Sean Murphy

Robert, I think Baker simply misunderstands Dulles's question ("Had he meanwhile gone on through the door ahead of you?") and speaks to the wrong door. Belin, realising Baker's error, eliminates the ambiguity by relating Baker's answer to Exhibit 498, which shows the landing door rather than the lunchroom door.

Bill, In case you have not seen this, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10755&relPageId=4 there is a section in the 1/29/64 investigation report by SA Roger Warner that mentions his interview with James Powell (Army Intelligence). Powell told Warner he entered the TSBD and observed Pierce Allman using a phone in the lobby of the building and that it was near a desk. FWIW, I have seen two photos of the lobby and neither shows a phone, at least that I can detect. Perhaps there is an area of the lobby that is not visible in either photo. I have to believe that Powell knew what the lobby was, and was not confusing it with the phone near the column in the middle of the first floor. Richard, Warner's gloss on what Powell said is in error, as is made clear from the first-person statement that Powell himself gave:

From Gary Mack: Cheap shot, Sean, cheap shot. I can think whatever I want. History has put Oswald elsewhere whether you agree with that or not. As to your question, I think Prayer Man is NOT Lee Harvey Oswald. Clear enough? Gary Mack ** Gary, we already know you think Prayer Man is NOT Lee Harvey Oswald. History has evidently placed you in a position where you are professionally compelled to rule that possibility out. But in answer to your question: no, not clear enough. Who do you think Prayer Man is? Are you still, by process of elimination, backing the slender white male TSBD employee Bill Shelley?

Jeraldean Reid's 11/23 affidavit is an impressive document, for it manages with great economy to tick every box Roy Truly and the FBI so very badly needed ticked: Just as Jeraldean entered the office area, she noticed Oswald coming through the back door into the office area This back door was located near the lunchroom and the rear stairway The encounter was unmistakeably post-assassination because Jeraldean said something to Lee about the President's being shot Lee had a coke in his hand She saw Lee walk out of the office just after their paths had crossed. The last item here-- --is of particular note for it will become weirdly muddled in Jeraldean's WC testimony. There, she and Belin will go on an elaborate and silly detour as to the possible routes Oswald might have taken just after passing Reid near her desk. For some reason, Jeraldean now has to refrain from telling us authoritatively that Lee, having mumbled something, "walked on out of the office". And yet she must take pains to eliminate the possibility that the door through which he walked on out of the office might have been the back door through which he had just come in: Mr. BELIN. Did Lee Harvey Oswald walk past you? Mrs. REID. Yes; he did. Mr. BELIN. Kept on walking in the same direction? Mrs. REID. Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN. How far did you see him go? Mrs. REID. I didn't turn around to look. He went on straight, he did not go on past the back door because I was facing that way. What he did after that--- Mr. BELIN. But you know he did not go out the same back door he came in? Mrs. REID. No; he did not. But where exactly was Jeraldean so that she could rule the possibility out of Oswald's having left by the back door? Let's look at the layout of the floor, with Oswald's alleged post-shooting route from the sixth floor drawn in: The natural assumption would be that Jeraldean was at her desk. But she explicitly rules that idea out: I met him by the time I passed my desk several feet and I told him, I said, "Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him." Why did she pass her desk? Where was she going? Did she keep walking and leave the office area through the same back door which Oswald had just entered? Did she perhaps want to recover from the shock of the shooting by making a beeline for the ladies' room? But her own testimony rules all this out. For she makes a point of keeping herself in the office space long enough to rule out the possibility that Oswald could have turned tail and gone out the back door at some point after Reid herself had left it. Thus we are left with the very strange image of Jeraldean Reid standing frozen in space several feet away from her desk, facing resolutely west and not going anywhere. Why is she fudging the issue of her actions after the Oswald exchange? Because she needs to do two irreconcilable things: a ) Be in the office for a long enough time to rule out Oswald's having exited the office via the back door b ) Sustain the impression that she is herself perfectly positioned to exit the office by the back door. The reason for b? Geneva Hine, who is about to reenter the office--via the corridor and through the back door.

