27
The Bottle
During my Lancer 2023 presentation (at 51:21) I brought up the find of a bottle that stood closely to where Prayer Man (aka Lee Harvey Oswald) was standing. This bit gets very little mention in my book Prayer Man More Than a Fuzzy Picture. It is something I had started to look into years ago already while studying the Prayer Man footage in the Darnell and Wiegman films.
I based my initial find of a bottle on some still and moving frames of the Dave Wiegman film where we can see Prayer Man is moving an object that is partially illuminated, with his right hand only, closer to his face. Not many objects can be illuminated like that, but I know one thing that does and that is glass. For those that are not too familiar about this whole matter; Oswald got a coke for his lunch!
After the assassination there is a find of a bottle that stood in the westerly corner of the TSBD steps and that was captured by William Allen of the Dallas Times Herald in a few of his photos of the front of the TSBD as shown below. To the best of my estimation these pix were taken between 13:00 and 14:30 that day. The DPD did not cordon the building off until 20-25 minutes after the assassination.
In the William Allen contact strips below in the green sectioned area it shows that frames nos 11-13 show many people standing on and in front of the TSBD front steps, these people are gone in the subsequent image, with the very first frame (no 14) showing the sighting of the bottle. This is the first photograph of the gallery of four images above.
In the photos below the front of the TSBD is managed by the DPD and TSBD employees can only be seen behind the glass front inside or when leaving the building. All photos by William Allen – Dallas Times Herald. These images come from The Portal to Texas History.
At the Education Forum Chris Scally jumped on to this specific bit of my presentation and posted a William Allen photograph of Herbert Sawyer of the DPD, holding a Dr. Pepper bottle while standing on the Texas School Book Depository’s steps. Sawyer had setup his command post right there and was seen interviewing Howard Brennan inside a patrol car right in front of the Texas School Book Depository’s front steps shortly before. Scally did not base his ‘find’ on anything substantial other than to assume that Sawyer had littered his bottle on those steps. Something for me hard to accept for being plausible in those days.
I managed to pinpoint roughly when the image was taken (just before 13:00 hrs) by getting hold of some of Allen’s contact sheets with thanks to Dennis Morissette. Check out the green marked image and you can see that the tramps, escorted by Marvin Wise are his next shots. Then in the following frames on the strip below we can see Gerald Hill shouting from the sixth floor before his departure to the Tippit murder and Oswald’s subsequent arrest at the Texas Theatre. Finally at the end of the bottom strip is Larry Florer’s arrest. That arrest of Larry Florer (image 17), whose arrest happened at about 12:50 – 13:00.
The decisive part for me is that Oswald’s lunch bag rolled up and jammed between the bottle and the step from a close-up seen below. The bottle that Sawyer is holding has Dr Pepper stamped on, it is not a label of some sort.
If only they had tested that bottle and sack for fingerprints………
12
The Lone Gunman Podcast – More Than a Fuzzy Picture.
I had the pleasure speaking again with Rob Clark of the Lone Gunman Podcast. And as always great fun to do and had a very relaxed and mostly unscripted chat.
Listen to it HERE.
Thank you Rob!!!
08
Prayer Man More Than A Fuzzy Picture
So here it is, something I did not think I would be putting together, a book! Especially after finishing my papers just over a year ago, ‘blame’ Malcolm Blunt who said to me in June 2022 “You should do a book.” It meant more research and many more hours of work, which enabled me to conclude on some things I had not thought thought of, like the fingerprints, palm prints and above all the connection between the rifle and Lee Oswald on Nov 22nd.
That editing and finalising the book was going to be such a slog (10 weeks) and that stressful was unbeknown to me, but hey I am an experience richer. Same goes with publishing it thru Amazon, which was virgin territory as well.
I hope you enjoy it, like the ones who have ordered it already!
07
JFK Lancer Conference 2023
I will be doing a one hour presentation remotely at the 27th Annual JFK Lancer Conference!
This event is being held on November 17th – 19th, 2023 at the Lorenzo Hotel, Dallas, Texas.
I shall be speaking about some of my key findings from my book “Prayer Man: More Than a Fuzzy Picture“.
04
The Book
So when I finished my papers last year in June Malcolm Blunt said to me “you should do a book”. And that was something I had not planned on doing at all. I was completely against it when I set off on this ‘journey’ of writing it all down in 2016. I enjoyed the approach of the interactive papers with its inserted evidence right there and then.
Had it been anyone else I would not have heeded much notice to that remark, but in this case I did nothing until September 2022 and then started to look into what needed to be done to add and turn it into a book. Producing a book is not really something I have done before, it’s my first.
