Richard Randolph Carr

[Bernice Moore]

Hi Dennis.........

As Don said, words to the effect that when one, is selective and uses ""witnesses who may be no more believable than the two you are so passionately trying to discredit.....""

That is where the discord and the eh ?? comes in......what one believes is entirely up to them that is a given.......But when they present whatever as a researcher, and the differences of the said, witnesses for and against, have not been included within the information by anyone.......then that becomes a type of misinformation, a one sided view , and it is not complete, and never can be....

How talking to someone, 10,20, 30, 40 years down the road, after a witness is dead, and or any member of a family, who were not there, clarifys anything, and taking it as a positive, is beyond me.....Their memory is as bad and can be as as some say the witnesses were, and perhaps also there are those who will say anything, for a moments attention, and to be a part of whatever, seemingly a great personality or not, how would one know positively, one cannot......they are after all human..........

I mainly stick to first day when it comes to within Dealey....and that is usually the big why, if at all possible after the W/C scrambled so much within the testimonys and or did not call so many.......FWTIW......

There is within the research, mention of others, with SS IDs, being at the back entrance of the TSBD, as I believe it was also mentioned by Romeck or Rackley, one of them.......does within his statement, as well as by other witnesses there that day, as well as DPD, authourities etc...and I question the "why they would be there "and so quickly, seeing that no SS were stationed, within Dealey that day...this could connect, this could possibly be a reason why, witnesses changed their information, a little talking to perhaps, which is known as pressure.....but as some will say they do not believe those witnesses either, even though some are and were the authourities....and that is entirely their choice.......

There are many out there, who just read, that will not and do not take the time to perhaps go to the witnesses testimony, for instance and or search to find out, what the other side, "the downers "said..in this case being, Rackely and Romack...re Worrell......which is entirely up to them.......but they then walk away with an incomplete picture....and may believe a one sided view........and that spreads.....No matter that there were the two of them or not, and stated the opposite , to what Worrel did, their confusion whihc is seen, within their W/C testimony should imo have been included....and not just within Worrel....with all....

Also when such is being reseached, one must try to look into the photos, or perhaps work with others who can, which is the other part of the research, to see if what any witnesses may say can be if possible, corroberated..IMO.....In this case, what Rackley & Romack stated about seeing the back door, of the TSBD, . from the photos I posted in the Worrel thread, and am working on, further that I have found within my files, puts great doubt on that information into their statements, and after all as it has been mentioned by Tom, I believe, that whomever may have gotten Carr to blow smokel !!, how do we know that the other three were not..as far as Carr is concerned or Worrel, and they possibly were convinced to.blow it......??

If one is to be taken serious imo, within their research then they must include , both sides, not just what they feel backs up their thoughts....or scenario.....

We all at many timess differ, it is not the end of the world, if something new comes to light, that has been overlooked, and that continues almost on a daily basis, we all learn, hopefully new information..

To each their own, but I believe I see within this choosing of information within any article, by anyone, of a selective nature, in any way... why the research world is really in such a G/D confusing mess....

Antti : I have found these two photos showing the construction, for you and all, they were taken by Cubluck....one is dated Nov.22/63 the other Nov.24/63....

Duke :I am also still working within the photos re the viewing by anyone, of the back entrance of the TSBD, that any witness could possibly have had from Houston Street that day......I have not gotten to the photos of the TSBD, as yet, and possibly seeing if anyone there could have been Worrell, but will do so, as I mentioned to you...I would....

See, I do not know if anyone ran from the back door entrance of the TSBD, chances are I may never, positively, and no one does right now, but there is within, much to be found...IMO....

Thanks all...for your time....

B....

Edited February 5, 2009 by Bernice Moore

[Bernice Moore]

Antti:

All, here is another, with the building completed, if wanted for counting floors..

HSCA EX 15..

B....

[John Dolva]

B : post with photos "... these two photos showing the construction, ..."

_____

It seems to me that the first photo has been cropped. The centre is to the right and maybe below that again.

The lines of sight that makes a view possible are above where RRC said he was. Which perhaps begs the question that if he were where he could have seen what he claimed, why not say so?

Because he wasn't and someone filled him in with misguided statements?

Because he was and for some reason he wouldn't say so, (perhaps if he did he would then have to say other things)?

Because it's a deliberate obfuscation for some purpose?

Because he was after his '15 minutes' of fame?

Because my analysis is garbage?

What? What else?

______________

B, This ties in with an attempt to develop a universal method for determining photographers position in "Missing Nix Frames". (A resolution of that could be helpful here and in other photos too).

'Q'

[Don Jeffries]

Duke,

Perhaps you don't realize it, but you often come off as abrasive in your posts, especially when someone disagrees with you. Perhaps this is your style, or perhaps you don't care. This is one of the things that drives people away from these forums. No one has stronger opinions than I do, but I feel that it's possible to debate and disagree without being arrogant or dismissive.

