Chris Bristow

Stereoscopic analysis is good for testing the background but I don't think it works when testing Oswald. Oswald changes his position completely with each photo and that should make a stereoscopic analysis of him impossible. When your eyes look at a 4x4 stairway post each eye sees it from a slightly different position. if you take two photographs of that post from slightly different positions you simulate what your two eyes take in. Then if you use a stereoscopic viewer to see one photo in your left eye and the other in your right eye, your brain will fuse the two images just like it does when you look at the real post and that results in a 3d effect. For that effect to happen you have to be looking at the same stationary object from two slightly different positions. as soon as Oswald shifts his stance that becomes impossible. A stereoscopic test could show if they used the same background for two different photos because there would be no 3d effect but it really doesn't tell us much about Oswald.

David, the image on the left is very misleading and really can't be compared without compensating for the off angle of the camera. in 133a he is facing almost directly to the camera with his torso. His spine sits pretty much directly behind his belly button and gives a true measure of his Center. In the other photo his spine sits far to the right and the belly button sits to the left creating the illusion that he's leaning farther to the left, when it's really created by the depth of the Torso from the spine to the belly button. He also seems to have his hips forward which from the off angle increases the illusion of him leaning left. If he had his hips forward in 133a it would make no difference because he's facing towards the camera. The camera seems to be almost 40° off to the side and it is completely distorting his actual position.

Yes I agree there's definitely reason to doubt the official story.

The question for me is what caused them to assume it was a high powered rifle? The damage it did or the distance it was fired from are the only two indicators I can think of. Maybe they call it a rifle round so they can later implicate Oswald.

The Carcano velocity is about 2,000 ft per second out of the barrel. that well-known Myers test where they fired into a bunch of pine boards left the barrel at 2050 frames per second. I know very little about the Walker shooting but it may be possible that the Bullet Hole represented something closer to 1800 ft per second which would eliminate a handgun. I still don't know if they can even estimate that so I'm just tossing it out there.

Is it possible to estimate the velocity of the bullet based on its depth within the wall, and could that lead them to conclude it was a rifle?

If by splicing you mean some frames were removed it would not work. We can measure the limo moving forward relative to the background in each frame. Even taking one frame out would make the limo jump twice as far as the previous frames. The limo can't just double its speed in a single frame. Any alteration to remove the limo stop would require a matting process. But the matting process alone would create some fatal errors. If you used a matte process to keep the background moving in order to create the illusion that the limo did not stop you would have to make up for approximately 40 ft of travel. In other words you would have an image of the limo from frame 310 matched to a background from frame 370. That is a huge mismatch and the angle from Z to the limo would be way off when compared to the background. So would the shadows and so would the reflections of objects in the trunk. As an example you can see Moormon and Hill reflected in the trunk around frame 310 which would be shifted to frame 360 when they are nowhere in sight. To take out a limo stop you would need a combination of several techniques but there would be no splices.

My father and I were standing in the living room and watching the transfer. When Oswald was shot my father became stunned and took a few steps backward and plopped down on the couch. I remember him just staring into space for a while and I thought that was strange. He said nothing he just sat there and stared into space. About 8 to 10 years later he explained that he immediately saw the parallel between Oswald claiming he was a patsy and then being murdered within 2 days. It was a well-known tactic to kill the Patsy before they could talk and that concerned him. I think you may have doubts about the assassination but was never a CT person.

The bullet took a 28° downward angle through Connally. I don't know if that means he was leaning back 10° and it came from the sixth floor, or if he was sitting straight up and it came from the roof of the Records building or Dallas textile building, or maybe it was deflected downward. Breaking his radius must have imparted a fair amount of energy to his forearm in that downward Direction . But in the film he doesn't seem to react that way. I don't know for sure but I think his arm would go down for a few frames before rising up in reaction to the injury. that downward angle would allow his wrist to be about two to three inches below the nipple and about 7 in out from the chest . In that position he would only need to rotate the dorsal side of his wrist about 28° towards him. The lateral angle through Connally was only 15° so the Bullet had to deflect at least 15° if originating from the TSB . If a shot came from the southwest corner of the Dallas textile building the bullet had no lateral deflection. This is all based on Connelly being rotated 20° in the seat. I don't know exactly where his left leg was or exactly how far his wrist was from the exit wound on his chest. In the diagram the bullet would have to deflect about 50° through his wrist to make it to his left thigh. Tuck his knee in a little more and it would maybe be 30°. Seems like a pretty sharp turn. Connally's rotation in the Z film and the track through his body show the bullet would have left his chest in a direction that was at least 5° to the right of the Direction the limo was facing. The overhead drawings usually put the bullet on a straight line through both men and into the thigh. But if the bullet was from the TSB it had to have deflected twice laterally. That makes it a little harder to explain the near pristine nature of ce399

The camera is about 5 or 6 inches higher than Z's camera.

