THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION - WHY OSWALD IS NOT GUILTY

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION - WHY OSWALD IS NOT GUILTY

of being the Sixth Floor Sniper and Assassin of President Kennedy 

By William Kelly [billkelly3@gmail.com (609) 425-6297]

Excuse me, Judge JohnTunheim and Gary Cornwell and those who have publicly pronounced Lee Harvey Oswald guilty of killing President Kennedy, I’d like you to consider a few facts that prove he is not guilty of the murder.

Can you give Lee Harvey Oswald a break? Can you give the accused assassin of President Kennedy the benefit of the doubt? Can you assume that he’s innocent, if only for a few minutes while I try to convince you he didn’t kill President Kennedy?

Do you support the time honored American tradition of presumption of innocence - a constitutional right that presupposes one’s innocence until proven guilty in a court of law? Well Oswald was never convicted in a court of law - other than for disturbing the peace for rumbling around on a New Orleans street corner with some anti-Castro Cubans, and now he can’t defend himself because he was murdered while in custody of the Dallas Police, which greatly reflects on the law enforcement officers who first considered him a suspect.

If you can at least try to keep an open mind, and consider a few basic previously established points - four facts that if true, proves Oswald is innocent of killing the President, then maybe you can view the assassination in a new light and from a different perspective, and join the effort to try to identify the real assassins.

For a variety of reasons most people believe Oswald is not guilty of being the assassin and was framed as a patsy, as he himself claimed, and they consider him a pawn in a larger conspiracy, one that still affects us today. The unresolved nature of the assassination of President Kennedy still affects us today in the continued unhindered use of political assassination as a means of controlling power and the continued withholding of government records relating to the assassination on grounds of national security.

But a few people - less than 20%, who still believe that Oswald was the lone, deranged gunman, and maintain he is guilty of the crime. Those who think Oswald did it alone also usually attribute to him a psychological motive - such as seeking fame. As the former chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board Judge Tunheim put it: “I think his motivation is he thought he was supposed to be someone famous in his own mind, and if he did this he would be viewed with great glory in the Soviet Union and Cuba,” an informed opinion that belies the fact that Oswald denied the deed.

Since it can be clearly shown, as I will do, that Oswald could not have been the Sixth Floor Sniper, then what can be made of the motivation of the patsy, framed for the crime, just as he claimed to be?

Whatever you believe, your opinion is based on something - probably some true facts that you learned over the years - or maybe it is based on an accumulation of a lot of knowledge about the case, but the positive proof Oswald that Oswald is not guilty of killing JFK is based only on a few simple officially acknowledged facts that were established in the first few minutes after the assassination.

Those predisposed to Oswald’s singular guilt usually list the hard, circumstantial evidence that proves to them, that Oswald shot the president from the Sixth Floor Sniper’s nest. As they attest, the rifle found on the Sixth Floor was ordered by Oswald, his palm print was on the rifle, three bullet shells found at the scene were ejected from Oswald’s rifle and the bullet found at Parkland hospital was fired from the rifle. What more do you need to convict him?

Although Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry was one of the first to proclaim Oswald guilty, he also acknowledged that, after all is said and done, “we can’t put him in that window.”

And the preponderance of testimony and evidence supports the fact Oswald wasn’t the gunman in that window, as those who did eyeball the gunman exonerate Oswald as they unanimously agree the gunman wore a white shirt, while Oswald was wearing a brown one, and as one witness noticed, the sniper had a distinguishing bald spot on the top of his head that excludes Oswald as a sniper suspect.

There are also witnesses who saw a man with a rifle in the Sixth Floor widow at 12:15 p.m., when Oswald was seen on the first floor. And after the assassination a court clerk from across the street saw a man in the Sixth Floor window five minutes after the last shot was fired, when Oswald was on the Second Floor. If Oswald was the Sixth Floor Sniper, then who was the man seen in the window with a rifle fifteen minutes before the assassination, when Oswald was seen on the first floor? And if not Oswald, who was the man seen in the sniper’s window five minutes after the last shot, when Oswald was on the Second Floor?

