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…