Gary Mack has not responded. Seems to me there's no hard evidence that Gary's job allows him to even consider the possibility that Lee Oswald was not the sixth floor shooter.

My responses (in red) to Gary's email to William Kelly and myself: "Sorry, folks, you cannot use Pierce Allman to turn Oswald into PM. I’ve known Pierce for many years, and this account is the story he has always told and sticks with today: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10755&relPageId=4. (The report has one error I know of: Pierce was program director of WFAA radio, not TV, and once Oswald pointed to the phone, Pierce called the radio station.) Based on his travel down to the Newmans TWICE from the Elm-Houston intersection, he could not have gotten to the TSBD door for 2, 3, maybe 4 minutes depending on how long he spoke to them, whether he spoke to others, or just looked around before heading to the building and dodging traffic. For Oswald to be PM, he would have had to hang around the front door for several minutes from the moment of the shooting until he was met by Pierce, and that is highly unlikely. One or more fellow employees would have seen him and eventually reported it. In case you haven't been following closely, Gary, the claim is not that Oswald just hung around the front door for several minutes. It's that he popped in to the "small storage room" just off the lobby and was seen there by Ochus Campbell (and possibly Jeraldean Reid too) as he (and possibly she) headed for the front stairs up to the second floor: that's the sighting Ochus Campbell himself was telling news reporters in the TSBD within just two or three hours of the assassination. Allman's reaching the front door of the TSBD within 2 or 3 minutes of the shooting in no way undermines the case for Oswald as Prayer Man. Instead, Pierce stopped Oswald as Oswald left the building following the lunchroom encounter, for no other explanation makes sense. It's important that you not put words in Pierce's mouth, Gary. He did not say he "stopped" Oswald, he merely said he spoke with him. Precision, please. Pierce may have flashed his press pass to Oswald, but he didn’t remember doing that nor did co-worker Ford say he did....but he certainly could have done so and it would have been a natural thing to do at the time. As for Oswald’s belief Allman was a Secret Service man, the notes and recollections say he said the man had a crew cut hair style. Pierce appeared on WFAA-TV later that afternoon, the tape exists, and he certainly did have that hair style. Although Manchester and other books often attribute the TSBD encounter to NBC’s Robert MacNeil, that’s simply wrong. Tapes of MacNeil that day show his hair was much, much longer than Allman’s and it was even longer then than it is today. I quite agree: Allman is the most likely candidate for the crew-cut man Oswald helped. Folks will have to look elsewhere to ID the Prayer Man, for he certainly wasn’t Oswald. Oh dear, Gary, such categorical ruling out of something you simply can not categorically rule out. Given the certainty with which you issued your erroneous declarations that Prayer Man was (first) Lovelady and (then) Shelley, perhaps a little humility and tentativeness might have been hoped for from you with respect to further suggestions as to the identification of Prayer Man? (Unless, of course, one subscribes to the theory that the polite, ever-trusting killers allowed all TSBD workers who could have seen Oswald on the steps to live for years if not decades after the assassination, hoping they would never tell anyone.) Who says the killers of JFK would have been bothered by the revelation that Oswald was not the sixth floor shooter? Again, please address the Prayer Man theory that is being put forward, not a straw man simplification of it. Gary Mack" Question for you, Gary: who do you believe Prayer Man is?

Bjorn, I still lean strongly towards the belief that Baker's 11/22 affidavit account of catching a man walking away from the third or fourth floor stairway was a fiction designed to incriminate Oswald. If it really did happen, however, then you are right: it surely would implicate Truly--being that the description of the man sounds nothing like the "great big husky" 39-year-old Jack Dougherty, it seems hard to find anyone else Truly could have legitimately vouched for as an employee. Was Oswald set up as the sixth floor shooter by the murderers of President Kennedy? I think it's highly doubtful. The framing of Oswald as triggerman seems to have been the priority of the 'investigating' authorities not the conspirators themselves. I reckon Truly, Reid & Campbell were innocent parties who were subjected to massive pressure to play ball with the Oswald Alone conclusion that was decided upon within hours of the assassination. ** The Dec 4 Secret Service interview with Truly does indeed mark the point by which Truly's lunchroom story has stabilised: he now says he saw Baker confronting an Oswald who was just inside the lunchroom door. However, as we shall see, there was one more piece of choreography to come: the mobilisation of Oswald into a man who was in some very awkward sense "walking away" from Baker into and then in the lunchroom.

