Why do so many people overthink the JFKA?

[John Corbett]

In my experience, many JFK CTers view the evidence against Oswald in a vacuum.  Each individual piece of evidence is addressed without regard to other evidence and circumstances.  Oswald's bag is a great example.  Frazier confirms Oswald carried a long bag that morning.  He indicates that Oswald told him it contained curtain rods.  Frazier asked Oswald about his lunch and was told he didn't bring it that day.  A long bag was found in the TSBD that had Oswald's prints on it.   No other such bag matching Frazier's description was ever found or accounted for in any way.  Oswald denied that he carried any bag such as Frazier described when he claimed he took only his lunch.  He denied carrying any curtain rods.  Entirely contrary to what Frazier described including Oswald confirming to him that he did not have his lunch and instead having curtain rods.  But because Frazier's estimate of the length of the bag is off by several inches, they ignore the totality of these circumstances to conclude that the 6th floor bag is not the same one Oswald carried to work.  What happened to the bag they believe he carried as described by Frazier is never addressed.  Why Oswald lied to Frazier about his lunch and the curtain rods is not addressed.  And so forth.  Repeat endlessly.

I have made a similar point numerous times over the years. No single piece of evidence, by itself, proves Oswald's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. For any given piece of evidence there is a probable explanation and one or more less likely explanation that are theoretically possible. The problem for the Oswald defenders, the probable explanation always points to Oswald. Yes, he was the owner of the murder weapon but theoretically, somebody else could have gotten possession of the weapon by hook or by crook, and used it to kill JFK. But the fibers on the butt plate of the rifle seem to refute that possibility. Again, the probable explanation is that Oswald was the shooter. The far less likely explanation is the person who got possession of Oswald's rifle was wearing the same kind of shirt as Oswald when he fired the shots. The odds of that are extremely remote if it happened by coincidence. If it was deliberate by the conspirators, how did they know which shirt Oswald was going to wear to work that day. Or maybe they had a whole closetful of duplicate Oswald shirts and just picked out the one they saw Oswald wearing that morning. Does anyone think that is even plausible. There are dozens of such pieces of evidence which are probative of Oswald's guilt. It strains credulity to think the least likely explanation is the correct one for each of those dozens of pieces of evidence.

For sake of argument, let's say each piece of evidence is only 75% probative of Oswald's guilt. I happen to think it is significantly higher for most of the evidence, but just for his exercise let's go with the 75% value. If one were to cut a deck of playing cards, there is a 75% chance one would not cut to a spade. That means there is a 1 in 4 chance one would cut to a spade. If one cuts the cards twice, there is only a 1 in 16 chance of cutting to a spade on both cuts. If one cuts the cards three times, there is only a 1 in 64 chance of cutting to a spade on all three. Each successive cut of the cards multiplies the chances against cutting to a spade every time by a factor of 4. The odds of cutting to a spade on 10 successive cuts would become astronomical. To believe we could have so many pieces of evidence where the likeliest explanation is Oswald was guilty is not remotely possible if he were actually innocent.

This is why CTs always attack the evidence piecemeal. They can offer a plausible argument for Oswald's innocence by looking at any one piece, but there is no plausible argument for his innocence if one looks at the body of evidence as a whole. Each piece of evidence strengthens every other piece of evidence to the point where there is no possibility of Oswald's innocence. If one takes a single pencil, it's very easy to break it with your bare hands. Put 12 pencils together it becomes very dffiicult to break them. This is why CTs will never try to break more than one pencil at a time.

[Lance Payette]

What the CT community needs is one piece of irrefutable evidence that is central to the LN narrative and is flatly inconsistent with it. It would have to be either (1) something that shows to a certainty that what the LN narrative says took place in Dealey Plaza is incorrect, or (2) shows to a certainty that Dealey Plaza is not the whole story. The CT community has largely shot itself in the foot (feet?) by (1) proposing so many diametrically oppsed alternative scenarios for what took place in Dealey Plaza that it's almost comical, (2) hypothesizing so many diverse conspirators that it's likewise almost comical. To even get the attention of serious historians with anything short of irrefutable evidence, there would have to have been a single plausible theory involving plausible conspirators that cast really serious doubt on the critical elements of the LN narrative insofar as Dealey Plaza is concerned. Instead, we have a hopeless mishmash of mostly raw speculation - and the increasingly preferred theory of an elaborate, multi-faceted conspiracy flowing from the highest levels of government and an elaborate, multi-faceted coverup is one of the most ludicrous and inherently unbelievable of all. And on it goes ...

[John Corbett]

What the CT community needs is one piece of irrefutable evidence that is central to the LN narrative and is flatly inconsistent with it.

Yup. And in 62 years of trying, the CT community has failed to bag that snipe. It makes me wonder why they keep trying.

