What to make of this mysterious Oswald encounter?

[Fred Litwin]

The book is here:

https://archive.org/details/manongrassyknoll00crai/mode/2up?q=%22The+Man+on+the+Grassy+Knoll%22

[Lance Payette]

The book is here:

https://archive.org/details/manongrassyknoll00crai/mode/2up?q=%22The+Man+on+the+Grassy+Knoll%22

That's where I said I had found a few pages. I don't believe the whole book is available there, but maybe it is. Another member alerted me that it can be downloaded for free with a free 30-day trial subscription to SCRIBD, which is how I got the whole book.

https://www.scribd.com/document/335412837/The-Man-on-the-Grassy-Knoll

[Michael T. Griffith]

<<< The account attributed to the Gerharts is that, on September 25, 1963 two tired men who gave the names Lee and Charles appeared at their church. They said they had traveled from New Orleans and were on their way to Mexico. They were supposed to meet a contact named “Carlos” at a bus stop down the street but he had failed to show.

The Gerharts invited them in and fed them. Lee used the phone and said he had reached Carlos. The Gerharts watched from a window as the men made their rendezvous at the bus stop. They recognized “Carlos” as Charles Frederick Rogers, with whom they were familiar because his mother attended their church.

After the JFKA, they recognized Lee as Oswald. Elmer called the Houston office of the FBI, which showed little interest. He called again a short time later and was told his report had been sent to the Dallas office. Hearing nothing further, he confided in a friend who was a retired CIA guy. The guy told Elmer he had done his civic duty and should back off. >>>

The main question that comes to my mind is, Is there documentation that Elmer Gerhart did in fact call the FBI and report he had seen Oswald with Rogers? If so, this would lend some credence to his story.

I am skeptical of the Gerharts' story, but I would be inclined to give it a closer look if there were proof that Elmer Gerhart called the FBI and reported seeing Oswald with Rogers.

[Lance Payette]

Since I’ve now read the book, I’ll close out this exercise with my final verdict. I believe the Gerharts’ supposed encounter with Oswald (and Harrelson) has proved to be yet another factoid ripe for the busting.

As you can tell from my original post, I started with open-minded enthusiasm that this might be the real deal. I was reading the account of the famed Icebox Murders at the Texas True Crime blog and had no idea I was going to be sucked back into the JFKA follies.

My only interest was and is the Gerharts’ encounter. The conspiracy theory set forth in the book is the standard CIA/Mafia/anti-Castro scenario with the added twist of the Three Tramps being Charles Frederick Rogers (the probable Icebox Murderer), Charles Harrelson and Chauncey Holt.

I now believe that the authors, James R. Craig and Phillip A. Rogers, simply took Harrelson’s claims and especially Holt’s claims and weaved them together with the Icebox Murders and the truly mysterious, Ferrie-like Charles Frederick Rogers and said, “Voila, a JFKA conspiracy theory! It coulda happened this way!”

The book is fascinating and impressive even if it’s 98% speculative fiction. I encourage you to read it. Alas, there is not one citation or footnote. The Acknowledgements give no clue as to the authors’ sources for their fantastic claims.

I’m perplexed as to the authors’ motives. They claim the book is “true” and clearly intended for it to be taken seriously – yet how could they have expected it to be taken seriously when we have no clue where it all came from? Yes, Chauncey Holt for sure, and the Houston Police investigation of the Icebox Murders for sure, but the sources of the Gerhart stuff and much else are a complete mystery.

I traced all the Acknowledgments as best I could and came up completely empty. I researched the Gerharts as best I could and came up close to empty. Rev. Elmer Gerhart had been previously married to Bessie, but she died of illness in 1944. He married Marietta less than a year later. He and Bessie had three children, two of whom were still alive when the book was published (one until 2008) – but they are not cited in the Acknowledgments and surely could not have known all that the authors reveal. Elmer and Marietta had no children, so there is no likely source there. The authors say that Marietta revealed the Oswald encounter to “close friends” before she died in 1990, but those friends are not acknowledged or even hinted at and surely could not have had the astonishing level of knowledge the authors reveal.

I could find no contact information for either author, but I’d love to know their source for the Gerhart stuff.

At least according to Google and the standard genealogical sites, Rev. Elmer and Marietta were extremely obscure. I found only the basics, yet the book has more about them than I could tell you about my own family: Elmer’s first marriage, his ministerial career ups and downs beginning in the 1920’s, his meeting with and marriage to Marietta, his breakup with his former ministerial partners, his founding of his own Lord’s Church at 1616 Indiana Street in Houston in 1948, the couples’ sterling reputation in the community for aiding those in need, and even a fair amount about Marietta’s background. Who on earth was the source for all this – which, as far as I can tell after diligent inquiry, is entirely accurate.