I've been studying this case for about 35 years now. Many here have at least that much experience, if not more. I think you're scrutinizing Carr, and now Worrell, to a degree that defies logic. If you succeed in converting a majority of people on this forum to your view that Carr could not have seen what he said he saw, and neither could Worrell, what have you accomplished? As Antti has pointed out, the best you possibly have shown is that Carr might have been inconsistent. You also seem to ignore the fact that several witnesses claimed that their FBI reports and/or Warren Commission testimony had been altered and did not accurately reflect what they'd said.

Bernice did a good job in questioning the credibility of Romeck and Rackley, the witnesses you used to discredit Worrell. In my opinion, she cast as much doubt on their word as you did on Worrell's. I also agree with Bernice's view that talking to Worrell's relatives is meaningless, at least in terms of trying to prove anything conclusively. I've seen the interview Mark Oakes conducted with Worrell's mother some years ago. In my view, she had really nothing substantial to offer. Mark never brought up the fact that her son had long been included in the list of strange deaths related to the assassination. Maybe he felt uncomfortable bringing this up, but I didn't even sense that she realized her son was the source of any real interest.

I stand by what I said regarding referring to Worrell as Dickey. Regardless of whether or not his family called him that, what other witness has been referred to on this forum, by you or anyone else, by their first name? Especially a nickname like Dickey? Considering the effort you're expending in an attempt to discredit him as a witness, it's only logical to assume that the unusual use of such a familiar nickname is meant to further demean him. I'm not suggesting you're doing that, I'm only saying that it's a reasonable assumpton to make. Btw, have you shown any of his family members the posts you've written about him?

Edited February 6, 2009 by Don Jeffries

[Antti Hynonen]

QUOTE(Antti Hynonen @ Feb 5 2009, 02:26 AM)

Duke says:

QUOTE

The fact that Richard Carr is on record as telling three completely different stories (emphasis mine) about what he'd seen should be enough to destroy his credibility with any but the most ardent of the faithful, who - as the sobriquet implies - take things on faith rather than on fact, and whose faith can't and won't be shaken by contrary facts. Yet you'd rather tell me that I'm "a bit off base here" when all I've dealt with are the facts?!?

Sure, Carr didn't parrot the exact same facts at each deposition, agreed, but 3 completely different stories?

How about 3 somewhat inconsistent stories, instead?

DUKE: OK, let's go with "somewhat inconsistent."

Sounds much better, thanks!

DUKE: Before taking it any further, what floor or range of floors would you stipulate Carr to have been at on the new courthouse building. He said that he was on his way up to the ninth to see the foreman and had reached either the sixth or seventh, but you suggest that he could have gotten all the way up to the ninth where the foreman was (and, being so close to a job interview, did he decide to go back down to the ground level without seeing the foreman or not?); do you think he might've maybe gone to the tenth? Eleventh? All the way to the top of the building? Climbing six flights of stairs can easily be confused with climbing ten ("somewhat" inconsistent), but I'm curious how many additional flights you're willing to allow him to have climbed in order to see what he claimed to have seen.

Yes, the foreman probably should have been on the 9th, them folks do move around you know, the foreman could have been on the 12th instead and Carr could have been on the 9th when he saw what he saw. Hard to say how it actually went down, since it all took place some 8 years prior to my birth.

The point is to try and make sense of what Carr claims to have seen imo, and not to focus on what floor he was on. If you scrutinize every word of each witness, I'm sure you will be able to do the same kind of "debunking" with a great number of them. You seem to approach his case now with the assumption that Carr was a pathological lxxr, whereas I, for example, allow him the benefit of the doubt and consider him a bona fide witness.

DUKE: The fact that you can't see the 7th floor of the courthouse from the 6th floor of the TSBD certainly doesn't mean that you couldn't see the 6th - or 5th - floor of the TSBD from the 7th floor of the courthouse, now, does it. In fact, who's to say that the Old Red Courthouse, completed during the late 19th century, was as high as it is today back in 1963? It might also have moved. Or maybe the foreman wasn't on the ninth floor, but maybe on the 11th. Whatever it takes to show that these "somewhat" inconsistent recollections are nevertheless accurate ....

Undoubtedly, that narrow staircase you see in the aerial was actually 10 or 20 yards wide to enable someone on them to have been seen out beyond the buildings that today block one's view. The photos that makes the stairs look narrower than that have obviously been altered.

Do you really expect me to reply to that?

QUOTE(Antti Hynonen @ Feb 5 2009, 02:26 AM)

In post #1 (this thread, link here above) you expressed doubts about R.R. Carr's enlistment in the military. You also stated that he may not have been a Ranger at all. In post #40 of this thread I showed you his enlistment data.

DUKE: Right. Since it doesn't include the word "Ranger" anywhere in that data, how have you proved he was a Ranger?

If his obituary states he was a Ranger, will you then consider Carr's statements as his best recollections of the events of 11/22/1963 and him an honest witness? I do hope he is our Richard Randolph Carr. The USA is a big country and I'm sure there are many folks with the exact same name. You and I have done some fairly thorough research and we've only come across 2 men with that name. The other was born in the mid 1850's (not our man) and the other could very well be our man as discussed earlier on this thread. Hoping for a break-through regarding his identity. I'm sure Myrtle could set the record straight about this RR Carr.

