Richard Gilbride

That's fine, I was remembering info on Lovelady's height that I had seen somewhere, not having the time to fact-check that. I don't know that Shelley's height is known with certainty, but Lovelady was shorter than Shelley, by a mile. They stand out in the Couch film like Batman & Robin.

Thanks on that, Gene. I'll take a stab at the second part of my question, i.e. who let him get away with what he did on November 22nd? Earle Cabell.

My 2 cents on this. Gerda Dunckel's identification of Shelley & Lovelady in the Couch film still stands up. They left the steps long before Baker arrived there. Lovelady, about 5'4", is easily recognized by his checkered shirt and balding head. Shelley looks just like the guy ID'd by Tom Scully as what Shelley really looked like. And we know that they had stood together up on the front landing. Lovelady's handwritten affidavit initially reads: "...After it was over we went back into the building and went to work." But we know, in retrospect, that nobody went to work- the workers milled around, hung out for a roll call, and were eventually dismissed for the day. Lovelady, when writing this sentence, was referring to a timeframe many minutes after the shots. He crossed out "went to work" and so amended this sentence to read: "After it was over we went back into the building and I took some police officers up to search the building." He is still referring to a timeframe many minutes after the shots. This portion of his affidavit has nothing to do with his actual behavior after the shots. Gauging from Gerda's film analysis, Lovelady & Shelley went down the Elm St. Extension just after the shots. In their testimony they clarified something they had first brought up in their FBI blanket-interviews a few weeks earlier. They had remained at the 1st railroad track 1 1/2- 2 minutes, then returned inside via the West Annex ramp. They omitted not only their return to the front landing, through the warehouse, but also what had transpired on the ramp while they while they were at the 1st railroad track. This is how important Gerda's discovery was. It's the sword that slashes the Gordian knot, on the mishmash of information wrapping the front landing just after the shots.

From the pilot car at 12:30 PM, during the initial reaction to the shots, Sheriff Bill Decker called in over Channel 2: "Have my office move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there and hold everything secure until Homicide and other investigators should get there." (XXIII p. 913) At 12:34 motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood radioed in that he'd spoken with a guy who'd told him the shooting came from the TSBD building, and by 12:36 Sgt. David Harkness had a witness with him who told him it was from the 5th floor. (XXIII p. 914) Yet there is no record of Decker's response to these reports about the Depository. The pilot car arrived at Parkland at 12:37, and the probability is good that Decker used a hospital phone to contact his office. Luke Mooney, who had initially been searching the railyard area, reported on that day that another deputy "came up and told me and officers Sam Webster and Billy Joe Victory to surround" the TSBD building (XIX p. 528). Mooney's testimony clarified that these instructions had been relayed from Decker (III p. 283). Decker did not notify his deputies to search the Depository for 3-plus minutes after the 1st radio broadcast that the building was the source of the shots. Mooney's after-action report contained additional information, pertaining to his attempt to use the west freight elevator. "...we went up one floor and the power to the elevator was cut off." The mystery was not what happened- the power was cut. The mystery was who had done it. Decker did not inform any news provider about this power outage. Nor did this information find its way into any investigative report of any agency investigating the assassination. About 5:00 PM Decker phoned Captain Fritz and requested that he come see him immediately. Fritz dropped what he was doing and complied (JFK & the Unspeakable p. 274). Whatever they discussed, in greatest privacy, remains unknown. But their pow-wow occurred while 14-year-old Amos Euins was being held for questioning at Decker's office. And Euins, who at 12:35 had told a Dallas news director that he'd seen a colored man up in the TSBD with a rifle, at 8:00 PM produced a Sheriff's statement that read: "This was a white man, he did not have on a hat." Whatever Decker & Fritz discussed in private, part of it concerned the alteration of Euins' eyewitness account. *********************** Decker misdirected his deputies for several critical minutes, ensuring that the Depository hit team made a clean getaway. His coverup of the elevator power outage reveals that he knew this was a critical piece of information, one that would betray the TSBD employee-complicity in the plot. And his alliance with Fritz was central to blaming the crime on the white-guy scapegoat, Oswald. Decker was a key conspirator. Who put him in that position, and let him get away with what he did on November 22nd?