I was over in the wilds of Connemara, Robert, on blissful holiday from all internet connections! Thanks for the very kind words btw.

Bjorn, the report you cite drives home once again the crucial point in all this: Geneva Hine was extremely anxious to find out what exactly had happened outside. The idea that Reid would not have noticed her in the office area is a big stretch, but an even bigger one is the idea that Hine would not have noticed Reid. ** Reid was drafted in by Truly the day after the shooting to help him seal the deal on his new, phoney lunchroom story. And boy, did he need help: the evidence suggests that Marrion Baker was not playing ball, and would not start doing so for several months. Reid, for her part, knows exactly what it is she is required to tell Leavelle about the meaning of her Oswald encounter: Why doesn't she mention that this door is also located near the men's room or that it leads off the corridor connecting the top of the front stairs with the lunchroom? Reid's words bias blatantly to the notion that Oswald had come down the rear stairway before entering the lunchroom. And ain't it just perfect how a ) her first sighting of Oswald is of him actually coming through the office door: no room for ambiguity there b ) she has the presence of mind to notice not just which hand he has the coke in but also the fact that the coke is full? What better way to help her boss out by joining the dots between the lunchroom story and her Oswald encounter?

Earlier in this thread we saw Dallas Morning News reporter Kent Biffle's March 1964 note on the nature of the Truly-Baker-Oswald encounter: "The [TSBD] superintendent [Truly] would recall later that he & a policeman met Oswald as they charged into the building after the shots were fired." Biffle is not talking off the top of his head here: he got closer to Truly in the TSBD in the immediate aftermath of the assassination than any other news reporter. And here he is reporting exactly what happened: they met Oswald/Prayer Man at the front entrance to the building as they charged into it. Baker didn't challenge Oswald or stop him, he simply asked him for help. ** Shortly after this, a second man would ask Oswald for help at the same front entrance. His name was Pierce Allman, manager of programming and production at WFAA radio, and here's his 1998 recollection of the incident: And then I turned around, ran back down the hill, ran up the sidewalk, went into the depository building, asked the guy where the phone was, went inside, got on the phone, called the station, and had trouble getting through. The "guy" in question was, of course, Lee Oswald, who would later erroneously recall the crew-cut credentials-flashing Allman as a Secret Service man whom he had directed to the phone on the first floor, which was located towards the rear of the first floor: ** Now Allman was noticed shortly after this by Army Intelligence Special Agent James W. Powell: Powell went up to the second floor to use the available telephone there. He is surely the "policeman" recalled by Geneva Hine: ** There is an uncomfortable moment in Hine's WC testimony where she is asked about Jeraldean Reid, who was claiming to have gone up to the second floor office area very shortly after the assassination and to have encountered Lee Oswald there: Mr. BALL. When you came back in did you see Mrs. Reid? Miss HINE. No, sir; I don't believe there was a soul in the office when I came back in right then. ... Mr. BALL. Did you see Mrs. Reid come back in? Miss HINE. Yes, sir; I think I felt sure that I did. I thought that there were five or six that came in together. I thought she was one of those. Mr. BALL. Mrs. Reid told us she came in alone and when she came in she didn't see anybody there. Miss HINE. Well, it could be that she did, sir. I was talking on the phones and then came the policemen and then came the press. Everybody was wanting an outside line and then our vice president came in and he said "The next one that was clear, I have to have it and so I was busy with the phone. Mr. BALL. From the time you walked into the room you became immediately busy with the phone? Miss HINE. Yes, sir; sure was. (I believe "policemen" here is a stenographer's error and should read "policeman"--i.e. James Powell.) Hine in the above exchange is clearly trying to be helpful, offering as an explanation for her having missed Reid the circumstance that she (Hine) was so busy with the phones. But it just doesn't work. For one thing, how could Reid have missed her and the "policeman" with her? For another, and even more calamitously for Ball's line of questioning, how could Hine have missed both Reid and Oswald when the desk she was manning the phones at was in the front row of desks facing right where Reid is supposed to have come in and Oswald to have gone out? Mr. BALL. Did you have to change your desk over to another desk [in order to watch the phones that day]? Miss HINE. Yes, sir; to the middle desk on the front row. ... Mr. BALL. Did you see Oswald come in? Miss HINE. My back would have been to the door he was supposed to have come in at. Mr. BALL. Were you facing the door he is supposed to have left by? Miss HINE. Yes, sir. Mr. BALL. Do you recall seeing him? Miss HINE. No, sir. ** How in heaven's name can Hine--desperate for information as to what has happened outside--possibly have missed Reid and Oswald? And how can Reid possibly have seen Oswald but missed Hine (and the policeman)? Might it be that the Reid-Oswald encounter happened before Hine reentered the office space? For anyone wishing to preserve the second-floor lunchroom story, it's a tempting idea. But it causes a whole new set of problems.

