Greg Doudna

Bill you claimed certainty the fingerprints on the patrol car from a single person found exactly at two locations where the gunman was seen at the car were not from the gunman.

You claim that is not influenced by the knowledge that they have been found to be not from Oswald. 

Are you aware that Dallas Police Paul Benton of the crime lab believed the prints were the gunman’s? He told people and believed they were Oswald’s prints! Why do you suppose he thought that? 

When I asked your reason you answered: because no conceivable plausible scenario that the gunman would have. That was your stated reason for negative certainty. You have refused multiple requests from me to cite what you would consider a plausible scenario for any OTHER single individual to leave those prints in those two locations. But you are certain someone else did so, just not the gunman, because you claim to know the gunman didn’t, which certainly wasn’t the view of the Dallas police if Bentley was representative. 

You object to my ca 90-95% guess at prior odds those would be the gunman’s prints (in a situation where that is not yet known either way), versus your 0%. You consider my ca 90-95% odds unwarranted, versus your 0% odds as warranted.

The way to test if you are being honest and straightforward about this is as follows. Judge what kind of odds you would gamble with discretionary money and expect to win more than lose, like betting on the outcome of an election or a sports game but in this case betting on whether those fingerprints would turn out to be from the gunman (before knowing, with assumption there will be a finding at point Y future date). 

I would put my money where my mouth is in such a situation, since I judge true odds in the 90’s %, it would be a no-brainer for me to offer 4 to 1 on “from the gunman” and I would expect to win at those odds (if identical cases of such bets were repeated and averaged),

Now what about you? Would you bet 10 to 1 the other way, on “other than the gunman” (for both locations’ single-individual prints)? (you win @1 if they are from somebody else and lose @10 if they ARE from the gunman.)

Which is more realistic in the real world on this — my 4 to 1 (what I would consider winning odds and would offer) or your 1 to 10 going the opposite way (which if you have not been bs’ing you logically should consider winning odds). 

would you put (discretionary) money of yours on those odds so extremely different from mine (and officer Bentley)? Be honest!! 

Just as insurance actuaries make bets on odds for profit on life expectancies of people, or Jimmy the Greek of Las Vegas gives odds on presidential election outcomes, this is a useful mental exercise in this case.

If you wouldn’t offer 10 to 1 odds on the prints being from anybody BUT the gunman—the only individual known to have been at those two location—what odds WOULD you offer and expect rationally to win (if enough identical situations were to be bet and averaged)? 

Also, having run me through hoops to go to the work of giving you a hypothetical plausible scenario for the gunman leaving a handprint on the fender, I notice you seem to be ignoring that. This is a third request to answer— do you find that scenario plausible or implausible? 

Michael Griffith, just for the record I think you are overthinking the 12:30 pickup time objection. I reread Whaley's testimony and he filled in approximate times later from guessing and memory that would usually be within 15 minutes or so of correct. As you yourself note he was not rounding to exact quarter hours in his times filled in either, despite saying that was his practice. This case of 12:30 would be about 20 minutes or so off from true time, which Whaley said he back-filled in on his time sheet that day after I think 1 or 2 more fares after Oswald. He just wrote the time wrong by 20 minutes, within his margin of error under his working conditions. It doesn't prove he didn't take Oswald 20 minutes after the time he wrote, or that that wasn't his Oswald fare.  

I don't buy the idea that he was trying to give hints that he'd been pressured either, way too subtle for what comes across as a non-subtle man. The number 2 and number 3 business, second or third from the left or right, which order he wrote his statement and saw the lineup, etc., Whaley being pressed on those things months after the fact, was Whaley being not too sharp and just mixed up. He tries to explain and get the "right answers", wants to save face and dignity. That is how I interpret the two coats business in which he sticks to his story that he saw Oswald wearing Oswald's gray jacket (which he calls light blue but agrees on the stand [wrongly] was the light-tan C162), but thinks the "right answer" (what he thought the Warren Commission wanted) was the heavier blue jacket C163. So Whaley concedes (as if this was normal and he never denied it) that Oswald was wearing the blue jacket but over the gray jacket the one he saw.

In fact he saw Oswald's actual gray jacket (which he comes to call light blue matching what he calls light blue pants--it was actually gray pants and gray jacket, the pants are known to be have been gray not light blue). Because Whaley thought in the moment the blue coat C163 was being otherwise established as the "right" answer and he had gotten the "wrong" answer, he says Oswald was wearing both, to have it both ways! 

Its like some people I've known, we all have, when caught out on some minor mistake will quickly without missing a beat modify the story to correct or harmonize and say retroactively, "like I've always said..." That is what Whaley was doing with the wearing both coats, and probably doing a bit with the number 2 and 3 lineup discrepancy.

Oswald told his interrogators he took the cab, and taking the bus and the cab on his own evasively makes sense of someone believing their life is in jeopardy. Oswald got to his rooming house some way and with a bus stuck in traffic how else than by cab. 

It certainly makes no sense that he catches a ride in a getaway car to drive him off with no money to his rooming house!   

Yes a defense attorney for Oswald would have ripped up Whaley's testimony. Whaley like a lot of witnesses was no perfect witness. But that's not the question here, the question is did Oswald take the cab. That fare of Whaley was dropped off five blocks beyond Oswald's rooming house which agrees with Oswald's pattern of evasion in his movements, it accounts for how Oswald got there.

Whaley does not come across as sophisticated or nuanced enough to carry out a subtle signaling that he had been pressured, or subtly sabotage his testimony under fear of his life from police if he were to say so openly. If that is what he was trying to get out, he would say so, no evidence he ever did. And apart from that, why on earth would Dallas Police carry out an elaborate pretense of fabricating Oswald taking a bus and a cab? What's the point? 

Roger Craig's "Oswald" getting into the station wagon at Dealey Plaza is well understood as a mistaken identification from viewing briefly at a distance, like so many others. It would be interesting to know who that was Roger Craig (and others) saw, but it wasn't Oswald despite Craig thinking so. Craig was not a perfect witness either.   

19 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The basic point on the fender is that those are from the same individual who put the prints on the passenger door where the killer was seen leaning in and Helen Markham says she saw his arms up leaning on to the car. 

We know the killer was in proximity to both locations just twenty minutes before the prints were lifted. It doesn't matter whether any witness saw hands on the car directly, or whether the one or two who say they did are reliable; the killer was there, had opportunity. He had means: his two hands. He did not have motive but no motive is needed in nearly all fingerprint cases, they are accidental. 

The positive argument is an inference from a negative argument: that the fender prints are not a likely position for anyone to put their hand on to. Yet someone did. Who could that possibly be?

Well, we have one item of information, a factual finding: it was the person who put their hands on the right front passenger door. Just for whatever reason moved back and away from that passenger door, and went to the right front of the car, and put their hand on that fender there. Now what individual who would have been in proximity to Tippit's patrol car does that sound like? 

You can object that you cannot imagine why anyone standing next to a fender of a car would reach down and touch it. But that objection applies to all others, including the one who actually did touch it. Your objection objects to too much. Your objection suggests that all humans are excluded from having left fingerprints on that fender because you cannot imagine why any human would want to put their hand on that fender.

The point is there are multiple ways someone could touch a fender they are standing next to.

You ask me for a scenario. If I give a scenario you are going to jump all over pointing out (correctly) that it isn't proven and I have no proof for it. You will confuse my answering your question of possible scenario as if I am saying that is the way it happened.

I have already given a few in passing--the stumble and recovery ... the reaching out for balance in a momentary crouch ... 

But here is a possible scenario, so long as you understand I don't know how it happened exactly, am not claiming to know, and don't feel I need to claim to know.

