Need a source - LHO not the only employee absent from TSBD after shooting

[Joseph Backes]

Hello,

I hope someone can help me. I'm looking for a source in a book, or in the WC or HSCA, or a document, that proves that LHO was not the only employee unaccounted for from the TSBD after the assassination. Thank you.

Joe Backes

[Greg Parker]

Hello,

I hope someone can help me. I'm looking for a source in a book, or in the WC or HSCA, or a document, that proves that LHO was not the only employee unaccounted for from the TSBD after the assassination. Thank you.

Joe Backes

CE 1381

[Ron Ecker]

I could swear that Peter Jennings said Oswald was the only one absent.

[Joseph Backes]

Hello,

I hope someone can help me. I'm looking for a source in a book, or in the WC or HSCA, or a document, that proves that LHO was not the only employee unaccounted for from the TSBD after the assassination. Thank you.

Joe Backes

Thanks folks. There is a great article on this topic by Mark Bridger "The Myth of the Depository Roll Call," in The Dealey Plaza Echo, Vol. 11 No. 2 July 2007 which is on the Mary Ferrell site.

See - http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=41

Also, Sylvia Meagher, "Accessories After the Fact," p. 85-90.

[John Dolva]

I wonder if the Virginia Barnum was related in some way to a James Barnum and whether either had ties to Buell Frazier?

[Greg Parker]

Hello,

I hope someone can help me. I'm looking for a source in a book, or in the WC or HSCA, or a document, that proves that LHO was not the only employee unaccounted for from the TSBD after the assassination. Thank you.

Joe Backes

Thanks folks. There is a great article on this topic by Mark Bridger "The Myth of the Depository Roll Call," in The Dealey Plaza Echo, Vol. 11 No. 2 July 2007 which is on the Mary Ferrell site.

See - http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=41

Also, Sylvia Meagher, "Accessories After the Fact," p. 85-90.

Agreed, Mark Bridger did a good job. But he also got some things wrong, imo.

Here is one:

Oswald's two cop encounters

[B. A. Copeland]

I could swear that Peter Jennings said Oswald was the only one absent.

Peter Jennings also said that "there is not one piece of credible evidence.." regarding conspiracy in JFK's murder lol...

[Jack White]

People then and now get confused about the floor numbering system in the TSBD because

the ground floor is not the first floor.

The "domino room" was on the GROUND floor. From the entrance into the original TSBD,

as I recall, one comes to a landing where there was a passenger elevator and stairway

to the OFFICES portion of the building; there was a stairway down to the ground floor

(as I recall, the Hertz roof sign was stored there). Freight elevators were at the rear.

People going up the front steps MAY have been confused about whether they were

on the first or second floor.

Maybe this graphic of the original building will help.

Jack

[Greg Parker]

People then and now get confused about the floor numbering system in the TSBD because

the ground floor is not the first floor.

The "domino room" was on the GROUND floor. From the entrance into the original TSBD,

as I recall, one comes to a landing where there was a passenger elevator and stairway

to the OFFICES portion of the building; there was a stairway down to the ground floor

(as I recall, the Hertz roof sign was stored there). Freight elevators were at the rear.

People going up the front steps MAY have been confused about whether they were

on the first or second floor.

Maybe this graphic of the original building will help.

Jack

Jack, I do not think Occhus Campbell was confused about what floor he was talking about when he told the reporter "Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We saw Oswald in a small storage room on the ground floor."

Likewise Roy Truly, who Fritz admitted "I asked him what part of the building he was in at the time the President was shot, and he said that he was having his lunch about that time on the first floor. Mr. Truly had told me that one of the police officers had stopped this man mmediately after the shooting somewhere near the back stairway..." Kent Biffle listened in on that conversation between Truly and Fritz, and he reported it in DMN, that it was "near a small storage room" on the first floor.

To quote from my article - which apears to be the reason for your post here:

"The comment that the encounter was “near the back stairway” fits in with the Campbell quote of Oswald being in a “small store room” on the ground floor when Baker came in. Why? Because there is indeed, a small store-room on the first floor near the back stairway- and it was used to store the text-books Oswald mainly collected. "Are you suggesting that they both meant "lunch room on the second floor" when they said, "storage room on the first"? If so, you are free to defend the WC version, as would I... if it had any merit...