DUKE: Once you've done so, I recommend getting in touch with the Rangers at Fort Benning so they can properly include him in their records. I'm sure they'll appreciate it, especially when you show them his sworn testimony that he was one of them, and since he's no longer alive to be called to task, they should just go ahead and add him to their roster. I can't imagine they'd want (or have) better proof than that, can you? And if they don't, why should we demand any better? After all, he was in the Army, so at worst, he's only "somewhat" wrong about being a Ranger.

Well, it's not my business to update military records, nor do I want to take that task upon me. I'm mostly interested in what Carr had to say after the events of 11/22/1963 and I do find it interesting that he was attacked on several occasions especially after he came forward with his statements.

[Antti Hynonen]

Bernice thanks for the photos! Glad to see Dealey Plaza from a completely new angle as well. It immediately opened up other possibilities regarding angles and lines of sight.

[William Kelly]

Bernice thanks for the photos! Glad to see Dealey Plaza from a completely new angle as well. It immediately opened up other possibilities regarding angles and lines of sight.

There's also scenes from the SS reenactment film from the Sixth Floor snipers window that looks down Houston and you can see the new construction girders.

BK

[Duke Lane]

Perhaps you don't realize it, but you often come off as abrasive in your posts, especially when someone disagrees with you. Perhaps this is your style, or perhaps you don't care. This is one of the things that drives people away from these forums. No one has stronger opinions than I do, but I feel that it's possible to debate and disagree without being arrogant or dismissive.

I tend to be dismissive when, for example, I show that a line of sight is impossible and people argue that it really isn't just because the person said they saw something: so Carr said he was on the sixth floor ... no, the seventh floor ... oh, well he could have been on the 10th floor then ... the important thing being to establish the "truth" of what he said he saw.

That, IMO, requires selective use of evidence: if he said he saw something from the sixth or seventh floor, but he couldn't have seen what he claims he saw, then we dismiss his inability to have seen something of possible importance by making him "mistaken" in his whereabouts, or the physical evidence of the impossibility somehow inaccurate or no longer relevent.

Bernice did a good job in questioning the credibility of Romeck and Rackley, the witnesses you used to discredit Worrell. In my opinion, she cast as much doubt on their word as you did on Worrell's. I also agree with Bernice's view that talking to Worrell's relatives is meaningless, at least in terms of trying to prove anything conclusively.... You also seem to ignore the fact that several witnesses claimed that their FBI reports and/or Warren Commission testimony had been altered and did not accurately reflect what they'd said.

I don't agree with that assessment: all that I could note was that Bernice questioned how "reliable" they were when they said that "Secret Service" people surrounded the building when we all know that there were no Secret Service people there. That's a simple observation of a man who did not claim to have seen their USSS ID or that they told him they were USSS, but who merely made an assumption based, presumably, on the men's dress and that most people associate the USSS as being with the President. Their incorrect presumption of a relatively minor fact calls their entire testimony into question? I disagree.

Talking with someone's relatives certainly can't be considered as "conclusive," especially if we can't even count on what witnesses themselves said then or say now, and even if we could, it's possible if not probable that their statements/testimony were altered, so we really don't know anything about this case and there are no FACTS, merely "the record," which is all or part fabrication. What was important - just as it is with Richard Carr - is whether his own family believed him, if he was often taken to flights of fancy, braggadoccio, exaggeration, telling tall tales or outright lies, or if he'd ever told any of them that he'd made up the story.

If he had, would you dismiss their saying so and say that it had no bearing on what he'd told the WC? If you credit their saying so - thereby discrediting what he swore under oath - how or why would you discredit anything else they had to say? Dickey told his mother that Earl Warren had given him, Amos Euins and Robert Jackson the use of his official limousine the evening after they testified to tour Washington. What do you make of that? Presuming that his mother didn't "misremember," does it in any way reflect on his credibility?

I stand by what I said regarding referring to Worrell as Dickey. Regardless of whether or not his family called him that, what other witness has been referred to on this forum, by you or anyone else, by their first name? Especially a nickname like Dickey?

Well, there's Donnie Benavides, whom I've called "Donnie" many, many times. He continued to go by that name throughout his adult life, and that's also what his wife called him when we spoke several years ago. Ditto Tom (Temple F.) Bowley, whom I've visited with several times. What would you have me call any of them? You might consider the name to be dimunitive, but you have to realize that, in Texas, people have names like "Billy" and "Tommie" put on their birth certificates in place of William and Thomas, and many of them go by the full name "Billy" and "Tommie" even in place of "Bill" and "Tom." Should I call them "James" and "Domingo" and "Temple" when nobody else does or ever did, and they never went by any of those names outside of official documents? Or would you prefer that I stick with their last names?

