Mar
07
JFK Assassination – NBC Films – Prayer Man & AI – Part 1
Updated Mar 16 2026.
I have stated during some interviews that AI could assist us in identifying Prayer Man. Yes I am partisan to Prayer Man being Lee Harvey Oswald. This site shows plenty of evidence supporting that. Without that so called cherry on top. The NBC films.
My intention using AI was trying to see whether I could enhance the images using deblurring and sharpening techniques. I have already that experience of doing that myself n Photoshop, but this time I let what is around for everyone to have a play withHaving some high res images made me have a go at things and see how it pans out. First stop ChatGPT and prompt it about deblurring with AI.
The answers led me to various companies, so here are my first attempts of trying to get a better definition of the people in the Darnell and Wiegman films.
I started with the Dave Wiegman frame that is of the best quality.
First I used PixBin. The result was not too bad, definately more clarity on the steps’ occupants.
Then I used AI Enhancer and this has a much better result for both groups.
Then I used Artguru (free version), which took clarifying people to the next step, too extreme for my liking.
But using the same application again for an earlier Wiegman frame it came out not as ‘choppy’, if you blow it up then you will notice its short-comings, but from afar in the photograph below we can see Sarah Stanton in much greater detail, standing next to Pauline Sanders. Both are positioned next together to the pillar on the right. Otis Williams looks a lot clearer as well being in front of Bill Shelley.
The Truly group in front of the stairs group also benefits from this process.
Not a bad start.
Then Darnell, which is more blurry than Wiegman and also suffers from the low resolution that is only available at this point. I used all of the above apps and did not like the results.
The first one where I thought ‘ok’ was after using Topaz. The frame is from the 6th floor museum video. Is that Oswald’s t-shirt creeping through?
Original screen shot.
And after using Topaz.
Update Mar 16.
I started using Gemini last night. This time I fed 10 frames to it. Is Oswald’s white t-shirt starting to peak though? The additional sharpness also helps differentiating the females who have joined the others on the steps after the shots were fired. The top right corner is still a bit of an enigma.
So in closing after a first few attempts using different of the shelf deblur and sharpening techniques I can state that the results are ok, but there is room for improvement. The technology upgrades and higher resolution footage/images hopefully will become available and yield better results. Just seeing from these attempts what it can already achieve I would be having cold sweats too ;)
Which brings us to the original NBC films and I hope congress woman Anna Paulina Luna can get these released to the National Archives. Doubt this will happen.
To be further explored…..
Sep
28
Anna Paulina Luna’s Letter to NBC to request the JFK Assasination films
In case you are not too familiar with this subject: this article is about the films that NBC is holding that were taken during and right after the assassination of JFK in Dallas, Texas. The large majority of this post is due to Ed Ledoux’s dilligent work and his perserverance in trying to get hold of these films since they are so pivotal for Prayer Man.
NBC has been anything but cooperative from day one, they have stuck with the Warren Commission side of events of the JFK Assassination. Richard E. Sprague while trying to get hold of the JFK Assassination films, decades ago already reported in 1968 he had no luck getting access to any of the footage the network had taken. It was only through affiliates that Sprague managed to get hold of some of them. He got a copy of the Wiegman film through UCLA. Alec Baldwin also made mention of this when working on a JFK 50th anniversary show for MSNBC that was never aired.
In my book, Prayer Man – More Than a Fuzzy Picture, I mention Ledoux’s earlier work from a decade ago. He was in direct contact with NBC trying to obtain digital copies of the original films.
Not much came out of that other than the acknowledgement that they admitted to having the films. I quote from a reply on June 3rd, 2015 by Meg Nakahara to Ed Ledoux:
Thank you so much for your patience. Unfortunately, I have some bad news. I just received a call from the powers that be and sadly they do not want to authorize any film transfers from the original footage. They are pretty protective of the original and hence the reason we have the dubs that we are able to license from.
And by dubs they mean old U-matic 3/4 inch vhs tape transfer copies that are, in this digital age, of inferior quality.
A decade later and Ledoux has been a busy trying to contact the NBC offices and Anna Paulina’s office and I am more than happy to share his recents efforts, which took a fair bit of effort.
After the first hearing on April 1st, which I wrote about shortly after, some of us were wondering aloud what was being done by the committee in trying to get the original Darnell and Wiegman films. And Ed started to email shortly after to enquire whether he could get a copy of the letter that was meant to be sent out to NBC, and this proved to be quite a task.
I spoke with him earlier this week and from that conversation it transpired that he had been trying get hold of Anna Paulina’s letter to NBC requesting the films that were taken during the assassination. And in our case to be more precise the Dave Wiegman and James Darnell films.
He emailed and tried to call numerous times to get hold of this letter and after months of perservering he got it! Ledoux eventually managed to get in touch with Chief Legal Counsel William Christian at Anna Luna’s office, who passed him on to Chief of Staff Sam Luna (no relation) and he forwarded the letter to Ledoux.
Click photo to enlarge. With thanks to Ed Ledoux.
At the same time Ledoux tried to call and email NBC, especially the licensing office, to get an update about the request and the films. However no one would answer or reply to his emails. He left messages, but they were not returned either. I quote from his entry at The Education Forum. Because I wanted to make contact with the same people to get their opinion on the testimony before congress and what was going on in the office to satisfy what may become a subpoena.The same staff I’d spoke to before without any delay and strangely their phones went to voicemail. You could leave a message. But they wouldn’t call back. So I got the staff directory and I started calling everybody in the office, management etc. Everyone’s phone went to voicemail. No one would return a message. no matter how detailed or indiscript I left it.
And in closing if we are so wrong that Prayer Man is Lee Harvey Oswald, which is merely based on a belief if I may add. Why are the films not released? I mean Zapruder, a violent and graphic recording, has been in the public realm for quite some time now. Or could it just be that the films are just the cherry on top of the DPD & FBI evidence that Oswald stated where he was at that time. Out with Bill Shelley in front and Then Went Ouside to watch the P. Parade.
To be continued.
More:
The Search for the Wiegman and Darnell Films.
