David Von Pein

1 minute ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

Oswald got a potential refund on his original bus ticket in Elm St when he got off & got a taxi.

But that was only AFTER he left the TSBD. You've got him desperately trying to get his jacket BEFORE he ever switched from the bus to the taxi. You've got your chronology all messed up here.

6 minutes ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

1. Baker did not enter the lunchroom. Baker called Oswald over to Baker.

Any other nitpicky points you want to bring up?

I've got to give you credit though, Marjan. You've posted more hunks of pure speculation (aka: fantasy) in these last 24 hours on this forum than anyone else I can ever think of. Congrats.

8 minutes ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

And in the end Oswald tried to save a few cents on his bus ticket while being hunted.

Huh??  What's that got to do with his blue jacket?

Are you suggesting he had a "Get On The Bus Free" ticket in his blue jacket?

25 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

So, she and Styles DID run off toward the stairs in just seconds. Bolsters her story imo. That would not have been enough time for Oswald to stand up, run to the far end of the 6th floor, stash his rifle...then start his run to and down the stairs and beat Adams and Styles to those stairs below them imo.

JEAN DAVISON SAID:

I have a question for anyone who accepts Vickie Adams' time line and believes that she came downstairs before Truly & Baker had reached the freight elevator on the 1st floor.

If she's right, how does her story prove that Oswald didn't come down those stairs?

In the WC version, Baker spotted Oswald just after each man had reached the second floor landing. That means that while Truly & Baker were rushing up from the 1st floor to the second, Oswald would've presumably been hurrying from about the 3rd floor to the 2nd. So where were Adams and Styles during that time, according to Adams? Already outside the building!

Can someone explain how her time line prevents Oswald from using those stairs?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

It doesn't prevent Oswald from using those same stairs. And that is something I have also pointed out in my posts in the past:

"I'll say this regarding Vickie Adams' timeline....The more I think about this subject, the more I realize that even if Adams DID descend those stairs as quickly as she said she did, that particular scenario really does no harm whatsoever to the "Oswald Did It" conclusion.  Why?  Because...then Adams and Styles very likely BEAT Lee Harvey Oswald to the stairs. Hence, it's likely that Adams & Styles were always AHEAD of Oswald on their descent down the stairs. And if Adams & Styles were really THAT fast at getting to the first floor, then they could have possibly beaten Baker & Truly too, with B&T only getting on the stairs after A&S had vacated the stairwell." -- DVP; February 17, 2011
 

28 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Did Adams really state in the interview that she and Styles waited a full minute ( 60 seconds) after the shots to begin running out to the stairs?

I don't recall her saying any such thing in her 1966 interview. (But maybe she did and I just missed it.)

But here's what Adams told the WC:

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it was between the time the shots were fired and the time you left the window to start toward the stairway?

Miss ADAMS - Between 15 and 30 seconds, estimated, approximately.

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it was, or do you think it took you to get from the window to the top of the fourth floor stairs?

Miss ADAMS - I don't think I can answer that question accurately, because the time approximation, without a stopwatch, would be difficult.

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it took you to get from the window to the bottom of the stairs on the first floor?

Miss ADAMS - I would say no longer than a minute at the most.

3 hours ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

If Adams was on the stairs after all 3 men had already used the stairs then Garner would not have seen Baker & Truly on the 4th floor.

Why not? We know Baker & Truly DID briefly emerge on the 4th floor during their journey thru the building.

We merely need to accept these possible alternative scenarios:

1. Baker & Truly were both inside the lunchroom with Oswald on the 2nd floor at the precise moment when Adams & Styles were also on the 2nd floor making their mad dash toward the ground floor.....and, therefore, A&S didn't see B&T (or Oz).

or....

2. Dorothy Garner got the chronology mixed up SEVEN MONTHS LATER (on June 2, 1964) when she tried to reconstruct the timeline for Assistant United States Attorney Martha Joe Stroud.

3 hours ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

Nope, read my earlier comment.

Oswald fires his shot-1 at pseudo Z105, the slug ricochets off a guy-rod of the overhead signal arm, the slug puts a hole in the floor of the limo, the fine lead splatter hits jfk on the back of his head, & jfk utters my god i have been hit.

Oswald fires his shot-2 at Z218, the magic bullet.

Oswald stands up & back from the window, he duznt fire his last bullet.

Oswald sees that Hickey accidentally fires an auto-burst of his AR15 at Z300 to Z312, hitting jfk in the head.

Oswald takes off.

Oswald gets to the 2nd floor after 48 sec.