A possible analysis

First a finding of fact: the prints on the right front fender were a right handprint from a right hand.

Therefore (reasoning), if that was the gunman, the gunman was left-handed, since the hand on the fender would be for balance from the free hand not the hand holding the gun. 

So imagine a left-handed gunman. This accounts for movement of the gunman further forward past the windshield than if shooting from the right hand, since the left hand is on the left side. To get a good shot across the windshield with a left hand, the shooter will be at least halfway or more forward toward the front of the car. (And Benevides, a good-quality witness only a few feet away, seems in his wording to put the shooter at the right front fender location on the passenger side of the car explicitly.)

Now imagine one wants to explain that bullet right in the right temple in terms other than a fortuitously lucky accident. That shot so perfect for a coup de grace except there was no point-blank or contact shot coup de grace. That can be known as fact (I am indebted here to Steve Roe for a private discussion on this point of the autopsy, not that he agrees with or is responsible for the rest of my interpretation)--it can be known as a fact, not speculation, that there was no point-blank or contact coup de grace shot into Tippit because a pointblank shot would have left powder and the autopsy found none at that wound.

And a contact shot pressed into the skin in some cases might not leave powder but if so will always result in stellated triangular skin tears due to pressure under the skin, which is not the case either in the Tippit temple wound.

Therefore, no pointblank or contact coup de grace, excluded on autopsy grounds alone. Moriarty of HSCA was just on a wrong path on that. Anything I may have said before on a pointblank or contact coup de grace was in error, it didn't happen that way. 

But imagine a killing by an experienced shooter (i.e. not Oswald). In which this was an execution, a hit, not a passion or impulse killing. In which Tippit did not call over the gunman, but Tippit, familiar in the neighborhood and someone knew when and where he would be, and the gunman called Tippit over as Tippit may have arrived for some other purpose, the gunman from the sidewalk flagged him down. The back and forth in directions seen by the witnesses is just the gunman, having arrived there walking from the east, was going back and forth to get to the patrol car as the patrol car slowed, to get to the window to speak to Tippit. The gunman flagged down Tippit, Tippit did not flag down the pedestrian. Then Tippit was ambushed and killed and it was Tippit going into an ambush.

In that killing then imagine that it matters to the shooter that the victim not survive, not be able to talk before dying. Assume the gunman is an experienced accurate shot with a snub-nosed .38, acquired through practice.

Go back to the odd fact: there is that perfectly placed right temple bullet hit, so perfect for a head shot, yet ... second fact: it did not get there from an up-close point-blank or contact shot (autopsy finding). But it looks a little too good and perfect to be coincidental or accidental as in hit by accident there as Tippit was falling backward. It just looks so perfect, a shot right into the brain, instant death, he ain't gonna say dying words to anyone now, same effect as if there had been a pointblank or contact coup de grace finale shot. 

Reconstruction: the killer not only went to the right front corner of the car where Benavides' testimony seems to place him and not inconsistent with Helen Markham, but goes a foot or two still further beyond the front of the car, still in that right front fender proximity, but just enough in front to fire at Tippit from ca. 20 feet away (or however many feet it was) to Tippit now prone on the ground with his right temple exposed to line of fire from the shooter. The shooter puts a head shot into Tippit's head not over the hood hitting an upright Tippit while he was falling, but from just in front of the car on his side from ca. 20 feet, into the right temple of Tippit who is down and on the pavement (from ca. 20 feet), with the shot hitting that accurately because the shooter is experienced and accurate. 

It is a coup de grace at ca. 20 feet, so to speak.

In agreement with the witnesses who saw the gunman at that right front area of the car before backing off to the sidewalk on Tenth in his known path. In agreement with the autopsy, lack of stellate wound and lack of powder ring or tattooing in agreement with ca. 20 feet away. Right into the temple--not accidental but intentional from a shooter capable of that accuracy with a snub-nosed .38 at ca. 20 feet. 

With that final shot to Tippit's head which hit in the temple from just in front of the right front fender, that bullet's hitting Tippit in the brain confirmed visually by the shooter at ca. 20 feet, mission accomplished, shooter then leaves, back to the sidewalk as seen by Benavides and the gunman picked up by other witnesses as he went west on Tenth and south on Patton as known. 

A left-handed shooter uses his right hand on the fender for balance in an intentional partial crouch for momentary peering around the front of the car to ensure it is safe to do so before moving out bodily into the open a foot or two in front of the car to fire a single shot at Tippit's head when Tippit is prone on the ground, from at ca. 20 feet.

It happens so fast, its all over, all the shots, in seconds.

There is the handprint on that fender, from his right hand, balance for a moment.

It is a more satisfying explanation for the bullet in the right temple than the explanation of hitting in such a perfect position by accident as Tippit was falling from upright.

Bill you asked for a scenario, said it was ok to speculate. I gave one, what do you think? How do you rate this one and do you still hold it is certain that a gunman at a right front passenger window and then right front fender can be excluded as the person who touched the car on the right front fender? 

Separate question: would you give a scenario on how you can imagine a different person might reasonably leave fingerprints in those two locations,  unlike the gunman whom you have said is excluded as that person? Thanks.

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

How about this... I am asking you to speculate, so feel free... In one or two paragraphs, please explain how it all goes down where the shooter placed his hand on the right front fender.  Remember, it must make sense and it must be reasonable.

I say the killer had no cause to ever touch the right front fender.  Make it make sense that he would.

YOU are the one who said that the killer touched the right front fender.  You placed a percentage of probability, something like 95% or whatever it was.  I say that's a bunch of bull.

The basic point on the fender is that those are from the same individual who put the prints on the passenger door where the killer was seen leaning in and Helen Markham says she saw his arms up leaning on to the car. 

We know the killer was in proximity to both locations just twenty minutes before the prints were lifted. It doesn't matter whether any witness saw hands on the car directly, or whether the one or two who say they did are reliable; the killer was there, had opportunity. He had means: his two hands. He did not have motive but no motive is needed in nearly all fingerprint cases, they are accidental. 

The positive argument is an inference from a negative argument: that the fender prints are not a likely position for anyone to put their hand on to. Yet someone did. Who could that possibly be?

Well, we have one item of information, a factual finding: it was the person who put their hands on the right front passenger door. Just for whatever reason moved back and away from that passenger door, and went to the right front of the car, and put their hand on that fender there. Now what individual who would have been in proximity to Tippit's patrol car does that sound like? 

You can object that you cannot imagine why anyone standing next to a fender of a car would reach down and touch it. But that objection applies to all others, including the one who actually did touch it. Your objection objects to too much. Your objection suggests that all humans are excluded from having left fingerprints on that fender because you cannot imagine why any human would want to put their hand on that fender.

The point is there are multiple ways someone could touch a fender they are standing next to.

You ask me for a scenario. If I give a scenario you are going to jump all over pointing out (correctly) that it isn't proven and I have no proof for it. You will confuse my answering your question of possible scenario as if I am saying that is the way it happened.

I have already given a few in passing--the stumble and recovery ... the reaching out for balance in a momentary crouch ... 

But here is a possible scenario, so long as you understand I don't know how it happened exactly, am not claiming to know, and don't feel I need to claim to know.

A possible analysis

First a finding of fact: the prints on the right front fender were a right handprint from a right hand.

Therefore (reasoning), if that was the gunman, the gunman was left-handed, since the hand on the fender would be for balance from the free hand not the hand holding the gun. 

So imagine a left-handed gunman. This accounts for movement of the gunman further forward past the windshield than if shooting from the right hand, since the left hand is on the left side. To get a good shot across the windshield with a left hand, the shooter will be at least halfway or more forward toward the front of the car. (And Benevides, a good-quality witness only a few feet away, seems in his wording to put the shooter at the right front fender location on the passenger side of the car explicitly.)

