Breakthrough in the Walker shooting case: an inside job, accomplices, and the role of Oswald

[Greg Doudna]

Breakthrough in the Walker shooting case: an inside job, accomplices, and the role of Oswald

Witness Kirk Coleman saw two men in two cars leaving the adjoining church parking lot immediately after the single shot fired into General Edwin Walker's house said to have narrowly missed Walker on April 10, 1963. Neither of those two cars and persons were identified by police, the FBI, the Warren Commission, or researchers to the present day. The following represents a breakthrough in the case: a solid identification of one of those two vehicles and individuals seen by witness Coleman. The solution to this identification has been missed in all studies until now. This breakthrough is not minor but critical, going to the heart of what happened that evening of April 10, 1963 and by whom. 

 

(1) What has been known about the two cars seen by Coleman until now

Kirk Coleman, then 14 years old, heard the shot, ran the length of his backyard, stood on a bicycle to climb up and look over a fence, and saw two men leaving in two cars from the end of a church parking lot adjoining Walker's house. Coleman gave descriptions to the police and FBI of the two individuals and vehicles, known as man No. 1 and man No. 2. Coleman described man No. 1 as age 19 or 20, long or bushy dark hair, 130 pounds, skinny. No. 1 drove away in a 1949 or 1950 light-colored Ford. An odd detail is Coleman saw the car of No. 1 had its engine running and its headlights on, with no one else in the car, before man No. 1 walked toward it got to that car and then drove out of the parking lot. Coleman saw man No. 2 walking toward a parked car in a direction which looked like he had entered the parking lot from an alley which ran behind the Walker house, later determined by police as from where the shot had been fired. Coleman described man No. 2 as about 6'1" and 200 pounds, age unknown. Coleman said the car of man No. 2 was a 1958 Chevrolet black-over-white two-door sedan, parked next to a Renault. Although Coleman did not focus attention on man No. 2 until after seeing No. 1 drive away, when Coleman did turn attention to No. 2 he saw No. 2 leaning into the two-door car with the seat forward as if he was putting something on the floorboards in the rear, though he could not see what it was. Coleman said he did not notice either man carrying anything before they got to their respective cars.

Fact #1: Extensive informal inquiry among the church people using the parking lot failed to identify either of the cars of No. 1 or No. 2 as belonging to people of the church. On the other hand the "Renault" was identified; it turned out to be a Karmann Ghia owned by a young man who attended the church and parked his Karmann Ghia at the location Coleman saw what he mistakenly called a “Renault”. But the cars of No. 1 and No. 2 seen by Coleman were not identified with any church person despite efforts. Those negative results, and the location of the activity in the area of the parking lot away from the church and near the Walker house, suggest the cars of No. 1 and No. 2 were associated with the Walker house, not the church. 

Fact #2: On the other hand, and oddly, there is no record that Walker or anyone working with Walker was asked by police or the FBI if they could identify the cars seen by Coleman. In the Warren Commission testimony of General Walker, he was not asked. In the Warren Commission testimony of Walker aide Robert Surrey, he was not asked. There is no record any of Walker’s people were asked that question by Dallas Police, FBI, or the Warren Commission. 

Fact #3: Man No. 2 with the black-over-white car (hereafter called Coleman’s “car No. 2”) appears to represent either a reaction from the Walker house to the shot or involvement with the shot, one or the other. First, car No. 2 was parked away from the church and nearest the Walker house where it was known Walker people parked. And second, witness Coleman believed the two men and vehicles he saw were associated with the shot due to the timing—only seconds following the shot combined with the closeness of the men and cars to the Walker house. 

Fact #4: Given that man No. 2 either came from the Walker house in response to the shot or was involved in the shot, one or the other, it is further odd that there is no record Walker was asked by police, FBI, or the Warren Commission whether he, Walker, was alone in his home at the time of the shot. As the story is usually told it is assumed Walker was alone. But I have not found any statement from Walker or anyone else in a position to know actually saying that. It is inconceivable that police would not have asked Walker that question, yet there is no known official record of that question having been asked or its answer.

On June 10, 1964 the Dallas FBI office reported to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. that the two cars Coleman saw remained unidentified, over a year after the shot:

“[T]he two automobiles and the two individuals described in the interviews with Walter Kirk Coleman have not been identified. It appears only logical these two individuals are (1) either accomplices of the individual shooting at General Walker; (2) are witnesses to the shooting who are reluctant to divulge their identity, or (3) they are associates of General Walker. If further investigation is desired to identify these individuals and these automobiles, it would appear necessary to interview General Walker who, it is pointed out, is a most controversial figure, who will, undoubtedly, immediately alert the press or call a press conference and publicize the inquiry." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59602#relPageId=21)

The above confirms that as late as June 1964 General Walker had not been asked by the FBI if he could identify either of the cars seen by Coleman. Nor is there record any persons associated with Walker had been asked, in addition to no record of Walker having been asked whether anyone else was at his house at the time of the shot. In the closing line Dallas FBI signals that it will not conduct interviews of Walker people concerning that line of inquiry unless specifically instructed by headquarters to do so. On the statement “If further investigation is desired to identify these individuals and these automobiles”: why wouldn't first—emphasis upon “first”—inquiries of that nature be desired? But there is no record that headquarters instructed FBI Dallas to question Walker or Walker’s people for the purpose of attempting to identify the two cars seen by Coleman.

However I am going to identify one of those two vehicles Coleman saw right now.

 

 

(2) Identification of the black-over-white sedan of man No. 2: it is the car of Walker aide Robert Surrey

The car of No. 2 seen by Coleman was the car of Walker right-hand aide Robert Surrey, pure and simple, not previously identified. First will be shown the evidence, then its significance which can hardly be underestimated in understanding what happened with the Walker shot and Oswald’s role in that shot.

The key detail is the color. The car of No. 2 was described by Coleman as a black-over-white two-door sedan. From a Dallas Police interview of Coleman, 4/11/63:

". . . [Kirk Coleman] heard a noise. He thought it was a blowout ... Kirk stated that he then ran out back and climbed the back fence and saw a man getting into a 1949 or 1950 Ford, Lt. Green or Lt. Blue and take off. This was on the parking lot of the Church next to General Walker's home. Also on further down the parking lot was another car, unknown make or model and a man was in it. He had the dome light on and Kirk could see his hand over the front seat as if he was putting something in the back floorboard. The only description Kirk could give on this car was the fact that it was black with a white stripe ... This boy made me promise him that this would not get out in the newspapers. His name is already in the newspaper and he is scared to death that the assassin will attempt to do away with him." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=217818#relPageId=70)

FBI interview of Coleman, 6/3/64:

"... No. 2 was about ten yards behind No. 1 at a point about twenty-five feet inside the church property, or parking lot, from the alley entrance to this parking lot ... No. 2 was walking in a direction away from the alley entrance and towards a 1958 black over white, two-door Chevrolet sedan... Coleman stated he was able to observe this even though it was nighttime, as the church has a floodlight which was on at the time, and which lights up the parking lot. Coleman then looked back towards No. 2 and observed that he was, by this time, at the driver's side of the Chevrolet. He had the door open and the front seat pushed forward. He was leaning through the car door and into the back seat area of this car. Coleman then returned to his residence and did not observe how or when No. 2 left the parking lot. ... He stated that neither man resembled Oswald..." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60410#relPageId=118)

FBI interview of Coleman, 6/4/64:

"...Concerning the foreign-made car he had observed parked next to the 1958 black and white Chevrolet, Coleman stated he believes this was a Renault but it could have been some other make of automobile as he does not know what a Renault looks like ... He returned to the house because he did not think that a shot had been fired and there was no other reason for him to continue observing the man near the 1958 black and white Chevrolet." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60410#relPageId=122)

Although one could never know this from any Warren Commission testimony or exhibit, Walker aide Robert Surrey’s car, which was a 1961 Ford Galaxie Sunliner two-door convertible, was black over white. That evening it had its top up, and was mistakenly called by Coleman a 1958 Chevrolet two-door sedan. The distinctive black-over-white color of Robert Surrey’s car revealing the identification match is not found in the Warren Report, the Commission’s exhibits, or any known law enforcement report or later document release. It was not revealed in Surrey’s Warren Commission testimony. In his testimony Surrey said he was not at the Walker house at the time of the shot but was called at home two miles away by Walker after the shot. Then, Surrey said, he drove to the Walker house arriving ca. 15 minutes later, after police were already there. Surrey was asked what kind of car he drove that evening. But he was not asked the color and he did not volunteer that.

Mr. JENNER. …Were you at General Walker's home the evening of the attempted assassination, or attempt on his life? 
Mr. SURREY. Yes, I was. After the shot. I was not there at the time. 
Mr. JENNER. How soon after the shot were you there? 
Mr. SURREY. About 15 minutes. 
Mr. JENNER. How did you become aware that there had been an attempt on his life? 
Mr. SURREY. He called me on the telephone at my home. 
Mr. JENNER. And how far did you live from General Walker's home? 
Mr. SURREY. About 2 miles. 
Mr. JENNER. And you immediately drove over there? 
Mr. SURREY. Yes. 
Mr. JENNER. What kind of an automobile do you own and drive? 
Mr. SURREY. A 1961 Ford convertible. 
Mr. JENNER. And did you arrive at his home in that convertible? 
Mr. SURREY. Yes, I did. 
Mr. JENNER. What time of the day or night was this? 
Mr. SURREY. This was about 9 to 9:30 in the evening. 

The detail that Surrey’s convertible was black over white becomes first known to history on page 218 of Gayle Nix Jackson’s book, with contributions from Doug Campbell, Steve Roe, Chris Scally, and James Wagenvoord, Pieces of the Puzzle: Anthology, published in 2017. Pieces of the Puzzle reports that from a videotape of David Surrey, the oldest son of Robert Surrey, produced in 2012 but only first made publicly available on Utube in 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NtOlTQ1kzA).

