Sean Murphy

Robin, I believe that may be Gloria Calvery. Incidentally I remember several years back a man posting a comment on a Texas message board (TV or newspaper-related, can't quite remember which) claiming to have been a next-door-neighbour of Gloria. She apparently shared with him her recollection of having seen Lee Oswald very close in time to the assassination and confessed she had always been perplexed by the notion that he could have been the sixth floor shooter. I tried to get the poster to elaborate but unfortunately he didn't respond.

Buell Wesley Frazier & Joe Molina: the two TSBD men who remained standing stock still on the front entrance steps after the shots were fired Buell Wesley Frazier & Joe Molina: the two TSBD men who were threatened with a conspiracy-with-Oswald charge within 24 hours of the shooting. Buell Wesley Frazier & Joe Molina: two TSBD men who could offer no memory of having seen Marrion Baker run into the building.

Hi Martin, It's him alright. Important to zoom out again and reiterate that the shape of Oswald's torso is distorted here because of the blocking presence of a woman on the steps in front of him. If one starts with this woman's foot and lower leg, one can work one's way up to where her head is and appreciate the enlarging effect she is having on Oswald's frame (oh dear, that could have been phrased better...): What's going to happen next is that the WC defender kooks will attempt to stave off a collective nervous breakdown by channelling the spirit of Ralph Cinque and denying that this is the man it so very obviously looks like. The lapel is wrong! The hands are too big!! He has breasts!!! Dave Reitzes may even need to revert to the two Oswalds theory to get out of this one.

Those who have been following this thread will know that there is nothing wildly surprising at our finding visual confirmation of Oswald's presence at the front entrance. ** That this would happen is predicted by Jesse Curry's reckless description to the press on the evening of the assassination of the essentials of the brief Baker-Oswald encounter at the front entrance (click to enlarge): Had Darnell kept filming the front entrance for just a few seconds more, we would have actual footage of this encounter. ** It is predicted by the giveaway anxiety of the FBI over the weekend of the assassination that Oswald's claim to have been out front had found photographic corroboration in a certain photo that had gone out on the newswires shortly after the shooting: ** It is predicted by the clunky protest-too-much disclaimer contained in Roy Truly's first on-the-record account of his actions immediately following the assassination: ** It is predicted by Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes's off-script moment during his WC testimony, where he has the bad taste to use the word 'vestibule' in its correct sense (front lobby of a building): Mr. BELIN. By the way, where did this policeman stop him when he was coming down the stairs at the Book Depository on the day of the shooting? … Mr. HOLMES. He said it was in the vestibule. Mr. BELIN. He said he was in the vestibule? Mr. HOLMES. Or approaching the door to the vestibule. He was just coming, apparently, and I have never been in there myself. Apparently there is two sets of doors, and he had come out to this front part. Mr. BELIN. Did he state it was on what floor? Mr. HOLMES. First floor. The front entrance to the first floor. Holmes got the basics right: Oswald had indeed not long before that come out to "this front part", as shown in the relevant Wiegman frames. ** It is predicted by the telltale reticence in the various interrogation reports on the head of where exactly Oswald claimed to have been during the assassination. The farthest anyone will go is: "on the first floor". ** It is predicted in what--on the basis of a close comparison with the contemporaneous Bookhout interrogation notes (which we have access to thanks to the handwritten copy that Captain Fritz made and kept)--we established to be an almost certain interpolation by SS Inspector Thomas Kelley in his first interrogation report of the sentence in red below: I asked him if he viewed the parade and he said he had not. I then asked him if he had shot the President and he said he had not. I asked him if he has shot governor Connally and he said he had not. ** And it is predicted in the first page of Bookhout's contemporaneous interrogation notes.