Now imagine one wants to explain that bullet right in the right temple in terms other than a fortuitously lucky accident. That shot so perfect for a coup de grace except there was no point-blank or contact shot coup de grace. That can be known as fact (I am indebted here to Steve Roe for a private discussion on this point of the autopsy, not that he agrees with or is responsible for the rest of my interpretation)--it can be known as a fact, not speculation, that there was no point-blank or contact coup de grace shot into Tippit because a pointblank shot would have left powder and the autopsy found none at that wound.

And a contact shot pressed into the skin in some cases might not leave powder but if so will always result in stellated triangular skin tears due to pressure under the skin, which is not the case either in the Tippit temple wound.

Therefore, no pointblank or contact coup de grace, excluded on autopsy grounds alone. Moriarty of HSCA was just on a wrong path on that. Anything I may have said before on a pointblank or contact coup de grace was in error, it didn't happen that way. 

But imagine a killing by an experienced shooter (i.e. not Oswald). In which this was an execution, a hit, not a passion or impulse killing. In which Tippit did not call over the gunman, but Tippit, familiar in the neighborhood and someone knew when and where he would be, and the gunman called Tippit over as Tippit may have arrived for some other purpose, the gunman from the sidewalk flagged him down. The back and forth in directions seen by the witnesses is just the gunman, having arrived there walking from the east, was going back and forth to get to the patrol car as the patrol car slowed, to get to the window to speak to Tippit. The gunman flagged down Tippit, Tippit did not flag down the pedestrian. Then Tippit was ambushed and killed and it was Tippit going into an ambush.

In that killing then imagine that it matters to the shooter that the victim not survive, not be able to talk before dying. Assume the gunman is an experienced accurate shot with a snub-nosed .38, acquired through practice.

Go back to the odd fact: there is that perfectly placed right temple bullet hit, so perfect for a head shot, yet ... second fact: it did not get there from an up-close point-blank or contact shot (autopsy finding). But it looks a little too good and perfect to be coincidental or accidental as in hit by accident there as Tippit was falling backward. It just looks so perfect, a shot right into the brain, instant death, he ain't gonna say dying words to anyone now, same effect as if there had been a pointblank or contact coup de grace finale shot. 

Reconstruction: the killer not only went to the right front corner of the car where Benavides' testimony seems to place him and not inconsistent with Helen Markham, but goes a foot or two still further beyond the front of the car, still in that right front fender proximity, but just enough in front to fire at Tippit from ca. 20 feet away (or however many feet it was) to Tippit now prone on the ground with his right temple exposed to line of fire from the shooter. The shooter puts a head shot into Tippit's head not over the hood hitting an upright Tippit while he was falling, but from just in front of the car on his side from ca. 20 feet, into the right temple of Tippit who is down and on the pavement (from ca. 20 feet), with the shot hitting that accurately because the shooter is experienced and accurate. 

It is a coup de grace at ca. 20 feet, so to speak.

In agreement with the witnesses who saw the gunman at that right front area of the car before backing off to the sidewalk on Tenth in his known path. In agreement with the autopsy, lack of stellate wound and lack of powder ring or tattooing in agreement with ca. 20 feet away. Right into the temple--not accidental but intentional from a shooter capable of that accuracy with a snub-nosed .38 at ca. 20 feet. 

With that final shot to Tippit's head which hit in the temple from just in front of the right front fender, that bullet's hitting Tippit in the brain confirmed visually by the shooter at ca. 20 feet, mission accomplished, shooter then leaves, back to the sidewalk as seen by Benavides and the gunman picked up by other witnesses as he went west on Tenth and south on Patton as known. 

A left-handed shooter uses his right hand on the fender for balance in an intentional partial crouch for momentary peering around the front of the car to ensure it is safe to do so before moving out bodily into the open a foot or two in front of the car to fire a single shot at Tippit's head when Tippit is prone on the ground, from at ca. 20 feet.

It happens so fast, its all over, all the shots, in seconds.

There is the handprint on that fender, from his right hand, balance for a moment.

It is a more satisfying explanation for the bullet in the right temple than the explanation of hitting in such a perfect position by accident as Tippit was falling from upright.

3 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

You've completely missed the point.  This is where you're goofing up.

I have never stated that it is a fact that the jacket found behind the Texaco was most definitely the killer's jacket.

But you allow that its possible, you don't raise all sorts of objections, to that jacket as the killer's jacket. You "believe the jacket found behind the Texaco was ditched by the killer.  But there's no way it can ever proven to a certainty."

Which is a fair assessment.

You do not allow for the same possibility with the fingerprints coming from the killer, as you do for that jacket coming from the killer. 

That is what is inconsistent. They really are parallel issues in principle.

I do not claim certainty on fingerprint grounds alone that the killer left those fingerprints. In parallel with you on the jacket, I "believe the fingerprints found on the Tippit patrol car were put there by the killer. But there's no way it can ever [be] proven to a certainty".

Echoing your wording.  

Fingerprints

Bill, you stated earlier certainty that even though the gunman who killed Tippit was seen with his hands near the top of the right front passenger door--with hands seen touching the window there according to a witness--that fingerprints found twenty minutes later in that exact location most certainly did NOT (you assert) come from the Tippit killer.

Your extraordinary assertion of certainty on this was explicitly said to be because of the linkage in which one single individual left fingerprints both at that location and at one other location where the killer of Tippit also was close to and may have been, the right front fender of the Tippit patrol car. You stated the killer of Tippit most certainly did NOT leave those fender fingerprints, therefore you argued logically it followed the killer did not leave any of the fingerprints at the right front passenger door either where a witness said he was seen leaning in with his arms and hands on the car, twenty minutes before those prints were lifted.

How astonishing is your certainty on this! That a person acknowledged and witnessed to be in close proximity to an area of the car with their hands within inches of the prints--you just know they did not touch there. You claim to know that, as certainty, as if it is a fact. That is what you claim.

Now the unspoken elephant in the room is there is a fact upon which you and I are agreed: that those prints have been found definitively to be from someone other than Oswald; Oswald is excluded as having left those prints. If the shooter left those prints, Oswald is exculpated right there, hands down, no pun intended.

An outside person not knowing better might suspect you, the defender par excellence of the Oswald-killed-Tippit case, just possibly might be influenced in your certainty concerning this matter of the fingerprints by your certainty that Oswald was that shooter, and therefore cannot have left those prints, in a reverse-engineering backward logic. However, that is not your stated reason. An outside person might think maybe that could be your real reason, but since that is not admitted, other bogus reasons may be grasped to frame the desired conclusion: the dogmatic claim of certainty that the killer did not leave those prints.

It was not easy to get you to state reasons for your statement of certainty when I asked, but now that you have answered the question of "why", you give two reasons which have no substance as a basis for certainty that someone did not leave fingerprints.

These two reasons you have given have not been claimed by anyone else on earth as proof for the conclusion of negative certainty you are claiming. You cannot cite Myers citing the two reasons you have given for a negative certainty, and I am quite sure Myers never will, because the two reasons you have given evaporate under the mildest of scrutiny. They do not establish the certainty that you claim to conclude from those two reasons. 

First, you have repeated like a mantra: "no witnesses saw".

Well hell's bells Bill, no witness was in a position to see the killer touch the right front fender if he had. Helen Markham from her position could not see through the car to have seen the fender below her line of sight on the other side of her. Who else was even looking? Or if they were, from a block distant on the other side of the street, the right front fender on the passenger's side also would be blocked from their view, and it was quite a distance, and are you sure they have noticed? How many witnesses do you think were even looking at the right front fender of the car during the moments of the shooting?

