Andrej Stancak

Jim:

once  Officer Marrion Baker needs to be brought to support the lift escape theory, something is wrong. There was no second-floor lunchroom encounter between Baker and Lee Oswald, so his referral to a brown shirt which he allegedly saw on Lee Oswald does not sound credible. Bart discovered a few months ago James Hosty's original notes taken during the very first interrogation of Lee Oswald - this authentic record says that Lee went up to the second floor from the first floor (Domino room from where he saw two Afro-American employees passing by), bought Coke, returned back to have lunch and there he was when shots rang out (or when he heard the excitement due to motorcade turning to Houston street). He moved quickly toward the glass door and out and while he stood in the doorway he was photographed by Wiegman and Darnell. At no time point after he bought the Coke did he need to return to the second floor lunchroom to buy another Coke. 

Marrion Baker was told what to say in his reports and since the dark brown shirt was the one which the FBI needed to have pinned to Oswald (the fibres story explained in Pat Speer's book), Baker told he had seen Oswald wearing a brown shirt. He also said he has seen two white men while moving through the first floor, however, there were no white men there at that moment except Baker and Truly.

Redwood would be the closest from the red range, not sure about the names of brown colours. 

Maybe this could be of help?

Can "salmon" or "Indian red" or even "redwood" be the correct name for the colour of CE151?

It seems that my culture-based interpretation of the colour of CE151 is actually the same as that of Lee Oswald:

• Cpt. Will Fritz's notes, dated 23rd November 1963: “Says 11-22-63 rode bus/got trans same out of pocket…Changed shirts + tr. Put in dirty clothes—long sleeve red sh + gray tr.” (retrieved from https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=29103#relPageId=7&tab=page)
• Cpt. Will Fritz's narrative  "Interrogations of Lee Harvey Oswald": “During this conversation he told me he reached his home by cab and changed both his shirt and trousersbefore going to the show” (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=29104#relPageId=6&tab=page).

• Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley (CD87 p375).: “He said he went home, changed his trousers and shirt, put his shirt in a drawer. This was a red shirt, and he put it in his dirty clothes. He described the shirt as having a button down collar and of reddish color. The trousers were grey colored.” ("First interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald", retrieved from http://www.prayer-man.com/secret-service/thomas-j-kelley/#lightbox[group]/0/ ).
• FBI agent James Bookhout:  "stated that after arriving at his apartment he changed his shirt and trousers, because they were dirty. He described his dirty clothes as being a reddish colored, long sleeved shirt with a button-down collar and gray colored trousers"  (Commission Document 5, page 100, retrieved from https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10406#relPageId=103&tab=page).

 Besides, there is Buell Wesley Frazier's recall of the shirt which Lee wore on Friday morning:

• Special Agents Bardwell Odum and Gibbon McNeely interviewed Buell Wesley Frazier and recorded the following: "As Frazier recalls, Oswald was wearing a reddish shirtand a gray jacket, waist length." (WCH vol. 24, 408-410, retrieved from https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0213b.htm).

Sorry, gentlemen:

How can you label this shirt CE151 as brown? This colour can be pink, reddish, light red but not brown.

In my view, the CE150 was brown:

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Andrej,

Thank you for bringing this up…. I’ve been meaning to discuss that shirt ever since I saw your description of it as “bright red.”  Here is the image of CE151 from Pat Speer’s site:

Below is a color swatch I see as bright red.  Do you see it differently?

 

There is little doubt that color perception and monitor/displays can differ about colors, which is why I sent that image to several people I know back in March and asked what color they saw.  I would describe that color as brown or reddish brown.  The two replies I got back both called it brown.  Do you really see it as bright red?

It would be nice if others here indicated how they would describe the color of CE151. 

I would also ask, is that shirt closer to brown or closer to white?

