Southwestern Publishing Doors Locked, Someone Inside. With View of Elm Street.

[Benjamin Cole]

OK, here is just a speculative post--but puzzling. 

Geneva Hine worked accounts and phones at the TSBD.

Testimony to WC---

After the shots 11/22 Hines--- 

"went down it to Southwestern Publishing Co. door and I tried their door and the reason this was because those windows face out.

Mr. BALL. On to Elm?

Miss HINE. Yes ; and on to the triple underpass.

Mr. BALL. I see.

Miss HINE. And there was a girl in there talking on the telephone and I could hear her but she didn’t answer the door.

Mr. BALL. Was the door locked?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. That was which company?

Miss HINE. Southwestern Publishing Co.

Mr. BALL. Did you call to her?

Miss HINE. I called and called and shook the door and she didn’t answer me because she was talking on the telephone; I could hear her. They have a little curtain up and I could see her form through the curtains. I could see her talking and I knew that’s what she was doing and then I turned and went through the back hall and came through the back door.

Mr. BALL. Of your office, the second floor office?

Miss HINE. Yes; and I went straight up to the desk because the telephones were beginning to wink; outside calls were beginning to come in.

---30---

So, after the JFKA there is someone in the Southwestern Publishing office who will not answer the door despite repeated calls to her through the door, and the door being "shook."  That publisher's office has windows facing Elm Street and with a view to the triple underpass. 

There is no indication that the multiple publisher's offices within the TSBD were ever searched, nor a roll call done of their employees. 

If the shots on 11/22 were so loud they shook the TSBD, and sounded like cannons---what would a girl in the publisher's office be doing talking on the phone and ignoring people imploring her to open her door? Sheesh, the publisher girl could naturally assume people at her door are warning her of a building emergency. 

Loud explosions, people shaking your door and calling to you. 

And with a window onto Elm, did not the girl stick her head out of the window and witness the motorcade and this the JFKA? 

Well, human nature is inexplicable. Maybe nothing there. But sure is odd.  

 

[Tony Krome]

29 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Miss HINE. And there was a girl in there talking on the telephone and I could hear her but she didn’t answer the door.

Hine could hear her voice. Hine could see her through the curtain.

Months later and Hine had no name to match this person?

[Benjamin Cole]

34 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

Hine could hear her voice. Hine could see her through the curtain.

Months later and Hine had no name to match this person?

Yeah. And Hine explicitly mentioned the name of another girl working at a nearly adjacent publishing office. 

HINE: I went past the hall that goes to my right and I knocked on the door of Lyons and Carnahan ; that’s a publishing company.

Mr. BAL.L. What did you do then?

Miss HINE. I tried the door, sir, and it was locked and I couldn’t get in and I called, “Lee, please let me in,” because she’s the girl that had that office, Mrs. Lee Watley, and she didn’t answer. I don’t know if she was there or not, then I left her door."

---30---

So, by deduction, there was girl in the Southwest Publishing office, the outlines of whom could be seen through a curtain, but her ID was unknown to Hine. Hone knew the girl in the Lyons and Carnahan office.

The girl in the Southwest Publishing office was talking on the phone in the moments after the JFKA and loud "cannon" shots in the TSBD, but refusing to answer the door. 

No one at the WC seemed interested in what was going on in the Southwest Publishing office. 

Who else worked in Southwest Publishing? Warren Caster, the guy who brought rifles into the TSBD a few days before the JFKA. 

Odd, just odd. 

 

[Tony Krome]

17 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

So, by deduction, there was girl in the Southwest Publishing office, the outlines of whom could be seen through a curtain, but her ID was unknown to Hine. Hone knew the girl in the Lyons and Carnahan office.

Unless someone can identify that lady, she may have been a stranger to Hine.

She makes a phone call right after the JFKA. What are we talking? 30 seconds, a minute?

Why lock the door if there was staff inside?

[David Von Pein]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The girl in the Southwest Publishing office was talking on the phone in the moments after the JFKA and loud "cannon" shots in the TSBD, but refusing to answer the door.

No one at the WC seemed interested in what was going on in the Southwest Publishing office. 

Who else worked in Southwest Publishing? Warren Caster, the guy who brought rifles into the TSBD a few days before the JFKA. 