In this 25-minute videotape, David Surrey, who was 12 years old at the time, tells of being with his father in Walker’s house at the time of the shot, then leaving with his father in his father’s car immediately after the shot. In the process of telling that, David mentions (with no awareness of the significance) that his father’s car was black over white. The videotape was produced in 2012 at the urging of David Surrey’s neighbor and friend Allen Trent in the last year of David’s life when David had been diagnosed with a fatal condition. (David died in 2013. An obituary and tributes is here, https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/name/david-surrey-obituary?id=20003946.) In this video David tells a different account of his father’s movements that evening than Robert Surrey told to the FBI and Warren Commission. The following is my transcription, David Surrey speaking:

“My father became a PR man for Edwin Walker. At that time <...> I think I turned 11, or maybe 12 at that time. And one evening we were at Edwin Walker's house. He was making a run for the governorship of Texas. And my Dad was actively campaigning for him, and my brother, my two brothers, my sisters Karen, Julie, both stepsisters, and my real brothers Bill and Richard, were with me. We were all at a house, General Walker's house, who had a nice beautiful house on Turtle Creek here in Dallas.

“And we're stuffing envelopes to send in the mail. And as we were doing this, a shot rang out! Very loud! "BAM!" Echoed through the house. And my Dad was there, screamed "Everybody hit the ground!" Which we all did, and they dove. Even though we were kids, we knew what a gunshot was.

"So as things went on, my Dad said—no more shooting—my Dad jumped up and goes, "It came from right out front!" And he goes, "Come with me David!" And we jumped in my father's car. And we took off down the alleyway, and he circled the block, and another gentleman--

Question off camera, interrupting: What kind of car was it?

David Surrey: Well my Dad had a Sunliner. Ford Sunliner.

Question off camera: What color?

David Surrey: It was white with a black convertible top. A pretty car!”

No Dallas Police, FBI, or Warren Commission document tells that black-over-white color of Robert Surrey’s car (I have looked), which exactly agrees with Coleman’s car No. 2. It was Robert Surrey’s car to which Coleman saw man No. 2 go immediately after the shot, told independently by David Surrey who left the Walker house with his father in that car immediately after the shot that evening!

 

(3) Coleman’s identification of Surrey’s 1961 Ford Sunliner as a 1958 Chevy

Then-14-year-old Coleman showed fallibility with respect to make and model of the parked Karmann Ghia which he mistakenly called a Renault. Coleman similarly erred in the make and model of car No. 2. What matters about Coleman’s testimony with respect to car No. 2 is the shape (sedan), number of doors (two), and color: black over white. Coleman saw Robert Surrey's two-door black-over-whiteconvertible with the black top up that night. Because the black top was up and Coleman could see it was a two-door, Coleman called it a black-over-white two-door sedan. But why did Coleman say it was a 1958 Chevrolet two-door sedan, if it was a 1961 Ford Sunliner? 

I am not expert in classic automobiles but in checking I see the 1958 Chevy sedans have a similar profile to a 1961 Ford Sunliner looked at from the side. There is also a prominent single horizontal stripe running most of the length of the sides on both the 1961 Ford Sunliner and 1958 Chevy sedans, whereas that stripe was not the case with most other models in the year 1958 and other years. I see that Ford, Chrysler, Cadillac, and Rambler models in 1958 do not have such a lengthy stripe on the side similar to that of the 1961 Ford Sunliner. The 1958 Chevrolets and Plymouths do, but the 1958 Plymouths have extremely pronounced, oversized tailfins which would not be confused with a 1958 Chevy sedan or 1961 Ford Sunliner both of which had more modest or subdued tailfins. The point being: if someone saw a 1961 Ford Sunliner with its distinctive stripe on the side and did not realize it was a Sunliner, one could associate that stripe with the 1958 or 1959 Chevy sedans which had similar stripes. Even the Chevy sedans themselves dropped that stripe by 1960, then a partial return in 1961, but then gone again in 1962 and 1963. 

In fact the similarity in the distinctive long stripe on the side between Surrey’s Ford Sunliner and the 1958 Chevy sedans could be why Coleman thought car No. 2 was a 1958 Chevy sedan. An echo of this might be in Coleman’s first statements to police, if police misunderstood Coleman’s descriptions. The original police offense report for the night of the incident, written by McElroy and Van Cleve 4/11/63 reported of Kirk Coleman: 

“He then noticed what appeared to be a w/m with the door open on a 58 Chev., blk with white stripe down side, said this person had the right seat pushed up and was leaning over as if he was putting something into the floorboards.” 

What if a comma was left out of the officers’ handwritten notes in typing up the report, and the notes of what Coleman actually said read, *“blk with white, stripe down side”? The presence or absence of the comma changes the meaning! Or original, *"blk/white stripe down side"?

And then what if the next day’s investigator misunderstood Coleman describing the car the same way Coleman had the night before, Coleman describing the car (correctly) as *“black and white with a stripe”, which became (mistakenly) “black with a white stripe” (DPD, report of Tucker and Norvell, 4/11/63). (Also, the report of Tucker and Norvell could have been influenced by McElroy and Van Cleve’s report.)

The evidence that something like this happened is that Coleman was later reinterviewed on multiple occasions and in all cases after these original two police reports, without exception, Coleman is reported as saying the car of man No. 2 was either “black over white” or “black and white”, i.e. a two-tone (not an all-black car except for a white stripe). That indicates the “white stripe” on an otherwise black car envisioned by the original police report of Coleman’s description was a mistake. But that mistake would not have been on the part of the witness but of the officers writing down and reporting the words of the witness.

If counts of surviving classic cars represented on Google Images in 2022 are any indication, two-tone black-over-white was not common for 1958 Chevy sedans. For the search term “1958 Chevrolet two-door sedan” I counted only 7 black-over-whites out of 315 color photos of such 1958 Chevys. That is an incidence of less than 3%—about 3 percent chance that a random 1958 Chevy two-door sedan observed parked where Robert Surrey is known to have parked his black-over-white Sunliner on an earlier occasion, also would be black-over-white, just as Robert Surrey’s car. 

The most important point is that the black-over-white color is no coincidence. Coleman’s car No. 2 was not some unknown different car that looked like Robert Surrey’s car—also black over white and two-door; parked where Walker people parked; parked in the same area of that church parking lot where Robert Surrey by his own account parked his black-over-white two-door only two nights earlier; and seen by Coleman about to drive away at the exact time David Surrey, who was with his father that evening, said his father drove his car away, immediately following the shot—that was Robert Surrey's car.

According to Robert Surrey, only two evenings earlier before the evening of the Walker shot, on April 8, 1963, Surrey said he parked his black-over-white convertible in the same area of the church parking lot where Coleman told of seeing the black-over-white sedan the evening of April 10, 1963.

“On Monday night, April 8, 1963, at about 9:00 to 9:30 p.m., [Robert] Surrey arrived in the area of the residence of General Edwin A. Walker, 4011 Turtle Creek Boulevard. …. Surreyproceeded around the block and entered the Mormon Church Parking Lot, located on the property adjoining the Walker residence to the north, and parked his car in this lot.” (FBI, 6/3/64, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60410#relPageId=116)

Despite publishing the color of Robert Surrey’s car for the first time, in 2017, Gayle Nix Jackson’s Pieces of the Puzzle did not go that one step further and make the identification that Robert Surrey’s car was Kirk Coleman’s car No. 2. That identification is first made now.

(continued)  

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

(4) Two Boy Scouts see the same black-over-white car the evening of the Walker shot: “a pretty good looking car”

Scott Hansen was a 15-year old member of a family of the Latter-day Saints church next to the Walker house, the church of the parking lot. He and a friend saw the same car Coleman saw the evening of the shot:

“Hansen stated that he recalls observing a 1958 black over white Chevrolet parked along the fence next to Major General Edwin A. Walker's property on the night of April 10, 1963. He stated that he recalls seeing the same automobile parked along this fence on a previous Wednesday, but has not seen the car in the church lot since April 10, 1963. He stated that he was talking to another Boy Scout by the name of David Clemens concerning the appearance of the automobile and remembered that he thought it was ‘a pretty good looking car’.” (FBI, 6/4/64, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60410#relPageId=126)

That Hansen is reported as referring to the No. 2 car of Coleman as a 1958 Chevrolet—instead of (accurately) a 1961 Ford Sunliner—should be interpreted as Hansen’s response to an FBI agent asking if he had seen a black-over-white car of that make and model, with either Hansen or the FBI agent in reporting echoing the mistaken year and make of the FBI inquiry.

Note that those two young men not only saw the same black-over-white car Kirk Coleman saw, but they admired the car in practically the same words David Surrey used in the video of his father’s black-over-white convertible: “A pretty car!” (David Surrey). “A pretty good looking car” (the Boy Scouts). It is the same car!

 

(5) Physical descriptions of man No. 2 and Robert Surrey compared

According to an FBI report of 6/3/64 Kirk Coleman estimated man No. 2 (= Robert Surrey) to be about 6’1” and about 200 pounds (CD 1124, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11520#relPageId=12). The only physical description I have been able to find for Robert Surrey is attributed to a redacted name of source—a source who did not know Robert Surrey’s exact age or exact weight, suggesting a human informant’s estimate, not measurements or vital statistics from a document—reported in an FBI document dated 10/27/64: there Robert Surrey is said to be 5’10” and 150-160 pounds (p. 44 of 46 at https://archive.org/details/SURREYRobertA.HQ9456242AndDallas10012834/mode/2up). The closest I can find to a standing photo of Robert Surrey as an adult is at Pieces of the Puzzle, p. 191, showing Robert Surrey kissing his wife Mary at an airport. Although only the upper half of his body is shown and that in profile, he looks in agreement with the FBI height and weight, maybe two inches taller than Mary (of unknown height), and solid, not a thin man. A photo of Robert Surrey sitting in a chair is here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=109189#relPageId=24. There is a full-length standing photo of Robert Surrey as a teenager at Pieces of the Puzzle, p. 212. In that photo his height is hard to determine though he does not seem to be short. He looks neither lean nor overweight but “solid” and healthy in that photo.

