Sean Murphy

For Oswald to be Prayer Man, and for the second-floor lunchroom incident to have really happened as described by Baker and Truly to the WC, there is only one realistic scenario available. Oswald stands in the front entrance, not showing the slightest curiosity about what's just happened on the street--that's because he's been expecting it He is however taken by surprise by Baker's sudden and extraordinarily early dash into the building He follows him and Truly upstairs by taking the front stairs and crossing the second floor He looks through the door window at Truly crossing the landing He also sees Baker come onto the landing, but is startled when Baker notices him back Not wishing to draw attention to himself, he spins around and starts walking into the lunchroom Et cetera. Why would the Oswald of this scenario want to keep tabs on Baker & Truly's progress? The answer hardly needs spelling out.

Is that you, Lee?

Here's Prayer Man in a different frame from Darnell (courtesy of Robin Unger): Here he is with bit of width reduction (NB click on the image to enlarge): That last, cropped and magnified:

No, far from a certainty.

For all we know, Sean, some or all of the others in the Geneva Hines group also got cokes. Can you prove they did not? For all we know, Ray, some or all of the others in the Geneva Hine group went upstairs to have furtive group sex in the second-floor toilets. Can you prove they did not?

On December 23rd 1963, Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz wrote a letter to Police Chief Jesse Curry in which he outlined the case against the late Lee Harvey Oswald. Amongst Fritz’s points we find the following statement: [T]his man [Oswald] had been stopped by Officer M. L. Baker while coming down the stairs. Mr. Baker says that he stopped this man on the third or fourth floor on the stairway, but as Mr. Truly identified him as one of the employees, he was released. Fritz’s source for this claim is clearly Marrion Baker himself--or else the affidavit statement which Baker gave at City Hall within a couple of hours of the assassination: As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to the man and he turned around and came back toward me. The manager said, “I know that man, he works here.” I then turned the man loose and went up to the top floor. The man I saw was a white man approximately 30 years old, 5’9”, 165 pounds, dark hair and wearing a light brown jacket. ** Jesse Curry must have scratched his head when he read Fritz’s reference to a third or fourth floor rear stairway encounter. Was Fritz not aware that Oswald had actually been stopped in a lunchroom on the second floor of the Depository? ** If Curry must have been puzzled by this, then we must surely be perplexed. Does Fritz not remember what Oswald himself told him in their very first interrogation session? 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. Mr. Truly was present and verified that he was an employee and the police officer thereafter left the room and continued through the building. (solo report on Oswald's first interrogation by F.B.I. Special Agent James Bookhout) ** Has Fritz, for that matter, not even read his own interrogation notes? claims 2nd Floor Coke when [/] off came in ** And how is it that, by the time of his Warren Commission testimony in April ’64, Fritz will be mysteriously (and with symptomatic awkwardness of expression) re-remembering what he has now apparently forgotten? Mr. BALL. At that time didn't you know that one of your officers, Baker, had seen Oswald on the second floor? Mr. FRITZ. They told me about that down at the bookstore; I believe Mr. Truly or someone told me about it, told me they had met him--I think he told me, person who told me about, I believe told me that they met him on the stairway, but our investigation shows that he actually saw him in a lunchroom, a little lunchroom where they were eating, and he held his gun on this man and Mr. Truly told him that he worked there, and the officer let him go. Mr. BALL. Did you question Oswald about that? Mr. FRITZ. Yes, sir; I asked him about that and he knew that the officer stopped him all right. Mr. BALL. Did you ask him what he was doing in the lunchroom? Mr. FRITZ. He said he was having his lunch. He had a cheese sandwich and a Coca-Cola. Mr. BALL. Did he tell you he was up there to get a Coca-Cola? Mr. FRITZ. He said he had a Coca-Cola. ** In sum, how can Fritz possibly believe, as of December 23rd 1963, that Oswald had been stopped on the third or fourth floor on or near the rear stairway? ** Fritz’s curious ignorance on this score may be explained by the simple, but disturbing, hypothesis we have been exploring in this thread: Oswald never said a word in custody about a post-assassination second-floor lunchroom incident. He did however speak of a second-floor lunchroom visit followed by a return downstairs to catch some of the motorcade. Fritz must have compared Oswald's claim with Baker's story about having stopped a man on or by the stairway several floors up the building, and concluded that Oswald was lying. ** The lunchroom incident was, I suspect, invented by or for Roy Truly with the FBI on the evening or night of the assassination and Oswald's confirmation of it put in his mouth posthumously by James Bookhout of the F.B.I. It would not be until 1978, when Carolyn Arnold was contacted by Anthony Summers, that the truth which had been hidden in plain sight in Bookhout's first interrogation report (the one co-written with James Hosty) would be fully exposed: Oswald went to the second-floor lunchroom several minutes before the assassination. ** One need only give the gentlest of pulls on the tiny strand of Arnold's information to watch unravel the entire weave of lies put together around the question of Oswald's assassination-time whereabouts.

