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Leading arguments Oswald was innocent/guilty of personally shooting/killing JFK


Greg Doudna

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Greg regarding your response to:

 

a) Ruth Paine testified that she only had (2) curtain rods in the garage and when the DPD arrived the rods were still there. Also, during interrogation LHO denied the curtain rod story to Fritz. Why, because he couldn't produce them.

I covered the package story in the first paragraph on the 'What's the Package? Lee.' thread.

 

b,c) please elaborate, what meeting, with food? This is 1963 not 80's corporate America.

Not one book order was filled on the morning of the 22nd. Why? He was preoccupied with something else.

 

d) No doubt the cash came from the bank check. But he was a controlling individual. He would have kept the cash and helped Marina as needed. I made the argument in the 'What's the Package? Lee.' thread that he left the wedding ring because he wasn't returning.

 

e) To the best of my knowledge he always wore his ID bracelet not the MC ring.

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19 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The fewer far-fetched elements one proposes, the more credible one's explanation becomes.

 

This philosophy is precisely the reason we have Warren Commission apologists. WC apologists consider the mere ideas of a conspiracy and a cover up as being far fetched. The difference between Jeremy and WC apologists is only where they draw their respective "far fetched" lines.

Jeremy labels many of us here as tin-foil-hat-wearing investigators just because we want to know the whole truth regardless of how odd some of it may sound, not just enough "simple" truth to prove a conspiracy.

Had Albert Einstein used Jeremy's philosophy and line of reasoning, he never would have formulated his theories of relativity. Talk about far-fetched ideas! Take a look at this partial list of principles Einstein would have us believe:

  1. The faster something is moving, the slower its time will run... but only for it. This means, for example, that if you took a spaceflight moving very fast, upon return you'd have aged less than everybody else who remained on Earth. (I use spaceflight in the example only because it allows very fast travel. Any time you move your aging slows down.)
  2. The faster something is moving, the heavier it will be. Though it will remain the same weight as far as it knows. Furthermore, it's weight will approach infinity as it approaches the speed of light
  3. The faster something is moving, the thinner it will be in the direction it is moving. It will become virtually flat as it approaches the speed of light. But it's dimensions will be normal as far as it can tell.

 

The thing that bugs me most about Jeremy's attitude is how he paints himself as the man of reason. He thinks he knows best which things are far fetched and which aren't.  Which would be fine if the theories he doesn't like were actually debunked or shone not to be backed by evidence first.

Jeremy said:

"The same principle applies, but even more so, to the far-fetched, tin-foil-hat variety of explanations that the JFK assassination seems to attract. You can have Oswald being impersonated in the run-up to the assassination without inventing a bizarre long-term scheme involving doppelgangers. You can have official interference at JFK's autopsy without inventing body-snatchers on Air Force One and a secret team of surgeons manipulating JFK's wounds at Walter Reed. You don't need to invent the widespread alteration of films and photographs, or the murders of dozens of inconvenient witnesses." (Emphases are mine..)

Jeremy doesn't like these three things so he labels them as far-fetched inventions. But what they really are are theories used to explain seemingly irreconcilable contradictions in the evidence. Jeremy doesn't like them and so he want's us to ignore the contradictions in the evidence and move on. And he says that's okay because we don't need these things to prove a conspiracy. But as I said earlier, some of us want the whole truth, even when it is inconvenient for us.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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17 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Greg Doudna writes:

That's a good point, well explained. You could make things even simpler by omitting the final stage: "and Oswald killed immediately afterward".

If we suppose that Oswald didn't know anything about the shooting, there would have been no need to eliminate him for that reason: he would have had no beans to spill.

Since Oswald's actual elimination took place when he was in the custody of the Dallas police, the obvious explanation is that he was eliminated to prevent him contradicting either of the two scenarios that required his involvement: the lone-nut scenario and the Cuban or Soviet communist conspiracy scenario.

Once Oswald was out of the way, it would be easy to suppress his alibi (that he was on the ground floor during the assassination, and "went outside to watch the P. Parade"). We know that his alibi was in fact suppressed, largely by the police and the FBI, and misrepresented by the Warren Commission.

In general, the less evidence that needs to be explained away as faked or falsified, the more credible one's theory of the assassination will be, and the more likely the theory is to be accurate. The rifle purchase can be explained as part of the Dodd subcommittee's work, and the backyard photographs can be explained as Oswald's creation of a legend for himself. Maybe one or both of these items of evidence were in fact faked, and conclusive proof of this will one day emerge, but it isn't necessary for them to have been faked.

The same principle applies, but even more so, to the far-fetched, tin-foil-hat variety of explanations that the JFK assassination seems to attract. You can have Oswald being impersonated in the run-up to the assassination without inventing a bizarre long-term scheme involving doppelgangers. You can have official interference at JFK's autopsy without inventing body-snatchers on Air Force One and a secret team of surgeons manipulating JFK's wounds at Walter Reed. You don't need to invent the widespread alteration of films and photographs, or the murders of dozens of inconvenient witnesses.

The fewer far-fetched elements one proposes, the more credible one's explanation becomes. And, more importantly, the less tin-foil-hatty the whole subject of the assassination becomes for the general public, which in my opinion would be a good thing.

Excellent comments Jeremy. On no need to kill an unwitting Oswald because no beans to spill, possibly, but my thinking there is he would have had beans to spill even if no advance knowledge of the shooting, such as: who he worked for, prior ops, and history of the rifle. It is like with Federal Aviation Administration mandated investigations every time there is an airplane crash: it is so easy for investigators to close cases with a conclusion of "pilot error" as the default explanation if no other cause of the crash can be found, when pilots are dead. Living pilots tend to push back against such findings. (I believe this phenemenon in FAA investigation outcomes is not simply anecdotal but has been studied.) If there was an operation to blame Castro via a setup of Oswald for the JFK assassination as a casus bellus in the eyes of public and world opinion, it would seem simpler to succeed (effectiveness in swaying public opinion) without a living Oswald and his lawyers pushing back, especially if he were innocent and could show it. So that has been my thinking there.

This is so true when you say: "the less evidence that needs to be explained away as faked or falsified, the more credible one's theory of the assassination will be".  

