Greg Doudna

Thanks Gerry. Ewell's detail that the knife was "open bladed" is interesting, not a normal way to carry a knife. Was Oswald fearful of being double-crossed by someone sitting next to him? An open-bladed knife if true should have been part of the investigation as a material fact. The reason it wasn't is explained here as an officer diverting something into private hands. Ewell knew something but Ewell wasn't going to burn a source or a fellow reporter or whatever happened.

Thanks Marjan, will do.

Thanks for that Gerry. I never heard of this before, but its obviously some version of the same story and seems to confirm the find. Sure would like to find that documentary and know that retired DPD officer's name and hear that story; I'll keep my eyes out for it, appreciated.

Speaking of Hugh Aynesworth, there was a report by a schoolkid who with his schoolkid friend was seated in the main level seating of the Texas Theatre on Nov 22, 1963, who witnessed Oswald's arrest, who told of seeing police officers searching the seating area in the area where Oswald had been sitting and then taken away under arrest, and finding a knife (pocket knife presumably) on the floor. The one officer picked it up and (according to the schoolkid witness) said to the other, "must be his". However that item was never registered or reported as found property. Somewhere I read something written by Hugh Aynesworth in which as I recall he identified himself as having come into possession of a knife found at the Texas Theatre, or an Oswald knife, something like that, anyway when I read it I identified it as sounding like that unexplained police pocket knife find witnessed by the schoolkid. However I have searched through all I have from Aynesworth--books, articles--and have been unable to locate that reference. Does anyone else recognize this reference? I can only think it must be from some obscure newspaper article or something but I cannot find it. I do not see that any larger issue as to the case itself hinge on this (whether Oswald carried a pocket knife or not) but it is an item of trivia I would dearly love to nail down if possible.

Marjan, on the Hickey shooting idea, may I ask why you think so? I have recently looked at the McLaren and Menninger books which make that case and can't see it. The 6.0 mm measurement for an entrance bullet wound I assume is too close to distinguish from human measurement error and coincidence, and that's about it for the positive case apart from an argument for plausibility. However against plausibility is nobody in the followup car told of hearing Hickey firing (and they surely would have heard it), and its a bit extreme to assume a successful silencing and coverup of all the witnesses in that followup car without someone leaking. And even more, the hit to JFK's head is just obviously from someone intending to hit him, not an accident (too freak perfect of a hit). And Hickey for sure was not intentionally shooting JFK which excludes him as the source on that grounds (extreme improbability). So, no strong positive evidence, and two extreme improbabilities. Please say where you differ? Also, can you say which in-print or off-the-shelf available published argument is in your opinion the best, in making the Hickey case? Incidentally, I think the witnesses who saw and smelled gunsmoke and heard a shot near the limousine probably reflect a gunman firing a shot from the storm drain, perhaps as source of the throat shot entering from the front in an upward trajectory and exiting at the lower back of JFK's head, at Z327, in keeping with the original bullet track of the autopsists (according to Sibert and O'Neill), not a Hickey shooting. So I do not see those arguments as calling for a Hickey shot or shots either. But never mind me, I'm interested in your argument if you can spell it out in a nutshell (and optionally give a reference to read more). Thanks.

Could you cite the document source for this claim that Jean-Pierre Laffite recruited QJ/WIN to assassinate Lumumba? Not a secondary book but the source the secondary book cites? That's what is needed, the documentation for the claim.

Speaking of genocide closer to home ... in 1982 I lived and worked in Eureka, California for about six months. It was a coincidence that during those few months I was there, news broke that a coup in Guatemala had occurred and a new general, Rios Montt, had taken power who was an evangelical Christian and member of a sectarian church headquartered none other than in Eureka, California, called Gospel Outreach. I had never heard of it before or the church's Lighthouse Ranch on some acreage in Humboldt County outside Eureka. Guatemala 1980s was the location of perhaps the worst and most horrible massacres of native peoples backed by US supported militaries perhaps in all of Latin American, in sheer numbers, exceeding the horrors of the more well-publicized El Salvador. I remember those days. In my linguistics undergraduate major at the University of Oregon in the 1980s there were in that department fieldworkers who worked in Central America studying indigenous languages and told firsthand some of the stories. What was going on in Guatemala was determined to be genocide by international definitions, and that was not long ago, this was western-hemisphere US, us, in our time (well, forty years ago). General Montt, a devout Christian, came to power in that coup in the midst of the ongoing carnage in Guatemala. I saw Pat Robertson on TV on his national television program, the "700 Club", ecstatic that a fellow evangelical Christian was now in power in Guatemala. How God was moving in world affairs. Etc and etc. General Montt promised to restore order to Guatemala. As I recall he announced, everyone will obey the law, and any who do not will be shot. The reality was the genocidal actions carried out by the army continued and escalated under his time in power, and General Montt spent his old age in court facing criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity. All of this holocaust was US supported. According to the Holocaust Museum Houston, during the full duration of what was considered a Maya holocaust which reached its peak intensity under General Montt, a reported 200,000 Maya Indians were massacred or disappeared and 646 Maya villages destroyed (https://hmh.org/library/research/genocide-in-guatemala-guide/). From a History Today article: While the genocidal killings have ended and dictator Efrain Rios Mott is dead, the United States has not atoned for its heinous actions in supporting the killings. The CIA is widely known to have understood its role in funding genocidal persecution whether intentionally or unintentionally. Regardless of the overarching goals of United States’ Cold War foreign policy in containing the spread of socialism throughout the world, the United States still bears responsibility in perpetuating genocide against the Mayan people of Guatemala. In combatting the denial of the Guatemalan genocide, citizens of both Guatemala and the United States must continue to stand up for the truth in remembering the atrocities of the past committed by both governments. By telling the stories of the Guatemalan Genocide and condemning the crimes against humanity perpetuated upon the Mayan people of Guatemala, further acts of genocide may be prevented in the battle against the violence of the state. (http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/7/4/the-cold-war-era-guatemalan-genocide-and-americas-role-in-it) Do most Americans know this history today? No. Just like Indonesia. The amnesia. So recent. No presidents, no CIA decision-makers, get held to account, criminally prosecuted, over things like this. It just goes on and on, again and again. It is hard to imagine JFK/RFK, not perfect, but that they would have gone along with that.

