A five-point road map to accomplishing a change of consciousness in America concerning the JFK assassination

[Pete Mellor]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Does anyone have a comment on the viability of the schematic five-step roadmap to go to a change in mainstream consciousness re the JFK assassination?

Greg, even though it is a long time mantra that U.S. & G.B. have a special relationship, I do not really feel able to comment on the viability of an American national membership and lobbying organisation from across the pond, that could engage with the U.S. Congress while being headquartered in D.C. etc.

However, as usual, the meat of your thread here I find very interesting.  If Joan Mellen can organise the scrutiny of fingerprints from boxes on the TSBD and obtain the prints of Mac Wallace from WWII U.S. Naval records to get recognised experts to compare the two, then I would think it should be possible to achieve the same with Curtis LaVerne Crafard's (Craford) prints, (unless some nefarious higher power deem that not in their interest.)

Unless there is a significant improvement in the photographic quality of images of 'prayer man', I do not see that route being of value in the pursuit of exoneration of Oswald in the JFK case.  Jonathan Cairns has a fair defence attorney's post on Kennedy's and King.

As for General Walker, Gil's present thread on 'The Witness' has a good post from Jim Hargrove regarding CE573 (the item dug out of Walker's wall) being a steel jacketed bullet.  I would think this evidence should have more weight to exonerate Oswald with the public etc., than anything.  The fact that Walker himself could not identify the bullet that the Warren Commission presented to him also says much.

Whatever you develop along these lines I am sure to watch from afar with great interest.  Good luck!

 

[Greg Doudna]

Thanks very much Pete for the sensible comments. 

On the Curtis Laverne Craford fingerprints, yes, it should be doable. The block on me getting it done is I work for a living (window cleaning) and simply cannot afford to get it done right on my own dime. I could get it done if there were funding (this is not a hint asking for funding, just statement of fact). There are others who could get this done competently and I would happily assist (with no funding needed for me to assist) so long as I am not in the position of being unfunded point man. In my vision of what ought to be done, I would want to identify three of the most reputable, experienced, top-tier names in America in latent fingerprint examination and offer them $2000 apiece, without condition or attempt in any other way to influence their result, for their best professional assessment. I would have them agree not to consult with or contact each other directly or indirectly. No results of any would become known until all three completed their examinations. Once all three submitted their findings, there would be a scientific paper coauthored by the team involved and the three, publishing the data and interpretation of that data. Maybe this sounds like overkill and it could all end up for nothing if there is a non-match to Craford, or could become unexpectedly complex (if there is a split decision requiring second or third rounds with additional experts to resolve), but if there is a match to Craford the significance is important enough that it is not overkill to do what I have outlined. (The nightmare scenario with only a single expert doing a match is what happened with the Mac Wallace print issue.) My idea is to get it done right the first time, in the best case unequivocally establishing an up-or-down finding as a new fact not previously known as a fact. I personally got done the second of two radiocarbon dating series which have been done and published so far on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the series carried out at Tucson, Arizona in 1994-1995. (By that I mean I initiated, obtained and negotiated the offer from the University of Arizona AMS Facility that was accepted by the Israel Antiquities Authority; obviously I did not do the lab measurements.)  

You may be right on Prayer Man and I think you are right on the Walker bullet. I doubt the Walker bullet came from the Carcano, in agreement with HSCA on that. However the logical problem there is a steel-jacketed Walker bullet not from Oswald's Carcano does not actually exonerate Oswald if he was acting with others; it really exonerates him only if he was acting alone, which although that has always been supposed there is no reason to know that. The problem with saying Oswald had nothing to do with the Walker shooting is: witness (Marina); witness-story compatible with Walker inside job in which Oswald was involved (Angers); Walker letter (absolutely genuine Oswald handwriting, no question on that); and the Walker house photo (sure, could be planted but just simpler that it is real). The problem with rejecting all four of the just-named is that will not fly to intelligent mainstream America, plus it almost certainly is not right. I think both the point about the steel-jacketed Walker bullet not being from the Carcano and the (in my view) credible case to be made that Walker may have been party to a staged shot, would address these issues establishing reasonable doubt. I think it is a mistake to try to deny Oswald was involved in the Walker shooting. I think the Angers story is a version of the "true truth" which is that Oswald could have been mixed up with the Walker group and what may have been the staged shot. One thing is clear to me and that is there must be reasonable doubt on the Walker shot or few will see Oswald as exonerated in the case of JFK. For me this is not a matter of trying to sell a story I don't buy myself, because I'm skeptical Oswald was actually a killer (there is nothing in his writings about the virtues of tyrannicide, for example), and even more to the point, if the shooter of the shot into the Walker house was intending to kill why was the shot a complete miss? Another minor factor: I think Oswald not only was a poor rifle shot (for some physiological reason) but knew that (according to Laura Kittrell of the Texas Employment Commission, Oswald told her that). 

On Prayer Man as Oswald I have been struck especially with the work of Andrej Stancak here and succeeding pages, https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22247-prayer-man-is-a-man/page/2/. I don't know for sure that Prayer Man is Oswald--maybe it is the equivalent of the HSCA acoustics analysis which looked so good until it turned out it wasn't--but a lot looks like it was Oswald and would make better sense of some things. In terms of mainstream America, if Prayer Man as Oswald is correct, that unlike any other single point is narrative-changing. All the other arguments back and forth remain, but Prayer Man is the visual evidence (if so) that Oswald was not up there on the sixth floor shooting anyone. You are probably right, most people I think understand this, that a poor photo is a long shot to get decisive information from it. But there is no other choice--throw everything technical that exists at it, try to get the information that can confirm or exclude a match with Oswald, and bring in experts to the investigation who are not CT's. 