Ray, have you ever stood in the doorway of the TSBD while a President is being shot on Elm St.? Me neither. I expect it's hard to hear the shots and the screaming and to see the pandemonium break out on the street scene in front of one without being either deaf, blind, moronic--or all three. Thanks to Wiegman and Darnell, we know that Prayer Man was exposed to all these things. You want to believe that Oswald's immediate reaction to what was happening was to shrug, turn around and hurry upstairs for a nice cool drink? Go right ahead. I'm sure the WC defenders will have a good laugh at that one. As for Prayer Man's behaviour being no different from that of others near his location, that is true, at least up to a point. But it stops being true up to any point the instant he quits the spot in urgent quest of a coke.

Richard, I think the second-floor lunchroom was in fact the only halfway feasible location for a transplanted Oswald encounter. ** Your suggestion re. Mrs. Reid is intriguing, and if memory serves Greg Parker has had a similar thought in the past. Imagine the following: 1. Oswald is Prayer Man and has the brief and innocent Baker-Truly encounter at the front entrance within seconds of the last shot. 2. He does not go up for a coke immediately but hangs around a little bit on the first floor before doing so (rather like Buell Wesley Frazier heading down to the basement for his lunch not long after the shooting). There is no lunchroom incident, just an uneventful lunchroom visit. 3. Mrs. Reid sees him exactly as and where she claimed, only a little later. 4. The second-floor lunchroom is chosen for the phoney Baker-Truly story mainly because Oswald is known (by simple inference from Reid's information) to have been there shortly after the assassination. Now I don't personally believe this can have happened, not least as Carolyn Arnold puts Oswald up on the second floor several minutes before the shooting--and the notion of two visits there is just odd. I also believe that Oswald would have come through a second-floor office that was far from empty (but for Mrs Reid) by that stage. ** Must say I keep coming back to the crucial fact that Mrs Reid was not just another person who worked in that building: she was the very person who had stood watching the motorcade with Truly and Campbell. Of all the three TSBD people who could have had an Oswald sighting in the building just after the shooting, it had to be these three. What are the odds? ** There is one variant scenario whereby Oswald could be Prayer Man and could still have a second-floor lunchroom encounter with Baker & Truly: -Oswald is at the front entrance at the time of the shooting -A few minutes after the shooting he goes up to buy a coke -As Baker and Truly make their way down from the roof, Baker does a quick sweep on each floor -On the second floor he pops his head into the lunchroom and sees Oswald standing there drinking a coke -He checks with Truly that Oswald is ok. Not that I believe this happened, but it is perhaps at least worth throwing out there for members' consideration. It certainly would give a new spin to the words in Bookhout's solo report where the second-floor lunchroom incident is being covered: "...at the time of the search of the Texas School Book Depository building by Dallas police officers..."