Bill, That's *very* interesting. Do you know if the lady is saying that she was in the company of her brother in Dealey Plaza that day? And does she mention that she had her baby with her? Thanks, Sean Hi Sean, Yes, she said she was with her brother at the time, and they were eating lunch - take out burgers and Strawberry Nihi - (am i spelling that right?), sitting on a bench on the Grassy Knoll, and they knew the groundskeeper - and when the shooting started they got up, and she looked and saw a policeman with a rifle behind the fence, and they ran north away from the street. She also said that a few days her and her brother tried to report what they saw to the DPD but they were told not to bother. Her brother has since passed away she said. And while some people mention a women with a baby, she is not that person. I still would like to know exactly where the park bench she was sitting on was located. Thanks, BK Thanks for the extra information, Bill. It would be terrific if this woman's claim could be authenticated and full details taken from her on the record: might lay to rest the Black Dog Man thing once and for all. Sean

(Grin) Somebody's just taking out a little insurance against somebody else bringing up what Harry Holmes had to say about where exactly Oswald said the encounter with the police officer actually took place...

Bill, That's *very* interesting. Do you know if the lady is saying that she was in the company of her brother in Dealey Plaza that day? And does she mention that she had her baby with her? Thanks, Sean

Proof - at least for me... X indicates not-Y... Sorry, Bill, but this is thin gruel. At best your argument establishes that Truly & Baker's testimony is strongly indicative that Oswald was coming from the corridor to Baker's right. But it doesn't prove that scenario to the exclusion of all others. It doesn't disprove the scenario I laid out, for instance. It leaves Baker's first glimpse of Oswald ambiguous. The thing can be--and has been--argued both ways. And Roy Truly recognised that the incident exonerated Oswald? He did no such thing. Sean : "And Roy Truly recognized that the incident exonerated Oswald? He did no such thing." Sean, when Baker opened the lunchroom door, pointed his pistol at Oswald he asked him "are you an employee?" Truly then shows up behind Baker, hears the question, looks a Oswald, and later says that Oswald appeared perplexed but it is Truly who answers the question, "he works for me," and that was good enough for Baker - Oswald, because of his position in the lunchroom on the second floor, and his demeanor, was not considered a suspect by either man. Why Truly would suddenly consider Oswald a suspect for being missing a few minutes later is a question that has yet to be answered. And Truly testified he didn't know Baker saw Oswald through the closed door window until sometime after 11/22/63, but he certainly knew the significance of him not seeing Oswald walk through the door as he should have if Oswald went through the door, and David Belin asked, "What, weren't you paying attention?" or as other Warren Report appologists have suggested, perhaps he was looking at his feet. But the fact remains that when Truly opened that door at the top of the steps, he should have seen Oswald go through the lunchroom door if he in fact did so. And he didn't. And Sean, I'm really disappointed you won't go over and read the Oswald's Coke thread where Jean Davison and DVP document the origin of the September 23rd Statements Alfred Goldberg had the FBI obtain from Baker and Truly. You say your're not interested in the origin of the document that you keep referring to or the name of the guy who wrote the Second Floor narrative you say didn't happen? I think we should call him and ask him about it. BK Bill, citing Goldberg as "the guy who wrote the Second Floor narrative" is just anachronistic. He's neither here nor there.