Many pages back in this thread it was established beyond doubt that the only TSBD employee Prayer Man could conceivably be is Lee Oswald. All other candidates--Frazier, Lovelady, Molina, Otis Williams, Bill Shelley--were definitively ruled out. We all remember how quickly poor David von Pein found other things to do once he realised his wiggle room on this issue was precisely zilch. Each improvement in Darnell image quality has only made the case for this being Oswald more and more compelling. Now let's not kid ourselves here as to the magnitude of what has just happened. If a bona fide image even a quarter as clear as this one had emerged in recent days of a man at the SN window at assassination time, this would have been hailed by WC defenders as the final nail in the kook coffin. Well, things have not turned out quite that way, have they? It seems the WC defenders are left with one pitiful option if they are to avoid the checkmate reality that faces them: resort for dear life to the argument from incredulity and insist that Prayer Man just has to be someone other than Oswald. The argument from incredulity will run as follows: It's just plum ridiculous to claim that Oswald could have been on those steps for the motorcade and the aftermath without being noticed by any of his co-workers. Sheesh. This argument, being silly, is easily disposed of. Prayer Man is a fact. He was there. His presence there is not however recalled by a single witness in on-the-record statements or sworn testimony. And yet--did I mention this?--he is a fact. He was there. The lack of attestation as to his presence puts not a dent, not even a scratch, in the integrity of that fact. Prayer Man was there. To claim that Prayer Man is not Oswald is to claim that the presence of Oswald--a quiet and unexceptional worker in the building-- would have been more liable to notice up there at the entrance amongst the other TSBD folk than the presence of a total stranger-- someone who didn't work in that building, had no business being there amongst the TSBD folk, would have had to walk up those steps from the street in order to end up in the Prayer Man position. And to claim that is to take terminal recourse to kook logic. Which, of course, is what the kook WC defenders will now do. After that? Well, one can only look forward to Dave Perry's next time trial on Discovery Channel where Usain Bolt will demonstrate that Oswald could have fired off all three rounds from the SN window and still have made it comfortably down in time to catch the motorcade from the front entrance. Equally stimulating will be Max Holland's National Geographic spot showing that Prayer Man's posture is not at all inconsistent with the posture of a man firing a rifle at traffic poles and street signs, and at an angle not entirely inconsistent with a deflection-to-the-Presidential-limousine scenario. Meanwhile the rest of us can be getting on with the job at hand: evidence-based research.

Robert, Here's how I see it. If Jack were inventing the trip up to the fifth floor, why on earth would he be telling us he heard just one shot --and then going on to point up the strangeness of this fact by telling us that Eddie Piper told him he had heard three shots? Surely if he were inventing he would make sure to harmonise the number of shots he heard with the number of shots he subsequently learned there had been? No, I'm suggesting we take Dougherty's first-day affidavit statement at face value and see where its contents lead us. ** Now how could a man be at the rear of the fifth floor, some ten feet west of the west freight elevator, and only hear one shot? Our options are pretty limited. Tell me if I've missed any: There was only one shot fired from the sixth floor. Due to adjustments in the position of the rifle at the window, only the first shot boomed loudly within the building. Jack's reaction to the first shot was to stick his head deep inside a box full of cotton wool, plug his fingers in his ears or do something to make it possible for a man on the fifth floor to stop hearing loud noises. Jack's reaction to the first shot was to make a terrified dash to the noisy, wooden-planked and enclosed rear stairway and run downstairs for his life. Re. #1: I know this view has some adherents, but I'm not one of them. Bonnie Ray Williams's earliest statements speak of two shots sounding as if they came from just over him. Re. #2: There may have been some variation in the inside-the-room boom levels, but I find it very hard to believe that Jack could have remained standing there on the fifth floor after the first shot and heard nothing else by way of bang, pop, what have you. Re. #3: Non-starter. Re. #4: Jack's description of his location some ten feet west of the west elevator is also a description of his location very near the down stairs. If there was one place in his vicinity where the noise of a subsequent shot or shots might have failed to reach his ears, it was the very noisy stairwell down which a man (he himself) was stomping. But why would Jack react so quickly to that first shot? Because he knew it was a rifle shot. For, just prior to this, he had had the misfortune of wandering up to the sixth floor to get a bird's eye view of the motorcade only to see several strangers up there, including at least one man holding a rifle. That's why, the instant he heard the loud bang upstairs while down on the fifth floor, he knew exactly what it was. And ran.

