Jim Hargrove

Tony, Just a minute or two after the shots, both freight elevators appeared to be stopped on the fifth floor when Truly pushed the button to call an elevator. Assuming it was Truly who ordered Shelley to stay by the elevators on the first floor, Shelley probably remained there until more cops arrived. During that time, he or Lovelady must have restarted the power to the elevators, including the front passenger car, which would enable the passenger elevator escape according to John A’s theory. When more cops arrived at the back of the first floor, Truly probably shut off the power again, showing the police that people on the upper floors would have to remain on those floors, and he then accompanied some of the cops up the stairs.

But do you think the FBI altered the time stamps?

Sandy…. Ah… I didn’t understand your position. We agree wholeheartedly that the FBI is the most reliable disinformation agency in this whole, sordid affair. But it’s hard to know who to distrust even nearly as much as the FBI here… but I’ll try to get back to you tomorrow. Tony…. Thanks. Before we can proceed, please see John A’s case presented on my website that the FBI time stamps on the so-called Dictabelt “recordings” of the DPD radio broadcasts have been totally falsified. Just go to the link here: https://harveyandlee.net/Tippit/Tippit.html and scroll down to the heading: “The FBI alters the Dallas Police dictabelts”

Tony, I can’t put an exact time on the second instance, but it seems as if the electricity to the elevators was shut off on two different occasions that afternoon. Once, of course, during a few minutes around the time the shots rang out, and then again several minutes later, as noted by Adams and others. There is no evidence I’m aware of for this, but my bet is that the DPD or some of the Feds may have ordered the elevators stopped that second time to prevent escapes, but I’m just guessing. Do you have anything more specific?

Sandy, I thought you believed that the WC added the Shelley/Lovelady sighting to Vickie Adams’ testimony in an attempt to push the encounter later and give “Oswald” time to descend the back staircase from the 6th floor? Have I read that incorrectly? If you DO think Adams talked about Shelley/Lovelady on the first floor before the two men testified, it would certainly make sense to ask those two men about it. But if you planned to put false words into Ms. Adams’ mouth, why would you ask the two subjects to confirm the falsehood unless you had a secret handshake agreement with them to lie, which apparently the WC didn’t have. (I do think, though, that EVERYONE was content to see all the additional time both Shelley and Lovelady inserted into their outdoor adventures before re-entering the TSBD.) What makes this all a bit difficult is we don’t have at hand our usual source for 100 percent disinformation whenever it was needed to cover up anything smacking of conspiracy. The FBI appears to be only peripherally involved in this issue. Without them, who can we trust for 100 percent bs?

I can’t see that any of the above offers substantial evidence that Shelley and Lovelady could not have been the two white men allegedly seen by Baker at the back of the first floor of the TSBD, by the freight elevator and the electrical panels, within a minute or two of the shots. Arguing about seconds here is not going to solve this issue. If Baker saw Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor so soon after the assassination, there is no reason he would have known who they were. But Truly certainly would have known, and we have to wonder why the WC pointedly didn’t ask him to identify them. And if Truly didn’t vouch for these two white men, we have to wonder why Baker didn’t challenge them, as he allegedly did “Oswald” just moments later. If these two white men, unchallenged by Baker and therefore probably TSBD employees, were not Shelley and Lovelady, who could they have been? The really substantial evidence against the theory of this thread is Barry Ernest’s “The Girl on the Stairs,” which argues that, by my count, a half dozen or more reports and transcripts were falsified in order to insert into the record the Shelley and Lovelady sightings by Vickie Adams (and, indirectly, Sandra Styles). There aren’t many cases in which such a scenario would be plausible, but, tragically, this is clearly one of them. Again, I would suggest that the apparent correction decades after the fact is enormously complicated by research, by William Weston and others, indicating Bill Shelley and the whole TSBD operation may have had substantial intelligence connections. There are a number of threads about this on this forum. Here’s one, started by Mr. Weston in 2006:

True enough, but it would take just seconds to run across Elm St. and then go back into the building, as Shelley said he did in his 11/22/63 statement. Compare that to the amount of time he said he spent outside the building to the Warren Commission. IF he did cross the street and see/hear Cavalry, Baker still had to finish driving to the front entrance, park his bike, and run inside. This too took some time.