How long does it take to touch the top of a fender of a car and not be noticed when no one is looking?  

Citing "no witnesses saw" when no witnesses would have seen (and no witness saw whoever put those prints there in any case) is unbelievably weak for you to cite as a basis for certainty that someone who could have been next to a fender of a car did not touch that fender and leave the fingerprints found there twenty minutes later.

And second, your only other reason given, you express a lack of ability to imagine how it could be that a man standing near a right front fender, with hands which could have been immediately over the position of the fingerprints in a standing position if he was that far forward, might in the course of a shooting over the hood, have had some occasion to place a hand on that fender, whether in a momentary intentional crouch for balance, as part of a momentary stumble, for momentary balance while reaching down to pick up something, or some other unknown cause.

You just can't imagine that any of those are possible! That's your reason for claiming certainty the killer's hands never touched the car there!

You don't deny that the killer could have been at that right front fender with his hands immediately above where the prints were found when the killer was in a standing position.

You simply deny capability to imagine how he could have touched that fender even if he was standing right there. Because if you could imagine that that was possible, then there would no longer be certainty that it didn't happen, and there would be gone your reason for ruling out that the killer left the fingerprints found at the passenger door. 

The analogy with the abandoned jacket, C162

Do you think the jacket found in the parking lot of the gas station, C162, was abandoned by the killer?

I do. What about you? Of course you do.

But the same arguments you are citing as stated reasons for certainty that the killer of Tippit did not leave fingerprints on the patrol car in the same way would logically prove the killer of Tippit was not the owner of the C162 jacket.

Just imagine if C162, let us say hypothetically, had been found not to belong to Oswald as a conclusive finding of fact for some reason.

I can just hear you then using the same arguments against linking C162 to the killer of Tippit, as you are now using against linking the fingerprints to the killer of Tippit.

No witness saw the killer throw the C162 jacket under the car in the parking lot behind the gas station, you would say.

"You have failed to prove any scenario by which the killer threw that jacket there", I can hear you saying, with equal bombast and certainty as in the case of the fingerprints.

Its the same thing, same nature of argument. It is parallel.

Both are circumstantial arguments as to actions reconstructed to bring about the physical evidence, in ways not directly witnessed. 

The difference is you are gung-ho (and properly so) concerning one of these, the case of C162, but argue the opposite in the case of the fingerprints.

What is the variable that accounts for the opposing treatments of these two roughly parallel cases? In both cases involving a non-witnessed but circumstantial-evidence situation? 

I think we both know what the variable is that accounts for the difference in treatment. One of the two has been excluded as being Oswald. The other hasn't. 

Explains it all?

A reasonable person would say it is ludicrous to say something certainly did not happen in a situation where there is absolutely no disproof that something did not happen, other than a claim that you cannot imagine how a killer of Tippit might have been at the position of that fender, and reached for a moment with a free hand as he stumbled, or crouched, or reached down to pick up something, or took a step beyond the right front fender (still on the passenger side) to get a line-of-sight shot into Tippit's head (from the killer's side of the car), while Tippit was prone on the ground.

Any of those scenarios could involve putting a handprint on a fender for balance or by accident. Just for a moment. So quick, none of the witnesses not in a position to have seen anyway, would notice.

You cite your lack of imagination of seeing how someone known to be standing near a fender, and who could have been standing directly over it, could have put a hand on that fender for any reason, as your basis for certainty that he did not touch. 

Your claim of certainty that the killer was not the individual who left those fingerprints on the Tippit patrol car twenty minutes before they were lifted makes no more sense than if someone cited the same two reasons to you as proof of certainty that the killer of Tippit did not abandon the C162 jacket. 

You would reject such an argument, and rightly so.

And I reject your parallel argument applied to the fingerprints, and rightly so.

Mr. BENAVIDES - The other man was standing to the right side of the car, riders side of the car, and was standing right in front of the windshield on the right front fender. And then I heard the shot.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window. 
Mr. BALL. He put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. The window was down. 
Mr. BALL. It was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. Put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. On the ledge of the window.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. That is right. And the man went over to the car, put his hands on the window-- 
Mr. DULLES. The window was open? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Leaned over like this. 
Mr. DULLES. Let me see. Was that on the right-hand side of the car, or where the driver was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. It was on the opposite side of the car. 
Mr. DULLES. Opposite side of the car from the driver, yes. 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes. The window was down, and I know it was down, I know, and he put his arms and leaned over, I don't know what they were talking about, I didn't hear it. Then he stepped back in a few minutes, stepped back two steps. 

Jimmy Burt:

"[The killer of Officer Tippit] put his hands on the right side of the car as he leaned down and talked in the window." (interview of Jimmy Burt by Al Chapman, 1968, cited Myers, With Malice, 776)

Twenty minutes later prints found there.

Not from Oswald. 

Sandy, point of order, what is this business of you claiming "I haven't seen anybody here denying that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic." Have you so short of memory that you yourself were saying that just that two days ago on this thread?

On 4/13/2023 at 8:17 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Paul,

I dispute that Liberty Lobby was overtly an anti-Semitic organization. Its founder Willis Carto was. In the court cases Michael cited, the courts basically declared that Liberty Lobby could be treated as being anti-Semitic because it promoted a lot of Carto's publication that were indeed anti-Semitic.

I contend that most likely there were numerous members of Liberty Lobby who were far-right but not anti-Semitic. And that Liberty Lobby itself wasn't known to be anti-Semitic.

Had it been known that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic, then why is it that Liberty Lobby bothered with suing those news publishers that claimed Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic?

Had it been known that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic, then why is it that investigations were conducted to find evidence indicating that it indeed was?

Had it been known that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic, then why is it they were invited to contribute to a Congressional report? ("The Role of Gold in the Domestic and International Monetary Systems" , search for Liberty Lobby.)

Had it been known that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic, then why is it that C-SPAN chose to broadcast a Liberty-Lobby hosted speech given by a former Mossad agent? ("Mossad Influence on U.S. Policy" .)

And on and on.

I cannot speak to Prouty or the issue of his association with Carto, Liberty Lobby, and IHR, but I can say solidly that Michael Griffith is accurate on the anti-semitism and holocaust denial that some here--amazingly and jaw-dropping to me--are denying was really the case, as if this might be a case of a few bad apples in an otherwise pluralistic organization and publication.

Not so. I lived in Los Angeles in the 1970s, and I used to see copies of Spotlight, the mass-circulation newspaper. Apart from a few guest columnists recruited by the publication who may not personally have shared the actually fascist, anti-semitic core raison d'etre of Spotlight, there was no non-antisemitic component of Liberty Lobby and Spotlight. This was not like the John Birch Society where that would be accurate description (that is, non-antisemitic extreme conservatives as a part of the core mix of JBS which itself institutionally sought to suppress anti-semitism internal to its own; not so with Liberty Lobby).

Carto behind the whole thing of Liberty Lobby had actual connections and ideological lineage from the European far-right, neo-fascist political parties which exist in Britain and most nations in Europe.

This was not minor or collateral but core to what Carto and Liberty Lobby were about.

Any denials by Liberty Lobby that Liberty Lobby was anti-semitic are just wrong. This was a toxic organization, sucking in readers by populist-conspiracy type issues, every issue of Spotlight mixing those "outreach" articles with anti-Jewish and anti-black (yes, racist against blacks) articles, often in the form of mocking reporting on news stories.

I was at a party once in Los Angeles and met a prominent local hard-core libertarian who was on one of the boards of the IHS (Institute for Historical Studies, the holocaust-denial group of Carto and Liberty Lobby). He cheerfully described himself to me as "their token non-antisemite" on their board.