The height and weight estimates differ but not dramatically beyond range of error of a truthful witness. Note that Coleman did not call man No. 2 “skinny” or about 130 pounds as was Coleman’s description of No. 1; if that had been Coleman’s description of No. 2, that would be a dramatic difference. 

Given that the Coleman height and weight estimates for man No. 2 were only first reported obtained from Coleman on June 3, 1964, fourteen months after the event, and allowing for the brief viewing Coleman had of No. 2—according to description mostly from the back with the man leaning into the car and not upright—witness Kirk Coleman’s height and weight estimate is judged in satisfactory agreement with a real sighting of Robert Surrey by Coleman the evening of April 10, 1963 as Coleman’s man No. 2.

 

(6) Kirk Coleman at the Walker house

According to Robert Surrey’s Warren Commission testimony, he and arriving officers parked at the front of the Walker house, on Turtle Creek Boulevard. He and they entered the Walker house through the front door and went to the rear of the house, where Walker was in the room into which the shot had been fired. After Surrey assisted Walker with tweezers getting a small sliver of metal out of Walker’s right forearm police took some information, then Surrey with police went out the back door into the back yard and back alley. At this point reporters were showing up. 

It appears Kirk Coleman, seeing the activity and police officers behind Walker’s house, walked over to the rear of the Walker house, spoke to the officers and told them what he had seen. The officers noted Coleman as a witness in their report and what he told them. The next day the Dallas Police sent out an investigator to interview Coleman more closely; that interview was written up 4/11/63 by Norvell and Tucker. If Robert Surrey heard what Coleman told the officers the night of April 10, as Surrey would have since he was there and reporters heard it, he would have realized one of the cars Coleman was speaking of was his own. 

What Robert Surrey did not do was volunteer clarification to the officers that one of the cars Coleman saw had been his, and inform officers of the correct year and model and identification of Coleman’s car No. 2. Why Surrey did not do so may be an open question. But that he did not do so, that he let an erroneous report of Coleman stand concerning car No. 2, which functioned to have it remain unidentified, has the status of a fact. Because even if Surrey somehow missed hearing what Coleman told the officers that night (not very likely), Surrey would have read it in the newspaper the next day and heard about it. Yet he did not disclose.

If upon his return to the Walker house after the shot Surrey had parked in the rear of the house, Coleman would have seen and identified Surrey’s car as car No. 2 on the spot. But that did not happen, because Surrey parked out front on Turtle Creek Boulevard. Surrey to the Warren Commission:

“When I pulled—I pulled up in front on Turtle Creek, got out of my car. A police car was there. (…) I parked and got out of my automobile, and walked up the front walkway into the house. (…) There were several policemen in the house, just arriving. Mr. Walker was sitting at his desk in this back room.”

But why did Coleman not recognize Surrey himself in the back yard as man No. 2? That is not too hard to understand. Coleman said he never saw the face of man No. 2 (“Coleman advised he never saw No.2’s face”, FBI, 6/4/64). Coleman said when he did pay attention to looking at man No. 2 he saw him only from the rear. Then, the back yard and alley area of Walker’s house was dark. A backyard floodlight on the Walker property was inoperable that evening. The police officers may have been moving around with flashlights (flashlights out back may have been what drew Coleman’s attention to the police activity). There was a moonrise of a full moon that night at 8:30 pm from 103 degrees southeast which would have shone on the back yard and alley behind the Walker house as the moon rose enough to be over any buildings or landscape, depending on whether the southeast horizon was clear or cloudy that night (according to this historic moonrise date calculator, https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/usa/dallas?month=4&year=1963; and incidentally, by separate NOAA-ESRL historical sunrise/sunset calculator, sunset that evening in Dallas was 6:53 pm with total darkness occurring ca. 70 minutes after sunset in Texas or ca. 8:03 pm). There would not have been much moonlight at around 9 pm, the time of the shot, even on a clear night, but in the 9:30-10:00 pm time frame, when Coleman most likely spoke to the officers, there might have been light from the full moon at that point, if there was no cloud cover on the horizon that evening. 

But whether or not there was moonlight, if Coleman did see Surrey among the officers and reporters and perhaps a neighbor or two mingling around in the semi-darkness, Coleman would not have recognized him because Coleman never saw the face of No. 2 to make a facial recognition possible. And Coleman would have had no reason to expect to see man No. 2 there. These circumstances account for Coleman not recognizing Surrey that evening as the man No. 2 he had seen less than an hour earlier leaving in a car from the parking lot, even though one of the two mystery men Coleman was describing may have been among those standing right there listening to Coleman as he spoke. And Surrey for whatever reason was not making himself known to either Coleman or the officers, that Coleman’s man No. 2 was he.

(continued)

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

 

(7) David Surrey’s younger brother Bill’s memory of the night of the Walker shot

Gayle Nix Jackson reports from a dialogue in which she engaged with Bill Surrey, David Surrey's younger brother, a correction to David's account on a point, while corroborating that he and his brothers and sisters stuffed envelopes at the Walker house that evening. Bill Surrey was about 10 years old at the time.

"Bill [Surrey] also shares a slightly different remembrance of the night at General Walker's home. He says that yes, the whole family was there stuffing envelopes and they ran out of something they were putting in the envelopes, so Robert Surrey sent his wife Mary, the girls, Bill and Richard home. They weren't home very long when they got a call from their Dad (not General Walker as he testified to the Warren Commission) to quickly come back over. After the phone call, Robert and David went searching for the 'shooters'. By the time David and Robert got back the police began to arrive." (Pieces of the Puzzle, 222)

And again,

“William Surrey states that this [father Robert and older brother David at the Walker house at the time of the shot] did indeed happen, but it was after his Dad had sent he, his younger brother Richard, his stepsisters Karen and Julie and his stepmom home. Karen Surrey says she wasn’t there either but remembers the evening.” (Pieces of the Puzzle, 410 n. 318)

On July 29, 2022, Allen Trent posted on Utube a 33-minute video from David Surrey’s brother Bill Surrey produced in 2013, apparently made public for the first time in 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5R4Yz5ML3E. (Nearly four months later, on Nov 21, 2022 I saw it showed zero Utube views before I viewed it that date, then it showed one total views.)

(Also, whereas Bill Surrey confirms David’s memory of the family stuffing envelopes at the Walker house that evening, David erred in his video in saying those mailings were for Walker’s gubernatorial campaign since that campaign ended the fall of 1962. Robert Surrey was Walker’s campaign manager in Walker’s unsuccessful run for governor in 1962. The envelope stuffing on April 10, 1963 would have been for something else.) 

 

(8) David Surrey leaving with his father after the shot

According to David Surrey he left the Walker house with his father in his father’s black-over-white convertible immediately after the shot. However witness Kirk Coleman saw no boy or second individual with man No. 2 corresponding to 12-yr old David. The strength of the positive argument for identification of the two accounts as two versions of the same car and same event calls for resolution in terms other than rejection of the identification. Coleman said he paid little attention to man No. 2 at first. Coleman said he first saw man No. 2 (= Robert Surrey) walking by himself toward the black-over-white car, but then focused his attention on man No. 1 until he saw car No. 1 drive out of the parking lot out of sight. Only then did Kirk turn his attention to No. 2. According to the police report Kirk saw man No. 2 had now reached the car, the driver’s side car door was open, the seat was pushed forward and the man “had the dome light on and Kirk could see his hand over the front seat as if he was putting something in the back floorboard”. 

It has not been clear what that activity of No. 2 involving the rear floorboard was about. Some have thought that could be the shooter stashing a weapon that had just fired the shot, but Coleman never claimed to see man No. 2 carrying anything when he first saw him walking, nor did Coleman see him with a weapon or package at the car—only the man leaning into the car in that posture, with Coleman viewing the man’s backside without seeing what the man was moving or arranging in the car. Coleman said he quit looking after that point, climbed down from the fence and returned to his own house without seeing car No. 2 drive away. That is, man No. 2 “as if he was putting something in the back floorboard” was Coleman’s last visual of No. 2 and his car (= Robert Surrey). From an FBI interview of Coleman referring to after car No. 1 drove out of the parking lot:

“Coleman then looked back towards No. 2 and observed that he was, by this time, at the driver’s side of the Chevrolet. He had the door open and the front seat pushed forward. He was leaning through the car door and into the back seat area of this car. Coleman then returned to his residence and did not observe how or when No. 2 left the parking lot.” (CE 2958, FBI, 6/3/64)

It hardly seems possible that Kirk Coleman would have failed to notice young David in the car if, say, David had run out to the car in advance of his father before Coleman climbed up the fence to look over. Therefore by default (and because the match of Coleman’s black-and-white car No. 2 as Robert Surrey’s convertible is the non-negotiable fact here), David Surrey will have entered the car after Robert Surrey went to the car alone, after Kirk Coleman left off looking. There are two theoretical possibilities how that could have worked. 

The first: following the shot, Robert Surrey instructs son David to go with him to the car but David tells his father he has to make a stop to the bathroom; Robert goes on ahead and tells David to meet him at the car; Robert goes out the back of the house into the alley and to the parking lot and the car on his own (seen by Coleman); Robert moves something—could be mailing envelopes, packaging supplies, anything—off the front passenger seat to the back of the car to make room for David in the right front passenger seat (seen by Coleman); Coleman leaves off looking; David arrives to the car in the church parking lot (unseen by Coleman who has left the fence); Robert Surrey and David drive out of the parking lot (unseen by Coleman). However, although theoretically possible I do not think that is what happened. 

