Michael K., on the alibi for Craford, that is what Steve Roe always tells me, Andy Armstrong confirms Craford was elsewhere. 

Well yes Andy Armstrong said that but was it truthful? If he was asked to provide the alibi, do you think he would have refused or would disclose that he’d been asked? I don’t. He never talked anything incriminating about anyone. Black in the Deep South 1963, prison time served, working for underworld types … did his job, loyal to a fault, never squealed on anyone …

And that is the only claimed alibi for Craford apart from Ruby and himself. Not sufficient for exculpation. My opinion. 

Greg Parker on the ROKC site says he smells a rat and this may be a setup by someone associated with the RFK Jr campaign or the security for it. Suggests Aispiro was set up. Suggests someone found his crazy social media comments and decided he would be the perfect “nut” patsy to phone and tell to show up for a “security job”. Time and place perfect for national media attention. 

I think there are some bad persons internal to the RFK Jr campaign. I refer to whoever wrote that post of RFK Jr about Secret Service protection not being provided after 88 days, when “88” has a known and verified neo-n azi code meaning and use in Europe and the US, preceding RFK Jr’s social media post making unnecessary reference to that particular count of days. 

After that was brought out and RFK Jr did not acknowledge and denounce that “88” dog whistle and announce that someone or ones had been fired for ghost-writing that for him, I concluded RFK Jr may not be in control of his campaign. 

Not that RFK Jr would trade on his father’s horrible assassination that way, or play with fire that way. But what of some people around RFK Jr? 

Finding out if there was a call to Aspuiro offering a job, if so from who and where that goes, and exactly why an armed Aspuiro requested to see RFK jr personally (if that report is true), is essential. 

I don’t think it would be entirely irrelevant also to get to the bottom of who wrote the first draft of that RFK Jr tweet with “88” in it, and find out what else that individual, upon identification, has been up to. 

On the Mary Lawrence sighting of Ruby and Craford at the Lucas B & B Restaurant, ca. 3 am, Nov 22, 1963

Thank you Michael K. for the links to the Dallas Police interview reports.

It is of interest that Pete Lucas, owner, said that his waitress, Mary Lawrence, had told him that she saw "Ruby and Oswald" in the restaurant. This was before Mary Lawrence spoke to any authorities about it. 

Lucas's response to the Dallas Police was she was a "chronic l-iar" and "tends to fabricate stories" and "stated there was no truth to the story". Said he, Lucas, had forbidden Ruby to be in the restaurant. 

Uh, no. Lucas is the suspicious one here. I think Mary Lawrence is entirely truthful apart from being mistaken on the Oswald identification, truthful on the Ruby and Craford sighting and truthful on the threatening phone call.

Craford independently confirmed he was with Ruby at the restaurant at that time. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10626#relPageId=399. That independent confirmation cannot have been contrived. Mary Lawrence was telling the truth.

Craford was working at the Vegas Club (very near the Lucas B & B ) till closing in the days in the runup to then. Ruby would come out and give Craford, who did not have a car, a ride back home, to the Carousel Club. It fits.

Mary Lawrence tells Lucas she saw Ruby and Oswald (sic).

Lucas is opposed.

Within days Mary Lawrence has an anonymous male caller threaten her life and advise her to leave town. The identity of that caller has never been solved. At that point Mary Lawrence now goes to the FBI and talks to them for the first time.

This does not sound to me like a crazy woman or who had been put up to it. Few people will just cold-call the FBI to falsely claim a threat on their life in association with a truthful and relevant witness report. Her story of seeing Ruby and Craford (as we now know the identity) was true. So was her report of the threat on her life phone call.

I would say Pete Lucas is a prime suspect as having something to do with that call. No other known motive for anyone to try to stop Mary Lawrence's story. Lucas was opposed to her story. Lucas falsely said Mary Lawrence fabricated it when Mary Lawrence was telling the truth.

Pete Lucas's claim that Ruby was forbidden to be in his restaurant sounds like distancing and, on its face, is questionable since Ruby in fact was there (testimony of Mary Lawrence and Craford independently). 

Why was Pete Lucas either lying or distancing, and trying so hard to discredit Mary Lawrence?

I suppose the innocent explanation would be he doesn't believe Oswald would have been in his restaurant, believes it will be bad for business if that story spreads, wants waitress Mary to shut up for that reason.

But that doesn't account for the death threat phone call, in juxtaposition of timing and motive going to suspect Pete Lucas. 

Sam Pate, reporter for KBOX, "spoke at length with the HSCA investigators about 'information' he received from Pete Lucas of the Lucas B & B Restaurant, that JFK had been killed by one Bruno, who escaped via the storm sewer system"(https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48709#relPageId=8).

The death threat to Mary Lawrence is puzzling, since there is nothing obviously incriminating to either Ruby or Craford about having been seen in that restaurant near the Vegas Club after they closed up at the Vegas Club, eating an early-morning breakfast before heading home that night. No crime in that. Completely normal behavior and hours for Ruby.  

Pete Lucas is the one and only known person who strenuously did not like Mary Lawrence speaking of that, followed in short order by Mary Lawrence gets that phone call threatening her life. 

Is Pete Lucas a suspect in that death threat to Mary Lawrence? I think so.

"[Sam Pate] also described a 1968 episode in which his car was bombed after Pete Lucas had warned him not to mention Sam Campisi and other mob-connected people on his radio 'gossip show'" (at the link above).

Lucas sounds like a man with nice friends.

I don't think there is any question Mary Lawrence saw Ruby and Craford in that restaurant that night, just before Ruby drove himself and Craford and either dropped off Craford at the Carousel Club (Craford's claim) or alternatively took Craford with him to Ruby's apartment which was only several blocks' short walk to the Tippit killing scene in the direction from which the killer was seen walking toward the crime scene later that day.  

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

I asked this in another thread, I think to Greg D., but do you know if Myers has ever released tapes of any of his interviews? This “paraphrased quote” business does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of Myers’ reporting. 

Myers has supposedly conducted hundreds of interviews with witnesses, witness family members, and other key persons involved in the case. Other JFK researchers get crucified for not making that type of research available for peer review. Myers should be held to the same standard, but for whatever reason his persistent anti-transparent behavior has been largely ignored, other than his refusal to release the parameters of his single bullet animation.

Sure he has done some valuable work, but the real value of Myers’ research is the unfiltered raw data: witness interview tapes, 3D modeling data, dictabelt calculations, etc. etc. etc. Myers as far as I know has never released any of that material to the public. Why not?

Basically, I agree that Myers’ interviews are worthless as reported; and until he starts exposing his work to real scrutiny by other researchers, I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that he’s withholding information to protect his own credibility.  

Mostly right on above Tom. The lack of release of interview recordings and/or transcripts is a good point (I know of none). That such transcripts for at least some interviews exist is verified because I have seen a Myers footnote refer to a page number and date of a witness interview transcript. But the instance of Myers claiming that a published direct quotation, between quotation marks, attributed to Jack Tatum, in both editions of With Malice, were not words spoken by Tatum at all but a gloss of Myers' own which inadvertently became part of the published quotation, is troubling.

I do not think Myers intentionally fabricated that Tatum quotation that Tatum never said. But I have asked myself, how does an error like that happen (and how isolated is that error given that one came to light). 

My best guess at what happened with that non-Tatum quotation quotation--the mechanism or causal explanation--I draw from something I learned long ago from observation during a brief stint as an intern doing radio news production, in the news business. It is a common phenomenon reported by people who have been interviewed for newspaper stories: reporters will interview, and reporters have a "storyline"--a hook, a setup, the interesting information, the second opinion or opposing opinion if available, the wrapup.

Time after time, persons interviewed for a story in the local paper will read their own quotations in the newspaper and turn to whoever is nearby and say, "I didn't say that. That reporter misunderstood me!" These were not reporters trying to get it wrong, and in most cases these were "friendlies", reporters sympathetic to the persons and stories they were reporting. What was going on was the reporter asks questions, listens to the answers, takes written notes (if not a recorded interview). Then writing up the story the reporter writes what the reporter thought the person said or meant. Puts quotation marks around it. Often the reporter is not expert on a topic of a story apart from a surface briefing, and things can easily be gotten wrong.

(Incidentally, I learned that reporters at least in the circles I moved did not usually run stories by the persons interviewed to verify accuracy of quotations before going to press. Sometimes they would but more commonly not. Reason? Partly it was time deadlines and the hassle. But also all reporters learned that when they did that, people would think they were being asked for permission or approval, want to change things, etc. and that was not the reporter's view, the reporter only wanted verification of accuracy. Misunderstandings, hurt feelings ... simple solution, try to get the quotes right, but send it to press without running it by the people quoted. Then in the occasional case a person howled misquotation, run a correction and clean it up afterward. 🙂)  

Myers' quotation of Tatum saying something Tatum did not say only came to light because Myers had gone into print emphatically denying that Tatum had said what Myers had published Tatum quoted as saying, and a reader brought it to attention and Myers confessed the published quotation was incorrect. If Myers had not had a lapse of memory and forgotten he was contradicting his own published interview, that invented quotation of Tatum likely never would have come to light, preserved in print for all time.