That is, everybody knew what Liberty Lobby was about. He knew. That's why he called himself, which he thought was humorous, their "token non-antisemite" invited on for appearances.

Nobody then reading Spotlight who had what a friend long ago liked to call "an IQ two points above plant life" could read that publication and not see that this was anti-Jewish and anti-black, racist and, with only a slight bit more discernment, an American outreach of old-fashioned post-WW2 European National Socialism.

I disagree with Michael Griffith on many things, and again I am not speaking to the issue of Prouty, but on Spotlight and Liberty Lobby and IHR, the pushback against Griffith on those organizations' descriptions as anti-semitic and toxic et al, is just astonishing. It is either ignorance or denial, but it is not truthful. On those points, Griffith is just plain right.  

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

Greg, as simple as I can answer this... No witness said the killer touched the front fender/quarter panel.  The man was walking on the sidewalk and then went straight to the passenger door to talk to Tippit.  The man would have no reason at that moment to touch the front fender.  Then, after the man shoots Tippit from across the hood, the man backs up onto the sidewalk and heads toward the corner in the opposite direction from the front passenger fender..  At no point does this man touch the front passenger fender.

OK thanks Bill, this is progress, in answer to the question of why you are certain the shooter of Tippit did not leave a handprint from a right hand lifted at the right front fender of the patrol car.

Just to be clear (please confirm I am understanding you correctly): you are saying there is 0% realistic or reasonable possibility it came from the shooter (i.e. certainty it did not happen from the shooter), for two reasons: because no witness saw it, and because there is no reasonable scenario whereby the shooter would have, based on his location, movements, and purpose. 

Does that accurately represent your position?

Just to clarify (please stay with me on this), it is agreed the shooter stepped back a little and moved to the right (east) from the front passenger window, in order to shoot over the hood as he did and was seen doing. How far forward are you assuming is the realistic maximum he would or did move toward the front of the car, when shooting, before retreating back to the sidewalk? 

Do you think it is possible he was standing over where that handprint was found (that far forward on the right side of the patrol car), or do you believe that far forward is not realistically imaginable? Thanks—

There is reason to believe de Mohrenschildt’s original story of first discovery of that Backyard Photograph among their stored belongings after their return from Haiti etc. is not true, and that It was given to de Mohrenschildt by Marina from Lee and Marina in April 1963. Michael Paine had nothing to do with it. I researched and wrote about this in my piece on the Walker shot ("Did Lee Harvey Oswald shoot at General Walker on April 10, 1963"?, https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1497) :

[start quote]

A print of one of the Backyard Photographs turned up years later in the belongings of Lee and Marina’s friends George and Jean de Mohrenschildt, claimed by George de Mohrenschildt to have been a belated discovery in their belongings found by George and Jean after they returned from Haiti in Nov 1966. On the back was an inscription in handwriting authenticated as Oswald’s reading, “To my friend George from Lee Oswald 5/IV/63”, that is, a date of April 5, 1963 using European reversal of numbers of month and day—only five days before the Walker shot. Another inscription on the back of that same print reads in different ink in Cyrillic letters (Russian), looking like Marina wrote it, “hunter of fascists ha-ha-ha!!!”

However according to author Edward Jay Epstein, on March 29, 1977, George de Mohrenschildt told a different story when Epstein interviewed de Mohrenschildt in Florida the morning of the same day de Mohrenschildt ended his life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. (At least it can be said suicide is what all the evidence looked like and police concluded, and de Mohrenschildt had a recent history of depression, commitment to a hospital for mental issues, and talk of suicide, although the timing looked suspicious, occurring just as HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi had located him and HSCA intended to subpoena de Mohrenschildt’s testimony, and other high-profile witnesses of interest to HSCA were turning up dead too.)

According to Epstein, de Mohrenschildt now said, to Epstein that morning, that he, de Mohrenschildt, had actually been given that Backyard Photograph by Marina sometime in early April 1963. De Mohrenschildt not only told Epstein his knowledge and receipt of the photo had happened at that time but that he had reported it to a contact at the time in the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas, both before and after the shot at Walker, and he (de Mohrenschildt) rued having done so, blaming his reporting of Oswald’s apparent involvement in the Walker shot as having been the ruin of him. The head of the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas, J. Walter Moore, quietly denied some of what de Mohrenschildt claimed but was never interviewed by the FBI nor called to testify by the Warren Commission or any other investigation (Edward J. Epstein, The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend [1992], 557-569).

In support of the truth of de Mohrenschildt’s last-day-of-his-life disclosure concerning when he had first knowledge of the Backyard Photograph which emerged years later out of his belongings, Epstein noted, “two of De Mohrenschildt’s friends told me that he had discussed the photograph, and the problems it raised for him, before he returned from Haiti [Nov 1966], and Marina Oswald subsequently testified that she had seen the photograph in De Mohrenschildt’s house in 1963”.

Concerning Marina’s testimony there is a discrepancy: according to Epstein, de Mohrenschildt said Marina had given that Backyard Photograph to him in April 1963. Marina, on the other hand, claimed she saw de Mohrenschildt had the photograph and was “surprised” to realize Lee must have given it to de Mohrenschildt. If the “hunter of fascists ha-ha-ha!” written on the back of the photo is from Marina, then that supports the de Mohrenschildt version and would be one of Marina’s prevarications along the way, distancings from certain details.

For her part, when shown the “hunter of fascists ha-ha-ha!” inscription, Marina said at first she thought she had written it but then explained to the Warren Commission that as she studied it more she saw the handwriting was not her way of writing, so she came to realize she had not written it by that logical deduction (“at first I thought it was maybe my handwriting, but after I examine it, I know it is not”).

[end quote]

3 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

More on Crafard from Sparticus. " 

Is there any doubt that the Warren Commission deliberately set out not to tell the American people the truth? There is a brief glimpse, an illustration of the level at which that deceit was carried out, in an incident that occurred during the Warren Commission's investigation. Commission chairman Earl Warren himself, with then Representative Gerald Ford at his side, was interviewing a barman, Curtis LaVerne Crafard. Crafard had worked at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club before he was seized by FBI men as he was hightailing it out of town the day after the assassination, having told someone, "They are not going to pin this on me!"

In the interview, Warren asks Craford what he did before he was a bartender.

"I was a Master sniper in the Marine Corps," Craford answered.*

The next question that Warren immediately asked was: "What kind of entertainment did they have at the club?" "

This is a mistake. This is not in the Warren Commission exhibits. It comes from a "spoof" satire by comedian Mort Sahl in which he would go on stage pretending to read from the Warren Commission, but he wasn't really reading verbatim, he rewrote it to be funnier. Then Gaeton Fonzi of HSCA thought it was a real quote from Craford's testimony and quoted it in a serious speech as if it was, a mistake. Peter Whitmey was the one who noticed this and wrote the letters, etc. getting the error called to attention. 

It would be like one of the political satire sites with a realistic-sounding news article (which is a spoof) being misunderstood as if it is real and quoted. That is what this is. Whitmey explains at https://www.jfk-assassination.net/creatingapatsy.htm (about 60% in to the article is the section on this). 

Craford served in the Army, not the Marine Corps.

More on Bonnie Kellough here, the chapter in the Diana Hunter book, Jack Ruby's Girls: https://archive.org/details/jackrubysgirls00hunt/page/105/mode/2up. This book, rare and I do not see used copies listed for purchase anywhere under $150, can be read for free at that link. It requires signing up for a login account there, however it costs nothing and does not expire, and there is no downside to it (not even being subjected to advertising and popups). 

