“The lights all went out,” and the elevators stopped while JFK was murdered. Shelley and Lovelady were near the bottom of the back staircase, by the electrical panel... and Vickie Adams saw them ... until everyone's story changed...

[Paul Jolliffe]

There is official sworn testimony that an unnamed "man" exited the passenger elevator on the first floor within just a couple of minutes of the shooting. Further, this "man" apparently was very helpful to the police in determining the floor from which the shots allegedly were fired.

From Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer's deposition with David Belin:

"Mr. BELIN. What did you do then? 
Mr. SAWYER. Immediately went into---well, talked to some of the officers around there who told me the story that they had thought some shots had come from one of the floors in the building, and I think the fifth floor was mentioned, but nobody seemed to know who the shots were directed at or what had actually happened, except there had been a shooting there at the time the President's motorcade had gone by. 
And I went with a couple of officers and a man (not Truly, but who?) who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor. And we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything. 
Mr. BELIN. Now you took an elevator up, is that correct? 
Mr. SAWYER. That's right. 
Mr. BELIN. The route that you took to the elevator, you went to the front door? 
Mr. SAWYER. Right. 
Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do? 
Mr. SAWYER.  We got into the elevator. We run into this man. "

In other words, as soon as the doors opened, the police entered and "ran into" a man trying to leave the passenger elevator! The "man" was helpful and told the police where to look!

Nice guy, this "man". (But of course, under intense questioning from David Belin, Sawyer then told us all about this "man", right? What's that you say? David Belin immediately changed the topic and asked no further questions about this "man"? Well, knock me over with a bulldozer! I'll be darned! Who could have seen that coming? 😉)

So exactly when did Sawyer "run into" this "man" who knew where to direct the police, this helpful "man", this unnamed Good Samaritan?

Well, according to his own testimony, by 12:37 Sawyer had spoken with a couple of officers, entered the TSBD, ridden the passenger elevator to the fourth floor, "looked around", and arrived back on the first floor in time to issue orders to seal off the building. 

Of course, we can't talk about Sawyer without bringing up his infamous 12:45 suspect description broadcast: "the wanted person in this is a slender white male, 5 feet 10, 165, carrying what looks to be a 30-30 or some type of Winchester."

 

To this day, no one knows who provided that description to Sawyer, but we can say it was not Howard Brennan - he swore that he gave his description to Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels!

 

Further, Sorrels swore that he took 20-25 minutes to return to the scene after escorting the motorcade to Parkland - way too late to be conduit of Brennan's description to Herbert Sawyer.

 

Of course,  brings me back full-circle to the "man" that Sawyer encountered at sometime around 12:34 . The "man" that Sawyer "believed worked there", who knew the source of the shots.

A "man" that Sawyer "ran into" when Sawyer was initially entering the passenger elevator. If this knowledgeable "man" was not the source of Sawyer's description over the police radio just a few minutes later (between 12:43 and 12:45), then we have to conclude that Sawyer ran into two separate knowledgeable sources about the shooting location and the suspect description within a very short time, yet managed to remember not one salient detail about either person.

 

I say "baloney".

 

Sawyer came face-to-face with one conspirator, whether or not the guy was fleeing from the sixth-floor. Sawyer swore to Belin he couldn't remember anything about the guy who gave the description, but notice that Belin was careful not to clarify whether it was the same guy that was so helpful when Sawyer first entered the TSBD's passenger elevator!

 

No one but a conspirator could have given the above description to Sawyer, no matter how hard the Warren Commission tried to pretend that maybe somehow Brennan did. Unless we believe in fairy tales, then Sawyer's unnamed, undescribed source of the phony suspect description at 12:45 and the 12:34 helpful passenger elevator "man" were one and the same. 

 

I believe the suspect on the passenger elevator may very well have fled from the sixth floor in the manner first described by John Armstrong. While it cannot be proven beyond a doubt, we have in front of us unequivocal proof that someone got off that very elevator at precisely the right time, someone who was remarkably "helpful" to the police, and someone about whom David Belin wanted to ask NO questions.

 

(That the Sawyer-broadcast physical description of the suspect happened to coincide with the physical description the CIA had in its files of "Oswald" is not a coincidence either, but that's another topic.)

 

Mr. BELIN. Was the elevator on the first floor when you got there, or did you have to wait for it to come down? 
Mr. SAWYER. Best of my recollection, it was there. 
Mr. BELIN. You got to the elevator, went up, looked around back there. How long did you spend up there at the top floor that the elevator took you to? 
Mr. SAWYER. Just took a quick look around and made sure there was nobody hiding on that floor. I doubt if it took over a minute at the most. 
Mr. BELIN. To go up and look around and come down? 
Mr. SAWYER. To look around on the floor. How long it took to go up, it couldn't have been over 3 minutes at the most from the time we left, got up and back down. 
Mr. BELIN. Then that would put it around no sooner than 12:37, if you heard the call at 12:34? 
Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir. 

