Jim Hargrove

Above left: Marita's book cover; Above center: Marita with Frank Sturgis; Above right: Marita with Fidel Castro From John Armstrong's write-up on our website: In late 1960 CIA asset Marita Lorenz was in a Miami CIA safehouse with members of her group and met LEE Harvey Oswald for the first time. The HSCA interviewed her and asked about her first meeting with Oswald: Mr. Fithian: "Now is it your testimony that the first time you saw Oswald would have been in the camps in the Everglades?" Marita Lorenz: "The very first time, no. I saw him in the Safehouse and then in the camps." Mr. Fithian: "And that first meeting at the Safehouse would have been within a year of the Bay of Pigs?" Marita Lorenz: "I would say 1960." Mr. Fithian: "It would be some time during 1960?" Marita Lorenz: "Late 1960." Mr. Fithian: "All right. Now I want to be sure that I have your dates correct. You said the first meeting of LEE Harvey Oswald, the first time you saw him, was at a Safehouse in Miami in 1960." Marita Lorenz: "Yes." Mr. Fithian: "The next time or times that you saw him were during training at a camp in the Everglades, various places in the Everglades, in early 1960, 1961 period?" Marita Lorenz: "Yes." Mr. Fithian: "And after that you saw him at the Safehouse the second time?" Marita Lorenz: "Yes." Mr. Fithian: "What makes you so sure of the dates. Within a year of the first meeting in the Safehouse and the meeting at the camps in the Everglades, is there anything else you could match that up with?" Marita Lorenz: "The photographs, the events that took place. the photographs that Alex (Rorke) took. Everywhere we went Alex took pictures." Mr. Fithian: "This was prior to the Bay of Pigs?" Marita Lorenz: "Yes, April, 1961, was the Bay of Pigs." Mr. Fithian: "And you are sure you saw him (Oswald) before April, 1961." Marita Lorenz: "Yes, because Alex took the pictures." Mr. Fithian: "And the whole purpose of the training was to somehow participate or help in the Bay of Pigs. Marita Lorenz: "Yes." Mr. Fithian: "Did you see Oswald at any time in the intervening two years between early 1961 prior to April of 1961 and the September-October Safehouse meeting in 1963?" Marita Lorenz: "No, but Frank (Sturgis) kept in touch with me. Alex kept in touch with me." Mr. Fithian: "Mrs. Lorenz, has your attorney explained what perjury before a congressional committee is all about?" Marita Lorenz: "That is right, yes." Mr. Fithian: "In any way do you want to change your testimony on these dates?" Marita Lorenz: "No, I do not." Mr. Fithian: "There is adequate documentary evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald did not indeed return from the Soviet Union until June of 1962. Marita Lorenz: "I don't know about that." Mr. Fithian: "Therefore you could not have met him at the Safehouse in 1960, you could not have seen him in the Everglades in 1960 and 1961, and you could not have taken a picture in those areas and could not have a picture for the dates of that time." Marita Lorenz: "No?" Mr. Fithian: "It is not possible." Marita Lorenz: "I don't know about that." Mr. Fithian: "Now can you explain to the committee why you gave us this false information as far as dates?" Marita Lorenz: "I did not give you false information." Mr. Fithian: "Mrs. Lorenz, I went over your testimony very carefully a moment ago and you assured me that you met Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the Bay of Pigs." Marita Lorenz: "I did." Mr. Fithian: "On two occasions." Marita Lorenz: "Yes." Mr. Fithian: "Lee Harvey Oswald was in Russia during that entire period." Marita Lorenz: "I do not know that. I did not know that. The Lee Harvey Oswald that I met was the same in that picture, the one in the Safehouse. the same one that Frank knows. I do not know where he was according to your information. I do not know. I never read up on anything about these theories that are coming out about him." Mr. Fithian: "This is not a matter of theory." Marita Lorenz: "I know I am telling the truth. If you don't want it, that's too bad, you know. I am here to gain nothing, you know. Nothing. Nothing at all. You are trying a homicide investigation that should be solved, you know. Don't dispute me or put me on trial." Mr. Fithian: "Only if we can have full and truthful testimony." Marita Lorenz: "You have got it. You have it from me. I don't know about the other people. I have nothing to lose and nothing to hide-nothing. Mr. Fithian: "And it is your testimony that you are certain that the person you met at the Safehouse and at the camps of the Everglades is the same person that you met in Dallas." Marita Lorenz: "Yes, it is." Mr. Fithian: "Do you have any explanation for how we come up with two Lee Harvey Oswalds during this period?" Marita Lorenz: "I have no explanation. I know the man I met; he was a creep. I didn't like him. I don't have to be here at all. I have nothing to gain. Mr. Fithian: "Thank you. That is all." NOTE: CIA asset/photographer Alex Rorke had taken photos of LEE Oswald in Florida (1960-61) while HARVEY Oswald was in the Soviet Union. Rorke died in an airplane crash in Mexico in May 1964, along with Hugh Ward, DeLessups Morrison (former Mayor of New Orleans), his 7-year-old son Christopher, Daleigh Pellegrin and Ovide Cenac.

