Lee Oswald’s Departure from the TSBD

[Duke Lane]

... Earlier in this thread Duke Lane took issue with Alaric Rosman's suggestion that Markham saw the gunman walk up to the police car from the rear ...

As I get older, my memory fades ... but if I remember correctly, I took issue with the word "approach" having any particular directionality associated with it, that is, you can "approach" something equally as well from the front, the back, the side, the top....

... No contemporaneous witness contradicted Scoggins on this issue (I am discounting the value of Tatum's 15-year-old recollection), so I submit we have undisputed evidence that the patrol car stopped JUST BEFORE it reached the pedestrian....

Undisputed, certainly; undisputable may be a different story.

Edited May 11, 2008 by Duke Lane

[J. Raymond Carroll]

... No contemporaneous witness contradicted Scoggins on this issue (I am discounting the value of Tatum's 15-year-old recollection), so I submit we have undisputed evidence that the patrol car stopped JUST BEFORE it reached the pedestrian....

Undisputed, certainly; undisputable may be a different story.

Then let me re-phrase and see if we can make this INDISPUTABLE:

THE WARREN COMMISSION had undisputed evidence that the patrol car stopped just BEFORE it reached the pedestrian.

[William Kelly]

While most of the details concern the movements of Oswald and/or Tippit's murder in Oak Cliff, and the flight to the movie house, the movements of Oswald immediately after the assassination are also of interest and beg yet unanswered questions.

Roger Craig either saw Oswald or someone who looked like Oswald get into a Rambler station wagon driven by a dark skinned cohort.

Others thought they saw Oswald walk out the front door of the TSBD and walk down the street four or five blocks, board a bus going back in the direction he had just come from, and then disenbark and grab a cab, which he took five blocks past his rooming house and walked back.

Mark Furhman, in his A Simple Act of Murder, makes many mistakes and comes to wrong conclusions, but he does have a little, simple minded street sense that seems to focus on some interesting, often ignored pieces of evidence.

For instance, Furhman points out that while Oswald said during one of his interrogations that he changed his shirt while in his room, also grabbing a jacket and his pistol, it seems that he didn't actually change his shirt and was arrested with the same brownish "salt and pepper" shirt that he had worn to work that day.

One piece of evidence to support this point is the bus transfer ticket Oswald got while disembarking from the bus, which Furhman says (p. 78) was in his shirt pocket and time stamped 12:36 PM.

Now to me, that is even more fantastic than the time stamp on Ruby's money order, or the time of the Tippit shooting because an awful lot of things happened between 12:30 when the last shot was fired, and 12:36, when the fleeing assassin ostensibly disembarked from the Getaway Bus.

I mean he had to cross the 6th floor, stash the rifle, go down four flights of stairs, buy a coke, encounter the cop and super, cross paths with women worker, walk down the stairs and drink the coke, see Shelly, step outside, direct a reporter to a phone, walk four blocks and get on a bus, eyeball Mary Bledsoe his old landlandy, then grab the stamped bus transfer and disembark.

To me that's a lot of encounter and quite a distance to go in six minutes.

Is there more to this, or am I missing something?

"In a homicide investigation, we must listen to the evidence and follow where it leads, even if it contradicts our gut feelings or everything else we believe to be true...." - Mark Fuhrman

After reading Fuhrman's book on JFK I now belive that OJ might be innocent of murder after all.

BK

Edited September 9, 2008 by William Kelly

[Don Jeffries]

Bill,

Furhman's book on the OJ case, as well as his one about the murder of Martha Moxley, were both very good. That makes his slim, lightweight Warren Commission apologia a real disappointment. I remember seeing a "Hard Copy" type of t.v. show about 10 years ago, where Furhman was profiled. He was said to be a long time JFK assassination "buff," and believed that there had definitely been a conspiracy. I guess he's just another in the lone line of mysteriously converted former conspiracy believers.

Good point about the 12:36 time stamp on the bus ticket. That's just another reason to think that the guy on the bus was not the same "Oswald" who'd been working at the TSBD just a few minutes before. About the shirt he was wearing; Oswald's alleged claims to have changed his shirt have to be taken with a huge grain of salt. I've never placed much credence in those unrecorded interrogation sessions. Oswald's supposed comments often make no sense ("You know what boys do, they get their gun," in reference to why he supposedly had a pistol on him when arrested at the Texas Theater), and I think he may actually have been saying something completely different behind closed doors. Something like, "Come on, guys, I told you I'm an undercover agent who was infiltrating a plot to kill the president. I was trying to stop this... Now, where's my lawyer?"