Robert, the door to the lunchroom is something of a non-issue IMO (it was probably just routinely left open) but the issue of distance which you raise is one whose importance cannot be overstated. Rest assured that I will be addressing it when I get to the ludicrous finalised story that Baker told to the WC.

Proof - at least for me... X indicates not-Y... Sorry, Bill, but this is thin gruel. At best your argument establishes that Truly & Baker's testimony is strongly indicative that Oswald was coming from the corridor to Baker's right. But it doesn't prove that scenario to the exclusion of all others. It doesn't disprove the scenario I laid out, for instance. It leaves Baker's first glimpse of Oswald ambiguous. The thing can be--and has been--argued both ways. And Roy Truly recognised that the incident exonerated Oswald? He did no such thing.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, Bill. Your devotion to the lunchroom story is total, and that's fine with me. You're also perfectly free to mock the notion that the 'investigating' authorities would have worked very hard to cover up inconvenient facts in the case. But you should be aware that when you do so you sound more like David von Pein than your own good self. ** Now the question you ask is easily answered: Truly, by the time the 'walking away' element was incorporated into the lunchroom story, had already gone on the record over and over again to the effect that his own first sighting of Oswald post-assassination was of Oswald in the actual lunchroom. It was too late to embellish along the lines you are suggesting. ** Why do you keep claming that the lunchroom scenario, as told by Baker and Truly to the WC, "exonerates Oswald"? Please show us how the following LN scenario is ruled out by Baker and Truly's testimony: Oswald shoots JFK Oswald comes down the stairs Oswald on the second floor, hearing the noise of someone on the way up, hurries over to the second-floor landing door and goes through it Oswald looks through the door window as Truly crosses the landing Oswald is about to go back out onto the landing when he is surprised to see an officer hit the landing Oswald spins around to head for the lunchroom But the officer notices the movement. I don't need a link to some other discussion. Please give me your own analytical refutation of the above scenario with close reference to Baker and Truly's testimony.

Robert, all we know for sure is that it's in the handwriting of FBI Agent Richard Burnett, as is the Truly statement.

Thanks, Robin. Doesn't look very like Roy Truly now.

Yes, just "a man". Well spotted, Bjorn. The main body of Baker's 23 Sep 64 statement-- --reads to me like a very early text, as though it has been lifted straight out of a late-November 63 statement drafted for or by Baker. No mention of Oswald's name. No mention of Truly's. The hesitancy between second and third floor, as though this statement is being delicately harmonised with Baker's disastrous 11/22 affidavit statement ("third or fourth floor"). And, of course, "drinking a coke". No wonder certain bits had to be crossed out in September 64 before the thing got filed for typing.

