Duke Lane

The inset photo at the bottom right was taken a short distance to the right of where the corresponding original photo was taken. The distance does not appear to be that great, although I couldn't calculate exactly how far without knowing things like the size of the letters, etc., and even still, I'm not sure I've got the math skills for it. Ditto all of the above for determining whether or not it was taken closer to the building than the original. In any case, it appears to me that the re-enactment was valid attempt at recreating where Altgens stood. Could it have been more exact? Probably, if they'd taken the time to trace exactly how the letters (for example) appeared in the re-enactment photo, but frankly, I think they're probably "close enough for government work" (could it have been the inspiration for the phrase? ). For it to have been a purposeful misplacement, the supposed perps would have had to go through as exacting a process to ensure that the photo was taken in the wrong place as they would have to ensure it was in the exact right place, so for that reason alone, I have little faith that there was a nefarious purpose - at least not the nefarious purpose of mis-placing Altgens on purpose! - in taking the photo from where it was taken.

Probably ... but none of them were Lee Harvey Oswald, so why bother?

... but not quite good enough to get me on Spartacus' list of researchers and investigators ... nor even the "possible conspirators" list!! (John, are you listening? ROFLMAO!)

"Borderline retarded" was a phrase that I repeated from what someone said to me, paraphrasing someone else who knew Jack when that someone wasn't much more than a kid. It was not a medical opinion. My bad. He may have been "slow" and socially inept, but he was not necessarily a candidate for residency in a state school. Maybe his deal was something we control with drugs these days, like kids with short attention spans, I don't know, and I don't know that anybody does for real, since many or most of his contemporaries are dead (he was 40 in 1963), and any doctors he might have seen probably are, too. He died in 1994. My main point in this exercise is simply this: nobody has ever given Jack Dougherty a second glance beyond "he was standing by the 5th floor stairs" when all sort of stuff was going on around him. It is uncritically accepted as unquestionable fact; there's no more to it than what we've always heard, which is nothing much. Remove my "borderline retarded" characterization from the equation, because all it seems to do is provide an inaccurate reason to dismiss absolutely anything other than what little we already know. So I'll add another little factotum, again an opinion offered by someone else: "Jack always acted as if he knew something about the assassination that nobody else did." Maybe he did ... or maybe it was his smug ineptitude, who knows?

Your points are well taken ... ... and ... To say the least.....From his interview with FBI Agents Ellington and Anderson on the day of the assassination: Also present during the interview with JACK EDWIN DOUGHERTY was his father, R. C. DOUGHERTY, who advised his son had received a medical discharge from the U. S. Army and indicated his son had considerable difficulty in coordinating his mental facilities with his speech. (Dougherty Exhibit A) From his interview with FBI agent Johnson on December 19, 1963: During the above interview, the father of JACK EDWIN DOUGHERTY, R. C. DOUGHERTY, was present. It was noted during interview of JACK DOUGHERTY, he had difficulty in correlating his speech with his thoughts, therefore, his father assisted him in furnishing answers to questions asked. (Dougherty Exhibit B) Thanks for noting that bit about the second pages of those interviews. It puts the following exchange in a different light, doesn't it? Mr. Ball. Now, did you ever have any difficulty with your speech? Mr. Dougherty. No. Mr. Ball. You never had any? Mr. Dougherty. No. Mr. Ball. Did you ever have any difficulty in the Army with any medical treatment or anything of that sort? Mr. Dougherty. No. Mr. Ball. None at all? Mr. Dougherty. No. Mr. Ball. (Apparently giving up on that line of questioning) What did you do after you got out of the Army? .... (16H374) Jack, as you might know, was 40 years old at the time, single and living at home with his mom and dad who, as you noted, accompanied him to his FBI interviews to lend a helping hand. He had spent "2 years, 1 month, 17 days, to be exact" in the Army, from October 24, 1942 to approximately December 9, 1944; that is, he was discharged before the end of the war, unlike most able-bodied young men of the time. He rode the bus to and from work each day because he was unable to drive. He arrived an hour before everyone else because he had a "special job" assigned by Roy Truly of "checking the pipes for leaks" down in the basement. If Lee Oswald's supposed motivation for supposedly shooting Kennedy was because he was a "loser" wanting to "make a name for himself," then in Jack Dougherty you've got a LOO-o-o-ser with a capital "L"! The only thing is, nobody would say that he was "trying to make a name for himself." I also wouldn't necessarily posit that Jack was a (or "the") shooter, or even that he had a hand in planning any of what went down, but precluding him as someone who assisted in its execution, wittingly or not up to the point that the guns were aimed, is foolish. The question that it raises, of course, is who it was that he helped. Consider: Jack worked in the building, something that was surely needed by any outsider who wanted to come in as unobtrusively as possible; He arrived early every morning, giving him the opportunity to take the "rifle sack" paper from Troy West's roll. He could have gotten it out at any time (after all, who was watching him, or was even asked about him in the subsequent "investigation?"), but the point is that he wouldn't have been seen taking it; He went immediately "back to work" that Friday, which he stated was not his norm. Why did he do that when virtually everyone else went to watch the parade? Jack didn't just not watch it, he "went back to work." He was on both the fifth and sixth floors. Like Lee Oswald, he too had "access to" those floors, was there every day, and "had business" there, but unlike Oswald, he admitted that that's where he was. Yet ... he saw and heard nothing but a single "backfire." No running above him, nor even fifty feet away when three grown men ran pell-mell from one side of the building to the other. Is that really believable? Nobody saw him after lunch, not even Bonnie Ray Williams who was on both floors that Jack was on. Someone like Jack could be easily manipulated. He was borderline retarded, and the object of ridicule by some of the younger men at work who chided him for being a "mama's boy" living at home (at 40!) and made fun of the way he spoke. All it would take is someone who knew him to cozy up to him, build up his anger, tell him that he could "do something for his country" (as he was unable to do in WWII Indiana!) and be a "hero" (like Jack Ruby?), but, well, he just couldn't say anything to anybody. All you've gotta do, Jack, is meet these guys by the back door after lunch and take them upstairs .... Personally, I don't think that Bonnie Ray didn't see Jack, any more than Hank or Junior "didn't see him" either. If they saw him, they chose not to say so for some reason; if Jack was with someone with a gun who'd shot the President, I'd qualify that as "a good reason for suddenly going blind and deaf!" Means? With a little help, yes. Motive? As much as Oswald, anyway. Opportunity? By his own admission. Was he "conspiracy material?" I'm guessing there's a fair chance that he was.