Frazier is not the greatest witness. Here's what Shelley and Lovelady both wrote, ostensibly in their own handwriting, within hours of the assassination. Nothing about walking toward the tracks or any of that stuff they came up with later.

Sandy, What I said above was, “If it is true that the Shelley/Lovelady sighting was added by the WC to David Belin’s questioning of Ms. Adams, then the questions asked during the testimony of Shelley and Lovelady just a couple of hours later by Joseph Ball also had to be altered.” For example: Mr. BALL - Did you see Vickie Adams after you came into the building and did you see her on the first floor? Mr. SHELLEY - I sure don't remember. Mr. BALL - You don't. Mr. SHELLEY – No. If Adams’ sighting of Shelley and Lovelady was added later to her testimony, how is it that Joseph Ball asked about it to other witnesses on the very same day Adams testified? And we’re not arguing about whether Shelley was on the first floor by the elevator, only about when, exactly. After all, in his own handwriting on the day of the assassination, Shelley wrote: “I was on the first floor then & I stayed at the elevator & was told not to let anyone out of the elevator.” My guess is he admitted to that because he knew he had been seen, surely by Truly and Baker, and probably by Adams and Styles. This all becomes more complicated when you consider that there is some evidence that Shelley and the whole TSBD (via the ultra-right owner D.H. Byrd) had intelligence connections. William Weston has done some serious research on this in his The Fourth Decade articles and elsewhere.

I’m more than halfway through The Girl on the Stairs and it’s a good read. Well written and a nice overview of the case. But has anyone ever confirmed what Mr. Ernest has written about Adams and Styles? On a case this complex, I don’t believe you can base any conclusions on what just one person argues, no matter how well that argument is put together. If it is true that the Shelley/Lovelady sighting was added by the WC to David Belin’s questioning of Ms. Adams, then the questions asked during the testimony of Shelley and Lovelady just a couple of hours later by Joseph Ball also had to be altered. Adams’ 2/17/64 statement recorded by DPD detective Leavelle also had to be falsified. Likewise, the 26-page memo by Wesley Liebeler saying Adams’ testified that she encountered Shelley and Lovelady at the bottom of the stairs also had to be false. For all the above to make sense, we’re also to believe that DPD officer Marion Baker couldn’t tell the difference between African-American and Caucasian men. A sorry comment about this case is that all of this seems possible, even if unlikely. For me, though, the kicker is this: Most of us agree that the Warren Commission wanted to make it appear that Ms. Adams descended the stairs later than she remembered, thus giving time to Oswald to climb down before she and Styles were on the stairs. If the WC really added the Shelley/Lovelady sighting to Ms. Adams’ testimony, why did they say she saw them just a minute after the shooting? Why not say 10 minutes later, as they wanted the world to believe?

John A. has been studying the TSBD re-flooring work being performed at the time of the assassination. The Warren Commission Report admitted that on 11/22/1963 the 6th floor was in the process of being covered with plywood. John notes that a rifle could have easily been concealed and brought to the 6th floor in the day(s) prior to the assassination in the stacks of plywood and other construction materials required for the project. I’d add the obvious by saying that the re-flooring of the 6th floor would also permanently conceal evidence of an escape by the assassin(s) into the passenger elevator shaft extending up to just below the sixth floor. John added the following in an email note: This is interesting.It appears that the 6th floor (and possibly the 5th floor) had either one or two or three layers of wood on the floor on 11/22/63, depending on the location.The first layer, seen in the photo of the NW steps, going down, are 2 x 6 boards nailed to the girders (these same boards can be seen in photos of the "snipers nest"). On the 6th floor these 2 x 6 boards run east and west, while the large girders run north and south. The second layer of wood boards, shown in this photo, were laid on top of the original 2 x 6 boards, and run 90 degrees in the opposite the direction. This 2nd layer appears to be 1 x 4 boards, and they run north and south. The attached photo shows the end of one board (4" wide) and the long edge of another board. These boards appear to have been well used from this photo, but these 1 x 4 boards only cover a portion of the 6th floor.The third layer of wood is comprised of 4 x 8 sheets of 3/4 inch plywood, which were being installed by TSBD workers under the direct supervision of Bill Shelley. A photo, taken of the "snipers nest" and east windows, shows the newly installed plywood laying at the same level throughout the 6th floor. In other words, the 1 x 4 boards shown in the attached photo had to either be removed or additional 1 x 4 boards had to be installed prior to the installation of the plywood. I don't know if there is any significance to these multiple layers of wood, but the installation of plywood on the 6th floor of the TSBD at the time of the assassination (the floor from which JFK was allegedly shot) has always bothered me. If nothing else, a rifle could have been easily concealed and brought to the 6th floor days before 11/22/63 while hidden in a stack of plywood (look at the trolley cart below the window, used for hauling construction materials/books, etc).