The problem with the General Cappucci comment is how do you know whether he is speaking from suspicion--everybody on earth has opinions on the JFK assassination--or knowledge. It is not evidence unless Cappucci claimed and specified he was speaking from knowledge not suspicion. I ordered Sean Fetter's two volumes based on Robert Morrow's opening description, and Sean Fetter comes across well enough in the interview. He claims he has an original correct solution to the JFK assassination from 40 years of research in a magnum opus that in part deals with something happening to the body but which differs from Lifton whom he says got it wrong. From the interview, it seems Fetter is not arguing for a vast micromanaged plot in advance in explanation of the things which happened but suggests it was a plot which started going wrong immediately in real time and, like a football play where the quarterback is scrambling and nothing is working right, they were scrambling as things were not happening as they were supposed to. Not that the plot did not succeed in killing Kennedy, but the plotters also intended to get away with it and not be identified as the perpetrators, not so easily accomplished when things started falling apart. Fetter doesn't give the evidence he claims he has for this in the interview, says that is in the two volumes, but that seems to be the gist of what he says he argues. He says he obtained original interviews with Air Force personnel on Air Force One and Air Force Two that day which he claims helped crack the case of what happened. In his interview he tells of his starting point long ago: the Fred Whitcomb and Perry Adams 1974 privately circulated book manuscript which received little publicity since it was never published at the time but which is recognized today as having pioneered in original research (e.g. on the witness testimonies who saw and smelled gunsmoke near the limousine and grassy knoll area with gusts of wind from the southwest blowing northeast [therefore not from the 6th floor TSBD], to name just one). I was in the fourth grade in Portage Path Elementary School in Akron, Ohio on Nov 22, 1963 when a child walked into our teacher's classroom and handed a note and our teacher read it to us and then started tearing up. Somewhere in 1976 or the spring of 1977 I was living and working in Santa Barbara, California and by total accident read a feature article in a local newspaper about someone local associated with the U. of California, Santa Barbara, who had coauthored a book manuscript on the JFK assassination, named Perry Adams. The article was so intriguing I looked up Perry Adams in the phone book, called him and asked if it would be possible for me to borrow the manuscript to read. My spirit fell when he said he had no copy he could lend out. But then quickly lifted again when he invited me, if I wanted, to come over to his place and I could read it in his living room. He just was not willing to let his copy out of his sight. So I did, read the manuscript, loose typed pages right in his living room, I think it may have been a Saturday afternoon while his wife took off for some errands and he did other things while I read for a couple of hours, then talked and answered my questions when I was finished reading. He told me of their having sent the mss to every member of Congress and some of the reactions of interest they had received. Perry Adams struck me favorably in person, as an intelligent, left-investigative-journalist or historian type. Adams' basic thesis was the Secret Service under the direction of Johnson and Connally had offed JFK while the government was out of the country in a plane flying over Japan, a coup. (I see here in the archived papers of Perry Adams who passed away in 1997 reference to only a single typescript manuscript draft--maybe that was the one I read in his living room that day: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2w1017hx/entire_text/.) Although I did not return until recent years to study the JFK assassination, that early encounter strikes a chord of curiosity of where forty years of research took Sean Fetter from that starting point. Its a chunk of money to set out for something unknown, but I'll report back what I think after the books arrive for the benefit of others less inclined than me to impulse buying.