However all that waits. The possible fingerprints solution to the true killer of Tippit must be run out to the extent possible. Thanks for the encouragement. 

 

[Greg Doudna]

Is there anyone able to get this fingerprint check done? The only way to find out if there is a match to Craford is to find out.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

[deleted]

 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

Oswald said he was out front when President Kennedy passed by the TSBD building, after eating his lunch on the first floor

This relates to point #2, exoneration of Oswald from shooting JFK.

The information brought out by Bart Kamp in a new article posted, "The Destruction of Lee Oswald's Alibi & the Invention of the Second Floor Lunchroom Encounter" (http://www.prayer-man.com/the-destruction-of-lee-oswalds-alibi-the-invention-of-the-second-floor-lunchroom-encounter/), is stunning, even though on its central argument I believe that article is mistaken. But do not let that mistake (or my argument that that is a mistake, which I will get to in a moment) detract from that in that article which is not mistaken--for it is stunning, and astonishingly, it was primary data not previously known until it was brought to light by Bart Kamp in Feb. 2019. It is a handwritten note of FBI agent Hosty in his notes from Nov 22:

"O stated he was present for work at the T.S.B.D. on the morning of the 22nd and at noon went to lunch. He went to the 2nd floor to get a coca cola to eat with lunch and returned to 1st floor to eat lunch. Then he went outside to watch P. Parade."

The argument--convincing and compelling argument--is that that is the accurate version of Oswald's movements, both as to what Oswald said were his movements and which were his movements. All that developed later, in terms of narratives of Oswald's movements, represented misunderstandings (in my interpretation), not intentional fabrications (Bart Kamp's interpretation). There is more to it than this, but I will save time by saying here is what I see all the evidence supports from the data presented in Bart Kamp's article (differing from Bart's interpretation; this is me): Oswald went up to the second floor and bought a coke to eat with his lunch. He bought the coke, then returned to the first floor and ate his lunch, in the 12-12:30 time frame. (So far that agrees with Bart.) When the president was coming by Oswald stepped out the front door and saw that. Right out there in front of the front door but toward the back in the shadow, the same front steps where Shelley and others were standing when the President went by. (Still in agreement with Bart.)

(And incidentally, that Oswald had a lunch to eat confirms that the long paper sack he carried that morning carried his lunch, in a bread bag obtained from Hutchison's grocery in Irving where he walked to buy milk and food to eat that morning before his ride with Frazier.)

After the president was shot Oswald determined to leave. For reasons which need not be settled here, Oswald went into evasive flight mode (even though he had not been a shooter). 

(At this point I am departing from Bart Kamp in interpretation of the data.)

He did not walk out the front door. He went up the stairs just inside and next to the front doors at the southeast corner of the TSBD to the second floor (just after Baker and Truly came racing in the front doors). Oswald crossed that second floor, made his way across that floor to the northwest corner doors exit where he intended to go back down that rear flight of stairs to the first floor and exit through the back door which would be his exit from the building with the least notice.

Oswald never made it that far in his intention. As he was in the vestibule between two doors about to make his exit from the second floor lunchroom area to the northwest corner stairwell, he saw through the glass door window officer Baker and quickly reversed direction. Baker saw a glimpse of movement through the window in that door and charged through that door and the second door, gun drawn and pointed at Oswald walking away whom he ordered to turn around and come over to him. Truly came in a moment later and vouched for Oswald as being a legitimate employee, and Baker let him go and he and Truly resumed running up the stairs. Neither Baker nor Truly saw Oswald with a coke in his hand. In fact Oswald had not bought any coke on this occasion and that is not why he was there. If Oswald did buy a coke--he did according to Mrs. Reid at a desk on the second floor who testified that moments later Oswald passed by her with a coke in hand--it was after the Baker encounter and would have been a second coke to support an alibi of why he was there. For Oswald was not there after the assassination to buy a coke, but on his way to leave the building with the least amount of notice.

Instead, Oswald returned back the way he came across the second floor (witnessed by Mrs. Reid), returned to the stairs at the southeast corner, went back down those stairs to the first floor, retrieved his gray jacket from the domino room, and left the building by the front door, as he told his interrogators. There was an encounter with a newsman at the front door whom Oswald mistakenly thought had been a Secret Service agent asking to use a phone. He then walked north on Elm a few blocks to the location of the Rio Grande building where the Army 112th Intelligence Corps office was and got on a bus there, and by bus and cab got to Oak Cliff and to the Texas Theatre, acting evasively all the way though his post-TSBD-exit movements are not important to the point here. 

The important point of difference with Bart Kamp and others generally on the ROKC forum: the second-floor lunchroom encounter with Baker was not a fabrication, it happened. Baker wrote of it in his first written report that afternoon, though he wrote it as on the third or fourth floor getting the floor wrong. For so long there have been claims that that was some different third- or fourth-floor encounter with some suspect other than Oswald. No, it was Baker telling of his encounter with Oswald on the 2nd floor, Baker just got the floor wrong (the building was unfamiliar to him). 

And so the second-floor Baker and Oswald encounter was real, but it was not Oswald going there a first time to buy a coke. No working man eats sandwiches dry, and then goes get a beverage, a coke, afterward. It is as Oswald said it was (see the handwritten notes of the Oswald interrogations in the Bart Kamp article): Oswald went up to the second floor and got a coke for his lunch and returned to the first floor and had the coke with his lunch, all before the assassination happened. The post-assassination Baker and Oswald encounter was not about Oswald getting any coke, although Oswald would have said that if asked why he was there when Baker encountered him. Baker: "What are you doing here?" Oswald (thinking quickly): "Just getting a coke, officer." There is no record those words happened but that is the sense of what would have been said in that encounter if he had been asked.