I see the issue of Oswald’s guilt or innocence of shooting JFK as a straightforward question of whether there has been a wrongful conviction (in the verdicts of accredited epistemological authorities, not at law since he died before it could come to trial), an "Innocence Project" genre of case, that is also mixed with the larger-context question of whether the JFK assassination represented some kind of operation which corresponds astonishingly to known Joint Chiefs-level planning to manufacture or exploit pretexts for war against Cuba. That the Joint Chiefs and CIA at top level were undertaking dozens of conspiracies designed to remove the regime of Castro, to manufacture pretexts for armed intervention, and discredit Castro-sympathetic domestic political activity within the US such as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, is a matter of simple uncontested record. Conspiracy on the part of some of those actors to launch a successful nuclear attack on the Soviet Union (success defined as destruction of Russia while keeping American losses down to an acceptable level in the low millions of deaths), such as LeMay, while contested and less clear, is disturbingly not-obviously excluded. The issue is to what extent these numerous now-known top-level conspiracies were carried out operationally, and whether the JFK assassination did or did not arise out of that context. (A powerful academic article giving background and context of these high-level conspiracies against Castro's Cuba: Anna Kasten Nelson, "Operation Northwoods and the Covert War against Cuba, 1961-1963", Cuban Studies 32 [2001]: 141-54 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/24486204].)  

And yet that is a distinct issue from whether Oswald was a shooter.

Here is another point of interest: the most vulnerability of the presidential limousine to assassination from a gunman on the sixth floor of the TSBD was in the approach to or just as the limousine was about to enter that hairpin turn left onto Elm. Why did the 6th-floor shooter—whether or not that shooter was Oswald--not shoot then? What would have been the best-practices response on the part of the Secret Service driver if that had happened? Especially if not immediately certain from where the shots were coming from? Probably an immediate acceleration further into the line of fire into the turn and then left onto Elm at high speed. A shooter from the 6th floor would have had more ideal shooting conditions, ability to make more shots, and higher chances of success in killing, in this scenario. So why, if the intent of the shooter was to kill JFK, which it must be assumed it was, did this not happen?

The only explanation other than unexplained irrationality on the part of the shooter (which is possible) seems to be: there was prior planning to have the 6th floor shooting occur at a time when an additional shooter or shooters would simultaneously fire when the limousine was in the approximate area of the Grassy Knoll. 

The failure of the 6th floor shooter to fire upon JFK before the limousine turned left on Elm is not an argument for Oswald’s innocence as the 6th floor shooter, which is why I did not include this point in the “innocence” arguments column. But it is an apparently-strong argument that Oswald would not have been that 6th floor shooter and acting aloneif he was that 6th floor shooter.

Or was there some calculation on the 6th floor shooter's part that it would be easier to escape if he waited to fire, even if shooting with accuracy became more difficult? But if the shooter was a lone shooter intent on doing a heroic or ideological act in killing a president, would not having the greatest chances of success in shooting to kill override all other considerations? 

Edited by Greg Doudna
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"He's Been Shot! He's Been Shot! Lee Oswald Has Been Shot!"

The shocked shouted words of NBC television news reporter Tom Pettit who was on location in the DPD basement and just feet away from Oswald as he was shot by Jack Ruby the morning of 11,24,1963.

The up close - point blank gun shot killing of Oswald ( the most important criminal suspect in America's history ) on the Sunday morning of 11,24,1963 right inside the Dallas PD building with two escorts at his sides and another 70+ armed security all around supersedes almost every other Oswald guilty or not debate in conspiracy suggesting importance imo. 

It was the viewing of local strip joint owner Jack Ruby leaping from the press line and blowing Oswald's guts out LIVE on national TV ( by what 50 million Americans including me ?) in that totally improbable DPD Oswald security failure situation that deeply wrenched the stomachs and immediately planted seriously strong seeds of conspiracy suspicion and doubt in the minds of those tens of millions of Americans ( and for sure tens of millions of foreigners as well) as it rationally should have.

Whether or not Oswald was guilty of the JFK killing or not or worked with others or not became the secondary issue behind his live on national TV viewed, total trust shaking murder in DPD custody.

The DPD's literally unbelievable negligence in protecting the most important criminal suspect in America's history in the worst possible way and with the worst possible results with Oswald's death is the single main event that triggered the greatest loss of trust in our government ever - lasting decades!

Most American's like me didn't feel this suspicion, doubt and loss of trust until we saw Ruby whack Oswald in the DPD basement live on national TV that morning.

That's how hugely important, effecting and damaging the DPD Oswald security failure event was.

Edited by Joe Bauer
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Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

Jeremy labels many of us here as tin-foil-hat-wearing investigators just because we want to know the whole truth regardless of how odd some of it may sound

No, the tin-foil hat epithet does not apply to people who merely want to know the truth about something. It applies to those who invent complex and far-fetched explanations when much simpler and straightforward explanations exist.

For each of the examples I cited, there are simple explanations and unnecessarily complex explanations. People who insist on believing unnecessarily complex, conspiratorial explanations deserve to be called tin-foil-hatters. That's what the term means.

Quote

Had Albert Einstein used Jeremy's philosophy and line of reasoning, he never would have formulated his theories of relativity. Talk about far-fetched ideas!

This is a version of the tin-foil-hatters' old 'misunderstood genius' argument. They suppressed Galileo's ideas but he is now recognised as having been right all along! Therefore my ideas about a perpetual motion machine / cold fusion / the moon landings / little green men aren't crazy after all!

There is no equivalence between, on the one hand, inventing counter-intuitive concepts to explain aspects of the natural world, and, on the other, inventing unnecessarily complex conspiracies to explain aspects of the social world.

The people who came up with far-fetched notions such as doppelgangers and body-snatchers were not misunderstood geniuses who will be recognised as such in the future. They were fantasists and nincompoops, and will be recognised as such in the future, in the unlikely event that anyone even remembers them.

Quote

Jeremy doesn't like these three things so he labels them as far-fetched inventions. But what they really are are theories used to explain seemingly irreconcilable contradictions in the evidence.

Indeed they are theories that try to explain contradictions in the evidence. Unfortunately, they are poor theories, using poor explanations. In each case, the contradictions can be explained much more simply. That's what makes them poor theories.