The other solution (this is what I think happened): Robert Surrey does not have his son go with him out the back of the house and through the back alley to the car in the church parking lot. There would be a safety consideration, plus it is not clear David would know where the car was or how to get to it if he was not with his father. Instead, Robert instructed David to wait at the front door of the Walker house facing Turtle Creek Boulevard, watch for the car from the front door, then run out to it. Robert then went by himself out the back of the Walker house through the alley to the church parking lot and the car (seen by Coleman walking to his car in the church parking lot). Arriving at his car Robert cleared the front seat preparatory to David sitting in the front seat, relocating something to the rear of the car (seen by Coleman). Robert Surrey then drove the car out the exit of the church parking lot to Turtle Creek Boulevard, turned right on Turtle Creek and stopped in front of the Walker house where David ran out, got in the car and they left.

This second reconstruction makes the best sense. Robert had to go out the back of the house into the back yard which was dark that evening (a floodlight on the Walker property which usually lit up the back yard was out), to the back alley, then a few steps through the dark alley (exactly from where the shot had originated less than a minute or two earlier with a shooter at large), then into the lighted church parking lot to get to his parked car which is where Kirk Coleman picked up sight of him walking. Robert would then drive out of the parking lot and pick up David from the safer front of the Walker house. Coleman saw the part in which Robert Surrey got to his car in the church parking lot, before Surrey picked up David at the front of the Walker house.

This also explains Coleman’s seeing man No. 2 setting or relocating something to the rear of the car. That detail is in agreement with Robert Surrey picking up young David moments later from the font of the house because what Coleman saw was Robert Surrey preparing the front seat for a passenger. If there were no passenger about to sit in the right front seat, Robert Surrey would not have been seen doing what Coleman saw. What Coleman saw was a clearing of the front seat for a passenger which supports David’s story that he left the Walker house in his father’s car just after the shot that evening.

This information also is sufficient to dispense with the notion that man No. 2 was putting a rifle into the back of the car, or that man No. 2 had taken the shot. Man No. 2 was Robert Surrey and Robert Surrey did not take the shot. He was in the Walker house at the time of the shot. The witness of David Surrey, also the testimony of Marina Oswald, supports that Robert Surrey was not the shooter that night.

Nevertheless, although Robert Surrey was not the shooter, something is not right about Robert Surrey in this story of the shot taken at Walker. The witness accounts of Kirk Coleman and David Surrey leave little room for any other conclusion than that Robert Surrey spoke falsely both to the FBI and in his subpoenaed testimony under oath to the Warren Commission concerning his whereabouts that evening.

Because: Kirk Coleman’s same-night, smoking-gun eyewitness seeing of Robert Surrey getting into Robert Surrey’s car, and David Surrey’s years-later firsthand account of leaving the Walker house in that car with his father immediately after the shot, establish that Robert Surrey was at the Walker house at the time of the shot. But Robert Surrey told the FBI and the Warren Commission that he was two miles away at his home, and only first arrived to the Walker house about 15 minutes after the shot!

Robert Surrey to the FBI: 

“On the night of April 10, 1963, Surrey stated he was not at Walker’s residence, but received a call from General Edwin Walker shortly after the shooting incident, or shortly after 9:00 PM. He stated he proceeded from his residence directly to Walker’s residence, arriving there at about the same time as did the first police car.” (CD 1124. FBI letterhead Memorandum of 10 Jun 1964 re: Walker Incident, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11520#relPageId=10)

Robert Surrey to the Warren Commission: 

Mr. JENNER. Thank you, sir. Were you at General Walker's home the evening of the attempted assassination, or attempt on his life? 
Mr. SURREY. Yes, I was. After the shot. I was not there at the time. 
Mr. JENNER. How soon after the shot were you there? 
Mr. SURREY. About 15 minutes. 
Mr. JENNER. How did you become aware that there had been an attempt on his life? 
Mr. SURREY. He called me on the telephone at my home. 

These statements to the FBI and Warren Commission were not true. They are not true because Kirk Coleman saw Robert Surrey’s car parked near the Walker house and Robert Surrey walking to his car moments after the shot; and because son David Surrey, who was there, supports the witness of Kirk Coleman, confirming the presence of his father at the Walker house at the time of the shot and that his father left the Walker home immediately after the shot. 

Although Robert Surrey did not fire the shot, Robert Surrey, for unknown reason, went to the extraordinary length of giving false information to the FBI and false, perjured testimony under oath to the Warren Commission rather than disclose that he was at the Walker house at the time of the shot; why?

At this point the identification of Coleman’s car No. 2 as Robert Surrey’s car, and man No. 2 as Robert Surrey, should no longer be in question. The question now has become a different one: why did Robert Surrey dissemble concerning his whereabouts that evening?

 

(9) What happened next after Robert Surrey and David left the Walker house

From the David Surrey video, my transcription:

“We jumped in there [into his father’s car after the shot] and we took off, after this gunman, looking for a car or something out of the ordinary, it was a nice neighborhood. And anyway, we circled around four or five blocks, six or something, didn’t get anything.

“And after a what—my father pulled up on the curb—we were about three blocks away—behind another car. And I was in the front seat of the car. And supposedly we had not found this gentleman, whoever shot at him. And my Dad got out and he went up to this car. And the guy got out of the car, and I couldn’t see, it was dark, it was night. And he says, uh, ‘Did you get him?’ And he said, ‘No I missed. No I didn’t see him.’

“‘No I missed’ is what he said. And at the time I thought he meant, he didn’t see the guy who shot at him. They looked for him and they just missed him. He didn’t know where he was. And my father didn’t know either. So anyway, the police came, took a report, and they dug the bullet out which missed General Walker from behind his head.”

Was this some memory of David of his father arriving to the Walker house and speaking to a police officer? There is this in Pieces of the Puzzle: “Warren Bosworth, Dallas Times Herald reporter, was sitting at the press room desk at the Dallas Police Department, when he heard the call about the shooting. Riding out with the police he was met by Robert Surrey and granted access into the Walker home. Police immediately interviewed Walker upon arrival” (Roe, Pieces of the Puzzle, 91, citing a Sixth Floor Museum Oral History interview of Bosworth). 

However, David’s mention of his father pulling up behind a stopped car several blocks away, if David is correct on that detail, suggests this may have been something else. The other possibility is David’s father may have been meeting up with car No. 1 that Coleman saw leave the church parking lot just before Surrey left in car No. 2.

If so, one interpretation might be that man No. 1 in his car was an accomplice of Oswald taking the shot, perhaps assisting in conveyance of Oswald and the rifle to the scene that evening and earlier occasions. After the shot—which according to Marina, Lee told her later that night he had fired—car No. 1 might have tried to find or meet Oswald to pick him up and drive him to his home neighborhood. In this case the exchange David overheard between his father and the man in the other car would be the man of car No. 1 telling Surrey (No. 2) that he had “missed him”, meaning Oswald after the shot—Oswald on foot wasn’t to be found. Oswald then stashed the rifle in undergrowth somewhere where it could later be retrieved and made his way home on his own late that night, as he was capable of doing, by bus, which is how Marina says Lee told her he got home that night.

In short, David Surrey’s account is compatible with the implication of what witness Kirk Coleman saw, that there may have been two men and automobiles connected to and leaving immediately after the shot that evening in addition to a third person, a shooter on foot (Oswald as told to Marina). Kirk Coleman saw two cars in the parking lot as they were leaving, and David Surrey may tell of those same two cars meeting up a few minutes later after circling the neighborhood—both perhaps looking for Oswald—meeting and agreeing they had missed him. 

After that, the person David Surrey saw his father meet would go on his way. Robert Surrey returned to the Walker house to join police and reporters and be of assistance to Walker. In light of Robert Surrey’s testimony to the Warren Commission that he went to the Walker house from his own house after the shot with no mention of David with him, it may be that Robert Surrey took David home before Robert returned on his own from his house to the Walker house, followed separately by the rest of the Surrey family in a different family car driven by Mary. The stop home by Robert Surrey before returning to the Walker house is not quite clear or confirmed but it makes sense and gives better agreement with Surrey’s testimony than if he did not. In any case police and reporters arrived to find Robert Surrey helping Walker pull a sliver of metal out of Walker’s forearm with tweezers, as reported in the news.

(continued)

Edited December 11, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

(10) Fortuitous circumstances for the shooter

Following the shot and a phone call from the Walker house, Mary Surrey and the kids went back to the Walker house, described by Bill Surrey in his video. After returning to the Walker home, Bill recalls the kids were kept in a room at the front of the house to the left going in the front door, separate from the police activity in the back where police were taking their reports from Walker and Robert Surrey. “Neither of them [David and Bill] remembers seeing police officers at the Walker home” (Pieces of the Puzzle, 222).

Later, after the police had gone, Bill tells of the kids being taken back, shown the bullet hole in the wall, and having explained to them what had happened. There appears to have been no occasion for police to discover or interview 12-year old David as a witness concerning his and his father’s presence in the house at the time of the shot. Years later in his video Bill still seemed puzzled over why the kids were kept away from the police activity in the back of the house and assumed it must have had something to do with shielding children’s ears from talk of violence. Whatever the reason, it meant David did not hear what his father told police and it minimized the chance that David would come to the attention of and be questioned by police as a witness himself.

Late that night the Surrey kids were taken home again by Mary Surrey. Robert Surrey remained and stayed in the house with Walker that night. Walker himself was reported by police and reporters as showing no fear, expressing no plans to increase security or alter his activities or daily routines. 

There was a dog belonging to a woman who lived on the other side of the Walker house, a border collie named Toby owned by a Marion Ross-Bouve (her name appears in FBI documents as “Mrs. Ross Bouve”, but a photograph of her tombstone reads “Marion Ross-Bouve” with a hyphen and no sign that she was a “Mrs.”). Toby became sickened the next two days after the evening of the Walker shot, and was a notorious barker at anyone in the alley near the Walker place, which is from where the shooter took the shot. As it happened Ms. Ross-Bouve took Toby inside the house and confined him to a laundry room earlier that evening (to stop the barking at people coming and going at the Walker house that evening as well as people arriving to the church, she said), such that the dog was not an issue by the time the shot was fired. Ross-Bouve “advised her dog ‘Toby’ became very sick on April 11 and 12, 1963 … vomited extensively”. Ross-Bouve believed Toby had been poisoned with intent to silence him that evening (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60410#relPageId=132). A contemporary police report of April 12, 1963 has a report of Toby being “very sick” on the 11^th and again sick on the 12^th (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10484#relPageId=15).

It may be objected that the delay before Toby began vomiting argues against the sickness being related to the shot, since it would not have stopped the barking at 9 pm if Toby had been outside as normal that evening. However if the mechanism for the intended silencing of Toby was something tossed into Ms. Ross-Bouve’s back yard for Toby to eat before the time of the shot but after Toby had been brought into the house, Toby would remain healthy because he had not yet eaten that in the yard which was going to make him sick. At some point that night or the next morning when Ross-Bouve let Toby back out into the yard Toby would have occasion to find and eat and react to what had been tossed there for him, and that would account for the delay in his starting to vomit. The timing of Toby becoming sick would correspond to his first opportunity to eat something bad which had been thrown into the yard after Ms. Ross-Bouve brought Toby inside. 

The mechanism of the poisoning could be petals or leaves from one of a number of flowers and plants known to be toxic to dogs baked into a dog biscuit and tossed into Toby’s yard from a car driving by in the alley. The tainted treat would have been tossed at a time after Toby had been taken inside but without knowledge on the part of whoever wanted Toby silenced that Toby would not be let back out in the yard before 9. From the motive and timing, the poisoning of Toby appears to have been part of the carrying out of the Walker shot.

There was also a floodlight at the back of the Walker property which would have made for a well-lit back yard if it had not been inoperable on the evening of April 10 (“a large flood light in the rear area of the General’s home was burned out on the evening the offense occurred”, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1140#relPageId=60). That certainly was helpful to the shooter in giving cover of darkness when the shot was taken from the alley. Dallas Police officer John Toney, who interviewed Walker as part of the police investigation, speaks of Walker referring to the alley behind the back yard as dark at the time of the shot (Sneed, No More Silence, 311), consistent with the floodlight which did not light up the Walker back yard. 

Another thing helpful to the shooter that evening was that although it was dark outside, the window of the room where the shot was fired did not have curtains or blinds drawn, making Walker at his desk at that time of night lighted up for anyone outside to see (not my preference when home at night, though tastes can vary). Walker told the Warren Commission, in explaining how the shot had happened, that “the shades were up”. Dallas Police Detective Gus Rose who was one of the reporting officers that night to the Walker shot, had a different version in his written report of 4/11/63, the next day. According to Rose, the shooter had a clear view “as there are no window shades” (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10484#relPageId=13). One of these two claims is mistaken. If Det. Rose’s report is accurate on this point, that in itself is odd: why would a window have no shades? What a fortunate shooter—to find Walker that evening sitting behind a window that had no window shades to draw down! 

Both the non-barking Toby in the neighbor’s back yard and the inoperable floodlight not illuminating the back yard of the Walker house, on the evening of April 10, 1963, were not simply advantageous but arguably essential to carrying out the shot. It is difficult to imagine both of those brought about by a person not involved with the Walker house itself. Did Walker have assassins plotting his death working for him inside his own house? 

 

(11) The Surreys and the church next door

Gayle Nix Jackson reported another detail of possible interest in Pieces of the Puzzle. According to Bill Surrey, just weeks before the shot at Walker the Surrey family joined or began attending the church next to the Walker house, which was unusual according to Bill:

“Bill Surrey also shared a strange story to me, but even stranger to him. As his parents were never religious in that they never attended church services of any denomination, he found it odd that in March of 1963, his father and step-mother joined the Mormon church that was on the next lot, approximately 400 yards from Walker’s home. This is the church that figured heavily in Marina’s story about her husband Lee Oswald, shooting at General Walker. Bill said that the family attended the church a few times, he remembers getting Kool-Aid and cookies there, but after the Walker shooting they never went back again. Why the sudden conversion to Mormonism and the even more sudden departure from the church?” (p. 224)

The question is raised whether the timing of the involvement with the church was related to the Walker shot, whether the family’s lack of interest in the church after April 10, 1963 as remembered by Bill Surrey—and Bill’s surprise at the churchgoing in the first place—may have been because the involvement with the church was for utilitarian reasons, more than interest in the teachings of the church. Among other things church attendance would legitimize use of the church parking lot. Compare Marina Oswald telling of Lee telling of activity in that church parking lot affecting the timing of the shot.

“Marina was more closely questioned concerning the events surrounding the attempted assassination of General Walker. She said he had confessed to her on the same night of the attempted assassination that he had attempted to kill General Walker by shooting him with a rifle. On the following evening, they again discussed the attempted assassination. On that evening Oswald told her he had originally gone to the Walker house three days or more prior to the actual assassination attempt to try to shoot Walker but had changed his mind. While he was in the vicinity of the Walker house on a bus en route there or in some manner he had heard there was to be a gathering at a nearby church to the Walker residence and he preferred to do the shooting of Walker when more people were around and it was for this reason that he eventually made the assassination attempt on Wednesday night, April Ten.” (12/12/63, FBI, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10145#relPageId=20)

“[Lee] told me that even before that time [April 10] he had gone also to shoot, but he had returned. I don't know why. Because on the day that he did fire, there was a church across the street and there were many people there, and it was easier to merge in the crowd and not be noticed.” (Warren Commission testimony)

“She [Marina] does recall Oswald on one occasion, when they were discussing the Walker incident, a gathering at a church near the Walker house, he told her he had postponed the assassination attempt until the evening of the gathering of the church.” (FBI, 6/4/64, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59614#relPageId=101)

Both the Surreys and Oswald reflected interest in that church and its parking lot in the runup to the shot, according to these separate sources of information.

 

(12) Early suspicions that the Walker shot was staged by Walker

James Hosty, the FBI agent of the Dallas office tasked with investigating General Walker in 1962 and 1963 concerning the University of Mississippi riots of Oct 1962 which Walker was accused of inciting, was reported as having suspected Walker arranged the shot himself.

"[FBI Special Agent James] Hosty suspects the shooting [at Walker] 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." (Gus Russo, Live by the Sword [1998], 539) 

George De Mohrenschildt said similarly to investigators in Haiti:

"[George de Mohrenschildt] added that 'it sounds serious now but we all believed the Walker incident was a publicity stunt'. He said 'everybody in Dallas' thought Walker had staged this himself for publicity" (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5946#relPageId=11)

An FBI confidential informant described Walker as "very much an egotist who would do almost anything for publicity" (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=145523#relPageId=105).

Captain O.A. Jones, one of two Dallas Police officers assigned to be in charge of the Walker case, did not regard Walker as a credible witness. An FBI report of 12/7/63 noted that “Captain Jones … stated that it is difficult to investigate any type of matter where General Walker is involved since Walker apparently does not know the truth from fiction and leads the police up many blind alleys” (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=789).

In fact it may not be far from the truth that the idea that Walker staged it was the leading largely-unspoken law enforcement suspicion or surmise concerning the Walker shot prior to the post-assassination revelation of the role of Oswald, which altered that perception.

(continued) 

[Greg Doudna]

(13) Allegation that Walker tried to arrange a fake kidnapping of himself for publicity in 1962

This allegation comes from Robert DePugh, founder of the Minutemen, told to author Jeffrey Caufield:

"Minutemen leader Robert DePugh told the author that he visited Walker at his Dallas home during the primary campaign [for Texas governor in 1962]. Walker asked DePugh to have his men kidnap him in a publicity stunt, which DePugh refused. Walker had planned to blame the kidnapping on the Communist conspiracy, in an effort to help his campaign.” (Jeffrey Caufield, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy [2015], 327, citing interviews of DePugh of Dec 17, 1999 and May 11, 2000)

 

(14) Was the shot at Walker staged by Walker? 

Nov 25, 1992, NEW YORK — Curtis Sliwa said Tuesday that he faked his 1980 kidnaping and five other exploits to help the Guardian Angels survive its early years as a volunteer crime-fighting group.

“I was wrong, but we were in a sprint for survival,” Sliwa said. “We were just little people trying to get recognition for doing good work. In a sense it was like being Don Quixote.”

But he admitted that the constant media attention played a part in the deception. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-25-mn-1060-story.html)

Although Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels have no connection to General Edwin Walker of 1963, the above is cited as a possibly instructive parallel. In the case of Sliwa, the story of his 1980 kidnapping and other fabricated exploits enhanced public sympathy for the work of the Guardian Angels. Before Sliwa confessed, the status of the 1980 kidnapping of Sliwa was comparable to the status of the Walker shot.

In the case of the Walker shot: Although a shot fired into the study of General Walker’s home the night of April 10, 1963 is a fact, that Walker was at his desk in that room when that shot was fired is known solely on Walker’s sayso. If it was a staged shot, Walker would not have been in the room when the shot was fired, though he would claim he had been. There would be no serious injury, which was the case. That what would have been an easy shot at Walker supposedly missed in itself raises eyebrows. A rifle and a scope and a man at a desk in a lighted room: the shot should not have missed. How did the shooter not hit Walker, if everything was as reported?

Walker’s injuries that night were extremely light. There were three or four slight flesh wounds or scratches on his right forearm which required no medical attention. Supposedly Walker had been hit by glass or metal shards from the bullet shell casing on the back of that right forearm and nowhere else such as on the neck or head. Walker was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up that night. Walker’s injuries could easily have been self-administered by gently pressing the back of a forearm down on broken glass or metal shards just enough to have skin broken in two or three places without serious pain. 