Sandy, The bump and lack-of-Biffle-corroboration have to be contorted in extremis in order to be able to fit into the "supports-the-hoax" column. Post #160 explains this. Post #148 explains why the Sept. 23rd affidavit also cannot be construed as favoring the hoax, without concocting an interpretation- sort of like anthropomorphisizing your cat- to ladle on top of its face-value. It's fine with me if you want to look for a needle in the haystack, but I'm contending there ain't no haystack there. Hey, maybe Baker suddenly remembered he'd forgotten to mail a letter, and was too embarrassed about that in his re-enactment to duplicate that. (smash ice cream cone against forehead) Robert, Please re-read post #262. To repeat, whatever Baker did immediately off-camera, it must add up to 20ish seconds in order to allow Adams to run out of the warehouse unnoticed. Then you might re-read pp. 26-29 of Inside Job. (Sigh) And Belin, attempting to confabulate a hoax, would have been exposed almost-immediately by a Mark Lane, who would have raised an uproar over the hoax's logical problems. (Sigh) (insert marshmallows into ear canals) Tommy, You make great rebuttals in #278, #279 and #293, and I couldn't have said it any better myself. Sandy and Robert, IMO, are hackin' fer gold dat just ain't dere, 'n dey dunno dat. They are drawing conclusions about Baker that aren't supported by what the evidence supports, e.g. a 15-second reconstruction, a mad dash to the freight elevators- nor can they rebut your objection to their flight-of-fancy, that some snippet of eyewitness support should have arisen to help corroborate their "flight-of-fancy". It is as if Baker disappears into a 20ish second portal of time. IMO painting Baker as a bad guy, even a belated bad guy, is the fatal mis-step here. Reading him the wrong way heads to piles & piles of confusion. Again, I refer to the "results" produced by the hoax hypothesis- Tan Jacket Man, Ira Trantham, Spooky ("3rd or 4th floor man"). That's sophistry, not detective work. (balance tinsel from eyeglasses)

Robert Prudhomme: In other words, WC lawyers falsified [this portion of] the testimony of Victoria Adams, and either falsified [the associated portions of] the testimonies of Lovelady and Shelley, or coerced [i.e. prepped] these two into giving false testimony. If you can readily accept these serious offenses to have occurred [in a Government that has just murdered its sitting President], I am puzzled as to why you accept as Gospel the testimony [that in particular relates to the lunchroom incident] of Marrion Baker and Roy Truly. Do you think the WC's lying could extend to these gentlemen, as well? *********** Belin could not have achieved this, the perpetration of a lunchroom hoax, because there were 2 testimonies in near lock-step correspondence to doctor up. The will-call counter bump is the telltale clue that the correspondences were true accounts. Imagine Belin attempting to insert the bump into scripts, in his office at his leisure, for dramatic realism. Not only does this run into the problem I mentioned earlier- of the stenographer, etc.- now wrapped up in the mini-conspiracy. But the bump will be exposed as a falsehood once the hoax hypothesis fails, when it is held up against the aggregate of: the filmed interview, the Sept. 23rd affidavit, the lack of Biffle corroboration (this list is not exhaustive- we may include the Oswald-wedding-ring similarity with Baker's-sameday affidavit-omission-arrested-Oswald and the Martha Jo Stroud document) Belin knew full well that he would have to answer to the historians of his day, when the 26 volumes were published. And if the bump had been a falsehood, and the historians had recognized and publicized that, the whole edifice could have come tumbling down. He couldn't have pulled off this sleight-of-hand, even if he had to. It is impossible in a philosophical sense- there is too much of the aggregate that could potentially pop up and expose Belin's sleight-of-hand. So the hoaxers thus have to paint Baker as a monster- a devious player in the coverup, stretching over a 23-year-coupling of film record. But the coverup maestro was Truly, and it was Truly who used the lunchroom incident to help keep focus away from the west elevator.

Well, Robert, I go with Barry Ernest's information in The Girl on the Stairs, that Vickie Adams and Sandra Styles both denied several times that they'd seen Shelley & Lovelady. Support for that is found in S & L's lack of clarity as to whether and when they saw Adams on the 1st floor post-assassination. The inference is that David Belin confabulated this part of the transcript. In order to retard their descent, & thereby explain why they didn't see/hear any sign of Oswald fleeing the nest. I think that when they testified, S & L knew they were being written into the 1st-floor script and played along with the Belin confabulation. I recall looking through some Tony Fratini photocopies this past summer at jfkassassinationforum, he had the Belin-handnotated transcripts and could show how Belin was being deceptive. I didn't download them because I had been in agreement on that for a long time; I forget the name of the thread, it was probably one that he or Colin Crow had started. It may have been in Fratini's "Arnold Rowland and the two men on the 6th floor". But he makes a convincing case, on top of what Ernest had to offer. The thread is a 90-pager or so, but a couple of pages have some big chunks of these photocopied transcripts on display, so you might key on that & that would get you through the pages much more quickly. There's some gold at that forum, although some of it was put there by fools.

