Basic facts that seem like conspiracy-killers to me

January 18, 2023

Hi

Edited February 16, 2023 by Lance Payette

Chris Bristow · January 18, 2023

For me the compelling evidence of a conspiracy surrounds the Parkland testimonies and multiple corroborating stories from the autopsy of the large hole in the occipital parietal. That conspiracy involves a second gunman and a cover-up but still allows for Oswald to be the shooter from the 6th floor. Or possibly Oswald's suspicious activity was due to his being complicit in an assassination plot as the inside man who helped with the plot. I don't know and it doesn't matter how Oswald was involved. The possible conspiracy of a second gunman and a cover-up of the injuries does not have to involve Oswald directly.

Benjamin Cole · January 19, 2023

2 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I find certain basic facts impossible to square with any plausible conspiracy theory. One of these is Oswald’s last-minute trip to Ruth Paine’s home to obtain his rifle.

Conspiracy enthusiasts, of course, thrive on complexity. If you insist Oswald never actually ordered or received the Carcano, or the conspirators somehow obtained it from Ruth’s garage and planted it in the TSBD without Oswald's knowledge, you’re already in the land of extreme implausibility - quite possibly because you intuitively recognize the problem I’m describing here.

No, I’m talking about a conspiracy in which Oswald actually owned the Carcano and was either a knowing participant or a designated patsy. In other words, a conspiracy that is at least within the ballpark of plausibility. For some reason, it was important to this conspiracy for Oswald and/or his rifle to be on the sixth floor of the TSBD at the time of the assassination.

Think about such a conspiracy and ask the question, “Does the following scenario make any sense at all?”

The morning before the assassination, a Thursday, Oswald uses his unlikely “curtain rods” story as an excuse to visit Ruth’s home in Irving;

Oswald asks casual acquaintance Frazier, his 19-year-old coworker, for a ride, the first one he’s ever requested on a Thursday;

The evening before the assassination, Frazier and Oswald undertake the 35-minute drive to Irving in Frazier’s 1954 Chevrolet;

That night, Oswald retrieves his clunky Carcano with its misaligned scope, an implausible assassination weapon at best, from the garage and wraps it without Ruth or Marina noticing his activities;

The morning of the assassination, Oswald strolls down the street with his wrapped rifle extending nearly to the ground and tosses it in the back seat of Frazier's car;

Frazier and Oswald travel the 35 minutes back to Dallas in Frazier’s 1954 Chevy;

Oswald leaves Frazier’s car and walks toward the TSBD with the wrapped rifle extending from his cupped hand up his arm;

Oswald somehow conveys the rifle to the sixth floor without being seen or questioned by anyone.

Whether your pet conspiracy involves a small group of anti-Castro radicals, the CIA, the Mafia or any combination of the Usual Suspects, does the above scenario make any sense at all? How many absurd last-minute risks does the above scenario entail ? If Oswald and/or his rifle were important to the conspiracy, what sort of inept conspirators would allow all these risks to be taken when they could so easily have been avoided? How much conspiratorial planning could possibly have resulted in the above scenario?

On the other hand, it seems to me the above scenario makes perfect sense if (1) Oswald never gave a thought to assassinating JFK until he learned the motorcade would pass in front of the TSBD; (2) Oswald retrieved his clunky Carcano the day before the assassination because it was the only rifle he had and the only timeframe in which he had to work; and (3) his plan wasn’t crystallized until Marina rebuffed him and he decided to take his shot at history.

I know it's fun to debate the SBT or Mexico City trip for dozens of threads and hundreds of posts, but here in Lone Nut world I find it useful simply to take some of the very basic facts and ask, "Does a conspiratorial explanation of these facts make any sense at all?" The answer "No, it doesn't" is why, I believe, many CTers are so eager to move away from the basic facts and dive into far-fetched diversions like "Oswald never bought the rifle - everything is fake!" or "Ruth, Frazier and Truly were all part of the conspiracy!"

Lance:

Yes, there are other reasons to have reservations about the WC conclusions.

BTW, the HSCA was the last official investigation into the JFKA, and concluded there likely had been a conspiracy. If you want to cite official investigations....take your pick.

The chain of events you describe, of LHO somehow secreting the murder weapon into the TSBD on Friday morning, does raise more questions than answers.