I have been tempted by that line of conjecture too so am not unsympathetic to your efforts, but here is my problem with that, actually four problems: the first is skepticism that anyone rational would agree to be falsely blamed for an extended period of life if not forever for an assassination attempt on a popular president one supports. The second is skepticism that anyone in their right mind would believe anyone who tried to recruit one into that kind of operation, without suspecting they would become a dead patsy or double-crossed. The third is skepticism that Oswald would willingly give up seeing his children again, probably the most precious things in his life. And the fourth is lack of positive evidence. The massive number of Dealey Plaza earwitnesses who heard the final two shots close together, and the number of witnesses who both saw and even more importantly smelled gunsmoke at street level in the Grassy Knoll area, with wind direction gusting northeast, are standalone evidences that the JFK assassination was not done entirely from the 6th floor of the TSBD, i.e. something other than or more than Oswald's rifle alone accounting for the shots. But if it was a multiple-shooter situation then it is a professional shooting situation and professionals won't be relying on a Mannlicher-Carcano with only four bullets in a clip that holds six, and a crappy scope meant for use with a .22. But the rifle is easily traceable to the "communist", Oswald, is a setup. And yet Oswald was involved in something, was stalling and lying under interrogation as if maintaining a cover just long enough until intervention could spring him free, but killed before it could be learned what that was about. Oswald, with no rifle ammunition, no cleaning supplies, and no practice shooting in the runup to the assassination, had a gunsmith fix the damaged screw holes of the scope mount, the scope reinstalled and the rifle sighted-in on Nov 11, with apparently no indication that was for his own use to shoot. I think my work has established that date and event as a fact, only the interpretation or what to make of it is at issue (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Irving-Sport-Shop-109-pdf.pdf). It looks like he was preparing the rifle for a sale to someone else rather than for his own use. The logistics of his lack of a car and not returning to Irving again until Nov 21 suggest such a sale or conveyance of the repaired rifle could have either occurred that same day, Nov 11, or he could have stashed the repaired and newly-sighted-in rifle in a storage locker at the bus station for someone else to pick up later. If Oswald is not the lone shooter (established from the two points cited above alone), that suggests Oswald may not have been any shooter, even though the rifle on the 6th floor is traced to him, as a setup--the setup not requiring framing Oswald as the shooter but Oswald as the owner of the rifle involved in what would be presented as a communist conspiracy. The logistics would be worked out in a fluid situation leading up to Nov 22. Not too hard to get people in and out of the TSBD as far as that detail goes. What did Oswald know? What and who was he involved with? I believe Oswald was intending to meet someone in the Texas Theatre which is why he went there, but others knew he was there and sought to kill him there.

This is not a negotiation. There is no linkage between Clemons and Tatum. Either zero, one, or both were witnesses, with neither affecting the other. It is OK with me whatever you judge, I and others can agree or disagree, state our reasons, etc. You say above you have not been convinced Clemons was a Tenth and Patton witness, but then in the same breath you express a conditional, seeming to say (I think) that you will accept her as a Tenth and Patton witness if (the conditional) I accept that Tatum was a Tenth and Patton witness, and ask me if that is "fair". What I think of Tatum--or anyone else, or you on Tatum--should have no logical bearing on your judgment on Clemons. I will tell you straight where I stand: yes Clemons was a witness, and yes Tatum was a witness. I think they both were there, both saw the gunman. We can discuss whether 100 percent of what each of these witnesses--as all the others too--reported was accurate or mistaken in specifics, how to interpret what they said, etc. That is a distinct issue from were they there and did they see. But Tatum has nothing to do with the judgment on Clemons, nothing at all. It is exasperating sometimes trying to get a straight answer from you. Please clarify. You know she was working at a house only two or three houses or however many it was removed from the Tenth and Patton intersection. Do you doubt she worked at or was at that house that day? You know she said she came out to the sidewalk upon hearing the shots. You know from the film interview of her that she says she saw the gunman, in agreement with what other witnesses saw and told. You know that Myers in 2020 reported a Tenth and Patton girl present at the time who told Myers how as a girl she saw a black woman--clearly Acquilla Clemons--at that very Tenth and Patton corner, "bawling" and wringing her hands at what had just happened to Tippit moments after the fact--exactly the position in which Acquilla Clemons was positioned from her testimony to have seen what she said she saw and told. There is no sign Acquilla Clemons materially changed her story over time. There is no sign Acquilla Clemons' story was of late first appearance or origin. There is no sign Acquilla Clemons sought publicity (just the opposite). There is no known sign that Acquilla Clemons had a history of prevarication or dishonesty, unless you have knowledge of something related to her character that has not been made public. Can you say why you have "never been totally convinced that Clemons saw the killer as he was making his escape"?

Is it possible Oswald wore a white shirt, tie, and black pants when he went to the Adlai Stevenson event on Thu Oct 24? And that was what that dry cleaning (I assume it was dry cleaning) was about? The witness's "approximately one month ago, exact date he could not recall" before the Dec 5, 1963 date of that FBI interview? Or Fri Oct 25 when Oswald went with Michael Paine to the ACLU meeting? I believe Oswald's clothing on Nov 22 is known and is not consistent with a white shirt, tie, and black pants, on any of those three counts.

