The Remains of Bonnie Ray

[Alan Ford]

This comes down to a very simple question:

If there was a conspiracy, would this conspiracy have been
a) carefully planned?
b) left to chance?

Anyone who thinks b) needs their head examined!

And anyone who thinks a) but believes that a careful plan would NOT have included measures for commandeering the sixth floor needs their head examined!

(And, while we're at it, anyone who thinks a Lone Nut Depository employee would choose the sixth [with every chance of other employees showing up] rather than seventh floor [little or no chance of that] needs their head examined too!)

[Alan Ford]

So!

~12:15pm: Mr Rowland's 'elderly Negro' is 'hanging out' at the soon-to-be SN window------i.e. he is not back from the window, but leaning out at it-------i.e. he is making himself visible.

Messrs Norman & Jarman are down in the street (with Mr Givens and Mr Arce). In all likelihood, at least one of them will have noticed the 'elderly Negro' up at the sixth-floor window.

Scenario A: The 'elderly Negro' is Mr Bonnie Ray Williams. Therefore Messrs Jarman & Norman, in choosing to go to the fifth floor, are choosing NOT to join Mr Williams. Strange!

Scenario B: The 'elderly Negro' is not Mr Bonnie Ray Williams, who is instead at the window below him. Messrs Jarman & Norman know he is there. Therefore, once they hear on the police radio that the motorcade is still a few minutes away, they choose to go upstairs after all and choose the fifth rather than (the more obvious choice:) sixth floor because they have decided to join their friend/co-worker. Logical!

[Alan Ford]

Well!

Mr. BALL - What did you do after you went down and washed up; what did you do?
Mr. LOVELADY - Well, I went over and got my lunch and went upstairs and got a coke and come on back down.
Mr. BALL - Upstairs on what floor?
Mr. LOVELADY - That's on the second floor; so, I started going to the domino room where I generally went in to set down and eat and nobody was there and I happened to look on the outside and Mr. Shelley was standing outside with Miss Sarah Stanton, I believe her name is, and I said, "Well, I'll go out there and talk with them, sit down and eat my lunch out there, set on the steps," so I went out there.

Mr Lovelady must have spent a lot of time washing up! Because we have good reason to believe he didn't go out to the front steps until quite a few minutes later. (Cf Mr Shelley's testimony [he spent some time eating lunch in his office before going outside: "and Billy Lovelady joined us shortly afterwards"] + Mr Jarman's testimony [Billy came outside later than we did] + Mr Arce's testimony [he was in the domino room when Mr Lovelady says it was empty!]).

Now! Mr Arnold Rowland recalled ~12:15pm not just two black people in the fifth-floor pair of windows directly under the SN window but also possibly a white man too.

So what happened to those missing minutes in Mr Lovelady's timeline?

Well, if there was indeed a white man with Mr Williams and [Mr Piper?] at the fifth-floor window ~12:15pm, then my candidate would be Mr Lovelady himself------------who at some point thereafter will have decided to come downstairs again and watch the P. Parade from the front steps.

Remember what Mr Bonnie Ray Williams said:

Mr. WILLIAMS. I went back up to the sixth floor.
Mr. BALL. Why did you go to the sixth floor?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, at the time everybody was talking like they was going to watch from the sixth floor. I think Billy Lovelady said he wanted to watch from up there. And also my friend; this Spanish boy, by the name of Danny Arce, we had agreed at first to come back up to the sixth floor. So I thought everybody was going to be on the sixth floor.

The idea that all these people just quietly decided to discard the idea of watching the P. Parade from six, without communicating any of this to Mr Williams, is simply fanciful---------------and would represent the most extraordinary stroke of luck for whoever was on six about to shoot Mr Kennedy.

No. I believe Mr Lovelady may well have--------as per arrangement---------taken his lunch & Coke up to six. To his surprise he was (like Mr Williams) met by 'security' who told him the floor was out of bounds but he could watch the P. Parade from five if he wished.

From the KP file for Mr Bill Shelley:

[Zeon Mason]

The “elderly negro” at the SE 6th floor window 12:15-12:20 could be Eddie Piper IF he was wearing a red and green “plaid” shirt and IF he took off his glasses while he was hanging out the window. (Rowland would have seen the glasses if Piper was wearing them)

BRW maybe went up to the 5th floor to eat his lunch about 12:05 erroneously thinking Norman and Jarman would join him immediately.

This scenario allows enough time for a 6th floor shooter hiding out on the 6th floor to place a box on the SE window ledge by 12:25 since Piper could have left the 6th floor by 12:21 returning to the 1st floor.

