Duke Lane

While DPD queried its on-duty officers about being in the Oak Cliff area or specifically in the Zangs/Beckley area, it appears to have taken whatever the officers said at face value. None were in the unit designated by Earlene Roberts (#107) or anything similar, and none claimed to have been in the immediate area.Therefore (if I might digress from the subject ever so slightly) Mrs. Roberts - who was blind in one eye and distracted by trying to improve the TV reception, but nevertheless was able to positively identify Oswald to "most everyone else's" satisfaction because she'd known him for five weeks and had presumably seen him almost every day and thus could not be mistaken even though she never testified to doing more than glancing at him - was unable to differentiate a police vehicle, approximately 30 times bulkier and with a much larger provile than any human being we'll ever know, from any civilian vehicle on the road. Based on police reports - any one or more of which could have been lying to cover their sixes - she was "mistaken." There is at least one scenario that I know of that would or could place a police vehicle in front of 1026 from its last suspected position in approximately the same elapsed amount of time as Oswald presumably spent inside the house. The driver was not and could not have been JD Tippit ... and that's all I'm prepared to say about that right now. There is absolutely no question that Oswald could have gotten to 10&P by vehicular transport, but since he didn't own a car, didn't presumably have a license, and likewise had no assistance whatsoever, that has to be ruled out. It's further ruled out by the unlikelihood that anyone could have driven him only to that neighborhood and then forced him out of the car, gun in hand, left to his own devices (and not worry about being shot themselves, or held at gunpoint) ... and if that's as far as he was going, why get anyone else involved? If he'd hitchhiked, it was a helluva place to hitchhike to. Even had that happened, someone still needs to put the gun in Oswald's hand, which nobody has ever been able to do. (I kno-o-ow!)* * With apologies to TV's Craig Ferguson!

I can perhaps provide some insight into this from a couple of perspectives.The first is that I rode public busses for many years to and from middle and high schools and used transfers every day. That said, I did not do it in Dallas, and it's very possible if not likely that DTC's rules were different than the bus company's where I grew up. The second may be through talking with some folks still in Dallas whom I'd been in contact when researching my bit on Worrell. While I know I won't be able to dig up specific information about, say, bus route schedules, it is entirely possible that they'll be able to recall broader topics like how the transfer system worked. The bus company I rode with allowed you to transfer on to any intersecting route, but not use it to get off of one route's bus for a period of time and get back onto that route's next bus; i.e., a transfer from line #19 could not be used to board a bus on line #19. If, however, line #20 continued past the point where line #19 stopped, you could use the line #19 transfer to get onto line #20, just as you could to change onto an east-west bus from a north-south bus. Typically, you had to ask for a transfer when you first got onto the first bus or shortly thereafter. The transfer tickets they used were identical in most major respects to DTC's transfers, although I cannot attest to a driver's punch being used. They, too, were marked in 15-minute increments (not obvious from the ticket in evidence since all higher time intervals were cut off), with the time that was shown being the time of the transfer's expiry, i.e., you could not use a transfer cut off at 1:00 at 1:15 or 1:30 (although some drivers were undoubtedly more lenient than others). The transfer was used in lieu of fare, meaning that the driver had to collect either the transfer or the cash from you as you boarded the bus. This prevented someone from getting on bus "A" and transferring to bus "B" and then again to bus "C" or "D" or "E" for as long as the time was not yet expired. This could be done more easily in a downtown area where several bus lines converge than it could in an outlying area where the lines are fewer even if not less frequent. As you say, since no bus driver had the transfer, it most likely means it was not used to transfer to another bus. I will see what I can do about finding out how DTC worked in the next several weeks. There never was a suggestion that he could've taken a bus there, although - absent the transfer and assuming DTC's rules to be the same as my bus company's - it is very well possible. Indeed, even with the transfer in hand, it doesn't preclude that he couldn't find the transfer in his pocket (how long, after all, did it take the cops to find it?) and paid the cash fare instead. It was probably only a nickel or so (five or ten cents/pence for the furriners here!), which he could've had laying on top of his dresser in pennies, thus not figuring into his financial portfolio as dissected by the WC. 'Tis so.

...I'll sit back, let you advance the discussion further a bit, so we can cover/recap the goodies that were said in the various Tippit threads with regards to the timing and events at 10th and Patton as well as the TT. Sorry about that; what I should've said was that you were getting there a little faster than me! Didn't mean to be so arrogant .... The "technical" problem with that scenario is that a bus driver would have taken the transfer from the rider in lieu of a cash fare, meaning that the paper transfer would no longer have been in the rider's possession ... unless the bus driver was also "in on the plot!"

Well, there ya go! Thanks for that, Ray! Contrary to my earlier post, it appears that Whaley did not see Oswald heading south. Also, contrary to his later statement, he also did not see him heading north. Yes, he did. No, wait! No, he didn't. Well, he must have, because that's what he told CBS! Imagine the pluck of that man Whaley! He lies to the FBI - ain't no Feebie got nothin' over on no Dallas cabbie, nossir! - and under oath in front of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but put a camera in front of him - or anybody! - and out comes the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! I wonder how it is that the court system hasn't picked up on this: y'know, put a guy on the stand, get a bunch of reporters holding microphones out to him, cameras whirring, and Presto! instant confession! But wait. Further email suggests that it's "picking and choosing" if we were to select one of Whaley's statements to the exclusion of any others, so which one do we lend more credence to? Or do we lend equal credence to all of them, i.e., Whaley didn't see anything, but what he did see proves that Oswald went southward and northward? Or that none of them are true, that Oswald didn't walk anywhere or that Whaley wasn't paying any attention to him? Ah! Wait! I see the light! If Whaley said that he saw Oswald walk south on the day following his cab ride, but then says he didn't see which way he went, and then months later in front of a camera he said southward - validating the first statement - but turned around and went north, he validates the Report, which means the WC understood Whaley correctly no matter how many ways he told it. After all, it makes sense, doesn't it? How else could he have gotten to the rooming house if he didn't walk north whether Whaley saw him or not? QED. Well, the bus that Helen Markham rode to work came every ten minutes (see CD630h). The bus from Love Field to downtown came at 20-minute intervals, as I recall. There is that series of bus schedules out there among the CD's somewhere....Discarded clothes? Matching the ones he was wearing in Whaley's cab and apparently seen by Mary Bledsoe? Is there a more reliable test for determining when someone wore clothes than there is for when they fired a rifle ("Oh, man! These are ripe! I'd say from the smell that he took these off between 1:01 and 1:05 ....")?

