Those Front Steps

[Paul Cummings]

Visually it looks like someone is holding a coffee cup. 

[Tom Gram]

On 10/24/2023 at 2:09 PM, Alan Ford said:

Friends, we have by no means said all there is to say about the front steps during the motorcade. However, let's skip ahead to that doorway ~25 secs after the last shot. I'm speaking, of course, of the Darnell film. It shows Officer Marrion L. Baker running to the front steps:

Except------------it doesn't actually. As Mr. Sandy Larsen (with input, I believe, from Mr. Robert Prudhomme) showed a number of years back with this brilliant GIF, Officer Baker is in fact running to an area EAST of the steps:

Where do those parallel lines lead to? The area where the mailboxes are:

Now unless Officer Baker urgently needs to post a letter, it seems something other than mailboxes must have attracted his attention.

Well, it just so happens that standing in front of those mailboxes is a woman holding a long rectangular object.

Here's a better-quality Darnell frame, in which I have embedded what I believe to be the very object the woman is holding up:

It is my contention that the first cop to see the infamous long paper sack (which Mr. Oswald will be accused of bringing the Carcano to work in that morning) is not going to be some officer on the sixth floor many minutes after the assassination but Officer Marrion L. Baker here----------right outside the TSBD, right after the last shot has rung out.

This, I believe, is the real bombshell revelation contained in the Darnell film.

And how has the bag ended up there?

Mr. Oswald------the man we have just seen waving a flag furiously at Pres. Kennedy-----has dumped it there.

Now: look again at the Darnell frame above. You'll see mailboxes; and, just in front of them, the woman holding the long rectangular object; and, just in front of her, a roadworks barrier; and, just in front of that roadworks barrier, lying on the ground, .................. something strange.

Someone at ROKC came up with a plausible explanation for the alleged bag, and I think they’re probably right: some sort of debris or construction material covering up concrete/roadwork marked off by the barrier. 

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2793-prayer-man-with-a-rounded-collar

In the image of the mailboxes in the sixth post down, there’s a bunch of junk laying against the edge of the far mailbox, including what looks like a box. 

Also, in the .gif above, something appears to be spinning/twirling/blowing in the wind at the end of the alleged bag. If whatever that is is attached to the object, that would also suggest that the object is not a paper bag. 

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Andrej Stancak]

The still brought by Alan was already discussed on this formum in a different thread back in September 2022; I remember Chris has brought it here from Duncan's forum.

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28136-prayerperson/

The picture with the light-coloured circled area around the neck is from a different frame compared to the one showing a person resembling Lee Oswald. In the original film frames (Robin Unger's version), the one with rounded neck is noticeably more affected with motion blur than the one that shows Lee Oswald's feature more clearly. 

The "red arrow version" still appears processed a lot. Here is a side-by-side comparison of Prayer Man in the still showing Oswald's features and the one in "red-arrow" frame (right-hand panel). The right arm appears thinner, all light tones strongly enhanced (e.g., on the lady in white scarf), and the dark tones in the background (behind Prayer Man's head) showing no details. It is possible, using multiple iterations of contrasting and changing shadows-lights to arrive at a picture which changes the appearance and shapes of parts of photographs. It is difficult to make any conclusion from a sole still without knowing its provenience and what happened to it in terms of processing. And processed it was.

 

 

[Andrej Stancak]

On 10/24/2023 at 2:34 PM, Alan Ford said:

A few years back, Mr. Pat Speer did what no other researcher had ever thought of doing: he obtained COLOR photos of the "reddish-brown" shirt which Mr. Oswald told his interrogators he wore to work that morning. According to Mr. Oswald, he changed out of this shirt at the rooming-house.

Alan:

for your record, I wrote to NARA back in 2019 and asked them to provide me with the original photograph of shirt CE151, the maroon one which Owald took to work on that fateful Friday. They obliged and sent me the coloured picture of this shirt and I posted it on this forum on June 15,  2019. This is the coloured version of the shirt photograph taken in 1963. I hope this helps.