But these questions don’t seem to bother those who are set in their belief that it was Oswald who shot the President from that window and then quickly ran down the steps to the Second Floor Lunchroom.

                                  TECHNICALLY NOT GUILTY

The bottom line is Oswald was not convicted in a court of law and probably wouldn’t have been if subjected to a trial for a number of reasons, as enumerated by former Manhattan prosecutor Robert K. Tanenbaum, the first deputy chief counsel to the HSCA. [See R.K. Tanenbaum - 2003 Wecht Conference transcript]

When he was Chairman of the ARRB, Judge Tunheim didn’t take a position as to whether there was a conspiracy, or pass judgment on Oswald, as his job was not to investigate the assassination, but to locate and release government records to the public and to let people make up their own minds. But he has more recently been quoted in the media that he personally believes Oswald guilty.

Judge Tunheim must have read a lot about Lee Harvey Oswald, and he certainly knows much more about the accused assassin than most people, but he’s also a federal Judge and should know better than to describe Oswald as “guilty,” a legal term that applies only to those who have been convicted in a court of law.

When discussing Oswald, open minded and honest people, especially those familiar with legal terminology, refer to Oswald as the “accused assassin” or “alleged assassin,” as the TSBD historic marker correctly calls him, because that’s what he is.

And the gunman in the window should be referred to as the Sixth Floor Sniper, because it has never been established for certain that it was Oswald, and there is a preponderance of evidence that Oswald wasn’t on the Sixth Floor at the time the shots were fired, as I will demonstrate.

                                  OSWALD - PAWN & “MERE PATSY?”

Judge Tunheim isn’t the only well-informed person to publicly express a person-al belief in Oswald’s guilt, as Gary Cornwell, the former Deputy Chief Counsel to the HSCA does in his book. After the resignation of the first HSCA Chief Counsel Richard Sprage, Cornwell was recruited by second chief counsel G. Robert Blakey.

In his book “Real Answers” Cornwell wrote: “…we confirmed that much of what the Warren Commission said was wrong. But we also found that most of the many reasons that led critics of the Warren Commission to conclude that Oswald was a mere patsy were also wrong, and were based upon inadequate access to the available evidence, questionable assumptions and logic, and/or faulty ‘scientific’ analysis…” 

“Mere patsy”!?

Certainly if Oswald was framed for the crime, and was set up as the patsy, as he claimed, and as much of the evidence indicates, then the assassination wasn’t the work of a deranged lone nut, but was a well planned and successfully executed conspiracy by unknown confederates still at large, and the case an unsolved homicide and a major national security threat today.

There’s nothing “mere” about it.

If Oswald wasn’t the Sixth Floor Sniper and was a patsy, then he most certainly played a smaller role - that of a sacrificial pawn - in a much larger game and scheme of things that has yet to be figured out.

Since Gary Cornwell, not only thinks Oswald guilty, but that those like me who have concluded Oswald was a “mere patsy” are wrong because we have had “inadequate access to the available evidence,” make questionable assumptions and use faulty logic and/or make “faulty scientific analysis,” I’d like him to evaluate the four facts and reasoning that have led me to believe that Oswald is not guilty of killing the President.

I’d like for him to point out where I am wrong, or acknowledge Oswald is really not guilty if these four facts and reasoning are agreed on and correct.

While Cornwell, like Tunheim, probably knows a lot about Oswald, I’m pretty sure they haven’t reviewed these four basic facts, acknowledged by the Warren Commission, that whatever else you believe about him, if they are true, prove Oswald didn’t kill the President.

My purpose here is to present this evidence in a public forum and use it to convince them and anyone else who believes Oswald is guilty, that he deserves the benefit of the doubt and a presumption of innocence that the Constitution, as well as the evidence in the case, legally and morally grants him.

So I publicly ask, challenge Gary Cornwell and Judge Tunheim to consider the following facts and refute or agree 1) that Oswald should not be considered or referred to as guilty and 2) there’s at least the distinct possibility that Oswald was not the Sixth Floor Sniper.