Jim:

I have never described the colour of CE151 as "bright" red, only as light red. CE151 is pinkish, the CE150 which Lee wore during his arrest would be dark brown or brown-red. CE150 was distinctly darker than CE151. These two shirts cannot be interchanged. CE151 is a button-down collar type of shirt, a detail which Lee told his interrogators and which detail excludes the CE150 as the shirt he wore during the time of the assassination.  While I do not care what John Armstrong writes about the colour of Oswald's shirt (there are much more serious issues with his escape theory than the colour of the shirt), I do care about knowing exactly which shirt did Lee Oswald wear during morning hours because only the CE151 would not only allow to consider Lee Oswald as Prayer Man but also provide additional circumstantial evidence for this possibility.

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Classic Oswald® was wearing a dark red or brown shirt at the TSBD, and a brown shirt at the Texas Theater.

Jim:

this is one of many points which you keep repeating in spite of data saying otherwise. Lee Oswald wore a light red shirt, CE151, not the dark brown-red shirt, CE150 in the morning hours of Friday, November 22. Please note that he worked all Thursday in the same shirt which he had on himself when he arrived to work on Friday morning. That shirt was dirty and Lee needed to change it and he did after he arrived at his room at North Beckley. I am copying here my text from the thread "Oswald's shirt". 

Oswald's clothes, similar to his whereabouts or the statements of people who saw him on Friday morning were deliberately kept unclear and even contradicting. This was the disinformation strategy which unfortunately affects us all even today. 

(While you do not like to refer to Prayer Man in this thread, it may be of interest to you that the colour of CE151 (light-red) matched, after converting it to greyscale, the grey tone of his pants (khaki or grey worker's cloth colour). This combination of similarly grey shirt and slacks is seen in Prayer Man). 

1 hour ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Personally, I suspect the figure in Altgens really is Lovelady, wearing the plaid shirt later photographed in 1976. Lovelady told the HSCA that the FBI had not asked him in 1964 to be sure to wear the same shirt from 11/22/63, so he was not wearing it. That's probably true, in my opinion.

Weisberg suspected that Altgens man was "Oswald" (he told me so in 1993) and therefore the FBI was desperate to hide proof of "Oswald's" innocence. However, I suspect that "Oswald" was Prayerman (not visible in Altgens), but the FBI was mortified that there might be some  inadvertent photo disclosure, and therefore muddied the waters with the Lovelady/Altgens/shirt/doorway man issue. 

That's where I am with this.

Paul:

I agree with your take on Lovelady or Prayer Man being Lee Oswald. I am in the process of reconstructing Altgens6 using 3D modelling, and from what I saw so far there are no doubts in my mind that Lovelady was the man whom many consider being Lee Oswald. By the way, Lovelady stood on the second step, not on the top landing (first step) as he claimed during his testimony for the Warren Commission. An honest error in my view.

Please find here a taster of my analysis. In (A), Lovelady is seen standing on the top landing - that would make him much taller than Bill Shelley who stood behind him and to his left. (B) is correct. C and D are overlays of Altgens6 and the 3D model.

James:

Welcome to the Forum. I hope you find your Forum debates useful and enjoyable.

The neck wound was reconstructed by Tom Wilson in the book A Deeper, Darker Truth (2009) written by Don Phillips. While the method is neither trivial nor easy to understand, Tom Wilson's model of the wound clearly shows the bullet entrance in relation to the surgery.  Of note, the bullet entrance wound appeared to be to the right of the opening for the tracheostomy catheter.

For completeness, here are a few black-and-white photographs showing Lee Oswald after his arrest while he still had his CE150 on. The grey level of the shirt, of course, depends on the illumination and therefore, the same shirt can look almost black in poor light to medium grey when illuminated by a flash or top fluorescence light. The combinations of CE151+CE157 and CE150-CE157 are also shown.

Bart:

you ran out of arguments and employ arrogance and a very personal-attacking style instead of reason. 