  

Edited October 28, 2023 by Andrej Stancak

[Alan Ford]

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Someone at ROKC came up with a plausible explanation for the alleged bag, and I think they’re probably right: some sort of debris or construction material covering up concrete/roadwork marked off by the barrier. 

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2793-prayer-man-with-a-rounded-collar

So this woman's response to the shots and the ensuing pandemonium was to run over to the mailboxes, pick up some sort of debris or construction material covering up concrete/roadwork marked off by a street barrier, and stand there holding it out from her body? Perhaps she was using it as the world's worst shield from further possible shots?

Also-------------a police officer was so worried about the Health & Safety aspect of her behavior that he made running over to her his priority #1?

The guys over at ROKC really are reaching.........................

[Alan Ford]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

In the image of the mailboxes in the sixth post down, there’s a bunch of junk laying against the edge of the far mailbox, including what looks like a box. 

Sixth post down shows this----------------

It's from a post-11/22 photo--------------

[Alan Ford]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Also, in the .gif above, something appears to be spinning/twirling/blowing in the wind at the end of the alleged bag. If whatever that is is attached to the object, that would also suggest that the object is not a paper bag. 

It's the tie of the suited man walking west much closer to the camera

(Apologies btw for spreading my responses to you across separate posts, Mr. Gram---------am still coming to grips with the Quote function!)

[Alan Ford]

1 hour ago, Andrej Stancak said:

The picture with the light-coloured circled area around the neck is from a different frame compared to the one showing a person resembling Lee Oswald.

Exactly. So let's compare an apple with an apple rather than with an orange. That way we can judge which is the superior version.

JFK BLURAY VERSION:

KAMP VERSION:

The frame is 'affected by motion blur'? Nope-------the JFK BluRay version is just of significantly poorer quality.

Mr. Kamp's publication of the superior-version frame constituted a clear research breakthrough, just as Mr. Unger's original publication of the JFK BluRay version constituted a leap forward from the crappy version below, which was all folks had to work with when this whole Prayer Man thing first kicked off back in 2013:

The fact that you don't like what the new Kamp version shows, Mr. Stancak, is neither here nor there. No offense, but 'I prefer the old version' is not a scientific analysis.

[Alan Ford]

1 hour ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Alan:

for your record, I wrote to NARA back in 2019 and asked them to provide me with the original photograph of shirt CE151, the maroon one which Owald took to work on that fateful Friday. They obliged and sent me the coloured picture of this shirt and I posted it on this forum on June 15,  2019. This is the coloured version of the shirt photograph taken in 1963. I hope this helps.

  

Thank you very much for this, Mr. Stancak.

It doesn't look 'maroon' btw.

As you know, Mr. Oswald described the shirt he wore to work 11/22 as 'reddish-brown'. Had the shirt looked IRL as it does in the above photo, he would surely have described it as 'tan' or 'light brown'. The image above appears rather bleached out-------whether due to original lighting conditions or 'post-production'.

The 'investigating' authorities were very keen that the public not go looking for a second red(dish)-shirted man in the doorway.

 

[Andrej Stancak]

10 minutes ago, Alan Ford said:

Exactly. So let's compare an apple with an apple rather than with an orange. That way we can judge which is the superior version.

JFK BLURAY VERSION:

KAMP VERSION:

The frame is 'affected by motion blur'? Nope-------the JFK BluRay version is just of significantly poorer quality.

Mr. Kamp's publication of the superior-version frame constituted a clear research breakthrough, just as Mr. Unger's original publication of the JFK BluRay version constituted a leap forward from the crappy version below, which was all folks had to work with when this whole Prayer Man thing first kicked off back in 2013:

The fact that you don't like what the new Kamp version shows, Mr. Stancak, is neither here nor there. No offense, but 'I prefer the old version' is not a scientific analysis.

Alan:

I did not expressed my preferences in my previous post, I never wrote 'I prefer the old version', you have made it up.