"Martin's recorded interview with Clemons proved that Lane was telling porky pies, regarding a mysterious 2nd female witness to the Tippit murder [other than Helen Markham]." That is not the issue Bill and you know it. The issue is the same as for your other witnesses, that she saw the gunman leaving the scene. The way you cite this, an average reader will read you as saying it was a lie that Acquilla Clemons was a witness of the gunman, although in your hair-splitting meaning of "witness to the Tippit murder" you will deny that you said or meant "witness of the gunman of the Tippit murder". "Because Smith and Benavides testified to the Warren Commission and Clemons refused/was reluctant, it is faulty to place Clemons in the same category of witnesses as Smith, Benavides, Burt, Markham, B. Davis, V. Davis, Scoggins, Guinyard, Callaway, Reynolds, Patterson, Russell and Lewis." Bill, where do you get Clemons "refused/was reluctant" to testify to the Warren Commission?? She was never asked!! The Warren Commission was never informed or had knowledge of her existence as a witness. And who cares whether or not she was reluctant. What does that have to do with it. What does her testimony or lack of such to the Warren Commission have to do with whether she is a witness for historians or investigators today? Let me repeat the question as to the simple starting fact: do you agree that she was a witness? Simple question.

I don’t understand Jimmy Burt’s testimony, there are contradictions in his tellings. I agree his claim of witnessing the killer’s hands touching the top of the right front passenger door where the fingerprints were lifted 20 minutes later, as you note from 300 feet away (if his location at that moment was as he said), is not stronger than supporting plausibility that the killer touched (since he said he saw the killer there).

Wait a minute Bill. You have William Smith on your list, he was after the fact. You have Benavides on your list. He was after the fact. It is true you did not include Tatum. But back to Benavides. Why Benavides but not Acquilla Clemons? Acquilla Clemons said she was visited early on by an officer bearing a sidearm, which sounds like some law enforcement talked to her, knew she was a witness but made a decision not to use her. I hope that decision at the time was not because her witness description was not deemed useful to what was wanted, or because she was deemed less important because she was black. I suspect both of those were factors. There is no question she was a witness, and her story is firsthand on videotape. For a late-breaking additional confirmation of Acquilla Clemons as a witness, Myers in 2020 of Mary Little who told of Acquilla Clemons at 10th and Patton that day, https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/emory-austin-his-daughter-mary-and.htm. Perhaps your unstated criterion was witnesses who became publicly identified no later than the time of the Warren Commission. But going by actual witnesses, not simply by an arbitrary dividing line based on who was known to the Warren Commission, is there any reason for excluding Acquilla Clemons as a witness in studying the Tippit case? Incidentally Acquilla Clemons' story is not materially different than what the other witnesses saw and told. She echoes what the other witnesses told, she saw what the others saw. But that is beside the point from establishing, do you agree, that she was a witness.

Michael K., I see in the earlier Bill Drenas article Kinsley is quoted earlier, "He was heading for the library". That plus Kinsley saying the man was on the median divider on Jefferson, and the Myers' quote of Kinsley saying the ambulance turned "onto Jefferson heading east", OK, I concede you are right the man was heading east, in the direction of the library, and it seems Kinsley's route for the ambulance was correct and Butler's incorrect. The gunman ended up passing Brewer's store and into the balcony of the Texas Theatre ca. 1:35 pm which is about 15 minutes later. There are some minutes unexplained time gap in that; it doesn't take 15 minutes for the gunman to get there. Hypothetically it could be possible for the gunman to have been seen by Kinsley going east on Jefferson, doubling back in the same direction he originally came from, then somehow out of the ambulance's sight he doubled back again to make his way heading west again to the Texas Theatre. But it is difficult to imagine why and it makes no sense. If Warren Reynolds is excluded as a mismatch to the man because of Kinsley's thinking the man looked like Oswald, maybe it was Patterson (do you know of a photo of Patterson?) or someone else.

