Vickie Adams Interview

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

I have shown that Adams' story is 100% compatible with Oswald-fired-shots-&-skipped-down-the-stairs.

But it could well be that the WC did not understand.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Marjan Rynkiewicz

[K K Lane]

About 25 minutes in Mort Sahl talks about "alterations" to the Nix film.   I've read the lengthy legal filing posted on IPB this May about the Nix film which does NOT mention pre-1966 "alterations" to the Nix film.   Is there an online source which goes into pre-1966 Nix film "alterations" in more depth?

[Ron Bulman]

On 12/30/2023 at 3:35 PM, Roger Odisio said:

The second thing:  A few months after the murder the cop who was handcuffed to Oswald when he was murdered, showed up unannounced at Adams' apartment.  She had just moved in the day before and had not told anyone.  She was shook.

He told her he had to interview her again because the police had a fire that destroyed a bunch of records. A blatant lie.

He was obviously there to probe her story for the best way to discredit her. WC staff knew by then what an important stumbling block she was to their story.  I believe the first official mention of Adams saying she saw S&L on the first floor when she got there was in the cop's report of his visit with her.

I don't think he was there to probe her story.  He was there to intimidate her, to get her to shut up, on behalf of the DPD and FBI (probably at the behest of the CIA, SS).  And it worked.  As you mention she had moved the day before, and I think changed her phone number, telling no one.  She was probably terrified to find Leavelle at her door, lying.  She soon moved far away, disappeared.  Until Barry Ernst found her after much probing, 40 years later. 

[Roger Odisio]

40 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't think he was there to probe her story.  He was there to intimidate her, to get her to shut up, on behalf of the DPD and FBI (probably at the behest of the CIA, SS).  And it worked.  As you mention she had moved the day before, and I think changed her phone number, telling no one.  She was probably terrified to find Leavelle at her door, lying.  She soon moved far away, disappeared.  Until Barry Ernst found her after much probing, 40 years later. 

It was a bit of both, Ron.  Intimidate her, sure, but if that didn't work (and it didn't, as her interview by David Belin a few months later and the '66 TV appearance  showed), they had to figure out a way to discredit her testimony.

She didn't shut up after the cop talked to her.  According to Ernest she went to a Mark Lane lecture in '66 and introduced herself to him afterward.  Lane invited her to the Mort Sahl show. She was excited.  It was an opportunity to finally tell her story to the public.

But Lane and Sahl seemed interested only the bit about seeing Ruby.

When, at the end of the taped segment she started talking about seeing Lovelady on the first floor and him checking on the time (which she volunteered without being asked), Lane interrupted her to ask what is the relevance of that. It was about the timing of the trip on the stairs she was talking about, she said.  The tape ended soon after that. I don't think either Lane or Sahl understood the significance of what she was telling them. 

Adams was discouraged about the show and, according to Ernest "she simply stopped talking" until he found her years later.

I've posted a message on Ernest's facebook page asking him to reconcile what Adams said on TV in '66 with what he has written that she told him many years later. Since it is clear he knew about her TV appearance.

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't think he was there to probe her story.  He was there to intimidate her, to get her to shut up, on behalf of the DPD and FBI (probably at the behest of the CIA, SS).  And it worked.  As you mention she had moved the day before, and I think changed her phone number, telling no one.  She was probably terrified to find Leavelle at her door, lying.  She soon moved far away, disappeared.  Until Barry Ernst found her after much probing, 40 years later. 

It's not as simple as that. The DPD in that week interviewed I think it was 11 TSBD employees, not just Adams. I think they did this on behalf the WC, for that matter. There is a story still untold, although I tried to get into it on my website, about what happened in that period. It's not entirely clear, but I'm fairly certain the FBI stopped cooperating  with the WC, and refused to do any more interviews, if the WC was gonna use outside experts to testify on the fingerprints and ballistics evidence. The FBI considered it a deep insult, supposedly. But I think they may have been concerned an outside expert would catch them in a "mistake." In any event, for a week or two, the DPD was back on the case, interviewing witnesses. Strangely, moreover, 3 or 4 of the reports on these interviews were never published by the WC, and can only be found on the DPD website. Did the WC trash these interviews? It sure seems like it. 

Edited January 1 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

It was a bit of both, Ron.  Intimidate her, sure, but if that didn't work (and it didn't, as her interview by David Belin a few months later and the '66 TV appearance  showed), they had to figure out a way to discredit her testimony.

