Richard Hocking

On 6/8/2010 at 2:22 AM, John Simkin said:

Earlier, in 1967 or 1968, with Allan Hughes, a CIA operative who had attended the Deep Creek Lake meeting where Olson had been dosed, and the reporter James Phelan, Lafitte burgled Garrison’s office to retrieve papers relating to Shaw.

My take is  Allan Hughes, James Phelan and Lafitte burgled Garrison's office to retrieve papers relating to Shaw.

19 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

...

To me, the evidence and Ockham's Razor say:  Start with the Lone Nut theory and modify it only as absolutely necessary to account for undeniable evidence (if any) that unquestionably doesn't fit. ...

Why start with the Lone Nut Theory?

To be truly objective, why not start with a blank slate, and let the chips fall as you do your research?

Limo orientation to cardinal directions at time of head shot.

15 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

 

Below is another one... a young Paul Newman. Notice that all three of these show a height of 5' 9" and a head height of 13". It seems there must have been a standard or popular mug shot system that made all three. I found this one by googling "13 inch head height mug shot."

Mystery solved. Good job Richard and Tom.

 

Thanks Sandy.  I had the same reaction when I first noticed the "13 inch head".

 

More food for thought on relative heights of LHO and BNL:

I am aware that BNL told the FBI, and the HSCA that he was 5' 8.  But Lovelady also gave what seems like contradictory information on his height in an article that was circulated by UPI.

The crop below is from an article that appeared in the Oxnard CA, Press Courier May 23, 1964.  The article title was "JFK Slaying Mystery Cleared Up".

Didn't the WC or HSCA photographic panel determine that what looks like Lovelady's arm was actually the black man's (Roy Lewis?) arm as he was waving?

Very Close Ian.

According to Richard Sprague, he obtained an 11 x 17 blowup made from the original Altgens.

Sprague claims the raised arm in front of Lovelady is that of a black man, his body not visible that is in front of Roy Lewis.

If you look closely you can make out the faint outline of a hand at the top of the arm.

Edit:

Link

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/B%20Disk/Brunson%20Beverly/Item%2005.pdf

Thanks for the url, Lee.

Do we know who the individual is to BWF's left in the following frame - one step down from the top? My money would be it is the same guy stood behind Billy Lovelady in Altgens 6 whose face is partially obscured by shadow (who is wearing a shirt and tie)

Lee,

There were very likely three men in suit and tie on the entrance steps when the Limo passed the TSBD:

BookKeeper Supervisor Otis Williams

Credit Manager Joe Molina

TSBD Manager William Shelley

A few other notes: Otis Williams and Pauline Sanders testimony places them on the East side of the entrance steps. Joe Molina testified he was standing with them. We know Shelley is gone from the steps by the time this photo was taken, so the two remaining candidates should be Williams or Molina.

It should also be noted that Shirley Martin wrote a letter to Harold Weisberg dated July 8, 1967 revealing Molina claimed to be wearing a suit that day he was on the steps.

My url to that letter is corrupted, but it is in the jfk.hood.edu collection that contains the Weisberg material.

Pamela, I've forwarded the question to Jerry Dealey who probably knows the most about the TSBD including its phone system. I can tell you that some of the individual businesses inside the building had their own small key systems where a secretary could forward calls to extension phones or individuals could use those extensions to call out. I suspect the same was true for the TSBD, if somebody has quick access to a 1963 directory or cross directory you can check the number of lines going to that address and who they are listed for....I'm betting there was only one listed number for the TSBD. Plus there is the other fact that as a business the TSBD was actually located in two buildings and the school book depository location was relatively new. Not sure exactly what offices were in which building. It would be interesting to see what the phone directory really lists in that regard.

I'll let everyone know if Jerry provides any information but my guess is that the TSBD also used a key system, classic operator switchboards with patch panels were pretty uncommon other than in telephone exchanges. If so the system was on a Secretary's desk who would have answered for the company and no doubt asked why somebody was calling the janitor. I can't fathom how Oswald would have heard about the call? Besides, why call him at work. His apartment building had a shared phone. And anyone who was cautious enough to use multiple mailboxes would probably be up to telling her to call a payphone at a given time or better yet call her from a pay phone to keep in touch.

Larry,

Geneva Hine provided a limited glimpse of the phone setup for the TSBD in her WC testimony:

Mr. BALL. Did you have to change your desk over to another desk?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; to the middle desk on the front row.