I should note that everything above in quote marks is an actual, direct quote from the FBI report of an interview with William Whaley on Saturday, November 23, 1963. I note this because I've gotten an email that suggests that my paraphrase is only "partially true" because ... So we come now to the conclusions that, after multiple stories had been broadcast and printed about what Oswald did after leaving the Depository, Whaley's memory was more accurate at some point prior to 10 months having elapsed than it was the day after the events he described took place. One might think that watching someone cross the street, start walking in one direction and then suddenly turning around and walking in the opposite direction - especially after having seen said passenger's face on TV the night before for having killed the President, possibly (but not necessarily!) raising your suspicions about him, his actions and his intentions - might be somewhat memorable, maybe even important to mention to the FBI ("y'know, now that I think about it, I thought it was strange that he turned around suddenly, going in the opposite direction. Sneaky fella, trying to make me think he was going one way when he really wanted to go the other!"), but we don't find it in Whaley's initial statement. We do see, however, that Whaley reported seeing this suspicious passenger of his "walking ... in a southward direction," at which point saying he "left him and did not see him any more." Didn't say that he noticed that he'd "immediately" changed directions, or that he thought his doing so might've been a wee bit odd; no, just that he "did not see him any more." He didn't even say that he'd last seen Oswald walking "in a northward direction" after having started southward, but because he said it on TV months later, it must be what happened. Only long after it became evident that Oswald would've had to walk northward from where Whaley had dropped him off in order to get to his room does he reconcile this apparent discrepancy in what he'd said before by adding this little detail that had escaped him earlier. Maybe someone told him that if he didn't see Oswald walking north rather than south, then he couldn't have had Oswald in the cab with him. Maybe he simply didn't think the change in direction was noteworthy. Maybe the FBI got it wrong, or he was as confused about directions as he was about street names, but whatever the cause, his updated version is the correct one. Mea culpa. My new mantra: "I've seen the light, the Report is right. I've seen the light, the Report is right. I've seen the light, the Report is right...." Edit: Oops. My mistake. It wasn't me who was "partially right," it was the witness! Still: "I've seen the light ...!"

You're jumping just a little ahead of the conversation, Antti - we haven't even gotten Oswald beyond the rooming house yet! - so allow me to just tackle your last part: You'll have to realize that most of the witnesses did not give any sort of accurate time, ranging from "lunchtime" to "around 1:00" to as late as 1:30. One of them - I'm thinking Ted Callaway - was even asked in his deposition what he was doing "at about 1:20," being told the time the shooting took place rather than being asked.I've got this all broken down somewhere, but the bottom line is that most of the people queried were not "doing anything" other than Markham and Bowley. The Davis girls were lazing around with their kids; Donnie Benavides' lunch hour was pretty casual; Callaway was going about his business; Scoggins was eating lunch; Smith and Burt were just hanging out; etc. Only Markham and Bowley were trying to get somewhere at a particular time and thus paying some attention to the hour, Bowley even looking at his watch. Only Markham and Bowley's afffidavits gave reasonably exact times: on November 22, Helen's affidavit [CD81, page 347; also CE2003, page 37 at 24H215] began by noting that "at approximately 1:06 PM, November 22, 1963 -- I was standing on the corner ...." In her testimony [3H306], when asked what time she'd thought the shooting had occurred, she replied that she'd "be willing to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1," which she knew because she was on her way to catch her "1:15" bus (it actually came at 1:12). (These, incidentally, are the only times she mentioned what time it was, which the WC disposed of in its "Rumors and Speculations" section by noting that "in her various statements and in her testimony, Mrs. Markham was uncertain and inconsistent in her recollection of the exact time of the slaying" [R651; emphasis added]. I guess saying "6 or 7 minutes" qualifies as that, eh?) Bowley's December 2 statement (he'd gone on vacation to San Antonio with his wife and daughter, and was on his way to pick her up at the phone company office at 9th and Zangs when he stumbled across the shooting) said that he'd looked at his watch, which read 1:10. He was not deposed; having met and talked with Bowley several times, I'm pretty sure he'd have stuck to his guns and proven that it actually was 1:10. I don't believe that there is anything wrong with the tapes (dictabelts), at least not during the timeframe in question. As to who was on the radio, there are two male voices, one belonging to Tom Bowley, the other belonging to Ted Callaway. Donnie Benavides tried using the radio, but didn't have any luck. Both he and Bowley state that Bowley got into the patrol car after Donnie got out; Bowley is certain that he'd gotten through, while Benavides only "knows" he did because the WC said he did. It was Benavides who testified to Callaway's getting on the radio later on and being told to get off, as indeed there is such an exchange a couple of minutes or so after the first "citizen" call. The WCR determined that if Oswald "left his roominghouse shortly after 1 p.m. and walked at a brisk pace, he would have reached 10th and Patton shortly after 1:15. Tippit's murder was recorded on the police radio tape at about 1:16 p.m." (R165). Well, of course the actual shooting was not "recorded on the police radio tape," and Oswald's being able to get there "shortly after 1:15" does not take into account either Benavides' saying that he'd waited in his truck "for a few minutes" to be sure the shooter was gone, or Bowley's arrival at 10th and Denver and seeing Tippit lying in the street before he'd driven part-way up the street and stopped his car so his elementary school-aged daughter couldn't see everything before walking the rest of the way to the scene, or the delay in his waiting for Benavides to get finished fumbling with the microphone (which the WC simply pretended didn't happen). People were already gathered around the car when Bowley got there, so either he arrived a few minutes after the shooting or Oswald had a bigger audience than anyone has acknowledged so far. So there you have the most accurate estimates of the time the event occurred: 1:06, 1:06 or 1:07, before 1:10, before the 1:12 bus, and several minutes before 1:16. If Oswald could have gotten there in 11 minutes (4.9 mph, a 12-minute mile at 7.2 fps vs. the "normal" 4.3), es machts nichts. Tippit was already dead.