I posted side-by-side Prayer Man in two frames which originated from supposedly good quality versions of Darnell, and spotted- several differences which suggest that the red-arrow picture was processed: the bright tones look burned out and there are no midtones in the background. This the does not allow to evaluate the contours of Prayer Man's head in red-arrow picture. Iterative adjustments of contrasts and brightness may explain the differences seen between the two images. Please find the comparison below:

 

By inspecting the two critical frames in Unger's version of Darnell, the one from which the red-arrow image originated is significantly more blurred than the version showing Oswald's feature. The region of Prayer Man's head in the "red-arrowed" still is specifically more blurred than other section of the still; for that reason I assumed it was motion blurr, but I cannot be sure. 

 

[Alan Ford]

15 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

I posted side-by-side Prayer Man in two frames which originated from supposedly good quality versions of Darnell

Yes, Mr. Stancak, and the word 'supposedly' cuts both ways.

So we tested respective version qualities through side-by-side comparison of the same frame.

Result? The deficiences of the JFK BluRay version stand exposed. The blur/distortion is proper to it, not being present in the superior Kamp version.

[Andrej Stancak]

3 minutes ago, Alan Ford said:

Yes, Mr. Stancak, and the word 'supposedly' cuts both ways.

So we tested respective version qualities through side-by-side comparison of the same frame.

Result? The deficiences of the JFK BluRay version stand exposed. The blur/distortion is proper to it, not being present in the superior Kamp version.

But we cannot see the superior "Kamp" version of Darnell film in toto. We only see one still of unknown provenience. You argue it is a superior copy of Darnell's still and I am pointing to some glaring problems with this frame in the significant area of the still - the Prayer Man figure. If the red-arrow frame was that superior, we should see the contours of Prayer Man's head, separation from backround, enough details in light tones (i.e., the lady wearing a white scarf), and the same thickness and length of arms in Prayer Man figure in the reference frame (the left one in my previous post) and the red-arrow frame. The red-arrow still is poorer on details in the area of Prayer Man than the reference image even if the whole picture looks appealing. 

I hope I was able to explain my point clearly.

[Alan Ford]

54 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

But we cannot see the superior "Kamp" version of Darnell film in toto. We only see one still of unknown provenience. You argue it is a superior copy of Darnell's still and I am pointing to some glaring problems with this frame in the significant area of the still - the Prayer Man figure. If the red-arrow frame was that superior, we should see the contours of Prayer Man's head, separation from backround, enough details in light tones (i.e., the lady wearing a white scarf), and the same thickness and length of arms in Prayer Man figure in the reference frame (the left one in my previous post) and the red-arrow frame. The red-arrow still is poorer on details in the area of Prayer Man than the reference image even if the whole picture looks appealing. 

I hope I was able to explain my point clearly.

Mr. Stancak, the only 'glaring problem[]' with the Kamp frame is that it shows Prayer Man looking not a blind bit like Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald. If you can look at Prayer Man here and say the words 'Lee Harvey Oswald..... Lee Harvey Oswald... Lee Harvey Oswald...' without laughing, then you have a stronger constitution than mine..............

We both know that had this frame been available in 2013, any PM-in-Darnell=LHO claim would have been D.O.A. 

The PM-in-Darnell folks' misgivings about this frame only found expression after I pointed out the inconvenient fact------------that it's clearly a woman-------which Mr. Kamp had evidently missed when he first posted it. Go figure.

If you want an apple-for-apple 'reference frame', then just use the corresponding one from the previous go to version (JFK BluRay). It is substantially poorer in quality:

 

The Kamp frame proves that the indistinct blur around Prayer Man's collar belongs not to the frame per se but to the relative poor quality of the JFK BluRay version of Darnell-----------the very version from which ONE frame was singled out in 2013 as the visual basis of the PM-in-Darnell=LHO claim.

This is NOT to pour scorn on those who made that claim back in 2013. They were working off the best available evidence at the time. But new evidence has come to light, and their claim hasn't panned out.

Now---------------you're quite correct when you state that "we cannot see the superior "Kamp" version of Darnell film in toto". I truly wish we could! But what you are leaving out of account is the fact that, before the superior Kamp version came to light, someone (Mr. James Hackerott) warned us that the Sixth Floor Museum first-gen copy of Darnell showed the exact same problem: a feminine neckline. Mr. Kamp's publication of the superior frame merely confirmed what Mr. Hackerott's eyes had already told him-----------and what he had already told us.