[Duke Lane]

... the bus transfer ticket Oswald got while disembarking from the bus, which Furhman says (p. 78) was time stamped 12:36 PM. ... I mean [Oswald] had to cross the 6th floor, stash the rifle, go down four flights of stairs, buy a coke, encounter the cop and super, cross paths with women worker, walk down the stairs and drink the coke, see Shelly, step outside, direct a reporter to a phone, walk four blocks and get on a bus, eyeball Mary Bledsoe his old landlandy, then grab the stamped bus transfer and disembark.

Well, yes, theoretically that's what happened, but did Furhman explain in his discourse on the matter how a paper bus transfer that is torn off in 15-minute intervals was "stamped" with an exact time?

Maybe if you forward a copy of this to him, he can point out where the "12:36" is.

See? All one needs do is to make a bland assertion as a fact, and ouala! it becomes one.

We must remember, in any case, that Furhman's evidence didn't convict OJ. Some "authority," eh?

In the event that you're unfamiliar with these transfers, there is a block for each hour, so you see the "1" on the left and a "0" on the right for 1:00. Within that square (3/4 of which is torn off) and beneath the "0" is a "15" and beneath that a "30" and beneath that, a "45." Then there is a line, beneath which there is a "2" on the left, and the same sequence of numbers on the right, then a block for "3" and "4" and so on.

The transfers are bound together in a pack of - I'm guessing - 50 (about 1/4" thick), each marked with the date and a list of the routes (e.g., Belmont, Forest, Harwood). The driver uses a punch to mark the route issuing the transfer, in this case Lakewood. The purpose of this is to ensure that the person getting the transfer actually transfers to a different route and doesn't use the transfer to board the same bus going either farther along the route or back in the direction he'd come from (which would require a new fare). In the morning, he also punches the "A.M." and at noon discards those and punches a new stack with the route and "P.M."

The time that is shown - in this case, 1:00 - is the time of expiration, not the time that it is issued, thus this particular transfer is good to get on an intersecting route until 1:00; in actual practice, someone might be allowed to transfer as late as 1:15 depending upon the driver's generosity, but probably not afterward.

The cut edge at the top is situated closest to the driver; the torn edge is created when the packet of transfers is put into a holder with a straight-edge that has springs at either end to put pressure on the packet, holding it in place to allow the driver to simply pull up and tear along the desired lines. When a sufficient number of torn tickets has amassed beneath the straight-edge making the line less distinct or the tickets harder to tear, the driver typically would readjust the packet in the holder by folding the used transfers back, placing the straight-edge directly on the next transfer to be issued.

This typically also occurred when a 15-minute interval has passed, in which case the driver pulls more of the ticket out from under the straight-edge to reveal the "15" or "30" or "45" or the next hour. Since the "1" appears only once in the block, some drivers might cant the ticket so it cut from the "1" diagonally to the "45;" others might simply pull it straight out so it cut straight across and nothing would be on the left (the "1" being well above the cut) and the minutes showing on the bottom right. Since the transfers for 1:00 would necessarily be shorter than the transfer for 1:15, the driver would usually fold back the issued transfers up to that time, putting the straight-edge on the first 1:15 transfer.

(Is all of this making sense?)

Now here's where it gets interesting. First, there is the question of how much time Dallas Transit allowed for someone to board the bus and get onto an intersecting bus. Transfers were (and maybe still are; I don't know, I don't ride busses anymore) usually issued when the person boards the bus, only rarely afterward and only begrudgingly when they're debarking from a long ride, the object being to allow someone to travel where the initial bus doesn't go and NOT to allow them, say, to spend 45 minutes shopping before going on (and not, as already noted, to return on the same route).

If Dallas Transit policy was to issue 30-minute transfers, then perhaps this transfer was issued as late as 12:30 or maybe even 12:35, but not conceivably later than that. If the driver waited until 12:45 to move it to 1:00, then it becomes only a 15-minute transfer. More likely it was moved to 1:00 prior to 12:30, giving passengers a "bonus" five minutes rather than penalizing them five minutes. If they issued 45-minute transfers, this one is a real problem.

Now, nobody wants to "cancel" their transfer by tearing it to show an earlier time: why would I want to get on a bus and get a transfer that's good until, say, 3:00 and then cut it back to allow me to get on my next bus no later than 2:45? Clearly, I wouldn't, which is why the tickets are designed this way because if they were done opposite, all I'd have to do is cut the part I was given in order to have more time to do something.