I take note of your objection, but I'm not going to change a thing. Whether I agree with them or like them or not, they are "real people" to me - not merely names in a book - and that is what they are or were known by, so that's what I'm going to call them. You can call me Duke whether you like or agree with me, you don't have to call me "Mark" if you don't.

I've been studying this case for about 35 years now. Many here have at least that much experience, if not more. I think you're scrutinizing Carr, and now Worrell, to a degree that defies logic. If you succeed in converting a majority of people on this forum to your view that Carr could not have seen what he said he saw, and neither could Worrell, what have you accomplished?

Actually, I looked into Worrell's story quite a while ago; the Carr inquiry is much more recent.

The object isn't and wasn't to scrutinize and dissect one small portion of what either of them said, but to view the details of what they said in light of the totality of their testimony. It is not solely a question of whether Dickey Worrell saw someone run from the side of the TSBD while Romack and Rackley say he couldn't have; it is a question of whether he was even in Dealey Plaza. If he wasn't, then it doesn't really matter what he said he saw, does it? Can you agree to that much, with an emphasis on "if?" If not - if you think his observations are valid whether or not he was even downtown that day, please tell me so I don't waste the pain of carpal tunnel trying to explain how he couldn't have seen what he claimed to have seen if he wasn't there.

That - and not what he did or didn't see - is the key question, just as is whether Carr could have physically been able to see what he claimed in Shaw to have seen. If not, then to what end should we credit what they had to say?

It's easy to put it all off to being "somewhat inconsistent," but then we have to wonder why people like Bill Newman (is it okay to call him Bill? His actual name is Billy, by the way) and others can be consistent down to the movements of their little fingers, while others aren't expected to know which floor they were on or where a car was parked or how many men they saw or what color the driver really was.

If a supposed witness's statements cannot be dissected and found to be either in error or, for that matter impossible, you realize that the detailed statements of, say, the "three blind mice" on the 5th floor that tend to exonerate Lee Oswald from being the shooter must likewise be dismissed or ignored as well, right? If the Devil is in the details, you've got to remember that he doesn't play fair: if the details can't be used to disprove something, then they can't be used to prove anything either, and then the whole question of the JFK assassination comes down to "did he get shot and killed or not" since nothing anyone said or did (or said they said or did) has any value (especially since it might not be what they actually said they said or did!).

Maybe we should just have one last poll and get it over with: who believes JFK is dead? Great. Let's close the forum now that our work is done.

(And, damn! There I go being abrasive again!)

[Duke Lane]

... the foreman probably should have been on the 9th, them folks do move around you know, the foreman could have been on the 12th instead and Carr could have been on the 9th when he saw what he saw. ... The point is to try and make sense of what Carr claims to have seen imo, and not to focus on what floor he was on. If you scrutinize every word of each witness, I'm sure you will be able to do the same kind of "debunking" with a great number of them. You seem to approach his case now with the assumption that Carr was a pathological lxxr, whereas I, for example, allow him the benefit of the doubt and consider him a bona fide witness.

This strikes me as a backwards way to look at the question. How does one "make sense of" what he presumably saw if we won't first examine the question of whether he saw it or could have seen it.

Isn't this what we accuse the WC of doing, presuming that Oswald was guilty, collecting and presenting only the data that supported that conclusion, ignoring that which put it into dispute, and stretching the facts that it did collect and present in such a way to support its preordained conclusion? I think that, on the face of it, the Report did a really great job of "making sense" of Oswald's presumed guilt, don't you? I mean, as long as you don't read any further ...?

Nobody saw Oswald on the 6th floor, nobody saw him with a gun, but because nobody saw him at the crucial time or the minutes leading up to it, and since he did carry some sort of package into the TSBD that morning - because nobody could prove he didn't shoot Kennedy - then we "must" presume that he did it. We criticize the WC for daring to do that, despite the exculpatory evidence it turned up despite its best efforts not to.

How is this situation different? Carr said he saw something from the sixth or seventh floor on his way to the ninth, it's possible that the foreman had gone elsewhere or that Carr was on a higher floor than he'd thought, so since he said he saw something, we "must" presume that he saw it and that any of the other "facts" he gave us must be mistaken in favor of our preordained conclusion, and nobody should dare criticize us for doing that no matter what exclusionary evidence we choose to ignore.

Why is dissecting Carr's statements and testimony any different than dissecting others'? For example, so what if Helen Markham, who took a bus to work every day at the same time said, in the only two times she said anything about what time it was (and was "confused and inconsistent" in so doing), said that the time was at first 1:06 (on her affidavit) or that it "wasn't but 1:06 or 1:07" (in her testimony)? The conclusion is that Oswald shot Tippit at 1:15, so what value is there in dissecting her every word that it was earlier? And so what if Tom Bowley made a statement corroborating her?

And how did that conclusion come about? Through the realization that Oswald could not have left 1026 North Beckley at 1:04 and have gotten to 10th & Patton by 1:06, 1:07 or 1:10, at least without help, which the WC likewise presumed he didn't have. It therefore determined that Tippit was shot at the latest possible moment before Donnie Benavides (but not Tom Bowley, whom it then could not ignore with his 1:10 estimate) made the radio call.