What it suggests to me is that that interview of Tatum may not have been recorded. 

It is difficult for me to understand how an error of that nature would happen if it involved Myers working from a tape recording and transcription from a tape recording.

But it is easy to understand if Myers was writing up that Tatum interview from a combination of written notes and memory, "creating" verbatim quotations from that raw material. Or, worse, adding in words within the quotation marks at a possibly years-later stage of writing his book as something he thought Tatum had said too. 

That does not mean Myers' reporting of interviews is worthless. I think Myers' interviews in With Malice are valuable in content and probably in the top 10% percentile of accuracy and credibility as far as reported interviews in the JFK field go.

But from the Tatum misquotation, some of Myers' reported interviews appear to me not to have been recorded. The reporting of interviews that were unrecorded in With Malice then become, as I judge it, approximately of equivalent degree of accuracy and credibility as FBI interview writeups which, as I understand it, normally were not recorded but written up from memory or notes soon after the interviews. (In other words, usually accurate except when they aren't.) 

Would Myers be willing to disclose which interviews utilized in With Malice were recorded and which were not? As in a list A of one class, and a list B of the other class?

I'm not going to ask him. The last time I asked him something he misunderstood my question as if I was asking something totally else and blasted me for it. I have a weak stomach to go through that again. 

Paul, I agree the Louisiana plates on the car driven by "Nick" could be inconclusive, but the accent detail as from either New Orleans or Boston supports a New Orleans origin for "Nick" consistent with those Louisiana plates.

A check of US dialect maps (e.g. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/597712181777277236/) shows you are right that east Texas is the same as Louisiana dialect--except for New Orleans which is distinctive from the rest of Louisiana/east Texas. You can see on most of the dialect maps the area of New Orleans has a marked dialect of its own.

I see a lot written on New Orleans' distinctive dialect and the history and reasons for that. Check this article: "How New Orleans got its accent", https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/how-new-orleans-got-its-accent.html.

"If you’ve been listening to coverage of Katrina’s devastation on the radio, you’ve no doubt heard the distinctive New Orleans accents of victims, officials, and rescue workers alike. Some of them speak with a familiar, Southern drawl; others sound almost like they’re from Brooklyn. Why do people in New Orleans talk that way? ..."

So the reference by Estes to a "New Orleans" (not Louisiana but "New Orleans") accent, and that he somehow thought it sounded like someone who could be from "Boston", is not imaginary but has a basis in reality. He pointed out the accent of "Nick", unlike any of his other characters, because it was memorable or stood out to him, differing from how most people in Dallas were talking. 

Meanwhile, here are Joe Turman's books including the one about his boxer brother Buddy: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJOE+GARNER+TURMAN. 

Paul, I sure like your digging up details and suggesting possibilities. My main problem with the Buddy Turman idea for "Nick" is Buddy Turman was not named Nick. You point out that he had a brother Nicky or Nickie, and a phone number for the brother, written as "Nick Turman", was found on a paper of Jack Ruby. So there is a local "Nick" in Dallas known to Ruby, however nothing is known of the brother Nicky beyond he had a famous boxer brother (who worked for Ruby at the Vegas Club). Two other difficulties: Estes said his "Nick" drove a maroon Cadillac with Louisiana plates, also that his "Nick" spoke with what he called either a New Orleans or a Boston accent. Since the Turman brothers were all native Texans would the New Orleans or Boston accent fit?

There is a source on this that could be checked: I see that a still third brother of this family, Joe Garner Turman, was an author of several books including one about his famous boxer brother, Buddy: The Life of Texas Boxing Legend Buddy Turman, and another book which is his own memoirs (Memoirs: A Rusty Old Halo). I wonder if either of those books have anything interesting about Nicky or about Ruby or the Carousel Club. 

I continue to think that one of the Nicks associated with Marcello/mob circles in New Orleans is a best guess to look. And Jada arrived from New Orleans to the Carousel Club along in there although her arrival on July 17 is two or three weeks earlier than when Estes puts his "Nick" and Connally et al meeting in Ruby's office which Estes has approximately the first week in August or so. 

It is hard to imagine Jada and "Nick" would not have known each other, if both were from New Orleans and both associated with Ruby at the Carousel Club in such close proximity in time.

There have always been allegations of Ruby and Marcello contacts via Marcello surrogates but also allegations of directly. "Nick" as one such surrogate contact would agree well with the details given by Estes. 

Joe Bauer, interesting on suggesting that Seafoam Green color might be a woman's choice of car color rather than a man's. I know there is current research on gender and car color preferences but I looked but could not find any data from the 1960s, was just curious to check that. The one thing I don't think any data is needed to confirm though is that few men will buy a pink car like Jada's in any decade!  

2 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Greg, 

You're right of course that I can't prove that the same 1961 Chevy Impala ridden in by Estes was the same one seen by Bowers, but might I point out that an "off-green color" was probably Chevrolet's "Seafoam Green".

Further, since the 1961 Impala seen by Bowers was "muddy up to the windows", might I suggest that a dirty up to the windows Seafoam Green (with white accents, maybe?) might be described as "white" by Lee Bowers at a distance in the Texas noonday sun?

The reason I focused on this was because the last Bowers saw of this car, the lone male driver was not only circling the parking lot adjacent to the TSBD just before the assassination, but 

"Mr. BALL - Then did he leave?
Mr. BOWERS - The last I saw of him he was pausing just about in--just above the assassination site."

Now, I don't know what Bowers meant by "just above the assassination site". He was looking at a car near the fence on the grassy knoll, not a car hovering in mid-air above the sixth-floor window of the TSBD.

But since Joseph Ball asked no clarifying questions of Bowers (i.e., "What do you mean - ' just above the assassination site'?"), we can only guess at Bowers cryptic statement. 

 

In any event, what about this one?

Estes said that the second time that he and Lee Oswald went to Possum Kingdom Lake, they drove in the waitress/go-go dancer's "1963 Galaxie Ford with Texas plates."

Now according to W.P. Gannaway's helpful report (which you linked earlier - good work!), Barbara Bonnie Gene Jean Louise Hethcoat Kelly Kellough did not have a spare penny to her name as of late November 1963. 

[Intelligence Report - Bonnie Louise Kellough, January 23, 1964] - Page 1 of 2 - The Portal to Texas History (unt.edu)

So how did Ms. Cutie Pie get herself a brand-new Ford Galaxie to use?

Hmm.

By an amazing coincidence, Jack Ruby's club at which our girl worked in 1963 was regularly frequented by several/many/dozens/hundreds of different officers, both on and off duty, of the Dallas Police Department!

Who knew?

And the Dallas Police Department's official vehicles for both marked and unmarked patrol cars were . . . 

1963 Ford Galaxies.

JFK Files: Replica 1963 Dallas police squad car to honor officer slain by Lee Harvey Oswald

One can only ponder the vast mystery of how an attractive 23-year-old woman, working in various capacities at a strip joint, might have had access to vehicle the exact same make and model year as the very cops she served at Ruby's place every night . . . 

Such a riddle . . . 

Very interesting Paul on Estes' "Bobby Kelly", Bonnie Kellough, having a brand-new 1963 Ford Galaxie, the same model car used by the Dallas Police Department and many other police departments for their patrol cars, two months before she is nearly indigent. Estes also says she gave him, Estes, money to buy a car for himself to assist in his leaving Dallas, when she seems to have urged Estes to get out of town hurriedly for his safety.

The Diana Hunter book, Jack Ruby's Girls, referred to on page 1 of this thread, has recent-hire pretty Bonnie as a "favorite" of Ruby, with other girls jealous of Bonnie because Ruby favored her. Maybe that translated into somehow Ruby steering a new car Bonnie's way? Or maybe it was just lent to Bonnie?

After the assassination and Ruby was arrested for having killed Oswald, Bonnie would be receiving no more favoritism or gifts from Ruby, if Ruby perchance was the source of the car. 

Bonnie also had (I think I remember from the Diana Hunter book) an ex- (or was it current but not living with him) husband, and a child not living with her at the time she was in Dallas. 

Bonnie last known headed to Los Angeles late 1963, then unknown. Wonder what became of her.  

Or the child, who could be still living today somewhere.

2 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

(BTW, did you see my point about Estes' comment on the 1961 Chevy Impala?)