... if this proposition is in fact correct, then Earlene Roberts was a perjurer and obstructor of justice. In deference to Occam and his predecessors, there are a multiplicity of assumptions hidden in that proposition, and a little bit of PROOF might be in order, before we could give it further consideration.I didn't say it was a fact, Ray; I said there is "reason to believe," and the reason to believe is as strong as just about anything else to do with the case against Oswald.Earlene Roberts was blind in one eye; I'm thinking it was the left one, but I don't recall offhand if she specified. You also know that she was distracted not alone by the television, but by the information she'd received from her friend on the telephone, if not the telephone itself (she never specifically said that she'd hung up the phone, tho' my recollection of phones in those days is that they didn't have long - or necessarily even coiled - wires either from the wall or between the unit and the handset, so I merely presume that she did); in any case, it's distinctly possible that the information about Kennedy being shot did to her what it did to millions of other people that day: upset her pretty badly. In any case, I think we'd both agree that she was not focused on Oswald, but on the information and tuning in the television. I submit in that case that virtually anyone could have come into the house and Oswald's room, and the simple fact that he knew where to go was probably sufficient for Roberts to believe it was Oswald. But that's not the teller; what is may also support your supposition of Oswald going to the theater. I think it fair to say that Whaley's eye -- and memory -- for men's attire was not the keenest, and I am not sure that my own is any better. Now if his passenger had been a hot-looking female, he might have noticed more and remembered better.In his FBI interview of November 23, William Whaley told agents, first, that he had dropped Oswald off in "the 500 block of Beckley Street, where the man stated 'this will do right here'. Then he got out, gave Mr. Whaley a dollar bill to pay the fare of $.95, and stated 'keep the change'. The man then angled across the street and started walking down Beckley Street in a southward direction. At that point, Mr. Whaley left him and did not see him any more." [CD5, p349; emphasis added] In other words (to paraphrase Mr. McWatters!), Oswald got out of Whaley's cab and walked in a direction away from 1026.That's the first "reason to believe;" the second is that, in the same interview, Whaley recalled that "the young man he drove in his cab was wearing a heavy identification bracelet on his left wrist ... was dressed in gray khaki pants ... [and] had on a dark colored shirt with some light color in it. The shirt had long sleeves and the top two or three buttons were unbuttoned." [ibid.; emphases added] Shades of Mary Bledsoe! (One could almost be convinced Whaley picked up Billy Lovelady, too, but we won't go there!) So, if all of this is true and accurate - other than, perhaps, Whaley's recollection of the block he'd dropped Oswald off at, that being Neches, which the WCR was quick to point out did not intersect Beckley and, quite frankly, doesn't sound a lot different than "Neeley," which could account for such a mistake - then not only did Oswald not depart in the direction of his room, but he also did not change his shirt nor, apparently, did he pick up a jacket and a pistol. If he did not change his shirt, it could well explain a bus transfer still being in his pocket. If we insist that Bledsoe was correct in identifying him even if his clothing didn't match McWatters' and Jones' descriptions, her description certainly matched Whaley's, which in turn sounds an awful lot like the shirt Oswald was arrested in. If we believe Bledsoe, supported by Whaley, then we'd have to know that the information - passed along by police, not heard directly from Oswald - about him changing clothes is completely false. Since he also supposedly admitted to picking up a gun to carry to the movies "like boys do," he did not use changing clothes as his "excuse" for stopping by his room. Why say so at all if it wasn't true? (Ahhh ... because some would say he was a pathological xxxx! So why, then, not lie and say he didn't pick up a gun? Changing a shirt wasn't illegal; carrying a concealed weapon was. Doesn't make sense, does it.) The FBI picked up a handful of bus schedules from the Dallas Transit Company, but I neither recall in what report you'll find them (it's a Commission Document, not an Exhibit) or whether the Beckley Street bus schedule was among them. We know a bus ran down the street, however, simply on account of Earlene Roberts' saying that she'd last seen "Oswald" standing at the bus stop in front of the house.When I was researching my (unfinished) piece on Dicky Worrell (Deep Politics Quarterly, July 2006, I think), I contacted several sources, including a retired bus drivers' social group, about bus schedules back then, but came up completely empty-handed. I was concerned with a different route at the time (line 39, I think it was; the one between Love Field and downtown), hence my failure to note the Beckley Street bus. There are no 1963 schedules in DART's archives today, nor with any of the bus afficianado groups that I was able to find, including the one that operates the trolleys downtown today, whose director was a DTC employee back then.

Check out Google Street View. This is intersection of Lemmon and Oak Lawn. Of course, there could be many changes in 45 years ...!

Seems reasonable ... but you know, of course, that there is some reason to believe that Lee Oswald did not go back to his room to change his shirt, right? For example, what was the clothing description given by William Whaley as being worn by his cab rider?

Good gosh, a distinction like that for little ol' me? I'm probably also the first one to use similar calculations to determine similar data for how long it took Oswald to walk from where Slim Givens saw him last on the 6th floor to the elevator, and what the implications to that were ... but that's another story for another thread. Answer is: a qualified "maybe." Nah, that wouldn't work.Google tells us it's 0.7 miles from 700 N. Beckley (at Neeley) to the theater, approximately 14 minutes to walk; 14.33 minutes according to the spreadsheet. I think we (or I) also found that it was about six minutes' walk from 700 Beckley to 1026, meaning that it was a 10 to 15 minute round trip back to Neeley (including time to clean up?), plus 14 more minutes back to the theater in order to be ten minutes late as opposed to five minutes early. Getting out of the cab at a point where it cost a buck seems like a reasonable thing to do, given the subject, if the theater was his intended destination.

I can't find anything online about it. I emailed the author to see if he can provide any additional information on this FBI report.

Just curious to see who's planning on being at either of the Dallas conferences coming up next month, and which conference are you attending ...?