(See update at end.) Re the man in the street almost run over by the ambulance of Dudley Funeral Home at ca 1:18 pm. From the Dudley Funeral Home, start of the ambulance, at the SE corner of Jefferson and Crawford, the route of the ambulance assume as told by Butler, the driver, in 1981: right turn out of the funeral home on to Crawford heading north, north through Jefferson remaining on Crawford to Tenth, right (east) on Tenth 1.3 blocks to the fallen Tippit at the crime scene on Tenth. (Interview quotations here are from Myers, With Malice, 2013 edition, pp 155-156 and associated endnotes.) Kinsley’s conflicting route description of the ambulance told to Myers in 1986 perhaps is mistaken (as opposed to vice versa). Either because of real error of Kinsley, or error in reporting or misunderstanding of Kinsley. Both Butler (“pulled out from behind the funeral home onto Crawford”) and Kinsley (“We pulled out the side entrance onto Crawford”) agree on the right turn (north) on to Crawford as the start of the ambulance’s direction. Kinsley (as reported) says they next turned right (east) on to Jefferson. But driver Butler said they went straight through on Crawford and turned right on Tenth (not right on Jefferson). One has to pick one. Butler’s route may have been the quicker of the two. A single right turn, versus three turns one being a left turn, to get to the same destination after leaving the Dudley Funeral Home would be more efficient and likely quicker from an experienced driver’s instinctive preference, in this ambulance situation where seconds mattered. Then they encounter the man walking hurriedly in front of the ambulance but not running, almost getting run over, Kinsley yells at him, the man is unfazed, “never looked back…just kept going”, per Kinsley. We know the killer went west to go past Brewer’s shoe store on Jefferson farther west and then still farther west into the balcony of the Texas Theatre. So when Myers reports Kinsley saying that man headed “east” on Jefferson is that a mistake for “west”? I have seen mistakes in transcription of “east”/“west” in archaeological site descriptions. The westward direction of the man might be supported by the description that the man passed in front of the ambulance in the street. If he was actually going east then he would not be crossing Crawford from the Ballew’s Texaco area in front of the ambulance heading north on Crawford. Kinsley says after he shouted at the man, the man did not look back but just kept going. “We had the lights and siren on” (Kinsley) though they were not yet moving fast says Kinsley. As they start to pick up speed going through the Jefferson intersection north on Crawford, they see this man crossing the street in front of them (this would be crossing from the east to the west side) and almost have to hit the brakes to avoid running him over. The man ignores Kinsley’s shouting at him and Kinsley sees the back of the man’s head because he says the man never looked back. This could fit a picture of a man crossing Crawford westward in front of them. Therefore the man almost run over by the ambulance may have been the gunman heading west. If it really was someone heading east on Jefferson—if the Kinsley route was correct and Butler’s the one in error—then it would be someone other than the gunman. Either way, this was not a sighting of the gunman heading east—or if anyone thought it was it would have been a mistaken report. The gunman did not head east on Jefferson, but headed west from around Ballew’s Texaco going to the Texas Theatre. Update: the suggestion outlined above is probably incorrect. Kinsley's route for the ambulance may be correct after all and Butler's incorrect.

In the article posted by Robert M. is this: "According to Kennedy-family confidante Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Bobby Kennedy “found [Bill] Harvey and his meaningless melodrama detestable” while Harvey “hated Kennedy’s guts with a purple passion.” Could someone with access or knowledgeable of Schlesinger's writings verify Schlesinger wrote that? Historian Schlesinger wrote those words? Let me get this straight -- the CIA man in charge of running a government program dedicated to carrying out officially-approved extrajudicial assassinations "hated Kennedy's guts with a purple passion"? Is that really the best kind of person to put in charge of secret assassinations? Maybe CIA's Human Resources department might have recommended finding someone, shall we say, less negatively opinionated about the boss to assign to a position with that kind of sensitive operational capability? Has a US commander-in-chief of the armed forces ever had a fragging issue with subordinates? (My father, WW2 Army Air Force combat veteran New Guinea, told me when he was in basic training one officer had a particular reputation for being a mean dude. One night some enlisted men grabbed him, held him over the side of a ship and threatened to drop him to his death if he did not improve his ways. He promised he would, they did not kill him, and he was less mean from then on.)

Minor point Bill, but why isn't Acquila Clemons in your database of "thirteen REAL witnesses who saw Tippit's killer ... run from the scene holding a gun"? Oversight? She would make fourteen and add one more to your subset of "eyewitnesses who [did] not say if the man was Lee Oswald or not". She described seeing the gunman (from her 1966 interview on YouTube): "reloading his gun" "kind of chunky" "kind of heavy" "not a very big man" "kind of a short guy" "he unloaded and reloaded" "he was short and kind of heavy" But she did not say whether or not she thought that man was the medium-height, thin, 5'9", 140 lb Oswald. (Craford was ca. 5'7-1/2" which qualifies as "short" and weighed ca. 150-160 which would be medium weight for his height, not skinny. The light jacket worn by the gunman if it was loose or billowing might assist in her having seen him as "chunky" for his size.) Acquila Clemons was definitely a "REAL" witness, and there is no justification not to consider her so and list her among the others in your database.

Unless I missed something, I didn’t see any evidence Jerrie Cobb had a disease that scarred her clavicle, or the same kind of disease as June Cobb.

