JAHS Chapter 17

4-7-64--4-8-64

Oswald coworker stuff

Step 3: The 4-8-64 Testimony of Eddie Piper

There are questionable conclusions, and there are conclusions so questionable they are suspicious. And the conclusion Oswald never came down for lunch was (and is) the latter.

We've already shown how Eddie Piper, within hours of the shooting, swore he talked to Oswald on the first floor around noon. And we showed how he repeated this claim.

So it should come as no surprise then that on 4-8-64, Piper testified before the Warren Commission and once again claimed he saw Oswald on the first floor around noon.

But that's not all Piper said. Here, in testimony taken 4 1/2 months after the killing of President Kennedy, Piper finally said where on the first floor he saw Oswald. Now, it's not as if anyone asked Piper this incredibly important detail. And it's not as if Piper volunteered it when they didn't. It just kinda...came out. Here, see for yourself.

Mr. BALL. What time did you go to work that day?

Mr. PIPER. 10 o'clock.

Mr. BALL. That was your usual time to go to work?

Mr. PIPER. Yes. Mr. BALL. And, did you see Oswald that morning?

Mr. PIPER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Where?

Mr. PIPER. Down on the first floor filling orders.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever see him again that day?

Mr. PIPER You mean all day---the rest of the day?

Mr. BALL. Yes, sir.

Mr. PIPER. No.

Mr. BALL. Was that the last time you saw him?

Mr. PIPER. Just at 12 o'clock.

Mr. BALL. Where were you at 12 o'clock?

Mr. PIPER. Down on the first floor.

Mr. BALL. What was he doing?

Mr. PIPER. Well, I said to him---"It's about lunch time. I believe I'll go have lunch." So, he says, "Yeah"---he mumbled something---I don't know whether he said he was going up or going out, so I got my sandwich off of the radiator and went on back to the first window of the first floor.

(4-8-64 Testimony of Eddie Piper, 10:20 AM, 6H382-386)

Piper saw Oswald by a radiator.

Now, let's stop right here and point out that Piper is not sure Oswald said he was "going up," as originally reported, and that he now says Oswald could have said "going out." Now, some will claim it makes no difference because no one saw Oswald go up or out. But this is short-sighted. As we've seen, no one saw Oswald between 12:00, when Piper saw him, and a few minutes before 12:15, when Carolyn Arnold thought she saw him on the first floor, near the front door. Well, this suggests the possibility that, after talking to Piper, Oswald went out the back of the building to take a walk. And that he returned 15 minutes later. And that he even considered going out front with his co-workers upon his return, but saw the crowded steps outside, and thought better of it.

And no, this isn't pure conjecture. In his 11-22-63 affidavit to the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, William Shelley, Oswald's boss, opted to add a little detail about Oswald that has been largely over-looked. He revealed: "This man stayed by himself most of the time, and would go for a walk at noon time. Lee would bring his lunch and usually eat with us in the lounge and read the paper." (CD87, p273)

So, there you have it. Oswald's going "out" at noon, and then returning to sit by himself in the domino room, while sipping on a drink and reading the paper, would not have been a deviation from his usual routine. It WAS his routine.

We now return to Ball's questioning of Piper...

Mr. BALL. The first window on the first floor? Mr. PIPER. No, not the first window---but on the first floor about the second window on the first floor. I was intending to sit there so I could see the parade because the street was so crowded with people---I didn't see anything.

It's curious, to say the least, that Ball failed to follow-up on Piper's claim he saw Oswald at 12 by a radiator by asking him the precise location of this radiator, and that he oped instead to change the subject from the relevant issue of Piper's discussion with Oswald to the barely relevant issue of which window Piper chose to sit behind while watching the motorcade.

But if Ball was trying to lure Piper to sleep so he could circle back and undermine Piper's testimony he saw Oswald on the first floor around 12:00, he was in for a surprise.

Mr. BALL. What time was it that you spoke to Oswald and said you thought you would have your lunch?

Mr. PIPER. Just about 12 o'clock.

Mr. BALL. And do you remember exactly what he said?

Mr. PIPER. No, sir; I don't remember exactly. All I remember him was muttering out something---I didn't know whether he said he was going up or going out.

Mr. BALL. He said something like that?

Mr. PIPER. Yes--something like that.

Now, apparently, this ticked Ball off. If he gets Piper to say Oswald said he was going "up", the Commission can conclude Oswald did just that--went back "up"...to the sixth floor.

Piper's refusal to specify "up" as opposed to "out", then, could only have been seen as a set-back for Ball. Now, look how he responds.

Mr. BALL. Now, that day, you went over to the sheriff's office and made a statement, didn't you?

Mr. PIPER. Yes, sir---no, sir; not that day.

Mr. BALL. Did you the next day? Mr. PIPER. Saturday.

Mr. BALL. Did you go to the sheriff's department?

Mr. PIPER. I went to the county---yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. And did you tell them at any time that you saw Lee about 12 o'clock?

Mr. PIPER. Yes.

Mr. BALL. And that Lee said, "I'm going up to eat?"

Mr. PIPER. He said either "up" or "out"---that's the way I reported it.

Mr. BALL. That's what you told them? Mr. PIPER. Yes, sir.

(4-8-64 10:20 AM, 6H382-386)

Now, this is important in light of subsequent developments... When Piper didn't testify in the manner most damaging to Oswald, and most supportive of what we can only assume was Ball's presumption Oswald acted alone, Ball reminded Piper of his previous statements, and undermined Piper's credibility to the Commissioners tasked with studying Piper's testimony.

And he did this, moreover, at the expense of asking the far more relevant question of where it was on the first floor Piper saw Oswald.

It wasn't until 2017, for that matter, that I realized Piper's claim he got his "sandwich off of the radiator" (after briefly talking to Oswald) had actually answered the question Ball had failed to ask.

Here's an FBI photograph of the domino room, entered into evidence as Kaiser Exhibit B. (20H334) The radiator is on the left. Note that Oswald's jacket was later discovered by this radiator.

And here's another FBI photo of the radiator. Note that the window sill is used to store found items and lunch bags. Presumably, Piper brought a hot sandwich for lunch and placed it on the radiator to keep warm.

Note also that this version of the photo was marked with an X by depository employee Frankie Kaiser, to show where he found Oswald's jacket weeks after the shooting. This version of the photo was entered into evidence as Kaiser Exhibit C (20H335).

While some might prefer to believe Ball had no idea what Piper was telling him when he said he picked his sandwich off the radiator and went back to the front window after talking to Oswald, and that it was just an oversight on Ball's part that he failed to put on the record that Piper was thereby confirming Oswald's claim he came down for lunch and went to the domino room... there's no good reason for us to do so. Kaiser Exhibits B and C, photos of the domino room in which the radiator is obvious, were entered into evidence on 4-8-64, roughly 4 hours after Piper testified. Kaiser's testimony, as Piper's, was taken by Joe Ball. Ball personally handled Kaiser Exhibits B and C. As a consequence one can only assume these photos were in Ball's briefcase when he took Piper's testimony.

So, yeah, you can bet you bippy Ball knew full well that the radiator discussed by Piper was the radiator in the domino room.

And that it was no coincidence Ball failed to put this on the record.

Suspicious Omission #5 4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Eddie Piper where on the first floor he saw Oswald at 12:00, and thereby conceals from the Commission and public that Piper felt certain he saw Oswald just where Oswald said he was during the lunch period--in the domino room.

Now, here's a third photo showing the radiator in the domino room. (CD 496, p 24) Note that there was a shower in the domino room.

Well, heck it's mighty dark over on that side...so dark, in fact, that the narrator of the Secret Service film offered "As you see, it's impossible to see anything in the opposite corner of the building."

So, yes, this raises the question of whether or not Givens could have seen Oswald as purported.

So...where was it, precisely, that Givens was standing when he supposedly saw Oswald...and where was it, precisely, where he claimed Oswald had been standing?

Mr. BELIN. Just a second, where did you go? Where were you when you saw him on the sixth floor?

Mr. GIVENS. I had went and got my jacket and was on my way back to the elevator.

Mr. BELIN. All right, just a second. I am going to get a plan of the sixth floor, if I have one, and try and have you point that out to me.

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Well, I don't seem to have a sixth floor plan here, but perhaps we can use another plan here to help us. Here is a diagram of the front of the building. This is the Elm Street side, and you can see the arrow pointing north. This perhaps would be a diagram of the third floor. You notice that there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven sets of windows, right?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. On the Elm Street side, seven pairs of windows?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. You notice the two freight elevators toward the rear. Now did you see--when you first saw him on the sixth floor there, were you standing near any of these windows?

Mr. GIVENS. No, sir. I was over here by the elevators.

Mr. BELIN. You are pointing your finger to a spot which would be somewhat to the east of the east elevator, is that correct?

Mr. GIVENS. That's correct.

Mr. BELIN. At a spot which is about on the same line as what I call the south side of the east elevator, and about as far east of the front part of that elevator as the distance from the front of the elevator to the back of the east elevator, is that about as far east of the front part of that elevator, is that about right?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. You were standing at that point, and where did you see Lee Harvey Oswald?

Mr. GIVENS. Well, I was along here [indicating].

Mr. BELIN. All right, you are pointing at a spot you say along in here?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. That would be near the east wall of the building, Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN. You can see a scale here that is from 0 to 20 feet. Well, it would be about 30 to 40 feet north of the south wall of that building, is that right?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN. And around 10 feet or so away from the east wall, is that about right? (4-8-64 9:00 AM, 6H345-356)

Okay. Givens claimed he was near the east elevator, (around 25 feet to the east of the location from which the Secret Service had filmed their panoramic view), and Oswald was in the first aisle 10 feet from the east wall at a point 30-40 feet north of the south wall.

Now, let's see if Givens could have seen Oswald from his purported location.

Here's a drawing of the sixth floor, made by the Dallas Police, showing the approximate locations and directions from which they took their crime scene photos. Each tiny square represents a square foot. I have added a G and an O to this drawing to designate the approximate locations of Givens and Oswald when Givens supposedly saw Oswald. I have also added the numbers 1 to 7 to designate the locations of the fronts windows along Elm Street.

Now, this is already helpful. It establishes that Givens, by his own estimation, was about 60 feet from Oswald when he supposedly saw Oswald. And that he would have been looking at Oswald at an angle, about 30 degrees to the left from straight down the aisle.

Now note the small black squares on the DPD drawing. These reveal the locations of the wooden support pillars within the building. Well, heck, this shows that Oswald would have been on the far side of three pillars to the south of Givens and two pillars to the east.

Now, here's a photo found on the Sixth Floor Museum website, showing the Sixth floor when gutted. The unmarked area between the blue line I've added on the floor and the blue arrow stretching from the roof approximates the supposed location of Oswald in relation to Givens when Givens supposedly saw Oswald before lunch.

Now, Givens could have seen and made out Oswald from this distance.

But we're forgetting something. Boxes.

On 12-5-63, along with the panoramic view of the sixth floor shown above, the Secret Service filmed a re-enactment of what they presumed was Oswald's walk across the sixth floor after the shooting. This re-enactment showed Secret Service agent John Joe Howlett posing as Oswald in both the location where Givens claimed he'd been standing, here...

and the location where Givens claimed he'd observed Oswald walking, here...

Note that in the second image, taken as the Oswald stand-in reaches 30 feet north of the sniper's nest window, that the area to the left of the stand-in, the aisles to his left, in the distance ahead of him, are dark, dark, dark. This is intriguing. The light from the northernmost window on the east side of the building is apparent on the floor of the first aisle. The light from the easternmost window on the north side of the building is also apparent. But none of the light from the west side window aligning with the aisle where Givens was standing in the first image is apparent in the second image. One might reasonably doubt, then, that any of this aisle is even visible from the location attributed to Oswald.

When one lightens this image, etc, in hopes of finding out just what was in this dark area, however, one finds nothing but disappointment. The area is just a big blob.

It then occurred to me that I was working with images taken from youtube of the recently-released DVD of the re-enactment. I decided to look for older, lighter versions of the re-enactment as presented on VHS, or TV. And I found one, courtesy the youtube channel of Helmer Reenberg.

Here it is. While this version of the film has obviously been lightened, and stretched horizontally, it proves nonetheless that when one looked from Oswald's purported location back towards Givens' purported location, one was looking into darkness and stacks and stacks of boxes.

Let us now look at photos taken on the day of the shooting.

Let's start with Dallas Police crime scene photo #2. This was taken down the first aisle towards the sniper's nest. This was purportedly taken from a location 85 feet north of the sniper's nest window. Givens claimed he was roughly this distance back from the front of the building when he saw Oswald, only two and a half aisles over. He also claimed Oswald was less than halfway up this aisle. Unfortunately, there is no photo of the sixth floor taken from such an angle.

Still, what photos do exist are enough to give us doubt Givens saw Oswald as claimed. Note that there's an awful lot of stock on the right side of this first aisle. Note also that the highest stack appears to be between the second and third post from the camera. If so, it seems possible this stack would have blocked Givens' view of Oswald, who was, according to Givens, within ten feet or so of the fourth post away from the camera.

Now, let's look at DPD photo #4. This one was taken in the second aisle. The Dallas Police claimed this photo was taken from 40 feet north of the front window. Givens, as we've seen, claimed he saw Oswald heading north along the aisle to the left, at a location 30 to 40 feet from the front window in the aisle to the left. And that he saw this from the back of the aisle to the right.

And yet... There are high stacks of boxes on the left and the right. While there are some gaps in these stacks, the rows are double-wide between aisles. This means there are 4 rows of boxes between the third aisle where Givens claimed he was standing and the first aisle where he claimed Oswald was walking. When looking towards Oswald, for that matter, Givens would be viewing these boxes at an angle. This angle would serve to distort the width of these boxes, not to mention the 9 1/2" by 9 1/2" wooden posts in the building, and block out an additional 25-30% of what lay behind.

Yes, there's no escaping it. There's reason to doubt Givens saw Oswald as claimed.

Now let's look at DPD photo 5. The Dallas Police said they took this one looking down the third aisle, from 45 feet north of the windows.

Well, pardon the size of this image. But I wanted to be sure you could make out the multiple rows of boxes in the background, and that there appears to be stacks of boxes at the depth of the third and second aisles that would have interfered with Givens' line of sight towards the first aisle.

So now let's look at an image from the newsreel footage of Tom Alyea. This shows Lt. J.C. Day and Capt. Will Fritz inspecting the rifle found in the northwest corner of the sixth floor. (I have marked as 1-4 the locations of four pillars in this image.)

So now let's add the large stacks of boxes apparent in these images onto the DPD drawing of the sixth floor, and see how these boxes would have obstructed Givens' purported line of sight. (An attempt at such a reconstruction is demonstrated below. The approximate location and size of these stacks have been added and color-coded to match the photo in which they are apparent. It is a bit rough. It is hoped that this attempt will inspire someone with more experience in photo reconstruction and analysis to take the time to perform a more precise re-construction.)

This brings us to a fourth deception... While the report suggests there is something suspicious about the orders on the clipboard all being unfilled, the reverse is true--it is exactly as one would expect should Oswald have been innocent. An order-puller, after all, would take his completed orders downstairs to the shipping and billing department when he came down for lunch. As all three orders found on the clipboard were for books found on the sixth floor, moreover, there is no reason to believe Oswald wasn't intending to come back and fill those orders after lunch. These books, moreover, could very well have been found within a few feet of the clipboard location; the Commission doesn't say. As no real effort was made to determine what orders Oswald HAD filled on the 22nd, furthermore, there is no reason to believe Oswald hadn't filled an order for a book stored near the clipboard location, quit for lunch, put down his clipboard, and transported the order downstairs. The Commission's implying the clipboard's being found in this location supported Givens' story, when it quite possibly had an innocent explanation, and may have actually supported Oswald's innocence, was unreasonable and unfair.

There was just no reason to trust Givens. The line in the 11-23 FBI report about Givens seeing Oswald in the break room on the morning of the shooting is quite clear, once read in the proper context. And it's not as if the FBI agent taking the notes was thinking of somebody else. At the very least, the Commission counsel tasked with this line of inquiry, David Belin and Joe Ball, should have called the FBI and Secret Service agents who’d interviewed Givens in the weeks after the shooting to see if they had notes on their meetings with Givens, and would vouch that Givens had made the statements attributed to him in their early reports. That the Commission's counsel did not, and lustily accepted Givens’ sudden recollection 4 months later that “Oh yeah, I saw Oswald on the sixth floor about 5 to 12,” is to their everlasting shame.

But their shame was destined to be shared. On June 25, 1967, CBS News debuted part 1 of a 4 part investigation of the Warren Commission’s findings. As to whether or not Oswald was on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting CBS relied on the statements of one man: Charles Givens. Eddie Barker of CBS introduced Givens as the “last man known to have seen Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination.” Givens then told Barker a new and improved story of his seeing Oswald "standing about middle ways of the building on the sixth floor...just standing there looking with his orders in his hand" and of Oswald asking him to close the door on the elevator when he got to the bottom, so that Oswald could call it when needed. Well, this was a change from Givens' 1964 testimony, in which he claimed he saw Oswald walking back from the sniper's nest in the southeast corner of the building. But a bigger change was a-coming. When Barker asked Givens “This would be about what time?” Givens’ gave a new response, indicating that someone, somewhere, had alerted Givens to Piper’s testimony.Givens told Barker “Well, about one or two minutes after twelve.” Not surprisingly, CBS failed to alert their viewers that Givens had thereby changed his story, yet AGAIN, and that Bonnie Ray Williams, cited elsewhere on their program, had testified he was on the sixth floor from about noon to 12:20 and had seen neither Givens nor Oswald.

A final note on Givens... Although Edward Shields, Givens' lunch partner on 11-22-63, was interviewed by the FBI on 3-23-64, and signed a statement saying he'd left the building where he worked "about twelve o'clock noon" in order to watch the parade with Givens, he was more specific when talking to the HSCA on 10-23-77. Instead of lending credence to Givens' latter-day story--the story that only emerged after Shields had been interviewed--Shields told his HSCA interviewer that he'd met up with Givens on the street around 10 to 12.

From the sum of the evidence, then, the HSCA refused to accept Givens' story about seeing Oswald on the sixth floor at 5 to 12, and concluded instead that Oswald's whereabouts at 12:00--a half an hour before the shots were fired--were irrelevant as to his guilt.

So, yeah, we caught another one. Neither the Warren Commission's staff nor the FBI had the gumption to re-interview Shields after Givens coughed up his story about seeing Oswald near the sniper's nest after everyone else had left for lunch...if only to, y'know, see if someone they'd decided to prop up as a key witness was actually totally full of it.

Suspicious Omission #13 4-8-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to follow-up with Givens' lunch partner, Edward Shields, to see if he will confirm Givens' claim he saw Oswald on the sixth floor around 11:55.

Half-time Re-Cap

So...PHEWWW. I know this has been exhausting. But we're only half-way through this chapter.

So let's pull a Howard Cosell and sum up what's happened so far.

The first half demonstrated how Ball, Belin, and their backers on the Warren Commission (including but not necessarily limited to Earl Warren himself) shoe-horned the evidence regarding Oswald's actions and whereabouts before the assassination of President Kennedy into the shoes of a guilty man, when there was actually quite a bit to suggest his innocence.

They did this in steps, moreover.

Step 1. They attempted to minimize the damage done to their position by Bonnie Ray Williams, and his claim he spent the bulk of his lunch period on the sixth floor, but didn't see Oswald, by making it seem as though Williams may have spent just a few minutes on the sixth floor, and ignoring that James Jarman and Harold Norman had confirmed Williams' recollections.

Step 2. They attempted to debunk Oswald's alibi--that he was in the domino room at the time of the shooting, and saw James Jarman and Harold Norman (Jarman's "short" companion) shortly before the shooting--but failed to follow-up when Jarman and Norman gave them reasons to believe Oswald's alibi.

Step 3. They dismissed the testimony of Eddie Piper, in which he claimed he'd talked to Oswald at 12:00 after Oswald came down for lunch, but failed to acknowledge that an uncalled witness named Carolyn Arnold had told the FBI she thought she saw Oswald on the first floor around 12:15, and Oswald's boss William Shelley had also confirmed that Oswald came down for lunch.

Step 4. They drummed up a witness--Charles Givens--who helped them place Oswald on the sixth floor in the moments before the shooting--but failed to point out during Givens' testimony, or even in the Commission's report, that Givens' testimony was in opposition to both all his previous statements, and those of his co-workers. (One of these co-workers, Edward Shields, could have shot down Givens' testimony in a few seconds, should he ever have been interviewed by the Commission or the FBI on behalf of the Commission. So, of course, he wasn't called.)

Still, as ruthless and sleazy as Ball/Belin were when questioning witnesses as to Oswald's activities before the shooting, they were even more ruthless and sleazy when questioning witnesses as to what happened directly after the shooting.

The Ghost in the Elevator, and the Girls on the Stairs

As we've seen, Ball and Belin, and by extension the commission that hired them, both cherry-picked the statements of their witnesses, and avoided certain lines of questioning altogether, in order to prop up their conclusion Oswald acted alone. When less-than-friendly witnesses like Williams and Piper told them what they didn't want to hear, they rubbed their faces in their earlier statements. But when suddenly friendly witnesses like Givens, Sawyer and Revill popped up with a new story in which Givens saw Oswald near the sixth floor sniper's nest after everyone else had left for lunch, they failed to challenge them.

That this was not a coincidence, but part of a larger pattern, moreover, becomes obvious when one studies the bigger picture, and realizes that Ball and Belin had additional evidence supporting that someone or somebody--perhaps the actual assassin or assassins--had come down from the top floors on an elevator just after the shooting...but chose to hide this by propping up the highly dubious theory Jack Dougherty was on this elevator, and that Oswald himself ran down the stairs.

The Dougherty Problem (in which the Warren Commission manipulates and distorts the statements of a mentally handicapped person to hide that President Kennedy's assassin or assassins could easily have escaped the school book depository)

Let's re-read the final paragraph in Howard Willens' March 10, 1964, journal entry.

Only this time let's highlight the last line...

"After the above meeting various members of the staff gathered in my office to make their suggestions regarding alterations in the schedule. Present were Messrs. Redlich, Eisenberg, Ball, Belin, Stern, Liebeler and Ely. As usual there was considerable debate among the members of the staff regarding the function of the Commission and the definition of what constitutes a thorough job. Apparently during the day’s testimony the Chief Justice had indicated his readiness to receive a clean record and not pursue in very much detail the various inconsistencies. Mr. Ball agreed with the approach suggested by the Chief Justice completely and Mr. Specter thought that we would have to amend our approach to correspond with that of the Chief Justice. Mr. Redlich and Mr. Eisenberg took a strong and articulate contrary view."

Well, from this one might assume Redlich and Eisenberg were concerned...that this new approach would lead to a less-than-thorough investigation. And that they would soon thereafter record their concerns in memorandums...

Well, guess what? They did.

March 12, 1964

MEMORANDUM

TO: J Lee Rankin

FROM: Melvin A. Eisenberg

SUBJECT: Identity of Assassin

I think a thorough investigation should he run on a TSBD employee named Jack Dougherty.

On the morning of November 22, Dougherty was part of a crew laying a new plywood floor on the sixth floor of the TSBD. This crew consisted of Danny Arce, Dougherty, Charles Givens, James ("Junior") Jarman, Billy Lovelady, and Bonnie Rae Williams, all regular employees in the TSBD shipping and. order-filling department.

They were apparently working under the direction of William Shelley the senior employee in that department.

In a written statement to the Dallas Police on November 22,

Dougherty gave the following story: On the morning of November 22, he had worked [with the floor laying crew] on the sixth floor until 12:00, when he went down to the first floor to eat his lunch. After lunch he returned to work (on the sixth floor) and then went down to the fifth floor "to get some stock," when he heard a shot, which sounded as if it had come from inside the building. He then went down to the first floor and asked Eddie Piper, the TSBD Janitor, whether Piper had heard anything. Piper said yes, he had heard 3 shots. Dougherty then returned to the sixth floor.

SA Blake of the Secret Service, who interviewed Dougherty between December 2 and December 5, reported that "when Dougherty was interviewed he seemed to be very confused about time and places. Mr. Truly [Roy S. Truly, Superintendent of the TSBD] furnished the information that although Dougherty is a very good employee and a hard worker, he is mentally retarded and has difficulty in remembering facts, such as dates, times, places, and.has-been especially confused since the assassination."

I am suspicious of Dougherty for several reasons.

(1) He has no alibi. Of the six employees on the floor laying crew, Givens claims to have been with a friend at a parking lot several blocks away when the assassination took place; Williams and Jarman were together on the fifth floor with another employee named Norman; Lovelady was standing outside the TSBD (and was photographed); and Arce claims to have been standing outside the TSBD.

Dougherty was inside the TSBD and all alone.

(2) His story is very thin.

(a) It does not make sense that Dougherty, one of a six-man floor laying crew, should begin working before the other five members returned from lunch.

(b) It is questionable that Dougherty would have had to go to the fifth floor to get "stock" in connection with the floor-laying project.

1/ Dougherty’s father told the FBI that Dougherty had received a medical discharge from the U.S. Army and had considerable difficulty coordinating his mental facilities and his speech.

(c) Jarman, Norman, and Williams, who were at the southeast window of the fifth floor at the time of the assassination, and ran from there to the southwest window, make absolutely no mention of having seen Dougherty on the fifth floor.

(d) It does not seem credible that Dougherty would have gone down to the first floor, found out that the three shots had been fired, and then casually returned to the sixth floor.

(e) No report indicates that Dougherty or anyone else was on the sixth floor when that floor was searched.

(f) Since Dougherty heard the shots on the fifth floor, and since the shots were fired at approximately 12:32, Dougherty must have returned to the sixth floor, allegedly to go back to work, before 12:30. This seems odd, since the TSBD lunch period extends until 12:45.

(3) If Dougherty is “mentally retarded,” it may explain some of the inconsistencies in his story. On the other hand, the “mental retardation” may be an emotional problem, which would itself be grounds for suspicion. In this connection, I find disturbing Truly’s comment that Dougherty “has been especially confused since the assassination.”

cc: Ball

Belin

Craig

Adams

Specter

Redlich

And Eisenberg wasn't the only one concerned Ball and Belin would miss something, who thought interviewing Dougherty was a very good idea.

March 25, 1964

MEMORANDUM

TO: Messrs. Ball, Belin, Craig

FROM: Norman Redlich

SUBJECT: The Mystery of the West Elevator

This memorandum results from a discussion between Mr. Belin and myself on March 24, following Roy Truly's testimony.

Roy Truly has testified that when he and Patrolman Baker ran to the rear of the first floor, neither elevator was there. Truly pressed the button for the west elevator and shouted up the shaft asking that the elevator be released. It was necessary to do this since the elevator would not work if the gate was open. Once the gate was closed the elevator would come if the button was pressed. Truly did not try to get the east elevator, because this operates only by hand and can be run only by a person who is in it.

Truly claims that he looked up the shaft and saw that both elevators were together on the same floor.

As part of this picture we should also remember that approximately 15 minutes before the assassination Jarman and Norman took the west elevator up to the fifth floor.

Truly and Baker started climbing the stairs no more than two or three minutes after the assassination. (Mr. Belin timed it at less than two minutes.) At each landing Truly and Baker looked to see whether an elevator was present and they did not see one. They certainly would have noticed the west elevator because this was most directly in line with their vision at each landing.

It was only when they reached the fifth floor that they saw an elevator, but, surprisingly enough, it was the east elevator which they saw. The west elevator was not present on the fifth floor where Truly thought he had seen it from below, and where it could have been expected to be found since Jarman and Norman had taken it there to have their lunch.

Truly testified further that he and Baker took the east elevator to the seventh floor. The west elevator was not on the seventh floor when they reached that floor. He cannot say that the west elevator was not on the sixth floor at this time.

Truly and Baker then looked around the roof and took the east elevator back down from the seventh floor. On the way down he noticed that the west elevator was on the fifth floor again.

There are several alternative explanations for the movements of the west elevator.

First, let us assume that Truly was correct in his first observation that the east and west elevators were both on the fifth floors of approximately two minutes after the assassination. This means that by the time Truly and Baker reached the fifth floor, it was gone. We know that someone would have had to close the gate during this period, because Truly was unable to get the elevator by pressing the button when he was on the first floor. This person then might have taken the elevator up to the sixth floor while Truly and Baker were running up the stairs. At this moment, however, we have Jarman, Williams and Norman who say that they didn't hear any elevator. Moreover, they have never admitted that anyone else was on the floor.