It's time to face reality, and move on. A once serious research initiative should not devolve into an evidence-denying cult. Otherwise it's just AltgensDoorwayman all over again.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Tom Gram]

6 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

It's the tie of the suited man walking west much closer to the camera

(Apologies btw for spreading my responses to you across separate posts, Mr. Gram---------am still coming to grips with the Quote function!)

It’s not the tie. Look at the original .gif you posted of the bag, and the high contrast version Chris Davidson posted. The apparent twirling object is near the very end of the actual bag. If you post a crop of the end portion of the alleged bag I bet you’ll see it. It’s moving much faster than the rest of the object. 

That said, I do agree that it would be a strange reaction for a woman to casually stroll over and pick up a large piece of random crap, and the expanded image of the debris pile doesn’t show anything large enough to be the object, so I’m still curious. 

Edited October 28, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Greg Doudna]

Some comments on the “red arrow” photo of Prayer Man

On the photo under discussion, the “red arrow” photo, is that a woman's dress scoop neckline, or is it the way Oswald as one of the TSBD laborers commonly wore his shirt with the top two or three buttons unbuttoned over a white T-shirt, with a vertical splotch on the photo creating an optical illusion? 

First some primary data: three sketches drawn by the only known reported person to have seen and studied the first-generation copy of the Darnell film--better quality than any posted on the internet--at the Sixth Floor Museum, James Hackerott. On Dec 30, 2019 James Hackerott posted three sketches he drew from what he saw in better photos than any of us have seen on the internet. This is primary, please see here:  

https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=2359.0 

From reading Hackerott's descriptions and notes it is clear to me Hackerott strove for accuracy to the best of his ability without attempting to support or bolster any theory. He attempted to document data for the record and for the benefit of others as accurately as he could. He not only sketched but told of notes and comments on his sketches.  

Then there is the "red arrow" photo of uncertain provenance and origins, which shows the appearance of a woman's scoop neckline. On the provenance issue, the following was commented in Sept 2022 (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28136-prayerperson/)

"... thanks for posting the Darnell picture. It is obvious that the photograph submitted by Alan Ford has been heavily worked out, this is not the original Darnell still. It is a great risk to use photographs of uncertain origin (we know Alan retrieved it but where from?), and it even opens the possibility that someone squeezes in a tampered version of the photograph. I would only use Prayer Man related pictures from jfkassassinationgallery.org or from prayer-man.com. If there are other sources of validated photographs, we should be able to review the history of these pictures."

"Could it be that the picture provided by Alan Ford was photographed in the Sixth Floor Museum as displayed by the viewing system the Museum offers for viewing Darnell film? …" 

"… Based on the link provided by Chris earlier in this thread, it seems that Mr Hackerott from jfkassassinationforum.org had seen this particular picture when viewing Darnell in SFM."

Let us proceed on two assumptions: that the Darnell improved photo of mystery origin is not tampered with (as distinguished from possible processing) and that it is one of the frames Hackerott saw at the Sixth Floor Museum, per Stancak's suggestion that it could even have been someone's photograph of one of those Darnell first-generation-copy frames at the Sixth Floor Museum. That would account for its better quality than the other internet images. 

From Hackerott’s description it seems he was able to view the film frame by frame but reported that he was unable or had no knowledge of how to zoom. Apparently his sketches were done at three separate sittings, each time looking at a still frame or frames through a viewer without the benefit of zooming. (He later reported he had learned it was possible to zoom with that software but at the time he was in the Sixth Floor Museum he had not known how.) Hackerott reported difficulty in easily going backward to a previous frame, and experienced the software repeatedly crashing when he tried to examine individual frames, such as moving from frame to frame. These were either software or user issues of the viewer program used at the Sixth Floor Museum, technical details discussed by Hackerott and others. Hackerott reported he was unable to make any enhancements on the frames with the software. 