When it comes to explanations, the simpler they are, the better they are. As I pointed out:

Quote

In general, the less evidence that needs to be explained away as faked or falsified, the more credible one's theory of the assassination will be, and the more likely the theory is to be accurate.

I assume Sandy agrees with that point. If not, I'd be interested to hear why.

In the real world, conspiracies happen. The legal system deals with them all the time. When it comes to the murders of prominent political figures, the historical record shows us that conspiracies are not at all uncommon; it may even be the default explanation. There's nothing far-fetched about using the concept of conspiracy to explain the murder of, say, President Kennedy. In this case, the balance of the evidence strongly indicates that more than one person was involved.

But you need to keep the proposed conspiracy as small as possible. If a plausible everyday explanation exists for an incongruous item of evidence, you should use that explanation, and not expand your proposed conspiracy to accommodate it.

Take the notions of long-term doppelganger projects, and presidential body-snatchers, and teams of three-letter-agency employees roaming the country, seizing and altering films and photographs. These concepts are far-fetched, because things like these rarely if ever happen in everyday life.

In each case, there is some evidence which is consistent with those notions. But in each case, much of that same evidence can be plausibly explained without expanding the proposed conspiracy. Witnesses often make mistakes. Sometimes, people exaggerate and lie. Sometimes, typists fill in forms incorrectly. Invariably, when making copies of copies of copies of films and photographs, visual anomalies will be generated. These explanations are not far-fetched, because things like these very often do happen in everyday life.

Greg's very useful thread is an attempt to identify the essential elements in the conspiracy versus lone-nut argument. Keeping things as simple as possible is what we all need to do.

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BA53A067-3216-487E-9E11-AF1410197B75.jpeg.f4899501c419cfada22d996115845213.jpeg
 

so LHO could have been anywhere that day- shopping, at the beach, at the zoo, out front - it didn’t really matter as he was always to be eliminated after his arrest due to his connection to the rifle, with all his info taken to the grave? I get that.
But then surely he’d only be an accessory/bit player, discarded as the owner/provider of the weapon and a furore would ensue to locate the actual gunman and who he represented? 
 

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On 2/1/2022 at 12:23 AM, Greg Doudna said:

Suggestions for additions? Subtractions? Rewordings? 

Leading arguments Oswald was innocent of personally shooting/killing JFK:

Over recent months I have enjoyed many of the threads that Greg has launched on this Forum, this latest one being another.

On 2/1/2022 at 12:23 AM, Greg Doudna said:

Color of shirt of 6th floor shooter of witnesses differs from color of shirt worn by LHO

Not sure how this entry can be reworded and kept brief, but we know that many witnesses in the plaza prior to the motorcade's arrival witnessed more than a single shooter as well as differences in LHO's shirt colour, there were differences in hair and skin colour i.e.:-

Arnold & Barbara Rowland saw a man with a rifle in the far west window of 6th floor TSBD + elderly black man with plaid shirt in eastern most window.

Carolyn Walther saw two men on the 4th or 5th floor. One man wearing white shirt with blond or light brown hair with rifle + other man with brown suit coat.

Richard Carr saw man on 6th floor wearing brown/tan sport coat, heavyset with horn-rimmed glasses.

John Powell + many inmates on the 6th floor of the County jail, directly opposite the TSBD, saw two men, one with rifle, both wearing brownish looking clothes.

I may stand corrected but I believe none of the above were considered by the Warren Commission.

I also agree with Joe's post above that Ruby's snuffing out of Oswald was a tragic security failure by the DPD.  However, I consider THE major failure of the DPD over that weekend to be the failure to record all the interrogations of the accused assassin.  How different would be our considerations of this case, if instead of the scribbled notes of questions and answers that only appeared decades after the event, instead we could fully listen to what was spoken.

The above thought struck me just the other night when U.K. tv aired 'In the heat of the night' following the recent passing of Sidney Poitier.  The movie was released in 1967, set in a small dusty cotton town of Sparta, Mississippi.  A murder mystery with the killing of wealthy Philip Colbert, investigated by Police Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) and Virgil Tibbs (Poitier).  A great movie with a great sound track by Quincy Jones!  But what struck me was when the killer was finally exposed by Tibbs and the cops were getting Ralph's confession in Gillespie's office, the confession was taken with a tape recorder.  Yet, the big city of Dallas, Texas, handling the murder of the president did not have access to, or could not provide such a device.  Even I had a small portable reel to reel Japanese tape recorder in '67.

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1 hour ago, Pete Mellor said:

 Yet, the big city of Dallas, Texas, handling the murder of the president did not have access to, or could not provide such a device.  Even I had a small portable reel to reel Japanese tape recorder in '67.

In Dallas, the concept may have been similar to the FBI's 302 forms, which are written by agents from their notes when a witness is interviewed, with no recording made.  The agents are free to dictate events and quotations as they see fit, or omit them.  Worked wonders with the troublesome TWA 800 crash witnesses who saw a missile or missiles strike the plane, and is still in use today.

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On 2/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, Claude Barnabe said:

a) Ruth Paine testified that she only had (2) curtain rods in the garage and when the DPD arrived the rods were still there. Also, during interrogation LHO denied the curtain rod story to Fritz. Why, because he couldn't produce them.

I covered the package story in the first paragraph on the 'What's the Package? Lee.' thread.

I will get back re this later.

On 2/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, Claude Barnabe said:

b,c) please elaborate, what meeting, with food? This is 1963 not 80's corporate America.

Here is an important question: when did Oswald eat the morning of Fri Nov 22?

It can be rejected out of hand that someone would go to work at a workplace involving physical labor and physical movement and not eat that morning. Yet according to the testimony of Marina and Ruth, Oswald left that morning not having eaten anything but having only drunk a cup of coffee. Further, according to Wesley Frazier Oswald also unusually took no lunch. But there is no information that Oswald left the TSBD during lunchtime to buy lunch, and the only known thing he bought inside TSBD was a coke. Then there was the walking, the bus, the cab, the rapid walking to his room in Oak Cliff ... rapid change of clothes and dashing out again ... a struggle with police officers in the theatre ... and yet in all of this there is no mention from any witness of Oswald expressing hunger or needing food, though he may have been given something to eat after 2 pm when he was in custody. Although no attention has been given to this point, I think this calls for explanation: when did he eat that morning? (And what?) If Oswald's own claim to Fritz that he brought his lunch that day (in the long bag seen by Frazier) was accurate that would account for lunch but it still leaves unexplained fuel for his body to do physical work that morning. 