Michael Griffith, are you in contact with Mary H.? The claim of a handwriting match between an unidentified “Jeri” who wrote a marginal note on a QJWINN working internal CiA document, and Jerrie Cobb, is testable, if verified handwriting of Jerrie Cobb could be produced for expert comparison. Would it be possible for you to ask what H’s source is for the “Jerrie” lookalike signature that H identifies in the book as Jerrie Cobb’s? I cannot see a reference for that in the book. And ask if H could produce a longer sample or exemplar of Jerrie Cobb’s handwriting? There is already good sample quantity of the unidentified CIA “Jeri” writing on those documents, all that is missing is verified Jerrie Cobb handwriting to compare, which I would not think should be difficult to find. That could allow confirmation or falsification of this particular detail up or down decisively and fairly easily.

That claim seems to be nothing more than CT urban legend, Donald. I myself tried to find evidence for that claim but there isn’t any. The FBI lab reported that revolver was in excellent, perfectly good working order without a thing wrong with it, and there is no document from a primary source saying otherwise, only book authors’ hearsay claims which never cite a primary document as footnote. The claim probably originated as a speculated explanation for the “click” or alleged failed shot during the struggle for the handgun. I believe two officers thought they were each the owner of the one hand a fleshy part of which was injured by the striking of the revolver’s hammer and which stopped the bullet from firing—McDonald, and Paul Bentley who also claimed he had a bruised hand from the same cause (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIQqi1CF21U). Another detail that receives little notice is McDonald in a later interview I have seen on YouTube told of how as he struggled for the revolver and both his and Oswald’s hands were on it, the revolver was pointed at one point (so McDonald said) at Oswald and McDonald said he was tempted to shoot Oswald which he indicates he could have but said he resisted that impulse out of concern that if he did the bullet would go through Oswald and hit an officer behind Oswald. Was McDonald embellishing in that telling? Who knows. Maybe it was true? Wouldn’t it be interesting if when that trigger was accidentally or intentionally pulled the revolver was pointed at Oswald?

The absence of a reported ticket stub on Oswald's person when searched after his arrest I agree at first glance seems to run counter to expectations if he had bought a ticket, however I do not regard that as decisive. If one does not anticipate needing to leave and reenter the theater again--most patrons do not--there is no need to hang on to the ticket. Has a study been done to find out what percentage of theater patrons have their ticket stubs on their person after a movie has begun? I am pretty sure it would be under 100 percent and it would not surprise me if it were well under 100 percent. But what I think happened is Oswald entered that theater wearing his blue jacket, the heavier or warmer of his two jackets, the one sometimes called a "coat", the one Earlene described as "dark" in color and (because she was color-blind) "gray". As my jackets study brings out, those are the only two adjectives Earlene Roberts ever used in description of the color or shade of the jacket, which she called a "coat", which she saw Oswald leaving the rooming house newly putting on and zipping up going out the door at 1 pm, and neither of Earlene's adjectives agree with the color of the Tippit killer's off-white light tan jacket, CE 162, but both agree with Oswald's blue jacket or coat. The ticket stub went into the pocket of his coat as Oswald entered. Inside the warm theater Oswald took off his coat and set it somewhere. In his moving around of seating positions next to persons told by Jack Davis as he looked to find someone he expected to meet, he became separated from his coat, with the ticket stub in it. When Oswald was arrested he was not wearing his coat and was taken from the theater without it. In that scenario (see my "jackets" study https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/T-Jackets-112.pdf) Oswald's blue jacket would have been found elsewhere in the theater perhaps not realizing who it belonged to. At some point somebody might wonder if it could have been Oswald's and turned it over to the police, who would then have turned it over to the FBI, who reported a couple weeks later it had been found at the TSBD. The positive argument that Oswald bought a ticket is that of the inside-the-theater witnesses--staff and patrons that day--only three gave information on when Oswald arrived into that main seating area, and all three said Oswald was there before or during the opening credits at 1:15-1:20, when ticket purchasers entered the theater. Those three are Burroughs (Burroughs later, differing from his earlier Warren Commission testimony); the credible witness Jack Davis; and George Applin according to an unpublished interview of him by reporter Earl Golz in Earl Golz's papers (Applin told Golz Oswald was already in the theater when Applin entered). If that timing of those three witnesses is correct, that is Oswald's alibi--he was not the man who ran up into the balcony at 1:35 (after that man had killed Tippit). Brewer saw that man in front of his store through his glass doors and from the stage in the darkened theatre identified Oswald who had stood up in the back of the theater as that man, to police, who arrested Oswald, but that could easily have been a mistaken identification on the part of Brewer, given the other Craford/Oswald identification confusions. And the man who ran into the balcony probably was the man seen walking out of the balcony down the front stairs passing by deputy sheriff Courson at about 1:40 who Courson also, like Brewer, thought was Oswald, even though in Courson's case that man cannot have been Oswald since Oswald was at that time in the main seating area below. Now you ask: Who says he "slip[ped] past" the ticket taker? Why assume that? Was the ticket taker ever asked? I know both Julia Postal and Burroughs referred to Burroughs taking tickets, Burroughs doing so at "slow" times (such as that 1:20 matinee film) while running the concession at the same time. But while that would normally be the case, and would have been the case after the first rush of persons came in and after the movie started that day, I read the testimony below as indicating a different person took the tickets from the bulk of the ticket purchasers who bought and entered the theater before the movie started at 1:20: general manager of the chain of theaters, John Callahan. Mr. BALL. Now, did many people go into the theatre from the time you opened at the box office until about 1:15 or so? Mrs. POSTAL. Some. Mr. BALL. How many? Can you give me an estimate? Mrs. POSTAL. I believe 24. Mr. BALL. Twenty-four? Mrs. POSTAL. Fourteen or twenty-four. I believe it was 24. Everything was happening so fast. Mr. BALL. You had sold about that many tickets? Mrs. POSTAL. That's right. Mr. BALL. What was the price of admission? Mrs. POSTAL. We had three. Adults 90 cents, teenager with a card is 50 cents, and a child is 35, and you have a pass ticket. Mr. BALL. It is cheaper that time of day than other times of day? Mrs. POSTAL. No, sir; we don't change prices. Used to, but we don't. Mr. BALL. Same price? Mrs. POSTAL. Uh-huh. Mr. BALL. Now, did you see anybody go in the theatre well, did you see any activity on the street? Mrs. POSTAL. Now, yes, sir; just about the time we opened, my employer had stayed and took the tickets because we change pictures on Thursday and want to do anything, he----and about this time I heard the sirens----police was racing back and forth. Later in her testimony Julia Postal identifies who that was by name: Mr. BALL. Who is your boss? Mrs. POSTAL. Mr. John A. Callahan. Callahan was not just the boss of that theater but over all in the entire region--but he was there that afternoon and I read Julia Postal's testimony as Callahan was at the door taking the tickets. After the movie started, Burroughs would take over from Callahan in taking tickets from later arrivals, which would have been his job all the time that day if it had not been for Callahan's presence. I think Oswald bought a ticket from Julia Postal at the front window before 1:20, gave that ticket to Callahan taking tickets at the door, and entered the theater as a fully legitimate paid-ticket customer. The guy who ran past Brewer's store and up into the balcony at 1:35 wasn't Oswald, notwithstanding Brewer. Brewer, and police, got the wrong guy. The right guy--the guy who ran into the balcony at 1:35--was still in that balcony, but Brewer couldn't see anyone there when he looked and missed him. Brewer didn't see anyone there, but he was there. Police talked to that guy in the balcony that day, but let him go and then lost their written record of and their memories of his name.