Therefore it seems Hackerott's sketches were from freezing one frame, without zoom or enhancement, and sketching as accurately as he could what he saw of Prayer Man, benefitting from looking at adjacent frames too.

The important point is that Hackerott described a “vertical line” down Prayer Man’s throat. That corresponds to what can be seen as a semi-vertical dark “blotch” on the red-arrow photo in the throat area of Prayer Man which has the effect of making the remaining area not covered by the dark blotch look like a white border of the neckline of a dress. But actually that could be some vertical dark “blotch” on top of white T-shirt underneath. The dark blotch makes it look like the white not covered by the blotch is a white or bright fringe or edge of the neckline, part of the same item of clothing, but that may be an optical illusion.

Although Hackerott’s vertical dark line corresponds to the vertical “dark blotch” in the red-arrow photo, there are discrepancies in the nature of that dark blotch or mark between the two. First, Hackerott saw only a narrow vertical line, which he said reminded him of a bolo tie, whereas the red-arrow photo has not a narrow line but a blotch (as I call it). 

And second, the first two of Hackerott’s sketches show his vertical dark line going down to and joining the top of the clothing's neckline, dividing the remaining white area on each side in two. Hackerott’s third sketch however is a bit ambiguous, with his vertical line not quite touching the neckline below (or above below the face), compared to the first two sketches.

In the red-arrow photo the “dark blotch” (corresponding to Hackerott’s vertical line) definitely does not go down to touch the clothing neckline, and this is what gives the appearance (illusion?) of a bright white border at the neckline of a woman’s dress. 

So there are at least three distinct interpretations of these data features. Note the first two below, in which the interpretation is of a woman, are very different in terms of identification of "the white" and "the dark blotch" features.

• Interpretation of the Hackerott sketches as showing a woman: an apparent woman’s neckline; the white is not clothing, is not part of the dress but is skin, the woman’s neck; and the woman is wearing something that falls down from her neck, something that Hackerott thought looked like it could be a bolo tie except bolo ties are only worn by men. Hackerott said his wife suggested it could be some sort of choker necklace with a pendant worn by a woman.
• Interpretation of the red-arrow photo as showing a woman: an apparent woman’s neckline with the white area being the border of the dress at the neckline; the “dark blotch” is skin, the woman’s neck.

To those two very different interpretations may be listed a third, in which Prayer Man is a man wearing a man's shirt similar to the way Lovelady standing next to him was wearing his shirt, and Oswald that afternoon when arrested was wearing his shirt: unbuttoned top buttons, with the top of the shirt wide open and loose, worn over a white T-shirt going up to the neckline.

• Interpretation of Prayer Man of the Hackerott sketches and red-arrow photo as one of the male manual laborers at the TSBD: the white is neither skin nor the border of a woman’s dress, but is a man’s white T-shirt. The scoop-neckline appearance is from the way TSBD laboring men such as Lovelady (in the same Darnell footage) and Oswald (as evidenced in photos that afternoon) wore their shirts routinely—top buttons unbuttoned, collar spread out and very loose on the shoulders, worn over a white T-shirt going up to the neck. The dark blotch or vertical mark is the remaining puzzle in this interpretation, but by this interpretation is neither skin nor a jewelry-accoutrement over skin or T-shirt, but an artifact of photo processing, or conceivably shadow (within the shadowed area), or from sweat, say, from a TSBD laborer working all morning who sweated into the front of a white T-shirt, with the dampness causing the “dark blotch” photographically.

For the record, I am interested in objective determination of the photo information, as I think is true of most following this issue. If it can be known not to be Oswald, so be it. If it is Oswald, so be it.

On the anomaly in the photo processing, one can note on the red-arrow photo what look to me like similar-appearing dark “blotches” on the concrete columns at the left on the same photo, which are clearly artifacts of the processing or the photo, not in the concrete. The idea, which I believe was suggested by Stancak, is that heightened contrast on photos in processing can create noise or static or illusory dark spots, etc. that are not actual information.

May others better than me in photo interpretation vet these comments!   

Edited October 28, 2023 by Greg Doudna