There is, however, nothing that would prevent someone who wanted to prove, for example, that they'd gotten directly on the bus after school and didn't go smoking with the boys in the woods for an hour before coming home, from getting a transfer at 2:30 that the driver cut at 3:00 and then tearing the transfer again to reflect an earlier time. "See, ma? I got on the bus a half-hour before 2:30! I'm late cuz I just barely missed the connecting bus, and here's the transfer to prove it: I had to pay a new fare cuz I was late, that's why I still have the transfer!"

... Or, for that matter, to prevent someone from boarding Cecil McWatters' bus at 6:00, taking a transfer good through 6:30 (or one good until 3:00 at 2:30), and then cutting it back to 1:00, and then say "hey, lookee here what I found in this boy's pocket!"

Everything would be in order on the bus, nothing would be missing or out of place, cut improperly or anything; it was a transfer issued but never used. Happens all the time (it does). The only constraints would be what time McWatters got off from his first shift on the Lakewood route before returning later to drive his second route, which is what he'd been doing when he was stopped at DPD that evening. Was he in the same bus, just driving a different way? Did he still have the transfers from his earlier shift with him? Were there any un-torn transfers left over from the Lakewood shift still in a discarded pack?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

There is, however, nothing that would prevent someone .. .. from boarding Cecil McWatters' bus at 6:00, taking a transfer good through 6:30 (or one good until 3:00 at 2:30), and then cutting it back to 1:00, and then say "hey, lookee here what I found in this boy's pocket!"

Everything would be in order on the bus, nothing would be missing or out of place, cut improperly or anything; it was a transfer issued but never used. Happens all the time (it does). The only constraints would be what time McWatters got off from his first shift on the Lakewood route before returning later to drive his second route, which is what he'd been doing when he was stopped at DPD that evening. Was he in the same bus, just driving a different way? Did he still have the transfers from his earlier shift with him? Were there any un-torn transfers left over from the Lakewood shift still in a discarded pack?

Not much evidence to support such a theory, though, while there is evidence (Bledsoe) that he was in fact a passenger on the bus, and from what we know of the interrogations, it seems he "admitted" that he took a bus.

I cannot figure out what time is shown on this transfer.

[Duke Lane]

Ray, the (expiry) time on the transfer is 1:00 ... "1" on the left, "0" on the right. In any case, it's not 12:36.

I'll see your Bledsoe and raise you a McWatters, as far as the bus goes.

There is absolutely no evidence that Bledsoe was actually on the bus other than her word. As I recall, she or her son also supposedly sold their guest book (page?) with LHO's signature in it, clearly suggesting her desire for notoriety. Her description of the "wild" looking Oswald with the messed-up shirt doesn't square with anything else known or conjectured about him at the time. Is she really a credible witness?

On the other hand, McWatters recalled giving ONE man - who wasn't Oswald - a bus transfer downtown, and "identified" Oswald in the lineup by saying, in effect, that he thought they wanted to know which one of those in the lineup looked most like the BOY who had been clowning around on the bus. While he never said that, no, Oswald was NOT on the bus, he likewise never said that he was, tho' the prima facie evidence appeared to prove otherwise to McWatters (correct date, route and punch).

I'm not propounding it as a theory, I'm merely stating that it can't be shown to be NOT possible, and that the opportunity to jake up some needed evidence was present when they pulled McWatters off of his bus in front of DPD later that evening (I've always wondered how they tracked him down or what sicced them on him in the first place!).

No apparent attempt was made, for example, to confiscate the REST of the book of transfer tickets that McWatters had used earlier in the day to show that the transfer in evidence was actually from McWatters' book and that other transfers surrounding it were issued during the same general time of day, yet at the same time a very thorough search was made to try to track down a laundry tag.

A decent defense attorney could have a field day with it.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Ray, the (expiry) time on the transfer is 1:00 ... "1" on the left, "0" on the right. In any case, it's not 12:36.

Thanks Duke.

I'll see your Bledsoe and raise you a McWatters, as far as the bus goes.

There is absolutely no evidence that Bledsoe was actually on the bus other than her word...... Her description of the "wild" looking Oswald with the messed-up shirt doesn't square with anything else known or conjectured about him at the time. Is she really a credible witness?