I was going to compare it to their hunt for the white whale but then I remembered Ahab did find his white whale.

[Jarrett Smith]

I believe 100% it was a mob hit, and yes Oswald was involved and killed Tippit. The problem with most CT's they believe Oswald was setup and 100% innocent. They are dead wrong.

[Lance Payette]

I believe 100% it was a mob hit, and yes Oswald was involved and killed Tippit. The problem with most CT's they believe Oswald was setup and 100% innocent. They are dead wrong.

That is definitely a source of confusion, with the CT community comprising those who think (1) Oswald was a totally innocent patsy; (2) Oswald was involved but not a gunman; (3) Oswald was a lone gunman but part of a conspiracy; and (4) Oswald was one of two or more gunmen. What they each do with the evidence and try to prove is completely different - hence my term "hopeless mishmash."

[Michael T. Griffith]

Any straight forward examination of the available evidence in the JFKA yields only one plausible explanation and that is the one the WC reached almost 62 years ago. While we have discovered somethings that have cleared up questions the WC was unable to resolve, their basic conclusion remains sound with no revisions necessary. Oswald did it and there is no evidence he had even a single accomplice..

It was Oswald's rifle found on the sixth floor. It had his palmprint on the underside of the barrel which could only have been put there with the rifle disassembled which it would have to have been in order to fit inside the bag found next to the sniper's nest. Oswald's palmprint was also on the bottom of the bag. Fibers matching the blanket he used to store the rifle were found in the bag and fibers matching the shirt he was wearing that day were found on the butt plate of the rifle. The rifle was positively matched to the shells found by the window where several people saw a shooter. The rifle was also positively matched to the only two recovered bullets. Oswald's fingerprints were found on top of the boxes that had been stacked by the window in question oriented just as they would be if Oswald was kneeling at those boxes looking down Elm St. Every qualified medical examiner who has reviewed the autopsy materials has agreed with the findings of the original autopsy team that JFK was shot twice from above and behind him. There is no medical evidence or any other forensic evidence of another shooter firing from any other location in Dealey Plaza. These are facts.

On top of all the forensic evidence of Oswald's guilt, he flees the scene of the crime, fetches his revolver from his rooming house and a short time later guns down a cop who stopped to question him. About a dozen people either witnessed the shooting or identified Oswald fleeing the scene of that crime. A short time later, Oswald was arrested with the murder weapon in the cop killing in his possession after attempting to shoot one of the arresting with the same gun.

These facts tell us unambiguously that Oswald killed two men on 11/22/1963, yet for some people, that simply isn't good enough. For some strange reason, they feel compelled to look for conspiracies. They will invent any excuse imaginable to dismiss each and every piece of evidence that Oswald was a double murderer. Then they will turn around and dream up bizarre conspiracy theories from the flimsiest evidence or no evidence at all. Just factoids. They are chasing ghosts and have been for over 62 years. Their futility in finding no credible evidence of any other person's involvement in the assassination doesn't discourage them. They continue on their never-ending snipe hunts convinced the piece of evidence that will finally prove there was a conspiracy is right around the corner. Perhaps we should use a modern term for what drives these people. Oswald Derangement Syndrome.

Of course, CTs are not alone in dreaming up alternate realities. Perhaps the most famous was Jim Moore's book Conspiracy of One which put a different twist on the LN theory. Let's not forget our own Andrew Mason who has dreamed up a theory that requires about a dozen bizarre, improbable, and impossible things to have happened.

Dale Meyers has said it best. The JFKA happened one way and we now have an even clearer picture than what the WC was able to present. Oswald fired an early first shot that missed. There is some question as to exactly when that shot was fired because the Z-film doesn't give us definitive evidence as to when that shot was fired. It does show us JBC reacting to the first shot by rotating his shoulders to his right at Z164, just as he said he did. This tells us the first shot was fired some time before that. The second shot fired at or about Z220 struck JFK high on his back to the right of his spine, exited his throat, tumbled into JBC's back near his armpit, exited below his right nipple, struck and shattered his right wrist before making a shallow wound in his thigh. A third shot was fired at Z310-311 which struck JFK in the back of the head at Z313 causing a massive, unsurvivable brain injury causing his deata a short time later. This us the one way the JFKA happened. Anybody who believes otherwise is only fooling themselves.

Most of these claims are years behind the information curve; they reflect research that seems to have stopped many years ago.

For starters, the last official U.S. Government investigation into the assassination, i.e., the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1977-1979, rejected the WC's lone-gunman conclusion, and we now know that three of the WC members themselves doubted the lone-gunman scenario.