[Duke Lane]

Duke Lane created a fantastic list on the people that left the TSBD. He has not put it on his new website, but he posts here and you can ask him for the list, and his sources.

Probably because it's such a xxxxty little website! In fact, I called it just that for a while, as I recall.

Actually, I'd thought I'd put it there. If you say I haven't, you're probably right.

I can email the spreadsheet I put together from CE1381 to anyone requesting it. It's an at-a-glance compendium of what people said about themselves and what they did in the CE1381 pages. Remember that these are all affidavits taken by FBI agents who were present during the WC's downtown investigation and re-creation of around March 20, 1964, and contains very little "editorial" beyond answers to specific questions they wanted answers to.

The spreadsheet lists things like their gender and race (might many muster mischievous misses, or merely malcontent males?), as well as whether they claimed to have ever left the building, if they tried to get in, if they were successful in getting in, or whether they'd found the doors locked or themselves in any other way barred from re-entry.

It's very rudimentary, but the net effect is to show that there were a lot of people, white and black, male and female, who were not inside the building in the shooting's aftermath to have been roll-called.

Maybe one of these days I'll actually do something with the website (dukelane.com). Not many breaths should be held waiting, however.

[Duke Lane]

People then and now get confused about the floor numbering system in the TSBD because the ground floor is not the first floor.

The "domino room" was on the GROUND floor. From the entrance into the original TSBD, as I recall, one comes to a landing where there was a passenger elevator and stairway to the OFFICES portion of the building; there was a stairway down to the ground floor (as I recall, the Hertz roof sign was stored there). Freight elevators were at the rear.

People going up the front steps MAY have been confused about whether they were on the first or second floor.

Maybe this graphic of the original building will help.

Jack, I do not think Occhus Campbell was confused about what floor he was talking about when he told the reporter "Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We saw Oswald in a small storage room on the ground floor."

Likewise Roy Truly, who Fritz admitted "I asked him what part of the building he was in at the time the President was shot, and he said that he was having his lunch about that time on the first floor. Mr. Truly had told me that one of the police officers had stopped this man mmediately after the shooting somewhere near the back stairway..." Kent Biffle listened in on that conversation between Truly and Fritz, and he reported it in DMN, that it was "near a small storage room" on the first floor.

To quote from my article - which apears to be the reason for your post here:

"The comment that the encounter was "near the back stairway" fits in with the Campbell quote of Oswald being in a "small store room" on the ground floor when Baker came in. Why? Because there is indeed, a small store-room on the first floor near the back stairway- and it was used to store the text-books Oswald mainly collected. "Are you suggesting that they both meant "lunch room on the second floor" when they said, "storage room on the first"? If so, you are free to defend the WC version, as would I... if it had any merit...

The things people will come up with!

Didn't BW Frazier not also say that he ate his lunch in the "basement?" He was not the only one to refer to such a location, which surely - even in Texas, where basements are few and farther between - a "basement" is beneath a "ground floor."

The only people who'd confuse what floor they were on - "first" or ground, "second" or first/ground - would be those more influenced by European than American floor-counting.

WC counsel was apparently "confused" about these floors, too, as were at least some TSBD employees. Witness this exchange between David Belin and Troy West (emphases added):

Mr. BELIN

. What route would he take when he (Oswald) normally came to work? Do you know what doorway? Did he walk through the front or the back?

Mr. WEST

. Well, it is through the back door. He would come in the side door next to the dock on the northeast side.

Mr. BELIN

. Then what route would he take when he walked in?

Mr. WEST

. Well, he would come right in, and a lot of times I would be mostly, or be passing him, and he would come right in and probably I'd go right on, and I never would see him no more than that he would be on that work, or whatever.

Mr. BELIN

. When he came in, for instance, did he go right to an elevator to go upstairs, or

did he go

over

to the domino room,

or down

to the basement

, or where would be go when he would first come in? (

6H359

)

Why not "down to the domino room" if it was in the basement (which is even what folks from California called it!)? Where did anybody get the idea that the domino room was in the basement? Or that a building level whose floor was below the ground level would be called the "ground floor?!?"

Jeepers creepers.

Edited April 5, 2010 by Duke Lane