Jim Hargrove

Wish I had a definitive answer to that question.  For the record, below are the existing transcript excerpts Paul is talking about.  They're from Channel 1.  Can anyone recognize Jackson's voice?  The surviving recording can be heard at the following link by clicking on on the loudspeaker icon about halfway down the page:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/index.htm

The following assumes Jackson is the dispatcher:

At 12:45, Murray Jackson tells Tippit (#78) to "move into central Oak Cliff area":

"Dispatcher: 87, 78, move into central Oak Cliff area."

"78 (Ptm. J.D. Tippit): I'm about Kiest and Bonnie View."

At 12:54 p.m., dispatcher Murray Jackson contacted J.D. to make sure he was in Oak Cliff. 

"You are in the Oak Cliff area, are you not?" Jackson asked. 

"Lancaster and Eighth," J.D. replied. 

"You will be at large for any emergency that comes in." 
 

Thanks again, Joe.

It’s probably been a long time since you had much of a Wisconsin connection, but since you spent your youth in the state, I wonder if the following would mean anything at all to you.  Any connection with Classic Oswald® may be a long shot, but there is some suggestive background, as follows.

There were two alleged appearances of “Lee Harvey Oswald” in Wisconsin during 1963. There is some evidence that “Oswald” checked into the Nicolet Hotel in Sparta, Wisconsin on March 29, 1963, and in the evening had his hair cut in the hotel barbershop by a fellow named John Abbott, who said the young man introduced himself as “Lee Harvey Oswald.”  Abbott noted that the young man had a mastoidectomy scar behind his left ear.

The second sighting occurred on September 16, 1963 in Hubertus, Wisconsin.  From Harvey and Lee, p. 595:

On September 16, while Harvey and Marina were in New Orleans, someone
signed "Lee Harvey Oswald" to a restaurant registry in Hubertus, WI. President
Kennedy was due to speak in nearby Ashland, WI on September 24 during a nationwide
tour to promote conservation. The same day a man signed "Lee Oswald, Dallas" in a
guest registration book at a nightclub about 30 miles from Milwaukee, WI (Milwaukee
Sentinel, November 30, 1963 ).

NOTE: The possibility has to be considered that the conspirators were trying to create
the impression that "Oswald" was stalking President Kennedy. This would explain the
sightings of Oswald in Sparta, WI, Hubertus, WI, Oak Ridge, TN, Miami, FL, and other
remote locations.

But here’s where the story gets weirder.  Note the following newspaper image and caption apparently from the 6/30/61 Wisconsin newspaper The Post Crescent:

According to the U.S. Census of 1940, a “Lee Oswald” was listed in Ward 6, City of Madison, in Dane County, Wisconsin (see below).  The actual handwritten “Population Schedule” sheet listing dozens of Madison residents, including “Lee Oswald” indicates that he was 3/12 (three-twelths) of a year old when the information was taken.  The handwritten image is a little big to upload but here’s the abbreviated listing:

In all likelihood, this Wisconsin Lee Oswald was born in 1939, just like Classic Oswald®.  No doubt it is a big country, but I’ve been surprised by how few “Lee Oswalds” appear in census and death records in recent history.  Not nearly as many as I would have assumed.  The strangest thing of all is that this Wisconsin “Lee Oswald” seems to simply disappear after the 1961 newspaper story.  I can’t find him listed anywhere else.

I’ve only been looking into this for a little more than a day, so I may well have missed a lot.  Thanks again for your kind words.

Thanks, Joe.  Whether Tippit’s erstwhile partner was on the dispatcher’s job for two days or four days, it’s yet another of those coincidences in this case that are so hard to view without suspicion.  

I’ve always thought Tippit’s actions after McWatters’ bus passed the GloCo station without “Oswald” getting off indicated he had expected to meet him, but if Joe happens to read this, perhaps he’d talk a bit about what William Mentzel apparently told Marie Tippit, and whether that information would have needed cooperation—or a cover-up—from the dispatcher(s).  

7 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Hmm.

