Greg Doudna

I am in the final stages of editing a paper which will argue that Lee Harvey Oswald had two screw holes of on the Mannlicher-Carcano drill-and-tapped repaired as part of a reinstallation of the original scope at the Irving Sport Shop on Mon Nov 11, 1963. Despite the existence of a written job ticket at that shop showing that kind of work was done for a customer named "Oswald", the Warren Commission concluded it did not happen. I believe my paper will show the Warren Commission erred in that conclusion.

It has occurred to me there could be a technical means of confirmation or falsification of this point. If drill-and-tapping was done on the Mannlicher-Carcano at the Irving Sport Shop on Nov 11, it would be slightly larger screw sizes drilled and tapped in the same screw holes previously drilled and tapped at Klein's in Chicago of slightly smaller size (which had become stripped necessitating the second drill and tapping).

The question: is there technical ability, within present forensic methods, to determine whether a given screw hole was drill and tapped once or twice? To determine whether a larger size screw hole was drilled and tapped over a smaller size, versus virgin drill and tap only once? Is anyone able to answer this question? 

Just brainstorming here. Could this be Jack Tatum, earlier version of his story? The author of the letter (a) says he was a witness; (b) has a wife; (c) says he is not coming forward with what he saw; (d) gives the same two reasons for not coming forward Jack Tatum later gave in explanation (thought there were enough other witnesses; fear for life). Those points agree with Tatum.

Tatum did not come forward later but was found, via HSCA door-to-door checking in Oak Cliff for leads as I recall, i.e. not Tatum's idea to be outed as a witness. When he was outed and found, he now says he saw Oswald. One possibility is that could be a strategic alteration of his story intentionally, if he believed the real killing was mob- or underworld-related, and that they might still be at large if he told a non-Oswald story.

There is no doubt to me that what Acquilla Clemons saw, and what Doris Holan from her second-story window on Patton saw, was the known shouting/waving-arms interaction between the killer and Ted Callaway on Patton, running in opposite directions on Patton. Neither of those two women claimed that both of the men they saw were gunmen; both claimed they saw one gunman waving or interacting with another man across the street going the opposite direction, one of the two men of that interaction testifying to the Warren Commission directly of that interaction which Clemons and Holan saw (Callaway). 

That would not agree with the author of the letter if his claim is real that he witnessed the shooting and claimed to see two involved in the shooting (if the letter is not bogus). This is just shot-in-the-dark speculation, but imagine Tatum is the author of the Playboy letter, was a witness, and the letter represents an original version of what Tatum saw or thought he saw, prior to when HSCA found him and he was then up and down with the Oswald smirk and etc., if he changed or developed the story to that.

Is there a possible reconstruction from Tatum's HSCA and post-HSCA version, and the known facts of the Tippit crime scene, to interpret the Playboy letter claim if Tatum wrote it? Imagine Tatum driving his red car, the one Benavides sees in front of him. Tatum goes west, passes the Tippit cruiser, sees the man standing by the right front fender of the cruiser, Tippit getting out of the car. Tatum hears shots as he goes through Patton and Tenth, looks into his rear view mirror and sees not much distinct but does not turn around bodily to look yet because is focused on clearing the intersection. Tatum pulls his car over to the right and stops, and only then turns around bodily to look and see clearly. There he sees (so he said) the killer running around the back of the cruiser and firing a coup de grace shot into Tippit on the pavement. However Tatum has got the shot numbers garbled and there were three final shots in quick succession into Tippit on the ground, not just one final coup de grace. The shot sequence is as Callaway heard, bam...bam...bam-bam-bam, two with a delay and then three final quick. Therefore: shot #1 over the hood, a hit into Tippit's side. As Tippit stumbles and topples from that hit shot #2 misses for that reason. With Tippit down and out of a line of fire over the hood the gunman cannot shoot further from that position and runs around the car (around the rear is what Tatum said he saw), fires the final three in rapid succession into Tippit on the ground, one the button hit, one in the chest, and last one in the temple. Then the killer, with Tatum watching, starts loping, slow run, in what looks like his direction west on Tenth and Tatum thinks he's headed for him and guns his car forward and loses further sight temporarily, but sees in the rear view mirror the killer turn south on Patton and out of sight. Once Tatum sees the killer has gone south on Patton Tatum stops his car a second time and turns around and looks again and now he sees Callaway who has arrived, unseen by Tatum up to that point, almost to the position of the cruiser. Tatum sees Callaway in the vicinity of the cruiser and the fallen Tippit, and Tatum sees Callaway running beyond the cruiser (east) to Benavides' truck appealing to Benavides to drive so they can try to catch the killer. From Tatum's vantage point Callaway looks like a second man involved in the shooting and running in the opposite direction. Tatum knows there are a few other witnesses. This is reflected in the letter to Playboy. Or something like that?

The word censored out is "t-r-o-l-l"

Lance Payette, after I labored to detail and eviscerate your character smear of Alveeta Treon, you are not even going to acknowledge or address or retract your character smear? Just drive-by character assassination, ignore substantive to-the-point response (from me), and "then I'm done"? 

That's xxxxx behavior Lance. 

You started it. You assassinated Alveeta Treon's character, called her names in public. She probably has family members, and even if she did not it is not right. I don't like to see character assassination done of Ruth Paine and I don't like it any better to see you doing this to Alveeta Treon.

You can't just "then I'm done" without response or correction. Have you no conscience? 

3 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Come on, this nonsense is beyond putrid even for Conspiracy World. Folks like scowly face are so desperate to make Oswald an intelligence asset that they sail right past Alveeta and into the arms of nutcase John David Hurt (or, at the other extreme, major CIA figure John Limond Hart).

There is no known person advocating for John Limond Hart, and you were informed of that on this thread. Straw man. 

2 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Just a quick dose of common sense, and then I'm done:

Lance Payette, after I labored to detail and eviscerate your character smear of Alveeta Treon, you are not even going to acknowledge or address or retract your character smear? Just drive-by character assassination, ignore substantive to-the-point response (from me), and "then I'm done"? 

That's xxxxx behavior Lance. 

You started it. You assassinated Alveeta Treon's character, called her names in public. She probably has family members, and even if she did not it is not right. I don't like to see character assassination done of Ruth Paine and I don't like it any better to see you doing this to Alveeta Treon.

You can't just "then I'm done" without response or correction. Have you no conscience? 

In defense of Alveeta Treon

On "the story evolves and changes" you are holding Alveeta responsible for words not verified she ever said. You are taking hearsay reports of what Alveeta said, and when Alveeta herself says what actually happened was a little different than the hearsay, you accuse Alveeta of changing her story. This is neither fair nor justified, because of how easy hearsay gets details garbled. 

One or two people who heard Alveeta's story say she told of getting a slip out of a wastebasket. Alveeta herself is emphatic that was a misunderstanding. You have no direct statement from Alveeta in which she herself changed her story. 

On the affidavit, which you cite as evidence she changed her story from what was in the affidavit, the affidavit is unsigned and Alveeta emphatically denied she ever saw it! You cite from your own experience that affidavits are composed based on what witnesses tell legal staff, and are highly accurate in your experience, and I believe you. But there is no basis for assumption that was what was going on with that affidavit. If that was what was going on with that affidavit, why isn't it signed? I read through Proctor's article again and there is that business of the National Enquirer reporter in the picture. It looks to me like the authors of that affidavit--motivated by someone (National Enquirer?) needing documentary evidence--wrote up that affidavit based on the hearsay, not based on interviews of Alveeta. The idea would be to obtain Alveeta's cooperation in signing it either as is or corrected, which evidently never got to that point (of bringing Alveeta in on it). Alveeta herself says she never saw it, and that is consistent with there is no signature of hers on it, and she says up and down that certain things in it are false. You take that bogus document (composed on the basis of the hearsay without Alveeta's knowledge or participation) and then claim it is evidence of Alveeta lying when Alveeta corrects errors in it when she does see it!

Your trump card for calling Alveeta the worst form of prevaricator is you say she forged Louise Swinney's signature on the call slip. Now you're a lawyer, I am not, but I want to ask you, on what legal grounds is that forgery? Did she represent it to anyone as Swinney's signature? No. Did she use the call slip for financial gain? No. Did she try to sell it, publish it, represent it as written by Louise Swinney? No. Is there any evidence she had malicious intent? No. Exactly how would you define her guilt of forgery if you were to prosecute this in court? What crime or wrong has been committed? There was no misrepresentation because it was kept private to herself until when it was requested, and when she showed it she made clear from the outset that there was no claim that was Louise Swinney's signature. She never said other than that she wrote the whole thing. What is the nature of her perfidy in your opinion, exactly?

Here is how I read what happened. I read Alveeta's story from her own words (as distinguished from the hearsay and the affidavit writeup of which she had nothing to do) as consistent. Therefore the following interpretation is based on Alveeta's consistent story from her words. She works there. She says she showed up a little early to her normal shift start at 11 pm. She is on the switchboard, working, when Swinney handles the phone call requests coming through from Oswald. She listens in. As she says, there is nothing to do with a wastebasket. Rather, she is filling out a call slip as the conversation is happening, not as a work product of her job, but as her notes or records for private personal use (even though on work time). She could have written longhand the notes (that are for her personal purpose). She simplified it by taking her notes in the form of filling out an existing call slip form. Your objection that that was not the normal procedure for calls that did not go through is true but irrelevant, since Alveeta's call slip was not done for the job, not done per usual procedure as part of work, but was an off-the-books, off-the-job personal notetaking.

All the information of the phone calls that she is overhearing she writes down, taking personal notes in this way, to record this history for her own benefit. Writing the name as Louise Swinney, which you find as the smoking gun of her perfidy and villany, is simply her completing her notetaking on who the operator was, Louise Swinney.

