Oswald Leaving TSBD?

[Robert Prudhomme]

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

[Robert Prudhomme]

That is the whole point, Thomas. If Ms. Adams testified she was stopped, by a policeman in the rail yard, it could not have been Barnett.

Now, read this excerpt from Ms. Adams' WC testimony:

"Mr. BELIN - East is here. East is towards Houston, and west is towards the railroad tracks. You went east or west? Towards the railroad tracks or towards Houston Street?

Miss ADAMS - I went west towards the tracks.

Mr. BELIN - How far west did you go?

Miss ADAMS - I went approximately 2 yards within the tracks and there was an officer standing there, and he said, "Get back to the building." And I said, "But I work here."

And he said, "That is tough, get back." I said, "Well, was the President shot?" And he said, "I don't know. Go back." And I said, "All right."

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Miss ADAMS - I went back, only I went southwest."

Notice she says the officer told her to get "back to" the building and not "inside" the building? This is merely another uninformed assumption on Mr. Weston's part.

As there were no office buildings other than the TSBD adjacent to the rail yard, it is understandable for the officer to assume Ms. Adams had come from the TSBD. Or, thinking the assassin was in the rail yard, the police may have decided the area around the TSBD was safer than the rail yard, and were directing everyone back to there.

So what's your final, bottom line take on all this, Robert? Was it Baker or Barnett running towards the TSBD in Darnell/Couch? Or neither?

Hmmmm?

OK then. What's your most current tentative conclusion?

--Tommy

It's a bit early to begin drawing conclusions, Thomas. In this case, it's more a matter of continuing to eliminate the impossible, and seeing what remains after we are finished.

Barnett cannot be the cop we see running in the films as, by his own testimony, he was assigned to crowd control at Elm and Houston.

Going over the story of Romack again, and his testimony, several more problems arise. By his own testimony, he was 100-125 yards from the NE corner (rear) of the TSBD and walking toward the TSBD at the time of the shooting. Here is his testimony describing his actions, following the shots:

"Mr. BELIN. Well, you heard the shots, and then what did you do?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, I knew something was wrong. I mean, I could sense that with in my own self.

Mr. BELIN. All right.

Mr. ROMACK. And I looked up and I felt kind of chilly looking down towards the which I am facing the Houston entrance, and I looked down toward where all the people were standing along, the motorcade was passing by, and just immediately after I heard the shots, I saw a policeman running north towards me. He was running to look to see if somebody was running out of the back of this building.

Mr. BELIN. What building?

Mr. ROMACK. Texas School Book Depository Building. And he didn't stay but just, oh, he was just there to check and he runs back.

Well, sensing that something is wrong, I automatically take over watching the building for the man.

Mr. BELIN. What part of the building were you watching?

Mr. ROMACK. The back."

Further testimony from Romack:

"Mr. BELIN. How long did you stay after that watching that back door?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, we were all there watching it then.

Mr. BELIN. How long a period of time?

Mr. ROMACK. Pardon?

Mr. BELIN. Did you see a policeman go up there?

Mr. ROMACK. I saw policemen up in there. I didn't see anyone come up the back. They came in the front, all---most of them.

Mr. BELIN. Did you see any employees walk up the back way?

Mr. ROMACK. There was two other gentlemen which I never said anything.

281

about, that taken over. They were FBI or something standing right here at the very entrance, and just stood there.

Mr. BELIN. You are pointing again to the back stairway that leads up from the street to the dock on the north side of the building?

Mr. ROMACK. Right.

Mr. BELIN. See anyone else?

Mr. ROMACK. No, sir; other than all the motorcycle officers and squad cars. They started coming in, I would say, in 4 minutes from the time that this happened. They were swarming the building, which naturally. I quit watching anything particular.

Mr. BELIN. In other words, about 4 minutes after the shots came you quit watching it? Would that be accurate, or not?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 minutes, 4 or 5 minutes. That would probably be true. I stayed there, but I wasn't particularly watching.

Mr. BELIN. In other words, then as I understand your testimony, you said that from about the time of the shots until about 5 minutes after the shots, you watched the back door of the building?

Mr. ROMACK. Right."

Next, here is Barnett's testimony:

"Mr. LIEBELER - What did you do when you concluded that the shots were coming from that building?

Mr. BARNETT - I ran to the back of the building.

Mr. LIEBELER - Ran down Houston Street?

Mr. BARNETT - Yes, sir.

Mr. LIEBELER - There is a door in the back of the Texas School Book Depository. Does it face on Houston or around the corner?

Mr. BARNETT - It is around the corner from Houston Street.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you go in the building?