Tony…. I really don’t see the n/s marks of floorboards you mention above, but even if they are there, the fact remains that it is an amazing coincidence that the sixth floor was being covered in plywood at the time of the Kennedy assassination. Yet another cover-up? Andrej and Paul…. I don’t know what building codes were for elevators and escape hatches, but even if they were locked, it is a simple matter to unlock them for anyone in charge of the building or building maintenance. Here, again, is a YouTube video showing the top hatch being opened from inside an Otis elevator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7I2E3QiVoI

Below is a YouTube link to a fully operational, permitted elevator in Omaha, NE. Go to about 1:35 and watch as the camera is pointed up through the open emergency hatch. You can see the inside of the elevator shaft as the elevator ascends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hHpqRD8SMA In the clip linked below, escape hatches in two different Texas elevators are shown. Scroll to about 1:50 to see the escape hatch in a permitted 1954 Otis elevator in use in Austin, TX. Another escape hatch in a Univ. of Texas in Austin elevator appears at about the 4:50 mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEp2J_mqOKU A fourth elevator, a 1964 Otis model at Cole Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania, is shown in the clip below. The escape hatch can be seen around the 30 and 1:15 marks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE939xM1sc0

"How to Get out of an Elevator when it's stuck! - Part 2" Below is a link to a short YouTube video showing people climbing out of an elevator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA4p2IPWt54

"Otis lift in a Paris hospital (includes opening the escape hatch)" Below is a 2 1/2-minute video from YouTube. Scroll to 2:00 and see how easy it is to open an Otis ceiling hatch from inside the elevator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7I2E3QiVoI

Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that, at the time of the assassination, the Warren Commission told us that plywood was being installed on the sixth floor? And it clearly was, at least at some point, as shown below.

Andrej, If this theory has some basis in fact, it is obvious that some preparations had to be made prior to the assassination. Floorboards had to be cut and repositioned, or a vent discovered and opened, and, if locked, the trap door at the top of the elevator unlocked. I don’t understand why the locked or unlocked status of that door is so important to you. If it was locked, it could obviously be unlocked in advance. What is far more significant to me is the information gathered by Barry Ernest. I’ve just started reading The Girl on the Stairs. If evidence gathered from Adams, Styles, and Baker convinces me the Shelley and Lovelady sightings were inventions of the FBI/WC, then I’ll gladly disavow that portion of John’s theory. (And consider it yet another example of the enormity of the FBI/WC’s treachery.) But putting aside the Shelley/Lovelady controversy for the moment, I still believe there was a shooter on the sixth floor, and that the shooter wasn’t the man we know as Lee Harvey Oswald. Through a process of elimination, I see no other way for the real assassin(s) to escape from the sixth floor unseen and unheard except through the elevator shaft.

The fact that trap doors on many modern elevators are locked from the outside does not mean that the TSBD elevator's was in 1963. Even if it was, it is only a matter of unlocking it prior to the event(s) to make it accessible. The other issues, the recollections by Sandra Styles and Baker, are for more serious for our theory, if they are accurately portrayed. I have received The Girl on the Stairs from John and I'm reading it now.

Once more.... from the sixth floor....

Interesting. Thanks, Bart.... Backgrounder from Harvey and Lee, p. 931....