Really, LHO brought a rifle into the TSBD Friday morning and no one saw him? One TSBD worker saw LHO enter the building that morning, and said LHO was carrying nothing. Frazier, perhaps the best eyewitness, said LHO was carrying a too-small paper bag.

So...if not Friday morning, when? Was the rifle brought in at night? The previous night? Does that imply confederates?

Matt Allison · January 19, 2023

Hey Lance-

Explain the incongruities around Oswald's alleged trip to Mexico City.

Thanks

Greg Doudna · January 19, 2023

On the curtain rods

Lance, I accept Oswald ordered the rifle, received it, and that it was in the garage of the Ruth Paine home at least as late as Nov 11, 1963. However after Nov 11 the paper I have just posted on the Furniture Mart (https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1450) not only supports that the rifle was taken out of the garage on Nov 11 but at least calls into question whether the rifle was put back into the garage on Nov 11 after the rifle was taken out that day for a repair.

There is no actual positive evidence of the rifle either at the Ruth Paine house or in possession of Oswald after Nov 11, think about it. There is not, to my knowledge, evidence of any kind where the rifle was between Nov 11 and 22. It may be assumed, and may be plausible, that the rifle was returned to the garage and remained there Nov 11-22. But that is assumption, not evidence.

Marina says she saw the stock of the rifle inside the blanket about a week after she moved to Ruth Paine's from New Orleans, and that that is the only time she saw it in the blanket. That is mid-Oct. Somewhere else I recall she gave a different time estimate of the last time before the assassination she had seen it in the blanket, of about two weeks before the assassination. But Marina never claims to have seen the rifle in the blanket or garage later than that.

Michael Paine told of moving the blanket and feeling what he thought were tent rods or camping equipment inside--that would be the broken-down rifle inside the blanket--but there is no evidence that occurred for Michael Paine after Nov 11. Ruth Paine, on the other hand, in testimony kept thinking the blanket as she remembered seeing it was more "flat" than as reconstructed with a rifle-equivalent mass inside it that she was shown in testimony. That could be because that memory of Ruth Paine of the blanket was from a time after Nov 11 when the blanket, in fact, was empty.

Remember, initial news reports said the rifle had been seen in the Ruth Paine home the night before, but that was misreporting. The rifle was not seen by anyone at the Ruth Paine house the night of Nov 21. On the afternoon of Nov 22 Marina showed police the blanket and it was empty, is the only fact there. It does not say how long that blanket had been empty. Again, the known evidence runs out at Nov 11 (when the rifle was taken by Lee to the Irving Sports Shop to get its original scope reinstalled and the stripped threads of the base mount fixed in that installation, with Oswald paying cash while employee Dial Ryder, running the shop in owner Greener's absence on vacation, alone in the shop that day, Veterans Day, because the normal woman behind the counter was off for the holiday, doing the job while Oswald waited and putting that $6.00 cash in his pocket rather than running it through the cash register afterward as he was supposed to do). The rifle was in Oswald's hands on Nov 11, was taken out of the garage that morning. The rifle after the scope was reinstalled and sighted would have been returned to Oswald driving Michael Paine's blue and white '55 Olds ca. late morning or noon or so Nov 11. That is where the known trail for that rifle ends, until it is found Friday afternoon on the 6th floor TSBD following the assassination, Nov 22.

For all we know Oswald could have had that original scope (a piece of crap scope according to reports) reinstalled on the rifle on Nov 11 to ready it for a resale. That actually is what I proposed in my Furniture Mart article and I gave my reasons. Others may debate that differently. There is no hard evidence (none to my knowledge, maybe a better way to put it) for where that rifle was between Nov 11 and Nov 22. If Oswald (with Marina's support) was repairing the rifle with intent to get rid of it--sell it or convey it, so as to get it out of Lee's hands and out of Ruth Paine's garage--one could conjecture Lee might not put it back in the garage again Nov 11, but might, say, drive it to a storage locker at the bus station and temporarily pay for its storage there. (Then upon finding a buyer, arrange for the buyer to pick up from there?) Or drop it off somewhere else? Or it could have gone back into the garage as before. But that is unknown.

Now hold that thought and turn to the other thing, the package of Fri morning Nov 22. Let us agree that Lee was carrying a package that he said was curtain rods, the Buell Wesley Frazier story, which is supported by Linnie Mae coming over ca. 3 or 4 pm or whenever it was Fri Nov 22 and telling police in front of Ruth Paine's house that she saw Oswald carrying a package that morning. You, with the Warren Commission, assume Oswald's package that morning was actually the rifle. But you don't know that, only that it was a package of something, which Lee told Frazier was curtain rods.