PrayerMan is a great choice for a first topic, and I would hope that some of the discussion would be about locating the original Darnell film. As I understand the situation, the Sixth Floor Museum currently houses a 1st-generation copy made that assassination weekend. I have no clue as to where the familiar internet copy came from. It is conceivable that the 1st-generation copy would suffice for the level of clarity desired; a scan of that should be acquired as soon as manageable. The original would settle the ongoing debate, to the best of our ability. The Museum seems to me the best place to make an initial inquiry as to where the original might be located. There is some WBAP footage of that era at the Willis Library at the University of North Texas in Denton. But after a preliminary on-line look at the collection, I'm skeptical that the Darnell film is there. Somebody could call the Special Collections librarian listed on their website and he/she/it may know more than the Sixth Floor Museum. The Darnell film may have made its way to the NBC Universal Archives, whose physical location is unknown to me. WBAP-TV (KXAS) Reel 7 is on-line at http://www.nbcuniversalarchives.com/nbcuni/clip/51A02395_s01.do and contains some of the Wiegman footage at about 18:00, as well as an extended take of the Ft. Worth breakfast, but no sign of Darnell (although I didn't look through a whole lot of that footage). In any case, even without incorporating this into the PrayerMan research topic discussion, I wanted to put this information out there.

#223 Prudhomme: The crazy thing about Baker's testimony is that he actually states the pigeons were flying up to the roof... #224 Gilbride (ribbing): That's not what I saw in the movie [JFK]. I must express my opinion that this research into what Baker did off-camera, immediately after this film clip, is a waste of time. Researcheritis, a highly-contagious pathogen, is back with us. And gobbling victims like hapless Christmas geese. 1) Baker's March 20th re-enactment brought him to the top of the landing 15 seconds after the shots. 2) The aggregate of the filmed interview, the Sept. 23rd affidavit, the will-call counter bump, the lack of Biffle-story corroboration (to mention 4 things)- these things oblige us to dismiss completely any notion that the lunchroom incident was hoaxed. This means that we are obliged to consider every item of related evidence through the lens of the incident's reality. The hoaxers have never presented a position paper detailing their argument. By contrast, I have 1) initiated a thread at the old ROKC forum to challenge their contention 2) written an essay defending the incident at the old forum 3) invested 11 pages in a section in a new essay to further discuss this debate, and hammer home my point. You must juxtapose Baker's timeline with Adams' timeline. Whatever Baker did immediately off-camera, it must add up to 20ish seconds in order to allow Adams to run out of the warehouse unnoticed. The first couple of the 11 pages call attention to this requirement. And not only that, reasons must be offered as to why Adams' "big black man" was standing approximately by the east elevator, but Baker's "large black man" was sitting when he & Truly encountered him. The reason proferred in my new essay is that Baker encountered Troy West, who was at his habitual lunch spot, and that Adams encountered West when he had stood up afterwards to see what was going on. (This, by the way, occurred after the lunchroom incident) To counter my proferred solution, you are required to find a more natural fit for the data we are presented (from The Girl on the Stairs). And, proffer a reasonable explanation as to why Baker would "fake" a 15 second re-enactment on March 20th. Do you still believe there is recoverable gold in the vein you are prospecting? In that 1/4 - 1/2 second of film?

That's not what I saw in the movie.

Fabulous to hear of this, Don. You might give consideration to Stewart Galanor's Cover-up. Sort of like a Dutch miniature that becomes a celebrated masterpiece 200 years later. Your students might need to invest in a daypack with some smaller side pockets to tote it around.