There are two shirts which need to be considered as candidate Prayer Man shirts. They differ substantially in how dark they would look like after converting their colours into greyscale. One (CE151) appears grey after converting it into greyscale and the level of grey corresponds to the grey seen in CE151 in Warren Commission exhibits. There is almost no difference between the greyness of CE151 (in Warren Commission exhibits or after converting coloured CE151 into a grey scale) and the greyness of the pants. This is what we see in Darnell.  It is true that Darnell film is blurred and a multiple times copied document, however, this process would affect all grey tones in the same way. Two grey spots looking similar in their greyness in the first generation copy would maintain their similarity in the fifth generation copy of Darnell.

In contrast, the CE150 is a dark brown shirt and reaches a very dark grey tone, close to black, and this difference would not be smeared by copying Darnell film over again. It is not possible that both CE151 and CE150 would match Prayer Man's shirt (and Prayer Man's pants) at the same time. Only one shirt would match (since their grey levels differ so much), and everyone needs to make a choice. My choice, supported by Lee Oswald's statements as reproduced by interrogators, is that it is the light-red shirt which Lee Oswald wore in the morning hours of November 22. Your choice, it seems, is that it was the brown shirt CE150. You will need to answer queries by other researchers asking you how a dark brown shirt can look like a light-grey shirt in Prayer Man in Darnell film.

I wanted to explain the possibility of Oswald wearing CE151 during the time of assassination for the record because the problem of Oswald's shirt is too important for Prayer Man cause to leave it unanswered. From my perspective, the record has been made.

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

This shirt mix-up might even explain why Oswald was murdered. 

Pat:

thanks for your thorough analysis of the shirt problem in your online book at patspeer.com. 

If there would be a trial with Oswald, the "proof" of prosecution of Oswald's guilt as President's assassin owing to fibres from CE150 being on Mannlicher-Carcano rifle would have been dismissed because the defendant side would be able to prove that Lee wore the light-red CE151 during the time of the assassination. There would be questions about how could then the CE150 fibre occur on the rifle. In my opinion, the prosecutor would bailout by saying that the fibres are there because Oswald had the rifle in his possession and manipulated with it while wearing CE150 in the past. So, although the CE150 fibres on the Mannlicher Carcano rifle look bad and equal to planting false evidence, the prosecution would just lose one piece of "evidence". The shirt problem may be one but not the strongest reason for leading Lee Oswald to his death in DPD garages on Sunday morning.

11 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

You keep on speculating, why do you not add some proof for that colour assertion. I as a photographer would love to see it.

I already provided proofs by comparing both shirts, CE151 and CE150, with the pants Oswald wore on Friday morning (CE157) in my posts here. What more evidence do you need to understand that only the light-red shirt CE151 would match Prayer Man's shirt in Darnell? It is not too difficult to understand what is the consequence for Prayer Man's identity if Oswald wore CE150 (brown shirt)  during the assassination.

Bart:

I know, whatever I write is wrong, a guess, a belief, laughable, rubbish etc. - in your eyes. There is nothing I can do about it, so ignoring your views is the best way forward. However, whoever opens this thread will be able to compare the quality of our arguments and also see how you react if someone expresses a different opinion. 

By the way, by dressing Oswald into the dark brown-red shirt you would exclude him as Prayer Man because converting a darker shirt than CE151 into grey scale would make Prayer Man's shirt look darker than his slacks. There is only a limited range of colours which can render the same shade of grey as Prayer Man's grey slacks. Light red (CE151) is one of those colour while a dark brown-red colour (CE150) is not amongst them.

Late edit: Here is the brown-red shirt CE150 converted into a grey scale and paired with CE157 (grey pants). Do you really see this dark shirt on Prayer Man in Darnell? If not, then you have only two choices: Prayer Man wore the other Oswald's shirt CE151, or someone else than Lee Oswald wore a light-coloured shirt giving that light grey tone in Darnell film.

And this is how CE151 paired with the grey slacks according to photographs contained in the Warren Commission exhibits.