Yes. Craford did not own a car but did know how to drive, which corresponds to Estes telling of his "Oswald" one-time driving a 1961 Chevy Impala, but all other occasions being seen by Estes taking a cab, being met at or dropped off at the Greyhound bus station, etc., indicating a non-car owner (just like Craford). Therefore the 1961 Chevy Impala sounds like a loaned car. Since the lake cabin where "Oswald" and Estes drove and stayed, described by Estes as at Possum Kingdom Lake near Mineral Wells, Texas, was also said by the man (according to Estes) to have been loaned for use by a friend of the man, it is possible the 1961 Chevy Impala was provided by the same source who provided the loaned cabin at the lake.

You note that a 1961 Chevy Impala was spotted in the parking area behind the Grassy Knoll area of Dealey Plaza the day of the assassination, and raise the possibility or question as to whether that was the same car. 

One discrepancy is that the 1961 Chevy Impala spotted in the Grassy Knoll parking area is said to have been white, whereas Estes' statement says, "I think [it] was an off-green color", though I don't think that in itself would falsify their being the same car if there were other reasons for a match. However, apart from worth noting the similarity, I assume at this point this is coincidence. There does not seem to be enough tangible to take this anywhere further on present information. There is no certainty that the white 1961 Chevy Impala in the parking lot had anything to do with the assassination. It could be interesting if you find anything further on this though.  

Paul Jolliffe -- 

You note that Estes clearly thought the man was Lee Oswald and said the man had used the name "Lee Oswald" and was called "Mr. Oswald" by another at the Carousel Club. All true. 

You close with: 

"And since the comings and goings in the Carousel Club in June, July and August of 1963 had nothing to do with the upcoming assassination of JFK (the Texas trip had not yet been fully planned, let alone announced), and since there is exactly zero evidence that Crafard and Ruby had met before October of 1963, this "Lee Oswald" was . . . who exactly?"

My short response is:

FACT ONE: the man was not Oswald. Oswald was in New Orleans. It is not possible Estes' "Oswald" was Oswald.

FACT TWO: It was Curtis Laverne Craford, from argument. Argument for similarities and identity run through these four figures: Estes' "Oswald" = Jarnagin's "Oswald" = Larry Crafard = Tippit killer.

With those two facts in place, the question is how is the memory of Estes that the man claimed to be "Lee Oswald" explained. 

Either it was a mistaken memory, or it was not a mistaken memory and Craford was impersonating Oswald. It is one of those two.

I believe the possibility that Craford was impersonating Oswald (using the name "Lee Oswald") has too many improbabilities and incongruities to be viable.

Therefore, it was a mistake in Estes' memory. Had to have been, because no other alternative makes sense. 

The question now becomes: the mechanism for the mistake, how did it happen?

Fact: cases of other witnesses who saw Oswald on television after the assassination, and were convinced that someone they had seen pre-Nov 22 might have been Oswald or was Oswald.

Fact: in a few of these cases witnesses actually "remembered" the person, who absolutely was not Oswald, using the name "Lee Oswald" (e.g. an Alice, Texas "Oswald" sighting). Those must be mistaken memories provided it indeed is excluded that Oswald was that person in these cases, and if impersonation is also not a reasonable explanation.

Context for Estes: Estes was traumatized, feared the people he had dealt with in the summer of 1963 the rest of his life, in light of the assassination which followed not long after his leaving the Carousel Club. Estes shows inaccuracy in memory of the exact name of the woman with whom he then lived (Carousel Club waitress Bonnie Killough, whom he remembered as "Barbara Kelly"). The analogy of inaccurate memory of Bonnie's name and the trauma and shock of thinking the man he knew in July and Aug 1963 had been Oswald, the assassin of the president, must be reconstructed as causing the memory that the man called himself and was called "Oswald" to be a created memory. It must be so, because no other explanation works to account for the facts. 

Estes tells his story for the first time in 1977, fourteen years after the fact. No sign he had even ever written it down before. It is not even clear that he had even ever told his story before.

He tells of his first meeting with the man, in which he says he told the man his (Estes') nickname, "Whitey". Possibly, Curtis Craford told Estes his nickname, "Larry". Perhaps the reality was the two exchanged nicknames, first-name basis, no last name used normally.

And just as "Bonnie" became retroactively remembered as "Barbara", maybe "Larry" was retroactively remembered as "Lee" (possibly that in itself explicable even without invocation of the traumatic influence of seeing Oswald on television).

(Incidentally Dan Rather, the newsman, told the FBI that the weekend of the assassination he spoke to a Mr. "Dollar" at the locked front entrance of the Carousel Club who told Rather he thought he might have seen Oswald in the club. Repeatedly, Rather kept telling the FBI about that "Mr. Dollar". It was William DeMar, the memory-act entertainer. To show how names can be misunderstood in pronunciation in memory.)

And then under the post-Nov 22 influence of the shock of seeing Oswald and Ruby on television, a memory of use of "Oswald" attached to "Lee" (Larry) became a created or manufactured memory.

Paul, that's about the best I can do on this. You ask good questions that go right to the issues, and it is puzzling.

I will elaborate further on why Estes' "Oswald" was Craford, so clearly that it is a fact to me, but not today.  

17 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

I am unfamiliar with the incident involving a restaurant near Vegas Club, perhaps you can provide a citation. Two of the three employees at Contact Electronics refused to identify Crafard as Oswald. Regarding the one who did, in the scheme of things misidentifications are always possible. A solid hypothesis should elevate its support threshold above the "could have" test.

The reference is to Mary Lawrence and the Lucas B & B Restaurant, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10626#relPageId=397. That it was Craford with Ruby: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=374.

Then there is this, a report of someone intimidating this witness:

"At 1:00 P.M., December 3, 1963, Mary Lawrence, head waitress, B & B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue in Dallas, telephonically advised SA J. Doyle Williams she had received an anonymous call from a male caller about 6:00 A.M. on December 3, 1963, who stated: "If you don't want to die, you better get out of town."

"Lawrence stated she has known Jack Ruby for the past eight years and that she saw him at approximately midnight on November 22, 1963, after the President had been shot or during the early morning hours of November 23 [sic], 1963. Ruby was at the B & B Restaurant at that time and was with an individual, possibly identical with Lee Harvey Oswald." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10489#relPageId=554)

From the dates, Mary Lawrence's first contact to the FBI was the report of the threat, following which the FBI interviewed her about her sighting of Ruby and what she thought may have been Oswald with him, which actually was Ruby and Craford.

On 9/12/2023 at 2:28 PM, Leslie Sharp said:

A prime candidate for "Nick" at the Carousel Club, Nick Popich:

As noted in this government record, Popich had known William Wayne Dalzell* since Dalzell was a young lad. 

Popich had agreed that if Dalzell — who had significant experience in the oil industry in Yemen in particular — could arrange anything concrete with any Middle East government, he/Popich Marine Construction would be on board any feasible project.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=68908#relPageId=1&search=addis_ababba

As revealed in a 1964 article detailing Bobby Baker's role in the F-111 scandal, in May 1963, Nick Popich played host to his business associate, Puerto Rican Paul Aguirre along with Baker, his girlfriend Nancy Carole Tyler, and Ellen Rometsch.**

At the time, Popich was operating the Vieux Carré, a venue he co-owned with Marcello. Buried in remarks we find that Andrew "Moo Moo" Sciambra shared a passion for boxing with Popich who employed him at the restaurant. 

Fast forward, it was Asst. DA Sciambra who provided memos to his boss Jim Garrison outlining the activities of Popich's friend for decades, Bill Dalzell  including a brief collaboration with Ed Butler of INCA which was partially funded by Dallas oilman Clint Murchison. I've not found any indication that Moo Moo disclosed to Garrison his past employment at Popich's Vieux Carré; we do have reason to consider the restaurant also employed sous chef Jean Martin a.k.a. Pierre Lafitte at the time.