So Deputy Chief George Lumpkin knew by shortly after 5 pm that he needed to have physical possession of the dispatch tapes/dictabelt recordings. This was before the FBI seized all of the relevant evidence late Friday night. Before Chief Curry was pressured into releasing the "evidence" to the FBI. 

As a matter of fact, at 5 pm, the lineups in which "Oswald" was identified (or not) by various witnesses had yet to take place!

All of the audio evidence was turned over to the FBI on Friday night, but was later returned as "too vague". Meanwhile, apparently no one from the DPD could have listened to the original tapes before they went to the FBI except for Lumpkin. No one from the DPD would know whether the audio evidence the FBI returned to the DPD was original, except for Lumpkin.

I'd say Deputy Chief George Lumpkin's connections to various suspects outside the DPD deserve some very careful scrutiny.

Makes sense to me.  But securing the radio dispatch recordings doesn’t seem all that incriminating, at least to me.  After all, the U.S. President had just been assassinated, the Governor of Texas had been wounded, and uniformed city cop murdered, all in the city Lumpkin was empowered to protect.  Impounding of evidence sounds like standard operating procedure.

I’d sure like to know exactly what Lumpkin said to Curry about taking police detectives from Parkland back to Dealey Plaza.  Did he refer directly to the TSBD, or simply to the vicinity of the assassination?
 

Paul,

Here’s what I’ve been able to find searching at Baylor’s John Armstrong collection (emphasis added).

According to an interview with Murray Jackson summarized by HSCA staff,  

“JACKSON tells us that the tapes were sequestered almost immediately after the shift ended, and JACKSON would not have had access to the original, to dub in any comments. JACKSON left after his shift and went to the home of TIPPIT.”

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/10393/rec/1

According to a summary of an HSCA interview of Sergeant Gerald D. Henslee, supervisor of the dispatcher’s unit, 

“On 11-22-63 he had four officers and four civilians working for him on the day shift. The officers were: V. A.McDaniels, C. E. Hulse, Murray Jackson (Tippit's erstwhile partner) and Bob Huffstutler….”

The summary of Henslee’s interview goes on to state, 

“Later that afternoon he started to transcribe channel two (autograph disc) - about 5 PM. After that, Chief Lumpkin came in and told him to take all the tapes (and discs), place them in sealed envelopes and bring them to him. This was done shortly after 5 PM. Tapes (and discs) were sent to FBI for transcribing, but were returned later as channel one was too vague what with the interference and the unfamiliar names, etc.

“Chief Lumpkin again gave them to Henslee for complete transcribing. It was 3 to 4 days later that he completed the task and returned them to Lumpkin.

“Henslee next saw the original tapes sometime in the fall of 1968 when he received a call from Judy Bonner, ex-news media in Dallas area, turned author. She wanted him to transcribe the tapes for her efforts with the book she was working on. She delivered them to his apartment and he transcribed them – again, but this time for her. Doesn't know where tapes were between November, 1963 and Fall of 1968.

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/9716/rec/2

Interesting that the DPD dispatcher supervisor said didn’t know where the “tapes” (actually Dictabelts) were from November 1963 to the Fall of 1968.

Steve Thomas seems to know the DPD archives inside and out.  He might know more about this.

8 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I just want to add that I too noticed that out-of-order 1:10 timestamp. But when I subtracted 7 minutes from all the other timestamps to correct them (because I had concluded that the WC/FBI had added 7 minutes to them all), the 1:10 timestamp landed in order. And so I concluded that -- probably -- when the transcripts of the radio logs were altered by adding the 7 minutes, the persons doing so accidentally missed the 1:10 timestamp.

Sandy,

The question, then, would be were transcripts made of the Dictabelt recordings before the FBI seized and replaced them, and the evidence seems to suggest there wasn’t time.  From John’s write-up in The Murder of J.D. Tippit:

DPD dispatcher Murray Jackson, who worked 20 years at the Dallas Police department, told the HSCA that the dictabelts/tapes were sequestered almost immediately after his shift ended on November 22, 1963. Police Chief Lumpkin had the dictabelts and discs placed in sealed envelopes and taken to his office. A few days later the Dallas Police gave the FBI their original dictabelts and discs that contained the original recordings of the dispatchers' radio transmissions from channel 1 and channel 2 on November 22, 1963.