Mrs Bledsoe made no bones that she formed an intense dislike for Lee oswald, especially after she heard him speaking on HER telephone in a FOREIGN language. Her description of Oswald's clothing etc. when she saw him on the bus is not particularly credible, but then we don't identify people by their clothing, we identify people by their faces. Bledsoe recognized him, but she owed him money, so she did not want to look at him or be seen by him.

A decent defense attorney could have a field day with it.

Maybe so, but I don't see how Bledsoe's testimony can hurt the defense case. It is no crime to take a bus, and according to the interrogation reports (if I am remembering correctly) Lee Oswald himself told Fritz that he took a bus.

If Lee Oswald says he was on a bus, and Bledsoe (who knew him well by sight) says she saw him on the McWatters bus, then the McWatters bus is good enough for me, despite mcWatters own confusion in the matter.

Why would a lawyer defending Lee Oswald try to prove Mrs. Bledsoe a xxxx?

As far I can see, Bledsoe's testimony is perfectly consistent with Oswald's claim that he was innocent.

[William Kelly]

Ray, the (expiry) time on the transfer is 1:00 ... "1" on the left, "0" on the right. In any case, it's not 12:36.

Thanks Duke.

I'll see your Bledsoe and raise you a McWatters, as far as the bus goes.

There is absolutely no evidence that Bledsoe was actually on the bus other than her word...... Her description of the "wild" looking Oswald with the messed-up shirt doesn't square with anything else known or conjectured about him at the time. Is she really a credible witness?

Mrs Bledsoe made no bones that she formed an intense dislike for Lee oswald, especially after she heard him speaking on HER telephone in a FOREIGN language. Her description of Oswald's clothing etc. when she saw him on the bus is not particularly credible, but then we don't identify people by their clothing, we identify people by their faces. Bledsoe recognized him, but she owed him money, so she did not want to look at him or be seen by him.

A decent defense attorney could have a field day with it.

Maybe so, but I don't see how Bledsoe's testimony can hurt the defense case. It is no crime to take a bus, and according to the interrogation reports (if I am remembering correctly) Lee Oswald himself told Fritz that he took a bus.

If Lee Oswald says he was on a bus, and Bledsoe (who knew him well by sight) says she saw him on the McWatters bus, then the McWatters bus is good enough for me, despite mcWatters own confusion in the matter.

Why would a lawyer defending Lee Oswald try to prove Mrs. Bledsoe a xxxx?

As far I can see, Bledsoe's testimony is perfectly consistent with Oswald's claim that he was innocent.

Thanks Duke, and JRC,

And I forgot to mention that the bus transfer ticket was reportedly found in Oswald's shirt pocket, which would have at least placed him on a bus.

I don't know where Fuhrman got the 12:36PM but it is a pretty precise number, and it just doesn't make any sense.

BK

[Jim Feemster]

Ray, the (expiry) time on the transfer is 1:00 ... "1" on the left, "0" on the right. In any case, it's not 12:36.

Thanks Duke.

I'll see your Bledsoe and raise you a McWatters, as far as the bus goes.

There is absolutely no evidence that Bledsoe was actually on the bus other than her word...... Her description of the "wild" looking Oswald with the messed-up shirt doesn't square with anything else known or conjectured about him at the time. Is she really a credible witness?

Mrs Bledsoe made no bones that she formed an intense dislike for Lee oswald, especially after she heard him speaking on HER telephone in a FOREIGN language. Her description of Oswald's clothing etc. when she saw him on the bus is not particularly credible, but then we don't identify people by their clothing, we identify people by their faces. Bledsoe recognized him, but she owed him money, so she did not want to look at him or be seen by him.

A decent defense attorney could have a field day with it.

Duke and I have had this conversation before but leaning more on Scoggins and his sandwhich than Markham.

By Scoggin's " Glaring Ommission " of his not seeing Oswald or anyone else pass in front of his cab while having his lunch I cannot say that Tippit's killer was walking EAST at anytime as Scoggins was setting at the corner of Tenth and Patton before Markham could have arrived or even started her "approach " to the corner.

If Scoggins didn't see anyone pass in front of his cab walking EAST then no one was walking EAST. After all , IMO, Scooins is a much better credible witness than Helen and he was about twice as close to the scene as was Markam.

I will say this, it has never occurred to me that Tippit's killer could have been waiting there before Scoogins or Markham showed up by way a pre-arranged meeting of some sort. Markham could certainly be persuaded to add to or take away from her testimoney by DPS or others with badges and guns to say she a man step up onto the curb ect...

jim feemster

Maybe so, but I don't see how Bledsoe's testimony can hurt the defense case. It is no crime to take a bus, and according to the interrogation reports (if I am remembering correctly) Lee Oswald himself told Fritz that he took a bus.