I guess Lee Oswald wore the light-red shirt, Commission Exhibit 151, on Friday morning. That shirt was not seen in colour until 2016 when Pat Speer, thanks to his perseverance, was able to obtain colour pictures of CE 151. 

Lee Oswald told the interrogators that he had changed his shirt after he arrived at the rooming house, 1026 North Beckley. 

The quotations below are the statements of law enforcement officers interrogating Lee Oswald. A report by Special Agents Odum and McNeely from their interviews of Buell Wesley Frazier is also quoted as it is relevant to the shirt problem.

• Cpt. Will Fritz's notes, dated 23rd November 1963: “Says 11-22-63 rode bus/got trans same out of pocket…Changed shirts + tr. Put in dirty clothes—long sleeve red sh + gray tr.” (retrieved from https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=29103#relPageId=7&tab=page)
• Cpt. Will Fritz's narrative  "Interrogations of Lee Harvey Oswald": “During this conversation he told me he reached his home by cab and changed both his shirt and trousers before going to the show” (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=29104#relPageId=6&tab=page).

• Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley (CD87 p375).: “He said he went home, changed his trousers and shirt, put his shirt in a drawer. This was a red shirt, and he put it in his dirty clothes. He described the shirt as having a button down collar and of reddish color. The trousers were grey colored.” ("First interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald", retrieved from http://www.prayer-man.com/secret-service/thomas-j-kelley/#lightbox[group]/0/ ).
• FBI agent James Bookhout:  "stated that after arriving at his apartment he changed his shirt and trousers, because they were dirty. He described his dirty clothes as being a reddish colored, long sleeved shirt with a button-down collar and gray colored trousers"  (Commission Document 5, page 100, retrieved from https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10406#relPageId=103&tab=page).

 Besides, there is Buell Wesley Frazier's recall of the shirt which Lee wore on Friday morning:

• Special Agents Bardwell Odum and Gibbon McNeely interviewed Buell Wesley Frazier and recorded the following: "As Frazier recalls, Oswald was wearing a reddish shirt and a gray jacket, waist length." (WCH vol. 24, 408-410, retrieved from https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0213b.htm).

The best piece on Lee Oswald's shirt is Pat Speer's online book:  A New Perspective on Kennedy Assassination. Chapter 4b, Threads of Evidence. The problem was that the FBI identified some fibres on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle which fibres allegedly matched - CE150, the dark, brownish shirt. They only could continue l.y.i.n.g about the shirt as how could the fibres from CE150 be on the rifle if Lee wore the light-red shirt CE151 during the time of JFK's assassination?

Of note, there would not be any chance that Lee Oswald was Prayer Man if he wore the dark, red-brown shirt CE150 as this shirt would appear much darker than the shirt worn by Prayer Man. Also, only CE151, the light-red shirt, had tails both on the front and the back; the front tail obfuscated the view of the belt on Prayer Man. The brownish CE150 had a rounded hem with no tails.

CE 151 from patspeer.com:

Late edit: below is an illustration of how the light-red shirt CE151 matches Prayer Man' grey pants after converting the images into grey scale. Please note that Prayer Man in the 3D model is viewed from a slightly different angle compared to Darnell still. Amounts of shadows and lights and the contrast and blurring could still be tweaked, however, this example serves well to say that CE151 could be the shirt which Prayer Man wore on Friday morning and during the assassination.

There is a number of anomalies in BYPs which Jack White, Tom Wilson and others have flagged up. My theory is that BYPs genuinely show Lee Oswald, however, that the pictures were altered in very obvious manner. This gave Lee Oswald a plausible denial - he postured himself as a sort of potentially aggressive leftist in these pictures which could be used to pin guilt on him. However, he could always show that the pictures were manipulated and that gave him protection in any trial. Of course, it is a speculation and hardly anyone besides Lee Oswald could confirm it.

Ray:

the reconstruction with myself posturing as Lee Oswald had only the purpose to show that the extreme leaning was actually possible without falling. I had no assistance or navigation as to how to orient my right foot or left arm.