If anyone doubts the force of the argument that Oswald got a coke to eat with his lunch (in the 12-12:30 time frame), or that Oswald said he had gone out the front door to watch the president go by, please see and study the data--the notes of Hosty and Bookhout of what Oswald said--in the article of Bart Kamp, focusing on those two points.

This is strong evidence, from primary data--handwritten notes from the time of what Oswald told Fritz--putting Oswald where Prayer Man is, at the time Prayer Man is there in the photos. Prayer Man has not been otherwise identified. The whereabouts of nearly everyone else employed in the TSBD and present that day have been accounted for, and the only other possibility, that it was some unknown person from the street, while possible just seems less likely. There is no certainty the blurry Prayer Man figure was Oswald on the basis of photo analysis alone, but what is new is that Prayer Man's location is in independent exact agreement with--is supported by--the data on Oswald's own claims to Fritz as to his whereabouts, which readers can look up and study in the Bart Kamp article. 

The argument that analysis of the photos of Prayer Man which, although the photos are far too blurred for facial recognition of Oswald, give telltale details in agreement with Oswald, of Andrej Stancak in the pages at the topic of https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22247-prayer-man-is-a-man/, receives this independent support from the Oswald interrogation notes. 

And bear in mind: this information is new and has only been known since Feb 2019, even though it is from primary written information from the weekend of the assassination.

Why this information has not received more attention

In the presentations of the Prayer Man = Oswald argument of Bart Kamp's site dedicated to the topic (http://www.prayer-man.com/) (good site: a lot of primary documents), and in a book on the topic, Stan Dane, Prayer Man (2015), and pervasively in discussions on the Education Forum, the Oswald as Prayer Man idea has been linked by many of its advocates to a mistaken idea that the second-floor lunchroom encounter never happened. No matter how pervasively this second notion has taken root--involving elaborate suppositions that witnesses such as Baker and Truly and a half dozen others were scripted to tell narratives of entirely fabricated testimony in coordinated fashion--it is just wrong, and has the effect of marginalizing the Prayer Man issue. For refutation of the idea that the Baker-Oswald encounter on the second floor never happened, see Richard Gilbride, "Death of the Lunchroom Hoax" (90 pp. Feb. 2018) at https://jfkinsidejob.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DEATH OF THE LUNCHROOM HOAX _Final_.pdf. I could quote extensively from that but will not and simply direct the reader with serious interest to read that, the takedown is all there. 

And yet my favorable endorsement of that Gilbride article on that topic must be qualified in this sense: Gilbride also has several errors mixed in with his highly accurate and correct refutation of the second-floor lunchroom hoax idea. Gilbride thinks Prayer Man was not Oswald (he says it was Sarah Stanton). Gilbride thinks Oswald was in the second floor lunchroom eating his lunch the entire time (not on the first floor), never was out front watching the parade, and was posted there on the second floor for some unspecified lookout purpose related to the assassination plot. Just forget those things, they are not correct, they are extraneous and unnecessary to the force of Gilbride's correct argument that the Oswald/Baker second-floor encounter did take place.

The problem is that what each of these have said that is true--of Bart Kamp and Gilbride and others--has to be distinguished from that which is mistaken. That is why I am writing this here--to outline a clearer argument, to make the case that the Prayer Man = Oswald issue has no necessary or correct linkage to the idea that the second-floor Baker-Oswald encounter was a hoax. To disconnect the separate parts in the work of Kamp and Gilbride and others and reconnect what each of these authors have gotten right, in a correct synthesis and reconstruction.

Not only did the second-floor Oswald/Baker encounter occur, but Bill Kelly has argued from it that it is unlikely Oswald could have come down the stairs at the northwest corner of the TSBD from the 6th to the 2nd floor as the Warren Commission reconstructed. The outer door of that second-floor vestibule had an automatic door closer to prevent the door from slamming. Baker saw a glimpse of Oswald reversing direction through the door window, because Oswald was about to come out through that door, not because he had just gone in through that door. Bill Kelly's work on this point is here: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-doors-of-perception-why-oswald-is_14.html. See also the good summaries of the Oswald alibi issues at http://22november1963.org.uk/prayer-man-jfk-assassination, http://22november1963.org.uk/carolyn-arnold-witness-oswald, and especially http://22november1963.org.uk/lee-harvey-oswald-alibi.

Some other miscellaneous comments:

• Baker did see Oswald in custody at the time he wrote his statement at the police station Fri PM Nov 22, and identified him at that time as the man he had met in the TSBD on what he mistakenly wrote was the third or fourth floor, but which was actually the second floor.
• That Baker would write Oswald was 165 pounds is a little puzzling since Oswald was actually 131-140, but that may have been influenced by Baker hearing a broadcast physical description of Oswald prior to his writing that report which matches what Baker wrote for that weight. Also, Oswald may have had his shirt out which would hide his slimness.
• Carolyn Arnold who worked on the second floor saw Oswald in either the second-floor or first-floor (domino room) lunchroom, ca. 12:20 to 12:25 time frame, and there was no sighting of Oswald inside the front door seen by Carolyn Arnold from outside the building (as she vigorously said to Golz and Summers later, that the FBI report had gotten that wrong of what she had told the FBI). There is an uncertainty concerning in which lunchroom, second- or first-floor, Carolyn Arnold saw Oswald sitting alone. Whichever lunchroom it was, Carolyn said she had seen Oswald there because she was pregnant and had suddenly craved water at that moment, and this was after she had left her desk and was on her way outside to see the parade. Although most interpret Carolyn Arnold's Oswald sighting as being in the second-floor lunchroom, I believe the factors weigh in favor of it having been first floor. The first-floor domino room was where Oswald sat and ate his lunch that day, not the second-floor lunchroom--he went to the second floor to buy a coke to have with his lunch on the first floor but returned to the first floor were he ate his lunch (with that coke), and was on the second floor a second time after the assassination intending to exit the building by way of the rear stairs, in neither case involving sitting down and eating. Also, if Carolyn Arnold had told the original FBI agent who interviewed her that she had seen Oswald on the first floor just before she went out the front door, that could be how the FBI agent got that garbled and mistakenly written up as a sighting by her of Oswald just inside the front doors of the building on the first floor. There is no need to suppose Carolyn Arnold actually walked inside the domino room to find water. All that needs to be supposed is she walked in the vicinity to get to a drinking fountain or wherever the water was and in so doing saw Oswald through an open door, as she described it, sitting to the right of a doorway and eating.
• As Gilbride brings out, Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles coming down the northwest stairs from the fourth floor passed the second floor when both Truly and Baker were inside the doors of the second-floor lunchroom, such that neither of those saw or noticed the other.
• An additional minor error of Gilbride is he says Oswald encountered officer Welcome Barnett at the front door. It is puzzling that Gilbride says that, in light of this testimony of Barnett:

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you notice Oswald around that area at anytime? 
Mr. BARNETT - No, sir. 
Mr. LIEBELER - Later on you saw his picture in the paper and, of course, on television? 
Mr. BARNETT - Yes, sir. 
Mr. LIEBELER - You have no recollection of seeing him in the area at all? 
Mr. BARNETT - None whatsoever. There were hundreds of people in that intersection.

• When Oswald told Fritz he was out front "with Shelley" and that he, Oswald, left the TSBD that day because Shelley said something about no further work needed to be done that day, I believe Oswald was correct about being out front on the same steps where Shelley was, but that he was not correct in having heard Shelley say that, or if he did hear Shelley say something it was hearing from a distance. This was Oswald giving a white-lie answer because of not wishing to give the truthful answer of why he fled (whatever that truthful answer for why he fled evasively was). I think Shelley was truthful in saying he never noticed Oswald there behind him. Nor did Shelley remain there following the shots but left almost immediately.
• Gilbride is also devastating in refuting another misbegotten idea that Oswald did not take the bus and the cab to Oak Cliff. He certainly did.
• A framing of Oswald in the assassination of JFK should be considered in terms of connecting a rifle implicated in the assassination to Oswald, not an original plan to have Oswald accused of having been a shooter (nor should it be assumed there was an original intent to have only one gunman believed to have fired all shots). From the "22 November 1963" site, article "Who is 'Prayer Man'?" (link above): "It might be objected that the framing of Oswald would require him to be kept away from other people during the assassination. If he was seen watching the motorcade on the first floor, he could hardly be accused of firing a rifle from the sixth floor. There is, however, no reason to assume that Oswald needed to be falsely implicated in advance as the lone gunman on the sixth floor. (. . .) The lone-gunman interpretation was imposed on the evidence after the event for political reasons, and need not have been an integral element of any plot. Oswald's essential function was simply to provide a link between the assassination and the Cuban or Soviet regimes, either to provoke an invasion of Cuba, which did not happen, or purely to prevent an honest investigation of the assassination."

Edited June 10, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

Photo overlay of Oswald and Prayer Man. Comparison of male pattern baldness

An overlay of a photo of Oswald on the Prayer Man image (below) was done by Ed Ledoux (posted at https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t587p725-prayer-man, May 28, 2022, 6:58 am). That was one of Andrej Stancak's points--Stancak cited a 1975 study of seven types of male pattern baldness in white men and identified both Prayer Man and Oswald as a match to Norwood's Type II which is the case for 28% of white men age 18-29. For white men age 30-39, 26%, and for white men age 40-49, 22% (O.T. Norwood, O.T. "Male Pattern Baldness: Classification and Incidence", Southern Medical Journal, 68 [1975]: 1359-1365; Stancak's discussion at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22247-prayer-man-is-a-man/page/7/).

Also, nobody on those steps remembered seeing Oswald, and paradoxically the position of Prayer Man on those steps is about the only position where it is possible that no one would have remembered seeing him. If Prayer Man were anywhere else than in that northwest corner in the shadow, he would not have been missed. The most striking point about Buell Wesley Frazier (not pictured below but a little farther to the right) is that when Frazier in recent years was asked about the photo and commented on it on his Facebook page, what did not happen was Frazier answering, "Oh, that was _____ (some other name)". Frazier did not know who it was. Frazier's position was it could not be Oswald because Oswald was somewhere else, but Frazier would have had no way of knowing that Oswald was somewhere else. The impression is Oswald was out on those steps only briefly, saw Kennedy go by, then slipped back inside soon after the shots were fired, without others noticing he had been there.

In March-April 1964 the FBI obtained statements from every TSBD employee responsive to five questions (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9882#relPageId=11&search=depository_employee statements). Each employee was asked if they had seen Oswald at the time of the assassination. At the time of the assassination everyone watching the parade was watching the parade or presidential limousine, so naturally no one standing on the steps in front of Oswald watching the parade would have seen Oswald at the time of the assassination.

I no longer consider the fact that nobody on the steps reported seeing Oswald an important objection to Prayer Man being Oswald. I think it is believable that, the others on those steps standing in front of him and facing forward looking at the motorcade and in the excitement, Oswald unobtrusively slipping in to stand in one corner in shadow and then slipping back into the building, went unnoticed. 

Prayer Man has the same type of male pattern baldness as Oswald, about a 1 in 4 chance of that happening by random accident.