Judge Tunheim should recognize that Oswald, not having been convicted in a court of law, should not be considered or called “guilty,” as that word is a legal term reserved for those convicted in a court of law, and Cornwell should acknowledge, based on these four facts, that it is possible that Oswald wasn’t the Sixth Floor Sniper, and therefore the investigation into this unsolved homicide should consider the probability that someone other than Oswald killed the President.

In his book Cornwell doesn’t address or refute the issues or reasons that lead me to believe that Oswald could not have been the Sixth Floor Sniper, but I would like him and Tunheim to consider them and respond.

I base my conclusion on just four facts from the evidence and testimony provided to the Warren Commission, four facts that if true, completely exonerate Oswald from being the Sixth Floor Sniper. And if I make any questionable assumptions, use faulty logic or make an incorrect scientific analysis, I’d like to be corrected.

This is not to say that Oswald is innocent of everything. I don’t know who killed President Kennedy, I don’t know who took a shot at General Walker and I don’t know who killed Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit, but I do know for a fact that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill President Kennedy.  

Not my original observation, I credit Howard Roffman, in his book “Presumed Guilty,” of first pointing out most of these details, though I’ve since come across some additional documents and evidence that supports the contention that Oswald is not guilty and was framed as the patsy, and I believe it can be proven to anyone interested in reviewing these few facts, that Oswald was not the Sixth Floor Sniper. [see Dave Ratcliff http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ -   http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/PG/PG.html]

Oswald did not kill President Kennedy if you believe the two men who claim they ran into Oswald in the Second Floor lunchroom ninety seconds after the last shot - Dallas police officer Marrion Baker and Roy Truly, the superintendent of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD).

There are dissenting voices who think they are lying, and there are those who believe the first police reports and discount the later official testimony, and these objections are certainly worth considering. [See: Greg Parker’s ReopenJFKcase blog, and The lunchroom encounter that never was.

http://jfkthelonegunmanmyth.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-lunchroom-encounter-that-never-was.html?spref=fb ].

But the following analysis is based strictly on four points of fact that have been entered into evidence in the official record as published in the Warren Report, and it rests entirely on the credibility of Dallas Policeman Marrion Baker and TSBD superintendent Roy Truly, and what they said occurred in the first two minutes after the assassination.

                                                OSWALD’S ALIBI

Among the Dallas motorcycle policemen escorting the President’s motorcade through Dallas, Marrion Baker was behind the last press car when shots rang out on Dealey Plaza. Baker had just turned the corner onto Houston Street when he and was startled by the gun shots, his attention drawn to the roof of the building in front of him where a flock of pigeons took flight.

The digital clock on the Hertz car rental sign on the roof read: 12:30.

Baker pulled out of the motorcade, parked his bike, dismounted, and as seen in the photo taken by Malcolm Couch, entered the front door of the building he suspected shots were fired from the roof - the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD).

At the front door Baker met Roy Truly, who identified himself as the building superintendent. Baker said he wanted to go to the roof, so Truly led Baker back through the first floor to the rear service elevators that went up to the roof.

Just inside the front door there are steps that lead up to the second floor, and a passenger elevator that went up to the fourth floor, but Baker suspected the shots came from the roof, and that’s where he wanted to go, and Truly knew that only the back stairs and two rear service elevators went to the top floors and roof, so that’s where they headed.

At the back of the first floor, looking up the open elevator shaft, Truly saw that the two service elevators were stopped together on the fifth floor, so Baker followed Truly as they ran up the rickety wooden stairs.

During their Warren Commission testimony, commission counsel David Belin, Commissioner Allen Dulles, Senator John Sherman Cooper and Congressman Hale Boggs all questioned both Truly and Baker about their lunchroom encounter with Oswald.

Mr. Dulles: “You do not think he used any of the elevators at any time to get from the sixth to the second floor?” 