There are a few possibilities. Maybe he ate fruit or some other food at the Ruth Paine house that simply went unnoticed by the women. Maybe he left the house 45 minutes or so earlier than assumed and walked about a mile each way to Hutch's Market on the corner of Shady Grove and Storey, 8 blocks south, where owner Hutchinson said Oswald would come in early, around 7 am, and buy milk, rolls, and bread. If he did that Fri morning Nov 22 that would resolve the question of food in the morning, and if his purchase at Hutch's Market (if so) involved by accident receipt of a long bread bag, say about 25" x 5", into which he shifted fruit and a sandwich from a jacket pocket reusing the grocery bag to carry his lunch that morning, that would account for the size of paper bag Linnie and Wesley Frazier saw Lee carrying, which as Wesley described it to police was the kind of bag one gets from a grocery store. All that would need to be assumed is that Oswald gave Frazier a bogus story on Thursday as to why he was going out to see Marina unusually on a Thursday--such that Frazier's testimony is true that that is what Oswald told him, but what Oswald told him was not true--and then Lee stuck to that story with Wesley Frazier on Friday. Then Frazier was truthful in his testimony (in telling what Oswald had told him and the size of bag Frazier saw him carrying) and Oswald also was truthful to Fritz and his interrogators in saying it was his lunch. And it also would account for Oswald having a lunch to eat that day and no major issues of explanation of source of food that day. 

However if Oswald did not walk to and from Hutch's Market that morning, then there is a problem calling for explanation.

On 2/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, Claude Barnabe said:

Not one book order was filled on the morning of the 22nd. Why? He was preoccupied with something else.

Where do you get that Oswald filled no book orders that morning? I am not familiar with a basis for that. A clipboard of his with some unfilled orders was later said to be found, but aren't there TSBD witnesses who saw him in the process of filling orders that morning? What is the evidence that there were no previous clipboards of orders that he did fill that morning?

I have conjectured that Oswald, with the knowledge and approval of Shelly and Truly, might have been able at will to slip out for meetings, and by meetings I mean with a contact as an informant--perhaps to Treasury agents (ATF) whose offices were located I think elsewhere in Dealey Plaza?--but that is just speculation. If Oswald did not walk to Hutch's Market to eat that morning, and if he ate nothing at all in Irving that morning, then a planned meeting which he knew would involve him eating could be an alternative explanation for why he did not feel it necessary to eat that morning, and may not have felt it necessary to pack a lunch either. This again is motivated by conjecturing solutions to the "when did he eat?" question that morning.

i believe one thing some think Oswald may have been doing that morning can be excluded--building the sniper's nest (or so-called sniper's nest, depending on if that is a correct term for it) with all the stacked boxes there. Two reasons for excluding that Oswald was doing that Friday morning: first, because according to the workers laying flooring on the sixth floor that morning (I am thinking of the testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams), although they may have seen Oswald filling an order on the sixth floor, they did not see him much there that morning, and not stacking boxes in that corner. And second, the configuration of boxes in that corner existed that way prior to the morning of Nov 22. Allan Eaglesham, "The Sniper's Nest That Never Was", https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48682#relPageId=5. Eaglesham argues that those boxes were constructed prior to Fri morning Nov 22 by employees as a means of having privacy. If that was so then this would be a case of a shooter secondarily and opportunistically using what was already there. (To be clear, Eaglesham himself has an additional argument contesting any shooting was done from that location at all which I skip over here as I assume that must be flawed in light of all the reasons to suppose someone was shooting from that window.) An alternative possibility could be an earlier construction of what was ostensibly an employees' privacy corner by employees that actually did have a hidden purpose for a planned shooting, and a third hypothetical possibility could be an after-hours construction of those boxes prior to the morning of Nov 22, such as the night before. This last would agree well with what I believe is the simplest reconstruction of how the shooter (and second person if so) got into the TSBD and to the 6th floor without being noticed by any of the daytime employees: by entering the building after-hours Thu night Nov 21 when there is known janitorial staff in and out of that building with keys none of whom were ever questioned by the FBI or Warren Commission to my knowledge. But a notion that Oswald spent hours on that sixth floor the morning of Nov 22 stacking boxes in that corner unknown to the rest of the workers working full-time on that floor that morning seems excluded as not very realistic to me.

On 2/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, Claude Barnabe said:

d) No doubt the cash came from the bank check. But he was a controlling individual. He would have kept the cash and helped Marina as needed. I made the argument in the 'What's the Package? Lee.' thread that he left the wedding ring because he wasn't returning.

It is not as obvious to me as it seems to be to you that Lee would not leave that cash with Marina. (On controlling, a comment: despite what witnesses and Lee himself said, I don't think Lee actually prevented or discouraged Marina from learning English, which makes absolutely no rational sense at all for an imported wife in a new land. I interpret that as Lee was backing up an agreed-upon cover story with Marina for why Marina was not learning English which was actually because she secretly already knew English very well. So there goes the #1 exhibit often cited to show Lee as controlling. Not that Lee was perfect, but I believe he was innocent on that perception on that point.) The $170 cash may have been safer with Marina hiding it where she lived in Ruth's house simply on practical security grounds. The sum was the equivalent of maybe $1500-$2000 in today's money and Lee appears not to have had a bank account nor did he have a safe. The other alternatives of carrying it around on his person every day or hiding it in a drawer in a rooming house with no locked door might make leaving it with Marina the best thing to do.

On 2/2/2022 at 10:35 AM, Claude Barnabe said:

e) To the best of my knowledge he always wore his ID bracelet not the MC ring.

What is the evidence or basis for this--for saying wearing his Marine Corps ring was unusual? I see a 2006 topic on this forum in which David Lifton explicitly asked if anyone knew of evidence on this specific question, and in that entire thread no one gave evidence or reason to suppose Oswald did not normally wear his Marine Corps ring (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/7995-oswalds-marine-corp-ring/). Pat Speer commented there that he thinks Oswald was wearing the Marine Corps ring in the Backyard Photos. So unless the statement that Oswald did not normally wear his Marine Corps ring can be demonstrated, I see no reason to assume anything unusual in Oswald's behavior on that point on Nov 22, 1963. 