Oswald just missed seeing Hines walking along the corridor near the lunch room & entering the office door from the corridor at about 46 seconds.

Oswald stops.  What to do next?

Should he continue down to the first floor?

Should he go to the first floor via the front stairs?

Should he lay low in the lunch room?

His jacket is in the Domino Room.

Uh Oh -- He hears Adams & Styles klomping down the stairs in a real hurry on a mission.

Best to visit the coke machine & hope that whoever it is goes clean past.

They pass. He comes back out. What to do next?

He can't decide.  He will be less conspicuous if he takes the front stairs, but he would then have to walk back into & throo the storage area to get his jacket in the Domino Room.

He decides to continue down the back stairs.

He makes a start but then Truly hollers up the elevator shaft, so he goes back up.

Then he hears Baker & Truly galloping up the stairs, & he retreats to the coke machine a second time.

He walks slow & cool.

He would have been better off diving into the lunchroom in a hurry, & laying low, he knows there is no-one in there, but he knows that if seen rushing (by Truly & Co) it will be a sure sign that he is guilty of something.

He nearly makes it, another couple of slow steps & he will be out of sight.

But damn, Baker spots a bit of him throo the glass of the door & says to come back.

Truly says that Oswald works here, & Baker & Truly gallop off.

They get to the 5th floor & take the east elevator to the 7th floor.

Oswald gets a coke to look less guilty & more cool if confronted again.  And assassinations go better with coke.

The back stairs are now dangerous.  He heads for the front stairs, either forgetting about his jacket or deciding that his jacket is a dead duck.

But just in case more dumb cops are entering along the corridor he goes via the office.

Damn, he meets Jeraldean Reid as she returns to her desk.  Mrs Hine is also in the office but she doesn't notice Oswald, or forgets.

Reid in 3 re-enactments took exactly 120 sec to get to her desk, which is about right (ie to meet Oswald).

She says something as they pass & he mumbles something back.  Its not a good look.  He has no business in the office, unless wanting change for the coke machine. Its not even a short cut to the stairs. Damn.  Anyhow no big deal.

He goes down the front stairs & mixes with the growing throng in the lobby near the front door without raising any suspicion.

Someone asks him about a phone.

Ok, things aint so bad, praps he can take a chance & get his jacket from the Domino Room anyhow.

Hmmm – he can get his jacket by going out the front door & down the steps & around & entering via the Houston dock (like he does each morning), & walking 16 paces to the jacket.

Getting caught walking in shouldn’t result in getting bitten by a cop.

So, off he goes, but he gets a little ways up Houston & he sees Officer Barnett on sentry duty at the dock, & Barnett looks vicious.

So, a quick U-turn & back down Houston.  Buell Frazier sees him walking south along Houston.

No, the jacket is a dead duck.  He decides to get out of there asap, he crosses Houston & then crosses Elm.

Tippit is waiting.

Boy, Oswald was sure desperate to get that jacket, wasn't he?

But.....why?

From a 2011 discussion (which includes participation by Barry Ernest; see link below).....

DAVID V.P. SAID:

With respect to Vickie Adams, the ONLY thing a person needs to accept in order to have Oswald on the back stairs within one to two minutes after the President's assassination is to accept the almost certain fact that Victoria Adams was simply inaccurate in her time estimate about when she and Sandra Styles were on the back staircase.

And if she's off by a mere ONE MINUTE, or even less, then her whole story unravels and it then becomes quite easy to accept the fact that Oswald used the back stairs just after shooting President Kennedy from the sixth floor.

The key to pretty much knowing without a doubt that Adams and Styles were on the stairs only AFTER Lee Oswald used the same stairs is not really Oswald himself--but Roy Truly and Marrion Baker.

Because if Adams was really on the stairs as early as she said she was, she would have had virtually no choice but to have seen (or heard) the two men who we know for a fact WERE on those stairs within about 60 to 75 seconds of the assassination -- Truly and Baker.

Since Adams saw nobody and heard nobody, the very likely solution is that she was mistaken about her timing (which couldn't be a more common error with human beings), and she was on the stairs AFTER all three men (Oswald, Baker, and Truly) had already utilized the same stairs.

David Von Pein
February 14, 2011

24 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

Thanks! Now I'm going to be up late watching the movie [1978's "Ruby And Oswald"].

It's actually a very good movie (accuracy-wise), with very few mistakes. Some 1978 cars are shown on the street in a couple of scenes, and the Hertz sign atop the TSBD says "Fords" instead of "Chevrolets". But those aren't really things I would regard as mistakes, because they couldn't really be corrected within the type of TV Movie budget they had to work with.

