Duke Lane

Not hardly. Happens quite frequently ... or at least, more often than most people might expect. Even still, "uncommon" does not equate with "strange" or "impossible."

It's a shame you didn't ask for help!

Well, as I noted, I aligned the window sashes on either house at the farther edges of the image where I could see as much of the line of them as possible, then used to the doorway sash to rotate the image to vertical. As you can see, all three of these do line up when so corrected, they are not off at odd angles. The horizontal lines also line up, again within a pixel or two.By that measure, the houses are not "ramshackle," and aren't "funhouses" ready to tilt over. They were probably fairly old, though, even then: I'll bet built in the '20s? ... And not for very much money, even in the dollars of those days. "Ramshackle" as in direpair? That I'd say is probably the case. But not falling over. No idea.

I'm down to 4.92K global space left, so am posting a very poor quality version; have sent you the better one by email? The vertical and horizontal lines (almost none of which you can see on this version) by the dark window at the left, by the door in the center, and by the window at far right were drawn in with Photoshop's line tool with the shift key held to force them to 90°. The photo objects (windows, door) are all within a pixel of being absolutely vertical. I did not correct for barrelling because /a/ the lines look straight enough, and /b/ I don't know what lens was used, and there are variations for so many of them! Hope this helps!

I haven't had a chance to do anything with the photo, but thought you might be interested in seeing a lighter and clearer photo on James Richards' site; look at the lower part of the image, probably below your screen's bottom.

Lyndon! Lyndon! Leave them alone! If it bothers you that much, I'll leave the bubble top off!

If anyone was being pedantic, it was I. I'll see what I can do, but you realize that it renders the original as "altered," with perhaps some important clue removed. It's bad enough that every single image taken in DP is "doctored," and a pity that the Oak Cliff images will be too! As for Harry, the things he describes are peripheral, ostensibly innocuous in the larger scheme of things. His prevarications call attention to them and make one wonder what's so important about them to warrant the lies.

I'm very familiar with the article; Bill Drenas' number is on my cell phone speed-dial, so you can be certain that we've discussed it more than once. I referenced it regarding the Gloco Station in another post on this thread (leading to the "Duke, Duke, Duke of Oil, Duke, Duke..." ditty!).That is what Harry told Bill Turner when Turner (ex-FBI) interviewed Olsen on behalf of Jim Garrison. Harry is obfuscating. In 1964, he told the WC that the house belonged to an elderly aunt of a DPD motorcycle cop who was in the motorcade (maybe) and who had asked him to fill in for him. He could recall the names of neither the elderly aunt nor the motor cop. Three years later it became the "estate" of a "dead person" who was male, and Harry'd been hired by an attorney representing the estate of such dead person. But note that in 1964, Harry told WC that /a/ he had been outside at some point following the assassination, and /b/ had gone back inside to answer a phone call from a woman friend of the elderly aunt. Problem: how many friends of deceased people call them at home after they've died? Even if the friend didn't know of the death, upon learning of it - as I'm sure anyone answering said dead person's phone would tell upon learning it was a friend of said decedent on the phone - would carry on with a total stranger about the assassination of the President like the death of their friend was of no import, and talking to a "security guard" was the most natural thing in the world? Harry is also the person responsible for the characterization of Jack Ruby as being distraught over "poor Jacqueline" having to come back to Dallas, etc., etc., on the night before Ruby shot Oswald, this during a conversation held between him, girlfriend (later wife ... so as not to be able to testify against him?) Kay Coleman, parking garage attendant "Johnny" (last name unknown) and Ruby. The FBI interviewed "Johnny" (John Simpson) in August 1964, four months after the Olsens' testimony, who said that he did not take part in the conversation, did not eavesdrop on it, and did not overhear any of it ... and moreover, while he recognized the "other" three participants to the conversation "by sight," he "did not know them well enough" to carry on any sort of conversation with any of them beyond a simple greeting. Also, in December 1963, the FBI interviewed Harry at Baylor Hospital, where he'd been recuperating from an auto accident. At that time, Harry described Ruby as being "no more upset than the average guy." Take your pick: which do you think is the true story? Either one (or any) of them? What I'm curious about is just what Harry was really doing at a house - any house, large or small - that just happened to be along the same route that Tippit took from Kiest and Bonnieview, to 8th and Lancaster?

As to distortion, a good photogammetrist would probably take me apart (to paraphrase Howard Brennan), but basically, the wider-angle a lens used, the more barrelling you'll get (a fisheye is usually about 8mm, vs a standard wide-angle of about 24mm, vs. a "standard" lens of about 40-50mm).The corrective order is supposed to be barrelling/pincushioning, then perspective, then rotation. I did not correct for distortion because I don't know what lens was used, and simply decided from the photo's content that it was probably a standard lens (a wide-angle lens would probably have more content in all directions from the distance this photo was taken). There is more street than sky or building, suggesting the downward angle, substantiated by the "V"-ing of the usually-parallel lines of the window frames at either side of image. I aligned the window on the left-hand house with the far-right window edge on the right-hand house, those being the lines closest to the edges. Then I used the doorway to correct rotation. I use Andomeda's LensDoc plug-in. I process literally thousands of images of homes - interior and exterior - every month with it.

No, not general parking. Check the testimony of Pop Rackley (Virgie's father) and James Romack. They indicate that, despite the construction going on there, there were still truck delivery companies operating from the area behind the TSBD at the time. The van appears to be a delivery-type van. Romack, as I recall, drove them.

