21
Tom Samoluk (ARRB) on the Will Fritz Interrogation notes
The Will Fritz Oswald interrogation notes have always been of huge interest to me and fellow researchers. They were not made public until the ARRB received them from an anonymous donor.
During one of my chats with Podcaster Robbie Robertson of Out of the Blank he told me that he would have Tom Samoluk of the ARRB on soon. I wanted to see if he could ask him about the above and perhaps Tom Samoluk could offer some extra information on the Will Fritz interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, especially how he got hold of that documentation of the Fritz interrogation notes.
What follows is a transcript of the subject discussed between Robbie Robertson and Tom Samoluk, which comes from this video.
RR: I just got a couple more questions for you, but do you know anything about Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald? That’s a big area for me.
TS: Yeah, that was another interesting chapter because we wanted to find out what records existed from the interrogation. And this has not been written a lot about it. Got some coverage, I think, because we did release these records that I’m going to reference at the time we found them.
But I remember we had written to, I think we found a family member, a surviving family member of Captain Fritz. And it led us to, I believe, a lawyer representing Captain Fritz or Captain Fritz’s family because he was long deceased. And we said what we were seeking, any records that may have survived with a focus on the interrogation, but interested in anything else. And then one day, this is my recollection, at the ARRB headquarters in Washington, I got a packet, like a manila envelope. And if I recall correctly, there was a cover letter from the attorney that we had been dealing with. And he basically said, this is what we found. And the family does not want to be interviewed. The family does not want to talk with anyone, but they freely contribute these records.
And there were handwritten notes. You know, there’s no way of validating at that point, but we believe them to be handwritten notes by Captain Fritz taken during contemporaneous with the interview. The way they were written, I think that that was our record. That was our thought that they were in fact contemporaneous, although they might have been shortly after, but he took notes about the assassination. And we made those available to the media. I forget whether that was 96 or 97. 97. Got some coverage. 97. So I don’t know. Are you familiar with those records? Yeah. There’s probably nothing I can mention to you, Robbie, that you haven’t dealt with. Go ahead, please. Please do. No, but you’ve done great research. Yeah. So those became part of the record, I think.
And I was not directly involved in this, but one of my colleagues on staff, I believe we also got some notes that hosted the FBI agency and hosted the had taken, which was interesting. He was coming out with a book of his own at that time in the mid-90s. And that was kind of a factor in our discussions with him. But my recollection is that the original thought and what people had said was there were no contemporaneous notes with the interrogations of Lee Harvey Oswald. And I think we ended up getting the Fritz and Hostie notes, whether that was everything. Of course, we don’t know. But I think that’s what we found. But we found them. And I remember when I was opening up the file with the Fritz notes, the original notes.
And I was with, one of the analysts was with us who, more directly than me, dealt with the actual original records that we were getting and reviewing from the various federal agencies. So I’m holding, just having opened up the Manila envelope that came in the mail, and I’m holding the records. And we’re reading the cover letter from the attorney and realizing what they are in the original records. And my colleague Kevin says, Tom, I think it’s time for us to put on the white gloves. And we did, because that’s what he was used to, wearing the white gloves, dealing with all those federal records. But so that, it’s another example. That was obviously at the municipal level related to Dallas. But we looked hard for records that we thought would be of interest. And I think we did add to the richness of the, of the assassination record.
RR: How thoroughly did anybody look through Hostie’s notes? Because he said something that wasn’t exposed until Bart Kamp. And this is another theory about Oswald. It’s ‘Prayer Man’. I don’t necessarily buy that, but there is a statement in Hostie’s notes where he talked about getting a Coke for his lunch and then going out to go watch the parade. So that’s a bunch of big obviously conspiracy. I wouldn’t say conspiracy, but it’s one that’s very controversial subject in the Kennedy assassination. There’s photographs of someone that does look like Oswald standing on the front steps. I don’t necessarily go into that because I feel like if you want the public interest, you don’t really have to deal with that because it’s kind of like trying to study specific individuals like Ruth Payne or any of them. You just get lost in kind of the minutia. But do you know why no one really questioned that that was in his notes?
TS: You know, I don’t recall a discussion of that, but certainly Oswald’s movements before the assassination, after the assassination are critically important. And I must say that as Oliver Stone went through in some detail with some witnesses that the Warren Commission didn’t pay attention to, like a lot of things, and any researchers watching this will agree, unfortunately there are a lot of things that leave us scratching our heads. But the investigation that day was botched from the get-go. There were a lot of mistakes made. Granted, it was 1963 and not 2023, but even for 1963, there were a lot of mistakes made by the Dallas police.
19
Greetings all!
It has been a while since I posted as I did not have much to share and I needed a much needed break from it all. And now I have a few things to share with you. But before I start I wish to thank everyone who bought my book and also took the effort of reviewing it and heaping it with such praise. I am completely chuffed by the overal large postive feedback to it.
A new job, which I started in Jan. this year, was the perfect escape from it all. In early Dec. 2023 I was approached for it and after a trip to Germany I was offered the job within 15 minutes and the first 10 was just about my book. So after all it was good for something!
Although I did look at some things, the work I did is so demanding from a time perspective that pro-activeness wasn’t on the cards at all and it will take some time before I get back into the ring.
But (there is always one) I have started to collect some bits that will be used in an update to the book. But it will be quite a while before I even attempt to do that. I am planning to release a hardback version then and will also insert more photographic media. The print quality of photographs prevented me from doing this last year. Hopefully things will have improved by the time the updated version will be released. Watch this space for further announcements.
Instead I started to work on some technicalities of the Malcolm Blunt archive and I can tel you that in the past month I have been busy using OCR on about 15,000 PDFs to increase ease of searching through the entire set of records. This was the easy part as I could let it do its job in the background.
Next comes grouping the records, renaming and catagorising and rehousing it on a new Google Drive depository which I hope to have completed by the 61st anniversary. It will have a few thousand extra PDFs which have not been shared before. I shall announce its completion of course. I know this is a thankless task, but I wish to complete the whole thing there and then before I can move on. The beauty of doing this huge undertaking is that I end up reveiwing previously scanned documents again and this ‘break’ from all that documentation has enabled me to see further bits that I can use, also for books 2 & 3. Whenever that may be.
Oh yes!!!!!!
27
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!
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.
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.
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………
10
A Closer Look at Bart Kamp’s Prayer Man
I had not noticed this Dec 4th article at KennedysandKing.com until yesterday, and I know only now about it thanks to Vinny at ROKC. In this article Jake Fernandez has reviewed Prayer Man: More Than A Fuzzy Picture at Kennedysandking.
Here is a quote from his review: “As we navigate through Kamp’s exploration, encountering historical figures, overlooked sketches, and clandestine meetings, we are prompted to view the “Prayer Man” not as a static element in a photograph but as a key to unlocking the best-kept secrets regarding the Kennedy assassination.”
20
JFK Lancer 2023 Conference
Below some pictures of the crowd at the JFK Lancer Conference while my presentation was on in Dallas on Nov 19th 2023.
With thanks to Peter Antill for the photographs.
And here is the video of it, added Nov 24th.
12
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!!!
04
The Opperman Report
I spoke with Ed Opperman on Sept 25th about Prayer Man.
You can listen to it on Spreaker HERE.
Enjoy!