Scenes from Lafitte’s New OrleansIn 1961, with significant funding from Californian industrialist Patrick J. Frawley and Dallas oilman Clint Murchison, mentioned previously as a financial benefactor of Ferenc Nagy’s Permindex, and with financial support from his friends at International Trade Mart, Lloyd Cobb and Director Clay Shaw, twenty-seven-year-old Ed Butler founded the Information Council of the Americas (INCA). His publications under that banner were relied on by the CIA in a blitz of propaganda just prior to the invasion at the Bay of Pigs which could explain his association with Deputy Director CIA, Charles Cabell. Some of their money went toward a film titled Hitler in Havana, reviewed as a “tasteless affront to minimum journalistic standards” by the New York Times.      Researchers will be aware that Butler was a member of “Free Voice of Latin America” for a short time before being ousted for his extreme right political views. Its own secretary treasurer, William Klein who filed incorporation papers which designated a young Cuban student at Univ of Tulane as president, and a shy, intelligent former citizen of Belize Honduras as vice president, wrote in a recap of the organization for DA Jim Garrison, “The life of the Free Voice as a corporate entity was ephemeral and uneventful. For my own part it was an absolute bore.”       The letter states that Ed Butler’s globe-encircling communist conspiracy theory quickly made his removal from office mandatory. According to Grand Jury testimony, the originator of the concept of Free Voice was William Dalzell. He testified that along with Klein (who according to an investigator present during Grand Jury later went to work at the Office of Naval Intelligence in DC), he wanted to “warn Latin America of what has transpired here since Castro has been in power for the last few years.” Klein’s dismissive remarks about the organization as well as his version of Butler’s role at Free Voice contradicts Dalzell’s testimony in several areas, including that Butler was never active because INCA was in effect competing with Free Voice. However, there is no doubt that Butler and Dalzell were well acquainted in spite of his claims. 

* On Wednesday, April 17, Pierre Lafitte made the following entry: “Dalzell – K money for Drilling.” Three days earlier, Lafitte’s entry reads, “Delong meet with T. Cuba.” We have reason to believe that “Delong” is a reference to the patent holder of various designs of heavy equipment for the oil industry, Leon Delong; we know that Dalzell had been attempting to raise money in New Orleans for another of his oil related schemes, and we know that he had been employed briefly in Odessa, Texas by Dixilyn Drilling the same year that the West Texas oil company invested in the “Julie Ann,” one of the first floating, self-contained platform rigs with jack-up legs for off-shore drilling designed by Texan R. G. LeTourneau.*** An oil industry manufacturing magnate, LeTourneau had been in joint ventures with Delong. The “Julie Ann” was the fifth such jack up rig based in Longview, Texas (the first two being commissioned by Zapata Oil founded by George H. W. Bush who held extensive contracts with LeTourneau). Three months later, on July 17, Lafitte wrote “-Dalzell crazy? (Rene says ignore his antics.)” Bill Dalzell had been in psychiatric care the summer of 1963. 

**  Author G. R. Schreiber in a book published in 1964 by ultra-conservative Regnery Press, The Bobby Baker Affair: How to Make Millions in Washington, confirms Lafitte’s entries when he writes that East German born Ellen Rometsch, on at least one occasion “went along with Bobby and Nancy Carole [Tyler] and Paul Aguirre, a friend from Puerto Rico, on a jaunt to New Orleans.” Continues Schreiber, “The chief counsel for the Senate Rules Committee said that Bobby's Puerto Rican friend told committee investigators that if he were ‘asked anything about what took place [on the trip to New Orleans] he would take all the amendments, from 1 to 28.’” We see from Pierre Lafitte entries that later in the year a shipment of LSD from New Orleans to Dallas was on the cards. Schreiber goes on, “The Rules Committee did not call Paul Aguirre, but Senator Hugh Scott reported on some of what the Puerto Rican told the committee's investigators. "Mr. Aguirre admitted that Baker brought Carole Tyler and Ellen Rometsch with him from Washington to New Orleans on the May, 1963, trip.’” This claim coincides with Lafitte’s record of May 14: “Carole – (airport) Paul Aguirre  Others?” 

*** Dr. Lawrence Alderson stated that a Captain, first name unknown, Letourneau [sic]  replaced him at the depot in Petette Malioun, France, and it is his understanding that Captain Letourneau became well acquainted with [OAS Captain Jean Rene] Souetre. He stated Letourneau was from Texas, but he does not know his address.

Could you identify your reference for your statement concerning Nick Popich: "As revealed in a 1964 article ... Nick Popich played host to ... Aguirre along with [Bobby] Baker, his girlfriend Nancy Carole Tyler, and Ellen Rometsch"?

What 1964 article reveals that?

Your two stars go to a footnote citing a 1964 book,The Bobby Baker Affair, by G.R. Schreiber. 

There is no reference to Nick Popich in that book. I know, because I checked today. Wasted 90 minutes of my precious time trying to find your claimed reference in that book (the book has no index), and it isn't there. The name Nick Popich isn't in the book. 

2 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

This is critical. Myers' estimate does not stand up to the facts. Markham arrived at the scene at 1:06. Bowley arrived at 1:10. The ambulance arrived at 1:19. All three of these times are about as firm as the evidence gets in this case. The intervals allow plenty of time for Benavides to arrive after the shooting but before Bowley, missing the murder event and its immediate aftermath entirely.

If there were witnesses who attested to the presence of Benavides' truck at the murder scene when Tippit was killed it would undermine Guinyard's WC testimony, but I don't believe any such witness has ever been produced. Ball tried and failed to fit Markham into this role in an amusing exchange [3H320].

As to Crafard -- Andy Armstrong didn't see a resemblance to LHO. Neither do I.

It doesn’t matter who doesn’t see a resemblance between Oswald and Craford, the fact is some witnesses did make that confusion (eg at the Contract Electronics store, and Mary Lawrence at a restaurant near the Vegas Club the early morning hours of Nov 22, to name just two). That is simple fact. You can say they would not have made that mistake which sounds fine apart from they did, after seeing Oswald on TV and “remembering” (without being able to actually see Craford again). In the case of the Tenth and Patton witnesses, it is not certain whether any got a good look at the killers face though Benavides, Markham, and Scoggins might have (Benavides’ denial notwithstanding), but none of those are certain on that point. The Tenth and Patton witnesses had less time or proximity to the killer upon which to make their Oswald ID than the staff at Contract Electronics and Mary Lawrence who did see Craford up close for a period of some consecutive minutes and mistakenly identified Craford as Oswald.

On the timing, of the three you cite I do not consider the first two certain, in the case of Bowley not because I think his watch was off but because he reported remembering the time on his watch as 1:10 first known the next day, and it could be possible he remembered incorrectly by a few minutes. Things like that can happen in next-day memories. Helen Markham I believe was walking intending to arrive at ca 1:15 in order to catch the 1:20 bus, not the 1:10 bus. Given that there were three, not one, very quick call-ins to the police or emergency services following the shooting (Mrs. Wright, Barbara Davis, and the Tippit patrol car radio, and that before Callaways arrival which 90 seconds sounds about right for that), a “long” delay before emergency response is less likely than the more “rapid” response. Myers’ timing may have some unacknowledged margin of error but it hangs together with the known police radio call time checks as approximately correct, at least that was my conclusion when I worked through the arguments on this a while ago. How I see it anyway. 

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

I don't see how Connally's 1967 pardon of Candy Barr, four years after the assassination, has any bearing on the claim that Connally held a secret meeting with Ruby and others at Ruby's strip club before the assassination. Governors get dozens of requests for pardons every year and usually rely on some kind of screening board to vet the pardon requests. 

It just makes no sense to me that a Boy Scout like Connally, who was the governor of the state at the time, would have been caught dead in a strip club for any reason, much less that he would have attended an illicit meeting at such a club. It would have been far more logical and much safer to hold such a meeting in a private home or in a hotel room.

Is it possible that the FBI padded Estes's account and added the bit about Connally meeting with Ruby and others at the strip club? Or did Estes fabricate this meeting in an otherwise-truthful account?

No connalys pardon of Candy Barr in 1967 had nothing to do with a meeting in 1963, only the 1963 parole issue if anything. But whether the 1963 Connally meeting in Ruby’s office story of Estes had to do with “paroles” itself is only a guess, not claimed by Estes who gave or knew no reason for the meeting, only says he witnessed it. I don’t think Estes made it up and I don’t think the FBI taking his statement added it either with all the details Estes’ gave. Estes signed the whole statement. 

And I don’t know if you saw my above, but in Estes’ story Connally would not have been seen by anyone entering or at a strip club, apart from the ones present in Ruby’s office who would be the only ones who knew he was there. It is not as if he was in public watching strippers on a stage, or walked into an entrance of such an establishment. I am assuming an unmarked door in the alley in the back went to all levels of a multistory building thus even if seen need not necessarily be seen as going to the Carousel Club at a time when it was closed. I do see one point that could weigh in favor of what you are saying though. If I were Connally, I might want to control the venue out of fear of being covertly taped or caught on camera (and then set up for blackmail). 

"He won't work with us on paroles"--Ruby on why Ruby and his associates were displeased with Governor Connally, overheard Oct 4, 1963

That was a comment of Ruby according to Jarnagin when he overheard Ruby and Craford (not Oswald) on Friday night, Oct 4, 1963. Jarnagin was a flawed witness, he was under the influence of alcohol, he appears to have only set down in writing what he remembered after the assassination on Nov 22, and his mistaken belief that that was Oswald with Ruby I believe corrupted his account such that it incoherently mixes real Craford material with fictitious Oswald information in Jarnagin's reconstruction of what he heard that evening. 