For curiosity, where is this quote from? Harry testified to no such thing, actually, although it is clearly the impression he gave to Bill Turner for the Garrison deal. Also - if one is to believe anything that Harry told anybody - the "estate" was on 8th Street (2 blocks to the north) near the "Stemmons freeway" (actually R.L. Thornton ... but they are just names for different sections of the same highway), that is, north and east of the murder site. This is furthered by Kay Coleman's having stopped at the 7-11 to get Harry some milk for lunch, the 7-11 being located at 8th and either Marsalis or Lancaster (I can't remember which right now, but they're only a block apart).This, incidentally, is the same photo corrected for perspective and rotation(the original shot was taken at a slight downward angle, hence the "V" of what are normally parallel lines at either side of the photo, and none of the usual things that you'd think were vertical - e.g., doorways, the vent window of the car, etc. - were actually vertical. This is stuff I do literally every day): Unretouched Retouched for perspective and rotation Take a look at it using the same "gridded" and highlighted technique as above, could you? I'm curious to see how it appears ....

From William Scoggins' testimiony: Mr. Dulles. How near the intersection were you? Mr. Scoggins. Right near. They had a stop sign there and someone had had a wreck previously, I don't know, the sign was down. It was laying there, it had been bent over. As to the rear-ending-the-cop-car story, I'm sure the boyfriend-caller sounded particularly "completely unrehearsed" and "spontaneous" since he'd heard the story from someone he generally believed, but it's impossible to say how the girlfriend would've sounded if she'd been the caller!

Absent any suggestion of that from either Helen Markham or Bill Scoggins, both of whom were watching the car as it pulled up to stop, I'd say no. With white reverse lights even back then, it would be something that would have been noticeable and noticed, even aside from the obvious change of direction of the car (to Markham, at least), since both were in a position to have seen them.Well, "possible," yes ... but about as likely as that Tippit was practicing parallel parking or had actually been towed there.

What is the significance of the van?

