Oswald's Escape Route Time Trial

[Fergus O'Brien]

You haven't argued "in any way" that the fibers from Oswald's shirt would prove him innocent?  Then why make such a big deal about him changing shirts and claiming that resulted in a "problem" for LNers?  What problem would there be then?  The argument seemed to be that because Oswald claimed to have changed shirts, he could not have left the fibers on the rifle that was used to assassinate JFK.   That sounds a lot like suggesting he was not the assassin.   The facts are that the fibers found on the rifle are consistent with those from the shirt that Oswald was wearing approximately an hour after the assassination.  Absent a time machine we can't know certain things with absolute certainty, but those facts lend themselves to Oswald's guilt rather than his innocence.  What are the odds that Oswald puts on a random shirt that matches the fibers found on his rifle that day?  And again, even if there were no fibers from his shirt, there is ample evidence to link Oswald to the murder weapon.  It is difficult to even contemplate how there could be any more evidence of the fact.  Oswald has no explanation for the presence of his rifle at the crime scene.  He has no credible alibi for the moment of the assassination.  He flees the scene within minutes and gets a gun.  He is identified by several witnesses as the person who murdered a police officer in broad daylight on the street.  I'm puzzled how anyone can fixate on a trivial point like the fibers in the face of the overwhelming mountain of evidence that links Oswald to the crime.

i am not making a big deal , you are the one doing that . your stance is oswald was guilty , as with any LN and as with the warren commission when taking this LN stance you are stuck with the evidence you thinks proves oswald acted alone . you simply cant and wont contradict it , because it weakens and maybe destroys your arguments to do so . this is why you felt a need to come up with the supposition that he left the FRESH fibers on the  rifle weeks to months prior , anything to keep that brown shirt on Oswalds back .

it is very simple the fibers were fresh , not weeks or months old , but Stombaugh as with the other agents was not going to let the commission try to push them into being specific and try to give an exact time how long the fibers were there . just as they would not say any tippit bullet matched to the pistol . hence the commission had to get joe nichol in to save the day .if they were fresh fibers left on that rifle that day and Oswald never wore that brown shirt in work that day , well that is a problem . it means they got there in one of two ways , by accident (cross contamination ) or on purpose . if the fibers got there on purpose that then means we have to question the reliability of that evidence , that is the point . and if one item of evidence is suspect how do we know we can trust other evidence ? .

LN love certain words , one being consistent / CONSISTENT WITH . the fibers are CONSISTENT with the fibers from Oswalds shirt .the sun and the moon are consistent , both are round and bright in the sky . but they are very different . Stombaugh mentioned the color of fibers he looked at , he never mentioned BROWN , it was after all a brown shirt . so there should be brown fibers or color fibers that together make a shirt look brown YES ?  . i already posted some of pat speers work on this matter .

but as you admit you cant know with certainty certain things , neither can i . the difference being i am not claiming that which i cant prove is proof of anything .

there is that OVERWHELMING MOUNTAIN again lol , certainly evidence points to Oswald but as we can see here on this forum that evidence is not always quite what it appears to be .

[Fergus O'Brien]

Ball was debating Mark Lane at the time and within context was only giving a sarcastic reply, but Martin likes to say Markham is a screwball when she identified Oswald and on the other hand Markham was an honest valuable eyewitness with her time estimate. Do you see the obvious conflict?

Whereas from my perspective, Markham's identification of Oswald was true and genuine and the 1963 timepiece was never verified and considering the FBI ascertained that buses came every ten minutes, whenever she got to the bus stop, the wait was never very long.

JohnM

and LN love to cite Markham as a witness to the Tippit shooting but they refuse to accept her estimate of the time (about 1.07)  that the shooting took place BASED upon her leaving home at her normal time to go and get her normal bus to work . a time estimate which is not inconsistent with Bowleys 1.10pm time . he saw tippit already down , looked at his watch , and noted the time was 1.10 pm . you are another who refuses to accept her time estimate .

you accept her testimony that she identified oswald .  but she told agent Odum (from  me memory) the killer was about 18 with dark hair . she told Aynesworth the killer was (again from memory) again bit chunky , bit short , slightly bushy hair . this is what prompted lane to speak to her . a conversation she first denied took place and she even denied her own voice . in addition she has the killer crossing 10th street , turning left and going to the corner of 10th and patton , then crossing the street again and coming face to face with her . NO OTHER WITNESS CLAIMED THIS . this either tells us that she was a screwball or that she saw a second man . the same woman who testified that she did not know ANYONE in the line up NOT A ONE , not by their face , not by their clothing . yet you stand by her identification of Oswald while you criticize martin . 