Alveeta never tried to pass that off as Louise Swinney's call slip. Never claimed that. Never represented it as such. The only thing that could be said is if someone else found that and did not know better, one might mistakenly think Louise Swinney signed it. There is however no evidence Alveeta ever intended that. 

Therefore you have not shown any basis to justify your conclusion that Alveeta Treon is a "villain". There is no evidence she did anything other than tell the truth. All that needs to be assumed is that errors in the hearsay are the fault of the transmitters of the hearsay, not the fault of Alveeta. I believe with your legal experience you will recognize that that is the fair and reasonable default assumption to be made here. 

The call slip is not a "fraud" as you term it because fraud involves intent to misrepresent, and there was none in this case.

On Alveeta Treon.

7 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

The Raleigh call didn’t surface for several years after the assassination. A red flag? The matter was brought to the attention of the HSCA in 1977 as described below. The HSCA investigated it thoroughly but didn’t mention it in its final report.

Yes, grounds for caution. But does not automatically mean its false. It is corroborated that Alveeta was employed there, was employed that evening, was there to listen in on an Oswald phone call, had been asked by her daughter for a physical momento from this historic Oswald phone call. 

It is corroborated that there were phone calls attempted via operator by Oswald that evening. It is corroborated that Alveeta was there at the time of those Oswald attempted phone calls.

It is corroborated that there was unusual interest in the name "John Heard" (phonetic) on the part of the Secret Service in the days immediately following that weekend. 

Lance: "Alveeta’s first contact with the HSCA concerned a call she had ostensibly taken the night of the assassination in which someone had claimed there’d been a second assassin. She gave the HSCA the alleged assassin’s name and a Texas license plate number. She “stated that the original notes she took are in her handwriting and we may have them if wanted.” Does this seem a bit odd to you, as it does to me?"

Absolutely not odd, because it is completely in keeping with a documented pattern of calls from that particular caller of exactly that nature to other law enforcement agencies. You may not have known this, and Alveeta certainly would not have known it at the time (and probably not later). This is the little known saga story (a sad story truly) of one Marion Meharg. You can dive into the weeds on this with all the documents and details at the ROKC site https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t585-the-case-of-the-nuisance-phone-calls-redux?, with research there from (I think) Tom Gram.

I know a little about this because within the past year I have talked a couple of times with the younger of two sons of Marion Meharg.

Briefly, Marion Meharg made phone calls starting from Day #1 to law enforcement agencies. He claimed he was in Dealey Plaza and a witness. He claimed he witnessed an assassin run out of the Texas School Book Depository building and get into a white over green two-tone station wagon that he said belonged to his ex-wife. He claimed the assassin was his ex-wife's current husband, one David Miller. He claimed his ex-wife and her new husband were part of the assassination. Over the following weeks his phone calls became more persistent and abusive to innocent persons. Mixed in with this was he was cut off from access to his two boys, ages 11 and 8, whom he loved very much, but did not know where they were being kept hidden from him. Every time he found information, such as that they had moved to Atlanta, Georgia, he reported this to authorities. At one point he was almost prosecuted for impersonating a Secret Service agent over the phone, but federal prosecutors decided not to proceed on the grounds that it was mostly a domestic dispute not worth federal resources. The point: if you check the documents there you will see that the phone call reported by Alveeta is completely of a piece with the rest of the Marion Meharg case and completely believable that she took that call as she described, because that is what Marion Meharg was saying to everyone else under the sun.

David Miller (Jr.) (born Marion Meharg Jr.), with whom I have spoken, was 8 at the time. He remembers the move to Atlanta. His mother and stepfather (the ones Marion Meharg accused of assassinating President Kennedy making use of David's mother's station wagon) were in Atlanta the day of the assassination; David confirmed that to me; he remembers that day. Neither they nor his mother's station wagon had anything to do with the assassination. All of Marion's accusations to the Dallas police, FBI, Irving police, etc. were false accusations although he may have believed them. David was not aware of the extent of his father Marion's trail of abusive anonymous phone calls in Dallas; he told me his mother and stepfather did not tell him and his brother much of that, only vaguely. He says (something not in any of the documents) that his father found him and his brother in Atlanta ("he found us"). There was no violence. David and his brother seemed to care for their father even though he had problems exacerbated by alcohol, and Marion was attached to his boys. David came across to me as a decent man, with his father's behavior so long ago something of a painful subject.

Incidentally, I believe Marion's story could be understood if he was present on the same building Richard Randolph Carr said he was, seeing much the same things Carr said he saw. Their two stories are roughly similar, the main difference being in Marion Meharg's case he came to the belief that the station wagon was his ex-wife's, and the assassin running out of the TSBD was his ex-wife's new husband. But if one sets aside those mistaken identifications, it could be possible Marion Meharg did see a running man and a station wagon. David told me he had no knowledge of if his father was a witness at Dealey Plaza and said his father never said anything about that to him.

So in isolation Alveeta's report of the first known of many similar Marion Meharg phone calls looks bizarre. But it was exactly what Marion Meharg was doing elsewhere in the immediate days and weeks following the assassination. Alveeta gets a full pass of credibility on this. There is no warrant for impugning Alveeta's credibility on this, or calling her account of that phone call "odd".  

(continued)

Lance Payette -- I appreciate your effort in putting together this case but on this one I think you have misfired. Before going into the issues you raise concerning Alveeta Treon's credibility, some starting points. There was a "John Hurt" issue stemming from the assassination weekend in which Secret Service Agent Kelley, who was part of the interrogation of Oswald on Sunday morning Nov 24, contacted Chicago Secret Service within ca. 1 day seeking information on "John Heard" (phonetic).

And next, I do not think John D. Hurt of Raleigh is the right man, nor do I think John Limond Hart of CIA is the right man either for the reasons you cite: the name is different; no Raleigh connection. 

My person of interest is a John B. Hurt, a somewhat now-famous brilliant cryptographer and Japanese language specialist although he never was in Japan, one of the top technically brilliant persons in the National Security Agency (NSA). Jim Root (who first suggested interest in this name) looked into his background extensively including archival research, I to a much lesser extent. There is no known contact or known mechanism for contact between John B. Hurt and Oswald. Nor from what I have read was John B. Hurt involved in covert operations or the things Oswald was involved in. The impression is John B. Hurt was introverted, a sort of brilliant geek type who worked quietly in the office and cracked enemy codes. If it were only the name alone it would not be much. But...

• there is a "Raleigh" connection. Family roots of John B. Hurt from and plenty of relatives in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Next state over and not Raleigh, North Carolina. Could be coincidence.
• he was married to Anna Drittelle, who was a famous cellist. An alias of Oswald used only one known time, on the handwritten order for the revolver, was "D.F. Drittal". Highly uncommon last name. Sounds like the last name of John B. Hurt's wife. Could be coincidence.
• Anna Drittelle, the famous concert cellist, was from Russia and reportedly spoke fluent Russian. Oswald was in Russia and spoke Russian, and loved classical music of the kind for which Russian-born cellist Anna Drittelle was famous in the 1950s and 1960s. Check and check and check, raising the question whether Anna Drittelle would have been known by name to Oswald, and if there was ever contact. I would dearly love to know a timeline of her concerts and travels and movements, in order to run down the question "could Oswald have met Anna Drittelle?" But although google searches turn up New York Times reports of concert appearances here and there of Anna Drittelle in the 1950s, I can find so little on her movements, and no evidence she ever gave a concert in Russia, for example. She was from Paris and lived with her husband John B. Hurt in the U.S. so far as I can see. Nothing to connect her to Oswald, but so little is known it is unknown. About all that can be said is Oswald very well might have known the name from the classical music world, found her of interest because of the Russian connection, and if he did have opportunity to meet her might be expected to have welcomed it. But of course quite a lot is known and has been studied of Lee Harvey Oswald's movements and contacts and there is no Anna Drittelle in what is known of Oswald, which I suppose is a somewhat serious negative argument against a contact.

But its the three above added to the "John Hurt" name itself ... well, there's the case for this being a figure of interest with respect to the unexplained "John Hurt" of "Raleigh, North Carolina" sought by Oswald who (I believe, with you) was not one of the two John Hurts in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

And so imagine an Oswald, stonewalling under interrogation, stalling for time until an expected intervention springs him free (or whatever), dismayed that there is no intervention, the horror of a realization that it looks like he is being hung out to dry ... and the attempt to reach "John Hurt" (or attempt to reach Anna Drittelle via John B. Hurt?) is a Hail Mary pass on Oswald's part, so to speak. Somehow if he can reach this person, they know him, know something, can vouch for or get word to or say the right word to somebody ... if only he can reach John Hurt or Anna Drittelle ... John Hurt who retired recently from NSA several months earlier, and he remembers they said something about family in "Raleigh" not too far from Washington, D.C., he makes his Hail Mary pass trying to find John Hurt maybe in "Raleigh" through an operator's directory assistance in a previous phone call on Saturday from the Dallas jail, receives those two numbers...