She didn't shut up after the cop talked to her.  According to Ernest she went to a Mark Lane lecture in '66 and introduced herself to him afterward.  Lane invited her to the Mort Sahl show. She was excited.  It was an opportunity to finally tell her story to the public.

But Lane and Sahl seemed interested only the bit about seeing Ruby.

When, at the end of the taped segment she started talking about seeing Lovelady on the first floor and him checking on the time (which she volunteered without being asked), Lane interrupted her to ask what is the relevance of that. It was about the timing of the trip on the stairs she was talking about, she said.  The tape ended soon after that. I don't think either Lane or Sahl understood the significance of what she was telling them. 

Adams was discouraged about the show and, according to Ernest "she simply stopped talking" until he found her years later.

I've posted a message on Ernest's facebook page asking him to reconcile what Adams said on TV in '66 with what he has written that she told him many years later. Since it is clear he knew about her TV appearance.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was the position of some that she was not actually interviewed by Leavelle, and that his report was put into the files to discredit her. And now it turns out she talked to Sahl and Lane in 1966 about his visiting her, and that his report says exactly what she told Sahl and Lane in 1966--that she'd seen Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor...

And, huh, she also said she'd been shown her testimony and made only minor corrections. 

Well, so much for the theory she never said anything about Shelley and Lovelady, and that the Leavelle report was a fake, and that the portions of her testimony about Shelley and Lovelady were added in to make her look bad. 

Good riddance to total bs. 

Edited January 1 by Pat Speer

[David Von Pein]

On 1/1/2024 at 2:20 AM, Pat Speer said:

Well, so much for the theory she [Victoria Adams] never said anything about Shelley and Lovelady, and that the Leavelle report was a fake, and that the portions of her testimony about Shelley and Lovelady were added in to make her look bad. 

Good riddance to total bs. 

Exactly!!

The big question I have now regarding Victoria E. Adams is:

Why on Earth would she have told author Barry Ernest (in the early 2000s, was it?) that she had definitely not seen Shelley & Lovelady just after she got to the first floor of the TSBD on 11/22/63?

Prior to her interviews with Ernest, had her memory of events been so diminished that she had actually thought the Warren Commission had added things to her sworn testimony? I suppose the "fading memory" explanation is always a possibility to consider. (Victoria passed away in November 2007. She was 66.)

Also, I'm wondering what Barry Ernest's opinion was/is of Victoria's "mental state" when he interviewed her? Did her memory of the events seem clear and vivid? Or was it somewhat shaky and murky? (I'm just wondering.)

 

Edited January 2 by David Von Pein

[Andrej Stancak]

On 12/30/2023 at 12:40 PM, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

Read my long explanation of Oswald's use of the stairs earlier in this thread. This is the only solution. No other solution exists or possibly exists.

Re Adams & Styles....... they left the window after say 10 sec. They firstly went to their office lift & then lost another say 10 sec. Then they probly exited the lift area & entered the storage area via a door near their lift (rather than going back into their office & using their office door to enter the storage area). Then once in the storage area they would have klomped to the rear stairs (praps they intended to use the lifts if available)(they were not available). Garner (in the office) would have heard their klomping as they passed along the office/storage wall along the near side of the storage area, & Garner herself then entered the storage area (to look throo the western windows to see the commotion near the grassy knoll carpark).

Adams' & Styles' klomping would have drowned out any noise made by Oswald. 

Marjan:

where did you get information about Adams and Styles going first to the lift before heading to the stairwell? This diversion was not mentioned either in her WC testimony or in her exchanges with Barry Ernest, or in the audio recording from 1966 which opened this thread. 

I am involved in reconstructing movements of Vicki Adams, alleged Oswald's movements, and the trajectories of Truly and Baker using a computer technology and realistic (measured) time estimates of individual nodes of movements such as opening the door leading from the stairwell to the 2nd floor or durations of descending/ascending a flight of stairs by a male or female. I have been consulting Barry on details of Vicki's and Sandra's departure.

This is what Barry wrote to me in April 2021:

"Vicki estimated she left the window between 15 and 30 seconds after the shots. Both she and Sandra told me they remembered seeing Clint Hill rush to the car, and they started away from the window  before the car entered the Triple Underpass. This may be a rather imprecise way of figuring it, but if you look at the single frames of the Z-film, you'll see Hill reach for the limousine's rear hand-hold at about Z-342. The car is close to entering the Underpass at Z-462. That leaves 120 frames which, at an average speed of 18.3 frames per second, gives us 6.5 seconds.