The front of the left foot touches the ground but not the heel of the left foot. This is the cost of placing all body weight onto the right foot; the left foot only provides some stability but carries almost no weight. I also did an overlay of Andy onto Lee Oswald's figure to check if Andy's posture would be a good approximation of Lee's posture. However, it is not my intention to argue about the details of my work: the sole purpose was to show that the posture displayed in BYP was humanly possible.

By the way, John Butler was able to find, back then when this topic was discussed (2017?), a fitting photograph of young John Kennedy leaning forwards to simulate the angle of the leaning tower of Pisa. It shows how seemingly impossible postures can be actually achieved.

Late edit: I hope people can spot the staggering similarity between Lee Oswald's posture in BYP and Prayer Man's posture (with right foot on the second step and carrying all the body weight and the right leg slightly bent in the knee joint).

The problem of extreme leaning in the backyard picture has been already discussed on this Forum. I guess it is possible to reproduce Lee Oswald's posture without losing balance.

I have modelled the posture using a human avatar named Andy in Poser 11.1. Using Andy's figure, it is possible to visualise the relationships and angles in legs, hips and arms.

It is a tough call. There are good arguments on both sides to claim either possibility: that Lovelady and Shelley are out and walking, or that they are still in the doorway during the moments when Darnell filmed the doorway. I am inclined, after giving it considerable time and effort, to prefer the latter possibility.

1. The doorway in Darnell was captured only some 30 seconds after the last shot. At that moment, people were still in shock and frozen and had no reason to walk seomewhere else right away. Therefore, there is still continuity with the preceding Wiegman scene in which both Lovelady and Shelley are seen all right. Bill Shelley is the man in a dark suit and wearing a black tie and standing at the centre of the top landing. Lovelady is seen descending the steps in the last Wiegman frames, so he could be where some think he was in Darnell, on the second step and very close to the western wall. It is possible that Lovelady stopped at the second step at the moment just after the Wiegman sequence ended and took the exact spot previously occupied by Carl Jones.

2. I have modelled both men of interest in Darnell. The man in the front is leaning towards his left at an angle which is almost equal if not equal to the leaning seen in Lovelady in Altgens6. The body height of that man was 5'8'', give or take half of an inch. The overlay with a realistic model of Lovelady works well. This does not prove identity on itself, however, at least does not exclude Lovelady. As far as Shelley's figure is concerned, he himself told the Warren Commission that he did not do anything for about a minute after the last shot, meaning he stood in Darnell at the spot where he is seen in Altgens and Wiegman. I was able to reconstruct his figure by fitting a man of about 5'4''-5'6''. The man standing in the centre of the doorway in Darnell is shorter by at least 2 inches than Lovelady. This is consistent with reports of people who met and knew Bill Shelley. According to these reports (acquired and reported by Bob Proudhomme in the original "Oswald leaving the TSBD?" thread), Shelley was 5'6'' as a maximum. My reconstruction of Altgens6 shows him 5'4'' or 5'4 1/2''. 

3. As Shelley was shorter than Lovelady, this poses problems to the possibility of these two men being captured by Couch(Darnell) in front of the Depository because the man resembling Lovelady is shorter than then man believed to be Shelley.

4.   The men seen walking in Couch/Darnell do not appear to walk together. They arrived to the spot at which they look as close to each other from different directions and with different speeds; they certainly did not walk in synchrony before the snapshot showing them close together.

5. Likewise, each of the two men continues walking in different directions after the snapshot showing them close together. The men resembling Lovelady walks toward the railroad tracks, and the man resembling Shelley slows down and seems to stop at the concrete island. 

6. Lovelady has an orthopaedic problem manifesting in having his head too much forward relative to the front plane of his chest. This causes rounded back or a hunch. I cannot see this feature in the man walking in front of the building.

7. I took the original frames of the Gerda Dunkel GIF and analysed them one by one. I believe that the frame showing both men in this GIF as if walking together has been enhanced to an extreme. Looking at the original frame, there is no bold spot on the top of "Lovelady's" head.

