JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate > JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate
There seems to be a problem with Officer Baker's testimony.
Lance Payette:
Mark Tyler favored me with the following response and kindly authorized me to post it. I continue to be impressed by someone who does work of this quality and yet remains refreshingly non-dogmatic about the JFKA.
I would never rule out any errors being made in the animation, so I'm always happy to fix any issues that people discover.
Having said that, I'm fairly confident that the animation is correct regarding the movements and timings of Officer Baker. We see Baker running towards the TSBD in the Couch and Darnell films, so this helps pinpoint him at that stage. As Couch panned down Elm Street towards events, he catches several things that overlap with other film evidence, such as cameraman David Wiegman running down the knoll and Hargis running back to his bike.
Helpfully these events were filmed by Mark Bell from another angle, which crucially had overlapping film of Charles Hester jumping up to get shelter in the pergola, which we see at the end of the Wiegman film. As that Bell film segment ends, we see Wiegman start to get up from being on the ground after he stops filming that segment. Then presumably a few seconds later he starts running down the hill, which is what we see in the Couch film. While this isn't a perfect overlap, I think it's likely that Wiegman immediately ran down the knoll, and didn't just stand there for 30+ seconds.
As you may know the Wiegman film ran continuously for about 25 seconds, starting just after shot 1 and before shot 2 (he started filming after he first heard the shots). All of this evidence combined pegs the position of Baker running to the TSBD about 25 seconds after the Z313 frame. It's possible that there are minor errors here and there in my calculations, but this will amount to a second or two at most during that time sequence, not the long gap that the forum thread suggests.
There's a lot of evidence to juggle here, so I hope I have covered the reasoning well enough. Some of these items are visible in the animation in the form of yellow flashes to mark where the film evidence matches what the animation shows.
I think the main problem in the forum thread is that they are referencing unreliable witness testimony rather than concrete evidence like the films. Thanks to all of the overlapping films it is possible to recreate much of what happened, which is what the animation is all about.
Sadly the films can't explain everything, such as when the shooting started and finished, but it many cases it can be used to debunk theories and witness testimony such as in this case.
Charles Collins:
--- Quote from: Lance Payette on September 07, 2025, 06:29:44 PM ---Mark Tyler favored me with the following response and kindly authorized me to post it. I continue to be impressed by someone who does work of this quality and yet remains refreshingly non-dogmatic about the JFKA.
I would never rule out any errors being made in the animation, so I'm always happy to fix any issues that people discover.
Having said that, I'm fairly confident that the animation is correct regarding the movements and timings of Officer Baker. We see Baker running towards the TSBD in the Couch and Darnell films, so this helps pinpoint him at that stage. As Couch panned down Elm Street towards events, he catches several things that overlap with other film evidence, such as cameraman David Wiegman running down the knoll and Hargis running back to his bike.
Helpfully these events were filmed by Mark Bell from another angle, which crucially had overlapping film of Charles Hester jumping up to get shelter in the pergola, which we see at the end of the Wiegman film. As that Bell film segment ends, we see Wiegman start to get up from being on the ground after he stops filming that segment. Then presumably a few seconds later he starts running down the hill, which is what we see in the Couch film. While this isn't a perfect overlap, I think it's likely that Wiegman immediately ran down the knoll, and didn't just stand there for 30+ seconds.
As you may know the Wiegman film ran continuously for about 25 seconds, starting just after shot 1 and before shot 2 (he started filming after he first heard the shots). All of this evidence combined pegs the position of Baker running to the TSBD about 25 seconds after the Z313 frame. It's possible that there are minor errors here and there in my calculations, but this will amount to a second or two at most during that time sequence, not the long gap that the forum thread suggests.
There's a lot of evidence to juggle here, so I hope I have covered the reasoning well enough. Some of these items are visible in the animation in the form of yellow flashes to mark where the film evidence matches what the animation shows.
I think the main problem in the forum thread is that they are referencing unreliable witness testimony rather than concrete evidence like the films. Thanks to all of the overlapping films it is possible to recreate much of what happened, which is what the animation is all about.
Sadly the films can't explain everything, such as when the shooting started and finished, but it many cases it can be used to debunk theories and witness testimony such as in this case.
