“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...

[John Butler]

Various people saw various people in the 6^th floor Sniper’s Nest before the assassination.  There are various accounts of what these people looked like.

There are also accounts of people in the Sniper’s Nest after the assassination.  Lily Mooneyham, a clerk employee of the 95^th District Court saw someone there 4 or 5 minutes after shots were fired.  There are two photos, Dilliard and Powell, that back up her statement that someone was there after the assassination.  These photos show that someone was there rearranging book boxes in the window of the Sniper’s Nest.  The HSCA concluded this was in 2 minutes of the assassination shooting.

Who was this person rearranging boxes?  That can only be answered through speculation. 

It could be a cleanup person from the Sniper’s Nest assassination team.  From the various descriptions of the people given for who was seen there before the assassination there could have been 3 people.  A dark complexioned man in a brown coat, possibly Mac Wallace or a Latin, a white man in a light colored shirt, possibly Lee Oswald or another, and a negro.  A negro who was partially bald or had dust in his hair.  The team by logical reasoning should have been composed of 3 or 4 individuals.  There should have been a shooter, a spotter, a radio man, and a guard.

That is all speculation.  But, what is not speculation is that someone was there after the assassination arranging boxes.  Many boxes were removed from the window and place elsewhere.  Where were they placed? 

Here is where the alternative down through the floor boards to the passenger elevator escape plan would come in handy.  The sniper team escapes on the passenger elevator.  The cleanup man stays and covers the tampered with floor boards with boxes moved from the window and hides he weapon on his way out.  Then he goes down the steps to be confronted by Baker and Truly at about the 3^rd or 4^th floor.  Most likely the 4^th floor.  My objection to the weapon and shooting is that one cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that shooting occurred on the 6th floor.

Dorothy Garner said she saw and heard Baker and Truly going up the steps.  She would have heard someone going down prior to Baker and Truly coming up.  The person coming down’s noise would have been covered up by Baker and Truly’s noise coming up.  The only problem with this is Garner doesn’t say she saw a person going down the stairs.

The cleanup man is a TSBD employee who is identified by Truly when encountered on the 4^th floor stairs.  He was never identified publicly.  This leads to a speculation he might have been Lee Oswald and he left the building shortly after to be spotted by Roger Craig.

Could it be that Lee Oswald was in the Sniper’s Nest and this fact was known to the authorities?  But, they couldn’t pin the wrap on Harvey because he was down on the street or in the doorway. 

It is a bit of a stretch.  You would have to prove the box arranger and the man on the 3^rd or 4^th floor met by Baker and Truly are the same.  Then you would have to prove that person was Lee Oswald, half of the Harvey and Lee team.  As the old Senator from SC said there’s too much proving going on.

Edited February 21, 2019 by John Butler

[Jim Hargrove]

John,

Another researcher (not John) just wrote to me saying he was researching the plywood and 2 x 6 floor planks work being done at the time on the sixth floor and its position in relation to the elevator shaft beneath it.

[Jim Hargrove]

On 2/20/2019 at 2:16 PM, Paul Jolliffe said:

Andrej,

Yes, the actual departure from the passenger elevator did pose a risk for the escaping assassins. However, John has posited that one of them, the brown coat man, in fact was seen leaving the TSBD on the Houston Street side by both James Worrell and Richard Carr. This man did not leave the TSBD via the front door and go down the front steps. After departing the TSBD, this man apparently then drove the Nash Rambler to the spot on Elm Street where he picked up a white-shirted man running down the slope, away from the southwestern side of the TSBD. That man (white shirt) was seen by Roger Craig, and Craig believed he witnessed the flight of (LHO) from the scene, abetted by the brown jacket man from the sixth floor of the depository.

(Now, I disagree with John about the post-assassination 2nd floor lunchroom encounter, but that is not the point here.)

The two men on the sixth floor - seen by at least five and perhaps as many as forty witnesses before the assassination - escaped somehow: they did not run down the back stairs, they did not run down the fire escape, and there is no good evidence that they came down one of the old, noisy, slow freight elevators, elevators whose open gates would have made them easy to spot by anyone as those elevators descended.