I’m not sure there is anything mysterious about James Worrell and his testimony. From the sound of it, he wasn’t an especially bright individual.... I’m guessing that Mr. Worrell was most likely intimidated and overwhelmed when having to give statements and testimony, and it’s not surprising that he may have gotten some things wrong, or changed his story a bit. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t see what he says he saw. It just means that he had trouble relating that information in an intelligent, concise manner. See the threads James Worrell: Fact or Fiction? and KBOX's Sam Pate for a bit more on this subject. It's not completed yet as I've got a couple of more people to interview including his sister and his cousin (I've already spoken with his mother at length), so until then, the jury's out. The big question is his veracity. My tentative conclusion? Worrell -> <- facts? There are a lot of problems with the story that he told, most notably that if he left Love Field after JFK landed, the bus - if one was running just at the nick of time - could only have just barely made it downtown in time for Worrell to have gotten to Elm & Houston in time to see the motorcade. (This even forgives all of his mistaken time estimates.) I haven't been able to find a copy of the 1963 bus schedule for the only route he could have taken, but do know from newspaper clippings that beginning in 1962, the bus only ran from Love to downtown once an hour. It took - and still takes - close to 30 minutes to make the trip in "normal" traffic. The primary question is what time it would have left Love, and I haven't been able to find anything or anyone who knows for certain. The bus route crossed the motorcade route a couple of times, but this might not have been much of a problem since it seems as if traffic wasn't stopped until the parade was a block or two from any given location. Cross-traffic would have been the last stopped, meaning that it didn't necessarily preclude the bus being able to make the trip on schedule. Even assuming he could have caught a bus, and that the bus was unaffected by the motorcade or other traffic, he'd have had only about two minutes to get to Elm & Houston once it stopped, and he'd have had to proceed there pretty directly as opposed to the aimless wandering that he seemed to depict in his testimony (he "just happened" to go there, he said, but apparently didn't plan to). The one possible saving grace is that Sam Pate, who arrived behind the TSBD within just a couple of minutes of the shooting, noticed a young man cross Houston St diagonally from the TSBD side to the other, heading toward Pacific, which is what Worrell said that he'd done. Even still, tho', Worrell depicted having cut and run almost immediately, while there's no question that Sam could not have gotten there in less than a minute from where he was, out on Stemmons near Hi Line. Could his estimate of running scared after the first or second shot be as mistaken as his estimate that he'd seen JFK land and then gotten to Dealey Plaza an hour and a half before the motorcade? I'll concede that it's possible ... but how likely is it to have so many inconsistencies and still arrive at a reasonably cohesive conclusion? More later ....

Maybe it shouldn't be dignified by response(?), but I'm sort of surprised that this comment and the stuff that followed didn't even apparently catch anyone's notice!

Responding also to some other posts in this thread ....First, regarding the "automatic" shells: Sgt Gerald Hill was by no means a ballistics expert, having spent most of his time-to-date with DPD in the Traffic Division, and then working screening new police applicants with Capt "Pinky" Westbrook. Despite the fact that he dressed in plain clothes that day and looked like a detective, he was not ... and had nowhere near the experience. Quite simply: automatics eject their shells. The shells were not in the gun so they must have been "ejected." Ergo, it was an automatic rather than a pistol. (Aren't revolvers pistols, too? Goes to experience, your honor!) Second, nobody who didn't want to leave evidence behind would have at least tried not to. Fingerprints were not an unknown in 1963 and hadn't been for several decades. Further, someone who didn't want to be identified probably would have gone to greater lengths to at least hide his features a little bit as he ran past the Davises' house, grinning at the girls as he fled. At the very least, he might have paused a moment to either shake the shells into his hand and then put them in his pocket, or try to catch them as he shook them loose, picking up any that fell. These things together add up to someone who was secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't be fingered personally, and that any of the evidence he left behind wouldn't be tied back to him. Hence, he not only didn't care if evidence was found, he wanted it to be found. Look at the neat job of eradicating fingerprints on the "Oswald revolver" that was done in the patrol car, and the farce of McDonald's "identifying" it in the personnel office as examples of what the shooter might reasonably have expected to have happened with the evidence he left behind at 10&P. In any case, by the time "the" shells were booked into evidence, Poe's initials were already gone, too, as was the primer "ding" from the "misfired" bullet that was supposed to have killed McD, resulting in a hail of gunfire eliminating the "guilty suspect." Make no mistake: that "snap" put Jack Ruby behind bars just as surely as the bullet from his own gun did! For more on the shells, see Dave Perry's "Tippit Evidence?".

Ron ...Different women. Two got on at the first floor and off at the second, with a third - Adams - apparently waiting to get on at the second. Otherwise there are two instances of the elevator getting stuck on the second floor, only minutes at most apart. It would also have had to have been operating again in between, because it had obviously left the second floor to pick the "new" people up somehow. I cannot recall any report or testimony of any of the other women indicating that they'd boarded the elevator with Mooney on the first floor, but there may have been. Also, Mooney doesn't mention a second man on the elevator with him, and Adams doesn't mention women getting off (I don't think), so either the details were blurred or lost by these two people during the five months time between the event and their testimony. (As another former TSBD employee has said, things were just happening, and most people weren't paying particular attention to them at the time because they didn't know there would be any reason to remember them.) A third possibility, of course, is that the elevator always had the problem of not operating at the second floor unless you did something that wouldn't be obvious to everyone ... like Mooney. Sort of like having to jiggle your key a certain way in a lock for it to open: if you didn't know to do it, you'd think the key was bad or the lock was broken. As to the power being off, that can only be an impression they'd had since neither stuck around to try to troubleshoot the problem. I'm also curious - and hopefully in the process of finding out - if there were other things that could have affected the elevator's operation, such as someone pulling at the doors on another floor so that a necessary contact was separated (remember: if the boys going down to lunch at noon had left the door open, LHO couldn't have called the elevator back, so the doors being closed had something to do with it, and them being slightly apart could have affected the operation too). I don't imagine that separating the contacts (or whatever) - it might have been possible to do that accidentally - would have stopped the elevator mid-floor, but I don't find it unrealistic that it would have prevented the elevator from re-starting after it had stopped. If you've ever reported something to a cop - say, a break-in at your house - what you tell him as you're explaining what happened, and what you finally write down as being the salient information they will need to refer to later can be different things, and you're more likely to omit things that you said - talking, after all, is easier than writing and takes less time - than the other way around.Passing a fellow officer on the stairway might not have seemed very relevant the day it happened - unless every deputy or cop you passed anywhere else was also important - and it may not have even seemed very important when he told it, but that happens sometime: you mention something that you noticed, paid no attention to at the time, but it stuck with you anyway, and state it only in passing. That it wasn't important to you doesn't mean it wasn't important. Where will one find the Sneed interview? At this juncture, I don't find what he said or didn't say vis-a-vis his WC testimony particularly important unless one were to suggest that because he didn't say or write it at another time, it was therefore a lie. If it wasn't a lie, then it could simply be a detail that went unremarked at one time, unrecalled at another. In the midst of all that was going on, it wasn't necessarily something you'd think was important, and may not to this day (after all, LHO wasn't a deputy sheriff, right? - grin). I guess it's also a fair question: was he asked about passing anyone on the stairs?