Note also this indication of a TAPE SPLICE at 1:44 on the FBI transcript of the recordings.  What on earth is a tape splice doing on a Dictabelt recording?  Dictabelts are not tape and they cannot be spliced, although I'm not sure what Murray Jackson's reference to "tapes" was about above.  I'll try to remember to ask John about it.

John’s complete write-up on the Dictabelt alteration begins here:

https://harveyandlee.net/Tippit/Tippit.html#Dictabelt

Interesting question, John, but I don’t know the Dealey Plaza imagery well enough to answer it.  Perhaps someone has studied the surviving images of the big clock before. It may not lead anywhere significant, but you never know.

54 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Steve, 

I am not so sure it is a typo for a few reasons:

1. Three of the time stamps you pointed out have a parenthesis around them, whereas the "1:10 pm" time stamp does not, indicating to me that the transcriber of this transcript was probably looking at an annotated copy of the dispatch tapes, one that someone had marked with parentheses around the (changed) times. This is a general pattern - look at several time stamps over several pages around the Tippit shooting. There is one exception to this pattern, but still, it is a pattern.

I know that's speculative, but  . . .

2. Look at the bottom of page 408. There in black and white is an obviously changed time stamp. It now reads "1:19", yet the whiteout and the original time it hides are still clearly visible: 1:10. 

It is indisputable that the current "1:19" at the bottom of page 408 is typed over an earlier time. 

3. Finally, why would ambulances 602 and/or 603 be en route to Baylor? J.D. Tippit was taken to Methodist Hospital in Oak Cliff, not the Baylor Medical Center which was much closer to Dealey Plaza. I think you were trying to imply that because 602 and 603 responded on the extant transcript very soon after the report of the Tippit shooting that their calls to the dispatcher were, in fact, to pick up Tippit. While that may be so, it does not explain why one of them, 603, notified the dispatcher that they had arrived at Baylor.

That 603 ambulance could not have been responding to the shooting of J.D. Tippit. No ambulance took Tippit to Baylor Medical Center. I agree with you that a Dudley Hughes ambulance responded to the Tippit shooting report very soon after the 1:07 shooting, and it was probably 602 from Dudley Hughes, literally right around the corner. And therefore, the "1:10 pm" time stamp was probably accurate.

In any event, you and I agree that the type written transcripts almost certainly reflect the changes made to obscure the fact that Tippit was shot earlier than 1:15. I agree with those who believe the time was probably around 1:07 or 1:08. (Way too early for "Oswald" to arrived at 10th and Patton on foot from 1026 N. Beckley.)

 

T.F. Bowley said that he arrived at 1:10 according to his watch and that he called in on Tippit's radio.  Quite a coincidence for that typo!

Steve,

I can’t say that I see a luggage rack on the b&w photo either, but Paul Jolliffe posted this shot of a 1961 Nash Rambler station wagon, and the luggage rack doesn’t appear to be a very prominent feature.
 

But whether you believe in the bus and taxi “Oswald” or the Nash Rambler “Oswald,” or both, the evidence we have shows Oswald(s) leaving the TSBD long before Lumpkin and the others started questioning people leaving the front door.   The bus and taxi Oswald arrived at his rooming house just 10 minutes after Lumpkin ordered the front door challenges, and other evidence shows he boarded the bus around 12:40.  Roger Craig said he saw the Nash Rambler Oswald enter the car also at 12:40, nearly ten minutes before Lumpkin’s arrival.  There is even a photo showing “12:40” on the big TSBD outdoor clock and apparently showing the Nash Rambler on Elm.

Sandy raised a good point about how the FBI altered the police radio Dictabelts.  (Dictabelts themselves can’t be altered.  The audio had to be transferred to tape, edited, and then re-recorded on a Dictabelt machine.)  However, the evidence seems to show that the Dictabelts began to be falsified at about the actual time of the Tippit shooting, circa 1:06 pm, to give Classic Oswald® sufficient time to walk .8 mile from his rooming house to 10th and Patton.