[Fergus O'Brien]

How exactly does it "bring into question the fairness of the circumstances"?  She is taking his questions literally.  She didn't "know" Oswald or "recognize" him.  She didn't have a clue who he was.  She had never seen him before she witnessed him murdering Tippit.  Obviously, if she had been "coached" to answer these questions her answer would have been "yes."  She is certainly not the greatest witness in history, but she is also not the only witness who places Oswald at the scene with his gun in hand.  What do you think the odds are that Oswald worked in the place from which the president was assassinated, would leave work to get his gun, and then pass the very scene of the only DPD officer murdered in a number of years on the way to the movies?  All within about an hour.  And was unlucky enough to look so much like the Tippit shooter that he was identified by multiple witnesses as the person at the scene with a gun?  A billion to one if he was innocent?

"She is taking his questions literally.  She didn't "know" Oswald or "recognize" him.  She didn't have a clue who he was"

Mr. BALL. Did you identify anybody in these four people?
Mrs. MARKHAM. I didn't know nobody.

Mr. BALL. I know you didn't know anybody, but did anybody in that lineup look like anybody you had seen before?
Mrs. MARKHAM. No. I had never seen none of them, none of these men.

Mr. BALL. No one of the four?
Mrs. MARKHAM. No one of them.

Mr. BALL. No one of all four?
Mrs. MARKHAM. No, sir.

Mrs. MARKHAM. No. I had never seen none of them, none of these men.

[Michael T. Griffith]

How about a dose of reality in this thread? I discuss the myriad of problems with the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting in my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view?usp=sharing). A few points:

-- The last time housekeeper Earlene Roberts saw Oswald shortly after he left the rooming house, he was standing at the northbound bus stop. He wasn't speed-walking southward to the Tippit scene but was standing at a bus stop.

-- The fact that Oswald was standing at the northbound bus stop is important because the Tippit scene was in the opposite direction--it was southward from the bus stop.

-- The weight of the eyewitness evidence clearly has Tippit's killer walking toward the police car, not away from it. This wreaks havoc with the WC's timeline for getting Oswald to the Tippit scene. From Rockefeller Foundation scholar Henry Hurt's widely acclaimed book Reasonable Doubt:

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One of the most glaring discrepancies of all is seen in the accounts
of the direction in which Tippit's killer was walking just before Tippit
stopped. William Scoggins, a cab driver who was an eyewitness,
testified that the gunman was walking west toward Tippit's car prior
to the shooting. Another witness reported similarly. Reports from
the Dallas police as well as the first reports of the Secret Service
reflect the same impression. Despite the preponderance of evidence
that the killer and Tippit's car were moving toward each other, the
Warren Report concluded that the killer was walking in the opposite
direction. The commission version held that Tippit's car overtook
the pedestrian killer.43

This was necessary for the Warren Commission's tenuous version
to work at all. If he was Oswald, the killer had to be walking east,
in the same direction as the police car was moving when it overtook
the killer. Otherwise, Oswald, on his exceedingly tight time sched-
ule, would have had to move from the rooming house to a point
beyond the scene of the shooting and then to have turned and been
heading back to reach the location of the murder. Because of time
considerations, that was preposterous even by commission stan-
dards, so the commission ignored the testimony. (pp. 149-150)
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-- The weight of the evidence puts the time of the shooting at around 1:08-1:10, not 1:16. Henry Hurt:

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As in other aspects of its investigation, the Warren Commission
found itself using as key witnesses those whose accounts must have
been distressing in the formulation of the official version. For the

Tippit murder, Helen Markham emerged as the star of the com-
mission's presentation, even though she claimed she saw Tippit
being shot no later than 1:07 P.M.—significantly earlier than the
murder could have happened if it was committed by Oswald. (Mrs.
Markham, while highly inconsistent in other areas, seems credible
on the matter of the timing because she was on her way to catch a
bus at 1:15 to go to her regular job.)2

Other eyewitnesses also plagued the commission. The only person
who claimed he actually checked the time was T. F. Bowley, who
stated that his watch indicated that it was 1:10 P.M. And Bowley
came upon the murder scene after Tippit was shot, while he was
still lying in the street. Bowley's report gives credence to the 1:07
time Helen Markham gave for the actual shooting. Four other wit-
nesses put the time even earlier, stating that it occurred around one
o'clock. (p. 144)
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-- The "identifications" of Oswald as Tippit's killer are doubtful. Henry Hurt:

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Other eyewitness testimony concerning Oswald and the Tippit
murder also seemed shaky at best, calling into question the whole
lineup procedure used that afternoon and evening by the Dallas
Police Department. One witness taken to view the lineup told the
Warren Commission that one reason he was able to pick out the
prime suspect was that Oswald was complaining loudly that he
was being framed by the procedure. In fact, he was the only one in
the lineup with a bruised and swollen face, the results of the scuf-
fle at the time of his arrest. He certainly was the only one who,
when questioned so that the witness could hear his voice, stated
that he worked at the Texas School Book Depository—by then
heralded to the world as the almost certain site of the assassin's
Five of the witnesses who identified Oswald as the man fleeing
the scene picked him out of the lineup under the dubious conditions
described.

Others were asked two months later to look at a photograph of
Oswald and to say whether he was the man observed running
from the murder scene. (These witnesses were not asked to pick
the person they saw from among several photographs—only to say
whether Oswald was the man they had seen.) Several witnesses made
positive identifications in this fashion, while others did not.3 (pp. 146-147)
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-- The duration of Oswald's ride in Whaley's cab is problematic for the WC's case against Oswald, and his post-assassination actions are not indicative of someone who was in desperate flight. From Sylvia Meagher's book Accessories After the Fact:

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According to the Warren Report, Oswald walked from the point where he had
left the bus to the Greyhound Bus Terminal. There he took a taxicab driven by
William Whaley, saying that he wished to go to 500 North Beckley. As the cab
was about to start, Oswald seemed about to yield his place to an elderly woman
who wanted a taxi too, but apparently she refused his offer.

The cab proceeded to North Beckley, where Oswald got out in the 700 block,
paying a meter charge of 95 cents. The Report (WR 163) states that the elapsed
time of the reconstructed run from the Greyhound Bus Station to Neely and Beckley Streets
was 5 minutes 30 seconds, in a retracing of the route performed during an inter-
view with Whaley in Dallas. The Commission suggests that if the cab ride lasted
approximately 6 minutes, Oswald could have walked the distance to his room-
ing house in time to arrive there by 1 p.m.

Comments on the treatment of the taxi ride by the Warren Commission can
be brief. It is immediately obvious that Oswald's actions were inconsistent with
those of an escaping assassin in two respects: he took a taxi to a local address
instead of taking advantage of the possibilities in the Greyhound Bus Station
for leaving Dallas or the State of Texas altogether; and he was ready to sur-
render the taxi to a lady who wanted it, as if he had no cause for anxiety or
urgency.5 These surprising actions are not discussed in the Report in the con-
text of Oswald's alleged guilt, although the mere fact of his departure from the
Book Depository is considered incriminating.

5 It is increasingly difficult to reconcile Oswald's demeanor with what the Commission
calls "escape." Whaley testified to the "slow way" Oswald had walked up to the taxi, saying:
"He didn't talk. He wasn't in any hurry. He wasn't nervous or anything." (2H 261)

The estimate of six minutes for the taxi trip merits a few remarks. Whaley
first testified before the Commission on March 12, 1964. At that time he esti-
mated the distance between the points where he had picked up and discharged
Oswald as two and a half miles. Asked for an estimate of the time it took to
cover that distance, Whaley said:

Whaley: I run it again with the policeman because the policeman was wor-
ried, he run the same trip and he couldn't come out the same time I did... .

I got the two minutes on him he never could make up. So I had to go back
with him to make that trip to show him I was right.

Ball: How much time, in that experiment, when you hit the lights right,
how long did it take you?

Whaley: Nine minutes. (2H 259)

The estimate of nine minutes for the taxi ride apparently created difficulties,
since Oswald's movements from the Book Depository to the Tippit scene, as
reconstructed by the Warren Commission, had him on a tight schedule without
a minute to spare. Whaley was re-interviewed in Dallas on April 8, 1964, after
again retracing the route on which he had transported Oswald, this time in a
Secret Service car. It was this re-enactment that served as the basis for the
Commission's estimate of six minutes (6H 434), with a slightly altered point of
termination of the ride (the 700 instead of the 500 block of North Beckley
Street), three blocks (instead of five) from the rooming house, to which Whaley
now agreed. He readily acknowledged that his original recollection—that Oswald
had left the cab in the 500 block—was wrong.