I think it's a pretty big assumption, so I'm not so certain of its reasonableness. Where were these persons? How did they manage not to be seen by anyone? Clearly they had to be in the right place(s) at the right time doing the right things and not interfering with anything else ... and then get out without being seen either.Not only would they be "making investigators and employees walk the stairs," but would also be making their co-conspirators do the same ... virtually guaranteeing that they would run into each other. Also, pay close attention to all of the things that Victoria Adams did and places she'd been before encountering Lovelady inside: it was not "so soon after the shots" as you make it sound. I don't think it mitigates for or against anything, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise!

Duke,The colored text highlights what I believe to be the key to the Tippit murder. You and I have discussed this before. Officer Parker, I believe it was, notified dispatch that he would be on E. Jefferson. This is in the immediate vicinity of where Tippit was killed. Is it coincidence that Tippit is sent there only after Parker indicates he is to be in the area? Actually, it was the unit number assigned to Parker - not necessarily Parker - that indicated that he would be "out for five" with no location given ... until the dispatcher asked for his location, which he replied was "East Jefferson." The call to Tippit to report to central Oak Cliff was the next call made.Parker's assigned patrol area was ten miles to the east, on the Garland town line. All of East Jefferson is in Oak Cliff. No, I don't think it's a coincidence ... any more than I think it's a coincidence that dispatch next asks Tippit his whereabouts in exactly the amount of time it has taken me to travel from where he was to where he'd gotten to, eight minutes. Watch for "What Was Harry Hiding?" sometime in the not-too-distant future for an explanation (tho' I don't know that here is where you'll find it). The other officer was WD Mentzel, the regular patrol officer for that district, the only one that was singled out to be "augmented" by an additional "at large" patrol (Tippit). He was in Luby's Cafeteria on Jefferson at the time, the only patrol officer in Dallas taking lunch at that time.I don't believe that Parker could have been the shooter if only because it is indisputable that the shooter ran two blocks away from where the patrol car (even assuming it was Parker's) was supposedly parked between two houses, and the patrol car supposedly started up and backed up toward the alley almost immediately after the shooting. I say "supposedly" because all of that would depend upon the veracity of the storyteller, who had died by the time the story came out. The identity of the shooter could also depend on the veracity of another story - I'm thinking that it's one told by Frank Ellsworth? - of a man seen at DPD following LHO's arrest, or if I'm remembering it correctly. According to Officer Tom Tilson ("The Black Car Chase" made famous by Jim Marrs, and infamous by my related mini-story "Tom Tilson Tells Tall Tales"), that Tippit had been dating someone who lived on the south side of 10th Street was a matter of "common knowledge" among DPD. If both of those things are true (whether or not Tilson knew them himself), Tippit's being shot by another officer makes a lot of sense, and would explain why the conversation was "real friendly like" as well as why he'd not only have gotten out of the car, but had been slowing down, maybe even stopping there on 10th, in the first place. It would also explain a lot of other things that I don't have time to get into right now, but the explanation of "controlling the evidence" leaps to the fore.

Duke, in reading Mooney's testimony I wondered the same thing. In fact, his testimony raised a lot of questions in my mind.After hearing the shots, Mooney runs to the railroad yards because that's where he thought the shots came from. By his account, he is only there for a few seconds, trying to get civilians out of the area. Almost immediately he receives orders to cover the Texas Depository Building from an unnamed officer, apparently relaying them from Sheriff Bill Decker. He, and two other plainclothes officers (Vickery and Webster) immediately run to to the back loading door of the Depository. He closes the gates, and gets an unnamed citizen to watch them. Then he shuts the back door on the little dock and he, Vickery and Webster enter the building. Vickery and Webster announce they are going up the stairs. Inexplicably, Mooney opts for the elevator without saying why. Ball doesn't ask him. According to Mooney power undoubtedly goes out, so he gets off and goes up the stairs. He encounters some men in plainclothes coming down, cannot identify them, and just keeps going. Did he ask them any questions? Did they say anything? Mooney doesn't say. Ball doesn't ask. Mooney stops at the sixth floor. He doesn't see anyone. He assumes other officers had been there, but doesn't say why. Ball doesn't ask. He works his way through the maze of boxes, in order to check the open open windows on the south side. Apparently finding nothing, he leaves and goes to the seventh floor, where he is reunited with Vickery and Webster. They are trying to get into the attic, but it is too dark. The three of them return to the sixth floor. Mooney makes a beeline to the southeast window, wedges himself between the stacked cartons and sees the shells. He also sees a crease in one of the boxes, where he surmises the rifle could have lain. Careful not to touch anything, he leans out the window and hollers and whistles to Decker and Fritz, who are standing below. After some difficulty, Mooney gets their attention. Fritz and other officers quickly arrive. Ball was so strangely disinterested in all of the above. He spends more time questioning Mooney about the piece of fried chicken, paper bag, and Dr. Pepper bottle than any of the events leading up to Mooney finding the shells. Who was the unnamed officer that told Mooney to cover the Depository at a time when many (including Mooney) felt the shots came from the railroad yards? Remember that this happened within minutes of the assassination. Mooney ran there with Vickery and Webster. Why did one of them not guard the back gates, instead entrusting that duty to a citizen? Why did Mooney split up from Vickery and Webster? Why did they go immediately to the seventh floor, in order to access the attic? Who did Mooney encounter coming down the stairs? How many men were coming down the stairs? Why did Mooney assume other officers had already been on the sixth floor? It was still only minutes since the assassination, and other than the men coming down the stairs, at that point Mooney had seen no other officers in the building. What was so important about the attic? Did they want to get on the roof? How come Mooney headed staight for the cartons in front of the south east window, when apparently he ignored that area the first time? I'm sure someone here can explain these things to me. The words you often repeat are: "Mooney doesn't say. Ball doesn't ask." Most of the questions seem to be toward eliciting minor, unimportant details rather than the "meat" that Mooney puts on the table and that Ball has no interest in.There is no explaining, sometimes, why anybody does anything other than "it seemed like the thing to do at the time." Everyone - Baker and Truly included - seems interested in the roof because it would seem like a more likely place to shoot from and not be detected than inside a building where people might be? All three of the deputies might have considered taking the elevator, the other two deciding to take the stairs so that they might catch someone trying to escape down the stairs rather than bypassing them as they rode up the elevator, the easiest and therefore most likely method of transportation up? Mooney could have presumed other officers were on the sixth floor simply because he saw two of them coming down? As I'd noted in the message above, the shooter(s) could have ridden the elevator - or even taken the stairs - down to either the fourth or third floor and stayed there for a short while (who'd suspect a cop anyway?) waiting for whoever was running up the stairs - Webster and Vickery - to pass by, then continuing down when the officers had gone by, only to encounter Mooney after the elevator had jammed. Oops! Luckily, Mooney apparently didn't recognize them, and hadn't looked into who they might have been in the interceding months leading to his testimony. Or he did, and figured it was better to leave well enough alone. The "someone other than Oswald did it" stance wasn't terribly popular - or career-enhancing - during that period. As to Ball being "strangely disinterested" in all of this, I've often thought that WC counsel suspected - or knew - something other than "the official story" was what really happened, but knew both that /a/ the conclusion had already been reached by the powers that be, their employers as it were, and /b/ that they'd never get answers or find they evidence needed to get the truth out, so instead they opted for making sure that certain bits of seemingly irrelevant information found its way onto the record.