Its where Oswald told his interrogators he was. There is no other good identification established. I think its him.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

Further on Oswald's movements following the assassination, with Prayer Man as Oswald

In the Darnell film which shows Prayer Man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfMwkPa295I), an officer--Baker--is seen running east and the camera pans away just as that officer reaches the bottom of the steps of the front entrance of the TSBD. "Prayer Man" is seen in the left rear at the top of the steps in shadow in a position in which that officer would have gone past him through the doors, although the film does not show that. What the film does show is that Oswald is still standing in his position when the officer (Baker) is ca. 3 seconds away from passing him going in that doorway, after the shots were fired of the assassination. Prayer Man is still there. 

Truly caught up with Baker and led Baker to the elevator at the north wall of the first floor where there was some delay as Truly punched for an elevator that never came and shouted up trying to get an answer to release the elevator to come down. After realizing the elevator was inoperable Truly and Baker ran up the northwest stairs where Baker was diverted on the second floor by catching a glimpse of Oswald behind a door window about to come out to the stairway landing, reversing direction and moving away from that door window from the inside. 

The reconstruction is: following Baker and Truly initially going past an unnoticed Oswald in one corner of the top landing at the front steps of the TSBD, Oswald also went inside and went up the southeast stairs. His intent was to cross the second floor, go down the northwest stairs, go to the domino room to get his gray jacket and maybe a final restroom stop, then out the rear door.

(That Oswald wore his medium-gray jacket to work that morning, not his heavier blue one, and was wearing that medium-gray jacket when he left the TSBD, is separately established: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27754-the-jackets-as-exculpation-of-oswald-as-the-tippit-killer-an-analysis/.) 

At the second-floor lunchroom encounter with Baker, assume that Oswald has his shirttails out of his maroon shirt, as seems to be the case in the Payer Man photo on the front steps of the first floor. Baker's physical description of Oswald wearing a "light brown jacket" would be a slight error in both color and description of what actually was a maroon (reddish-brown) shirt with tails out. The shirttails out could give an illusory impression that Lee could weigh a little more than he did, since his slimness would not be as evident as it would be if his shirt was tucked in. In the tense rush and adrenalin of the moment Baker after the fact might remember a "light brown jacket". Baker's overestimation of Oswald's weight as 165 instead of accurate ca. 135 perhaps was also influenced by an earlier broadcast mistaken police report that Oswald weighed 165.

Mr. BAKER - At that particular time I was looking at his face, and it seemed to me like he had a light brown jacket on and maybe some kind of white-looking shirt.
Anyway, as I noticed him walking away from me, it was kind of dim in there that particular day, and it was hanging out to his side.
Mr. BELIN - Handing you what has been marked as Commission Exhibit 150, would this appear to be anything that you have ever seen before?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; I believe that is the shirt that he had on when he came. I wouldn't be sure of that. It seemed to me like that other shirt was a little bit darker than that whenever I saw him in the homicide office there.
Mr. BELIN - What about when you saw him in the School Book Depository Building, does this look familiar as anything he was wearing, if you know?
Mr. BAKER - I couldn't say whether that was--it seemed to me it was a light-colored brown but I couldn't say it was that or not.
Mr. DULLES - Lighter brown did you say, I am just asking what you said. I couldn't quite hear.
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; all I can remember it was in my recollection of it it was a light brown jacket.
Mr. BELIN - Are you referring to this Exhibit 150 as being similar to the jacket or similar to the shirt that you saw or, if not, similar to either one?
Mr. BAKER - Well, it would be similar in color to it--I assume it was a jacket, it was hanging out. Now, I was looking at his face and I wasn't really paying any attention. After Mr. Truly said he knew him, so I didn't pay any attention to him, so I just turned and went on.
Mr. BELIN - Now, you did see him later at the police station, is that correct?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.
Mr. BELIN - Was he wearing anything that looked like Exhibit 150 at the police station?
Mr. BAKER - He did have a brown-type shirt on that was out.
Mr. BELIN - Did it appear to be similar to any clothing you had seen when you saw him at the School Book Depository Building?
Mr. BAKER - I could have mistaken it for a jacket, but to my recollection it was a little colored jacket, that is all I can say.

Since the rest of Oswald's movements until his arrival to the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff were evasive and involved a series of acts designed to disguise directions of movement such that he could not be quickly tracked or located--the changes of shirt and pants, the putting on of a different jacket at the rooming house, the standing at a northbound bus stop feinting headed in the wrong direction for Earlene Roberts to see, before unknown to Earlene Roberts going south by bus to the Texas Theatre--perhaps suppose one additional act in keeping with this series of known ones, on the second floor: after his encounter with Baker, Lee not only bought a (second) coke but took off his maroon shirt leaving him wearing only his white T-shirt, stuffed the maroon shirt underneath the white T-shirt or down his pants, then crossed past Mrs. Reid at her desk on the second floor. Mrs. Reid said when Oswald went past her he was wearing a white T-shirt.

Reconstruct then that Oswald (in white T-shirt?) descended to the first floor by the southeast stairs, went to the Domino room, into a restroom, put the maroon shirt back on and his gray jacket over the maroon shirt, then walked out the TSBD front entrance and exited the building.

In this reconstruction, the timing requires Oswald and Baker/Truly--those two separate parties--each to leave the TSBD front door area at about the same time, and then to meet at the northwest area of the second floor at the same time. The length traversed by the two parties is the same for each--in each case crossing one floor of the building to the opposite corner plus up one flight of stairs. Although Baker and Truly were running, they were delayed for an interval of time by the futile attempt to catch an elevator to take them up. Oswald would have been walking, not moving as quickly as Baker/Truly but he also had no delay waiting for an inoperable elevator. Those two factors canceled each other out such that the two parties ended up at the opposite northwest end on the second floor at the same time. The reconstruction is the respective timings of the two parties equaled each other such that Oswald ended up in the lunchroom area on the second floor at the northwest, and Baker at the same place, at the same time.