Since Vicki was not included in any of the timed tests, absolutes are difficult."

This conversation led me to assume a 10-second interval between the time of the last shot and Vicki Adams leaving the window on the fourth floor.

The two girls took the shortest possible route to get to the entrance to the stairwell and that route would be shorter than the presumed Oswald's route from the most east corner of the sixth floor plus the time required to stash the rifle among the books. Therefore, there was no chance that Lee Oswald, should he be on the sixth floor, could descend via the stairs ahead of Adams and Styles. In the SS reconstruction of Oswald's movements, agent Howlett (Oswald) was walking while moving from the sniper's nest window to the entrance of the stairwell. In contrast, Vicki and Sandra were running both to reach the stairwell and to descend to the first floor, which adds additional seconds to their advantage.

I have also enquired with Barry about movements of Mrs. Garner. Dorothy Garner moved to the north-west part of the 4th floor immediately after Adams and Styles left. If Oswald would be following the two girls, both girls would hear his steps, and Garner would either see Oswald or for sure hear hist steps. Nothing of this happened. 

The only conclusion is that nobody was using the starirwell to escape from the sixth floor in the seconds or a minute elapsing after the last shot.

However, I am not disputing a part of Baker's and Truly's encounter with Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom, albeit in a different scenario. In my view, Lee Oswald went to the 2nd floor from the first floor via the front stairwell once he realised Kennedy has been shot. However, this is for a different thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Edited January 1 by Andrej Stancak

[Pat Speer]

41 minutes ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Marjan:

where did you get information about Adams and Styles going first to the lift before heading to the stairwell? This diversion was not mentioned either in her WC testimony or in her exchanges with Barry Ernest, or in the audio recording from 1966 which opened this thread. 

I am involved in reconstructing movements of Vicki Adams, alleged Oswald's movements, and the trajectories of Truly and Baker using a computer technology and realistic (measured) time estimates of individual nodes of movements such as opening the door leading from the stairwell to the 2nd floor or durations of descending/ascending a flight of stairs by a male or female. I have been consulting Barry on details of Vicki's and Sandra's departure.

This is what Barry wrote to me in April 2021:

"Vicki estimated she left the window between 15 and 30 seconds after the shots. Both she and Sandra told me they remembered seeing Clint Hill rush to the car, and they started away from the window  before the car entered the Triple Underpass. This may be a rather imprecise way of figuring it, but if you look at the single frames of the Z-film, you'll see Hill reach for the limousine's rear hand-hold at about Z-342. The car is close to entering the Underpass at Z-462. That leaves 120 frames which, at an average speed of 18.3 frames per second, gives us 6.5 seconds.

Since Vicki was not included in any of the timed tests, absolutes are difficult."

This conversation led me to assume a 10-second interval between the time of the last shot and Vicki Adams leaving the window on the fourth floor.

The two girls took the shortest possible route to get to the entrance to the stairwell and that route would be shorter than the presumed Oswald's route from the most east corner of the sixth floor plus the time required to stash the rifle among the books. Therefore, there was no chance that Lee Oswald, should he be on the sixth floor, could descend via the stairs ahead of Adams and Styles. In the SS reconstruction of Oswald's movements, agent Howlett (Oswald) was walking while moving from the sniper's nest window to the entrance of the stairwell. In contrast, Vicki and Sandra were running both to reach the stairwell and to descend to the first floor, which adds additional seconds to their advantage.

I have also enquired with Barry about movements of Mrs. Garner. Dorothy Garner moved to the north-west part of the 4th floor immediately after Adams and Styles left. If Oswald would be following the two girls, both girls would hear his steps, and Garner would either see Oswald or for sure hear hist steps. Nothing of this happened. 

The only conclusion is that nobody was using the starirwell to escape from the sixth floor in the seconds or a minute elapsing after the last shot.

However, I am not disputing a part of Baker's and Truly's encounter with Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom, albeit in a different scenario. In my view, Lee Oswald went to the 2nd floor from the first floor via the front stairwell once he realised Kennedy has been shot. However, this is for a different thread.

 

FWIW, Adams gives an approximation for the time for her descent in her appearance on the Sahl show. She says something about Belin's refusal to perform a re-enactment and how it allowed him to claim it took her five minutes to get down as opposed to a minute thirty (or ninety seconds). 

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

1 hour ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Marjan:

where did you get information about Adams and Styles going first to the lift before heading to the stairwell? This diversion was not mentioned either in her WC testimony or in her exchanges with Barry Ernest, or in the audio recording from 1966 which opened this thread. 