On Sunday at the very end of Oswald's final interrogation Secret Service agent Kelley, the one who asked Chicago to check files for anything about "John Heard" the next day, spoke privately to Oswald. Kelley's written report says they discussed nothing. Postal inspector Holmes who was there tells in his Warren Commission testimony of overhearing quite a bit of content of that interaction between Kelley and Oswald which supposedly was nothing. Not all that happened in the Kelley/Oswald exchange was reported in writing. In keeping with not one time in all of the interrogation reports of Oswald that weekend is Oswald reported to have been asked whether he had ever worked for a government agency. When Oswald was interviewed by FBI Fain in 1962 he was asked that. Robert Oswald told of how Lee laughed with Robert over that afterward, thought it was hilarious, Lee saying he answered: "Don't you know?" Why wasn't, according to any written report of those hours of hearsay, Lee asked that utterly elementary question at any point on the weekend of Nov 22-24, 1963? Well, maybe Fritz was asked not to ask, if you catch the drift. Could it be Oswald tried to tell Kelley, a different agency than Oswald's hated (?) FBI, something privately? (Whatever Oswald told Kelley Sunday morning, minutes before he became dead, was out of the hearing of the FBI, about the only known time that weekend of interrogations when that was the case?) It is not known fully what was said between Kelley and Oswald. But it is known Kelley came out of that meeting wanting to find out, for no known explicable reason, if other of his Secret Service colleagues knew anything about a "John Heard" (phonetic). Was it because of something Oswald said to Kelley privately Sunday morning?

Next: to take up your criticisms of the credibility of Alveeta Treon, which are unjustified. Her story is credible, nothing not credible about her or it. 

53 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Then why did Lee tell this lie to Fritz? ....

"I asked him [Lee Oswald] if he had told Buell Wesley Frazier why he had gone home a different night, and if he had told him anything about bringing back some curtain rods. He denied it." -- Captain Will Fritz' written report [WCR; pg. 604]

So, you're going to try to convince people that LHO really did have curtain rods in that package on 11/22, but he then deliberately LIES to the police after he's arrested concerning that very thing---whether he did or did not bring curtain rods into the building?!

Come on! Let's not all common sense go down the drain here!

Or do you think Fritz was the li@r in the above quote from his report? That must be what you actually think, right Greg?

Its a good question David. I do not have a good answer to it. I do not know why Lee denied in interrogation what he told Frazier. No, I don't think Fritz lied about the denial of the curtain rods in interrogation. I accept Lee denied. I don't know why. It is a weak point in the counternarrative I outlined. I could speculate one or two things but they would be justly criticized by you and others as without evidence. You know how the LN explanations account for a lot of evidence but there are always loose ends. Well, this is a loose end in the counternarrative.

Did Lee know he was being suspected of having brought the rifle in that morning when he was asked the question? It is easy to assume that but is that known?   

You know the questions about the Dallas map that Ruth Paine had given him and Oswald had made marks on it? Police thought he had the parade route and even Dealey Plaza shooting locations marked on it. Lots of investigation of that map, but in the end I believe the Warren Commission accepted that it really was innocuous job application locations, bus stops etc. markings, nothing to do with Oswald planning to assassinate with that map. What if the curtain rods is a parallel example, of something police hone in on as suspicious.

Just suppose--as a thought experiment David!--that Lee was in the role of framed patsy and realizes it. He sees every move he's made interpreted in terms of his guilt (and he has a few things vulnerable himself he's covering up but not killing JFK). Suppose he does figure out, whether or not he is told, that his curtain rods are now suspected as being the means of transmission of the rifle into the TSBD that he had sold Nov 12. Rather than admit the curtain rod package he just denies, because he can see where they are going with that. I don't know. An innocent person is always better off sticking to the truth in police interrogation, is the conventional wisdom. But do innocent people who are egregiously falsely accused and believe they are being railroaded follow policies of sticking to the truth in such situations, in real life? I don't know. Are there studies addressing this answerable question? Did Jews or leftists arrested by the Gestapo who were innocent of, say, a charge of terrorism always stick rigorously to the truth when answering questions which would look bad if they told the truth?

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

I'm not sure why you think I missed the ends of the curtain rods in my  chapter. I am fairly certain I was the first to notice them. 

From chapter 4h at patspeer.com:

The Warren Commission visit to Ruth Paine's garage, stenographer accompanying, regarding the curtain rods, has them standing in front of the bench (below the part of the photo you show) and seeing the curved end of a curtain rod peeking out at one end on a shelf below the roof but above the workbench. I am seeing the curtain rod as that lengthy dark object with upturned end closest to the viewer right in the middle of the lower part of the photo, below and parallel to your double arrow blue line above. I am seeing the shelf upon which the curtain rod or rods rest as suspended from a wall bracket which is visible in the photo looking (in the photo) like a profile view of a chair without the rear legs, between the dark curtain rod below and blue double arrow above. I am seeing the shelf itself as the less dark (than the curtain rod) line below the curtain rod dark line, parallel to the line of shelving above, not parallel to the darker curtain rod slightly above it. The angle of the shelf is flat compared to the floor and ceiling. The darker object, what I am seeing as the curtain rod, is not perfectly parallel or flat relative to the floor, or to the shelf on which it rests, but rises in angle slightly from left to right in the photo. The photo is showing one end of one or two curtain rods which are not lying flat on the shelf but are resting at that end on the shelf at the end of the shelf (nearest the viewer). The other end of the curtain rods is out of sight in the photo but resting on something higher than the shelf base. The dark end of the dark curtain rod at the end appears pointing upward at 11 o'clock in the photo I am interpreting as actually a 90 degrees angle in the metal object itself, the curtain rod, but the end is tipped over until blocked by the wall such that the end is not upright and visually looks in the photo like it is less than 90 degree angle, but it is actually a 90 degree angle. What do you think? Do I have that right or wrong? If you don't think what I am seeing is right what do you think that dark object, that looks vaguely like a golf club on its side (but clearly is not a golf club) is? It cannot be the base of a shelf because the angle is wrong. I am seeing it as an object lying on the shelf that is the loose, unwrapped curtain rods that the Warren Commission delegation described in words as seeing in that position.

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

You are correct in that the results of the polygraph were not published. But it can not be doubted that Frazier was asked about the bag and that he passed, seeing as the DPD officers involved deferred to his insistence the bag shown him was not the bag he saw earlier that day in Oswald's possession. . 

Yes, it is certain he would have been asked, and his registering truthful on an answer that was not the answer wanted is the most likely explanation why those polygraph results were lost. 

Frazier has told of how he (and Linnie Mae) were made to make paper reconstructions, hand estimations of length, over and over and over. Length of the bag, over and over and over, 24-27" with convergence on 27" (not 24"). That Friday night. Very important issue to police, the length of that bag Frazier was telling Oswald carried. The 27" length of Frazier's highly consistent testimony is the exact length of curtain rods in the Paines' garage (27") as Pat brings out. Intention of an imminent move, and Oswald's room at Beckley had damaged curtain rods (probably by Lee accidentally, Mrs. Roberts had no idea how they were damaged, speculated police or reporters, no idea), needing fixed before moving. Motive and opportunity.

And it's what Oswald said they were (to Frazier). And he did not bring out any TSBD wrapping paper the day before (Frazier emphatic testimony including to Pat on that).

At one point in her testimony Marina says she saw Lee with a "small" package less than the size of a rifle, leaving the morning of Nov 22. Lee and Marina both had opportunity the previous evening for access to the garage, Marina especially after Ruth went to bed.

Four curtain rods originally in the Paine house. Marina/Lee gave Lee 2, leaving 2 left in the garage which are what are there when the Warren Commission goes to the garage. (In Pat's curtain rods discussion he missed on the description of the garage photo--the ends of the remaining 2 Paine curtain rods, not in any wrapping, are actually visible loose, the curved end of at least one visible, in that photo on a small shelf below where Pat was looking in his discussion (above the workbench). Pat missed that! Its there if you just look again Pat! 🙂 )

The curtain rods would not have been the reason Lee went to Irving Thu night Nov 22 but it would be the reason told Frazier, and not untrue. (Non-assassination reason for going out Thu night: he had already missed seeing Marina and his kids the weekend of Nov 16-17, and he told Frazier he was going to get his driver's license the next Saturday Nov 23, and he was asking Marina to get an apartment with him that weekend Nov 23-24. Going out Thursday night sensible in that context since he was not going out with Frazier Fri night.) 

Frazier saw Lee walk with the curtain rods into the first door on the enclosed loading dock. But Lee was not seen entering with the package inside the second door from the loading dock to the TSBD proper, the door by the Domino Room. He probably stashed the curtain rods somewhere out of sight on the loading dock where they would be undisturbed until he was off work and would take them to Beckley with him by bus. The assassination interrupted that. The package, abandoned by Lee, was probably thrown out as trash from clearing that loading dock without anyone realizing or caring what was being thrown out, went into a dumpster, no one knew what became of it.

The large paper bag despite incongruities in the find reporting, probably was associated with the rifle, with both that bag and rifle having been Oswald's prior to Nov 11, the day Lee took the rifle out of the garage and had the scope reinstalled on it that day for purpose of preparation for sale or conveyance. 

OK, there's the alternative narrative. It agrees and makes sense of the emphatic and credible 27" length from Frazier, likely upheld by polygraph examination late that night (and that very upholding then covered up and the reason it was covered up). 27" and 27" (exact length of the Paine curtain rods). Check and check. And its what Lee told Frazier all along they were. Because its what they were. 

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

It's more likely by far that someone had taken it before the evening of the 21st, and was hoping Oswald wouldn't notice its absence. 

2 hours ago, Steve Roe said:

Pat, you already know I don't buy that someone broke into Ruth Paine's garage and took Oswald's rifle. I found this to be an extremely far-fetched theory. 

My recently posted paper on the Furniture Mart (https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1450) establishes to the level of fact that Lee Oswald was in the Furniture Mart on Nov 11, 1963 asking for a gunsmith and being directed to the Irving Sports Shop down the street, last seen leaving appearing intending to go there.