In allowing six minutes for the taxi ride,7 the Commission has made no
allowance for traffic conditions immediately after the assassination. Yet in the
case of testimony that Jack Ruby was seen at Parkland Hospital an hour after
the assassination, the Commission solemnly concluded that the witnesses were
mistaken, basing this decision in part on the assumption that Ruby could not
have made the drive in the available time, 10 to 15 minutes, because of traffic
conditions. Since the normal time for the drive was 9 to 10 minutes, the Com-
mission apparently considered that Ruby would have experienced a slowdown
of 50 per cent.

It is difficult to reconcile the Commission's reasoning in the case of Ruby
with its calculations in the case of Oswald. His trip was actually speeded up
by 33 1/3 per cent in relation to the driver's first attempts to retrace the route,
which took nine minutes. In the later experiment, the Commission failed to
check the six-minute ride against the taxi meter to see if it registered 95 cents
at the end of the ride, the amount that Oswald paid. (pp. 83-84)

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[Tom Scully]

All those words and it could actually be summed up in a few sentences. You wrote,

-- The weight of the eyewitness evidence clearly has Tippit's killer walking toward the police car, not away from it. This wreaks havoc with the WC's timeline for getting Oswald to the Tippit scene. From Rockefeller Foundation scholar Henry Hurt's widely acclaimed book Reasonable Doubt:

The two "timing" witnesses, Roberts and Whaley, are farces. Mrs. Roberts' testmony had the DPD arriving at 1:30 pm, vs. Detective Potts at 3:00 pm.
Her employer, Gladys Johnson, testified to a prior firing of Roberts as a compulsive teller of tall tales!
I proved that Whaley was born three years later than his midlife alteration of his birth year and no one has responded to my challenge for support of his earning the Navy Cross (a cab driver @ age 40) for his combat actions as a navy gunner "over Iwo Jima".

Your extreme right wing orientation has you praising Henry Hurt, "the scout" dispatched by his patrons, Bush and Beamis, to find out everything Billy Joe Lord remembered about Oswald, after Hurt married the niece (see article image below) of FreePort Sulphur's Langbourne Williams. Williams was the nephew of Beamis's grandmother.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9963#relPageId=270


Michael, you're intelligent with a penchant for detail. We actually agree on most things but your political orientation introduces a blind spot in your entire approach.

From Billy Joe Lord's 1977 letter to newly swqorn-in President Jimmy Carter,
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,1439.msg38753.html#msg38753
Dec. 6 specially decorated Bush '41 Train engine, was Billy Joe Lord on board?
...




The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global ...books.google.com › books
Jeffrey A. Engel · 2011
FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 311
The Making of a Global President Jeffrey A. Engel. I brought home a picture for Bar from ... Bemis, Lias and Devine had a meeting regarding my political future—very thoughtful of them.5 All I know now is to do the best job one can here.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9963#relPageId=270

[Martin Weidmann]

How about a dose of reality in this thread? I discuss the myriad of problems with the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting in my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?"

Have you considered the fact that Marina confirmed to the WC that Oswald arrived in Irving on 11/21/63 in his gray jacket;

Mr. RANKIN. Do you recall any of these clothes that your husband was wearing when he came home Thursday night, November 21, 1963?
Mrs. OSWALD. On Thursday I think he wore this shirt.
Mr. RANKIN. Is that Exhibit 150?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you remember anything else he was wearing at that time?
Mrs. OSWALD. It seems he had that jacket, also.
Mr. RANKIN. Exhibit 162?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.

If Marina's recollection is correct, how in the world could the gray jacket have ended up at the roominghouse the next day for Oswald to put it on?

[John Mytton]

Have you considered the fact that Marina confirmed to the WC that Oswald arrived in Irving on 11/21/63 in his gray jacket;

Mr. RANKIN. Do you recall any of these clothes that your husband was wearing when he came home Thursday night, November 21, 1963?
Mrs. OSWALD. On Thursday I think he wore this shirt.
Mr. RANKIN. Is that Exhibit 150?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you remember anything else he was wearing at that time?
Mrs. OSWALD. It seems he had that jacket, also.
Mr. RANKIN. Exhibit 162?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.

If Marina's recollection is correct, how in the world could the gray jacket have ended up at the roominghouse the next day for Oswald to put it on?

"seems" LOL

JohnM