We have seen Roy Truly's lunchroom story evolving over the first ten days or so through the following stages: The officer saw Oswald in the lunchroom... ...The officer saw Oswald sitting at one of the tables in the lunchroom... ...No: The officer saw Oswald leaning against a counter in the lunchroom... ...No: The officer saw Oswald standing at the coke machine sipping a coca cola. Yet Truly's WC testimony will make it clear that he himself can have seen none of these things. All he himself actually saw was the officer standing at the lunchroom door with his gun up against Oswald, who was standing just inside the lunchroom door. ** Those who still cling to the veracity of Baker and Truly's WC story can brush away these discrepant stories with a simple explanation: Truly made a number of erroneous but innocent inferences. He just filled in the gaps by making a series of guesses. Perhaps this line of argument might be developed: At first Truly just assumed Oswald had been sitting at a table when the officer first burst in and then rose to his feet and came towards the door. Maybe a reporter or two just misattributed certain statements to Truly. Maybe the whole thing is just a case of Truly's guesswork meeting journalistic Chinese whispers. And maybe Truly refined his guesswork towards the end of November on the basis of information passed on to him by investigators that the officer back at DPD HQ was saying that Oswald had been over at the coke machine by the time he had taken his first sighting of the inside of the lunchroom. Maybe Truly just assumed Oswald had already bought the coke. Or maybe Truly said nothing about a coke--we have no direct quote from him mentioning a coke--but a reporter or reporters had embellished on the basis of picking up word of Mrs. Reid's sighting of Oswald with a coke in his hand just after that. Thankfully (so the lunchroom believer will conclude) all of this was cleared up when Truly and Baker finally met up in March 64 and Truly was able to learn first-hand from Baker the true circumstances of his first glimpse of Oswald behind the closed door. ** Sounds plausible, no? Well, there are two very large problems with this explanation. First: It must ignore the fact that we have absolutely nothing on-the-record from Baker himself between end-November 63 and March 64. Are we seriously to believe that not a single investigator thought to ask Baker for his version of events? That no attempt was made by DPD, FBI or Secret Service in the pre-WC phase to nail down the basic facts of this exquisitely important first post-shooting sighting of the alleged assassin? Second: It must ignore this (click to enlarge): Baker and Truly have been brought in, on the eve of the Warren Commission's findings being presented formally to President Johnson, to clarify once and for all that Oswald was on his own in the lunchroom at the time of the incident. Yet, even as Baker dutifully clarifies this important point, he does something that is quite inexplicable on the lunchroom believer argument outlined above: He offers a version of events that chimes perfectly with the 'erroneous' 'guesswork' version of events everyone had been told at the end of November 63: There is no wiggle room here. No Truly to distort the story. No reporter to distort Truly's distortion of the story. Just Marrion Baker himself, talking about Oswald "standing in the lunchroom drinking a coke". The coke 'error' is pointed out to him, or he has second thoughts about it himself, and it is crossed out. But it is still there, a glaring anomaly in the statement. The other glaring anomaly--Oswald "standing" in the lunchroom--is allowed to, well, stand. It is as though Baker has brought the wrong, outdated memo with him to DPD HQ and has very foolishly worked off it for his final statement on the lunchroom incident. His WC appearance being months in the past, he has forgotten to forget the details of this earlier version he had at one point been asked to support. What a gaffe!

Bjorn/ Richard, The person directly behind 'Truly' looks like woman. I think this may be Campbell in the back:

Very quick recap: Once it became clear that the police urgently needed to stop talking about the Oswald-Officer-Truly encounter at the front entrance, the encounter was moved deep into the building, at or near the rear stairs. The 3rd/4th floor rear stairway story was quickly superseded by the lunchroom story. Which became: the lunchroom stories. ** The initial plan was simply to transplant Oswald up to the lunchroom, stretch the timeline and worry about the details later. Oswald was still alive and had every prospect of going to trial, so his damaging ability to describe an officer and Mr. Truly coming in to the first floor needed to be preempted by a story involving the officer and Mr. Truly's coming into the lunchroom. Truly's inflated time estimate in his first on-the-record account of the lunchroom incident (11/22 FBI interview) tells us how the thing was going to be played: Two or three minutes? Yeah, right. The WC would struggle badly, even with the help of numerous time-trial shenanigans, to stretch the time to 90 seconds. But as of the night of 11/22, the gambit was to inflate the time enough to give Oswald a chance to descend from the sixth floor but not enough to delay overmuch his exit from the building. Then all the Oswald accusers had to do was drive home the incongruity of a man alone and palely loitering in a lunchroom while everyone else was either outside or looking outside. ** But what was Oswald actually doing in the lunchroom when Baker spotted him? At first the question was fudged: Truly in a suite of statements simply has him "in" the lunchroom, specific location and activity left vague. Then, very quickly, the incongruity of Oswald's behaviour gets sharpened up by the detail of his sitting at one of the tables. Within about a week, Oswald is brought suddenly to his feet: Truly describes him, first, as leaning against the counter and, then, as standing right over at the coke machine. ** Why the coke machine? Because Oswald had talked about purchasing a coke before the assassination--having him over by the coke machine turned this into a cool post-assassination act. But there was a second reason. In February 64 French researcher Leo Sauvage contacted Roy Truly and grilled him about the lunchroom incident. Truly revealed the game plan as he and Baker headed in to March 64 and their rendezvous with the WC at the TSBD: the officer (name still unknown to Truly!) evidently had heard a noise coming from the lunchroom. The noise, evidently, of a coke machine delivering up its product to the man who had just shot the President. ** This was a crucial addition, for it gave Baker a reason for checking out the lunchroom--a reason he badly needed, as the lunchroom was nowhere near being in his line of sight as he came off the landing. Just look how far he would have had to swing over to the right to get a line into the lunchroom: The door of the lunchroom being open, the noise of the coke machine would have been heard by Baker. Except... it wouldn't. For there was another door between Baker and the coke machine, and--disastrously--it was an automatically self-closing door. The new story as told in the Washington Post Dec 1-- --seemed beautifully clean and convincing. However its lack of acoustic plausibility meant that a further refinement would be in order.

On the day of the assassination, Oswald's supervisor Bill Shelley gave an affidavit in which he mentioned the name of Gloria Calvery (click to enlarge): The affidavit leaves no room for ambiguity. Shelley "ran into" Gloria after leaving the front steps of the building and running "across the street to the corner of the park". By the time of his and Billy Lovelady's April 7 WC testimony, however, the encounter with Gloria has been mysteriously transplanted to the front steps themselves. Shelley: Mr. SHELLEY - Gloria Calvary from South-Western Publishing Co. ran back up there crying and said "The President has been shot" and Billy Lovelady and myself took off across the street to that little, old island and we stopped there for a minute ... Mr. BALL - She ran back up to the door and you had still remained standing there? Mr. SHELLEY - Yes. Lovelady: Mr. BALL - Now, when Gloria came up you were standing near Mr. Shelley? Mr. LOVELADY - Yeah. Mr. BALL - When Gloria came up and said the President had been shot, Gloria Calvary, what did you do? Mr. LOVELADY - Well, I asked who told her. She said he had been shot so we asked her was she for certain or just had she seen the shot hit him or--she said yes, she had been right close to it to see and she had saw the blood and knew he had been hit but didn't know how serious it was and so the crowd had started towards the railroad tracks back, you know, behind our building there and we run towards that little, old island and kind of down there in that little street. It couldn't be clearer. The two men don't run into Gloria out across the street, she now runs up to them and becomes the reason why they leave the steps. Most bizarrely of all, as we have seen earlier in this thread, both Shelley and Lovelady are now timestamping their departure from the front steps to some 3 minutes after the shooting. Even Ball is taken aback by the extravagance of their over-estimation. And it in turn yields the wildly implausible timestamp of between 3 and 4 minutes for their looking back from the 'island' and seeing Baker and Truly about to enter the building. ** It's clear that somebody at some point--somebody other than the WC folk--prevailed upon Shelley and Lovelady to delay their departure from the front steps by several minutes. But why? I've already suggested two likely reasons: 1. The police were initially admitting that the Baker-Oswald-Truly encounter happened on the front steps just after the assassination. In order to make this story work, the timeline had to be stretched to minutes rather than seconds: Oswald was 'stopped' on his way out of the building some 3-4 minutes after the shooting. He had time to make his descent from the sixth floor. 2. Billy Lovelady needed to be kept on the steps for a little while to help explain away any Oswaldian images that might show up in photos or films of the TSBD front entrance in the immediate assassination aftermath. ** We can I think reasonably offer a third reason why the authorities, in the very early part of the 'investigation', would have wanted to distort the Shelley-Lovelady timeline: Oswald was still alive. The prospect of his going to trial was still a real one. And he, as defendant, was going to make a very damaging claim from the dock: I was out front with Bill Shelley. How, if Oswald was the sixth-floor shooter, could he have known where exactly Bill Shelley was at the time of the assassination? How was the prosecution to explain away his description of Shelley (and others) on the steps? The intended solution was to shift Oswald's sighting of Shelley to several minutes after the assassination. The front-entrance Baker incident having been transplanted up to the second-floor lunchroom, Oswald would now be said to have spotted Shelley at the front entrance on his (Oswald's) way out of the building. To this end, Shelley needed to be kept on the front steps just long enough for this story to be plausible. Three minutes would do it. ** Shelley's name is not mentioned in the joint Bookhout-Hosty interrogation report, written while Oswald is still alive. It does however make it into Bookhout's solo report, written after Oswald has been murdered: "out with Bill Shelley in front" is glossed as a post-lunchroom incident event: He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman Bill Shelly, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of Bill Shelly, he did not believe that there was going to be anymore work that day due to the confusion in the building. All that now remains is for Shelley to be asked whether this had ever happened--and for Shelley to answer with an honest 'no'. ** Thus the quadruple switcheroo: i) Oswald, in the domino room, sees Jarman & Norman come in the back door of the first floor BECOMES Oswald claimed to have eaten his lunch with Jarman & Norman ii) Oswald claims to have gone up to the second-floor lunchroom to buy a coke shortly before the assassination BECOMES Oswald claimed to have gone up for the coke just after the assassination iii) Oswald claims to have been eating his lunch and/or drinking the coke out front when the officer came in to the first floor BECOMES Oswald claimed the officer came into the second-floor lunchroom just after he had bought his coke iv) Oswald names Bill Shelley as one of the people he was out front with at the time of the assassination BECOMES Oswald named Bill Shelley as someone he spoke with out front several minutes after the assassination. That lying b*stard, Oswald. We have him (literally) dead to rights.

