Aug
12
The Dallas Action – Episode 206
I had the pleasure once again to talk with Doug Campbell about my forthcoming book “Prayer Man: More Than A Fuzzy Picture”. This time we talk about what happened in front and inside the TSBD. Click the picture below to go to Spreaker to listen to the podcast.
Jul
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“.
Jul
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.
May
18
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.
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- TSBD – Second Floor Rough Sketch. Click pic to enlarge.
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- TSBD – Second Floor Finished floor plan. Click pic to enlarge.
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- TSBD 3rd floor – rough notes-Roy Rose – Mar 8 1964. Click pic to enlarge.
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- TSBD 3rd floor – completed diagram -Roy Rose – Mar 1964 Click pic to enlarge.
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.
Oct
28
Recently we managed to have some scans made of someones archive (his name shall be kept a secret for now). In his collection (that was plundered by many before us) we found a contact sheet belonging to Jim Murray of the Dallas Times Herald.
We can see Mary Moorman, Larry Florer, Charles Brehm, Ruth Dean, Madeleine Reese the cordoning off the TSBD and a peek inside a cafe. A lot of these photographs were shown first in That Day In Dallas by Richard Trask who managed to obtain the rights from Black Star Photo Agency.
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- Mary Moorman.
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- Larry Florer in the far corner.
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- Charles Brehm on the right.
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- John Chism Family and Larry Florer inside the Sheriff’s office
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- Charles Brehm on the right.
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- Charles Brehm on the right.
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- DPD cordoning of the area between the TSBD and Dal Tex building.
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- DPD cordoning of the area between the TSBD and Dal Tex building.
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- DPD cordoning of the front of the TSBD.
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- In front of the Dal Tex building. Maddie Reese and Ruth Dean (w black hat).
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- Charles Kimerlin.
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- Walter Cronkite on TV inside a Dallas Bar
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- Walter Cronkite on TV inside a Dallas Bar
Oct
17
This article was orginally posted on Oct. 17 2015. It has been in part re-written, re-edited and updated in Sept. 2024.
In March 2015, Gary Mack sent a few members of the Education Forum a PM which contained some info on the Darnell & Wiegman films, I quote from the PM Darren Hastings received (third post from the top), and I quote from his post: NBC owns the original Wiegman film but when producers of JFK: Death in Dealey Plaza asked them for it 12 years ago (at my request), NBC could only locate a 1960s-era video tape of it. We wound up using, I think, a 1963/1964 theatrical newsreel version held by UCLA.
NBC took the original Wiegman and Darnell films from the Dallas NBC affiliate to New York following the assassination weekend. Whether the network still has the original Darnell film is unknown, but as a former employee I know the affiliate does not have it or a copy. Nor does Jimmy Darnell.
Fortunately, a first-generation 16mm copy print was made in Dallas over that weekend and it is in the Museum’s collection; however, the Museum cannot do anything with it until copyright issues are resolved. It’ll happen, and sooner rather than later.
Then in Sep 2015 I happen to see this NBC5 news segment from roughly two years prior, I speculate that it was because of the 50th anniversary. In this video Gary Mack, at that time the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, visited the archives of NBC5 in East Fort Worth. Mack had a close relationship with the channel. He used to work for KXAS (as the network was named before it became NBC5), starting in 1981, according to the NYT, where part of his job was to manage and preserve the station’s film archives and its coverage of the assassination and its aftermath.
The video shows Mack of the 6th Floor Museum going into a room in a basement of NBC 5, where various boxes are standing on shelves which contain WBAP (later to become KXAS) film spools of the JFK Assassination and above all its aftermath, looking at this makes me think about all the excuses TV corporations and disinfo agents spread about the films being hard to find or ‘locked away’ when the video clearly shows that the films are just placed in a box without any serious form of preservation and identification present.
My and a handful of others’ quest has always been to find the best possible versions of the Dave Wiegman and Jimmy Darnell films. It has been challenging to say the least.
Then UNT Libraries posts a press release, which now has been removed from their website, and replaced with this page where they state that they will house the complete news archive from NBC5/KXAS (formely WBAP) from 1950 – 2012 and that the UNT Library will digitise all this material.
Following this I contacted the UNT Library on Sept 7 2015 and conversed with Morgan Gieringer, I asked her about the films and if there was an inventory list of them.
I quote from her reply: KXAS made a prior agreement with the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas to donate all JFK related news footage to the museum. You will need to contact them with this inquiry.
After getting this message the first thing I did was to contact the 6th Floor Museum through Twitter and asked them if they had these films. To which I got the following reply.