Look at the official transcript of DPD channel 1 (the primary channel) below.  Are we really to believe that between 1:04 and 1:18—less than an hour after JFK was assassinated—there were only 10 brief statements?  That’s less than one per minute!  Compare that chatter with what immediately went on before and after.  This is the time, I’m almost certain, for which the FBI altered the evidence.

Sandy,

Assuming you are correct about the evidence presented in the thread linked above, and it sure looks like you are, this puts to rest a whole lot of nonsense about Shelley and Lovelady. Clearly, they both went back into the TSBD soon after the shots rang out. 

Now the question becomes, was the whole Excellent Adventure about accompanying police to the railroad tracks invented by WC attorneys to impeach Vickie Adams’ timing, or was it invented by Shelley and Lovelady to protect their own butts.  A clear answer to this question would help our search for the truth keep moving right along!

Sandy,

Megathanks for all the hard work you did on this, but I do have one quick question about your methodology.  You apparently base your 11/22/63 ID’s on the body types of Gloria Calvery, Carol Reed, Carol Hicks, and Karen Westbrook and the premise that all four women stood together in a line along the parade route.  Is there evidence that they stood together in their testimonies or elsewhere?

Thanks again for what you have done here!  Assuming you are correct, and it sure looks like you are, this puts to rest a whole lot of BS about Shelley and Lovelady.  Clearly, they both went back into the TSBD soon after the shots rang out. 

One more question.... Since there exists that infamous clip that people say shows Shelley and Lovelady walking away from the TSBD, do you think any kind of intel-style faking could have been involved here?  If John Butler happens to read this, his input on this question would be appreciated.

For a third and perhaps final time, thanks again Sandy!!

Thanks, Paul.  I missed it.

Paul,

Did Lovelady say anywhere he talked to Gloria Calvery a few moments after the hit?  In his first day affidavit, Bill Shelley said he ran across Elm and talked to her before going back inside the building.  From this image, Shelley’s conversation with her must have happened very quickly, if it is true at all.

Thanks to Sandy for all this hard work putting this evidence together.

On 5/19/2019 at 9:05 AM, David Josephs said:

So is this just a huge coincidence?     Can’t be the same guy....

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKwilsonS.htm

There is a claim this Wilson had a hand in with the BYP.....

Justin Joseph "Steve" Wilson was born in Mansfield, Ohio. He spent three years in the United States Army and five years in the United States Marines.

Wilson was a member of Interpen (Intercontinental Penetration Force) that was established in 1961 by Gerry P. Hemming. Other members included Loran Hall, Roy Hargraves, William Seymour, Lawrence Howard, Howard K. Davis, Edwin Collins, James Arthur Lewis, Dennis Harber, Bill Dempsey, Dick Whatley, Ramigo Arce, Ronald Augustinovich, Joe Garman, Edmund Kolby, Ralph Schlafter, Manuel Aguilar and Oscar Del Pinto.

This group of experienced soldiers were involved in training members of the anti-Castro groups funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in Florida in the early 1960s. When the government began to crack down on raids from Florida in 1962, Interpen set up a new training camp in New Orleans. The group carried out a series of raids on Cuba in an attempt to undermine the government of Fidel Castro. This involved a plan to create a war by simulating an attack on Guantanamo Naval Base.

Some researchers believe that a combination of Interpen members and anti-Castro Cubans were involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This included Wilson, James Arthur Lewis, Roy Hargraves, Edwin Collins, Gerry P. Hemming, David Morales, Herminio Diaz Garcia, Tony Cuesta, Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio Gonzalez, Felipe Vidal Santiagoand William (Rip) Robertson.

Steve Wilson was working as an ironworker on a Key West desalination plant project, when he died of heart failure in 1984.

