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Texas School Book Depository

TSBD Descent Timing by the HSCA

TSBD Descent Timing by the HSCA

 

Too good to keep hidden for any time longer while I am still scanning in for  Malcolm Blunt’s Archives. This document mentions the descent by HSCA Staff members inside the TSBD while on their trip in Sept 1977. From the 19th on to the 29th of that month various staff members, a total of 9 persons, of the HSCA were on a Dallas trip to ascertain more info from several witnesses.

While browsing I came across the following on the last two pages (p 11 & 12) from the bottom paragraph. They met ‘en masse’ at the TSBD, where they took notes and photographs but they also did something much more significant and that was that they timed their descent from the 6th floor (the so called sniper’s window) down to the 2nd floor lunch room via the stairway which could be done in 46 seconds……which compared to the Secret Service Report which claimed it was around a minute and a half and the re-enactment the WC allegedly did.  The Warren Commission made mention of it during the sessions in March 1964. But no one in Dallas while the W.C. was there could attest to this particular re-enactment actually happening!

Still 46 seconds is half the time compared to what both the Warren Commission and the Secret Service came up with about an event that did not take place in the first place ;)

HSCA Dallas Trip Sep 1977. Click pic to enlarge.

HSCA Dallas Trip Sep 1977. Click pic to enlarge.

 

The whole document is at the Malcolm Blunt Archives.

Important to Hold That Man by Jerry D. Rose May 1986

Important to Hold That Man by Jerry D. Rose May 1986

 

Once in a blue moon you come across a great article. From The Third Decade; a magazine that has published some of the finest articles in JFK Assassination research. This article below by publisher Jerry D. Rose is no exception. And the reason for me to bring this up is because it falls nicely inside my remit but it is also a great way to compare it with my own work. And Rose does a terrific job. The parts where Truly had stated to the WC he had not seen Oswald after the assassination which of course makes no sense when the second floor lunch room encounter allegedly happened within 90 seconds after the shots had been fired. Rose’s remarks following up on Bill Shelley stating to Roy Truly that he did not see Lee Oswald are simply priceless.

Fritz’s movements and actions from the T.S.B.D. and to the D.P.D. are thoroughly questioned, but his pit stop at Bill Decker’s office is sadly missing from those paragraphs. All this makes Will Fritz look even more suspicious

Oswald being paraded past his fellow employees had more of an effect than Rose describes. He notes discrepancies from a procedural p.o.v. But add on that those fellow employees were told that Oswald had killed a cop at that time which of course meant that these people were distancing themselves from Oswald as much as they possibly could.

A perfect example of someone being too close is Buell Frazier who got it in the neck from early evening onwards from the D.P.D. that day. Joe Molina a worthy second.

The yellow marker (grey on these pages) and pen annotations are from Harry Livingstone whose archive I have been digitising this past year and a bit.

Do read!

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Spring 2020 update

Spring update.

  Greetings!

Quick update from me. I have been relatively busy until the beginning of Jan. with the work on my papers that yet have to come out. I hope both the T.S.B.D. (at this point just over 200 pages) and Prayer Man (clocking at 140 pages as we speak)  papers will be released later this year. A taste of one of these papers can be read in the up and coming sixth issue of Garrison Magazine. This will be out near July.

As you have seen recently I posted the Hosty notes story and the two T.S.B.D. related stories, one about Victoria Adams’ fellow employees and a page on Steven Wilson. All these articles are part of the papers coming out later this year.

Then an update of the Anatomy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Interrogations paper will be released just before or at the same time as the other two. I have added about ten pages of extremely rare and important information.

Once the papers are out I will start putting scripts together, based on the papers, for a new set of four movies. of which I reckon there will be an Autumn release of the first one. Otherwise early 2021.

For the past month and a bit I have been scanning pages of Malcolm Blunt’s archive. I did about 10,000 pages but not a lot was really good for Prayer Man related matters. A few T.S.B.D. titbits but nothing much. On other fronts plenty of it. Most of it is already accessible at that archive.

Corona virus has kicked in and that has put a stop to me scanning more pages in at this time. So it’s back to my own work again and perhaps a small article or two from my many drafts ;) We’ll see. Until then stay safe and healthy, look out for another.