According to this magnificent spreadsheet I've got(!), a walk of 8/10 mile would take 16.37 minutes at an "average" speed. Since we now have this spreadsheet and Google Maps "walking directions" available to us (and both seem to jibe in terms of time to cover any distance), let's start at the beginning. It seems as if the WC had decided that Lee was a brisk walker at all times. This is necessary because their "reconstruction" was dependent upon getting him to a certain point by a certain time, rather than from a certain point in whatever period of time (it was meant to prove he could do it, not eliminate the possibility that he couldn't).FBI and USSS agents walked the seven-block distance from Elm & Houston to Elm & Murphy (which latter is no longer a street, but a pedestrian walkway located just west of Field Street, i.e., less than half-a-block closer to Houston than Field) three times, averaging 6.5 minutes. Our Google Maps estimates the distance at .4 mile with an eight-minute walk; our "average speed calculator" estimates the time needed to cover that distance at 8.19 minutes (8:11.4); covering the same distance in 6.5 minutes gives us an average speed of 5.4 fps (vs. 4.3 "average"), or 25% faster than "normal." The WCR estimated Oswald getting to 1026 at "about 12:59 to 1 p.m" after getting on the bus at 12:40 (four minutes after McWatters left the Elm/St. Paul stop); being on the bus for four minutes (12:44); three to four minutes walking three blocks to the Greyhound depot (12:47-12:48); taking a six-minute cab ride (12:54); and walking 3/10 mile to 1026. It quoted Earlene Roberts as estimating that Lee stayed in the house "no more than three or four minutes," having entered in "an unusual haste" (Roberts' own words were a bit more colorful) and leaving while "zipping up a jacket." Then "a few seconds later," she saw him "standing near the bus stop in front of the house on the east side of Beckley" (current maps show the bus stop to be beyond the house next door to the north). (WCR161-65) It goes on to note that he "was next seen nine-tenths of a mile away" at 10th & Patton which, "if he left his roominghouse shortly after 1 p.m. and walked at a brisk pace, he would have reached 10th and Patton shortly after 1:15 p.m. Tippit's murder was recorded on the police tape at about 1:16 p.m." Using the WC's own "nine-tenths of a mile," the spreadsheet calculates the "normal walking speed" time to get there as 18.42 mins (18:25.2); Google gives us 0.8 miles and about 16 minutes, and at that distance, the spreadsheet calculates 16.37 minutes. Using the average of 0.85 miles, we end up with 17.4 minutes, or 17:24; call it 17 minutes. Pick at time that Oswald left the rooming house to come up with an arrival time: 1:02 = 1:19 1:03 = 1:20 1:04 = 1:21 1:05 = 1:22 (giving one minute standing at the bus stop, latest "possible" time ... tho' who's to say Earlene Roberts' estimate of his being there "no more than three or four minutes" wasn't short, and he'd been there five or six; after all, she was trying to tune in her TV set to catch the news about the shooting, and could've been wrong about how long he'd been there in either direction.) Remembering the "normal" rate of speed as 4.3 fps (2.93 mph), if he arrived there "by shortly after 1:15," Oswald's walking speeds would have to be: 1:02 = 5.8 fps = 3.92 mph (15.3-minute mile) 1:03 = 6.2 fps = 4.25 mph (14.1-minute mile) 1:04 = 6.8 fps = 4.64 mph (12.9-minute mile) 1:05 = 7.5 fps = 5.10 mph (11.8-minute mile) ... all eminently do-able times at a "brisk" pace, tho' the last couple might today be called "power-walking," maybe even jogging, at about 1.6 to 1.75 times the "normal" rate of speed. It could've been as early as 1:06 or 1:07, but we can state with a fair degree of certainty that it was before 1:10. There are several threads relating to Tippit that have this information, but for starters, you can also go to the affidavits of Helen Markham and T.F. Bowley, as well as Markham's testimony about the events. I've got something lengthier and more in-depth that I can email you; drop me a PM. (As to Markham, as much an "utter screwball" as she may have been, she certainly knew when she left for work and what bus she had to catch to get there.)

STUPENDOUS! A giant leap forward. I nominate the Dukester for THE COPERNICUS AWARD. Can this apparatus tell us: 1. How long it took him to walk from Beckley to the Cinema? 2. How long would it have taken him to walk [to the cinema] from the location(s) where the Taxi dropped him off? It is geographically neutral: it doesn't care what's at either end of a trip, only that you know how long it was. Google Maps is good for determining that with reasonable accuracy.All you do is plug in a distance in miles, to any decimal value you want (e.g., 100 yards = .0568 mi) and it will, in the first column, compute how long it will take an average adult moving at an "average" page (4.3 feet per second) to cover that distance in both seconds and minutes (70 seconds or 1.16 minutes), as well as feet per second, feet per minute, feet per hour and miles per hour. As an added bonus, it will also tell you "what kind" of a mile is being covered, e.g., a four-minute mile or a ten-minute mile. You can then, in a second column, change the amount of time you want that distance to be covered in minutes (say, 10 seconds, or 0.16666666666 minutes) and get the same calculations as above (a 10-second, 100-yard dash is equal to running at about 20.46 mph, or a 2.9-minute mile if someone could sustain that speed ... or run that fast: I have no idea what a "fast" 100-yard dash is), as well as the reverse calcs for determining what their average fps is. A third column gives you the same calculations to allow you to compare the difference between, say, running that 100-yard dash in 12 seconds, or in six. You could also calculate a marathoner's average speed over a much longer distance, as long as you work with distance expressed in (fractions of) miles, and time in (fractions of) minutes, so that if you covered 29 miles in 4.00 hours (i.e., 240 minutes), the average speed is 7.25 mph, or 10.6 fps, more than double the "average" pace of an adult (4.3 fps or 2.93 mph). An auto covering 29 miles in 30 minutes would be going an average of 58 mph. According to Google Maps (which now has walking directions and times in beta), it is 1.0 miles from 1026 to TT, going south on Beckley to Davis then cutting over to Zangs to Jefferson. Google estimates a total elapsed time of 21 minutes; my spreadsheet estimates 20.47 minutes at the 4.3 fps average, close enough. If you wanted someone to get from 1026 to TT in, say, 11 minutes, they be moving at 8.0 fps or 5.45 mph; if you wanted LHO out the door at 1:04 and walking into TT by 1:10 in time to see the start of the first movie (but miss the trailers!), he'd have been moving at 14.7 fps or 10 mph ... probably meaning that he'd gotten a ride, because that's a six-minute mile). Handy stuff, no? We don't believe it because the evidence is not in the least bit persuasive, for reasons already stated. Yes, we believe he got the pistol, because he freely admitted it.I guess it all depends upon how easily you're persuaded that the people who wanted to get a confession out of him reported his statements accurately, and/or that Lee's statements were made and could be taken at face value (i.e., not sarcastic or "what they wanted to hear"), or whether, as a defense attorney, you would allow that a statement about carrying a gun to the effect that "you know how boys do" (not a seemingly apropos answer, verbatim, from any 24-year-old man, I wouldn't think) is the same as a "confession." Remember that until recently, concealed handguns were in themselves illegal; there was no such thing as carrying an gun "without a permit" (a la Jack Ruby) because there were no permits to be had. We submit that Lee Oswald, when last seen, was about to start heading towards the Texas Theatre. That would be consistent with what he told his captors. As I recall that Beckley intersection, (and I know you will correct me if I am wrong) he would have to cross the street from where he stood if he wanted to walk to the Cinema. As far as I know, Dallas doesn't have any one-way sidewalks, so no, he wouldn't have to had to cross the street to get anywhere, and going north - unless he wanted to walk down Zangs to Jefferson, which is about the same distance (1.0 miles, per Google) - is hardly necessary because, if he'd wanted to cross the street at a marked crossing, he could have done so at 5th or 6th or any street along the way, or anywhere along the way if he wasn't so concerned about crossing at a corner.