Odd, just odd. 

I'm glad I brought up the topic of the girl on the phone and the locked door at the Southwestern Publishing office (in this other thread). Because it looks like I inadvertently provided some of the conspiracists here at the EF with yet another person that they can add to their ever-expanding "Suspicious Persons" file when it comes to their search for JFKA suspects and co-conspirators.

No need to thank me. I'm always glad to be of service. 

Edited November 1, 2022 by David Von Pein

[Tony Krome]

7 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

I'm glad I brought up the topic of the girl on the phone and the locked door at the Southwestern Publishing office (in this other thread). Because it looks like I inadvertently provided some of the conspiracists here at the EF with yet another person that they can add to their "Suspicious Persons" file when it comes to their search for JFKA suspects and co-conspirators.

No need to thank me. I'm always glad to be of service. 

I gather you are don't consider the lady on the phone as suspicious.

Fair enough, you have the TSBD employee list, who is your candidate?

[Benjamin Cole]

1 minute ago, Tony Krome said:

I gather you are don't consider the lady on the phone as suspicious.

Fair enough, you have the TSBD employee list, who is your candidate?

TK-

Whoever the girl was in the Southwest Publishing office, she was likely an employee of that office, or a stranger. 

The publisher's offices were independent businesses within the TSBD. They just rented space. 

AFAIK, there was no roll call of the publisher's employees post JFKA, nor were their offices ever searched. 

And yes, not answering someone calling repeatedly through a locked door, even shaking the door, with a few moments after three "cannon" shots were heard inside the TSBD---that is inexplicable behavior. That girl in the Southwest Publisher's office also had a clear view of Elm Street down to the Third Street Overpass.

Basically the same view as the Sixth Floor window but maybe a little better---closer and a less steep angle. 

Seems like odd behavior.  

But why would the WC follow up on such clues? 

[Benjamin Cole]

41 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

I'm glad I brought up the topic of the girl on the phone and the locked door at the Southwestern Publishing office (in this other thread). Because it looks like I inadvertently provided some of the conspiracists here at the EF with yet another person that they can add to their ever-expanding "Suspicious Persons" file when it comes to their search for JFKA suspects and co-conspirators.

No need to thank me. I'm always glad to be of service. 

DVP-

To be sure, no one said the girl behind the locked door in the Southwest Publishing office was proof of a plot. 

But...if you were a detective in late 1963, and Geneva Hine told you they had called and shook the door on the Southwest Publisher's office within moments of the JFKA...but the girl inside was talking on the phone and ignored repeated and urgent imploring...and that three "cannon" shots had been heard inside the TSBD moments earlier...and the publisher's office had a bird's eye view of the Presidential killing zone...

You would not ask questions? 

Well, maybe you not being a detective was a wise career choice to make....

 

 

[David Von Pein]

46 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

I gather you [DVP] don't consider the lady on the phone as suspicious.

Fair enough, you have the TSBD employee list, who is your candidate?

After searching through many of the statements of the Book Depository employees that can be found in Commission Document No. 706, it would appear that the girl who was on the telephone in the second-floor TSBD office of the Southwestern Publishing Company just after the assassination occurred on 11/22/63 was 27-year-old Mrs. Carol Hughes of Garland, Texas.

In her March 20, 1964, statement to the FBI which appears on Page 47 of CD706, Mrs. Hughes says she "was alone in the office" at the time of the Presidential shooting.

Mrs. Hughes did not appear as a witness before the Warren Commission. And I don't think she gave any testimony to the HSCA either.

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by David Von Pein

[Sean Coleman]

So someone was on the phone when the phone lines were (reportedly) down.

Geez, at every turn, more complications. This puzzle don’t get no easier. 
 

[Benjamin Cole]

25 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

After searching through many of the statements of the Book Depository employees that can be found in Commission Document No. 706, it would appear that the girl who was on the telephone in the second-floor TSBD office of the Southwestern Publishing Company just after the assassination occurred on 11/22/63 was 27-year-old Mrs. Carol Hughes of Garland, Texas.

In her March 20, 1964, statement to the FBI which appears on Page 47 of CD706, Mrs. Hughes says she "was alone in the office" at the time of the Presidential shooting.