Mr. BALL. Was there a switchboard?

Miss HINE. No, sir; we have a telephone with three incoming lines, then we have the warehouse line and we have an intercom system.

Mr. BALL. You don't have a switchboard?

Miss HINE. Not now; we did in the other building.

Mr. BALL. Were you alone then at this time?

Miss HINE. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Did you stay at your desk?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir: I was alone until the lights all went out and the phones became dead because the motorcade was coming near us and no one was calling so I got up and thought I could see it from the east window in our office.

This sounds similar to the phone system scenario you describe in your post. Hopefully Jerry Dealey can add something to that.

Regarding the "Janitor" issue ... Eddie Piper gave his title as Janitor in his first day affidavit and in his WC testimony (the only employee to do so). If someone had phoned the TSBD and asked for the Janitor, wouldn't Eddie Piper be the person who was paged on the intercom?

What do you make of Allman's description of the sound of the first shot? He calls it a 'boom', and says it was not the typical sound of a rifle firing. While in some way it makes sense that the volume of sound being greater than a rifle might be because he is near the TSBD. I wonder whether what he really heard was the echo bouncing off the buildings of a shot from somewhere in front of the limo. I always thought the first shot hit JFK in the throat, delivered from the front. If that is true, then what he heard was an echo.

Geneva Hine gives a similar description, comparable to Pierce Allman's "boom".

An excerpt of her testimony to the Commission:

Mr. BALL Could you tell where the shots were coming from?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; they came from inside the building.

Mr. BALL. How do you know that?

Miss HINE. Because the building vibrated from the result of the

explosion coming in.

Mr. BALL. Did you know they were shots at the time?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; they sounded almost like cannon shots they were

so terrific.

Geneva was leaning out an East facing window above Houston St. I have speculated in the past that shot(s) fired from the Dal-Tex building would have reverberated essentially in an "echo chamber" between the Dal-Tex building and the TSBD.

Tommy wrote:

"... Question: Would it have been unprofessional (or unreasonable or unrealistic) for Inspector Sawyer to leave his partially drunk soda pop in the shade on the steps at some point, and retrieve it a bit later to "finish it off"? "

The first Allen photo showing the bottle on the NW corner step was taken about 12:42.

Again going back to Sawyer's actions when he arrived at the TSBD at 12:34: He immediately went up the elevator to the 4th floor, quickly surveyed the floor, and returned to the first floor. In his testimony, Sawyer estimates his return time to the front entrance as 12:38 where he immediately goes outside and sets up a Command Post. No mention of walking to the back of the TSBD where the Dr. Pepper machine is located.

Prayerman is not Lovelady.

They appear close to each other in a frame from Weigman.

Within seconds of the last shot fired, Shelley and Lovelady leave the entrance and make their way down the Elm St. extension (visible in the Couch film). Shelley and Lovelady are well down the street by the time Baker makes it to the entrance. Prayerman is still on the top step as Baker approaches the entrance.

Also, Oswald (Prayerman) is seen in a storage room on the first floor when Ochus Campbell comes back into the building. There is a storage room right under the stairs in the entrance lobby. There is one other small storage room at the back (North end) of the first floor. It would have been one of those two. So he definitely went back into the building.

So what soda.bottles are in evidence today?

None.

What does that mean?

BK

Really Bill? Not "William's" or the one from the front steps... I had not put that together...

Means there may have been prints on them that could ID people who should not be identified... if one was a paranoid Conspiracy Realist.

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir; there was a sack of some chicken bones and a bottle brought into the identification bureau. I think I still have that sack and bottle down there. The chicken bones, I finally threw them away that laid around there. In my talking to the men who were working on that floor, November 25, they stated, one of them stated, he had eaten lunch over there.

Mr. McCLOY. Someone other than Oswald?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir; so I discarded it, or disconnected it with being with Oswald. Incidentally, Oswald's fingerprints were not on the bottle. I checked that.

Mr. McCLOY. They were not on the bottle?

Mr. DAY. No, sir

Yet the documentation for such an act as well as the storage of evidence is not available... or even mentioned in Day's reports...

Were WILLIAMS' prints on the bottle?

Another fascinating glimpse into the DPD investigation of the murder of the President. If it could not be used to establish Oswald's guilt, it was not considered evidence.

Too bad they never tested the bottle on the Entrance step for prints.

Not only the WC but every investigation since....

This is the FBI's primae facia case against a 6th floor shooter from that window, ergo Oswald, yet they are never asked to explain or justify these conclusions.