Also please note that the real Jim Leavelle is handcuffed to Oswald (Frederic Forrest) in the film.

8 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

Interesting about the self-closing heavy doors that are heard easily on the stairway.

See one of those stairway doors in action in the cued-up video clip below (which is from a TV movie that was filmed inside the TSBD itself in 1978):

Thank you, Bill Fite, for posting the link to the 1966 interview with assassination witness Victoria Adams.

Adams, of course, is a witness that a lot of conspiracy theorists love to prop up as "proof" that Lee Harvey Oswald could not possibly have gone down the back stairs of the Book Depository just after the assassination due to the fact that Miss Adams did not see or hear anyone on those stairs when she and Sandra Styles used them to descend from the 4th floor to the 1st floor very shortly after JFK was shot on 11/22/63.

But the notion that the entire case against Lee Oswald should be flushed down the toilet merely due to the estimated timeline of events as described by Vickie Adams is a very silly notion indeed....as I talk about in great detail on my webpage LINKED HERE.

I think the most interesting thing that is heard in the 1966 interview with Adams is when she talks about the three mistakes that were made by the Warren Commission during the time she was providing her testimony to the Commission in April of 1964. And the three errors that Adams mentions are things that are completely innocuous and relatively unimportant in nature, with none of the three items dealing with any substantive matters at all.

And yet, to hear many conspiracy theorists tell it, Victoria Adams was one of the many witnesses who has said she had key portions of her published testimony "altered" or "changed" by the Warren Commission.

But if that had truly been the case, then why on Earth wouldn't she have said something to Mark Lane and Mort Sahl about that very important fact during her fairly lengthy 1966 interview when she starts talking about the various things that the Commission got wrong in her published testimony?

But instead of raking the Commission over hot coals for "altering" or "eliminating" some of the things she had actually said during her testimony, she didn't say a single word in her 1966 interview about the Warren Commission altering anything that anyone could possibly consider to be of great value or substance whatsoever. She talked only about three very unimportant things that the Commission stenographer got wrong, which are things that I would classify as merely "typos" and nothing more than that.

After hearing Vickie Adams' total silence in 1966 when it comes to certain parts of her WC testimony allegedly being "altered" before it was publicly published (relating specifically to Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady), it makes me wonder if this rarely-heard 1966 interview with Victoria Adams has inadvertently debunked (at least in part) yet another conspiracy-flavored myth that has endured for decades. That being: the "Altered Testimony" myth (at least with respect to Vickie Adams' testimony specifically, at any rate).

And we must keep in mind when listening to Adams speak in the '66 interview that she most certainly doesn't come across as a fan or a supporter of the Warren Commission in any way whatsoever.

Therefore, I think it's also quite obvious that her complete silence about any alleged "Shelley/Lovelady alterations" during the interview was not brought about as a result of Miss Adams being frightened of what might happen to her if she dared speak out in a negative manner about Earl Warren's Commission.
 

If you'd like to hear Rob Reiner misrepresent the evidence concerning the events surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald's movements on November 22nd and the "Coke" and the "Lunchroom Encounter", then CLICK HERE to listen to Part 8 of Reiner's 10-part "Who Killed JFK?" podcast.

Anyone who is not familiar with the things that Oswald told the Dallas Police after his arrest, and anybody also unfamiliar with the details concerning the Coca-Cola and Lunchroom Encounter topics, will probably tend to believe the untrue things that Mr. Reiner has uttered in Part 8 of his conspiracy-oriented podcast series, such as when Reiner tells us that Oswald told the police that he was on the second floor of the Book Depository when the President was shot.

But Oswald most certainly did not tell the police he was on the second floor at the precise time of the shooting. He specifically told Dallas Police Homicide Captain J.W. Fritz that he had been eating his lunch on the first floor of the building when JFK's motorcade passed the Depository....

From Captain Fritz' typewritten report:

"I asked him [Lee Oswald] what part of the building he was in at the time the President was shot, and he said that he was having his lunch about that time on the first floor." -- Warren Report; Page 600

In his podcast, Reiner has utilized some sleight-of-hand to try and make his podcast listeners think that Oswald must have been located on the second floor all throughout the key minutes before, during, and after the assassination of President Kennedy. Because when Reiner selectively reads this direct quote from the Hosty/Bookhout FBI report that appears on page 613 of the Warren Commission's Final Report....