Mr. SURREY. And then a policeman asked him a question, and I noticed that his arm was bleeding. 
Mr. JENNER. General Walker's arm? 
Mr. SURREY. General Walker's arm, was bleeding in four or five places. (…) His right arm, yes; on his forearm. And---- 
Mr. JENNER. Was he bleeding profusely? 
Mr. SURREY. No. (…) So I went over and looked at his arm, and there was a piece of metal in one particular spot in his arm, that I noticed, in addition to the other scratches, and I went looking for some first aid equipment and found tweeze[rs] upstairs, and came back downstairs and picked that piece of metal and two others out of his right forearm. 

The fact is Walker's slight injuries to his right forearm are not distinguishable from self-infliction of near-painless and harmless scratches breaking skin on the back of that right forearm and specks of metal in the skin, the nature of Walker's injuries that evening. Walker also gave conflicting versions of the moment of the shot. According to Lieutenant Elmo Cunningham, one of the original Dallas Police investigators of the Walker case, Walker told him he had reached across his desk for a tax form, and the shot would have hit him in the head if he had not fortuitously moved.

“General Walker said that just as he reached across the desk for a tax form, a bullet went right behind his head … The bullet would have gone into his right ear and out his left if he hadn’t reached for that tax form.” (Cunningham, in Sneed, No More Silence [1998], 276)

Officer John Toney was also part of the original Dallas Police investigators of the Walker case. He said Walker told him the shot missed because he had reached down to pick up a dropped pencil:

“As I recall, I interviewed him [Gen. Walker] three times. My first interview was after the reported shooting at him in which he told me that after the shot was fired from a darkened alley, the reason that he wasn’t killed was that he dropped a pencil while filling out his income taxes and, as he bent over to get it, the bullet hit right where his head had been as he bent over to pick it up.” (Toney, in No More Silence, 311)

Other times Walker said he had not moved, which was his Warren Commission testimony. 

Mr. LIEBELER. Now did you make any sudden movement on or about the time that shot was fired? 
General WALKER. None that I was aware of; no. 

In this last account, which Walker came to adopt in which he had not moved, Walker said the bullet grazing a wooden piece on the window frame had deflected the shot trajectory slightly upward just enough to go over his head and by that means his life had been saved. However Walker misunderstood the direction of deflection of the path of the bullet caused by the grazing of the wooden piece in the window, in this explanation. The bullet grazed the wooden piece from underneath and any trajectory deflection would have been downward, not upward. A bullet deflected downward from an aim at Walker’s head would hit Walker lower, not pass harmlessly through his hair a little higher overhead.

Therefore there remains this question: if the shot was a real murder attempt aimed at Walker’s head, how did it go higher (and miss) rather than lower (and hit), if the grazing of the lower part of a piece of wood altered the trajectory? There are really only three alternatives if Walker had not moved as he testified he had not. First, the shooter was a poor shooter with little skill at aiming at an easy shot. Second, a faulty or inaccurate weapon (i.e. weeks or months of preparation to end up with a shot taken that unprofessionally). The third possibility is a staged shot, with Walker not at risk of being hit when the shot was fired and Walker making it up as he went along.

As for the change in Walker from “I did move” to “I didn’t move”, here is an interpretation in explanation of that. When officers identified the place in the fence in the alley where the rifle had rested that took the shot and calculated the trajectory, they at first told Walker the trajectory passed straight through where his head was, such that a somewhat awkward question was raised: how was Walker alive and whole that moment? Upon being told that, Walker may have invented some explanation—the leaning forward for a tax form; the bending over for a dropped pencil—rather than disclose the true reason which was he was not in the room when the shot was fired. Evidently upon further checking the police reconstruction of trajectory was slightly corrected such that now it went just over where Walker’s head would have been in his upright position—this is how the story came to be that the bullet went through Walker’s hair. Now, it was no longer necessary for Walker to have ducked to account for his being alive and whole and talking to the officers. The sudden movement or ducking was dropped in the telling (no longer needed). Walker changed to saying he had not moved at the time of the shot.

However that introduced a new question: if Walker was stationary and upright and had not moved, how did the shooter miss such an easy shot? That was explained by the deflection explanation of the wooden window sill even though any deflection from grazing the undersize of the wood would have been lower, not higher. And so the question of how the shooter missed an easy shot on a sitting-duck stationary target—if the shot was a real assassination attempt—remains a live question in the Walker case. To the present day there is no good explanation if the shot was a real assassination attempt. But the anomaly disappears if Walker was not in the room when the shot was fired. That would be the simplest explanation why Walker was not hit.

Then there is this exchange in Walker’s Warren Commission testimony in which Walker recalls expressing surprise when a police officer suggested that a shot putting a bullet hole in a wall inches from where Walker said his head had been looked like somebody had tried to kill him.

General WALKER. The police asked me to sit down when I got there and they went through the motions of lining up the shot from inside and outside. And one policeman said, "He couldn't have missed you." And one said, a lieutenant I believe it was, said, "It was an attempted assassination." And I said, "What makes you call it that?" And he said, "Because he definitely was out to get you." And I said, "Your remark sounds like a natural remark."

Dallas Police officer John Toney also recounts:

“He [General Walker] further stated that after the shot rang out and he knew for sure that he’d been shot at, he ran upstairs, got a pistol and ran out into the alley looking for this attempted assailant. I asked him, ‘Weren’t you kind of leery about running into a darkened alley after someone who shot at you and not knowing where, who, or what was out there?’ And I remember his comment to me; he said, ‘Mr. Toney, if you had made (x-many jumps) in a parachute into combat as I have, that one shot wouldn’t deter you from going out and looking for the assailant.’” (Toney, in Sneed, No More Silence [1998], 311)

General Walker comments on the shot to reporters the next day, April 11, 1963: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCjahRnkQfk

General Walker later describes the shot and his injuries: at 0:44f, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLIjxSzRTFE

 

(15) Summary of key points in combination suggesting a staged shot

• publicity-seeking public figure 
• reputation for not knowing truth from fiction
• allegation of previous solicitation to have a fake kidnapping of himself blamed on communists
• single shot that misses
• no serious injury
• no verification Walker was in the room when the shot was fired
• no blinds on window
• backyard floodlight inoperable
• barking dog next door sickened
• Walker running recklessly into the back yard and alley, pistol in hand, looking for the shooter; no increase in security
• no followup attempt
• false statements under oath of Walker aide Robert Surrey concerning his presence in the Walker house at the time of the shot
• failure of Surrey to disclose he was Coleman’s No. 2 in the church parking lot reported in the press
• post-Nov 22, 1963 information that Oswald was the shooter does not exclude the shot having been staged if Oswald was working with Robert Surrey

On the one hand indications suggest the Walker shot was an inside job. On the other hand there is no known reason why Robert Surrey would be party to killing the general he admired and who was his friend. It is unlikely in the extreme that persons closest to Walker such as Robert Surrey would be party to an attempt to kill Walker, as opposed to assisting Walker in staging something on Walker’s behalf. Therefore:

If the Walker shot was an inside job involving those closest to Walker, then it was staged.

(continued)

Edited December 11, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

(16) Oswald’s involvement with the radical right

According to Michael Paine, Oswald told him that he, Oswald, was involved with right-wing groups in Dallas—for whom General Walker was the most prominent cause célèbre. Spying on such groups is how Michael Paine remembered Oswald telling it.

"We were both interested in the activities of right-wing groups in Dallas ... and I think he described his activities as spying on them"-- Michael Paine (at 0:35 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lzWSLSa08k)

And Paul Hoch in 1985, concerning the rifle Oswald obtained in the runup to the Walker shot:

“Fred Newcomb and I have done some work along the lines of a hypothesis mentioned in Meagher’s book (p. 194); I am willing to speculate that Oswald might have ordered his weapons using a false name and with obviously false identification on instructions, thinking that he was helping with the investigation being carried out by the Dodd committee of the Senate into mail-order sales of firearms.” (Paul Hoch, “The Final Investigation? The HSCA and Army Intelligence”, The Third Decade, 1/5 [July 1985], 1-9 at 3, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48725#relPageId=6)

Oswald had General Walker’s name and phone number in his address book. No known reason why.

 

(17) The stunning finale: Oswald and Robert Surrey in close association

Again from the video of Robert Surrey's son David Surrey, my transcription:

“We went out, my Dad and I, and he introduced me to a guy, 'Lee'. We just called him 'Lee'. And we went out to the woods, which at that time was in Richardson, which was a wooded area with nothing on it. And we went out there and we were shooting some guns. My Dad had a 30.06, Lee had a 30.30, and another type of deer rifle I can't remember what it was. But we were shooting these guns. ..."

From Gayle Nix Jackson, Pieces of the Puzzle:

"I decided to start a dialogue with his [David Surrey’s] younger brother William [Surrey] that has continued to present time [2017] to see if he could verify or remember dates these things happened. He freely states that he was younger than David and doesn't remember as much as David does about events, but he did confirm that he too went shooting with his Dad, General Walker, and Lee in an area that in present day would be where the Owens Sausage Plant is now located in Richardson. The recollections of shooting with their Dad, General Walker and Lee Oswald and retrieving shell casings is memorable for both the boys though they were never together and both enjoyed doing it. (…) Both David and William believed it was the man they saw on television the day the president was killed." (p. 226)

It is known Oswald made trips to the Walker house prior to the night of the Walker shot, from photographs. Here it is learned that Oswald was involved with Robert Surrey and the nature of their socializing involved practice shooting. Compare Marina Oswald’s testimony as another version of this from the point of view of what Lee told Marina:

Mr. RANKIN. Did you learn at any time that he had been practicing with the rifle?
Mrs. OSWALD. I think that he went once or twice. I didn't actually see him take the rifle, but I knew that he was practicing.
Mr. RANKIN. Could you give us a little help on how you knew?
Mrs. OSWALD. He told me. And he would mention that in passing---it isn't 
as if he said, "Well, today I am going"---it wasn't as if he said, "Well, today I am going to take the rifle and go and practice." But he would say, "Well, today I will take the rifle along for practice. (…)
Mr. RANKIN. When you testified about his practicing with the rifle, are you describing a period when you were still at Neely Street?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.