I don't think the photo is per se inconsistent with Markham's description inasmuch as it's highly unlikely that the patrol car was - or that anyone would expect it to be - travelling within a foot of the curb, but rather much more toward the center of the roadway, which is significantly to the car's left. The car had, apparently, moved "into the curb" from its "normal" route of travel; that it turned outward just before it stopped is not in opposition to that description.Your rationale for why it ended up parked as it was is certainly sound, although I've always gotten the impression from Markham that the car had pulled up beside the shooter before the shooter approached it. (I do not, incidentally, consider Markham an entire non-credible witness, at least not with respect to her usual itinerary and what happened before she went hysterical after the shooting.) The right rear tire is still within(?) a foot of the curb even though the front tires have the car pointed away from it. I cannot tell from the photo how much the front wheels are turned, if at all, so can't deduce whether the car pointing away from the curb is the result of several feet of travel after Tippit began to turn the car slightly away from it, or if it's the result of an abrupt movement just before he'd stopped. Can you? Another rationale for the car's position could be that Tippit turned to look over his right shoulder just before stopping, turning the steering wheel to the left as an unintended part of that movement; another might be that Tippit had been pulling to the curb (to park the car, for example) when, for whatever reason, he decided notp to complete that movement and intended to look to the man walking as if he (Tippit) was not going to be parking the car, but rather was merely driving by. In the first instance, it would appear that Tippit was headed toward the curb from the normal route of travel; the only question is what caused his car to be positioned the way it was just before he stopped. I tend toward the latter possibility - that Tippit didn't want the man to think that he was going to park the car, but was just "driving by" (albeit abnormally close to the curb) - based on several factors: It is an established fact that Tippit had (at least) a dalliance with someone who was separated from her husband at the time, and who lived in Oak Cliff during that separation. (She reconciled - at least temporarily - with her husband on November 23, 1963).Larry Ray Harris established that she received her mail during that time via general delivery at the Marsalis postal station, only a few blocks away, proving that she lived in that area if not at that particular house. (Larry Ray took whatever other information he had about her to the grave, and reportedly was "very circumspect" about anything else to do with her.) In her (unsworn and unrecorded) interview with the HSCA, the woman - by then remarried as Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon - claimed that "the affair was over" at least a few weeks before November 22. Even while that may be true in a technical sense - i.e., that "as far as she was concerned" it was over, or that "nothing physical" took place after late September - it does not preclude any man from attempting to continue that relationship even after it's "over," nor that she may not have been telling the complete truth. [*]William Scoggins' testimony that "I wasn't paying too much attention to the man [in the police car], you see, just used to see him every day," coupled with Charlie Virginia Davis' testimony that the police car "was parked between the hedge that marks the apartment house where he lives in and the house next door" to the Davises' home (that is, between the second and third houses east of the corner of 10th and Patton, the Davises' home being the one on the corner) shows that Tippit was a "regular" in the neighborhood Scoggins himself was a "regular" at the Gentlemen's Club at 125 Patton, south of 10th, as evidenced by his characterization of his first driving by the club looking for a place to park: (O)ne of the guys hollered at me and asked me did I know the President had been shot, and I made the remark that I had not heard that one. ... I thought it was some kind of a joke. It is not the normal course of events for "one of the guys" (itself a term of familiarity) to yell to a stranger passing by about anything, and given the seriousness of the news, highly unlikely that a passing stranger who had been yelled to would think that "it was some kind of a joke." If Scoggins was a regular at the club and "just used to see [Tippit] every day," then - discounting a complete misidentification of Tippit by Scoggins - it stands to reason that Tippit was, in fact, in the neighborhood fairly frequently if not exactly "every day." Charlie Davis' statement in effect means that Tippit was in the neighborhood frequently enough that she actually thought he lived two doors away from her (or at the very least, that some officer did, again requiring a complete misidentification of Tippit by Davis, too). Clearly, Tippit did not live in that house, the neighborhood, or even nearby. The third house in was a multi-unit home - an "apartment house" by Davis' description - so she would not have seen Tippit - even if he'd lived there - out mowing the lawn or trimming the hedges. Given that Tippit lived about five miles away and had a family, it's unlikely that Davis would have seen him lounging around on the front porch in the evenings either. If she'd only seen him in the evenings or on weekends, Tippit was not high enough on the food chain to have brought his patrol car home, so she would not necessarily know that her "neighbor" was a patrol cop in that area, even if she had seen him in uniform. So, if she saw Tippit frequently enough that she thought he lived just a couple of doors away, it was most likely during the day, perhaps thinking that he was coming home for lunch. (Incidentally, I don't buy her disclaimer in With Malice that she "didn't know why" she'd made the statement about Tippit living two houses from her.) [*]According to DPD Officer Tom Tilson, who claims to have known Tippit well, it was "common knowledge at the station" that Tippit had a "girlfriend" who lived "on the south side of 10th" (sorry, I don't recall the source for that particular statement). It is therefore possible, at least, that Johnnie Maxie still lived in Oak Cliff, and in the "apartment house" two doors away from the Davises, and if so, that Tippit was dropping by to see her. In such a case, he would be slowing down (and would have been "every day" that Scoggins saw him from his vantage point on Patton Street) and pulling toward the curb - and he was clearly at least driving near the curb prior to his pulling away ... which he only could have been doing since he hadn't been driving on the sidewalk, something anyone would have noticed, even Markham! - to stop in front of that house. Why, then, would he have subsequently been pulling away from the curb before he actually stopped the car? Scoggins noted in his testimony about the man walking on the street that "I kind of looked down the street, saw this, someone, that looked to me like he was going west, now, I couldn't exactly say whether he was going west or was in the process of turning around, but he was facing west when I saw him." Scoggins further noted that when he noticed the man walking, he was "ust a little east [of the police car] is the best I can remember. ... just a little bit forward [of it]. The police car headed east and he was a little bit, maybe not more than the front end of the car," that is, in a position where Tippit could see his face. If the man had first been walking east and had, as Scoggins allowed, been "in the process of turning around," that means that Tippit might have seen that there was someone walking along the street, but did not know who it might have been until the last moment when the man turned around. In that case, Tippit might have hoped that the man wouldn't notice him if he kept driving down the street, and the man's suddenly turning around meant that that wasn't going to happen. If Tippit was visiting the house surreptitiously, he well might not have wanted anyone to see him pulling up and stopping; that might be especially true if he thought, perhaps, that the man walking was Johnnie Maxie's estranged husband (who may also have thought the affair was over and would find out that it wasn't, or who might confront Tippit if he encountered him there), or if he noticed that the man was someone he knew and didn't want to catch him approaching a possible tryst. Either way, Tippit could no longer pull away from the curb and continue down the road if he was caught in the act of parking his vehicle. If it was Johnnie Maxie's husband, the man might not have recognized him by face, but only known that JM's paramour was a cop, QED. Even still, JD was "caught in the act," but had no good reason to stop and probably would have been better off - even ignoring that he was subsequently shot to death - if he kept on driving anyway: let Johnnie Maxie deal with the husband, and JD could apologize to her later. If it was the husband, JD had every reason to keep driving ... but didn't. There's no sensible reason why not. Thus we're left with only a couple of possibilities: JD really was stupid and wanted to engage himself in "real friendly-like" conversation with the husband who was obviously prowling the streets waiting to encounter - and probably confront - the competitor to his wife's affections; The man was just some "John Doe" walking down the street and JD decided to stop and chat with him on such a pretty fall day, possibly about the playful squirrels or the uplifting chirping of songbirds; or JD recognized the man and, moreover, knew that the man recognized him and that, even if he'd continued driving away nonchalantly like he'd never seen or recognized the man, the man would bring it up to him again later, so there was no way to actually avoid the encounter, but merely to postpone it. JD was "caught" and there was no getting away with it. Since Scoggins was specific about the man facing west and being in front of the patrol car (that is, facing the patrol car, ahead of it), we can eliminate my first proposal about Tippit turning around in his seat to see who was walking on the sidewalk and inadvertantly turning the steering wheel to the left to account for his position. We can likewise eliminate the possibility that the car ended up in line with its prior line of travel because directly behind it was nothing but grass and sidewalk, and Tippit had obviously not been driving on the sidewalk or grass. We can probably also eliminate the possibility that the man - supposedly Oswald - was walking east and that Tippit pulled over to confront him as a possible suspect if only because there would have been no need to park in a "nose out" position to talk with a pedestrian on the sidewalk. The purpose of police nose-out street-side parking is to act as a shield to deflect traffic from hitting the officer from behind when involved in a traffic stop; no such protection is needed if the officer is going to be not only on the right-hand side of the car, but on the sidewalk to boot. Finally, since Scoggins had testified that the man was on the sidewalk, facing the patrol car and, from his point of view at least, slightly in front of the vehicle, we can probably also eliminate the possibility that Tippit pulled out from the curb as any kind of evasive action. Thus, the most likely scenario is that JD saw and was seen by someone he knew. He attempted to turn back into traffic unnoticed, but once he knew he'd been seen, he didn't have much choice other than to act as if he'd always intended to pull over and talk with the man (nose-out parking notwithstanding: it probably would have seemed more curious if he'd attempted to turn back into the curb before stopping, thus bringing more attention to the fact he'd tried pulling away from it in the first place). ... Unless there's another possibility I haven't considered here?