Joe you are right to note those parallels with Curtis Craford's later job which Craford had from ca. Oct 15 until he left Nov 23. The later Craford's was similar job description (except for the live-in and phone answering part) as James Estes' job earlier in July and August of the same year in his story, as cleanup man and miscellaneous duties as requested.

But from Estes there is insight on how that worked: Estes tells that he was paid in cash for his work cleaning the place, no taxes taken out. In other words, it was off the books. Compare Craford, under oath in Warren Commission testimony, claiming he was paid only in smokes and was able to take out $5 at a time as needed from the cash register with Ruby's permission whenever he needed to eat, but otherwise (so Craford claimed) he was not paid any wages or salary, just allowed to sleep there. And claiming he left Dallas hitchhiking with only $7 in his pocket. Its all baloney. Craford was only saying that to not be asked questions about unreported income and sources of cash. Craford knew better than to put on the record cash he'd received that had not been reported. 

Thanks Pete, and well put Joe.

I gave the wrong link on the James Odell Estes story in my opening (links are fixed now); the correct link for the story is: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10020#relPageId=49.

Estes was a drifter and his petty offenses crime record basically show the criminalization of being poor, dealing mostly with inability to pay his bills. He had health issues that did not help matters. Nothing in his story comes through that he was a nasty or bad person. Apart from struggles over money at the low end of the economic ladder, survival and health issues (along with some millions of others in America), from the little from his story he comes across as decent-hearted who meant no harm to anyone, who by accident got caught up in Dallas, during his time working as a low-level flunky at the Carousel Club a few months before the assassination, in maybe seeing a little too much that he was not supposed to see.

Estes tells of serving beverages to persons in two strange meetings held in Ruby's office involving Ruby, "Nick" the mob-type from Louisiana (my word "mob", not in the Estes mss.), "Chuck", "Lee", and in the second meeting an arrival of Governor John Connally with his party (of one other), and how Estes, serving drinks in this second meeting, saw a briefcase of cash in the room which looked like it was being conveyed to Connally.

In his story, Estes in retrospect came to believe his "Lee" character was Oswald in the news for assassinating JFK. Obviously he was mistaken on that later identification of one of his characters but that does not mean it was not someone. 

I was talking to a friend locally last night--non-JFK buff--about Estes' story and how Bonnie told him to get out of town the first week of Sept and gave him money for a car to do so ... and the strange detail told by Estes that after the meeting which included Connally in Ruby's office, Estes said the wine bottles and all the glasses used by everyone in that meeting were gathered up and then broken. Not washed. Smashed and broken and disposed of. Estes tells of this strange breaking of all glassware used by persons after meetings, twice, both meetings involving "Nick" the mob-type from Louisiana, the second one the Connally meeting. Estes does not say why all the glassware was broken afterward and disposed of, just that was what was done on those two occasions. (Maybe wanting no accidental fingerprints to survive?) My friend suggested in a situation like that, Estes, the low-level help who if it was thought he had seen too much, nobody would miss him if he was whacked, he was expendable, indeed could have been at risk of his life. Bonnie, one working-class person to another, may have seen he was a good-hearted man and saved his life by getting him out of town and giving her own money so he could get a car to do so.

Maybe she knew something was at risk of happening to him, maybe she overheard something, who knows, but she got him out of town and Estes said he feared thereafter, kept moving, fearful. It may be if Bonnie had not gotten him that car and gotten him out of town Estes would have ended up dead and forgotten, nobody would know or care, but that did not happen because he disappeared (at Bonnie's urging and help). In this light it might not simply, or maybe at all, have been a ploy by Bonnie to get rid of a "sticky" man out of a relationship. Estes never refers to problems or fights with Bonnie. He speaks well of her, was grateful for her kindness regarding the car.

47 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

Let me put it to you this way...

No witness said that the killer touched the quarter panel.

You said that it is 99% obvious that the prints on the quarter panel belonged to the killer.

Once you explain how you know this to be true then I will address your question to me asking for the same.

Not acceptable. Again you do not give a direct answer. I will give straight answers to you on anything relating to this topic, I assure you. But you are continuing to try to deflect without answering the question. In order to engage with you I need to know what you mean, and not be drawn into guessing and then have you rip me for guessing wrong on your reason when you REFUSE to say what your reason IS.

You have said "the killer did not touch the quarter panel". You have denied saying it could not have happened. But you have said that it did not happen, as if you have some (secret???) means of knowing that with certainty. 

Your statement, without qualification, that the killer did not touch the quarter panel (the right front fender of Tippit's patrol car), you have used as a premise upon which you have built further argument.

When you say "let me put it to you this way..." is that a retraction, a replacement for, or in addition to your assertion, which despite four direct requests from me you still refuse to explain: "the killer did not touch the quarter panel"?

If I allow you to change the subject without you giving a straight answer to what I asked, then you will attack that and it will derail further. 

That is unacceptable. 

Do you believe with certainty your repeated unqualified statement, "the killer did not touch the quarter panel"? If that's not what you meant in its presently worded form, then why not just up front say so, replace it with what you now do believe in a more accurate form, and be done with it?

If you are in good faith my question should not be that hard to answer. 

I will give a straight answer to your question above now, then I want yours: My answer is I don't know the 99% Bayesian probability figure estimate, that specific number, is correct. I believe the Bayesian number is high based on the finding that a single person, and only a single person, left all the prints in both locations, and the killer was the only and last person seen with arms and hands and body leaning on the right front door where those prints were found, and was also standing next to the right front fender where he was shooting and could have stumbled and left that handprint there. Maybe the Bayesian number should be only 92.5%, or 95.4%, who knows, I just think its high for reasons stated. You don't need to agree, but I have answered your question, which was why think the figure is high ("99%").

Its like coming across a spilled goldfish bowl which had a goldfish in it which is now missing and a happy cat nearby, and concluding the Bayesian number is high on a certain explanation of how the goldfish might have disappeared. 

(Note that Bayesian probability says nothing about whether something actually is true or not true after all the evidence is considered. It is a subjective estimate of what one would expect based on starting conditions prior to getting the full evidence to know.)

Question answered.

Now I am ready for your answer to mine.  

Give a straight answer, or I'm about done here.

57 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

First, I did not say the killer "could not have" touched the quarter panel.  Don't put words in my mouth and/or misquote me.

I said that none of the witnesses said the killer touched the quarter panel.  You have no support for your claim that the killer did indeed touch that quarter panel.  It is YOUR claim that the killer touched the quarter panel.  You haven't supported it, however.

No, you did NOT say “none of the witnesses said the killer touched the quarter panel”. If that is what you had said we would not be having this discussion, for no one says otherwise and that point is not in the least disputed. You SAID, “The killer DID NOT TOUCH the quarter panel” which is a conclusion of certainty of you personally. You repeated that twice, and deflected but did never said clearly your reason for that conclusion or belief on your part. You have neither retracted nor given a straight answer on what is your reason, what is it that causes you to believe that is certain as you expressed.

I wish to represent you accurately but you are not making it easy. Please help by giving a first straight answer in a simple declarative sentence. “We know the killer DID NOT TOUCH the car at that location BECAUSE….abc…”

Is it “because witness Helen Markham never said she saw the killer put his hand on that fender, therefore that proves he did not touch there”? If so, please say to avoid this Dance of the Seven Veils concerning your reasoning and logic. If your reason is not that but something different please say what it is.

If you wish to retract or reword, that is OK too, we all need to do that from time to time, please do, but please make that EXPLICIT. 

Just a simple straight answer here before proceeding on other things, please…

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

You're a guy walking on the sidewalk.  A police officer pulls up alongside you in his patrol car and asks you to come over to the car so he can speak with you for a second.  You are on the sidewalk facing the officer in his car.  Why are you laying your hand on the quarter panel on your way over to the passenger-side window?  Also, no witness saw the killer touch the quarter panel.