I have pointed out, Robert, a couple of times, that Baker's 15-second re-enactment is a very good indicator that he went straight up the stairs on November 22nd. That factor dampens the requirement for witness corroboration, plus we do get a taste of that via Pauline Saunders. And the "veer" is of course implied, the direct result of taking a semi-parallel maneuver in his bead for the top of the steps. This "veer" is much less of a stretch than a big chunk of Bakertime expended for some unverified "very good lead". That is a very nice photo-graph, Ed, and implies a potential path for Baker immediately left of the center railing. Albert Doyle's critique, that no one returning to the TSBD noticed Oswald, has this counterargument: when Oswald's knack for hiding in plain sight [blending into the scenery, being Mr. Nobody in the corner] is taken into account, no returning TSBDers have much cause to notice him. He's been expecting this assassination, is cool & calm, and has more in reserve for this Mr. Nobody performance on the landing. Someone is still obliged to get that Sixth Floor Museum 1st-generation Darnell copy scanned- hope must be kept alive that it will give a better-precision image of PM. It's a first step, and there are a lot more steps in bringing that 1st-step-result to the public. The mini-1st-steps entail getting a doer (e.g. a "Groden") a legal permit to access it, a machine to scan a bunch of frames, a room to do that in, and a quick & safe relay person to pass it to. Doubling or halving the loot is great insurance, should one half lose theirs. Then a battle plan for blowing up & tweaking scans, and getting those to the research community. This seems achievable by spring, and considering the potential benefit, will be well worth the weight. It could of course involve the lost secret of the Templars, and by the Ides of March you may wish you had made contingency plans for contacting the Vatican or Kremlin, or acquiring Geiger counters, the usual, you know the drill.

Thank you, Tommy, but all I gather is about 1/4 - 1/2 second (if that) at the close of the film clip, of Baker apparently veering for the right-hand mid-section of the entranceway stairs. That he apparently went up the stairs just right of the railing. I don't see a problem here. Baker, in his re-enactment, went straight up the steps. Why would he do that, if he had not done that in real life on November 22nd? There's no nefarious conclusion to be drawn from his quick semi-parallel maneuver to go up via the right-hand side of the railing, as the film clip implies. Are researchers hoping there was a "very good lead" that diverted Baker east of the steps, and so consumed Bakertime that ate into his Bakerpath toward the freight elevators & 2nd-floor landing? Based on this 1/4 - 1/2 second of film? That is what gnaws at me, flimsy reconstructions like this, which is my main motivator in righting this hoax vs. incident ship. We can see how deeply the pernicious hoax-hypothesis has pervaded researchers' minds- and how the grasping at these flimsy reconstructions builds but one more tower for their sand-castle world. Again. so much emotional energy has been invested over 10+ years, in constructing & advertising this castle, that it will be cataclysmic for the core group of builders to admit their error. Giving an extreme loss of face, & taunting from their associates. I pointed out this latter circumstance in the final paragraph of my previous lunchroom essay: Unfortunately, the state of affairs in the research community is such that objective truth is based upon tribal allegiances.

Robert Prudhomme: If you look closely, you'll see Baker was nowhere near the steps as Darnell panned away, and was actually running parallel to the bottom step. Please post that photo-analysis, or refer me to its location. I am aware that you have been involved recently in that discussion. It is time-consuming for me to try to locate it. When I looked through that discussion the first time, I could not agree with its conclusion that Baker is "running parallel". I thought you were jumping to that conclusion, that the film was too coarse-grained to definitively determine that.

Robert, Thanks for that detailed sketch & description. One point that the Graf & Bartholomew article made was that a mis-shapen clip wouldn't fire bullets. IF, on the 6th floor, a clip had been in the M-C mis-shapen and spread open, how on earth does it glide out 2 inches (only- rather than completely fall out) once Day brought it outside? No way. Therefore, there was no clip inside the M-C when it was filmed on the 6th floor. And, Since the weapon customarily loads from the top, one would rightly conclude that the sidewalk clip (the 2-inch clip seen jutting out) had been loaded from the bottom. There were no fingerprints found on the clip. The Warren Report's description of the clip (p. 555) makes no mention of how it is ejected from the M-C rifle. As Accessories After the Fact outlines (p. 117), the Report's assertion that "when the rifle was found in the TSBD Building it had a clip" has 2 references in the testimony, but when one looks at these 2 references, the clip is not mentioned. Further, Day (WCH IV p. 260) added that he had dictated to his secretary re: items recovered from the 6th, which included a clip, stamped SMI, 9 x 2. Yet the official stamp was SMI 952. One would be inclined to deduce that the DPD was faking it as regards their reports about the clip. These factors (no prints, deceitful accounts) lead me to believe that there never was any clip found on the 6th. It was brought there, before the rifle discovery. It was brought there by the head of the Crime Lab, J. Carl Day. And, you can see his efforts in the Crime Lab photos I posted, trying to hide what he'd done, since he realized he'd been filmed out on the sidewalk. Day, I'm happy to announce, was not the kingpin of the Dallas law enforcement conspirators. He was a misguided puppy, drawn into the plot by that German shepherd Fritz and his sheepdog accomplice Decker.