Edited by Greg Doudna
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p.s. Claude, on the wedding ring, I only just now saw this, must-read: Greg Parker, "Was there a Wedding Ring?' published on Kennedys and King 2019: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/was-there-a-wedding-ring. Argues the ring found in the cup was Marina's, not Lee's. That Marina called Ruth to retrieve it for her so she could put it on Lee's hand for Lee's burial. That the story of Lee leaving his wedding ring the night before which he otherwise never took off is an early invention as a narrative was crafted in which Marina cooperated. That the ring Lee always wore was his Marine Corps ring.

It is a stunning article. The wedding ring that Lee allegedly left with Marina on his last night with her, the night before the Kennedy assassination, whch he had never done before, makes a gripping dramatic story. But it may not have happened that way.

Edited by Greg Doudna
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5 hours ago, David Andrews said:

In Dallas, the concept may have been similar to the FBI's 302 forms, which are written by agents from their notes when a witness is interviewed, with no recording made.  The agents are free to dictate events and quotations as they see fit, or omit them.  Worked wonders with the troublesome TWA 800 crash witnesses who saw a missile or missiles strike the plane, and is still in use today.

David, I'm viewing this from the U.K. so I'm ignorant as to U.S. procedures both now & back sixty years.  Yet DPD weren't interviewing just a witness, they had charged the guy with assassinating the POTUS in a confusing and highly visible case with the world media watching developments etc.  Assuming Sunday morning was a surprise event to Fritz & Co., surely the fully transcribed interview sessions from taped records would have been most important in a trial...even with a Dallas D.A. like Wade.  LHO was interrogated in sessions on Friday, Saturday & Sunday morning.  How many hours in all?  The Fritz/Bookhout/Hosty notes could only cover an hour or two, if that.  What was covered in the full time periods?  As I posted, this lost info has resulted in all the guessing, surmising, theorising of the 'so called evidence'.

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18 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

[You] need to keep the proposed conspiracy as small as possible. If a plausible everyday explanation exists for an incongruous item of evidence, you should use that explanation, and not expand your proposed conspiracy to accommodate it.

 

The part I made bold above is a key concept of Jeremy's that will lead anyone following it to fail in his quest for the truth. Let me explain.

Jeremy says that if we can think of a plausible everyday explanation for an inconsistency in the evidence, we should accept that explanation over a sinister one and move on. The problem with that is that almost anything can be explained away with an innocent explanation.

Warren Commission apologists do this very thing all the time when debating conspiracy theorists. The CT debater will present some damning evidence, and in reply the LN debater will wave it off as a clerical error or some such thing.

Of course the LNer may be correct in pointing out an innocent explanation. This begs the question, then, how does one differentiate between an innocent explanation and a sinister one? The answer to that is that the researcher should take into account related evidence and see if there is any corroboration for the sinister explanation. If there is little or no corroboration, then he should let the innocent explanation stand. On the other hand, if there is a good deal of corroboration for the sinister explanation, he should accept the sinister corroboration.

 

Edited by Sandy Larsen
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If Sandy reads the rest of the quoted sentence, he will see that I wasn't suggesting that in every case "if we can think of a plausible everyday explanation for an inconsistency in the evidence, we should accept that explanation over a sinister one and move on."

My point was simply that the more far-fetched a proposed explanation is, the stronger the supporting evidence needs to be.

There are plenty of examples in the historical record of political figures who were murdered by lone nuts, and plenty of political figures who were murdered by groups of assassins. Neither of those explanations is far-fetched in itself, though of course you could argue about how well each might apply to the JFK assassination.

But if one is proposing the existence of, say, magical shrinking doppelgangers who were 5' 11" tall in 1959 and 5' 6" not much more than a year later, or invisible presidential body-snatchers on Air Force One, you really need to provide evidence that doesn't have a straightforward alternative explanation.

How many examples are there in the pre-1963 or post-1963 historical record of long-term doppelganger schemes involving two unrelated young boys who, a decade or more later, had grown up to magically look identical? Or of political assassinations which required all the shots to be fired from the front and a team of surgeons to alter the wounds to indicate that all the shots came from behind? There aren't any, are there?

That's what makes these sorts of notions too far-fetched to be accepted by any rational person in the absence of a body of strong evidence, i.e. evidence that doesn't have plausible alternative explanations.

The problem here is not only theoretical but also practical. If the JFK assassination is ever to have a proper investigation, it will require political pressure from the general public, which is what brought about the HSCA and ARRB hearings. But far-fetched, poorly supported and patently stupid theories like these are liable to be looked on by the general public, justifiably, as the ravings of tin-foil hatters. I'm sure Sandy will agree that far-fetched conspiracy theories are exactly what the lone-nut sympathisers would like the general public to associate with the JFK assassination.

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Joe Bauer, I agree with you on the impact of Ruby killing Oswald on live television to millions. A horrified world wanted to know what would come out at trial from Oswald to make sense of the assassination, and if anyone else was involved--and then the suspect is killed, just like that, by what can now only be characterized as a (for the most part) legally operating but nonetheless direct Mob operative. Hair on end. Red flag red flag red flag. Setup! Something stinks! This was what the entire world thought seeing that.  

But that inchoate instinctive visceral reaction was not so simple. Ruby had an explanation: he felt so sorry for Jacqueline, the widow, and little Caroline, the child now without a father, and being an emotional man, overcome with grief for Jacqueline and especially little Caroline, he just could not help himself and literally in less than four minutes after the intent first came to him to do so, he walked one block down the street to the Dallas Police station and through an unbelievably extraordinary coincidence in timing, was able to go right up to Oswald at a point of an inexcusable breach in police security and just shot and killed Oswald dead. Just like that. 