This is fascinating David. On the Coca Cola company that's hilarious. On the $13.87 on Oswald, here is some speculating... Marina's room in Irving was their "bank", she had their surplus cash. Lee did not have a large amount on his person and no additional coins or currency were found in Lee's room in his rooming house. Lee was paid in cash biweekly at TSBD I think. They didn't have a bank account. Let's suppose the way it worked was every weekend when he saw Marina in Irving he would take $15.00 with him back into Dallas from there, out of their "bank" which Marina physically had. Lee would live on that $15.00, spend down part of it until the next Friday in Irving. Whatever was left of it Lee would empty his pocket change and bills in Marina's room, plus give Marina any lump sum cash such as his TSBD pay for safekeeping, then return to Dallas with a fresh replenished $15.00 in his pocket for the next week. Why $15.00? An arbitrary round number, convenient, enough to live on for a week with some left over until the next weekend's replenishment. A TSBD 2nd floor woman employee said Lee often came to her desk to ask her to make change for the coke machine. That could suggest Lee returning to Dallas from his weekends in Irving with simply bills--the $15.00--in his pocket. Imagine on Thursday night Nov 21 Lee does as usual, empties whatever cash and coins he brought with him, then leaves Fri Nov 22 to return to Dallas with a fresh replenished $15.00 in currency. But that particular day Lee knows it will be the presidential parade and is not sure how that will change his ability to conveniently get change and he likes his cokes, so thinking ahead he adds two dimes from what they have in Marina's room, enough for two cokes if he wanted them Fri Nov 22, so he would need to ask for change that day. Imagine Lee also has had om hand a special torn (as in torn-off) dollar bill which he has in case of needing to meet someone in a theater as a contingency or in an emergency, for use only if needed. He does not carry it on his person but has it somewhere if it is ever needed. Where would he keep it? Say, in his address book. Then Nov 22, Lee, who is not the assassin and does not realize the rifle he sold on Nov 11 was up on that 6th floor, does realize when JFK is shot something is wrong that could come back on him. Not knowing what is going on Lee gets out of the building evasively out the back, gets to his rooming house on Beckley, evasively all the way, and there picks up that torn dollar bill for its purpose (also changing clothes and picking up his revolver), and goes south on foot to the Texas Theatre for the meeting. Counting the torn dollar bill which was part of the $13.87 on him at the time of his arrest, that is $16.20 total before what he spent. He buys two cokes that morning, one to eat with his lunch before the parade passed, then a second one after the parade only because his purpose of going up on the second floor after the shooting of JFK was to go out and down the rear stairs to exit the rear in a circuitous way but was stopped by seeing officer Baker when he got to the NW door on the 2nd floor and backpedaled, seen by Baker. He was not there for a coke that time but he buys a second coke due to his accident of being there, as his pretend reason why he was there then. So that's two cokes, $0.20. He takes the bus, 0.23, the taxi, 1.00, and buys an admission to the movie at the Texas Theatre, 0.90. There you have it, $13.87 exactly on his person when arrested in the theatre. (No popcorn bought.) This speculation is more whimsical than serious David but its one way of interpreting those numbers that I thought you might enjoy. It was your Bugliosi page on these numbers which prompted this, so don't think your labors and research on your website don't produce results. 🙂