Then following the Baker encounter Oswald went back the way he came, back down the southeast stairs to the first floor, retrieved his gray jacket from the domino room in the northeast corner of the first floor, and walked out the front entrance of the TSBD, just before the building was sealed by officers.  

Edited June 10, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

Reasonable doubt department: veteran FBI agent James Hosty's skepticism that Oswald was guilty of attempted murder of General Walker

Hosty carried out an FBI investigation of Walker and might be argued to be in a better position than anyone to have an informed professional judgment of the Walker case. As reported on the basis of an interview of Hosty by Gus Russo of 22 June 1993:

"Hosty suspects the shooting might have been an inside job. (Some of Walker's own people were angry with him because of his recent arrest in Oxford, Mississippi, for inciting a riot there--Hosty was in charge of that investigation, so he was familiar with the personnel. Bob Schmidt was his driver.) Hosty also suggests the shooting was arranged by Walker himself as a publicity stunt--in fact, the Dallas Police considered these as possibilities and were working on them." (Russo, Live by the Sword [1998], 539 n 45)

[Greg Doudna]

The Sarah Stanton daughter-in-law interview: a new interpretation in which Sarah Stanton's story may be testimony in support of an identification of Prayer Man as Oswald

On June 17, 2018 the daughter-in-law of Sarah Stanton, the former Rosa Daniel, was interviewed by Brian Doyle. She told of a story Sarah Stanton had told family members consistently from the time of the assassination, yet which until the Brian Doyle interview had not gotten to the outside world. A transcript of this interview is published in an article by Richard Gilbride, https://jfkinsidejob.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FURTHERING-THE-LUNCHROOM-EVIDENCE.pdf (the audio of the interview can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUM4YlNiuus). I agree that it is important but for a reason which has not yet been set forth until now. For Gilbridge argues that Sarah Stanton's story refers to Oswald on the second floor before the assassination and cites it in corroboration of the second-floor lunchroom encounter. While I do not doubt the post-assassination second-floor lunchroom encounter, it slowly dawned on me that a second-floor presence of Oswald is not what Sarah Stanton's story, as relayed through the hearsay of the family telling and retelling, was about. Sarah Stanton was telling her family members of encountering Oswald at the top of the steps of the front entrance to the Texas School Book Depository. Sarah Stanton was there at that front entrance, and told of having seen Oswald there too, with a coke in hand--in agreement with Prayer Man as Oswald. 

That is how I read the interview. Bear in mind this is a daughter-in-law--who was already a young adult and married to Sarah's son at the time of the assassination--with memories of Sarah's telling going back to the time of the assassination. The account has the disadvantages of any hearsay in that these are not Sarah Stanton's direct words nor does Sarah Stanton have any ability to clarify what she really meant or clear up misconceptions that family members or now outsiders reading the hearsay may assume. Yet the argument that there is real information here is strong, given the early origin of and consistency with which Sarah Stanton told family members this story.

Interested readers will need to work through and think through the transcript themselves for a full analysis; here I quote the key points which stood out to me as suggesting a surprising and different reading than has been assumed. In interpreting the interview, two method points: first, focus solely on what Rosa says and disregard the interviewer's interpretation or wording of questions. The issue is what Rosa says not anyone else. And second, allow for the possibility that Rosa herself--who was not there at the TSBD that day--may have imperfect understanding of what Sarah meant even while telling a basically correct account of what Sarah told her family members through the years.

Wanda (Rosa's daughter, Sarah Stanton's granddaughter): "when we would get together with family members they would discuss what she talked about to them. But it was always the same--which is, what my mom (Rosa) recalled."

Sarah Stanton told of meeting Oswald. We want to know when and where. The first key point is that Sarah Stanton said Oswald had a soda in hand when she saw him.

Rosa: "She (Sarah Stanton) says he was drinking a soda."

The second key point is where the encounter took place: "at the stairs". Doyle wants to interpret this as near the secnd-floor lunchroom but Rosa keeps returning as if by rote to what she said Sarah Stanton had always said, it was "at the stairs". Up to now, the only debate has been whether that meant the second-floor stairwell at the northwest corner (which was near the second-floor lunchroom and coke machine so that is what Gilbride and Doyle conclude) or at the southeast corner.

No one has considered a third possibility: that Sarah Stanton meant the front steps of the entrance of the TSBD. That is what I think Sarah Stanton meant.

Rosa: "In- at the stairs."

Rosa: "That's what she said. At the stairs. And she asked him (Oswald) if he was going to go down to see it? And he said, 'No, I'm going to go upstairs.""

Note here the timing--it is before the motorcade has passed by. That has not happened yet.

Rosa: "And--and he said, 'No, I'm--I'm just going to get this soda--I came down to get this soda and I'm going back'--back to--to the room where he was working."

Note the unusual wording, of returning to a "room". Oswald did not work in a particular room but all over the building, and in the half hour before the motorcade passed he was on his lunch break, not working. I believe that unusual word "room" to which Oswald told Sarah he would be returning was the domino room on the first floor. Oswald was saying he was not going out to eat lunch, nor would he be going upstairs to eat lunch, but would be returning to the domino room.

Rosa: "Yes [Sarah said Oswald had a soda in hand]. Yes. And, uh, she said that he wasn't going to go eat. That he had just come down to get the soda."

From other information Oswald had gone up to the second floor and bought a coke to eat with his lunch. This was before the president passed by in the parade. After buying his coke to eat with his lunch Oswald returned to the first floor and the domino room, which was deserted except for him. Everybody else was with others watching the parade. Workers might go through the domino room to get to bathrooms to wash up. Oswald was in the domino room. He could see out through the open door and saw two of the colored employees whom he named--James Jarman and Harold Norman--who independently verified they had passed by on the first floor in a way that would have been visible to Oswald looking out the open door of the domino room (see the discussion at http://22november1963.org.uk/lee-harvey-oswald-alibi).