The extraordinary coincidence in timing ironically has been cited as evidence supporting opposite conclusions, depending on perspective. Some look at that extraordinary coincidence in timing as overwhelming evidence against premeditation on the part of Ruby, therefore evidence in favor of the overcome-with-grief spontaneous act. Then all sorts of awe and wonder and marveling proceed from that, how accidental the timing was yet it happened--if Ruby had been five minutes earlier or five minutes later, if Oswald had not delayed by wanting to change sweaters, etc and etc. How capricious history is, etc. (And truly there are plenty of capricious and chaotic things in history with major consequences. But was this one of those, is the question.)

Others look at that same datapoint--the identical uncontested set of facts--the extraordinary coincidence in timing--and conclude that coincidence is too unlikely in this case to be a reasonable explanation, and therefore that extraordinary coincidence in timing makes Ruby's timing and the timing of Oswald being brought into that security breach where Ruby could get at him unlikely to be reasonably explained as coincidence, more likely to indicate coordination (even if it is not necessarily obvious how that coordination happened), some corruption inside the Dallas Police Department, accomplice or accomplices on the Dallas Police side to that murder--not all or most of the Dallas police, but just enough (one or two or maybe three?) with capability of assisting that extraordinary coincidence in timing coming about as it did. And the overwhelming rational reason for supposing that, being the very extraordinary nature of that timing coincidence.

So an irony: two opposite conclusions drawn by persons reasoning from the identical datapoint (the extraordinary coincidence in timing). Which is right? They cannot both be correct--one of these two interpretations, however sincerely held, is just plain wrong. But which?

Everyone has heard of the saying upon which countless sermons have been based, "What would Jesus do?" as a question urged to be self-asked in morally ambiguous circumstances. (Or like the spinoff on that on a bumper sticker I saw in the 1970s: "What would Nixon do?") I think a useful question to ask in this Ruby killing Oswald event is "What would Colombo do?" Colombo being the famous television detective, working-class with his clunker of a car and low-fashion clothing, who encounters arrogant wealthy and powerful types who consistently underestimate him. But underneath appearances he is quite savvy, a veteran detective, who through dogged digging and his famous "oh--just one more question" asked while on his way out as if an afterthought--and always so agreeable and humble, never violent or insulting to anyone including even the worst suspects, when hearing every elaborate alibi offered by suave and sophisticated crime-doers . . . and then he gets the guilty one in the end, nails it, and the viewer sees how all the clues come together in an elegant solution not obvious at the outset. 

So if after Ruby shot and killed Oswald, Colombo had been called in and given free reign to investigate the case--not whether Ruby killed Oswald, but why and how--what would Colombo have done and in the end concluded?

I think the extraordinary coincidence in timing is an indicator of coordination. I suspect that Colombo would have thought so too, and from that starting point have dug and dug until he found how that coordination worked exactly, how that went down.

Two decent analyses on the how: Seth Kantor, The Ruby Cover-Up (1978), and chapter 3 in Flip de Mey, The Lee Harvey Oswald Files (2016), pp. 184-233.

On the story of Ruby overcome with emotion on behalf of the widow and orphaned child and just could not help himself from killing Oswald dead before he could talk at trial, all I can think of is this true anecdote from my own late mother and father, as my father told me later. My mother, sweet and trusting, always tried to believe the best in people, which made her sometimes a bit naive. My father, with heart and soul but also a combat veteran of WW2 had better acuity on some things from experience. They were watching television and Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, was giving a speech. Unfortunately, and to the consternation of his staff and the embarrassment of everyone in the world watching this televised speech, Yeltsin was (as described to me, I didn't see it) acting utterly ridiculous, saying things that made no sense, uncoordinated, with two young henchmen types trying to physically prop him up on each side. Finally Yeltsin became so incoherent some aides physically ushered him away interrupting the speech with an aide explaining to the world that "his medication was acting up".

My mother said sympathetically, "Oh, poor man, his medication is acting up." Whereupon my father said, "'Medication'!!!??? The man's drunk!" 

Ruby's story of being overcome with sympathy for Jacqueline and Caroline driving him out of control to where he could not help himself but murder Oswald to me is transparently his alibi. He could not deny killing Oswald, it was a certainty he would do time for it, but the idea was to have America with him sympathetically as to why. Jurors like my mother would say, "It wasn't right that he shot and killed Oswald. But he felt so sorry for Jacqueline and Caroline. Poor man!" and that sympathy would be reflected at the sentencing stage and in the eyes of public opinion. 

What I think: 

  • that there were at least two, and perhaps four, attempts to kill Oswald prior to that of Ruby on Sunday morning which was successful. The first, suspected on the basis of logic, would have been at or near the TSBD perhaps when Oswald emerged from the building that day. On the reconstruction that Oswald had been set up and in the moments after the shooting realized it, I believe he acted evasively in his escape trying to avoid being tailed out of fear of the assassins (not police as his immediate fear). The second attempt to kill Oswald was by the killer of Tippit, Ruby's recent hire Larry Crafard, at the Texas Theatre, which attempt also failed when Oswald's life was saved for the moment by his arrest by the Dallas police. The third and fourth possible attempts, also which failed, would be of Ruby in the Dallas police station, on Friday night when Ruby, who reportedly admitted he had a gun on him at the time, impersonated a reporter at a press conference at which Oswald briefly appeared, and then another time when Ruby was witnessed trying to enter Capt. Fritz's office at the Dallas police station at a time when Oswald was physically present inside but Ruby was prevented by officers there. The fifth (or third, depending on interpretation of the earlier Ruby behavior) attempt was Ruby on Sunday morning, which was successful.
  • that the sympathy for Jacqueline and Caroline story was total alibi and fictitious as the reason for the murder
  • that Ruby's deathbed taped story in the last interview he gave before he died in which he repeated the same story was Ruby with intent to live until he could be transferred out of Dallas
  • that Ruby's death from medical causes while in police custody, only several weeks before he was to be transferred out of Dallas and a new trial begun, may have been assisted
  • that the execution of Oswald by mobbed-up Ruby, following an unsuccessful attempt to kill Oswald by low-level free-lance mob-contractor and Tippit killer Crafard, indeed supports that there was conspiracy in the JFK assassination (however one regards the issue of Oswald's personal guilt or innocence in that assassination).