All I'd like to know is HOW they arrived at these shot locations... FBI Inspector Leo Gauthier is named by Hoover as the FBI liason to the WC regarding the models..

CE878, CE879 & CE880 are photos from WCD298 depicting the model... and Gauthier testified for the WCR.... http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/gauthier.htm

By focusing the question on the model itself and NOT showing the images depicting the shots... the entire thrust of the model is lost.

Mr. SPECTER. And what model reproduction, if any, did you make of the scene of the assassination itself?

Mr. GAUTHIER. The data, concerning the scene of the assassination, was developed by the Bureau's Exhibits Section, including myself, at the site on December 2, 3, and 4,. of 1963. From this data we built a three-dimensional exhibit, one-quarter of an inch to the foot. It contained the pertinent details of the site, including street lights, catch basin, concrete structures in the area, including buildings, grades, scale models of the cars that comprised the motorcade, consisting of the police lead car, the Presidential car, the followup car, the Lincoln open car that the Vice President was riding in, and the followup car behind the Vice-Presidential car.

This again reinforces the selectivity of the WC lawyers with regards to source materials... WCD298 is buried while 3 photos are used to represent the efforts of the FBI... that they painstakingly produced a model that offered no conclusions within the WCR seems a bit odd.... we only learn the purpose of the model in WCD298's preface... and in the detailed measurements offered within the doc.

Sure be nice if someone at the FBI could answer for this...

Mr. GAUTHIER: The models were delivered to the Commission's building and installed in the exhibits room on the first floor, on January 20, 1964.

"... By focusing the question on the model itself and NOT showing the images depicting the shots... the entire thrust of the model is lost."

"This again reinforces the selectivity of the WC lawyers with regards to source materials... "

This brings to mind a similar tactic used when drawings of autopsy photos (prepared by illustrator Ida Dox) were presented as evidence to the Warren Commission instead of using the genuine Autopsy photos.

Perhaps it is just me, but my gut feeling is that the logic used was “Look at the incredible amount of work we did to create these drawings and 3D scale models … therefore, you can trust our conclusions must be correct.”

Robert,

How would you respond to the argument that a shooter would have used the iron sights (instead of the scope) on the MC for the distances involved at Dealey Plaza?

This is a follow-up to a question raised earlier in this thread concerning the Dr. Pepper bottle Inspector Sawyer is holding in the photo below.

Could this bottle be the same bottle seen on the top step NW corner of the entrance in 4 other photos taken by William Allen?

The answer lies in the sequence of the photos. We know that the bottle on the step appears in two photos taken by Allen during the 12:40 – 1:00 time range. Around 1:00 pm, Larry Florer is arrested on the street and taken to the Sheriff’s office. Allen walks over to the office and takes 6 pictures of Florer in custody. After several minutes in the office, Allen leaves and begins walking North on Houston Street back towards the TSBD. As he approaches, he takes two photos of the building.

The next photo on the Allen Contact Sheet is the photo showing Sawyer on the steps with the Dr. Pepper bottle and a cigarette.

The very next photo after that shows the 3 tramps being escorted in front of the TSBD. We know the tramps photo is taken around, or just after 2 pm.

So, being sandwiched between the Florer photos and the Tramps photos places the Sawyer photo somewhere in the 1:15 – 2:00 time period. The Dr. Pepper bottle Sawyer is holding is not the same bottle seen on the top step in the other Allen photos.

From a logical standpoint, it makes sense. When Inspector Sawyer arrived at the TSBD, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, he became a very busy man. After going up to the 4^th floor, taking a quick look, and coming back down to the entrance, he setup a command post. Numerous witnesses and suspects were arriving to be interviewed or give statements. These included Howard Brennan, Amos Euins, Charles Brehm, Arnold Rowland and wife, Robert Edwards, Larry Florer, and others.

It seems unlikely Sawyer would have taken a cigarette and Dr. Pepper break during this hectic period when the assassin was also potentially in the building.

Sawyer was out front of the TSBD until 4 pm. It seems reasonable that he would have taken a break later in the afternoon after the building had been cleared and the witnesses and suspects delivered to Decker and Fritz’s offices.

So, for anyone keeping score, there was one Dr. Pepper bottle allegedly found on the 6^th floor (with photos showing Johnson bringing it out front), another bottle left on the top step in the NW corner of the entrance, and a third bottle being held by Inspector Sawyer in the Allen photo.

edited for syntax.