Paul, Yes, I used a genealogical service that included, I think, the same database that newspapers.com uses. I chose it because it had a thrifty sale for a 2-year subscription. If you spend just an hour or two reading up on search techniques for whatever front end you use, it can make a big difference in the quality of the results.

Steve, It’s hard for me to believe that the commander of the VIII U.S. Army Corps at Austin would believe Crichton's story if Crichton just pretended to be in charge of the 488th. The Dallas Morning News was and is a big daily, and I sincerely doubt they printed vanity stories made up out of thin air, at least not ones written solely by the subject.

To John B…. Thanks much for those fabulous Crossfire tables! My bet is that the list Mr. Marrs compiled cannot be beaten for thoroughness and accuracy. I’ve saved that whole post in a local archive. Thanks again!

Joe, I agree with you about Hunt’s role in this, but the deathbed confession business may be over-hyped. Jefferson Morley has some details here, including an edited recording of the so-called confession. Still, my opinion is that he was a co-conspirator. He certainly seemed eager to help the Nixon White House smear JFK’s memory by creating false documents implicating Kennedy in the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. It was kind of like trying to assassinate JFK a second time, as if once wasn’t enough. On a different note…. A Wikispooks.com page on HSCA/Premature deaths adds former U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers to the list, indicating: Powers died in August 1977 in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles, as he was covering a brush fire for KNBC news in their helicopter that he was piloting. Seventeen years prior, he had named in a court in Moscow in 1960, the U. S. Marine responsible for his capture as Lee Harvey Oswald. Powers died shortly before he was to answer a subpoena to testify to the HSCA.

The Dallas Morning News (Sunday, May 5, 1963, p. 5) under the heading “Military Briefs” lists field training encampments for a number of units including the “488th Military Intelligence Detachment, The Pentagon, July 7-21.” In it’s edition of Tuesday, December 5, 1967, the same newspaper announced Crichton’s retirement from the Army Reserves and listed him as “commanding officer of the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment….”

American-born Lee Oswald worked at Tujague’s much longer than the FBI/WC claimed, starting in 1955, when Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald was attending Warren Easton high school full time. (The FBI/WC had to falsify a number of records to avoid the conflict.) John A. wrote: “While Lee Oswald continued to work at Tujague's, Harvey allegedly began working at J.R. Michels on Monday, January 17, 1956. J.R. Michels’ business was the same as Tujague's, and their offices were located one floor below Tujague's in the same building. The Commission provided no explanation as to why ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ quit Tujague's or his reason for securing the same type of job at J.R. Michels the following business day.” This is just one of many reasons the FBI had to confiscate the school and teen-aged employment records of “Lee Harvey Oswald” within hours of the assassination. It also shows that Hoover was well aware of the “Oswald Project.” This material is covered in great detail in Harvey and Lee starting at p. 127. Frank DiBenedetto, a longtime friend of Gerard Tujague, was Lee’s supervisor at the company, and he remembered well that Lee worked far longer at Tujague’s than the FBI/WC claimed. Tujague’s and J.R. Michels were both located in the Sanlin Building, where John A. interviewed Frank DiBenedetto in the 1990s.