I never considered that they tried to paint these activities as "suspicious," but rather to show where he'd been and how he'd gotten to Beckley in the time allotted him. The only "suspicion" that came into play was in the presumption that he feared going back through DP where the bus might've gotten searched (and so? Did they suspect he'd be asked if he worked in the TSBD and get arrested if he'd said yes?), so he hopped off to avoid that possibility. Which, of course, was why they couldn't have Tippit dead as early as he was. My opinion is that this house of cards was built upon the twin premises that (1) Mrs. Bledsoe, his former landlady, "must" have recognized him, and the bus was on a schedule, ergo he had to be on that bus at that time; and (2) Earlene Roberts, his current housekeeper, likewise "must" have recognized him, ergo he had to be into Beckley as soon as they could get him there. Stuck with the bus's schedule and a walk to the Greyhound station, they had only so much time left to work with. Thereafter, they had to get him out the door quickly, and Tippit couldn't have died any sooner than Bowley's announcement on the radio because Oswald couldn't have gotten to 10&P before then within the constraints they'd established (no car, nobody driving and assisting him, etc.). I'm only surprised that, after finally managing to get Whaley to within two blocks of where he'd left his passenger off (he said 500 block of Beckley; they settled on 700 block so that Oswald had time to walk back to Beckley by 1:00. It took several tries and a Secret Service or FBI car to accomplish it) that they permitted him a full four minutes of being inside. It would've been easier if they'd left the bus trip out of it - decided Mary Bledsoe was "mistaken" and ignored her along with Tom Bowley, et al. - and let him get straight into the cab, but, well, there you have it. It is not enough, however, to simply remove one card to collapse the house, ya gotta pick up all the cards. No argument from me on that, but I'll add that the evidence that Lee Oswald was ever inside the rooming house at all was based on the same woman's statements.I can draw a scenario about that, also tying in the Gloco incident and the "toot-toot" out in front, but not now. Think Frank Ellsworth.

In and of itself, you may be right. Nevertheless, as a part of the "prosecution's" case, each part must be proved and, in an adversarial proceeding, the bus ride could be challenged by the proverbial "good defense attorney" that likewise could've taken Bill Whaley apart. Obviously, we don't have the benefit of knowing what a defense attorney would have done with WC witnesses, but we can judge the relative merit of the testimony that's on record, and basically, nobody else supports any part of Mary Bledsoe's testimony that relates to Oswald other than that a man got on the bus.Anyone who believes her can only do so on the basis of "why would she lie," ignoring the evidence and assuming that she had perfect eyesight and actually paid careful - or any - attention to anything about him ... while she actually testified that she didn't pay any attention to him once she thought she'd recognized him, and deliberately ignored him from that point forward, and then accept her testimony as valid because he'd been her boarder for a week, so she "must" have known and positively recognized him. We can simply agree to disagree on this point. I, however, am not inclined to disbelieve part A, believe part B, disbelieve part C, and believe part D, which last is dependent on the sum of the previous parts, two-thirds of which I don't believe. If you're willing to concede those things that "aren't incriminating" in and of themselves, and challenge only those things that "make a difference" in your mind, you're left with a "jury" wondering why your conclusion is right if only half of your data is right, versus your opponent who thinks it's all right and reached a different conclusion. Whose conclusion would be "right," then? So we believe that he got on the bus, which isn't incriminating. Maybe into the taxi cab, which also isn't incriminating. Maybe he got off in the 500 block of Beckley, maybe the 700's, which also isn't incriminating. Maybe he did go into Beckley, which isn't also incriminating. We don't believe he got a jacket, because it might be incriminating. Do we believe he got a pistol, which might also be incriminating? We believe he went to the bus stop, which isn't incriminating (and actually tends toward the opposite). You take it from there. Tell me what pieces you think we can keep and which ones we need to throw away, and what we need to put in each part's place to reach the next segment otherwise. It doesn't seem that we can have part of the story right and part of the story wrong and be able to determine which conclusion is correct, does it?

According to the WC, it's only 9/10 of a mile between 1026 and 10&P (8/10 according to Google Maps) and 6/10 from 10&P to TT (ibid).The average walking speed of an adult (male?) is 4.3 feet per second, or about 3 mph. 9/10 of a mile at that rate of speed takes 18.4 minutes; 6/10 would take 12.2 minutes at the same "average" speed. One could do 6/10 of a mile in five minutes at a slightly faster clip (5.28 fps/4.43 mph), but would have to be running (10.56 fps/7.2 mph) Doing 9/10 mile in 10 minutes is 7.9 fps/11.1 mph. As points of reference, a four-minute mile is a speed of 15 mph; a respectable 7.5-minute mile is 8 mph (which damned near "killed" me when I was a young teenager doing it for the first handful of times, and still somewhat painful after doing it regularly!). I've got an Excel spreadsheet that calculates all of this stuff if anyone wants it; the forum won't let me upload it here. A compelling case can be made that Oswald was never at Beckley around 1:00, but even assuming that he had, if it was not him at 10&P - which it couldn't have been 'cuz he couldn't run a four-minute mile(!) - and the only other place he most definitely was was in central Oak Cliff, it's difficult to say where he might have been heading.As I've remarked elsewhere (or maybe it was here?), we sometimes have a propensity to correlate conflicting data, for example saying "Oswald didn't kill Tippit" on the one hand, then asking where might he have been going since he was "heading in that direction," on the other. If you put him at 10&P, or heading somewhere that passed through that area, then by definition, he killed Tippit. These positions cannot be reconciled unless you postulate Oswald at 10&P as an innocent bystander who ran back, more or less, the way he came for some unknown reason rather than continuing to where he'd "intended" to go.

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense does it? We will never, however, understand Oswald's thinking, or even know the basis for any of it.