Pat, I never said Baker, Truly or Reid were trying to or wished to frame Oswald. They probably had no personal desire whatsoever to see Oswald framed. Baker & Truly would have fallen in with the lunchroom story simply because they were leaned on heavily by the authorities who were desperate to deprive Oswald of his alibi--and Reid in turn would have been leaned on by Truly & Ochus Campbell, who were desperate simply to cover their own asses. Did the improvised story foresee and tie up all loose ends? Of course not. It would be naive--and anachronistic--to expect it would. Can you suggest a location other than the second-floor lunchroom to which the incident might have been better relocated? And do you really believe Oswald hurried upstairs to buy a coke immediately after becoming aware that shots had been fired at the President? If so, how do you explain his calm demeanour as described by Baker and Truly?

That's a very astute observation, Thomas, you may well be right. Though I still think (and this may well be just subjective impression on my part) that the distance of Prayer Man's hands to his face is increasing ever so slightly.

What's silly, Pat, is the idea that we could have Oswald be Prayer Man without that changing anything else in our understanding of what went down in those first couple of minutes post-shooting in the TSBD. Silly also is the idea of the 'investigating' authorities not going into cover-up overdrive to deprive Oswald of his 100% ironclad alibi. And very silly indeed is the idea that Oswald's immediate response to the shooting out front would have been to hurry--yes, hurry--upstairs to buy a coke. The theory being put forward in this thread, in case you missed it, is not that the second-floor lunchroom story was a well-thought out strategem but that it was hastily and crudely put together on the evening of the assassination as an emergency damage-limitation exercise. Can you suggest a place other than the second-floor lunchroom where the incident could have been relocated?

That is simply incorrect, Pat. Here's what motorcycle officer Stavis Ellis told Larry Sneed. As the final sentence makes clear, he was not alone in this view: "...That's when they encountered Oswald drinking a coke on the second floor. Baker was told he was all right, that he worked there. That's where Baker messed up! He should have sealed off the building and not let anybody out till it was ascertained that nobody there had anything to do with it. He could have saved an officer's life had he arrested him there, had he done what he was supposed to have done. We don't say anything to him about it; officers make mistakes just like everybody else." Had Baker been known to have encountered a man by the rear stairway on the fourth floor (or even higher) and then let him go, of course, the error of judgement would have been seen as all the greater. (It once even crossed my mind that maybe Baker's 11/22/63 affidavit was telling of an actual encounter with Oswald that was relocated down a couple of floors to spare the blushes of the DPD; but that idea just doesn't check out.) Then again, an encounter on a higher floor and by the stairway would at least have given Baker a credible reason for being interested in the man in the first place. The second-floor lunchroom story never really gave him that.

Gents, the man in that video has nothing to do with Prayer Man--completely different timeframe.

Robert, holding a coke with both hands is a little unusual but by no means unheard of... If Prayer Man is taking periodic sips, his hands' default position will be a bit higher than in the photo above. I actually came across a classic old-school small coke bottle yesterday and tried holding it in the posture of Prayer Man. The stance was surprisingly natural and comfortable. There is of course also the possibility that something other than a coke is in Prayer Man's two hands. Our old friend Captain Fritz might be able to offer us one interesting pointer: Mr. BALL. Did you ask him what he was doing in the lunchroom? Mr. FRITZ. He said he was having his lunch. He had a cheese sandwich and a Coca-Cola. A sandwich? Whether Coke, sandwich or neither-- Is it just me, or do Prayer Man's hands begin to lower ever so slightly just as the gif is reaching the end?

I believe there is an aspect ratio issue with the Darnell frames we have been looking at, with width being flattered somewhat. This may be making Prayer Man look a little bulkier than he really is. Look for instance at how brawny the man in the white cowboy suit (back to camera) looks in Darnell (look at those big arms!): Now look at the same man in Wiegman--he looks so much more slight: Aspect ratio really does matter in these things. It was for instance the reason some people thought the rather gorilla-esque 'Lovelady' in the Martin film couldn't possibly be the real Lovelady. Here is what happens to Prayer Man with a 10% reduction in the width of the Darnell frame (without corresponding reduction in height): ** Would anyone here--Robin? Martin?--have the know-how to look at this aspect ratio issue in a more systematic fashion?

