Otis Williams
The first photo of Williams that day just before the shooting started is the Weaver Polaroid. He is seen at the very bottom in the entrance of the TSBD holding his arm up to shield himself from the incoming sun.
Otis Williams was in charge of the bookkeeping department inside the TSBD, he worked alongside with Joe Molina on the 2nd floor of the TSBD. He stayed inside the building until just before the motorcade arrived. “I’think I will go outside for five minutes” according to Geneva Hine’s Warren Commission testimony.
In his interview with DPD detective W.E Potts, Otis Williams mentioned that ”he came back into the building, and went into his office on the second floor. He then went to the fourth floor after hearing the president had been shot but stated that he did not see anyone on the stairway.
In Darnell Williams has not been recognised until Sept 2024 when a better copy of the film has been released by the Sixth Floor Museum.
In Larry Sneed’s No More Silence, Williams is quoted as: “I entered the building [TSBD] immediately, climbed up the stairs back where the warehouse elevator was which led to the sixth floor and went up to the fourth floor, which was the first one I could see from to see the underpass….. I could have gone down the steps when Oswald came down, but he came down on the elevator. Anyway, I walked down the steps and didn’t see him or anything.”
Williams stayed on, while Molina got laid off due to the introduction of ‘automisation’, more about this on the Joe Molina page.