Now hold on Duke. I think you already mentioned the number of people on McWatter's bus and the number was nowhere near 73. I stand by the number: anyone could have walked onto the bus and been seen by Bledsoe; only the people who worked in TSBD would have been seen by Carolyn Arnold. No, Ray: she glimpsed him. Then she looked away, and kept looking away. Big difference from "up close and personal." I am sure that has happened. But if someone I knew from living in my house a month ago got on my bus and walked back towards me…… and if I didn't like him, and if I owed him money, or thought he had at least an argument that I owed him money, I might pretend not to notice him, just as Bledsoe did.You weren't paying attention to (or failed to understand) where Mary B was, as well as what she saw or said. You are putting words in her mouth (so to speak) and adding elements to the circumstance that didn't exist.I'll recap: Mary Bledsoe was sitting in the first seat on the right hand side of the bus, which faced the center aisle and the bus driver. Whoever entered therefore entered at her right elbow and, by the time he was fully in sight, in front and to the right of her, he was standing, facing the bus driver while she was seated, also facing the bus driver, which means that she saw his left rear quarter as he paid his fare, possibly his left half as he turned to move toward the back of the bus, or possibly portions of his left side as he climbed the stairs coming on board the bus, where her vision of him would have been blocked in largest part by a partition. If she saw him once he'd gotten fully onto the bus, she would have had to look up to see his face, which she said she'd only had a "glimpse" of. It was not as if she'd seen him full-face or face-on. If he came on board the bus from her right, with his right side away from her, and then he turned left in front of her, with his right side still away from her, I submit that it was difficult if not impossible for her to have seen the hole in his right elbow, even assuming it was there. Her description of his clothing was also at odds with two other people who saw the man who'd boarded the bus, so tell me why, given all of this, you might still think that she saw Lee Oswald. What we see instead, it would seem, is her susceptibility to suggestion: yup, the shirt you [the FBI] are showing me is the one he was wearing, and yup, the one you [Joe Ball] are showing me is the same one the FBI showed me, which, despite the fact that I swore I'd never seen the shirt, "he had it on, though." The epitome of credibility. Why do you believe her? Because you think her testimony isn't probative in any way, shape or form? And let it be said with finality: she never, ever, even once even hinted at trying to "hide" from him because she owed him money, or thought that there might be an argument that she did - and given her general demeanor, I tend to doubt she'd ever concede any such thing. This is a supposition that has no basis in fact. That she didn't like him goes without saying, hence her refusal to look at him and thereby get anything more than a simple "glimpse" of him ... from an angle that would make positive identification difficult, impossible, or at least dubious. It doesn't really matter; it was certainly not practiced universally either geographically or chronologically. Sir, I submit that that was done in September 1964, not in November 1963, which latter date occasioned the casting aside of the principle of "innocent until proven guilty." Setting aside the question whether Bledsoe saw him at all, Oswald's supposedly dropping by his rooming house, or getting or wearing a jacket is just as "criminal" as his getting on a bus, so what difference does it make, right?

The difference, Ray, is that Carolyn Arnold didn't purposely try to ignore Oswald the moment she saw him and from every moment forward, as Bledsoe did. I'd say the same thing about her if she'd said, for example, "when I saw him coming, I immediately ducked into an office and hid behind the door, didn't come out until his footsteps were gone." Too, inside the TSBD, the potential number of subjects was significantly smaller: Arnold had only those 73 who worked there to make a mistake from; Bledsoe had the entire city of Dallas and all its visitors. As for motive - if motive is necessary to be just plain wrong - I would posit "civic duty" based on a false premise. I didn't say she exaggerated knowing him, but only her actual ability to recognize him and be certain it was him. Are you going to tell me that you've never seen someone in a crowd that you knew, only to find out it was someone else? Even after more scrutiny than Mary gave Lee? And what if your friend ended up in jail because when you saw "him," "he" was running away from where a bank happened to have been robbed? Is it possible you were wrong? Or would it have to be a "positive ID" because you know him?

Oh! All of this means simply that Oswald's presence on McWatters' bus cannot be proved. Mrs. Bledsoe's very brief and intermittent acquaintence with Oswald and purposeful "not paying attention" to the man on the bus does not establish it. If the first leg collapses, what happens to the second?

Occam's Razor suggests NO SUCH thing. Occam's theorem says that assumptions should not be multiplied, and it is a Theorem that holds great wisdom. The version of the theorem that you presented here is an oversimplification, and is only true if the word "simple" is understood to mean a proposition requiring no assumptions at all, or one requiring fewer assumptions than any competing proposition. In the example of a person being brought to trial, our wise ancestors discovered that the simplest explanation is that the accused is innocent. If a man is sitting in a cinema, peacefully watching a movie, then is forcibly seized by police and charged with a crime, it requires a great many assumptions to accept, without evidence, that the man is guilty. You have to assume that the arrest was lawful, that the authorities are acting in good faith, and that the police were relying on truthful witnesses, etc etc. There are a great many assumptions involved in suggesting that only guilty people are brought to trial, but only one assumption is needed if you begin by believing that the accused is innocent. The legal presumption of innocence that we hold so dear is actually an example of Occam's Razor operating at it's sharpest. In <ahem!> theorem, I agree with you; it's application we're talking about here, however: the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" has not been around since the Magna Carta (which so happened to also be in Occam's time, more or less), y'know.Sure, Oswald was innocent as hell, sitting there in that theater with a gun that he pulled on a cop, with another cop dead less than a mile away. Innocent enough, at least, to be brought in for questioning by a bunch of cops in a conservative city with an anything-but-liberal bent as he hollered things like "police brutality" and of "knowing his rights" while a dead President was being flown "home" to Washington. ... And was just as innocent as a veritable parade of people picked him out of thoroughly fair lineups including men of over 250 lbs (or so one of them told me), teenagers, and nattily-dressed detectives. Proof of his trying to kill another cop by way of a dent on the firing pin of another - lucky for Nick McDonald - "dud" round that three officers attested to, along with the FBI. A .38 revolver, the same caliber as had killed JD Tippit, and a rifle found in the building where he'd worked and where none of his co-workers had supposedly seen him during the minutes leading up to the shooting of a United States President; these are all but incidentals. So, you'd be right that Occam's Razor doesn't apply to a man who'd only ever packed a pistol in a movie house "like boys do" and proclaimed himself quite righteously a "patsy," because the only prevailing assumption that needs be overcome is that Oswald had only ever been innocently watching a movie while his guns did bad deeds unbidden in the same vicinities he'd innocently just happened to be at the times in question. According to one source, "the version of the Razor most often found in Ockham's work is Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate [Plurality ought never be posited without necessity]," which might be colloquially translated to say "don't oversell the proposition; keep it short and simple." Maybe that would have been best at the outset, but that's not what we've got 45 years later: when they got done nailing down Oswald's coffin, they got out the liquid nails, sealed it with superglue, and wrapped it in shrink-wrap. So, for those non-criminal acts, we have: Why did Oswald get on a bus? To go home. Why did he go home? To get his jacket. Why didn't he have his jacket in the theater? I checked, and it's also not a crime to leave your jacket near the scene of a murder as long as you didn't also commit the murder. While it is true that the burden of proof is upon the prosecution, such a proposition requires that the field be leveled by having a defense, otherwise there will be nothing but proof. Each leg of the journey to the theater was painstakingly recreated until it was certain that it was at least possible for the conclusion to be tenable. On which proposition does the weight of assumptions fall in this case? William Whaley is probably more the lynchpin to the scenario than McWatters, because if by chance he was right and it took him longer to get to Beckley (and presumably the 500 block he'd said rather than the 700 block agreed upon) using his cab rather than the FBI/Secret Service car that was ultimately used to prove the scenario, then everything else blows apart and we are left with a different solution ... but what? My point all along has been that it cannot be ruled out that the man on the bus was not Lee Oswald, because the sole identifying witness to it is a woman who disliked him and, once she thought she'd seen him, did her best not to look at him. (Of course, there will be the argument that it is precisely because she despised him that she could be certain at a glimpse who he was, whereas if she'd liked him - or better yet, been ambivalent about him - then she'd be more likely to be mistaken.) If something as innocuous as that will be taken at face value - along with other innocuous things, like getting a jacket from home - because they seem plausible, and all those plausible, possible things add up to the commission of a crime (in this case, the murder of JD Tippit), then each must be examined and ruled in or out on their own merits. What if Oswald's story had been that he got on the Romana bus and took it to the theater, where he went in to watch the movie and saw the trailers before the feature started? What's up with the Marsalis bus transfer, then? Who was that who went into his room at Beckley, then? And was the police-car toot-toot an event that actually occurred? Was Oswald perhaps the second figure Earlene thought she saw? The trouble with overstating one's case - disobeying, as it were, Occham's Razor - is the creation of a web in which many more strands can be broken and collapse the tangle altogether. Being supported by so many premises, if any of them are weak enough to disprove - or reduce the likelihood of - the next, what's left? As it stands, the case is - as I think it was Nicholas Katzenbach who characterized it - "too pat, too obvious."