 

 

 

[Tony Krome]

35 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

There is official sworn testimony that an unnamed "man" exited the passenger elevator on the first floor within just a couple of minutes of the shooting. Further, this "man" apparently was very helpful to the police in determining the floor from which the shots allegedly were fired.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/19425-was-oswald-stopped-by-sawyer-near-the-tsbd-front-entrance/

 

[Paul Jolliffe]

31 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/19425-was-oswald-stopped-by-sawyer-near-the-tsbd-front-entrance/

 

Thanks for posting that, Tony. While the speculation on that thread is fascinating (was "Oswald" the man stopped by Sawyer?), my point was much more narrow: someone got off the passenger elevator around 12:34, and this "man" was consistent with John Armstrong's escape theory.

Further, this "man" was helpful about the location of the shooting, and finally, this "man" almost certainly was the source of Sawyer's infamous 12:45 broadcast description of the "suspect". The only other possibility is that Sawyer ran into TWO "helpful" sources within less than ten minutes, and that he could remember no details of either. I think that is so unlikely that I bolded and underlined it before! That Belin asked exactly zero questions about this exiting elevator "man" furthers my suspicions that Sawyer's passenger elevator man and Sawyer's unknown broadcast description source were, in fact, one and the same.

This was my (windy) attempt to answer Andrej's good question from February 19:  "Besides my concerns about Shelley and Lovelady and the presence of power supply in the front of the building, there is also a question of the assassins' exit from the building. John suggests they exited the lift on the first floor. How could they be certain that they would not be seen by people standing close to the lift? They could not know who would stand there, this was beyond their control. No assassin would agree to a venture with uncertain escape."

My answer: This "man" was seen and thanks to his "help", he was able to direct the police to a floor (4th) where nothing was going on. Sawyer and company wasted a minute or two on the 4th floor before getting back to the first and trying to seal the building. By that time, the "man" was gone, never to be mentioned again by Sawyer.

 

[Tony Krome]

20 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Thanks for posting that, Tony. While the speculation on that thread is fascinating (was "Oswald" the man stopped by Sawyer?), my point was much more narrow: someone got off the passenger elevator around 12:34, and this "man" was consistent with John Armstrong's escape theory.

Further, this "man" was helpful about the location of the shooting, and finally, this "man" almost certainly was the source of Sawyer's infamous 12:45 broadcast description of the "suspect". The only other possibility is that Sawyer ran into TWO "helpful" sources within less than ten minutes, and that he could remember no details of either. I think that is so unlikely that I bolded and underlined it before! That Belin asked exactly zero questions about this exiting elevator "man" furthers my suspicions that Sawyer's passenger elevator man and Sawyer's unknown broadcast description source were, in fact, one and the same.

This was my (windy) attempt to answer Andrej's good question from February 19:  "Besides my concerns about Shelley and Lovelady and the presence of power supply in the front of the building, there is also a question of the assassins' exit from the building. John suggests they exited the lift on the first floor. How could they be certain that they would not be seen by people standing close to the lift? They could not know who would stand there, this was beyond their control. No assassin would agree to a venture with uncertain escape."

My answer: This "man" was seen and thanks to his "help", he was able to direct the police to a floor (4th) where nothing was going on. Sawyer and company wasted a minute or two on the 4th floor before getting back to the first and trying to seal the building. By that time, the "man" was gone, never to be mentioned again by Sawyer.

 

If there was a man in the passenger elevator as the doors opened on the first floor at 12:34pm, I'm not buying that it was a stranger. Further, if this stranger had anything to do with any shots fired on the upper floors, he would be a fool to emerge in the lobby.

[Jim Hargrove]

But the real TSBD assassin(s) had to get out of the building some way, and the passenger elevator was a less obvious choice, since neither it nor the front staircase near it reached up to the 6th floor.  Could the man encountered by J. Herbert Sawyer possibly be the same person as the man in the brown coat seen and described by James Worrell and Carolyn Walther?

Megathanks to Mr. Jolliffe for his important post.  

 

 

[Andrej Stancak]

I wonder if the man whom Marrion Baker had seen on the 3rd or 4th floor, according to his very first report, could take the front elevator to get to the first floor. People remained in the offices during the assassination and some of them could decide to go down, in which case the passenger elevator would have been an option.

According to this escape theory, two men got to the elevator and one of the men was in the 2nd-floor lunchroom about a 1 minute after the shooting.. This would mean that the other man had to stay in the elevator while the elevator remained motionless for 3  more minutes without anyone wanting to use it. Is this likely? 

