The Lone-Gunman Theory: An Extremely Fragile House of Cards

[Michael T. Griffith]

Here is a fourth set of examples:

-- The problem of Oswald’s documented presence in the Depository’s second-floor lunchroom, with or without a Coke, within 90 seconds after the shooting is compounded by accounts that someone was in the sixth-floor window long after Oswald could not have been there.

Lillian Mooneyham, a clerk of the 95th District Court, watched the motorcade from windows in the Dallas Criminal Courts Building. She told the FBI that about four to five minutes after the shooting, “she looked up towards the sixth floor of the TSBD and observed the figure of a man standing in the 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.”

Obviously, this man could not have been Oswald, and no policeman was in the sniper’s nest until at least 30 minutes later.

If Lillian Mooneyham wasn’t seeing things or wildly mistaken about when she saw the man in the sixth-floor window, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

The HSCA Photographic Evidence Panel (PEP) confirmed from the Dillard and Powell photos that boxes were being rearranged in the sixth-floor window “within two minutes after the last shot was fired” (6 HSCA 109-115; 4 HSCA 422-423). This is key photographic evidence that someone other than Oswald was in the sixth-floor window within two minutes after the shooting.

The few WC apologists who have addressed this crucial HSCA finding have floated the amateurish argument that the apparent movement of boxes is an optical illusion caused by a difference in perspective and sunlight in the two photos, specifically, that because the line of sight and sunlight are different in the photos, we are seeing different boxes in one photo than are visible in the other photo. However, the HSCA photographic experts specifically considered this explanation and rejected it (4 HSCA 422-423).

The most detailed analysis of the HSCA PEP’s historic finding on the post-assassination movement of boxes in the sniper’s nest is Barry Krusch’s 55-page analysis in his book Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald, Volume 3, pp. 25-70. Krusch shows beyond any doubt that the HSCA PEP experts were correct. He also shows that WC counsel David Belin recognized that the boxes in CE 482 (the Dillard photo) were not in the same position as the boxes in the police evidence photo of the sniper’s nest taken after 1:12 PM (CE 715).

-- If all the experts, including the HSCA PEP experts, who’ve concluded that the Zapruder film shows JFK reacting to a wound starting at right around Z200 and that this shot was fired at around Z186-190, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

Anyone who knows the basics of the JFK case knows that a gunman in the sixth-floor window would have had his view of JFK obstructed from Z166-207 by the intervening oak tree on the north side of Elm Street. This is one reason that the fiercest debate among the HSCA PEP members was over the conclusion that a shot was fired at Z186-190, but a solid majority of the PEP experts supported the finding, to their great credit.

Another indication that JFK was hit at around Z190 and began to react at around Z200 is that Jackie Kennedy, starting at about Z202, clearly notices that something is wrong with JFK. By Z202-204, Jackie has made a sudden sharp turn to the right, toward
her husband. When she reemerges into view at Z223, she is looking intently at
JFK. Obviously, her attention was drawn to him because the reaction that
he had begun at around Z200 had become more noticeable while the car was
behind the freeway sign.

Also, the HSCA PEP experts noted that a strong blur episode begins at around Z189.

Some Oswald-was-the-shooter researchers, recognizing the validity of the Z186-190 shot and JFK’s Z200-207 reaction to it, have suggested that the sixth-floor gunman fired this shot at Z186, during the split-second break in the oak tree's foliage. However, the gunman would have had only 1/18th of a second to aim and fire this shot, but the human eye requires 1/6th of a second to register and react to data. Even the WC admitted it was unlikely the alleged single assassin would have fired during the 56-millisecond break in the foliage at Z186.

For more information on the Z186-190 shot, see “Reactions to Six Shots in the Zapruder Film,” https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nnp3Vch_KMOB_qufAhlQOCLTTS9jqNV0/view.

See also Don Olson and Ralph Turner, “Photographic Evidence and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” Journal of Forensic Sciences, 16:4, October 1971, pp. 399-419, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/J%20Disk/Journal%20of%20Forensic%20Science/Item%2001.pdf

BTW, all three volumes of Barry Krusch's book Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald are available online in PDF format. He has combined all three volumes into a single PDF file online. In the PDF version, his analysis of the HSCA PEP's conclusion that boxes were rearranged within two minutes after the shooting is on pp. 657-690. Here's the link:

https://krusch.com/books/Impossible_Case_Against_Lee_Harvey_Oswald.pdf

[Tom Graves]

[...]

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Is this a full-time job for you, or just part-time?

-- Tom