Lee Oswald was just another face in the crowd to Jones and McWatters, but Mrs. Bledsoe said she knew him, and no witness ever contradicted her on that issue.Nor, clearly, was any effort made to find someone who might have, or who might even have shored up her character (as, for example, not being someone who was "prone to exaggeration"). McWatters, who was on the stand at one point, was not asked about her; neither was Jones, who was not called to testify but was interviewed. Other than her relating things that - presumably - someone would "only have known if they'd been there" (and they weren't on TV), there is nobody who corroborates Mary Bledsoe even having gone downtown to watch the parade that day, much less witnessed any of this stuff. The problem is that Mary Bledsoe was prone to exaggeration, as well as leaping to conclusions, and being judgmental, prejudiced, and probably spiteful to boot. Consider the fact that nobody contradicted Arnold Rowland either and the circumstances that arose from that! It is one thing to recognize someone you know, which is easy to do, but it is not so easy to recall exactly what someone was wearing. Bledsoe's clothing description does not sound very reliable, as Ball obviously recognized.So, what are you doing, telling us the criteria by which you select which of an unreliable witness's statements you deem reliable? Consider Mary's initial statement at DCSO on 11/23/63: Last Friday [sic], November 22, 1963, I went downtown to see the President. I stood on Main Street just across the street from Titche's [Department Store] until the parade passed by. Then I walked over to Elm Street and caught a bus to go home. The bus traveled West on Elm Street to about Murphy Street and made a stop and that is when I saw Lee Oswald get on the bus. The traffic was heavy and it took quite some time to travel two or three blocks. During that time someone made the statement that the President had been shot and while the bus was stopped due to the heavy traffic, Oswald got off the bus and I didn't see him again. I know this man was Lee Oswald because he lived in my home from October 7, 1963 to October 14, 1963. /s/ Mrs. Mary E. Bledsoe [emphases added] Compare that to her testimony in which she said that the first thing she'd done after getting home was go to her neighbor's house to tell them the news; then she went home when some neighborhood 'boy' came by and turned on the TV, which they watched together until he left. Then her son came home, she supposedly told him about seeing Oswald on the bus, and called the police immediately, but didn't give a statement until the next day, at the Sheriff's Department rather than DPD. And what she said was that she'd simply noticed - or thought she'd noticed - Lee Oswald get on the bus and then get off, and that's about it. Put this in the context of a woman who, when Oswald moved in, she said he'd come to her and said, "'Well, where is the grocery store?' Well, I [Mary Bledsoe] said, 'It is down that way,' but I didn't want him to use the kitchen, so, he said, 'I'm going to get some milk,' and so, I didn't like that much, but I didn't say anything about it because I wanted to get along with him." And he did seem personable at first, mentioning even before they'd gotten into her house that he was married and looking for a job. ... And so, [when he said that, it] give me a lead, something to talk about, and I said, "Well, what kind of work do you do?" "Oh, I do electronics," he said, and I said, "Well, there is some good jobs because you are young, and you can get a good job a young man like you." And then [he] went on. Then something about him being in the Marines, and I said, "Well, that is wonderful. My son was in the Navy." And talking about him, you know, just getting to know him, and - but, "here is a picture of my wife, and picture of the girl, and the baby." And I said, "Oh, she has got a baby, hasn't she?" And he said, "Yes." Within days after this apparently pleasant exchange, she decided that - [H]e was not a man to talk, you know, what I got out of him, I had to get it out of him, because it was hard to - because I wanted to see what kind of a person he was, and it was hard to get, you know, to judge him in such a short time. ... And everything he said, I had to pull it out of him to talk about something for him to say what it was." I didn't like his attitude. He was just kind of like this, you know, just big shot, you know, and I didn't have anything to say to him, and - but, I didn't like him. There was just something about him I didn't like or want him - just wasn't the kind of person I wanted. Just didn't want him around me. ... and so she threw him out. I would submit that, given her warm personal feelings toward the "big shot" Oswald and the publicity surrounding and condemning him in the aftermath of the shooting, it is not unlikely that those feelings just gushed forth and germinated in what was obviously a very fertile imagination. All of the rest grew from there and was fertilized by the clothing that the FBI brought by her house to examine, resulting in a "strong" identification of Oswald on the bus. I don't know exactly what to think, except that I don't think that Bledsoe's a reliable witness, or that her testimony should be taken at face value simply because she claimed to know Oswald. I say "claimed" to know because he had only lived at her house for part of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday. Much if not most of that time he was either away from the house or in his room. It had been a month since he'd been there, and she pointed out no less than 46 times in her 28 pages of testimony how much she "didn't pay attention to" a lot of things, and I submit Lee Oswald was one of them. The clothes "cinched" her identification of him, for with all her "I don't know's" and "didn't pay attention's," there really wasn't anything else of substance to her testimony beyond her recognizing the clothes the FBI had brought by her house to show her, and her ability to recognize them "again," which fell on its face. The Report didn't "rely" on McWatters' testimony (or even take Jones'), but instead utilized Bledsoe and her "identification" of as well as her "familiarity" with Oswald to put him on the "escape bus." This exchange shows that she saw someone whom she at least thought was Lee Oswald board the bus, and did her studious best to avoid even looking at him again: Mr. Ball. Well, did you look at him as he got off the bus? Mrs. Bledsoe. No; I sure didn't. I didn't want to know him. Mr. Ball. Well, you think you got enough of a glimpse of him to be able to recognize him? Mrs. Bledsoe. Oh, yes. Mr. Ball. You think you might be mistaken? Mrs. Bledsoe. Oh, no. Mr. Ball. You didn't look very carefully, did you? Mrs. Bledsoe. No; I just glanced at him, and then looked the other way and I hoped he didn't see me. I think she convinced herself of what she'd seen, and her feelings toward her former boarder - who wouldn't entertain her, who stayed mostly to himself in his room, used her refrigerator and phone, woke her up from her afternoon naps, and (of all things!) spoke in a foreign language (which might've been Spanish, like half the people in Texas speak!) that she couldn't understand - simply enhanced her recollection. The FBI's displaying the clothing to her beforehand gave her a better straw to grasp. The point to this is simply that her testimony is worthless toward putting him on that bus or proving that the transfer was his, not criminal in and of themselves, but potentially probative toward placing him where he wasn't.

