Greg Doudna

In No More Silence, p. 485, deputy sheriff Bill Courson tells of meeting one of the persons coming down from the balcony in the Texas Theatre, and how he (mistakenly) believed that man had been Oswald.

He could not have mistakenly believed someone was Oswald, who was white, if that man from the balcony had been black. 

Of all the witness accounts that day, no one has said any of the ca 12-20 patrons in the theater that day (Julia Postal remembered the number of tickets sold had been either 14 or 24, and the witness accounts overwhelming favor the 14 as being the correct number of the two), either on the ground level or in the balcony, were African-American (colored in the language then), and there is no evidence the Texas Theatre had a formal rule of or was practicing strict segregation in Nov 1963. The killer of Tippit, a white man, without dispute ran into the balcony at about 1:35 pm because that was logistically how a person without showing a ticket could get into the theater without being seen by concessionaire Burroughs in the lobby at the ground level. (That killer of Tippit who ran into the balcony was probably the same man Courson mistakenly thought was Oswald coming down from the balcony.) 

On 1/29/2024 at 1:58 PM, Alan Ford said:

Some very interesting fresh thinking here, Mr. Doudna. Bravo!

N.B. Don't forget the officially documented fact of 2 curtain rods submitted for testing for Mr. Oswald's fingerprints 8 days before 2 curtain rods were 'discovered' on the record in Mrs. Paine's garage at Irving. Could they have emanated (per your scenario) from the McKeel seamstresses in the Dal-Tex building?

Yes Alan--your work on that curtain rods fingerprint document, and I see Pat Speer credits you in his chapter on the curtain rods on that (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4h-the-curtain-rod-story)--is compelling and correct. And not only does the March 15 date the curtain rods were submitted call for explanation (which precedes two curtain rods obtained from Ruth Paine's garage by the Warren Commission on March 21), but the two versions with differences that independently came to light from the Warren Commission published in exhibits (showing a return by Day of DPD to Secret Service Howlett on March 24, not signed by Howlett, carbon copy) and from the Dallas Police Department (showing a return by Day of DPD to Secret Service Howlett on March 22, signed by Howlett, top original), with -- this is the tough one to explain -- two different signatures of Day as the officer disbursing those curtain rods to Howlett, on the original and the carbon of the same form.

Neither form with its dates makes sense as being the curtain rods picked up from Ruth Paine's garage on March 21, but the problem is compounded by two versions of the same disbursement form!

The best I can figure is these indeed were the two curtain rods that Lee had brought in on Nov 22, which may have been found or turned over by a McKeel Sportswear seamstress as early as Dec 6 to Howlett when Howlett was at the TSBD doing the Secret Service reenactment, as Pat S. suggests. That same day, Dec 6, was when the FBI investigated the TSBD 2nd floor Warren Castor rifles of Nov 20, as a part of the investigation of the parking-lot rifle conveyance sighting reported by Henrietta Vargas, the seamstress, the one who showed up to make this report with an attorney.

Did Henrietta Vargas (with her attorney) turn over two curtain rods at that time, part of what she was working for Oswald's curtains? (Speculation.)

The role of the Secret Service, Howlett, instead of the FBI, in the curtain rods forms and in the Warren Commission testimony taken in Ruth Paine's garage on Marh 21, instead of the FBI, also seems odd. Maybe Pat S. is right that it was a way of handing off from the FBI, it was received by the Secret Service (Howlett) on Dec 6, and was simply delayed until a later time when it was checked for fingerprints (by Howlett).

By this reconstruction those curtain rods fingerprinted by Howlett were not the two found in Ruth Paine's garage, but two brought in by Oswald on Nov 22 and given to the seamstress, perhaps Henrietta Vargas, who turned them in at the time she appeared with her attorney at FBI offices on Nov 25. 

If that had happened, it would be expected that the FBI would have asked Henrietta not to talk about it, since that is what the FBI seems to have asked practically all the witnesses it interviewed. 

Two days ago I talked to a seamstress I know who worked in a sweatshop decades ago (which may be what McKeel Sportswear on the 2nd floor of the Dal-Tex was). She told of how it was assembly line, jobs would have a week or so turnaround, and it was tightly controlled in a wide-open workspace such that there would be no opportunity for personal work easily done by any of the seamstresses.

She suggested though that a seamstress might agree to take the work home, do it at home, then return or meet the person to hand it over. As she said, "money is money". From what this seamstress told me it is not likely that Oswald's curtains need would be taken care of by McKeel Sportswear which seems to have been industrial, supplying retail stores. But Oswald could have walked across the street and asked, and one of the seamstresses offered to do the job herself for cash, told him what to bring to her and she would take it home and meet him to deliver it to him. In that case Oswald bringing the fabric and curtain rods to her on Fri morning Nov 22 would not have expected to have his curtains by Friday night.

But it would not necessarily have meant a wait until Monday for Oswald to have curtains in his room for privacy. The seamstress I talked to said a seamstress doing that work might agree to meet to hand over the finished work on Saturday morning. That is when Oswald can be reconstructed to have anticipated having his finished curtains ready, by a seamstress across the street from his workplace doing the job on her own for cash.

Then, after the assassination the possible seamstress of this, Henrietta Vargas, got an attorney forthwith and reported it to the FBI on Nov 25, including the curtain rods, following which in accord with a request of the FBI she did not talk of that. 

Would that mean that seamstress never told?

Consider this, from Sara Peterson and K.W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks (2020), chapter drawing from interviews of Buell Wesley Frazier of 2015 and 2019, at pp. 186-7. Maybe the seamstress did talk in one instance come to light, in this phone call to Frazier described below? Never mind the editorial assumption of Peterson and Zachry of a TSBD location--assume that is editorial. Note that the caller was a woman. 

"For his own peace of mind, Frazier located a rifle with a serial number only a few digits off from the serial number of the rifle Oswald was accused of using to kill the President. He dismantled it and wrapped it in brown paper so he and his sister could compare the size with the way they remembered Oswald's package looking on that Friday.

"'It was obviously still too long,' he said. 'Lee could not have carried even a dismantled rifle like that one under his arm.' Frazier's sister agreed.

"If Oswald had really been carrying curtain rods that day, they should have been found somewhere in the Depository. Supposedly, they were never found. However, a few years after the assassination, Frazier received an intriguing phone call. Once the caller established that she was speaking to the man who had driven Oswald to work on November 22, 1963, she quietly confided to Frazier that some curtain rods had indeed been found in the Depository after the assassination.

"She then hung up without revealing her identity. Apparently, this woman wanted Frazier to know that someone knew his story was true."

On 1/29/2024 at 1:52 PM, Alan Ford said:

Hmmm........ would Mr. Oswald's having sold the rifle really be enough to make him leap to that particular conclusion once the shooting in Dealey Plaza happened? Seems doubtful to me on the face of it.

And how would this scenario explain his going to the Texas Theatre and (to all appearances) seeking out a contact? To me that behavior is suggestive of a different kind of embroilment.

I understand the problem and, though this is unsatisfactory, I have no good solution to propose to it. I am independently convinced as a fact that Lee (and Marina) removed the rifle from the garage on Nov 11 to prepare it for some kind of sale or disposition, but what happened after that point on that date is a black hole of information. It hardly makes sense that it would be broken down again and returned to the blanket in the garage after spending all that money repairing it. It also makes no sense that Lee would take it to his room in Oak Cliff sight unseen to hide under his bed. But what did happen with the rifle after the scope base installation was repaired and the sighting-in on Nov 11? (Took it to a pawn shop and sold it? Met someone in Irving and conveyed it for cash that day? Stashed it in a storage locker at the Irving bus station? Returned again to the blanket in the garage? Don't know.) 

I suppose there are three hypothetical lines of possibility: (a) he was clueless to and had nothing to do with shots fired at the president but somehow realized he had been set up by means of the rifle sale; (b) he was witting to something other than an assassination and when the assassination occurred realized he had been set up; or (c) he was witting to being party to an assassination attempt that he thought was for the benefit of Castro (not necessarily as shooter).

The fact that he had not much money on him, that he either had no getaway car or refused to get in one if one was there for him, that he had to make a risky rapid stop at his rooming house to pick up his revolver (scared and for self-defense), weigh in favor of "a" or "b" and against "c". 

Somehow he was set up--the Boylan and Hancock Redbird Airport leads article for possible background on that (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rODOLtGaAe0cni6N5rBnmgmwC71N2hpN/view)--and his rifle was used and that implicated him overwhelmingly in the eyes of law enforcement and the public, and he never got a trial to explain anything differently. 

At the very week of the assassination there was separate "sting" activity on gunrunning involving circles seemingly associated with Jack Ruby. This "sting" activity involved persons pretending to be involved in criminal activity with real criminals, as sort of entrapment activity by law enforcement. The hunch would be that Oswald could have been involved in something similar, but we may never know for sure. 

15 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

In your own roundabout way, you are describing the principle of charity as applied to formal and informal debate, but that is not the way you have actually conducted yourself toward others -- such as Dr. McClelland and Dr. Mantik -- now is it? You have taken a systematic scorched earth warfare approach toward them and others, impugning their work, their qualifications and who they are as human beings. I've even had a taste of that in the form of your "stalker" allegations in return for exposing your fabrications about Jerrol Custer's ARRB testimony.

Yet you expect charity in return?

Keven, may I ask what is it you are after with respect to Pat Speer? Is it simply about wanting him to clean up some wording about McClelland and a few others, a style reform? Or do you wish to shut down his arguments from having a place on the table in this forum and in wider discussion? 

As I understand it the heated controversies over the medical and autopsy come about over apparent conflicts in data and different attempts to resolve and interpret those. 

As I understand it Pat's present position is not that there was no gaping wound visible in the back of the head. But that there was some gaping wound visible toward the top of and/or to the right of the back of the head (from a gaping wound that was on the right of the head extending also on to the back), that is covered up in the BOH photo by the autopsists having lifted a flap of scalp up in that photo, giving the illusion of no visible gaping wound in the back of the head when in fact there was gaping wound underneath some scalp in an upper part of the back of the head in those photos.

That was autopsist Boswell's own testimony as to how that BOH photo happened, and Boswell identified himself as one of the hands in that photo. Do you seek to make it illegitimate for anyone on this forum to argue in favor of some form of that autopsist's own explanation? Yes? No?

I realize you do not accept that explanation and you give your reasons and have your views, I understand that. Virtually everyone understands at this point that that there are missing photos, some spinning of interpretation by the official bodies, etc. on that autopsy of which the kindest characterization described from all quarters is "botched". That may or may not include actual photo and x-ray alteration too, which is disputed and argued. 