It is also possible that someone got on the elevator on the fifth floor at this time and headed down while Truly and Baker were running up the stairs. Here again, Jarman, Norman, and Williams didn't hear anyone and it is quite unlikely that Truly and Baker would not have noticed the elevator moving as they reached each landing.

While it is possible, therefore, that a worker moved the west elevator either up or down from the fifth floor during this period, we don't know the name of such a worker and we have the problem of Jarman, Williams and Norman who have to be questioned again as to whether they heard anyone on the floor and whether they heard the elevator move.

The second possible assumption is that the elevator was not on the fifth floor at all, but was on the sixth floor with the gate open at the time that Truly rang for it on the first floor. This would mean that someone on the sixth floor would have had to close the gate and take the elevator down-- either directly to the fifth floor where Truly saw it after he was on the roof, or to some lower floor and then back up to the fifth floor. In either case, it would mean that someone got on the west elevator on the sixth floor just a very short time after Oswald left the floor via the stairway. Significantly, none of the investigations appears to have turned up anyone who admits to being on the west elevator at this time.

Truly thinks that Dougherty was working there at this time. I know that Messrs. Ball and Belin plan to question Dougherty, who would have to explain why he was up there working so soon after the shots were fired. A previous memorandum on Dougherty, written by Mr. Eisenberg, raises questions about Dougherty which should be looked into on the next trip to Dallas.

If Oswald was not acting alone, it is very likely that an employee of the TSBD building was his accomplice. It is also possible that an employee of the TSBD might have information and for some reason be afraid to come forward. Through persistent questioning on such matters as the elevator locations we might be able to locate the person or persons who may know more than they are telling.

I have discussed this matter with Mr. Belin and he shares my feeling that this matter will be the subject of questioning when Messrs. Ball and Belin travel to Dallas again.

So, let 's sum this up. Baker and Truly said the west elevator was not on the fifth floor when they got there. This meant either that someone came down as they ran up--OR that this elevator was on the sixth floor as they rode the east elevator up to the seventh floor. And was brought down later...by persons unknown...

This was upsetting to Redlich. And justifiably so. I mean, here it was, four months after the assassination of the President of the United States, and only now does it occur to him--or anyone investigating the assassination--that it was possible the assassin, or at the very least someone involved in the assassination, took an elevator down while the first policeman to run into the building ran up, and then walked right out of the building.

But wait, it's worse that that. Re-read the last line of the highlighted section above: "In either case, it would mean that someone got on the west elevator on the sixth floor just a very short time after Oswald left the floor via the stairway." Holy guacamole! Redlich is so frightened by the implications of the elevator mystery that he can't even write them down. IF someone got on the west elevator on the sixth floor and rode it down as Baker and Truly ran up the stairs...there's no reason to assume Oswald "left the floor via the stairway." Period. The evidence against Oswald is circumstantial. The only eyewitness putting him on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting is unreliable. No one saw or heard Oswald run down the stairs, and he appeared calm when observed on the second floor shortly after the shooting. IF someone else rode the elevator down, well, then, there's no freakin' reason to assume Oswald was on the sixth floor during the shooting. No reason whatsoever.

Redlich's failure to acknowledge this, moreover, speaks volumes. It demonstrates that, no matter what they said in 1964, or in the decades to follow, the commission's staff was committed to claiming Oswald was Kennedy's assassin from the get-go, and unwilling to discuss or acknowledge any alternative in which he was not the shooter.

The commission let this dangle for several weeks. Apparently, they were thinking up the best way to resolve this issue.

Here is how they resolved this and a number of related issues in the Warren Report.

Oswald's Actions in Building After Assassination

In considering whether Oswald was at the southeast corner window at the time the shots were fired, the Commission has reviewed the testimony of witnesses who saw Oswald in the building within minutes after the assassination. The Commission has found that Oswald's movements, as described by these witnesses, are consistent with his having been at the window at 12:30 p.m.

The encounter in the lunchroom.

The first person to see Oswald after the assassination was Patrolman M. L. Baker of the Dallas Police Department. Baker was riding a two-wheeled motorcycle behind the last press car of the motorcade. As he turned the corner from Main onto Houston at a speed of about 5 to 10 miles per hour, a strong wind blowing from the north almost unseated him. At about this time he heard the first shot. Having recently Heard the sounds of rifles while on a hunting trip, Baker recognized the shots as that of a high-powered rifle; "it sounded high and I immediately kind of looked up, and I had a feeling that it came from the building, either right in front of me [the Depository Building] or of the one across to the right of it." He saw pigeons flutter upward. He was not certain, "but I am pretty sure they came from the building right on the northwest corner." He heard two more shots spaced "pretty well even to me." After the third shot, he "revved that motorcycle up," drove to the northwest corner of Elm and Houston, and parked approximately 10 feet from the traffic signal. As he was parking he noted that people were "falling, and they were rolling around down there * * * grabbing their children" and rushing about. A woman screamed, "Oh, they have shot that man, they have shot that man." Baker "had it in mind that the shots came from the top of this building here," so he ran straight to the entrance of the Depository Building. Baker testified that he entered the lobby of the building and "spoke out and asked where the stairs or elevator was... and this man, Mr. Truly, spoke up and says, it seems to me like he says, 'I am a building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you.' " Baker and building superintendent Roy Truly went through a second set of doors and stopped at a swinging door where Baker bumped into Truly's back. They went through the swinging door and continued at "a good trot" to the northwest corner of the floor where Truly hoped to find one of the two freight elevators. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1061, p. 148.) Neither elevator was there. Truly pushed the button for the west elevator which operates automatically if the gate is closed. He shouted twice, "Turn loose the elevator." When the elevator failed to come, Baker said, "let's take the stairs," and he followed Truly up the stairway, which is to the west of the elevator.

The stairway is located in the northwest corner of the Depository Building. The stairs from one floor to the next are "L-shaped," with both legs of the "L" approximately the same length. Because the stairway itself is enclosed, neither Baker nor Truly could see anything on the second-floor hallway until they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.

On the second-floor landing there is a small open area with a door at the east end. This door leads into a small vestibule, and another door leads from the vestibule into the second-floor lunchroom. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1118, p. 150. ) The lunchroom door is usually open, but the first door is kept shut by a closing mechanism on the door. This vestibule door is solid except for a small glass window in the upper part of the door. As Baker reached the second floor, he was about 20 feet from the vestibule door. He intended to continue around to his left toward the stairway going up but through the window in the door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man walking in the vestibule toward the lunchroom.

Since the vestibule door is only a few feet from the lunchroom door, the man must. have entered the vestibule only a second or two before Baker arrived at the top of the stairwell. Yet he must have entered the vestibule door before Truly reached the top of the stairwell, since Truly did not see him. If the man had passed from the vestibule into the lunchroom, Baker could not have seen him. Baker said:

"He [Truly] had already started around the bend to come to the next elevator going up, I was coming out this one on the second floor, and I don't know, I was kind of sweeping this area as I come up, I was looking from right to left and as I got. to this door here I caught a glimpse of this man, just, you know, a sudden glimpse ... and it looked to me like he was going away from me. ...I can't say whether he had gone on through that door [the lunchroom door] or not. All I did was catch a glance at him, and evidently he was--this door might have been, you know, closing and almost shut at that time."

With his revolver drawn, Baker opened the vestibule door and ran into the vestibule. He saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom. Baker stopped at the door of the lunchroom and commanded, "Come here." The man turned and walked back toward Baker. He had been proceeding toward the rear of the lunchroom. Along a side wall of the lunchroom was a soft drink rending machine, but at that time the man had nothing in his hands.

Meanwhile, Truly had run up several steps toward the third floor. Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the lunchroom "facing Lee Harvey Oswald. Baker turned to Truly and said, "Do you know this man, does he work here?" Truly replied, "Yes." Baker stated later that the man did not seem to be out of breath; he seemed calm. "He never did say a word or nothing. In fact, he didn't change his expression one bit." Truly said of Oswald: "He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have been if somebody confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face." Truly thought that the officer's gun at that time appeared to be almost touching the middle portion of Oswald's body. Truly also noted at this time that Oswald's hands were empty.

In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the lunchroom from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived, Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from the time of the shot until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom. Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about 200 feet from the corner of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots. Truly stood in front of the building. At a given signal, they reenacted the event. Baker's movements were timed with a stopwatch. On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing was 1 minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds.

A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom by stairway. Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner. He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald's rifle was actually found after the shooting. Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a "fast walk" took 1 minute, 14 seconds. The second test followed immediately after the first. The only interval was the time necessary to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk back to the southeast corner. Howlett was not short winded at the end of either test run.

The minimum time required by Baker to park his motorcycle and reach the second-floor lunchroom was within 3 seconds of the time needed to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor down the stairway to the lunchroom. The time actually required for Baker and Truly to reach the second floor on November 22 was probably longer than in the test runs. For example, Baker required 15 seconds after the simulated shot to ride his motorcycle 180 to 200 feet, park it, and run 45 feet to the building. No allowance was made for the special conditions which existed on the day of the assassination--possible delayed reaction to the shot, jostling with the crowd of people on the steps and scanning the area along Elm Street and the parkway. Baker said, "We simulated the shots and by the time we got there, we did everything that I did that day, and this would be the minimum, because I am sure that I, you know, it took me a little longer." On the basis of this time test, therefore, the Commission concluded that Oswald could have fired the shots and still have been present in the second-floor lunchroom when seen by Baker and Truly. That Oswald descended by stairway from the sixth floor to the second floor lunchroom is consistent with the movements of the two elevators, which would have provided the other possible means of descent. When Truly, accompanied by Baker, ran to the rear of the first floor, he was certain that both elevators, which occupy the same shaft, were on the fifth floor. Baker, not realizing that there were two elevators, thought that only one elevator was in the shaft and that it was two or three floors above the second floor. In the few seconds which elapsed while Baker and Truly ran from the first to the second floor, neither of these slow elevators could have descended from the fifth to the second floor. Furthermore, no elevator was at the second floor when they arrived there. Truly and Baker continued up the stairs after the encounter with Oswald in the lunchroom. There was no elevator on the third or fourth floor. The east elevator was on the fifth floor when they arrived; the west elevator was not. They took the east elevator to the seventh floor and ran up a stairway to the roof where they searched for several minutes.

Jack Dougherty, an employee working on the fifth floor, testified that he took the west elevator to the first floor after hearing a noise which sounded like a backfire. Eddie Piper, the janitor, told Dougherty that the President had been shot, but in his testimony Piper did not mention either seeing or talking with Dougherty during these moments of excitement. Both Dougherty and Piper were confused witnesses. They had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon. Truly was probably correct in stating that the west elevator was on the fifth floor when he looked up the elevator shaft from the first floor. The west elevator was not on the fifth floor when Baker and Truly reached that floor, probably because Jack Dougherty took it to the first floor while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs or in the lunchroom with Oswald. Neither elevator could have been used by Oswald as a means of descent. Oswald's use of the stairway is consistent with the testimony of other employees in the building. Three employees James Jarman, Jr., Harold Norman, and Bonnie Ray Williams were watching the parade from the fifth floor, directly below the window from which the shots were fired. They rushed to the west windows after the shots were fired and remained there until after they saw Patrolman Baker's white helmet on the fifth floor moving toward the elevator.

While they were at the west windows their view of the stairwell was completely blocked by shelves and boxes. This is the period during which Oswald would have descended the stairs. In all likelihood Dougherty took the elevator down from the fifth floor after Jarman, Norman, and Williams ran to the west windows and were deciding what to do. None of these three men saw Dougherty, probably because of the anxiety of the moment and because of the books which may have blocked the view. Neither Jarman, Norman, Williams, or Dougherty saw Oswald.

Victoria Adams, who worked on the fourth floor of the Depository Building, claimed that within about 1 minute following the shots she ran from a window on the south side of the fourth floor, down the rear stairs to the first floor, where she encountered two Depository employees--William Shelley and Billy Lovelady. If her estimate of time is correct, she reached the bottom of the stairs before Truly and Baker started up, and she must have run down the stairs ahead of Oswald and would probably have seen or heard him. Actually she noticed no one on the back stairs. If she descended from the fourth to the first floor as fast as she claimed in her testimony, she would have seen Baker or Truly on the first floor or on the stairs, unless they were already in the second-floor lunchroom talking to Oswald. When she reached the first floor, she actually saw Shelley and Lovelady slightly east of the east elevator. Shelley and Lovelady, however, have testified that they were watching the parade from the top step of the building entrance when Gloria Calverly, who works in the Depository Building, ran up and said that the President had been shot.

Lovelady and Shelley moved out into the street. About this time Shelley saw Truly and Patrolman Baker go into the building. Shelley and Lovelady, at a fast walk or trot, turned west into the railroad yards and then to the west side of the Depository Building. They reentered the building by the rear door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance. On entering, Lovelady saw a girl on the first floor who he believes was Victoria Adams. If Miss Adams accurately recalled meeting Shelley and Lovelady when she reached the bottom of the stairs, then her estimate of the time when she descended from the fourth floor is incorrect, and she actually came down the stairs several minutes after Oswald and after Truly and Baker as well. (WR 149-154)

So, there you go. By the publication of the Commission's report, the once suspect Jack Dougherty had been transformed into a useful hole plug. The Commission needed to explain how the west elevator made its way down from the fifth (or sixth) floor as Baker and Truly ascended the stairs, and they needed to put a name to the person inside. So they picked Dougherty.

So, now, let's go back and see if this makes sense.

Here is how Dougherty described his actions in an 11-22-63 affidavit to Dallas County: "I went back to work at 12:45 p.m. I had already gone back to work and I gone down on the fifth to get some stock when I heard a shot. It sounded like it was coming from inside the building, but I couldn't tell from where. I went down on the first floor, and asked a man named Eddie Piper if he had heard anything and he said yes, that he had heard three shots. I then went back on the sixth floor. I didn't see anyone on the floor..." (24H206)

And here is how he described his actions in an 11-22-63 statement to the FBI: "I was working on the fifth floor of the building at 411 Elm Street at about 12:45 P.M. or 1:00 P.M., when I heard a loud explosion which sounded like a rifle shot coming from the next floor above me." (19H621)

And here is how his actions were described in a 12-19-63 FBI report written by SA William O. Johnson, based upon his interview with Dougherty:"Dougherty stated that he worked on the 6th floor until 12:00 PM at which time he went to the 1st floor to eat his lunch. He said he went back to work at approximately 12:45 PM, at which time he returned to the 6th floor. He stated that as soon as he arrived on the 6th floor, he went down to the 5th floor to get some stock. Dougherty stated that it was while he was on the 5th floor that he heard a loud noise. He said that it appeared to have come from within the building but could not tell where. He said that he went down to the 1st floor and saw a man, Eddie Piper, and asked him if he had heard a loud noise, and Piper told him he had heard three loud noises. He also told him that someone had just shot the President. Dougherty stated that he then went back up to the sixth floor. He said that he used the elevator to go up and when he went back up there, there was no one on the sixth floor." (19H619)

And here is what he apparently agreed to in a 3-19-64 statement to the FBI: "At the time President Kennedy was shot, I was at a point about 10 feet from the elevator on the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. I was alone at this time." (19H618)

Now, this fits the commission's needs to a tee (in that it places Dougherty on an elevator after the shooting), except for two things: one is that Dougherty said he returned to work and went back upstairs at 12:45 or afterwards; and the other is that Dougherty fails to say which elevator he used to go upstairs.

If Dougherty says he used the east elevator...well, this strongly suggests he used this elevator AFTER Baker and Truly returned to the first floor in this elevator around 12:40, and supports Dougherty's recollection he went upstairs at this time. Of course, this also leaves the occupants of the west elevator as Baker and Truly charged up the stairs a mystery...a mystery the Commission couldn't afford to leave unsolved...

Let us look then at Dougherty's 4-8-64 testimony before the Warren Commission. (While that sounds grand and all, it was really just Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball, Dougherty, and a court reporter.)

Mr. BALL - And it also says, this report from Mr. Johnson, states that you told him that just prior to 12 noon you and five other men were working on the sixth floor. Were you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes; we were working on the sixth floor.

Mr. BALL - What were you doing?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I was getting some stock off of the sixth floor.

Mr. BALL - You weren't helping the men lay floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir.

Mr. BALL - Did you go down to lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - To what floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - The first floor.

Mr. BALL - How did you get down there?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well---used the elevator.

Mr. BALL - Did you go down alone or with someone?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I went down alone.

Mr. BALL - Where did you eat your lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - In the domino room.

Now, let's break in right here. The FBI report by Mr. Johnson said Dougherty came downstairs at 12 noon, and that he came down alone. Well, the other five men on the floor "just prior to 12 noon" all said they came down before that time, in fact, 10-15 minutes before that time. That means Dougherty was alone on the sixth floor for 10-15 minutes before he came down alone. During this time Oswald was presumed to have come back up from the fifth floor and to have begun preparing his rifle, and arranging the boxes of the sniper's nest, etc.

Well, why didn't Ball ask Dougherty about this, that is, if he heard footsteps or anything indicating Oswald came up to the sixth floor at this time? I mean, in the scenario pushed by the commission, Oswald was last spotted on the fifth floor around 11:45. What did he do for those fifteen minutes, if he didn't come up to the sixth? Did he actually put his rifle together on the fifth floor? And bring it up to the sixth? Had he counted the men going down in the elevators, and realized Dougherty was still on the sixth? And then waited for Dougherty to go down at 12?

It's not impossible, but Ball's avoiding this issue, by failing to note that Johnson's report made clear that Dougherty stayed on the sixth floor until 12 noon, and to ask what happened in the 10-15 minutes Dougherty was alone up there, is indeed suspicious.

Suspicious Omission #14a 4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Jack Dougherty what time he came down for lunch, and thereby conceals that Dougherty had previously claimed he was on the sixth floor until 12, and would thereby have been on the sixth floor when Charles Givens claimed he last saw Oswald.

Mr. BALL - Now, what time did you go back to work?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Oh, at 12:30.

Mr. BALL - Did you know that the President was going to pass in a motorcade that noon?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, they said something about it.

Mr. BALL - Did you intend to go out and watch him?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I would have loved to have went out and watched him but the steps were so crowded---there was no way in the world I could get out there.

Mr. BALL - Did you take a look at it---did you go out and take a look at it, or didn't you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well---no, sir.

Mr. BALL - Now, you were on the first floor in the domino room when you finished your lunch, didn't you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - And did you stay there any length of time after you finished your lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir---just a short length of time.

Mr. BALL - Then what did you do?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, then, I went back to work.

Mr. BALL - And where did you go to work?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Let me see---oh, up to the sixth floor.

Mr. BALL - Did you go to the sixth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - About what time?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - At about 12:40---it was about 12:40.

Mr. BALL - Had you heard any shots before that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes---I heard one---it sounded like a backfire.

Mr. BALL - Where were you when you heard that shot?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I was on the fifth floor.

Mr. BALL - You were on the fifth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Now, Dougherty's testimony should have set off alarm bells. On 3-24-64, Dougherty's boss Roy Truly testified to seeing Dougherty (who never mentioned going back to work on the fifth floor after hearing this "backfire") at work on the fifth floor as he and Baker descended from the roof "between 5 and 10 minutes after the shooting," according to Truly, which was a bit shy of Baker's estimate of spending 5 to 10 minutes up on the roof alone, and 15 minutes or so in the building overall.

Here, see for yourself...

Mr. BELIN. When you got to the fifth floor, as I understand it, the west elevator was not there, but when you started up from the first floor, you thought it was on the fifth floor.

Mr. TRULY. No. When I came down from the second floor---from the seventh floor with the officer, I thought I saw Jack Dougherty on the fifth floor, which he would have had plenty of time to move the elevator down and up and get some stock and come back.

Mr. BELIN. But when you got to the fifth floor that west elevator was not there?

And then later...

Mr. BELIN. I believe you said when you first saw the elevators, you thought they were both on the same floor, the fifth floor.

Mr. TRULY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Then how do you explain that when you got to the fifth floor, one of the elevators was not there?

Mr. TRULY. I don't know, sir. I think one of my boys was getting stock off the fifth floor on the back side, and probably moved the elevator at the time somewheres between the time we were running upstairs. And I would not have remembered that. I mean I wouldn't have really heard that, with the commotion we were making running up the enclosed stairwell.

Mr. BELIN. Did you see anyone on the fifth floor?

Mr. TRULY. Yes. When coming down I am sure I saw Jack Dougherty getting some books off the fifth floor. Now, this is so dim in my mind that I could be making a mistake.

But I believe that he was getting some stock, that he had already gone back to work, and that he was getting some stock off the fifth floor.

Mr. BELIN. You really don't know who was operating the elevator, then, is that correct?

Mr. TRULY. That is correct.

Mr. BELIN. What is your best guess?

Mr. TRULY. My best guess is that Jack Dougherty was.

(3-24-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 3H212-241)

Well, think about it. The convergence of Dougherty's thinking he descended from the fifth floor 10 minutes or more after 12:30, and Truly's thinking he saw Dougherty at work on the fifth floor 10 minutes or so after the shooting, more than suggests the possibility Dougherty did in fact come down from the fifth floor around 12:40. In such case, Truly may have seen Dougherty after Dougherty had heard the loud sound he claimed he heard, but before he decided to come downstairs and talk about it with Eddie Piper.

There's also this. While Dougherty's statements and testimony have been undoubtedly confusing, they have been clear on a number of issues. One is that Dougherty only came down to the fifth floor after first going up to the sixth. Another is that Dougherty never said anything about going back to work after coming down from the fifth. For Truly to have seen Dougherty at work on the fifth floor as he (Truly) came down from the seventh, then, is a clear indication he saw Dougherty BEFORE Dougherty came down and talked with Eddie Piper. For Truly to have seen Dougherty after Dougherty came down and talked with Piper would mean that Dougherty took a trip back up to the fifth floor that he never mentioned, and went back to work on the fifth floor after hearing a loud sound and being told the President had been shot, which he never mentioned. It defies belief. It is far more logical, after all, to assume the moment someone was seen doing something he admitted doing was at the time he admitted doing it, particularly when both he and the person seeing him placed this event around the same time, than to assume he actually did this thing twice but forgot to tell us about one of the times.

Now, this is quite startling. It follows from this that the real assassin (not Oswald, as he was spotted on the second floor by Baker as Baker ran up the stairs), or assassins, descended from the sixth floor via the west elevator after the shooting as Baker and Truly were running upstairs or even after Baker and Truly reached the roof (thereby leaving this elevator on the first floor, where Dougherty discovered it a few minutes later.)

Perhaps, then, what Dougherty thought could have been a shot wasn't a shot at all but was instead a sound related to Baker and Truly's coming down from the roof.

Let's return, then, to Dougherty's testimony, and see 1) if he says which elevator he used to go upstairs; 2) how he describes the "shot;" and 3) if he admits going back to work on the fifth floor after returning downstairs and talking to Eddie Piper.

Mr. BALL - Now, When you left your lunch, did you go to the fifth floor or the sixth floor to go back to work?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I went on the fifth floor when I was getting ready to go down to eat lunch.

Mr. BALL - Yes; and then what happened?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, at that time--I was about 10 feet away---

Mr. BALL - Wait a minute---did you hear the shots before or after you had your lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Before---before I ate my lunch.

Mr. BALL - You heard shots before you ate your lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Let's see---yes, I believe I did.

Mr. BALL - Well, now, you remember having your lunch, do you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Do you remember after you had your lunch, you went back to work that day?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - When you talked on the day this accident happened, on the 22d of November 1963, in a statement made to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, Mr. Dougherty, you told them you went down to the first floor to eat your lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - That's right.

Mr. BALL - And that you went back to work?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - And you told him on the 19th day of December, Mr. Johnson, that you went back to work on the sixth floor, and as soon as you arrived on the sixth floor, you went down to the fifth floor to get some stock?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir; that's right.

Mr. BALL - And while you were on the fifth floor, you heard a loud noise?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - That's right---it sounded like a car backfiring.

Mr. BALL - And did you hear more than one loud explosion or noise?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No; that was the only one I heard.

Mr. BALL - You only heard one?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - And where did it sound like it came from?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - It sounded like it came from overhead somewhere.

Mr. BALL - From overhead?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - How did you get to the fifth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Elevator.

Mr. BALL - You were on the fifth floor when you heard this, were you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Which elevator did you take?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, you see, there's one on this side and one on this side the one on this side is the one I took.

Mr. BALL - Well, now, "The one on this side and the one on this side," doesn't mean much when it's written down.

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I know it.

Mr. BALL - Can you tell me whether it was the east side or the west side elevator?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - East side.

Mr. BALL - Is it the one that you punch a button on?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - Or the one that you use a control on?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - It's the one you push a button on.

Mr. BALL - The one you push a button on?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - I believe that is the west side, isn't it?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, I believe it is.

Mr. BALL - Now, that's the one you took up?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

One can almost see Ball breath a sigh of relief at this point.

Mr. BALL - Where did you take that---to what floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I took it up to the sixth floor.

Mr. BALL - Then what did you do?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, when I got through getting stock off of the sixth floor, I came back down to the fifth floor.

Mr. BALL - What did you do on the fifth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I got some stock.

Mr. BALL - Then what happened then?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, then immediately I heard a loud noise---it sounded like a car backfiring, and I came back down to the first floor, and I asked Eddie Piper, I said, "Piper, what was that?" I says, "Has the President been shot?'. He said, "Yes."

Mr. BALL - You didn't say--did you say, 'Has the President been shot?"---you told the FBI agent that you went down to the first floor and you saw a man named Eddie Piper and asked him if he heard a loud noise.

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I asked him that too.

Mr. BALL - And Piper said he had heard three loud noises and told you that somebody had Just shot the President; is that right?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - That's right.

Mr. BALL - Who mentioned the fact that the President had been shot first--- you or Eddie Piper?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Eddie Piper.

Mr. BALL - Did you say anything to Piper about the President being shot?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir.

Mr. BALL - When you talked to Eddie Piper, did you know that the President had been shot?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir; I didn't know that at the time.

Mr. BALL - When is the first time you heard that the President had been shot?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - When Eddie told me that.

Mr. BALL - Eddie told you that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

So here is yet another indication Dougherty came down from the fifth floor 10 minutes or so after the shooting. If Dougherty had descended from the fifth floor just after the shots were fired, Piper may very well have told him he'd heard three shots. But he wouldn't have told him the President had been shot. This is something he wouldn't have known for several minutes after the shooting, after witnesses who'd seen the impact of the shots--or who'd talked to someone who'd seen the impact of the shots--had come pouring back into the building.

Mr. BALL - You told Mr. Johnson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that when you were on the fifth floor, you heard a loud noise and it appeared to have come from within the building, but you couldn't tell where you told him that on the 19th; did you tell him that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - On the day that this happened, on the 22d of November, you told the FBI agents Ellington and Anderson that you heard "a loud explosion which sounded like a rifle shot coming from the next floor above me." Now, did you tell them that it sounded like a rifle shot, coming from the next floor above you, or didn't you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well; I believe I told them it sounded like a car backfiring.

Mr. BALL - Well, did you tell them it sounded like it was from the floor above you, or didn't you tell them that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No.

Mr. BALL - You did not tell them that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No.

Mr. BALL - Did it sound like it came from the floor above you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, at the time it did---yes.

Mr. BALL - Tell me this---when you heard that explosion or whatever it was--- that loud noise, where were you on the fifth floor-tell me exactly where you were?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I was about 10 feet from the west elevator---the west side of the elevator.

Mr. BALL - That's the elevator that uses the push button; is that right?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - And what were you doing?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I was getting some stock.

Mr. BALL - And what did you do then?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I came on back downstairs.

Mr. BALL - How did you come downstairs?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I used that push button elevator on the west side.

Mr. BALL - Did you hear Mr. Truly yell anything up the elevator shaft?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I didn't hear anybody yell.

Mr. BALL - Or, did you see Mr. Truly?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, when the FBI men---I imagine it was who it was---he showed me his credentials, but he asked me who the manager was, and I told him, "Mr. Truly." He told me to go find him. Well, I didn't know where he was so I started from the first floor and Just started looking for him, and by the time I got to the sixth floor, they had found a gun and shells.

Mr. BALL - When you went up to the sixth floor, it was after they found the shotgun and shells?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, sir; and I found out later he was on the fourth floor, which I didn't find.