The HSCA's investigation was far more thorough than the WC's slipshod, hurried investigation. Among other things, the HSCA concluded that there were two gunmen, that four shots were fired, that one of the shots came from the grassy knoll, that Ruby lied about how he entered the police basement to shoot Oswald, that Ruby lied about why he shot Oswald, that someone was moving boxes around in the sixth-floor window shortly after the shooting at a time when Oswald could not have been the one moving the boxes, that Oswald associated with virulent right-wing extremists David Ferrie and Guy Banister, that the first shot was fired at a time when the sixth-floor gunman's view of JFK would have been obstructed by the oak tree on Elm Street, that Howard Brennan's identification of Oswald as the sixth-floor gunman was unreliable, that two of the shots were fired only 1.66 seconds apart, that Ruby stalked Oswald before killing him, that Silvia Odio's account is credible (her account shows someone was trying to frame Oswald before the assassination), that JFK was hit before frame 190 in the Zapruder film, that the autopsy doctors mislocated the back wound, that the autopsy doctors failed to follow basic autopsy procedures, that the back wound's abrasion collar proves the bullet hit at an upward angle, that the tunneling inside the back wound ranges upward, that the Secret Service protection of JFK in Dallas may have been "uniquely insecure," and that the WC failed to follow up on leads that indicated conspiracy.

For those who want more information, I recommend these articles:

The Warren Commission's Failed Investigation
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12x-2gGg50JQPrEfxZSxha_EYjgSfq0kJ/view?usp=sharing

Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers’ Book With Malice
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view?usp=sharing

Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WRwhDQ9HMydf5pICsHwgtkoNKw0YSO8T/view?usp=sharing

JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MAgWA0frOLVeWY6ok9nzdrgpRN4Wv1AL/view?usp=sharing

Why JFK's Tie and Shirt Slits Destroy the Single-Bullet Theory
https://sites.google.com/view/jfkshirtandtiedestroysbt/home

Faulty Evidence: Problems with the Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R1CZaCZfLA5QFjTCHNINcKxTH4cBiPfw/view?usp=sharing

[John Corbett]

Most of these claims are years behind the information curve; they reflect research that seems to have stopped many years ago.

For starters, the last official U.S. Government investigation into the assassination, i.e., the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978-1980, rejected the WC's lone-gunman conclusion, and we now know that three of the WC members themselves doubted the lone-gunman scenario.

The HSCA based their conclusion of a fourth shot and second gunman on junk science which wasn't vetted or peer reviewed. They accepted it at face value. When it was peer reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, it was thoroughly debunked.

https://www.jfk-online.com/nas01.html

Of course, since the CTs have no real evidence on their side, they cling to whatever they can get.

The HSCA's investigation was far more thorough than the WC's slipshod, hurried investigation. Among other things, the HSCA concluded that there were two gunmen, that four shots were fired, that one of the shots came from the grassy knoll, that Ruby lied about how he entered the police basement to shoot Oswald, that Ruby lied about why he shot Oswald, that someone was moving boxes around in the sixth-floor window shortly after the shooting at a time when Oswald could not have been the one moving the boxes, that Oswald associated with virulent right-wing extremists David Ferrie and Guy Banister, that the first shot was fired at a time when the sixth-floor gunman's view of JFK would have been obstructed by the oak tree on Elm Street, that Howard Brennan's identification of Oswald as the sixth-floor gunman was unreliable, and that two of the shots were fired only 1.66 seconds apart, that Ruby stalked Oswald before killing him, that Silvia Odio's account is credible (her account shows someone was trying to frame Oswald before the assassination), that JFK was hit before frame 190 in the Zapruder film, that the autopsy doctors mislocated the back wound, that the autopsy doctors failed to follow basic autopsy procedures, that the back wound's abrasion collar proves the bullet hit at an upward angle, that the tunneling inside the back wound ranges upward, that the Secret Service protection of JFK in Dallas may have been "uniquely insecure," and that the WC failed to follow up on leads that indicated conspiracy.

For those who want more information, I recommend these articles:

The Warren Commission's Failed Investigation
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12x-2gGg50JQPrEfxZSxha_EYjgSfq0kJ/view?usp=sharing

Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers’ Book With Malice
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view?usp=sharing

Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WRwhDQ9HMydf5pICsHwgtkoNKw0YSO8T/view?usp=sharing

JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MAgWA0frOLVeWY6ok9nzdrgpRN4Wv1AL/view?usp=sharing

Why JFK's Tie and Shirt Slits Destroy the Single-Bullet Theory
https://sites.google.com/view/jfkshirtandtiedestroysbt/home

Every QUALIFIED forensic medical examiner who has reviewed the autopsy material has concurred with the original finding of the autopsy team that the bullet that struck JFK in the back exited from his throat. That trumps you half-assed amateur analysis.

Faulty Evidence: Problems with the Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R1CZaCZfLA5QFjTCHNINcKxTH4cBiPfw/view?usp=sharing

More garbage in, garbage out. More of you substituting your analysis of the evidence for that of people who are actually qualified to make such judgements.