So Joe, it is as you and the rest of the world had that gut reaction the moment it happened (the Ruby killing of Oswald). I was a fourth-grader at the time, in Akron, Ohio. My father had the television on that Sunday morning watching the live transfer of Oswald. I was in the same room not paying attention and was interrupting my father asking a question about something when my father startled and gestured to me urgently to be quiet as I heard the words from the television screen and then turned to look to the screen myself: "Oswald has been shot! Oswald has been shot!"

Edited by Greg Doudna
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On 2/4/2022 at 4:58 AM, Greg Doudna said:

Joe Bauer, I agree with you on the impact of Ruby killing Oswald on live television to millions. A horrified world wanted to know what would come out at trial from Oswald to make sense of the assassination, and if anyone else was involved--and then the suspect is killed, just like that, by what can now only be characterized as a (for the most part) legally operating but nonetheless direct Mob operative. Hair on end. Red flag red flag red flag. Setup! Something stinks! This was what the entire world thought seeing that.  

But that inchoate instinctive visceral reaction was not so simple. Ruby had an explanation: he felt so sorry for Jacqueline, the widow, and little Caroline, the child now without a father, and being an emotional man, overcome with grief for Jacqueline and especially little Caroline, he just could not help himself and literally in less than four minutes after the intent first came to him to do so, he walked one block down the street to the Dallas Police station and through an unbelievably extraordinary coincidence in timing, was able to go right up to Oswald at a point of an inexcusable breach in police security and just shot and killed Oswald dead. Just like that. 

The extraordinary coincidence in timing ironically has been cited as evidence supporting opposite conclusions, depending on perspective. Some look at that extraordinary coincidence in timing as overwhelming evidence against premeditation on the part of Ruby, therefore evidence in favor of the overcome-with-grief spontaneous act. Then all sorts of awe and wonder and marveling proceed from that, how accidental the timing was yet it happened--if Ruby had been five minutes earlier or five minutes later, if Oswald had not delayed by wanting to change sweaters, etc and etc. How capricious history is, etc. (And truly there are plenty of capricious and chaotic things in history with major consequences. But was this one of those, is the question.)

Others look at that same datapoint--the identical uncontested set of facts--the extraordinary coincidence in timing--and conclude that coincidence is too unlikely in this case to be a reasonable explanation, and therefore that extraordinary coincidence in timing makes Ruby's timing and the timing of Oswald being brought into that security breach where Ruby could get at him unlikely to be reasonably explained as coincidence, more likely to indicate coordination (even if it is not necessarily obvious how that coordination happened), some corruption inside the Dallas Police Department, accomplice or accomplices on the Dallas Police side to that murder--not all or most of the Dallas police, but just enough (one or two or maybe three?) with capability of assisting that extraordinary coincidence in timing coming about as it did. And the overwhelming rational reason for supposing that, being the very extraordinary nature of that timing coincidence.

So an irony: two opposite conclusions drawn by persons reasoning from the identical datapoint (the extraordinary coincidence in timing). Which is right? They cannot both be correct--one of these two interpretations, however sincerely held, is just plain wrong. But which?

Everyone has heard of the saying upon which countless sermons have been based, "What would Jesus do?" as a question urged to be self-asked in morally ambiguous circumstances. (Or like the spinoff on that on a bumper sticker I saw in the 1970s: "What would Nixon do?") I think a useful question to ask in this Ruby killing Oswald event is "What would Colombo do?" Colombo being the famous television detective, working-class with his clunker of a car and low-fashion clothing, who encounters arrogant wealthy and powerful types who consistently underestimate him. But underneath appearances he is quite savvy, a veteran detective, who through dogged digging and his famous "oh--just one more question" asked while on his way out as if an afterthought--and always so agreeable and humble, never violent or insulting to anyone including even the worst suspects, when hearing every elaborate alibi offered by suave and sophisticated crime-doers . . . and then he gets the guilty one in the end, nails it, and the viewer sees how all the clues come together in an elegant solution not obvious at the outset. 

So if after Ruby shot and killed Oswald, Colombo had been called in and given free reign to investigate the case--not whether Ruby killed Oswald, but why and how--what would Colombo have done and in the end concluded?

I think the extraordinary coincidence in timing is an indicator of coordination. I suspect that Colombo would have thought so too, and from that starting point have dug and dug until he found how that coordination worked exactly, how that went down.

Two decent analyses on the how: Seth Kantor, The Ruby Cover-Up (1978), and chapter 3 in Flip de Mey, The Lee Harvey Oswald Files (2016), pp. 184-233.

On the story of Ruby overcome with emotion on behalf of the widow and orphaned child and just could not help himself from killing Oswald dead before he could talk at trial, all I can think of is this true anecdote from my own late mother and father, as my father told me later. My mother, sweet and trusting, always tried to believe the best in people, which made her sometimes a bit naive. My father, with heart and soul but also a combat veteran of WW2 had better acuity on some things from experience. They were watching television and Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, was giving a speech. Unfortunately, and to the consternation of his staff and the embarrassment of everyone in the world watching this televised speech, Yeltsin was (as described to me, I didn't see it) acting utterly ridiculous, saying things that made no sense, uncoordinated, with two young henchmen types trying to physically prop him up on each side. Finally Yeltsin became so incoherent some aides physically ushered him away interrupting the speech with an aide explaining to the world that "his medication was acting up".

My mother said sympathetically, "Oh, poor man, his medication is acting up." Whereupon my father said, "'Medication'!!!??? The man's drunk!" 

Ruby's story of being overcome with sympathy for Jacqueline and Caroline driving him out of control to where he could not help himself but murder Oswald to me is transparently his alibi. He could not deny killing Oswald, it was a certainty he would do time for it, but the idea was to have America with him sympathetically as to why. Jurors like my mother would say, "It wasn't right that he shot and killed Oswald. But he felt so sorry for Jacqueline and Caroline. Poor man!" and that sympathy would be reflected at the sentencing stage and in the eyes of public opinion. 