None of those are viable options.

John's floorboard escape to the passenger elevator theory is plausible. That's why I wonder if the (unstated) purpose of the floor-laying crew was to loosen the boards near the "sniper's nest" to facilitate the escape. I am not saying all or even any of that crew knew the purpose - merely that their work could well have been the cover needed to loosen the boards for the getaway, and to prevent any later investigators from realizing just what had happened around the southeast corner window, just above the 5th floor elevator shaft.

Andrej, your question about the risk the moment they stepped off the passenger elevator is legitimate, but not insurmountable for John's theory to be correct. I have more to say soon.

Meanwhile:

I'd like to ask the readership about the possibility/probability/certainty that the man with whom Marrion Baker came face-to-face (with the light brown jacket man, a 30 year old white man with dark hair, 5'9, 165 lbs), as described in Baker's first day affidavit, was, in fact the same man seen by Worrell, Carr, and Craig?

 

Good question!  I’ve often thought that arguing about Baker’s alleged second floor encounter was largely irrelevant to this topic (since we’re talking about people escaping from the sixth floor after the hit, and Classic Oswald® wasn’t there). 

But if Baker actually confronted the man seen by Worrell and Carr and perhaps Craig and others, it suddenly does become relevant.  Skeptics will argue that Truly told Baker “he works here,” but... uh... let’s just say how remarkably brave Truly must have been to race up the stairs ahead of a cop ready to encounter armed assassins, unless he knew more than he let on!

For the time being, at least, John is going with the legitimacy of Baker’s second floor encounter, but he also points out that the second floor lunchroom had no outside windows and, if the overhead lights were out, it would have been pretty dark in there.  The question of whether Baker actually encountered Oswald or the brown-coated man seen by Worrell and Carr is worthy of more discussion.

[Paul Jolliffe]

John, 

I agree with you that it is likely that at least one of the sixth floor "team" was confronted by Baker on either the third or fourth floor, only to have Truly vouch for him. According to Baker's description, written as "Oswald" was sitting in Fritz's office and in plain view of Baker, this could not have been our "Oswald". 

So why didn't Dorothy Garner say anything about anyone coming down to the third or fourth floor after Adams and Styles went down?

We don't know, but it is possible that person was known to her, and therefore not a suspect in her eyes. Personally, if Baker's first day affidavit was correct as I believe, then the suspect was on the same floor as Garner - she may have witnessed it, and if she did, then there was no way to claim that the 2nd floor lunchroom encounter actually happened. So she disappeared from any list of people to be interviewed.

I did find a much later interview with her in which she said explicitly that "Oswald" did not come down the stairs, but she did note the confusion and chaos throughout the building. So much so, that her phones were commandeered and she had to call her husband from a nearby diner.

[Jim Hargrove]

Some people believe that these frames from what John Butler has identified as the Couch-Darnell film show Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady outside the TSBD (they are supposedly circled in red). The images appear to me to be nowhere near clear enough to make any such claim.  But there is another problem....

The same day JFK was killed, Bill Shelley told the Dallas Police, "I went back to the building & went inside & called my wife & told her what happened. I was on the first floor then & I stayed at the elevator & was told not to let anyone out of the elevator." Four months later, on 3/18/64, Shelley told the FBI, "Immediately following the shooting, Billy N. Lovelady and I accompanied some uniformed police officers to the railroad yards just west of the building and returned through the west side door of the building about ten minutes later."

Where are the police in the frames above?  You can see well ahead of the two circled men and well behind them.  These two unidentified men do not appear to be accompanying any police officers.
 

[Tony Krome]

Very similar, but as with most images connected with that day, they are open to interpretation.

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks for responding, Tony.  Can you show me evidence that any of the people in your four images above are either Bill Shelley or Billy Lovelady?

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Some people believe that these frames from what John Butler has identified as the Couch-Darnell film show Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady outside the TSBD (they are supposedly circled in red). The images appear to me to be nowhere near clear enough to make any such claim.  But there is another problem....