"[Oswald] went to the second floor where the Coca-Cola machine was located and obtained a bottle of Coca-Cola for his lunch"....

....Mr. Reiner conveniently omitted the very next sentence that is written in that same Hosty/Bookhout report, which is this sentence:

"Oswald claimed to be on the first floor when President John F. Kennedy passed this building." --Warren Report; Page 613

So, as we can see, Oswald's "alibi" wasn't that he was on the second floor when JFK was shot. Oswald claimed he was on the first floor at that time.

In addition, Mr. Reiner's utilization of the wholly unreliable and inconsistent story of Carolyn Arnold is another sign that Reiner's arguments are mighty weak ones, as I discuss HERE.

And Rob Reiner engages in an even bigger and more blatant misrepresentation of the facts when he inaccurately claims that Roy Truly and Marrion Baker saw Lee Oswald "sitting in the lunchroom with a Coke in his hand".

But anyone who knows the true facts relating to the testimony of both Depository Superintendent Roy S. Truly and Dallas Police Officer Marrion L. Baker, knows that Oswald was most definitely not "sitting" when he was seen by Truly and Baker on 11/22/63. He was standing. Plus, neither Truly nor Baker testified that Oswald had a "Coke in his hand".

Mr. Reiner, like many other conspiracy theorists worldwide, has merely accepted as fact the long-ago-debunked myth about Oswald holding a Coke during the lunchroom encounter with Baker and Truly.

Lots of additional facts concerning the Lunchroom Encounter and The Coca-Cola and Oswald's Whereabouts At 12:30 PM On November 22, 1963, sans any speculative conspiratorial spin, can be found at the link below:

DVP's JFK Archives / Index / Lee Harvey Oswald

13 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Hugh Aynesworth BIH.

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I have no respect for the man [Hugh Aynesworth].

And that means, according to you, that Hugh should Burn In Hell, is that it Sandy?

What a ridiculous over-the-top emotion. You should be ashamed of posting such garbage on this forum. (And you, an "admin"/moderator yet. It's disgusting.)

BTW / FWIW,

Mr. Aynesworth was always very nice and pleasant and helpful in the few conversations I had with him via e-mail.

RIP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Aynesworth

IN APRIL 2008, PAT SPEER SAID:

His [Dale K. Myers'] animation deceptively depicts an under-sized Connally model on a seat 3.5 inches further from the door than the seat occupied by the flesh and bone Connally, and that, when these mistakes are corrected, the bullet exiting Kennedy's neck strikes Connally in the middle of his back.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

As far as Thomas J. Kelley's "six inch" measurement regarding the jump seat -- even you, Pat, admitted in this 2008 Usenet post that regardless of exactly where that jump seat was located (whether it be 6 inches or 2.5 inches inboard), John Connally would STILL have been hit by any bullet coming out of JFK's throat.

And since there's no other reasonable and rational conclusion to reach other than to conclude that a bullet DID exit JFK's throat, and since we know that Connally was struck in the upper back by only ONE bullet (not two) -- then do the math. It's not too hard.

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com / DVP vs. Pat Speer

On 12/20/2023 at 2:51 PM, Pat Speer said:

To make the SBT trajectory work, the WC pretended the back wound was inches higher than its actual location, and that JBC's seat was 6 inches inboard of the door, when it was actually 2 1/2 inches...

2012 DISCUSSION RE: THE LIMOUSINE'S JUMP SEAT MEASUREMENTS....

DVP SAID:

The more I think about this topic, the more convinced I am becoming that the U.S. Secret Service (Thomas J. Kelley [at 5 H 132]) merely measured the "inboard" distance of John Connally's jump seat from a different place from that which appears on the official Hess & Eisenhardt body draft of the 1961 Lincoln limousine, just as I speculated when I said this:

"I think BOTH Kelley and the Hess & Eisenhardt schematic are correct. And that's because Kelley's measurement must have been taken from a slightly different place on the car than was the H&E measurement for the jump seat location. Do you really think Kelley just MADE UP his six-inch figure? I don't. I think that measurement must have been different because they were measuring from a different starting point. Or, perhaps the "finishing point" was different than H&E's." -- DVP; April 12, 2012

Now, when we look at the two pictures below, I can easily envision the Secret Service's measurement for the jump seat being calculated from a different starting point on the car to account for the 3.5-inch difference in the measurements when compared to Hess & Eisenhardt.