A followup paper by me on the Irving Sports Shop, which I should have up within a few days, takes up the authenticated job ticket for a scope installation for "Oswald" which turned up at the Irving Sports Shop, the location where Oswald seeking a gunsmith was directed by Mrs. Whitworth of the Furniture Mart and where Oswald did then go next. I take up the earliest account of the employee at the Sports Shop who did that Oswald scope installation of that job ticket telling the FBI, on Mon Nov 25, in his earliest account, that he associated a photo of Oswald with a customer he remembered about two weeks earlier before Nov 25, who had the same kind of work done as the Oswald job ticket (scope installation) and that he remembered the rifle of that customer (whom he associated with a photo of Oswald, whose scope installation agreed in kind and date range with the Oswald work order done for an individual named "Oswald") was "Argentine made", that is, a Mauser, the same original mistake in identification of the same Mannlicher-Carcano rifle made by four law enforcement officers on Nov 22, TSBD. I will show that the employee, Dial Ryder, was working the front counter of the Sports Shop alone in the store that day, Nov 11 Veterans Day, because the owner, Greener, was on vacation, and the only other employee, a woman who usually worked the front counter, was not there that day for the holiday. Ryder did the job for Oswald on the spot while Oswald waited, Oswald paid cash, and the cash went into Ryder's pocket as a cash job without being run through the cash register or store paperwork as was supposed to have been done. The three holes versus two of the drill-and-taps on the job ticket writeup is only an illusory, not real, objection to the rifle having been the Mannlicher-Carcano, and all of Ryder's subsequent claims (and of Greener who wasn't even there at the time Oswald had the scope reinstalled) that the Oswald rifle Ryder had worked on had not been the Mannlicher-Carcano are simple motivated distancing or, at best, mistaken memory, in short, not credible and not true: it was definitely Oswald and definitely was the only rifle ever associated with Oswald, the Mannlicher-Carcano, on which Oswald had the original scope that had been shipped with the rifle from Klein's reinstalled at the Irving Sports Shop, on Nov 11.

There is no need for speculation whether the rifle was or was not removed from the Ruth Paine garage prior to the 21st. It was removed, on Nov 11, removed by Oswald. I establish that as a fact in new ways in the two papers, the one already up, that have not been shown before.

What happened with the rifle and its whereabouts, after it was removed from the garage the morning of Nov 11 by Oswald, whether it was put back into the garage again or was not put back into the garage again, is unknown on the basis of known evidence. Let that be emphasized: there is no evidence that the rifle was in the garage after its removal from the garage by Oswald on Nov 11. The rifle's whereabouts after it is last known out of the garage, but still in Irving in Oswald's possession, on Nov 11, until that rifle was then found on the 6th floor of TSBD on Nov 22--are unknown, a black hole of information where it was during the next 11 days, with no information stronger than conjecture concerning its whereabouts in that 11-day period prior to the assassination. 

There was no theft of the rifle, no breaking into Ruth's garage, necessary to explain an hypothesized removal of the rifle before Nov 22. Oswald removed it on Nov 11, and that is not hypothetical or conjecture but I move the needle in my two papers to establishing, by argument, that as a fact "beyond reasonable doubt".   

The "plunger"

On the ROKC site, Greg Parker has made an argument that the "plunger" which according to Mrs. Hunter she heard Oswald ask for at the Furniture Mart was not a firearms part but was a spring-loaded crib spring latch called a "plunger" for their baby's crib which Marina had put together (description and illustration of the "plunger" crib item here: https://servimg.com/view/19740706/263).

This alternative "plunger" explanation suggestion is of possible interest. My comments that follow reflect my possible synthesis of the proposal; for Greg Parker's interpretation which is different see at https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2678-lee-goes-plunger-shopping-the-actual-solution-to-the-gerty-hunter-conundrum.

A problem with the "plunger" firearm part request of Lee at the Furniture Mart has been that there was no known "plunger" problem in either of the firearms associated with Oswald. The rifle, no known such problem. The revolver was found by the FBI lab to be in excellent working condition, nothing wrong with it. At Oswald's next stop after the Furniture Mart, the Irving Sports Shop where Mrs. Whitworth directed him, a job ticket tells what Oswald had done there: he had a scope installed, nothing to do with a plunger. The package Oswald was holding when he entered the Furniture Mart store was of dimensions of a scope, the known work that Oswald had done when he did get to a gunsmith. Mrs. Whitworth had no idea what the object was wrapped in paper in Oswald's hand but said its dimensions were 15-18" x 2-3", which is not the size of a rifle plunger or crib spring latch plunger but is the size of a scope. And at the Sports Shop, Dial Ryder confirmed his customer of his Oswald work order had brought in his own scope with him for Ryder to install.

(In my analysis it was Oswald and the Mannlicher-Carcano at the Sports Shop of the Oswald job ticket, despite denials by Dial Ryder and the Warren Commission that Dial Ryder had worked on the assassination Mannlicher-Carcano; the scope Oswald had installed at the Sports Shop was the same scope that had come with the Mannlicher-Carcano shipped from Klein's; Oswald had taken off that scope but was now wanting it put back on, but he was unable to do so himself with a screwdriver because the threads were stripped, therefore the need for a gunsmith to drill and tap new slightly larger screw holes over the existing ones. Since Oswald was not using the rifle at that time, evidently had not liked the scope since he had taken it off, and could have been under pressure from Marina to get rid of the rifle, the scope repair and reinstallation could reflect Oswald preparing the rifle for a resale, not for his own use, restoring it to the condition in which it was received, in that Mon Nov 11 trip to the Furniture Mart and Sports Shop. I believe Ryder was working the front counter himself and the only one in the store that day, Veterans Day, Nov 11, because the woman who normally was at the front counter was off for the holiday; that Ryder did it on the spot as a cash job and put the cash in his pocket rather than run it through the cash register as was supposed to be done; that Ryder quoted and wrote up the job ticket for three drill-and-taps based on seeing three screw holes in the base mount that came with the scope from Klein's even though only two drill-and-taps were actually done to install the scope; and that the Warren Commission was just flat wrong in, with Dial Ryder, rejecting that Dial Ryder had worked on the Mannlicher-Carcano of Oswald, and even going so far as to suggest Dial Ryder forged the job ticket which is totally baseless. It was just obviously Lee Oswald, who had been sent there by Mrs. Whitworth, and it was obviously the Mannlicher-Carcano, the only rifle Oswald was ever associated with, and Dial Ryder's original memory to the FBI of Nov 25 that he remembered the Oswald rifle as having been "Argentine made", that is a Mauser, simply reflects the identical mistake in identification, of the same rifle, made by four law enforcement officers of the TSBD 6th floor who also first said it was a Mauser.) 

The point being, the idea that Oswald asked for a "plunger" as a rifle part is a puzzle in not fitting the other indicators or information as to what was needed or done by Oswald on the rifle that day. Therefore is it possible Greg Parker could be right on the crib spring latch "plunger" suggestion? I don't know, but if so the possibility I see might run something like this: Oswald comes in the store, scope in hand, expecting to find the gunsmith inside indicated by a sign outside, while Marina and children wait in the car outside. Oswald is informed by Mrs. Whitworth there is no gunsmith there and referred to the Irving Sports Shop for that purpose. Oswald then adjusts to the furniture store he happens to be in and opportunistically asks about a furniture-related item which perhaps Marina had mentioned and needed, the part for the crib. Or maybe Marina seeing they were at a furniture store asked Lee going in the door if he would ask about a plunger for the crib too. Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter misunderstand Lee's request, Mrs. Whitworth thinking he's asking about a firearms part since it immediately followed a "where is your gunsmith?" first question. Since the Mrs. Whitworth/Oswald exchange was the two women's memories from a little over two weeks later at their earliest (to a visiting reporter from London who found Mrs. Whitworth), the specifics of the exchange could be unclear (and this is assuming the sole source of hearing Oswald say the word "plunger", Mrs. Hunter, had that right in the first place). If Oswald after asking for the gunsmith asked if Mrs. Whitworth had a "plunger" meaning the crib part and Mrs. Whitworth unthinkingly answered no thinking he was asking for a gun part and she had no gun parts, could that be a possible explanation of that particular detail?

20 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Strange... DeMay says "The above leads to the unexpected conclusion that the Carcano was indeed used for the shots, but that it was not Oswald who took the shots. This possibility has never before been considered by the conspiracists." Well, heck, this is not true. This line of thinking was explored on my website 6 years or more before the publication of DeMay's books, and I know DeMay is famixxxx with my website because he ran up to me at a convention and gave me a copy of his first book, which included illustrations taken from my website. So... is it that he doesn't consider me a "conspiracist"? Is that what's going on?

Can you tell us, Greg, if by "conspiracist" he means certain people named elsewhere, and if I'm even mentioned in the book? I must admit I'm curious.  

Pat--In his main top-level text he mainly makes his arguments from evidence directly and engages the Warren Commission and HSCA, does not do back-and-forth debating with other secondary authors, but in footnotes he cites a number of familiar-name secondary authors. I don't see your name in the index of either book. I am sorry he made that statement without acknowledgement to you. I would guess this kind of thing is a mistake rather than malevolent or knowing in most cases. I don't see an unusual meaning in his use of "conspiracist" that would not include you as well as himself (meant non-pejoratively to refer to critics of the LN position).

Flip de May in two books, Cold Case Kennedy (2013) and The Lee Harvey Oswald Files (2016), takes up in turn three propositions, all three of which must be correct for Oswald to be guilty of the assassination of JFK:

• The Carcano that was found is Oswald's Carcano
• Shots that were fired at Kennedy were fired from that Carcano
• The shots that were fired from that Carcano were fired by Oswald

De May argues that the first two propositions are correct but that the third is not, on the basis of evidence and argument. The main difference between the two books is that in the first (2013) he incorrectly argued the Carcano in the Backyard Photos was not the same Carcano on the sixth floor of the TSBD. In his second book (2015) de May corrected that, showing that the Carcano of the BYP is the Carcano of the sixth floor. In the second book de May argues that the notion of Oswald bringing a disassembled rifle into the TSBD and assembling it that morning makes accurate shooting unlikely, but that the Carcano fully-assembled and sighted-in was capable of accurate shooting by a good marksman. However, bringing the Carcano in to the TSBD fully assembled rules out Oswald as the mechanism for the Carcano entering the TSBD. Therefore de May concludes the rifle entered the TSBD before Fri Nov 22, not from Oswald, even though it had been his rifle. 