If Lee Oswald says he was on a bus, and Bledsoe (who knew him well by sight) says she saw him on the McWatters bus, then the McWatters bus is good enough for me, despite mcWatters own confusion in the matter.

Why would a lawyer defending Lee Oswald try to prove Mrs. Bledsoe a xxxx?

As far I can see, Bledsoe's testimony is perfectly consistent with Oswald's claim that he was innocent.

Thanks Duke, and JRC,

And I forgot to mention that the bus transfer ticket was reportedly found in Oswald's shirt pocket, which would have at least placed him on a bus.

I don't know where Fuhrman got the 12:36PM but it is a pretty precise number, and it just doesn't make any sense.

BK

[William Kelly]

Bill,

Furhman's book on the OJ case, as well as his one about the murder of Martha Moxley, were both very good. That makes his slim, lightweight Warren Commission apologia a real disappointment. I remember seeing a "Hard Copy" type of t.v. show about 10 years ago, where Furhman was profiled. He was said to be a long time JFK assassination "buff," and believed that there had definitely been a conspiracy. I guess he's just another in the lone line of mysteriously converted former conspiracy believers.

Good point about the 12:36 time stamp on the bus ticket. That's just another reason to think that the guy on the bus was not the same "Oswald" who'd been working at the TSBD just a few minutes before. About the shirt he was wearing; Oswald's alleged claims to have changed his shirt have to be taken with a huge grain of salt. I've never placed much credence in those unrecorded interrogation sessions. Oswald's supposed comments often make no sense ("You know what boys do, they get their gun," in reference to why he supposedly had a pistol on him when arrested at the Texas Theater), and I think he may actually have been saying something completely different behind closed doors. Something like, "Come on, guys, I told you I'm an undercover agent who was infiltrating a plot to kill the president. I was trying to stop this... Now, where's my lawyer?"

Well, so far, the two things Furhman says that I've bothered to check into - DJ Drittal (Sic DF Drittal) and the 12:36PM timestamp on the bus transfer are both wrong, so he's Oh for two, so far.

Nor would I want to bother with speculative conversations .

The more I read of Fuhrman, the more I dislike him and what he says.

He may even be deserving of his own thread to straighten out all his mistakes.

BK

Edited September 10, 2008 by William Kelly

[Duke Lane]

... I don't see how Bledsoe's testimony can hurt the defense case. It is no crime to take a bus, and according to the interrogation reports (if I am remembering correctly) Lee Oswald himself told Fritz that he took a bus. If Lee Oswald says he was on a bus, and Bledsoe (who knew him well by sight) says she saw him on the McWatters bus, then the McWatters bus is good enough for me, despite mcWatters own confusion in the matter.

Why would a lawyer defending Lee Oswald try to prove Mrs. Bledsoe a xxxx? As far I can see, Bledsoe's testimony is perfectly consistent with Oswald's claim that he was innocent.

Sticking with the "theory" for a minute, let's say that Lee Oswald actually "got away" either in the Rambler driven by a dark-complected man or by some other as-yet-unknown means. A simple fact of the entire investigation is that Oswald claimed, publicly, not to have shot anybody. These statements were adjudged "lies." Even if we are to take that judgment at face value, the fact that he "lied" about not shooting anybody means that he did shoot somebody, and his declarations of innocence do not exonerate anyone else from also shooting someone. The "lie" about not doing it does not equal the truth of doing it alone, for the assassin abetted may be likewise lying about his accomplice(s).

We also know that the police search for Kennedy and Tippit's killers effectively ended as soon as Oswald was in custody. DPD, when requested to produce transcripts of radio chatter "related to the assassination" (and leaving aside all the obfuscations) only provided transcripts up to around 2:00 p.m. or so, just after he'd been taken in. "The assassination" was over at 2:00. Indeed, you will see where one sergeant, who had been downtown (but not at DP) and responded to the Signal 19 in Oak Cliff, asked if he was needed downtown or anywhere within minutes of Oswald's capture and he was told "no" ... while the search was supposedly still going on downtown! (He went back to northeast Dallas.)

So we've got Oswald in custody, denying his culpability, and the possibility that he's eventually going to spill the beans about how he actually left TSBD. If it was by any kind of motorized transport, someone else was doing the driving, i.e., he had an accessory after the fact if not also before and during. It's not like anyone saw him standing on the side of Elm Street with his thumb out and that Rambler just happened to pick him up!