8. Carl Jones is seen to arrive to the concrete island and stepping on the lamp there after walking quite fast from the front steps of the doorway towards the concrete island. He would be the first person from those standing on the steps to arrive to the concrete island because his way was unimpeded. It would be difficult for Shelley to overrun him from his post at the centre of the top step (especially after he said he had remained standing there for about a minute).

Thanks everyone for an interesting discussion on what is one of most puzzling questions regarding whereabouts of these two men.

John:

thanks for mapping all possible escape routes from the sixth floor; this is very useful. The fire escape has been maybe the first idea of Officer Baker and a reason for his dash towards the wast corner if the building first before he entered the Depository via main entrance. Difficult to find any hard evidence after more than 55 years, is it not?

Paul:

welcome to the forum, I hope you will enjoy it.

Can you please post a link to the ASME standard 1955? I would also like to know about the rules pertaining the shaft and the roof of the shaft.

In my view, we need to see the architecture plans of the building and to know the type of the passenger elevator as of 1963 to be able to to evaluate what was possible and what was not.

As to the light seen on the sixth floor, there was also a light in in the lobby right behind the glass door (1st floor) in Darnell film, taken some 30 s after the shooting.  The reasons for  Baker and Truly not being able to call any of the two freight elevators could be that only one of the elevators had the ability to be called from a remote floor and only if the elevator door was properly closed. The other elevator could not be called  at all. There could be a simple explanation for the failure to call a lift when the two men got to the back of the first floor.

Jim:

some elevators have safety hatches, some not. Some have them visible to the passengers and some not. However, the safety hatches in all lifts open from ouside as the law requires else passengers such as young male adolescents would roam in the elevator shafts just for fun...

Do you know what type of elevator was installed in the TSBD? The Sixth Floor Museum could know this information, and they also can have the 1961 architect building plans which would show the construction of the shaft. The idea that the elevator would hang on the wooden boards and joints of the sixth floor appears unlikely.

Jim:

The Otis lift had a square on the top deck looking like a safety exit hatch but it could only be open with a special key; just pressing on it did not help. It is a law that the hatch can be only open from outside the lift. The other video appears weird - had the chair in the lift?  The passengers smiled and it all looked strange. It certainly did not look like a US or EU country with strict safety rules.

Please consider this: the lift shaft was bricked from the bottom to the top of the fifth floor. The shaft had its own roof which was below the wooden floor of the sixth floor. Even if you would remove the boards on the sixth floor, you could not jump into the shaft as there would be still a shaft roof. It is an illusion to think that if you would remove few boards you could jump straight into the shaft - this is called safety. 

I see no sign of any opening on the sixth floor in the vicinity of the second east window on the sixth floor before or after placing new plywood in the pictures you posted. If there was important access to the shaft there, it would be either ring-fenced or sign-posted, and it would be on the floor map of the sixth floor. There was no such opening because the shaft was never meant to be accessible from the top. 

55 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Exactly where did one access the top of the passenger elevator shaft, and are there any photos of that area, regardless of which floor it was?

Paul, my understanding is that you cannot access the shaft from the top (e.g., from the sixth floor in case of TSBD). Any service check of the area above the lift (above the 4th floor) had to be done by moving the lift car just below the level of the fourth floor and stepping on the roof of the car. There was most likely a ladder in the shaft (above the fourth floor) allowing to climb up to the top of the shaft. However, one could not break through into the room above the shaft by standing on the top of the ladder and pushing the roof of the shaft because that roof (which was also the floor of the sixth floor) was stiffened to prevent an accident if a board on the sixth floor would loosen. Another way of checking the area above the lift (the fifth floor) was moving the lift to below the level of the fourth floor, opening the door, stepping on the roof of the car and then having an assistant move the car up to its normal 4th floor level. The technician standing on the top of the car would then effectively be on the fifth floor and could do the necessary maintenace there in this way.