On April 18, 2005, Education Forum founder John Simkin posted the following on this forum: William Sullivan, the main figure in the FBI involved in the Executive Action project, and the person in the FBI who investigated Oswald, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene. Several important figures in the Central Intelligence Agency died before they could give evidence to the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. William Harvey, head of the ZR/RIFLE project, died as a result of complications from heart surgery in June, 1976. William Pawley, who took part in Operation Tilt, died of gunshot wounds in January, 1977. David Morales, who some believe organized the assassination, died aged 53, on 8th May, 1978. John Paisley was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide. According to the journalist, Victor Marchetti, Paisley was a close friend of Yuri Nosenko. Marchetti also claimed that Paisley knew a great deal about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was murdered during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation because he was "about to blow the whistle". In the same thread Mr. Simkin posted in, Jim Root wrote: “Thomas Karamessines who had worked in the office of Richard Helms and was monitoring the movements of Oswald in the months before the assassination. Died at his vacation retreat in Canada just before he was scheduled to testify (heart attack I believe).” Pat Speer added Sheffield Edwards to the list, at least as one of the people “who died between the Church Committee and the HSCA.” James Richards added the name Juan Jose Peruyero, who, Mr. Richards said, “was gunned down in front of his Miami house on Jan. 7, 1877,” adding that “Peruyero was a member of Brigade 2506 and became very active in several anti-Castro movements which included an association with William Pawley.” Here is the full thread, one of several on this forum about the HSCA mysterious deaths. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/3689-mysterious-deaths-prior-to-hsca-hearings/ Can anyone reading this suggest there is an innocent explanation for all these HSCA-related deaths in such a short period?

Nice write-up, only slightly marred by a couple of errors I noticed. One was that “Oswald” owned a Minox spy camera, not a Minolta. Mr. Bleau’s basic case, though, seems well stated, especially his conclusion pointing directly at David Phillips, Hunt, Morales, a now all-too-familiar crew.

Just wanted to bump this old thread as a reminder for what most of us already know, that the cover-up of the JFK assassination is, and almost always has been, quite obvious. This thread does not even cover the medical evidence, which also presents obvious signs of a cover-up. When members of this forum get themselves busy psychoanalyzing what they consider to be the problems of Warren Commission critics, isn’t it remarkable that they pay so little attention to the obvious signs of cover-up in this case? And let me just add here the reasons to believe what was also obvious all along, that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was a spy working for American intel: 20 Facts Indicating the Oswald Project Was Run by the CIA 1. CIA accountant James Wilcott testified that he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.” Contemporaneous HSCA notes indicate Wilcott told staffers, but wasn't allowed to say in Executive session, that the cryptonym for the CIA's "Oswald Project" was RX-ZIM. 2. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s. 3. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962. 4. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA. 5. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA "contact" who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child. 6. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, apparently left his family to marry (and probably monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death. 7. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE. 8. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA. 9. FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination. 10. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report. 11. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots. 12. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear. 13. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story. 14. CIA's Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, and he said that the CIA and the FBI ignored his warnings. 15. LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.” For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved. In the summer of 1963, he once again seemed to have enough money to travel abroad to Communist nations. 16. To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.” What utter bs…. 17. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again! 18. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.” 19. CIA's Ann Egerter, who worked for J.J. Angleton's Counterintelligence Special Interest Group (CI/SIG), opened a "201" file on Oswald on December 9, 1960. Egerter testified to the HSCA: "We were charged with the investigation of Agency personnel....” When asked if the purpose was to "investigate Agency employees," she answered, "That is correct." When asked, "Would there be any other reason for opening up a file?" she answered, "No, I can't think of one." 20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, as evidenced by Arthur Krock's infamous defense of the Agency in the Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times. “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

Burroughs apparently was talking about the arrest of an “Oswald” lookalike in the theater at least as far back as 1993, long before his interview with James Douglass. (Thanks to Malcolm Blunt and Bart for the above.) I’ll try respond to some of the other issues raised above when I have more time. (We're hosting a Labor Day party tomorrow.)