--- End quote ---
Thanks Lance and Mark. This demonstrates quite clearly the potential errors that might be made when relying upon witness testimony that is not corroborated by more reliable evidence such as the photographic record.
Royell Storing:
".......CONCRETE Evidence like the FILMS.". With a credibility scale such as this, why would any JFK Assassination govt body even question a single JFK Assassination eyewitness? Or believe a single JFK Assassination eyewitness? This is blatant "prejudice".
Dan O'meara:
--- Quote from: Tom Graves on September 03, 2025, 10:44:44 PM ---(Title changed from "How long did it take Officer Baker to reach the TSBD's front steps after the 3rd shot?" to "There seems to be a problem with Officer Baker's testimony.")
According to Mark Tyler's synchronized map of the motorcade, after the 3rd shot it took DPD officer Marion Baker 15 seconds to park his motorcycle.
Baker testified to the Warren Commission that after he parked his motorcycle, he heard over its radio Chief Curry say "send all available men to the railway yard (or words to that effect) and started running towards the TSBD front steps at that time.
Curry spoke that "railway yard" order twice -- the first time was 65 seconds after the 3rd shot, and the second time 15 seconds after that (because the dispatcher didn't fully understand the first transmission).
According to Mark Tyler's graphics alone:
12:30:00 -- The Z-313 fatal head shot occurs
12:30:15 -- Baker parks his motorcycle
12:30:20 -- Baker starts running towards the front steps
12:30:25 -- Baker arrives at the TSBD front door.
However,
According to a combination of Baker's WC testimony, the audio of the DPD radio transmissions as synced to the timing of the fatal head shot by Tyler, and Tyler's graphics as they pertain only to the 1) 12:30:00 fatal head shot, and 2) the 12:30:15 parking of Baker's motorcycle:
12:30:00 -- Fatal head shot
12:30:15 -- Baker parks his motorcycle
12:30:35 -- Curry transmits "get men up on the overpass"
12:31:05 -- Curry transmits "get men to the railway yard" and Baker, per his WC testimony, starts running towards the steps at this point (or perhaps 15 seconds later -- see below)
12:31:20 -- Curry re-transmits "get men to the railway yard," and Baker, possibly like the dispatcher now able to understand what Curry had said 15 seconds earlier, now starts running towards the steps.
. . . . . . .
If Baker started running towards the front steps 65 seconds after the 3rd shot, big/tall, black blouse and black headscarf-wearing Gloria Calvery and her dressed-all-in-white colleague (Karan Hicks or Carol Reed), who were standing about 90 feet down Elm Street from the front steps during the motorcade, had plenty of time to walk or run to the TSBD and be on the steps in time for Calvery to tell Lovelady and Shelley, about ten seconds before Baker arrived there, that JFK had been shot. (I say ten seconds because in Couch-Darnell we can see Lovelady and Shelley almost as far as the "Huge Gates" on the side of the building as they are (apparently) on their way to the railway yard / parking lot for a quick look-see, after which they returned to the TSBD and entered it through a rear door.
In this scenario, it's possible that Officer Baker didn't enter the TSBD until at least 70 seconds after the 3rd shot. Ergo Truly (who can be seen in the Darnell clip standing in front of the TSBD and watching Baker run past him), followed by Baker, may not have reached the 2nd-floor until at about a minute-and-a-half after the 3rd shot, thereby giving Oswald plenty of time to reach the lunch room on that floor before they got there.
If Vicki Adams and Sandra Styles lingered at the window, watching all the commotion going on below, and then talked with Mrs. Gardner for a grand total of about a minute and twenty seconds before starting down, Oswald, Truly and Baker may have been out of sight inside the lunchroom's "vestibule" when they were quickly traversing the corner of that floor on their way downstairs.
https://www.marktyler.org/mc63.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawK4zONleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFFODdsRHVIa2RSUGZJNllFAR6Zx-0JB5zBmwy-qakJKtfLfY5vcW9V2IqOrNXjP-oezkHhb-av38NlRUa-uA_aem_2d95NRPz2dpt6k_03l7iYg
Caveat:
Even if Baker conflated Curry's 12:30:35 "up on the overpass" with his 12:30:05 "to the railway yard?" transmission in his WC testimony as to when he started running towards the TSBD, it still doesn't jibe with what we see happening (e.g., Baker's running's juxtaposed with motorcade cars' and motorcycles actions) in the Couch-Darnell clip.