"Based on the analysis of the facts, we can confirm the first two items. There were indeed shots from the sniper's nest, and they were more than likely fired with the Carcano. But, objectively speaking, we must conclude that the claim that Oswald was the gunman is contrary to the findings. All the objective elements we have investigated point in the same direction: Oswald did not fire the Carcano himself, and he was not at the crime scene [6th floor]. The fact that this assumption is quite outrageous is not a valid counter-argument. Anyone who wants to disregard this conclusion must rebut, in detail and with reference to the source, the answers we have provided to the seven questions in the section headed 'Could Oswald have shot with the Carcano?" (. . .) The most surprising finding is the answer to question 2 above: the shots were fired with the Carcano. This answer interrelates with the assumption that the Carcano was brought into the building assembled and perfectly adjusted. This cancels out the otherwise insurmountable questions regarding the precarious reassembly, the lack of fingerprints, the questionable accuracy of the weapon and the insufficient length of the package Oswald had with him that morning. The above leads to the unexpected conclusion that the Carcano was indeed used for the shots, but that it was not Oswald who took the shots. This possibility has never before been considered by the conspiracists. Those who don't believe in Oswald's guilt felt compelled to run with the pack and cry out that the Carcano is an unreliable weapon, but the facts contradict this. Oswald was at best a mediocre shot, but the Carcano is not that bad if it is properly adjusted. That precludes that the Carcano entered the building disassembled. If the Carcano was indeed smuggled into the building in twelve pieces, the conspiracists are right in saying that the weapon was unusable for the assassination. (. . .) The main intention behind the use of the Carcano could then have been to point directly towards Oswald, the scapegoat." (Flip de May, The Lee Harvey Oswald Files [2016], pp. 115-116)

4 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Assuming Oswald actually went after curtain rods, we would have to ask:

Just to be clear, I think Oswald told Frazier he was going out Thu to get curtain rods, and I think he did get curtain rods, but I do not think that is why Oswald went to Irving on Thu night. 

4 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Just finished reading the PDF on the furniture mart incident. This incident has always bothered me so it’s great to see someone take up the task of investigating this further.

If your assertion that this is the first time someone has proposed that it was possibly Michael Paines car, then that potentially moves this sighting that bit closer to fact then it has ever been before.

Having said that, I came across a few weaknesses to the sighting being of the Oswalds:

• Michael had the key to the Olds car that was parked in front of Ruth Paines house and when asked about keys to the car gave no indication that Ruth Paine had one in the house. Your document states: “All of this resulted in Ruth’s certainty that Lee and Marina never went to the Furniture Mart or Irving Sports Shop, which was the conclusion of the Warren Commission.”. If Ruth had a key to Michaels car in her house, then she would not have been so certain that the Oswalds did not go anywhere in a car without her knowledge. In fact, upon hearing the story of the Oswalds at the furniture mart in a blue and white car, Ruth should have spotted straight away (if indeed she did have a key to Michaels car in the house) that it was possible that the Oswalds had taken her key of Michaels car behind her back and gone to the furniture mart. Ruth Paine was/is an intelligent woman. It would seem she should have spotted this, or at least mentioned it to the investigators if only to say that there was a second car parked outside the house but there was no key to it in the house which the Oswalds could have taken without her knowing. In short, there seems to be no mechanism for Oswald to open the car, start it and drive off. And for that reason, Ruth Paine seems to never even have entertained the idea that they could have taken Michael Paines car. You would also have to question if Michael would give a key to Ruth in any case as there was a divorce going on and she might try to claim the car as part of the divorce if she had a key.
• The furniture woman was sure the car was a Ford and specifically said it was not an Olds. Can you post a picture of a 1950s Olds alongside a 1950s Ford so that we can see how similar the two cars are and if it was possible the furniture woman could have mistaken an Olds for a Ford by virtue of the fact both might have had fins (if indeed a 1950s Olds has fins)?

You’re possibly placing too much weight on the color of the car being blue and white that the Oswalds were allegedly in. I’d imagine this color combination was poplar back then. There is a film taken of 1026 North Beckley I believe on the weekend of the assassination and it shows possibly a blue and white car, with fins, parked in the driveway. Though admittedly the car could simply be an all white car. This car could belong to one of the rooming houses residents or belong to a law enforcement officer, FBI agent etc, collecting evidence from the house that weekend. The 1026 North Beckley car can be seen in this film: https://youtu.be/c-Sjmkhh_Hs

 

By the way, Marina Oswald did have a ponytail in Nov 1963 as can be seen in this image: https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10009913

If the sighting is indeed the Oswalds at the furniture mart, here is what I think happened…

Remember, this is the weekend that Oswald was writing the USSR embassy letter on Ruth Paines typewriter. And Oswald left that letter on the desk almost inviting Ruth Paine to read it, which she did. The reason Oswald did this was because in this timeframe Oswald was trying to cause a fight between Ruth and Marina, separate them, as Lee didn’t like Ruth. Lee was hoping that Ruth would read the letter and see that Oswald had been in Mexico City when Marina had told Ruth that Lee was in Houston looking for work.

One possibility is that, as an additional way to cause a fight between Ruth and Marina, Oswald may have taken Michael Paines car on Nov 11^th and coaxed Marina into it in the promise that he was going to get the rifle fixed so that he could sell it and put down a deposit for a new apartment. And with this promise Marina reluctantly agreed to go in the car. In this scenario, the whole purpose of the car journey by Oswald was to get caught by Ruth Paine. When Oswald went to the furniture mart he asked about the gunsmith. When told there was no gunsmith there, Oswald then stalled and started looking at furniture and dragged Marina into the shop. He also seems unusually talkative inside the shop, something he didn’t usually like being. Oswald was happy on this occasion to be talkative if it meant dragging out the visit as long as possible. This would explain why Marina looked sullen inside the furniture shop – she knew that with every passing second the chances of them getting back to Ruth Paines house before Ruth Paine did were diminishing. I don’t think Oswald really was looking to fix the rifle, but that this was more of a ruse than anything else to have an excuse for the car journey. Therefore the furniture mart incident does not necessarily validate the Irving Sports Shop incident as I don’t think Oswald was serious about having anything done to the rifle, though I agree that he may have been intending on selling it. A further clue that Oswald might have been intending on selling his rifle is the fact that he had only 4 bullets left over. No need to buy a new box.

This made me inclined to think that maybe the time of 2pm might be correct for when the Oswalds were in the furniture mart, though I understand that this might clash with your study of the temperature on those days. In this scenario, Oswald was dragging out the car journey as close as possible to when Ruth Paine would be returning to her house. Further proof LHO was intending to move to a new apartment in Nov 1963, and so would need furniture, was that he had the phone number in his address book of a guy who had an apartment up for rent that month. I forget the guys name atm, but I think he was a bus driver who lived in the Oak Cliff area. I was surprised not to see that in your PDF as further proof backing up Oswald was actively looking for a new apartment that month. The whole idea of getting this new apartment was to further distance Ruth from Marina. The new apartment was somewhere in the Oak Cliff area, so would be a good bit away from Irving.

It is very difficult to see how Oswald could have got a key to the car. The only thing I can think of is that Michael Paine gave Lee a key to practice with the car. Then after the assassination Michael retrieved the key from Ruth Paines house while the police were there and pretended he had the key all the time rather than admit he had given a key to Oswald to commit an illegal act – drive without a license. And this would have worked but for the fact that the furniture women came forward with their sighting of Oswald in Michaels car. There is something odd about Michael Paine having a second car parked outside Ruth Paines house that is not explained in your PDF, which I presume is the case because Michael and Ruth Paine themselves never fully explained the situation with this car. Maybe Michael did indeed buy the car for Oswald to get practice with and never told this to Ruth, and so the only time Lee could get practice was when Ruth was out of the house. If Ruth had caught the Oswalds out in this car, Ruth would be angry at Marina because Marina would have been keeping this secret from Ruth - that Michael and Lee had a secret arrangement regarding the car where Lee could use it to practice. Everyone knew about this secret agreement - except Ruth.

Gerry, these are some interesting comments and thoughts and analyses. Rather than engage them all, I will just let most of them stand as some different angles to look at the same facts. But I will make a couple of comments. It does look like Michael Paine bought that '55 Olds from his coworker with an idea of helping out Oswald, and if Lee liked the car working out something for that to become Lee's car. That would be why he immediately took it over to Ruth Paine's house, for Lee's benefit (presumably after he got his driver's license which was imminent). Oswald did not have a car key on him when arrested according to the police reports. If the car was unlocked parked outside (nothing valuable on the seats, and it was an old car, could be left unlocked?) maybe a key could be left inside the car somewhere, such as under a floor mat? But Michael must have left a key with Ruth in any case, and the simplest mechanism is that Marina knew the key's location and obtained it for Lee. I noticed Ruth at first said she had no certainty where they were during the 5 hours she was gone on Nov 11. Only in a late written statement when the Warren Commission was trying to nail down loose ends (and maybe asked Ruth if she would write it to help to that end) does Ruth produce a stronger statement now giving reasons why she does not believe they went anywhere Nov 11, but that is how she frames it, as her "belief" (my characterization of her having "certainty" would be accurate for days other than Nov 11 but may be overstating the written record re Nov 11; note to self to slightly soften or clarify that in a next edit). In fact she explicitly expressed lack of certainty re Nov 11 before she expressed "belief". Her "belief" that they did not go anywhere Nov 11 was based, she explained, on what they had told her they planned, what they told her after she returned, and that they were there when she left and returned, such that she "believed" they had not gone anywhere. She does not use the word "certain" for Nov 11, that was my word. It would be accurate to say she was "certain" they did not go to the Furniture Mart or Sports Shop any day other than Nov 11, and on Nov 11 she did not "believe" they went there either. Incidentally, Marina's account (either to WC or HSCA, I forget which) for Nov 11 is that Lee made about ten drafts of his Soviet embassy letter that weekend (not just the one that Ruth picked up and stashed) and that was what he was still working on on the morning of Nov 11. I think all that Ruth testified and wrote concerning Nov 11 is consistent with her "belief" that they did not go anywhere even if she did have a key to the '55 Olds at home somewhere among her things.