If the Secret Service measurement also included the area between the arrows in the second picture, it looks to me as though that would add up to just about six inches when the 2.50-inch measurement in the H&E diagram is included too:


 

CLICK TO ENLARGE:


Furthermore, the HSCA also used the six-inch [approx. 15 cm.] figure, when it said this:

"Connally...was seated well within the car on the jump seat ahead of Kennedy; a gap of slightly less than 15 centimeters separated this seat from the car door."
-- HSCA Volume 6; Page 49

Moreover, the HSCA's "slightly less than 15 centimeters" figure was obviously NOT being derived solely from Thomas Kelley's testimony, because just after citing the "15 centimeters" measurement at 6 HSCA 49, the HSCA gives a source for the 15-cm. measurement—Figure II-19, at 6 HSCA 50—which is the H&E body draft of the limo, which says the jump seat is 2.50 inches inboard. Which makes me think the HSCA was also using a measurement that included the 2.50-inch measurement we see specified in the H&E body draft PLUS an additional 3.5 inches of space that I've outlined with arrows in my photo above.

I'll also add this:

At one point in the endnotes in his JFK book, when Vincent Bugliosi cited his source for a "six-inch gap" between the jump seat and the limo door, Vince cited the HSCA and not Thomas Kelley's Warren Commission testimony:

"A six-inch gap separated Connally's jump seat from the right door [6 HSCA 49]." -- "Reclaiming History"; Page 344 of Endnotes

Final Thought:

In my opinion, BOTH Thomas Kelley and the Hess & Eisenhardt measurements are accurate. It's just that each of those figures was calculated in a different manner, utilizing a different starting point on the SS-100-X limousine. That's all.

2008 "JUMP SEAT" DISCUSSION:
JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/Dale Myers And The SBT
 

On 12/20/2023 at 2:51 PM, Pat Speer said:

They couldn't get the SBT to work. So they lied. 

ALSO FROM A 2012 DISCUSSION....

DVP SAID:

As for Shaneyfelt and Specter [et al] deliberately lying about the back-wound location, you're being way too harsh on those men....mainly because we KNOW that some things had to be approximated as far as the SBT trajectory analysis is concerned. And the word "approximately" is used in Shaneyfelt's testimony 24 different times when they get to the subject of the SBT and the 5/24/64 re-enactment in Dealey Plaza. 24 times!

So, many things are only the BEST GUESSES of people like Shaneyfelt and Robert Frazier, et al, when dealing with the subject of the Single-Bullet Theory and the precise positioning of the two victims, etc.

Plus, the Warren Commission's whole SBT scenario was based on an AVERAGE (or approximate) positioning of the limo between a 16-frame range of Zapruder Film frames (Z210-Z225). They merely split the difference and used, in essence, Z217.5 as their SBT frame, which is exactly what we see in Commission Exhibit 903, which is an exhibit that thoroughly demolishes the idea that the Warren Commission needed to move the wound in JFK's upper back into his neck, because it's obvious that the wound on the JFK stand-in is far below the neck. For some reason, however, CTers refuse to acknowledge this fact.

To reiterate an important point:

The Warren Commission didn't lie because they just flat-out had no reason to lie. And that's because Lee Harvey Oswald, by himself, really did kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. And Oswald's own actions, plus all of the physical evidence he left behind, proves that he was guilty. And that fact was proven many days before there ever was a "Warren Commission", as illustrated in Henry Wade's 11/24/63 news conference.

7 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Are you telling me the very sketchy DALLAS POLICE DEPT. found these 4 shells?

This is some of the most basic evidence in the case. Are you really saying here that you don't know anything about the origin of the 4 bullet shells found at 10th & Patton? Or are you just playing around?

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

This speculation is more whimsical than serious David but it's one way of interpreting those numbers that I thought you might enjoy. It was your Bugliosi page on these numbers which prompted this, so don't think your labors and research on your website don't produce results. 🙂 

It's fun to play around with stuff like this from time to time, isn't it?

Here's another question for you to ponder, Gregory.....

If, as you have suggested, Oswald purchased a movie ticket at the Texas Theater, then why wasn't the ticket stub found on his person after his arrest? And I can only assume that all Texas Theater patrons are, indeed, given a stub after their tickets are torn by somebody at the door who does that sort of thing, like we find at most U.S. theaters. Which, I guess, brings up another question: If Oswald didn't buy a ticket, how did he manage to slip past the "ticket taker" who should have been posted just inside the front door? ~shrug~*

* And the "ticket taker" on 11/22/63 would have been Butch Burroughs (who also sold the candy and popcorn at the theater)....