The question is whether you are trying to make illegitimate any place for discussion and/or argument in favor of e.g. autopsist Boswell's own explanation for the BOH photo. 

Are you trying to shut down Pat Speer? 

This is looking like a vendetta, of trying to shut down Pat Speer and his arguments. If that is not correct could you clarify?

Do you seriously believe Pat is being knowingly wilfully evil and dishonest? (That notion is truly absurd.) As opposed to simply (in your view) wrong and bullheaded?

In the academic world I have seen a lot of ideas in my field which I know full well are wrong from academics being bullheaded. (On rare occasions I am afflicted with bullheadedness myself. 🙂 ) I have learned to never underestimate how attached academics can get to ideas once they have committed themselves in print. This is the individualized form of the larger general phenomenon of scholarly conservatism, by which is not meant anything to do with political orientation, but the difficulty in overturning established ideas and ways of thinking once entrenched by simple mere citation of opposing facts.   

All I can say is if your wish is to see Pat Speer's work silenced, and you were to succeed in that, it would be a loss, and many more good minds than just Pat's would be lost to this forum. And if that is not your purpose I hope you would clarify that. 

10 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Brian,

I think the last time Oswald was placed in New Orleans was September 25th, but off the top of my head, I don't remember the source for that. Ruth Paine or Marina maybe?

Steve Thomas

I think there was an unemployment check cashed by Oswald at a grocery store in New Orleans that FBI investigation found could not have been received by Oswald in the mail and then cashed in New Orleans before the morning of Wed Sept 25. Ruth and Marina were already gone by then according to their and other persons' testimony, but Oswald cannot have left New Orleans before the morning of Wed Sept 25. Then, that is in agreement with the correct dating of the Silvia Odio sighting in Dallas, early evening Wed Sept 25, in which Oswald was in a car with two others having arrived from New Orleans, about an 8 hour drive. The timeline works, and Oswald then was seen leaving Silvia Odio's that evening driven in a car. The Warren Report could not figure how Oswald could have gotten from New Orleans that morning to Houston later that night and considered it a deep mystery, even though there is nothing implausible about Oswald having been driven as the two Odio sisters witnessed.

13 hours ago, Brian Kelly said:

There has been little progress in this area over a span of decades.

To the contrary, a major development on the issue of the identity of Silvia Odio's "Leopoldo" and "Angel" or "Angelo" was a presentation at the Lancer conference of Nov 2023, two months ago, by David Boylan, presenting argument of Boylan and Hancock for identifications of Victor Espinosa Hernandez for "Leopoldo" and Carlos Hernandez for "Angel". The argument is strong that this is the true solution to those identities replacing prior speculations. I do not know how that argument can be accessed other than via the Lancer video presentation at this point; I hope that it will be made available as an article online. The identifications are significant in linking to Oswald's Cuban associations in New Orleans and DRE/CIA in Miami. Accessible background to this is the 2022 Hancock and Boyle article on the Redbird Airport leads in which those two figures are discussed, but without the Odio sighting identifications, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rODOLtGaAe0cni6N5rBnmgmwC71N2hpN/view. 

1 hour ago, Tony Krome said:

According to Frazier, Oswald just waltzed into the rear loading dock door, just like any other day. There was no hiding the bag, no stealthy entrance, and it was a time when workers were all there on the floor ready to start work. Not only did he have to make an entrance with this huge bag, he had to cross the floor with it. Not only that, it was the ONLY day he walked in with such an object. It was unusual, people take note of unusual things.

Nobody saw Oswald with such a bag.

Oswald said he took his lunch, it was on his lap, no bag on the back seat, said Frazier was mistaken. 

Frazier said Oswald took no lunch, no lunch sack, only this big bag.

You are saying Oswald did not make a sandwich, did not pack that and fruit in a lunch sack. You are saying Oswald was being untruthful to Fritz and Co when he said he had lunch that day.

Tony, in my writeup on the curtain rods at the link (it goes to the Ralph Yates thread), I do not have Oswald taking the package of curtain rods inside the TSBD, or leaving it for an extended period of time outside on the rear loading dock either, even though I accept Frazier’s testimony of seeing Oswald walk inside the door of the rear loading dock carrying it. Too much to repeat here but see what I wrote there. 

Therefore I agree no one inside the TSBD ever saw him with the 27” curtain rods bag because it never went inside with Oswald. 

The lunch is a contradiction, true. Frazier spoke of a lunch truck that came during breaks, such as mid-morning, and said Oswald told him Nov 22 he was going to buy his lunch which Frazier understood to be that lunch truck. I assume that is where he got the cheese sandwich and fruit, even though he told Fritz he had not brought curtain rods but had brought a lunch in a bag that he said could have been a long one.

For what it is worth, Dougherty said he saw Oswald enter not carrying anything which also, if accurate, means no lunch. And Marina said she thought Oswald took a “small package” that was not his lunch to work that morning.

I don’t think Buell and Linnie Mae lied in agreement with each other or scripted by handlers which he has repeated the past sixty years, prior to Buell Frazier then passing a polygraph late that night saying what he was saying was truthful. That polygraph is what appears to have cleared him in the eyes of the Dallas Police after initial severe suspicion of him. The polygraph showed he was truthful because he was, including on the length and description of the bag. But please, read my piece and see what you think.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The people I suspect of seeing Oswald out on the TSBD steps all gave first-day statements, in which they stated when and where they saw Oswald that day. Had they said they saw Oswald on the steps, that part would have been left off their statements and they would have been strongly advised to keep their mouths shut till further notice.

Later they would have been given the patriotic talk that I mentioned before.

That's my speculation. But one way or another they would have been kept from talking.

Any other witnesses who saw Oswald outside would have been dealt with, as  they became known. As a matter of fact, in April 1964, the FBI got statements from every employee in the TSBD building that day, asking if they saw Oswald. (CE 1381).

Sandy, I think there is a misunderstanding. What you are talking about in your first paragraph, of FBI intentionally misreporting or selective non-reporting of witnesses statements in written reports, without those witnesses' knowledge or approval, is a possible tactic, one which has been alleged and has to be evaluated case by case. That is NOT--not-- what I have been talking about.

I am referring to your claim of large-scale subornation to perjury of false stories told and sworn under oath by those witnesses at the instruction of alleged--never named, never identified, but invoked by you and others--"handlers".

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I said that I suspect three people saw Oswald outside. Do you consider that to be "large scale?"

Wait a minute. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have a whole lot more than three witnesses whom you consider to have been suborned to perjury and given scripted, fabricated untruthful stories that you say were told to tell under oath and continue to tell for the rest of their lives. You have Shelley and Lovelady with their testimony of their timing and movements after the shots. You have the second-floor lunchroom witnesses, Truly and Baker, and I don't know if you have some of the 2nd floor women suborned to perjury on that for good measure too. You have Ruth Paine and Marina suborned to perjury by handlers. You have Buell Wesley Frazier by some invisible handler. And who knows how many dozens more. That is what I am talking about. All these people marionette-stringed told to perjure by unseen handlers, and voila!--in every single case it goes off successfully for life with all of those witnesses, not one refusing at the time and reporting the attempt, not one saying in later years,

"They suborned me to perjure. Here are their names, and the dates when this was done. They told me to lie in my testimony, to swear falsely under oath. They gave me a written script to memorize and tell that was not true, they rehearsed it with me, they made me say that. They made abc threats if I would not, and they made efg promises if I would, and they were doing that with a lot of us. And it is not just my sayso on this. I told xyz person at the time about this, and I wrote of this in a letter to a trusted confidante at the time, Exhibit Z..."

Something like that. 

The issue is not whether it is possible three people saw Oswald outside. The issue is whether, if so, they and dozens of other witnesses in the case were suborned to perjury as you have been supposing. 

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Apparently Frazier took his (possible) patriotic conversation with LBJ seriously.

But...

Even you said above, "Granted there could have been one or more witnesses who had exculpatory witness knowledge of Oswald and never spoke of it, though none known." Well, if there are one or more who haven't spoken of it in all this time, then why can't that be true for the three people I suspect of seeing Oswald?

It appears that you have a double standard on our respective beliefs, mine needing to cross a higher bar. Why is that?

No double standard. I am denying subornation to perjury, not that there could be fearful or lying witnesses. I am denying your notion of organized, large-scale subornation of perjury by unseen "handlers"--scripting of false testimony at the direction of others.

You still have not answered the question: who specifically do you suppose suborned Buell Frazier to perjury at the time and gave him permission of what he was allowed to say, I think is how you put it, and do you think Frazier has a handler today, sixty years later, to whom he must still obtain permission before he would be allowed to speak freely on matters relating to Oswald?

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You said above, "Granted there could have been one or more witnesses who had exculpatory witness knowledge of Oswald and never spoke of it, though none known." Well, if there are one or more who haven't spoke of it in all this time, then why can't that be true for the three people I suspect of seeing Oswald?

There goes your double standard again.

Again, no double standard. I am talking about your claim of large-scale organized subornation to perjury of witnesses. I am not talking about witnesses who on their own may not tell what they saw, or who might lie about what they saw. I am not talking about possible coverup or marginalization of witnesses, discrediting of witnesses, leading them in questioning, selective or misleading reporting of interviews or even possible tampering with written statements without their knowledge. I am talking about your invocation of handlers instructing and scripting witnesses to tell specific false stories under oath which both handlers and witnesses know are untrue, know is perjury, know is a serious crime, and that this was done (you say) in case after case after case after case with civilian witnesses on any number of issues in this case without any of those witnesses ever telling that that had happened that way in all these years.

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You don't believe what most of us do. Oswald had no such bag. And Yates' hitchhiker wasn't Oswald.

You've got that right I believe Oswald had a 27 inch bag, because I don't buy your idea that both Buell and his sister were suborned to perjury by unseen handlers to tell totally false testimony on that.

You see, you just decide what you want to believe, and then invoke subornation to perjury for witnesses right and left in agreement with what you choose to believe happened, even though the whole subornation to perjury of civilian witnesses idea as a systematic operational tactic with those Warren Commission witnesses is not verified and not plausible.

It is the perfect, all-purpose, unfalsifiable way to explain anything, isn't it?  

Does it give you no pause that no one has whistle-blown or confessed in later years to the use of that tactic, the existence of that phenomenon? 

Evidently not.

Is it really true that most on this forum ("most of us") believe that Buell Frazier was suborned to perjury--told by unseen agents of the US government to criminally lie under oath, told and rehearsed exactly what to say-- re that 27" bag and re Oswald telling him it contained curtain rods? 

