Question for Martin W.:
From your own personal point-of-view (i.e., as a person who has great doubts about the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald) .... do you think it's possible to come up with a "reasonable and sensible" scenario that explains every piece of evidence in the JFK and Tippit cases WITHOUT having to resort to any of the things I mentioned in my last post?
Those things being: Fantasy, wild speculation, and tons of planted evidence and coerced witnesses.
Good luck in your efforts. For I don't think it's even remotely possible to accomplish that task.
as a person who has great doubts about the guilt of Lee Harvey OswaldI have no definitive opinion about Oswald's guilt or innocence. In fact I couldn't care less either way. The man has been dead for 60+ years and nothing we do or say will bring him back to life. If you show me the evidence (not assumptions and speculations) that clearly shows his guilt, I will have no problem accepting that guilt, but so long that evidence is not presented he gets the benefit of the doubt.
do you think it's possible to come up with a "reasonable and sensible" scenario that explains every piece of evidence in the JFK and Tippit cases WITHOUT having to resort to any of the things I mentioned in my last post? If you have to use massive amounts of assumptions to connect the dots, it can never result in a "reasonable and sensible" scenario.
The thing is that I am not trying to come up with a scenario. On my side there is no wild speculation, tons of planted evidence and coerced witnesses.
I try to look at the evidence objectively and try to make sense of it.
Take the paper bag issue. Yes, there is a heavy duty paper bag with a partial print of Oswald on it. That bag must have been made at the TSBD but Troy Eugene West, who stated that he just about constantly (I'm paraphrazing) stayed where his work was (i.e. at the wrapping table), was absolutely clear about the fact that he had never seen Oswald anywhere near the wrapping machine area. Buell Frazier was asked it Oswald carried any package with him during the trip to Irving and his answer was: No.
Obviously Frazier could have been wrong and simply not have seen a folded up bag, and somebody must have made the heavy duty bag, but it would be a mere assumption that it was Oswald. There is no evidence that shows that the heavy duty bag ever left the TSBD and a bag made at the TSBD and found at the TSBD at a location where Oswald worked provides very little evidence of anything.
Then we turn to Frazier, who saw the package Oswald was carrying and describes it as a crickly brown paper sack. He also says that Oswald carried it in the cup of his hand and under his armpit. And while being given a polygraph he is shown the heavy duty bag, without more than likely being aware of or understanding it's significance, and he instantly denies it is the bag he saw. Lt Day clearly believes him, because he starts to theorize about the possibility that Oswald concealed the rifle in the heavy duty bag which he then concealed in the flimsy paper sack Frazier had described. After talking to Detective Lewis, FBI agent Vincent Drain concluded that he heavy paper bag was not a gun case.
So, let's look at the bag it self. It was allegedly found folded up in the corner of the sniper's nest, but there is no in situ photograph to prove that. Even worse, several officers claim to have found the bag, but, as far as I know, it was never determined who actually found it. Yet another example of a piece of evidence that has no governance. Nevertheless, the officers speculated from the first moment that this must be the bag that was used to bring the rifle into the building. Never mind that the interior of the bag shows no scars or markings that one would expect to be there if a broken down rifle was concealed and transported in that bag. And it gets worse. They say a partial print of Oswald's cup of his right hand was found on the bag. If so, it is a bag that was made and found in the TSBD at a location where Oswald worked. What is missing from the bag are prints that would reasonably be expected to be left when the bag was folded up after the rifle allegedly was removed unfolded and when the bag was unfolded by some officer. Not to mention when the bag was lifted from the back seat of Frazier's car. No such prints were found. There was only a partial print of Oswald and perhaps one a finger, and that strikes nobody as at least strange? Especially John Corbett makes a big deal of fibers found in the bag that - according to him - matched the blanket that the rifle was stored in. There are a multitude of problems with that claim. First of all, when Montgomery carried the bag out of the TSBD he did so holding the opening of the bag at the bottom, which makes it possible or perhaps even likely that whatever was in the bag (if anything) would have fallen out. Secondly, there are at least three evidence photos showing the blanket and the bag lying next to each other allowing for a strong possibility of cross contamination, destroying any probative value the fiber evidence could have had.
That's what the evidence actually tells us, so in comes the WC and the LNs. The WC deals with it by simply ignoring it and concluding, without a shred of evidence, that Frazier was mistaken and Oswald did carry the heavy duty bag found at the TSBD. The LNs go even further. They claim that Frazier was wrong about they way Oswald carried the bag and the description of the bag. They say that the flimsy paper sack was never found, but they can't even prove that there was ever a search for it. Apart from that, Oswald brought the bag into the TSBD at 8:00 AM and Kennedy was shot at 12:30 PM. That gave him 4,5 hours to dispose of the bag, if that's what he did.
I personally believe, but I can't prove it (words you seldom see a LN write), that the bag was noting more than a prop. So, it's absolutely possible that Oswald at some point quickly left the TSBD and dumped the package in a dumpster. Alternative, it could be that the package contained something that he had agreed to bring with him for some unknown third party to whom he gave the package to. The latter scenario obviously implies the involvement of at least one other person, but as I said, there is no evidence for it.
Nowhere in what I have written there is "fantasy, tons of planted evidence and coerced witnesses" and where there is speculation I call it exactly that.
I'm not a great believer in planted evidence theories, but manipulated and misrepresented evidence is Henry Wade's days can most certainly not be ruled out.
Having said that, here's my question for you, David. Based on all the factual information given above, how do you get to concluding that the heavy duty bag was nevertheless the bag Oswald carried?