Please bear in mind that my responses are to the limits of what we know as fact. Just because someone said something under oath does not mean it is a fact. If more than one person said the same or similar things independent of each other, we can put more stock in it.Question 1: We don't know for certain what Oswald said at any time, or what he was necessarily asked. I've only looked at what appears to have transpired on the bus. If memory serves beyond that, there was either a question about a bus or cab that Oswald responded to the effect of "I told you I did" (get on the bus or whatever). Getting on a bus does not necessitate a transfer, so even if he'd gotten onto one, doesn't mean that the transfer in evidence would be his. I cannot state with certainty that he was asked about the transfer as opposed to merely being on a bus. Another consideration is that, while Oswald may even have asserted that he'd taken a bus, what bus did he take? Clearly, McWatters' bus would have been the first - after 12:40 anyway - Marsalis bus to have gone through the Elm/Houston intersection, but according to what Mary Bledsoe had to say at various times, that was not the only bus route that Oswald may have had a choice to have taken. Mary Bledsoe's 11/24 interview notes, for example, that "she got on a bus, as she recalls, a Marsalis bus," suggesting that there may have been another bus she could've taken. In her testimony, when asked what bus she'd gotten on, she replied, "Well, I don't remember whether it was the Marsalis or the Romana," now clearly demonstrating that a second route could have gotten her home, their routes diverging at some point afterward. If the Romana bus went over the Houston Street viaduct (which empties onto Zangs Boulevard, which in turn shortly intersects with Beckley) and then turned south on Marsalis toward Mary's house, Oswald could have taken that bus and only had a short walk home, the same as he would have if he'd have taken a Marsalis bus. We know that McWatters' bus got held up in traffic some four blocks before reaching Houston Street; what we don't know is whether or where ahead of McWatters the Romana bus might've been. If it had been ahead of McWatters somewhere in that traffic jam, it would have gotten through the intersection before McWatters and possibly picked up Oswald at its first stop thereafter, probably the same place McWatters would've stopped (as he testified), at Main and Houston. It cannot be excluded from the realm of possibilities simply because none of the drivers from that route were apparently questioned and none testified or gave statements. If he had gotten on a Romana bus, whether or not he'd gotten a transfer (which he'd have had no need of in any case), then the validity of his statement of being - or lack of denial of not being - on a bus remains the same. Although I've yet to show that your wife is dead, but assuming you killed her, can you tell us some reasons why? This is one of the difficulties in evaluating evidence in this case, because people are willing to accomodate two sets of conflicting data into their evaluation. For example, Oswald "could not have walked from Beckley to 10th in time to shoot Tippit," but assuming he did, what reason did he have for leaving his jacket behind the Texaco station? Well, since he wasn't able to be there, and since the presumption is that the killer dropped it, how does Oswald's motivation for dropping it come into play if he wasn't and couldn't have been the killer? Going forth from the presumption that it was him on McWatters' bus and getting a transfer before getting off, then there need be no further destination in mind other than to do as the "suitcase lady" was doing: walking through the traffic jam and maybe catching the same bus on the other side of it ... which I recall Mary Bledsoe having said exactly that happened in her case. McWatters' bus would've taken him closer to Harlandale, within 6-7 blocks, as this map shows (click the little "street view" guy to take a look around the neighborhood of the supposed "safe house" - that's the yellow one, btw). I have no idea where he might have gone after Beckley, if he'd gone to Beckley, and the location where the blind-in-one-eye and distracted Earlene Roberts said it was on the northbound side of the street, i.e., the same side.All points being simply being - as I will expand on in my response to Ray Carroll - that the facts in evidence do not establish Oswald's whereabouts beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what Occam's Razor might dictate, for that theorem suggests that every single person who's brought to trial absolutely, positively did whatever it is they're accused of ... because that is, quite simply, the simplest solution. If your lawyer subscribes to that theory, fire him.

It's always been my impression that Day maintained possession of the rifle and was the only one to handle it from the time it was found until it was brought to City Hall. Is that not so? Is it a fact that someone else handled it - and therefore may have sniffed it - or are we merely assuming that as well?As to not reporting a strong, lingering smell of gunpowder because it was "obvious" is an obvious non sequitur. Does it follow that because I can smell it here, you'll be able to smell it there when I (don't) tell you about it? "It was so obvious that the victim was dead that I didn't think there was a need to tell you about finding a body." The real answer is that nobody with responsibility or who gave evidence sniffed the barrel, and that's all there is to that.