Mr. BARNETT - No, sir; I didn't get close to it, because I was watching for a fire escape. If the man was on top, he would have to come down, and I was looking for a fire escape, and I didn't pay much attention to the door. I was still watching the top of the building, and so far as I could see, the fire escape on the east side was the only escape down.

Mr. LIEBELER - Since you surmised that the shots had come from the building, you looked up and you didn't see any windows open. You thought they had been fired from the top of the building?

Mr. BARNETT - That's right.

Mr. LIEBELER - So you ran around here on Houston Street immediately to the east of the Texas School Book Depository Building and watched the fire escape?

Mr. BARNETT - I went 20 foot past the building still on Houston, looking up. I could see the whole back of the building and also the east side of the building.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you see anybody coming off the fire escape up there, or any movement on top of the building?

Mr. BARNETT - Not a thing.

Mr. LIEBELER - What did you do after you went around behind the building?

Mr. BARNETT - I went looked behind the building and I saw officers searching the railroad cars. I looked around in front towards the front of the building and I saw officers going west.

Mr. LIEBELER - Going west down the little street there in front of the School Book Depository Building?

Mr. BARNETT - Yes; but there was no sign they were going into the building or watching the building, so I decided I was the only one watching the building. So since this was the only fire escape and there were officers down here watching the this back door, I returned back around to the front to watch the front of the building and the fire escape. Then I decided maybe I had been wrong, so I saw the officers down here searching."

Officer Barnett is a little hard to follow but, his last utterance definitely tells us there were "officers down here watching the this back door". How these officers got to the back of the TSBD so quickly is a bit of a mystery, but Barnett gives us a clue a little further back in his testimony. "I went looked behind the building and I saw officers searching the railroad cars." Once again, we have a slight timing problem. If Barnett made a mad dash for the back of the TSBD IMMEDIATELY after the third shot, how could there already be officers searching rail cars by the time he got to the back of the TSBD? It is possible Barnett got to the back of the TSBD somewhat later than he claimed, and this may be the very reason he did not see Styles and Adams exiting the rear of the TSBD.

However, getting back to Romack, we now have another timing problem. By his own testimony, Romack was 100-125 yards from the rear of the TSBD at the time of the third shot, and walking toward the TSBD. He claimed to see Barnett run to the back of the building, and then run back to the front of the building. It is a little hard to believe Barnett would not spend at least 30 seconds at the rear of the TSBD before returning to Elm St. How long did it take Romack to cover the 100 yards to the TSBD, from where he heard the shots? At a brisk walk, it should take a 39 year old man no more than 30 seconds to cover this distance on flat ground. How could Romack arrive at the rear entrance after Barnett left?

Now, if we consider again that the rapid Barnett viewed officers searching rail cars immediately upon his arrival at the rear of the TSBD, I believe it safe to assume both Barnett and Romack heavily embellished the truth about their actions that day.

P.S.

Romack makes no mention of Styles and Adams or the officers Barnett claimed were watching the rear door.

[Vanessa Loney]

bump

Thanks Bob

And, lo and behold, Towner is going to be released to the public.

Bob and Bart, do you have connections we don't know about?

Anyway great work, keep it up. Can you ask for Weigman and Darnell next?

[James R Gordon]

I would like to point out to members that Gary Mack does not post here as a consequence of his position at the 6th Floor Museum. Members should not construe other motives to Gary Mack not posting on this site.

If Gary informs a member about the veracity of a piece of evidence then - unless members have good reason (and that is not opinion) to challenge that evidence - then curtesy requests members at least consider that evidence.

The Sixth Floor Museum - whatever members think about it - does have access to information that we do not possess.

I have hidden a number of posts where a member contradicted evidence in the case and questioned - without evidence - that the said member was right and the Sixth Floor Museum was wrong.

James

[Clive Largey]

The frame that shows Lovelady on the right side of the steps above is probably ten minutes after the assassination and has been marked as the John Martin film elsewhere perhaps because of word from the museum itself, I'm not sure. Groden himself did not associate this with Towner on his DVD with the films on it(probably five years or more after the research paper), it comes from the Dallas Cinema Associates portion which did indeed contain the Martin segments.

One minute into this taken straight from Groden's DVD, separate from the Towner section.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyI-abdmPwg

Perhaps Robert Groden took an educated guess as to films source at that time and the researcher getting that "confirmation" knew it had to be taken closer to the time of the shooting and wondered how can Lovelady be in two places at once? This is what I think he meant by the genuine film showing "Oswald and Lovelady together", nothing to do with Prayerman IMHO.

[Clive Largey]

Roy Schaeffer believed that "a frame in her film shows the right side of the steps" well it almost does though not exactly but that is not the blow up he used/or what Groden gave him. The frames he refers to in fact come from the NOV24 1967 not 66 or 63 are not the same, so there was clearly some crossed wires involved but it's understandable.