Bill, Greg Parker is aces with me--always has been, always will be. My single favourite JFK researcher. And Richard Gilbride has done some genuinely enduring work too, not least on the archival side. He was also very quick to support the idea that Prayer Man might be Oswald when the idea was first mooted on Lancer a few years back. ** I never said Baker's 11/22 affidavit 'means 'a first-floor encounter, nor that Mrs Reid's sighting of a white t-shirt is what undermines her testimony. ** Let's forget Prayer Man for a moment. Let's forget first-floor encounters. Let's forget 3rd/4th floor encounters. Instead let's consider Baker's supposed actions that day. He believes shots have been fired from the top of the building. He has dashed into the building and, after a maddening delay at the elevators, begun his ascent. Just one floor up in what he knows is going to be a high climb up a multi-storey building he comes out onto the landing and, as he is turning to hit the next flight of stairs, notices an indeterminate movement behind the glass pane of a closed door a good distance away-- There is nothing intrinsically suspicious about this movement, and certainly no sign that the person behind it has just passed through the closed door. Yet Baker decides to interrupt his already delayed dash up the stairs and go after this person. Don't you find this decision of Baker's just a little...counter-intuitive? And don't you find it just a little too flukey for comfort that Baker's decision should prove so inspired, bringing him face to face with--of all people--the very person who will later be arrested for the shooting of the President? ** Now if Baker had gone after, say, a man caught walking away from the stairway several floors up the building, that would be a rather different matter...

Since nobody there noticed Prayer Man either, I submit that argument falls of its own weight. Exactly. And let's bear in mind that Oswald at this point is not someone whose presence will be especially noticed. He's still a couple of hours away from becoming one of the most (in)famous men on the planet. It's not as if anyone is going to be looking around going, 'Gee, I wonder if Lee Harvey Oswald's here'.

On the contrary, Pat, the higher the floor the more stupid Baker looks for having let him go--and the more responsible for the death of a fellow officer.

On 23 September 1964 Roy Truly and Marrion Baker were asked to go back on the record to clarify an important point: was Oswald on his own in the second-floor lunchroom when they saw him just after the assassination? There had been press reports--based in large part upon statements made by Jesse Curry on 11/23/63--that Oswald was with others in the room when the officer came in. Baker dictated a statement to FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett. It has become notorious because of a certain deletion evident in Burnett's handwritten sheet: Why did Baker originally say "drinking a coke", only to have it crossed out and the deletion initialled ("M.L.B.")? Is not this little slip compelling evidence that--contrary to what Baker and Truly testified to the WC--Oswald had already bought the coke by the time of the incident? And does this not bear out Oswald's claim in custody (as reported by Fritz and Bookhout) on this head? And does it not deprive him of even more time to get down from the sixth floor? Not so fast. I agree that Baker's little slip is very telling indeed, devastating even, but what it is telling is not what people have generally suspected. To understand the significance of "drinking a coke" we need to note two other little slips in its immediate vicinity. Though they have achieved far less attention, they are in my view of no less importance. ** The first relates to the floor on which the lunchroom was located: Second or third floor: this uncertain either-or formula echoes in an uncanny way Baker's original 11/22/63 affidavit, where he talks of having seen a man walking away from the rear stairway on "the third or fourth floor". At least on 11/22 Baker might be said to have some excuse in that he was unfamiliar with the building. But this is different. Here we have Baker, on the far side of having taken part in multiple WC reconstructions of his movements inside the building, and on the far side of having testified in excruciating detail on the lunchroom incident to the WC, still showing uncertainty as to which bloody floor the incident happened on. ** The second interesting item is Baker's description of the circumstances of his first sighting of Oswald: I saw a man standing in the lunch room: even if we factor out the fact that this phrase originally closes with the words drinking a coke, it is still very troubling. It need hardly be pointed out that it does not chime with Baker's 11/22 affidavit words (which again use the very same phrase construction): I saw a man walking away from the stairway. That's just the half of it however. This phrase doesn't even chime with the story that Baker had told to the WC, the story of a man spotted while walking towards and then into the lunchroom. ** What, we must yet again ask ourselves, is going on here? To get a handle on Baker's very weird Sep 64 statement, we need to bear in mind an important point made by Paul Rigby yesterday: "The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisation, many of them subsequently abandoned." I submit that the second-floor lunchroom incident is not just a fiction, it is a fiction contrived in haste and panic on the evening of the assassination. The authorities knew that Oswald had an alibi and they knew that something, anything, had to be done fast to liquidate it. It didn't much matter what that something was, as long as it got Oswald away from the damned front entrance at the time of the President's passing (no pun intended). The details could be worried about later ** So what did they do? In order to maintain maximum consonance between the true story already circulating and already being told by Oswald in custody, and in order to make things as easy as possible on Baker and Truly, they chose the simplest operation possible: The Wholesale Switcheroo. Fact: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the front entrance became... Fiction: Oswald was standing drinking a coca-cola when the armed officer burst into the second-floor lunchroom. The details could be refined later. ** Marrion Baker's fellow motorcycle officer Stavis Ellis told Larry Sneed that Baker was known to be not "real bright". In fact, he was thought to be "slow" and was nicknamed "Momma Son". Harold Weisberg, years earlier, remarked that Baker was thought by his colleagues to be a "dope". Put the case that this verdict, however unkind, had at least a grain of truth in it. And put the case that Baker, at some point after the assassination, was fed the first draft of the lunchroom story as follows: You saw a man standing in the second-floor lunchroom drinking a coke. Got that? A man. Standing in the lunchroom. Second floor. Drinking a coke. Going in to give his Sep 64 statement, Baker has not been heavily prepped in the way that he most assuredly was going into his WC session. The 'finished' script is no longer fresh in his memory. What happens? He gets successive drafts of the Oswald Encounter Story almost comically confused with one another. He talks like a man who is not drawing on primary memory to describe an actually experienced incident. That's because he is describing an event that never happened. When he writes (and crosses out) "drinking a coke", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald drinking a coke in the lunchroom. When he writes of having seen the man "standing in the lunch room", he is not betraying a real, empirical memory of having seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom, he is betraying a real memory of having at some point been told to say that he had seen Oswald standing in the lunchroom. And when he writes (and crosses out part of) "second or third floor", he is not betraying uncertainty as to where the incident had really. empirically taken place, he is... Well, we must hold that thought because it brings us to Baker's all-important 11/22/63 affidavit story.