On confusion of a blue and white '55 Olds (Michael Paine's car) as a 1957 Ford or Chevrolet or Plymouth, with Mrs. Hunter saying when asked that it was not an Olds, I just chalk that up to Mrs. Hunter's mistake on make of the car. To see what these cars look like, look up "1955 Oldsmobile sedan" or "1957 Ford sedan" etc. on Google Images to get a quick comparison. I did try to make a back-of-the-envelope rough calculation of odds that a random car in Texas in 1963 would be a blue and white sedan but gave up because of too many gaps in data. But partial data I did find (from memory): 90% of cars on the road were American made in 1960 (compared to maybe only half today). Blue was the color of about 10% of cars in a recent year though since we are talking two-tone blue and white that complicates that. I could not find data on two-tone colors frequencies, or the frequency of how many cars were two-tones, but I took wild guesses that 25% were two-tones and 50% of two-tones had white tops. Something like 10% of cars were station wagons then (down to close to zero today). I forget all the variables but I came up with something like ca. 3% odds from random accident that a car would be a blue and white American-made sedan but could not document or defend that calculation very well so did nothing with it. The match of the colors of the car seen at the Furniture Mart and of Michael Paine's '55 Olds is so striking it is difficult for me to believe Ruth Paine was aware of that detail of the Furniture Mart story (otherwise she would have figured that out at the time?). We know the FBI and Commission exhibits telling the detail of the blue and white color of the sedan of the family seen by the women at the Furniture Mart but did Ruth Paine?  

On the curtain rods

Lance, I accept Oswald ordered the rifle, received it, and that it was in the garage of the Ruth Paine home at least as late as Nov 11, 1963. However after Nov 11 the paper I have just posted on the Furniture Mart (https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1450) not only supports that the rifle was taken out of the garage on Nov 11 but at least calls into question whether the rifle was put back into the garage on Nov 11 after the rifle was taken out that day for a repair. 

There is no actual positive evidence of the rifle either at the Ruth Paine house or in possession of Oswald after Nov 11, think about it. There is not, to my knowledge, evidence of any kind where the rifle was between Nov 11 and 22. It may be assumed, and may be plausible, that the rifle was returned to the garage and remained there Nov 11-22. But that is assumption, not evidence. 

Marina says she saw the stock of the rifle inside the blanket about a week after she moved to Ruth Paine's from New Orleans, and that that is the only time she saw it in the blanket. That is mid-Oct. Somewhere else I recall she gave a different time estimate of the last time before the assassination she had seen it in the blanket, of about two weeks before the assassination. But Marina never claims to have seen the rifle in the blanket or garage later than that.

Michael Paine told of moving the blanket and feeling what he thought were tent rods or camping equipment inside--that would be the broken-down rifle inside the blanket--but there is no evidence that occurred for Michael Paine after Nov 11. Ruth Paine, on the other hand, in testimony kept thinking the blanket as she remembered seeing it was more "flat" than as reconstructed with a rifle-equivalent mass inside it that she was shown in testimony. That could be because that memory of Ruth Paine of the blanket was from a time after Nov 11 when the blanket, in fact, was empty.

Remember, initial news reports said the rifle had been seen in the Ruth Paine home the night before, but that was misreporting. The rifle was not seen by anyone at the Ruth Paine house the night of Nov 21. On the afternoon of Nov 22 Marina showed police the blanket and it was empty, is the only fact there. It does not say how long that blanket had been empty. Again, the known evidence runs out at Nov 11 (when the rifle was taken by Lee to the Irving Sports Shop to get its original scope reinstalled and the stripped threads of the base mount fixed in that installation, with Oswald paying cash while employee Dial Ryder, running the shop in owner Greener's absence on vacation, alone in the shop that day, Veterans Day, because the normal woman behind the counter was off for the holiday, doing the job while Oswald waited and putting that $6.00 cash in his pocket rather than running it through the cash register afterward as he was supposed to do). The rifle was in Oswald's hands on Nov 11, was taken out of the garage that morning. The rifle after the scope was reinstalled and sighted would have been returned to Oswald driving Michael Paine's blue and white '55 Olds ca. late morning or noon or so Nov 11. That is where the known trail for that rifle ends, until it is found Friday afternoon on the 6th floor TSBD following the assassination, Nov 22.

For all we know Oswald could have had that original scope (a piece of crap scope according to reports) reinstalled on the rifle on Nov 11 to ready it for a resale. That actually is what I proposed in my Furniture Mart article and I gave my reasons. Others may debate that differently. There is no hard evidence (none to my knowledge, maybe a better way to put it) for where that rifle was between Nov 11 and Nov 22. If Oswald (with Marina's support) was repairing the rifle with intent to get rid of it--sell it or convey it, so as to get it out of Lee's hands and out of Ruth Paine's garage--one could conjecture Lee might not put it back in the garage again Nov 11, but might, say, drive it to a storage locker at the bus station and temporarily pay for its storage there. (Then upon finding a buyer, arrange for the buyer to pick up from there?) Or drop it off somewhere else? Or it could have gone back into the garage as before. But that is unknown. 

Now hold that thought and turn to the other thing, the package of Fri morning Nov 22. Let us agree that Lee was carrying a package that he said was curtain rods, the Buell Wesley Frazier story, which is supported by Linnie Mae coming over ca. 3 or 4 pm or whenever it was Fri Nov 22 and telling police in front of Ruth Paine's house that she saw Oswald carrying a package that morning. You, with the Warren Commission, assume Oswald's package that morning was actually the rifle. But you don't know that, only that it was a package of something, which Lee told Frazier was curtain rods.

Now here is my question to you: if--if (hear out this question)--just suppose hypothetically, Lance--it could be shown to a reasonable person's satisfaction (such as yours), that that package carried by Lee Fri morning was curtain rods, what would that change for you?

Now before you respond with ten reasons why you know that cannot be possible, let me just say Pat Speer has written over 100 pages on the curtain rods question arguing that it was curtain rods that Lee carried to work Nov 22. I have studied Pat Steer's work on this, gone over it thoroughly, so thoroughly I think it is possible I have studied that chapter of Pat Speer on the curtain rods more than any other person on earth 🙂. And my conclusion is that Pat Speer was on to something, that he took an argument 90% of the way there, but did not bring it home the final 10%. His argument falters at the end, leaving the reader basically interested and engaged up to the end where it falters and ends inconclusively or with the careful reader not convinced. The biggest problem is Pat Speer has to invoke planting of curtain rods and police foul play and substitutions etc. at the end to bring his argument home. Long story short, not only did I identify what I see as both the strengths and weaknesses of Pat's argument, but after my own struggles with that evidence, I think have cracked that to solution, bringing Pat Speer's argument home across the finish line without the problems (I see) in his form of his argument. 

In my form of the argument, it is not airtight proof that it was curtain rods from Ruth Paine's garage that Lee carried that morning, but it is extremely plausible with no decisive counterevidence refuting it. And I can explain what happened to the curtain rods and so on and so forth (I do not think Lee carried that package inside the TSBD). The one problem I struggled with--that loomed large--is Oswald's denial of the curtain rod story in his interrogations--denial that he told Buell Wesley Frazier that, etc. Whether my explanation of that is correct I cannot say, but I can only say, one, I do not believe Lee's denial of that was truthful, and two, my conjecture is Lee's untruth in that was to cover for Marina who had assisted in covertly obtaining those items of Ruth's property without Ruth's knowledge. This assumes that Lee had no idea, at the time he was asked, that the curtain rods would be alleged to have been his carrying a rifle. Without knowledge that that was the allegation, he would not realize that he was denying what actually, if established, would have been an alibi.

Bottom line: an alternative storyline is possible in which (a) the rifle was removed from Ruth Paine's garage on Nov 11 (not Nov 22), (b) may have come to be out of Oswald's custody and possession and knowledge prior to Nov 22, and (c) Lee carried curtain rods the morning of Nov 22. 

I cannot make the curtain rod argument here because there is a lot involved in that argument and the writeup will require labor equivalent to my Furniture Mart paper. Pat Speer has done heavy lifting on much of it. If interested, my suggestion would be to become familiarized with Pat Speer's work on the topic--nothing else I have seen on the curtain rods is comparable to what Pat Speer has done--while making note of the problems one sees in Pat Speer's argument as they are encountered. Then, see if my curtain rods study, when I write it and offer it, addresses satisfactorily those problems. So I am not endorsing all of where Pat Speer goes with that subject, only some of it. But Pat Speer's study and discussion was critical and essential to my thinking on the topic to the solution that I arrived at.  

I came to see the curtain rods as so fundamental, because if Lee was carrying curtain rods, then he was not carrying the rifle, and if he was not carrying the rifle the morning of Nov 22, that reopens all sorts of questions regarding Oswald's relationship to the assassination itself. 

Pat Speer on the curtain rods: https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4h-the-curtain-rod-story. Me on the curtain rods: forthcoming.