The one frame in Life that did show the doorway

Adorable.

[Vanessa Loney]

Just to clarify the news on the Towner film. The Museum will be getting a high resolution scan made of Towner. But they do not have enough server capacity nor budget to release all of their film collection items online in high resolution, this includes Towner.

The high res scan will be available to be viewed in the Museum's reading room for free.

[Clive Largey]

^{Best I could find of the shirted figure in Hughes}

^{leans out, the sun gets in his eyes and then moves back to the shade.}

^{Black man lifts arm.}

^{Shirt is much more open than Wiegman's Lovelady.}

[Vanessa Loney]

Thanks for posting this Clive.

Do we also get a bit of PM sticking his head forward here or am I seeing things? Also is there a flash at the end of this gif? Something seems to flash.

In regards to Lovelady and his shirt perhaps it's just the angle that the film was taken. Towner seems to be facing straight on to Lovelady while Weigman was turning past him to the left.

Clearly it is still Lovelady - same shirt, same t-shirt, same hair and same Lovelady-look about him.

[Clive Largey]

It looks as though that flash corresponds to a damaged frame in the film Vanessa and yes I would agree, the more you watch, it does appear as though PM was in position at this time.

I'm a bit reluctant to call him Lovelady but I suppose if I'm happy it's him in Altgens what's my problem?

Do we really expect a HQ Towner to show anything different to Hughes or even better?

From what I have seen, the people in the doorway look messy and confusing and folks in the shade are completely missing.

[Vanessa Loney]

It looks as though that flash corresponds to a damaged frame in the film Vanessa and yes I would agree, the more you watch, it does appear as though PM was in position at this time.

I'm a bit reluctant to call him Lovelady but I suppose if I'm happy it's him in Altgens what's my problem?

Do we really expect a HQ Towner to show anything different to Hughes or even better?

From what I have seen, the people in the doorway look messy and confusing and folks in the shade are completely missing.

It looks as though that flash corresponds to a damaged frame in the film Vanessa and yes I would agree, the more you watch, it does appear as though PM was in position at this time.

I'm a bit reluctant to call him Lovelady but I suppose if I'm happy it's him in Altgens what's my problem?

Do we really expect a HQ Towner to show anything different to Hughes or even better?

From what I have seen, the people in the doorway look messy and confusing and folks in the shade are completely missing.

Thanks Clive

Someone or something does seem to move behind Lovelady. Or is it Lovelady’s head ducking? So hard to tell. I’d also argue that damaged frame is about where we would expect to see PM in Hughes. The splodge seems to blot out JFK and then travel to the doorway to blot out PM. Just sayin’.

I don’t really expect to see PM in a HQ Towner because as you say the back of the doorway seems to be completely black with no-one there. But we know there were people there.

So what I would like is the opportunity for someone like Bart with photographic experience (J) to take that HQ Towner and show us the areas that have been blacked-out and perhaps even the brush strokes. The way he has just done with the back of JFK’s head in Zapruder in the “Oswald Leaving the TSBD” thread.

Without having the HQ Towner available on the 6FM website it’s probably a lot harder for someone like Bart to do that.

I guess that also brings me back to Bart’s posting on this thread of the Bernabei letter where Bernabei describes seeing a reddish shirt worn by PM in Hughes (and talks about Lovelady in the same frame).

With the best will in the world I cannot see a reddish shirt on PM in Hughes. I can barely even see PM. So I’m wondering again what version of Hughes Bernabei was looking at that he could see a reddish shirt on PM. And more importantly what happened to that film?

[Clive Largey]

This is the damaged frame I was thinking of which seems to be about the same time the flash appears in the gif

Have you gone over your upload allowance Bart?

[Guest Mark Valenti]

This is the damaged frame I was thinking of which seems to be about the same time the flash appears in the gif

Damaged frames appear in 8mm films largely because someone wanted to try to slow the film down enough to see something important. When the film was manually slowed down, it burned, creating the blob. It's no stretch to believe that this particular moment of the film was one that viewers wanted desperately to see in as close to freeze-frame as possible. Slow the film down, it burns.

[Vanessa Loney]

Thanks Mark

According to Robert Harris, Hughes sustained this damage while in the custody of the FBI. I would have thought that with a primary piece of evidence such as this that it should have been standard practice for whoever is viewing the film to make a few copies first and perhaps use them to slow the film down to have a look (and perhaps run the risk of burning it).

That way the original would not have been completely damaged for all time so that no-one can see what is on it. And if there had been something on it (such as an unidentified individual in the TSBD doorway) the original film would have been preserved as evidence for a trial.

[Vanessa Loney]

Thanks for clarifying that Barto. Unfortunately my hopeless browser won't let me view these but I take your word for what is on them.