Was there an encounter with a man by the rear stairway on the 3rd or 4th floor? That's the next question we need to explore.

According to Captain Will Fritz's interrogation report, prepared for the WC, Lee Oswald claimed to have been on the first floor at the time of the assassination but that "he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in". FBI Agent James Bookhout's solo second account of Oswald's first interrogation has Oswald makes a near-identical claim: "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." If Oswald really made these claims, then either he was lying or else Marion Baker was lying about the circumstances under which he first glimpsed Oswald on the second floor. This is because Baker's story to the WC involves Oswald's being en route into the second-floor lunchroom, not being already inside it at or near the coke machine. The fact that both Fritz and Bookhout's reports speak of Oswald not as having been on his way to buy a coke but as being already in possession of one should give pause to any conspiracy-oriented researcher minded to cite those reports as compelling evidence that Oswald confirmed the story Baker would tell to the WC. ** I submit that both Fritz and Bookhout really did hear Oswald say he was drinking a coca-cola, which he had just purchased from the machine in the second-floor lunchroom, when an officer came in with pistol drawn and asked him if he worked there. But the officer was not coming into the lunchroom, he was coming into the building. And I submit that Oswald, in saying these things, was telling the truth. ** In March 1964 the managing editor of the Dallas Morning News gathered together the personal recollections of fifty-one press people relating to the assassination and its aftermath. DMN reporter Kent Biffle was one of these fifty-one. Included in his piece is the moment when Roy Truly alerted the police to the 'missing' status of employee Lee Oswald. Biffle then adds the following fact: "The [TSBD] superintendent [Truly] would recall later that he & a policeman met Oswald as they charged into the building after the shots were fired." As they charged into the building. Not: as they charged up the building. Not: as they charged through the building. As they charged into it. ** I submit once again that the posture of Prayer Man's arms in the Darnell film indicates clearly that he must be holding something--and that we have strong reasons for identifying this man as Lee Oswald holding the very bottle of coca-cola that will find itself transplanted in time and space by Fritz and Bookhout. ** To summarise where we are so far: a ) Oswald did exactly what his co-workers Billy Lovelady and Harold Norman had done several minutes earlier that day: gone up to the second-floor lunchroom to buy a Coca-Cola to go with his lunch b ) Oswald informed Fritz of this pre-assassination visit to the lunchroom c ) The Bookhout/Hosty joint report accurately reflected this fact d ) Bookhout later wrote a solo report in order to bury this fact by ‘clarifying’ what (the now dead) Oswald had actually said e ) Fritz weeks later 'confirmed' Oswald's 'confirmation' of the apocryphal lunchroom incident. Were it not for Harry Holmes’ delightfully ‘off-message’ comments in his Warren Commission testimony, as well as Carolyn Arnold’s later insistence that she had seen Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom before the assassination, the switch from front entrance to second-floor lunchroom would probably have remained undetected.