David,

My best guess is that the Warren Commission never looked into the problematic discrepancies illuminated in your post.

David,

found this photo just recently, showing some more detail on the trees near the SW corner of the TSBD.

Credit Robin Unger for a still frame from the Lost Tapes DVD.

It was taken on 11/23/63.

Thanks for the visual update, James.

FWIW, I also get a distance of 33' West of the West Wall for Z224 using Don Roberdeau's map.

Here are some other reference points using that same map. All measurements are West of the West wall of the TSBD.

Z224 ~ 33'

Mary Moorman on S. Curb of Elm ~ 63'

TUM on N sidewalk of Elm ~ 73'

Z313 ~ 86'

I have begun a thread under this title on the Reopen Kennedy Case Forum and, rather than copy and paste three pages to post it here, I thought it better to just post a link to the thread on the other forum.

I believe this material to be well worth reading, as I believe I have clearly demonstrated the inadequacies of this scope and the difficulties it would present to a shooter, even one attempting to use the open sights.

I also deal with the FBI's Special Agent Robert Frazier (firearms expert), who test fired the 6.5mm Carcano found on the 6th floor and presented his findings in testimony to the WC. In this analysis, I discuss the data he presented, and ask whether he simply made "mistakes" or whether he presented impossible test results.

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t578-the-side-mounted-scope-on-the-65-carcano#6386

Great job on this issue, Robert. Side-mounting the scope certainly adds another level of complexity to hitting a moving target.

James,

That is a nice mockup of the buildings and Elm St.

Can you extend a straight line following the West wall of the TSBD out across Elm St?

This would show when the Limo would first become visible to anyone looking out an upper floor window on the West side.

It would also be interesting to see the positions of TUM and DCM on your mockup.

What plat are you using for your measurements?

Looks like you have put quite a bit of time into this.

Would like to see more as your work progresses.

I tried to find photos of those trees specifically and finally have... from the next day or two...

The polaroid lens was maybe 114mm (most seemed to be) with a 1/1200 sec shutter speed - so that's why everything is in "focus" yet the 'Land Camera 80' as her camera is described as, was really a model 800 it appears. and why it appears we are closer to the building than she was....

The tree limbs match while the image on the right was probably taken with a standard 35mm...

- yet, where is the light pole in Moorman?

Good find, David. The photo on the right looks like it may have been taken a few feet West of Moorman's position. Gives an excellent illustration of the tree line against the TSBD. I am curious who took it and what day they snapped the photo.

Regarding the Light pole, if you look at the uncropped Moorman photo, there is something that resembles the light pole near the right side of the photo.

We ought to rememebr that M3 was taken in the street, closer to the TSBD, and therefore the trees would indeed appear much taller than from other angles.

Some things of concern:

- How, with a polaroid, is the motorcycle and background in focus as the motorcycles is moving and would be blurred if she was not panning, or the background should be very blurry...

- Why is the quality so much worse than the other Moorman photos?

David, that's what I thought when I first saw the photo. After looking more closely, I decided that was not the case. The McIntire photo shows those same trees from a distance and they are roughly the same height, with the very highest branches reaching up to about the middle of the 4th floor window (at roughly 10' per floor that equates to a height of about 35'). Moorman is about 200-205' feet from the SW corner of the TSBD when she snaps her shot. If you do some line of sight geometry, those trees are not tall enough to block out the 5th and 6th floors, even when you account for her lower elevation.

You bring up a fair point about the blurry photos. As you know, Moorman took 5 photos that day in Dealey Plaza. The two that showed the west side of TSBD in the background were apparently the poorest in quality.

Thanks Richard; regarding the "lost" Moorman photograph, I believe we are talking about this same image. The attached report from the Dallas FO, constructed by SA Curtis L. Perryman and dated November 23, 1963, indicates that they were shown the photograph in question by SS SA Bill Patterson and were actually given the photograph by the SS. The handwritten note affixed in the bottom right hand corner of this memo is hard to decipher but in part it states that the photograph "was extremely poor in quality" and was rejected as important by both the SS and the FBI because it did not show the 7th floor [?] or the pertinent "6th floor window from which shots fired." Rush to judgement by eyes so blind? FWIW.

Correct about the "lost" Moorman photo, Gary. The memo you kindly posted echoes what I have heard from other sources -- "poor image quality ... shows nothing of interest".

I believe the image is still archived somewhere and may eventually turn up.