What I think: 

  • that there were at least two, and perhaps four, attempts to kill Oswald prior to that of Ruby on Sunday morning which was successful. The first, suspected on the basis of logic, would have been at or near the TSBD perhaps when Oswald emerged from the building that day. On the reconstruction that Oswald had been set up and in the moments after the shooting realized it, I believe he acted evasively in his escape trying to avoid being tailed out of fear of the assassins (not police as his immediate fear). The second attempt to kill Oswald was by the killer of Tippit, Ruby's recent hire Larry Crafard, at the Texas Theatre, which attempt also failed when Oswald's life was saved for the moment by his arrest by the Dallas police. The third and fourth possible attempts, also which failed, would be of Ruby in the Dallas police station, on Friday night when Ruby, who reportedly admitted he had a gun on him at the time, impersonated a reporter at a press conference at which Oswald briefly appeared, and then another time when Ruby was witnessed trying to enter Capt. Fritz's office at the Dallas police station at a time when Oswald was physically present inside but Ruby was prevented by officers there. The fifth (or third, depending on interpretation of the earlier Ruby behavior) attempt was Ruby on Sunday morning, which was successful.
  • that the sympathy for Jacqueline and Caroline story was total alibi and fictitious as the reason for the murder
  • that Ruby's deathbed taped story in the last interview he gave before he died in which he repeated the same story was Ruby with intent to live until he could be transferred out of Dallas
  • that Ruby's death from medical causes while in police custody, only several weeks before he was to be transferred out of Dallas and a new trial begun, may have been assisted
  • that the execution of Oswald by mobbed-up Ruby, following an unsuccessful attempt to kill Oswald by low-level free-lance mob-contractor and Tippit killer Crafard, indeed supports that there was conspiracy in the JFK assassination (however one regards the issue of Oswald's personal guilt or innocence in that assassination).

So Joe, it is as you and the rest of the world had that gut reaction the moment it happened (the Ruby killing of Oswald). I was a fourth-grader at the time, in Akron, Ohio. My father had the television on that Sunday morning watching the live transfer of Oswald. I was in the same room not paying attention and was interrupting my father asking a question about something when my father startled and gestured to me urgently to be quiet as I heard the words from the television screen and then turned to look to the screen myself: "Oswald has been shot! Oswald has been shot!"

I was 12 on the morning of 11,22,1963.

Just before 11:00 am or so ( California time ) I was in physical education class and playing basketball on the outdoor asphalt courts when fellow student John Norman came running out from the main junior high school buildings to tell our PE teachers they had to end the class and bring us kids back into the school.

We did so, re-dressed into our regular clothes and were told to report to our home rooms.

There was a strange apprehensive silence all around.

I can still remember seeing teachers crying.

By 11:30 am our entire junior high school was shut down and us kids were sent home.

Walking down to and through our small downtown area, which was deserted of traffic but with business doors open where you could hear radio and TV broadcasts, I sensed the ominous sadness of the moment and continued on walking another mile to our home where my mom was glued silently to the TV.

I would surmise that probably most of the rest of the country was probably experiencing this same shocked, saddened, disturbed and confused thought and feeling experience.

But it was a quiet reaction scene. Not much talking and no talk of suspicion and conspiracy at that time.

We were all just glued to the TV. With some reading of newspaper headline stories.

Even my brutish 6 ft 3 in. - 250 lbs. normally boozed up, raging, cursing and wife beating step-father (who hated JFK with a murderous passion) quieted down that weekend.

His daily work day routine was to come home from work, start knocking back shots of hard liquor, turn on the nightly news and whenever Kennedy's name and face were mentioned and shown, go into a red faced, bulging eyed cursing rage, shouting what a jew, commie, queer ( and especially) ni--er lovin' bastard JFK was.

I remember him actually shouting once or twice - "somebody ought to shoot that bastard!" ( JFK ) However, when it actually happened even he was stunned...and quiet. Like even he couldn't believe it.

Nobody knew what to think or make of the assassination. No talk of conspiracy in our family those first two days. Again, I think this was typical. 

Lee Harvey Oswald's name and face and personal background and history were so instantly and hugely broadcast in the news reports as JFK's killer, you figured he was the assassin with only some general thoughts and questions.

Some of these thoughts and questions regarded how quickly the DPD found Oswald and how the national media so quickly and massively displayed him and his personal life and history on TV that very Friday night. 

Add to this the dramatic scene of a crushing circus of shouting reporters with their cables, cameras and microphones crammed right inside the very inner sanctum of the DPD building headquarters.

Heck we even got some glimpses of Jack Ruby himself mingled into that horde of reporters!

Even back then however, I think everyone assumed that any and all interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald would be recorded. Or at least with a stenographer present?

Just weeks earlier the Miami PD had set up a hidden recorder to record the conversation of Joseph Milteer in a local Miami hotel room who the Miami PD and others knew was a serious threat to JFK. Recorders were available to and in use with every big city American police department...no?

But not with Dallas and Lee Harvey Oswald?

Wonder if the Dallas FBI had secretly recorded any of Oswald related persons through phone taps prior to 11, 22, 1963? Oswald's Raleigh call as well? Quality tape recorders were everywhere.

But none present in the interrogation of Oswald?

My guess is that Captain Fritz's practiced style of interrogation ( and probably thousands of other American police departments at that time as well ) was to "purposely" not tape record interrogations.

That way, those interrogations could not be used against them if they wanted to use unethical and even illegal means and comments to pressure their suspects in their questioning.

Heck, the only way we knew of Captain Fritz's cursing and shouting threats to Buell Wesley Frazier, including a raised arm and fist to physically hit Frazier when they were alone in an interrogation room, was because Frazier himself later told the public of this.

If there is an even decently respected research summary accounting or book in the JFK event annals that focused solely on the DPD and their actions in the whole JFK/Oswald/Ruby affair, please refer me to it?

Also, a thought about a story I cannot verify with any knowledge credibility;

Wasn't it reported that just days before 11,22,1963, Roy Truly and maybe others brought in rifles to show off to some of their workplace colleagues?

Kind of a macho good ole boy thing?

"Hey Kelly, check out this finely crafted piece of hardware!"

"I could take out a running 6 point stag from 250 yards with this baby."

First thought if true, what an odd and kind of inappropriate even creepy thing to do in a large workplace with dozens of women employed and present there?

I could see fishing poles and reels, maybe even a sling shot or boomerang ... but high powered rifles?

But then, what a pseudo-innocuous way of bringing in a rifle to hide somewhere in the TXSBD building without arousing too many uncomfortable feelings, suspicions and  questions?

Edited by Joe Bauer
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