I am involved in reconstructing movements of Vicki Adams, alleged Oswald's movements, and the trajectories of Truly and Baker using a computer technology and realistic (measured) time estimates of individual nodes of movements such as opening the door leading from the stairwell to the 2nd floor or durations of descending/ascending a flight of stairs by a male or female. I have been consulting Barry on details of Vicki's and Sandra's departure.

This is what Barry wrote to me in April 2021:

"Vicki estimated she left the window between 15 and 30 seconds after the shots. Both she and Sandra told me they remembered seeing Clint Hill rush to the car, and they started away from the window  before the car entered the Triple Underpass. This may be a rather imprecise way of figuring it, but if you look at the single frames of the Z-film, you'll see Hill reach for the limousine's rear hand-hold at about Z-342. The car is close to entering the Underpass at Z-462. That leaves 120 frames which, at an average speed of 18.3 frames per second, gives us 6.5 seconds.

Since Vicki was not included in any of the timed tests, absolutes are difficult."

This conversation led me to assume a 10-second interval between the time of the last shot and Vicki Adams leaving the window on the fourth floor.

The two girls took the shortest possible route to get to the entrance to the stairwell and that route would be shorter than the presumed Oswald's route from the most east corner of the sixth floor plus the time required to stash the rifle among the books. Therefore, there was no chance that Lee Oswald, should he be on the sixth floor, could descend via the stairs ahead of Adams and Styles. In the SS reconstruction of Oswald's movements, agent Howlett (Oswald) was walking while moving from the sniper's nest window to the entrance of the stairwell. In contrast, Vicki and Sandra were running both to reach the stairwell and to descend to the first floor, which adds additional seconds to their advantage.

I have also enquired with Barry about movements of Mrs. Garner. Dorothy Garner moved to the north-west part of the 4th floor immediately after Adams and Styles left. If Oswald would be following the two girls, both girls would hear his steps, and Garner would either see Oswald or for sure hear hist steps. Nothing of this happened. 

The only conclusion is that nobody was using the starirwell to escape from the sixth floor in the seconds or a minute elapsing after the last shot.

However, I am not disputing a part of Baker's and Truly's encounter with Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom, albeit in a different scenario. In my view, Lee Oswald went to the 2nd floor from the first floor via the front stairwell once he realised Kennedy has been shot. However, this is for a different thread.

Sandra Styles said (somewhere) that she & Vickie firstly went to the office elevator for a short time before heading off to the worker's elevators (or that stairway).

Tests showed that Oswald could take 48 sec to get to the 2nd floor without running.

[Roger Odisio]

11 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was the position of some that she was not actually interviewed by Leavelle, and that his report was put into the files to discredit her. And now it turns out she talked to Sahl and Lane in 1966 about his visiting her, and that his report says exactly what she told Sahl and Lane in 1966--that she'd seen Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor...

And, huh, she also said she'd been shown her testimony and made only minor corrections. 

Well, so much for the theory she never said anything about Shelley and Lovelady, and that the Leavelle report was a fake, and that the portions of her testimony about Shelley and Lovelady were added in to make her look bad. 

Good riddance to total bs. 

It seems clear Adams was being hounded.  She had told her story about the steps in multiple interviews and WC staff quickly knew that she was a real problem.  

The afternoon of the murder she went home and wrote out six pages of her thoughts about what happened.  She wrote a letter to a former high mentor of hers, who happened to work with her stepfather, apparently seeking his advice, since it was clear she was caught up in the whole thing.  She found out later he never got the letter.

So the incident with Leavelle is consistent with that.  And certainly WC staff had every reason to look for ways to discredit Adams, whether it was by sending Leavelle  to talk to her, or doing it some other way.

The fact that, when shown her testimony, she made only minor corrections doesn't prove anything because, we don't know when the part about seeing S&L was added, if at all.

However, I'm sure, Pat, you remember the exchange we had a while back in which I said the lie used to discredit Adams was the one offered by Ernest--she never said it; it was added later (backed up by the fact that the stenotapes of all three have gone missing from NARA).  You said, no, the lie was about when S&L returned to the building; Adams did see them.  Looks like the pendulum is swinging toward your version.

[Roger Odisio]

10 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

The only conclusion is that nobody was using the starirwell to escape from the sixth floor in the seconds or a minute elapsing after the last shot.