Robin, No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the above frame shows that Buell Wesley Frazier cannot but have noticed Lee there. No wonder they gave him such a hard time down at DPD HQ that night. I think it's perfectly possible that not a single other employee noticed Lee slipping out on to the steps just in time for the motorcadeor standing by the front-entrance vestibule door just after the shooting.I use the word 'employee' advisedly: Roy Truly did notice Lee there just after the shooting, for that's where and when the Baker encounter really happened.

Robin, Oswald is reported as having told Fritz that he changed shirts at his N. Beckley apartment, which would make the arrest shirt irrelevant to Prayer Man images. The shirt he's wearing in the Prayer Man frames is either short-sleeved or long-sleeved with sleeves rolled up. I went with the latter because Bookhout's contemporaneous interrogation notes (whose contents we know thanks to Fritz's handwritten copy) make mention of a longsleeve red[dish] shirt. It's hardly a stretch to imagine Oswald rolling up his sleeves while getting stock. And the reason we don't have any images of him with sleeves rolled up is that we don't have any images of him engaged in manual labour.

Very nice slide show, Robin. I've studied it, or at least the portions with Prayer Man in them, for half an hour now, looking for clues that PM may be a woman. Could you point out to me what you found in these frames that raised this possibility? Thanks. I could be mistaken Robert It wouldn't be the first time. My conclusion was reached BEFORE i had time to go in and really have a good look at a Larger higher resolution version of the frames. The single most important thing to note about these Darnell frames--and I say this having (like Robert) carefully inspected several times every frame Robin uploaded yesterday--is that in one frame, and one frame only, does Prayer Man's head come into any kind of clear focus. The moment when that happens is a startling one-- --for it shows us not just that this is a man but that it is a man with Lee Oswald's hairline. The lingering doubts I had when looking at previous images of Prayer Man related chiefly to his apparent baldness: where was the Oswald hair? The middle frame above puts paid to that question, and definitively: Now all things being equal this man would be a toss-up between Billy Lovelady and Lee Oswald. But all things are not equal. We know--for an absolute irrefutable fact, one backed up by the hard evidence of Wiegman movie frames--that Billy Lovelady was standing next to Prayer Man during the actual shooting. So this can only be Lee Oswald. And the man near him can only be Buell Wesley Frazier (who was put forward several times earlier in this thread as a candidate for Prayer Man)--his hairline and hairstyle are just too distinctive to allow any serious doubt on that score Game over.

Robin, Thank you so much for uploading these higher-quality frames from Darnell. I certainly will not be renaming Prayer Man 'Prayer Woman', because the frame above puts the matter pretty much beyond doubt: This is Lee Oswald. The womanly appearance is due to the fact that a ) his sleeves are rolled up; b ) the eye is confusing the back of a woman's head with part of Lee's torso. Here's the woman in question's lower leg and foot: If you place your finger to the screen to cover where her head should be, the chief source of the 'Prayer Woman' illusion becomes apparent. This is Lee Oswald. Just look at the hairline. ** And speaking of hairlines, this frame tells us something else: Buell Wesley Frazier knew--knows--Lee is innocent. Someone urgently needs to show this image to him.

Here it is, Robert:

Robert, Dougherty's WC testimony is a mess, but his basic story does have one very important thing going for it: it was the story he told consistently from the very start. Here's his 11/22 affidavit, given within two hours of the assassination (click to enlarge): And here's his FBI interview from the same day: I believe Jack Dougherty is telling the truth in these first-day statements is wholly innocent of any involvement in the assassination has genuine cognitive problems, as evidenced not only in the statements which Roy Truly and Jack's own father will make on that score but also in his peculiar response pattern during his WC appearance. I also believe his first-day statements above contain a vital clue that has been telling us all along how Jack really came down from the fifth floor just after the shooting: he ran down the stairs. Can you spot the clue?

Robert, I would assume the shooter(s) waited until the cables started moving again on the west elevator (i.e. signifying that it was coming up) before making their own descent. If this all seems a little improvised on their part--well, it was. Baker's entry into the building was remarkably quick. Let's talk about Jack! What, in the portions of WC testimony you've quoted above, doesn't add up?