9 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

In his 1967 book Oswald: The Truth, I think German journalist Joachim Joesten made some good points about the Oswald impersonation at the Furniture Mart:

          Despite this stern, and unwarranted, slap at Dial R. Ryder, the Commission isn’t quite sure that this man is really a perjurer and forger, as the next item on its agenda shows: 

          "Possible corroboration for Ryder’s story is provided by two women, Mrs. Edith Whitworth, who operates the Furniture Mart, a furniture store located about one and a half blocks from the Irving Sports Shop, and Mrs. Gertrude Hunter, a friend of Mrs. Whitworth. They testified that in early November of 1963, a man who they later came to believe was Oswald drove up to the Furniture Mart in a two-tone blue and white 1937 Ford automobile, entered the store and asked about a part for a gun, presumably because of a sign that appeared in the building advertising a gunsmith shop that had formerly occupied part of the premises. When he found that he could not obtain the part, the man allegedly returned to his car and then came back into the store with a woman and two young children to look at furniture, remaining in the store for about thirty to forty minutes. 

          "Upon confronting Marina Oswald, both women identified her as the woman whom they had seen in the store on the occasion in question, although Mrs. Hunter could not identify a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald and Mrs. Whitworth identified some pictures of Oswald but not others. Mrs. Hunter purported to identify Marina Oswald by her eyes, and did not observe the fact that Marina Oswald had a front tooth missing at the time she supposedly saw her. After a thorough inspection of the Furniture Mart, Marina Oswald testified that she had never been on the premises before."

          This story is extremely revealing of the elaborate arrangements that went into the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald. Not only does "Oswald" here again appear on the scene, but Marina and her two children also get into the act. Evidently, the plotters had at their disposal a young woman who looked even more like Marina than her "husband" looked like Lee Harvey. (History, since then, has tragically revealed the identity of this hapless woman, but this is a matter of such consequence that I propose to explore it in another book at a later date.) On no other assumption can it be explained that both these witnesses identified Marina as the woman they had seen while the Oswalds clearly were not involved. The fact that Lee Harvey at no time owned a car and couldn’t even drive, as well as Marina’s missing front tooth, which both women failed to see, affords sufficient proof of that. 

          Observe also the elaborate frame-up technique. A man goes into a furniture store to ask for a gun part on the flimsy pretext that there had once been a gunsmith shop in the same building. This action was clearly designed to fix this incident in the mind of the store owner who would not easily forget such a foolish query. When told that there were no gun parts for sale in this place, the customer comes back with a woman who strikingly resembles, but is not, Marina Oswald and with two young children who might easily be mistaken for Rachel and June. They stay in the store thirty to forty minutes without buying anything —much longer than ordinary customers normally would do, evidently for the purpose of creating a strong and lasting impression of a family not to be mistaken for another. To the recollection of a young man interested in guns thus is added, in the minds of the two witnesses, the picture of a family not yet in a position to buy furniture but which will soon be able to. Thus an instinctive association of ideas is created between shooting and monetary gain. 

          The Report goes on: "The circumstances surrounding the testimony of the two women are helpful in evaluating the weight to be given to their testimony, and the extent to which they lend support to Ryder’s evidence. [The implication: if Whitworth and Hunter aren’t to be believed, Ryder is finished for good - J. J.] The women previously told newspaper reporters that the part for which the man was looking was a 'plunger,' which the Commission has been advised is a colloquial term used to describe a firing pin. This work was completely different from the work covered by Ryder’s repair tag, and the firing pin of the assassination weapon does not appear to have been recently replaced. At the time of their depositions, neither woman was able to recall the type of work which the man wanted done." 

          What does it matter? If, as every circumstance of this episode suggests, this was merely another item in a well-planned frame-up campaign, the purpose of that man's visit to the Furniture Mart was simply to have a few more witnesses attest to Oswald’s concern with guns and to his financial prospects about to improve substantially. Now comes a most revealing item: 

          "Mrs. Whitworth related to the FBI that the man told her that the younger child with him was born on October 20, 1963, which was in fact Rachel Oswald’s birthday. In her testimony before the Commission, however, Mrs. Whitworth could not state that the man had told her the child’s birthdate was October 20, 1963, and in fact expressed uncertainty about the birthday of her own grandchild, which she had previously used as a guide to remembering the birthdate of the younger child in the shop." 

          This paragraph again demonstrates the deep-rooted bias of the Commission and its total unwillingness to pursue any clues pointing toward conspiracy or frame-up. For it would indeed be too much to assume that mere coincidence was at stake here. The mention of that birthdate, on that occasion, is cogent evidence that the man in question either was Lee Harvey Oswald, or somebody exceptionally familiar with Oswald’s circumstances. If it was not Oswald-and the Commission arrived at the firm conclusion that it was not - then this incident is hard evidence of frame-up. 

          On the other hand, note how the Commission, again most unfairly, tries to create the impression that Mrs. Whitworth is a poor old soul who just doesn’t know what she is talking about. Why, in her testimony before the Commission "she could not state" what she had previously told the FBI. Why couldn’t she? Obviously because, in the meantime, she, too, had been subjected to some of that pressure and harassment which practically all witnesses whose testimony in some way ran counter to the official version have experenced. Or she was simply overawed by the Commission and got bewildered. Who could blame her? But she did tell the FBI and that’s in the record. 

          What the Commission has to say about the circumstances that preclude the couple in question having been the Oswalds makes more sense: 

          "Mrs. Hunter thought that the man she and Mrs. Whitworth believed was Oswald drove the car to and from the store:  however, Lee Harvey Oswald apparently was not able to drive an automobile by himself and does not appear to have had access to a car. 

          "The two women claimed that Oswald was in the Furniture Mart on a weekday, and in midafternoon. However, Oswald had reported to work at the Texas School Book Depository on the dates referred to by the women and there is no evidence that he left his job during business hours. In addition, Ruth Paine has stated that she always accompanied Marina Oswald whenever Marina left the house with her children and that they never went to the Furniture Mart, either with or without Lee Harvey Oswald, at any time during October or November of 1963. There is nothing to indicate that in November the Oswalds were interested in buying furniture."

          In spite of the somewhat cagey wording used by the Commission--as though it wanted to leave a possible way out for itself in another seemingly inexplicable incident--the incontrovertible fact of the matter is that the visitors to the Furniture Mart on that day cannot have been Oswald and family, for the records of the Book Depository prove that Lee Harvey was on the job every weekday during the period in question. Inevitably, then, somebody else, or rather two other persons, had been impersonating Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald on this occasion--unless Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter, dreaming in unison in broad daylight, just had imagined the whole thing. And so the Commission, in sheer desperation, snatches at this straw and clings to it for dear life: 

          "Finally, investigation has produced reason to question the credibility of Mrs. Hunter as a witness. Mrs. Hunter stated that one of the reasons she remembers the description of the car in which Oswald supposedly drove to the furniture store was that she was awaiting the arrival of a friend from Houston, who drove a similar automobile. However, the friend in Houston has advised that in November 1963, she never visited or planned to visit Dallas, and that she told no one that she intended to make such a trip. Moreover, the friend added, according to the FBI interview report, that Mrs. Hunter has 'a strange obsession for attempting to inject herself into any big event which comes to her attention' and that she 'is likely to claim some personal knowledge of any major crime which receives much publicity.' She concluded that 'the entire family is aware of these tall tales Mrs. Hunter tells and they normally pay no attention to her.'"

          Here the Warren Commission really goes the limit in unfair treatment of a witness that cannot even be described as hostile but who merely wants to tell the truth as she experienced it. On the say-so of an unidentified "friend" in another city, without at least confronting Mrs. Hunter with these disparaging remarks, without even remembering the corroborating evidence of Mrs. Whitworth, the Commission concludes that this witness is given to spinning tall tales and that, therefore, the whole episode related above presumably did not take place. And, in the process, poor Ryder is also relegated to limbo. (pp. 78-83)

Michael, what do you think of the identification I showed in my paper of the blue and white mid-1950s sedan Lee and Marina were seen driving to the Furniture Mart, with the Michael Paine blue and white '55 Olds at Ruth Paine's house? In your insistence upon having impersonators for Lee and Marina in this incident instead of, well, Lee and Marina on Nov 11, how do you suppose your unseen, never-identified orchestrators handled the car in which your impersonators arrived? Do you think the impersonators borrowed Michael Paine's car from the Ruth Paine house without anyone noticing, or do you think it was an impersonated blue and white car too?

I think my paper pretty much makes Joesten in 1967 obsolete on this one. The problem with the Warren Commission rejection of the authenticity of the Furniture Mart visit is not solved by Joesten's massively complex micromanaged multiple-impersonators scenario while never questioning the impossible date the Furniture Mart women gave as premise, but rather on the realization that the Furniture Mart women had the date mistaken. Simple solution, get the date right, clears everything up, no? What not to like?

2 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

At 1:30 p.m. on November 30, 1963 a woman telephoned the Milwaukee Office to state that she was one
of a party of six who had dinner at the Fox and Hounds Restaurant on the previous Sunday. She said that,
after having a few drinks, the party looked over the guest register and one of the men inserted the name
of LEE OSWALD in a blank line found in the register. The unknown caller described the room at the Fox and
Hounds in which the register was kept. She declined to identify herself or the man that made the entry,
saying that she was too ashamed to do so.
(FBI report MI 62-1178)

OK, although an anonymous unverified call is not quite ideal, in this case it makes sense as what happened. The signature is not from the famous Oswald, and it also means Lance's fellow Lance the local "Lee Oswald" had nothing to do with it, since the local Lance/Lee Oswald would not also have written "Dallas, Texas". Therefore it was a prank and someone called the Milwaukee FBI office and confessed to it: at the restaurant on Sun Nov 24, 1963 (the day Oswald was killed by Ruby and the top news story), one of the party found a previous blank line and filled it in as a joke, after a few drinks. The woman has enough of a conscience to make the phone call letting the FBI know what happened but avoids trouble to herself and her friend who did it by not telling their names. Undoubtedly something similar happened in the Oak Ridge case.  