Their presumption: Oswald did it. Your presumption: Carr saw it.

There's no cause to "scrutinize every word of every witness" lest I and others are "able to do the same kind of 'debunking' with a great number of them," yet I presume - and it seems pretty self-evident - that it's okay to "scrutinize every word of every witness" if doing so can "debunk" the WC conclusions. It's not even a case of "what's good for the goose" not being "good for the gander," it's just that some "reasonable conclusions" (e.g., that Oswald killed Kennedy and Tippit alone and unaided) should be considered under a harsh light beneath a strong microscope, while others (e.g., that Carr did and could see what he said he saw) should be accepted at face value.

Therefore, whether or not Lee Oswald was even at 10th & Patton ... er, um, I mean, regardless of whether or not Carr could see the area where he (belatedly) claimed to have seen three men emerge from behind the TSBD and get into a Rambler station wagon, we must presume that they were in fact there and did what he said they did and move forward from that "established fact," is that about right? One cow is sacred and the other a blasphemy?

Somehow, I think that if Johnny Brewer had said one thing about Oswald in front of his store and sneaking into the theater in his 1963 affidavit, another in his 1964 testimony, and another years later on a television show, most of us would be all over him for doing so, nit-picking the details of his various stories to death, and reviling him for making stuff up (and whoever had "revealed" his "duplicity" would be lauded), yet when a "conspiracy witness" does the same thing, we put it off to bad memory, not paying attention to details at the time it happened, or any of a handful of other innocent explanations (and vilifying anyone who attempted to "debunk" him), while ignoring at the same time that many "non-conspiracy witnesses" can recall the exact details of everything they did, saw and said all these many years later ... just as many "conspiracy witnesses" can too.

Those we want to be believable, are; those we don't, aren't; and no amount of "facts" will change our minds.

DUKE: The fact that you can't see the 7th floor of the courthouse from the 6th floor of the TSBD certainly doesn't mean that you couldn't see the 6th - or 5th - floor of the TSBD from the 7th floor of the courthouse, now, does it. In fact, who's to say that the Old Red Courthouse, completed during the late 19th century, was as high as it is today back in 1963? It might also have moved. Or maybe the foreman wasn't on the ninth floor, but maybe on the 11th. Whatever it takes to show that these "somewhat" inconsistent recollections are nevertheless accurate ....

Undoubtedly, that narrow staircase you see in the aerial was actually 10 or 20 yards wide to enable someone on them to have been seen out beyond the buildings that today block one's view. The photos that makes the stairs look narrower than that have obviously been altered.

Do you really expect me to reply to that?

Nope.

In post #1 (this thread, link here above) you expressed doubts about R.R. Carr's enlistment in the military. You also stated that he may not have been a Ranger at all. In post #40 of this thread I showed you his enlistment data.

Right. Since it doesn't include the word "Ranger" anywhere in that data, how have you proved he was a Ranger?

If his obituary states he was a Ranger, will you then consider Carr's statements as his best recollections of the events of 11/22/1963 and him an honest witness? ... You and I have done some fairly thorough research and we've only come across 2 men with that name. ... I'm sure Myrtle could set the record straight about this RR Carr. ... it's not my business to update military records, nor do I want to take that task upon me. I'm mostly interested in what Carr had to say after the events of 11/22/1963 and I do find it interesting that he was attacked on several occasions especially after he came forward with his statements.

Let's say that it does say that he was an Army Ranger; does that make the obituary a correct historical document, or a reiteration of his family's belief that he was because that's what he'd told them, too? Or if it doesn't specifically state that he was a Ranger: will you concede that he lied under oath, or will you insist that the family just didn't mention this in his obit? If the obit does say he was, and the Army says he wasn't, who are you going to believe?

(The weight of it now is that independent researchers intent upon compiling a list of all WWII Army Rangers did not find his name among the records of WWII Army Rangers, and we have no cause to believe that they purposely omitted his name despite evidence of his service. If they won't take his sworn testimony that he was an Army Ranger as "proof" that he indeed was, on what basis should we? If they do, I'll willingly conceded that if they say he was a Ranger, then he was an Army Ranger; will you concede that if they don't and won't say he was, then he clearly wasn't?)

And what if Myrtle is his wife (and the same wife he had in 1963 through 1969) and doesn't corroborate all of these claims we've been discussing? Or what if she's a second or third wife and has no real idea about any of this other than that's what he'd told everyone?

[Antti Hynonen]

DUKE: Let's say that it does say that he was an Army Ranger; does that make the obituary a correct historical document, or a reiteration of his family's belief that he was because that's what he'd told them, too? Or if it doesn't specifically state that he was a Ranger: will you concede that he lied under oath, or will you insist that the family just didn't mention this in his obit? If the obit does say he was, and the Army says he wasn't, who are you going to believe?