Now here is my question to you: if--if (hear out this question)--just suppose hypothetically, Lance--it could be shown to a reasonable person's satisfaction (such as yours), that that package carried by Lee Fri morning was curtain rods, what would that change for you?

Now before you respond with ten reasons why you know that cannot be possible, let me just say Pat Speer has written over 100 pages on the curtain rods question arguing that it was curtain rods that Lee carried to work Nov 22. I have studied Pat Steer's work on this, gone over it thoroughly, so thoroughly I think it is possible I have studied that chapter of Pat Speer on the curtain rods more than any other person on earth 🙂. And my conclusion is that Pat Speer was on to something, that he took an argument 90% of the way there, but did not bring it home the final 10%. His argument falters at the end, leaving the reader basically interested and engaged up to the end where it falters and ends inconclusively or with the careful reader not convinced. The biggest problem is Pat Speer has to invoke planting of curtain rods and police foul play and substitutions etc. at the end to bring his argument home. Long story short, not only did I identify what I see as both the strengths and weaknesses of Pat's argument, but after my own struggles with that evidence, I think have cracked that to solution, bringing Pat Speer's argument home across the finish line without the problems (I see) in his form of his argument.

In my form of the argument, it is not airtight proof that it was curtain rods from Ruth Paine's garage that Lee carried that morning, but it is extremely plausible with no decisive counterevidence refuting it. And I can explain what happened to the curtain rods and so on and so forth (I do not think Lee carried that package inside the TSBD). The one problem I struggled with--that loomed large--is Oswald's denial of the curtain rod story in his interrogations--denial that he told Buell Wesley Frazier that, etc. Whether my explanation of that is correct I cannot say, but I can only say, one, I do not believe Lee's denial of that was truthful, and two, my conjecture is Lee's untruth in that was to cover for Marina who had assisted in covertly obtaining those items of Ruth's property without Ruth's knowledge. This assumes that Lee had no idea, at the time he was asked, that the curtain rods would be alleged to have been his carrying a rifle. Without knowledge that that was the allegation, he would not realize that he was denying what actually, if established, would have been an alibi.

Bottom line: an alternative storyline is possible in which (a) the rifle was removed from Ruth Paine's garage on Nov 11 (not Nov 22), (b) may have come to be out of Oswald's custody and possession and knowledge prior to Nov 22, and (c) Lee carried curtain rods the morning of Nov 22.

I cannot make the curtain rod argument here because there is a lot involved in that argument and the writeup will require labor equivalent to my Furniture Mart paper. Pat Speer has done heavy lifting on much of it. If interested, my suggestion would be to become familiarized with Pat Speer's work on the topic--nothing else I have seen on the curtain rods is comparable to what Pat Speer has done--while making note of the problems one sees in Pat Speer's argument as they are encountered. Then, see if my curtain rods study, when I write it and offer it, addresses satisfactorily those problems. So I am not endorsing all of where Pat Speer goes with that subject, only some of it. But Pat Speer's study and discussion was critical and essential to my thinking on the topic to the solution that I arrived at.

I came to see the curtain rods as so fundamental, because if Lee was carrying curtain rods, then he was not carrying the rifle, and if he was not carrying the rifle the morning of Nov 22, that reopens all sorts of questions regarding Oswald's relationship to the assassination itself.

Pat Speer on the curtain rods: https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4h-the-curtain-rod-story. Me on the curtain rods: forthcoming.

Charles Blackmon · January 19, 2023

16 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

That night, Oswald retrieves his clunky Carcano with its misaligned scope, an implausible assassination weapon at best, from the garage and wraps it without Ruth or Marina noticing his activities

You mean the clunky Carcano that Marina "all guns look the same to me" Oswald said was in the garage sometime before Nov 22?

Edited January 19, 2023 by Charles Blackmon

Michaleen Kilroy · January 19, 2023

10 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I find certain basic facts impossible to square with any plausible conspiracy theory. One of these is Oswald’s last-minute trip to Ruth Paine’s home to obtain his rifle.

Funny, I find the entire bring-your-rifle-to-work day to kill the president completely implausible and actually working in LHO’s favor as reasonable doubt in the trial he should’ve had.