David,

I did a little online digging and can't find any information on the Interpen Wilson having ever lived in Texas, much less the Dallas area.  This could be, though, because there was very little biographical information on him at all.  John Simkin on this forum did some digging ten or 15 years ago but doesn't mention the Interpen Wilson having ever been in Texas.

The name "Steve Wilson" seems pretty common.  If we could find a "Justin Joseph 'Steve' Wilson," or something close, associated with the TSBD, we might have something.  Otherwise, I don't see how we can assume it is anything other than a minor coincidence of names.

John B. -- Same thing, but even more so, for Ramigo Arce.

1 hour ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Sandy Larsen,

On a different note, I agree with you that the most important consideration for the conspirators on 11/22/63 was that the president was dead, not that "Oswald" be framed perfectly. I have long believed that "Oswald" was to be the patsy as the shooter if possible, but failing that, "Oswald" was to be blamed as the ringleader. This is where I disagree with Jim and John Armstrong. I have already demonstrated that there is clear evidence that Buell Wesley Frazier was impersonated before 11/22/63 (CE 3077) and was implicated after the shots with the  early press reports that the DPD "found" a .303 British Enfield - Frazier's exact weapon!

Paul,

But then why was such an effort made to frame "Oswald" as a shooter?  All those appearances at the Sports Drome rifle range, The Irving Furniture Mart and Dial Ryder referral (for the scope that eventually wasn't needed), the 4-foot long package while hitch-hiking with Ralph Leon Yates, that brown paper package mailed to "Lee Oswald" with 12-cent overdue postage notice delivered to Ruth Paine.  These elements of the set-up, all prior to the assassination, sure sound like trying to make "Oswald" appear to be a shooter, not a ringleader.

Steve,

It’s a little hard to parse, but I read the relevant portion of Fritz’s notes as follows: [Oswald] claims [he was on the] 2nd floor [with a] Coke when off[icer Truly] came in". This seems like  corroboration of the 2nd floor lunch room encounter.

Please pardon my lack of time for better research, but I think the timeline will show that whether you believe in the Nash Rambler Oswald or the bus and taxi Oswald or both, all had left the building well before the time Lumpkin, Kaminski, and Truly began challenging people at the front door.

Harry Holmes’ notation of the Negro employees and the elevator happened about 12:15, well before the assassination.  Postal Inspector/FBI informant Holmes is the only person in the known universe who heard “Oswald” say while in police custody that he had traveled to Mexico City.  The case is also excellent that Holmes helped to fabricate the U.S. Postal “evidence” for the Carcano rifle.  I wouldn’t rely on anything he said.

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I have talked with Frazier four or five times as I recall, twice at the Bethesda conference, and at least twice at Lancer conferences. He has been asked about prayerman in my presence on two or three of those occasions. As I recall, he insists Oswald was not on the front steps. As I recall, he looked at "prayerman" briefly and said he didn't know who that was--but that it most definitely was not Oswald. 

The last time he spoke at Lancer, for that matter, he spoke with his son, and they said they were working on a book on Frazier's connection to the case, and hinted that this book would deal with the prayer man issue as well. I have no idea if this book is still in the works, but was told by Frazier in 2016 that he was still working on it--to which I requested he include as much as he could remember on his co-workers---Shelley, Dougherty, Lovelady, Jarman, etc.

Pat,

That's very much what Mr. Frazier told the banned Ed Forum member in a very recent interview.  Thank you.

Rather than argue endlessly about this blurry photo, why doesn’t someone just call Buell Wesley Frazier and ask him about the so-called “Prayer Man?”  He can be seen directly facing the person you are debating about.

Len Osanic (Black Ops Radio) knows Mr. Frazier’s number and might share it with a serious researcher.

And, by the way, this has already been done by a person banned here, so I won’t say what he says.  If you really think Prayer Man is “Oswald,” wouldn’t it be worth at least hearing from an eyewitness who was right there looking at the person?

On 5/17/2019 at 7:28 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Jim,

Following is the chain of events as I believe it happened. I've listed all the steps so that you can tell me if and where it doesn't answer your question.