In January 1964 Dallas police detectives investigated claims that Lee Oswald had in November 1963 applied for a job at ALLRIGHT PARKING SYSTEM on Commerce Street: No trace of such an application by Oswald was discovered. However something else was: 'Frankey' Kaiser is, of course, Franklin Kaiser, the TSBD employee who found Oswald's alleged clipboard and jacket in the building on two separate days in December. But what was the exact relationship between Franklin and Fred? The answer is given in Larry Sneed's No More Silence by black TSBD worker Roy E. Lewis : As I recall, Eddie Piper was the oldest worker there. He was black as were Troy West, Hank Norman, Junior Jarman, Charles Givens, Bonnie Ray Williams and myself. The white workers included: Jack Dougherty, Billy Lovelady, two brothers named Frank and Fred, Wesley Frazier, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Does anyone have further information on Fred Kaiser, Jr?

Page 1 of 'Fritz's Notes': Another telling deletion: 2nd to 1st: Fritz is hardly sitting in that first interrogation wondering to himself, 'Now is this my first interrogation session with this suspect or my second?' No, he's jotting down a copy of Bookhout's notes and isn't sure at first which session it is covering. Once he gets clear on this he corrects 2nd to 1st, confirming the change with an arrow pointing to the date: 11/22.

Correct on all counts, Robert. So, if the back wall of the east elevator was solid metal, it may be safe to assume the same was true of the back wall of the west elevator. If a person was travelling down from the upper floors in the west elevator, could a person be travelling down from the upper floors in the east elevator at the same time, and the person in the west elevator might be unaware of the movement of the east elevator? And, with entrances facing away from each other, could that person exit the east elevator (and the building) without the person exiting the west elevator seeing him? For that matter, people ascending (or descending) the NW stairs might not have a very good view of the east elevator, and only when they were on the landing between stairwells. When do we get to Mr. Dougherty? he says with bated breath. Exactly, Robert, and that's how I believe the shooter(s) escaped--they simply took the east elevator down while Truly and Baker were taking the west elevator up. This explains why Vicki Adams and Sandra Styles saw or heard no-one -- not Baker or Truly, not a stranger or strangers-- going up or coming down the stairs. It was all so simple--and the 'investigating' authorities knew it. Which is why Truly was made to tell a wholly fictitious story of his and the officer's having gotten on the east elevator on the fifth floor.

Page 5 of the 'Fritz Notes', at the top of which Fritz notates the date and time of the interrogation session (11-23 - 6.35) : Except that's not quite what he does. For the first thing he writes is: 11 23: He's confused Bookhout's date notation with a time notation. And then, coming to Bookhout's next entry--"6.35"--he realises his error and corrects it: Date: 11-23 Time: 6.35

Correct on all counts, Robert.

Hi Robert, Not sure about the west elevator, but Roy Truly does mention in his WC testimony that the back wall of the east elevator was solid metal and afforded no view.

The theory I've been outlining on this thread does not require Roy Truly to be 'in' on the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. If Truly had really vouched for a non-employee by the third or fourth floor rear stairway, then it would be hard to see how he could not have been in on the plot. But my theory has him performing actions that are not suspicious. Nor are they even foolhardy. Rather than take to the rear stairs ahead of an armed officer, as per the later lunchroom fiction, Truly simply gets on an elevator with him and (as per Bonnie Ray Williams's information) stays on the elevator while Baker gets off to check out upper floors. ** But if Truly is innocent, why does he later shop Oswald to Captain Fritz as 'missing' so very quickly? Does this not indicate a key role for him in the patsification of his employee? Not necessarily. It has always been deeply puzzling why Truly should tell Fritz about Oswald without mentioning in the same breath that he had seen this employee of his in the second-floor lunchroom right after the shooting. Surely it would have been salient information? ** I believe what may have actually happened is this: Truly ran into the first floor after Baker and, just as Baker was engaging with Oswald/Prayer Man, introduced himself and offered to accompany the officer. After coming down from the roof with Baker, he noticed that Oswald was gone and incorrectly assumed that Oswald must have been on his way out of the building when Baker had passed him. This strikes him--understandably--as an odd and indecent kind of haste on his employee's part and so he conscientiously reports it to Fritz. In alerting Fritz to Oswald, however, the very furthest thing from his mind is that Oswald could be an actual shooter. All he is worried about is that Oswald may have been in some way involved in the plot such that he needed to leave the scene very quickly. ** What must have been Truly's astonishment when he later learned that Oswald was being treated by police as--of all ridiculous things!--the sixth-floor shooter? He must have felt much as Marrion Baker had when he saw Oswald being brought into the Homicide Office and was told this was the man the police had been after.