The better question is... How do you know the killer did touch the quarter panel?

No, answer the question. You stated certainty that a man known, and seen, to be standing right at the right front fender of the Tippit patrol car, did not--could not have--touched that fender and left the fingerprints there that someone did.

Answer the question. State in a simple declarative sentence your evidence or basis for certainty--why you (think you) know that, or withdraw your statement of certainty.

Are you claiming that those fingerprints were left by someone not standing next to the car at the location the partial handprint was found?

In Sept 1977 James Odell Estes walked into the Texarkana, Arkansas FBI office, said he had information relevant to the JFK assassination, that he had not divulged earlier for fear for his life, had been told by doctors he was going to die for medical reasons in the next year or two, and wanted to disclose his story. 

He told a story of having been a musician in earlier years who had found employment in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, Dallas, from late June to early Sept 1963. He told names of characters none of whom have been identified with the exception of Jack Ruby and Governor Connally. One of the characters he claimed to have had interaction with was Lee Harvey Oswald, who of course is known to have been in New Orleans at that time. 

I have quietly puzzled over Estes's story for nearly a year now. Until now his story has been regarded as a curiosity and received little attention.  

Estes made no attempt at publicity, nor did he even go to a newspaper, only the FBI, that was it. His claimed reason for telling his story before he shortly was to leave this life was true. He died Jan 1978, just four months later, and here is his gravestone: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86059847/james-odell-estes.

My hunch was that underneath the named characters who seemed to defy identification might be a story if those names could be deciphered. I kept at it, and I believe I have deciphered his story by deciphering several of the names as recognizeable persons.

His story is here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10020#relPageId=49 

The cast of characters:

• James Estes -- musician, drifter, string of low-level petty offenses crime record, nothing violent, landed in Dallas and found a job at the Carousel Club doing general cleanup and whatever he was asked to do
• Barbara Jean Kelly -- waitress at the Carousel, from West Allis, Wisconsin, lived in a trailer park in Irving, James lived with her.
• "Chuck" -- the manager at the Carousel Club who hired him, 6'4", red hair, mid-30s.
• Jack Ruby -- top person at the Carousel Club 
• "Lee" -- 5'9" or 5'10", 165-170 lbs, brown hair cut short and sort of curly, 30s. Not an employee of the Carousel Club but visited and knew Ruby. James went fishing with him twice. Sent by Ruby to do unspecified "jobs" for a couple of days involving round-trip airplane flights. 
• "Nick" -- well-dressed, flashy jewelry, "mob" type visiting from Louisiana, unspecified business with Ruby, New Orleans accent, age 30s-40s, 6'2", 200-plus lbs, big man, moustache, black hair cut short, drove maroon Cadillac with Louisiana plates.
• Governor John Connally--showed up once with another man with him, a closed-door meeting with Chuck and Nick and Ruby in Ruby's office, briefcase of cash changed hands.

 Following are my identifications.

"Barbara Jean Kelly"

This was exasperating: I tried and tried but could not identify this woman, not in West Allis, Wisconsin and not by that name in any known reference to Carousel Club employees or dancers. 

Finally I realized: I was looking for the wrong name. The waitress Estes was telling of was a waitress at the Carousel Club named Bonnie Louise Kellough. That is the correct spelling of her last name, though after the arrest of Ruby on Nov 24, 1963, her name appears on lists of Carousel Club employees spelled "Kelley", showing the confusion in spelling. 

And yet there seemed to be a couple of contradictions. In the book Jack Ruby's Girls, by Diana Hunter, there is a chapter dedicated to Bonnie, and there she is described as from Alabama with a southern accent. Also, in Estes' story he says his Barbara Kelly quit the Carousel Club and moved back to West Allis, Wisconsin, the first week of Sept 1963, whereas Bonnie Kellough was working on Nov 22, 1963. 

I think what happened is this: for whatever reason Bonnie decided it was time to move on from that relationship and only told Estes she was quitting and going back to Wisconsin. She urged him to get out of Dallas as she was going to do (unspecified bad things as reason). When he said he did not have money to quit and leave Dallas, she gave him money to buy a car to remove that impediment. She probably sold or moved out of her trailer at that time forcing the issue for him. Estes took the car she had bought for him to Nevada and never heard from "Barbara Kelly" again in his life. His itinerary compiled by the FBI shows he made a trip to West Allis in Dec 1963 trying to find her, but it was fruitless. That is because she wasn't there. She was at work in the Carousel Club in Dallas, where she was all along!

Remember the song, "fifty ways to leave your lover"? This was method #51! 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10516#relPageId=211 FBI interview of Kellough.

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth191022/-- this tells what became of Bonnie. Jan 23, 1964, DPD Special Services Bureau memo. Says before the assassination she lived in a rented room. When the Carousel Club closed she had been unable to find other work and moved in with another woman in Oak Cliff. In late Dec 1963 her former landlady at the rented room took up a collection for her and Bonnie took a bus to Los Angeles. Last known whereabouts.

(continued) 

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

I am not saying the killer sported a mullet.  I am saying that a person's collar line up against a jacket collar (you do agree that Tippit's killer was wearing a jacket.  Right?) could very easily give the appearance of a "block cut" (as you call it) instead of tapered look.  Your argument (tapered versus squared collar line) is poor and goes nowhere for either of us, so why do you choose to rely on it?

OK I see your point now. You are saying witness Benavides could have confused a jacket collar against Oswald's tapered-cut hairline in the back of his head as a block-cut hairline, a witness error. He was only a few feet away and he said he got a good look, but in the heat of a few moments and witnesses not being infallible, OK.

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

No Sir.

Markham was taken to police headquarters straight from Tenth and Patton.  Why do you say Markham was at work when interviewed by Odum?

You are right, my mistake. 

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

I don't know how much more clear I can be.  But, I'll try again.

Tippit's killer is walking on the sidewalk.  Tippit pulls up alongside.  The killer walks over to the passenger window of the patrol car and leans forward.  The killer may or may not have touched the door.  The killer did not touch the quarter panel.

Partial prints are found on the door.  Partial prints are found on the quarter panel.  These prints are from the same person (the opinion of Myers' fingerprint expert Herb Lutz).  The killer did not touch the quarter panel.  Therefore, the prints on the quarter panel are not the killer's prints.  If the prints on the quarter panel are not the killer's, then the prints on the door are not the killer's.

Twice you state "the killer did not touch the quarter panel". 

How do you know that?

On 4/8/2023 at 1:49 PM, Bill Brown said:

As for Benavides and the tapered collar line versus squared off collar line, the killer could have been sporting a 80's style mullet but if the mullet was tucked inside the collar of the jacket (the killer was wearing a jacket, right?) then it would appear squared off instead of tapered.  To try to make any sort of a case for the killer being someone other than Oswald because of this tapered versus squared collar line is highly ill-advised.

I don't follow you here Bill. I read you as saying Benavides' strong and credible testimony (because so close, only a few feet away, and because he said he got a good look at the back of the killer's head) on the "block cut" hairline point, could be alternatively explained as he misunderstood seeing a mullet inside a jacket collar.

That is an interesting suggestion and I would not discount it out of hand, BUT, Oswald had no mullet! So what are you saying then? If it was a mullet it was not Oswald. It would be some unidentified killer with mullet! 

But no other witness said the Tippit killer had a mullet. And Benavides was sure it was a block cut. Oswald did not have a block cut. I think Craford did (from his photo from the side, though it is not clear, but it is not excluded either, as it is in the case of Oswald). 