Bill, How exactly does your or Roffman's analysis of the second-floor lunchroom incident exclude the Oswald-behind-the-door-window scenario I have outlined? Please be specific. Are you still claiming that Oswald himself described the second-floor lunchroom incident in detail? Where are you getting this idea from? Please be specific by citing the relevant document(s). Bill, You have several times stated that Lee Oswald himself confirmed in detail the second-floor lunchroom story as told by Baker and Truly. You seem to be basing this claim on the two following sources: 1. "... I asked Oswald where he was when the police officer stopped him. He said he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in." (Captain Will Fritz, Interrogation Report) 2. "Oswald stated that on November 22, 1963, at the time of the search of the Texas School Book Depository building by Dallas police officers, he was on the second floor of said building, having just purchased a Coca-cola from the soft-drink machine, at which time a police officer came into the room with pistol drawn and asked him if he worked there." (FBI Special Agent James Bookhout, Interrogation Report) In both instances, Oswald is reported as having claimed to have already bought a coca cola by the time the officer came in the lunchroom. Fritz even has Oswald state that he was actually drinking said coca cola at the time. This version of events is clearly irreconcilable with Baker's description in his WC testimony of the circumstances under which he caught his first glimpse of Oswald. Now: Do you maintain that Oswald really said those things under interrogation? If not, how can you possibly ask us to depend upon these interrogation report statements? If so, do you believe Oswald was lying?--Or, do you believe Baker was lying in his WC testimony? I would appreciate, in the interests of constructive and meaningful dialogue, direct answers from you to these simple questions. Bill, Is it still your contention that we have a detailed description from Lee Oswald of the second-floor lunchroom incident? If so, do you believe he claimed to have already bought the coke by the time the officer came into the lunchroom?