 

(18) Conclusion

Until now there has been a basic schematic in which prior to Nov 22, 1963 the law enforcement view of the unsolved Walker shot seems to have focused overtly on it having been an inside job, if it was real, but with strong suspicions that it was a staged shot. Following the Kennedy assassination and killing of Oswald in November 1963, Oswald’s widow, Marina, confessed what she knew of the Walker shot. She told how Lee had told her he took the shot, told her how he did it, in agreement with other evidence which came to light (photos among Lee’s belongings; the Walker Note). 

But Marina’s story did more than that: it was also regarded as taking off the table the idea that the shot may have been staged. As Marina told it from what Lee had told her, Lee had been serious about killing Walker. That became the settled narrative: Lee shot at Walker with intent to kill but missed, acting alone. But does what Oswald told Marina establish that the shot was attempted murder, as opposed to participation in the staged shot suspected all along in which Lee was a participant? 

The information brought forth in the present study concerning Robert Surrey suggests a different possibility: that Oswald took the shot in coordination with Robert Surrey overseeing the planning of the shot on behalf of Walker. The shot was intended to look like an attempt on Walker’s life but at no time was Walker in actual danger; it was a staged shot. Part of staging a shot is pretending that it was real, and what Lee told Marina was part of pretending it was real, part of the staged shot. The central point is that both seemingly disparate lines of evidence become true: it was a staged shot by Walker, and Oswald fired the shot that Walker staged.

All that needs to be supposed is the reasonable proposition that Lee did not tell Marina everything. What Marina told the Secret Service and FBI post-Nov 22 becomes interpreted as reflecting only what Lee told her, one valuable but incomplete spotlight into what happened the night of April 10, 1963. The stories of Kirk Coleman and David Surrey represent second and third spotlights on a fuller understanding of the same events. What Marina told of Lee related to the Walker shot is best understood as essentially true and incomplete rather than fabricated.

That Oswald was working with others and not by himself in the runup to the Walker shot may come to be seen as making better sense of certain things that have long been puzzling. To begin with there is the sustained period of time Oswald, supposedly entirely on his own, worked on and planned the Walker shot, at least two months according to Marina. There are the logistical and practical matters of Lee without a car, getting back and forth on multiple occasions, how the rifle practice worked.

Witness testimony not previously known and appreciated has been cited of Robert Surrey and Oswald in relationship, as the back story to the Walker shot. It may be that when Oswald took the shot into the Walker house on April 10, 1963, Oswald was participating in a staged shot in cooperation with Robert Surrey working for Walker.

This has not been an attempt to answer all questions, but an attempt to establish a framework for asking some right questions.

[END] 

Edited December 3, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Pete Mellor]

Greg,

Very interesting set of posts on the Walker shooting.

In the recent D.P.U.K. seminar researcher Scott Reid gave a presentation on fellow Scott William McEwan Duff, who was a personal servant of Walker in late '62 till Feb of '63.  Duff was arrested on 18th April '63 in relation to the shooting after info given by Robert Surrey to DPD.  Surrey also gave testimony of two men casing Walker's house on 8th April '63.

Gen Walker also employed two private detectives to investigate Duff's possible involvement in the shooting.

Duff is reputed to have confessed to the shooting and I believe that he was polygraphed (by FBI?) in June of '63.  He also claimed to have seen Jack Ruby at Walker's house in late '62 & early '63.

Also, a Dallas bar or restaurant owner contacted DPD claiming to have seen Duff and Oswald together on night of the Walker shooting.

All very bizarre!

[Guest]

 

On 12/3/2022 at 9:35 PM, Miles Massicotte said:

And what would be the purpose of the Walker note in this whole scenario?

 

I think Marina was the only one linking that note to the Walker shooting. 

The note does not mention Walker and is undated. The way it got in the hands of the FBI is a little out of the usual as well I think.  Ruth said he had never seen it before, and the FBI didn't understand it before it was translated.  When it was translated they first assumed it had to do with the JFKA, not Walker (that came later, via Marina), but they found out the note had to be written well before JFK made any plans to come to Dalles

From the first F.B.I. docs on the note :

1) "Uncertain date" : Ruth Paine (?) takes the books etc to Paul Barger (Irving, Police Captain )

2) 11/30 (probably ?) Paul Barger (Irving Police Captain) to Leon Power (Irving, Assistant Chief of Police)

3) 12/2 Leon Power (Irving Assistant Chief of Police) to John Looper(Irving, Police Detective)

4) 12/2 John Looper (Irving, Police Detective) a Special Agent, Secret Service (?)

5) 12/4 Dallas FBI notes on the above by Special Agent James P.Hosty Jr. and James J. Ward....

Next, Ruth Paine stating in the Bardwell D. Odum (Special Agent / FBI) - FBI report (rep.dd. 12/4, dict. 12/5, dd. upper right corner 12/6) 

1) 11/30 she took the items to the Irving Police Station (and handed them to - she assumed - a Captain)

2) 12/2  visited by 2 Secret Service Agents and asked about the books and the note (Ruth states she had not seen the note before),

On 12/2 : this would be the same day John Looper handed it to "a Special Agent" - Secret Service).  But I have yet to find who found the note inside the book, or when this was (we have to assume it was 12/2 latest).

FBI report Dec. 4, 1963  FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 8 page 58 and further

A Mr. Boguslav translated the note, but the first impression the Secret Service had was that the note was intented for the JFKA, not Walker

Also from this doc. about the PO boxes they are making some assumptions in trying to date the document... : perhaps also of interest to @Tom Gram

 

Sorry Greg, I did not want to hijack your topic, on the Walker note I'll start another topic.

I think you have done a very good job on the Walker shooting in this topic, I have read about it being an inside set-up but never into such detail as you are describing, very interesting !

 

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans
Pict./doc. removed to save attachment space

[Greg Doudna]

23 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Greg,

Very interesting set of posts on the Walker shooting.

In the recent D.P.U.K. seminar researcher Scott Reid gave a presentation on fellow Scott William McEwan Duff, who was a personal servant of Walker in late '62 till Feb of '63.  Duff was arrested on 18th April '63 in relation to the shooting after info given by Robert Surrey to DPD.  Surrey also gave testimony of two men casing Walker's house on 8th April '63.

Gen Walker also employed two private detectives to investigate Duff's possible involvement in the shooting.

Duff is reputed to have confessed to the shooting and I believe that he was polygraphed (by FBI?) in June of '63.  He also claimed to have seen Jack Ruby at Walker's house in late '62 & early '63.

Also, a Dallas bar or restaurant owner contacted DPD claiming to have seen Duff and Oswald together on night of the Walker shooting.

All very bizarre!

Thanks Pete. Those two men casing Walker's house 2-4 days earlier reported by Surrey sound a lot to me like Surrey's own alibi story for something with the shot-doers in which Surrey was involved. Surrey's version just does not sound right--he claimed no license plate on the car (explanation for why he had none to provide police); nondescript physical descriptions with nothing specific; he claimed he would not be able to recognize or identify the two if he ever saw them again while at the same time assuring that these two men that he claimed he would never be able to recognize again had never been seen by him before or since; absolutely nothing tangible for police to go on to find or apprehend the alleged two men with the exception of one detail: the maroon color late-model car he said it was, agreed with color/description of one of one of the cars driven by Duff. Most significantly both Surrey and Walker claimed a report had been made to the police about that alleged casing but Dallas Police never had any record of any such report or phone call. There is also the match in timing of the separate Oswald-via-Marina Oswald story of telling Marina he (Oswald) had been to the Walker house ca. 3 days earlier--ca. same time as the alleged Surrey spotting of the casing--for an aborted assassination attempt on Walker then. I believe Surrey was part of that, and that Surrey appears to have been party along with Walker of an attempt to frame Duff (for motive as Duff said, that Duff knew stuff about Walker that Walker wanted silenced and discredited). And if anyone in the neighborhood had seen the real aborted-shot (of which Lee told Marina) in which Surrey was involved, Surrey's claim of having spied on "suspicious men" was Surrey's version or alibi. In short, both Surrey's physical descriptions of the casers and of the car have no credibility to me, but the event itself does read as Surrey's version of something in which Surrey was involved, a run-through (with Oswald telling his version of that to Marina).

I looked at but rejected the idea that Duff could be Coleman's man No. 1 due to difference in physical description. (Man No. 1 had "long" or "bushy" hair, both descriptions from Coleman, whereas Duff had very thinning short hair from his contemporary photo; No. 1 was 19-20 per Coleman, Duff was mid-30s; Coleman's No. 1 had a distinctive beak-like nose [as I recall], nothing unusual about Duff's nose in his photo. My conclusion: it is excluded that No. 1 could have been Duff.) The claim that Duff had confessed to involvement in the shot was only claimed but could not be verified. He passed the DPD polygraph which established his innocence to DPD satisfaction, and he narrowly escaped the later "sting" entrapment by Walker operatives to do a killing-for-hire of Walker which if he had taken that bait would have ruined and discredited him for good; only his own going to the FBI about that saved his skin on that one. I don't know what to make of the Ruby sighting claim.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

13 hours ago, Miles Massicotte said:

Greg,

This was a really interesting and quite plausible scenario with some great finds regarding the Walker shooting. Thank you very much for sharing this and for your research. 

In particular, I do think the Ford sunliner/Chevy sedan explanation is plausible enough to make Surrey a likely candidate. The scenario you propose that the event was a staged shot and that LHO was some kind of an associate of Walker makes the most sense of a lot of the details about the whole affair.