Great work, Sean, for which many thanks. Keep going. It's worth recalling that there were two powerful additional incentives for the FBI to embark upon hasty revisions - the objective of which was simply to banish Oswald from the doorway of the TSBD almost irrespective of the problems this initial change brought with it - during the late afternoon of November 22: 1) the Parkland doctors' press conference on Kennedy, which insisted upon a shot (or shots) from the front; 2) and Altgens 6 (specifically, the identity of doorway man). The second consideration above does not require the reader to accept the identification of the patsy as doorway man; merely, rather, to have the honesty to acknowledge what is plainly true from the FBI's own internal documentation - the question was, at that juncture, unresolved, at least to the Bureau's satisfaction. The cover-up is, after all, a process, not an event, with many errors, early inadequacies, and/or improvisations, many of them subsequently abandoned. Paul Thanks very much, Paul.

Yes, Tommy, that's exactly how I should have phrased it the first time. Thanks. Oswald's claim to have been on the first floor at the time of the assassination makes no sense if he first learned about the shooting when the officer burst into the lunchroom or when Jeraldean Reid informed him that someone had shot at the President. How could he have been so sure in retrospect that he had been on one, not two, at the time of the assassination? If, on the other hand, Oswald was already aware that something had happened outside before he left the first floor, then his decision to go up to buy a coke within seconds of becoming aware of this looks very weird. Of all the times in his lunch period to make that ascent up a flight, he chooses this one. What incredible synchronicity!

Yes, and I don't believe the second floor lunchroom confrontation was a fabrication, I believe that Marion Baker was a Wrong Copper, - in mob speak - which means that he was the wrong cop to try to bribe or get to go along with an illegal or immoral act. I can't say the same about Roy Truly because he is the one who first exonerated and then fingered Oswald, egged on by Chief Lumpkin, and I can't say the same for Shelley. Why would those covering up the conspiracy to assassinate the president concoct a false second floor lunchroom incident that exonerates Oswald? And Sean, I'm still open to persuasion, and thanks for calling attention to "Prayer Man," and I hope we can focus in on the figure further to determine for sure who it is - and if it is Oswald - is it the same man - "College Boy" in the third, yet unidentified film of the TSBD doorway in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. BK Well, Bill, thank you for starting this thread and kicking the whole discussion off in the first place. And I look forward to further constructive study here of the Prayer Man figure and related images. Regarding Fritz's account of what Oswald said in custody, we have two problems. 1) If we believe that Oswald really said he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in, then we must conclude either that he was lying or that the second-floor lunchroom incident as described by Baker never happened. 2) If Oswald really did claim to have been on the first floor at the time of the shooting, then the Groden/Hine change-for-coke-in-second-floor-office story is ruled out.