I contacted MG again and asked: another email from me, just when I thought and you probably as well the matter was closed, but the funny thing is that when I asked the 6th floor museum whether they had the KXAS film collection and they denied they had any of it.
So now I have a dilemma as I have no idea now who to approach.
Do you have any documentation or links that show that the material did go to the 6th floor museum?
Do you have any type of inventory list?
To which she replied on Sep 14: Interesting…. Could you possibly give me the name of the person you spoke with at the 6th floor museum? I am working on obtaining an inventory from KXAS of the film which was transferred to the museum.
Since it was a response through Twitter it was not possible to ascertain who exactly wrote that message to me. I relayed this to her and also asked her about the inventory list.
She replied to me again that same day: I do not know how long it will take to get the inventory from KXAS. In the meantime I suggest that you email the collections curators at the museum directly. The person responding to their twitter messages may just be uninformed, or the collection may be uncatalogued, but they absolutely do have the KXAS footage.
On Oct 1st 2015 I emailed Megan Bryant and asked her about this discrepancy.
She replied on Oct 9: Our social media response that we do not have the WBAP (now KXAS) / NBC5 films in our collection here at The Sixth Floor Museum was accurate. By now you have probably heard directly from the station, as I let them know about your inquiry. That material is still maintained by the station and is managed by NBC Universal Archives. It is searchable online here.
It is regrettable that you were misdirected by the UNT Library, but we have since made sure they are aware that the material in question is not in our collection.
I contacted NBC 5 as well and Sharla Alford assistant to the News Director/Custodian of Records got back to me promptly telling me that the University Of North Texas or the 6th Floor Museum has got all the JFK Assassination related film material from KXAS.
I replied and asked her if she could provide an inventory of the films, to which I got a reply from Brain Hocker, who is the VP of programming, research and digital media at NBC5.
He forwarded me to their online archive instead containing all the video screeners that were beamed across the nation that weekend and just after. Video, exactly the low resolution is not worth the bother, as the HD documentaries that have shown snippets of these films are in a larger resolution than what was offered to me. Furthermore the Darnell film was nowhere to be seen and the Weigman film was shown 3 times, and only once did it show the front of the TSBD.
I replied asking them (Brian Hocker at NBC5 and Megan Bryant at the 6th Floor Museum) several questions:
1/The film reels are clearly shown in the NBC5 news item, as shown above, just dormant in some boxes on a shelve in the basement at NBC5 archives, so where are they now?
2/Why are they not being digitised at ENT since everything else from that period of KXAS is?
3/Where are the original Darnell and Weigman films?
4/Can we get some high resolution still scans of the 1st gen. Darnell film that is at the 6th Floor Museum?
Then in August 2024 the Sixth Floor Museum issues a press release about the Darnell film. Furthermore the museum shares the film for public viewing.
Dennis Morrisette posts at the education forum (5 posts from the bottom) that Stephen Fagin has replied to his email: Thanks for your e-mail. We know there has been some interest in the Museum’s recent YouTube upload, and we are so pleased to be able to finally share the Darnell film online considering the researcher interest over the years. To clarify, the Museum does not have the camera original Darnell film. To our knowledge, if that film still exists, it is with NBC in New York. What we have is a print of the film that originally came to the Museum as part of the G. William Jones Collection back in 2006. Since the Museum did not have the rights from the local NBC affiliate (NBC 5 / KXAS-TV) to use the WBAP-TV footage in the Jones Collection, we were not able to do anything with the films without KXAS’s permission for specific projects. This changed only recently when NBC 5 / KXAS-TV generously donated their assassination-related footage to the Museum—and included rights to the WBAP-TV footage already in the Museum’s Jones Collection, which includes our print of the Darnell film. The late Gary Mack speculated that our copy of the Darnell film was a first-generation print of the film and shared this belief with researchers many years ago. I was twice asked about this same print of the Darnell film at JFK Lancer conferences, and I noted at that time that we could not be certain that it was a first-generation print. That is still the case. So, again, this is the same print that has been in the Museum’s possession since 2006. We simply now have the rights to share it publicly. What we put online is an excerpt from the digitization of the film, so the quality is as it appears. It is the same transfer that researchers were previously able to view by appointment in the Museum’s Reading Room.
Ok so what can we ‘discover’ in that film that wasn’t in view before in earlier versions?
I managed to see Otis Wiliams still being on the steps. Something I could not see In previous Darnell versions, it was nothing more than a highlighted blurry blob. Now you can see Williams, wearing his white shirt and tie has at the time Darnell filmed the Marrion Baker run remained in the same position as he has been in the Altgens 6 photo
and the Dave Wiegman film.