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Precisely. And since he had no idea, arranging to get from Gloco to Lancaster & 8th in the right amount of time after the dispatcher had called, from a place that was only 2-3 minutes away requires some duplicity on his part, either cruising slowly to make up that extra five minutes (at odds with the Gloco people's description, unless he braked heavily as soon as he was out of their sight) ... or else not being 2-3 minutes away at the Gloco station.I opt for "the five Gloco witnesses lied (or were all mistaken)." If you've ever been to Dealey Plaza on the 22nd, you have some familiarity with the people who inject themselves into history by making wild claims of things that just never happened so they can have their 15 minutes of fame. A few years ago, a former detective sergeant told me of how he'd been at TT and was one of the guys involved in subduing Lee Oswald. Trouble is, he said that at the time he was "undercover" and that his hair was "long," and there's no such person shown in any photo at TT, or any officer who provided a report - or was named by any other officer - by his name. To be generous, there could have been another cop there, including Patrolman V.R. Nolan, who was driving unit 222 (Accident Prevention Bureau), who indicated at 1:15 that he was at the intersection of Colorado and Sylvan (shown as '1' on the map below). Prior to that, he was last heard of at 1:11 immediately after 91 (Mentzel) was contacted about the accident at 817 Davis ('2' on the map). Dispatch merely said "222," and Nolan responded without any directions of what to do, "en route." (Of course, he was on the APB, so it would have been natural for him to respond.) Prior to the 1:11 call, he called in "clear" (not busy, ready for whatever you need me to do) at 12:41. LEGEND 1 - Colorado & Sylvan / 2 - 817 W Davis 3 - Gloco Station / 4 - Lancaster & 8th 5 - 10th & Patton / 6 - Top Ten Records According to Drenas' account, "Tippit" arrived "at approximately 12:45 ... at the Gloco (Good Luck Oil Company) gas station which was located at 1502 North Zangs Boulevard" (shown as '3' on the map), where he could be "watching the cars coming over the Houston Street Viaduct from downtown Dallas." Since Nolan was in the vicinity 30 minutes before the West Davis call (i.e., starting at 12:41 to 12:45), and the time between his first response to the Davis call (1:11) and his radioing in his location as "Colorado and Sylvan" (1:15) was four minutes, and since Yahoo maps shows the driving time from 1502 Zang to Colorado and Sylvan as three minutes, it seems reasonable to deduce that it very easily could have been Nolan - not Tippit - who was at the Gloco. (The one-minute discrepancy can be explained by the imprecise time-calling on the DPD radio.) Another point, for whatever it is worth: currently, Lancaster dead-ends a little way south of where it would intersect with Zang; I don't know if it was the same way 40 years ago, but I'll see if I can find out. If it was, then nobody could have taken off from the Gloco and driven south on Lancaster. Either way, immediately to the west of Lancaster is Marsalis, which is a much broader and faster street with fewer stops (signs or lights), so if I were going to take one or the other, it would be Marsalis. Also for what it's worth: Yahoo's current driving directions tell you to go from 1502 North Zang, south on Marsalis to Colorado, and then turn west on Colorado to Sylvan as being the most direct route to take. My guess? The Gloco people were simply mistaken. They saw Vern Nolan (maybe they just wanted to see Tippit one last time before he'd died?). Tippit was at Bonnieview and Kiest.