Mr. Truly: “You mean after the shooting? No, sir; he just could not, because those elevators, I saw myself, were both on the fifth floor, they were both even. And I tried to get one of them, and then when we ran up to the second floor - it would have been impossible for him to have come down either one of those elevators after the assassination. He had to use the stairway as his only way of getting down - since we did see the elevators in those positions.”

When Roy Truly got to the top of steps on second floor, he said he made a sharp left turn walked ten feet and started to ascend the steps to the third floor, thinking Baker was right behind him.

Truly: “I suppose I was up two or three steps before I realized the officer wasn’t following me…I came back to the second-floor landing. I heard some voices, or a voice, coming from the area of the lunchroom, or the inside vestibule. I ran over and looked in this door…I opened the door…I saw the officer almost directly in the doorway to the lunchroom facing Lee Harvey Oswald.…He was just inside the lunchroom door, two or three feet possibly. When I reached there, the officer had his gun pointing at Oswald. The officer turned this way and said, ‘This man work here?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ … Then we left Lee Harvey Oswald immediately and continued to run up the stairways.”

                                        THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

When Marrion Baker got to the top of steps on the Second Floor landing he started to turn the corner a few feet behind Truly but suddenly stopped, later testifying under oath that as he turned the corner on the second floor, he “scanned the room” and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man through the glass window of a door.

Marrion Baker: “As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I come out I was kind of scanning, you know, the room, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this — I happened to see him through this window in this door. I don’t know how come I saw him, but I had a glimpse of him coming down there.”

The Warren Report:  “On the second floor landing there is a small open area with a door at the east end. This door leads into a small vestibule, and another door leads from the vestibule into the second-floor lunchroom. The lunchroom door is usually open, but the first door is kept shut by a closing mechanism on the door. This vestibule door is solid except for a small glass window in the upper part of the door. As Baker reached the second floor, he was about 20 feet from the vestibule door. He intended to continue around to his left toward the stairway going up but through the window in the door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man walking in the vestibule toward the lunchroom.”

Attracted by the man in the door window, Baker suddenly stopped, took out his .38 revolver from its holster and moved towards the door.

At the moment Baker caught a fleeting glimpse of a man through the Second Floor lunchroom window, the Hertz clock on the roof read 12:30, within ninety seconds after the last shot was fired.

                                      THE LUNCHROOM ENCOUNTER

As Harold Weisberg concluded, “The lunchroom encounter was Oswald's alibi; it proved that he could not have been at the sixth-floor window during the shots.”

But knowing this, the Warren Commission, the Commission staff attorneys, the FBI and the Secret Service merely ignored it, as they also tried to do at first with the missed shot that injured James Tague, and like magicians, deflected attention to the amount of time it would take for an assassin to go from the Sixth Floor Sniper’s window to the lunchroom, and that would constitute proof that it could be done.

As Roffman indicates, “One of the crucial aspects of Baker's story” (that proves his innocence) is his position at the time he caught a ‘fleeting glimpse’ of a man in the vestibule (through the door window). Baker marked this position during his testimony as having been immediately adjacent to the stairs at the northwest corner of the building.”

Hoffman: “It should be noted that the Report never mentions Baker's position at the time he saw Oswald in the vestibule. Instead, it prints a floor plan of the second floor and notes Baker's position ‘when he observed Oswald in lunchroom.’ This location, as indicated in the Report, was immediately outside the vestibule door. The reader of the Report is left with the impression that Baker saw Oswald in the vestibule as well from this position. However, Baker testified explicitly that he first caught a glimpse of the man in the vestibule from the stairs and, upon running to the vestibule door, saw Oswald in the lunchroom. The Report's failure to point out Baker's position is significant.” 

The Warren Commission marked an X at a point on the map of the Second Floor, that was introduced into evidence, just outside the closed lunchroom door where Baker -through the window - saw a man in the lunchroom walking away from him, so Baker opened door and with gun drawn, halted the man who stopped and turned around, as Baker ordered the man to “Come here.”

With Baker’s revolver aimed at his belly, the man slowly walked back towards Baker and appeared perplexed, but not surprised or out of breath.