(The weight of it now is that independent researchers intent upon compiling a list of all WWII Army Rangers did not find his name among the records of WWII Army Rangers, and we have no cause to believe that they purposely omitted his name despite evidence of his service. If they won't take his sworn testimony that he was an Army Ranger as "proof" that he indeed was, on what basis should we? If they do, I'll willingly conceded that if they say he was a Ranger, then he was an Army Ranger; will you concede that if they don't and won't say he was, then he clearly wasn't?)

And what if Myrtle is his wife (and the same wife he had in 1963 through 1969) and doesn't corroborate all of these claims we've been discussing? Or what if she's a second or third wife and has no real idea about any of this other than that's what he'd told everyone?

Okay, what do you think the obituary will prove? Why go through the trouble of getting it if it is likely only a "reiteration of his family's belief" and won't be to your satisfaction anyhow?

Unless it is a story entirely different to what we've been told about him, what then?

Yes, what is "value" of the obituary? If it states something rather different than what we have been told about RR Carr, the JFK assassination witness, what then? Do we simply assume that he must be a totally different man?

Or, do we assume that RR just committed perjury at the Shaw trial?

I think if the obituary is indeed that of the the same man (same RR Carr we're hoping for, right?), it will state the most relevant things about him/his life and help us put his credibility issue to rest. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if his wife might be willing to confirm some of RR's statements, the Ranger issue, especially if the obituary supports what we know about him.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what it says before we make a judgement.

[Duke Lane]

Okay, what do you think the obituary will prove? Why go through the trouble of getting it if it is likely only a "reiteration of his family's belief" and won't be to your satisfaction anyhow?

Because someone else who apparently would have preferred that anyone other than themself be the one to do the actual research insisted on it.

Did we have his service number, btw? I didn't notice that in his enlistment data, or maybe I overlooked it....

[Duke Lane]

Okay, what do you think the obituary will prove? Why go through the trouble of getting it if it is likely only a "reiteration of his family's belief" and won't be to your satisfaction anyhow? Unless it is a story entirely different to what we've been told about him, what then?

Yes, what is "value" of the obituary? If it states something rather different than what we have been told about RR Carr, the JFK assassination witness, what then? Do we simply assume that he must be a totally different man? Or, do we assume that RR just committed perjury at the Shaw trial?

I think if the obituary is indeed that of the the same man (same RR Carr we're hoping for, right?), it will state the most relevant things about him/his life and help us put his credibility issue to rest. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if his wife might be willing to confirm some of RR's statements, the Ranger issue, especially if the obituary supports what we know about him.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what it says before we make a judgement.

Still waiting on it in the mail; it wasn't in yesterday's or today's, and they only called two days ago to say it was going to go out in the mail, presumably that day. Will keep the old eyes open for it.

If we find that the obit is for a Richard Robert Carr, then we're back at square one; no obit for Richard Randolph Carr. If it's for a Richard R. Carr and some of the information included in it - say, it says he was "a witness to the JFK assassination" or "lived many years in Dallas" - then we've still got a possibility if not a probability. If it doesn't give us any details that identify him as being "our" Richard Carr, then it's to the phone we go.

And it's to the phone we go in any case to see what we can clarify. If his wife and/or kid(s) - assuming that those we've got are actually his family - say something like "oh, yeah, he told that story a lot, but he told a lot of 'stories,'" or his wife says that the first time she'd heard about his "witnessing the assassination" was at the Christmas party at Mary Sue Brown and Elsie Johnson's place, then it's going to raise an awful big "hmmmmmm."

Will something like that prove anything? No, the faithful will be able to cling to their belief of what he saw (after all, they're convinced he could see through buildings!), while the more judicious might wonder at the fact that the man didn't say anything at all to his spouse until he got into a game of one-upmanship with a couple of women who knew Jack Ruby.

In the meanwhile, I wrote back to the guy who maintains the RangerRoster.org website with more questions. He notes first of all that "our" Richard R. Carr's ASN (Army Serial Number) was 14139454. Further:

Q:

With regard to Anzio (Cisterna), I have read somewhere that it was the 3rd or 4th Bn that sustained almost complete losses there, to the tune of fewer than 20, possibly fewer than 10 survived. Is there a list of the survivors of those battles from either or both of these batallions?

A:

The 1st and the 3rd were almost decimated. 12 killed, 36 wounded, 743 captured per Bob Black's book,

Rangers in World War II

, pg 171. The 4th which had been in reserve was separated into groups - those without enough overseas time went to the 1st Special Service Force and the remaining 19 officers, 134 enlisted men were returned to the United States to Camp Buckner, NC. I do not have a list of the the few from the 1st and 3rd who escaped being captured.

Q:

It's also been said that members of the 5th Bn were detached to a numbered "force" that fought in Italy, even while the entire batallion was not and did not. Is that definitively so one way or the other?

A:

Not true to my knowledge, and would not be logical as the 5th was training/preparing for D-Day invasion at Omaha during the time of Anzio and Cisterna. However, sometimes the Army does the illogical...