Over the last couple of days, I've been mulling over this west elevator business, trying to correlate the statements of everyone concerned - Adams and Baker and Truly and Bonnie Williams and Hank Norman, etc.Truly said that when he first tried to call the freight elevator, it wouldn't respond. Baker said that he looked up the shaft and saw the bottom of the elevator, "three or floors up". But when they got to the fifth floor, the elevator wasn't there. Like you said, he attibuted that to Jack Dougherty, but that was only a guess. I've been wondering who took that elevator, because after hearing the shots and running to the west window, Wliiiams and Jarman and Norman had to run down the stairs because the elevator they rode up to the fifth floor on, that west freight elevator was gone. Norman said that he closed the gates "to make it available to anyone who wanted it." Who took that elevator so that it was unavailable to Williams et al, and then took it back up so that it was then unavailable to Truly and Baker? Baker said that he encountered Sawyer on his way back down from the roof, but couldn't remember on which floor - he thought it might have been the third or fourth. I suspect it might have been the fifth, because Sawyer said, "And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor. And we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything." Baker said it was 90 seconds between the shots and when he encountered Oswald, spent 30 seconds interviewing LHO and spent 5 minutes on the roof. So he is encountering Sawyer within 7 or 8 minutes of the shooting. I think it might have been Sawyer that Luke Mooney was talking about, although why he didn't identify one of his own Inspectors is odd. Steve Thomas I've been through the same exercise and have it all written down somewhere, complete with references. Are you certain that Truly didn't say where the elevators were? Either he or Baker or both had indicated that the two floors were level with each other, that is, on the same floor. The elevator operator WAS unquestionably Jack Dougherty. He is the only one who said that he was on the fifth and sixth floors during the relevant time period, and if I'm not mistaken, he even said that he took the elevator downstairs. Completely lacking in popular mythology is this FACT: Jack Dougherty is the only TSBD employee who has no alibi other than his own word for what he was doing when and after the shots were fired. Even Lee Oswald was seen by people before and after the shooting, in places that it would have been difficult - tho' admittedly not impossible - for him to have been with enough time to either /a/ get to the sixth floor with enough time to spare before the motorcade arrived (remember: it was five minutes late, something nobody could have counted on), or /b/ get from the sixth floor after the shooting. Nobody saw Jack anywhere at any time after people started going out to watch the parade, and nobody mentions having seen him after ONE person (Arce?) said that he saw him in the lunch room immediately after noon. In his testimony, Jack said that he "usually" took the entire time alloted for lunch, but that on this particular day, he went "back to work" immediately after eating his lunch. He stated that he went to the fifth floor and then to the sixth "to get some stock," but he did not testify to having seen Bonnie Ray Williams on the sixth, nor any of the three men (Williams, Hank Norman or Junior Jarman) or anyone else on the fifth floor afterward, nor did any of them admit to having seen him. Jack also did not claim to have seen Oswald or anybody else on the sixth floor at any time, and didn't see or hear anyone coming down the stairs as Oswald is said to have done, which he presumably would have had to see and/or hear if he was where he said he'd been ... unless he either wasn't there (then, why say you were?), or he was and wasn't going to tell anyone what he'd seen ... and if it had been Oswald he'd seen, why not say so? It was the popular thing to do at the time! "Hiding" what everyone "knew" to be "fact?" The only answer here is that he "couldn't" have seen anything of import because then he'd have to explain it in detail, which he couldn't have done without slipping up, so he "saw nuh-think" in good Sgt Schultz style. Or he participated in it. A bit more about Jack: he was Truly's "pet," the self-styled "building manager" who arrived at around 7:00 a.m. - an hour before anyone else - to "check the pipes" in the basement for "leaks." I don't think, given this relationship between them - that both he and Truly alluded to in their testimonies - that it was a "guess" on Truly's part, but rather something he learned from Jack himself (that ... being generous?) during the five months between the assassination and their depositions. It is noteworthy, given this "project" of Jack's, that he had plenty of time before people arrived to have gotten a length of paper from the shipping roll without having been seen (which Oswald could not - and did not, according to Troy West and Wesley Frazier's testimonies). He would also, either before everyone else arrived or while they'd all gone outside to watch the parade, been in a position to move a rifle or rifles into position from elsewhere in the building and remove them afterward. Since he wasn't constrained by having to be in the lunchroom 75 seconds after the shooting, he also had time to "hide" the MC rifle beneath the boxes on the sixth floor. In fact, he had all the time he needed - up to the point when Roy Truly yelled up the elevator shaft - to do whatever was needed. If the MC rifle wasn't a murder weapon, then he had time to do it even before the shooting began ... and he WAS there, by his own admission. But (ahem!) "saw nothing." So how did Jack manage to not see - and not be seen by - anybody during all that time? Was Jack Dougherty a shooter, or assisting the shooter(s)? Did he help to clear out the sixth floor beforehand - telling Bonnie Ray Williams to skedaddle and not say anything to anybody (remember: in 1963 in the South, black folk hadn't left the "yes massa" mentality far behind ... and if there was someone else there with a gun to enforce it ...?)? Did he make sure the three men on the fifth floor didn't go to the elevator while his cohorts were getting on ... and then rode them down a short distance (say to the fourth or third floor?) before letting them off and continuing down on his own? Was Jack the "white man" in some sort of "uniform" seen by Amos Euins in the window beside another man? Were such cohorts the "sheriffs deputies" that Mooney encountered on the stairs? If so, it seems that that would be about the only slip-up they'd made all day. All of these things are possible, and since he wasn't seen by anybody immediately before or after the shooting - as Lee Oswald was - they make it even more likely that Jack Dougherty had a hand in it than Oswald having done it all ... or at all! As a final note regarding Sawyer (or whomever), it's not terribly "odd" that Mooney wouldn't have recognized him since Sawyer was DPD and Mooney was DCSD ... tho' I'd speculate that Sawyer had been around long enough that Mooney would have recognized him even tho' they were in different departments. But what's more important is that "Sawyer" said that he did not go above the second floor, so therefore Mooney could not have seen him "coming down" from the same floor as Mooney had gotten off of the elevator. So cross that one off your list! The "sheriff's deputies" were someone else. The question is, who?