B.

The James Hosty notes

The James Hosty Notes.

 

A small part of this material has already been released through my second paper Anatomy Of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Interrogations.

Recently a post by Rob Clark at the Education Forum asked “Best of the Year 2019″. In a nutshell the thread was about what were the best finds in 2019 from an evidentiary/research p.o.v. Cliff Varnell mentioned two instances of which one was the discovery of the handwritten note by James Hosty which I found in Malcolm Blunt’s archive in Feb. 2019 and I posted this straight after finding it. This document caused a few ripples within the scene and led to a doubling in my website traffic that same month and a 1.5 x increase the month after. A good indicator of people being curious about this find. The document in question is below.

Pat Speer had the nerve to call it and I quote:  The Hosty notes are not notes perse, but are a first draft of a report. Well he has got that right. And then This draft is important but not for the reason most believe. He mentions in this draft that he confronted Oswald about contacting the Soviet Embassy.  

So a phrase on Oswald’s letter to the Soviet embassy is more important than Hosty recording that Oswald got a coke for his lunch and then went out to watch the P. parade.

Has everyone else stopped rolling around laughing yet? It’s posts like Speer’s that cause nothing but acrimony between researchers. The stuff he writes about in that post Airtel and Ruth Paine has nothing to do with the thread’s subject. What he puts forward is old news and filled with speculative innuendo as well..

But having said that it got me thinking and looking into Hosty’s paper work. Below the document in question, which I found in Feb. 2019.

Handwritten note by James P. Hosty. Click page to enlarge.

It was F.B.I. procedure to destroy handwritten notes once a typed up version was created, Hosty made mention of this during his Schweiker Committee testimony. In Hosty’s book Assignment Oswald two notebook pages appear on one page related to the interrogations of Lee Oswald. These were miraculously found in a pile of papers at his home. What Hosty did not do was post all the other pages I found or even make mention of them.

The world had no idea that these notes existed at all. That was until Feb. 2019 when I visited Malcolm Blunt’s archives and found a folder entitled “Hosty”. This folder at Malcolm Blunt’s archives was filled with more than 200 pages. I only published the one page as it had the most revealing sentence regarding to Oswald’s actions just before the motorcade passed by the T.S.B.D. “Then went outside to watch the P. parade“. That passage reconciles with the handwritten Fritz notes phrase “Out with Bill Shelley, in front”.

The note by itself was a good find in Malcolm’s archives. He himself had no idea that he had this very important document. Nevertheless it was a great addition as evidence to my paper.

*****

The page, showing two notebook pages is part of a set of 3. I shall post the third page below, there is nothing suspicious about the missing page as it makes mention of matters that are happening after the first and only interrogation Hosty was present at. There were more pages in that notebook, but they do not relate to the interrogation. I will get back to these extra pages in a moment.

 

 

Hosty was there along with James Bookhout and three D.P.D. officers (Will Fritz, Richard Sims and Elmer Boyd). On that third page you can see Hosty making mention of the first line-up and even the Sorrell’s talk which got him in hot water due to Secret Service agent William Patterson reporting on this.

If I take the very first notebook page and compare it to the page on D.P.D. affidavit paper I found it becomes clear that the notebook page was written during the interrogations and that the actual page served as the source for the draft report on the right. The result is that the “1st floor entrance office” is the third handwritten source for Oswald’s location when the motorcade passed by the building.

James Hosty handwritten notes. Click to enlarge.

In Hosty’s book Assignment Oswald he described how he kept on taking notes even after the interrogation.

I decided nonetheless that I would remain at the police station. Just because I couldn’t talk to the police didn’t mean I couldn’t learn things from them. I headed back to Fritz’s office, where I knew the police were keeping Oswald’s personal belongings. Nothing there, but in the second inner office, which belonged to Lieutenant Walter Potts, I spotted Oswald’s things, which had been removed from his person and from his apartment at the Oak Cliff rooming house. Among the items on Potts’s desk was Oswald’s black address book. I pulled out my pad of blank police affidavit forms and started transcribing the entries in his book, thinking I might find some interesting leads or even some possible co-conspirators. A little way into my transcribing, I came across a line that made my heart crawl. There, scrawled in Oswald’s handwriting, was the entry:
Nov. 1 James P. Hasty, RI1-
1211, MV8605,
1114 Commerce, Dallas.