If Oswald is indeed Prayer Man, and if things went down as I have been suggesting in this thread, then the injustice infllcted upon him by the 'investigating' authorities, with collusion from his bosses, was even more monstrous than we had imagined. ** The first on-the-record reference to a second-floor lunchroom incident (as opposed to an uneventful pre-assassination visit up to the lunchroom to buy a coke by Oswald) does not come until the evening or night of November 22nd, when Roy Truly is interviewed by the F.B.I. The interview takes place at some point after – and as a result of - Oswald’s first interrogation, which concluded around 4:15 p.m. We know this because Truly is asked in this interview to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made: Mr. TRULY advised that it is possible OSWALD did see him with a rifle in his hands within the past few days, as a Mr. WARREN CASTER, employed by Southwesterrn Publishing Co., which company has an office in the same building, had come to his office with two rifles, one a .22 rifle which CASTER said he had purchased for his son and the other a larger more high powered rifle which CASTER said he had purchased with which to go deer hunting, if he got a chance. Mr. TRULY examined the high powered rifle and raised it to his shoulder and sited [sic.] over it, then returned it to CASTER, and CASTER left with both rifles. Mr. TRULY stated he does not own a rifle and has had no other rifle in his hands or in his possession in a long period of time. Truly’s explanation was investigated and found to check out. But the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer. Here is Truly’s response to that claim: […] He […] noticed a Dallas City Police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running toward the entrance of the depository building and he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone. This snack bar has no windows or doors, facing the outside of the building, but is located almost in the center of the building. The officer pointed to OSWALD and asked if OSWALD was an employee of the company and he, TRULY, assured the officer that OSWALD was an employee. He and the officer then proceeded onto the roof of the building [...] As far as I have been able to ascertain, the above text constitutes the very earliest reference anywhere to a second-floor lunchroom incident. As we have already seen, it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, may well be of explosive significance: …he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building… “They saw no one there”… The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely “there”, inside the front of the building on the first floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is disclaiming. Whether Truly fed the F.B.I. the second-floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the F.B.I. who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder. ** But what of Marrion Baker? He has gone on the record about having challenged a man walking away from the rear stairway several floors up the building. Like Ochus Campbell, with his loose words to the press about Oswald's being seen in a small storage room on the first floor, Baker goes awful quiet awful fast after this. Between the time of his 11/22 affidavit and his participation in the Warren Commission’s ‘reconstruction’ in March ’64 of his and Truly’s movements in the Depository, we hear astonishingly little from this crucial participant in the fateful day’s events. All we have are two extremely brief F.B.I. reports. ** The first, dated November 26th 1963, is of almost nil evidentiary value: These are Detective, not Patrolman, Baker’s reported words. They do not, therefore, represent anything Marrion Baker might have told the F.B.I. himself. The second document is more interesting: This appears on first glance to confirm Truly’s story. In fact, however, it falls far short of a clear endorsement. For one thing, why is Baker still saying absolutely zilch about the fact that he first spotted Oswald walking on the far side of a closed door? And why not a word that he himself went through this door to find Oswald in a room located near the middle of the building? Add to this complete lack of concrete context the fact that Baker gives the distinct impression that he and Truly only took to the stairs after having encountered Oswald – à la first-floor encounter. The incident is, it is true, placed explicitly on the “second floor” (as opposed to the “third or fourth floor” of Baker’s 11/22 affidavit statement). But there is not a single topographical reference here that might reassure us that this really is the second floor Baker is talking about. Indeed, assuming that the F.B.I. didn’t simply change Baker’s “first” to “second” when they wrote up this report (a very real possibility, alas), there is a very elementary way they could have got him to put a first-floor incident on the “second floor”: by telling him that the first floor of the Depository was in reality known as the ‘second’ due to the fact that one had to go up a flight of steps at the front entrance to get onto it. Factor in such a minor sleight-of-hand on the part of the F.B.I., and everything in the above statement bolsters the notion of a first-floor front entrance encounter. ** In any case, there is not a single instance between the assassination and Baker’s dealings with the Warren Commission in March ‘64 of his actually describing in recognisable form the second-floor incident which Roy Truly was happily narrating to anyone who asked. No door, no room, no machine, nothing. Apart from anything else, this suggests that it took quite some time to bring the perplexed Baker properly ‘on script’.