Q:

We have been able to determine this much about who we think is the man in question:

[enlistment data cited]

I don't know if any of that can help identify his service as a Ranger or not; I thought I had his service number somewhere in that, but I don't see it now and can't remember where else I might have come across it.

A:

It is possible that Richard R. Carr is the brother/relative of another Carr who was in the 1st or 3rd Ranger Battalion. Both the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions had Carr's listed but no "Richard Carr". Sorry that I cannot provide anymore details.

Those so inclined may cling to the thread of hope that the fact that "sometimes the Army does the illogical" permits the possibility that at least a part of the 5th Bn was at Anzio and that Richard Carr might have been one of them (we have already heard that he may simply have been "attached to" the Rangers while not actually being a Ranger, despite his claim to having been "a member" of the Fifth, and thus may be telling the truth).

It does appear, however, from the last answer that, unless he enlisted under an alias (which his enlistment data does not attest to), his name does not appear on any Ranger roster and he therefore was not a Ranger. We may be satisfied that as, perhaps, a mechanic assigned to support the Ranger batallion's transportation needs (I imagine they drove jeeps or something, right?), he was technically correct in calling himself a "member of the Fifth Ranger Batallion" even if he was giving a (deliberately?) false impression of being a Ranger, especially with his being "qualified as an expert" with rifles as part of that batallion.

Why someone qualifying, even in boot camp, as an expert marksman being allowed to remain as a mechanic or a cook is a tad beyond me, especially then and especially at Carr's age at the time (20), but as said above, "sometimes the Army does the illogical."

Actually, according to Ron's first answer above, it doesn't seem at all that only 13 members of the batallion "survived," as cited by Carr: only 12 were actually killed, 36 wounded (without being captured?), the vast majority (743) having been captured and apparently not killed.

All in all, I don't quite understand how anyone can find these discrepancies to be supportive of his reliability and veracity: it strikes me like a little kid telling most of the truth or enough of it to be considered "honest," while keeping his fingers crossed behind his back. But we'll hopefully figure out what the real truth is (not that I think everyone will accept it!) in due course.

[Thomas Graves]

[...] Whether he could have seen such a person 250+ yards away with the clarity he claims to have (able to discern not only someone wearing glasses beneath a hat brim, but also that the frames were "thick") is an altogether different question, and it appears from the descriptions I'd posted from an Army artillery manual that well pre-dates even Carr's birth, that he could not have. [...]

______________________________________________________

Dear Detective Lane,

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the only way Carr was able to discern that the man in the window was wearing any kind of glasses at all was because he (the man) was wearing glasses with frames sufficiently thick and dark-colored to, by definition, be visible to a keen-eyed observer some 250 yards away? If so, then we only need to determine whether or not Carr was sufficiently keen-eyed. LOL

The sort of glasses that Richard Cain was known to wear, for example?

Oh, by the way, I wonder what kind of glasses Malcolm (Mac) Wallace was wearing in the Fall of 1963?

Does your precious Army Artillery Manual actually say that it is unfeasable to try to spy thick, dark-colored, "horn rimmed" glass frames with the naked eye from 250 yards away? LOL

_______________________________________________

bump

[Duke Lane]

[...] Whether he could have seen such a person 250+ yards away with the clarity he claims to have (able to discern not only someone wearing glasses beneath a hat brim, but also that the frames were "thick") is an altogether different question, and it appears from the descriptions I'd posted from an Army artillery manual that well pre-dates even Carr's birth, that he could not have. [...]

Dear Detective Lane,

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the only way Carr was able to discern that the man in the window was wearing any kind of glasses at all was because he (the man) was wearing glasses with frames sufficiently thick and dark-colored to, by definition, be visible to a keen-eyed observer some 250 yards away? If so, then we only need to determine whether or not Carr was sufficiently keen-eyed. LOL

The sort of glasses that Richard Cain was known to wear, for example? Oh, by the way, I wonder what kind of glasses Malcolm (Mac) Wallace was wearing in the Fall of 1963?

Does your precious Army Artillery Manual actually say that it is unfeasable to try to spy thick, dark-colored, "horn rimmed" glass frames with the naked eye from 250 yards away? LOL

Dear Tommy-Tom,

It's not my manual, and I only came across it while trying to Google something that could tell me what could be seen at a distance, or how tall things appear at various distances, e.g., a six-foot man would appear to be one inch tall at 500 yards, or whatever.

The manual is Customs of Service for Non-Commissioned Officers and Soldiers (Kautz, August V., Captain, Sixth US Infantry; J.B. Lippincott & Company, Philadelphia, 1864) and can be found online for a more complete reading and reviews. Apparently, it is still something of a "standard" military text (over 1000 Google results on the title, including at least one "military review"), however much it may or may not apply to today's armies or technologies.

A chapter on "The Principles of Firing" states that an infantryman taking aim at enemy soldiers (whether with riflle or cannon) could estimate the distance to his target with an unaided eye according to these visible clues:

• At twenty-five to thirty yards, you can see the white of the eye;
  
• At eighty yards, the men's eyes are distinct points;
  
• At one hundred and fifty yards, you can see the line of the men's eyes;
  
• At two hundred yards, the men's heads are distinctly visible;
  
• At four hundred yards, the ornaments are visible on the head-dress, and colors are distinguishable.
  