Actually, I think "put[ting] pressure on" people to conform to the predetermined conclusion is a pretty fair thing to say about the entire WC/FBI rubber-stamp pseudo-investigation. You're quite correct in that TSBD didn't collect the evidence; that was left to DPD and FBI in that order. DPD was the first on the scene, so to speak, and in the best position to influence the initial direction the investigation would take, based on the evidence it gathered (or manufactured?) and passed along ... or not. Yank this one from the list. I don't believe that O was on the bus either; McWatters and Bledsoe clinch it. It was, however, McWatters' transfer, so it had to be obtained from him somehow.The WC may have called him "confused" or "vague," but that was only a means to downplay his testimony, which was not particularly supportive of the story WC wanted to tell. Clearly, he was very nervous - much like some people say "y'know" a lot, McWatters' favorite phrase was "in other words," which he said 188 times in the 31 pages of his testimony, including as much as seven or eight times in one response, even two or three times in a sentence (see example below)! - and got more so as time went on, but "confused" or "vague" were not adjectives I'd used to describe him or his testimony (maybe because he'd put things "in other words" so many times, the Commissioners were getting confused?). Sample McWatters exchange, taking place probably in less than a minute: Representative Ford. Where do you put your own identification? Mr. McWatters. On here. Well, if it is in the morning or in the afternoon, here is your a.m., or your p.m. In other words, it is before 12:45, in other words, we consider up to 12:45 a.m., in other words, that is the way they are. In other words, I would punch it in the a.m. side of it, and if it was in the afternoon, in other words, after that, it would be a p.m. transfer, and whatever line that you are working has the name on it right here. In other words, at that time that transfer I had punched was punched a p.m. Lakewood, in other words, because I was coming from the Lakewood addition is the way that was punched on the transfer. Mr. Ball. Well now, do you punch the transfer when the passenger asks for it? Mr. Mcwatters. No. No, sir; in other words, when you leave this, you are inbound when you are going into town or when you are going, in other words, out of town, in other words. I was coming in, in other words, when I got in Lakewood Addition I set my transfers for downtown. I used to ride a city bus as a teenager, and got transfers daily, so am familiar with the general means by which transfers were given, and how they were torn from the packet of transfers drivers kept on the bus with them. Basically, the transfer was torn - using a little straight-edge gadget roughly similar to how someone might use a ruler to rip paper in a straight line - with the numbers indicating the time the transfer was given, within 15 minutes prior to the quarter-hour time shown on the transfer (i.e., if you got on a bus at 12:46 or 12:47, the transfer would read 1:00; if you got on at 12:40, it would read 12:45). One of our favorite little "tricks" was to ask for the transfer getting off the bus so you hopefully had 15 more minutes to goof off before getting on the next bus. McWatters was pretty clear about the fact that he had issued only two transfers prior to leaving downton: one to a woman who had a 1:00 train to catch and didn't want to get stuck in traffic in the bus, and another to a man who had gotten on the bus about seven blocks from TSBD (at the intersection of Elm and Griffin, between regular bus stop locations, while the bus was stopped in a travelling lane); he gave them each transfers at the same location, between Poydras and Lamar, when they both got off of the bus. McWatters had left the corner of Elm and St Paul at 12:36 and had made three stops and was on his way to the fourth when the man pounded on the door to be let in. He got off two blocks later, asking for the transfer after the woman who had to meet the train. (The whole "grinning" incident - someone laughing about the President being shot "in the head" - took place much later.) If the transfer was cut at 1:00, then either /a/ the man got on the bus at or after 12:45, or else /b/ McWatters was particularly generous with the time allowance since he'd punched the tickets and set them up in the ripper prior to 12:36 when he left the St Paul stop. (I suspect the latter is probably the case based on laziness or convenience, since he'd have to reset the position of the transfers in just nine minutes anyway.) Old Cecil recalled the occasion specifically: Well, the reason I recall the incident, I had - there was a lady that when I stopped in this traffic, there was a lady who had a suitcase and she said, "I have got to make a 1 o'clock train at Union Station," and she said, "I don't believe [sic] from the looks of this traffic you are going to be held up." She said, "Would you give me a transfer and I am going to walk on down," which is about from where I was at that time about 7 or 8 blocks to Union Station and she asked me if I would give her a transfer in case I did get through the traffic if I would pick her up on the way. So, I said, "I sure will." So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and as she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about 2 blocks [before] asked for a transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did. He later stated, "I only gave two transfers going through town on that trip and that was at the one stop of where I gave the lady and the gentleman that got off the bus, I issued two transfers. But that was the only two transfers that were issued." Asked if he was "able to identify it any further as a particular transfer you had given to any particular passenger," he replied, "No, sir." Nowhere in the course of his testimony did McWatters volunteer that the man in question looked at all like Oswald, whom McWatters had undoubtedly seen between November 22 and March 12, the date of his testimony. Nor was he asked at any point to confirm that he even resembled Oswald. He stated that, with regard to the lineup he viewed, "I told them that there was one man in the lineup was about the size and the height and complexion of a man that got on my bus," and that the man on the bus "was just a medium-sized man ... just of average weight, and I would say a light-complected ... 135 or 140 pounds ... probably be five-seven or five-eight, in that vicinity" but "as far as positively identifying the man [in the lineup] I could not do it," and did not do so during his deposition, saying "as far as actually saying that [the man in the lineup] is the man [who got on the bus] I couldn't ... I wouldn't do it [then] and I wouldn't do it now." Translation? It probably wasn't Oswald, although the transfer was undoubtedly given out at the time and place McWatters described to one of only two people, one of whom was a woman and certainly not Oswald. Thus, if it wasn't Oz, and the police did end up with the transfer two hours after he'd been taken into custody ...? (To be completely fair, however, McWatters did say that he ""didn't pay any particular attention to [the man who got on the bus]. He was to me just dressed in what I would call work clothes, just some type of little old jacket on, and I didn't pay any particular attention to the man when he got on," which might account for his reticence in "positively" identifying Lee, but doesn't account for how much if any attention he paid to the man when he asked for a transfer during the course of an incident he recalled so clearly.)