The photo I unskewded and rotated is a Barnes photo, I think, and the guy on the pedestal was Shanyfelt? If so Shanyfelt is standing where the Barnes photo was taken from. I think a camera making multiple passes from the same exact location is easier to envision that two cameras running concurrently that day. Trying to combine two images from slightly different location is very limiting. Although a cut and paste of just the ladies without any of their background would work like we see it in 205/206. If the bobbling is a result of a cut and paste from a 2nd camera the 206 ladies would be taken from a position 5 to 7" above Z's lens.

His position is the same as I get for Barnes. I come across as an LN sometimes but that is just because I attempt to apply that scientific methodology of scrutinizing any new evidence from as skeptical a view as possible. But my core assumption about the film is that it is altered. All 4 bike cops seeing it stop or almost stop, the account of Chaney's ride forward missing from Nix and Dr Costella's observation on the Stemmons pincushion issue, and issues surrounding Parkland put me firmly in the CT camp. I have wondered about the opportunity they had when the plaza was closed down for the survey. If they still had possession of Z's camera it would be easy to re film it from the exact same position(Maybe using a tripod for perfect height matching), maybe choosing a time to duplicate the azimuth and elevation as close as could be done. Regarding the contrast on the right pole I think there might be a non alteration explanation. The darkest shadow is on the sign with a lighter shadow next to it on the pole and next to that is the bright part of the pole. Adding a little contrast darkens the lighter middle shadow and that part of the pole disappears into the dark shadow on the sign causing the pole to get skinnier from on its left side only. Add more contrast and the right side starts to shrink. I think the initial disappearance of the left side contributes or is fully responsible why the mismatch.

Perfect. That resolves the Newman's back of the head issue, and thanks for the video. The original Barnes photo used in one of your last comps is extremely distorted causing the buildings in the background to lean outward from the center of the image. It makes determining if the photo is level a big hassle. I don't know how much of it is due to the camera's downward tilt or the wide angle lens he used. The vertical center of the image should not be distorted by either, so the south corner of the Records Building would barley be affected. It should still be a good measure of level and it leans about 1 degree left. This might be the reason the right Stemmons pole does not match in the Z vs Barnes Stemmons pole comp. I skewed the image below to correct the leaning but the center, the records building south corner, was still leaning. I concluded the photo was not level and I added one degree of rotation to it.

Thanks for the info on the pedestal.

That is very strange. The simple answers don't work. It is not a change of Z' camera position as no other objects like the wall change relative to the sign. So it is definitely not the change of camera tilt or a change of camera height. It does not seem to be due to the distortion found in the sprocket area because the ladies remain in almost the same exact place in both frames. If it was a distortion the women would change shape significantly but they don't. I thought maybe it could be an illusion because we don't have any stationary objects in their background. It is not that. I thought maybe there is some rotational distortion where the center of rotation would be outside the frame to the right side causing greater change on the right side. That was a total fail. The woman in the blue scarf partially blocked by the sign looks as if her head is bobbling up and down while her coat does not move. I am not yet convinced this is an artifact of fakery but it is baffling as hell. If a non CT photogrametric(Maybe not a real word) answer is found it will be hugely educational. Would love to think this is proof of alteration but I have been disappointed before so I will be skeptical for now, but wow it sure is strange.

I have often pondered Zapruder's precarious position on the pedestal. He seems to have switched his stance from the Willis 5 position facing toward the Stemmons sign to a position about 45 degrees to his right by the Moorman photo. If that is correct he had to switch his stance while looking through the viewfinder. He could not see were to place his feet and his balance must have been compromised because he could only see the tiny landmarks through the viewfinder. Did you find it necessary to pivot while you panned?. I tried to test a changing stance during the pan and found switching your weight to the left foot as you pan to the right momentarily cancels out any parallax. I found the switching of stance happened right about the time I would be panning past the lamppost. I considered it may be the reason we see no parallax from the lamppost and background in the Z film. I am not positive on this but standing in front of the pedestal would cause the Newman's to block the view to JFK. I measured it and it is a close call but it is likely Newman would have blocked at least part of the view.