You are telling me "most" here believe that? I find that hard to believe, I hope it is not true, but if it is, pretty sad commentary on the state of the conspiracy-theorist community.

Anyone else following this: folks, Pat Speer has had a chapter on the curtain rods making the case that that is what Oswald was carrying. I see some details differently than Pat in his chapter but never mind that, he did spadework. And I have now gone well beyond that spadework and offered something genuinely new (not a rehash of old), on both the curtain rods interpretation and the interpretation of the Yates' hitchhiker. 

It goes to the heart of an exculpatory argument for Oswald that has not previously been made. See it here: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/13820-ralph-leon-yates/page/3/#comments.

 

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I think it is HIGHLY likely that a few TSBD employees know for a fact that Oswald did not shoot at Kennedy. Because they happened to see him when he was supposed to be in the sniper's nest.

So, yes, of course those people have been convinced they must take that information to their graves.

Granted there could have been one or more witnesses who had exculpatory witness knowledge of Oswald and never spoke of it, though none known. But your idea that the govt got to them all doesn’t make sense. First, if they never spoke of it at the time, how would your govt handlers know to suborn perjury from them? They would not know who saw what.

Second, if there was suppression of unwelcome testimony of that nature it would happen by familiar prosecutors methods of not calling witnesses, discrediting their credibility, and so forth, rather than widespread subornation to perjury of civilian witnesses which is not a common prosecutors phenomenon. No evidence for what you are supposing in any direct sense in those witnesses then (as there would be if it was happening on the scale you supposing), and the risks would be high in terms of suborned witnesses’ willingness to do so, keeping stories straight, later risk of blackmail or whistleblower telling of it, pangs of conscience, risk of it becoming known, need for lifelong monitoring of subornees who could go rogue.

And if a credible witness came forward exculpating Oswald as shooter who could not be marginalized through known techniques to not contradict the narrative, yes a different narrative might need to be framed, just as in any prosecutors office. Something like that appears to have already happened within the first hours, when a blame-Castro multiple conspirators setup fell through and a shift to a very different narrative, Oswald alone, took its place.

You did not address the question about who specifically you suppose suborned perjury from Buell Frazier then, within the first hours after the assassination, and do you think Buell Frazier has a handler six decades later today whose permission he must seek preventing him from speaking freely and truthfully in the year 2024. 

And you did not address the matter of not one case in all this time of one of these many suborned witnesses you suppose, having come forward and told that happened. If what you are supposing happened with large-scale civilian witness subornation to perjury, with never-identified unseen handlers working random civilian witnesses like marionette puppets on strings with scripted rehearsed perjured stories taught and controlled … for life … that would be known. It doesn’t pass the smell test that in 1963, if that was happening as you invoke as a magic solution to perceived ancient discrepancies in scenario reconstructions, would not have come to light. 

You continually invoke a WW3 fear and appeal to patriotism as how subornation to perjury would have been agreed to by civilian witnesses then. But that doesn’t account for later decades continuing not to tell. The Cold War is long over. There is no threat of nuclear war if witnesses or participants told of subornation to perjury in 1963, or that they had evidence of Oswald’s exculpation. Your mechanism works only fleetingly temporary at best then, does not explain zero evidence of organized large-scale suborning of perjury happening then with 100 percent compliance of multiple civilian witnesses over the next sixty years, no deathbed confession, nothing. 

Why do you suppose Buell Frazier was “allowed” by a handler to say the package Oswald took to work Fri Nov 22 was only ca. 27 inches? 

What have you got against him saying that because that is what it was, 27 inch curtain rods? No alleged handler’s permission needed, simply a credible truthful Buell Frazier. Have you read my writeup on that on the Yates’ hitchhiker thread? 

8 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I believe that Shelley, Lovelady, and Frazier all saw Oswald out on the steps and that they were all under pressure to keep their mouths shut. I believe that that is the reason they were chosen to provide the fake WC testimony they wanted to hear. Although they were all allowed to hedge their testimonies, to help ease their consciences. For example, Frazier was allowed to suggest that the bag was too short to hold a gun.

Sandy, this business of large-scale subornation to perjury of civilian witnesses spontaneously after the fact, adhered to for life by those suborned and without a single document or confession ever having come to light in all this time telling of such organized subornation of civilian witnesses to perjury, just seems far-fetched. Does it not give you pause that no witness has ever credibly later told of this kind of organized subornation to perjury—such a serious scandal if it ever were to be credibly accused—that you and others seem to promiscuously invoke as a way of reconciling testimony which conflicts with a reconstruction?

For example, when you say “Frazier was allowed to suggest that the bag was too short to hold a gun” as a concession to him to ease his conscience (over agreeing to be suborned to lie about other things which he knew was wrong), who do you mean exactly who “allowed” him or gave him permission on that back then? Who was running this subornation to perjury of Frazier of which you speak? Name? Agency? Please be specific? 

Do you believe Frazier today, sixty years later, is still under the control of someone whose permission he would need if he were to change his story?

Does that really make sense to you? That Frazier is not free today to say whatever he feels like?

Also, all the stories from officers who knew of Buell Frazier’s polygraph the night of Nov 22 said Frazier turned up truthful under that questioning. Have you factored that into your belief that Frazier was being compelled to fabricate testimony by a handler? And again, who do you think that handler was then, and today? 

I don’t think Buell Frazier had any such handler suborning him to perjury. I think he is credible and honest and a decent man and always has been. He would respond to someone official telling him to lie the same way he responded to Fritz’s bullying attempt to get him to confess, by refusal even under duress. That is who Buell Frazier was, and is. 

As I just wrote on the Ralph Yates thread—and I know my post is long there but I can’t help that, the content is important—Frazier did not invent either the existence of nor did he err on the length of the bag carried by Oswald to work Fri Nov 22, and this is one of the most critical points going to the matter of Oswald’s guilt or innocence there is. 

The case for Yates' hitchhiker having actually been Oswald--and Oswald innocent of the assassination

I have become convinced that there are no substantive grounds or compelling reason to suppose there was any instance of impersonation of Oswald in Oct-Nov 1963 in Dallas; all the cases either were Oswald or mistaken identifications but in no case is there sound reason to conclude someone intentionally presented as Oswald who wasn't. The following is excerpted and developed from what I wrote on another thread.

In the case of the Yates' hitchhiker, consider that that hitchhiker really was Oswald. The case for the Yates hitchhiker having been Oswald is: first, Yates positively identified Oswald as his hitchhiker from seeing photos of Oswald after the assassination. Second, the hitchhiker was dropped off by Yates in Dealey Plaza on Houston just next to Oswald's workplace at the Texas School Book Depository, and Yates last saw the man walking with his package crossing Elm Street in the direction of the TSBD.

And third, the timing of when Yates picked him up at the N. Beckley entrance of the R.L. Thornton Expressway, at about 10:30 am Thu Nov 21, was about 30 minutes after Oswald was independently witnessed at the Dobbs House Restaurant on N. Beckley near the rooming house eating breakfast at about 10:00 am according to the waitress who served him (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=572, and Mary Dowling, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95673#relPageId=18). 

Never mind that Oswald is supposed to be at work at the TSBD at those hours. The evidence says he wasn't that particular morning.

Yates said Oswald was carrying a package, estimated by Yates to be about 3-4 feet long. According to Dempsey, Yates said Oswald told him the package had curtains in it. That's what he said Oswald told him.

Forget the part about Oswald showing Yates a backyard photo and asking Yates if someone like that could shoot the president. In a followup interview Yates told the FBI that did not happen that way, correcting that part of his first report. Forget the part about Oswald doing anything incriminating in that ride with Yates, no matter how spooked Yates was and how tragic the outcome was on Yates in the aftermath of the assassination.

During that ride with Oswald, there was a discussion of the president's arrival, and discussion of the possibility that he could be shot from a window, in a discussion Yates says he initiated with mention of the Adlai Stevenson reception several weeks earlier. Everybody in Dallas was talking and wondering about that, that was not an unusual conversation. Yates took part in that conversation and Yates was no assassin. It only became considered unusual retrospectively after the assassination when Oswald was believed to have done it. Similar conversations must have occurred a thousand times in Dallas that morning of that nature.

Yates remembers Oswald asking if he knew if there had been any last-minute change of route of the parade. Again, that is the most innocent of question and only takes on sinister meaning in retrospect post-assassination.

Imagine that Oswald actually is innocent, that the Yates' hitchhiker really was Oswald; and that there was nothing sinister about what happened on that ride beyond Oswald wanting to get himself and a package of fabric for curtains from Point A to Point B at a certain time of day and hitchhiking as his means of doing so. 

Everyone has considered that either Yates imagined it was Oswald, or it was an impersonator with a package intended to look like it was a rifle and incriminate Oswald. Imagine that is all wrong, has all been misunderstood. 

Imagine the story is more mundane than has previously been considered: that it was Oswald and the package Oswald was carrying had in it what Oswald told Yates it did: curtains (or fabric for curtains).