That was where Oswald was eating his lunch and hanging out on his own. He was not with anyone and it was not his practice to speak to anyone, which contributes to explaining why he was so little noticed, though several did notice him, such as Carolyn Arnold who saw Oswald in the domino room on the first floor (per my analysis above). Some employees went outside in small groups to watch the full parade. Other employees held back until the parade or president was practically there and went out at the last minute to watch. Other employees watched through windows on one of the upper floors. Oswald would be among that second category of employees who waited until the last minute when the president had almost arrived, to go out to the front steps and watch, taking his coke with him. That is the reconstruction here. 

Rosa: "'(Sarah Stanton asked Oswald) Are you going up to lunch?' Yeah. And, uh--he said, 'No, I'm going back to--to my room."

I would not put too much emphasis on going "up" to lunch when the original sense may have been going "out" to lunch, as Buell Wesley Frazier described, employees often went "out" front to buy lunches from a lunch truck. But there was more to Sarah Stanton's inquiry to Lee whether he was going to eat lunch--Sarah Stanton was actually trying to be welcoming and get to know Oswald, and seemed on the verge of inviting Oswald to join her or her group of women (for whom neither lunch nor the parade has yet happened).

Rosa: "That--the reason--the reason (Sarah Stanton asked Oswald if he was going to lunch) is she wanted to talk to him. 'Cause he was a very quiet person. And he was not going to--to have conversations with nobody. So, she said that--he never talked. So, she asked--she asked him if he was going out for lunch. If he was going to lunch. And he said, 'No, just the soda.'"

Note three expressions used in parallel senses with the same meaning: "going up to lunch?" (no, he's going back to his room) "going out for lunch?" "going to lunch?" (no, he's just going to have the soda). They all mean the same thing. All are countered by Oswald saying no, he is not going up/out/to lunch. Sarah Stanton and the women with her were likely going up to the second floor after the parade to eat their lunch. Sarah appears to have intended to invite Oswald to join but Oswald was declining. That is the sense of Rosa's repeated tellings of this. 

Here is what I think is one of the most important lines of the Rosa interview of all, indicating what "stairs" Sarah Stanton meant when she said this encounter and exchange with Oswald occurred "at the stairs".

Rosa: "That, uh--she said, 'I went down because they said that, uh, the- that the President was going- they were already coming, but not- not there yet.' So she wanted to prepare herself and be on the stairs- where- where she met Oswald."

Sarah Stanton who worked on the second floor had gone down to the front steps of the front doorway to see the president pass by in the parade. "she wanted to prepare herself and be on the stairs." On the front steps. In which Sarah Stanton's story in the hearsay becomes interchangeable "stairs" and "steps". 

She wanted to be on the front steps--"to prepare herself" to to see the president (find her place with a view). These same "stairs"--front steps of the TSBD entrance where Sarah Stanton was--is where she was telling family members she saw Oswald and had her brief exchange with him. Sarah Stanton, who was not Prayer Man, saw and spoke to Oswald who was in the vicinity of her and Prayer Man, because Oswald was Prayer Man. (Sarah Stanton's position on those steps was to Buell Wesley Frazier's left, opposite side of Frazier as Prayer Man. Stancak gave an argument that she was behind the figure to Frazier's immediate left in the Couch photo.)

There is another point: Sarah Stanton by all accounts was extremely obese. It is very likely from that fact alone that she would be taking one of the elevators rather than go by stairs between the two floors, since either climbing or descending stairs for an extremely obese person can be difficult. This reinforces that what Sarah Stanton was really talking about all those years to her family members in "be[ing] on the stairs" (to prepare to see the pesident; and where she met Oswald) was: on the front steps of the TSBD doorway. Those front doorway steps--that top landing where Sarah Stanton stepped out through the front doors and did not climb down any steps (perhaps physically uncomfortable for her to do so, and why she stayed on the top landing)--that is what she meant when she said consistently to family members that she encountered Oswald that day "at the stairs" (as Sarah's story was filtered through the hearsay telling). 

Sarah Stanton did not want to talk to reporters or interviewers. But she spoke openly to family of this story.

Wanda (Rosa's daughter, Sarah Stanton's granddaughter): "All I had ever heard- and this is Wanda speaking now, is, uh- she didn't wanna speak. And we don't know what her reasons were, but- if she- she was- she didn't want to speak to anybody. And they were harassing her. Or not harassing her, but any calls or- I don't know if they were coming over and trying to get information. But she- she had already given her statement and she didn't want to be bothered."

The coke was Oswald bringing the coke he had bought to eat with his lunch, out with him, in hand, at the last minute just before the presidential parade passed by, so that he, Oswald, could see the president too. And Prayer Man is the photo of Oswald on that same landing as Sarah Stanton, and Prayer Man's right arm in the photos appears to be holding something in the right hand which could be glass and reflective. What else would that object be in Prayer Man's hand than the coke that Sarah Stanton remembered in Oswald's hand! The coke that Oswald already had with him in the domino room on the first floor, which he had bought to have with his lunch in the domino room on the first floor, and which he carried with him from the domino room to outside the front doors when it came time to see the president go by!

This is my reading of the Sarah Stanton story as it was known to her family members. It is a story of a witness to Oswald on the front steps of the TSBD, where Prayer Man was.

