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A Few of the Problems with the Case Against Oswald

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Michael T. Griffith:
I still remember being surprised in the early days of my research into the JFK case to see Norman Mailer say in a TV interview that he could have gotten Oswald acquitted in a trial. In 2015, Jeremy Gunn, the former general counsel for the Assassination Records Review Board, said he believed Oswald would have been acquitted--found not guilty--if he had stood trial. Said Gunn,

If we actually ask the question was Oswald guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, I am convinced that Oswald would have been found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To me there is just no question he is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

What led Mailer and Gunn to say these things? Answer: There are gaping holes and numerous problems with the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald. Here are just a few of them:

-- The Dallas post office where the alleged murder rifle was supposedly picked up should have retained the signature of the person who picked up the rifle for four years. However, the FBI said the signature form was "missing" when they tried to obtain it from the post office.

-- The alleged murder rifle was ordered under the name "A. Hidell." Yet, Oswald stipulated on his PO Box form that "Lee H. Oswald" was the only person authorized to receive mail from his  box. Moreover, U.S. Postal regulations required that "Mail addressed to a person at a PO Box who is not authorized to receive mail shall be endorsed 'addressee unknown' and returned to sender."

It should also be pointed out that the FBI was unable to find anyone at the post office who recalled giving Oswald the large package that contained the mail-order rifle. Additionally, the money order that was allegedly used to buy the rifle was purchased at a time when Oswald was at work.

-- Oswald supposedly carried his disassembled rifle into the TSBD in a long paper bag that he allegedly made from wrapping paper and tape from the TSBD. However, no such bag appears in any of the official crime scene photos of the sixth-floor sniper's nest, and the first police officers on the scene did not see it there. For example, Sergeant Gerald Hill told the WC that the only paper bag he saw was a "small lunch sack" and said, "... if it was found up there on the sixth floor, if it was there, I didn't see it" (7 H 65).

DPD Detective R.D. Lewis showed Buell Wesley Frazier the long paper bag supposedly found in the sniper's nest. Frazier told him "he did not think that it resembled ... the crinkly brown paper sack that Oswald had when he rode to work with him that morning..." (FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 17, p. 100) Frazier got the best look at the bag that Oswald carried that morning.

WC defenders not that Oswald's partial right palmprint and partial left index fingerprint were found on the bag. Yet, this raises an obvious question: How could Oswald have left only two partial prints on the bag when he supposedly made it himself using paper and tape from the TSBD, carried it with him to the Paine home, used it to wrap his rifle, carried it into the TSBD, and unwrapped it off his rifle on the sixth floor?

Oswald worked at the TSBD and handled boxes and wrapping paper as part of his job. It is likely that the DPD either found wrapping paper that Oswald had touched and used it to make the large paper bag or they made the large paper back and manipulated Oswald into handling it during one of his interrogations. Either scenario would explain why only two partial Oswald prints were found on the bag.

If Oswald had actually made the bag and carried it as claimed by the WC, his prints would have been all over it--he certainly would have left more than just two partial prints on it.

Oswald told the police that the bag was a regular small brown grocery bag from a grocery store and that it merely contained his lunch and nothing else. There are compelling reasons to believe he was telling the truth.

-- WC defenders point out that Marina Oswald "identified the rifle in testimony to the Warren Commission during its 1964 hearings." When asked, "Is that the scope that it had on it, as far as you know?", Marine said "Yes" (1 H 119). However, when she was interviewed months earlier by the Secret Service, Marina said the only rifle her husband ever owned did not have a scope. In fact, she said that before she saw the sixth-floor rifle on TV, "she did not know that rifles with scopes existed" (CD 344, p. 24).

Needless to say, this also calls into question the backyard rifle photos, which Marina allegedly took (although in later years she insisted they were not the photos she took). Thus, it is no surprise that the backyard photos contain impossible variant shadows that no one has ever been able to duplicate, despite repeated attempts.

