PRAYER PERSON - PRAYER MAN OR PRAYER WOMAN? RESEARCH THREAD

[Alistair Briggs]

Personally, I am not against the idea of Oswald being Prayer Man, it's just I don't think it's, with the currently available quality of images, possible to actually unequivocally nail the issue down...

On the 6 (actually 7) points Andrej makes, combined it does add up to something of a logical inference that the likliehood that Prayer Man is Oswald is extremely high, below are the 7 points (my comments added in brackets)

1. was a Caucasian (Fair inference)

2. he was male (Fair inference?)

3. he wears a worker type of clothing (Fair inference? - eg, say, looks more like type of clothing Lovelady (worker) wore than type of clothing Shelley (Supervisor) wore)

4. his hair line is remarkably similar to that of Lee Harvey Oswald (not the best quality image/video. Remarkably similar? Best that can be said surely is that it is similar. Depends on what image/video is being looked at)

5. he came from inside the building (a relatively fair inference as position implies highly unlikely to be someone from not in the building - not conclusive though)

6. he is 5'9" tall (the average height of a man at that time was about that)

7. assumed a specific stance which Oswald displayed on several occasions when photographed while standing upright (what is the 'specific stand'? And even if Oswald did on several occassions show the same 'specific stand' how common a stance is compared to other people?)

Considering that the 'hair-line' and the 'stance' are not necessarily unique to Oswald, setting them aside for the moment; starting with the probability that Prayer Man was indeed employed within the TSBD you start with, what, 75 people, then reduce that number by finding out how many of those were male, reduce it further by finding out how many were Caucasian, reduce it further by ruling out who we know it isn't (in terms of clothing, or indeed identiy either on steps or elsewhere), each step it narrows it down and the more it is narrowed down then the probability of it being Oswald, by definition, increases...

... it could be that it gets narrowed down so far that it becomes either Oswald or A.N. Other as both could be Male, Caucasian, in worker's clothes, average height and work in the TSBD, but without having anything known of A.N. Other how can that person be ruled out and Oswald ruled in? To do so would be to bring back the 'hair line' and the 'stance', both of which have not been 'conclusively proven' to be unique characteristics of Osawld...

... all of that is on the assumption to start with that it was someone from within the TSBD, and as I said earlier, the position does imply that it is highly unlikely to be someone from not in the building, alas it isn't conclusive.

Considering it from the other perspective. None of the other people have made mention of Oswald being on the step at that time, but as Andrej has previously mentioned that doesn't rule Oswald out as their attention may have been drawn elsewhere... alternatively no one else mentioned it because they were 'leaned' on not to admit it... also Oswald never claimed to be in that position at that time - according to Fritz's notes Oswald made two different references to where he was at the time (1) in the first interrogation he said he was in the first floor lunchroom and then went up to the second floor to buy a coke before being accosted by Baker (2) In his last interrogation he said that he went down to the second floor to buy a coke before being accosted by Baker. Also, at no time did Oswald say that at the time of the shots he was outside with Shelley, he did mention being 'out with Shelley' but that was in reference to after the meeting with Baker and on his way out leaving to go home... Whilst one can't know for sure exactly what Oswald said to Fritz, it is interesting to think that if Fritz was part of a 'set-up' to nail Oswald as the 6th floor shooter then why would he make up Oswald saying stuff that goes against the idea of 'setting him up', I digress. There is also the time when the reporter asked Oswald if he was in the building at the time and Oswald responded by saying that (I paraphrase) 'naturally I was in the building as I work there'. Technically someone could make the point that 'on the steps' could still be 'in the building', inasmuch as it's not away from the building, it has to be considered what Oswald didn't say, ie, on being asked if he was in the building at the time Oswald did not say 'oh actually I wasn't inside the building I was standing on the steps at the time'.

So there are plenty of arguments to say that it is likely Oswald was Prayer Man, but there is also enough to say that it likely wasn't. If it was Oswald then all the stuff that point away from it being him needs to be explained away, or if it wasn't Oswald then all the stuff that points to it being him needs to be explained away.

In simple terms then it can be said to come down to either (a) a lot of people were blind or part of a 'cover up', Fritz was part of the 'cover up', and Oswald thought 'in the building' was synonymous with 'on the steps' or (b) the photographic record isn't good enough to be conclusive.

Talking about probability then, which of those two options (a) or (b) is more likely?

As I said at the start, I am not against the idea of Oswald being Prayer Man, it's just I don't think it's, with the currently available quality of images, possible to actually unequivocally nail the issue down...

Regards.

P.S. As I was writing this there has been a few other posts, so apologies if some of this stuff has just been mentioned.
P.P.S Something else I would just like to mention in relation to this, there has been talk that the 'bottle of coke and brown paper bag' that can be seen on the steps whilst Prayer Man is there, and indeed, (long?) after must have belonged to Prayer Man, and as Oswald claimed to have had a lunch in a brown paper bag and had a coke, that the ones on the step must have been his and that is evidence that Oswald was Prayer Man... it has to be mentioned that Lovelady testified to having eaten his lunch on the steps and having drunk a coke on the steps, the probability is that the brown bag and bottle of coke on the steps belonged to Lovelady and not Prayer Man!

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Alistair Briggs said:

1. was a Caucasian (Fair inference)

2. he was male (Fair inference?)

3. he wears a worker type of clothing (Fair inference? - eg, say, looks more like type of clothing Lovelady (worker) wore than type of clothing Shelley (Supervisor) wore)

4. his hair line is remarkably similar to that of Lee Harvey Oswald (not the best quality image/video. Remarkably similar? Best that can be said surely is that it is similar. Depends on what image/video is being looked at)

5. he came from inside the building (a relatively fair inference as position implies highly unlikely to be someone from not in the building - not conclusive though)

6. he is 5'9" tall (the average height of a man at that time was about that)

7. assumed a specific stance which Oswald displayed on several occasions when photographed while standing upright (what is the 'specific stand'? And even if Oswald did on several occassions show the same 'specific stand' how common a stance is compared to other people?)

We almost need a statistician here, but how significant are those 7 items?  Male / Caucasian / 5'9" / worker-type clothing / receding hairline / stance - none of these is even vaguely a unique identifier.  I hate to sound like one of OJ's defense lawyers, but this entire combination could fit thousands of men in Dallas.  "Came from inside the building" is the only one that strikes me as really significant.  And still, no one really wants to deal with the elephant in the room:  Suppose we nail this down to the level of "Yes, we are confident of those 7 factors.  Yes, we are confident this could indeed be LHO."  Do we then say (as I'll bet we do), "There you go.  We've proved it's LHO."  Or do we say, "OK, we're confident it could be LHO - but what do we do with all those other considerations that make it highly unlikely it is LHO?  Just explain them away, because we so desperately want this to be LHO?"  I continue to say the PM discussion is going nowhere until we have a photo that does not require any interpretation at all.

[Alistair Briggs]

Just for clarity.

33 minutes ago, Alistair Briggs said:

Personally, I am not against the idea of Oswald being Prayer Man, it's just I don't think it's, with the currently available quality of images, possible to actually unequivocally nail the issue down...

On the 6 (actually 7) points Andrej makes, combined it does add up to something of a logical inference that the likliehood that Prayer Man is Oswald is extremely high, below are the 7 points (my comments added in brackets)

1. was a Caucasian (Fair inference)

2. he was male (Fair inference?)

3. he wears a worker type of clothing (Fair inference? - eg, say, looks more like type of clothing Lovelady (worker) wore than type of clothing Shelley (Supervisor) wore)

4. his hair line is remarkably similar to that of Lee Harvey Oswald (not the best quality image/video. Remarkably similar? Best that can be said surely is that it is similar. Depends on what image/video is being looked at)

5. he came from inside the building (a relatively fair inference as position implies highly unlikely to be someone from not in the building - not conclusive though)

6. he is 5'9" tall (the average height of a man at that time was about that)

7. assumed a specific stance which Oswald displayed on several occasions when photographed while standing upright (what is the 'specific stand'? And even if Oswald did on several occassions show the same 'specific stand' how common a stance is compared to other people?)

Yep, I'm in agreeance with what Lance just said, when he said, and I quote;

6 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

...  I continue to say the PM discussion is going nowhere until we have a photo that does not require any interpretation at all.

Regards

[Andrej Stancak]

38 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

We almost need a statistician here, but how significant are those 7 items?  Male / Caucasian / 5'9" / worker-type clothing / receding hairline / stance - none of these is even vaguely a unique identifier.  I hate to sound like one of OJ's defense lawyers, but this entire combination could fit thousands of men in Dallas.  "Came from inside the building" is the only one that strikes me as really significant.  And still, no one really wants to deal with the elephant in the room:  Suppose we nail this down to the level of "Yes, we are confident of those 7 factors.  Yes, we are confident this could indeed be LHO."  Do we then say (as I'll bet we do), "There you go.  We've proved it's LHO."  Or do we say, "OK, we're confident it could be LHO - but what do we do with all those other considerations that make it highly unlikely it is LHO?  Just explain them away, because we so desperately want this to be LHO?"  I continue to say the PM discussion is going nowhere until we have a photo that does not require any interpretation at all.

Lance:

here we came almost to agreement. Even if all points listed in my previous post would be proven beyond any doubt, I would still only be able to say that with an unusually high probability close to certainty Prayer Man was Oswald. 

As far as a better photograph is concerned, actually the best Darnell frame (posted by Robin Unger recently) may well be the best we can have. It is a good picture given that it is a frame from a film camera, not a photographic film, the distance, and the quality of the film material. Wiegman's film is a different cup of coffee - there could be a high quality copy somewhere which would reveal some novel aspects. 

I should add, if it is proven that Prayer Man came from inside the building, we then play not against "thousands of men in Dallas" but only against some 50-70 employees of the Depository, and it would actually converge to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Andrej Stancak

[Bill Miller]

7 hours ago, Ray Mitcham said:

What colour pants do you see, Bill?

I see them being a lighter color in the PM image as someone pointed out earlier - like a workers uniform. The top being the same tone as the pants.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Bill Miller

[Andrej Stancak]

29 minutes ago, Alistair Briggs said:

Just for clarity.

Yep, I'm in agreeance with what Lance just said, when he said, and I quote;

Regards

Here I disagree, the discussion may lead somewhere even with presently available pictures if we can determine e.g., Prayer Man's arrival to the doorway, or his body height.

[Alistair Briggs]

15 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

...

As far as a better photograph is concerned, actually the best Darnell frame (posted by Robin Unger recently) may well be the best we can have. It is a good picture given that it is a frame from a film camera, not a photographic film, the distance, and the quality of the film material. Wiegman's film is a different cup of coffee - there could be a high quality copy somewhere which would reveal some novel aspects. 

 

Andrej, is this the frame you mean? It's a cropped version available to view at Robin Ungers' site - a cropped (and blown up) version of the full image that is also on his site.

 

Edited January 14, 2017 by Alistair Briggs

[Andrej Stancak]

Alistair:

the picture I referred to was posted on January 5 in the other Prayer Man thread, page 183.

 

 

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

I should add, if it is proven that Prayer Man came from inside the building, we then play not against "thousands of men in Dallas" but only against some 50-70 employees of the Depository, and it would actually converge to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Or one of the conspirators.  Or someone who wandered in through the back after the others were already out front.

When I look at PM and the way he is supposed to be standing, it looks unnatural - reminiscent, if I dare say so, of the Backyard Photos.  The portion of the body below the arms looks "wider" or "bulkier" than I would expect LHO to look.  Almost like a pregnant woman (no I'm not going there).  Really, the whole person looks bulkier than LHO to me, but that's just an off-the-cuff observation.  I don't think I'd be prepared to say I see his legs at all.  What I think you're calling his left knee is so far out from the rest of his body that it looks unnatural to me, even if he is leaning.

Oh, well, good luck with the quest.

[Alistair Briggs]

5 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Alistair:

the picture I referred to was posted on January 5 in the other Prayer Man thread, page 183.

 

 

Here is that exact image that Robin posted on January 5th on page 183 of the other Prayer Man thread.

...

13 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Here I disagree, the discussion may lead somewhere even with presently available pictures if we can determine e.g., Prayer Man's arrival to the doorway, or his body height.

With the presently available pictures we can't determine Prayer Man's arrival at the doorway... we can speculate on it but unless other pictures become availabe that show him arriving from a different place to that position we can't determine it at all! The location as seen in the presently available pictures carries a strong implication that Prayer Man came from within the building - I can buy in to that thinking - it's still not conclusive though....