In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Allen Dulles and Hale Boggs recognized the significance of this encounter, and questioned Baker about it.

Dulles: “Where was he coming from, do you know?”

Baker: No, sir. All I seen of him was a glimpse of him go away from me. He was walking away from me about 20 feet away from me in the lunchroom… I hollered at him at that time and said, ‘Come here.’ He turned and walked right straight back to me.”

Baker couldn’t say where the man was coming from. He first saw the man from the top of the stairs through the door window and couldn’t say that the man went through that door, and he wasn’t going to.

Commissioner Boggs: “Were you suspicious of this man?”

Baker: “No, sir; I wasn’t.”

Boggs: “When you saw him, was he out of breath, did he appear to have been running, or what?”

Baker: “It didn’t appear that to me. He appeared normal, you know.”

Boggs: “Was he calm and collected?”

Baker: “Yes, sir; He never did say a word or nothing. In fact, he didn’t change his expression one bit.”

Mr. Belin: Did he flinch in anyway when you put the gun up . . .?
Mr. Baker: No, sir.

Sen. Cooper: He did not show any evidence of any emotion?
Mr. Baker: No, sir.

They go “off the record” a number of times while taking the testimony of both Baker and Truly, and you have to wonder what they are talking about, trying to get their stories straight, but the most curious thing is, if Baker saw Oswald as he had just entered through the door, then Truly - a few steps ahead of Oswald, should most certainly have seen him going through the door - but he didn’t see anyone.

When Roy Truly realized that Baker had not following him up the second flight of steps he stopped, turned around and walked back to the lunchroom door where he found Baker with his gun pointed at Oswald.

Commission Counsel David Belin, should have asked Truly, since he was ahead of Baker, if he saw Oswald, but he doesn’t ask that specific question because he knows the answer, - Truly had already testified he didn’t see anyone when he got to the top of the stairs, and he could’t have missed Oswald - 20 feet in front of him, walking through an open door. Instead he picks up the action at the lunchroom door.

Mr. Belin: Did you see any expression on his face? Or weren't you paying attention?
Mr. Truly: He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been a little startled, like I might have been if someone confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face.

Counsel Belin: All right. How far was the officer’s gun from Lee Harvey Oswald when he asked the question?”

Truly: …it seemed to me like it was almost touching him.

Baker asked, “Does this man work here?” and Truly said yes, identifying the man as an employee.  Baker lowered his gun and thenTruly and Baker continued their assent up the stairs to the roof, and Oswald proceeded to buy himself a coke.

That Oswald didn’t do it is the only conclusion that can be reached. What exonerates Oswald is the combination of four basic facts. 1) Roy Truly didn’t see anyone at the top of the Second Floor stairs; 2) Moments later Marrion Baker saw someone through the lunchroom door window; 3) that person was Lee Harvey Oswald; and the clincher 4) that door was closed when Baker saw Oswald though the window. 

Those are the basic facts of the case, as presented by the Warren Report, facts that exonerate Oswald as the assassin.

Since the door had to be closed when Baker first saw Oswald though the window, Oswald couldn’t have entered through that door, didn’t come down the stairs, wasn’t on the Sixth Floor when the shots were fired, and didn’t kill the President.

The lunchroom door had to be closed for Baker to see Oswald through the window because if the door was open, even if only an inch or two, physics and pure geometry dictate the 2 foot by 2 foot square window decrease in size as the door opens and closes, which makes it impossible for Baker, standing 20 feet away at the top of the stares, to see anything through the window. The door had to be closed for Baker to see Oswald through that window.

Rather than recognize the significance of Baker seeing Oswald through the lunchroom door window, the Warren Commission tried to establish that it was at least possible for Oswald to have gone from the Sixth Floor window to the Second Floor lunchroom within the allotted ninety seconds it took for Truly and Baker to get there - ninety seconds.