Edited March 2, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Andrej Stancak]

Paul:

The testimony of Inspector Sawyer does not say that the man who stood in the vicinity of the passenger lift and advised them was just exiting the lift. The lift apparently was stationary on the first floor as they approached the lift. The man in question may have stood right in front of the lift and he appeared to be an employee.  Both Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady were back in the building after first going about 100 yards in direction of the railroad yard; they came back in 3-4 minutes which was just before Sawyer entered the building after having a brief chat with some officers there. Both Shelley and Lovelady testified that they had stood at lift doors (not clear whether the passenger or freight lifts) and helped officers to get to higher floors.

It is all about the interpretation of these statements:

"We got into the elevator. We run into this man" 

Mr. BELIN. Was the elevator on the first floor when you got there, or did you have to wait for it to come down? 
Mr. SAWYER. Best of my recollection, it was there. 

Edited March 2, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Ray Mitcham]

Could it have been Oswald, as Mr Campbell said he saw Os just inside the small cupboard in the vestibule, after the shooting?

[Tony Krome]

And we can blow those times out too. Sawyer was on Main at 12:34 when he heard TSBD mentioned. 

[Jim Hargrove]

The two men from the 6th floor, along with an accomplice, rode the elevator down to the 2nd floor. The two men got off the elevator while the accomplice stayed on the elevator. When the elevator arrived on the 1st floor the accomplice may have walked past Dallas Police Inspector Herbert Sawyer, who was getting onto the elevator.

Mr. BELIN. Now you took an elevator up, is that correct? 
Mr. SAWYER. That's right.
Mr. BELIN. The route that you took to the elevator, you went to the front door? 
Mr. SAWYER. Right. 
Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do? 
Mr. SAWYER. We got into the elevator. We run into this man. 
Mr. BELIN. Well, when you say you got into the elevator, where was the elevator as you walked in the front door? 
Mr. SAWYER. It was to the right. 
Mr. BELIN. To the right? 
Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BELIN. Was it a freight elevator or a passenger elevator? 
Mr. SAWYER. The best of my recollection, it was a passenger elevator. 

When the two men got off the elevator on 2nd floor, they separated. The man wearing the brown coat probably walked to the rear of the building, exited onto the dock, and then began walking south on Houston St. This man walked past Richard Carr, who had seen this man a few minutes earlier on the 6th floor. Carr watched this man, and he soon got into a Nash Rambler station wagon on Record Street.

It appears as though the 2nd man from the 6th floor, wearing the white shirt, walked thru the hallway on the 2nd floor and entered the Book Depository office. An employee of the Book Depository, Mrs. Reid, had just returned to her office when the man walked into the office. As he walked thru the office Mrs. Reid said he was wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a bottle of Coke. Mrs. Reid's testimony before the Warren Commission caused a great deal of concern. The Commission knew that Oswald was wearing a long-sleeve brown shirt when confronted in the lunchroom by Officer Baker and Roy Truly. The Commission said that a minute or two later Oswald walked thru Mrs. Reid's office, but they could not explain why he was wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a bottle of coke. The Commission said Oswald then left the building and was next seen on Cecil McWatter's bus wearing a long-sleeve brown shirt.

Above was inadvertently deleted from the “Escape from the Sixth Floor” page of HarveyandLee.net sometime between Dec. 19 of last year and Jan. 8 of this year.  Seems appropriate here.
 

[Andrej Stancak]

Jim:

Sawyer did not say that the lift has just landed and the man who exited the lift advised them. Instead, he said the lift was there when he arrived and they run into that man. That man appeared to have stood in front of the lift door and advised the officers before they entered the lift, and it could have been a Depository employee as Sawyer believed. So, that man could stand there when Sawyer arrived, and they "run into him". Does this sound plausible?

Edited March 2, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Andrej Stancak]

Can anyone help me with what appears to be a triviality but what puzzles me a great deal:

John believes that the two assassins used the passenger lift both for getting to the sixth floor (allegedly, this was easy) and for escaping. I checked some youtube videos proudly showing lifts made in 1960'. All lift cars I saw had a neat ceiling with a cover in their interior. Of course, the ceiling cover could be dismounted if needed, however, this would not go without using instruments or damaging the top deck of the car. It would require time and some work to free the exit from the car. So, how the assassins got out from the lift car? They had to unscrew the top deck, and then one by one squeeze themselves through the opening on the top. The first going man had it easy because the second man still standing in the car could help. However, the second man would just not get out as there was no one who could lift him. How much noise would it cause? The fourth floor was pretty much packed with ladies  (about 7-8 of them) who chose to watch the motorcade from their office. One side of the lift box was a part of their office, so they would hear some noise causes by the assassins as they were working on the top deck to free the opening, and by climbing up to the fifth floor. There was apparently a ladder above the car in the shaft connecting the fifth and sixth floor. Still, how could they free the boards and remove the piles of books which exerted a weight upon the boards? How much time would it take to create the opening on the sixth floor and why e.g., Bonnie Ray Williams did not hear or see them? I gather only one man using only one hand could work at that stage because he would be standing on a narrow ladder and holding himself with one hand on the ladder.