Clive, You may be misunderstanding my point, or I didn't present it all that well. I typed that entry (Baker's March 20th blurb) from Bill Kelly's article The Doors of Perception- Why Oswald is Not Guilty, which included Bill's underlining. My bad in replicating that underlining. The point I was trying to make was that Baker ran right to the top of the entranceway landing- in a beeline from his motorcycle. The Couch film shows him in the process of doing that, up to Baker's almost touching the first step. There is no doubt in my own mind- picturing him as a basically honest cop- that what he did then (in this portion of the re-enactment) was what he had done on November 22nd. I'm not married to the notion that he was up there at Z-313 plus 15 seconds. It would be nice, but not essential, to have another look at Sean's 2007 Lancer study, just to see how he arrived at that figure of 22+ seconds for when Baker hit the first step. Sean singlehandedly outdid Gary Mack's desperation bid to put that at 45 seconds, so maybe some compromises were settled on when tallying & appraising, just to thwart Mack. I'm not suggesting that did or did not happen. What puzzles me is Howard Roffman's contention in another Bill Kelly blogpost, Howard Roffman's "Presumed Guilty" on p. 3- and the investigator would be well-served by reading from about one page previous to this excerpt (in the JULY 2013 section)- from where it states: To begin with, the reconstruction of Baker's movements started at the wrong time... ...From Couch's testimony and the scenes depicted in his film, in addition to the testimony of others in the same car, it can be determined that Couch began filming no more than 10 seconds after the last shot. Establishing a different time for Baker's first-step arrival, say at Z-313 plus 15 seconds, is not that critical. But it would add fuel to the contention (mine & Michael T. Griffith's) that Baker made it to the 2nd-floor landing by Z-313 plus 50 seconds. I have some free time today and hopefully will be able to comment on other parts of this thread.

2nd:

Well, Robert, the idea derived from the long essay Walter Graf & Richard Bartholmew put together, The Gun That Didn't Smoke, over at assassinationresearch.com; somebody inserted the clip into the rifle, on its way out of the building, because it wasn't filmed with a clip on the 6th floor. Day 1) was given the clip- but never reported who found it 2) found it himself, but never reported that 3) brought it in himself, beforehand I can't agree with Graf & Bartholomew's assessment that a clip was requested- once the rifle was looked at, without one- and brought in from somewhere outside the building. We're dealing with a 1:22- 1:57 timeframe here, from discovery to exit. So I'm heavily disposed to possibility 3). And, would you agree the M-C is easy to be mistaken about? Few people were familiar with its intricacies- which included loading the clip through the top of the magazine-slot. It got temporarily stuck, loading via the bottom. And I think Day got perplexed about that as he was on his way out of the building. For example, he may have loaded the clip during the elevator ride back down to the 1st. In its jammed state he figured he'd still be OK, no one outside realized Alyea had been filming upstairs. The clip jutted out about 2 inches in the sidewalk photos. By the time it was officially examined that night, the clip had all but disappeared- as if Day wanted it to be forgotten. You can see it jutting out just a 1/4" or so in the attached Crime Lab photos. It's cockeyed, and he must have had to cram it up there pretty good to make it completely go in. The HSCA firearms expert Monty Lutz tried to bluff his way through this problem (that's early in this article). You probably understand the intricacies of M-Cs a whole lot better than me. Isn't there some kind of metallic rivulet/tab-thing on the side of the magazine-slot, 6 of them aligning vertically, that help the clip move down toward extrusion in its progression of firing 6 bullets? Making a little "click" after each bullet is fired? It seems to be the un-natural attempt to feed the clip through the bottom that got it stuck, jammed-up because of these rivulets. It wasn't the way the weapon was designed to be fed, and the authors educate as to the available clip-fed rifles of the era, and Day evidently wasn't a firearms expert. This is 1:57, five minutes after Oswald's been dragged out of the Theater, and it sure looks to me like Day has just tampered with the alleged murder weapon. (the 2nd picture will be attached momentarily)