At the very least, we may not know who this mystery driver was. We've "got our man on both counts," but we suspect we don't have our "other man on either count." Since the search for accomplices was non-existent ("called off" if you prefer), we're now left with how to get him into Oak Cliff from downtown with enough time to kill a cop.

Ouala! we have a bus transfer! We pull a guy in from his bus as he passes in front of HQ (talk about serendipity!), have him identify Oswald (wasn't he who said they wrote up the statement first and had him sign it, and that he thought he was trying to identify what the "kid" on his bus had looked "most closely like" in terms of who was in the lineup?), grab a transfer from one of his transfer books, cut it to an appropriate time, and pull it magically from the pocket of the shirt he'd said he'd changed into after he no longer needed the transfer (or else we say he didn't change his shirt without evidence of his having worn the same one at work, hence the transfer in the same shirt pocket).

What's Captain Fritz gonna say about this discovery? While he took sketchy notes - despite his denial of having done so - it by no means is a verbatim transcript of what was said. "What's with this transfer, son? Did you ride a bus today?" he asks, to which Oswald replies, "it's not a crime to ride a bus." Fritz writes, "rode bus." Is that, then, an "admission" that he rode a bus, or more particularly, the Marsalis Street bus?

IF - and I emphasize the hypothetical! - things like bullet primers dented by a firing pin (seen and attested to by the FBI) suddenly have no such mark; cops' initials that they thought they put inside others disappear; Dr Pepper bottles go astray when they don't have Oswald's fingerprints on them; paper bags show up from somewhere they weren't photographed; and white jackets are found by unknown and unidentified officers and then turn grey ... what makes anyone who might question these things accept a bus transfer as evidence of something that's not proven by anything other than one woman's word?

That woman being one of few who shows up with an attorney in tow, who "hates" Oswald, who brings a paper that she consults to remember what she's "supposed to say," and whose only proof of Oswald's residence in her home is a page from a guest book she no longer has because her son "sold" it.

Does it somehow tend to prove Oswald's innocence? No more than it proves his guilt. It does, however, give him the means to not only "escape" downtown, but also put him in some semblance of a position to kill a cop. Just as there is but one eyewitness to the actual killing of Officer Tippit, there is also but one witness to Oswald's being on McWatters' bus, and both of those witnesses have their foibles that make their testimony less than entirely convincing.

Your assertion "If Lee Oswald says he was on a bus, and Bledsoe (who knew him well by sight) says she saw him on the McWatters bus, then the McWatters bus is good enough for me," is right on up there with Rankin or Redlich's dictate that "the Commission has decided it wants to believe Mrs. Markham, and that's all there is to that." As for "McWatters' own confusion in the matter," I never thought I'd see the day when WCR critics called witnesses "mistaken!"

[J. Raymond Carroll]

As for "McWatters' own confusion in the matter," I never thought I'd see the day when WCR critics called witnesses "mistaken!"

In that case you have neglected the writings of Harold Weisberg who waxed eloquent on the subject of McWatters confusion, recalling from memory. I have always thought that No one disputed the fact that McWatters mixed up the identities of Milton Jones and Lee Oswald.

As for your theory, which I assume is based in part on the story told by Roger Craig, I cannot vouch for Craig's reliability as a witness.

In any case my comments were limited to how I see the defense being handled. As I see it, the defense would not dispute that Lee Oswald was on the bus, and since Bledsoe corroborates the defendant's claim that he took a bus, then there is no need to call McWatters to confirm a fact already proven and stipulated to be true by both sides. The bus transfer is not even needed to complete the proof, but since it is there, we can add it to the pile.

[Don Jeffries]

Duke,

Great post. I don't understand why anyone would automatically accept the bus transfer as authentic, given all we know about the state of other "evidence" against Oswald.

The entire official account of Oswald's post-assassination movements is ridiculous, imho. Every bit of it ought to be questioned. McWatters, Bledsoe, Whaley and Markham would have been torn apart on the witness stand by any first year law student (Whaley acknowledged this himself in his WC testimony).

The best evidence regarding Oswald's movements just after the shooting is, imho, Roger Craig's Rambler sighting (which was corroborated by three other witnesses, all unrelated to each other). How he got from that point to the Texas Theater is something that a real investigation would have considered a top priority.

[Thomas Graves]

[...] I cannot vouch for Craig's reliability as a witness. [...]

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I didn't realize you knew him personally.

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