I was going to quote Luke Mooney's testimony, but I see that Michael already has.I believe the female TSBD worker is Victoria Adams. Victoria Adams was on the fourth floor, heard three shots, ran down the stairs in the northwest corner of the building, encountered Billy Lovelady and Shelley, ran out the Houston St. dock, ran to the railroad tracks and was ordered back in the building by a policeman. She went southwest around the corner of the building, went down the Elm St. extension and talked to a coworker on the steps in front of the TDBD. She asked permission of a policeman to enter the building because she worked there. Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do ? Miss ADAMS - Following that, I pushed the button for the passenger elevator, but the power had been cut off on the elevator, so I took the stairs to the second floor. Mr. BELIN - You then went all the way back to the northwest corner of the building and took the same set of stairs you had previously taken to come down, or did you take the stairs by the passenger elevator? Miss ADAMS - By the passenger elevator. Mr. BELIN - Do those stairs go above floor 2? Miss ADAMS - No, sir; they didn't. Thank you for that; it most certainly was Vicky Adams.There is elsewhere testimony from a police officer - I'm thinking Inspector Sawyer, but could be mistaken - that he and a couple of other officers went in the front door and took the elevator by the front door up to the second floor, and thereafter went to the northwest corner where there was a "storage room," and then went back downstairs. It's difficult if not impossible to determine where in all of the time that VA was running around the building and talking with people that Sawyer (or whomever) entered the building since neither refers to the other in any way. If, however, they had gone upstairs and were holding the elevator there (as I seem to recall they had), it could or would appear to someone trying to call that elevator that "the power was off" since the elevator did not start moving when she'd hit the button. The only thing that argues against that possibility is that VA did not mention anyone by the elevator when she'd gotten to the second floor. However, I'm not certain that someone who went up the stairs and then along the south corridor (running east-west across the front of the building behind offices and in front of the "secretarial pool" area) would have passed the elevator to have seen anyone there. I'm thinking that they wouldn't have, but a look at the 2nd floor layout (a Commission Exhibit) would eliminate all doubt of that. The other possibility - vague though it may be - is that by the time VA got to the elevator area, the cops had gone back downstairs. In any case, thanks for including this part of her testimony because, if she was trying to use the elevator when the cops had it, it could help in determining when Luke Mooney was in the elevator, since it's pretty clear from the next part of her testimony that she was one of the women Mooney had let into the elevator on the second floor, which is a decidedly important question. He'd estimated that he'd been in the parking area checking around cars there "a couple of minutes" before going into the building; perhaps Micheal can post that part of Mooney's testimony? One of the questions I've got for someone who worked at TSBD during that era include how the elevators could have been kept from moving. We know that if someone rode the elevator - at least the freight elevator - and didn't close the doors, then the elevator could not be called to another floor for someone else. Was it also possible to have opened another door on a floor where the elevator was NOT and keep it from moving, that is, a contact being broken and stopping the elevator from travelling? A "power outage" could have seemed to have occurred if this was the case.Since you mentioned Baker & Truly, you must remember, too, that at first, Truly tried to get an elevator while he and Baker were on the first floor, but neither elevator responded. He looked up and saw the bottoms of both elevators at the fifth floor, where Jack Dougherty was working (and not seeing or hearing anybody at all, not even the three black guys running across the same floor!). When B&T got to the fifth floor, they found and got onto the passenger elevator there; the freight elevator was not there, but had apparently gone down to another floor (Truly didn't state where it had gone to or if he had even looked), an action that he attributed to Dougherty. Truly said that the commotion he and Baker were making running up the stairs was such that they (or he) didn't hear it moving. I don't recall that he had said whether or not he saw it anywhere either on the way down or when he got to the first floor again. Also, Luke Mooney had indicated that he did not see anyone on the sixth floor when he got there, and had in fact walked or ran back and forth across the floor before going up to the seventh floor, and then again down to the sixth. If memory serves, Mooney is attributed as being the first law enforcement officer to have arrived on the sixth floor other than Baker, who never actually was on the sixth floor (got on the elevator at the fifth, rode it with Truly to the seventh, and then back down to the first). If that is so (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), then here's another important question: who was Mooney referring to when he said "And I met some other officers coming down, plainclothes, and I believe they were deputy sheriffs. They were coming down the staircase. But I kept going up"???