The same day JFK was killed, Bill Shelley told the Dallas Police, "I went back to the building & went inside & called my wife & told her what happened. I was on the first floor then & I stayed at the elevator & was told not to let anyone out of the elevator." Four months later, on 3/18/64, Shelley told the FBI, "Immediately following the shooting, Billy N. Lovelady and I accompanied some uniformed police officers to the railroad yards just west of the building and returned through the west side door of the building about ten minutes later."

Where are the police in the frames above?  You can see well ahead of the two circled men and well behind them.  These two unidentified men do not appear to be accompanying any police officers.
 

No cops in the frames, other than Baker running the other way.  Though they could have joined one or two further down I guess.  The one does look kind of like Shelly, I can't remember if Lovelady was balding and wearing a plaid shirt that day.  But I've reached a point where I believe any way you look at it they lied at some point.  Their statements are contradictory over time.  Why?  They were involved in the plot, which I doubt.  Or they were threatened at some point with bodily harm to themselves or their families if they didn't change their stories. 

[John Butler]

Ron,

That is very reasonable.  Of course the other guy can say different.  That is my problem with just about every piece of JFK research.  Can you get agreement from fellow researchers.

The Krome gif imagery is fairly poor.  It is the same as PM.  It is not sufficient to say whose who.  I originally thought the Lovelady figure was wearing a light colored shirt.  But, you can see a patterned shirt there if you want too.  The image is just that poor.  As far as identifying Lovelady and Shelley, the imagery looks vaguely like them.  But, the imagery also looks vaguely like someone else.  The business of the Lovelady shirt looking like two different shirts is hard to decipher. 

Tony later shows imagery that make one doubt what was said earlier about a light colored shirt. 

As far as there being no cops there I believe one was at the far left in the earlier frames.  And, of course the motorcycle cop running for the TSBD doorway.  I have my doubts that is Baker based on the timing of the Couch-Darnell film and supposedly what Baker said about when he arrived at the TSBD.  I am reserving doubt the motorcycle policeman being Baker.

Jim and Sandy are both right from their perspective.  You have to decide what you think is best based on how you read the evidence.  They read the evidence differently. 

The idea of Lovelady and Shelley being co-conspirators or not could go either way.  At least in the case of Bill Shelley, I agree he may very well be a co-conspirator based on the 3 Patsy photo in New Orleans showing Lee Oswald, Bill Shelley, and Chauncey Holt.  There is some disagreement on Bill Shelley in that photo.  But, to me he is a dead ringer.

This imagery may be suspicious.  It is from a TV film in New Orleans.  Why was this saved showing a minor event on the street.  The passing out of pamphlets that note worthy to film and then save the film?

This film may show a very rare event.  Harvey and Lee filmed together working the same event.  That's just speculation based on the central figure.

Edited February 22, 2019 by John Butler

[Cory Santos]

Do we know the name of the company that did the work on the floor?

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Cory Santos said:

Do we know the name of the company that did the work on the floor?

Read somewhere years ago, I think.  They May have been doing it internally, something about book orders being down that time of year, keeping the workers busy. 

[Tony Krome]

I think it was an in house project, headed up by Shelley, manager of Miscellaneous Dept.

Any answers to the following would be appreciated;

Anyone seen photos of piles of new TSBD plywood on sixth floor?

Anyone seen photos of woodworking tools on the sixth floor?

Anyone seen photos of the working area in progress at the time?

Were any tools found on the sixth floor? 

Where were woodworking tools stored, if not left on the sixth floor?

Where was plywood stored, if not on the sixth floor?

Thanks

[Cory Santos]

Lots to question about it.  Amazingly, I have not found any real answer in the Warren Omission yet but I just started.

[Jim Hargrove]

According to the Warren Report, Bonnie Ray Williams was “a warehouseman temporarily assigned to laying plywood on the sixth floor.” [WCR p. 68]
 

[Paul Jolliffe]