Steve, Looks to me that Westbrook was in charge, at least until "Oswald" was sent to police headquarters to be executed, but.... The rigor of your posts is most appreciated. Combining graphics of documents with a cohesive narrative is a technique we should all strive to attain. Nevertheless, neither you nor anybody else has shown evidence that George Applin left the theater through the alley exit, nor is there evidence that he left the theater in time to be the man seen by Bernard Haire. But there is considerable evidence that something serious happened in the balcony of the Texas Theater during the early afternoon of November 22, 1963. Since the list of theater patrons vanished, we only have two eyewitnesses on the record as to when Main Floor Oswald arrived at the theater, Butch Burroughs and Jack Davis. Both witnesses say he (Oswald) was there before 1:15 pm, the time the WC wanted us to believe Tippit was murdered. And Davis’s description of events suggests Main Floor Oswald may have created a scene because he moved about in the theater, sitting right next to several different customers, which may be one of the reasons the customer list had to disappear. By his own account, Applin was on the main floor, not the balcony, and so he had nothing to do with the Balcony Oswald. According to the WC, citing the Postal/Brewer saga, Balcony Oswald entered the theater shortly after 1:30 pm, at least 20 minutes after Burroughs and Davis saw Main Floor Oswald inside the theater. At 1:45 pm, Postal called the police and said the suspicious man who ducked into the theater was hiding in the balcony. At 1:46 pm, the Dallas Police dispatcher broadcast this message: “Have information a suspect just went in the Texas Theater on West Jefferson ... supposed to be hiding in balcony. Two DPD reports say “Oswald” was arrested in the balcony (one is shown below). For decades now, Burroughs has said he saw a man who looked like Classic Oswald® arrested in the balcony soon after Main Floor Oswald was captured. That man was not George Applin. I know you don't agree with me on everything, but do you have a theory about why the list of Texas Theater patrons disappeared while in DPD custody?

Bart, Thank you for making all these docs from Mr. Blunt available to all of us. For lengthy files such as this one, it would be even more helpful if they were text searchable. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, I’m told, you can make the docs searchable with just a couple of menu choices. It’s amazing how good the OCR searches can be. Even fuzzy typewriter images are often quite searchable. At any rate, thanks again!

There is no evidence that George Applin left the theater through the alley exit, nor is there evidence that he left the theater in time to be the man seen by Bernard Haire. (He said he left the theater “later” after the police had questioned the customers.) Nowhere in his affidavit or 1964 testimony does he say when he first saw Main Floor Oswald in the theater. Since the list of theater patrons vanished, we only have two eyewitnesses on the record as to when Main Floor Oswald arrived at the theater, Butch Burroughs and Jack Davis. Both witnesses say he was there before 1:15 pm, the time the WC wanted us to believe Tippit was murdered. And Davis’s description of events suggests Main Floor Oswald may have created a scene because moved about in the theater, sitting right next to several different customers, which may be one of the reasons the customer list had to disappear. By his own account, Applin was on the main floor, not the balcony, and so he had nothing to do with the Balcony Oswald. According to the WC, citing the Postal/Brewer saga, Balcony Oswald entered the theater shortly after 1:30 pm, at least 20 minutes after Burroughs and Davis saw Main Floor Oswald inside the theater. At 1:45 pm, Postal called the police and said the suspicious man who ducked into the theater was hiding in the balcony. At 1:46 pm, the Dallas Police dispatcher broadcast this message: “Have information a suspect just went in the Texas Theater on West Jefferson ... supposed to be hiding in balcony. Two DPD reports say “Oswald” was arrested in the balcony. For decades now, Burroughs has said he saw a man who looked like Classic Oswald® arrested in the balcony soon after Main Floor Oswald was captured. That man was not George Applin.

Karl, Thanks much for the link to the Bill Drenas piece about his interview with Paul Bentley's nephew, C.F. Bentley. Here's an excerpt from it that interested me (and I've added some boldface emphasis): When the light turned green he traveled approximately 20 yards past the intersection when another police radio dispatch was broadcast that a suspect had entered the Texas Theater and was in the balcony. C. F. was almost directly in front of the Texas Theater at the time of this broadcast, and so he pulled into the first parking spot in front of the theater. He was the first squad to arrive there and as he got out of his car another arrived right after him. C. F. entered the front door of the theater with his shotgun and was told by a theater employee that the suspect had gone to the balcony. By this time there was another police officer beside him (name unrecalled) and they both went up the stairs to the balcony. As far as he could see there were 3 to 5 people in the balcony at that time, and he could hear voices saying turn up the house lights, but unfortunately the house lights were already on and it was still very difficult to see. At this time C. F.’s uncle Paul and another detective arrived in the balcony. Paul told C. F. to search everyone in the balcony and to get their names. Just as C. F. began to do this someone downstairs hollered, “The son of a bitch is downstairs!” All the officers turned and exited the balcony, ran down the stairs and turned left into the theater. I'd sure like to know who hollered out that the s.o.b. "is downstairs." According to Bentley, it diverted the immediate attention of the cops from the balcony. My bet, just conjecture, is that it was Captain Westbrook.

Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing apparently all index every single post from this forum, at least from the “JFK Assassination Debate” sub-forum, which is what I follow. JFK assassination-specific queries on all three of these search engines usually produce Education Forum results high on the first page of the results. The more specific the query is, from my experience, the higher the Ed Forum ranks in the results. That’s the main reason I try to make every post I write as good as I can make it. And yes, I wish they were all better. But keeping criticism alive of the Warren Commission conclusions is important to me and hopefully just as important to most other people here, and this is one of the best ways available to do it. Once again, thanks to James R. Gordon for helping to make this happen. If the Ed Forum were to become a private website, the search engines would no longer cover it. Please keep the “JFK Assassination Debate” forum open and public! A lot may depend on this!

Ron, That looks like a very thorough summary. In fairness, we should point out that some witness statements you summarized above were made long after the assassination. Burroughs in particular has made some conflicting statements over the years. On the other hand, he has said consistently since at least as far back as the 1990s that he saw a guy who looked like “Oswald” arrested in the balcony. In addition to what you have summarized above, I’d also like to look at the big picture here. Why do we always have so much evidence suggesting there were two Oswalds, two Oswalds active during the entire day of 11/22/63, active in and around Dallas for six weeks or so prior to the assassination, and, for that matter, for years prior to that? At 8:30 am on assassination day, while one Oswald was already at the TSBD, another showed a Texas driver’s license in the name of “Lee Oswald” or possibly “H. Lee Oswald” to buy beer from Jiffy store clerk Fred Moore. Try as they might, the WC couldn’t get the white shirted Oswald seen by Mrs. Reid inside the TSBD into a brown shirt in time to be seen by Baker and Truly. The evidence that one Oswald left Dealey Plaza in a Nash Rambler while the other rode in a bus and taxi is substantial. One of the closest witnesses to the Tippit slaying, Domingo Benavides, thought Tippit’s slayer looked just like “Oswald” except his hair in back was different. Police radio dispatches after the Tippit killing sought a man in a “white jacket” and “white shirt,” not a brown shirt. One “Oswald/Hidell” wallet appeared in Westbrook’s hands at the Tippit muder scene, and yet another “Oswald/Hidell” wallet was taken from Oswald in a police car after his arrest. Two wallets for two Oswalds. Even after “Oswald” was arrested there is credible evidence, compiled by a future mayor of Dallas, that another “Oswald” was seen in a car traced to J.D. Tippit’s close friend Carl Mather. Mather was employed by Agency connected Collins Radio. Mistakes in identities by eyewitnesses happen all the time, but many people were taken aback by the Mather connection here. Even the earliest researchers realized that in the six weeks or so prior to the assassination, a fellow who looked like Oswald and often claimed to be “Oswald” was busy setting him up in Dallas and environs. Sylvia Meagher described these actions in Accessories After the Fact in a section called “Two Oswalds.” Here’s just a partial list. Bear in mind that Classic Oswald® was demonstrably somewhere else during most of these encounters: “Oswald” visits the Sports Drome Rifle Range on Oct. 26, Nov. 9, Nov. 10, and again on Nov. 17, several times creating a scene and once shooting at another guy's target; On Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits Morgan's Gun Shop in Fort Worth. Also on Nov. 2 “Oswald” visits the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership where he test drives a car at wrecklessly high speeds saying he would soon come into enough money to buy a new car. On Nov. 6 or 7 “Oswald” visits the Irving Furniture Mart for a gun part and is referred to the shop where Dial Ryder works. On Nov. 15, “Oswald” goes to the Southland Hotel parking garage (Allright Parking Systems) and applies for a job and asks how high the Southland Building is and if it had a good view of downtown Dallas. On Nov. 20 “Oswald” hitch-hikes on the R.L. Thornton Expressway while carrying a 4 foot long package wrapped in brown paper and introduces himself to Ralph Yates as “Lee Harvey Oswald,” discusses the President's visit, and asks to be dropped across the street from the Texas School Book Depository (where Russian-speaking “Lee Harvey Oswald” is already working). Despite the fact that several H&L critics have been mocking John A. and me for years and calling us all kinds of names, they know as well as we do that there is a trainload of evidence for two Oswalds. The above is just a start at summarizing it.