1. On 11/22/63, the DPD discovers in their interrogation of Oswald that he claims to have gone outside just before the presidential parade passed by. (Interrogation attendees noted that Oswald said he was outside with Shelley after lunch. Hosty's handwritten notes say specifically that Oswald went out to watch the parade.)
2. Not long afterward the FBI begins to formulate a story to cover up Oswald's being outside. This story has Officer Baker and Roy Truly seeing Oswald in the second floor lunchroom. The story is modified over time as necessary (e.g. their was/wasn't a coke involved).
3. In 1964 the WC begins finalizing the official story, which is to be based on the truth whenever possible. It incorporates the bogus second floor encounter.
4. The WC realizes that Vickie Adams' early descent down the stairs contradicts their narrative, specifically that Oswald descended the same steps to get to the second floor lunchroom. It's too late to change the lunchroom story. So they need to discredit Victoria Adams' testimony. Since there were multiple witnesses to her descent, they feel it is most convincing to discredit the timing of the event. They feel that the issue is important enough that they need to have multiple witnesses discredit the timing.
5. Lovelady and Shelley are talked into saying they entered the west TSBD door, but only after being outside several minutes after the shooting. They are told to say they saw Vickie exit the stairwell on the first floor. Vickie is likewise told to say she saw them as she exited the stairwell.
6. The WC lawyer who will be questioning Vickie, Shelley, and Lovelady, Mr. Belin, is briefed as to how the three are expected to testify. Belin outlines the questions he will ask. He expects them all to say they saw each other.
7. The attempt at getting the three witnesses to agree on the fake encounter failed. None was willing to say they saw the other. I suspect that the all wondered why they were being ask to point to someone else, as though they were being asked to implicate that person. The nearest the FBI/WC got to their goal was when Lovelady blurted out that he wasn't sure it was Vickie Adams that he saw. In the end the WC decides to alter Adams' testimony about the encounter and be done with it.

Sandy,

Thanks for spelling this all out, and sorry for this kind of rushed response.  You make a solid argument, but here’s what I think:

I think “Oswald” was instructed to stay inside the second floor lunchroom during the parade.  (Can you imagine the plotters allowing him to go outside and be seen and/or photographed by any number of people during the assassination?  All that planning would be ruined!)  At DPD headquarters, I think he DID say he was outside the building with Shelley because he was led to believe he could trust Shelley and that Shelley would vouch for him now that he suddenly needed an alibi.  

This position may be in a minority of one, but my belief is that the 2nd floor lunchroom encounter pretty much happened as Baker and Truly described.  The TSBD has an elevated first floor.  You have to climb those outer steps to reach it from the sidewalk.  The back staircase has two sets of steps, at right angles, to reach each floor.  Thus Baker had to climb three sets of stairs just to reach the second floor. In the excitement, I can easily see that he might have thought the encounter was on the third or fourth floor in his original statement.  And I don’t think Truly would have risked saying a non-employee was really a TSBD worker.  If the falsity was exposed, his perfidy would have been exposed also.

I think Vickie Adams DID see Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor, and so did Baker, Truly and newsman Robert MacNeil, who has talked often about the “three calm men” he saw in the back room of the first floor at about 12:34. MacNeil emphasized the almost surreal calmness of these men surrounded by all that mayhem. In 2005, attorney William Weston wrote a piece for The Fourth Decade and expanded on this forum in which he used a process of elimination to determine who those three calm men were. Here's part of what he wrote:

Quote

 

One thing that should be noted is the free and casual manner by which the three men occupied their surroundings. They could not have been strangers who had just walked in off the street. Their familiarity with the ground floor of the Book Depository is indicated by their precise and ready knowledge of the location of telephones. Only employees who come to work on a regular basis could have acquired such a comprehensive awareness of incidental details. Therefore the three men must have been workers whom other employees in the building would have recognized. On the 22nd of November there were sixty-nine people who came to work that day. Of that sixty-nine, thirty-six were women and twenty-three were men. Thus our field of inquiry narrows from an infinite range of possibilities to less than a couple dozen.