--- End quote ---
"Baker testified to the Warren Commission that after he parked his motorcycle, he heard over its radio Chief Curry say "send all available men to the railway yard (or words to that effect) and started running towards the TSBD front steps at that time.
Curry spoke that "railway yard" order twice -- the first time was 65 seconds after the 3rd shot, and the second time 15 seconds after that (because the dispatcher didn't fully understand the first transmission)."
Baker didn't mention the "railway yard".
Why don't you just look at his testimony and quote that?
Mr. BAKER - And then I ran, kind of running walk, went all the way around. First I glanced over this side here, because the last thing I heard here on the radio was the chief saying, “Get some men up on that railroad track.”
Mr. BELIN. Did you hear that on your police radio?
Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir ; that was the last thing I heard.
Mr. BELIN. As you were getting off your motorcycle?
Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir.
Mr. BELIN. All right.
"...up on that railroad track."
Baker is surely paraphrasing Curry's radio transmission to get someone "on top of that triple underpass".
However, there still exists a contradiction between Baker's testimony and Mark's animation.
In the animation, Curry makes this transmission around 35 - 40 seconds after the head shot. In the animation Baker is in the TSBD building by this point.
As Mark points out, Baker's movements are embedded in a matrix of interlocking film/photographic information so I can see only two explanations for this discrepancy:
1] Baker was wrong
2] The radio transmissions are out of synch with the animation
Tim Nickerson:
--- Quote from: Dan O'meara on September 07, 2025, 10:07:42 AM ---"My guess is Adams dramatized her testimony, in talking with Mark Lane and others."
There's actually no need to guess as there is photographic evidence supporting Adams' consistent claim that she raced away from the window she was looking out of, within seconds of the shooting. The crop of pic below was taken by Tom Dillard between 10 and 20 seconds after the shooting (Tyler has it at 11 seconds after the headshot). It shows two sets of windows. The right hand set, as we look at the picture, has an open window. It was through this window that Adams watched the motorcade. She must have been quite close to the window as she reported seeing Clint Hill running towards the limo and the limo speeding off towards the underpass, and this would have required her to look away to her right. She states that she decided to race outside before the limo had even reached the underpass.
We can see that the window in question is empty.
There is no-one there a few seconds after the shooting. This is incredibly strong evidence supporting Adams' claims about racing off immediately. Another point is the Stroud document. In its essence it has Adams and Styles heading down the back stairs before Truly and Baker head up. In a scenario where Adams is hanging around on the 4th floor this cannot happen. The only scenario in which Adams and Styles can head down the stairs before Truly and Baker come up them, and for neither party to interact with the other, is for Adams and Styles to hit the stairs running seconds after the shots, for them to be running all the way down and out of the loading dock door in the north of the building before Truly and Baker get to the back of the first floor.
I believe that is what happened as it fits the majority of known evidence about this aspect of the case.
IMO the most interesting part of this is Adams hitting the first floor approximately 60 seconds after the shooting and seeing Lovelady and Shelley there. This is something Adams told the DPD, the Warren Commission and Mark Lane.
Adams is an excellent witness, an intelligent woman of truly impeccable character. It's time JFKA researchers started to take her seriously.
--- End quote ---
Adams was not a good witness. Nor was she an impeccable character. If one believes Barry Ernest, she was a flawed character. She denied that she said in her WC deposition that she encountered Billy Lovelady and Bill Shelley on the first floor. She said that the transcript of her deposition had been altered by adding the encounter to it. The encounter was twice mentioned by her in her deposition. She claimed that Det. Leavelle lied in his report on his interview of her. She denied telling him that she saw Lovelady and Shelley on the first floor. She also said that he showed up at her private residence at night unannounced and lied to her about there being a fire at the station that destroyed her earlier statements.
Sandra Styles was adamant that they had stayed at the window on the fourth floor for no less than a minute after the shooting. In her interview with Sean Murphy, she was holding back on Adams. She was being kind.
Lovelady and Shelley made a trek westward to the railway tracks after the shooting, They never entered the building until several minutes after the shooting.
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