This actually covers a couple of past posts, in no particular order .... It would seem to me, then, that it would have to all be speculation as to what his role was and how it was carried out. It is not like, say, "the Cuban Connection" where it can be shown that so-and-so worked with so-and-so during such-and-such operation, or even that "Cop A and Cop B were known to associate with each other." Truly & Co. are "outsiders" to any of the usual suspects. This is not to say that someone couldn't - or even hasn't - unearthed some connections involving the TSBD brass, but like you, if they have, I haven't heard or read about them. In fact, as close as I've heard is that both Truly and Shelley showed dogs, and I've seen separate photos of each of them with show(?) dogs, but not together in the same photo (those photos might be on this forum somewhere ...? If so, I haven't found them). I don't know if it's even true that they were "show" dogs, or that Truly and Shelley even discussed dog shows, much less attended them together (or plotted JFK's demise at them!), but that is, in any case, the sole "background check" I've heard of about them. Further to your earlier comment: Greg - Those I believe were involved in the planning had strong local ties. ... MI with insiders in DPS intelligence units and media. Robert Morris and the whole Bircher crew and their associations with congressional committees and anti-Castro exile groups. ... you are moving into a realm where there are no records, few if any written memoirs, and little enough verbal lore except perhaps among those who were a bit more extreme, more patriotic than the mainstream. I was reading something recently - I don't remember what, maybe a newspaper - that discussed, albeit briefly, how conservative Dallas was in the 1960s ("conservative" in that era, in the South, translating roughly to "intolerant" today; "patriotic" translating to anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, anti-integration) and how, as much as they didn't like it, Dallas eventually got used to the civil rights changes of the Great Society, and the old "conservatives" have generally faded away. The point is that nobody talks about their "patriotism" back in the '60s; nobody wants to hear - nobody wants to know about Grandpa's proud exploits stringin' up n__ers, takin' pot shots at them damned Yankees signin' the darkies up to vote, and makin' sure them Commies know they ain't welcome in this here town; nobody today - correction: few people today would agree with Dr. Revilo P. Oliver's ringing endorsement of Senator Joseph McCarthy as "a great American patriot." Yet, according to non-assassination related literature from the period (see The Decision Makers about Dallas' Citizens' Council, for example), that was very much the Dallas of the '50s and early '60s, absent the lynchings of course. Witness DPD CID's concerns over such "radical" groups as the ACLU ("liberals" - and probably Communists - all) and the Veterans' Forum, of which Joe Molina was a member (and who actually sought to obtain military benefits for Mexican-American veterans in line with white soldiers'!). Thus, even if someone was a member of the Klan, a Bircher, a Minuteman - for many of which, Dallas was considered a "stronghold" at the time - it is unlikely today that barring some obscure reference (say, an arrest record of someone who might - yeah, right! - have been arrested for spitting on Adlai Stevenson), anyone would discover that Truly or anyone else was actually a member of such a group. It was "a different world back then," and nobody's broadcasting their '60s-era sympathies with them either. Through such connections, however, one might well find the "missing link" that explains how, for example, Roy Truly could have been in any way clued into, "in on," or otherwise involved in a conspiracy that might include Dallas cops. It would seem highly unlikely to me, however, that his "only" job in relation to that would be to set Oswald up with a job without knowing any of the other details. Once the shots rang out and Oswald was accused, his role would have come crashing in on him if he was unaware that he'd done anything to further larger plans. If he did rush in to try to direct Baker - or any other cop who attempted to come in right away - in any particular direction, then he was fully witting of the plan even if not all of the mechanics of it. I differ with you in one point only, and that is that it would not necessarily have to be senior police personnel - at least not in terms of rank - to effect an assassination plan and the implication of a dead patsy. Think about it: what chance would the Chief of Police stand if he knew that a corporal was part of the plot? If they've got the gumption to kill the President of the United States in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses, one would think that the chief - or the mayor or the governor - would be a piece of cake, like swatting a fly. (Well ... maybe not the mayor, whose brother was a US Army general and no stranger to high-level intrigue ... tho' a bit of a dim bulb for a general, I gather.) Givens only testified that he'd worked there "off and on for six years," and that he had been laid off in the past during "slack periods." He was not asked, nor did he volunteer how long he had been there for that particular stretch. He was doing the floors. (I still don't get why they'd put inexperienced people - Oswald - filling orders while other order-fillers were flooring. I mean, anyone can nail plywood down, move boxes and the like, so why not have the "temp" do that rather than something that he'd have to take time to learn?(On the sinister side of that question lies the answer that it gave him access to the entire building and kept him out of most other people's sights most of the day, ergo if he wanted to do something, he had the opportunity.) Nope. At least, nobody who mentioned him; on the other hand, nobody else was asked about him either and, if they saw him, they might not have considered it important enough - or in any way connected with the shooting - to be germane.My father once told me an interesting story about my grandmother that may illustrate this scenario. The deal was that Dad had taken Grandma somewhere, I don't remember where, and they became separated. Something happened; it might have been a car crash or something to do with a train, but in any case, something "sudden" happened. When Dad first hooked back up with Grandma a couple of minutes after the crash (or whatever; it was loud enough that it became something of a spectacle), she really didn't know much about what had occurred. Dad said that, later, it was almost as if Grandma had been directing it given her steadily increasing knowledge of exactly what had happened. Speaking for myself, I've had several times when I've been asked about something right after it happened and provided what information came to me at the moment. Later, as I had time to reflect on it, I remembered details that might have been important, but didn't really impress themselves on me when I was asked about it. Recently, when I was taking the dog for a walk, there was a commotion at a neighbor's house, flashlights looking all around for something or someone. I realized that the noise that I'd heard earlier might have something to do with it. When I went to the neighbor's gate to tell him what I'd seen (this is someone who lives nearby, not someone I'd ever met before), up comes a camoflaged assault rifle aimed right at me, with him barking behind it, "Hit the ground, motherf__er!" When the cops showed up, I was both irate and ... well, not scared anymore (I was at first!), but certainly still excited. Y'know, I didn't think to even tell the cops what had occurred from my perspective in terms of what had apparently set my neighbor off to begin with (it was kids playing pranks in the park behind his house, apparently doing something to his fence, hence the noise I'd heard ... and the kid I later remembered seeing running from the place!). And I remember thinking at the time that I am generally someone who "makes a good witness," but I damned sure wasn't that time! The point? Just that what someone says the first time may not be the whole story ... and what they say afterward may be "manufactured," or it may be details that they remembered later ... or may just be bullspit. There is not "best" recollection of events based on its proximity to the event being reported. Such as?