• The need of Oswald for curtains was not fictitious but real, from a reporter's Nov 23, 1963 photos showing landlord and landlady Mr. and Mrs. Johnson hammering what had been a crashed super-long curtain rod in Oswald's room on N. Beckley, back up with nails and hammer. Here are both Johnsons standing on the bed, Mr. Johnson hammer in hand, nailing that visible bent curtain rod back up, Sat Nov. 23, 1963.
• 
• 
• Those curtains therefore had become inoperable at some point before Nov 23, 1963. Oswald's room faced north into the side of another house, wide open with three sets of windows. If Oswald was used to closed curtains for privacy at night, this was something which needed to be solved immediately, not something optional or which could be postponed, and it had nothing to do with Oswald moving out or into a new apartment; it had entirely to do with his privacy in the evenings when he would spend time in that room with curtains closed for privacy. And if the crashing of that super-long curtain rod had happened only 2-3 days earlier and Oswald had decided to fix it himself, without telling Mrs. Johnson or housekeeper Earlene what he was doing, no wonder Mrs. Johnson would not know why that bent curtain was inoperable, would have assumed mistakenly that police or reporters the previous day had wrecked it. But it does not matter what Mrs. Johnson's speculation was as to the cause. What matters is that that was the case, and its timing (recently before the morning of Nov 23).
• Oswald was separately reported bringing other curtain materials to the location of his workplace at this very same time, referring of course to Oswald's unusual Thursday night trip to Irving, which Oswald told Buell Frazier was for the purpose of picking up curtain rods. 
• Oswald may have taken 2 out of an original 4 unused individual-window curtain rods out of Ruth Paine's garage (leaving 2 remaining in the garage, none in use) the morning of Nov 22.
• Buell Frazier has maintained from day one to the present day, his entire life, that the length of what Oswald carried that morning of Nov 22 definitely was ca. 27 inches, and not the length needed to carry a 34-inch broken-down Mannlicher-Carcano. That length told credibly and clearly by Buell Frazier, ca. 27 inches, unknown to Buell was the exact length of Ruth Paine's curtain rods in her garage, and Buell Frazier has said that that is what Oswald told him they were.
• Oswald denied to Captain Fritz that he brought curtain rods or that he had told Frazier that is what he was carrying, but he did tell Frazier that, and there may have been other reason for Oswald's untrue answer to Fritz about that (and his taking those curtain rods without permission from Ruth Paine's garage) having nothing to do with the assassination.
• The reasoning that if it were true Oswald had carried curtain rods he would have said so to Fritz because that would be his alibi, so commonly raised, assumes as its premise a point which hardly anyone has questioned: that Oswald was aware that he was suspected of having carried the rifle to work the morning of Nov 22. The world knew Oswald was suspected of that because it was in the news, but I have seen no evidence that Oswald had been informed or had any awareness or idea that that suspected of him. Can anyone cite evidence showing that? Oswald did not have a clue he needed an alibi (which in this case would be, the truth) for what Frazier saw him carry to work, which everyone unknown to Oswald was suspecting was something different! 
• There is an unrefuted and uninvestigated hearsay claim in an FBI report that some seamstresses at McKeel Sportswear (not "McKell" as misspelled in FBI interview reports), located on the second floor of the Dal-Tex building across from the TSBD, knew Oswald (link is below). That element of that hearsay claim could be more easily dismissed if it were not for the fact that the FBI questioned three seamstresses of McKeel on the basis of that hearsay report and did not ask any of them whether they knew Oswald, in an investigation in which the question was relevant since it was a report of a possible Oswald sighting in relation to a weapon conveyance on Tue Nov 19 in a parking area behind the TSBD. Putting that to one side, a logical place for Oswald to go for a curtains-seamstress need would be the nearest seamstresses to his place of work, McKeel Sportswear across the street. Actually there was probably more than one company with seamstresses in the Dal-Tex Building, but McKeel Sportswear is a known one and the first such one would encounter going up the Dal-Tex building. And Oswald needed curtains for his windows and he may have decided to accomplish that by making individual-window curtains requiring the need of a seamstress. Perhaps Oswald made inquiry at McKeel Sportswear concerning his curtains/seamstress need, learned what it would cost and what he needed to do (what he needed to bring) so that they could accomplish what was needed. Suppose he made that inquiry on Wednesday. Thursday morning in accord with what he was told, he buys and brings in fabric for the new curtains to the location of his workplace (this would be the package he carried hitchhiking with Yates, as he told Yates, "curtains"); Thursday night he goes to Irving, obtains curtain rods there, returns to the TSBD Friday morning with curtain rods, and either gave or intended to give them to a seamstress in the Dal-Tex building ... but an assassination of a president interrupted.

Timeline

The timeline of Oswald in the three days of Nov 20-22, 1963, makes good sense interpreted as a response to an urgent situation--the collapse of the superlong curtain rod with curtains over three individual windows in his room. It was not simply out of the goodness of Oswald's heart that he wished to remedy or repair that. It would be an issue of discomfort being in that lighted room at night without closed curtains. Rather than asking housekeeper Earlene or the landlady to fix it Oswald decided to fix it himself. 

Wednesday evening Nov 20, it is independently known that Oswald was at a nearby laundromat until closing time, Sleight's Speed Wash, 1101 N. Beckley. He was witnessed reading magazines there, not getting back to his room in the rooming house that night until after midnight (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=570).

There is no need to doubt that Oswald probably was doing laundry, but all night? Or was he in addition to doing laundry hanging out there, preferring to be there as long as he could until at midnight he was told it was closing and he had to go? Could there be a factor that he did not enjoy being in his room at night without curtains closed and private?

The curtains issue was so urgent, Oswald for the first time did not appear at work at the TSBD on time at 8:00 am on Thu Nov 21. It does not matter that his timesheet at TSBD shows him working the full day that day. There was no time-clock and unless someone proactively brought to attention of the TSBD time-records man that someone was missing, their normal times would be written in. And a factor working in Oswald's favor is that he was otherwise extremely reliable and punctual such that that kind of behavior and track record develops trust.

I have heard baseball stories of umpires becoming so familiar with a certain major league hitter who never swung at a pitch thrown that was a "ball" that they would call a close one influenced by whether that hitter had swung or not, because of that track record. The point being, Oswald could well have been late on Thu Nov 21 and not noticed, or even if Shelley or someone remembered wondering where he was they would assume he was there somewhere because he always was. 

And the evidence Oswald did not go to work on time on Thu Nov 21 is substantial.

• A witness report from his waitress for breakfast at the Dobbs House Restaurant
• A report that Oswald bought tickets to a Dick Clark Show at the Top Ten Record store on Jefferson in Oak Cliff on what must have been the morning of Thu Nov 21 (since the morning of Fri Nov 22 of the report is not possible as to the time, and human errors in time memory are common in otherwise truthful witness accounts). Although that sounds like odd behavior for Oswald, according to the family of Dub Stark, owner of Top Ten Records, he knew Lee and Marina. And an employee who personally witnessed Oswald's arrest on Fri Nov 22 at the Texas Theatre a few stores away said it was the same arrested Oswald who had bought the Dick Clark show tickets. Oswald was unusually planning to be in Oak Cliff that weekend, the weekend of that show, instead of in Irving. Was Oswald planning a date? But if he bought the tickets Thu morning Nov 21 he could not have been at work at 8:00 a.m. at the TSBD that morning.
• The Yates report of picking up Oswald hitchhiking on the Thornton Expressway from the N. Beckley entrance, driving him to Houston Street across from the TSBD in Dealey Plaza, letting him off carrying a 3-4 foot package that Yates said Oswald told him was "window shades". Yates identified the hitchhiker unequivocally as Oswald on the basis of photos. Yates said the day of the hitchhiker was either Wed Nov 20 or Thu Nov 21, that he could not remember for sure which of those two days it was, in either case at ca. 10:30 a.m. The FBI found company records establishing that it was certainly Thursday Nov 21, not Wednesday, as to the date. And the timing and points of pickup and dropoff match Oswald. The "fantastic" elements in Yates' story of what was discussed by the hitchhiker are explicable in terms of Yates' mental condition and Yates' explicit clarifications retracting some of those elements in a following FBI interview, but the hitchhiker's existence itself and his identity as Oswald stands, without anything incriminating Oswald in the assassination in Oswald's actual conversation with driver Yates properly understood. Furthermore, Yates submitted voluntarily to a polygraph which found no intentional deception.

 From the FBI report of Dempsey Jones, Yates' coworker, whom Yates told about his hitchhiker before the assassination:

"Jones said Yates told him he had picked up a boy in Oak Cliff and took this boy to Houston and Elm in Dallas. Yates said this boy had a package not described at that time, but after the death of the President, Yates described the package as a 'long package' and then on telling the facts over again, Yates said this man told him it was some window shades he was carrying for the company he (the man) had made." (FBI, Nov 27, 1963, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10406#relPageId=425)

Then upon getting to and starting work at the TSBD late that morning, estimate somewhere in the 10:30 am to 11:00 am range the morning of Thu Nov 21, Oswald immediately finds Buell Frazier and lines up a ride to Irving that evening after work. (Buell Frazier said Oswald asked him that in the morning of that day.)

Oswald goes to Irving Thursday night, returns Fri morning Nov 22 to work at TSBD with Buell Frazier, with curtain rods, and intent to deliver the fabric material and curtain rods to a seamstress across the street in the Dal-Tex building.

If Oswald's actions to resolve his curtains issue in his room began immediately following the crashing of the curtains in his room, the following timeline shows Oswald minimizing time spent in his room in evenings while taking action to get new curtains installed:

• Wednesday night, Nov 20--Oswald spends the entire evening until midnight in a laundromat reading before forced to go home when it closed.
• Thursday night, Nov 21--Oswald is not in his room at N. Beckley at all, is in Irving
• Friday night, Nov 22--if the assassination had not interrupted things, there is every reason to suppose Oswald would have anticipated having his new curtains ready by the end of that day or perhaps a half-hour later, ca. 5-6 pm, ready to be taken back with him by bus to Oak Cliff and he would be in his room with closed curtains again by that night.

Although the major objection to this scenario is the overwhelming juggernaut of belief that Oswald carried a rifle from Irving the morning of Fri Nov 22, and not curtain rods, that belief becomes very equivocal in light of research I separately and newly showed in 2023 which establishes that Lee and Marina removed the rifle from the Ruth Paine garage on Mon Nov 11--eleven days before the assassination--and took it to where Lee repaired a damaged scope base installation in order to prepare that rifle for disposition. That study establishes that the rifle was in Ruth Paine's garage up to Mon Nov 11, but that there is no evidence that rifle was in Ruth Paine's garage, or in Oswald's possession, after Mon Nov 11 (https://www.scrollery.com/?page_id=1581).

Therefore, since there is evidence Oswald did take curtain rods from Irving with him to the location of his workplace on the morning of Fri Nov 22 for reasons cited, and since there is no evidence that Oswald brought a rifle from Irving the morning of Fri Nov 22--the issue of when and how the rifle found on the 6th floor of the TSBD got there, and whether Oswald was involved in putting it there, may need revisitation. 

What became of Oswald's curtain fabric and curtain rods?

A possibility is Oswald on Friday morning Nov 22 after arriving to the TSBD with curtain rods obtained from Ruth Paine’s garage, momentarily set them inside the door Buell Frazier saw him enter at the rear loading dock, but outside the second door that was the rear entrance of the first floor area proper. He doesn’t hide the curtain rods package, just sets them down leaning against a wall outside that second door, because he is only going to be inside for a couple of minutes.

He enters to use the restroom. (Which could be why he didn’t wait for Buell but walked on ahead, as Buell described. Remember Lee started out with coffee in Irving that morning, which has a diuretic effect—easy to imagine Lee having a need to visit a bathroom upon arrival.) 

That mission accomplished and washing up, he returns out the back, retrieves the curtain rods and walks them over to the the Dal-Tex building, gives them to one of the seamstresses there who had already agreed to cut and sew the curtains, and Lee either already had given her the fabric he had brought in the day before, or retrieved it to give to her with the curtain rods now. It would be logical to do this at the start of the workday, in order for the seamstress to have the maximum amount of time to have them done by the end of that day, which may have been the understanding. Lee then returns to work at the TSBD. 