For John Butler.... Thanks very much for your recent work attempting to identify a sixth floor vent for the passenger elevator shaft which extended up to the fifth floor. John A. did some work the other day studying the photo you used and comparing it to an architectural sketch of the first floor, which, among other things, identifies the six-by-six array of square vertical columns used to support the building. These columns were directly on top of each other for each floor of the building, and so the positioning of these columns would be the same on the first and the sixth floors. John ultimately decided that the object you were considering was near the north wall of the building, not above the position of the passenger elevator shaft. Architect Robert Cutler did some technical drawings of Dealey Plaza and the TSBD. Below is his sketch of the first floor, that John annotated, using yellow or green lines (different people see them differently) to show what John believes is the camera’s field of view in the sixth floor photo you were studying.

Andrej, Don’t most elevators have an emergency exit door in the roof? Making it exceptionally difficult to get out of that door wouldn’t seem logical. As I’ve said before, firewalls are required by most building codes to enclose elevator shafts. In a building of this age, that would suggest bricks, which could muffle a lot of sound.

What’s most implausible here, as Paul Jolliffe pointed out, is that a lawyer supposedly investigating the assassination of a U.S. president would have so little interest in the man Sawyer encountered that he would ask no questions whatsoever. Did he have a brown jacket? Glasses? A white shirt? How old? How tall? Sheesh! As we can tell from the above John A. speculated that the two men escaping from the sixth floor both probably got off the elevator on the second floor and separated. But he considered the possibility that an accomplice may have stayed on the elevator until it reached the first floor. It is astounding… and so telling… that neither Belin nor anyone else on team WC had any interest in the man Sawyer encountered.

The two men from the 6th floor, along with an accomplice, rode the elevator down to the 2nd floor. The two men got off the elevator while the accomplice stayed on the elevator. When the elevator arrived on the 1st floor the accomplice may have walked past Dallas Police Inspector Herbert Sawyer, who was getting onto the elevator. Mr. BELIN. Now you took an elevator up, is that correct? Mr. SAWYER. That's right. Mr. BELIN. The route that you took to the elevator, you went to the front door? Mr. SAWYER. Right. Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do? Mr. SAWYER. We got into the elevator. We run into this man. Mr. BELIN. Well, when you say you got into the elevator, where was the elevator as you walked in the front door? Mr. SAWYER. It was to the right. Mr. BELIN. To the right? Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN. Was it a freight elevator or a passenger elevator? Mr. SAWYER. The best of my recollection, it was a passenger elevator. When the two men got off the elevator on 2nd floor, they separated. The man wearing the brown coat probably walked to the rear of the building, exited onto the dock, and then began walking south on Houston St. This man walked past Richard Carr, who had seen this man a few minutes earlier on the 6th floor. Carr watched this man, and he soon got into a Nash Rambler station wagon on Record Street. It appears as though the 2nd man from the 6th floor, wearing the white shirt, walked thru the hallway on the 2nd floor and entered the Book Depository office. An employee of the Book Depository, Mrs. Reid, had just returned to her office when the man walked into the office. As he walked thru the office Mrs. Reid said he was wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a bottle of Coke. Mrs. Reid's testimony before the Warren Commission caused a great deal of concern. The Commission knew that Oswald was wearing a long-sleeve brown shirt when confronted in the lunchroom by Officer Baker and Roy Truly. The Commission said that a minute or two later Oswald walked thru Mrs. Reid's office, but they could not explain why he was wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a bottle of coke. The Commission said Oswald then left the building and was next seen on Cecil McWatter's bus wearing a long-sleeve brown shirt. Above was inadvertently deleted from the “Escape from the Sixth Floor” page of HarveyandLee.net sometime between Dec. 19 of last year and Jan. 8 of this year. Seems appropriate here.

But the real TSBD assassin(s) had to get out of the building some way, and the passenger elevator was a less obvious choice, since neither it nor the front staircase near it reached up to the 6th floor. Could the man encountered by J. Herbert Sawyer possibly be the same person as the man in the brown coat seen and described by James Worrell and Carolyn Walther? Megathanks to Mr. Jolliffe for his important post.