No...quite the contrary. The speculation is that you were a young trainee sent down to train in the field under an expert operative. This was intensified when it was reported that your "company" had transferred you "to Virginia". Perry is good. How he turned GM 180 degrees is still a mystery. "Mind control?" "The speculation is ...?!?" So has all that training paid off, do you think, all these years in the field? Jack, the really important question is whether someone can tell well enough what they're looking at when they see it to be able to recognize a "change." No offense, but ... apparently not: nothing has ever changed. Even despite AFIO.

Refresh my memory: who was it that found a jacket, supposedly Oswald's, at TSBD a couple of weeks later. Same guy who "found" the clipboard, I think .... I will buy into Baker's getting Ozzie's description correct if they were in the same room together and Oz had been the same man he'd seen on the stairs, but two ... no, three considerations come into play here:Since Baker was, according to this scenario, not clued into what was supposed to be happening here, and since other TSBD employees were at DPD providing statements, and since Oz worked at TSBD, there is not necessarily any reason for Baker to have realized that Oz was a suspect rather than someone simply giving a statement, even if Baker recognized him from an (alleged) encounter at TSBD. As to recognition at the time of his statement, put yourself in Baker's shoes: you've just come from running into a strange building after a barrage of gunfire had sounded, looking for a potential shooter. You encounter someone that the building super had identified as being "all right." There is no longer any reason to remember this guy: he's a "nobody" as far as your investigation goes. "Trained observer" or not, it is very possible that Baker didn't put two and two together even while describing what the man he'd seen had been wearing, if only - or especially - because O wasn't wearing the same thing anymore, and was therefore a "different person." That is human nature. Baker's later "recognition" of LHO can be attributed to what I call "manufactured memory" or that some others might call "the power of suggestion," which simply put refers to a situation akin to someone saying "gee, now that you mention it, he does look like the guy who robbed the bank," and therefore, guess what: he is the guy you saw rob the bank (whether he really is or not). Even if Baker did recognize Oz, it would not be proper procedure to identify someone who happened to be in the same room at the time of making a statement for a couple of good reasons: There is no absolutely-certain way to identify who is in a room at any given moment, and if there are more than just one other person in the room, the reliability of his identification could be called into greater question (this is where, at trial, they would call in Johnson to state that, while taking Baker's statement, Baker had indicated that the man he'd encountered at TSBD was then in the same room while Baker was giving his statement, and Baker had pointed out the defendant to him, Officer Johnson); and If Oz was later found not to be the person Baker had encountered, Baker's written contemporaneous account identifying LHO as the individual he'd encountered could jeopardize his testimony at trial since, if whomever he had encountered was clearly not Oswald, how therefore could his later identification of another perp be considered reliable? To paraphrase another witness, "a good defense attorney could take him apart" with that kind of testimony; a good prosecutor wouldn't even have called him as a witness to this effect. For example: Q - Officer Baker, isn't it true that you identified a particular individual who was then present at the police department interrogation room as being the same individual whom you saw in the TSBD? A - Yes, ma'am it is. Q - Is it not also true, Officer Baker, that that individual turned out to only have been in to make a statement - that is, not as a suspect - and was subsequently determined not to have been the individual whom you claim to have encountered as you went upstairs? A - Yes, ma'am. Q - Well, then, Officer, if your positive identification of the first individual turned out to have been mistaken, how can we be certain that your identification of this defendant is reliable? The prosecutor would have had Truly come in as back-up to identify the man the officer had described as his employee, Lee Oswald. But if Baker's Friday afternoon statement had reflected this information as fact, you can see how easy it could have been to call his entire judgment and recollection into question (and I'm not even a trial lawyer!). Cops, I'm told, don't particularly like "reasonable doubt," and sure as heck don't want to give it up without a fight! [*]A statement is intended to reflect the facts of what happened at the time of the events being described. Even if Oswald had come into the interrogation room and greeted Baker with a hearty "Hi, remember me? I met you on the stairs about an hour ago," that would not be germane to the events Baker had been describing (it might, however, have been pertinent to testimony provided later by either Baker or Johnson at trial). Oops, that was four considerations! Oh well: all of that merely to say that Baker's lack of identification of Oswald in his statement does not necessarily have any real significance, and does not necessarily "prove" anything. Objection, your honor; non-responsive. The witness was asked how this was accomplished and by whom.When did Geraldean Reid give her statement about seeing Lee on the second floor? In order for Truly to have accomodated his testimony - and presumably thereby influence Baker's later recollections - he would have had to have known either what Reid said or was going to say. The former seems much more likely if only inasmuch as Reid might not have played along ... and if someone was going to get her to play along, it would seem much more effective to try to get her not to say she'd seen Oswald. Thus her statement would seem to have thrown a monkey wrench into what Baker had said, which somehow needed to be accomodated, hence Truly's statement. Is that in fact the sequence of events: Reid's statement first, then Truly's? Either way, someone then had to "get to" Baker. As of Saturday, Lee was still alive and stood a chance of making it to trial and could have contradicted the entire account of the lunchroom encounter if it didn't happen. Having failed to kill Lee at least once, maybe twice, confidence in his not surviving until then must have been greatly diminished (after all, the third time is not always the charm!), so making up the encounter out of whole cloth and expecting it to survive would seem pretty misguided. What if Ruby's bullet hadn't killed him, and O had spent the rest of the time pending trial under heavy guard at either or both Parkland and/or the country jail? Three failures to eliminate the defendant and his testimony would have certainly weighed in Oswald's favor, don't you think? This entire scenario presupposes Truly's collaborating with police - and police with Truly - to first, use his building to shoot the President and hide the weapons; second, to ensure that no "real" cop (one bent on actually doing his duty, i.e., not clued into the conspiracy) questioned or arrested - or preferably even saw - any of the active players; third, to get the details of both Baker's and Reid's statements back to Truly; fourth, to concoct a story that was somehow compatible with both statements (at least in the major details); fifth, to convey Truly's account to Baker and thus confuse Baker at best ... or coerce him, at worst, to change his own account; and sixth, well in advance, to have gotten Truly to hire Lee in the first place a month before all of this was to come down. At some point, there may arise a theory as to what Truly was doing - and how he did it - when he rushed in after Baker, but for now I'm curious how all of the above was accomplished and who did the deciding. Speculation is all well and good - "building a case" is fine - but absent hard evidence, you've at least got to provide some foundation and fill in as many gaps as you possibly can; otherwise, it's purely speculation. Since you're making the proposition here, let's return to the "prosecution" and ask: Q - So what leads you to the possible conclusion that the defendants, Mr. Truly and company, were able to accomplish what you have just described? As to: The whole bit about Baker's crossing out the "drinking a coke" portion of the statement was covered in detail by someone; I'm thinking it was Harold Weisberg in one of his Whitewash series. Might've been someone else: sometimes I get confused about those little details! You speak of cops "sweep[ing] away technicalities which may get cases thrown out of court," etc., with the same disdain police officers speak of defense attorneys who introduce those "technicalities that get cases thrown out of court" after the cops' arduous work in getting the case into court in the first place. If the cops want to shade the truth just a little bit - as no doubt the defense will do! - is that such a bad thing? Do the ends justify the means, even sometimes? Or does the answer to that question depend upon one's perspective? Gotta run for now; there's more to look at in the morning!