No problem David. Before you took the link away I read your page on Bugliosi errors where you had caught mistakes, great page of fact checking and interesting trivia! Speaking of which, one item there caught my eye, on the $13.87 Oswald had on him at the time of his arrest, which you calculated he had to have had at least $15.10 starting the morning. I am actually interested in this detail, can you say how you arrived at that? $1.00 for the .95 plus .05 tip cab I know. But what was the bus fare paid to McWatters? And what would a vending machine coke go for in those days? (Then there is the question of one or two cokes that day.) Is it possible Oswald bought a sandwich from a food truck mid-morning? (He left Irving that morning on only a cup of coffee, not much to go on for manual labor, and Buell said that is what Oswald sometimes did.) I think he also paid .90 for a movie fare too 🙂 , one of Julia Postal’s 14 ticket sales that afternoon (though no torn ticket stub on his person was reported). (The 0.90 movie price is from Julia Postal’s testimony.)

After finishing a careful rereading of the book I don’t think H has shown that Jerrie Cobb was the CIA June Cobb and I don’t think they were identical. I also don’t think either had anything to do with the Babushka Lady. I think H makes an intriguing case for some June Cobb connections with QJWINN but does not show a connection of Jerrie Cobb to June Cobb or QJWINN. Jerrie Cobb’s claim to have been the twin-engine pilot at Redbird is believable, since I see no other obvious sign Jerrie was lying to H. As a veteran pilot already employed in Fort Worth why wouldn’t it be plausible Jerrie would fly a charter flight of a news crew from Florida to Dallas. But no reason to conclude that had anything to do with June Cobb. To run down the short list of supposed strong items for the identity, with the exception of Fortuna Calvo-Roth’s identification of Jerrie Cobb photos as the long-ago June Cobb she remembered—with the exception of that—nothing else shown by H in the book is substantial to me, in identifying Jerrie as June. And with only that left standing, not good enough. From what I see Calvo-Roth appears to be still living at age 90 and would merit a serious reinterview and fact-check on the photo ID reported if that is to be stand-alone relied upon. The “26” scar? Look at the photo of Jerrie’s arm again. There is no “6” or “o” at all that I can see apart from natural folds or wrinkles in the aged skin of Jerrie arm. There is a line scar with a curl at the end that does look like the shape of a huge “2” but I doubt that is significant, simply coincidence. At the start of that scar a couple of other straight-line scar lines radiate outward which one has to disregard to have only one of them become the base of the “2”. Seeing shapes in clouds phenomenon. The “26” of Taafe’s assault reported in the Miami newspaper is completely different scars in the news photo, smaller distinct “26”, not Jerrie’s scar at all. H suggests a deceptive photo was published of Taafe’s assault mutilation in Miami. But nothing verifies that ad hoc claim. June Cobb had a massive diseased boil-looking disfigurement on her clavicle area of her lower throat published in a medical journal which shows her young face in the early 1950s which is not the face of Jerrie Cobb. H suggests photo alteration in that article published by an MD in a medical journal to explain that the face of June Cobb there is not Jerrie. Totally ad hoc. H’s photo of the aged Jerrie’s neck or clavicle area shows a small slight darker spot in the skin that looks like a birthmark. H sees that small darker skin spot in aged skin as the remnant of June Cobb’s massive disease scar, I don’t think so. H shows a comparison of QJWINN document signatures of “Jeri” as looking like a signature of “Jerrie” Cobb. While visually it is striking, in H’s otherwise well-documented book I could find no identification or source for where she got that Jerrie Cobb signature. I wanted to fact-check that, and cannot on information provided. Therefore, as it stands, insubstantial. On checkerboarding, the interesting checkerboarding claims H shows have to do with June Cobb and QJWINN, without bringing Jerrie into the picture. I don’t see Jerrie as identifiable with June Cobb via checkerboarding claimed to show that. My take on these points. The book makes June Cobb more interesting, but I do not see a convincing case made in the book that Jerrie Cobb ever went under the name June Cobb.