There is no conflict therefore fir the shooter having to of wait until 12:24 for BRW to leave the 6th floor since BRW was never there.

The chicken bones and Dr.Pepper on the 6th floor therefore either were left by Piper or placed there after the fact perhaps moved from BRWs speculative 5th floor eating spot.

[Alan Ford]

The “elderly negro” at the SE 6th floor window 12:15-12:20 could be Eddie Piper IF he was wearing a red and green “plaid” shirt and IF he took off his glasses while he was hanging out the window. (Rowland would have seen the glasses if Piper was wearing them)

Mr Piper certainly is a viable candidate in terms of physical appearance (unlike Mr Williams). And I think the WC would have killed to make him the 'elderly Negro'.

However #1:
Is this Mr Piper (main picture)? The clothes look oddly uniform-like for someone with Mr Piper's role, but this man does look a ringer for Mr Piper:

If this is Mr Piper, then a bright plaid shirt ain't what he was wearing that day.

However #2:
If Mr Piper was the 'elderly Negro', then who were the two black people Mr Rowland saw in the fifth-floor easternmost pair of windows? Without Mr Piper available, we're down to Mr Williams and Mr Troy West. And the latter seems very unlikely. (Then again: perhaps we might need to revisit Mr Charles Givens' account[s!] of his movements in the minutes leading up to the assassination?)

BRW maybe went up to the 5th floor to eat his lunch about 12:05 erroneously thinking Norman and Jarman would join him immediately.

This scenario allows enough time for a 6th floor shooter hiding out on the 6th floor to place a box on the SE window ledge by 12:25 since Piper could have left the 6th floor by 12:21 returning to the 1st floor.

There is no conflict therefore fir the shooter having to of wait until 12:24 for BRW to leave the 6th floor since BRW was never there.

The chicken bones and Dr.Pepper on the 6th floor therefore either were left by Piper or placed there after the fact perhaps moved from BRWs speculative 5th floor eating spot.

I suspect the latter was the case.

But the key issue in all this IMO:

The sixth floor was a brilliant spot from which to view the P. Parade. The obvious spot for the manual workers. And yet not a single one of them chose to watch the P. Parade from there. Why not? It's bizarre---particularly when put beside Mr Williams' recollection that there was a general agreement among the sixth-floor crew to come back up to six and watch the P Parade from there.

Again, I suggest this was no stroke of luck for the assassination team. I believe at least one, but probably more than one, employee went up to six as their first choice but was told to leave the floor. They left that floor in the belief that it was being used for bona fide security purposes to keep an eye on the crowd from.

I believe the above would explain the two clusters of employees seen at those fifth-floor windows:
~12:15pm: two black people + (possibly) a white man (Mr Rowland's recollection)
12:30pm: Messrs Williams, Norman & Jarman

All of these people would have been innocent of involvement in the plot to kill Mr Kennedy

[John Iacoletti]

Scenario D: improbable because the other TSBD black employees were accounted for. Neither Euins  nor Brennan described the shooter as a black man so it is improbable the 6th floor man seen by Rowland was some unknown black man.

James Underwood testified that Euins told him he saw a colored man with a rifle.

[Zeon Mason]

Excellent point made by Mr.Lacoletti ( as usual), however , this is a 3rd party account vs Euins WC testimony himself, so IDk what to conclude.

DId Euins see an “elderly”  black man as Arnold Rowland did,  and then later Euins was advised or coerced to omit this detail in his WC testimony?

Reasons to doubt that Eddie Piper was the “elderly” black man Arnold Rowland saw at the SE 6th floor window at TSBD from
12:15 to 12:20.

1.The photo of Piper outside the TSBD wearing his jacket (post shots) .  Piper is wearing his glasses while outside which indicates he was probably nearsighted. It is therefore doubtful that if Piper were on the 6th floor to watch the JFK limo that he would have removed his glasses. It is doubtful that  Arnold Rowland would have missed seeing the glasses if Piper were wearing  them.

2. Pipers jacket appears to be a solid texture and his shirt was vertical striped ( DPD photo). This doesn’t quite match a red and green plaid shirt unless Pipers jacket was reddish color and he was wearing it open enough to expose the green striped shirt.  Or for some reason changed his shirt  for the DPD photo.

3. What reason to substitute BRW being on the 6th floor instead of Eddie Piper? It only introduces a conflict with BRW meeting Norman and Jarman at 12:25-26 which makes it a dilemma about the box on the. 6th floor SE window ledge being placed not later than 12:25 per the Bronson film while BRW is theoretically still on the 6th floor.