Of the twenty-four men who came to work, nine had gone outside to watch the motorcade. The other fifteen were either the inside the building at the time of the shooting or had gone inside immediately afterwards. Three of these men were management personnel: Steve Wilson, Otis Williams, and Roy Truly. Steve Wilson, the manager of a publishing company, remained in his office on the third floor. Otis Williams was standing on the steps of the Book Depository when the shooting occurred. Immediately afterwards he went inside and headed for the back stairs and climbed them up to the fourth floor in order to see the activity at the Triple Underpass, where he thought the shots originated. Roy Truly went up to the roof with Officer Marion Baker where a gunman was thought to be posted. Thus we can eliminate Wilson, Williams, and Truly as being among those who were on the ground floor when Robert MacNeil came in.

The remaining eleven men were all warehouse workers. Eight of these warehouse men were Negroes. Although MacNeil did not specifically mention skin color, we can be sure that he would not have omitted such an obvious characteristic in his description of the three men. Thus the eight black workers can be eliminated from consideration. This leaves five men: Jack Daugherty, William Shelley, Billy Lovelady, Wesley Frazier, and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Jack Daugherty could not have been one of the three, for he was up on the fifth floor during the shooting and came down at 12:33 by means of the west freighter. As soon as he came down, he immediately got in a discussion about the shooting with a fellow worker named Eddie Piper, a Negro warehouseman. [13] Daugherty would not have had time to stand with two other men by the pay phone, when MacNeil came into the building.

We can rule out Oswald as one of the three men for two reasons. For one thing MacNeil did not later recall seeing Oswald before, when he saw him that same night at the police station. Since MacNeil was close enough to the three men to interact with two of them, MacNeil would most likely have remembered Oswald if he were one of the three. Furthermore Oswald was on the second floor at least until 12:32 or 12:33. He would not have been able to go down the stairs and lounge around with two companions by the time MacNeil came in at 12:34. When taken together, these considerations make a strong argument that Oswald was not one of the three.

 

I think Mr. Weston correctly identified Shelley and Lovelady as two of the “three calm men.” But the third may well have been “Lee Harvey Oswald” instead of Frazier.  Do you think Oswald would have left the building just minutes after the hit without permission from his direct supervisor?  Shelley had to tell him to leave so it would appear that he was running away.  And someone had to instruct him how to leave the building, how to travel to the Texas Theater, and perhaps even give him those two half dollar bills that magically appeared in the Dallas Archives.

I think Shelley and Lovelady admitted in their first day statements that they went back into the building relatively quickly because they knew many people saw them do just that.  But as the cover-up grew, they felt the need to claim being elsewhere for a longer and longer period of time, not so much to impeach Vickie Adams’s timeline, but to save their own guilty hides.  If not Shelley, who told Oswald to leave the building and go to the Texas Theater?    Truly couldn't have done it--he was busy with Baker.

Sandy,

John A. saw the "Baker" clip, or one similar to it, some time ago and he told me that he didn't think the cop shown was Baker. From memory, he said something about Baker being stockier than this cop and being able to see Baker's parked motorcycle and that this image was probably taken after Baker was already inside. I'll try to remember to get a better description from him, but I looked up Baker's testimony and noticed this, indicating there were other cops around: 

SENATOR COOPER - Were there any officers that you saw near the School Book Depository when you went in?
Mr. BAKER - There was an officer working traffic on that corner, and Officer J. W. Williams was---
Mr. DULLES - By that corner you mean the corner of Elm and Houston?
Mr. BAKER - That is right, sir. J. W. Williams who is a motorcycle officer, was, I thought, over on the left-hand side of me, and he was right with me, but as I ran in this building, I found out that I was by myself. I didn't know where anybody went.

John has sent some updates to HarveyandLee.net that I'll try to get done before going over the Shelley and Lovelady business, but I do appreciate you covering this ground again.  More asap....
 