Tommy, I would speculate that the Theater was pre-arranged rendevous point, mostly based on accounts of LHO changing seats often once inside. The pistol was grabbed for self-defense; the danger was very high then that the people who knew too much could be eliminated; Oswald was keenly aware of that. Cliff, Absolutely, Tippit & Ruby were strung along and set up like dominoes. The JFK conspiracy survived numerous 1st-day blunders: 1) J. Carl Day's inserting the ammo clip in the wrong side of the Carcano 2) the power shut-off to the elevators (oops! whose bright idea was this?! The anti-Oswald evidence was easily tidied up by 12:35, it's 12:42 and we got 70,000 cops storming the building, screaming to get upstairs) 3) the Mooneyham sighting ("Now remember, Jack, don't let anyone from anywhere outside see you doing this, not at anytime." "Yes, master FrankenTrulystein" ....... "Hmmm. Did boss say anyone from outside, don't let them see you? I was just up here. I don't see anyone from outside looking in." .... Oh, no. Better not tell Mr. Truly. I better get to the 5th and look at some stock) 4) the mini-conspiracy to bump off Oswald in the Theater 5) the boffo DPD investigator (either Day, Studebaker, Montgomery or Johnson- or hey, maybe they had a group conscience vote) who took the just-constructed gunsack and sample paper from the same wrapping-paper roll. There's more, of course. A big, big key was information control, so the public could fool themselves. Vince Salandria wasn't fooled, though, as he relates in his False Mystery essay: "On November 23, 1963, I discussed the assassination with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. I told him that we should keep our eyes focused on what if anything would happen to the suspected assassin that weekend. I said that if the suspect was killed during the weekend, then we would have to consider Oswald's role to be that of a possible intelligence agent and patsy. I told him if such happened, the assassination would have to be considered as the work of the very center of U.S. power."

To whom it may concern. When they began their dash out of the lobby into the warehouse, Truly unexpectedly found that the will-call counter door was latched shut, and Baker bumped into him. Each man testified about this. This little incident was superfluous to the main line of action, which was getting to the rear corner, to access the stairs or elevator. Its being superfluous is a very strong indicator that it actually happened. If this little incident was added into a contrived hoax narrative, what purpose would that serve? Dramatic effect, for added realism? I scoff at that notion. It would only be one more little lie to remember, to help prop up the bigger lie that the whole lunchroom episode was a hoax. Isn't there enough to remember already, for Truly & Baker to prop up? Or we could suggest that the invisible hand of David Belin crafted T & B's itineraries to the lunchroom, and it was he who thought up the will-call counter bump. But the mini-conspiracy quickly grows to farcical proportions. We have to add the stenographer and everyone else who was present during at least this facet of the testimony. Common sense gets derailed. The will-call counter bump is a telltale piece of evidence, which validates the numerous points of correspondence in T & B's accounting of their journey to the rear corner. And that validation is a strong indicator that their accounts of their lunchroom journey are also true- they really happened. This latter part of their journey has numerous points of correspondence as well: 1) Truly led the way up the stairs 2) B & O were in the area encompassing the lunchroom doorframe & 2-3 feet inside the lunchroom 3) Baker was facing Oswald 4) Baker asked "Does he work here?" and Truly said "Yes" 5) Baker left immediately 6) Oswald was calm & collected 7) Oswald had no change of expression as Baker's gun was close to him It might be refreshing to get Kafkaesque here, and wonder whether a Pontiac crashed into the warehouse as they were nearing the elevators. Baker, in an act of pure heroism, pushed Truly to safety, sustaining only minor injuries. Truly rang the service bell, alerting anyone upstairs, a fact which Baker neglected to share in his own account of the event. Truly shouted up the elevator shaft in a desperate plea for assistance. Suddenly one of the villains tossed a time bomb from the Pontiac, the size of a bowling ball, with a fuse only as long as a cigarette. Truly & Baker fled upstairs. Baker spotted a man's face in a door's insert, and ran that-a-way. Truly, with ears like a bird, and wanting to avoid the approaching high heels, ducked into the vestibule behind Baker... The indications are very good that Truly & Baker witnessed the same Pontiac crash. *************************** Biffle has always bothered me. Truly mentioned his presence in his 1st round of testimony (WCH III p. 230), characterizing him as sort of an eager-beaver young reporter on the 6th who overheard Truly's murmuring to Fritz about Oswald. And then elaborating in his 2nd round of testimony (VII p. 384) So I have some doubts here, whether Biffle was a plant from Operation Mockingbird. So he comes forth with this account that made the Dallas Morning News on November 23, that Oswald had been seen in a small storage room on the 1st floor. Even giving Biffle a pass, and picturing him as an honest young journalist, this account has big-time problems. The teller of the tale, Ochus Campbell, doesn't say anything about seeing Oswald in 2 FBI interviews, on the 24th and 26th, nor in his Secret Service interview the first week of December. A hoaxer would have to enlarge the Truly-Baker mini-conspiracy to now include Campbell- if his account were true- and, if he had blurted something out, add in some squelching by a whole bunch of authorities. And Ochus Campbell had mentioned a "we"- and who can this be but Jeraldean Reid? Now she gets involved in this T & B mini-conspiracy. But she never mentions having seen Oswald in that small storage room, despite plenty of chances. The whole affair is very similar to Sylvia Meagher's problems with the Givens story. At every step of the way with Campbell & Reid, the hoaxer has to enlarge the bounds of the mini-conspiracy. Nothing about this Biffle attempt at journalism appeals to me. But that only says that the profession wasn't much different in 1963 as compared to today. I look at it as another red herring in a long line of mis/disinformation hoping to hide the significance of the west elevator. My guess is that Kent Biffle is still around, and it would be advantageous to ask him whether he was involved with Mockingbird at the time in question. After his denial, you might say that you have proof that he was. And watch his response as you fish out a copy of the news article. And as you show it to him tell him, "I have a living witness..."