Now, this is interesting. No follow-up. In Dougherty's 11-22-63 affidavit, it was claimed he'd returned to the sixth floor after speaking to Piper, but saw no one. This was repeated in the FBI's 12-19-63 report on Dougherty. It seems obvious, then, that Ball would ask Piper about this in his testimony. But it is never mentioned elsewhere. It seems apparent, then, that Ball felt the question and answer above had covered that aspect of Dougherty's testimony, and that Dougherty had not, in fact, raced right back upstairs after talking to Piper, as one would assume from reading the affidavit and report.

(And, yes, should you be wondering, there is some support for Dougherty's claim he tried to help an FBI agent, but that this was after the discovery of the rifle and shells. While Nat Pinkston, the first FBI agent in the building, failed to write a report on his visit to the building, he did eventually grant an interview with the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, and admit that by the time he reached the sixth floor, the rifle had already been discovered.)

Ball then proceeded to ask Dougherty about Oswald. To which Dougherty had little to add.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see a gun around there?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir; I sure didn't.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see anybody with a gun in the place?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir.

Mr. BALL - Did you see any strangers in the building that day?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see Lee Oswald carry any sort of large package?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, I didn't, but some of the fellows said they did.

Mr. BALL - Who said that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, Bill Shelley, he told me that he thought he saw him carrying a fairly good-sized package.

Mr. BALL - When did Shelley tell you that?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, it was--the day after it happened.

(Note that Dougherty has just handed Ball a present. He said that although he never saw Oswald with a large package--which Ball presumed to have been holding the rifle used in the assassination--he recalled William Shelley saying he thought he saw Oswald with such a package. The problem is that Ball has already taken Shelley's testimony--annoyingly, it was just the day before! So...does Ball re-call Shelley and ask him if he saw Oswald with a large package? Or ask the FBI to go out and have a talk with Shelley? Apparently not. Ball does call Shelley back to testify on 5-14, however. He asks him about the boxes in the sniper's nest and a few other questions. But he fails to ask him if he saw Oswald with a large package. While this could have been an over-sight, it's hard to see it as such, given the importance of the issue, and Ball's predilection for pre-interviewing witnesses. One might reasonably assume, then, that Ball did ask Shelley about this in a pre-interview conducted before his testimony on either 4-7 or 5-14, and that Shelley provided an answer Ball chose to keep off the record. Perhaps he told him he saw Oswald with a package but that it wasn't large enough to have held a rifle. Who knows?)

Mr. BALL - Are you sure you were on the fifth floor when you heard the shots?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes, I'm positive.

Mr. BALL - Did you see any other employee on the fifth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir; I didn't see nobody---there wasn't nobody on the fifth floor at all--it was just myself.

Mr. BALL - You told me that just before you heard the shots, you had been on the sixth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - And then you went down to the fifth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - That's right.

Mr. BALL - Did you see anybody on the sixth floor when you were there, before you went to the fifth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Oh, yes; I did.

Mr. BALL - Who?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, there was Bill Shelley, Billy Lovelady---

Mr. BALL - That was in the morning, wasn't it?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - That wasn't after lunch, was it?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir.

Mr. BALL - After lunch, did you ever see them on the sixth floor?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - No, sir; I didn't.

Mr. BALL - Now, did you hear this shot either before or after lunch?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - It was before lunch it was before lunch.

Mr. BALL - You think it was before lunch you heard the shot?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - I believe it was--yes, sir.

Mr. BALL - And you were alone, were you?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - That's all I have to ask you, and this will be written up and if you would like to come down and read it and sign it, you can, or you can waive your signature.

What do you want to do?

Mr. DOUGHERTY - Well, whatever you want to do---it doesn't make any difference.

(The 4-8-64 Testimony of Jack Dougherty, 10:50 A.M. 6H373-382)

And that's it. Dougherty was tired of explaining stuff to Ball. And Ball was tired of questioning someone who couldn't be trusted to tell him what he wanted to hear.

Dougherty had testified to being on the fifth floor around 12:40, not 12:30, when the Commission needed him to be on the fifth floor.

The possibility someone descended on the west elevator as Baker and Truly ran upstairs remained just that, a possibility.

One would think, then, that somewhere in the Warren Commission's records is a memo outlining why this possibility should be rejected, or accepted.

But one would be wrong.

Suspicious Omission #14b 4-8-64. Ball, Belin, and the Warren Commission fail to explore the possibility Dougherty went upstairs to work after the shooting, after someone else had taken the west elevator to the ground floor.

It falls upon us, then, to do their work for them...more than fifty years after the fact.

Here, then, is a discussion of the elevator issue. Questions challenging the possibility Dougherty heard a sound around 12:40 are asked, and then answered.

The Dougherty Memo Never Written

1. It was claimed Dougherty was mentally handicapped. His initial affidavit said he returned to work at 12:45. Why should we trust his testimony in which he claimed he heard a loud sound from above him in the building at 12:40?

ANSWER: We shouldn't trust his testimony, but look at it within a broader context. Dougherty was used to taking his lunch break from 12:00 to 12:45. On 11-22-63, however, William Shelley, the foreman, let the work crew off at 11:45, so they could clean up, eat their lunches, and get in position for the motorcade. It seems evident that Dougherty was a bit confused by this, and that Dougherty, ever loyal, and ever anxious to prove his worth to his employers, returned to work at 12:30, after taking his customary 45 minute break. (It should be noted, for that matter, that Dougherty was probably on the autistic spectrum as opposed to being slow. I spoke to Buell Frazier at the JFK Lancer Conference on 11-18-17 and he told me Dougherty was smart and friendly, and was a big bear of a man who enjoyed play fights with his younger and smaller co-workers, particularly Frazier and Billy Lovelady.)

2. Dougherty appeared to be confused in his testimony. He swore he heard this loud sound before lunch. In this same testimony, he'd said he'd already eaten his lunch and returned to work before he heard this loud sound. Was he just daft? Or is there a logical explanation for this?

ANSWER: The latter. Dougherty opened up the building in the morning. He arrived before 7:00, more than an hour before most everyone else. It seems likely, then, that he would sometimes eat his lunch a bit early. He knew, however, that the other employees normally ate their lunches between 12:00 and 12:45. If he went back to work around 12:33 or so, and then went up to the sixth and then fifth floors, as he claimed, before coming down, he would have come down around 12:38 or so.

And what would he have seen upon his descent?

Mr. BALL - Put a circle to show the general area where you and the rest of them stood around and talked.

Mr. FRAZIER - Right in there is right around near the telephone and we were just right around in there.

Mr. BALL - Where did you go?

Mr. FRAZIER - We left, you know, after we stood and talked with some guys there, some of them had eaten and some of them didn't, some of them had sandwiches in their hands, so naturally I felt like eating and I walked around the bin and walked down the steps there.

Mr. BALL - Got your lunch?

Mr. FRAZIER - Right.

Mr. BALL - Come back up?

Mr. FRAZIER - No, sir; I didn't come back up. I was sitting eating my lunch. I looked at my watch and didn't have but 10 minutes, so I naturally ate faster than normal, so I was eating a couple of sandwiches, and eat an apple or something and come right back up and the guys, the people who worked there, standing around on the first floor, some of them eating their lunches and others merely talking.

Mr. BALL - You never went back to work?

Mr. FRAZIER - No, sir; we didn't. I didn't work any more that day.

(The 3-11-64 Testimony of Buell Wesley Frazier, 2H210-245)

So Dougherty was telling the truth, for at least some of his co-workers. He'd heard the loud sound before they'd eaten their lunch.

3. Baker and Truly raced up the stairs shortly after the shooting, and then took possession of the east elevator for the next 10 minutes or so. If Dougherty didn't take possession of the west elevator until after someone else had come down, he would have taken possession of this elevator at 12:34 or so, and have maintained possession of this elevator for 6 minutes or so. Did anyone else claim they used this elevator at this time, and, if not, who was the first person other than Dougherty to use this elevator after the shooting?

ANSWER: The first person known to ride the west elevator after 12:30 outside Dougherty was Dallas Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney, who spent a number of minutes searching the area around the railroad tracks before being told to search the depository. Mooney claimed he ran into the west elevator with two women, and that the elevator took them to the second floor and broke down. That the elevator did in fact break down, was confirmed, moreover, by Vickie Adams. She returned to the building around 12:38, and claimed that after talking about the shooting with a number of employees on the second floor, she tried to take the west elevator back up to her office on the fourth floor, but that she couldn't get it to work.

So let's say this was 12:41. And that Mooney rode the elevator at 12:40. It still remains possible that Dougherty returned to work at 12:34, took the west elevator up to the sixth floor, grabbed a box, went back down to the fifth floor around 12:36 (after Jarman, Norman, and Williams had raced down), heard a loud sound above him as he was grabbing another box, was observed by Roy Truly as Truly descended at 12:38, descended to the first floor, and spoke to Eddie Piper around 12:40, just as Mooney ran into the elevator.

4. Why should Truly's Dougherty sighting cause us to re-examine the theory Dougherty descended from the fifth floor after hearing a shot? Can't we just assume Dougherty returned to work after talking to Piper?

Answer: No. Dougherty never said he went back to work after hearing the loud sound and talking to Piper. While Dougherty did say he returned to the sixth floor after hearing the loud sound and talking to Piper, his testimony clarified that he didn't return to the sixth floor until after the rifle was found at 1:22. While this by no means proves Dougherty didn't return to work after talking to Piper, it is undoubtedly more logical to assume Dougherty was correct about hearing a loud sound around 12:40, and then descending from the fifth floor, than to assume he was wrong about the time he heard the sound, wrong about his descending right after hearing this sound, and neglectful for not telling us that after talking to Piper, and finding out the President had been shot, he went right back to work. The pieces fit in one scenario. But not the other. There's also this... Mooney's testimony suggests that he found the west elevator on the first floor around 12:40--12:41. Baker and Truly's testimony suggests they descended in the east elevator around 12:38. It follows, then, that, Dougherty, should he have been working on the fifth floor when Truly descended, as claimed, quit working within a minute or so of Truly's descent. Well, this, in turn, suggests that he quit due to an interruption--such as his hearing a loud sound.

5. If the sound Dougherty heard wasn't a shot being fired, why didn't he hear a shot being fired?

ANSWER: He was somewhere deep within the building. Troy West, the shipping clerk, was eating lunch and drinking coffee at his table near the middle of the first floor; he testified that he didn't hear any shots. If Dougherty was sitting in the domino room, or in the bathroom, when the shots were fired, he would not have heard any shots, either. If he was relying on the same clock as Eddie Piper, which was five minutes slow, moreover, he would have gone back to work at 12:35, just in time to enter the west elevator after its descent from above.

Of course, we can only guess that Dougherty walked right onto this elevator, because, amazingly, he was NEVER asked, at least not on the record, if he had to call the elevator to the first floor, as presumed. Perhaps this was because there was no upside in asking this question... If Dougherty had said he'd called the elevator down from the fifth floor, after all, the best the commission could hope for was a sigh of relief. But if Dougherty had said the other thing--that he'd walked onto an anxiously waiting elevator that had somehow come down from the fifth floor without anyone's noticing who'd taken it down, well, then, all hell would have broken loose.

So, no, I don't think Ball's failure to ask Dougherty this question was an oversight.

Suspicious Omission #15 4-8-64. Warren Commission Attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Jack Dougherty if he called the west elevator to the first floor or if it was on the ground floor waiting for him, something that Dougherty may not have remembered, but something that was of vital importance and needed to be asked.

6. What did Dougherty hear if it wasn't a shot?

ANSWER: Well, one possibility is that he heard a sound related to Baker and Truly's running around on the roof, and subsequent descent using the east elevator. Was it the slamming of the door to the roof?

The exact nature of this door remains a bit of a mystery. But it appears it was some sort of trap door or hatch.

Mr. BELIN - Officer Baker, I am going to hand you what the court reporter, what the Commission reporter, has marked as Exhibit 507 which purports to be a diagram of the seventh floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building and on that diagram you will see at the top the marks of two elevators and then, what looks to be the south, a stairway marked "Ladder to the roof."

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - What is the fact as to whether or not this stairway marked "Ladder to the roof" is the stairway that you took to go to the roof?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; it would be.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Here is the top half of Exhibit 507.

Note that one can easily make out that someone is standing in front of the north window. This window is about ten feet to the west of the west elevator, which puts it right by where Dougherty claimed he was standing at the time. Dougherty was purportedly a big fella. If so, it seems highly unlikely Jarman, Norman, and Williams would fail to notice him back there. Williams, by far the tallest of the three, claimed he saw Marrion Baker walk from the stairs to the east elevator from this location. In doing so, Baker would have been in his line of sight for just a few seconds. So how can we believe he failed to see Dougherty, who by nature of his claiming he was standing 10 feet from the west side of the west elevator, and his not using the elevator for 90 seconds or more after the shooting, would have been far easier to spot than Baker?

Or that, even worse, Dougherty failed to notice three excited, if not semi-hysterical, co-workers, racing across the front of the building by the windows, and thereby blocking out much of the light streaming in at the end of the aisle or aisles before him?

And that's not even to mention the incredible hypocrisy shown by the commission in pushing that Givens could see Oswald across a crowded sixth floor from three aisles over, but that Williams could not be expected to see Dougherty across a less-crowded fifth floor from one or two aisles over.

Or that... Wait a second...

Here is the Warren Commission's diagram for the fifth floor of the school book depository, taken from Commission Document 496. I have added JD to represent the location of Jack Dougherty when he heard the loud sound the Warren Commission insisted was a shot. I have also added BRW to represent the location of Bonnie Ray Williams after he raced to the west end of the building.

And here's the photo that was used to create CE 491, a photo purportedly presented in support of CE 490 and 492, which showed Bonnie Ray Williams' view as he looked toward the stairs. This shows the position of Williams, Norman, and Jarman, from our L to R, as they stood by the north window.

Now think about the location of the photographer. The west side of the west elevator would be directly at his right, in line with the large beam hovering in the foreground above Williams', Norman's, and Jarman's heads. Well, heck, this picture was taken from within a few feet of where Jack Dougherty claimed he was standing when he heard the loud sound.

Now look to the left of Williams. Those stairs lead up to the sixth floor. Those are the stairs down which Oswald was purported to have either run, or descended quickly, within a minute of the shooting. He is purported to have come down these stairs, and then curled to his right, and then continued down the stairs concealed behind the wall of boxes on the left side of the photograph.

Let's figure this out. The Warren Commission did two re-enactments in which Secret Service agent John Joe Howlett got up from the sniper's nest, hid a simulated rifle by the stairs in the northwest corner of the sixth floor, and descended the stairs to the second floor lunch room. One re-enactment took 78 seconds, the other took 74. If these re-enactments were reasonably accurate, then, it seems clear Oswald would have come down these stairs and then out into the open some 50-60 seconds after the shooting.

Well, then, what about Dougherty? The Warren Commission re-enacted Baker's actions after the shooting as well. They found that he reached the area outside the second floor lunch room--where he first saw Oswald--75 to 90 seconds after the shooting. At a minimum. That means he reached the freight elevator shaft--where Roy Truly looked up and saw the west elevator up on the fifth or sixth floor--about 60 to 75 seconds after the shooting. At a minimum.

Of course, that's assuming the elevator started its descent just as Baker and Truly raced for the stairs. The reality is that it may not have begun its descent--assuming that it descended from the fifth floor and contained Dougherty--for another 45 seconds or so, after Baker confronted Oswald, and Baker and Truly continued up the stairs to the fifth floor.

It seems obvious, then, that in the Commission's scenario, Dougherty remained on the fifth floor in the vicinity of the west elevator for somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes after the shooting.

Well, that proves it then. Something that's been overlooked for years... If Dougherty rode the fifth floor elevator down as Baker and Truly ran up--as claimed by the Commission--he would have been standing near this elevator when Oswald raced down the stairs but 20 feet or so away...on a route that would have taken him out in the open.

And yet Dougherty...saw nothing. And heard nothing... from Oswald, Jarman, Norman and Williams...

There's just no reason to believe Dougherty was on the fifth floor at this time. It actually defies belief.

Suspicious Omission #17

4-8-64--September 1964. Attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin and the Warren Commission as a whole fail to acknowledge that their conclusion Jack Dougherty rode the west elevator down to the first floor as Baker and Truly ran upstairs places Dougherty on the fifth floor as Oswald raced past him across an open stretch of floor.

And there's more to it. When one thinks about it, it seems an awful coincidence Ball and Belin took a photo from Dougherty's supposed position, which just so happened to prove he'd have seen Oswald should Oswald have run down the stairs as proposed. The other photos taken in this re-enactment, CE 490 and CE 492, presented Williams' view of the back stairs, and helped establish that he might not have noticed Oswald should Oswald have raced down the back stairs. It only makes sense, then, that Ball and Belin would have had a similar photo taken from Dougherty's position.

Now, I'd fought this conclusion under the belief they didn't know Dougherty's position when they took the photos. CE 491 was taken on 3-20, and Dougherty didn't testify until 4-8. But, guess what, I was wrong. On 3-18-64, but two days before CE 491 was taken, Jack Dougherty gave a statement to the FBI, which claimed: "At the time President Kennedy was shot I was at a point about 10 feet from the elevator on the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. I was alone at the time." (22H645) It seems quite possible, then, that Ball and Belin had CE 491 taken from Dougherty's position, saw that it undermined their conclusion it was he who rode the west elevator down as Baker and Truly ran up, and then introduced it into evidence for the sole purpose of showing the location of the stairs in comparison to CE 490 and CE 492.

When you think about it, moreover, Ball and Belin's twisting of Dougherty's 4-8-64 testimony represents the Warren Commission at its worst. Here was a mentally-handicapped man--in that he had difficulty expressing himself--whose testimony was largely ignored (e.g. the time he went back to work, the time he heard the loud sound) so they could insert him into a scenario in which the movement of the west elevator as Baker and Truly climbed the stairs had an innocent explanation.

Playing the Piper

That Ball and Belin had little interest in the truth is supported, moreover, by the questions asked Dougherty (and about Dougherty). As we've seen, Ball never asked Dougherty if he called the west elevator from the fifth floor (where it was left by Jarman and Norman), or whether he'd found it on the first floor. Just as unbelievably, he never asked Eddie Piper, who'd testified just before Dougherty, anything about the conversation he'd supposedly had with Dougherty after Dougherty descended from the fifth floor. I mean, did this conversation take place a few seconds after Piper had witnessed Baker and Truly run up the stairs, as in Ball and Belin's scenario, or 5 to 10 minutes later, as in the scenario suggested by Dougherty?

And, yeah, that's another one. That Ball failed to ask Piper anything about his conversation with Dougherty, even though Dougherty mentioned this conversation in both his 11-22-63 affidavit (24H206) and his 12-18-63 FBI interview (19H619) before Piper testified, and then again in his testimony just after Piper testified, is a real head-scratcher...and hair-puller.

Suspicious Omission #18 4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Eddie Piper about his discussion with Jack Dougherty, something that was desperately needed for the establishment of Dougherty as the passenger coming down in the west elevator after the shooting.

And should one think it unfair for me to second-guess Ball in this manner, well, lucky for us, Warren Commission counsel Howard Willens shared some of the Commission's internal documents on his website for a short period surrounding the 50th anniversary of the assassination, and one of these was a 5-6-64 memo from Ball to Commission counsel J. Wesley Liebeler outlining what questions Liebeler should ask when re-interviewing a number of witnesses. Apparently, Ball was hoping to shove these interviews off on Liebeler on Liebeler's upcoming trip to Dallas.

Here is Ball's section on Piper:

"Eddie Piper. The deposition of Eddie Piper was taken in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday April 8, 1964. Piper is a janitor employed by the Texas School Book Depository. He watched the motorcade from the first floor window which opens on to Elm. After he heard the shots he walked away from the window; he saw Truly and some officer (Baker) run into the building and up the stairway. Ask Piper if he saw Jack Dougherty come to the first floor immediately afterwards. Dougherty has testified that he was on the fifth floor when he heard the shots; that he came to the first floor by way of the west elevator; that the first person whom he saw was Eddie Piper; that Piper then told him that the President had been shot."

Now here's a surprise. Or maybe not. Ball himself took Piper's testimony on 5-14-64, and failed to ask Piper if he even talked to Dougherty on 11-22-63!

And yet, here, once again, question or no question, when Eddie Piper spoke, the truth somehow slipped out...

Mr. PIPER. Well, Mr. Truly and this fellow run up the steps. He just hollered for the elevator and I said, 'I don't know where it is at,' and I'm still standing over there by that table and he ran up on up the steps with this police officer--him and another fellow and I was standing there and the people began swarming out and around--different ones coming in, but it was where nobody could come out.

Mr. BALL. They were the first ones to go up the steps?

Mr. PIPER. That's right.

Mr. BALL. Had anybody come down the steps before they went up the steps?

Mr. PIPER. No, sir.

Mr. BALL. They weren't the first ones to come down?

Mr. PIPER. Yes; and when the elevators come down---I really don't know who brought the elevators down, but I know nobody ever come down the steps.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever see Vicki Adams come down the steps?

Mr. PIPER. No, sir; I don't know about that, if she said she did, it was after I got over here and walked over to the back door.

(The 5-14-64 Testimony of Eddie Piper, 7H388-390)

Well, there it is... The implosion of the story pushed by Ball and Belin. Piper didn't know who brought the elevators down. He couldn't confirm that Dougherty brought the west elevator down just after Baker and Truly ran up the stairs, even though he watched Baker and Truly run up the stairs a minute or so before.

Suspicious Omission (or, in this Case, Commission) #19a 5-14-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball cuts off Eddie Piper after Piper volunteers that he has no idea who brought the elevators down just after the shots, and steers him to what he believes is a more productive course--that he failed to see Vickie Adams come down the stairs.

And yes, Ball failed to follow up on this anywhere in Piper's testimony. He never asked Piper about speaking to Dougherty just after Baker and Truly ran up the stairs. He never mentioned Dougherty at all.

Well, this is damning. That Ball was supposed to ask Piper about Dougherty, but failed to ask him about Dougherty on the record, strongly suggests that Ball asked Piper about Dougherty in the pre-interview, and really, really didn't like Piper's answer. Yes, it seems probable Ball opted to leave Piper's refusal to back up that Dougherty came straight down after the shooting (or perhaps even Piper's clear recollection Dougherty came up to talk to him 10 minutes or so after the shooting) off the record.

And, no, it's not mean or irrational or any other TV pundit term for us to assume Ball's failure to ask Piper about Dougherty (or Shelley, or Lovelady) on the record was deliberate. Piper's answers may very well have shot down the scenario Ball and the rest of the commission staff had already decided upon--that no one besides Oswald could have fired the shots from the sixth floor and gotten out of the building before Baker and Truly arrived at the back stairs. And Ball, we can only assume, was having none of that.

That Ball and Belin had it in for Piper, and had decided to undermine his credibility, is supported, for that matter, by their subsequent discussion of the elevator problem in the Warren Report. On page 153, they wrote: "Jack Dougherty, an employee working on the fifth floor, testified that he took the west elevator to the first floor after hearing a noise which sounded like a backfire. Eddie Piper, the janitor, told Dougherty that the president had been shot, but in his testimony Piper did not mention either seeing or talking with Dougherty during these moments of excitement. Both Dougherty and Piper were confused witnesses. They had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon."

Wait-what??? Ball and Belin failed to follow up with Piper to see if he would back up Dougherty's story, and they blamed it on Piper? They used THEIR FAILURE to do their job and ask the questions they'd outlined for Liebeler as a means of discrediting Piper?

I don't believe it. Nor should you... Ball almost certainly asked Piper about Dougherty. I mean, think about it. Ball and Belin's writing off Piper as a "confused" witness only makes sense if he told Ball and Belin something they really didn't want to accept. Oswald's being on the first floor around 12 wouldn't have been enough. They could always argue he went back up. We can only assume, then--based upon Piper's testimony "when the elevators come down---I really don't know who brought the elevators down"--that Piper told Ball in a pre-interview that he didn't talk to Dougherty just after the shooting, or that he did talk to Dougherty, but that this was some time later, after Baker and Truly had returned from their run up the stairs.

I mean, there are lies and then there are damned lies, and the commission's claim Piper had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon, when Piper was actually one of the more consistent witnesses, is a damned lie.

Suspicious Omission (or, in this Case, Commission) #19b 5-14-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball not only fails to ask Eddie Piper the questions about Jack Dougherty he'd claimed in a memo needed to be asked, but uses the failure of Piper to provide answers to these never-asked questions as a means of discrediting him.

Now, that's pretty sleazy, and indicative of just how low the commission's staff were willing to go to sell that no one came down from the sixth floor using the elevator after the shooting, and that Oswald musta dunnit...alone.

It should be noted, moreover, that interviews conducted after the completion of the Warren Commission's investigation only add to the probability Dougherty went upstairs after the shooting, and came back down to talk to Piper after Truly and Baker had already returned to the first floor.

An interview with researcher Gil Toff (circa 1969-1971) and transcribed by Bart Kamp in 2020 reveals that Dougherty said Roy Truly was in his office when he (Dougherty) came back down after the shooting. Well, think about it, The official story--the one in which Dougherty came down within a minute or so of the final shot--has Dougherty going down within the west elevator as Truly ran up, and Truly remaining upstairs for five minutes or more. There is no way this recollection fits that scenario. It only makes sense, moreover, if what I've concluded is true--that Dougherty went upstairs after someone else came downstairs, and that he returned after hearing Baker and Truly coming down from the roof.

There's also this...

From a 6-21-02 Sixth Floor Museum Oral History interview of Oswald co-worker Buell Frazier by museum curator Gary Mack...

Gary: A couple of quick questions. Has anyone either with... has anyone ever told you to not talk to anyone?

Buell: No. That’s kind of something I kind of developed on my own.

Gary: OK. In other words, you’ve never been threatened? No one’s ever come up to you and said, “It would be good of you not to say anything?”

Buell: (shaking head) No.

Gary: Has... did that happen to anyone at the Depository?

Buell: Now that, I do not know. I think I know what you’re referring to (smiling). There was a coworker that worked there, and his name was Jack Dougherty?

Gary: Jack Dougherty?

Buell: (nodding) Yes. For the people that had worked there like... were employed there at the time, Mr. Shelley and some of my coworkers, we often wondered about Jack after that. I know I talked with Mr. Shelley, and he talked with me because I know when someone would mention the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jack would... would begin to act unusual and would usually leave your presence. And I’m not implicating or saying... and I don’t want to imply that, that he had anything to do with that at all. But... but we often wondered that. If... if maybe Jack saw something or... or knew something and was afraid to tell..."

But, wait, it gets worse...

In The Girl on the Stairs (2010), Barry Ernest describes a December 2004 phone call with Officer Marrion Baker that further fuels my conclusion someone other than Oswald came down the elevator, and that Dougherty then took this elevator back up.

When asked if he could describe the two white men he'd testified to seeing near the elevators on 11-22-63, Baker said he didn't recall seeing any white men, just an "older, large black man sitting toward the back stairs, near the elevators there." He then told Ernest that he asked Roy Truly about this guy, and that Roy Truly said the man was an employee and "slightly retarded."

Well, Baker was almost certainly confused, at least a little bit. The only black employees known to be anywhere near the back of the building at this time were Eddie Piper and Troy West. Piper, 55 at the time, was all of 5'10" and 140 lb.s, and West, 56 at the time, was all of 5' 9 1/2" and 155 lb.s. (CD789 p5-6).

So who was Baker talking about?

Most probably Troy West. While Eddie Piper was an older black man within the building at the time, who made his presence known to Truly and Baker, Piper was a trusted employee, and almost certainly not "retarded," not even a little bit. He also was not sitting when Truly and Baker came into the building, but walking to or standing by the coffee counter. West, on the other hand, said he was sitting down and having lunch by the coffee counter 40 feet or so from the back stairs when the police came in the building. He was only interviewed a few times, and never in much detail, His testimony before the Warren Commission was notoriously short on detail. It seems probable, then, that Baker was thinking of West.

But, hold on, wait a second, there was an older, large white man who Truly was in the habit of describing as "mentally retarded." And that was...Jack Dougherty, who was 40.

Here, let's remember, is the Secret Service on Dougherty in their 12-7-63 report on Oswald's co-workers..."When Dougherty was interviewed, he seemed to be very confused about times and places. Mr. Truly furnished the information that, although Dougherty is a very good employee and a hard worker, he is mentally retarded and has difficulty in remembering facts, such as dates, times, places, and has been especially confused since the assassination. Dougherty was therefore not questioned further." (CD87, p781).

So, Baker remembered seeing an older, large man who Truly said was "retarded" sitting near the back of the building as they ran up the stairs. And this might very well be Dougherty.

If true, this means that...someone other than Dougherty--and Oswald (who Baker and Truly saw on the second floor seconds after starting up the stairs)--took the west elevator down as Baker and Truly ran up...

The Adams Problem (in which the Warren Commission bent over backwards to dismiss a problematic witness so it could pretend Oswald ran down the stairs)

The complicity of Ball, Belin, and their bosses on the commission in a cover-up of the evidence becomes clear when one studies the commission's treatment of Victoria Adams.

To begin, a 2-25-64 Ball and Belin memo (retrieved from the Archives by researcher Barry Ernest) reveals that, from the start, before they'd even taken one day's testimony, Ball and Belin had recognized that Oswald "had to descend to the second floor in a short space of time in order to meet Truly and Baker" in the second floor lunch room within 90 seconds of the shooting. And that, as a consequence, Adams' claim she and Sandra Styles ran down the stairs Oswald would have to have used, at the same time he would have had to have used them, was a problem. And that, as a result, they needed to "pin down this time sequence."

So let's see how they "pinned" it down.

But first, an acknowledgement. There are legitimate reasons to doubt Adams and her testimony claiming she raced down the stairs but didn't see Oswald or anyone else. The main cause for doubt is that she claimed she saw William Shelley and Billy Lovelady at the bottom of the stairs after she'd raced down the stairs, and they claimed they went over to the train yards for a spell just after the shooting, and then re-entered the building via a loading dock on the west side of the building. Well, the assumption is that this would have taken Shelley and Lovelady 4 minutes or more. If so, they would have re-entered the building after Baker and Truly had started their run up the stairs. If so, Adams would have to have run down the stairs after Baker and Truly had run up the stairs past her floor. And that would open up a minute or so before they ran up the stairs, for Oswald to run down the stairs to the second floor lunch room, where he was observed by Officer Baker.

But what's that they say about assumptions?

Mr. BELIN - What did you see and what did you do as you ran into the building?

Mr. BAKER - As I entered this building, there was, it seems to me like there was outside doors and then there is a little lobby.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Mr. BAKER - And then there are some inner doors and another door you have to go through, a swinging door type. As I entered this lobby there were people going in as I entered. And I asked, I just spoke out and asked where the stairs or elevator was, and this man, Mr. Truly, spoke up and says, it seems to me like he says, "I am a building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you." So we immediately went out through the second set of doors, and we ran into the swinging door.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Now, during the course of running into the swinging door, did you bump into the back of Mr. Truly?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; I did.

Mr. BELIN - Then what happened?

Mr. BAKER - We finally backed up and got through that little swinging door there and we kind of all ran, not real fast but, you know, a good trot, to the back of the Building, I was following him.

Mr. BELIN - All right. Then what did you do?

Mr. BAKER - We went to the northwest corner, we was kind of on the, I would say, the southeast corner of the Building there where we entered it, and we went across it to the northwest corner which is in the rear, back there.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Mr. BAKER - And he was trying to get that service elevator down there.

Mr. BELIN - All right. What did you see Mr. Truly do?

Mr. BAKER - He ran over there and pushed the button to get it down.

Mr. BELIN - Did the elevator come down after he pushed the button?

Mr. BAKER - No, sir; it didn't.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did he do?

Mr. BAKER - He hollered for it, said, "Bring that elevator down here."

Mr. BELIN - How many times did he holler, to the best of your recollection?

Mr. BAKER - It seemed like he did it twice.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Then what did he do?

Mr. BAKER - I said let's take the stairs.

Mr. BELIN - All right. Then what did you do?

Mr. BAKER - He said, "Okay" and so he immediately turned around, which the stairs is just to the, would be to the, well, the west of this elevator.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Mr. BAKER - And we went up them.

(3-25-64 9:50 AM, 3H242-270)

Now, this testimony--of racing to the back of the building--yelling up the elevator shaft, and racing up the stairs--was pretty much a repeat of what Roy Truly had testified to the day before.

Well, then, what about Shelley and Lovelady? Did they race?

Perhaps not. There's this... "Immediately following the shooting, Billy N. Lovelady and I accompanied some uniformed police officers to the railroad yards just west of the building and returned through the west side door of the building about ten minutes later." (The 3-18-64 statement of William Shelley to the FBI, 22H673)

But then there's this...

Mr. BALL - Did you see Truly, Mr. Truly and an officer go into the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yeah, we saw them right at the front of the building while we were on the island.

Mr. BALL - While you were out there before you walked to the railroad yards?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Do you have any idea how long it was from the time you heard those three sounds or three noises until you saw Truly and Baker going into the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - It would have to be 3 or 4 minutes I would say because this girl that ran back up there was down near where the car was when the President was hit. Mr. BALL - She ran back up to the door and you had still remained standing there?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

Well, we're off to a heckuva start. Simply incredible. On March 20, Ball's partner Belin timed a re-enactment of Marrion Baker's actions after the shooting, from his hearing the first shot to his observing Oswald on the second floor. Baker testified that they performed this re-enactment twice, with the re-enactment taking 90 seconds the first time and 75 seconds the second, when they sped things up a little. Now, this is key--according to their re-enactment, Baker reached the front of the building within 15 seconds of the first shot.

So what's this mean? It has long been noted that stress has a negative impact on our perception of time, and that witnesses to a stressful or traumatic event will usually over-estimate the length of the traumatic event they'd witnessed, often by a factor of 3 or more. (One 1977 study, by Dr. Robert Buckhout, published in Criminal Defense, reported that subjects over-estimated the duration of a video they'd been asked to view of a staged assault on a college campus by a factor or almost 2 1/2 to 1...on average.) So Shelley's testimony isn't all that surprising. He has recalled a series of events that would subsequently be re-enacted in 15 seconds--(but probably took more like 25 seconds)--as taking 3 or 4 minutes. For him, time slowed down by a factor of 7.2 or more.

Now this, in turn, suggests Shelley and Lovelady returned to the building through the west side door about 83 seconds after the shooting, not 10 minutes.

Let's see if we can break this down further... Ball returned to this line of questioning a few minutes later.

Mr. BALL - Then you went out across Elm?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, to the divider.

Mr. BALL - Between the two Elm Streets?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - The one street dead ends and the other street that goes on down under the viaduct?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Did you run out to the point or walk out?

Mr. SHELLEY - I believe we trotted out there.

Mr. BALL - Did you stay very long?

Mr. SHELLEY - Oh, it wasn't very long.

Mr. BALL - How long?

Mr. SHELLEY - Maybe a minute or two.

Mr. BALL - And that's the place you saw Truly and Baker, you say, going into the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, uh-huh,

So, to be clear, Shelley has claimed that he and Lovelady saw Baker and Truly enter the building 3 or 4 minutes after the shooting from a vantage point on the divider, and that they had been there 1 or 2 minutes. This, then, suggests they stood on the steps for 2 minutes or so before heading over to the divider.

Mr. BALL - Then you went down the Elm Street that dead ends to the first railroad track?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - That's about what distance?

Mr. SHELLEY - Approximately 100 yards.

Mr. BALL - Did you trot, run or walk?

Mr. SHELLEY - We were walking but it was a pretty fast walk.

Mr. BALL - Did you stay there any length of time?

Mr. SHELLEY - Not very long.

Mr. BALL - How long would you say?

Mr. SHELLEY - I wouldn't say over a minute or minute and a half.

Mr. BALL - Then you went back to the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

So, here, in his testimony, Shelley backs off his purported approximation of 10 minutes. He says it was 3-4 minutes before Baker and Truly entered the building, and that he and Lovelady spent another 1 to 1 1/2 minutes by the railroad tracks. That's it. Add in the travel time to this last location--and then back into the building (around 30 seconds)--and you have a grand total of 4 1/2 to 6 minutes.

Now, keep in mind that this was Shelley's approximation...which, based upon the studies cited above, we can assume was inflated by a factor of 2 1/2 or so.

So, believe it or not, Shelley's testimony suggesting it took him 270 to 360 seconds to re-enter the building after the shots actually suggested he'd re-entered the building 108 to 144 seconds after the shots, and possibly much less, seeing as he'd approximated the initial 15-30 second segment as 3-4 minutes.

So the gap between Shelley's return and Baker and Truly's reaching the back stairs is not as large as most imagine.

If such a gap existed...

Consider, Baker testified that the 75-90 second time for the re-enactments was the "minimum" amount of time for the actual event, seeing as they failed to re-enact his slowing down to make his way through the crowd by the entrance to the building, etc.

There's also this. In April 1964, high school newspaper reporter Roy E. Bode (the future editor of the Dallas Times-Herald) scooped the adults and finagled an interview with Roy Truly. This interview was then published in the Odessa American. In this interview, Truly discussed the difficulty he'd encountered in getting his life, and business, back to normal. But he also discussed his recent trip to Washington to testify before the Commission. Bode reports "Truly flew to Washington with a construction worker, who has a new ulcer, and a policeman. All testified before the Commission. The worker developed his ulcer after seeing John F. Kennedy murdered. Truly says he was the only actual eyewitness to the slaying. 'The man was standing on the wall of a monument near Elm Street. He looked toward the building and saw the killer, aiming the rifle. The shots were fired and he ran across the street where a policeman and I were standing,' Truly said. 'He yelled to us that the man was on the fourth floor and told us what kind of clothes he was wearing. I understand he later identified Oswald as the killer at police headquarters.' Truly said that after the man pointed out the killer (note: Bode presumably meant to write 'the location of the killer') he (Truly) and the policeman ran upstairs to the second floor. They bumped into Oswald there as he was calmly leaving the depository's cafeteria. 'The policeman put his gun on him and asked me who he was,' Truly continued. 'I was misquoted by the press on my reply. I did not say 'He's all right, he works here.' I said 'He works here.' There's a lot of difference in these two statements."

Now, this is just a ball of confusion, right? Did Truly, after talking to Howard Brennan on the plane, come to believe that he and Baker had talked to Brennan before running into the building? And, if so, why did they go to the roof of the building, when Brennan had told them the killer was on the fourth? The thought occurs that the teen-aged reporter got his notes mixed-up. In any event, it remains possible that Baker and Truly discussed something with somebody before running towards the back of the building.

Well, this puts Shelley and Lovelady, entering from the west side of the building, ahead or in a virtual tie in a race to the back of the building with Baker and Truly, entering via the front steps.

So let's read on and see if we can figure out who got there first.

Mr. BALL - What did you and Billy Lovelady do?

Mr. SHELLEY - We walked on down to the first railroad track there on the dead-end street and stood there and watched them searching cars down there in the parking lots for a little while and then we came in through our parking lot at the west end.

Mr. BALL - At the west end?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes; and then in the side door into the shipping room.

Mr. BALL - When you came into the shipping room did you see anybody?

Mr. SHELLEY - I saw Eddie Piper.

Mr. BALL - What was he doing?

Mr. SHELLEY - He was coming back from where he was watching the motorcade in the southwest corner of the shipping room.

Mr. BALL - Of the first floor of the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Who else did you see?

Mr. SHELLEY - That's all we saw immediately.

(4-7-64 Testimony of William Shelley, 4:10 PM 6H327-334)

So let's see what Piper had to say about this when Ball questioned him the next day.

Mr. PIPER. I heard one shot, and then the next shot went off---the one that shot him--and I got on up and went on back, back where they make coffee at the end of the counter where I could see what happened (Note: we can presume from this that he was planning to turn on a radio) and before I could get there, the third shot went off, and I seen the people all running and in a few minutes someone came in the building, and I looked up and it was the boss-man and a policeman or someone.

And then later...

Mr. BALL. Did you look out the window later?

Mr. PIPER. No more no, sir; I didn't go back to any window.

Mr. BALL. You mentioned you saw Truly?

Mr. PIPER. I don't know whether it was a policeman or FBI or who it was, but another fellow was with him.

Mr. BALL And where were you?

Mr. PIPER. Standing right there where they make coffee.

So let's get this straight. Shelley claimed that when he and Lovelady came in from the western dock he saw Piper heading back from the front window...and Piper said he left his spot at the front window and went back to the coffee counter, that Roy Truly came in "a few minutes" later when he was at the coffee counter, and that he failed to return to the front window after Truly came in.

Well, this is a clear indication Shelley and Lovelady arrived at the back of the building before Baker and Truly.

Now, let's go back to Shelley's testimony... and reflect a little... Ball has asked Shelley if he saw Roy Truly enter the building, but has failed to ask him if he saw Truly in the building after his own return to the building. It's hard to believe this was a coincidence.

Suspicious Omission #20 4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball asks William Shelley if he saw Roy Truly enter the depository building, but fails to ask him the more important question if he saw Truly at a later point, before Truly and officer Baker ran up the back staircase.

Still, it's not as if Ball failed to ask Shelley about Adams.

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see Vickie Adams?

Mr. SHELLEY - I saw her that day but I don't remember where I saw her.

Mr. BALL - You don't remember whether you saw her when you came back?

Mr. SHELLEY - It was after we entered the building.

Mr. BALL - You think you did see her after you entered the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir; I thought it was on the fourth floor awhile after that. Mr. BALL - Now, did the police come into the building?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir; they started coming in pretty fast.

Mr. BALL - Did you go with them any place?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes; Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors.

(4-7-64 Testimony of William Shelley, 4:10 PM 6H327-334)

Now, I suspect most of those reading this have assumed Shelley is talking about the freight elevator in the back of the building. But why should we do that? There was an elevator in the front as well. Most of those using elevators in the building used this elevator. Anyone coming in from the street and wanting to use an elevator would want to use this elevator. It seems near certain then that this is the elevator Truly asked Shelley to guard.

Let's see if this is supported by any of Shelley's previous statements.

Here's a beauty: “Today approximately 12:30 P.M. November 22, 1963, I was standing on the front steps at 411 Elm watching the President in the parade. The President’s car was about halfway from Houston Street to the Triple Underpass when I heard what sounded like three shots. I couldn’t tell where they came from. I ran across the street to the corner of the park and ran into a girl crying and she said the President had been shot. The girl’s name is Gloria Calvery who is an employee of this same building. I went back to the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what had happened. I was on the first floor then and I stayed at the elevator and was told not to let anyone out of the elevator. I left the elevator and went with the police on up to the other floors. I left Jack Dougherty in charge of the elevator." (The 11-22-63 affidavit of William Shelley to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, 24H226)

Now this gives us a number of things to think about. One is that Shelley never even mentioned stopping off in the train yards in his initial statement. This supports our belief he really spent very little time there.

Still another item of interest is Shelley's claim he guarded an elevator--singular, not plural. This supports that he did in fact guard the front elevator. And yet another is that he said he left Jack Dougherty in charge of this elevator. While this supports that Dougherty was on the first floor just after Baker and Truly went upstairs--which could mean he descended as they rose--Dougherty claimed he turned around and went back up to the sixth floor after coming down from the fifth floor and talking to Piper. So that's a no go.

While Dougherty's minding the front elevator is also problematic to the belief he went upstairs via the rear elevator a few minutes after the shooting, this isn't as big a problem as it seems. Outside of Shelley, no one ever mentioned Dougherty's guarding any elevator. Well, this suggests that within a short time of Shelley's ascent, Dougherty got bored or confused and simply returned to work. (It bears repeating here that Dougherty claimed he was unaware Kennedy had been shot until told as much by Piper.)

Quest for Phone

This brings us, then, to yet another interesting ingredient in Shelley's original statement--that he made a phone call to his wife upon his return to the building. Apparently, he thought she'd be worried. In any event, if we can isolate when this call was made in comparison to other events, we can better estimate the time of his return.

So let's compare the statements of some others who entered the building...in a quest for phone.

First up is newsman Pierce Allman. He was interviewed by the Secret Service on 1-29-64. "Mr. Allman stated that he was watching the parade from a position near the corner of Elm and Houston. Upon hearing the shots he ran across Elm Street to a couple who had fallen on the ground. He asked the man if he was all right; the man stated that he was. Allman then ran up an incline toward Houston Street. Upon reaching the top of the incline, he turned and ran down. He stated that he is at a a loss to explain this action other than he was extremely excited and upset by the assassination. Mr. Allman then stated that he ran full speed into the Texas School Book Depository Building with intention of locating a phone and calling his television station WFAA. Mr. Allman stated that after he had entered into the front door of the building, he emerged into a hallway and there he met a white male whom he could not further identify. He asked this white male for the location of a telephone. Mr. Allman stated that he did not identify himself to this person; stated further that he was extremely excited at the time and that he could not remember anything about the person except for the fact that he was a white male. Mr. Allman has seen pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald and could not positively state whether or not he was the one of whom he inquired. Mr. Allman stated that the person pointed out a phone to him which was located in an open area of the first floor of the Texas School Book Depository; that he immediately went to the telephone and stayed at this position for approximately 25 minutes talking to his office. Mr. Allman stated that he was accompanied by a fellow worker, Terry Ford." (CD 354, p5)

So what did Ford have to say about this when interviewed on 1-31-64? "Mr. Ford stated that he had accompanied Mr. Allman to the corner of Houston and Elm Streets to watch the procession; that upon hearing shots, he retreated to a concrete building near the side of the small park bordering Elm Street, then running back toward the Texas School Book Depository. He followed Allman into the building, walking on his right side. He remembers Allman turning to his left to ask a white male the location of a telephone. Ford stated the white male, who he can neither identify nor describe, indicated in some manner that a telephone was inside a room directly ahead. Ford does not remember Allman identifying himself at this time. Ford stated that he did not have a press card at this time and did not identify himself to anyone until he left the building about one hour later." (CD354, p6)

Next up is newsman Robert MacNeill MacNeill furnished the FBI a typewritten statement on 11-30-63. "On hearing the shots I got out of the bus immediately and followed some police officers who were running up the grass slope to the right of the road on which the President was shot. We climbed a fence and I followed the police who appeared to be chasing someone, or under the impression they were chasing someone, across the railroad tracks. Wanting to phone news of the shooting, I left there and went to the nearest place that looked like an office. It was the Texas School Book Depository. I believe I entered the front door about four minutes after the shooting. I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw--a man who was telephoning from a phone by a pillar in the middle of the room--where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were already lit up. I made my call and left. I do not believe any police officers entered the building before me or until I left. I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men there looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. My New York news desk has since placed the time of my call at 12:36 Dallas time." (CD 206, p5)

And our fourth man up is military intelligence officer James Powell. Powell was interviewed by the Secret Service on 1-28-64. "Mr. Powell stated that he had been watching the parade from a position near the corner of Houston and Elm Streets, the site of the assassination. Mr. Powell stated further that he heard the shots and he then joined a group of Sheriff's Deputies, who were heading toward the rear of the Texas School Book Depository on the basis of information that the assassin had shot from the railroad yards. Mr. Powell worked with the Sheriff's Deputies at the rear of the Texas School Book Depository Building for about six or eight minutes. He then entered the front door of the Depository, in search of a phone from which to call his office. Mr. Powell, upon entering the Texas School Book Depository, observed Mr. Pierce Allman using a phone in the lobby of the building. Mr. Powell stated that he did not meet anyone upon entering the building nor was he called upon to identify himself to anyone. Mr. Powell said that the only persons present on the first floor of the building at the time of his entry were Mr. Allman and an unidentified white male described as being tall and about 30 years of age; both of these men were near a desk in the lobby and Mr. Allman was using a telephone." (CD354, p4-5)

Well, hell. This raises almost as many questions as it answers.

Its does suggest, however, that Shelley re-entered the building and called his wife before Allman and MacNeill came in. The phone used by Allman was in the middle of the building. He was there before MacNeill, who was there before 12:36. Allman would have noticed should Styles and Adams come running down the stairs, and run into Shelley and Lovelady near the back elevators, 5-6 minutes after the shooting. Yet he did not see them. This suggests, then, that Shelley had already re-entered the building, called his wife, and went over to guard the front elevator and stairs when Allman came in.

Now, to the questions... Who showed Allman the phone? Presumably Oswald, who is reported to have told the FBI he'd spoken to a man with a crew-cut--who had ID'ed himself as as Secret Service agent--as he (Oswald) was leaving the building.

And who were the three men observed by MacNeil? Presumably Allman, Ford, and either Shelley or Dougherty nearer the door. As Lovelady was photographed outside on the steps after his return to the building, and as Shelley claimed he'd been told to guard the front elevator, we should probably suspect Shelley.

And who was the one man beyond Allman observed by Powell? Presumably Ford, who claimed he remained in the building for an hour...

But maybe Dougherty. Buell Frazier claims Dougherty was a giant of a man. His military records have him at 6'2". But was Ford equally as tall? Good question. Here he is with Allman in two shots from the Dorman film. Ford is on the left of the image on the left and the right on the image on the right. Ford appears to be a few inches taller than Allman.

But how tall was Allman? Not very, as it turns out. A quick photo search online reveals that Allman is around a foot shorter than former football player Jason Witten, who was listed as 6'6". So Allman was 5'8" tops. Which means Ford was 5'10" to 6'. Tops. Tall? Not remarkably so.

And what about his age? Powell pegged the tall man as being about 30. Ford had just turned 22. Jack Dougherty was 40. So it's a bit of a toss-up.

So, hmmm. We have reason to suspect Shelley had already made his call and went upstairs with the police before Powell came it into the building. And that Lovelady had followed or went outside. And that the other man observed by Powell beyond Allman was thereby either Ford or Dougherty. But more probably Ford. Powell came into the building around 6-8 minutes after the shooting. Dougherty had probably taken the west elevator up by that time.

But it's still a bit murky, isn't it?

Still, never fear, we have solid gold reasons to believe Dougherty was on the first floor at the time of the shooting, and went up to the sixth floor afterwards. In the story pushed by Ball and Belin, let's recall, Dougherty was working on the fifth floor, unaware of anyone else on the floor. He then heard a loud sound from above him, even though he would have heard a shot from the sniper's nest window on the sixth floor, through the open windows just below the sniper's nest, directly to the east of where Dougherty was standing when he heard this sound. He then went into some sort of time warp, whereby he thought he took the west elevator down from the fifth floor to the first floor to find out what happened, but where he actually waited 90 seconds or more before doing so. It should be noted, furthermore, that Dougherty was unseen and unheard by Jarman, Norman, and Williams--who were looking out the west windows of the depository but sixty feet or so away from where Dougherty said he was standing when he heard this loud sound--during the last of these 90 seconds. In any event, in Ball and Belin's story--the one pushed in the Warren Report--Dougherty then descended to the first floor, talked to Eddie Piper, and then took the elevator back up to the sixth floor, but saw nobody.

Let's now recall that Roy Truly, who is purported to have run up the stairs as Dougherty came down to talk to Piper, testified to seeing Dougherty on the fifth floor as he came back down on the east elevator. Now, those desperate to defend the Warren Commission myth composed by Ball and Belin, will say, but of course, Dougherty went back to work on the fifth floor after going up to the sixth floor to look around. But they're missing something. Two somethings, actually. One is that Dougherty testified to not going back up to the sixth floor until after the rifle had been discovered. And two is that Shelley's initial statement makes it crystal clear Dougherty was on the first floor when he (Shelley) took Truly's cue and raced up the stairs with the police.

Well, when was this, you might ask? How do we know Shelley didn't go upstairs 10-15 minutes after the shooting, after Truly had come back downstairs, with Dougherty behind him?

If only we knew the name of one of the "plainclothesmen" Shelley led upstairs, we might straighten this out, right?

Well, guess what? We do. Sort of. The first plainclothesman to storm into the building stormed into the building alongside Dallas Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer. Sawyer testified the day after Shelley.

Mr. SAWYER. I heard Sheriff Decker come on the radio and tell the dispatcher to get all of his men over to, and I thought he said Texas School Book Depository, but at least that was the overall gist of the conversation. That is what I gathered. He may not have said Texas School Book Depository, but the Texas School Book Depository was mentioned in the broadcasts that were made at that time.

Mr. BELIN. Was this on Channel 1 or Channel 2 if you remember?

Mr. SAWYER. Channel 2, I am sure.

Mr. BELIN. Did Sheriff Decker have any particular call number at all, or not, in your police number system?

Mr. SAWYER. No. I was wondering why he come on our radio, but then I think that he was with Chief Curry and probably using that radio.

Mr. BELIN. All right, in any event, a call was made from Chief Curry's car?

Mr. SAWYER. Well, this I don't know either. I don't know what car it was made from, but I think it was Sheriff Decker talking. I could recognize his voice, yes.

Mr. BELIN. What did you do then?

Mr. SAWYER. Then I went on down to the Texas Book Depository.

Mr. BELIN. Where did you park your car?

Mr. SAWYER. In front of the Texas School Book Depository.

Mr. BELIN. In front of the main entrance there?

Mr. SAWYER. In front of the main entrance.

Mr. BELIN. What did you do then?

Mr. SAWYER. Immediately went into---well, talked to some of the officers around there who told me the story that they had thought some shots had come from one of the floors in the building, and I think the fifth floor was mentioned, but nobody seemed to know who the shots were directed at or what had actually happened, except there had been a shooting there at the time the President's motorcade had gone by. And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor. And we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything.

So let's jump in here and point out that Shelley was almost certainly the man Sawyer believed worked in the building. The only other TSBD employees to admit guiding policemen upstairs were Billy Lovelady and Jack Dougherty, and neither of them indicated that they did this within a few minutes of the shooting.

Also telling is this... The top floor for the front elevator was the fourth floor, where Shelley thought he might have talked to Adams.

Mr. BELIN. Now you took an elevator up, is that correct?

Mr. SAWYER. That's right.

Mr. BELIN. The route that you took to the elevator, you went to the front door?

Mr. SAWYER. Right.

Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do?

Mr. SAWYER. We got into the elevator. We run into this man.

Mr. BELIN. Well, when you say you got into the elevator, where was the elevator as you walked in the front door?

Mr. SAWYER. It was to the right.

Mr. BELIN. To the right?

Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Was it a freight elevator or a passenger elevator?

Mr. SAWYER. The best of my recollection, it was a passenger elevator.

Mr. BELIN. Did you push for the top button in that elevator?

Mr. SAWYER. Well, I don't know who pushed it, but we went up to the top floor.

Mr. BELIN. You went up to the top floor that the elevator would go to?

Mr. SAWYER. That's right.

Let's recall: the front elevator was the only passenger elevator in the building and it only went up to the fourth floor.

Mr. BELIN. You got off, and were there officers there?

Mr. SAWYER. There was one or two other officers with me.

Mr. BELIN. Now when you got off, you say you went into the back there into a warehouse area?

Mr. SAWYER. Storage area; what appeared to be a storage area.

Mr. BELIN. Did you go into any place other than a warehouse or storage area?

Mr. SAWYER. No.

Mr. BELIN. Was there anything other than a warehouse or storage area there?

Mr. SAWYER. Well, to one side I could see an office over there with people in it. Some women that apparently were office workers.

Well, it's clear, then. For whatever reason, Shelley took Sawyer up to the fourth floor, it had offices in the front, and a storage area in the back.

Mr. BELIN. Now Inspector, what did you do then?

Mr. SAWYER. Well, I didn't see anything that was out of the ordinary, so I immediately came back downstairs to check the security on the building.

Belin then did something unexpected...his job.

Mr. BELIN. Would it be fair for me to assume then that you had not at least completely left your car by 12:34 p.m?

Mr. SAWYER. Correct.

Mr. BELIN. Then when you got to the Texas School Book Depository, well, you got out of the car and talked to some people or to some officers?

Mr. SAWYER. Officers.

Mr. BELIN. And then what did the officers tell you?

Mr. SAWYER. That their information was that the shots had come from the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

Mr. BELIN. Did any officers give you any other information about the source of the shots other than the fact that it came from the Texas School Book Depository, at that particular time?

Mr. SAWYER. I can't say whether it was officers or who, but there was a reference also made to the overpass.

Mr. BELIN. All right, in any event--pardon me, do you have anything else to add?

Mr. SAWYER. Also, there was a broadcast here in the transcript about the railroad yard.

Mr. BELIN. All right.

Mr. SAWYER. And this could be part of what I was thinking about, or what I had heard, was this broadcast on the radio about the railroad yard.

Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do? You went inside the building, is that correct?

Mr. SAWYER. We immediately went inside the building. I took--I believe Sgt. Harkness may have gone with me. I am not positive of that.

(Note: nor should he be. Harkness claimed he stayed outside.)

Mr. BELIN. Was the elevator on the first floor when you got there, or did you have to wait for it to come down?

Mr. SAWYER. Best of my recollection, it was there.

Mr. BELIN. You got to the elevator, went up, looked around back there. How long did you spend up there at the top floor that the elevator took you to?

Mr. SAWYER. Just took a quick look around and made sure there was nobody hiding on that floor. I doubt if it took over a minute at the most.

Mr. BELIN. To go up and look around and come down?

Mr. SAWYER. To look around on the floor. How long it took to go up, it couldn't have been over 3 minutes at the most from the time we left, got up and back down.

Mr. BELIN. Then that would put it around no sooner than 12:37, if you heard the call at 12:34?

Mr. SAWYER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Then you got down and what did you do?

Mr. SAWYER. I asked the Sergeant to doublecheck the security around the building, and then I took two patrolmen and stationed them at the front door and told them, with instructions not to let anybody in or out.

Mr. BELIN. Now up to the time you did this, had anyone else sealed off the building, that you know of?

Mr. SAWYER. When I arrived, the sergeant told me he had the building sealed off. There were officers all around the building. To the best of my recollection, there was no officer actually stationed on the front door, at the front door. There was some on the sidewalk in front of the front door, and also, as far as I know, had no instructions been issued to anyone to let anybody in or out.

Mr. BELIN. So yours would have been the first instructions to stop traffic from coming in and out of the front door, am I correct in that?

Mr. SAWYER. That's right.

Mr. BELIN. All right, anybody that would have been seen leaving the building would have been stopped and interrogated by the officers that were there? Even before you instructed them?

Mr. SAWYER. Yes, because they were looking for something or anything, and I know that anybody coming out of the back doors, from what the Sergeant told me, they would have stopped them, too.

Mr. BELIN. What happened at the front door now. There were people standing. out on the area of the steps, were there not?

Mr. SAWYER. No. There were some people around, yes.

Mr. BELIN. Do you know whether or not any of those would have been stopped?

Mr. SAWYER. For sure, no; I don't.

Mr. BELIN. Now after you got down and you issued these orders, then what did you

Mr. SAWYER. I set up a command post in front. The various officers were bringing up different witnesses who had seen various things, and I saw that this was quite an involved situation. It was so many of these people that had information, that I knew I didn't have time to take this information down, and by this time several deputy sheriffs were standing there, and one of them, I think he was a supervisor, I had his name at one time, I can't think of it now, was there, and he offered the use of an interrogation room of Sheriff Decker's office, I think he said, for interrogating these people.

(Note: this was Chief Criminal Deputy Sheriff Allan Sweatt.)

Mr. BELIN. That is located down the street a little bit there?

Mr. SAWYER. Well, it is catty-corner across the street.

Mr. BELIN. All right. Mr. SAWYER. It is southeast across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, at least from the corner, and so we set up a group of officers and deputy sheriffs who were to take charge of the witnesses and take them over to see that affidavits were taken from them. They were more or less an escort service so the witness wouldn't get away. And then as our detectives began to show up, I sent them over to the Sheriff's Office to assist in taking these depositions or affidavits.

Mr. BELIN. How many witnesses were there around there during this period of time that you talked to?

Mr. SAWYER. Well, during the entire period of time that I was there, I would venture to say between 25 to 50 different people had come up with information of one kind or another.

Mr. BELIN. Now, on this radio log, Sawyer's Deposition Exhibit A, do you notice your number there for any calls at all that might have come in? What number did you use?

Mr. SAWYER. I used No. 9. That is my regular call No. 9.

Mr. BELIN. I notice here a No. 9, the first time that appears to come in here is at 12:40 p.m.; is that right?

Mr. SAWYER. That is the first one after 12:40, sir.

Mr. BELIN. The first one after 12:30?

Mr. SAWYER. The first one after 12:30, yes, that is true.

(4-8-64, 3:45 PM, 6H315-325)

So, yikes. By Sawyer's account, Shelley led him upstairs a short time after 12:34. (It was probably more like 12:36. Sawyer said he arrived about 12:34, and talked with some officers before going inside. He also said he spent about 3 minutes in the building, and that he got back on his radio about 12:40...) In any event, Sawyer (and Shelley) went upstairs before Roy Truly returned from the roof with Baker. It only follows, then, that if Truly spoke to Shelley and told Shelley to guard the elevator before Shelley guarded the elevator and gave Sawyer and two unnamed policemen a tour--as Shelley claimed--that he did so when he first came into the building. And that--Ta-da!--Shelley was in the building BEFORE Baker and Truly.

Now, some might wish to believe that Sawyer was just wrong about this, and that he'd actually went upstairs with Shelley after Baker and Truly had come down from the roof, and Truly had had a chance to talk with Shelley.

Except, no go.

Mr. BELIN. Now, after you got down from the seventh floor, you then went down to the sixth floor with Officer Baker?

Mr. TRULY. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. Did he look around on the sixth floor at all or not?

Mr. TRULY. Just before we got on the elevator on the seventh floor, Officer Baker ran over and looked in a little room on the seventh floor, and glanced around on that floor, which is open, and it didn't take much of a search. And then we reached the sixth floor. I stopped. He glanced over the sixth floor quickly.

Mr. BELIN. Could you see the southeast corner of the sixth floor from there?

Mr. TRULY. I don't think so; no, sir. You could not. Mr. BELIN. Then what?

Mr. TRULY. Then we continued on down, and we saw officers on the fourth floor. I don't recall that we stopped any more until we reached the first floor. But I do recall there was an officer on the fourth floor, by the time we got down that far.

Mr. BELIN. All right. And then you got down eventually to the first floor?

Mr. TRULY. That is right.

Now that's interesting. But how do we know this was Sawyer?

Mr. BELIN - When you got back down from the roof to this top floor, did you have any occasion to notice whether or not the west elevator was on that top floor or not?

Mr. BAKER - No, sir; I still didn't look at the elevator. I was following Mr. Truly and every time I had a chance I would look around over the building.

Mr. BELIN - You would look over the floor itself rather than the other elevator?

Mr. BAKER - That is right.

Mr. BELIN - You then got on the elevator to go on back down?

Mr. BAKER - That is correct.

Mr. BELIN - And I believe you said it was the east elevator, is that correct?

Mr. BAKER - That is correct.

Mr. BELIN - How far did you take the east elevator down?

Mr. BAKER - As we descended, somewhere around--we were still talking and I was still looking over the building.

Mr. BELIN - As the elevator was moving?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; downward.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Mr. BAKER - The next thing that I noticed was Inspector Sawyer, he was on one of those floors there, he is a police inspector.

Mr. DULLES - City of Dallas Police?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir. And he was on, I really didn't notice which floor he was on, but that is the first thing I saw as we descended how this freight elevator, you know, it has got these picket boards in front of it and it has got it open so far, and it seemed to me like we stopped for a moment and I spoke to him and I told him that I had been to the roof, and there wasn't anything on the roof that would indicate anybody being up there, and then we started on down.

Mr. BELIN - Did you stay on the elevator while you spoke to him?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Do you remember what floor it was that you spoke to him on or how many floors down that you went from the top before you saw him?

Mr. BAKER - No, sir; not at that time. It seemed to me like it was on either the third or the fourth floor.

Mr. BELIN - Do you remember about how long you stayed on the roof?

Mr. BAKER - It was a little over 5 minutes.

Mr. BELIN - When you continued moving on the elevator after you talked to Inspector Sawyer how far did you go on the elevator?

Mr. BAKER - We went to the, I believe it would be the first floor there.

Mr. BELIN - All right. You got off the elevator then?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Did you leave Mr. Truly or did you stay with him?

Mr. BAKER - I left Mr. Truly there.

Well, that's it, people. If Shelley and Lovelady were in the building when Baker and Truly came in and headed to the back elevators, well, then, it follows that they could have been there when Vickie Adams and Sandra Styles came down from the fourth floor, moments earlier...

And that--ta-da! ta-da!--Vickie Adams was probably telling the truth about running down the back stairs just after the shooting... and not seeing Oswald...

Oh, yeah, Oswald...

Smelly Shelley

Let's recall the response of William Shelley when asked if he went anywhere with any policemen after the shooting: "Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors."

Now here is the east/front quadrant of the building, as presented in CD 496.

Note the location of the front stairway (which is marked by an "up"), which leads from the first to the second floors, and vice-versa. This is the stairway down which Oswald was presumed to have descended before leaving the building 3-4 minutes after the shooting.

Now look above it. It's the elevator Shelley was "guarding" before Sawyer came in the building and requested his guide services. This was no earlier than 12:34 and no later than 12:36.

So...YIKES. Shelley was almost certainly standing at the base of the stairs when Oswald came down the stairs.

Now note that Shelley said he'd been told to guard the stairs as well as the elevators...

Well, this is HUGE. This proves that for Oswald to go outside...he would have to have made it past Shelley.

So what did Oswald have to say about this?

Capt. Will Fritz's report on the initial interrogation of Oswald proclaims: "I asked him what part of the building he was in when the President was shot, and he said he was having his lunch about that time on the first floor. Mr. Truly had told me that one of the police officers had stopped this man immediately somewhere near the back stairway, so I asked Oswald where he was when the police officer stopped him. He said he was on the second floor drinking a Coca Cola when the officer came in. I asked him why he left the building, and he said there was so much excitement he didn't think there would be any more work that day, and that as this company wasn't particular about their hours, that they did not punch a clock, and that he thought it would be just as well that he left for the rest of the afternoon." (WR 601)

The joint report of FBI agents Hosty and Bookhout on this interview proclaims: "Oswald stated that he went to lunch at approximately noon and he claimed he ate his lunch on the first floor in the lunchroom; however he went to the second floor where the Coca-Cola machine was located and obtained a bottle of Coca-Cola for his lunch. Oswald claimed to be on the first floor when President John F. Kennedy passed his building. After hearing what had happened, he said that because of all the confusion there would be no work performed that afternoon so he decided to go home." (WR 612)

And the solo report of Agent Bookhout on this interview proclaims: "Oswald stated that on November 22, 1963, at the time of the search of the Texas School Book Depository building by Dallas Police officers, he was on the second floor of said building, having just purchased a Coca-Cola from the soft-drink machine, at which time a police officer came into the room with pistol drawn and asked him if he worked there. Mr. Truly was present and verified that he was an employee and the police officer thereafter left the room and continued through the building. Oswald stated that he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employee's lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman Bill Shelley, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of Bill Shelley, he did not believe that there was going to be any work that day due to the confusion in the building." (WR 619)

Well, this was obviously a lot of hooey. And not Oswald-hooey, either. The Bookhout solo report has Oswald going downstairs to eat AFTER the shooting. And talking to Shelley for five or ten minutes AFTER having his lunch. This did not happen and none of the other reports claim as much.

And yet, there is one bit in this last report that rings true--and that is that Oswald said he only left the building after talking with and/or listening to Bill Shelley.

I mean...WHAT ARE THE ODDS? Bill Shelley said he was told to guard the front stairway--the stairway down which Oswald is presumed to have descended before leaving the building--and claimed further that yessiree he did guard that stairway--and Oswald just so happened to suggest he'd had a talk with Bill Shelley before he left the building.

WELL, how would Oswald have known Shelley was guarding the front of the building...unless...Oswald had seen him doing so?

And if he saw him doing so, well, it follows that he probably spoke to him, and that Shelley had allowed him to pass.

Now, think about this. Within hours of the shooting, the presumption was that Oswald had killed Kennedy all by his lonesome, and that he had also killed Officer Tippit all by his lonesome. Well, that would make someone who'd allowed Oswald to leave the building after he shot the President a suspect, or, at the very least, someone who bore some responsibility for the death of Officer Tippit.

Well, is there any wonder, then, why Shelley would lie about this?

I mean, Shelley's admitting he talked to Oswald would not have done Oswald any good... and it would have complicated his own life by a...(fill in your own colloquialism...I, for one, choose "shitload").

So, yes, we have reason to suspect Shelley lied about not talking to Oswald before he left the building...

There's also this. When Shelley testified on 4-7-64, he was not asked one question about Oswald's claim he chatted with Shelley before he left the building. Not one. This was one of the main reasons for his testimony. And yet he was not asked one question on this topic.

Well, this suggests the possibility--and I admit it's just a possibility, based upon a hunch--that Ball and Shelley made a trade, of sorts--that Ball wouldn't bring up Shelley's letting Oswald leave the building if Shelley helped him refute Vickie Adams' claim she ran down the stairs just after the shooting.

Now, apparently someone noticed this, and decided it was really important they get Shelley on the record denying he had any contact with Oswald after the shooting.

Now, this could have been Ball himself. On 5-6-64 he wrote a memo to Commission Counsel Wesley Liebeler and told him to be sure to ask William Shelley to clarify this matter in an upcoming deposition.

It seems apparent, then, that Ball thought he could hand his dirty work off to Liebeler. But no such luck. On 5-14-64 Ball himself took Shelley's deposition, and put the following on the record:

Mr. BALL. Did you see him in the building at any time after 12?

Mr. SHELLEY. No.

Mr. BALL. Did you at anytime after the President was shot see Oswald in the building?

Mr. SHELLEY. No, sir.

Mr. BALL. Did you at anytime after the President was shot tell Oswald to go home?

Mr. SHELLEY. No, sir.

Mr. BALL. Did you tell anybody to go home?

Mr. SHELLEY. No.

Mr. BALL. You didn't tell anybody to leave the building at all?

Mr. SHELLEY. No, sir.

Straight and to the point. Like most rehearsed testimony...

In any event, getting back to Vickie Adams, and Shelley's claim Truly told him to guard the front elevator, yes, even Oswald's words support that Truly talked to Shelley before heading up the stairs (and not after he came back down).

So...what's Lovelady got to say about all this?

Well, at first glance it appears that Lovelady, as Shelley, felt he'd spent too much time in the railroad yards to arrive at the back elevator before Baker and Truly, and be observed by Adams. Let's recall that a 3-18-64 statement to the FBI prepared for Shelley's signature says he and Lovelady "accompanied"some police officers over to the railroad yards and returned to the building "about ten minutes later"(22H673). Now realize that a similar statement prepared for Lovelady's signature said they stayed in the railroad yards "for about five minutes" before returning to the building (22H662).

So let's take a second glance...

Mr. BALL - When Gloria came up and said the President had been shot, Gloria Calvary, what did you do?

Mr. LOVELADY - Well, I asked who told her. She said he had been shot so we asked her was she for certain or just had she seen the shot hit him or--she said yes, she had been right close to it to see and she had saw the blood and knew he had been hit but didn't know how serious it was and so the crowd had started towards the railroad tracks back, you know, behind our building there and we run towards that little, old island and kind of down there in that little street. We went as far as the first tracks and everybody was hollering and crying and policemen started running out that way and we said we better get back into the building, so we went back into the west entrance on the back dock had that low ramp and went into the back dock back inside the building.

(Note: this is one of the problems with transcripts. You can rest assured Lovelady did not say "so we went back into the west entrance on the back dock had that low ramp and went into the back dock back inside the building." He more probably said, or at least meant to say, "so we went back into the west entrance on the back dock--(that) had that low ramp-- and went into the back (door) back inside the building.")

Mr. BALL - First of all, let's get you to tell us whom you left the steps with.

Mr. LOVELADY - Mr. Shelley.

Mr. BALL - Shelley and you went down how far?

Mr. LOVELADY - Well, I would say a good 75, between 75 to 100 yards to the first tracks. See how those tracks goes---

Mr. BALL - You went down the dead end on Elm?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - And down to the first tracks?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Did you see anything there?

Mr. LOVELADY - No, sir; well, just people running.

Mr. BALL - That's all?

Mr. LOVELADY - And hollerin.

Mr. BALL - How did you happen to go down there?

Mr. LOVELADY - I don't know, because everybody was running from that way and naturally, I guess---

Mr. BALL - They were running from that way or toward that way?

Mr. LOVELADY - Toward that way; everybody thought it was coming from that direction.

Mr. BALL - By the time you left the steps had Mr. Truly entered the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - As we left the steps I would say we were at least 15, maybe 25, steps away from the building. I looked back and I saw him and the policeman running into the building.

Mr. BALL - How many steps?

Mr. LOVELADY - Twenty, 25.

Mr. BALL - Steps away and you looked back and saw him enter the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Then you came back. How long did you stay around the railroad tracks?

Mr. LOVELADY - Oh, just a minute, maybe minute and a half.

Mr. BALL - Then what did you do?

Mr. LOVELADY - Came back right through that part where Mr. Campbell, Mr. Truly, and Mr. Shelley park their cars and I came back inside the building.

Mr. BALL - And enter from the rear?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, sir; sure did.

Mr. BALL - You heard the shots. And how long after that was it before Gloria Calvary came up? Mr. LOVELADY - Oh, approximately 3 minutes, I would say.

Mr. BALL - Three minutes is a long time.

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, it's---I say approximately; I can't say because I don't have a watch; it could.

Hmmm... Shelley and Lovelady have both made an approximation for the time it took Gloria Calvery to run up to them, and have grossly inflated this time beyond what Ball and Belin purport to be true, based upon their re-enactment of Baker's actions. Ball knows this. And yet does nothing to correct the record on this point. He fails to mention the re-enactment in Shelley's and Lovelady's testimony. He fails to clarify this issue through a re-enactment of their movements after the shots. And he fails to even call Calvery as a witness.

Suspicious Omissions #21-23

4-7-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin fail to interview Gloria Calvery and re-enact the actions of William Shelley and Billy Lovelady after the shooting, even though Ball and Belin know from their testimony that Shelley and Lovelady's sense of time for the moments immediately following the shooting are at odds with the re-enactments Ball and Belin had previously performed of Officer Baker's actions after the shooting.

And it wasn't just their re-enactment of Baker's actions that Ball and Belin were ignoring. News footage of the front steps of the depository taken about 30 seconds after the last shot was fired show Shelley and Lovelady walking away from the steps towards the west end of the building...before Baker runs up to the front steps.

Here is a brilliant piece of work by Gerda Dunckel, in which she matches up the news footage of Malcolm Couch and Jimmy Darnell, and proves Shelley and Lovelady were walking west as Baker ran towards the steps, and that this all took place just seconds after the shooting. (The press car moving slowly down the street at the end of the clip was but 6 cars behind the limo in the motorcade.)

And here is a blow-up from the Darnell film focusing on Shelley and Lovelady.

And here is a comparison of the figures believed to be Shelley and Lovelady in the clip above with images of Shelley and Lovelady taken later in the day. (Images and Inspiration: Bart Kamp).

Suspicious Omission #24 4-7-64--September 1964. Ball and Belin fail to consult newsreel footage which could help them establish the timing of Shelley and Lovelady's walk around the building, which could, in turn, help them establish the credibility of Vickie Adams' claim she ran down the back stairs just after the shooting, and failed to see or hear Oswald on the stairs.

Mr. BALL - Had people started to run?

Mr. LOVELADY - Well, I couldn't say because she came up to us and we was talking to her, wasn't looking that direction at that time, but when we came off the steps--see, that entrance, you have a blind side when you go down the steps.

Mr. BALL - Right after you talked to Gloria, did you leave the steps and go toward the tracks?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Did you run or walk?

Mr. LOVELADY - Medium trotting or fast walk.

Mr. BALL - A fast walk?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - How did you happen to turn around and see Truly and the policeman go into the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - Somebody hollered and I looked.

Mr. BALL - You turned around and looked?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - After you ran to the railroad tracks you came back and went in the back door of the building? Mr. LOVELADY - Right.

Well, hello. Shelley and Lovelady both testified to seeing Baker run up to the steps after they'd started heading west. Now, both the Warren Commission's re-enactment of Baker's actions and the news footage from 11-22-63 prove this happened around 30 seconds or so after the shooting. And this proves Shelley and Lovelady's claim this happened three minutes or so after the shooting to be nonsense.

This should have been clear to Ball and Belin, for that matter.. When one gets past Lovelady's obviously incorrect approximation for the time elapsed before Gloria Calvery ran up to him, one can see that Lovelady has testified that the time he and Shelley spent around the railroad tracks was about half as long as the time elapsed before Gloria Calvery ran up to them, and that Baker and Truly ran into the front of the building AFTER she ran up to them. This then suggests Shelley and Lovelady spent but fifteen seconds or so over by the railroad tracks.

Let's think about this. Shelley and Lovelady circled around from the front of the building and then re-entered the building from the west. They had a head start on Baker and Truly and were moving at a medium trot. It only makes sense, then, that they could beat Baker and Truly to the location of the freight elevators within the building. I mean, Baker and Truly would have to have spent some time discussing things, such as the fact the front elevator doesn't go to the roof. They also had a brief exchange with Eddie Piper about the elevators. It certainly seems possible then that Shelley and Lovelady were standing by these elevators when Adams and Styles came down the stairs. And that Baker and Truly ran up to Shelley and Lovelady a few seconds later.

Mr. BALL - Did you go in through the docks, the wide open door or did you go in the ordinary small door?

Mr. LOVELADY - You know where we park our trucks--that door; we have a little door.

Mr. BALL - That is where you went in, that little door?

Mr. LOVELADY - That's right.

Mr. BALL - That would be the north end of the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - That would be the west end, wouldn't it?

Mr. BALL - Is it the one right off Houston Street?

Mr. LOVELADY - No; you are thinking about another dock.

Mr. BALL - I am?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes; we have two.

Mr. BALL - Do you have a dock on the west side and one on the north side of the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - East, and well, it would be east and west but you enter it from the south side. Mr. BALL - Now, the south side---

Mr. LOVELADY - Elm Street is that little dead-end street.

Mr. BALL - That's south. Mr. LOVELADY - I drive my truck here (indicating) but we came in from this direction; that would have to be west.

Mr. BALL - You came into the building from the west side?

Mr. LOVELADY - Right.

Note that, although Ball had previously got Lovelady to agree that he re-entered the building through the rear door, Lovelady was now clarifying his previous testimony, and making it clear--crystal freaking clear--that he'd re-entered the building from the west side.

Now note that Lovelady is talking about the door to the left of the car port in the photo below.

Here it is again.

.

Note that the door is open, but that once inside this door, one would still have a ways to walk to get into the main building.

Mr. BALL - Where did you go into the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - Through that, those raised-up doors.

Mr. BALL - Through the raised-up doors?

Mr. LOVELADY - Through that double door that we in the morning when we get there we raised. There's a fire door and they have two wooden doors between it.

The layout of this part of the building--strangely never depicted in the Warren Commission's diagrams of the building--is depicted below.

Oh wait, that's another one.

Suspicious Omission #25 4-7-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission's diagrams for the first floor of the school book depository strangely fail to include the west loading dock, through which Shelley and Lovelady re-entered the building, which was presumably left unsecured for some time after the shooting.

Illustration by R.B. Cutler.

It should be pointed out as well that Ball was completely clueless about the layout of the building, and had assumed Shelley and Lovelady had returned to the building through the north dock. While this might give him a partial excuse for failing to believe Adams, it shines a brighter light on his over-all investigation--and proves he didn't have a good grasp of the facts.

And that's not to mention that Ball failed to properly explore the facts about this side door, and find out if and when it was locked up after Shelley and Lovelady entered.

Mr. BALL - You came in through the first floor?

Mr. LOVELADY - Right.

Mr. BALL - Who did you see in the first floor?

Mr. LOVELADY - I saw a girl but I wouldn't swear to it it's Vickie.

Notice how Lovelady jumps right in--"I wouldn't swear to it it's Vickie". It's clear from this he's already discussed this issue with Ball, and that Ball has told him Adams has said she saw him when she came down the stairs. Notice also that he's using lawyerese--"I wouldn't swear to it". This suggests that Ball has coached him away from saying he's fairly certain or strongly believes, and has pressured him into weakening his testimony, so that the commission could turn around and say Adams wasn't very reliable.

Mr. BALL - Who is Vickie?

Mr. LOVELADY - The girl that works for Scott, Foresman.

Mr. BALL - What is her full name?

Mr. LOVELADY - I wouldn't know.

Mr. BALL - Vickie Adams?

Mr. LOVELADY - I believe so.

Mr. BALL - Would you say it was Vickie you saw?

Mr. LOVELADY - I couldn't swear.

Mr. BALL - Where was the girl?

Mr. LOVELADY - I don't remember what place she was but I remember seeing a girl as she was talking to Bill or saw Bill or something, then I went over and asked one of the guys what time it was and to see if we should continue working or what.

Wait. There's two points of interest here. The first is that Lovelady remembers seeing the girl he thinks was Vickie interacting with Shelley in some way. As we shall see, Lovelady did not follow Shelley up to the fourth floor. It seems clear then that this must have happened on the first floor. Adams was on the first floor but twice--when she first came down just after the shooting, and when she returned to the building 8 minutes or so later, at a time when Shelley was presumably helping the police search the building upstairs. It seems probable then that she saw or spoke to Shelley when she first came down, precisely as she claimed.

This brings us to the second point. Lovelady said he spoke to some guy about whether or not they should go back to work. Well, what guy? Could this have been Eddie Piper? Could this have been Dougherty? Did Lovelady and Dougherty discuss whether or not they should go back to work? Did Dougherty, not realizing what all the hub-bub was about beyond that the President had just passed by, then take the west elevator upstairs and return to work?

We don't know because Ball failed to ask Lovelady about Dougherty.

Suspicious Omission #26 4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Billy Lovelady any of a number of relevant questions regarding Eddie Piper and Jack Dougherty's actions after the shooting.

Mr. BALL - Did you see any other people on the first floor?

Mr. LOVELADY - Oh, yes; by that time there were more; a few of the guys had come in.

Mr. BALL - And you stayed on the first floor then?

Mr. LOVELADY - I would say 30 minutes. And one of the policemen asked me would I take them up on the sixth floor.

Mr. BALL - Did you take them up there?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, sir; I sure did.

Mr. BALL - Mr. Lovelady, your testimony will be written up and it can be submitted to you for your signature if you wish and you can make any changes, or you can waive signature and we will make this your final---

Mr. LOVELADY - I want this to be the final one.

Mr. BALL - All right; you waive signature?

Mr. LOVELADY - Yes.

Mr. BALL - Thanks very much.

(4-7-64, 3:50 PM 6H336-341)

And that's it. BALL NEVER ASKED LOVELADY IF HE SAW TRULY AND BAKER IN THE BUILDING EITHER BEFORE THEY WENT UPSTAIRS OR AFTER THEY CAME DOWN.

He was supposed to be clearing up what happened on the back stairs and back elevators, but has done anything but... There's just no excuse for this.

Suspicious Omission #27 4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball also fails to ask Lovelady if he saw Roy Truly and Officer Baker run up the stairs.

This omission is particularly egregious and suspicious in light of subsequent events. On 7-5-78, Billy Lovelady was interviewed by an HSCA investigator, accompanied by an HSCA photo analyst (Robert Groden). While the tapes of this interview were not transcribed, copies of the tapes were eventually acquired by researcher Richard Gilbride and placed on Youtube. Towards the end of Tape 1, Lovelady is asked "What did you see inside the building?" after he and Shelley returned to the building. He says he saw some co-workers, but does not name them. He is then asked to describe what the police did as they ran into the building. His response is blurred as the tape runs out. At the beginning of Tape 2, however, he repeats for posterity what he was describing as the tape ran out. He repeats: "One policeman (and) Mr. Truly had run up the steps...I guess they went up the steps when they couldn't get the freight elevator to go upstairs." Lovelady is then asked "What else did you see that went on at that time after the police came in?" He responds "At that time, after Mr. Truly and (the) officer ran up, there were more Secret Service and FBI, I guess it was, that came in."

Well, this is clear. Lovelady (and Shelley) were inside the building when Truly and Baker ran up the stairs.

So yeah, it 's painfully obvious that the commission's argument (in which Shelley and Lovelady's recollections were at odds with Adams' recollections, and somehow refuted her recollections) was nothing but smoke, and that their recollections actually supported her recollections.

Let us look beyond them, then, and see if there are any other statements and testimony supporting that Shelley and Lovelady were at the bottom of the stairs when Adams said they were, and/or that Adams came down the stairs when she said she did.

Here's one...

SENATOR COOPER - Did you see anyone else while you were in the building, other than this man you have identified later as Oswald, and Mr. Truly. Mr. BAKER - On the first floor there were two men. As we came through the main doorway to the elevators, I remember as we tried to get on the elevators I remember two men, one was sitting on this side and another one between 20 or 30 feet away from us looking at us. Mr. DULLES - Were they white men?

Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Every employee working in the school book depository building on 11-22-63 was interviewed by the FBI. No one said anything about running back to the elevators in the seconds after the shooting. No one said anything about coming out of an office and casually walking over to the elevators, either. It should be noted, moreover, that no white men were known to have been on the first floor at this time. Well, it follows, then, that these men were most probably Shelley and Lovelady.

And, if not, men of great interest...

One should rightly wonder, then, why no effort was made to find out the identity of these men.

Suspicious Omission #28 3-25-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin fail to follow-up on Officer Baker's claim he saw two white men by the elevators when he came into the building, at a time when no white men besides Baker and Truly were known to be on the first floor.

It's worth noting, moreover, that the existence of these men only slipped out because a couple of the commissioners decided to do their job, that is, to ask questions, and not just swallow whatever Ball and Belin were feeding them.

This brings us, then, to Miss Adams' 4-7-64 testimony.

Mr. BELIN - When you got to the bottom of the first floor, did you see anyone there as you entered the first floor from the stairway? Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Who did you see?

Miss ADAMS - Mr. Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady.

Mr. BELIN - Where did you see them on the first floor?

Miss ADAMS - Well, this is the stairs, and this is the Houston Street dock that I went out. They were approximately in this position here, so I don't know how you would describe that.

Mr. BELIN - You are looking now at a first floor plan or diagram of the Texas School Book Depository, and you have pointed to a position where you encountered Bill Lovelady and Mr. Bill Shelley?

Miss ADAMS - That's correct.

Mr. BELIN - It would be slightly east of the front of the east elevator, and probably as far south as the length of the elevator, is that correct?

Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - I have a document here called Commission's Exhibit No. 496, which includes a diagram of the first floor, and there is a No. 7 and a circle on it, and I have pointed to a place marked No. 7 on the diagram. Is that correct?

Miss ADAMS - That is approximate.

(Note: CE 496 is NOT a diagram of the first floor. It is a job application of Oswald's. The diagram shown Adams by Belin was, however, page 7 of an FBI booklet dubbed Commission Document 496. As CE 497 IS a diagram of the second floor, however, it seems possible the diagram of the first floor was going to be CE 496, but then someone changed their mind. But why? Well, one possibility is right there, in plain sight. Perhaps Ball and Belin were afraid this diagram, a diagram showing the camera locations for photos taken of the first floor, offered support for Adams. Or not. Maybe just maybe Belin confused Document 496 (which would not be made public for years after the commission's work had been completed) with Exhibit 496 (which would be published as part of the commission's volumes in November 1964), and forgot to have what he mistakenly called Exhibit 496 entered into evidence, and published along with the other exhibits shown to his witnesses. Maybe.)

In any event, here's the diagram showing the circled number 7 where Adams thought she saw Lovelady and Shelley.

Suspicious Omission #29 4-7-64--Warren Commission attorney David Belin shows Vickie Adams a diagram of the first floor depicting where she claimed she saw Lovelady and Shelley, but fails to enter this diagram into evidence.

Photo 9 from Outer Space

And that's not the only suspicious aspect to CD 496. When one goes through CD 496 one finds that photo #9 is a photo taken from the north side of the warehouse towards Mr. Shelley's office. This is what's on the diagram, above, and this is what the photo shows. When one looks at the photo on the Mary Ferrel website, however, one finds that it is a barely legible photocopy of the original photo, and has been mislabeled as a photo of Roy Truly's office.

It's enough to make one wonder if they (the FBI along with Warren Commission counsel Joseph Ball and David Belin) were trying to hide something.

So what's in photo #9 that they might have been trying to hide?

A phone.

Here it is. (Now, to be clear, this is not the photo as presented in CD 496. That's nearly illegible, at least on the Mary Ferrell website. This is the photo as presented in FBI file 62-109060, Section EBF Serial 2654X p.39 on the Mary Ferrell website. It's slightly better.)

Now, should you have trouble spotting it, here's the phone.

So why would "they" try to hide that phone?

Let's go back to the beginning of this long national nightmare and re-read the initial statement of William Shelley.

“Today approximately 12:30 P.M. November 22, 1963, I was standing on the front steps at 411 Elm watching the President in the parade. The President’s car was about halfway from Houston Street to the Triple Underpass when I heard what sounded like three shots. I couldn’t tell where they came from. I ran across the street to the corner of the park and ran into a girl crying and she said the President had been shot. The girl’s name is Gloria Calvery who is an employee of this same building. I went back to the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what had happened. I was on the first floor then and I stayed at the elevator and was told not to let anyone out of the elevator. I left the elevator and went with the police on up to the other floors. I left Jack Dougherty in charge of the elevator." (24H226)

And that's it. Nothing about hanging out in the train yards. The man rushed back in the building to call his wife, folks.

For the image below I have layered R.B. Cutler's drawing of the first floor of the school book depository (which shows the western loading dock and the pillars within the building) atop the illustration of the first floor provided the Warren Commission in CD 496. I have then marked with blue arrows the presumed route of William Shelley to the location of the phone depicted above, and marked this location with a yellow star. I have then marked with green arrows Vickie Adams' purported route from the building.

Now note the red star. That's where Adams testified to seeing Shelley. It was right on his route to the phone!

Now, to be clear, we don't know for fact this was the phone used by Shelley. He may have used one in his office. And yet, that doesn't matter very much, because the direct route from the side door to Shelley's office was blocked off by wrapping tables, and this would have led him to head north within the building upon entry and then east to get to his office. And this would have led him within a few feet of the location picked out by Adams.

Well, what are the odds? A woman claims she saw two men together at a specific place and time. They admit to being at that place, but one thinks he was at that place a bit later, and isn't completely sure she was the woman he saw when he was at that place, and the other thinks he was at that place a bit later, and remembers seeing the woman, but thinks maybe he saw her a bit later on a different floor entirely, when he wasn't with the other man.

Well, it should be readily apparent that she was right and they were wrong. Or, if not, that a little bit of thinking and/or digging could have resolved this conflict.

I mean, Lovelady remembered there being a woman when he came in the building. Well, was any effort made to identify this woman? No, of course not, because a study of the witness statements makes it pretty freakin' clear no women outside of Adams and Styles were by the back entrance of the depository in the minutes after the shooting.

And Shelley thought maybe he talked to Adams on the fourth floor. Well, was any effort made to back this up--by establishing the time Shelley was on the fourth floor, and the time Adams returned to the fourth floor, to see if these times over-lapped? Or even to ask Adams' co-workers who remained on the fourth floor to see if they recalled her talking to Shelley? No, of course not.

Because...Ball and Belin didn't want to know the truth. That much is clear, if nothing else.

Here, again, is the passage in the Warren Report in which they pretend to resolve this issue:

"Lovelady and Shelley moved out into the street. About this time Shelley saw Truly and Patrolman Baker go into the building. Shelley and Lovelady, at a fast walk or trot, turned west into the railroad yards and then to the west side of the Depository Building. They reentered the building by the rear door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance. On entering, Lovelady saw a girl on the first floor who he believes was Victoria Adams. If Miss Adams accurately recalled meeting Shelley and Lovelady when she reached the bottom of the stairs, then her estimate of the time when she descended from the fourth floor is incorrect, and she actually came down the stairs several minutes after Oswald and after Truly and Baker as well. "

While Shelley testified to Baker and Truly's running up the front steps 3 or 4 minutes after the shooting, and Lovelady testified to Gloria Calvary's running up to Shelley and himself 3 minutes after the shooting (and that this happened before Baker and Truly ran up the steps), Ball and Belin knew they couldn't use this to discredit Adams, because they'd already performed a re-enactment of Baker's run to the steps, and had concluded it concluded around 15 seconds after the last shot, and not 3 or 4 minutes. So they relied instead on Shelley and Lovelady's estimates regarding how long they spent in the train yards.

But this, too, was a problem. And a pretty big one at that. While Shelley and Lovelady were purported to have told the FBI they spent 5-10 minutes in the train yards before re-entering the building, those claims were made in unsigned statements. So how did they testify? Well, when asked how long they spent by the railroad tracks, Shelley said he "wouldn't say over a minute or minute and a half" and Lovelady said "just a minute, maybe minute and a half."

Now, wait a second. It would have taken Shelley and Lovelady but 15 seconds or so to reach the train yards, and another 15 seconds or so to re-enter the building via the side door. And they had already left the steps when Baker and Truly ran up to the steps. So let's cut 5 seconds off that 30.

So...by their own approximation, Shelley and Lovelady were back inside the building within 85-115 seconds of Baker and Truly's entering the building (as opposed to the "several minutes" claimed in the report).

Well, this nearly overlaps with the re-enactment performed by Baker on 3-20-64, which Baker thought was a bit faster than it had been in reality.

That re-enactment placed Baker on the second floor 60-75 seconds after entering the building. As it would take but 8 seconds or so to climb the stairs from the bottom of the elevators to the second floor, furthermore, this put Baker and Truly at the back elevators 52-67 seconds after entering the building.

Well, that's just 18 seconds or so before Shelley and Lovelady said they were near the back elevators.

Now, okay, Shelley and Lovelady would have to have been there 10 seconds or more before Baker and Truly ran up to be seen by Adams, and not have Adams see Baker and Truly, so that's 28 seconds.

Which is pretty damned close, when you think of it. I mean, Shelley and Lovelady thought they re-entered the side of the building 85-115 seconds after Baker and Truly entered the front of the building. Let's say they were wrong. And that it was more like 71 seconds.

Now let's add-in that Belin's re-enactment (which Baker thought was on the short side) placed Baker by the back elevators 75 seconds or so after he entered the building. Well, what if he was wrong? And that it was more like 89 seconds?

Well, that gives Shelley and Lovelady an 18 second window in which to get to the back of the building, be addressed by Adams and Styles, and observe Baker and Truly run up to the elevators.

That's right, a 14-second mis-estimation on the part of both Belin/Baker, and Shelley/Lovelady, changes everything.

Now consider the opposite. For Adams to have been wrong, and for her to have descended AFTER Baker and Truly ran up the steps, she would have to have been off by 90 seconds or so in her estimation, that is, what she thought took 60 seconds or so would have to have taken 150 seconds or so.

And not just her, but Lovelady. Let's recall that Lovelady placed his return into the building at 85-115 seconds after Baker and Truly entered the building, and that he thought he saw Adams upon entering.

Well, the scenario propped up in the Warren Report holds that he, too, was wrong, and that he'd really returned 165-180 seconds after Baker and Truly entered the building.

So what makes more sense? That the re-enactment and the recollections of Shelley and Lovelady were slightly off, or that the recollections of Lovelady and Adams were far off--not even close?

I mean, this isn't rocket science. Ball and Belin had to choose between two scenarios--one in which the estimates of Baker, Shelley and Lovelady were slightly off and one in which the estimates of Adams and Lovelady (and presumably Styles who they never bothered to interview) were far off, and they choose the latter and refused to investigate further.

They believed because they wanted to believe--or, more accurately, disbelieved because they wanted to disbelieve.

If Adams was on the stairs when she claimed, it shot a hole in their belief Oswald ran downstairs, which in turn shot a hole in their belief he fired the shots, which in turn shot a hole in their belief Jack Dougherty was on the elevator that descended while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs.

In other words, Vickie Adams, much as Arnold Rowland, Jack Dougherty and Eddie Piper, was an obstacle to the goals of the commission, that needed to be smashed.

AND SO...One might more than wonder if it was just a coincidence that FBI photo 9--the one showing the warehouse phone presumably used by Shelley upon his return to the building--and the one right by where Vickie Adams said she saw him--was a mis-labeled mess, at least as presented within the commission's records...one might suspect foul play.

And I know. That might seem a bit of a stretch. Photos get mislabeled and are sometimes badly reproduced, etc...

But...there was no upside in the commission letting the public see this phone.

Let's recall here that Pierce Allman claimed he'd arrived at this phone (a phone in "an open area,"according to Allman, and a phone "by a pillar," according to MacNeill) shortly after the assassination, and that no one was around when he came in besides the person now presumed to have been Oswald.

Well, think about it. Allman, who has become semi-famous for 1) running into Oswald as he came in the building, and 2) claiming all the shots came from the building, and that Oswald must have acted alone, is actually one of the best witnesses for Oswald's innocence. He would have to have arrived on the scene within a few minutes to have bumped into Oswald. And yet he would have almost certainly have noticed, or been noticed by, Adams, Styles, Shelley and Lovelady, should THEY have come through the side door, or down the stairs, after his arrival at the location of the phone.

Well, it follows, then, that they had skedaddled BEFORE Allman came into the building, and not after. Allman, let's remember, stayed on the phone for 25 minutes or so...

And that means they had skedaddled BEFORE Oswald reached the front door, where Allman asked him about a phone...

And that means they had arrived on the first floor, and left the first floor, within 3 minutes of the shooting.

Now, that doesn't prove they had their "encounter" before Baker and Truly came in the building, but it does prove the timeline pushed by many a theorist--which holds they ran into each other 6-7 minutes after the shooting--is doubtful, at best.

(If someone knows the location of another phone within the building that would more logically be the one used by Shelley, or Allman, please let me know...)

Suspicious Omission #30 March 1964--September 1964. Warren Commission attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin fail to follow-up on the Secret Service's interviews of Pierce Allman and Terry Ford, in which they placed themselves near the back of the building at the time the commission claimed Adams and Styles had raced down the back stairs.

Now let's get back to Belin's interrogation of Adams.

Mr. BELIN - Between the time you got off the stairs and the time you got to this point when you say you encountered them, which was somewhat to the south and a little bit east of the front of the east elevator, did you see any other employees there?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Any other people prior to the time you saw them?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Now when you were running down the stairs on your trip down the stairs, did you hear anyone using the Stairs?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Did you hear anyone calling for an elevator?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Did you see the foreman, Roy Truly? Did you see the superintendent of the warehouse, Roy S. Truly?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir; I did not.

Mr. BELIN - What about any motorcycle police officers?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Now what did you do after you encountered Mr. Shelley and Mr. Lovelady?

Miss ADAMS - I said I believed the President was shot.

Mr. BELIN - Do you remember what they said?

Miss ADAMS - Nothing.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Miss ADAMS - I proceeded out to the Houston Street dock.

Mr. BELIN - That would be on this same diagram? It is marked Houston Street dock, and you went through what would be the north door, which is towards the rear of the first floor, is that correct?

And down some stairs towards the rear of the dock?

Miss ADAMS - That's correct.

Mr. BELIN - Where did you go from there?

Miss ADAMS - I proceeded--which way is east and west?

Mr. BELIN - East is here. East is towards Houston, and west is towards the railroad tracks. You went east or west? Towards the railroad tracks or towards Houston Street?

Miss ADAMS - I went west towards the tracks.

Mr. BELIN - How far west did you go?

Miss ADAMS - I went approximately 2 yards within the tracks and there was an officer standing there, and he said, "Get back to the building." And I said, "But I work here."

And he said, "That is tough, get back." I said, "Well, was the President shot?" And he said, "I don't know. Go back." And I said, "All right."

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Miss ADAMS - I went back, only I went southwest.

Mr. BELIN - Well, did you come back by way of the street, or did you come back the same entrance you went out?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - You went back in through the front entrance, through the front of the building?

Miss ADAMS - Well, I didn't go back in right away.

Mr. BELIN - What did you do then? There is a street that would be a continuation of Elm Street that goes in front of the building, and Elm Street itself angles into the freeway. Did you go back either of those streets?

Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir. I went by the one directly in front of the building.

Mr. BELIN - What did you do when you got there?

Miss ADAMS - When I got there, I happened to look around and noticed several of the employees, and I noticed Joe Molina, for one, was standing in front of the building, and also Avery Davis, who works with me, and I said, "What do you think has happened?" And she said, "I don't know." And I said, "I want to find out." I think the President is shot.

Okay, then. Let's see if the statements of Davis and Molina can help us figure out what time this was. Davis was never asked to testify. Molina's testimony was taken at 4:50 by Joseph Ball in the same office and on the same day Adams' testimony was taken by Ball's partner David Belin at 2:15. And yet Molina wasn't asked about her. Not one question. He was asked about Baker and Truly, however, and verified that Truly ran into the building "maybe 20 or 30 seconds" after the shots. He was also asked about Gloria Calvery, but only remembered her talking about the shooting after the she re-entered the building. (6H368-373)

Well, what about their earlier statements, then? An FBI report on an 11-23-63 interview of Davis says she "immediately returned to the building and to the elevator to her fourth floor offices" after the shooting. (CD7, p23) Hmmm... That doesn't sound like she waited around much. A 2-18-64 report of the Dallas Police Department (found in box 3, folder 19, file 6 of Dallas JFK Archive) similarly claims that, after the shooting, Davis "went back to work on the fourth floor." Still, that's a little vague. A 3-20-64 statements to the FBI by Mrs. Davis, however, gives us a little more detail. There Davis claimed that after the shooting: "I, along with others, started to move forward in the direction of the President's car, but after moving about fifteen feet I turned and returned inside the Depository Building." (22H642)

It seems probable from Mrs. Davis's statements, then, that she would have told the Commission she talked to Vickie Adams 3 or 4 minutes after the shooting, as Adams was claiming, and not 6 minutes or more after the shooting, as Ball, Belin, and the Commission were pushing. It only follows, then, that one should consider their failure to ask Davis about Adams suspicious.

Suspicious Omission #31

4-7-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to ask Mrs. Avery Davis about Vickie Adams even though it has reason to suspect she would confirm Adams' claim she was outside on the front steps within a few minutes of the shooting.

Well, then what about Molina? An 11-23-63 report by the Dallas Police Dept. holds that, after the shooting, Molina "went down the embankment toward Commerce Street, saw officers closing the gate to the parking lot to the west of the School Book Depository Building...then went back into the building and stayed on the first floor." So that's not much help. Molina's 3-25-64 statement to the FBI similarly holds that, after the shooting, "he remained outside for a few moments and then went back inside the Texas School Depository Building." While not exactly convincing, it should nevertheless be observed that Molina's statements mirror Davis's statements in that they suggest Adams arrived on the front steps within a short time of the shooting, as opposed to six minutes or more afterwards.

Suspicious Omission #32 4-7-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to ask Joe Molina about Vickie Adams even though it has reason to suspect he would confirm Adams' claim she was outside on the front steps within a few minutes of the shooting.

We now return to Adams' testimony.

Miss ADAMS: There was a motorcycle that was parked on the corner of Houston and Elm directly in front of the east end of the building, and I paused-there to listen to the report on the police radio, and they said that shots had been fired which apparently came either from the second floor or the fourth floor window, and so I panicked, as I was at the only open window on the fourth floor.

Mr. BELIN - Did they say second floor or second floor from the top?

Miss ADAMS - It said second floor. So then I decided maybe I had better go back into the building, and going up the stairs---

Now, hold it right there. Adams' recollection of this broadcast has created a time-stamp by which we can approximate the time she returned to the building.

Let's turn, then, to the testimony of motorcycle patrolman E.D. Brewer.

Mr. BELIN. Handing you what has been marked Sawyer Deposition Exhibit A, which appears to be a transcript of a police log of the Dallas Police Department, you see this exhibit here?

Mr. BREWER. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Your call number that day was?

Mr. BREWER. 137.

Mr. BELIN. I notice here that the first time there appears Call No. 137, after 12:30 is at 12:38 p.m.

There is a call from 137 to 531. You want to read what it says there?

Mr. BREWER. "A witness says he saw 'em pull the weapon from the window of the second floor on the southeast comer of the Depository Building."

Mr. BELIN. Would that have been the second floor or the second floor from the top?

Mr. BREWER. I don't know.

Mr. BELIN. Do you remember any witness talking to you at all?

Mr. BREWER. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. Do you remember what he said?

Mr. BREWER. He said that he had saw him pull a weapon from the window from that building.

Mr. BELIN. Do you remember what window he said?

Mr. BREWER. I don't remember specifically which window he indicated, but I immediately told that to the dispatcher and proceeded on up to the building.

(4-9-64 testimony of E.D. Brewer 10:00 A.M., 6H302-308)

It follows, then, that Vickie Adams was standing in front of the depository at 12:38.

Mr. BELIN - Now at this time when you went back into the building, were there any policemen standing in front of the building keeping people out?

Miss ADAMS - There was an officer on the stairs itself, and he was prohibiting people from entering the building, that is correct. But I told him I worked there.

Mr. BELIN - Did he let you come back in?

Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do ?

Miss ADAMS - Following that, I pushed the button for the passenger elevator, but the power had been cut off on the elevator, so I took the stairs to the second floor.

Mr. BELIN - You then went all the way back to the northwest corner of the building and took the same set of stairs you had previously taken to come down, or did you take the stairs by the passenger elevator?

Miss ADAMS - By the passenger elevator.

Mr. BELIN - Do those stairs go above floor 2?

Miss ADAMS - No, sir; they didn't.

Mr. BELIN - What did you do when you got to the second floor?

Miss ADAMS - I went into the Texas School Book Depository office and just listened for a few minutes to the people that were congregating there, and decided there wasn't anything interesting going on, and went out and walked around the hall to the freight elevator meaning the one on the northwest corner.

Mr. BELIN - Would it have been the west or the east? The one nearest the stairs or the other one?

Miss ADAMS - Yes; the one nearest the stairs.

Note: it seems apparent that Adams and her companion for most of this trip, Sandra Styles, have separated by this point. A 3-19-64 statement by Styles relates that upon heading round the front of the building, "I then re-entered the building through the front door, took the elevator to the fourth floor, and returned to my office." (22H676) One would have to presume, moreover, that this was the elevator by the front stairs--the one Adams would later testify was without power on the first floor.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Miss ADAMS - I went into the elevator which was stopped on the second floor, with two men who were dressed in suit and hats, and I assumed they were plainclothesmen.

Mr. BELIN - What did you do then?

Miss ADAMS - I tried to get the elevator to go to the fourth floor, but it wasn't operating, so the gentlemen lifted the elevator gate and we went out and ran up the stairs to the fourth floor.

Mr. BELIN - Then you went back to the Scott Foresman Company offices?

Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir. Mr. BELIN - Now trying to reconstruct your actions insofar as the time sequence, which we haven't done, what is your best estimate of the time between the time the shots were fired and the time you got back to the building? How much time elapsed? If you have any estimate. Maybe you don't have one. Miss ADAMS - I would estimate not more than 5 minutes elapsed.

It should be noted that this was in keeping with the estimate she offered the FBI on 11-24-63, where she is purported to have said "that the time between her departure from the building and her return to the building was about four or five minutes." (CD5, p40)

Well, this places her exit from the building around 12:33, at the latest. And for this to have been accurate she'd have to have started down the stairs around 12:31 or 12:32, at a time when Baker and Truly were purported to be either just below or just above her location.

Mr. BELIN - Is there any particular reason why you make this estimation?

Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir; going down the stairs toward the back, I was running. I ran to the railroad tracks. I moved quickly to the front of the building, paused briefly to talk to someone, listened only to the report of the windows from which the shot supposedly was fired, and returned to the building.

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it was between the time the shots were fired and the time you left the window to start toward the stairway?

Miss ADAMS - Between 15 and 30 seconds, estimated, approximately.

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it was, or do you think it took you to get from the window to the top of the fourth floor stairs?

Miss ADAMS - I don't think I can answer that question accurately, because the time approximation, without a stopwatch, would be difficult.

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it took you. to get from the window to the bottom of the stairs on the first floor?

Miss ADAMS - I would say no longer than a minute at the most.

Mr. BELIN - So you think that from the time you left the window on the fourth floor until the time you got to the stairs at the bottom of the first floor, was approximately 1 minute?

Miss ADAMS - Yes, approximately.

Mr. BELIN - As I understand your testimony previously, you saw neither Roy Truly nor any motorcycle police officer at any time?

Miss ADAMS - That's correct.

Mr. BELIN - You heard no one else running down the stairs?

Miss ADAMS - Correct.

Mr. BELIN - When you got to the first floor did you immediately proceed to this point where you say you encountered Mr. Shelley and Mr. Lovelady? Well, you showed me on a diagram of the first floor that there was a place which was south and somewhat east of the front part of the east elevator that you encountered Truly and Lovelady?

Miss ADAMS - I saw them there.

Mr. BELIN - I mean; you saw them?

Miss ADAMS - Yes.

Mr. BELIN - Would that have been a matter of seconds after you got to the bottom of the first floor?

Miss ADAMS - Definitely.

Mr. BELIN - Less than 30 seconds?

Miss ADAMS - Yes.

And then later...

Mr. BELIN - Is there any other information that you can think of that might be relevant to anything, connected with the assassination?

Miss ADAMS - At the time I left the building on the Houston Street dock, there was an officer standing about 2 yards from the curb, and about from the curb across the street from the Texas School Depository, and about 4 yards from the corner of Houston and Elm, and when we were running out the dock, going around the building, the officer was standing there, and he didn't encounter us or ask us what we were doing or where we were going, and I don't know if that is pertinent.

Well, there's another one. Belin should have looked into this. If he had maybe he'd have realized Adams was telling the truth.

Suspicious Omission #33 4-7-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney David Belin fails to follow-up and establish the identity of a policeman observed by Vickie Adams just after the shooting, even though the identification of this policeman could help the Commission establish the veracity of Miss Adams claim she raced down the back stairs just after the shooting.

Mr. BELIN - No one stopped you from getting out of the building when you left?

Miss ADAMS - That's correct.

Mr. BELIN - That is helpful information. Is there any other information you have that could be relevant?

Miss ADAMS - There was a man that was standing on the corner of Houston and Elm asking questions there. He was dressed in a suit and a hat, and when I encountered Avery Davis going down, we asked who he was, because he was questioning people as if he were a police officer, and we noticed him take a colored boy away on a motorcycle, and this man was asking questions very efficaciously, and we said, "I guess he is maybe a reporter," and later on on television, there was a man that looked very similar to him, and he was identified as Ruby.

(4-7-64 testimony of Victoria Adams, 2:15 P.M., 6H386-393)

Well, nobody's perfect. On this issue, Adams was obviously confused. The man driving the "colored boy" around on his motorcycle was Dallas Police Sgt. D.V. Harkness, and the man with the hat asking questions was Dallas Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer.

Mr. HARKNESS - I had started west on Main Street to the, I don't know what they call this area here.

Mr. BELIN - Plaza.

Mr. HARKNESS - On the plaza area with the crowd to observe the President as he went west on Elm Street.

Mr. BELIN - How many shots did you hear?

Mr. HARKNESS - Three.

Mr. BELIN - What did you do after you heard those noises? Did you know they were shots, by the way?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - What did you do?

Mr. HARKNESS - When I saw the first shot and the President's car slow down to almost a stop----

Mr. BELIN - When you saw the first shot, what do you mean by that?

Mr. HARKNESS - When I heard the first shot and saw the President's car almost come to a stop and some of the agents piling off the car, I went back to the intersection to get my motorcycle.

Mr. BELIN - You were in the process of doing that when you heard the second and third shots?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Where did the shots sound like they came from?

Mr. HARKNESS - I couldn't tell. They were bouncing off the buildings down there. I couldn't tell.

Mr. BELIN - You mean the reverberations?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do

Mr. HARKNESS - I went west on Main to observe the area between the railroad tracks and Industrial.

Mr. BELIN - Why did you go down there?

Mr. HARKNESS - By the way the people, when I went into this area, everybody was hitting the ground, and someone led us to indicate that the shots were coming into the cars.

Mr. BELIN - You mean from some point in front of the cars?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes.

Mr. BELIN - Do you know who that someone was?

Mr. HARKNESS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - What did that person do that indicated that?

Mr. HARKNESS - I don't remember.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you

Mr. HARKNESS - I went down to Industrial to see if I could see anyone fleeing that area.

Mr. BELIN - What did you see?

Mr. HARKNESS - I didn't see anyone, so I come back to the front of the Book Depository and went around to this fence that was across the street from Elm Street.

Mr. BELIN - What do you mean across the street from Elm Street?

Mr. HARKNESS - Again, I will have to--near the railroad track.

Mr. BELIN - Behind the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - No, sir; this area right here. See, Elm Street goes down.

Mr. BELIN - What you are really saying---

Mr. HARKNESS - This area.

Mr. BELIN - You are pointing to a place between what would be the extension of Elm that doesn't go down into the parkway but the actual extension of Elm?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes; to the plaza area.

Mr. BELIN - The plaza area?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - What did you find there?

Mr. HARKNESS - I found a little colored boy, Amos Euins, who told me he saw the shots come from that building.

Mr. BELIN - Now you just picked out a little small book, one of those little pocket notebooks?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Or a notepad from your pocket here. Is that the original notation that you made?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - When did you make that notation?

Mr. HARKNESS - Immediately after the shooting.

Mr. BELIN - Is that your own record that you have kept in your possession since then?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir. I turned.

Mr. BELIN - You turned what?

Mr. HARKNESS - After I took his name and address and put this information on the radio, I then took him on the back of my three-wheel motorcycle and put him in Inspector Sawyer's car.

Mr. BELIN - Now you mentioned that you put something on the radio here, and I hand you here what has been marked as Sawyer Deposition Exhibit A. Before doing that, do you remember what call number you used, you were using on that day?

Mr. HARKNESS - I believe 260.

Mr. BELIN - Well, I notice here that there is a call with a notation at 12:36 p.m., 260 to 531. 531 is your office in the main station?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - What does it say there on that transcript?

Mr. HARKNESS - "Witness says shots came from fifth floor, Texas Book Depository store at Houston and Elm. I have him with me now and we are sealing off the building."

Mr. BELIN - All right, that was at 12:36 p.m.?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Had the building been sealed off at that time?

Mr. HARKNESS - Not to my knowledge. There were several officers around it, but I don't know whether it had been sealed off or not.

Mr. BELIN - In the process of sealing off the building, what did you do?

Mr. HARKNESS - Asked for a squad.

Mr. BELIN - How long did it take you after that to have the back part sealed off?

Mr. HARKNESS - The guard was arriving by the time I got off my motorcycle. There was already additional squads en route.

Mr. BELIN - How soon after 12:36 p.m., would you say the building was sealed off?

Mr. HARKNESS - It was sealed off then because I was back there and two other men.

Mr. BELIN - You are talking about the back part of the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - What about the front part of the building? When was that sealed off?

Mr. HARKNESS - Inspector Sawyer and two officers were there.

Mr. BELIN - By the time you got around to the front part of the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir; by the time I put the witness in his car, I went immediately to the back.

Mr. BELIN - In other words, as I understand the sequence, you first went to the back of the building and had that sealed off first, or not?

Mr. HARKNESS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - You tell me what happened then.

Mr. HARKNESS - I had this witness with me. I didn't want to lose this witness.

Mr. BELIN - All right.

Mr. HARKNESS - So I took him to the car.

Mr. BELIN - To Inspector Sawyer's car?

Mr. HARKNESS - To Inspector Sawyer's car, which was right in front.

Mr. BELIN - Which was parked in front of the Texas School Book Depository?

Mr. HARKNESS - And left the witness there and went around to the back.

Mr. BELIN - On whose radio did you call? Did you call in before or after you left the witness in the car?

Mr. HARKNESS - I don't remember in exact sequence there, but it was in the process of going to the car there.

(4-9-64 Testimony of D.V. Harkness, 11:30 A.M. 6H308-315)

So...hmmm... Adams, in the company of Davis--who she and Styles encountered out in front of the building, (after Adams and Styles had already been to the railroad yards) saw Harkness questioning Euins, before putting him on his motorcycle and wheeling him over to Sawyer's car, and talking on the radio at 12:36. This puts Adams and Styles outside at 12:33 or so, and strongly supports that she raced directly down the stairs before Truly and Baker raced up the stairs.

And that's not all Harkness told us.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you do?

Mr. HARKNESS - See, here is the thing. The radio traffic was heavy at the time, and it depended on how long you had to wait to get in.

Mr. BELIN - All right, in any event, after you made the call, what did you do on the radio? And after you got the man in the car?

Mr. HARKNESS - Well---

Mr. BELIN - The witness in the car, what did you do?

Mr. HARKNESS - Stayed at the back of the building until I was relieved by a squad.

Mr. BELIN - So you then went to the back of the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes.

Mr. BELIN - When you were at Inspector Sawyer's car, did you see him there?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Was he at his car?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir; he was by his car, near his car.

Mr. BELIN - Do you know whether or not he had gone inside the building.

Mr. HARKNESS - No, sir.

Mr. BELIN - You mean you don't know?

Mr. HARKNESS - Don't know whether he had gone in or not. Actually, he was standing there in front taking information. All the information was being funneled to Inspector Sawyer.

Mr. BELIN - Did you tell him you had a witness?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - In his car?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - At that time, had the building been sealed off yet when you told him that?

Mr. HARKNESS - At that time?

Mr. BELIN - When you told Inspector Sawyer that you had a witness that said the shot came from the building, up to that particular moment, had the front part of the building been sealed off yet?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - It had already been sealed off?

Mr. HARKNESS - There was two officers with Inspector Sawyer at the front.

Mr. BELIN - Were they stopping people from going in and out?

Mr. HARKNESS - I don't know.

Mr. BELIN - You don't know?

Mr. HARKNESS - No, sir; I don't know that, because I didn't go up and talk to them.

Mr. BELIN - Did you notice whether or not people were coming in and out of the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - No. I was interested in getting around to the back of the building to make sure it was.

Mr. BELIN - Then am I correct that your testimony is that you didn't notice whether people were coming in and out? Did you notice, or did you not notice whether people were coming out of the building at that time?

Mr. HARKNESS - Several officers at the area, and it was a lot of people around. I don't know whether they were going in or out or not. I couldn't say that.

Mr. BELIN - Then you went around to the back of the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - Was anyone around in the back when you got there?

Mr. HARKNESS - There were some Secret Service agents there. I didn't get them identified. They told me they were Secret Service.

Mr. BELIN - Then did you stay around the back of the building?

Mr. HARKNESS - Yes; I stayed at the back until the squad got there.

(4-9-64 Testimony of D.V. Harkness, 11:30 A.M. 6H308-315)

No Secret Service agents were in the vicinity. This is curious, to say the least.

When one reads the testimony of witness James Romack, moreover, what was curious becomes faintly eerie.

Let's give his testimony some context. Romack claimed he'd viewed the motorcade make the turn from Houston onto Elm from far up Houston. And that he walked down closer to the corner of Houston and Elm after he'd heard shots... And that this put him in a position to view the back of the depository for the next several minutes.

Here's a photo approximating his perspective. While this photo was taken from the east side of Houston and Romack stood further to the west, the distance is about right

Well, this shows that, yessiree, Romack was in position to see anyone leave the back of the building, provided he was staring at the back of the building at the precise moment this person came out. So let's now read his testimony to see what he did and did not see.

Mr. BELIN. Well, you heard the shots, and then what did you do?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, I knew something was wrong. I mean, I could sense that within my own self.

Mr. BELIN. All right.

Mr. ROMACK. And I looked up and I felt kind of chilly looking down towards the--which I am facing the Houston entrance, and I looked down toward where all the people were standing along, the motorcade was passing by, and just immediately after I heard the shots, I saw a policeman running north towards me. He was running to look to see if somebody was running out of the back of this building.

Mr. BELIN. What building?

Mr. ROMACK. Texas School Book Depository Building. And he didn't stay but just, oh, he was just there to check and he runs back. Well, sensing that something is wrong, I automatically take over watching the building for the man.

Mr. BELIN. What part of the building were you watching?

Mr. ROMACK. The back

Mr. BELIN. Could you see that back dock in the back part?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, I mean, they got it sealed off. I could see as much as anyone could see.

Mr. BELIN. Could you see---there are some stairs that go up to the back dock, aren't there?

Mr. ROMACK. Right here.

Mr. BELIN. You are pointing to a first floor plan of the Texas School Book Depository?

Mr. ROMACK. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. Did you watch those stairs?

Mr. ROMACK. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. How long did you watch them after you saw the policeman leave?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, I watched them all the time until someone arrived, and the only time I did take my back off, turn my back to the building, was Sam Pate with his KBOX news. He arrived before any of the police or anyone.

Mr. BELIN. Is that KBOX?

Mr. ROMACK. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. Is that a radio or television station?

Mr. ROMACK. It is a radio station.

Mr. BELIN. How long did you take your eyes off then?

Mr. ROMACK. He was driving up and they were having a little high---the city has, a piece of wood that they use to stop traffic coming through, and I'd taken that so he could come through, drive his truck.

Mr. BELIN. How long did you leave your post?

Mr. ROMACK. I didn't leave. That was right there, even closer than what we were. But all I did was let that down for him, and then we...

Mr. BELIN. Would that have taken less than a minute?

Mr. ROMACK. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. Less than 30 seconds, do you know?

Mr. ROMACK. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. How long did you stay after that watching that back door?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, we were all there watching it then.

Mr. BELIN. How long a period of time?

Mr. ROMACK. Pardon?

Mr. BELIN. Did you see a policeman go up there?

Mr. ROMACK. I saw policemen up in there. I didn't see anyone come up the back. They came in the front, all---most of them.

Mr. BELIN. Did you see any employees walk up the back way?

Mr. ROMACK. There was two other gentlemen which I never said anything about, that taken over. They were FBI or something standing right here at the very entrance, and just stood there.

Mr. BELIN. You are pointing again to the back stairway that leads up from the street to the dock on the north side of the building?

Mr. ROMACK. Right.

Note: there were two different flights of stairs leading to this dock, one leading directly from the street on the east side of the dock, and one in the corner between the south and west sections of the dock.

Mr. BELIN. See anyone else?

Mr. ROMACK. No, sir; other than all the motorcycle officers and squad cars. They started coming in, I would say, in 4 minutes from the time that this happened. They were swarming the building, which naturally. I quit watching anything particular.

Mr. BELIN. In other words, about 4 minutes after the shots came you quit watching it? Would that be accurate, or not?

Mr. ROMACK. Well, I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 minutes, 4 or 5 minutes. That would probably be true. I stayed there, but I wasn't particularly watching.

Mr. BELIN. In other words, then as I understand your testimony, you said that from about the time of the shots until about 5 minutes after the shots, you watched the back door of the building?

Mr. ROMACK. Right.

Mr. BELIN. What is the fact as to whether or not you saw anyone leave the building?

Mr. ROMACK. They wasn't anyone left the building.

(4-8-64 testimony of James Romack 11:30, 6H277-284)

Now let's be clear about this. There were NO Secret Service or FBI agents at the Texas School Book Depository when Harkness and Romack thought they saw two of them standing by the back door. The first Secret Service agent to reach the depository was agent Forrest Sorrels. He testified before the Commission on 5-7-64 and said he arrived at the depository around 12:50. The first FBI agent to reach the school book depository, and the only one to go up to the sixth floor and look around, that has ever come forward anyhow, was Nat Pinkston. Pinkston filed no reports on his activities on 11-22. His presence on the sixth floor was acknowledged, however, by an FBI memo listing the names of the men who'd been on the sixth floor and had possibly handled the sniper's nest boxes, so their fingerprints could be checked against the unidentified prints on the boxes. And Pinkston admitted he was there in both an 8-5-94 Sixth Floor Museum Oral History, and a 7-19-07 interview conducted for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI (found online). What is surprising, however, is that Pinkston said that upon his arrival on the sixth floor, he saw Lt. J.C. Day handling the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle purportedly owned by Lee Harvey Oswald. This rifle, of course, wasn't even discovered until 1:22. So yeah, there were NO Secret Service agents or FBI agents standing outside the back of the depository when the two men presumed to be Secret Service agents or FBI agents were observed by Harkness and Romack.

And should one wonder if any other Secret Service agents were spotted where no Secret Service agents actually were...

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you turn to watch the motorcade? Did you turn to watch the President as the motorcade went by?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir; I glanced around and was watching the crowd to make sure they stayed back out of the way of the motorcade, and also to make sure none of the cars started up or anything. Then I heard the shots, and I immediately proceeded from this point.

Mr. LIEBELER. Point 4 on Commission Exhibit No. 354?

Mr. SMITH. I started up toward this Book Depository after I heard the shots, and I didn't know where the shots came from. I had no idea, because it was such a ricochet.

Mr. LIEBELER. An echo effect?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir; and this woman came up to me and she was just in hysterics. She told me, "They are shooting the President from the bushes." So I immediately proceeded up here.

Mr. LIEBELER. You proceeded up to an area immediately behind the concrete structure here that is described by Elm Street and the street that runs immediately in front of the Texas School Book Depository, is that right?

Mr. SMITH. I was checking all the bushes and I checked all the cars in the parking lot.

Mr. LIEBELER. There is a parking lot in behind this grassy area back from Elm Street toward the railroad tracks, and you went down to the parking lot and looked around?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir; I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn't alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there. I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you accost this man?

Mr. SMITH. Well, he saw me coming with my pistol and right away he showed me who he was.

Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember who it was?

Mr. SMITH. No, sir; I don't--because then we started checking the cars. In fact, I was checking the bushes, and I went through the cars, and I started over here in this particular section.

(The 7-23-64 testimony of Dallas Police Officer Joe Marshall Smith, 7H531-539)

(Note: James Powell, an off-duty military intelligence officer, was half a block east of Dealey Plaza when he heard shots fired. He then ran to the Plaza, where he took a famous photo of the top floors of the depository. He then ran over to the parking lot, where he lingered briefly before returning to the depository. On 4-12-96, ARRB investigator Timothy Wray interviewed Powell. The transcript of this interview is available at JFKassassinationfiles.com. In this interview, Wray asked Powell if he identified himself to anyone while he was in the parking lot. He responded: "I basically recall that I did. Because the officers were curious as to why I was joining them and I just flashed my credentials to show them."He was then asked how he would have identified himself. He responded: "Well, I'm Jim Powell, and I'm with the Military Intelligence Corps." He was then asked if he might have said he was a special agent. He then took Wray's cue and said out loud, as if auditioning for a part, "I'm a special agent with military intelligence. And show my credentials." While this raises the possibility Powell was the "agent" encountered by Smith it is far from definitive. It's clear Wray was coaxing this testimony from Powell, and that Powell had no clear memory of identifying himself to anyone in the parking lot, let alone identifying himself as an "agent".)

We should be clear about this as well. Romack's claim no one came out the back is refuted by the fact Vickie Adams and Sandra Styles came out the back. Perhaps then Romack focused his attention on the steps leading down to the street and missed Adams and Styles as they scampered out the door in the photo above, which would have been the door closest to the train yards to which they were fleeing. Romack was, we mustn't forget, 100 yards or more away when he first started watching the back door. There was a lot of people running about. It seems likely then that he focused on just the one exit.

Still, who was this officer Romack saw run over to the back of the building?

After much study, I've concluded that he's Welcome... Dallas policeman Welcome Eugene Barnett, that is.

Mr. BARNETT - When the first shot was fired, I thought it was a firecracker, and I looked across the street. In fact, I scanned the whole area to see where people would jump or move or make some action.

Mr. LIEBELER - You couldn't tell specifically where it had come from?

Mr. BARNETT - Not the first one, but I thought it was a firecracker. But none of the people moved or took any action, whereas they would have if a firecracker went off. And when the second shot was fired, it sounded high. The sound of the second one seemed to me like it was coming from up high, and I looked up at the building and I saw nothing in the windows. In fact, I couldn't even see any windows at that time.

Mr. LIEBELER - In the Texas School Book Depository?

Mr. BARNETT - No, sir; because I was standing to close, was the reason. And I looked back again at the crowd, and the third shot was fired. And I looked up again, and I decided it had to be on top of that building. To me it is the only place the sound could be coming from.

Mr. LIEBELER - What did you do when you concluded that the shots were coming from that building?

Mr. BARNETT - I ran to the back of the building.

Mr. LIEBELER - Ran down Houston Street?

Mr. BARNETT - Yes, sir.

Mr. LIEBELER - There is a door in the back of the Texas School Book Depository. Does it face on Houston or around the corner?

Mr. BARNETT - It is around the corner from Houston Street.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you go in the building?

Mr. BARNETT - No, sir; I didn't get close to it, because I was watching for a fire escape. If the man was on top, he would have to come down, and I was looking for a fire escape, and I didn't pay much attention to the door. I was still watching the top of the building, and so far as I could see, the fire escape on the east side was the only escape down.

Mr. LIEBELER - Since you surmised that the shots had come from the building, you looked up and you didn't see any windows open. You thought they had been fired from the top of the building?

Mr. BARNETT - That's right.

Mr. LIEBELER - So you ran around here on Houston Street immediately to the east of the Texas School Book Depository Building and watched the fire escape?

Mr. BARNETT - I went 20 foot past the building still on Houston, looking up. I could see the whole back of the building and also the east side of the building.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you see anybody coming off the fire escape up there, or any movement on top of the building?

Mr. BARNETT - Not a thing.

Mr. LIEBELER - What did you do after you went around behind the building?

Mr. BARNETT - I went looked behind the building and I saw officers searching the railroad cars. I looked around in front towards the front of the building and I saw officers going west.

Mr. LIEBELER - Going west down the little street there in front of the School Book Depository Building?

Mr. BARNETT - Yes; but there was no sign they were going into the building or watching the building, so I decided I was the only one watching the building. So since this was the only fire escape and there were officers down here watching the back door, I returned back around to the front to watch the front of the building and the fire escape. Then I decided maybe I had been wrong, so I saw the officers down here searching.

Mr. LIEBELER - You mean the officers went on down toward No. 5 on your Exhibit No. 354?

Mr. BARNETT - When I got to the front, some of the officers were coming back toward me, started back toward me.

Mr. LIEBELER - You were still back near the intersection of Elm and Houston?

Mr. BARNETT - Yes, sir; I was back where No. 8 is then. That was probably 2 1/2 minutes after the last shot was fired. About that time, my sergeant came up from this way, from the north of Houston Street and asked me to get the name of that building. I broke and ran to the front and got the name of it. There were people going in and out at that time. I ran back and told him the name of it, and about that time a construction worker ran from this southwest corner of the intersection up to me and said, "I was standing over there and saw the man in the window with the rifle." He and I and the sergeant all three broke and ran for the door. I kept the man there with me. The sergeant ran to the back to make sure it was covered. I kept the man there until they took him across the street to the courthouse. I was there until 3 o'clock, at the door there with one of the other officers, J.D. Smith.

Mr. LIEBELER - You didn't actually go into the building at the time?

Mr. BARNETT - No.

Mr. LIEBELER - How long do you think it was from the time the last shot was fired until the time you were at the front door keeping people from going in and out?

Mr. BARNETT - It was around 2 1/2 minutes. Maybe between 2 1/2 or 3 minutes.

(7-23-64 testimony of Welcome Eugene Barnett, 3:50 P.M., 7H539-544)

Now I suspect you've guessed the location of number 8.

That's right. It is EXACTLY where Adams said she saw a policeman..when she and Styles first came out the back of the building.

Here is a crop from CE 354. The number 8 is at the northeast corner of Houston and Elm, across from the school book depository, where Adams claimed she saw an officer when she exited the building. (FWIW: I thought I was the first to realize Barnett was the officer observed by Adams, but subsequently discovered Tony Fratini had been making this argument since 2015, 2 years before I came to my "realization".)

Note the brickwork on the left. That is the front of the first floor of the depository, the side facing Elm Street. Eddie Piper claimed he was somewhere near this location when the shots rang out. Now note the roll of tape beneath the table at right, and the roll of paper stretched between the legs to its left. This is a wrapping table. Troy West, who worked at the wrapping tables, claimed he was sitting somewhere near this location when the shots rang out, and that he walked up to the front of the building after police came running in.

Now note the machine on the right in the photo above... This is presumably a scale. It appears to be the same machine/scale as at left in the photo below... Now look at the table at right below. This table would have been off to the right (and out of frame) in the photo above.

Now look at what's on the table. Well, that, my friends, is a coffee pot, the center of both Piper and West's activities in the aftermath of the shooting. Now here's a look back at the machine and the coffee counter from the other direction.

Note that I have brightened two rectangles on this image. The first was so one could make out that there is a door open behind the man on the left. The second, at right, was so one could make out that there is a roll-up door on the west side of the building, 20 feet or so north of the coffee counter. So where was this door? And where was this counter?

Now here again is a big chunk of an R.B. Cutler drawing of the first floor. (If you're having trouble orienting it, Elm Street is at the bottom of the drawing.) In any event, I have inserted this drawing instead of the Warren Commission's drawing of the first floor because it shows the pillars within the building and the western loading dock (which was inexplicably left off the Commission's exhibit). Now, as shown by the DPD's photos, the coffee counter was on the western side of a pillar at least three pillars back from the front of the building, and was just past an opening on the western side of the building. There is only one place, then, that it could be--at the location of the red star below.

Now, at first I had my doubts about this. The door behind the man in the last photo was not a roll-up door. But then I remembered Billy Lovelady's testimony.

Mr. BALL - Where did you go into the building?

Mr. LOVELADY - Through that, those raised-up doors.

Mr. BALL - Through the raised-up doors?

Mr. LOVELADY - Through that double door that we in the morning when we get there we raised. There's a fire door and they have two wooden doors between it.

While Lovelady's description was in-artful, it was nevertheless helpful. The takeaway is that there were two wooden doors behind the roll-up doors on the west side of the building, for use during the day. Well, I believe that's what we see in the background of 91-001/194.

In any event, West, and Piper, or anyone on the western-most aisle by the coffee counter, would not have had a clear view of the bottom of the stairs (by the "up" in "up to roof" above). The wall (just above the "up" in "up from basement" above) which concealed a couple of vending machines, including, one can only presume, the legendary Dr. Pepper machine, simultaneously concealed the bottom of the stairs from anyone making or pouring coffee.

Now, should one doubt that this wall between the "up"s was a solid wall, one need only look at photo 7 from CD 496. Here it is.

The solid wall to the nook with the refrigerator and drink machine is on the left side of the image. Next to that is the nook. The stairs, down which Vickie Adams and Sandra Styles raced, are to the right of the nook. The edge of a roll-up door leading to the north/east loading dock is to the right of the stairs. And the south wall of the elevator shaft is on the right in the image.

Now here, for those interested in such things, is a much closer view of the fridge nook. Well, golly gee, Goober, that's a Dr. Pepper machine...just to the left of the fridge. While Vincent Bugliosi claimed there was something innately suspicious about Oswald's saying he went up to the second floor lunchroom to get a Coke, because, y'know, he usually drank Dr. Pepper, Bugliosi was unbelievably out to lunch on this point, as a number of witnesses, including Oswald's wife, Marina, claimed he drank Coke as well.

Now, all this discussion of coffee and soda does demonstrate one thing for, well, near-certain--and that's that even if they were looking towards the back of the building when Vickie Adams and Sandra Styles raced downstairs (which is in itself highly doubtful), neither Troy West nor Eddie Piper could have seen them at the bottom of the stairs.

Well, alright. But there's more to it. Adams' words indicate that she and Styles didn't exit through the roll-up door at the bottom of the stairs. but circled around the elevators to exit from the door by the Houston Street dock.

Now here's a photo taken from this door looking back in the direction of the coffee counter. The pillar beside the counter has been marked with a red star.

Now, Troy West is presumed to have been near this pillar both before the shooting and when the shots rang out. This would have put him in a good position to see anything suspicious. But he said he was sitting and looking the other way. And he may have been listening to a radio.

Well, now, here's a closer look. This photograph, taken in March '64, shows an additional wrapping table between the coffee counter and the exit.

Alright, alright. Onward. Upward.

Back to Work

Now, let's go back to work. Before we got side-tracked by our coffee (and soda) break, we were discussing Piper's testimony in which he said Vickie Adams did not come downstairs before Truly entered the building.

Well, seeing as he was in no position to view the bottom of the stairs, we can pretty much dismiss his assertion.

But we can not quite ignore it entirely. Here it is again:

Mr. BALL. Did you ever see Vicki Adams come down the steps?

Mr. PIPER. No, sir; I don't know about that, if she said she did, it was after I got over here and walked over to the back door.

Note the last part--"walked over to the back door."

Let's recall here that Jack Dougherty claimed that, after hearing a loud sound, he decided to go down to the first floor and find out what was going on. Let's recall that the only person he mentioned talking to at this time was Eddie Piper. Well, it's reasonable to assume from this that Piper was near the elevators at this time (whether it be 2 minutes after the shots or 6 minutes after the shots, or more), and not in the front of the building by the window or drinking coffee at Troy West's coffee counter in the middle of the building. The back door was, as we have seen, close to the elevators. So it appears that, yessiree, Piper went over to the back door after Truly and Baker went up.

This brings us, then, to yet another reason to distrust Piper's claim Adams failed to come down before Truly went up.

While Clyde Haygood claimed the man presumed to be Piper had told him he hadn't seen anyone go out the "back way," we can now see that this cuts two ways. One way is that it proves this man, purported to have been in position for five minutes before Haygood came over to the building, i.e. since around 12:33 or 12:34, didn't see Adams and Styles leave the building. If this man was Piper, as presumed, and he was asked to "guard" the rear door by Truly, as presumed, well, this supports then that Adams and Styles came down the stairs and out the loading dock BEFORE Baker and Truly went up.

The other way is more problematic for our working theory someone (not Oswald) came down on an elevator as Baker and Truly raced up the stairs. If Piper was "guarding" the back door from the moment Baker and Truly went upstairs, and told the truth to Sorrels, it seems to suggest that the occupant or occupants of the elevator that descended as Baker and Truly ran up the stairs didn't walk out the back door.

But only seems to suggest... I mean, we don't know just when Piper arrived at the back door, now do we? For all we know, he visited the bathroom before making his way to the back door, or maybe, just maybe, he took a slow walk back to the shipping table to get some more coffee, before heading to the back door. In the meantime, someone could have come down on the elevator and walked out the back door. On March 10, 1964, in Washington, let's recall, James Richard Worrell testified that he panicked when the shots rang out, and ran from his location near the front of the depository, only to stop a block to the north of the depository on Houston St. He then looked back at the building. Now, here's the "hmmm" part. Worrell testified that "I was there approximately 3 minutes before I saw this man come out the back door..."

Now, many choose to disbelieve Worrell.

But, heck, 3 minutes. That's the exact right time, isn't it? Adams and Styles would be out the back about two minutes after the shots rang out. And Truly and Baker would be heading up the stairs around this same time. This means that whoever came down that west elevator as Truly and Baker ran up would have reached the bottom (and been out the back door?) approximately 3 minutes after the shooting.

That is, assuming Piper the guard dog had not yet reported for duty...

Still, let's assume he had. And that he jumped right in, and guarded that exit... That still doesn't rule out that someone came down the elevator while Piper was by the back door, and left the building via a different route.

Perhaps the elevator inhabitant or inhabitants went out the side door through which Shelley and Lovelady had entered the building. (Troy West, who'd been sitting by that door, said he walked up to the front of the building after Baker and Truly came in the building--well, this would have left the area unoccupied, and "unguarded.") Or perhaps he or they walked out the front door and were not stopped. As we've seen, Inspector Sawyer testified that the front door wasn't officially blocked off before 12:37--12:40. Although he said he suspected someone leaving the building prior to that would have been stopped by the policemen outside, moreover, we know this isn't true. Let's not forget that Lee Harvey Oswald left the building without being stopped. Now realize that a person descending on the west elevator as Baker and Truly ran up the stairs and then heading out the front door would have been but seconds behind Oswald.

Now, some might object here, and argue "Well, no one saw anyone suspicious walk out the front door at this time!" But that misses the point. The point is this. No one saw Oswald walk out the front door at this time either!

And not only Oswald... Let's not forget that Allman, Ford, MacNeill and Powell all entered the depository after the shooting, and spent several minutes inside, and that no one pointed them out to the police who'd stormed into the building as suspicious people who didn't belong in the building. They all came and went without incident. Well, that is, except Powell. He joined in on the search of the building, to such an extent even that someone finally asked him who he was.

But it wasn't the employees of the building who pointed him out. And no one claimed he was "suspicious."

And besides, what is "suspicious"? Perhaps the assassin or assassins had fake IDs, or, perhaps, even scarier, REAL ones, that allowed them to pass out the front door without harassment from the Dallas Police officers gathering outside.

When one reads the statements and testimony of everyone known to have been in the building after the shooting, moreover, one finds numerous references to cops and sheriff's deputies who were observed in the building shortly after the shooting who never filed a report or made a statement detailing their activities in the building. One also finds references to unnamed officers and deputies who may or may not have been among those whose names were mentioned, but who never filed a report (such as Inspector Sawyer's reference to two unnamed policeman who raced into the building at his side, and immediately started searching the building).

For all we know, one or more of these individuals was in the building BEFORE the shooting, was involved in the shooting, and then took advantage of the chaos by blending in with their fellow officers and pretending to look for the "real" shooter.

We just don't know enough about what happened in the building to say this didn't happen, or even that it probably didn't happen.

One of the things we do know, however, is that Vickie Adams, and Eddie Piper, were treated like hostile witnesses and unfairly maligned so that Joseph Ball and David Belin--not to mention their backers on the Warren Commission-- could feed the world a fantasy.

That this was so becomes crystal clear, moreover, when one realizes that Adams was not the only one who'd been on the back stairs when Oswald was purported to have been on them. And that these other witnesses were not even called before the Commission...

The first of these witnesses was Adams' companion on that day, Sandra Styles. Styles was not called before the Warren Commission to shed light on Adams' testimony, even though Adams had cited her in support, and Styles had offered her that support on 3-19-64 (almost three weeks before Adams' testimony) in the following statement:

“On November 22, 1963, I was in my office at a window facing Elm Street watching the Presidential motorcade at the time President Kennedy was shot. Also present at this window with me were Dorothy Garner, Elsie Dorman, and Victoria Adams...I never knew Lee Harvey Oswald, not even by sight as an employee at the building…I heard shots but thought at the time that they were fireworks. I was unaware of the place the shots came from. I saw people running and others lie down on the ground and realized something was happening but did not know exactly what was happening. Victoria Adams and I left the office at this time, went down the back stairs, and left the building at the back door. We then went around to the side of the building where we saw a policeman talking to someone whom I did not recognize. I was told by a policeman to go around to the front of the building and out of that area. I then re-entered the building through the front door, took the elevator to the fourth floor and returned to my office.” (The 3-19-64 statement of Sandra Styles to the FBI, 22H676)

After that, Styles pretty much disappeared. It appeared she might die an enigma. But then, for the 50th anniversary of the assassination, she stepped into the light and raised her voice to confirm that she and Adams (since passed) had in fact raced down the back stairs within a minute of the shooting...and did not see or hear Lee Harvey Oswald racing down the steps in front of them or behind them.

Suspicious Omission #34 March 1964--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to call Sandra Styles to testify, even though she could confirm Vickie Adams' claim she raced down the back stairs just after the shooting and didn't see Oswald.

The second of these witnesses was Otis Williams. Williams made a number of statements suggesting he was on the back stairs within a few seconds of Adams and Styles--but did not see Oswald. So, of course, he was never called before the Warren Commission.

(11-24-63 FBI report, CD5 p.64) “He thought (the) blasts came from the location of the court house. He did not look up and immediately went back into the building into his office on the second floor.” (2-18-64 statement by Williams included in a report of the Dallas Police Department, box 3, folder 19, file 20 of the Dallas JFK Archive) "The president's car had gotten out of Mr. Williams' view when he heard the shots. Mr. Williams then came back into the building, and went to his office on the second floor. He then went to the fourth floor after hearing that the President had been shot. He used the stairway to go to the fourth floor, but stated that he did not see anyone on the stairway." (3-19-64 statement to the FBI, 22H683) “I thought these blasts or shots came from the direction of the viaduct which crosses Elm Street. I did not then know that President Kennedy had been shot. I remained momentarily on the steps and then returned inside the building.”

Williams was finally interviewed, however, by researcher Larry Sneed.

(No More Silence p.116-120, published 1998) (On the shots) “I thought it came from the underpass. I entered the building immediately, climbed up the stairs back where the warehouse elevator was which led to the sixth floor and went up to the fourth floor, which was the first one I could see from to see the underpass. After I got up there and saw that nothing was going on on the underpass, I turned around and came back down to the office and called my wife. Soon, while we were talking, people came in, officers rushed in, and I had to get off the phone... I could have gone down the steps while Oswald came down, but he came down on the elevator. Anyway, I walked down the steps but didn't see him or anything.”

It should be acknowledged here that Williams may have simply slipped through the cracks. His initial statements did not specify that he'd taken the back stairs to the second floor, and then the fourth. And, from what can be gathered, the Dallas police report on his activites, in which he specified going up to the fourth floor via the back stairs (the front stairs only go up to the second floor) was never forwarded to the commission.

Oh, wait, why the heck wasn't this report sent to the commission? On 2-17, and 2-18, 1964, members of the Dallas Police intelligence Division, along with several homicide detectives, interviewed a number of those who'd been working in the school book depository building on 11-22-63. They then prepared some of these interviews as statements from these witnesses... but somehow failed to forward all of these reports/statements regarding a crime they weren't officially investigating, to the commission appointed by the President of the United States to officially investigate this crime.

To be clear, when one looks through the contents of Box 3, File 19 of the Dallas Police JFK Archives, one will find roughly 20 different reports on TSBD building employee interviews conducted on 2-17-64 and 2-18-64. Some, but not all, of these reports were forwarded to the Warren Commission by the Dallas Police as part of Commission Document 950, a collection of Dallas Police documents forwarded to the Commission by Chief Jesse Curry on 5-19-64. The report on Williams is among those not included in CD 950.

I repeat, why the heck wasn't Williams' "statement" forwarded to the Commission. I mean, even if one assumes Williams took the elevator to the second floor, he acknowledged using the back stairs to go to the fourth floor. How soon was this after the shooting? Did he see Oswald on the stairs? Adams and Styles? Baker and Truly? Jarman, Norman, and Williams? The failure of the Dallas Police to alert the Commission to this interview/statement, or the failure of the Commission to put this interview/statement into its records, either way, has no good excuse.

So, yes, it's quite suspicious that the Dallas Police Dept.'s report on Williams never made it into the 26 volumes...particularly when you realize one of the other "missing" reports/statements belonged to Miss Vickie Adams... (Beyond Williams and Adams, the other "missing" reports--on Doris Burns, Ochus Campbell, Avery Davis, Mary Ann Hollies, Judy McCully, Joe Molina, Ruth Nelson, and Lupe Whitaker--appear to have been of little importance.)

In any event, here is Vickie Adams' statement", as prepared by Det. Jim Leavelle.

STATEMENT OF VICKIE ADAMS

I talked with Vickie Adams at 8:10 pm this date, February 17, 1964. The following statement is what she said happened November 22, 1963.

My name is Vickie Adams, 3909 Cole, Apt. D., no phone. My job is office service representative. I reported to work that day about 8:30 am, and I worked in that capacity until noon.

A friend of mine, Elsie Dorman, who lives in Oak Cliff and works in the office, wanted to take some moving pictures of the motorcade. I opened a third floor window about the third one from the front of the building. She took pictures of the motorcade. When the President got in front of us I heard someone call him, and he turned. That is when I heard the first shot. I thought it was a firecracker. Then the second shot. I saw the Secret Service man run to the back of the President's car. After the third shot, I went out the back door. I said, "I think someone has been shot." The elevator was not running and there was no one on the stairs. I went down to the first floor. I saw Mr. Shelly and another employee named Bill. The freight elevator had not moved, and I still did not see anyone on the stairs.

I ran out the back door of the depository and around to the front. I started down toward the railroad tracks when an officer stopped me and turned me back. I asked the officer if the President was shot, and he said he did not know. As I turned back I saw another employee Molena standing by the front of the building facing Elm Street. I stopped and talked with Avery Davis another employee. I saw two men in street clothes, one was gesturing with his hands and asking questions. I asked Mr. Davis who he was. I later saw Jack Ruby on TV and thought it was the same man. No one had surrounded the building at that time. I went back into the building and the passenger elevator, but the power was off. I went to the back to the freight elevator. There were two plainclothes men on it. However, the power on it also was turned off. I went up the stairs to the fourth floor to my office. We were later told to leave.

This concludes Miss Adams' statement to me.

J. R. Leavelle

Let's note that Miss Adams claimed the elevator was not moving when she first tried to use it, and still wasn't moving when she reached the bottom of the stairs. This is yet another indication she ran down the stairs before Baker and Truly ran up. Whoever had the west elevator on the fifth or sixth floor when Baker and Truly called for it, after all, would already have come down by the time she reached the bottom floor. So why was there no movement of the elevators while she was on the stairs?

Suspicious Omission #35

5-19-64. The February 17-18 statements of Vickie Adams, who claimed she raced down the stairs just after the shooting, and Otis Williams, who claimed he raced up to the fourth floor shortly after the shooting (and who later claimed he'd taken the back stairs up to the second floor just after the shooting), are inexplicably missing from a batch of interviews conducted by the Dallas Police that were only belatedly provided the Warren Commission.

Lillian Mooneyham is yet another witness whose statements were damaging to the Ball/Belin scenario of Oswald racing down the stairs, who was strangely (or not so strangely) never called to testify.

She watched the assassination and aftermath from an upper floor of the courthouse on the northeast corner of Main and Houston. She was interviewed by the FBI on 1-8-64. Here is a segment of the report on this interview.

"Mrs. MOONEYHAM and Mrs. CLARK left Judge KING's courtroom and went to the office of Judge Julien C. Hyer on the third floor of the Records Building, where they continued to observe the happenings from Judge HYER's window. From Judge HYER's window, Mrs. MOONEYHAM noted a number of bystander running toward the cement pavilion which borders Elm Street between the railroad viaduct and the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). Mrs. MOONEYHAM estimated that it was about 4 to 5 minutes following the shots fired by the assassin that she looked up towards the sixth floor of the TSBD and observed the figure of a man standing in a sixth floor window behind some cardboard boxes. This man appeared to Mrs. MOONEYHAM to be looking out of the window, however, the man was not close up to the window but was standing slightly back from it, so that Mrs. MOONEYHAM could not make out his features. She stated that she could give no description of this individual except to say that she is sure it was a man she observed, because the figure had on trousers. She could not recall the color of the trousers."

She said she saw someone in the sniper's nest "4 to 5 minutes" following ths shots, which, of course, could really mean she saw someone a minute or so after the shots. In either case, this couldn't have been Oswald because in the commission's scenario Oswald was already on his way down the stairs.

Mooneyham should have been called to tesify, but was not called.

Suspicious Omission #36 March 1964--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to call Lillian Mooneyham to testify, even thought she told the FBI on 1-8-64 that she saw a man standing in the sniper's nest at a time when Oswald was presumed to have been running down the back stairs.

There is an even better witness who wasn't called. Her name was Dorothy Ann Garner.

In his 2011 book The Girl on the Stairs, Barry Ernest revealed that within the Warren Commission's files was a 6-4-64 letter from the office of U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders to Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin that read "Mr. Belin was questioning Miss Adams about whether or not she saw anyone as she was running down the stairs. Miss Garner, Miss Adams' supervisor, stated this morning that after Miss Adams went downstairs she (Miss Garner) saw Mr. Truly and the policeman come up."

Apparently, Sanders' assistant, Martha Stroud, who'd help co-ordinate the testimony of numerous witnesses, including Adams, in Sanders' office, had decided to drop by Vickie Adams' office in the depository building in order to get her to sign off on a transcript of her testimony, and had started up a conversation with Adams' boss, Miss Garner, who informed Ms. Stroud that she could vouch for the fact Adams and Styles ran down the stairs before Baker and Truly ran up the stairs, and that Oswald hadn't run down the stairs in between.

And yes, it's shocking. But all too true. Rankin, Ball, and Belin failed to follow up on Stroud's letter and ask Miss Garner a single question. Ms. Stroud's letter was put into Vickie Adams' Warren Commission file, and was never seen again until uncovered by Barry Ernest decades later.

Stroud's letter, like a paper plane thrown by a disobedient child, single-handedly collapsed the Warren Commission's house of cards. So they filed it away.

Suspicious Omission #37

6-4-64--September 1964. Vickie Adams' boss, Dorothy Ann Garner, lets it be known she'd be willing to testify in support of Adams' and Styles' claim they raced down the stairs after the shooting, and goes one step further by claiming she saw Baker and Truly run up the stairs after Adams and Styles ran down the stairs... And is totally blown off by the Warren Commission...

A Quick Review: the Suspicious Omissions (and Commissions, with a Few New Additions) in Chronological Order

From reviewing the suspicious omissions, and placing them in chronological order, one can get a sense of where the Commission went astray. It went astray because it wasn't willing to get it right. It seems clear, moreover, that, prior to taking any testimony, Messieurs Ball and Belin had already decided to push a scenario in which Oswald stayed upstairs during lunchtime and raced downstairs after the shooting, and Jack Dougherty rode the elevator from the fifth floor on down as Baker and Truly raced up the stairs to the fifth floor.

12-20-63. The FBI omits from a report on an interview with Eddie Piper that Piper feels certain he saw Oswald on the first floor around 12:00.

March 64--September 64. The Warren Commission fails to call Carolyn Arnold to testify, even though she told FBI investigators on 11-26-63 that she believed she saw Oswald on the first floor around 12:15.

March 64--September 64. The Warren Commission fails to call Carolyn Walther to testify, even though she told FBI investigators on 12-4-63 that she saw a man with a rifle on an upper floor of the school book depository, and that there was another man behind him, to his left.

March 1964--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to call Lillian Mooneyham to testify, even though she told the FBI on 1-8-64 that she saw a man standing in the sniper's nest at a time the Commission presumes Oswald to have been running down the back stairs.

March 1964--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to call Sandra Styles to testify, even though she could confirm Vickie Adams' claim she raced down the back stairs just after the shooting and didn't see Oswald.

March 1964--September 1964. Warren Commission attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin fail to follow-up on the Secret Service's interviews of Pierce Allman and Terry Ford, in which they placed themselves near the back of the building at the time the commission presumed Adams and Styles had raced down the back stairs.

3-11-64. In a desperate attempt at getting them to change their recollection of the size of the bag they saw Oswald carrying on the morning of the 22nd (which they remembered as being too small to hold the rifle found in the school book depository) Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball asks Buell Frazier and his sister Linnie Mae Randle to hold their hands apart to demonstrate the length of the bag. He then asks them to do this again, and again, at least ten times, according to Frazier, giving them the feeling he won't stop asking until they lie and tell him the bag was longer than they believed it was.

3-24-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to follow up with witness Harold Norman and find out how his not playing dominoes at lunch made him think someone else was in the room--an inquiry that would almost certainly have led to Norman's saying he thought this someone else was Oswald.

3-24-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to point out during testimony or subsequently acknowledge that James Jarman and Harold Norman's claim they re-entered the building via the back door towards the end of their lunch time supported Oswald's claim he'd been sitting in a room with a view of the back door area during lunch time, and had observed Jarman and Norman.

3-25-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin fail to follow-up on Officer Marrion Baker's claim he saw two white men by the elevators when he came into the building with Oswald's boss Roy Truly, at a time when no white men besides Baker and Truly were known to be on the first floor.

4-1-64. Warren Commission attorney David Belin argues with witness Ronald Fischer about the color of the hair of the man Fischer saw staring out the window of the sniper's nest. According to Fischer, Belin tries to "intimidate" him, because Oswald's hair was not as light as the hair of the man Fischer saw, and he "wanted me to tell him that the man was dark-headed and I wouldn't do it." (Note: this was detailed in a December 1978 Dallas Morning News article by Earl Golz.)

4-7-64--Warren Commission attorney David Belin shows Vickie Adams a diagram of the first floor depicting where she claimed she saw Lovelady and Shelley, but fails to enter this diagram into evidence.

4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Billy Lovelady any of a number of relevant questions regarding Eddie Piper and Jack Dougherty's actions after the shooting.

4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball also fails to ask Lovelady if he saw Roy Truly and Officer Baker by the elevators, and whether or not he could be one of the white men observed by Baker.

4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball asks William Shelley if he saw Roy Truly enter the depository building, but fails to ask him the more important question if he saw Truly and officer Baker by the elevators, and whether or not he could be one of the white men observed by Baker.

4-7-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask William Shelley any of a number of relevant questions regarding Eddie Piper and Jack Dougherty's actions after the shooting.

4-7-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission's diagrams for the first floor of the school book depository strangely fail to include the west loading dock, through which Shelley and Lovelady re-entered the building, which was presumably left unsecured for some time after the shooting.

4-7-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin fail to interview Gloria Calvery and re-enact the actions of William Shelley and Billy Lovelady after the shooting (in order to develop a timeline for Shelley and Lovelady's return to the building, which is essential to their assessing the credibility of Vickie Adams), even though Ball and Belin know from their testimony that Shelley and Lovelady's sense of time for the moments immediately following the shooting are at odds with the re-enactments Ball and Belin had already performed.

4-7-64--September 1964. Ball and Belin fail to consult newsreel footage which could help them establish the timing of Shelley and Lovelady's walk around the building, which could, in turn, help them establish the credibility of Vickie Adams' claim she ran down the back stairs just after the shooting, and saw Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor.

4-7-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to ask Joe Molina about Vickie Adams even though it has reason to suspect he would confirm Adams' claim she was outside on the front steps within a few minutes of the shooting.

4-7-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to ask Mrs. Avery Davis about Vickie Adams even though it has reason to suspect she would confirm Adams' claim she was outside on the front steps within a few minutes of the shooting.

4-7-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney David Belin fails to follow-up and establish the identity of a policeman observed by Vickie Adams just after the shooting, even though the identification of this policeman could help the Commission establish the veracity of Miss Adams' claim she raced down the back stairs just after the shooting, and didn't see Oswald.

4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney David Belin fails to follow-up and clarify the record when Charles Givens testifies to leaving his coat in the domino room upon his arrival at work, but then going back up to the sixth floor to get his jacket after everyone else had left for lunch--a brand new addition to Givens' story that allowed Belin and the Commission to place Oswald in the proximity of the sniper's nest shortly before the shooting.

4-8-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney David Belin fails to point out in testimony or subsequently acknowledge that Givens' new story was in conflict with both his previous recollections, and that of his co-workers.

4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney David Belin goes against the precedent established during the testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams and others and allows Charles Givens to dispute the claims of an FBI report--without putting the source of these claims on the record.

4-8-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to follow-up with Givens' 11-22-63 lunch partner, Edward Shields, to see if he will confirm Givens' claim he saw Oswald on the sixth floor around 11:55.

4-8-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney David Belin, the man behind a number of re-enactments, fails to re-enact Givens' purported sighting of Oswald, to see if Givens could actually have seen Oswald where he said he saw him.

4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Eddie Piper where on the first floor he saw Oswald at 12:00, and thereby conceals from the Commission and public that Piper felt certain he saw Oswald just where Oswald said he was during the lunch period--in the domino room.

4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Eddie Piper about his discussion with Jack Dougherty, something that was desperately needed for the establishment of Dougherty as the passenger coming down in the west elevator after the shooting.

4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Jack Dougherty what time he came down for lunch, and thereby conceals that Dougherty had previously claimed he was on the sixth floor until 12, and would thereby have been on the sixth floor when Charles Givens claimed he last saw Oswald.

4-8-64. Warren Commission Attorney Joseph Ball fails to ask Jack Dougherty if he called the west elevator to the first floor after lunch, or if it was on the ground floor waiting for him, something that Dougherty may not have remembered, but something that was of vital importance and needed to be asked.

4-8-64--September 1964. The Warren Commission fails to test whether or not a rifle shot from the sixth floor sniper's nest window could have been heard by Jack Dougherty, standing near the opposite end of the building, as a sound coming from above him.

4-8-64--September 1964. Ball, Belin, and the Warren Commission fail to explore the possibility Dougherty went upstairs to work after the shooting, after someone else had taken the west elevator to the ground floor.

4-8-64--September 1964. Attorneys Joseph Ball and David Belin and the Warren Commission as a whole fail to acknowledge that their conclusion Jack Dougherty rode the west elevator down to the first floor as Baker and Truly ran upstairs places Dougherty on the fifth floor by the west elevator as Oswald crossed an open stretch of floor before him.

4-8-64. Warren Commission attorney David Belin allows Dallas Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer to testify as though Charles Givens' new-found story (about seeing Oswald near the sniper's nest after everyone else had left the sixth floor) had been common knowledge on 11-22-63, when Belin knew this wasn't true.

5-13-64. Dallas Police Detective Jack Revill testifies in support of Givens' new-found story, and offers Dallas Police Detective V. J. Brian as a witness to his discussion with Givens, only to have Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin fail to ask Brian about Givens in testimony taken just after Revill dropped his smelly surprise.

5-14-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball cuts off Eddie Piper after Piper volunteers that he has no idea who brought the elevators down just after the shots, and steers him to what he believes is a more productive course--that he failed to see Vickie Adams come down the stairs.

5-14-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball not only fails to ask Eddie Piper the questions about Jack Dougherty he'd claimed in a memo needed to be asked, but uses the failure of Piper to provide answers to these never-asked questions as a means of discrediting him.

5-14-64--September 1964. Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball inexplicably fails to ask William Shelley about Jack Dougherty's 4-8-64 testimony, in which Dougherty claimed Shelley had told him he saw Oswald with a large package on 11-22-63.

5-19-64. The February 17-18 statements of Vickie Adams, who claimed she raced down the stairs just after the shooting, and Otis Williams, who claimed he raced up to the fourth floor shortly after the shooting (and who later claimed he'd taken the back stairs up to the second floor just after the shooting), are inexplicably missing from a batch of statements taken by the Dallas Police that are only now provided the Warren Commission.

6-4-64--September 1964. Vickie Adams' boss, Dorothy Ann Garner, lets it be known she'd be willing to testify in support of Adams' and Styles' claim they raced down the stairs after the shooting, and goes one step further by claiming she saw Baker and Truly run up the stairs after Adams and Styles ran down the stairs...and is totally blown off by the Warren Commission...

June-64--September 1964. Chapter IV in the Commission's Final report is presented, approved, and sold to the public even though it includes an egregious lie, which, no surprise, helps sell Oswald's guilt. In support of the Commission's conclusion Vickie Adams was mistaken, and that Oswald did in fact race down the stairs within a minute of the shooting, the report claims: "Victoria Adams, who worked on the fourth floor of the Depository Building, claimed that within about 1 minute following the shots she ran from a window on the south side of the fourth floor, down the rear stairs to the first floor, where she encountered two Depository employees--William Shelley and Billy Lovelady. If her estimate of time is correct, she reached the bottom of the stairs before Truly and Baker started up, and she must have run down the stairs ahead of Oswald and would probably have seen or heard him..." It then strikes: "Shelley and Lovelady, however, have testified that they... reentered the building by the REAR door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance".

So where was the lie? I sure hope you caught it.

It was the bit about Shelley and Lovelady re-entering the building through the REAR door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front door. While Shelley and Lovelady both struggled with their time estimates, and thereby helped the Commission in its effort to discredit Adams, they also were consistent in that they both testified--in the testimony the Commission cited by footnote to support they'd re-entered by the rear door, moreover-- to re-entering the building through the side door. By claiming they re-entered the building through the REAR door, instead of the side door, the commission had effectively doubled the distance the men were presumed to have covered in the "several minutes" of their estimate.

And, oh yeah, "several minutes." Shelley and Lovelady both testified to spending but 60-90 seconds down by the railroad tracks, which translates to their re-entering the building 85-115 seconds after Baker and Truly entered the building. That's close, but it isn't "several minutes."

The commission's report, then, made two false claims in one sentence that served the same purpose--to stretch out the time sequence regarding Shelley and Lovelady's return to the building, which the commission could then use to discredit Adams.

This would appear to be no coincidence.

Q and A About the Q and A

Let's summarize, then, what the Warren Commission uncovered and concluded, from the witnesses discussed in this chapter.

Question: where was Lee Harvey Oswald in the 40 minutes leading up to the shooting of President Kennedy?

What the witnesses told the commission: William Shelley, Eddie Piper, and Carolyn Arnold claimed they saw Oswald on the first floor after he came down for lunch (around 11:50, 12:00, and 12:15, respectively). Oswald identified James Jarman and Harold Norman as (presumably the last) men who could support that he was in the domino room before the shooting. Norman's testimony suggests he may have seen Oswald in the domino room as he ate his lunch, shortly before or after 12:00. But he wasn't with Jarman at this time, and Oswald said he saw them together. It's undoubtedly significant then that Norman and Jarman passed by the door to the domino room circa 12:20-12:25--a fact Oswald was unlikely to have known should he have been busy on the sixth floor at this time. Charles Givens, on the other hand, changed his story at the last minute and claimed he saw Oswald on the sixth floor around 11:55.

How the commission answered the question of Oswald's whereabouts during the 40 minutes leading up to the assassination: the commission concluded Givens was telling the truth, and that, somehow, someway, this meant Oswald never came down for lunch.

Question: who took the west elevator down from the fifth (or sixth) floor a few minutes after the shooting, around 12:32?

What the witnesses told the commission: Jack Dougherty claimed he took this elevator up to the sixth floor circa 12:35, and then down to the fifth floor, where he heard a loud noise from up above him at 12:40, and immediately returned to the first floor, where he talked to Eddie Piper. Despite his writing a memo insisting Piper be asked the time he spoke to Dougherty, Warren Commission counsel Joseph Ball failed to ask Piper this incredibly important question, at least on the record. Supporting Dougherty's claim he took the elevator up circa 12:35, and was on the fifth floor circa 12:40, moreover, was Roy Truly's recollection of seeing Dougherty on the fifth floor circa 12:35-12:40, as he (Truly) descended from the roof with Officer Marrion Baker. Supporting that a loud sound was made at this time, and came from above Dougherty's location by the west elevator (as opposed to coming from the sniper's nest, far to the east of Dougherty), for that matter, is that J.C. Price (on the roof of the building across the plaza from the depository) also claimed to hear a loud sound 5 minutes or so after the shooting, and that Baker and Truly returned from the roof via a hatch, almost directly above Dougherty's location.

So the short answer to the question of who took the west elevator down between 12:31 and 12:32...is not Dougherty.

Here are some additional reasons to believe Dougherty took the west elevator up after the shooting--after Baker and Truly raced up the stairs, and an unidentified person came down on the west elevator:

1) Dougherty failed to see or hear Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams, and James Jarman speak excitedly to one another after hearing the shots that killed Kennedy, and race across the fifth floor to the west side of the building to see what was happening. The fifth floor was an open floor being used as a warehouse. As a result, it seems certain Dougherty would have heard Norman, Williams, and Jarman, should he have been standing by the west elevator for 1-2 minutes after the time of the last shot, as presumed by the Commission.

2) Norman, Williams, and Jarman also failed to notice Dougherty at this time. He was in the government's scenario a big man standing out in the open near the elevator, who went over to the elevator, closed its gates, and rode downstairs without being noticed. Maybe. Maybe not.

3) If Dougherty actually took the west elevator down as Baker and Truly raced up the stairs, moreover, he would have to have been standing by the west elevator as the sniper raced down the stairs from the sixth floor, and across an open stretch of floor, in plain sight, less than 10 yards away. Oswald was observed, after all, on the second floor, as Baker and Truly raced up the stairs within a minute and a half of the shooting. If he was the shooter, he would have to have raced down the stairs (which are not separated by a stairwell and feed into and out of the floors) forty-five seconds or so after the shooting. Well, this would have been before Dougherty started down on the elevator. Baker and Truly insisted, after all, that the west elevator was on a top floor when they looked up the elevator shaft from the first floor, around one minute after the shooting.

And here is an additional reason to believe someone other than Dougherty took the west elevator down from the upper floors around 12:32: Vickie Adams, Sandra Styles, and Dorothy Garner all swore Adams and Styles raced down the stairs before Baker and Truly raced up the stairs, and that they didn't see or hear Oswald on the stairs as they raced down.

So it seems fairly certain someone other than Dougherty rode the west elevator down a minute or so after the shooting.

If true, this strongly suggests someone other than Oswald was the sixth floor shooter.

How the commission answered the question of who rode the west elevator to the first floor after the shooting: the commission ignored Styles and Garner, and claimed Piper, Dougherty and Adams were confused. It offered instead a scenario in which Dougherty was hard of hearing, blind, invisible and frozen-in-time between the moment of the last shot, and the moment he took the west elevator down to the first floor, a minute or more after the shooting.

The audacious nature of these conclusions, then, suggests Belin and Ball's "investigation" was nothing but a whitewash.

Let's take another look, then, at how this was done.

JAHS Chapter 18