The Floor-Laying Crew

[Alan Ford]

No doubt Officer Baker has mentioned to law enforcement what he saw. And Mr. Truly knows he has a sighting of a man he vouched for as a worker---------a man whom the officer caught walking away from the rear stairway several floors up the building----------to explain away in a manner that is not lethal to himself.

Enter Mr. Oswald......................

Well! Up to this I have explored the scenario where Mr. Truly (and Mr. Shelley) have no foreknowledge of the plot. They have brought the outside contractors in in good faith.

But what if they are not innocent of involvement? What might that scenario look like?

Let us add into the mix another element: Mr. Oswald is being knowingly set up.

OK. The plan might work as follows:

1. The outside crew is brought in, but an arrangement is made to have them be helped out with the floor-laying by several internal employees
2. The habit of the outside crew of working through the lunch hour protects the internal employees: making it unlikely that any will watch the P. Parade on 11/22 from the sixth floor, and thus be on the hook for involvement--------each will have an alibi
3. The crucial bit: after the assassination, the real reason for assigning internal employees to help out will come into play------------they can take all the credit for all the floor-laying project, evidence for which will be apparent to the investigators who come on to the sixth floor. I.e. the outside crew can be disappeared from history
4. A man resembling Mr. Oswald is given the job of firing from the SN window
5. But Mr. Oswald's movements on 11/22 cannot be controlled, so it's always going to be touch and go whether he stays in the building for the P. Parade or goes outside to watch it
6. If it turns out he stayed inside, then the frame-up of him is 100% successful: he has no alibi
7. If it turns out he went outside, then he can at least be implicated as an accomplice (via the rifle)
8. He is not, on either outcome, being set up as a lone wolf assassin but as a member of a conspiracy. The men on the sixth floor do not keep themselves carefully hidden. They are not anxious to hide the fact that this was a conspiracy
9. But how does Mr. Truly explain away the presence of non-employees on the sixth floor at the critical time? He doesn't. He simply offers the heart-broken explanation that Mr. Oswald (who seemed such a nice boy and such a reliable worker) must have slipped several men up there after the internal flooring crew broke for lunch. It was all the commie rat's fault. Mr. Truly's only sin was to give a young man in need of work a job.

So that---------on the present scenario---------might have been the basic plan.

However! Officer Baker's dash into the building forces Mr. Truly's hand prematurely. After the encounter with the man caught walking away from the rear stairway several floors up, he must commit to identifying this man: a worker in the building, but which one? Remember, he cannot reveal the existence of the outside flooring crew. Nor however can he in hindsight declare he was a stranger in the building--------he himself vouched for the man as a worker he recognised!

Erroneously thinking--------on the basis of his and the officer's sighting of Mr. Oswald in the small storage room on the first floor just after the shooting---------that Mr. Oswald did NOT go outside to watch the P. Parade after all, he feeds Mr. Oswald's name to the cops: he was the man we encountered by the stairway.

But (for reasons outlined a few posts back) this causes complications. Mr. Oswald, it turns out, was in the doorway at the time of the motorcade, and there is no guarantee that proof of that will not yet emerge into the public domain (before authorities have had a chance to monkey with it, as they must do with the Wiegman & Altgens images).

Result: the rear stairway encounter is relocated to the second-floor lunchroom, an ambiguous, hedge-betting location that Mr. Oswald could conceivably have reached from EITHER the sixth floor OR from the front entrance.

 

[John Iacoletti]

I believe the shows the cart that BRW claimed to have been sitting on (though several deputies noticed his chicken bones and lunch sack on and near boxes by the SE window).  It looks to me like it is right next to the window.  Which makes sense if he had been planning to watch the motorcade while he ate lunch.

[John Iacoletti]

As for how far from the window Rowland's gunman was standing, Rowland said this in his testimony, which is closer than what he originally said in his affidavit.

Mr. SPECTER - And what is your best recollection as to how close to the window he was standing?
Mr. ROWLAND - He wasn't next to the window, but he wasn't very far back. I would say 3 to 5 feet back from the window.

[Charles Collins]

I believe the shows the cart that BRW claimed to have been sitting on (though several deputies noticed his chicken bones and lunch sack on and near boxes by the SE window).  It looks to me like it is right next to the window.  Which makes sense if he had been planning to watch the motorcade while he ate lunch.

After taking another look, I think I agree that the cart was next to the window. I believe that I was mistaken about it being between stacks of boxes that form the third aisle. There is another view of the cart and bottle taken looking essentially west that fooled me. Thanks for helping. If we are correct, I think the cart shows up in the photo we were discussing earlier. I have circled it in the one below:




However, the boxes with the Xs, that I indicated earlier would be between a sitting BRW and a man with a rifle standing back from the window, would still be between them. 3 to 5 feet back from the window or further is enough.

[Alan Ford]

However, the boxes with the Xs, that I indicated earlier would be between a sitting BRW and a man with a rifle standing back from the window, would still be between them. 3 to 5 feet back from the window or further is enough.

Lol, an earnest analysis founded on a wildly silly double premise:
-------------a bald 'elderly Negro' in a bright plaid shirt hanging out at the SN window = 18-year-old Mr. Bonnie Ray Williams in a dull green shirt sitting on a cart
-------------a man in a very light-colored open-necked garment = Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald.

Most entertaining! 

What's next, one wonders? A painstaking exploration into whether Santa Claus's hat is best classed as vermilion or as scarlet? 

[Alan Ford]

From FBI interview report on Mrs. Lillian Mooneyham, 1/8/64:

Mrs. MOONEYHAM estimated that it was about 4 to 5 minutes following the shots fired by the assassin that she looked up towards the sixth floor of the TSBD and observed the figure of a man standing in a sixth floor window behind some cardboard boxes. This man appeared to Mrs. MOONEYHAM to be looking out of the window, however, the man was not close up to the window but was standing slightly back from it, so that Mrs. MOONEYHAM could not make out his features. She stated that she could give no description of this individual except to say that she is sure it was a man she observed, because the figure had on trousers. She could not recall the color of the trousers.

Who was this man?

It may well have been Mr. Jack Dougherty. From his first-day affidavit:



 

[John Iacoletti]

However, the boxes with the Xs, that I indicated earlier would be between a sitting BRW and a man with a rifle standing back from the window, would still be between them. 3 to 5 feet back from the window or further is enough.

I disagree. I think those boxes are at least a foot deep.