This wasn’t a modern lock-and-load rifle that you could disassemble or assemble easily. It had nine separate parts and at least as many screws.

To make it fit in the paper bag the WC had in its possession, LHO would’ve had to carry it disassembled and the WR concedes that.

So LHO is in the Paine garage with poor lighting taking apart his rifle and sealing it in a bag he made that no screws could fall out? Did he also have a screwdriver handy for disassembly?

So he carries the self-made bag that no one at the TSBD saw him make (in fact the employee who was in charge of the packaging materials was emphatic LHO didn’t) filled with gun parts and screws that somehow don’t fall out and don’t make a racket in BWF’s car? And he carries it into the TSBD and no one notices and nothing falls out? And in a bag that the only two witnesses who saw it maintained was too small to hold even a disassembled Carcano against all sorts of govt intimidation and pressure to change their story?

And LHO somehow finds a safe time and place ostensibly on the 6th Floor (don’t tell me he carried the assembled rifle from another floor without being seen) to reassemble the rifle with no screwdriver? When and where was that? Some say he used a dime. Would you shoot an old rifle that was that insecurely assembled?

One missing screw or someone sees him at any point with the rifle and his assassination plan is over.

I don’t believe there is any way it went down that way. You have to put your mind in a pretzel like believing the SBT to buy it.

BTW, the WC tried but couldn’t find any evidence the rifle had been stored in that blanket - no oil stains on the blanket, no threads on the gun.

And don’t buy the old canard LHO left his money and ring as some sort of farewell. The wallet was being used by the couple to hold money to get their own place again and LHO never wore his wedding ring when he wore his rather large Marine Corps ring. In those days, it was protocol for veterans to wear their MC rings on their wedding finger. And that’s where it was when he was arrested. Check the photos.

Which brings up another question - why would he wear that big honking ring if he’s going to be working that crappy bolt-action Carcano in record time?

Edited January 19, 2023 by Michaleen Kilroy

Michael Griffith · January 19, 2023

21 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I find certain basic facts impossible to square with any plausible conspiracy theory. One of these is Oswald’s last-minute trip to Ruth Paine’s home to obtain his rifle.

Conspiracy enthusiasts, of course, thrive on complexity. If you insist Oswald never actually ordered or received the Carcano, or the conspirators somehow obtained it from Ruth’s garage and planted it in the TSBD without Oswald's knowledge, you’re already in the land of extreme implausibility.

[SNIP]

These two paragraphs alone contain several questionable or doubtful assumptions and suggest that you need to read some of the better crtiques of the lone-gunman theory. Here are a few--just a few--of the problems with the evidence against Oswald:

-- In the Texas of 1963 Oswald could have bought a rifle across the counter with few if any questions asked. He could have done so and risked only a future debatable identification by some gun shop worker. Instead, we are asked to believe that Oswald ordered the murder weapon by using the alias "A. Hidell," gave his own post office box number, committed his handwriting to paper, and then went out to assassinate JFK with this same "Hidell"-purchased rifle and while carrying a Hidell ID card in his wallet. This is an example of evidence that appears to be too pat and that defies common sense, since we know Oswald was highly intelligent.

-- The bag in which the alleged murder weapon was carried poses several problems. For starters, FBI expert James Cadigan reported that he was unable to find any marks, scratches, abrasions, or other indications that would tie the bag to the rifle.

-- More problematic is the fact that the Carcano rifle supposedly found in the sniper's nest was well oiled, yet no oil traces were found on the bag. It is difficult to understand how a well-oiled rifle, carried in separate parts in the bag no less (per the WC), would not have left traces of oil on the paper bag, easily detected in laboratory tests if not with the naked eye.

-- Even more incredibly, there were no oil stains or oil traces on the blanket in which the rifle allegedly had been stored--not for hours, but for months. The WC claimed that the Carcano rifle was wrapped in that blanket until the night before the assassination.

-- CE 543, the dented shell found in the sniper's nest, could not have been used to fire a bullet during the assassination. (LINK)

-- Even the HSCA Photographic Evidence Panel admitted that the Zapruder film shows that JFK was hit by Z190, that he begins to visible react by Z200, and that this shot was fired at around Z186. However, the sixth-floor gunman's view of JFK would have been obstructed by the oak tree from Z166-210.