That block cut seen by Benavides is such a strong stand-alone detail, so widely ignored. I even wonder if Benavides told the FBI that the same day or the next, and was that the real reason he was not invited downtown to a lineup or further interest shown in him (until the Warren Commission then called him, whereupon he told the block cut hairline detail).

Then there is Helen Markham's FBI interview by Odum on the afternoon of Fri Nov 22, 1963, at her workplace the Eat-Well Cafe, wherein she gave a physical description of the killer before she saw the lineup and Oswald in that lineup whom she picked. 

The physical description she gave to Odum is of critical importance as not influenced by any information concerning Oswald.

She said the Tippit killer was (description in full):

• white male
• about 18
• black hair
• red complexion
• wearing black shoes
• tan jacket

Since one police officer and one FBI agent at the Tippit crime scene said they heard Helen Markham telling at the scene that the killer was maybe 25, or 27, years old respectively, let's consider this "about 18" which represents what would have been her direct answer to Odum's question, as a wash. 

But "black hair"--Oswald's hair was medium brown, and Craford's hair was dark brown

"Red complexion"-- Julia Postal said the man who ran by her into the balcony of the theater (the Tippit killer) had a "ruddy" complexion. Benavides, Latino himself, said the Tippit killer had skin color no lighter than his own. The FBI physical description of Craford in Dec 1963 said he was "medium" complexion, not "light". Oswald however was light complexion.

In a taped interview with Mark Lane, Helen Markham said the Tippit killer was "short". (I am not defending the rest of that tape, simply reporting one detail on which Helen Markham gave a clear answer, said the killer was "short".) 

That agrees with Acquila Clemons who said the gunman she saw was "short". Oswald at 5'9" was not "short", that is considered medium height. Craford was probably 5'7" or 5'7-1/2" (his FBI physical description of Dec 1963 has him at 5'8", but on a number of grounds that seems a half or full inch high). (Although it was much later in life, compare Peter Whitmey's writing of his surprise at how short Craford was when he met him in person.) 

Jimmy Burt, who claimed that he saw the killer and claimed emphatically that the killer definitely was not Oswald, said the killer was 5'8". William Smith said 5'7" to 5'8".  

The killer wore size "M" (from his jacket with the dry cleaning tag which could not be identified as from any dry cleaner in Dallas or New Orleans). That "M" is consistent with the heavier weight of Craford which was 150 pounds versus Oswald's 140 and a little taller. Oswald was lean or almost skinny, whereas Craford was medium build (compare Acquila Clemons' "sort of chunky"). 

4 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

You are perfectly aware that Crafard was asleep inside Ruby's club at the time of the assassination.  Right?  Hardly the state of being for him to be in if he's supposed to be in Oak Cliff walking along Tenth Street having just left Ruby's apartment on Ewing.

Well, faithful Carousel Club employee Andy Armstrong, the African-American with a criminal record in his past who Ruby trusted with money and management and the combination to the safe, who saw everything and spoke of nothing out of line, never talked of anything confidential, never crossed anyone who should not be crossed, did his job as he was told ... he said Craford was there. Ruby did too.

Nobody non-Carousel Club saw Craford any time that morning or until late afternoon. There is no photo, no evidence, no witnesses other than Armstrong and Ruby that he was in the Carousel Club or anywhere other than at Tenth and Patton in Oak Cliff at 1:15 pm. 

Weak alibi. 

5 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

There is no evidence that Tippit's killer touched the quarter panel.  If Tippit's killer did not touch the quarter panel, then the prints on the passenger door did not belong to Tippit's killer. 

If you are arguing that because no witness saw a human hand from the Tippit killer touch that fender, therefore that means "Tippit's killer did not touch" that fender, that is a logical fallacy. 

If you do mean the premise of your syllogism is indicated by the preceding sentence, the same logic of reasoning would mean no human at all put those fingerprints on the right front fender. 

The syllogism alone, disconnected from the preceding sentence, would be a tautology, not saying anything, i.e. if someone did not touch the Tippit patrol car, then that someone did not leave fingerprints on the Tippit patrol car. No argument with that syllogism Bill! Its your reasoning from the first sentence to the premise of that syllogism that is the problem!

4 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Also, there is no proof that Larry Crafard really was an "experienced hit man" and you won't be able to provide any.

The most important post-Warren Commission testimony work on Curtis Craford (Larry Crafard) is that of Peter Whitmey and especially this article: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/creatingapatsy.htm. 

Peter Whitmey interviewed Craford in Oregon. I am getting that from Whitmey from that article, here:

"During my initial interview with Craford at a bar/restaurant in the small town where he lives in a rural area of Oregon, he revealed to me that he had been a “hit man” in the early sixties in San Francisco, prior to going to Dallas. While living there he got involved with the granddaughter of the local “Don”, and, unfortunately for Craford, she became pregnant. However, in exchange for leaving town and promising never to contact her again, Curtis was spared the usual harsh treatment associated with organized crime. Although I was somewhat skeptical of Craford’s claim, his older brother, whom I later spoke to by phone, appeared to confirm what Curtis had revealed to me." 

12 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

The revolver taken from Oswald is the weapon linked to the shell casings found at the scene (Nicol, Killion, Cunningham, Frazier), to the exclusion of any other weapon in the world.  Therefore, a revolver found in a paper bag lying in the street in a big city nowhere near Tenth and Patton could not be the weapon responsible for those shell casings.

The FBI found the exclusive match to Oswald's revolver concerning the shell hulls they were given by the Dallas Police. Five officers marked the hulls at the scene of the crime and not one out of those five gave a credible statement under their own signature, or under oath, or in their own name not under oath, saying that they recognized and could find their own marks on the hulls turned in to the FBI lab. That is, lack of chain of custody verified in the form of direct signed statement or credible sworn testimony in their own names, on the part of all five of the officers who were the only ones in a position to verify such chain of custody.

I believe this lacuna is a dog that did not bark, namely, someone in the Dallas Police switched those four hulls and attempted to forge officers' marks that the officers either could not recognize as their own or were puzzled as having been their own, which is why four of those five officers were not willing to swear to it, with only one who did so weakly and unconvincingly.

(Barnes is the one arguable exception but his arguable exception, of claim under oath to identify two shells he marked, not only was expressed with hesitancy but beyond that was formally repudiated in the case of one of those identifications, meaning the other identification equally lacks confidence--that is why I included the caveat "credible" identification, though in the other four officers' cases not even that occurred.)

In short, what someone in the Dallas Police did with what I believe was the Tippit murder weapon (disappeared it after its find on Sat Nov 23), I believe similarly was done with the shell hulls found at the Tippit crime scene. Someone in the Dallas Police Department switched the hulls found at the Tippit crime scene for shell hulls fired from Oswald's revolver, before sending them on Thu Nov 28 to the FBI lab for analysis to find out from which revolver they had been fired from). 

4 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

How does a revolver found in a paper bag lying on the ground near the curb in downtown Dallas automatically mean that it "looks like the real abandoned murder weapon from the Tippit killing"?

Because that's like how its done in mob movies: the professional killer does the deed, then drops the murder weapon not caring it it will be found since it is untraceable, simply to have it not on his person or found in his possessions, if stopped and searched. Because I can't think of any better explanation for someone disposing of a .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson in a paper bag with some fruit, can you?

Its not likely an accidental loss of a handgun by mistake that way. There had to be some homicide attached to that. The only issue is to what recent homicide to attach it. It turns up 18 hours after Tippit is killed with that kind of weapon. But the Dallas Police Department loses it so that it can never be forensically examined. The existence of this paper-bag revolver in the possession of Dallas Police on Saturday Nov 23, 1963 only becomes known buried in FBI documents released in the 1990s.