Ray, Please re-read post #148. The hoaxers have to address the major contortions needed to get the selected items listed in order to fit them into the "supports-the-hoax" column. I will get to the will-call counter bump, and lack of Biffle corroboration, when I feel less drained. (That's from non-cyberspace beeswax). Please at least reflect upon the last paragraph of #148. You cannot make the hoax hypothesis work, not at all, when faced down by the aggregate of these contorted items. We have no a priori reason to say that the 1st-day affidavit trumps all the other lunchroom-related evidence.

Tommy, Oswald returned to the 2nd-floor lunchroom from the front landing (PrayerMan). He had recently beforehand been in the lunchroom, posted as a lookout. I think he was a political animal and would not pass up an opportunity to see JFK. And he knew JFK was about to get shot. It wasn't that big a deal for the success of the conspiracy whether Oswald performed his sentinel duties well or not. I do think there were "two white men"- a failsafe unit- posted on the 1st floor, and maybe Oswald didn't know about them. But he may have been led to believe he was the failsafe guy. All he'd have to do is watch the landing from the plate-glass window and step out and yell if an intruder came upstairs. Somebody would be listening at the head of the stairs on the 5th or 6th. Just looking for a plausible reason for him to be PrayerMan, and to be in the lunchroom incident. Just because we don't know it doesn't mean there wasn't one.

Tommy, Too funny. But I am inclined to look to biology as the easiest method to produce a lookalike, from circa age 13 to circa 18 (the Mercer farm hunting photo) to age 24. That would boil it down to LHO's mother having a) fraternal twins or incestual relations, and so produce a lookalike. These birth records never came to light. The 1930-40 census records should be publicly available by now, but there isn't anything I know of that would show some kind of indication that Marguerite had a misbegotten child. By the way, I haven't looked, but it would be interesting to see the census data. There is the Margaret Keating enigma also, someone out there knows a heck of a lot more than I do about her. I haven't followed developments very much in recent years pertaining to Armstrong's theory. I think the following data from Harvey & Lee relates to this issue: p. 51) In January 1953 the HUAC in New York made reference to a "Mrs. M. Oswald" in a CIA Office of Security file. The file contained references to 1941, Nazis, and New Jersey. Judge John Tunheim, of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), wrote to Henry Hyde in an attempt to get the HUAC files on Lee and Marguerite Oswald released, but his request was refused. I do think the Rambler took LHO home and circled around the neighborhood a couple minutes while he changed clothes and got his pistol. It picked him up across the street at the bus-stop and took him straight to the Texas Theater. I have no idea where "Leeski" fits into the mix. Maybe to get people in the Plaza to report an Oswald sighting, their "double vision" increasing the day's confusion, just in case the conspirators' plans for the just-arrested patsy had to be changed. I think the villians had back-up patsies in mind, in case LHO didn't work. The Trinity River accomplice of "Lee Oswald" fits the description of David Morales. They arrived by jeep and must have rendevoused somewhere not far from the El Chico parking lot.