(And if indeed Oswald lied to Marina about the event, then it makes a lot of Oswald's subsequent actions for the rest of 1963, in my opinion, make more sense, i.e. acting out "roles", and calls into question the validity of much of Marina's information if she was in fact being lied to. And shows the extent Oswald would go to enact these roles: lying to his wife.) 

My question would be: if you had to speculate, do you think Oswald was a willing patsy? In other words, was he intended to be discovered as the "shooter" at some point? And for what reason? And what would be the purpose of the Walker note in this whole scenario?

 

Thanks Miles. Your last question raises a range of interesting points. For a long time I marveled at how meticulously Oswald left written evidence of his involvement in the Walker shot (by Marina's account, with remnants surviving in Oswald's belongings supporting her account of the maps and photos and notebook) ... and that he told Marina directly that he did it and how he did it, to Marina's horror and distaste (Marina's negative reaction is entirely believable, as there is nothing at all that suggests Marina was interested in assassinating anybody). I recall thinking to myself, it looks like Oswald was almost purposely setting himself up for arrest. Surely he had to consider that Marina would "leak"--would confide in or tell someone and everything Lee told her would come to light. And if so, all authorities had to do was search and find Oswald's detailed "notebook"! Was Oswald that stupid? Of course all of this has long been noticed, the only difference being in proposed explanations of it. Even Liebeler for the Warren Commission asked Marina a line of questioning along that line in her testimony, asking her if she ever had suspected Lee wanted to be found and arrested. One way of interpreting that, the line the WC took, was it was part of Lee wanting to be a major name in history, etc., for doing what Lee believed was the good thing of trying to assassinate (but failing!!! not doing so!!!) a would-be Hitler. "I'm famous, I tried to kill Hitler one time, one shot! Its true I failed! he's still around! but I did try!--look at me!!" as reconstructed Lee psychology. CT's take the same evidence, ask how is it even plausible somebody could be that stupid to leave so much smoking-gun incriminating evidence around and tell hostile Marina everything which she would by intent or accident blow the whistle on him ... and that becomes a CT argument (citing the implausibility) that the whole thing is fabrication, an elaborate framing of Oswald etc. and etc.

If the shot was a real attempt to kill Walker then Oswald would be looking at serious prison time if caught and convicted, and if Oswald was willing to do that to himself--in this case for something that did not even accomplish the objective (of removing Walker)--he would indeed be an ideological fanatic, a LN fanatic. But if the shot was staged (with Oswald taking the shot as part of that), then there is a third possibility: that Lee did intend for Marina to turn him in (by her telling someone who would). Lee's "Walker is bad like Hitler so I took a shot at him for the good of humanity" was analogous to Ruby's "I cared so much about Jacqueline and Caroline I just shot Oswald for that reason", both the alibi story. But in Oswald's case with Walker, if the shot was staged, then all it would take for Oswald's exculpation at trial would be for that to be shown, evidence of that which was actually true, and charges would not stick of attempted murder. So Oswald would know he had that ace-in-the-hole. Therefore, although it is speculative, I speculate that Oswald, working for an hypothesized hidden hand intelligence agency, he knew they would have his back, and he was not actually risking a lengthy prison term for attempted murder of Walker since in the end it would be shown not to have been attempted murder. But in the interim, before that became necessary, it could be useful for Oswald's resume-building or whatever purposes would be served by having it believed Oswald had attempted to kill Walker. It is intriguing to consider that Oswald did his level best to have Marina turn him in but Marina just did not do so.

[Greg Doudna]

12 hours ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

I think Marina was the only one linking that note to the Walker shooting. 

The note does not mention Walker and is undated. The way it got in the hands of the FBI is a little out of the usual as well I think.  Ruth said he had never seen it before, and the FBI didn't understand it before it was translated.  When it was translated they first assumed it had to do with the JFKA, not Walker (that came later, via Marina), but they found out the note had to be written well before JFK made any plans to come to Dalles

From the first F.B.I. docs on the note :

1) "Uncertain date" : Ruth Paine (?) takes the books etc to Paul Barger (Irving, Police Captain )

2) 11/30 (probably ?) Paul Barger (Irving Police Captain) to Leon Power (Irving, Assistant Chief of Police)

3) 12/2 Leon Power (Irving Assistant Chief of Police) to John Looper(Irving, Police Detective)

4) 12/2 John Looper (Irving, Police Detective) a Special Agent, Secret Service (?)

5) 12/4 Dallas FBI notes on the above by Special Agent James P.Hosty Jr. and James J. Ward....

Next, Ruth Paine stating in the Bardwell D. Odum (Special Agent / FBI) - FBI report (rep.dd. 12/4, dict. 12/5, dd. upper right corner 12/6) 

1) 11/30 she took the items to the Irving Police Station (and handed them to - she assumed - a Captain)

2) 12/2  visited by 2 Secret Service Agents and asked about the books and the note (Ruth states she had not seen the note before),

On 12/2 : this would be the same day John Looper handed it to "a Special Agent" - Secret Service).  But I have yet to find who found the note inside the book, or when this was (we have to assume it was 12/2 latest).

FBI report Dec. 4, 1963  FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 8 page 58 and further

A Mr. Boguslav translated the note, but the first impression the Secret Service had was that the note was intented for the JFKA, not Walker

Also from this doc. about the PO boxes they are making some assumptions in trying to date the document... : perhaps also of interest to @Tom Gram

 

Sorry Greg, I did not want to hijack your topic, on the Walker note I'll start another topic.

I think you have done a very good job on the Walker shooting in this topic, I have read about it being an inside set-up but never into such detail as you are describing, very interesting !

 

Thanks Jean Paul. You're not hijacking any thread, whatever you have to say is always welcome with me. You and Tom Gram are two of the best newcomers to this forum with discussions of evidence. On the circumstances of the Walker Note finding, I accept Ruth Paine's and Marina's accounts (which are the same) in full. Marina told how she hid at least two things in books, not just one: the Walker Note (which she did not take with her Sat night Nov 23 to the hotel) and BYP (which she did and there destroyed).

[Guest]

18 hours ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

I think Marina was the only one linking that note to the Walker shooting. 

The note does not mention Walker and is undated. The way it got in the hands of the FBI is a little out of the usual as well I think.  Ruth said he had never seen it before, and the FBI didn't understand it before it was translated.  When it was translated they first assumed it had to do with the JFKA, not Walker (that came later, via Marina), but they found out the note had to be written well before JFK made any plans to come to Dalles

From the first F.B.I. docs on the note :

1) "Uncertain date" : Ruth Paine (?) takes the books etc to Paul Barger (Irving, Police Captain )

2) 11/30 (probably ?) Paul Barger (Irving Police Captain) to Leon Power (Irving, Assistant Chief of Police)

3) 12/2 Leon Power (Irving Assistant Chief of Police) to John Looper(Irving, Police Detective)

4) 12/2 John Looper (Irving, Police Detective) a Special Agent, Secret Service (?)

5) 12/4 Dallas FBI notes on the above by Special Agent James P.Hosty Jr. and James J. Ward....

Next, Ruth Paine stating in the Bardwell D. Odum (Special Agent / FBI) - FBI report (rep.dd. 12/4, dict. 12/5, dd. upper right corner 12/6) 

1) 11/30 she took the items to the Irving Police Station (and handed them to - she assumed - a Captain)

2) 12/2  visited by 2 Secret Service Agents and asked about the books and the note (Ruth states she had not seen the note before),

On 12/2 : this would be the same day John Looper handed it to "a Special Agent" - Secret Service).  But I have yet to find who found the note inside the book, or when this was (we have to assume it was 12/2 latest).

FBI report Dec. 4, 1963  FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 8 page 58 and further

A Mr. Boguslav translated the note, but the first impression the Secret Service had was that the note was intented for the JFKA, not Walker

Also from this doc. about the PO boxes they are making some assumptions in trying to date the document... : perhaps also of interest to @Tom Gram

 

Sorry Greg, I did not want to hijack your topic, on the Walker note I'll start another topic.

I think you have done a very good job on the Walker shooting in this topic, I have read about it being an inside set-up but never into such detail as you are describing, very interesting !

 

 

 

What is also a little strange... after all of the above... Robert goes to Ruth on 12/8 to pick up 13 more books and stuff  at the behest of Marina (cfr. FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 144, circa page 22).     

Now, Robert might not have known about the "Walker note" and Ruth did not expect him to show up (as it was on Marina's behalf).

Ruth had been visited by the Secret Service about the note on 12/2,  did the Secret Service check these 13 books on that visit ?  

Wouldn't ANY agent on 12/2 have asked Ruth : Mrs. Paine, are there any more books ...?  

Apparently they didn't bother.... so some six days later Robert picks them up...

Oh yes, those 13 books did end up at the FBI, but later you know... 

Edited December 4, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Tom Gram]

18 hours ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

Also from this doc. about the PO boxes they are making some assumptions in trying to date the document... : perhaps also of interest to @Tom Gram

The Walker note makes it sound like Marina had never been to the Post Office, at least with Oswald’s knowledge, until at least the second week in April ‘63. However, Oswald allegedly told Harry Holmes that he gave Marina one of the two keys on occasion to go to the box and pick up the family mail. In spite of this, and with a mountain of other evidence that Marina may have used the box herself, and the FBI and WC did not ask her a single question about the box or even how Oswald received his mail in Dallas.

Very interesting research Greg. If Oswald was involved in a scheme to help Walker it  fits in with the idea that his communist bona fides were bogus. There’s still a bit of an issue with the questionable ballistics in the Walker case though. 

[Bob Ness]

Very interesting stuff Greg.

[David Boylan]

I'm glad to see Gayle's work getting some exposure. Gayle is a member of this forum and hopefully will contribute to this most interesting subject.

Great info Greg.