Jarnagin failed a polygraph, but I do not think he invented that he overheard much of what he claimed he did that night of which he tried to communicate by letter to J. Edgar Hoover in early December 1963. The FBI basically wrote his story off as the story of a nut, since Jarnagin was certain that the date was Friday night, Oct 4, 1963, and Oswald was in Irving visiting his wife Marina at Ruth Paine's house that night. No way was that Oswald drinking beer with Ruby that night in the Carousel Club discussing a contract killing of Governor Connally involving a rifle shot taken from the Carousel Club during an unspecified future parade.

Since it wasn't Oswald (and since he also later failed the polygraph), essentially no attention has been given to taking seriously that Jarnagin did overhear something, talk of a contract killing, with Craford. That makes a lot of sense on a number of levels, and follows with similar description and in continuity from the entirely independent story of James Odell Estes telling of Craford showing up at the Carousel Club and meeting with Ruby only four to six weeks earlier. 

The method to be used in analysis of Jarnagin's story is (a) subtract everything uniquely "Oswald"; (b) what is left, that is "not Oswald", much of which does agree with Craford, is the possible real information there, to be read critically, concerning Craford and Ruby and discussion of a contract killing of Governor Connally to be carried out by Craford. 

Jarnagin says he overheard Ruby say Governor Connally "will not work with us on paroles" as why Ruby's mob backers were displeased with Connally. 

That hardly is reason to have a contract killing of Governor Connally. Craford says (all this in Jarnagin's writeup) not that it mattered to him, but why did Ruby's backers dislike Connally. I interpret Ruby's answer about "working with us on paroles" to be deflection. Yet it was not invented, it was a true statement, there was some issue with "paroles", but that would not have been the reason for a mob contract killing of Connally, that doesn't sound right, makes little sense. Whatever the true reason was, either Ruby didn't know and wasn't saying, or Ruby did know and also wasn't saying. (And was there really a mob contract on Connally? Or was that itself smoke and a possible recruitment of Craford to become a patsy in planning underway for a JFK assassination in Dallas? How knowledgeable was Ruby? Did Ruby believe everything he was telling Craford? Who knows--speculation can run in a thousand directions.)

Who was Ruby talking about in which "parole" was a live issue? ... one may have been Candy Barr, girlfriend of leading mob figure Mickey Cohen

Yes, Joe Bauer, you hit it. Candy Barr, who had been sentenced in 1957 to fifteen years for possession of marijuana, began her sentence in 1959 and by 1963 had served three years in Huntsville with only a mere 11 more years to go. She was paroled in April 1963 but her parole requirements were objectionably strict and there was an effort to get her parole restrictions loosened.

The "he won't work with us on paroles"--of Ruby concerning Governor Connally, Oct 4, 1963 ... was that related to the late Aug meeting in Ruby's office in which Governor Connally was present and Estes saw the briefcase with $100 bills?

Ruby was taking an active interest in Candy Barr's welfare in this time frame ... visited her, allegedly to give her a gift of dogs. Ruby gives the impression of being a go-between, an intermediary who did favors for others in the background, in addition to the legal running of the clubs. 

Ruby's Oct 4 words, "he won't work with us on paroles", was exactly the issue with Candy Barr at that time. Maybe there were more paroles than just Candy Barr, but Candy Barr's was one that could have involved a request to Governor Connally. 

"Jack Ruby and Candy Barr--in her own words" (letter of Candy Barr in 1996): https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16249#relPageId=44.

A 2001 Texas Monthly article interviewing a reclusive Candy Barr reminiscing about her earlier life: https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/candy-barr/ . 

From the wikipedia article on Candy Barr:

On December 4, 1959, Barr entered the Goree State Farm for women near Huntsville, Texas to serve her prison term. During her imprisonment, she was a witness in Los Angeles in mid-1961, of the tax evasion trial of her former boyfriend Mickey Cohen. She testified that he paid $15,000 to her attorneys and gave gifts to her during their engagement in 1959. She said that among the other gifts she received from him were jewelry, luggage, and a poodle. It was her understanding, she said, that Cohen was to settle a clothing bill of hers for $1,001.95.

After serving over three years of her fifteen-year sentence, Barr was paroled from the Goree Women's Unit on April 1, 1963. She left the prison, having requested that no pictures be taken and no interviews arranged. Barr had intended to return to Dallas, but her parole stipulations were too strict, so it was not permitted. Instead, she returned to her hometown of Edna, where her father and stepmother still lived. At this time, she became closer to Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby in telephone conversations. As she was having health problems when she was released from prison, she decided the best way to earn a living was by raising animals for profit. Ruby went down to Edna and gave her a pair of dachsund breeding dogs from his prized litter to help. 

Jefferson Morley was emphatic in rejecting the idea of a storm drain shooter, but the reason he gave--that a storm drain shooter could not have shot over the top of the windshield--seems flawed. The shot would come into the right side of the limousine by direct line to the right of the windshield (from point of view of occupants in the limousine) and not hit the windshield at all. I don't think a shooter from the storm drain is obviously farcical, provided it is post-Z312 and the shot was a throat entrance and near-EOP exit (the only shot it could be and work from the storm drain), for the reasons argued by Pat Speer for that bullet path apart from Pat has it in the opposite direction. The smell of gunsmoke near the limousine, what Sam Pate saw, suggest a storm drain shot and it seems to me it should not be ruled out unless it can be ruled out, on grounds other than this over-the-windshield illusory objection. Also, the storm drain shooter should be disassociated from theories of crawling through drains to escape. The simplest explanation is entrance and exit was made through the manhole cover on top, with the only issue being specific logistics of how and when accomplished. It would be one thing if there were any reports of officers checking that storm drain for occupancy by a human being following the shots, but I have never heard any. It remains therefore a non-excluded possibility until it is shown excluded. I agree that a pre-Z312 and I believe also a Z-312 storm drain shot is excluded which means the Z312 head shot is excluded.  

Morley's three comparative examples cited indeed are farcical, but a storm drain shooter post-Z312 is not obviously in the same class unless it is shown excluded. Morley:

Was there a gun man in the sewer shooting at JFK?

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, sheesh. Can you guys ever just go where the evidence leads? So even though Benavides said the killer had a blocked haircut in the back of his head, since Benavides did not specify that "the hair was cut above the collar," maybe the killer's haircut was really tapered but just looked blocked because of the jacket's collar!

IOW, even though, according to your theory, Benavides supposedly could not see the hairline because of the collar, he merely guessed that the hair was squared off. Is it not much more likely and logical that Benavides could see the hairline and could see that the hair was blocked? Oh, but you can't go there because Oswald undeniably had a tapered haircut. 

Obviously, if you could not see a person's hairline because of his coat collar, you couldn't see whether he had a blocked or a tapered haircut. Naturally, therefore, you would not just guess about what kind of haircut he had. You'd say, "As for his hair style, I don't know because I couldn't see his hairline, so I don't know if his hair was blocked or tapered." This is just common sense. 

Bill, Michael Griffith is clearly correct on this point. It is clearly the natural reading. The fact that Benavides spoke of the killer's hair "went down and squared off" means it "went down" to where it "squared off", which implies it did not go down below where he saw it "squared off", i.e. he saw skin under where he saw the hair "squared off". 

You can say Benavides remembered it wrong in his testimony six months later, or misunderstood what he saw, or whatever. But you can't say that skin under a "squared off" hairline in back is not what Benavides was claiming he saw, thought he saw. 

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Benavides said the killer had a squared off haircut, yes.  But he did NOT say the hair was cut "above" the collar of the jacket.  You muddy the waters with this stuff.

Since Benavides did not say that the hair was cut above the collar, it is indeed possible that the jacket's collar itself gave the appearance of a squared off haircut.  The killer could have had a pony tail tucked inside the collar of the jacket and still have the appearance of a squared off haircut.

Bill you hammer Michael Kalin pretty unmercifully for errors, including ones he made in the past not the topic of current discussion, and indeed you are strong on details. Just remember that when you hit someone too hard when they are down audiences start sympathizing with the one being hit, irrespective even of the issue. Here the tables may be turned. I think you missed it on this one, and perhaps may acknowledge a little humility and that no one, not even yourself, is immune from an occasional mistake.

Here is what Benavides said, and the issue is not what a man with a pony tail might have looked like, but whether this is a description of the back of the head of Oswald on Nov 22, 1963. That is the issue.

Mr. BENAVIDES - I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline was sort of--looked like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off, and he looked like he needed a haircut for about 2 weeks, but his hair didn't taper off, it kind of went down and squared off and made his head look flat in back. 

Now here is a photo of Oswald from the same weekend, and I ask you to say with a straight face that a witness getting a good look at this back of Oswald's head at close range would say twice, with emphasis, that that man's hairline in the back did not taper off: "his hair didn't taper off". "it kind of went down and squared off".

Does Oswald look like that below to you? Yes, this Oswald, right here, the one with the tapered hair in the back.

And a second photo is clearer, showing the back of Oswald's head better, but I am unable to show that photo, only the link to the Dealey Plaza Echo page on the MFF site where you can see it if wished: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=146528#relPageId=8 . Same questions on the second photo.

Your suggestion that Benavides from a few feet away saw Oswald's tapered hair going down behind the collar of a jacket and decided to describe that as "his hair didn't taper off" sounds like a bit of a stretch. It is not what one would expect a reasonable witness to report with emphasis if it were Oswald. 

That same Dealey Plaza Echo article notes that Helen Markham "told two patrolmen (J.E. Poe and L.E. Jez), almost certainly within 20 minutes of Tippit's slaying, that the gunman had "bushy hair".

Sergeant Gerald Hill said that as soon as he drove up to the scene a man approached him and described the gunman as having "brown bushy hair" (7H47-48). 

Ted Callaway gave an immediate physical description (before influence from any other factors) to "Patrolman H.W. Summers (the second policeman at the scene of the Tippit killing), who passed on the description to his dispatcher. Included was a reference to the gunman as having 'black, wavy hair'."

Do those repeated descriptions of "bushy", and "wavy" (and the later Benavides' "curly") hair look like Oswald's hair above?

Compare the photo below of the head of hair of Jack Ruby's experienced-contract-killer employee living at the Carousel Club at the time, recently employed by Ruby as a "handyman" paid in cash, Curtis Craford, two years younger than Oswald, about 1.5 inches shorter and about 10-15 pounds heavier than Oswald, not lean or almost skinny looking like Oswald (compare witness Acquilla Clemons' description of the gunman as "short and kind of chunky"). 

This photo of Craford was taken in Michigan a few days after the Tippit killing and may even have been after a haircut though that is unknown. In this photo Craford wears a light zippered jacket similar to, and of exactly the same off-white light tan color as CE 162, the Tippit killer's abandoned jacket, though the two are not the same jackets. They just are exactly the same color and zippered lightweight by an odd coincidence (as if someone liked similar jackets of that particular color, or perhaps wanted to establish that CE 162 wasn't a jacket someone might have seen him wearing at the Carousel Club). This jacket of identical color is worn by a man matching the earliest witness descriptions of the Tippit killer, a man who for no explicable reason quit his handyman job with Ruby with no notice and fled Dallas hitchhiking for Michigan less than 24 hours after Tippit was killed, on the morning of Saturday Nov 23, 1963. Tippit dead, an experienced contract killer bolts from Dallas hours later, a few hours after that the experienced contract killer's boss, Jack Ruby, kills Oswald dead witnessed on national television. Okaaaay.

But notice the full head of hair below. Does it look like Callaway's "black, wavy" hair of the Tippit killer? Sort of does, doesn't it? Can you imagine Craford's hair below, if windblown as the Tippit killer's was according to witnesses, looking "bushy" as witnesses said spontaneously within minutes, before having seen and come under the influence of having seen Oswald on television and in lineups?  

And although it is a little hard to tell from this photo, does it look like Craford's full head of dark brown or near-black wavy hair could have a block rather than tapered hairline appearance in the back, in a way that Oswald's hair did not?

Maybe notice the skin complexion too. Benavides, Latino, said the Tippit killer, although a white male, nevertheless had a skin complexion a little darker-toned than average for a white man, about the same skin tone as himself, Benavides. Of course we don't know the color scale used in this photo of Craford, so it could be illusory. But doesn't he at least look in this photo like he could be a slight bit "darker" in skin tone than average for white males, perhaps compatible with Benavides' description of the Tippit killer?

That is brilliant on the Ralph Paul Cadillac de Seville, Paul Jolliffe! I believe you got that right! 

Ruby had use of it loaned from Ralph, and had the hired help--Estes--wash it as a courtesy in appreciation to Ralph Paul for the loaner, or something like that. 

The FBI report does not give a color for Paul's de Seville (Estes says it was white), and Estes' 1963 was off by a year, it was a 1962 Cadillac de Seville in the FBI report. But thats close enough--Estes was not lying, is right. 

Michael G., on Connally as governor would not want to be seen patronizing a strip club for image reasons, probably true (though that didn't stop Secret Service agents in the presidential party the night before the JFK assassination). But in Estes' description, Connally and the man with Connally came up to Ruby's office via a "back" door entrance with a stairway up to the second floor, then going to Jack Ruby's office which I think was at the end of a hallway off the club premises proper. From many such alleys and commercial buildings I have seen, the ground-level door at the alley entrance may have been unmarked, just a rear doorway into a multi-story building from an alley, likely going up all floors with doorways to the floor of choice as one went up the stairs.

As viewed from the outside, the stairs could go anywhere, to walk-up apartments up above, anything. The club was closed during the daytime; entrance was not done from the main entrance with signage on Commercial; and the path to Jack Ruby's office via that rear door and stairwell I believe did not involve even passing through the closed premises of the public and stage area of the club. And if some semi-shady types visiting from New Orleans sought a brief in-person meeting to discuss a favor someone unnamed in New Orleans was seeking, with the possibility of some gratuity or appreciation in return extended from a grateful favor recipient, and the go-between suggested the venue, Connally (if so) might not wish to inform his normal staff. A visit to an office in a building entered by way of a non-public unmarked ground-level alley entrance might work. In any case that is what Estes said happened.

23 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

You can't be serious. Surely you know it is misleading--grossly misleading--to simply claim that Markham "identified" Oswald on the day of the shooting. Surely you know that such a claim would have been destroyed under cross examination in a trial.

For example, in her press interviews, Markham described the gunman as short, a little chunky/kind of heavy, and with bushy black hair. Oswald was 5’9”, downright skinny (if not almost anorexic), and had thinning brown hair.

She told the WC that she did NOT identify Oswald by his face but because he gave her the "chills."

Shall we mention that Markham was at least 90 feet away when the shooting occurred, and that she said that after the killer fled, she spoke with Tippit for several minutes? Tippit, of course, was quite dead when the killer fled.

Shall we mention that the one guy who was actually close to the shooting when it occurred, Domingo Benavides, said that the gunman had a squared-off (blocked) haircut that ended on the back of his neck above his "Eisenhower" jacket, and that photos taken on 11/22/63 clearly show that Oswald’s hair was tapered in the back and would have extended below the neckline on a similar jacket?

And on and on we could go.

Yes. It’s just so obvious that Helen Markham was an emotional wreck (understandably), had seen the killer shoot Tippit from ca 90 feet away, said she was terrified covering her face with her hands as the killer went past her to the other side of the street, and then identified Oswald in that lineup not because of recognition of his face but because he gave her “cold chills” looking at him. That was how she knew he was the one.

One of the Leavelle affidavits even says he/they brought her direct to that lineup from the “infirmary” at the police station where she was receiving medical attention from being so distraught. Other stories told of smelling salts reviving her from fainting. Makes a perfect witness to ID a man for a capital crime out of a lineup! Would it have made any difference in her identification if Oswald was actually innocent? No. 

And you are right, her descriptions of the killer’s hair to police and reporters do not agree with Oswald. 

Her physical descriptions of the killer to reporters do however sound like approximate descriptions of someone matching in description Curtis Craford, in his hair and his somewhat heavier weight—Craford who was otherwise “routinely” mistaken for Oswald by witnesses who didn’t know any better who had seen him with Ruby and freaked out when later seeing Oswald on television thinking Craford they had seen had been Oswald. 

If it wasn’t that the FBI lab in D.C. identified shell hulls the Dallas Police sent them, labeled the ones from the scene of the crime, as from Oswald’s revolver which the Dallas Police also had in custody, it actually might have been an open question in court whether Oswald did it.

And the block cut rear hairline on the killer from the best witness, a different witness, with a perfect view of the back of the killer from a close distance only ca. 15 feet away. Not Oswald’s hairline. That detail of testimony alone should have received significant attention from the Warren Commission but it did not receive any. 

But emotional mess Helen Markham revived back to consciousness with smelling salts, sees Oswald and feels cold chills, and realizes by that means it was him. 

According to the Innocence Project, about half of actually innocent persons exonerated after wrongful convictions were positively identified by eyewitnesses who were mistaken in those identifications.

And in this case it is not just conjecture but already on the table as fact that another suspect, complete with association with another possible murder weapon covered up by the Dallas Police, who unlike Oswald had self-confessed experience in contract killing, who was at the time of the Tippit killing in the direct employ of Oswald’s own killer, who may have been overnight in Ruby’s apartment the night before the Tippit killing which occurred only several blocks’ walk away by a killer who walked there from that direction, who left Dallas leaving no contact information or goodby hours after Tippit was killed, was frequently misidentified as Oswald by witnesses. 

1 hour ago, Joe Bauer said:

Was this meeting a night time one?

Or was it during the day when the club was closed?

According to Estes' statement Connally and another man accompanying him arrived between two and three in the afternoon (when the club was closed). 

Just brainstorming here, but … I don’t know whether that crevice area at the top of the back seat was positioned, but if it was in a center position, then just possibly could the Landis bullet be from the hypothesized through-and-through shot from the front through JFKs throat and exit near the EOP, post-Z312 from the storm drain, since that would be approximately where in the rear seat JFK was leaned over or located at the time of that hypothesized shot?

But if the crevice was to one end or the other of the rear seat, scratch that, wouldn’t work. 

I think the shallow upper back wound that did not penetrate may be correct, and also there may be something to the Paul Landis bullet or fragment given the 1983 article found by David von Pein.

But I am having difficulty seeing how an intact bullet could reverse itself out of JFK’s back and place itself in a crevice at the top of the rear seat, in the space of four minutes. 

If the shallow back wound is accurate, that has to have been a bullet that exploded into powder upon hitting the bottom side of a rib going in with nothing intact left to be found in the body. And the throat wound must then be a through-and-through from the front with an upward trajectory from the storm drain post-Z312 and exiting near the rear EOP of the back of the head, the reverse direction but same path argued by Pat Speer, the reported original theory of both bullet path and direction of Cyril de Wecht. 

Then the Landis bullet piece might be from some ricochet or something inside the limo from one of the head shots? (Or a Connally through and through shot?)

It’s just a puzzle. 

Gut feeling though is the deathbed confession interpretation more than the book enrichment for heirs interpretation. 

Second gut feeling: it is not C399. Hypothesis: the mystery of what happened to the fragment was easily though wrongly thought connected to the mystery of explanation of how C399 came to be? In that light, maybe Landis does not remember at this point what he did with the bullet piece that day? And has filled in an absence of memory with his story of walking it in since he reasons he “must have” done so?

I have seen 90-plus year old John Curington change details in his telling of stories from published versions decades earlier, in ways that look to me that he believed the changed version detail. My father’s true World War II Pacific Theatre combat war experiences in the tellings over the years, same phenomenon. Has something like that happened with Paul Landis’s memory?

Michael K., if you feel I have wronged you please contact me at gdoudna "at" msn.com and let's talk. If I see I have wronged you I will come back here with an apology. Sincerely, Greg.

More on Benavides

On whether Benavides was where he said he was, at the moments of the Tippit killing--about fifteen feet away from officer Tippit's parked patrol car--and saw the back of the killer's head from a uniquely close position as no other witness, this is critically important.

I have come to realize that Benavides' testimony is actually devastating to the Oswald-did-it case.

Either Benavides was seriously mistaken; was not as close to the killer as he said he was; or was truthful and the killer was not Oswald. 

Because: Oswald's thinning hair was straight, not wavy or curly or bushy. Oswald had tapered hair on the back of his neck, not a block cut hairline, from many photos. And Oswald's skin complexion was light, not "darker than average" for a white man. 

That is the significance of Benavides' testimony. If there was funny stuff about why he was not invited downtown, why there is no record of a written affidavit or statement or FBI interview, etc. ... and those things were not a matter of accident or routine police sloppiness ... Benavides' physical description of the killer, combined with his credibility as the closest witness in a position to see, could be a possible factor.

Benavides' physical description of the killer describes Curtis Craford, and excludes Oswald.

I cannot imagine anyone in a position to suborn perjury from Benavides having Benavides perjure that kind of testimony exculpatory to Oswald.  

I do not believe anyone suborned perjury on Benavides' testimony, or that Benavides perjured. 

Instead, Benavides' testimony was regarded as a possible embarrassment or dissonant note, probably only taken at all because of the negative criticism it would bring upon the Warren Commission investigation if his testimony were not taken. Belin was the WC counsel of choice for such witnesses. He preinterviewed his witnesses before their testimony ("rehearsing" the witnesses; learning their answers in advance of the questions asked for the record). Belin knew how to constrain and word and limit questions to best draw out what was helpful, and best minimize what was unhelpful, in the development of the prosecutorial case against Oswald which was the bulk of the Warren Commission's work.

On the question of "was Benavides there close at hand at the time of the shots?" the following says he was.

• if one accepts Bowley's testimony of the witness on Tippit's police radio before Bowley, that confirms Benavides was there within ca. 90 seconds of the killing according to the timeline estimate of Myers. Myers estimates the time of the shots as 1:14:30 and the time of the police radio sounds of Benavides mashing down the button trying to get through, as 1:16 pm. (With Malice [2013 edn], 138-39)
• The point: Benavides was first to try to use the police radio to get contact for help, and this was before the ambulance arrived, making it likely Benavides was already at the scene at the time of the shots 90 seconds earlier.
• It makes little sense that Benavides would have been somewhere else, away from the scene, heard the shots, and have been able to drive or run there to arrive that quickly. Benavides mashing the button on the police radio was either before or just as Callaway arrived running from around the corner, and it only took Callaway an estimated 90 seconds after the shots, by Myers' estimate, to get to the scene (p. 139). Callaway attempted to use the police radio when he arrived, which is recorded as happening after the Benavides-Bowley transmissions. 
• And finally, it is Benavides' testimony that he was there at the time of the shots. That was his Warren Commission testimony under oath, and why would he not tell the truth to the best of his memory.

Guinyard

On Guinyard, there is a reference which seems introduced oddly by WC counsel Ball alluding to Benavides newly driving up in his truck after the ambulance arrived. But that cannot be, because Benavides is confirmed present at the police radio prior to/at the same time as Bowley, which occurred before the ambulance arrived.

Mr. BALL. And what did Callaway do? 
Mr. GUINYARD. He turned around and run back to the street and we helped load the policeman in the ambulance. 
Mr. BALL. He ran back up to 10th Street, did you say? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes. 
Mr. BALL. Did you go with him? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Right with him. 
Mr. BALL. Did you see a police car there? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes. 
Mr. BALL. What did you see besides the police car? 
Mr. GUINYARD. The police that was laying down in the front of the car. 
Mr. BALL. A policeman? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes. 
Mr. BALL. Was he dead or alive at that time? 
Mr. GUINYARD. He looked like he was dead to me. 
Mr. BALL. What did you do? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Helped put him in the ambulance. 
Mr. BALL. You stayed there until the ambulance came? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. Were you there when the truck came up that was driven by Benavides? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. He came up right after this? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes; he came up from the east side---going west. 
Mr. BALL. And then what did you do after that? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Well, we stood there a while and talked and I called him Donnie, he picked up all them empty hulls that come out of the gun. 
Mr. BALL. Who did--Benavides? 
Mr. GUINYARD. Yes.   

Note that Mr. Ball initiates the notion that Benavides drove up later, after the Benavides-Bowley police radio transmissions and the ambulance-loading.

It is unclear why Mr. Ball did this. What was going on with that-was it useful to discredit Benavides' physical description testimony? 

The testimony of Guinyard was taken by Mr. Ball the morning of April 2, 1963. Benavides' testimony was taken by Belin on the afternoon of that same day.

In any case, the placement of Benavides with Bowley at the initial police radio call places Benavides at the scene earlier than Benavides is placed there in the Mr. Ball question to Guinyard and Guinyard's answer.

Guinyard comes across as suggestible and agreeable to whatever was asked of him.

Guinyard did not initiate in his WC testimony (though he possibly could have pre-testimony) that the Benavides' truck belatedly "came up".

Mr. Ball initiated that, and nothing prior in Guinyard's WC testimony explains where that detail came from. Whatever was going on with that, Benavides' presence with Bowley at the police radio transmission with says Mr. Ball's question assumed incorrect information, or was wanting to get that incorrect information into Guinyard's testimony, whichever it was.

A final point: Benavides' picking up the shell hulls tossed by the killer is consistent with Benavides' testimony that he saw where the killer tossed those hulls moments after the shots. If Benavides had arrived later and never seen the gunman drop those shell hulls, Benavides would not have known where to go immediately to find those hulls as he did.

M. Kalin: please feel welcome to contest this, or offer comment or elaboration on what you may see as a better reconstruction. I will attempt to not represent views expressed by you.

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

These attacks ignore the fact that Ferrie also had extensive CIA connections, and that in previous CIA assassination plots the Mafia had been the hired gun, not the other way around. Clay Shaw and Guy Banister were intelligence assets, not Mafia assets. 

Your attacks also ignore the many valuable, historic leads that Garrison developed, such as the Clinton-Jackson witnesses who saw Oswald with Ferrie and Shaw. 

I reject the idea that the Mafia was the main force behind the assassination. The Mafia could not have rigged the autopsy, suppressed medical evidence, altered the autopsy skull x-rays, removed Oswald's name from the FBI's watch list, suppressed Oswald's intelligence connections, impersonated Oswald in Mexico City, suppressed the existence of extra bullets (such as the one handled by Dr. Young), etc., etc. The Mafia certainly played a role, but not the leading role. 

“The Mafia certainly played a role, but not the leading one.”

Thank you Michael for supporting the point! Yes, from the Ruby connection, and the reach of Marcello’s power into control over Civello and Dallas, it’s pretty obvious Marcello (who also had motive in spades), was a suspect for a role as you say contrary to the position of the Garrison investigation. That is not counting that Ferrie and Oswald’s attorney Dean Andrews working directly for Marcello, and Oswald’s uncle and surrogate father, Dutz Merrett, worked for the Marcello organization much of his life. Or that Marguerite was in thick with persons close to Marcello and said she called Marcello-linked attorney Clem Sehrt in New Orleans the weekend of Oswald’s arrest trying to get Lee legal counsel. Wasn’t Banister also alleged to work for Marcello? I forget. 

So I am glad you agree that Marcello should have been investigated. And obviously it’s easy to speculate how unimportant the suspected involvement might have been prior to investigating and finding out. The question is: if it is obvious to you and everyone else to see Marcello as suspected involved, how did Garrison not see that? It’s not as if there was a jurisdiction issue. He was right there in New Orleans. 

Garrison didn’t even think there was Mafia activity happening in New Orleans! (Can you believe he would seriously believe that?) And his interpretation of Ruby was Ruby was CIA, of all things!— instead of mob and Marcello.

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Your attacks also ignore the many valuable, historic leads that Garrison developed, such as the Clinton-Jackson witnesses who saw Oswald with Ferrie and Shaw. 

I did not ignore the leads. I said Garrison developed thousands of leads. Some of much interest. On the Clinton-Jackson presence of Oswald and probably Ferrie (I am doubtful the big man driving the black Cadillac was Shaw or Banister either, was it a mobster?), all interesting.

But with Clinton-Jackson, I’ve always wondered where that goes. The “so what?” question. So what if somebody is seen with Oswald somewhere in rural Louisiana. It’s interesting but where does it go. What does it have to do with relevant to the jfk assassination in Dallas. What’s the connection. I know, a hundred possibilities “could be”’s. Here’s one more: was it a contact with a Marcello man, Marcello who told a witness FBI informant that he had made contact with Oswald via Ferrie?

Just like Clay Shaw being mixed up with the CIA in some op name and the CIA and Shaw covering that up. Sure, I, you, we all would like to know what that was about. But we don’t know do we. Garrison despite rhetoric didn’t. Just because someone is CIA who is in the international trade business and circles which the CIA was very thick in, that doesn’t translate to that classified op was a formal CIA op to assassinate jfk in Texas! 

I see an “ends justify means” mentality, that it was ok to go after an innocent man in court, railroad him into a prison sentence if that were possible (innocent of the jfk assassination), plus recklessly accuse and smear who knows how many other innocent persons on the flimsiest of bases for suspicion, if it serves the good of raising public suspicion. 

I think Garrison probably did take the payoffs he was accused of, despite beating the charges in court. He seems like a variant of the Huey Long populist demagogue southern pol type, who often have redeeming and sympathetic and humanitarian qualities mixed in with the demagoguery and corruption. Gotta love those populist southern pols. 

Were the leads of interest, the wheat among the chaff, in the Garrison investigation, valuable? Yes (I say yes). But that’s like crediting LBJ for the civil rights act passage. That was true, and I do not believe it was all for show on LBJ’s part on that, but it doesn’t change LBJ was one of the most outstanding corrupt southern pol types in Americas history. 

And I believe Garrison didn’t go after Marcello on JFK because Garrison was compromised. How is that not just obvious. It was useful to some people for Garrison to die on the Clay Shaw hill, a “look over here” spectacle that went nowhere because, well, not that it mattered, but the man was innocent.

It was an Innocence Project case of a wrongful conviction, a Dreyfus Case analogy, in the making, if the jury had not gone against Garrisons wishes and acquitted before it became that.

3 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Joseph [McBride], #1 (Leavelle's Supplementary Offense Report) is the key item for two reasons. One, that Benavides "did not see suspect," and two, that Benavides gave a statement to DPD which never saw the light of day.

Easy enough to equivocate both into insignificance even when not totally ignored, but there are other circumstances that point to a subornation.

1. Big lie by Benavides to WC regarding the phone call from Tippit's squad car (6H449). Bowley made this call, but he was not called as a witness.
2. Benavides also gave a statement to the FBI on 11/22/63. It too is missing.
3. Weird interlude of Benavides walking toward his mother's house before turning back (6H449).
4. Guinyard's observation of Benavides arriving by truck about the time of #3 (7H398).

It's not much of a stretch to conclude Benavides was subbed in for Bowley with a role suitably augmented by the suborners. If this reasoning is sound, and two missing statements that were given the day of the murder support the argument, some kind of corroboration is required to substantiate his claim that he was at the murder scene when it occurred.

You talked with Leavelle. I do not remember reading about the SOR in "Into the Nightmare," which I am now rereading, so far not seeing anything on point. Did you discuss the implications of the SOR with him?

My guess is Benavides wanted to talk about the spent shells which meant little to Leavelle's tight case, so he was handed off to give statements and sent home. Benavides did not tell Leavelle or anyone else at HQ anything that might be construed as conferring eyewitness status on himself. Both statements reflected this.

You've been into this far longer and much deeper than I. Give me something solid to dispel my doubt about Benavides' veracity and I'll let it go.

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28214-police-car-in-the-alley-nope/?do=findComment&comment=474533

Thank you for the two excerpts explaining your argument and position Michael.

In defense of my good name, I wrote, 

"Kalin has some idea that Benavides was some sort of plant or used for disinformation purposes to falsely frame Oswald in Benavides' belated first appearance to the Warren Commission."

You answered, "Stop misrepresenting," without any further comment or explanation. Now you say, 

"...circumstances that point to a subornation"

"It's not much of a stretch to conclude Benavides was subbed in for Bowley with a role suitably augmented by the suborners."

I ask any reasonable reader to judge if my characterization above (which was based on my memory of your earlier) is a material misrepresentation. 

Again, when I wrote: 

"On your claim that Benavides was not present..."

You replied, making me look like I was putting words in your mouth: 

"I made no such claim."

Here you say (which is what I remembered and was referring to):

"some kind of corroboration is required to substantiate his claim that he was at the murder scene when it occurred"

"What all this means is much of Benavides' WC testimony is bogus. ... With a witness such as this it is futile to discuss where he was at the time of the murder, although my money says he was home eating lunch with mother."

If those kinds of paraphrases from me are going to get me publicly accused of misrepresenting (something I do not wish to do), I think I would like to steer clear of further discussion with you, and just let your contributions stand here. You at least have explained your case and argument. I don't find it convincing in terms of the conclusions drawn from the facts cited, but everyone can assess and evaluate for themselves.

3 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Evidence that Benavides was not present at the Tippit murder scene at the time of the shooting:
1. Leavelle's Supplementary Offense Report states explicitly that Benavides "did not see suspect."
2. Leavelle's Case Report omits Benavides altogether.
3. DPD's arraignment papers omit Benavides altogether.
4. A Secret Service Report (12/1/63) omits Benavides from a list of "WITNESSES TO THE
SHOOTING."
5. An FBI letter to Rankin (3/26/64) omits Benavides from a list of those "who observed Lee Harvey
Oswald during and subsequent to the shooting of Patrolman J. D. Tippit."
What all this means is much of Benavides' WC testimony is bogus. His tale that places himself 15
feet away as shots were fired is false. It follows that the entire narrative commencing with the
disabled vehicle on Patton is nonsense.
Since he did not see the suspect it also follows that his description of same to Belin is more
nonsense. So what's left? Not much more than a red Ford, and even that does not pass muster. He
later told journalist Berendt it was a red Ford with a white top.
With a witness such as this it is futile to discuss where he was at the time of the murder, although
my money says he was home eating lunch with mother.

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28214-police-car-in-the-alley-nope/?do=findComment&comment=474439