Mathias Baumann

Can this be done with a regular desktop PC or do you need some special hardware?

Excellent video, but I don't quite agree with the conclusion at the end. I think it's been shown that Kennedy and Connelly could've been hit by the same bullet if it came from one of the lower floors of the Dal-Tex building. Concerning the back wound: Notice the wrinkles in the neck just below the hairline. --> http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/zimmerman/frontmenu_i000003.jpg I think the doctors are pulling and pushing Kennedy's skin to move the wound upwards. I did an experiment of my own and it showed that by doing so a spot in the back can be moved up to 5 centimeters closer to the base of the neck.

Andrej, thank your for your opinion. It is my belief that Morales indeed had a scar. I think he could have been the man observing Oswald when he was handing out leaflets in New Orleans. Jim Garrison describes him as a muscular Latino and also mentions the scar. Morales was indeed quite chunky and also half-Mexican.

I wish you good luck with that and am curious to see the results. Now I realize this is off-topic, but there's something else I'd like to hear your opinion on, being an expert in photography. Please look at these three photos of David Morales: What do you think is the dark, elongated area above his left eyebrow?

Jim, I'm sure Robert somehow stayed in touch with his family during his service. Lee may have told him about this show by mail or on the phone.

Andrej, You could be right about that. Maybe PULSE could be used to identify Prayer Man by trial-and-error, that means by feeding it different images of different people and see which output looks most realistic. I don't know. But I see a technical problem here: So it appears you need some special hardware. CUDA was developed by Nvidia. I have a AMD RADEON HD 6450 installed in my computer. I don't think it'll support CUDA, but I'll give it a try anyway.

Andrej, I think what Dr Rudin was trying to say is this: the output of her software is determined by the input. So if you feed it a picture of Oswald you'll get Oswald as an output. If you feed it Sarah Stanton you'll get Sarah Stanton. You can't use it to enhance the quality of the image. It's only useful if you already know who's in the picture and if you have high-quality photos of that person that you can feed into the software.

Jeremy, I think Oswald was a very intelligent person, much more intelligent than some people give him credit for. He learned Russian in a remarkably short time. I'm sure he would've been able to understand the not so subtle difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism, if he'd wanted to. Oswald was clearly an agent provocateur, in my opinion. The Fairplay for Cuba Committee warned him not to distribute pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans. And yet he did it anyway. Some weeks later the FBI takes him of the watch-list. After he'd openly advertised his support for America's sworn enemy! Oswald was on a mission for the FBI to discredit the FCC, which was probably run by former FBI officer Guy Banister.

Can you point me to a source where I can download the entire film in high resolution?

I showed Prayer Man to a friend of mine, who is an expert in computer graphics. He says the image quality and resolution are way too poor to tell anything with reasonable certainty. The reason is it is not possible to know which pixels represent real information and which just digital artifacts. And I think this is further confirmed by Dr Rudin's remarkable observation. What you posted here is a good example. The pixels that make up Prayer Man's face can correspond to a great variety of different faces. We'll never be able to tell with certainty if Prayer Man is man or woman, let alone what shirt he/she is wearing or what he/she is holding in their hands. The information in the picture is just insufficient.

Andrej, I'll see if I can the Python software running on my computer. But I suspect I'll need a more powerful GPU to perform this kind of calculation. Unfortunately I only have a run-of-the-mill desktop PC.

So I just had an e-mail exchange with Dr Rudin. As I suspected her software is not suitable for identifying Prayer Man. In fact, she wrote that I guess that means we'll never know who Prayer Man is. There's just not enough information in the picture.

"I Led 3 Lives" first aired in 1953, so the same year Oswald allegedly started to display his left-wing leanings. For a 13-year-old to become fascinated with a political ideology as complicated as Communism is a rare and remarkable thing. (Most adults cannot comprehend the philosophical and economic ideas that form the basis of Marxism.) However, playing the role of your favorite TV character in real life is more like the behavior you'd expect from a person that age. I think Oswald was never genuinely interested in Communisum. He never met a real communist in his life. And a real communist would not subscribe to both a Stalinist and a Trotksyite newspaper.

Sandy, it is known that the digitization of photos leaves all kinds of unwanted artificial artefacts. That is precisely why I'm highly skeptical of all attempt to identify certain people or objects without access to the original material, because the observer cannot distinguish between what is real and what is artificial. Anyway, I've just written an e-mail to Dr Rudin and asked her if she thinks that her software could be helpful in improving the face of an unknown person. (I didn't mention the Kennedy assassination.) I don't think it can, but I'll let you all know when/if I hear back from her.

First I'll send her an e-mail and ask her if her software is the right tool for the job. Because after reading this on the PULSE website (http://pulse.cs.duke.edu/) I'm not so sure anymore, but I guess "blurred out" in this context means that a face has intentionally been made unrecognizable, which is not the case with Prayer Man. Regarding the Python software: I know some VBA, but I guess that won't help me much with the implementation. However, I know someone who might be able to help, if he has the time. Anyway, there's some in-depth documentation on the software, which can be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03808.pdf

I wonder if artificial intelligence could be used to improve the quality of Prayer Man's image. Software that could be capable of this has recently been developed.

Cliff, some of the Dallas Police were certainly not "honest". I think Jack Ruby could not have succeeded in killing Oswald without the help of some of the officers. But could the plotters really expect the police to ignore concrete evidence of Oswald's innocence, such as a photograph? I think that would imply that most of the police department were in cahoots with the conspirators. But if that was the case, why was Oswald shot in front of dozens of reporters? That was a pretty risky move, it fuelled suspicions of conspiracy. Why wasn't Oswald killed in the Texas theater, "trying to resist arrest"? It is my opinion that the number of conspirators was fairly small. Big conspiracies tend to be exposed sooner or later. I do not believe that a huge number of police officers was involved.