Numerous attempts were made to time how long it took for someone to traverse the distance from the Sixth Floor window to the lunchroom within a minute and a half, as Oswald would have had to do if he was the assassin. Repeated tests successfully demonstrated that the Sixth Floor Sniper could have made it to the Second Floor lunchroom in that amount of time, but logically, that doesn’t prove Oswald did it, it only proves that anyone could have traversed that distance in that amount of time. 

They also repeatedly timed Truly and Baker walking and running from the front curb to the Second Floor lunchroom door, and came up with the same one minute and thirty seconds, give or take ten seconds one way or another. So the Second Floor lunchroom incident occurred approximately ninety seconds after the last shot was fired.

As Michael Roffman, after a thorough analysis, concluded, “Had Oswald been the assassin, he would have arrived in the lunchroom at least five to eleven seconds after Baker reached the second floor, even if Baker took the longest time obtainable for his ascent - a minute, 30 seconds. Had Baker ascended in 70 seconds - as he easily could have - he would have arrived at least 25 seconds before Oswald (or someone descending from the Sixth Floor). Either case removes the possibility that Oswald descended from the sixth floor, for….he unquestionably arrived in the lunchroom before Baker.”

In his book (“Presumed Guilty”) Roffman writes: “The circumstances surrounding the lunchroom encounter indicate that Oswald entered the lunchroom not by the vestibule door from without, as he would have had he descended from the sixth floor, but through a hallway leading into the vestibule. The outer vestibule door is closed automatically by a closing mechanism on the door When Truly arrived on the second floor, he did not see Oswald entering the vestibule. For the Commission's case to be valid, Oswald must have entered the vestibule through the first door before Truly arrived. Baker reached the second floor immediately after Truly and caught a fleeting glimpse of Oswald in the vestibule through a small window in the outer door. Although Baker said the vestibule door "might have been, you know, closing and almost shut at that time," it is dubious that he could have distinguished whether the door was fully or ‘almost’ closed.” In fact, the door had to be completely closed for Baker to see anything through the door window.

Roffman: “Baker's and Truly's observations are not at all consistent with Oswald's having entered the vestibule through the first door. Had Oswald done this, he could have been inside the lunchroom well before the automatic mechanism closed the vestibule door. Truly's testimony that he saw no one entering the vestibule indicates either that Oswald was already in the vestibule at this time or was approaching it from another source. However, had Oswald already entered the vestibule when Truly arrived on the second floor, it is doubtful that he would have remained there long enough for Baker to see him seconds later. Likewise, the fact that neither man saw the mechanically closed door in motion is cogent evidence that Oswald did not enter the vestibule through that door.” 

It was only for that one fleeting moment - as Baker reached the top of the stairs and began to turn to the left and make his scan of the room when he was attracted by the moving blur in the window - the sideways profile of Oswald’s head as he passed behind that window from right to left. 

“Had Oswald descended from the sixth floor,” writes Roffman, “his path through the vestibule into the lunchroom would have been confined to the north wall of the vestibule. Yet the line of sight from Baker's position at the steps does not include any area near the north wall. From the steps, Baker could have seen only one area in the vestibule - the southeast portion. The only way Oswald could have been in this area on his way to the lunchroom is if he entered the vestibule through the southernmost door, as the previously cited testimony indicates he did. Oswald could not have entered the vestibule in this manner had he just descended from the sixth floor. The only way he could have gotten to the southern door is from the first floor up through either a large office space or an adjacent corridor. As the Report concedes, Oswald told police he had eaten his lunch on the first floor and gone up to the second to purchase a coke when he encountered an officer…”

The significance of Baker’s view of Oswald through the window of the closed lunchroom door became apparent to the Secret Service during the course of their reconstruction of the assassination, as they stopped their reenactment at the lunchroom door.

It also came to the attention of Warren Commission investigators who realized that if Baker did indeed see Oswald through the window of the lunchroom door, then he wasn’t the assassin. Proof the Warren Commission recognized this exculpatory evidence is based on the fact they recalled Truly to testify a second time, just to put it on the record.