I do not share Hosty’s opinion that the name says Hasty. The way it was written down could be interpreted both ways. Oswald’s way of writing an “a” or an “o” appear to be fairly similar. See for yourself in the image which comes from Hosty’s book.

Hosty’s details in Oswald’s notebook. Click to enlarge.

Hosty mentions in his book that he used a pad of blank police affidavit forms. The document at the very top is part of that bloc. The rest which I am posting below show the details of Oswald’s address book. Now whether the draft document from the top was created before or after him taking down the details of that address book will remain a mystery. But all these pages come from D.P.D. affidavit papers.

Then there are more pages from his notebook, and they appear to show a deeper investigation into Oswald’s past. There is a mention of Mrs Cunningham who worked for the Texas Employment Bureau and also Pauline V. Bates. I have no idea what the actual sequence should be, these were stuck together in twos on one page.

 

In Hosty’s book he ‘remembers’ how the conversation went and again mentions Oswald’s location being on the first floor, although he has changed the landing of the T.S.B.D. for the Domino Room.

Okay now, Lee, you work at the Texas School Book Depository, isn’t that right?
Yeah, that’s right.
When did you start working there?
About October fifteenth
What did you do down there?
I was just a common laborer.
Now, did you have access to all floors of the building?
Of course.
Tell me what was on each of those floors.
The first and second floors have offices. The third and fourth floor are storage. So are the fifth and sixth.
And you were working there today, is that right?
Yep.
Were you there when the president’s motorcade went by?
Yeah.
Where were you when the president went by the book depository?
I was eating my lunch in the first floor lunchroom.
What time was that?
About noon.
Were you ever on the second floor around the time the president was shot?
Well, yeah. I went up there to get a bottle of Coca-Cola from the machine for my lunch.
But where were you when the president actually passed your building?
On the first floor in the lunchroom.
And you left the depository, isn’t that right?
Yeah.
When did you leave?
Well, I figured with all the confusion there wouldn’t be any more work to do that day.

It will be an enigma how these papers ended up at the archives. Perhaps Hosty wanted to show the world what was really happening and slipped these notes inside the batch. And the A.R.R.B. completely overlooked this.

Special thanks go to Malcolm Blunt for the documentation.

There were ten women on the fourth floor when it went down

There were ten women on the fourth floor when it went down.

 

From my up and coming paper Anatomy of the T.S.B.D.

 

Updated with a new title, a little text and some pictures on Jan 5th 2020.

Updated with the addition of a gallery of 4th floor drawings on March 12th 2022.

I knew that Victoria Adams’ descent down the back stairs of the T.S.B.D. was one key to the assassination puzzle especially when Oswald was supposedly to go down those same steps “escaping” from the building at about the same time. The ladies had watched among other fourth floor employees the motorcade turn the corner in front of the building on to Elm St. Then they heard the shots fired at the limousine. Adams and Styles almost immediately left the window to go down the back stairs, make their way towards the railroad yard, and upon arrival they were told to go back where they came from, which they did thru the front doors of the T.S.B.D.

The first one who drew my attention to this was Oliver Stone, who brought this segment up during the Garrison trial in the movie JFK.

Actors representing Victoria Adams’ and Sandra Styles’ descent in a re-enactment for the film J.F.K. Click to enlarge.

If there is anyone who researched Victoria Adams’ and Sandra Styles’ descent from the fourth floor to the railroad yard and back into the front of the T.S.B.D. better than anyone else  it is Barry Ernest.

His book The Girl On The Stairs: The Search for a Missing Witness to the JFK Assassination led me to focus more on the T.S.B.D. and its employees.

From his research we know that.