What makes you think I'm not still? Actually, wasn't the story that I'd come from Langley to "turn" Mack and Perry? So who was under whose influence when? Sometimes it is simpler to prove what wasn't than what was, such as the story of "David Atlee Phillips" "under arrest" at Fort Worth and the records and photos of "his" arrest having "disappeared." I'll also have something to say very soon about one 20-year-old in the plaza ... or not. It's been an interesting story so far, we'll see how it turns out.

What, nobody's beating me up on this?

I kind of liked . As LBJ used to say, "It pays to switch!" The links at the right change for every film short you watch. Some are interesting, some are great big yawns.

Patrolamn W.P. Parker was assigned to Districts 56 and 58. Captain Talbert told the WC that this was east Dallas, the Garland Road area. This is 25H913 Thanks, Steve. You are quite right about the location of 56, which the illustration below may provide some perspective for. I had merely assumed that you can see the "56" on the radio map.You can see that the area from the Dallas Mapsco I've selected fits neatly into the area hand-drawn by DPD for this exhibit. District 56 is roughly the square numbered "3" on the inset map; square "1" is Dealey Plaza, square "2" is Oak Cliff. District 58 is, of course, the next patrol district to the east, or away from downtown and Oak Cliff. The starting location I selected for the 10 mile estimate was Buckner Blvd at Garland Rd, which is marked on the upper left of the larger street map by a red square. This is closer, rather than farther, from downtown and Oak Cliff than if he had been, say, in his other district, #58, so I'm saying he was fewer miles out of his area than I could have. (To be eminently fair, placing him at the extreme southwest corner of the district by the highway (then known as the Fort Worth Toll Road, of Donald Wayne House fame) so he could make the trip as fast as possible, Yahoo maps show it was still 10.3 miles, taking approximately 12 minutes.) District 56 and Dallas Inset Map Thanks also for the reminder of where I had gotten the information about officers' assignments that afternoon! I have equivocated by saying "someone identifying themselves as" because of the discrepancy between what W.P. Parker did (according to CE2645) and where "56" said he was ("East Jefferson"). Unfortunately, this report is the only place Parker is referenced by name in the entire 26 volumes and Report, and believe it or not, it does not appear that anybody has mentioned him in any of the gazillion books on this subject. At least, his name does not appear at all in Walt Brown's "Global Index." The two sides to the coin are that there is no way for certain to say that the voice identifying itself by Parker's call sign was Parker; on the other side, if he was in Oak Cliff around the time Tippit was killed, it was only a 10-mile drive, much of it via highway, so - what? - 15 minutes later he could very well have been setting up roadblocks just as was reported. (Of course, one of the difficulties about these assignments is determining how the officers got them since they were not broadcast over either DPD radio channel. As already noted, 56 was not the originator or intended recipient of any broadcast after his 12:44 broadcast indicating he was on East Jefferson. No other mention of "roadblocks" is on the tapes either, so it must have been spontaneous decisions by these officer to set them up - or else they all called in by phone, or someone rode around telling them in person, somehow knowing exactly where to find them without using the radio?)