To whom it may concern, Nobody seems to want to address the points I expressed to Vanessa which are found in post #120: the filmed interview, the Sept. 23rd affidavit, the will-call counter bump, the lack of corroboration for Kent Biffle's story, & the close comparison with Oswald's wedding ring vs. Baker's not mentioning Oswald in his 1st-day affidavit. This is what I'm referring to as a part of "the totality of evidence". Because at the end of the day, either the lunchroom incident happened, or it did not. And every single item of evidence has to be processed through the lens of the one solution that works, from the set of simultaneous equations we (seemingly) start with. The results from the hoax solution do not work. They produce frail leads (Tan Jacket Man, Ira Trantham) that should be an indicator that maybe it's the hoax solution that's on shaky ground. The incident solution leads to 4 results, which I outlined previously: 1) LHO too calm 2) arrived from direction of central offices 3) A & S passed while T & B inside 4) west elevator descended approx. 60 seconds after Z-313 We can make two columns for every single item of evidence relating to the lunchroom incident, and separate them into "supports-the-hoax" and "supports-the-incident". In every single instance that a piece of evidence can be added into the "supports-the-hoax" column, it can also be added into the "supports-the-incident" column. There is a reasonable explanation, readily available, that says OK, that is a somewhat ambiguous item, but it doesn't necessarily mean there was a hoax. So let's look at a couple of things- first, WC 3076, the September 23rd affidavit. Baker crosses out "on the third floor", i.e. 6 months after his testimony, which included 2 re-enactments, he's still confused about the TSBD floor layout. Just like he was during his 1st-day affidavit. A hoaxer cannot account for this, except by contorting 3076's face-value meaning. By saying something along the lines of "Baker is mis-remembering this detail from his fabricated story. He remembered his fabricated story perfectly when he testified, but on September 23rd he slipped up." i.e. Baker, in a mini-conspiracy with Truly to fabricate the lunchroom story, has a failure of nerve 3 days before the Warren Report comes out, and muffs up the cover story. That's contorting the face-value meaning of 3076. Now the film, the 1964 CBS Warren Report, go to 52:35- 56:00 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VylXqBuhTQ0 Hoaxers have to be able to prove Baker is lying here. I would contend that he is a modest man with integrity. I believe that he is capable of fudging the truth, as when at the end of the interview his lunchroom ETA is 1 1/2- 2 minutes. He doesn't want to rock the boat. But he is psychologically incapable of telling a whopper such as that the lunchroom incident occurred, when it hadn't. This is a philosophically different order of magnitude, lying about the location of an event. The hoaxers are asking us to imagine about something that transpired between Baker & Oswald on the landing, that got transposed to the lunchroom. But this magnitude of lie is on a similar level to Baker having witnessed, for example, a gunshot by an assailant, and blaming it on someone who was only nearby. Not all lies are equally-weighted. Not all subjective determinations are, either. We have to imagine, as well, Baker having to refresh his hoax notes in preparation for Bugliosi's 1986 trial. Sorry, I don't buy it, the guy still radiates modesty & integrity. So, returning to the results produced, the incident hypothesis far outweighs the hoax hypothesis, and I would argue that every item of evidence should be viewed through the incident lens. Some items, at first blush, seem more favorably disposed to the hoax interpretation, but that melts like a snowball in the spring sun.

Tommy, I recall that Sean scoffed at the idea that PrayerMan would go to the lunchroom for a Coke, and rightly so. I still stick with my reason expressed early in the PrayerMan thread at the old ROKC, that Oswald returned to the lunchroom because he had been assigned there- a lookout, as insurance against possible uninvited stair-climbers during the assassination. And that Truly would have given him a hard look on top of the landing, whilst chasing after Baker, that communicated to Oswald that he was supposed to be in the lunchroom, not on the landing. And when you look at Geneva Hine's movements, the window of time at SouthWestern Publishing's door that doesn't work for Truly & Baker (because of the strong likelihood that Truly would have voiced something to Baker then, about TSBD directions) does work for the quiet guy Oswald slipping into the central offices to return to the lunchroom. My take on the vestibule door's window is that if Oswald had stayed put, Baker would have had no cause for alarm. But Oswald flinched the instant he saw Baker, made an effort to walk out of sight into the lunchroom, but Baker alertly spotted Oswald's near-reflex and went right after this suspicious character.