Mr. BALL -- "During the afternoon of the week, do you take tickets too?"
Mr. BURROUGHS -- "Yes, I take tickets every day."

[Later in Burroughs' WC testimony....]

Mr. BALL -- "If anybody comes in there without a ticket, what do you do, run them off?"
Mr. BURROUGHS -- "I make it a point to stop them and ask them to go out and get a ticket. I just failed to see him when he slipped in."

Oswald, of course, if he had purchased a ticket, could have just thrown his stub in a trash can inside the theater. But I'm wondering why he'd want to do that?

Because by keeping the ticket stub, he could then prove that he didn't "sneak" into the theater without paying. Which would certainly make him look at least a little bit less guilty of any crime --- because by simply being willing to take the extra time and pay for the cheap ticket at the outside box office, it makes him look a bit less desperate to get off the sunny streets in order to get inside that dark theater as fast as he possibly can get in there.

But if he didn't pay for that movie ticket (which I certainly don't think he did), it does indeed make him look mighty anxious (desperate perhaps?) to get off that police-filled Jefferson Boulevard and inside the darkened theater as quickly as possible.

And why would Lee Harvey Oswald be so anxious (even desperate perhaps?) to get inside that movie theater at about 1:40 PM CST on November 22, 1963?

The answer to that last question is, in my opinion, fairly obvious.

3 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

I read your page on Bugliosi errors where you had caught mistakes. Great page of fact checking and interesting trivia! Speaking of which, one item there caught my eye, on the $13.87 Oswald had on him at the time of his arrest, which you calculated he had to have had at least $15.10 starting the morning. I am actually interested in this detail. Can you say how you arrived at that? $1.00 for the .95 plus .05 tip cab I know. But what was the bus fare paid to McWatters?

$13.87 + $0.23 (bus) + $1.00 (cab) = $15.10

Mr. BALL - You let him on the bus, and he paid his fare, how much is that fare?
Mr. McWATTERS - It is 23 cents.

------------

The price of a vending machine Coke was 5 cents thru 1959. Then it went up to 10 cents. So Oswald probably left Ruth Paine's house on Nov. 22 with $15.20 in his pocket. *

* Which assumes he bought just one Coke that day, and it also assumes he didn't merely swipe a bottle of Coke off of one of the tables in the second-floor lunchroom right after his encounter with Officer Baker, instead of buying one himself, which is quite possible, I suppose. I've seen photos of the lunchroom in which we can see bottles of Coke left on the tables ---> such as HERE and HERE.

------------

Here's an interesting hunk of trivia concerning Coca-Cola [copied from this Wiki page]:

The Coca-Cola Company sought ways to increase the five cent price, even approaching the U.S. Treasury Department in 1953 to ask that they mint a 7.5 cent coin. The Treasury was unsympathetic. In another attempt, The Coca-Cola Company briefly implemented a strategy where one in every nine vending machine bottles was empty. The empty bottle was called an "official blank". This meant that, while most nickels inserted in a vending machine would yield cold drinks, one in nine patrons would have to insert two nickels in order to get a bottle. This effectively raised the price to 5.625 cents. Coca-Cola never implemented this strategy on a national scale.

------------

I can certainly see why the Coke Company never followed through with that spiteful strategy of literally stealing an extra nickel from 11% of its vending machine customers by dropping an empty bottle into their hands. I have a hard time believing the company would have even considered such a deceptive act of thievery. Customers wouldn't have stood still for only getting what they paid for 9 times out of 10. And can you imagine a 7.5-cent coin?! Just think of the mess that would have caused for all of the nation's cashiers. They'd have to find a way to give back 2.5 cents change for a 5-cent purchase. What a nightmare! 😁

17 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Crafard left Dallas for Michigan on Sunday morning, Nov. 24th, Greg. Not the 23rd.

13 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

David I am quite certain Craford left on Saturday Nov 23. I am not sure where you are getting 24th.

Yes, you're right, Greg. I was mistaken about something I read about Crafard on Page 247 of Vincent Bugliosi's book. That page is in the middle of Vince's chronology of events for "Sunday, November 24", but Bugliosi suddenly goes back to talking about the events of Saturday on that page. And that's when the subject of Crafard leaving Dallas comes up.

But it was my error this time, and not Bugliosi's. Vince has it right in his book. Crafard left town on Saturday, Nov. 23rd.

Sorry about the mistake, Greg.

7 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Craford [sic]...took off for Michigan the morning of Nov 23.

Crafard left Dallas for Michigan on Sunday morning, Nov. 24th, Greg. Not the 23rd.