This could be a possible answer to the question always asked: what became of the curtain rods? Maybe they were somewhere in the Dal-Tex Building.

Of course this scenario requires some seamstress, whether at McKeel Sportswear or otherwise, not to later have told of it.

The hearsay report the FBI received that seamstresses at McKeel Sportswear knew Oswald followed those women telling the hearsay source that they had been questioned by the FBI.

The original FBI questioning of those women happened as a result of a visit to the FBI on Mon Nov 25, 1963, by one of the seamstresses at McKeel Sportswear, Henrietta Vargas. She had something to tell the FBI, and was accompanied by an attorney (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57694#relPageId=54). Was the attorney normal? As it stands in the FBI reporting, what Henrietta Vargas told could have had no possible criminal suspicion on herself, yet she brought an attorney.

The later hearsay report deriving from these same women said that these women said they knew Oswald, although the source of the hearsay who knew those women says he did not say that and he did not think they knew Oswald (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95674#relPageId=70). The hearsay story that the seamstresses knew Oswald from eating lunch with him in a nearby restaurant and conversed in Spanish with him may be a garbled mistaken confusion of the hearsay source, David Torres', own meeting and conversations with these women, where he learned of what he told. Still, the FBI followup reports again did not report any inquiry or statement concerning whether Henrietta Vargas or any other of the seamstresses interviewed knew Oswald, an odd question not to ask responsive to a hearsay report which claimed some seamstresses at the Dal-Tex building did know Oswald.  

If the FBI had come upon something to do with curtains for Oswald in the Dal-Tex building in that investigation, would we know of it? Or might it be analogous to the citizen who turned in the find of the paper-bag revolver--a snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson with an apple and an orange in a paper bag--found on a downtown Dallas street early the morning of Sat Nov 23, which could have been the Tippit murder weapon tossed by Jack Ruby employee and self-confessed hitman Curtis Craford, out of a car driven by Ruby in which Craford was a passenger, in the early morning hours of Sat Nov 23 when Ruby had woken up Craford at the Carousel Club at 5 a.m. to go for a drive, before Craford said he decided spontaneously later that morning to hitchhike to Michigan. That paper-bag revolver was found by a citizen of Dallas who turned it in to the Dallas Police which informed the FBI. But both the Dallas Police and FBI withheld telling the press or the Warren Commission or the public of that find, and that revolver and its associated paperwork was lost and disappeared while in police custody. The Dallas resident who found it and turned it in, who is named in an FBI document that later came to light, never talked publicly about it.

2 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

I guess what I'm struggling with here, Mr. Doudna, is the question: how would Mr. Oswald's mere selling of his rifle account for his behavior post-assassination? It just doesn't have anything like the explanatory power I think we need.

Apologies for late reply btw!

This is conjecture but what if Ruby was part of the assassination; Oswald sold his rifle to Ruby circles and knew it but did not realize it was for an assassination of the president; upon learning like everyone else that President Kennedy was shot by hearing the shots, Oswald had some idea of what had gone down and believed his life was in immediate jeopardy from those circles to whom he had conveyed the rifle.

That would account for his evasive departure from the TSBD to Oak Cliff and the Theatre, evasive all the way, so as not to be followed or tailed or found by people he believed could intend to kill him (a rational fear in light of an unsuccessful attempt at the Texas Theatre on Friday and a successful attempt Sunday morning). 

The other thing that calls for explanation is his denials of some things in interrogation instead of coming clean on those things. Commonly lying is considered consciousness of guilt of what is accused but that reasoning has convicted many innocent people who may lie for reasons other than guilt of what is accused. Unless there is conclusive proof of Oswald's guilt on independent grounds--meaning conclusive proof not that the rifle found on the sixth floor had been ordered by, possessed by, and had been Oswald's up until Nov. 11, but that he was the one who had fired it from the sixth floor on Nov 22 (or had knowingly assisted those who did)--Oswald's false answers on certain things in interrogation, while it looks bad for him, falls short of proof of guilt, unless all other possible reasonable explanation is excluded.

One possibility is that non-denial denials in Oswald's actual replies were misunderstood by those who reported paraphrasing of his answers in their reports as denials. Either there was no taping of Oswald's replies or if there was it has never come to light, but if Oswald had come to trial, Oswald and his lawyer might have explanations for his answers, perhaps surprising ones, that might even be plausible to a reasonable observer. 

(For example, did Oswald say he never owned a rifle? Or did he deny he owned a rifle on Nov 22? Or did he have a reasoning under which he did not consider himself the owner of the rifle even when he did have it? Did Oswald say he never mail-ordered a rifle? Or did he consider the rifle not his at the time he ordered it? Did Oswald claim the backyard photos were faked? Or did he say, "you could have faked those!", which is not quite the same thing, in the second case not a denial even though interrogators writing up reports later would assume it was, etc.) 

Another possibility, a reason why many persons have lied even when innocent of the crime accused, not wanting to get other people in trouble, in Lee's case perhaps Marina. 

A third possibility is Oswald had been mixed up in some intelligence activity, not to his knowledge having to do with an assassination of the president, which he had been told was sensitive and he must under no circumstances break cover if arrested, for anything. In this scenario, he would understand he would be expected to stonewall and lie if necessary until intervention would get him released, and he would be cleared and that would be that, except it did not turn out that way. 

Some other pages of Paul Seaton show he believes in the higher, cowlick location entrance wound. Apparently some of his web pages represent different arguments that have been made by different persons or at different times.

Boswell explains why the BOH photograph is authentic but the Parkland witnesses were not wrong in what they said they saw

Boswell said there was gaping wound in the back of the head, and that the BOH photograph was genuine and unaltered, at the same time, because a flap of scalp had been pulled up over missing bone underneath to cover the wound. In his AARB testimony Boswell said he was one of the hands in that photo pulling scalp up to cover the large defect in the back of the head. In the case of the photo of the upper back wound, Boswell said the reason they pulled the scalp up was because if they had not, the scalp would have fallen the other way, like a flap, covering the area they wanted to photograph.

This is not John Canal's explanation of the BOH photograph representing post-autopsy embalmers' work. No, Boswell said the BOH photographs were taken during the autopsy (and I think I remember Boswell saying it occurred early in the autopsy).

This is Boswell saying the autopsists themselves, i.e. himself, pulled loose scalp up in that BOH photo (and in the rear upper-back wound photo). It looks like no gaping wound in the back of the head but Boswell said there was missing bone underneath, which would have been visible if they (Boswell and the others doing the autopsy) had not pulled that flap of scalp with hair still on it which covered it.

This is not some theory of what might have happened. This is one of the autopsists themselves saying that is what happened, resolving the apparent contradiction, in a manner that does not involve photo alteration.

Paul Seaton has discussed this and has added this further bit of interpretation: Seaton says the so-called cowlick "entrance hole" (the Ida Dox drawn hole) appearing to be in the cowlick area in the BOH photograph actually is the scalp entrance wound of the autopsists near the EOP and it was where the autopsists said it was, lower not at the cowlick. Seaton says the "cowlick" hole in the BOH photo is illusorily higher than it actually was because the scalp with the real hole in it was being pulled upward. The position in the BOH photo of that bullet hole in the scalp does not reflect its lower true location in the bone of the head. Seaton thinks the autopsists' near-EOP location of that bullet hole was correct, not the higher "cowlick" entry location of the later panels; Seaton says there never was any bullet hole in the bone at the cowlick area, and says pulling of the scalp flap upward is the explanation for that apparent discrepancy without invoking photo alteration in the BOH photo.

Pat Speer, I have searched on your site (under search terms Seaton, and Boswell) and do not see where you discuss this particular explanation given by Boswell for accepting both the rear-of-the-head wound witness reports and the authenticity of the BOH photos without alteration. 

All the others here who think without question the BOH photo was altered intentionally and deceptively to cover up visible wound in the back of the head, I also do not see have addressed this testimony of Boswell on this matter, or the Paul Seaton supplementary argument on this matter. Paul Seaton's analysis is here: https://paulseaton.com/jfk/boh/parkland_boh/parkland_wound.htm. Boswell's AARB testimony is here: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/boswella.htm.

Both sides, please address. Thanks.

~ ~ ~

Here is Boswell (copied from the Seaton page link):

" But the scalp was lacerated, & a pretty good sized piece of the frontal  & right occipital portion of the skull had separated and were stuck to  the undersurface of the scalp. " (Boswell, interviewed by Livingstone, High Treason 2, p196)  Q So you're saying that on the fourth view, which are the photographs that are in your hand right now, the scalp has been pulled back and folded back over the top of the head in a way different from the way that they appeared in the third view, the superior view of the head? A Yes. Q Is that fair? A In the previous one, it was permitted just to drop. In this one, it's pulled forward up over the forehead, toward the forehead. Q Who, if you recall, pulled up the scalp for the photograph to be taken? [Colour autopsy photo. The yellow hashed area marks the approximate location of the skull defect according to a skull Boswell marked for the ARRB ] A There are about three of us involved here, because there are two right hands on that centimeter scale. I think that I probably was pulling the scalp up. (Boswell ARRB)

" Well, this was an attempt to illustrate the magnitude of the
wound again. And as you can see it’s 10 centimeters from right to left, 17 centi-
meters from posterior to anterior. This was a piece of 10 centimeter bone that
was fractured off of the skull and was attached to the under surface of the skull. . . There were fragments attached to the skull or to the scalp and all the three
major flaps." (Boswell, interviewed by the HSCA FPP)

Boswell is explicit that the skull is missing beneath the scalp in the autopsy picture, above :

Q ...Now I'd like to ask you a question
about what is underneath the scalp of what we are
looking at now. Let's take the marking that
appears towards the hairline right at the base of
the neck, or where the hairline meets the neck. If
we take the point above that, where would you say
that the scalp is or that the skull will be missing
underneath the scalp that we can view there?

A Probably right about here.

Q So you're--

A Just about the base of the ear.

Q So you're pointing to approximately
halfway up the ruler that we can observe and to the
right of that small fragment, so the skull is
missing--

A Right.

(Boswell ARRB)

 

What was the long-term impersonator’s true name at birth and Social Security number, and mother’s true name and identity, according to the Harvey and Lee version of the impersonation idea? Did the impersonator marry or have a relationship with a significant other? In Dallas in Oct-Nov 1963? If the real Oswald was employed at the Book Depository, was the fake one, the impersonator, employed somewhere else in Dallas? 

I believe there was some early suspicion that the Soviets could kill a defector and send an impersonator in his stead back to the US, but that would be only one running around in the US upon return, not two of them, and that idea is falsified from Marguerite’s identification of her son (can’t fool a mother), as well as I understand by dental records. 

