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Texas School Book Depository

The Bottle

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!

 

Wiegman close-up frames of Prayer Man drinking in slow motion by Stan Dane.

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.

William Allen photos. Click to enlarge.

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.

Herbert Sawyer on the left, Marvin Wise to the right. Photo: William Allen/DTH. From The Portal to Texas History. Click pic. to enlarge.

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………

The Lone Gunman Podcast- More Than a Fuzzy Picture

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!!!

Prayer Man More Than A Fuzzy Picture

Prayer Man More Than A Fuzzy Picture

 

Prayer Man More Than A Fuzzy Picture Book Cover

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!

To order from Amazon click below
E-book.
USAUKAUS 
Soft back
USAUKAUS
Update Sept 18th 2023.
It is now also available through Barnes & Noble.

JFK Lancer 2023

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.

The Book

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:

  1. Prayer Man.
  2. Inside the TSBD.
  3. 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.

Out of the Blank #1366

I had a chat with Robbie Robertson two weeks ago. Was not really in the mood, but got ‘chatted’ into doing it. I ended up talking about the fingerprints, palm prints and the nitrate tests and also a bit on Oswald at Youth House. An article on that is in the works. It is an element that had to be added to the interrogations chapter.

Furthermore I am working hard on the book. I hope to have it done in electronic form in about 2-3 weeks (famous last words….). A physical copy follows in and around May/June. There will be some exclusive content in that book. Watch this space.

Also I am doing another Quick Hits show with Doug Campbell and Rob Clark in April, so more to come.

The Killing Floor

The Killing Floor.

 Recently a video was posted on YouTube titled The Killing Floor. This video, narrated by Rich Negrete, discusses Barry Ernest’s work and his book The Girl on the Stairs. The book delves into the search for Victoria Adams, which takes Ernest quite a few decades to get hold of and talk to her and then he also manages to find and talk to Sandra Styles and Dorothy Garner. I read it more than ten years ago and liked it quite a bit. It was also a fast read which for a JFKA book is quite rare. I read it when I was still reading books and had not started my own research yet. I credit this book for getting me interested into the happenings inside the TSBD and becoming the subject for delving deeper into in 2013.

If you have read this book by Barry Ernest then not much new is mentioned in this entire video. Actually I am of the opinion, that besides the addition of some WC related material there is a lack of serious new findings. This is to its detriment since the large majority of the body of work is more than ten years old.

The video, as the book, treats the second floor lunch room encounter as an event that actually happened, whereas I and others have presented a ton of evidence that shows that this encounter is a total fake event. The encounter is presented as a ‘way’ to make Oswald look guilty as the shooter that came from the 6th floor down, whereas he was nowhere near the sixth floor let alone the second floor after the President was shot.

Then this video also omits some very important facts such as:

Lovelady’s presence on the steps after the shooting has serious consequences for the alleged sighting of the ladies coming down the stairs, just after the shots were fired. Lovelady was nowhere near those steps and as the ladies confirmed they were met by a tall black man, which points to Eddie Piper.

 

  • And then there is the fourth floor matter that the fifth floor black guys stopped briefly on the fourth floor during their descent and spoke to the women that were looking out the windows on the west side of the TSBD which gave them a perfect view of the happenings in the railroad yard behind the picket fence. This actual happening is swept under the carpet by the WC. Just like the women on the third floor who did not ‘hear’ the shots. Read about this in my Anatomy of the TSBD paper.

 

 

Overall it is a decent attempt in bringing Ernest’s book to the masses by means of a video presentation, but the lack of new material is a bit of a letdown.

 

 

Spaulden Jones Photos at the Sixth Floor Museum

Spaulden Jones Photos at the Sixth Floor Museum

 

Spaulden Jones. Thanks to Phil Hopley.

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.

Click pic to enlarge. Photo: Spaulden Jones – Sixth Floor Museum.

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.

Click pic to enlarge. Photo: Spaulden Jones – Sixth Floor Museum.

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.

Click pic to enlarge. Photo: Spaulden Jones – Sixth Floor Museum.

Click to enlarge. Photo:  Spaulden Jones – Sixth Floor Museum.

 

Second floor office space entrance, click pic to enlarge. From MFF.

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?

Click to enlarge. Second floor conference room TSBD. Photo: Spaulden Jones – Sixth Floor Museum.

Click to enlarge. Second floor conference room TSBD, back of image. Photo: Spaulden Jones – Sixth Floor Museum.

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.

Spaulden Jones being interviewed in April 1996. Pic.: Sixth Floor Museum. Click to enlarge.

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.