... in terms of his height, perhaps from the presently available pictures we can determine Prayer Man's height (many have tried to do it, have any of them been conclusive?). Regardless, even if it was 'proved' from the presently available pictures that Prayer Man was 5ft 9 - the same height as Oswald, it's still not proof in and of itself that Prayer Man is Oswald. It may be held up as 'one more nail in the coffin' (so to speak)...

Not really sure, Andrej, why you disagree with my agreeance with what Lance said especially when you earlier said that you were ' almost to agreement ' with the exact same bit from Lance that I quoted!

Regards

P.S. for clarity I will repeat what I have said a couple of times already - Personally, I am not against the idea of Oswald being Prayer Man, it's just I don't think it's, with the currently available quality of images, possible to actually unequivocally nail the issue down.

[Alistair Briggs]

Lance & Andrej, if I may, can I enquire as to how you would describe Prayer Man's arms in the image above?

Regards

Edited January 14, 2017 by Alistair Briggs

[Andrej Stancak]

Alistair:

the arms are positioned as we see them, as if holding some object in front of his chest with his right hand, and maybe even with his left hand. I was never able to identify any object in either hand though. However, he surely had something which reflected the light in his right hand in Wiegman's film. Some researcher claim it was a camera, other say it was a mug or a purse,,, I would vote for a bottle.

 

Edited January 14, 2017 by Andrej Stancak

[Guest]

I just returned from the Prayer Man site, where I was checking what Frazier had said about PM - his most recent statement apparently being that he doesn't remember anyone there at all!

As to the arms, they do seem to me to be oddly "away" from the body, as though he were holding something out in front of him.  I tried duplicating this pose in a mirror and my arms were typically closer in to my body.  I can almost convince myself he's holding a jacket or something like that.  But I did see the enhanced portion of the Wiegman film posted by someone named Chris where it appeared to be a coffee mug and with a motion of lifting the mug to the mouth.  What happened with that discussion?

Actually, now that I compare them, he's actually holding his arms quite similarly to the Backyard Photos, the angle of PM being just a little more from the side.  I also note that in many photos LHO appears to have had a sharply sloping right shoulder, and I'll concede that this seems to be noticeable on PM as well.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Guest

[Alistair Briggs]

28 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

 

the arms are positioned as we see them, as if holding some object in front of his chest with his right hand, and maybe even with his left hand. I was never able to identify any object in either hand though. ...

 

and

3 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

...

As to the arms, they do seem to me to be oddly "away" from the body, as though he were holding something out in front of him.  I tried duplicating this pose in a mirror and my arms were typically closer in to my body.  I can almost convince myself he's holding a jacket or something like that.  ...

Andrej and Lance, I have quote above just the parts of your comments in reference just to the arm position in the above picture...

You both seem to be in something of an agreeance about the arms, inasmuch it shows both his right hand and left hand. I too can see that. I would describe it as looking like he was using his right hand to put something in a left hand shirt pocket and that his left hand was resting on the left hand side of his chest just below where the shirt pocket could be. I'm not saying that he is putting something in a shirt pocket necessarily by the way, just using that as something of a 'referenece point' for the position of his hands.

Does that make sense? Would you agree that all 3 of us are (relatively) reading the arm positions in a similar way?

Regards

[Guest]

Just now, Alistair Briggs said:

and

Andrej and Lance, I have quote above just the parts of your comments in reference just to the arm position in the above picture...

You both seem to be in something of an agreeance about the arms, inasmuch it shows both his right hand and left hand. I too can see that. I would describe it as looking like he was using his right hand to put something in a left hand shirt pocket and that his left hand was resting on the left hand side of his chest just below where the shirt pocket could be. I'm not saying that he is putting something in a shirt pocket necessarily by the way, just using that as something of a 'referenece point' for the position of his hands.

Does that make sense? Would you agree that all 3 of us are (relatively) reading the arm positions in a similar way?

Regards

Yes, I think so.  I added this to my post above just as you were responding:  "Actually, now that I compare them, he's actually holding his arms quite similarly to the Backyard Photos, the angle of PM being just a little more from the side.  I also note that in many photos LHO appears to have had a sharply sloping right shoulder, and I'll concede that this seems to be noticeable on PM as well."