...The only testimony regarding "state of mind" is that of Helen Markham, who characterized it as a "friendly" conversation or encounter. If there were conflicting testimony, I might be inclined to discount HM's characterization, but lacking it, I'd be hard pressed to manufacture this scenario beyond mere speculation. What — beyond speculation — would suggest "self-defense," even leaving the "coup de grace" out of the equation? Duke: It seems something must have been said or done, during the time that the "gunman" was talking to Tippet thru the passenger side window, to cause him to exit the patrol car and approach the suspect . This may have given the suspect a few seconds advantage, to draw down on the approaching cop. The front of the patrol car was low enough for someone to see Tippet draw or reach for his weapon. In my initial post, I used the term "suspect" as a hypothetical notion, as if the person was indeed a suspect, and as if JD Tippit was even looking for a suspect. That hypothetical is not supported by any facts. At the time Tippit was ordered into Oak Cliff, there were no reports of any suspects, per se, at large (if the broadcast description from TSBD did, in fact, originate with Howard Brennan, it did not describe a fleeing suspect, but only one that had been "seen" in a window ... if Brennan actually saw anyone!), and there was certainly no notion that any had slipped off into Oak Cliff to the exclusion of any other location in Dallas. Indeed, "all downtown units" were ordered to Dealey Plaza in response to the "Signal 19 [shooting] involving the President," and none were ordered out of there ... not even after Tippit had been shot. Contrary to popular mythology, Oswald was not the only TSBD employee "not present during a roll call." Not only were there other employees who had left the vicinity (including one man who said he had gone home for lunch), but a "roll call" never actually occurred. Moreover, it could not have occurred even if someone had thought of it because quite a number of TSBD employees were outside and were not allowed back into the building (and neither were those inside allowed out) until after 1:30, at which point Tippit was already indisputably dead. So how would this "roll call" have been made? There was no apparent suspicion that any suspect had escaped the area since none of those "all downtown units" were dispatched beyond the immediate area of Elm & Houston to search for one ... and clearly any suspect fleeing anywhere would have to go through an area intermediate to TSBD and anywhere else before they could actually get to wherever "anywhere else" might have been. There had not even been a report that someone had seen a suspect of any description leaving the area, evidenced by the fact that there is nothing on record indicating that anyone had left the TSBD area and railroad yards to search for anyone. The railroad yards, incidentally, lead away from Oak Cliff, not toward it. "Anywhere else" could, of course, have included areas north, east and west of downtown with just as much likelihood as it could have included areas south of downtown, such as Oak Cliff is. It is therefore noteworthy not so much that Tippit was singled out to patrol any area at all, but that Oak Cliff was singled out as the ONLY area to be patrolled. NO other units were dispatched to ANY other area of town for ANY reason. It is even more noteworthy when you consider that DPD knew that there were already two other patrolmen, including the one who normally patrolled the area in the central Oak Cliff area. In fact, Tippit was dispatched to Oak Cliff about two minutes after DPD had already verified that one of those officers was in the area. All of that, incidentally, is a matter of record, not speculation or theory. If there was no roll call and if Oswald hadn't been the only person missing, then there was still no reason to link the Oak Cliff area with him or any suspect. Indeed, in just twenty minutes time, even if there had been a roll call and Oswald was the only person missing, there simply wasn't time to connect his absence with either his going home or where "home" was. The most accessible information about him would have come from TSBD, which indicated that he lived in Irving, several miles west, not south. Tippit was not told to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious, and there is no reason to think that DPD considered it possible that any suspect might have gone to Oak Cliff. Rather, Tippit was told to "be at large for any emergency that might come in." What sort of "emergency" was envisioned there, and why only there? Nobody was dispatched to any of the ritzier areas of town, like Turtle Creek or University Park, nor to any industrialized area or even run-down section of town, only Oak Cliff which was then very much "middle-class." (That the area was not considered a particularly important area - other than for the fact that it, alone, was singled out for an "at large" patrol - is evidenced by the fact that RC Nelson, who had also been told to go to Oak Cliff, radioed in twice to effectively tell them that he was ignoring their order, and nobody countermanded what he said that he was doing - which was crossing the viaduct into downtown and getting "out down here" at TSBD - and that nobody thought to try contacting Tippit during the time he was "at large.") A friend of mine has observed that "all dead cops are heroes," even if nobody even remotely thought of them that way before their deaths (have you ever heard, for example, that "the corrupt officer was shot down and thus avoided being fired and prosecuted?"). As an alert "hero," Tippit never even radioed in at any time, not while he was supposedly "looking for a suspect" and certainly not when he supposedly thought he'd found one. Since he did not, and since the only "state of mind" characterization of the encounter between Tippit and his assailant was as "real friendly like," there is no cause to think that Tippit thought he was encountering a "suspect" or that he even remotely thought of whoever it was he met as being a suspect. The encounter being as it was described - "real friendly like" - whatever "cause[d] him to exit the patrol car" could simply be the ease of talking with whomever he'd met without a closed window being in the way or having to reach across the car to roll it down (putting himself at a disadvantage, if that was a consideration). Indeed, since there is no real indication that he was in any way on "high alert," it is as likely as anything else that Tippit may have envisioned leaning against the side of his car and having a friendly chat with someone he knew on a cool, sunny autumn afternoon in a quiet neighborhood. Indeed, every indication - absent the blind faith (and that's what it is) that Tippit was being a hero and was looking for a suspect even tho' he hadn't been ordered to and did encounter Oswald rather than someone else - is that that's exactly what occurred. Contrary to his expectations, however, he got shot and killed. Poor dumb cop. So the important question, then, is "why Oak Cliff?" It's not "why Tippit" (as people seem to like to focus on, although that, too, is a legitimate question ... but in a different context) or why Tippit did anything any particular way, but "why Oak Cliff?" Since there were two cops already there, what possible purpose did his presence there "at large" serve ... other than to get him killed and thence to get a large number of cops away from Dealey Plaza? The bottom-line answer? None.

...or someone leaving the door open [likely on purpose] to make it unavailable to others and available when needed to 'them'... It is in the testimony of Luke Mooney and a female TSBD worker; sorry, don't have the references at hand. Mooney had ridden one of the elevators to the second floor where someone wanted to get off and two women wanted to get on. When they closed the doors to start up again, the elevator did not operate, so they all got off and continued upward on foot. "Her" testimony pretty well corroborates his.As to the cause - or possible causes - of the malfunction ...? A part of the continuing inquiry! A great big "quite so!" to Ron about the phone lights!

I happened upon a place where some interesting old books can be found ... for a price. Here are some of them, all hardcover and in good condition: David Belin, November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury, 1st edition Gerald Ford, Portrait of the Assassin, 1st edition Edward Epstein, Inquiry, 1st edition Michael Eddowes, The Oswald File, 1st edition There are also 1st editions of a couple of books on the Ruby trial (including Dallas Justice and a book by Melvin Belli), but I didn't write the information down. Also, Richard Popkin's The Second Oswald: The Case for Conspiracy is also available in paperback. Other rarities show up from time to time. If anyone's interested in these or other hard-to-find books, drop me an email and I'll let you know what I can find.