I don’t see any good evidence of impersonation of Oswald happening in Dallas on Oct-Nov 1963. It’s all either Oswald or mistaken identifications, full stop, from my study of all the cases. 

5 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Because of something Pat said on another thread, I now believe that he simply made some mistakes -- which Keven called him on -- but wasn't willing to admit so.

Sandy I see things differently than you in a lot of ways but it is clear to me you have always attempted to be honest. I respect your comment here because it is what I see too. Pat Speer has done a massive amount of original research, all by his own policy and commendably put up on his website free access without attempting to monetize a thing. In the course of discussion of his research made minor errors from memory on nitpick level re the Custer x-rays. There is no way Pat is willfully attempting to deceive as Keven is trying to present. 

[]

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY ON WHAT BECAME OF OSWALD’S CURTAIN  RODS

A possibility is Oswald on Friday morning Nov 22 after arriving to the TSBD with two curtain rods obtained from Ruth Paine’s garage, momentarily set them inside the door Buell Frazier saw him enter at the rear loading dock, but outside the second door that enters the first floor area proper. He doesn’t hide them or anything, just sets them down and leans them openly against a wall there, because he is only going to be gone for a couple of minutes.

He enters to use the restroom, take a leak. (Could be that is why he didn’t wait for Buell but walked on ahead, as Buell described.) 

(Remember Lee started out with coffee in Irving that morning, which has a diuretic effect—easy to imagine Lee having a need for a bathroom upon arrival.) 

That mission accomplished and washing up, he returns out the back, retrieves the curtain rods and walks them over to the second floor of the Dal-Tex building, gives them to one of the women at McKeel who had already agreed to cut and sew the curtains and Lee had already given her fabric. 

Lee would logically do this at the start of the workday in order for her to have the maximum amount of time in order to have them done by 5:00 that day which may have been the idea. Lee then returns to work at the TSBD. 

This could be a possible answer to the question always asked: if Lee did bring curtain rods, what became of them? 

Of course this scenario requires the woman at McKeel not later to have told of it, but then none of the McKeel women ever were interviewed publicly. But suppose one of the women had curtain rods of Lee from the morning of Nov 22, then a few hours later there is the assassination of the president and by the end of the day Oswald has been arrested and accused of it. 

There already is testimony that the seamstresses at McKeel Sportswear were frightened to tell the police or FBI of the possible sighting of Lee receiving a rifle, and delayed doing so until the FBI found her and asked. 

Suppose one of the seamstresses did then tell of and hand over the curtain rods. However that does not go into written reports, at least the ones we know of. In this scenario it would be covered up, with the FBI doing the same as the routine and well-attested FBI request of witnesses in the case generally, of asking her not to talk about it.

It would be analogous to the citizen who turned in the find of the paper-bag revolver found early the morning of Sat Nov 23 which may have been the true Tippit murder weapon, ditched by Curtis Craford, killer of Tippit, tossed out a car window, before Craford precipitously fled Dallas hitchhiking to Michigan that morning. That paper-bag revolver was turned in to the Dallas Police which withheld telling press or the Warren Commission of that find and that find was promptly lost and disappeared, known with security to have existed only because FBI documents later came to light telling details of it. (And that citizen who found it retreated into obscurity and never talked publicly about it.)

The suggestion would be it is possible the same thing, or something like that, could have happened with any possible Oswald curtain rods belatedly turned in. 

On 1/22/2024 at 5:20 AM, Tom Gram said:

Greg, Ancestry.com last I checked had a complete 1963 Dallas city directory available online, including the criss-cross. 

Thanks Tom. I signed up and have identified both of the other women! 

Henrietta A. Vargas, identified in a 1967 Dallas Polk's as occupation, "Smstrs McKell's Sports Wear". She was 11 years old in a 1940 census therefore about age 34 in 1963. The 1963 Polk's shows her at 3702 Cole Avenue as homeowner with 18 other persons of varying names and employments living there, suggesting she may have been renting rooms. I could not find an obituary for her but I found an obituary of her husband, Carlos M. Vargas, Jr., in 2021, and it refers to her death before his https://www.theangelusfuneralhome.com/obituary/carlos-vargas-jr.

Frances M. Hernandez, is listed in the 1963 Dallas Polk's as an "Indry wkr RUMC", that is, industrial worker McKeel Sportswear (I don't know what the RU means), home address 1219 N. Washington Ave. The Polk's listing shows her living at that address alone. The FBI interview of her of Dec 31, 1963 gives a different address which goes to a street address which according to the 1963 Dallas Polk's does not exist.

She appears in a 1950 census listing as age 24, occupation "sewing machine operator, drs. mfg."; married to Albert Hernandez, with a 2-year old son George A. In 1963 she would have been about 37.

But husband Albert disappears from Dallas records whereas Frances remained in Dallas. Albert turns up in a 1998-2002 city directory in Hibbs, New Mexico. Albert died in 2017. Son George A. Hernandez died in 2019 with reference in his obituary having a brother named Hernandez who does not appear in Frances' obituary as a son of hers (https://www.echovita.com/us/obituaries/tx/dallas/george-a-hernandez-9528249). That suggests Albert remarried (hence the brother of George A. was really a half-brother from his father's new marriage, not a second child of Frances). Based on the 1963 Dallas Polk's with Frances living alone, the breakup of the marriage in the sense of Frances living separately seems to have occurred prior to Nov 1963. That Frances is named "Mrs." in her FBI interview reports probably means she was still legally married, not yet divorced, even though living separate from Albert. 

Frances Hernandez died in 2010 at age 84. In her obituary there is mention of her son but no mention of a present or past husband; evidently she never remarried. https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/name/frances-hernandez-obituary?id=10199367&_gl=1*rv9qnq*_gcl_au*MTk3MzM2NTAuMTcwNDQzNzAzNg..

The three McKeel Sportswear women are now all identified. All were mid-30s, none "young women" (as in early 20s). All three were married, though one appears to have been living separately from her husband even though still legally "Mrs." because not yet divorced.

A deeper dive on the McKeel Sportswear women rifle conveyance sighting

After the report came to the FBI's attention of a reported gun transfer in a parking lot behind the TSBD, the FBI investigated but there are several subtleties about that investigation easy to miss. A first point is that the McKeel women were not interviewed only once but in three separate rounds, on Nov 26 https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=279), again Dec 31 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10673#relPageId=107), and again on Jan 8 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10730#relPageId=129). 

And a second point is that it was not just the fact of a rifle sighting. Although the FBI reports do not ever say so explicitly, it is clear that what caused the women to be "frightened" and "reluctant to discuss the matter", "excited and confused" (in the report of Frances Hernandez, one of the McKeel women), was because at least one and possibly two of those women thought they recognized Oswald as the young slender man who had received a rifle out of a trunk of a car from an older, heavyset man.

The three women were in a car exiting the parking lot. Apparently it was a car pool and one of the women was driving, the other two passengers. As they attempt to exit they are stopped behind a 1955 or 1956 blue Buick momentarily blocking the exit, with an older heavyset man giving a rifle out of a trunk to a younger slender man who walked off with it. All the women said they were viewing both men only from the back and did not get a look at their faces. There was not much in the way of specific description of either of the men beyond younger and slim, and older and heavyset, without seeing a face, though there was a good description of the car, which the FBI tried to run down (more on that below). 

Ruby had nothing to do with this. Ruby comes into it only if one fixes on thinking Oswald was the younger man, then asking who the other might be, and speculating maybe unidentified older "heavyset man" might be Ruby who was a little heavyset and older. None of the three women gave any claim to have identified Ruby or reason to suppose the older man was Ruby other than secondarily if one conjectures from the Oswald starting point. Ruby is a red herring here.

But Oswald is not a red herring. The original hearsay was specific on details of how the women knew Oswald (at a lunch place, spoke Spanish with him), and that hearsay corresponds exactly to a time when Oswald was taking curtain materials for seamstress work needed to the location of his workplace, and these women were seamstresses who the hearsay said knew Oswald. 

Such that, the story underneath this story is that when those women after the assassination were scared, it may have been not only from seeing Oswald on television, but because one or more had actually met and knew him. And could have recognized him even from the back without seeing a face. At the time of recognition it would not mean much--Frances Hernandez said her first thought was these were simply hunters in hunting season like one of her own male coworkers who had just gone hunting, nothing unusual. 

But after the assassination, as might be imagined, if one of them had recognized Oswald or thought she did, it would be a devastating recent memory. 

Was pre-assassination knowledge of Oswald on the part of one or more of these women not disclosed in the reporting?

The reason for suspecting it was both true and that the FBI knew it was true that one or more of the McKeel women knew Oswald pre-assassination is because that was the issue, and the question "did you know Oswald?" is so routine of a question the FBI asked other witnesses. But the FBI agent, Pinkston, who did the first Nov 26 interviews of two of the three women, Frances Hernandez and Josephine Salinas (the third, Henrietta Vargas, was not interviewed on Nov 26), and the FBI agent responsible for the interviews and reporting of the McKeel women on Dec 31 and Jan 8, a William G. Brookhart of the Dallas FBI office (not Bookhout of the Oswald interrogations, different person), never reported whether those women knew Oswald pre-assassination. 

When an obvious question is not asked, or if it was asked there is no report of it asked or report of its answer, sometimes that is a signal of something going on.

Obviously Pinkston and/or Brookhart would have asked! Its not that neither one of them asked. Its that they didn't report that they asked, and didn't report the answer. That is what happened. Pinkston could have told Brookhart not to ask, but Pinkston would have asked, and if Brookhart was not instructed not to do so, Brookhart would have asked too.

First interviews of Nov 26, 1963 (by Pinkston)

These two interviews of Frances Hernandez and Josephine Salinas have practically identical wording in the report attributed separately to each of these two witnesses. Either Pinkston mixed combined interviews from both into one report and duplicated it to each one, or saved time in his paperwork by composing one and (if the two women had not disagreed on anything) simply copied the same thing to the other.

Either way, this identical sentence is attributed to both of those women: "She stated the younger man might have been Lee Harvey Oswald, but she is not able to say definitely it was Oswald". By having both women say that identically, if one was the true source it would be difficult to know which one it was.

Note in this original report the focus and underlying question is whether there had been an Oswald sighting. That was the issue.

There are three minor differences in wordings reflecting in all cases editing for reading better, not alteration of meaning. Also, the interview of Frances Hernandez occurred in Dallas on Nov 26 whereas the one of Josephine Salinas occurred the same day in Farmers Branch, Texas.