Mrs. Hughes did not appear as a witness before the Warren Commission. And I don't think she gave any testimony to the HSCA either.

 

Great find...but zero WC and HSCA follow-up? 

And the FBI man doing the interview...was he awake? 

Mrs. Hughes does not mention Hine repeatedly calling to her and shaking the door just after the JFKA, or the sound of gunshots. Did she hear three or four? 

She was looking out the window at the motorcade...and has nothing to say about the shooting itself? She should have had a valuable bird's eye view of the event. 

She is not asked if she joined a post JFKA roll-call, or how she left the building at 1 pm (wasn't exit and entry closed?). 

How long did she work at the publisher's office? Was her office searched then or later? 

This is a heroically un-useful interview. 

[David Von Pein]

Benjamin,

To quote from the cover letter that accompanies the CD706 FBI document, the 73 statements that appear in that document focused mainly on "six specific items in each statement". The two most important of those items, it seems to me, was to find out if each TSBD employee had seen any strangers in the building on Nov. 22 and whether those employees had seen Lee Harvey Oswald around the time of the assassination.

The CD706 interviews were obviously not meant to provide a detailed grilling of each of the 73 witnesses. The FBI, at the request of the Warren Commission in March of 1964, was only wanting to find out certain specific things in each of those interviews in CD706 (aka CE1381).

Edited November 1, 2022 by David Von Pein

[Tom Gram]

6 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Benjamin,

To quote from the cover letter that accompanies the CD706 FBI document, the 73 statements that appear in that document focused mainly on "six specific items in each statement". The two most important of those items, it seems to me, was to find out if each TSBD employee had seen any strangers in the building on Nov. 22 and whether those employees had seen Lee Harvey Oswald around the time of the assassination.

The CD706 interviews were obviously not meant to provide a detailed grilling of each of the 73 witnesses. The FBI, at the request of the Warren Commission in March of 1964, was only wanting to find out certain specific things in each of those interviews in CD706 (aka CE1381).

David is correct on this. The FBI did the minimum amount of work possible on requests from the WC, and Hoover (or maybe it was Belmont) specifically ordered agents not to write up the findings of WC request interviews in report form because it was unofficial business and they were only doing the President a favor, or something like that. This is why there are so many FBI interviews with no accompanying FD-302 report. 

That doesn’t really make it okay, and many of the WC requests were basic investigative tasks that the FBI should’ve done on their own, but in the FBI’s mind they solved the case with the issuance of their initial report so anything else they had to do was just a pain in the ass. That’s how they portrayed it anyway. 

[Benjamin Cole]

9 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Benjamin,

To quote from the cover letter that accompanies the CD706 FBI document, the 73 statements that appear in that document focused mainly on "six specific items in each statement". The two most important of those items, it seems to me, was to find out if each TSBD employee had seen any strangers in the building on Nov. 22 and whether those employees had seen Lee Harvey Oswald around the time of the assassination.

The CD706 interviews were obviously not meant to provide a detailed grilling of each of the 73 witnesses. The FBI, at the request of the Warren Commission in March of 1964, was only wanting to find out certain specific things in each of those interviews in CD706 (aka CE1381).

Yes I gather there was an interview template, from other interviews that were front or back of the Hughes interview. 

But this is not what I call great detective work.  

A locked door, an occupant inside not answering calls in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA, in an office with a excellent view to the kill from the TSBD on 11/22...and a woman inside that office who says she left the TSBD f at 1 pm...and who was not searched on departure....

Oh sure, all fine and dandy....

BTW in reading the interviews, there seems to be any number of publisher's offices in the TSBD. Some mention being on the third floor, but I thought they were on the second and fourth floors...

Sheesh, is is possible a large fraction of the TSBD was never searched? And that publisher's employees left, even at 1 pm, without being searched? 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Sheesh, is is possible a large fraction of the TSBD was never searched? And that publisher's employees left, even at 1 pm, without being searched? 

When they "had" the rifle, they pretty much stopped searching IMO

They even left Oswald's blue jacket where it was, for over a week...

For God's sake, the President was shot dead... if there was one case where they should have turned the building (and a couple more) upside-down, this was it !

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans