What Happened in the TSBD?

Much of the material in this section is taken from Pat Speer's analysis of witness testimony regarding their movements and observations in the TSBD in his Chapter 4 and Chapter 8.

Bart Kamp's work on this, especially his discovery of new archival and news stories has also been invaluable. You can read his 168 page pdf, Anatomy of the Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter, or his more updated 419 page book: PrayerMan: More than a Fuzzy Picture.

Another invaluable source is the indomitable Irish researcher Sean Murphy, who in 2013 popularized the concept of Prayer Man in a 232 page thread on the Education Forum. Stan Dane has summarized that thread in a 366 page book called Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald.

HERE is a very good 1 hour 40minute movie about the movements in the TSBD, with good animations of people and views inside the building.

Click HERE for a printable copy of this chapter

CLICK HERE to listen to a 30 minute podcast of this chapter. If you get a Google warning that the file is too big to scan for viruses, you can Play Anyway, since the file was generated and stored by Google.

Introduction

This week we will closely examine two hinge points in the Kennedy Assassination: What Happened in the Texas School Book Depository, and, in the next website tab, The Killing of Dallas Policeman J.D. Tippit. In this first section we’ll examine what went on in the Texas School Book Depository: how many people were on the sixth floor, how did they escape, and where Oswald was during the shooting. In the second section we’ll look at the allegation that Oswald killed Police Officer J.D. Tippit, to help determine whether Oswald was a cold blooded killer, or if he was framed, and if so, by who?

The Warren Commission prosecutor's brief is summarized in Chapter 4 of the Warren Report: The Assassin. As previously mentioned, the case against Oswald was circumstantial. As Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry said, "I'm not sure about it. No one has ever been able to put him (Oswald) in the Texas School Book Depository with a rifle in his hand." Yet the Warren Commission tried very hard and, with the evidence that they provided, they made a convincing case, not only that Oswald was the shooter in the TSBD, but that he was a cold blooded killer who killed Officer J.D. Tippit. As we examine the evidence that was ignored or suppressed, the picture becomes much murkier.

Chapter 4 of the Warren Report: The Assassin covers:

Ownership and Possession of Assassination Weapon
The Rifle in the Building
Oswald at the Window
The Killing of Patrolman J.D. Tippit and Oswald's Arrest
Statements of Oswald during Detention
Prior Attempts to Kill
Oswald's Rifle Capability

As you might expect, all of the Warren Commission's conclusions are disputed by assassination researchers. In the interests of time, we will just focus on the two hinge points: Oswald at the Window and The Killing of Patrolman J.D. Tippit. For those who are interested, analyses of the other points can be found on an optional page: Evidence Against Lee Harvey Oswald.

Warren Commission Version

In Oswald at Window, the Warren Commission highlighted some evidence that Oswald had been in the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the TSBD.

Palmprints and Fingerprints on Cartons and Paper Bag

The Dallas Police Department claimed to have found Oswald's palm print on a box in the sniper's nest. The WC acknowledged that Oswald's job involved retrieving books from boxes in the TSBD and taking them to shipment on the first floor, and the palm print may have been through innocent handling of the boxes, but felt that it was more likely that Oswald's print came from his being in the sniper's nest at the time of the shooting. Pat Speer on the other hand, reviewed the evidence chain and thinks it more likely that both the paper bag found in the TSBD that was thought to have carried the rifle, and the prints found on a box and the rifle, were manufactured by Lt. J.C. Day. Not only are Warren Commission critics skeptical of evidence from the Dallas Police, the Warren Commission staff and the FBI apparently were as well:

Mr. Rankin [J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel of Warren Commission] advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a serious question in the minds of the Commission as to whether or not the palm impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police Department is a legitimate latent palm impression removed from the rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source.

Gerald Drain, the lead FBI agent in Dallas involved in liaising with the DPD concerning physical evidence, believed the Dallas Police Department had fabricated that evidence in a context of external pressure to build evidence in the case. Gerald Drain:

“I just don’t believe there ever was a print … All I can figure is that it [Oswald’s print] was some sort of cushion, because they were getting a lot of heat by Sunday night. You could take the print off Oswald’s card and put it on the rifle. Something like that happened.” (Drain quoted in Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt [1985], 109)

Oswald's Presence on Sixth Floor Approximately 35 Minutes Before the Assassination

The WC used TSBD employee Charles Givens as their star witness to place Oswald on the sixth floor when the rest of the employees went to lunch around 11:45 am. According to the WC, Givens returned to the sixth floor to retrieve his cigarettes and saw Oswald on the sixth floor, who told Givens he wasn't coming down for lunch. The WC said "None of the Depository employees is known to have seen Oswald again until after the shooting." We'll look at this more closely below.

Eyewitness Identification of Assassin

Howard Brennan was the witness used to place Oswald in the sniper's nest. Brennan was sitting at the corner of Elm and Houston streets. He saw a man leave and return to the window prior to the shooting and then saw him as he took the last shot. Brennan estimated the man's weight at 165 to 175 pounds (Oswald weighed 131 pounds on 11/22) and although Brennan didn't estimate his height at the time, a few months later he estimated the man's height as 5'10". Oswald was 5'9 1/2", but since Brennan had thought the man was standing up, when he must have been kneeling, his height estimation is problematic. At a police lineup on 11/22 Brennan was unable to make a positive identification of Oswald.

Two other witnesses, Ronald Fisher and Amos Euins saw a man in the sniper's nest prior to the shooting. Fisher saw a man just prior to the shooting in a light shirt or T-shirt, slender face, light complexion, between 22 and 24 years old (Oswald was 24). Amos Euins was a 15 year old Black youth, standing close to Howard Brennan who saw a man fire from the sixth floor. Euins originally said the man was "colored" and had a bald spot, but he later changed his testimony and said that he couldn't tell if the man was Black or White.

Oswald's Actions in the Building After Assassination

The Warren Commission used the testimony of Dallas Patrolman Marrion Baker and TSBD building manager Roy Truly to place Oswald in the lunchroom on the second floor around 90 seconds after the shooting. Marrion Baker was riding a motorcycle in the motorcade when he heard the shots and saw pigeons fly off the roof of the TSBD. Thinking that the shots may have come from the roof, he parked his motorcycle and ran in to the TSBD where he encountered building manager Roy Truly. Truly led him to the elevators at the northwest corner of the TSBD. There were two freight elevators and both seemed to be at the level of the fifth floor. Since the elevators wouldn't come down, they ran up the steps. See the floor plan diagrams for the TSBD:

As Baker and Truly were running up the steps, the Warren Commission says that Baker caught a glimpse of a man through the window of a door into the vestibule of the second floor lunchroom:

Baker pulled his gun ran into the vestibule and saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom. Baker said "Come here." and the man turned and walked back to Baker. Truly caught up to Baker and Baker asked him if he worked there, and Truly replied "Yes."

The Baker/Truly encounter with Oswald was originally recorded in the evening of 11/22 in the offices close by where Oswald was being held. Here is Baker's 11/22 affidavit. He described the man as "approximately 30 years old, 5'9", 165 pounds, dark hair, and wearing a light brown jacket" and he places the encounter not in the lunch room but on the third or fourth floor with the man walking away from the steps. He revised or corrected his statement the next day to say, "On the second floor, where the lunch room is located, I saw a man standing in the lunch room. He was alone in the lunch room at this time. I saw no one else in the vicinity of the lunch room at this time."

It is interesting that in neither of the affidavits did Baker identify "the man" as Lee Harvey Oswald, even though Baker saw Oswald at Dallas Police HQ when Baker gave his statement. We'll have much more to say about the lunch room encounter below.

Who Came Down in the Elevator?

Baker and Truly ran from the second floor up to the fifth floor. When they got there, they found the east freight elevator available, but someone had apparently taken the west freight elevator down to the first floor. Baker and Truly proceeded to the roof where they found no one, and came back down a few minutes later. The Warren Commission decided that another TSBD worker, Jack Dougherty, had taken the west elevator down while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs.

The Girls on the Stairs

The Warren Commission maintained that Lee Harvey Oswald shot the rifle from the sixth floor sniper's nest, then hid the rifle behind some boxes and ran down the stairs and into the vestibule of the lunchroom where Baker then saw him. Recreations of Baker's and Oswald's movements showed that it was possible that Oswald could have run down and reached the lunch room and encountered Baker around 90 seconds after the assassination. However, Victoria Adams, Sandra Styles, Elsie Dorman and their supervisor, Dorothy Garner had watched the motorcade from the fourth floor overlooking Elm Street. After they heard the shots Victoria Adams panicked and decided to leave the building. She and Sandra Styles ran down the stairs estimating that it took about a minute to reach the first floor. She said that the stairs were very noisy and she heard no one else on the stairs. Dorothy Garner stayed on the fourth floor in the back storage room where she heard Adams and Styles descend and later saw Baker and Truly ascend. The Warren Commission had a problem with this because according to their timeline Adams, Styles or Garner should have seen or heard Oswald descend from the sixth floor. The Warren Commission decided that Adams and Styles descended the stairs several minutes after the shooting, after Baker and Truly had ascended the stairs.

Oswald's Departure from the Building

The Warren Commission's lunch room story was bolstered by the statement of Mrs. Robert Reid, secretary to Building Supervisor Roy Truly. The Warren Report states, "Mrs. Reid had watched the parade from the sidewalk in front of the building with Truly and Mr. O. V. Campbell, vice president of the Depository. She testified that she heard three shots which she thought came from the building. She ran inside and up the front stairs into the large open office reserved for clerical employees. As she approached her desk, she saw Oswald. He was walking into the office from the back hallway, carrying a full bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand, presumably purchased after the encounter with Baker and Truly. As Oswald passed Mrs. Reid she said, "Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him." Oswald mumbled something and walked by. She paid no more attention to him. The only exit from the office in the direction Oswald was moving was through the door to the front stairway. See Commission Exhibit 1118:

Mrs. Reid testified that when she saw Oswald, he was wearing a T-shirt and no jacket."

Mrs. Reid's testimony is at odds with that of Geneva Hine. She was alone in that office manning the telephones from 12:25 to 12:35pm and did not see Oswald. She testified to the Warren Commission that she saw Mrs. Reid enter the offices after police and newspaper people had arrived. Mrs. Reid arrived with a group of people including Mr. O.V. Campbell.

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald went down the stairs and left the building by 12:33 pm. From there he used a bus and a taxi to go to his room in the Oak Cliff neighborhood where he shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit at 1:16pm. We'll discuss the killing of Officer Tippit in the second part of this week's reading.

What Happened in the TSBD, Critics' Version

Who Was on the Sixth Floor Before and at the Time of the Shooting?

The Warren Commission relied on Howard Brennan, Ronald Fisher and Amos Euins who saw a shooter or someone in the sniper's nest window. While Amos Euins changed his original statement that the shooter was Black, the story of a Black shooter made it to J.Edgar Hoover early that afternoon. There were other witnesses as well:

Arnold Louis Rowland was waiting with his wife on Houston Street, around 12:15pm when he saw a man on the sixth floor holding a rifle with telescopic sight in the west corner of the building. The man was holding the rifle in a port arms position. He was fair complected, slim, dark hair, early thirties, light or white shirt open at the collar. He was in view for about 15 or 20 seconds. Around the same time Rowland saw an "elderly Negro" hanging out the window of the sniper's nest, on the southeast side of the sixth floor who remained there until around 12:25pm. Rowland did not look at the TSBD during the shooting sequence. Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig testified that Rowland gave him a description of the two men in the TSBD shortly after the shooting.
Mrs. Eric (Carolyn) Walther was standing on the east side of Houston Street, about 50 feet south of Elm Street. A few minutes before the motorcade she noticed a man in the southeast corner of the fourth or fifth floor of the TSBD holding a rifle with the barrel pointed down. He was wearing a white shirt and had blond or light brown hair. In the same window she saw another man wearing a brown suit coat.
Mrs. Toney (Ruby) Henderson was standing on the east side of Elm Street, just north of Houston Street, waiting for the motorcade. She noticed two men on one of the upper floors of the TSBD. One had on a dark shirt, the other a white shirt. The person with the white shirt had dark hair and was possibly a Mexican but could have been a Negro, as he appeared to be dark-complexioned.
John Powell was an inmate on the sixth floor of the Dallas County Jail in Dealey Plaza, across the street to the southwest of the Book Depository, at 12:30 pm on November 22, 1963. He and a number of other sixth floor inmates watched two men in the southeast sixth floor TSBD window about five minutes before the shooting. Powell could see the men clearly enough to notice them "fooling with the scope" on the rifle; one had a darker complexion than the other.
Richard Randolph Carr was an additional witness who claimed to have seen a man with a hat, a tan sports coat and horn rimmed glasses on the top floor of the TSBD. He was on an upper floor of a construction site about 800 feet away. Following the shots he claimed to have climbed down and proceeded toward Dealey Plaza where he encountered what he thought to be the same man he had seen in the TSBD. "This man, walking very fast, proceeded on Houston St. south to Commerce St., then east on Commerce St. to Record St. which is one block from Houston St. This man got into a 1961 or 1962 Grey Rambler Station Wagon which was parked just north of Commerce on Record St. The station wagon, which had Texas license and was driven by a young Negro man, drove off in a northerly direction." There is skepticism regarding Carr's testimony due to the requirement of fine visual acuity as well as the coincidence of running into the same man on the street, but it is tempting because it ties in with the testimony of Roger Craig, below.

So prior to the assassination, witnesses may have seen three different men on the sixth floor: a Black man, a young White man in a light shirt with a rifle, and a man in a brown suit. Following the assassination, the man in the brown suit or perhaps tan jacket may have been seen by the first DPD officer to enter the TSBD, Marrion Baker who, on 11/22 said he saw a man with a light brown jacket, 30 years old, 5’ 9” tall, approx. 165 pounds on the third or fourth floor walking away from the stairway.

Around 12:40pm, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig was inspecting a possible bullet strike by the manhole on the south side of Elm Street when he heard a shrill whistle. He saw a white Nash Rambler driving west on Elm St, driven by a Negro male pull over to the curb. A man ran across the lawn and got into the car and it drove off. The man was a white male, height 5'9", weight 140 pounds, slender, hair sandy, dress - brown shirt, blue trousers. Later that evening, Craig saw Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department. He stated that the man he observed running from the Texas School Book Depository was identical with Lee Harvey Oswald.

Marvin Robinson was driving west on Elm Street directly behind a light colored Nash station wagon. He stated that the car stopped and a white male came down the grass covered incline between the building and the street and entered the station wagon, after which it drove away in the direction of the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.

A light colored Nash Rambler is reportedly in the background of this photo shot by Jim Murray at 12:40PM.

Where Was Oswald?

It is somewhat ironic that we have many thousands of pages of witness statements and sworn testimony taken by the Dallas Police, the FBI, Secret Service and Warren Commission, and yet from the most important witness to the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, we have no formal statement, other than his recorded pleas for legal representation and his statement that "I'm just a patsy!" Oswald was interrogated over the weekend for twelve hours before he was killed. Instead of sworn statements, we have thirty-eight pages of reports by various interrogators including the primary interrogator, Captain J.W. Fritz, chief of the Homicide and Robbery Bureau. All of these reports were written after the fact, many were written after Oswald was killed on November 24. Fritz always claimed he didn't take any notes during his interviews, but at one point Postal Inspector Harry Holmes recorded Oswald as saying to Fritz, "I’ve told you all about that card. You took notes, just read them for yourself if you want to refresh your memory." After Fritz died, in the 1990's, five pages of notes in his handwriting were donated to the ARRB. Also, several pages of FBI Agent Hosty's handwritten notes were published in his book, and a handwritten report by Hosty turned up in an archive.

The interrogation notes and reports are very important, because if you were interviewing a suspect, wouldn't an important question be: "Where were you when the President was shot?"

According to Fritz' interrogation report conducted on 11/22, with FBI Agents Brookhout and Hosty, "I asked him what part of the building he was in at the time the President was shot, and he said that 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 after the shooting 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 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." The problem with this report is that if Oswald was in the second floor lunch room drinking his coke, then Marrion Baker could not have seen him in walking the vestibule of the lunch room.

In Fritz' interrogation on 11/23 he said, "In talking with him further about his location at the time the President was killed, he said he ate lunch with some of the colored boys who worked with him. One of them was called "Junior" and the other one was a little short man whose name he did not know."

In Brookhout and Hosty's report of the 11/22 interrogation, they say, "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 bought a bottle of Coca-Cola for his lunch." This implies that he bought the coke on the second floor, then took it downstairs to the first floor to eat his lunch, not the reverse.

Brookhout wrote a separate report on 11/25 with a very different lunch sequence. "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 employees lunch room.

He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY and thereafter went home." There are two problems with this report: this lunch sequence after the shooting makes no sense; the Warren Commission had a tight time schedule to get Oswald to Oak Cliff by 1:15pm to kill Officer Tippit, so the WC concluded that Oswald left the building by 12:33pm, and didn't eat lunch and stand around for five or ten minutes after the shooting. Also, Shelley wasn't standing around in the front after the shooting, he was there before the shooting. But Brookhout's attempt to change the story after Oswald's death may indicate that he felt the official story was unworkable. The other problem is the same with Fritz' report above: Baker could not have seen Oswald in the lunch room from the stairs, and Baker had claimed Oswald had nothing in his hands.

U.S. Postal Inspector H.D. Holmes had a little different sequence in his report. "When asked as to his whereabouts at the time of the shooting, he stated that when lunch time came, and he didn't state what floor he was on, he said one of the Negro employees invited him to eat lunch with him and he stated 'You go on down and send the elevator up and I will join you in a few minutes.' Before he could finish whatever he was doing, he stated, the commotion surrounding the assassination took place and when he went down stairs, a policeman questioned him as to his identification and his boss stated 'He is one of our employees' whereupon the policeman had him step aside momentarily. Following this he simply walked out the front door of the building." Postal Inspector Harry Holmes was not briefed adequately for his Warren Commission testimony. When he was asked about the Baker encounter with Oswald he insisted that it happened in the vestibule just inside the front door of the TSBD on the first floor, not the vestibule outside the second floor lunchroom.

These two pages of Will Fritz' hand written notes above add a few interesting comments:

To first floor had lunch
Out with Bill Shelley in front
two Negr came in - one Jr. + short Negro

Oswald's supervisor, Bill Shelley stood on the TSBD steps to watch the motorcade and left almost immediately after the last shot to run to the parking lot. How did Oswald know that Shelley had been "in front"?

In Anatomy of the Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter, p 144, Bart Kamp reproduces handwritten notes by FBI Agent James Hosty that were found in the archives.

The key notes are:

O. stated he was present for work at the T.B.D. on the morning of the 22 nd and at noon went to lunch. He went to 2 nd floor to get a coca cola to eat with lunch and returned to 1 st floor to eat lunch. Then he went outside to watch P. Parade.

Is P. Parade shorthand for Presidential Parade?

Oswald's Alibi

We're beginning to see the outline of Oswald's alibi, had he lived long enough to be prosecuted at trial. Let's look more closely at witness testimony to see if this story can be fleshed out. As noted above, the Warren Commission relied on the testimony of Charles Givens to show that Oswald was alone on the sixth floor around noon and "None of the Depository employees is known to have seen Oswald again until after the shooting." However, as Pat Speer shows, Given's testimony is problematic. In Given's FBI statement, given on 11/23 , Givens went to lunch around 11:30pm, "When he started down in the elevator, LEE yelled at him to close the gates on the elevator so that he (LEE) could have the elevator returned to the sixth floor." Givens also said, "On the morning of November 22, 1963, GIVENS observed LEE reading a newspaper in the domino room where the employees eat lunch about 11:50 am." Just for clarification, the Domino Room is a small lunch room and gathering room for the warehouse workers, located on the first floor, northeast corner of the TSBD. The second floor lunch room was reserved for office staff and management only; warehouse employees were not supposed to eat lunch there but could go in to purchase Cokes from the Coke machine.

In Given's FBI statement he says after he went down for lunch he went outside and walked around until the motorcade arrived; there is no mention of the story of going back up to the sixth floor around noon to get his cigarettes. Why would Givens change his story between 11/23 and his Warren Commission testimony in April 1964? Pat Speer thinks he was coerced because he was a Black man with a police record, and quotes a February 9, 1964 article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram: According to the article, written by Thayer Waldo, a Secret Service agent had boasted that a Negro witness, who "had been arrested in the past by the Special Services office of the Dallas Police for gambling" had come forward, and had claimed to have seen Oswald actually fire the shots that killed Kennedy. According to Waldo, who claimed to have sat in on a conversation between this agent and another man, the agent said "Wait till that old Black boy gets up in front of the Warren Commission and tells his story. That will settle everything. Yes, sir. He was right there on the same floor, looking out the next window; and, after the first shot, he looked and saw Oswald, and then he ran. I saw him in the Dallas Police station. He was still the scaredest nigger I ever seen. I heard him tell the officer, 'Man you don't know how fast fast is, because you didn't see me run that day.' He said he ran and hid behind the boxes because he was afraid that Oswald would shoot him." As Givens was the only school book depository employee with a felony (narcotics) police record, and was also one of the very few to have seen Oswald in the hour before the shooting, the "Negro witness" described in the article is likely Givens. Dallas Police Lieutenant Jack Revill reviewed the Star Telegram story and judged that he thought Givens would "change his story for money."

TSBD workers Danny Arce and Billy Lovelady corroborated hearing Oswald say "You all close the door on the elevator, I will be down," or "leave the elevator (gate) down", contradicting Givens' later account that Oswald refused to come down.

Eddie Piper (janitor) stated in his Secret Service Statement of 12/7/1964 that he saw Oswald on the first floor around 12:00 noon and Oswald said "I'm going up to eat lunch". In his Warren Commission testimony the following April, Piper said: "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 door."

William Shelley, Oswald's supervisor stated he "last saw Oswald on the first floor about 11:50 am, at which time Oswald was working at his normal duties on the first floor".

Mrs. Carolyn Arnold, secretary to TSBD Vice President O.V. Campbell claimed she thought she caught a glimpse of Oswald in the first floor vestibule of the TSBD around 12:15pm. In an 11/26 FBI statement that was not published by the Warren Commission she said, "As she was standing in front of the building, she stated she thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of LEE HARVEY OSWALD standing in the hallway between the front door and the double doors leading to the warehouse, located on the first floor. She could not be sure that this was OSWALD, but said she felt it was and believed the time to be a few minutes before 12:15 PM." However, in a 1978 newspaper article she said she had told the FBI that she had seen Oswald in the second floor lunch room around 12:25pm. "I just recall that he was sitting there ... in one of the booth seats on the right-hand side of the room as you go in. He was alone as usual and appeared to be having lunch. I did not speak to him but I recognized him clearly."

In Fritz' handwritten notes he wrote "two Negr came in - one Jr. + short Negro". FBI Agent James Bookhout's report also aligns with this, stating Oswald ate alone but "recalled possibly two Negro employees walking through the room in this period." These would be James (Junior) Jarman and Harold Norman. In Jarman's WC testimony he stated that he and Norman were out in front of the building around 12:20 pm but couldn't get a good view, so they went through the back door of the TSBD and took the elevator to the fifth floor and watched from there. His route would have taken them right in front of the open door of the Domino room, and Oswald would have had a direct view of anyone entering through that back door and passing by.

Another Black employee, Bonnie Ray Williams refuted the Warren Commission theory that Oswald stayed on the sixth floor until the shooting. Williams got his lunch from the first floor and took it up to the sixth floor where he ate a chicken sandwich and had a bottle of Dr. Pepper. After the shooting, police found the remains of a chicken bone and a Dr. Pepper in the vicinity of the sixth floor snipers nest. Early news reports said that the cold blooded assassin had enjoyed a chicken lunch while awaiting the President. J. Edgar Hoover even went so far as to suggest that Oswald’s feces be examined for traces of chicken. Williams told the Secret Service that while he was on the sixth floor he did not see anyone else or hear anything on the sixth floor. In William's Warren Commission Testimony he said he went to the sixth floor expecting to meet up with his workmates but he was alone so he "ate his lunch in 5, 10, maybe 12 minutes" and then went downstairs to find his friends. On the fifth floor he met up with Harold Norman and James Jarman and together the three of them waited for and watched the motorcade. As you recall from above, Harold Norman and James Jarman had been out in front and then came in through the back door, passing the Domino Room and went to the fifth floor. They had estimated they went up around 12:20pm and were joined by Bonnie Ray Williams a few minutes later. The presence of Williams on the sixth floor after noon brings into question what the shooter(s) were doing. They must have either waited for Williams to leave before taking their positions, or perhaps Williams saw the shooter(s) on the sixth floor and was frightened into silence.

Photo of Jarman, Williams and Norman on the fifth floor taken by Tom Dillard, moments after the last shot on 11/22

When Did the Assassin(s) Descend?

So far we've seen some evidence that places Oswald on the first floor around 12:15 to 12:20pm, as judged by Carolyn Arnold's sighting around 12:15pm and Oswald's reported sighting of Jarman and Norman around 12:20pm. Could Oswald have noticed Bill Shelley on the front steps around that time (which was referenced in Fritz' handwritten notes) and then raced up to the sniper's nest to shoot JFK? Possibly, but lets look at the other side of the shooting to see how he could have descended from the sixth floor. Harry Holmes said Oswald claimed during interrogations that immediately after the shooting, a man ran into the TSBD and Oswald directed him to a telephone. That man was most likely Pierce Allman who told the Secret Service that he ran into the TSBD and met a man on the first floor in a hallway who directed him to a telephone. Allman worked for television station WFAA and his report was broadcast starting at 12:34pm, so his encounter with Oswald must have been around 12:32-12:33pm.

You recall that after the shots were fired, Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles ran down the steps from the fourth floor to the first floor. They said they heard no one along the way. It is unlikely that an assassin on the sixth floor could have been ahead of them down the stairs, since they had a two floor head start. Their supervisor, Dorothy Ann Garner went to the back and saw Truly and Baker ascend after Adams and Styles had descended, and didn't mention any assassins running down. As Pat Speer recounts, the Warren Commission was able to argue that Adams and Styles came down several minutes after Truly and Baker had gone up, based on her Warren Commission testimony (which was withheld from the public with a Top Secret classification). Adams said that when she got to the first floor, she saw Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady. The Warren Commission got Billy Lovelady and Bill Shelley to describe how they took their sweet time to stand around and talk to Gloria Calvary and then mosey down to the railroad tracks and eventually come in the back of the TSBD around 12:40pm where maybe they saw a woman but they couldn't be sure if it was Victoria Adams. Spear thinks it is more likely that Billy Lovelady and Bill Shelley got to the rear of the TSBD by the time Adams and Styles got there because Marrion Baker testified that when he reached the elevators with Roy Truly, there were two white men there:

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 betweeen 20 or 30 feet away from us looking at us.

Mr. Dulles. Were they white men?

Mr. BAKER Yes, sir.

In Bill Shelley's first day affidavit, he said he was told to stay at the elevator and not let anyone out of the elevator. It is reasonable to assume that that Roy Truly and Marrion Baker arrived at the elevators, saw Shelley there and Truly then told Shelley to guard the first floor elevators. Shelley did not however stay at the elevator, perhaps allowing the assassins to escape. An alternative view is that the white men seen by Baker were the assassins, having just descended from the sixth floor.

So, assuming Adams was right and descended immediately, when could the assassin(s) have descended? Could it be possible that the assassin(s) descended in the freight elevator while Adams and Styles were descending by stairs? Could they have reached the first floor and then sent the elevator back up? Here's a video of one of the elevators today. An early descent would allow the man seen by James Worrell to escape. The FBI countered James Worrell's testimony about seeing a man running from the building with a report by James Romack who claimed that he was watching the rear of the TSBD for about five minutes after the assassination and saw no one come out or go in. However Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles left through the back door, which is counter to James Romack's testimony. An alternate exit for people leaving the building may have been doors on the west side of the TSBD which went directly to the parking lot.

Another option is that either Oswald or the 6th floor man in a tan/brown suit were actually encountered by Truly/Baker on the stairs on the third or fourth floor, just as Baker's first day statement said.

A third alternative for descending from the sixth floor would be via elevator just a minute or two after Adams and Styles, as Truly and Baker were ascending the stairs. Truly said that both elevators were hung around the fifth floor but when they had reached the fifth floor, someone had taken the west elevator down. The Warren Commission said that Jack Dougherty took the west elevator, but Dougherty estimated that he came down around 12:45pm, and Pat Speer gives plenty of supporting evidence for that timing.

So maybe, just maybe, Oswald dashed up to the sniper's nest at 12:20pm, shot the President, and took the elevator back down around 12:32pm, just in time to meet up with Pierce Allman at 12:33pm.

Prayer Man

In 2013, the Education Forum started a post, titled Oswald Leaving TSBD? suggesting that an image from the Darnell film, taken just seconds after the assassination, showed a figure in the rear corner of the TSBD steps who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald. He was dubbed "Prayer Man" because his hands are together, either in prayer, or holding a coke.

The post grew to 232 pages because of the intriguing line of argument put forth by Sean Murphy examining the evidence that Oswald could have been on the front steps during the shooting. The arguments can be found in a book by Stan Dane and the evidence is laid out by Bart Kamp. Murphy starts by noting that the interrogation notes said Oswald claimed to be on the first floor during the shooting, but weren't specific as to where. Fritz' handwritten notes, however, say he was "out with Bill Shelley in front." Shelley is standing on the steps.

The next point he makes is that Billy Lovelady, who looks a lot like Oswald, can be seen standing on the steps in the Altgens 6 photograph. On the night following the assassination, two FBI agents visited Lovelady to see if the photo was of him or Oswald. When Lovelady confirmed the photo was of him they were very relieved. Why? Had Oswald claimed to be out in front?

The next point Murphy makes is very interesting. In Roy Truly's FBI report, taken the night of 11/22, Truly describes connecting with Baker and going into the TSBD: "He then noticed a Dallas City Police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running toward the entrance of the depository building and he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building." They saw no one there? Why did Roy Truly say that? Was someone suggesting that someone had been there? In contrast, Marrion Baker’s first affidavit states there were people there: “As I entered the door I saw several people standing around. I asked these people where the stairs were. A man stepped forward and stated he was the building manager and that he would show me where the stairs were.”

Murphy summarizes Brookhout and Hosty's report about where Oswald said he was:

I went to lunch in the Domino Room
Then I went up to the Second Floor lunchroom and bought a coke
Then I went back down to the First Floor, which is where I was when the President passed the building

It begs the question, Where on the First Floor were you? Did Oswald not say, or did they not write it down? Harry Holmes's Warren Commission testimony was repeatedly specific on that point: he said that Oswald was on the first floor in the vestibule of the building when a policeman stopped him and the policeman told Oswald to "step aside for a little bit". When Truly said they ran into the vestibule and "they saw no one there", did he say that because Oswald had said that he was in the vestibule?

A similar thing was said that evening by Dallas Detective Ed Hicks, as recounted in the London Free Press 11/22: "Hicks said just about that time, Oswald apparently came out the front door of the red bricked warehouse. A policeman asked him where he was going. He said he wanted to see what the excitement was all about."

TSBD Vice President Ochus V. Campbell was standing out on the front steps with his secretary, Mrs. Robert Reid, and then they came back into the building. Campbell was quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, written 11/22, published 11/23: “Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We had been outside watching the parade. We saw him (Oswald) in a small storage room on the ground floor. Then we noticed he was gone.” Mr. Campbell added: “Of course he and the others were on their lunch hour but he did not have permission to leave the building and we haven’t seen him since.”

Bart Kamp noted that there were several employees missing after the assassination. Could Roy Truly's undue suspicions about Oswald, which led to him singling out Oswald to Will Fritz later that afternoon be because Marrion Baker had told Oswald to "step aside for a little bit"? Perhaps that's just what Oswald did for a few minutes in the storage room, but he later left, sparking Truly's suspicions. Below is a map and photograph of the vestibule area from Bart Kamp showing a closet. That is the most likely storage room on the ground floor that Campbell would have passed as he made his way up the stairs to the second floor.

Other press reports were similar. From the Dallas Morning News of 11/23/1963

"In a storage room on the first floor, the officer, gun drawn, spotted Oswald. "Does this man work here?" the officer reportedly asked Truly:

11/23/1963 Washington Post article (written 11/22): "He apparently got out of the building during the time we were surrounding it." Police Chief Curry said. "As an officer rushed into the building, Oswald rushed out. The Policeman permitted him to pass after the building manager told him Oswald was an employee."

On 11/29/1963, in a phone call with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover said, “at the entrance of the building he was stopped by police officers, and some manager of the building told the police officers, 'well he is alright, he works here, you needn’t hold him.' They let him go.”

If the Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter was Contrived, What was the Purpose?

Sean Murphy makes the point that the second floor lunch room encounter first appeared late on 11/22 in Roy Truly's FBI statement. At that point, Oswald could have been hollering: "For Heaven's sake, it couldn't have been me! Roy Truly saw me by the front door!" If so, the pressure was on Truly; if he admitted that Oswald was at the front door immediately after the shooting, he would have given the accused killer a perfect alibi. So he (possibly with Fritz and the FBI) may have taken some statement that Oswald had made about purchasing a coke and transplanted the encounter to the second floor lunch room, thus avoiding derailing an enormous train of institutional and public opinion which had already decided that Oswald was the killer. Baker seems to have kept his mouth shut and said as little as possible, and stayed out of the media circus.

Another reason for the second floor lunch room encounter may have been that Victoria Adam's descent down the stairs interfered with Marrion Baker's original story about a third-fourth floor encounter on the stairs, and so the encounter was moved to the lunch room.

Sean Murphy suggests that Baker's original story of encountering a man on the third or fourth floor may have been contrived as well, in order to link Oswald as the assassin to an escape route. Baker's description of the man was very close to the description of the suspect in the all points radio bulletin broadcast after the shooting. But Baker's fabricating an encounter with a generic suspect may have become alarming to him when Baker saw Oswald and recognized him as the man he had seen in the front door vestibule immediately after the shooting. Baker's conscience about framing an innocent man may explain his refusal to view a lineup with Oswald, his consistent descriptions of "a man" instead of identifying Oswald, and his complete lack of any press statements for the next year.

If the lunch room encounter was an ad hoc solution to an immediate problem, it caused many more problems going forward. The biggest issue is that from the second floor landing by the stairs, you can't see into the lunch room, you can only see through a window in a door into a dark vestibule which angles at 45 degrees into another set of doors into the lunch room. Truly and Baker were racing up the steps to get to the top floor to find a sniper on the roof. What could derail their search into the lunch room? Truly's 11/22 FBI statement says, "he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone. This snack bar has no windows or doors, facing the outside of the building, but is located almost in the center of the building." Why did Baker choose to randomly search rooms in the middle of the building on the second floor when he had been heading to the roof?

The only way the second floor lunch room encounter works is if Oswald is seen in the vestibule on his way into the lunch room. Brookhout's and Fritz' interrogation notes which have Oswald with a coke in his hand, having already purchased a coke, remove Baker's plausible reason for entering the lunch room. It took a long time to get the story straight. Bart Kamp and Stan Dane list various stories published in the press:

11/24/63 Dallas - Oswald was found by police on the second floor of the building shortly

after the shooting, calmly opening a soft drink. The policemen drew a gun on him and asked the manager if he knew Oswald. The manager said Oswald was an employee and the police left. Another policeman let Oswald out the front door of the building after confirming again that he was an employee. AP, 7:58 p.m.CST.

11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - The first officer to reach the six-story building, Lieutenant Curry said, found Oswald among other persons in a lunchroom. New York Times, Donald Jansen.

11/27/63 New York Herald Tribune - [Mr. Truly said] On the second floor he stuck his head into a snack bar we have and saw Oswald sitting at one of the tables.

11/29/63 The Evening Star - Mr. Truly said the policeman held his gun on Oswald as the youth leaned against a counter

12/1/63 The Washington Post- [Mr. Truly said] the policeman saw Oswald standing beside a soft drink machine, sipping from a coke bottle.

1/2/64 ... Chief Curry, for instance, in one of his numerous interviews, said on Saturday that Lee Oswald was in the lunchroom -- "among others." But those "others" were never mentioned again. And on Saturday night, when the chief of the Dallas Homicide squad, Captain Will Fritz, indicated that the crime was solved as far as he was concerned.-..."it's a cinch" --he mentioned the fact that Oswald was in the building to support his belief. But Oswald was not alone in the building. ...The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: A Few Loose Ends, Leo Sauvage, p. 24.

On 12/23/1963, Capt. Will Fritz sent a letter outlining the case to Police Chief Jesse Curry, which includes the following, "Mr. Baker says he stopped this man on the third or fourth floor on the stairway, but as Mr. Truly identified him as one of the employees, he was released." Didn't Fritz remember his own interrogation report where he wrote, " He [Oswald] said he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola when the officer came in. "?

Even as late as the following September, the day before the Warren Report was presented to LBJ, the Warren Commission got the FBI to take another statement from Officer Baker, just to clear things up. But unfortunately that got bungled, as Baker repeated the line "drinking a coke" and it had to be crossed out. The tenacity of the "drinking a coke" line is interesting because it also appears in Brookhout's interrogation report. Maybe Oswald had said it during interrogations, just in a different place, like perhaps the first floor vestibule?

Conclusions?

In this section, we see how different stories can be put together by selecting some witness testimony and discounting other testimony. By ignoring lots of witness statements, the Warren Commission was able to leave Oswald on the sixth floor undisturbed from noon until 12:30pm, thus inferring he was the shooter. By looking at inconsistencies in witness testimonies and interrogation reports and hypothesizing about what the Dallas police and FBI were grappling with on the assassination weekend, it is possible to put together a very different story, supporting Oswald's alleged statements that he was on the first floor when the presidential motorcade passed by, possibly even out in front with Bill Shelley.

Subsequent to the Prayer Man debate in 2013, a clearer frame of the Darnell film emerged and the consensus seems to be that the person in the corner of the TSBD steps was not Oswald but Mrs. Pauline Sanders. But the key question remains: Where was Oswald during the shooting? Oswald's knowledge of "Bill Shelley out in front", Oswald's claim that the encounter with Baker took place in the front door vestibule, as relayed by Harry Holmes, and Vice President O.V. Campbell's sighting of Oswald in the storage room off that vestibule, all suggest he was somewhere around there during the shooting, perhaps just standing in the vestibule, watching the parade. But if that's the case, why wasn't he outside like almost everyone else? Had someone told him to stay out of sight during the motorcade? Next week we'll look at suggestions that Oswald was a patsy, and had been manipulated by others. That suggests he might have been a witting accomplice, not necessarily knowing of an assassination plot, but somehow being involved with the assassins. We'll see hints of this in the second section of this chapter, as we look at Oswald's travel to his rooming house in Oak Cliff directly after the assassination, and his arrest for the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit.

Let's conclude this section with the poem Antigonish by William Hughes Mearns

Yesterday upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today,

Oh, how I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three,

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall,

I couldn’t see him there at all!

Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door...

Last night I saw upon the stair,

A little man who wasn’t there,

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away…

This week's material is in two tabs. Proceed to read the second section, The Killing of J.D. Tippit

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