The first I heard of the theory that a knoll shot would have hit Jackie was in the documentary "Inside The Target Car" with Gary Mack. It was a complete fabrication. Mack positioned JFK's head firmly up against the actresses left shoulder to put Jackie in the GK line of sight. We know from Z frame 312 that JFK's head did not align with her left shoulder and we know from the Muchmore film that their heads were at least 6" apart at the head shot. The theorized knoll shooter position at 15 ft west of the fence corner lines up above the 6" gap between their heads in the Muchmore film. That means Marie Muchmore, the gap between the heads, and the knoll shooter position are all on the same line of sight. They are at opposite ends of the LOS so they would both see almost the same gap at the head shot. A shot from the knoll would not have hit Jackie. Z frame 312 alone proves the shot would not hit Jackie. Taking into account the LOS from the knoll and Jackie's head being forward of JFK's the shot would have not hit her. The Failure analysis people must have plotted the knoll LOS so it is surprising they did not realize Jackie was out of the way.

I could see him riding into debris but not as a result of the wind pushing it there, which is a popular theory. Debris does spread out and take an angle off the original trajectory, but maybe he was in a position slightly off the original trajectory and was struck by bone. Maybe it was the bone that Brehm claimed he saw hit the curb very near there. I don't agree with your take on the location of the tangential head wound or your evaluation of the Parkland testimony so we probably could not see eye to eye on anything about the blood splatter on Hargis and Martin.

The wind was blowing from to the Northeast and maybe some gusts went East. But even directly east doesn't send the debris towards Hargis. The official or estimated location for the Harper fragment is like 100 ft Southwest of Hargis at 313. Of course even if it did hit him it would have to Loft around in the air for about 2/3 of a second. Then of course it wouldn't be striking him hard enough for him to think he got shot. If you have to invoke wind vortices you are more than stretching it.

His comment that he thought he was "hit", meaning he thought for a moment he had been shot, implied he was struck with some force. He also said he assumed he might be getting hit with concrete. I don't know where that would come from or why he assumed that other than something substantial struck him. The Ln explanation for the blood on Hargis and Martin is that they just rode into a cloud of debris that hung in the air for 2/3 of a second as they drove into it. Hargis's testimony is inconsistent with that theory. If the hanging debris cloud theory is correct then it hung there for almost 2 seconds before Kinney drove into it.

It is hard to take what he says in your clip at face value when he prefaces his statement in the video below with "This is not to be shown publicly but". He then states the limo came "Almost to a stop". Obviously the limo coming "Almost to a stop" is inconsistent with the Z film in which the limo never gets below 8mph. What reason, other than the controversy, would he give his caveat right before he says the limo almost stopped? If he did hold the opinion that a shot came from the knoll/overpass I doubt he would say it publicly. He didn't want his limo stop opinion made public and got burned on that. I don't know if he would make the same mistake twice.

Yes the bushes grew some. The background roof line appears lower in the cutout relative to the foreground because the recreation camera was lower than 133c. That makes it look like they grew more than they did. But the structure right behind the bush does show they grew from March to November.

By 'drop shadow' you mean the red image? Obviously not there in the background image 140 so it is an artifact of some kind and I wonder specifically what caused it. The lean in 133c is strange and 133a even stranger. That is the most baffling part of the Backyard photos for me. I have never seen a recreation of the 133a lean that got the foot and hip angle correct. Also in 133a Oswald has no upper body counter lean at all. It is almost impossible to lean over to the point you are near falling and not automatically counter lean the upper body. I found the hips in 133a are almost straight forward, no more than 10 degrees of angled and closer to 5 degrees. If you match the right foot, hips and counter lean the stance gets crazy. Using the fence to compare his lean in 133c and the ghost image from 141 shows the hand done cutout has him leaning 1 or 2 degrees more than 133c. so pasting 133c Oswald back into the cutout will cause him to lean more than 133c. Still the lean is strange. The actual 133c and the ghost image backgrounds are taken from different positions so the backgrounds and foreground will always be a mismatch. When they created the cutouts they matched his head to 133c and the roof line in the background. But the background roof line is a big mismatch with 133c. The lower camera in the recreation moves that background roof line down compared to the foreground. It can be seen where the roof line meets the stairway post next to Oswald. That mismatch places Oswald lower in the foreground and creates a huge perspective error. Being lower his feet land on the grass lower/closer to the camera. That should make Oswald bigger in the image but the cutout size matches his original size relative to the stairway post. He is too small for his location on the grass. That larger/closer Oswald should have his head appear higher relative to the stairway post but it is well below 133c. So the cutouts do not compare well to the original 133c. The recreation photos used for the background were supposedly taken on 11/29. If that is true Roscoe White would have had his personal copy of 133 by then so matching the 133c stance does not strike me as being controversial.

I have heard the 'Ghost Cutout' photos that show the near perfect outline of Oswald in 133c were found years later in with the contents from Roscoe Whites desk. I have also heard the official explanation was that White was tasked with testing Oswald's claim that the photos were faked by attempting to create a fake. Either way whoever made the cutout must have had other working copies of 133c to cutout Oswald and trace his shape into a background image.