However, I am not disputing a part of Baker's and Truly's encounter with Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom, albeit in a different scenario. In my view, Lee Oswald went to the 2nd floor from the first floor via the front stairwell once he realised Kennedy has been shot. However, this is for a different thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

RO:  Fascinating stuff, Andrej.  What do you make of Garner's further story that she was still in a position near the steps on the 4th floor to see or hear Oswald descending the steps, when Truly and a cop reached the 4th floor. *After* they supposedly encountered Oswald on the 2nd floor.  Garner said she neither saw nor heard Oswald while she was there.

 

That claim first appeared in the Martha Joe Stroud June 2 letter to J. Lee Rankin that was not only not followed up by Belin, at least officially, but was buried until Ernest uncovered it. You can bet Belin looked into it, if he did not already know what Garner had said.

 

To me that has always been the crucial fact that blows up the whole Oswald story. Regardless of what lie the WC used to discredit Adams, or Adams' veracity.

 

Are you still in touch with Ernest?  I posted a message on his facebook page asking for his comment on Adams' '66 TV interview, but so far it only has attracted a couple of rants from Brian Doyle.

 

Does Ernest still use that page?  Can you ask him for his reaction to the TV interview? How it contradicts what he wrote that Adams told him many years later? He obviously knew about it.  He mentioned it twice in his book.  There is also the loose end of Styles emphatically saying in the book that she didn't see S&L on the first floor either. 

 

AS:  However, I am not disputing a part of Baker's and Truly's encounter with Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom, albeit in a different scenario. In my view, Lee Oswald went to the 2nd floor from the first floor via the front stairwell once he realised Kennedy has been shot. However, this is for a different thread.

 

RO:  This was the scenario advanced here a while back by Greg Doudna. After the murder, when Oswald was on the first floor or the front steps, he went up the stairs to the 2nd floor on his way out the back entrance when he encountered Truly and Baker.

 

The importance of this is, if true, it is another way to establish that Oswald did not come *down* the steps from the 6th floor when he encountered Truly and Baker. It's another way to do this, besides the Darnell and Wiegman films. It is consistent with Garner's story of seeing Truly and Baker coming up the stairs but not Oswald going down. It is consistent with Oswald's alibi.

 

 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

It seems clear Adams was being hounded.  She had told her story about the steps in multiple interviews and WC staff quickly knew that she was a real problem.  

The afternoon of the murder she went home and wrote out six pages of her thoughts about what happened.  She wrote a letter to a former high mentor of hers, who happened to work with her stepfather, apparently seeking his advice, since it was clear she was caught up in the whole thing.  She found out later he never got the letter.

So the incident with Leavelle is consistent with that.  And certainly WC staff had every reason to look for ways to discredit Adams, whether it was by sending Leavelle  to talk to her, or doing it some other way.

The fact that, when shown her testimony, she made only minor corrections doesn't prove anything because, we don't know when the part about seeing S&L was added, if at all.

However, I'm sure, Pat, you remember the exchange we had a while back in which I said the lie used to discredit Adams was the one offered by Ernest--she never said it; it was added later (backed up by the fact that the stenotapes of all three have gone missing from NARA).  You said, no, the lie was about when S&L returned to the building; Adams did see them.  Looks like the pendulum is swinging toward your version.

Well, we agree that Ball/Belin saw her as a problem, and deliberately tried to minimize the damage by making her out to be a doofus. They did the same with Frazier, Piper, Dougherty, Rowland and so on, while treating Givens as if he were credible.

It's an abomination. 

[Marcus Fuller]

One of the many things I can't get my head around is how the LN's are constantly saying how Oswald was an idiot, a loaner, couldn't hold down a job etc etc, but at the same time are happy to assert that he was an excellent marksman, fast on his feet, had ninja like abilities and was a one man army. The limit of his abilities are only ever dictated by the point the LN's are trying to make or get out of.

How on earth was he supposed to get from the 'snipers nest', hide his gun between/under boxes, silently traverse across the 6th floor, through a heavy door and down to the 4th floor before two women on that floor leave their position? They probably left by the time he'd pulled his rifle in from the window! Despite all this Dorothy Garner see's nothing.

There's a point where knowledge of the subject doesn't matter because such suggestions are nothing short of laughable. I'm sure by 2025 we'll find out he could teleport!

Edited January 1 by Marcus Fuller

[David Von Pein]

Marcus,

Why wasn't the "real assassin" seen by anybody coming down those same back stairs?

I guess you think the real killer(s) must have just stayed up on the Floor Of Death for several extra minutes, running the great risk of being caught right there on the sixth floor. Is that it?

 

Edited January 2 by David Von Pein