Get this: The Gerhart tale begins in 1943 when Elmer is on a solo vacation in Acapulco. A chance restaurant encounter leads to a life-long friendship with “Charles Froelich” a/k/a “the Dutchman,” who is a high-level covert agent for the X-2 counterespionage branch of the OSS and who later reveals to Elmer that he has reluctantly had to assassinate a number of victims. The authors say that “Carl” is long dead, so how could they possibly know any of this – which happens to be pretty critical to the rest of the book? (Elmer, of course, knew “Carl’s” real name, but he and Marietta apparently took it to their graves. Ho-kay …)

In the late 1950s, the authors say, Charles Frederick Rogers applied successfully to be a CIA covert agent. Two CIA types visit the Gerharts as part of the background check, and Elmer guesses who they are. Right then and there, he calls “Carl” in Pennsylvania and asks him to grease the wheels of Charles’ application – which “Carl” does. How could the authors possibly know this?

After the JFKA and Rev. Elmer’s two unsuccessful attempts to interest the FBI in his and Marietta’s encounter with Oswald and Harrelson, Elmer again turns to “Carl.” “Carl,” now retired, does some checking with his CIA-type sources and sternly warns the Gerharts that they have done their civic duty, are in grave danger and should back off, even to the extent of taking a long vacation. Again, the authors know this how?

The Oswald-Harrelson-Rogers encounter itself is set forth in extensive, highly imaginative and clearly speculative detail. The interaction with Oswald and Harrelson goes on for pages. Did Markietta really blab her head off in anything like this level of detail to her “close friends,” and did those unnamed friends really recall it in this level of detail to the authors?

Just focusing on the encounters, there are a number of red flags that eventually caused me to morph from mild enthusiast to snarling Factoid Buster:

1. First is the conspiracy itself. The CIA/Mafia/anti-Castro wing of Conspiracy World is the one in which I have the greatest difficulty fitting the real Oswald. I have great difficulty picturing Oswald hobnobbing with Harrelson and willingly turning over his passport to the truly bizarre Rogers. It just doesn’t ring true to me.

2. The location and circumstances are somewhat unlikely. After their visit with the Gerharts, Oswald and Harrelson don’t simply leave and meet Rogers (a/k/a “Carlos”) at the bus stop where they were originally supposed to meet him, apparently a mile or two away. No, they meet him under a streetlight just down the street, and Rogers obligingly turns his head into the light so the Gerharts can recognize him. (His mother Edwina had sometimes taken him to the church, so that’s how the recognition angle is covered.)

3. After the JFKA, the Gerharts are torn as to whether they should tell Edwina about their encounter with Oswald and Harrelson. It seems that they intended to, but … before they do so, Edwina confides in them that Charles had been receiving mysterious late-night calls from someone named “Lee” and she fears he is involved in something BIG (like the JFKA!). The Gerharts decide to remain silent and not add to Edwina’s anguish. Convenient, eh?

4. Despite Elmer supposedly calling the Houston FBI office twice and being told that his report has been forwarded to Dallas, there is no record of this. The authors do not address this or even indicate they made any inquiry.

5. Here’s a biggie: After Edwina and her husband Fred are brutally butchered, almost certainly by Charles, the Houston Police contact the Gerharts as a routine part of their investigation. The Gerharts are again torn. If they reveal what Edwina told them about the calls from “Lee” and her suspicions about the JFKA, this would violate the pastoral privilege (not with Edwina dead, folks), so they say nothing. But what about their own encounter and observation? They say nothing about this either, both because “Carl” has sternly warned them and because they fear Harrelson is on their trail. Ergo, there is conveniently no Houston Police record of the Gerharts having said anything about this either.

Hence, your intrepid Factoid Buster is devoid of all previous enthusiasm and must chalk this up to just another factoid.

And yet … and yet … the Gerharts were real people, the authors know a hell of a lot about them, and the tale of the encounter with Oswald came from SOMEWHERE. Where the hell did it come from? I have no clue, but my strong suspicion is that whatever actually happened with the Gerharts, whatever Marietta actually said to close friends, and whatever the authors’ source actually told them, the encounter did not involve Oswald.

The parallels with umpteen “Roswell UFO crash” tales that have gone poof are absolutely fascinating. I should’ve learned my lesson years ago.

Well, that’s all I’ve got to say about that. Thank you for your kind attention, those of you who have paid any attention. You may now return to your intense speculation about mystery getaway cars, whether the first shot occurred at Z014, whether Rosemary Willis was actually sitting on Howard Brennan’s lap, and all the other minutiae that strikes me as absurd but seems to fascinate you folks.

[Fred Litwin]

Lance: There are no documents in the Mary ferrell collection that mention either of the Gerharts.

fred