  1. Victoria Adams did go through her W.C. statement and applied corrections even though the document ends with her stating she waivers her signature. The ‘corrected’ statement is being held much longer under lock and key than the first version without any corrections.
  2. She accused the W.C. of inserting the Lovelady & Shelley encounter in her testimony. She described the person she encountered after arriving on the first floor as a tall black man. This was independently corroborated by Sandra Styles who knew Shelley and Lovelady and was sure it wasn’t them who they met. The so called Adams & Styles – Lovelady & Shelley encounter on the first floor is a fugezi to undermine the timing of the ladies’ descent. It shows Jim “I don’t recall” Leavelle of the D.P.D. the maker of this report as a fabricator, who placed the misleading statement inside that report from Feb 1964. Obviously Leavelle is responsible but the decision to do this comes from higher up obviously.
  3. The Martha J. Stroud document Ernest found at the archives in Washington in 1999 confirms Adams’ corrections to her statement, and also states that Dorothy Garner saw the girls leave before the police officer came up to the fourth floor. Garner’s  real statement or anything besides the Stroud letter leading to it has disappeared.
  4. The W.C. discredited Adams’ story. by disbelieving her, nor did it really investigate further. But the W.C. did more to discredit Victoria Adams and it did that by minimising any attention towards the fourth floor.

While reading up about the other T.S.B.D. employees present on the fourth and fifth floors something else becomes apparent. The fourth floor was filled with ladies looking out through the south side windows.

Victoria Adams. Source: Barry Ernest.

Sandra Styles-Baylor Uni, Waco-1962

Elsie Dorman. Source: Life Magazine.

Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.

Judyth Louise McCully.

Avery Davis. Source E-Yearbook.com.

Mary Hollies. Source: E-Yearbook.com. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.

Ruth Nelson. Source Ancestry Family Tree. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.

Yola Hopson 1945. Source E-Yearbook.com. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.

Betty Alice Foster. Source E-Yearbook.com. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.

Think about it. Ten people on the fourth floor when it all went down. Some of them could have easily confirmed when Adams and Styles left. But that is something the Warren Commission, D.P.D., F.B.I. and the Secret Service, by the looks of it, did not bother much with.

Weaver Polaroid. Click to enlarge.

Even though Avery Davis claimed to be on the front steps, she is not recognised in either the Wiegman and Darnell films nor did any other person name her. Davis named Judyth McCully as the person she was on the steps with. McCully’s initial F.B.I. statement states that she was on the fourth floor while it all went down which then got changed to the front steps. Judyth McCully’s daughter told me that this was done at the behest of the F.B.I.

So if I do not know any better then efforts were made to look the fourth floor as a non event as much as possible with moving some witnesses away so original witness statements could not be corroborated.

Some more food for thought are the diagrams of the fourth floor. There were just three large rooms so people were close on each other.

Think about it, there were 10 people on the fourth floor. Some of them stood a few meters away from each other. Adams’ and Styles descent was the kryptonite to the  Oswald ‘escape’.

Then there are the men from the 5th floor and especially Jarman, Norman and Williams. I have made a spreadsheet with all three workers’ answers from every statement they have given and that are available. Download it from HERE.

From left to right: James Earl Jarman, Bonnie Ray Williams and Harold Norman in the Tom Dillard photo. Click to enlarge.

The fourth floor stop is in some statements not to be found, but in the W.C. testimony from Bonnie Ray Williams he states: They paused for one minute on the 4th floor as there were all these women looking out. Then there is James Jarman who during his W.C. testimony disowns the fourth floor stop even after asked about it by John J McCloy by saying I believe we went all the way.

The fourth floor was a direct threat to Oswald’s so called escape, so they thought. Until of course the Prayer Man surfaced and it has transpired Oswald was nowhere near the 6th floor when the shots were fired…

 

The Lone Gunman Podcast Explosive New Evidence and Timeline Tweaks About The Interrogations

I had the pleasure to talk with Rob Clark on his Lone Gunman Podcast for two hours no less on Lee Oswald’s interrogations, it flew by as I had such fun.

Thank you Rob.

Ep. 157 ~ Explosive New Evidence and Timeline Tweaks About The Interrogations. 

In case the audio volume is too low for you I have uploaded the file HERE (150 MB to d/l) which sounds a lot better than the Spreaker upload.