Using Google Earth's ruler function, the approximate distance from where the construction staircase was to the southeast (nearest) windows on the TSBD is about 850 feet or 283 yards, nearly the distance of three football fields. That's about 3½ times the distance that "men's eyes are distinct points," nearly twice the distance at which "the line of the men's eyes" is visible, and half-again the distance that "the men's heads are distinctly visible."

Draw your own conclusions. It strikes me that the ability to see glasses on someone's face at 3½ times the distance most people can make out other people's eyes would put that someone's vision in the 70/20 or 20/6 range (can see at 20 feet what most people can only see at 6 feet); I'm okay with it being 20/10 given the larger size of the glasses, even allowing that they were not hidden by or in the shadow of the hat's brim.

I'd say that the burden of proof of such exceptional vision would be upon you to prove and not me to disprove. Not having seen a photo of him at age 40, for all I know he wore coke-bottle glasses himself, but I'm at least allowing that he had 20/20 vision.

Thanks as ever for your insightful feedback and thoughtful questions. Whom is it that you think Carr saw, Cain or Wallace or both?

Love always, Dukie-poo

[Antti Hynonen]

Duke Lane Posted Feb 7 2009, 10:42 PM

QUOTE(Antti Hynonen @ Feb 7 2009, 12:40 PM)

Okay, what do you think the obituary will prove? Why go through the trouble of getting it if it is likely only a "reiteration of his family's belief" and won't be to your satisfaction anyhow? Unless it is a story entirely different to what we've been told about him, what then?

Yes, what is "value" of the obituary? If it states something rather different than what we have been told about RR Carr, the JFK assassination witness, what then? Do we simply assume that he must be a totally different man? Or, do we assume that RR just committed perjury at the Shaw trial?

I think if the obituary is indeed that of the the same man (same RR Carr we're hoping for, right?), it will state the most relevant things about him/his life and help us put his credibility issue to rest. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if his wife might be willing to confirm some of RR's statements, the Ranger issue, especially if the obituary supports what we know about him.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what it says before we make a judgement.

Still waiting on it in the mail; it wasn't in yesterday's or today's, and they only called two days ago to say it was going to go out in the mail, presumably that day. Will keep the old eyes open for it.

If we find that the obit is for a Richard Robert Carr, then we're back at square one; no obit for Richard Randolph Carr. If it's for a Richard R. Carr and some of the information included in it - say, it says he was "a witness to the JFK assassination" or "lived many years in Dallas" - then we've still got a possibility if not a probability. If it doesn't give us any details that identify him as being "our" Richard Carr, then it's to the phone we go.

Duke, I'm 99.9% sure that the man we have been researching, born in Georgia 1922, enlisted in the Army in GA, and passed away in 1996 is called Richard Randolph Carr. As I explained in a post of mine earlier, this information was available through people search, accessible through whitepages.com.

I commend you on your efforts in trying to establish his Ranger status. I still provide for a 10% chance that the man we have researched is a different Richard Randolph Carr, than the one who lived in Tx, and witnessed the JFK assassination in 1963. However, if that is the case, we are indeed in square 1 for establishing his credibility & learning more about his background.

In a previous post I attached links to on-line writings on Ranger history. In WW2 a special force was established prior to Anzio, this was the called the 6615th Ranger Force. As I recall it was a unit formed of several Ranger and other units.

The 6615th Ranger Force was formed specially for use in Operation Shingle (the Anzio battle). The 1st, 2nd, and 4th United States Ranger Battalions, the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, and several other units were molded into a temporary regiment given the name "6615th Ranger Force." Colonel William Orlando Darby, the former commander of the famous 1st Ranger Battalion, became the regimental commanding officer. Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Dammer served as the regimental executive officer.

Also this:

The regular use of the Rangers for conventional missions disturbed many of Darby's men. On 28 November, Major RoY A. Murray, commanding officer of the 4th Ranger Battalion, wrote to the chief, Army Ground Forces, in an effort to resolve certain related problems. Murray pointed out that the Rangers did not have a clear-cut directive that defined their purpose and were thus hampered in long-range planning. Although a directive establishing that the 1st Ranger Battalion was to be for training and demonstration purposes had been issued on 1 June 1942, it had been superseded by events, and no consistent written or unwritten policy had ever replaced it.

Murray saw three problems as plaguing the Rangers. The first and most pressing was the replacement of casualties. After losing well-trained men in combat, the battalions had to remain out of action for a month or more to receive replacements and train them to Ranger standards. Murray recommended that the problem be solved by having trained replacements sent to Ranger Force from the 2d and 5th Ranger Battalions that had recently been activated at Camp Forrest, Tennessee.

Nevertheless, I agree with you that it is quite strange that Richard R. Carr's name could not be found among the Rangerroster.org database.

Edited February 9, 2009 by Antti Hynonen