The problems were not smaller on their return. One by one they would have to jump from the top of the car into the lift car (some 7 feet height). That would occur on the fourth floor. Another big noise when the second man would jump onto the platform of the lift. How comes that no one heard the two loud jumps? Then they needed to mount the top back, possibly using a screwdriver. However, the white-shirt assassin needed to be in the second floor lunchroom before Baker and Truly got to the lunchroom as they saw (90 seconds after the last shot) Oswald wearing a brown shirt (it was light red, however, this is a different story). Thus, the lift had to move down from the fourth floor to the second floor right away without spending any time on mounting back the top deck. The car allegedly stayed on the second floor at that moment and one assassin remained in the car.   Could he alone mount the top deck without any help? There were already people on the second floor (Mrs. Hine, Mrs. Reid, Mr. Williams, Mr. Campbell, Mrs. Stanton) and how comes they did not see/hear any noise coming from the lift as the poor assassin was trying to fix the top deck of the lift?

There is also a problem with the movements of both the white- and brown-shirt Oswald. The white-shirt Oswald got to the second floor lunchroom before Truly and Baker reached the second floor, he had to buy a Coke and move from the back of the second floor to the front of that floor. This is what Mrs. Reid saw after she returned to her office about 2 minutes after the last shot - Oswald holding a Coke was walking from the lunchroom to the stairs in the front of the second floor. The timing does not seem to hold because Mrs. Reid came to her place with other workers in one batch only after Baker and Truly allegedly accosted Oswald in the lunchroom.  Further, the white-shirt Oswald would not leave via back stairs but via the front stairs. An even more puzzling thing is that the brown-shirt Oswald did not need any Coke because he was seen and asked about where he was going by Mrs. Stanton minutes (around 12.20) before the shooting, and this brown-shirt Oswald said he was going to buy a Coke for his lunch. So, only one Oswald could possibly go to the second floor lunchroom to buy a Coke, and it could only be the white-shirt Oswald. However, Baker said the man he had seen had a brown jacket on himself.

 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

49 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Jim:

Sawyer did not say that the lift has just landed and the man who exited the lift advised them. Instead, he said the lift was there when he arrived and they run into that man. That man appeared to have stood in front of the lift door and advised the officers before they entered the lift, and it could have been a Depository employee as Sawyer believed. So, that man could stand there when Sawyer arrived, and they "run into him". Does this sound plausible?

What’s most implausible here, as Paul Jolliffe pointed out, is that a lawyer supposedly investigating the assassination of a U.S. president would have so little interest in the man Sawyer encountered that he would ask no questions whatsoever.  Did he have a brown jacket?  Glasses?  A white shirt?  How old?  How tall?  Sheesh!

As we can tell from the above John A. speculated that the two men escaping from the sixth floor both probably got off the elevator on the second floor and separated.  But he considered the possibility that an accomplice may have stayed on the elevator until it reached the first floor.  It is astounding… and so telling… that neither Belin nor anyone else on team WC had any interest in the man Sawyer encountered.

[Jim Hargrove]

Andrej,

Don’t most elevators have an emergency exit door in the roof?
 

Making it exceptionally difficult to get out of that door wouldn’t seem logical.  As I’ve said before, firewalls are required by most building codes to enclose elevator shafts. In a building of this age, that would suggest bricks, which could muffle a lot of sound.

[Andrej Stancak]

Thanks, Jim. Your theory makes me explore the lifts. Of course, I am not an expert and can only rely on information acquired by searching through the Internet.

It seems that the emergency trap door on the top of the car is not accessible to people in the lift - it is for rescuers, not for the passengers to rescue themselves. 

This is what I found on the Imminent Threat Solution website:  

"As mentioned previously, the emergency exit hatch at the top of the elevator is more than likely locked from the outside, as required by law. You may not even be able to reach this unless there’s another person in the elevator to help you, or a railing to stand on." https://www.itstactical.com/skillcom/escape-and-evasion-skillcom/elevator-action-how-to-escape-being-trapped-in-an-elevator/

Late edit: The reason why elevator exit hatch can only be open from outside using a special key is that if there is a technical problem then to be inside a car itself is the safest option for the passengers. The hazard of falling or being injured by the lift  which can start moving abruptly or by objects in the shaft is extreme.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Andrej Stancak