12 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Thanks, Greg. This is indeed one of the "Oswald sightings" that has the ring of truth, and your November 11th solution makes a great deal of sense. As an "Oswald impersonation," the incident makes no sense at all.

There is, as you note, a veritable cottage industry of "Oswald sightings." Whether they make any sense seems irrelevant, so long as they can somehow prop up Harvey & Lee or at least make Oswald seem a Man of Mystery.

I tried to trace the "Lee Oswald" signature on a restaurant guest book in Wisconsin. I discovered a guy from the town named Lance (!) Oswald who went by Lee, but he wouldn't respond to me even when I tried through the pastor of his church. So, alas, that remains yet another "out of place Oswald" of conspiracy lore.

This last item you mention is interesting Lance. I delayed because wanting to recheck the documents of that story on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site but for some reason the MFF site continues to be completely gone as it was all yesterday and again this morning (all I get is a blank screen "cannot connect to server" error message). My question was whether there was a "Harvey" in that restaurant signature in Wisconsin. If not, it sounds like that local Lee Oswald is the obvious identity of that signature, with no reason to suppose faraway Lee Harvey Oswald in the first place was the reference? One more instance of no reason for mystery? I agree with Gerry, well done on that. 

5 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

To be clear, I don't buy the impersonation argument. It simply makes no sense, serves no purpose.

My best guess would be that this incident did occur pretty much as described. My inclination would be that either Michael or Ruth was the driver and lied about it because it involved the rifle.

But who knows, it's one of those incidents that defies any completely satisfying explanation. Perhaps it occurred as Greg suggests, but Michael actually gave permission for the family to use the car, which would involve some of the issues that occurred to me.

Thanks Lance, and also for the earlier. Just to let you know, I appreciate your cross-examination of ideas on this forum, and you will always be welcome to cross-examine mine. I too had wondered if Michael had quietly slipped Lee a key to the '55 Olds with tacit permission to practice for his drivers license, with the idea that after he got his license Michael would have worked out something for Lee to have that car if he liked it. However, Michael denied that (giving a key to Lee) in his Warren Commission testimony, never said anything of it later and Ruth knew nothing of that so I concluded more likely that did not happen. 

Going back to your earlier, the issue of if and how and when Lee and Marina and their children visited the Furniture Mart is distinct from the "why". In my view the visit itself is a fact on the date I argued with the persons and car identified, but on the "why"--the idea that Lee may have been getting the rifle in operable condition for a resale (to get rid of it, out of Ruth Paine's garage, at Marina's urging)--I used language of "it is tempting to speculate that..." and "by only a slight further step in imagination [it] could have been...", then gave my reasons. But that is distinct from establishing the fact of the visit or event itself and the date and time it happened, which somehow involves Marina who seems to have been opposed to Lee's rifle, and yet the trip involves something to do with fixing a rifle... 

If you're OK with impersonators, what's your objection to it being Oswald and Marina themselves on Monday Nov 11? I showed means, motive, opportunity, and made an argument that works. Why go for a thousand-fold greater complexity ... for what problem are you trying to solve exactly?

You cite a disputed case in another state over there, a real phone call voice impersonation phishing phone call in Mexico City, and then jump WAY into Texas as if there is a whole industry built up around Oswald, a whole impersonator infrastructure spanning the nation!

What's wrong with a simple boring solution that Oswald was Oswald at the Furniture Mart? On Monday Nov 11, 1963?  

11 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

The fact that Oswald was impersonated on other occasions has been established beyond any credible doubt. 

Not in Dallas in Oct-Nov 1963 has it been established beyond credible doubt. I refuse to go into other cases here, but suffice to say I have now looked into all of them, point by point and case by case, and have concluded there is nothing substantial to the Oswald-impersonation idea in Dallas Oct-Nov 1963; they are like Elvis and UFO sightings, with all instances either genuine Oswald or mistaken identifications on the part of witnesses, but no case of a non-Oswald person who claimed or personally represented as Oswald.

2 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Yes, Oswald's timecard puts him at work at the time of the visit to the furniture store. 

No, Oswald's timecard does not put him at work on Monday Nov 11, 1963, Veterans Day, the day the visit happened. It is accurate to say Oswald's timecard puts him at work when Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter dated the visit to the Furniture Mart, which was mistaken. It is correct that Oswald was not at the Furniture Mart on a day he was at work. 

Hi Lance -- and I thought the evidence and argument was so convincing it would be to any reasonable LNer! 🙂 

Mrs. Hunter's story that she saw a family in the Furniture Mart as she said she did, and did not fabricate it, is verified by the witness of Mrs. Whitworth. The hearsay gossip from an in-law cited by the FBI and Warren Commission saying family members thought Mrs. Hunter was a fabulator, drama queen, et al, catty in-law gossip genre, unverified, suggesting that Mrs. Hunter fabricated the entire thing (identification of the family as the Oswalds aside) is clearly incorrect. So start from that point. Mrs. Dominey in Houston clearly had no conceivable ability to know Mrs. Hunter fabricated the Furniture Mart sighting in Dallas, but just cited hearsay that that is what some family relatives assumed, claiming it is the kind of thing Mrs. Hunter would do. Whether or not that gossip was true in other cases, Mrs. Hunter clearly did not make up the story in this case. Mrs. Whitworth confirmed Mrs. Hunter was there when Mrs. Whitworth saw the family arrive in her story. Therefore Mrs. Hunter was there and saw it as she said she did.

Mrs. Hunter clearly did not invent or make up the blue and white car of the year and make belonging to the Domineys of Houston that Mrs. Hunter said the family's car arriving to the Furniture Mart reminded her of and she thought it was it; the FBI verified that the Domineys owned exactly the car Mrs. Hunter claimed although Mrs. Hunter's memory of the colors of that car preceded 1960 when the Domineys repainted the car a different color. But Mrs. Hunter's memory of the Domineys' car was true and verified from before 1960.

On the trip, Mrs. Dominey said she and her husband never made a trip to Dallas that weekend, never planned such a trip and never told anyone they planned such a trip. Whereas Mrs. Hunter claimed she had been expecting them, had left a note on the door at her home to tell them if they arrived to find her at the Furniture Mart, and when the blue and white car of the family drove up to the Furniture Mart, thought for a moment at first it was the Domineys because she thought it was their car.

That is the most serious discrepancy but Mrs. Hunter explained that she never claimed to have heard that from the Domineys themselves but rather from Mrs. Dominey's mother who was also the mother of Mrs. Hunter's brother's wife. "Mrs. Hunter stated that the 'Dommneys' had not directly told her that they planned to visit her in November, 1963, but that her sister-in-law and mother of 'Doris Dommney,' one Mrs. Patterson, had written her that the Dommneys were planning a visit to the Dallas area in November, 1963, and would probably visit her in Irving, Texas" (FBI to WC, 8/21/64, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1141#relPageId=631). Mrs. Patterson died in June 1964 and that letter could not be verified, but it is reasonable with some wires crossed in communication. That the Domineys had some Dallas connection such that they could visit there is supported by Mr. Dominey making a trip a few weeks later to Dallas, and perhaps a Dallas in-law connection: Mrs. Dominey's sister was married to Mrs. Hunter's brother (located in Dallas? since that is where Mrs. Hunter is? unknown). Maybe Mrs. Hunter saw the blue and white car arrive, thought for a moment it was the Domineys car, and embellished the rest about she connected it to the Domineys car because she thought they could be visiting based on a Mrs. Patterson letter mentioning that possibility weeks or months earlier, who knows. But Mrs. Hunter was there at the Furniture Mart, saw the family arrive, and saw a blue and white car. Those are facts, because Mrs. Whitworth confirmed Mrs. Hunter was there when it happened. Mrs. Hunter's reaction to having that gossip reported and believed in the Warren Commission's exhibits suggesting she made the whole thing up: she was hopping mad about the way she was portrayed by her in-law and that the FBI believed it. She was angry that the FBI had not returned to her re Mrs. Dominey's statement so she could respond to it. Mrs. Hunter's response: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60313#relPageId=27.

The important point is that Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter saw a blue and white mid-1950s vintage sedan, American made, in which the family arrived. At the time they both reported that in the days immediately following the assassination (not at their instigation or voluntary choice, but in response to a reporter who found Mrs. Whitworth by accident), neither of these two women would have had any way to know that a blue and white mid-1950s vintage sedan, American made, belonging to Michael Paine (Michael's recently-purchased blue and white 1955 Olds) was the one car that was parked at Mrs Paine's house. 

Bottom line: the gossip relayed by Mrs. Dominey negative about Mrs. Hunter is a sideshow and largely irrelevant in light of there being no serious question that the event happened (Mrs. Whitworth's testimony) and that Mrs. Hunter was there when it happened (Mrs. Whitworth's testimony and Mrs. Hunter's). Nothing in Mrs. Dominey's family gossip disproves that. The issue is not whether the incident happened or whether Mrs. Hunter was there when it did but whether the family was the Oswalds. That is the question and issue framed correctly.

Incidentally, I don't believe there has been a prior proposal that the blue and white sedan arriving at the Furniture Mart seen by both women was the blue and white '55 Olds of Michael Paine's parked at Ruth Paine's house, as obvious as that connection should be looking at it now (when combined with the rest of the story)--that I believe is original with my article just now. Something genuinely new in 2023, sixty years after the fact--a new fact put on the table.