Eva Grant said that Ruby knew Tippit. As Grant was Ruby's sister this information needs to be taken seriously. The point that Buchanan is making is that Oswald, Ruby and Tippit were all involved in the original conspiracy. Most researchers are if the opinion that Ruby was only involved in the cover-up. When Ruby mentioned Tippit's death, he said how sorry he was to hear of "Slick's" death.How does one call Officer Tippit by an obvious nickname, "Slick", if he did not know him personally? Just one more little slip that allows the truth to trickle out...no matter how deeply the B. S. has been spread. Chuck Chuck,There were two "Tippits" (phonetic) on DPD ... but the other was spelled Tippett. I don't recall the details offhand, but I recall that the latter was assigned downtown and frequented the Carousel. The pronunciation being the same, it is easy to understand how one could be confused with the other.

That's why I don't do theories.The salient fact remains that Decker emptied the County Courts building (a.k.a. "Criminal Courts building") and sent all his force out behind the TSBD. That's good, solid ground, innit? That's gonna last longer than an all-day sucker. Asthon What I'd said is also good, solid ground, and indisputable fact. Forgive my facetiousness because the "ifs" are not really "ifs," but merely blanks.

Yes. And might I amend the above with another mention of smoke (literally) from the knoll/fence area (including an officer later testifying that he'd burned his hand on something he erroneously had believed to be a steam pipe, but nobody ever determined what it was), and Decker immediately emptying the County Courts/Criminal Courts building of law enforcement presence, herding them all into the area behind the knoll/TSBD. ... and one of the next things that happened was the emptying of the rest of Dallas' streets by a call to "all downtown units" to report to DP ... which in reality led to quite a few others likewise descending there (unless one extends the "downtown" designation to include all of Dallas), followed then by the emptying of Dealey Plaza itself on an "officer down" call.Herd 'em all together in one place, then send 'em all somewhere else en masse, right to where "the assassin" would be waiting, and right where he might reasonably be expected to be, in his own neighborhood. In the meanwhile, what is interesting - and which nobody I can recall has noticed (or if so, said anything about) - only one of those emptied patrol districts was reassigned to another patrolman, that in central Oak Cliff. The question is not "why was Tippit sent to Oak Cliff," but "why was Oak Cliff the only patrol district that needed coverage?" It doesn't matter who was sent to Oak Cliff as much as it matters why anyone was sent there, and only there ... to the exclusion of every other patrol district in the city. And lo, the one and only patrolman with a particular assigned duty - to the exclusion of all other officers - "just happens" to get killed, and when the entire force rushes to his aid, the perp "just happens" to be sitting in a theater a few blocks away, and also "just happens" to be the President's supposed killer to boot! You couldn't get much luckier (other than Officer Tippit, that is) if it had been planned that way! But then, for it to have worked, there would have had to have been someone to send Tippit into Oak Cliff, and that's where the theory falls apart, doesn't it. They'd also have to know where Tippit was at any given moment (or at least when he'd arrived in Oak Cliff from wherever he might have been, which not everyone would have or could have known), and somehow know that there was someone there who was ready to shoot "the poor, dumb cop" when he was where he might reasonably be expected to show up while "at large" in central Oak Cliff. Too many "ifs," but a great theory for the 30 seconds it lasted, eh?

That's an intriguing scenario. That may well have been what went wrong. But I recall reading a while back that Oswald's gun was defective and could not have fired a shot in any case. Not very good planning if he was expected to shoot McDonald or some other cop in the theater and then get shot. Methinks you missed something up there. Did I say anything to the effect of Oswald pulling a trigger? I didn't think so. Do you know what happened to the gun afterward in terms of determining if his finger had ever been on the trigger ... ever? That makes for an even more intriguing scenario which, unfortunately, dovetails neatly into the one above. It's actually all on record ....

Quite so. Can you also think of another crime that would cause most of the police force to respond, or one that, if the police force is otherwise occupied (say, at the scene of the murder of the President of the United States) that might cause them to leave that scene? That is, of course, exactly what happened when JDT was shot. Deliberately emptying the gun and leaving the hulls at the scene was not "stupid," it was calculated: it tied the ammunition to the gun that would be "found" in LHO's "possession." The gun would simply have been dropped to the ground in the scenario below. Pinky Westbrook told a "funny story" of how, in the midst of subduing LHO, a police officer was very nearly handcuffed. Given any of their modes of dress vice LHO's, can you imagine any way in which a cop's hand might be mistaken for LHO's ... unless, perhaps, it had a gun in it?The "snap" that McDonald heard - the misfire that ceased to exist by the time the bullets got to DC but which at least three cops testified to - was supposed to have been the shot that killed him. Imagine a loud bang! in the theater and McDonald falling over, wounded at best. LHO would have died in a hail of bullets. The story would have ended right there, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Unfortunately (but fortunately for McDonald!), the bullet was a dud and thence to Plan B, which was concocted on the fly because nobody thought it would really be needed. Ruby was forced into it because he was a Jew, and was convinced of his need to shoot LHO on Friday night while "Johnny" was not part of the conversation. His other option was to have his family harrassed at best, killed at worst. Think about it: the Lone Communist killed by the Lone Jew. Unlikely? Sure, but in whose interest was it to deflect suspicion from himself or themselves by having such readily available suspects?