Howard Roffman to Richard Bernabei 1970

Howard Roffman to Richard Bernabei 1970

 

Howard Roffman wrote extensively with Harold Weisberg, but also with Richard Bernabei. I have managed to gotten hold of quite a bit of material myself after contacting his archive in Kingston and I also know that Denis Morissette went there and he sent me quite a few pages as well. I still have to go through all this. While browsing through the folder I came across this letter from 1970 that I gotten hold off in 2016.

It basically discusses the Couch film and Marrion Baker. Roffman did extensive research in the relation between the Couch film and Marrion Baker’s run almost 50 years ago. He also brings Gloria Calvery, Joe Molina and other T.S.B.D. employees’ statements in the fold and uses his common sense as most of his observations still stand today. Cool read.

The Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter in a Nutshell.

The Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter in a Nutshell.

 

Marrion Baker sees Lee Oswald on Nov 23rd. Click to enlarge.

 

Click HERE (27.3MB) to see the entire paper and be able to refer to the pages.

A PDF of this summary can be downloaded from here.

By: Bart Kamp.

  • The Darnell film ends with Baker just about to step up to the curb. He is at least 10 ft. away from the bottom steps when the camera swerves back. Page 29.
  • Baker does not appear to head for the stairs but to the south east corner of the TSBD building, his WC testimony at first shows he had no idea where exactly the shots had come from. Page 18.
  • Baker uses pigeons lifting off from the roof as an indicator that the shots came from the T.S.B.D., others have seen the same pigeons lift off and fly in different locations. Pages 24-25.
  • Buell Wesley Frazier, Roy Edward Lewis and Joe Molina who stand on the landing of the steps and in front of the door, see no helmeted officer going past them. Molina sees only Truly go in, and even states in his report by B.L. Senkel that Truly stayed on the first floor. Pages 41-43.
  • In April 1964, while being interviewed by Roy Bode, Truly states that he and Baker talked to Howard Brennan before they went in. That by itself contradicts Truly and Baker’s tale of storming up the T.S.B.D. stairs. Furthermore he states Oswald was sighted while leaving the lunch room. Page 40.
  • Foreman Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady, who have been recorded in film footage and supported with their statements as well, left immediately after the shots had been fired. Their W.C. testimony contradicts this by them claiming that they stayed on those steps for a few minutes, then left the steps and looked back and see Baker and Truly go in the building. In an interview with George and Patricia Nash in 1964 Shelley puts Baker’s and Truly’s entry even at 5-6 minutes. This kills the timing. Pages 33-39.
  • Pauline Sanders is the only person who makes a mention of a helmeted officer going in, but she makes no mention of Truly. She stood on the east side of the steps. Page 44.
  • Baker’s handwritten and typed up statements from the late afternoon of Nov. 22nd mention no lunch room encounter at all. And the only encounter he did have was on the 3rd or 4th Page 74.
  • In that first statement Baker says that when arriving in the vestibule he sees several people standing around and asks where the stairs are (which are to the right once inside the vestibule) and cannot be missed by anyone after which Truly supposedly steps forward (Truly states they had run up the steps together!) and leads him to the back of the building. Roy Truly’s F.B.I. statement from Nov. 22nd states they saw no one there” Page 46.
  • Marvin Johnson, who takes Baker’s affidavit later that afternoon states that Baker pointed out Oswald, while being interrogated by Will Fritz, as the man he apprehended. None of the interrogation reports by either the D.P.D., F.B.I. and S.S. support this part of Johnson’s statement. Page 74.
  • Johnson’s statement also states that Baker searched L.H.O, a physical contact which has not been substantiated by anyone else either. The official story during the confrontation is that Truly vouched for Oswald being a worker after which they continue their ascend to the top. Nor did Baker recognise him in a line-up as is stated. There is no record of this at all and this is something Baker denied happening during his W.C. testimony. Page 78.
  • Eddie Piper states during his W.C. testimony that in a few minutes someone came in the building, “and I looked up and it was the boss man and a policeman or someone.” That contradicts the timing element of Baker and Truly who said they stormed in within seconds after the shooting, also consider that the re-enactments were timed at 75 and 90 seconds. Page 49.