Hello Andrej, You're asking why I reopened this thread. Well, first of all I do find the idea of Prayer Man very exciting. I think it would be great to see Lee H. Oswald exonerated, if indeed he was innocent. That would surely be a great victory for justice. However, some people seem to believe that Prayer Man is a big chance to get the case reopened. I think those people should not set their hopes too high. It's not going to happen, for the reasons I outlined above. Only a really sharp and high-quality photo of Oswald might achieve that. But apart from proving Oswald's innocence I fail to see the significance of Prayer Man. Proving Oswald's innocence is one thing, exposing the real conspirators quite another. But please do keep up the good work. If Oswald was innocent and you can play a part in rewriting tomorrow's history books that would certainly be a great thing.

A sharp, high-quality image of Oswald would've exonerated him even if he were dead. The plotters certainly expected a great number of photographers to be in Dealey Plaza that day. I just don't think they would've taken this risk.

But Oswald was killed while in police custody. That would suggest that he possessed knowledge that could've incriminated the plotters. Yes, I know. And yet I remain unconvinced. Frazier had a reason to say the bag was too small. The police were about to charge him with complicity. And if the bag did not contain a rifle, then what was in it? Curtain rods? Were any curtain rods found in the TSBD? I vaguely remember reading about curtain rods being found, but I could be wrong. Can you elaborate on that? I'm sure that's possible. But still I don't see how the conspirators could expect to frame him if they weren't sure he didn't have an alibi. I think it's more plausible to suspect that Oswald was one of the shooters. That is the major reason why he had to be killed, in my opinion.

I have read about this before but I find that scenario not very convincing. Would Oswald really risk being arrested by the Secret Service or the police for bringing a rifle into the TSBD just to make a few bucks? I don't think so. Oswald was not that stupid. I think he might even have suspected that he was being set up. I'm not sure if this makes sense. How would it benefit the conspirators if Oswald had an alibi? I think they wanted to frame him for killing Kennedy. That's why they sent him to Mexico and made him take photos of himself holding the rifle. The chances of the Dictabelt being just random noise are even smaller. And yet it didn't convince the Justice Department to re-open the case. Despite the fact that a fair number of witnesses supported the theory of a fourth shot from the knoll. That's why I think that "Prayer Man" is a dead end, especially without additional evidence. Okay, Oswald says he was outside watching the motorcade. But that's precisely what he would say if he shot at Kennedy, wouldn't he? And no-one has ever come forward to corroborate his testimony. I really don't want to disparage your work as I don't possess the expertise to evaluate it. I just want to point out that people have claimed to see all sorts of things in photos of Dealey Plaza. A grassy knoll shooter, Howard E. Hunt being one of the tramps, Jack Ruby, George Bush... Or think about the backyard photos and the Zapruder film. Some people claim they're fake, some claim they're genuine. So, please don't get me wrong, but I remain skeptical. I think you'll never be able to convince the general public of Oswald's innocence if all you have is a blurry image and Oswald's own testimony. There was a conspiracy. We know that. The magic bullet, the holes in Kennedy's clothes, the Dictabelt... There's plenty of evidence for multiple shooters. If Oswald was one of them is irrelevant. But that's just my opinion.

Jeremy, that may be true if the plotters' objective was to provoke a second invasion of Cuba. I think that's a very plausible idea. But it was also dangerous for the conspirators. How could they be sure that the investigation would not uncover evidence of their involvement? Only if a thorough and honest investigation could be forestalled. The Warren Commission could only get away with their bungling because they managed to paint Oswald as a deranger loner and because he was shot before there was a trial. But that tactic would not have worked if there had been concrete evidence of other conspirators. Now if Oswald was not on the 6th floor, what was his role in your opinion? As you say, his rifle was found in the building. Why would Oswald bring a rifle to work that day if he wasn't going to use it? Or did someone else put it there? And if so, how did they know that Oswald was hiding it in Ruth Paine's garage?

That does sound plausible. But here's another idea: Maybe Prayer Man was a conspirator, a member of the assassination team, some of kind of spotter maybe. That would explain why he would disappear so quickly. (On the other hand, Dark Complected Man and Umbrella Man were still lingering at the scene of the crime for minutes after the shooting...)

Cliff, did any of the tramps visit the Soviet embassy just 2 months before the assassination? I think that was an important part of the plot. Oswald was carefully chosen for his role.

I have a question for those who believe that "Prayer Man" was Lee H. Oswald. In your opinion, what role did Oswald play in the assassination? I believe that Oswald did play some part in the assassination. Otherwise it would've been very difficult for the conspirators to make him the "patsy". And because of his Russian and Marxist background Oswald was the perfect scapegoat. I think the conspirators knew that his association to "Comrade Kostin" would make sure that the authorities would not touch any evidence for the involvement of other shooters. So Oswald had to be the fall guy. But for that the conspirators needed to have some control over him. And they surely could not allow him wandering around outside the building. If one of them (Dark Complected Man? Umbrella Man?) had spotted him they would certainly have aborted the assassination. So they had to make sure they knew where he was. And what better way than putting him in the 6th floor window with a rifle? I also think that we cannot discard the possibility that Prayer Man is not one of the TSBD staff at all but just a random bystander. Everyone was anxiously waiting for the motorcade to arrive, so I think it's not unlikely that they (the staff) would not have noticed a stranger looking for a good spot to take some photos (I think it has been argued that "Prayer Man" might be holding a camera in his hands).