Steve,In looking over the testimony of both Sawyer and Baker, there's some confusion over which floor Sawyer actually went to ... maybe. Work with me on this and maybe we'll get it figured out .... Sawyer said exactly as you'd quoted him on 6H317. Asked to clarify later on the same page where the elevator he'd gotten on was - Mr. BELIN. Well, when you say you got into the elevator, where was the elavator as you walked in the front door? Mr. SAWYER. It was to the right. Mr. BELIN. to the right? Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN. Was it a freight elevator or a passenger elevator? Mr. SAWYER. To the best of my recollection, it was a passenger elevator. Mr. BELIN. Did you push for the top button in that elevator? Mr. SAWYER. Well, I don't know who pushed it, but we went up to the top floor. Mr. BELIN. You went up to the top floor that elevator would go to? Mr. SAWYER. That's right. ... Mr. BELIN. Now when you got off, you say you went into the back there into a warehouse area? Mr. SAWYER. Storage area; what appeared to be a storage area. Mr. BELIN. Did you go into any place other than a warehouse or storage area? Mr. SAWYER. No. Mr. BELIN. Was there anything other than a warehouse or storage area there? Mr. SAWYER. Well, to one side I could see an office over there with people in it. Some womeon that apparently were office workers. Mr. BELIN. Now Inspector, what did you do then? Mr. SAWYER. Well, I didn't see anything that was out of the ordinary, so I immediately came back downstairs to check the security on the building. The elevator that was to the right of the main entrance was a passenger elevator that rode up only as far as the second floor where there were indeed office space and women who were office workers, and at the back of which floor was indeed "storage space." It wasn't "warehouse space," as Belin insisted to use even after Sawyer had corrected him, but "storage space" just as he said. Sawyer never said he went farther up into the building either by stair or by elevator, but rather said that after he hadn't seen anything suspicious on the floor he'd gotten off of the elevator onto, he "immediately came back downstairs" and went outside. There is nothing in what Sawyer said to indicate that he ever went any higher than the second floor, and stated explicitly that he did not go anyplace other than the storage ("or warehouse") area. Belin, however, did insist on his having gone higher, asking just a couple of questions after the above quote: "Did you give those instructions [to cover the entrances of the building] before or after you came down from the fourth floor or the top floor?" Sawyer never said he went higher than the highest floor that the passenger elevator at the front of the building, to the right of the main entrance, could take him, which would only be to the second floor. He didn't push the button, someone else did, so he couldn't say whether there were two buttons or ten, or how far up the elevator went except to the top of its travel. Belin's insistence on Sawyer having gone higher may be from his recollection of deposing Marrion Baker a few weeks before: Mr. BAKER. As we descended, somewhere around-we were still talking and I was still looking over the building. Mr. BELIN. As the elevator was moving? Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir; downward. Mr. BELIN. All right. Mr. BAKER. The next thing that I noticed was Inspector Sawyer, he was on one of those floors there, he is a police inspector. Mr. DULLES. City of Dallas Police? Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir. And he was on, I really didn’t notice which floor he was on, but that is the first thing I saw as we descended how this freight elevator, you know, it has got these picket boards in front of it and it has got it open so far, and it seemed to me like we stopped for a moment and I spoke to him and I told him that I had been to the roof, and there wasn’t anything on the roof that would indicate anybody being up there, and then we started on down. Mr. BELIN. Did you stay on the elevator while you spoke to him? Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN. Do you remember what floor it was that you spoke to him on or how many floors down that you went from the top before you saw him? Mr. BAKER. No, sir; not at that time. It seemed to me like it was on either the third or the fourth floor. ... Mr. BELIN. When you continued moving on the elevator after you talked to Inspector Sawyer how far did you go on the elevator? Mr. BAKER. We went to the, I believe it would be the first floor there. Mr. BELIN. All right. You got off the elevator then? Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir. Since Baker did continue going downward after speaking with Sawyer, then we can say with certainty that he saw Sawyer above the first floor. Since Sawyer said, tho', that he never went anywhere other than the storage area on the floor he'd gotten off the elevator onto, then there is no reason to think that Baker saw him anywhere other than on the second floor, even despite what it may have "seemed to" him to have been some four months later. Do you see any indication that Sawyer had climbed or ridden higher than what he'd said? The only possibility that I see is his running into the "man I believed worked in the building" since the floor they'd gotten off the elevator onto "was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor." There were, however, no offices on the fifth floor, and the elevator inside the main entrance didn't go that high anyway, so ...? Sawyer seems to have been something of a simple man - lacked a half-year of high school to graduate, and when asked why he'd headed west on Main Street after the motorcade had gone by, he replied without guile that it was "because that was the way my car was pointed at the time I got in!" - but clearly not stupid. He'd been on DPD for 23 years in 1964, and was just 47 years old, and was hardly a patrolman anymore, but "up there" in the ranks. How then can we reconcile his statements with his age and experience? Added on edit: I forgot to mention that, beginning on 6H319 is something of a reconstruction for the record of Sawyer's timings, noting that he "had not at least completely left [his] car by 12:34." He did not have to wait for the elevator he rode upstairs, it was on the first floor, and "doubt[ed] if [he] took over a minute at the most" looking around on the floor he'd gone to. "How long it took to go up, it couldn't have been over 3 minutes at the most from the time we left, got up and back down," or as Belin estimated, "no sooner than 12:37 if you heard the call at 12:34." From that point onward, he was outside. An interesting question is why Belin saw fit to place Sawyer on "the fourth floor or top floor" when Sawyer said that he'd ridden an elevator that only went to the second floor and no higher, and when he didn't say he'd gone to any other floor. I read that question and thought, "Where did I miss that?" Looking back, I found nothing about the fourth floor in Sawyer's testimony. Where, other than from Baker's testimony two weeks earlier (Baker's March 25, 1964 testimony to Sawyer's on April 8, 1964), was "the fourth floor" established? Finally, for the sake of mentioning it, Sawyer seemed to think that perhaps Sgt D.V. Harkness had been one of the officers who had gone up the elevator with him, but according to Harkness' testimony, he did not go into the building and did not have anything to do with Sawyer other than to put Amos Euins into Sawyer's car, and telling Sawyer that he'd done so.

They may have been with Herbert Sawyer.Marion Baker said that he ran into Sawyer on his way back down from the roof. Said he even stopped the elevator and spoke to Sawyer. Sawyer: "And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about." I believe that the "man who worked in the building" was William Shelley. Mr. SHELLEY - "Yes; Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors. Mr. BALL - Did you go up on the sixth floor? Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir. I can't remember anyone saying that they accompanied Sawyer though. I'll have to review Baker's testimony on Sawyer, unless you've got it handy? What is interesting in the above is that Sawyer said that the elevator "was just to the right of the main entrance." That would NOT have been the elevators that were in the northwest corner of the building, at the back, a damn sight farther than "just to the right of the main entrance."How did Sawyer describe his activities once inside the building? Do they coincide with those described by Shelley? How long after the shooting did he enter? Was either Sawyer or Shelley present when the hulls or gun were found upstairs? Am I remembering correctly that Baker went back into the building after his initial sprint to the top floors, after which he left? Which time was it that he saw Sawyer?

I will have to find some of my old notes, but some years ago - 1995? - I contacted one of the guys in the lineup who still lives in the Dallas area. He seemed relieved in a way that somebody actually knew about him because his family thinks he's lying about having been in lineups with Oswald. I think it was Borchgardt, but I'm not positive; it was an unusual last name in any case, it seems like. It might even have been Brazel, who I think is still living.What was interesting is that he said that he currently weighed in excess of 300 lbs, and that even when he was young (i.e., 1963), he was "very heavy," not fitting any of the descriptions of the people who were in the lineups with LHO. He thought it was ludicrous that they would place him in a lineup with someone who looked absolutely nothing like him in any way. I filed that tidbit and never followed up on it because I was living in Virginia at the time. It's possible that if he's still alive, I can reach him again and find out more information, possibly also including the identities of some of the men pictured above. If someone would be so kind as to save me the trouble of looking up the names of everyone in the lineups (other than the cops), I can possibly find out sooner.