13 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Jim,

If Shelley did give "Oswald" his instructions on what to do after the shots, then it strikes me that Shelley would be the first person named, once "Oswald" started naming names. And Shelley, of course, would have received his instructions from Truly, so he would have been next on the totem pole. And higher up yet would have been TSBD President, Jack C. Cason. Cason (former commander of American Foreign Legion Post 53) , as we may know, hosted a party in the spring of 1961 (post Bay of Pigs) during which Mrs. Cason was quoted as saying that "someone ought to shoot the president"

Here's a fascinating connection between the FBI and the American Legion:

During WWII, FDR's Attorney General Robert Jackson "sidetracked a proposal by American Legion officials to monitor suspicious activity in defense plants and their communities and to report their findings to military intelligence: instead Jackson authorized the American Legion Contact program, whereby FBI agents recruited and directed Legionnaires in their monitoring activities. By the end of the war, 40,000 Legionnaires had served as FBI informers. (The FBI continued many of these contacts after 1945. Intensified following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, this program was terminated only in 1966.)

https://books.google.com/books?id=VnQduXa4JdoC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=american+legion+FBI+contact+program&source=bl&ots=SDbZzr9RlM&sig=ACfU3U1weYDjAKCYCW_vj1KgFt6VvPS

So Jack Cason, a self-described "patriotic citizen who upholds our democratic principles", was the head of an American Foreign Legion Post during the time when the FBI encouraged the AFL to report disloyal Americans. And Bill Shelley testified to having worked in a defense plant during WWII, and he (allegedly) later claimed to an interviewer that he had intelligence connections (CIA, supposedly.)

Bill Shelley and Jack Cason, two guys who for decades had specialized in detecting subversives. 

And yet, right under their noses, the reddest of the red - ol' "Oswald" himself - worked right there in the TSBD, yet they had no idea!

Golly gee, what irony . . .  😄

I wonder if the Glaze letters/Shelley story about almost being arrested on the afternoon of 11/22/63 might actually have a little truth to it? Could "Oswald" have actually let slip something about his contact at the TSBD (without coming right out and saying he was CIA), and could the DPD have reacted by bringing Shelley in for an interrogation? We don't know exactly what "Oswald" did say, but I think we all agree that the DPD's excuse for not producing a verbatim record of what he did say is B.S. And if the Glaze letters detail about Shelley's release coming after calls were placed to the DPD was true, then that possibly would explain the disappearance of the verbatim "Oswald" interrogations.

If Shelley was "Oswald's" contact at the TSBD (again, "if") then almost certainly it was Shelley in the background of those strange leaflet photos from New Orleans in August. 

Hmm.

"Oswald" to Shelley to Truly to  Cason to  ? ? ?

Could be.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/C Disk/Cason Jack Charles/Item 01.pdf

Thanks, Paul.  Most of the Cason stuff you posted is news to me.  

If memory serves (and it often doesn’t) didn’t the Weston/Glaze material say that Shelley claimed he was actually charged with JFK’s murder by the DPD, but that the charge was quickly dropped?  If that is true, the National Security hammer must have come down hard and fast in Dallas that day.

That same hammer is my guess about what happened to the “Oswald” interrogations as well.  My bet is that at some point while still alive and in custody the Russian-speaking Oswald began singing like a bird, and that’s when the complete record of the sessions suddenly got lost.  I think Fritz’s notes and the  various reports from the questioning all tried to be honest… up to a point.

But when the National Security juggernaut began, the pressure was surely incredible.  I’ll bet there were serious threats made to anyone who dared to endanger our national well-being, all entirely “patriotic,” of course.

Sandy,

Sorry, I'm trying not to be so dogmatic, but I really don't remember your answer to the multiple lines of inquiry question above and it puzzles me.  If you'd answer once more, I'll make a real effort to remember it.

And your efforts to explain the Shelley and Lovelady appearances outside the TSBD really are appreciated!!!

Joe,

For some reason, Google Photos several times has sent my Google phone two different pictures of "Lee Harvey Oswald" and asked me if they were the same person.  I haven't answered yet.  The same Google bot often sends me matching pictures of family members and asks if they are the same person.  It never seems to make a mistake.