  • Piper gets called in again for a second time during his W.C. testimony, when asked whether Truly was with a white helmeted officer Piper says “I don’t think so.” Pages 50 and 51.
  • Truly makes no mention about any elevators in his statement from the 22nd. Page 52.
  • Marvin Johnson’s statement on taking Baker’s affidavit makes no mention of any elevators either. Page 57.
  • Roy Truly and Marrion Baker contradict each other about who actually said ‘let’s go up the stairs’ after ‘noticing’ the elevators are hung on the 5th Pages 54 and 55.
  • Jack Dougherty’s W.C. testimony states that he took the West elevator down from the fifth to the first floor immediately after hearing a shot. He does not hear Roy Truly yell up the shaft. Page 56.
  • Sandra Styles, many years after the fact, states that Victoria Adams told her offhandedly that she saw the elevator cables move while they made their descent from the fourth floor. Page 57.
  • While Truly and Baker make their alleged ascend up the steps there is more activity being recorded of another employee who use the very same stairs. Otis Williams makes his way from the front stairs to the 4th Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles descended almost immediately after the final shot from the 4th floor. Page 57.
  • Dorothy Ann Garner, in a Martha J. Stroud document had stated that she saw Truly and a police officer come up after the girls, Adams and Styles, had gone down. Page 57.
  • Truly walking ahead of Baker is not recorded until early Dec 1963 by the S.S. That same week and during the months after Roy Truly does 3 interviews, contradicting himself saying that Baker was ahead of him. Pages 61-64.
  • The lunch room encounter can be questioned by Baker’s position upon arriving on the second floor and the viewing angle through the closed door. Roy Truly passed it before Baker and admitted the door was closed as well. Pages 65-70.
  • The door with a self-closing mechanism takes 5 seconds to open and close, there was not a time difference that long after ascending one floor between Baker and Truly. Pages 76-77.
  • During the encounter Oswald is placed at different locations inside the second floor lunch room. Pages 86-88.
  • The second floor lunch room, and the rest of that floor was off limits to manual workers, unless they purchased a coke for their lunch. The manual workers had their lunch ether outside or downstairs on the first floor in the domino room. Page 135.
  • Mrs Robert Reid’s statement and testimony cannot be believed due to the timing aspect, she saw Oswald wearing a white t-shirt contradicting Baker and the presence of Geneva Hine inside the very same office, yet neither noticed each other. Pages 88-91.
  • Geneva Hine was alone in the 2nd floor office from 12:25 to 12:35. Page 90.
  • Oswald’s coke starts as an insertion into Mrs. Reid’s hand written statement. Page 94.
  • Marrion Baker mentions the coke in his hand written Sept. 1964 statement, only for it to be stricken out. In March that very same year, during his W.C. testimony, he said that he saw nothing in his hands. Page 93.
  • The Revill list contradicts Oswald’s departure after 3 minutes. It also shows that certain employees were not recorded on it and some arrived back at the T.S.B.D. much later.  Pages 112-113.
  • Oswald was sighted by Sarah Stanton before the motorcade arrived, near the stairs (which are most likely the front stairs) and asked whether he was going to go out for lunch! She noticed him holding a soda. Page 137.
  • Various law enforcement officers and T.S.B.D. employees make mention of an encounter on the first floor or at the front door in many different newspaper reports on the 22nd and 23rd. Pages 113-121.
  • The first mention of a second floor lunch room encounter in the press on Nov 23rd is at 13:50 hours by Peggy Simpson of the A.P.
  • Carolyn Arnold at first sees Oswald in the vestibule in her Nov. 26th statement, only for her to retract this roughly 15 years later. The retraction can be doubted due to her statement of going back for a glass of water and seeing him in the lunch room instead. Also statements from her co-workers who stated they left the building together. Pages 121-135.
  • Oswald’s alibi is systematically destroyed during his interrogations by D.P.D. Captain Will Fritz and F.B.I. agents James Hosty and James Bookhout. In a new found document, a draft document by James Hosty, states that Oswald had a coke for his lunch and then went outside the watch the P. parade.  Pages 136-146.
  • The re-enactment and its timing aspect of the 2FLRE, have never been confirmed by anyone seeing it actually happening outside and inside the T.S.B.D.. Pages 147-159.

 

COPYRIGHT © Bart Kamp.