Curry on the Friday evening needs to stress the "immediate" nature of the Oswald-Officer incident, and hence the incriminatingly immediate nature of Oswald's departure from the building. But as soon as it becomes clear just how immediate the incident was, how soon after the last shot had been fired, he shuts the hell up. And so the next day we find him going out to bat with a very different story altogether: And again: ** From: Oswald being stopped as he walked out the front entrance to: Oswald being seen sitting in a second-floor lunchroom: the fix was in. ** But, as we shall see, it didn't work.

To track police chief Jesse Curry's evolving statements to reporters over the Friday and the Saturday about the first post-assassination sighting of Oswald is to track the evolution of the story itself. ** On the Friday evening Curry was admitting candidly that Oswald had been stopped leaving the building very shortly after the assassination (click to enlarge): I believe what we are reading here is nothing less than an account of Oswald/Prayer Man's having been asked by Marrion Baker if he worked there (i.e. could he point him to the stairs), but with a crucial DPD spin of misprision: the incident is being represented not as an incident clearly exonerative of Oswald as the sixth-floor shooter but as a clear indicator of Oswald's guilt. Oswald is being described not as a man who appeared on the front steps in time for the shooting itself (Curry by this stage probably isn't even aware that Oswald was making this very claim in custody, isn't even aware that he himself is blurting out the details of Oswald's alibi) but as a man who had just that moment reached the front of the building and was leaving with suspicious haste (click to enlarge): This is not one of those early false rumours, it is one of those early true facts--and Curry is only too happy to tell the world about it:

Here is the fifth and final page of the 'Fritz notes': From his own original of these notes Bookhout wrote up his short and sweet Interrogation Report #5: Date 11/25/63 Lee Harvey Oswald was interviewed at the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, Dallas Police Department, at 6:35 p.m. ... Captain J. W. Fritz exhibited to Lee Harvey Oswald a photograph which had been obtained by the Dallas Police Department in a search by search warrant, of the garage at the residence of Mrs. Ruth Paine, located at Irving, Texas, which photograph reflects Oswald holding a rifle and wearing a holstered pistol. Oswald was asked if this was a photograph of himself. Oswald stated that he would not discuss the photograph without advice of an attorney. He stated that the head of the individual in the photograph could be his but that it was entirely possible that the Police Department had superimposed this part of the photograph over the body of someone else. He pointed out that numerous news media had snapped his photograph during the day and the possibility existed that the police had doctored up this photograph. Oswald denied that he had purchased any rifle form Kleins Store in Chicago, Illinois. Oswald complained of a lineup wherein he had not been granted a request to put on a jacket similar to those worn by some of the other individuals in the lineup. on 11/23/63 at Dallas, Texas. File#DL89-43 by Special Agent James W. Bookhout /wvm. Date dictated 11/24/63.

As we have seen, the 'Fritz notes' are not in fact contemporaneous notes taken by Fritz himself, but the copy he himself made of FBI Special Agent James W. Bookhout's contemporaneous notes. This fact is nicely brought home in the following little detail: Myself: if these notes were really being written by Fritz in real time during the interrogation session, the last thing he would need to be noting down for future reference would be the duh-level-obvious fact that he himself is one of the people present in the room! No, Fritz is copying from Bookhout's interrogation notes and, seeing the word 'Fritz', naturally translating it as 'myself'.

Thanks for posting this very pertinent segment of Vicki Adams's testimony, Bjørn. She's obviously talking about the same elevator that Mooney is talking about but is it the same incident? There are key differences (e.g. two plainclothesmen vs. Mooney on his own, Adams trying to get on the elevator on the second floor rather than two women trying to get on it on the first). My read is that Mooney has shortly before Adams's arrival already headed off up the stairs, leaving the no-good elevator behind.