Farmers Branch is where Josephine Salinas lived--her address is given in a later interview report and it is 13740 Birchlawn Drive, Farmers Branch, Texas.

Identification of one of the McKeel women: Josephine Salinas

One of the McKeel women can be identified: Josephine G Salinas aka Delfina G Salinas was born 11/2/26, was age 37 in Nov 1963, was married for a second time in 1966, unknown date of beginning and end of first marriage, and died Jan 12, 2013 at the age of 86. Here is a picture of her gravestone: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/236035623/josephine-salinas. 

A pre-Nov 22 knowledge of Oswald?

It is not clear which of the two, Frances Hernandez or Josephine Salinas, Pinkston interviewed first or second but he dictated both interviews later that same day and the one of Frances Hernandez was dictated first and the one of Josephine Salinas second. 

Here is Pinkston's report for Frances Hernandez in regular type, with the report for Josephine Salinas the same except for the variants in parentheses in italics:

"...while on their way home about 5:10 p.m. on November 19, 1963, and after leaving the parking lot near the Texas School Book Depository, observed two men with an automobile, about a 1956 Buick, color light blue. The older of the two men was observed to hand a rifle (--> "handed a rifle") to the younger man of the two (delete "of the two"), who then walked from the Buick toward a white car which was a compact (--> "a compact white car"), but she did not know the make of it. She stated the younger man might have been Lee Harvey Oswald, but she is not able to say definitely that it was Oswald. She stated she has no other information."

Josephine Salinas must have been the one of the three who lived the farthest away which means she will have been the driver of the three women, giving the other two rides home from work in some car-pool arrangement. 

A possible interpretation: one or both of these women were of interest to the FBI because they may have said they knew Oswald, and at least one of the two may have said she thought she may have recognized Oswald in the parking lot, based on knowing who he was pre-assassination. And from descriptions of fear described specifically to Frances Hernandez and not the other two, it may be that Frances was the one who thought the young man was Oswald (even if both Frances and Josephine may have known Oswald). 

Notice what is not said in the reports: why Frances Hernandez (or cc Josephine Salinas) thought the man might have been Oswald.

In other FBI reports it often is said explicitly, such-and-such witness saw pictures of Oswald in the newspaper or on TV and from that recognized the man they remembered seeing on some xyz earlier occasion ... but that is not said here. Taking these reports at face value, there is no sign that Pinkston had any curiosity in asking what was one of these women's grounds for thinking the man was Oswald. And yet it is certain Pinkston would have been curious. Pinkston simply is not reporting everything.

Why would the key detail, of the basis for Frances Hernandez thinking the man might have been Oswald, be left out?

Perhaps the original hearsay version tells why: because she had pre-Nov 22 knowledge of Oswald (the lunch place, the conversing in Spanish). But still, why prefer to not mention that in FBI reporting for the record? 

It is difficult to come up with an explanation or reason better than an Oswald curtains connection.

What if the FBI via Pinkston did catch a whiff that Oswald was known to one or more of those women at McKeel and--just possibly--that some of Oswald's curtain activity that week had included an inquiry at McKeel Sportswear, in the Dal-Tex building across the street from the TSBD, seeking a seamstress who could turn fabric and curtain rods into curtains that Oswald needed? 

These interviews occurred after the FBI and media all over America had already decided that Oswald's package from Irving the morning of Nov 22, of the exact size of curtain rods and which he told Buell Frazier was curtain rods, was really Oswald bringing in the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the 6th floor.

The curtain rods, in the FBI and later Warren Commission interpretation, never happened. Oswald made that all up. That was the accepted narrative. 

Could the FBI be relied upon to disclose information that potentially impeached that narrative? (I do not assume the answer is necessarily no, but I also do not assume the answer is necessarily yes.)  

Why did the FBI never ask the McKeel women, who were saying they were scared because they thought it might have been Oswald receiving that rifle in the parking lot, whether any of those women had previously seen or known Oswald from the building across the street?

Just to check off that question asked routinely of so many other witnesses?

Why not? Maybe there was a reason.

Second interviews of Dec 31, 1963 (by Brookhart)

This time all three McKeel women of the parking lot sighting were interviewed. Frances Hernandez is said to have been "re-interviewed" (note word). The other two (including Pinkston's report of Salinas) are said to have been "interviewed" (note word). And Pinkston is no longer interviewing on this case any more; Brookhart is from here on out.

In these interviews, no longer is there any attention called to a claim of recognition of Oswald as the original issue. At face reading it now is worded to sound as if it was the gun itself that aroused suspicion (irrespective of any claimed identification sighting). On face reading both Oswald and Ruby are raised as equally possible identities which in both cases had no basis, neither Oswald nor Ruby being any more at issue than the other.

In the individual reports, the third woman, Henrietta Vargas, is interviewed for a first time. Vargas explicitly denies she saw the faces of either man ("did not see the face of the young man ... did not see the face of the older man ... did not see their faces").

Josephine Salinas denies she saw the face of the older man but does not deny that in the case of the younger man ("she did not see the face of the older man ... the younger man who was of slender build walked away from the Buick carrying the rifle, but she did not see where he went, or whether he got into an automobile").

Frances Hernandez, like Salinas, denied seeing the front of the older man, but does not deny having seen the face of the younger man. Frances Hernandez:

"[S]he only saw the back of the older man's head and can only say the younger man was rather slim. She cannot describe either of these two men as being identical to Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby; and thought of the above incident only after the President was assassinated. She said she and her friends were frightened and reluctant to become involved and were very excited and confused for some time, but now that she has had time to think about this, she is certain of the above facts."

Frances Hernandez sounds like a good candidate for having been the first and perhaps only one of the women, after the assassination, to claim a possible Oswald identification for the younger man the three women had seen with the rifle, and Frances told the others.

Neither Salinas nor Vargas are said in their reports to have been frightened; Hernandez is the one who says she was "frightened".

The wording in Frances Hernandez's report makes it sound like Hernandez is backtracking on something though the report does not make clear what. Maybe it was an earlier opinion expressed that she thought the young man might have been Oswald?

Frances Hernandez may be the originator of the belief that she held and shared with her two coworkers that they had seen something truly scary, not just a random gun and random men, but Oswald whom they knew with a rifle. Frances Hernandez, the specific one of the three who speaks of fright. Frances Hernandez, the one of the three with language implying she is almost retracting something from before, without the reader of the reports being clear what. Frances Hernandez, who must have been asked but whose answer is not disclosed, whether she knew Oswald before the assassination.

Date of the incident

A minor point, which the FBI did not resolve but which we can, for whatever it is worth, is establishing the date of this incident with 100 percent certainty as Tue Nov 19, not any other day.

In the earliest Nov 26 reports, the identically-worded reports of Hernandez and Salinas, both have those two women each saying the date was Tue Nov 19. However by the time of the Dec 31 reports some of the witnesses' memory seem to degrade slightly on the matter of the date. In the Dec 31 reports:

• Hernandez: it was the day before JFK arrived [i.e. Thu Nov 21] and it was raining
• Vargas: cannot recall whether it was Tuesday or Thursday but does recall that it was raining
• Salinas: it was the day before JFK arrived, it was raining, she remembers thinking of JFK arriving the next day

But it was not Thu Nov 21. It was as Hernandez's and Salinas's original interviews said, Tue Nov 19, and here is the proof: all three of the women remember that it was raining. Weather history for Dallas shows it was raining on Tuesday Nov 19, but did not rain at all on Wed Nov 20 or Thu Nov 21. And on Tue Nov 19 it was raining 3-5 pm, the time of the 5:10 pm parking lot sighting incident when all three women remembered it was raining when that happened.

Even the FBI Gaemberling report on the JFK assassination of 1/22/64 was unaware of the correct secure date for the incident. That report refers in its title of the section dealing with this investigation as the incident having occurred "a day or so before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy". That is not accurate: it was Tue Nov 19. 

https://weatherspark.com/h/m/8813/1963/11/Historical-Weather-in-November-1963-in-Dallas-Texas-United-States#google_vignette

https://weatherspark.com/h/d/8813/1963/11/19/Historical-Weather-on-Tuesday-November-19-1963-in-Dallas-Texas-United-States#Figures-PrecipitationProbability 

Was it Oswald?

I would actually be inclined to say yes except it makes no sense to me that Oswald would be receiving a rifle out of a trunk of a car on Nov 19. He was no hunter. He isn't going to take it back to his room in Oak Cliff so he can look at it. If it was Oswald, then one would be looking at he is either doing some gunrunning of some kind, or else some new angle related to the assassination or a weapon into the TSBD building or something. 

I believe it is certain Oswald prepared his rifle on Nov 11 for a sale or dispossession of it, and I believe it likely (simply because it makes sense, even if lacking direct confirmation) that he did sell or dispose of that rifle prior to Nov 22. 

Therefore it makes no sense that Oswald would receive another rifle, or the same one back again, on Tue Nov 19.

That it makes no sense says to me the young man seen by the women was not Oswald. 

Yet the plausibility that one or more of the McKeel women knew Oswald raises the question of would such a woman who knew Oswald, whoever she was, have been mistaken?

If one takes out of the picture that any of those three women knew Oswald--but were solely reacting to the news of the assassination post-Nov 22--then that swings the weight heavily, overwhelmingly, toward assumption of simple mistaken identification, not further complicated. (And the notion that there was an identification of Oswald to begin with in that story is itself reconstruction and inference, not directly confirmed in the FBI reports though it is difficult to read those reports without suspecting that underlies those reports.)

But in the present narrative at least one of the McKeel women, a seamstress, did know Oswald, and on that rainy afternoon of Tue Nov 19 from inside Josephine Salinas's car all three saw a young man ahead that reminded her of Oswald. Everyone has probably had the experience of being in a strange place and suddenly seeing some stranger from a certain angle and momentarily thinking that is someone we know, or a family member, maybe even a loved one who has died, before they turn and we get a better look and see it is a different person. 

That is what in this narrative may have happened here. She knew Oswald, and when she saw the young man receiving the rifle she did not have a good look at the man but mistakenly thought it was he (which at the time would not mean anything amiss because it would be assumed he was a hunter in hunting season). Then Oswald the next day inquires of her about curtains, tells her he will bring everything in to her on Friday. On Friday there is the assassination, Oswald's picture is in the news, and she thinks with horror back to the man she thought could have been Oswald on Tue Nov 19, and that rifle in his hands now took on a sinister light in her memory. 

In all likelihood it was not really Oswald, though she thought it might have been, and that does not argue that she did not know Oswald personally, only that she did not get a sufficiently good look to know it was someone else.