When the Warren Commission attorneys realized the significance of these facts, they recalled Roy Truly a second time, after he had already testified extensively, just to ask him one question, the clincher. At an office in the Post Office Annex just across Dealey Plaza from the TSBD, they placed Truly under oath and created a legal affidavit in order to answer one peculiar question: did the door to the second floor lunchroom have an automatic closing device?

And the answer is yes, it does.

The following affidavit was executed by Roy Sansom Truly on August 3, 1964.

PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION
ON THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

AFFIDAVIT

STATE OF TEXAS,
County of Dallas, ss:

I, Roy Sansom Truly, being duly sworn say:
1. I am the Superintendent of the Texas School Book Depository Building Dallas, Texas.
2. The door opening on the vestibule of the lunchroom on the second floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building is usually shut because of a closing mechanism on the door.

Signed this 3d day of August 1964, at Dallas Tex.
(S) Roy Sansom Truly,
ROY SANSOM TRULY

Now those Warren Commission lawyers could have easily walked across Dealey Plaza and in a matter of minutes learned that basic truth themselves, but they recalled Truly to put the question and answer on the record – did the 2nd Floor lunchroom door have an automatic closing device? It is a simple fact that exonerates Oswald from being Kennedy’s killer because, as the affidavit say, the door is usually closed shut because of that mechanism, and in fact the door was closed when Baker saw Oswald through the window of the door.

Of course the Warren Commission lawyers did not explain this, they simply dismissed Truly from answering any further questions, and the Secret Service, also knowing these facts, just stopped their reconstruction of the assassination right there at that door, without bothering to follow Oswald outside or to Oak Cliff or anywhere else.

But they never bothered to explain what that meant, its true significance or the resulting and inescapable conclusions that stem from the fact that since the door was closed, Oswald didn’t enter the lunchroom through that door, he didn’t descend the stairs, wasn’t on the Sixth Floor when the shots were fired and didn’t kill the President.

In addition, other evidence supports the fact that Oswald didn’t come down the steps, and reaffirms his alibi including 1) Truly didn’t see Oswald as he would have if Oswald had gone through the door; 2) Jack Dougherty, a worker on the Fifth Floor landing, who took one of the elevators down, didn’t see anyone run past him, as he should have if the Sixth Floor Sniper had immediately ran down the steps; 3) two secretaries from the Fourth Floor offices didn’t see anyone on the stairs as they descended to the first floor immediately after the assassination, and 4) the three black guys, who witnessed the assassination from the Fifth Floor corner window directly beneath the Sixth Floor Sniper, didn’t see anyone run past them near the steps and elevator, where they were when Baker and Truly arrived up the steps and took the other elevator to the Seventh Floor and inspected the roof; 5) minutes after the last shot a court clerk from across the street saw a man in the Sniper’s Window, ostensibly moving boxes around, when Oswald was on the second floor.

Under interrogation Oswald said that at the time of the assassination he was on the first floor in the Domino Room eating lunch, when two of the black guys he worked with walked through. Although they claimed not to have noticed Oswald, the two men acknowledged that before going up to the Fifth Floor they did walk through the Domino Room, so how did Oswald know they were there if he didn’t see him? Further corroboration that Oswald was in the Domino Room came a few weeks after the assassination when his jacket was discovered in the window sill, right where he said he ate lunch.

Oswald said when he left the Domino Room he went up the front steps to the Second Floor Lunchroom to get a coke, when he was confronted by the policeman and Roy Truly. After buying the coke in the lunchroom, Oswald walked out the door he entered, not the one Baker saw him through, and went into the outer office where he encountered a secretary, who wasn’t there when he had walked through a few minutes earlier. She said Oswald walked past her desk with a coke in his hand, and when she said something about the President being shot, she didn’t hear what he mumbled in response.

Oswald then ostensibly went down the front steps to the first floor, calmly directed a reporter to a pay phone, heard Bill Shelly say that there wouldn’t be any more work that day, then walked out the front door and into the streets of Dallas.

Time on the Hertz Clock on the TSBD roof: 12:34

[For comments and corrections billkelly3@gmail.com (609) 425-6297]