Interesting question. Beckham would still be in his seventies, and so he might well be alive. We should note, however, that he testified to Garrison's grand jury and told a somewhat different story. He said, for example, that he never met "Oswald," and that he was not in Dallas in 1963. He did say he knew Ferrie, Banister and some of the other New Orleans characters, but not Shaw. His very lengthy testimony is here: https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/garr/grandjury/pdf/Beckham.pdf

Steve, Thanks for the link on Beckham. What a hoot! John A. describes Beckham as “a runner for Ferrie, Banister, Clay Shaw, Sergio Arcacha, and Grady Durham..." who “was given $200 by Ferrie and told to deliver a package to a man at the Executive Inn Motel in Dallas. Beckham delivered the package, which contained photographs and street maps, to Lawrence Howard at the motel...." John added in a note that the “package may also have contained diagrams of the sewer system in Dealey Plaza, which Lieutenant Francis Fruge learned from Captain Will Fritz had been found in (Sergio) Arcacha’s apartment following the assassination." What’s really stunning in this interview is that just as Beckham was getting up to what happened in Dallas, the HSCA guy said he was running out of tape (or the tape was running too long) and wrapped things up!! What an investigation! Perhaps Beckham would have talked about the theater, but we’ll never know. Maybe it's just me, but I'm beginning to think the HSCA didn't want to know a whole lot of things. On that measure, they were a bang-up success!

Steve, Thank you for this information. If this was Beckham, or anyone else, why was the “assistant manager” providing him with an alibi using obviously bogus information? Does anyone know this guy’s name? It sounds preposterous. An “assistant manager” who started that day but didn’t know when the theater opened or how to turn on the house lights? Of course, if DPD hadn’t lost the list of theater patrons, we’d know much more. Everything pointed to the balcony, until the main floor Oswald got busted. And we still have two DPD reports saying "Oswald" was arrested in the balcony.

Everyone has a theory, but Applin never said he was taken out the back of the theater. In fact, he testified that he “went out to the candy counter” after the main floor arrest and heard questions from a policeman, and provided him answers when asked for “my name and address and and where I was staying at the time.” He added that he only went down to the station "later" after “they got everybody’s name.” It doesn’t sound like that happened right away, and I see no reason to believe he would have exited from the alley door when he was right by the lobby. Where, by the way, are those names the police wrote down? When Mr. Parker is finished with his usual insults of this forum and me, perhaps he’d like to let us know about his theory on that. Why did they have to disappear?

MEGATHANKS! I'll bet I speak for the vast majority of forum members in saying that this is a wonderful addition to the rules. Thanks again.

That was a terrific discovery, Joe! I don't know why more people interested in the biological evidence don't make a bigger deal of it. The only excuse that WC loyalists can make is that Belmont or one or more of the medics was hallucinating, right?

Why should anyone have to ask that their own material be removed from this site just because David Von Pein is taking snippets of it and misrepresenting it? Do we have any other options?

Michael, Actually, I’m the one who brought up the RXZIM cryptonym for “Oswald.” The Pseudonyms and Aliases list is closely related to the Cryptonym list. In fact, there is a hyperlink to the Cryptonym list right on the Mary Ferrell page Bill Simpich pointed to in the OP. Despite the obvious caution, it is real progress to get RXZIM on the list. The current status will probably always exist. My bet is that every reference everywhere to RXZIM began being scrubbed immediately after the assassination of JFK. In his note above, Mr. Parnell didn’t mention that, from the HSCA’s own notes, it is obvious that Wilcott wasn’t allowed to fully testify under oath, and that Wilcott had to agree “to not reveal specifics of specific questions.”