So here goes….
Since Autumn 2022; the fingerprints, palm prints and nitrate tests have been dug into. Oswald’s psych reports at Youth House in 1953 as well. There will be partial transcripts of interviews done by Ed Ledoux with Roy Edward Lewis in 2018 & 2022. On top of that some serious finds added purely based on the documented evidence at hand from the Malcolm Blunt archive and not brought forward before on this website or anywhere else.
The e-book version will have all its evidence ( 1,200 foot notes) linked but for the hard copy book version I refer you to this website’s special section of the book. Which is a set of pages that has the book chapters’ numbered links to all evidence neatly organised for those that are interested. So you can use your electronic device at the same time to check out the foot notes while reading on that particular page of your hard copy.
This section I put together instead of having to go back and forth within book.
The book will have three chapters:
- Prayer Man.
- Inside the TSBD.
- The Interrogations.
Setting up this whole thing is virgin territory to me and took a few weeks longer than originally thought, but now I hope to release the e-book by July 10th and the hard copy version to be released a week later.
18
Spaulden Jones Photos at the Sixth Floor Museum
A few weeks back the Sixth Floor Museum published a set of colour photographs taken by Spaulden Jones inside the Texas School Book Depository. Jones was a regional manager of Macmillan and Company, which were housed on the third floor of the TSBD. Spaulden Jones believed that he was on the elevator with Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963 at 08:30 as per his notes seen below.
The next day on the morning of the 23rd, Jones took a series of color photographs on the sixth floor of the Depository, and it is just amazing to see the so called ‘scene’ in colour for a change.
I like the photo of the two men in the so called sniper’s nest with one on the phone and the other being close to the sniper’s position and is fairly well concealed from view unless from relative closeness which this shot perfectly demonstrates. Those pipes look like a bother for a right handed shooter.
Two other photos stood out to me as they were not taken on the third floor, where the MacMillan office was based inside the TSBD.
They are of the second floor front entrance of the TSBD office of which there is a similar FBI photograph that was published by the Warren Commission in 1964. A quick comparison immediately shows this to be the same front entrance.
I reckon that potential clients of the companies housed inside the TSBD where received through the second floor front entrance. And that also goes for the conference room photo pasted below. There is no other conference room in the building than on the second floor in the back where the upper management such as Jack Cason and Ochus Campbell had their offices. It is nice to see what the conference room looked like. Obviously the books belong to the publishing companies housed on the second, third and fourth floors. No idea of identifying the people in the photographs above the shelf unit are. Nor the Emblem, could be an award?
And for more clarification I share the 2nd and 3rd floor plans made by the FBI. For some strange reason rooms 302, 303 and 304 are missing on the third floor plans.
Add on April 14th 2023.
Jones also did an Oral History Interview with the Sixth Floor Museum in 1996.
During the first ten minutes he explains what he had done during his career and his position inside the TSBD as a manager for MacMillan book publishing company, he worked from the fourth floor and he had six secretaries working for him.
- He knew Roy Truly very well. Truly was in charge of the physical shipping of the books.
- Jones was out for lunch with Herbert Junker (one of his sales reps) at the closeby Blue Front restaurant when JFK was killed.
- They returned to the TSBD straight after hearing the news. His estimation was that about five or ten minutes had passed.
- He noticed that there was a lot of confusion.
- He had five of his office ladies down out in front of the TSBD when he returned.
- When asking them how many shots they had heard many of them could not precisely recall as to how many they thought they had heard. It differed from 2-4 shots.
- Some of the women were near the front entrance and some were further down Elm St.
- He was milling around and he mentions meeting Wes Wise, but also a suited gentleman who was holding a shoe box which contained a piece of Kennedy’s skull and which he saw being handed over.
- People were listening to their radios where they would hear that the President was at Parkland hospital. But upon seeing that piece of skull Jones had not much faith in JFK still being alive.
- They, the office people, were let back into the TSBD, but they couldn’t leave.
- Upon return inside the women were very much upset and before they let anyone go they were being interviewed in their office. Strangely enough he cannot remember who questioned them, only that they were not wearing uniforms. He thinks they were FBI or USSS. The ladies were interviewed first.
- He mentions seeing and talking to Doris Burns afterwards. They had questioned her already but would not let her go. After which one of the other older ladies remarked “She won’t tell them her age.”
- When asked what questions he was asked at that time he states: “How many shots did you hear? Where were you standing?”
With special thanks to Gary Murr (for the drawings) and Ed Ledoux for some additional research.