What about Sarah Stanton's FBI statement of 3/18/64 claiming she said she never saw Oswald that day (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62312#relPageId=20&search=sarah_stanton)? That FBI statement may not be correct. Sarah Stanton's family story comes across as credible at the point of Sarah's telling of it (distortions in retelling in the hearsay are a concern but a distinct issue). As such, why would Sarah Stanton have any reason not to tell it to the FBI or anyone else who asked? The denial attributed to Sarah Stanton in the FBI report lacks a sensible motive on Sarah's part. Sarah Stanton may not have been aware of the denial attributed to her in that FBI report of her, such that she was unaware that her family story was contradicting it. From an article "Carolyn Arnold's FBI Statements" on the 22 November 1963 site: 

"She [Carolyn Arnold] was not the only witness who questioned the reliability of the FBI’s version of their statements (. . .) The Warren Commission treated Carolyn Arnold as it treated many other awkward witnesses. She was not called to testify before the Commission. Neither of her statements was published in the Warren Commission’s Report or in its 26 volumes of Hearings and Exhibits. The Commission discounted her evidence and that of Eddie Piper, and concluded that “Charles Givens … was the last known employee to see Oswald inside the building prior to the assassination … at 11:45am” (WR, p. 143). Carolyn Arnold’s five colleagues from the Texas School Book Depository who stood with her as the motorcade passed, and who could have commented on the reliability of her account, were also ignored." (http://22november1963.org.uk/carolyn-arnold-witness-oswald)

Edited June 10, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

More on Prayer Man and the second-floor lunchroom encounter

• The reason I believe the second-floor lunchroom encounter occurred is because it is the testimony of Baker, a courageous cop who (unlike in a recent school shooting) charged up to the top of the TSBD to confront what he thought could be a possible live gunman there. Baker never called attention to himself on that but that was a brave response that could easily have been fatal if it had played out differently than it did. Baker DID tell of his encounter with Oswald on the second floor in his initial statement the afternoon of Fri Nov 22, but he simply estimated the wrong floor (and some imprecision in the physical description) of a building in which he had never been in before. The notions that the second-floor encounter was a secondary fabrication involve suppositions of a sustained mini-conspiracy to perjure and fabricate on the part of disparate actors such as Baker himself, Truly, and several others, orchestrated by Capt. Fritz. I don't buy it--because I do not think that scale of coordinated conspiracy to perjure operated that way that day. Much more sensible is these testimonies are imperfectly-told truths with good doses of human error and confusion mixed in in those first-hours and first-weekend reportings, rather than a coordinated multi-person plot to stick for years to each person's bit part in a coordinated intentional and witting fabrication. Ockham's Razor. 
• Buell Wesley Frazier did not report a police officer running by him entering the TSBD. Rather than cite that as evidence that Baker did not go by him into the TSBD, it is evidence of something different. As Frazier himself described in his HSCA testimony, following the shots whereas others were moving Frazier stood stock still, in place, going into emergency thinking, the rule being some form of: sudden movements or reactions look suspicious, just don't move, just stay in place and do nothing. Already it seems there was the flash in his mind that even if he was innocent, until the shooter was identified he among others in the TSBD could be suspect. The point: Frazier was so preoccupied that he did not notice Baker go by him, and that is a striking parallel giving plausibility, by analogy, to him not noticing Oswald as Prayer Man who in the photo is standing to Frazier's right but behind Frazier's line of focus in which Frazier is looking in the direction of the presidential limousine on Elm following the shots. Prayer Man (Oswald) would have been in his peripheral vision if he had noticed, but was not in his central vision which was looking long-distance to Elm where the presidential limousine had last been seen. Frazier's lack of notice of Oswald becomes exactly parallel to Frazier's lack of notice of officer Baker. Baker did go by Frazier from a massive amount of other evidence and the failure of Frazier to notice that which did happen is a powerful argument weakening the strength of the objection that if Prayer Man were Oswald why did not Frazier notice. It goes to Frazier's state of mind in those moments which was anything but normal. 
• The credible testimony of Mrs. Reid--from the same day and the next morning, with no intentional fabrication happening--of seeing Oswald, whom she knew, walk by her--it has been objected that Mrs. Reid's testimony is fabricated because Geneva Hine, who stayed on the second floor when the other women went down to see the parade, testified that she saw no one there--neither Mrs. Reid nor Oswald--on the second floor before the women en masse returned after the assassination. The objection is that Geneva Hine's testimony is incompatible with that of Mrs. Reid and that of the two, Mrs. Reid's is the one that is wrong. I have studied this and it is clear to me there is no contradiction in these two women's testimonies and that neither's is materially wrong, per reconstruction taking both testimonies as from truthful witnesses. Putting their testimonies together, what happened was: Geneva Hine, alone on the second floor, goes to a window on the east side to see the parade, then upon hearing the shots tries futilely to be let into one of the offices facing south so she could see what was happening. But Geneva Hine encounters only locked doors and a woman at the Southwestern Company's office who will not respond because she is on the phone inside the locked door. It is during this period that Mrs. Reid would have returned, separate from the other women below, and taken her seat at her desk. Oswald then walked by as Mrs. Reid said. All of this is before Geneva Hine returns to that room's area. That is why Geneva never saw that. When Geneva Hine returns she remembered a group of the other second-floor employees returning together and she thought but was not sure that Mrs. Reid had been in that group. But Mrs. Reid said that she returned on her own, and that is what actually happened, with Geneva just mistaken on when Mrs. Reid returned which Geneva indicated she was not certain anyway. The slight confusion in Geneva Hine's testimony over memory of who all was in the group that returned as a group is not grounds to draw the far-reaching conclusions that multiple witnesses were intentionally fabricating entire narrative stories within that first 24 hours, under the direction of (always unseen and always unnamed) handlers. That just is not what was going on (disparate civilian witnesses enlisted to fabricate and stick to false narratives at the direction of handlers). Ockham's Razor.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Greg Doudna