-- As a number of medical experts have pointed out, the JFK autopsy skull x-rays and brain photos clearly prove there were two separate cavitation wounds in JFK's brain, one near the top of the brain and the other at least 2 inches lower (or one cortical and the other subcortical), with no connection between them, which proves that two bullets must have struck his head, since one bullet could not have caused both of the cavitation wounds.

One indication of fraud in the autopsy evidence is the astounding fact that the autopsy doctors said absolutely nothing about the very obvious damage to the cerebral cortex, i.e., the cortical damage. Humes said nothing about it in the autopsy report, and the three autopsy doctors, incredibly, said nothing about it in the supplemental autopsy report, even though the main purpose of the supplemental report was to describe the brain damage that they found after they sectioned and examined the brain,

No one can believe that they "missed" the obvious cortical damage to the brain. The HSCA medical panel noted and described this damage. Yet, although the autopsy doctors described the subcortical damage in great detail, they said nothing about the equally obvious cortical damage. To clarify, cortical damage is damage that is on or near the surface of the brain. Subcortical damage is damage that is deep inside the brain and can be several inches away from the cerebral cortex.

Now, why did the autopsy doctors say nothing about the cortical damage? For the same reason they said nothing about the high fragment trail associated with the cortical damage: they knew there was no way they could relate the cortical damage and the high fragment trail with the EOP entry wound.

The cortical and subcortical cavitation wounds (wound tunnels) are several inches apart and are not connected, so they could not have been made by the same bullet. As Dr. Joseph Riley, a neuroanatomist, notes, "This is not a matter of interpretation but of anatomical fact." When a bullet travels in/through a brain, it creates a wound tunnel in the brain tissue, a tunnel technically known as a "cylinder of disruption" or a "cavitation wound."

A single bullet cannot create two cavitation wounds separated by several inches unless it, or a fragment from it, travels from the first tunnel and creates the second tunnel, and if it does so, there will be a connecting tunnel. But, there is no connecting cavitation wound or fragment trail between the cortical and subcortical cavitation wounds. This can only mean that two bullets struck JFK's head.

Another key fact about the subcortical damage is that, amazingly, there is no fragment trail associated with it on the extant autopsy skull x-rays! There is a fragment trail in and around the cortical damage but no fragment trail in/around the subcortical damage, which is several inches deeper into the brain than the cortical damage. This is an astounding contradiction.

To further thicken the plot, the autopsy report says there was a fragment trail going from the EOP to the right orbit; however, no such low fragment trail appears on the extant autopsy skull x-rays.

The HSCA medical panel noted both the cortical and subcortical damage, but did not explain the lack of any connecting damage between the two wounds and the lack of any fragments in/around the subcortical damage. (LINK) (LINK).

-- The autopsy skull x-rays show two small fragments on the back of the skull, but no FMJ bullet in the known history of forensic science has deposited two sheared-off fragments as it entered a skull, not to mention that the two fragments are in different layers of the skull and are 1 cm away from their alleged entry point. The alleged lone gunman supposedly used FMJ bullets. Even former HSCA wound ballistics expert Dr. Larry Sturdivan admitted in his 2005 book that FMJ bullets simply do not behave like this.

-- The 6.5 mm object seen on the AP skull x-ray has been proved to be an artifact, not a bullet fragment, via OD measurements. Dr. Sturdivan has acknowledged that the object cannot be a sheared-off fragment from an FMJ bullet. He speculates that the object is some kind of artifact, though he has no plausible theory for how it could have been accidentally created. Dr. David Mantik has duplicated how the object could have been added to the AP x-ray.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Michael Griffith

January 19, 2023

On 1/18/2023 at 4:02 PM, Chris Bristow said:

That conspiracy involves a second gunman and a cover-up but still allows for Oswald to be the shooter from the 6th floor.

On 1/18/2023 at 5:28 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

Lance:

Yes, there are other reasons to have reservations about the WC conclusions.

BTW, the HSCA was the last official investigation into the JFKA, and concluded there likely had been a conspiracy. If you want to cite official investigations....take your pick.

The chain of events you describe, of LHO somehow secreting the murder weapon into the TSBD on Friday morning, does raise more questions than answers.

Really, LHO brought a rifle into the TSBD Friday morning and no one saw him? One TSBD worker saw LHO enter the building that morning, and said LHO was carrying nothing. Frazier, perhaps the best eyewitness, said LHO was carrying a too-small paper bag.

So...if not Friday morning, when? Was the rifle brought in at night? The previous night? Does that imply confederates?

Bye