January 8 interviews

These interviews, also by FBI agent Brookhart, expanded to track down how the story of the three McKeel women spread to its endpoint in the hearsay that was initially reported to the FBI that started the investigation.

An interview of Jan 8 with a Mrs. Conrad Galvin tells what happened. David Torres was the brother of a woman who worked at McKeel's and he knew the story from his sister. Whether that sister of David Torres was one of the three women of the parking lot incident, and if so which one, is not known. Mrs. Galvin's husband heard from David Torres the story of what these women at his sister's workplace had seen. A Mr. and Mrs. Velez were present in the Galvin home when David Torres told them of it.

"Everyone there urged Torres to get in touch with these people to furnish this information to the FBI; however, they understood that the women were frightened and reluctant to discuss this matter."

Mrs. Velez was interviewed on Jan 8. She confirmed she had heard the incident in the home of Mrs. Galvin. She claimed (either falsely or mistakenly) that she did not repeat the story to anyone. But she did; she told her mother who was visiting her, and her mother then returned home to her city and told a lady who told that lady's visiting niece who reported it to the FBI which launched the investigation back in Dallas. 

Mrs. Velez said she too with the others had urged Torres to attempt to influence the McKeel women to contact the FBI. "Mrs. Velez advised that she does not know Lee Harvey Oswald...", reads the report of her interview. But Mrs. Velez was never at issue with knowing Oswald. Yet this item gets reported for her, and not for the women for whom the question is relevant, the three McKeel women of the sighting.

Possible identification of the heavy-set man

In a Jan 8 interview Frances Hernandez and Josephine Salinas walked with Brookhart to the parking lot--this was at Frances Hernandez's initiative again hinting that maybe Frances Hernandez is the source of a claim to have recognized Oswald--and showed Brookhart exactly where the car and men were when they saw them. It turned out to be where there was a dirt service road along side of the Dallas Count Sheriff's office parking lot.

In this interview Frances Hernandez updated her car description to the color being dark blue or dark green, not light blue as earlier. She says she was not sure it was a Buick as originally reported of her, says she got that from Josephine Salinas.

Josephine Salinas now says although she still thinks it was a Buick it could also have been a Chevrolet. She also updates her color memory, from earlier light blue to now medium blue.

The original Nov 26 car description of Hernandez and Salinas was a light blue 1956 Buick. 

On Dec 31, one Ed Cress, Chief Deputy of the Sheriff's office, said he didn't know, and he had checked with a few other employees and none of them knew either, of any of their people driving a 1955 or 1956 blue Buick.

On Jan 8 a Captain Frank Marion Buckalew, Supervisor, Uniform Patrol, Dallas County Sheriffs Office of that building, told Brookhart he owned a 1956 blue and white Buick, 2 door hardtop. The only photo I could find of Buckalew is this in an obituary from 2014 when he died at the age of 96 (https://kirbysmithrogers.com/tribute/details/28/Francis-Buckalew/obituary.htm). The photo shows him as a younger man when he was in uniform, perhaps not far from the age he was in 1963, appearing to be somewhat heavyset. His age in 1963 would have been 45. 

But there is a slight problem with Buckalew being the man and the car those women saw: Buckalew denied it was him, said he did not own a rifle, said he always went home at 3:30, and always was in uniform when he went home. 

In the end there was no identification either of the men or the car by the FBI. But there never was any evidence it had anything to do with the assassination. Handing over a rifle out of a trunk during peak activity time in a parking lot (5:10 pm after a workday) might be argued not to be how a secret conveyance would be done. Most likely, that rifle handover happened at that time because one or both of those men had just got off work just like others leaving the parking lot. And in a parking lot, it seems most likely both men arrived by car and will leave by car, with the reason for stopping blocking an exit momentarily being the a visiting car was stopping near the location of the man who had another car parked somewhere. (And Oswald had no car.) 

Reasons for a possible romantic interest of Oswald in one of the women at McKeel's Sportswear who was going to fix up Oswald's curtains

• Oswald was having curtains fixed or made in the vicinity of his workplace at the TSBD, which would involve a need for a seamstress.
• the original report to the FBI of the parking-lot sighting included hearsay that some of the McKeel Sportswear sewing women knew Oswald
• he left his wedding ring behind in Irving
• he was secretive about the curtains with Marina when there was no reason why he should be, unless there was another woman involved
• he bought unexplained tickets to a popular music event in Dallas for that weekend, and those tickets were not for Marina
• and possibly may be added here: he uncharacteristically wore a button-down dress shirt to work on Friday, the light maroon shirt of CE 151. (See Pat Speer's chapter on that; the matter of which shirt Oswald wore the morning of Fri Nov 22 is contested but the argument of Pat Speer is correct on that, as shown also in my jackets article.) Coworker James Jarman, when asked what kind of shirt Oswald wore Fri Nov 22: "Ivy Leagues, I believe". Why was Oswald uncharacteristically wearing a dress shirt to work? Dressing up for an assassination? Or dressing up for a lady? Which makes better sense?  

 

On 1/19/2024 at 1:54 PM, David Boylan said:

As noted here in Weisberg's letter to Howard Roffman, LHO was not averse to selling his rifle. Interesting comment by Roffman:

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/O Disk/Oswald Lee Harvey Property/Item 01.pdf

Thanks David.

1 hour ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

BTW- not only did NBC refuse to turn over the Sheridan files to ARRB (who commenced lawsuit that was terminated when ARRB went out of business) but it has also refused to share the Darnall film so that it can be analyzed usingmodern forensic techniques. There should be an outcry launched against NBC for withholding these materials that have been identified as "assassination" records.    

Larry, given your and Bill Simpich's standing in this case and in the media, would it be possible for you to assemble say, three reputable forensic analysts capable of studying the original of the NBC Darnell film, and submit a concrete request to NBC? Not only is there some chance that requests of this nature might be honored, but the alternative of a refusal on the record could have legal value down the road and itself could enter into NBC's calculus on deciding how to answer. (As opposed to now: is there evidence NBC has ever refused a concrete legitimate request formally made? or only hearsay reports through intermediaries?) 

Also, there were reports in prior years--at the time, claimed to be legitimate and compelling ones--that there did exist secret tape recordings of Oswald's interrogations made by Fritz with I think the help of one of Fritz's assistants but known by no one else, and that several researchers knew of this and said that the source who knew of these tapes was highly credible. There was anticipation that those tapes would come forth soon. Obviously, such tapes would be extremely valuable to history. 

But then, not another word was heard of that. Neither the alleged credible source nor the the names of the alleged researchers who knew and vouched for the source and the truth of the claim, supposedly researcher names that would be familiar, are known to my knowledge. (If anyone here knows, please say.) 

I do not know if that is anything that can be included in your purview now or at some point going forward, but if you see opportunity please consider that, thanks.

Also, though I know you already have this on your radar: the Marcello FBI tapes. Although most here seem to pooh-pooh the idea of a Marcello involvement, he was the mob boss in control of the city of the scene of the crime, had connections to Jack Ruby nobody disputes, and late in life confessed--his confession was what triggered the FBI to respond to that confession by announcing it was belatedly but finally closing the inactive but until then still-open investigation on the assassination of JFK, on the grounds that further investigation, such as of Marcello whose confession triggered this response, was unlikely to turn up anything new, since before the Marcello confession no evidence had been found against Marcello. (Yes, that was the reasoning given. Its like imagine police long have a suspect but could never pin anything on him. Finally, the suspect confesses and the police decide its time now to close the case because if there had been any evidence on the suspect who just confessed they would have known it before then. Therefore, when a suspect confesses is the logical time to decide that suspect is exonerated and end an investigation.) 

Finally, is there any mechanism by which Myers could be subpoenaed and asked to disclose the name of his anonymous source who told Myers that an unnamed police officer was a witness to the killing of officer Tippit, was at the scene of the crime and saw the killing happen, but never came forth? Myers reports the story, knows the identity of the source who told him, but has not disclosed. I realize Myers probably is honoring a promise on that or something, and reporters have some protections from being forced to disclose sources. But it is material evidence, it is not even clear the officer who may have been at the Tippit crime scene (if the story is true) or Myers' source are still alive at this point, and the interests of history could be argued to override such a promise. It is a shame Myers cannot find a way himself to bring this information to light (and the assumption that a promise to the source is the reason for Myers' non-disclosure is not to my knowledge even itself confirmed by Myers, who has never given a reason). I doubt there is a legal way to get at that information absent Myers' cooperation, just expressing frustration on that point to call to your attention.

Thanks for your work on what you have been doing. 

Pat I put a comment at the top of my earlier on the gaping head wound, saying are right that the Parkland witnesses' is the same as that of Z313 and of the autopsists.

Update 1/24/24: For reasons given in Pat Speer’s response, what I wrote in this post was not correct. The suggestion that the Parkland doctors' major gaping head wound was a different wound from the gaping head wound of Z313 and the autopsists’ and the subsequent panels' descriptions, was not right: reviewing the testimonies it is clear, as Pat responded, that the major gaping head wound described by the Parkland witnesses is the same wound, and cannot be interpreted as an exaggeration in perception of the distinct second head wound of the autopsists situated by the autopsists near the EOP in the lower back of the head. It is clear the Parkland witnesses were not referring to that one when they referred to the actual one and only major gaping wound higher up in the head. gd

Jim Hargrove, this is a serious question not intended to be flippant: in this theory of two Oswalds in the same Marines unit sharing a single Marines file, did these two Oswalds share the same Social Security number and the same bunk? 

If they had different ID numbers and were in different bunks, wouldn’t some of the other Marines have noticed, and wouldn’t there have been separate military files as two persons? 

I don’t know the explanation of the Taiwan vs non-Taiwan paperwork discrepancy, but surely there is some simpler resolution than two Oswalds with identical first and middle names in the same Marines unit?

If there was a secret govt plan to have two lookalikes with identical names (but who were genetically unrelated) have separate lifetime histories covertly without it being common open knowledge that there were these Siamese Twin Oswalds (so to speak), would it make sense to put them in the same military unit at the same time, if the idea was to keep it secret? 

On 1/18/2024 at 12:52 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Unless Tom has more information, I’m going with our original date of Sept. 14, 1958, but whether we use Tom’s date or the WC’s, there is just no way one Oswald could have appeared all those times at the hospital in Japan throughout the second half of September while he was in Taiwan and sailing the 1400 miles back and forth (a total of 2800 miles).

Jack R. Swike, The Missing Chapter: Lee Harvey Oswald in the Far East 2008), loaded to the gills with primary documents, is quite emphatic that Oswald did not go to Taiwan. See chapter 14, "Taiwan", with documents shown there, pp. 192-209.