-- WC defenders note that the FBI said it found a "tuft of cotton fibers ... clinging to the butt of the rifle" and that the fibers "matched those in the shirt worn by Oswald the day of the assassination." However, the shirt to which the fibers were "matched" was the one Oswald was wearing when he was arrested, but this was not the shirt he wore to work that day.

During his interrogations, when he knew nothing about any fibers found on the rifle, Oswald told police that between the time of the shooting and the time of his arrest, he returned to his rooming house and changed his shirt and pants. Oswald's statement was corroborated by Dallas Policeman Marrion Baker. Baker saw Oswald on the second floor of the TSBD less than two minutes after the shooting and saw him again at the police station a few hours later. Baker told the WC that when he saw Oswald the second time, "He looked as though he did not have the same thing on" (3 H 262).

In other words, an FBI man, not realizing that Oswald had changed shirts after he left the TSBD, took the shirt he was wearing when he was arrested and rubbed the butt of the alleged murder rifle into the shirt to plant fiber evidence against Oswald.

-- WC defenders claim that Oswald's palmprint was found on the barrel of the alleged murder weapon and that this proves he was the assassin. Leaving aside the highly doubtful, extremely suspicious circumstances of the alleged discovery of the latent palmprint, it should be pointed out that the man who supposedly (and belatedly) found the palmprint, Lt. J. C. Day, told the WC the print was an "old dry print" (26 H 831) and said in a 1994 interview that the print "had been on the gun several weeks or months" Anthony Summers, Not In Your Lifetime, p. 84).

Suffice it to say that when the FBI's fingerprint expert, Sebastian Latona, examined the rifle a few days later, he found no indication that the rifle had even been processed for prints and saw no prints on the rifle barrel, even though Lt. Day claimed the palmprint was still visible on the barrel after he allegedly lifted it.

-- We still here some WC apologists cite Vincent Scalice's 1993 claim that he positively identified the fragmentary fingerprints on the alleged murder rifle's trigger guard as Oswald's prints. Scalice claimed he found 18 "points of identity" by using a composite of four enhanced Dallas police photos.

Yet, when Scalice examined the trigger-guard prints for the HSCA, he said they were "of no value for identification purposes" (8 HSCA 248). Moreover, when FBI latent print expert George Bonebrake reviewed the prints for the PBS documentary Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, he concluded the prints were "simply not clear enough to make an identification." In addition, in 2003, an FBI laboratory computer software analysis of the prints failed to match the prints with Oswald's prints (Donald Thomas, [i[Hear No Evil[/i], p. 85).

-- Voice stress analysis (VSA) of Oswald's declarations of innocence while in police custody indicate he was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody. VSA polygraphs are more effective than traditional polygraphs because they can be administered without the person's knowledge and/or can be administered after the fact from recordings of the person's statements. George O'Toole, an ex-CIA agent, discussed the VSA results of Oswald's statements in his book The Assassination Tapes.

A forensic psychologist who is also an expert in body language has likewise concluded from video footage of Oswald in police custody that Oswald was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_qrtx8YApU

Lance Payette:

--- Quote from: Michael T. Griffith on Today at 02:50:18 PM ---I still remember being surprised in the early days of my research into the JFK case to see Norman Mailer say in a TV interview that he could have gotten Oswald acquitted in a trial. In 2015, Jeremy Gunn, the former general counsel for the Assassination Records Review Board, said he believed Oswald would have been acquitted--found not guilty--if he had stood trial. Said Gunn,

If we actually ask the question was Oswald guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, I am convinced that Oswald would have been found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To me there is just no question he is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

--- End quote ---

A defendant is either found guilty or not guilty. If he is found guilty, the jury concluded there was no reasonable doubt. If he is found not guilty, the jury concluded there was reasonable doubt. There is no such thing as "not guilty beyond reasonable doubt." For Gunn to have said this - twice - is a howler of epic proportions.

Gee, if a novelist with a degree in engineering could've got Oswald acquitted, maybe he really was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt!  :D :D :D

Benjamin Cole:
MTG-

An interesting post, and thanks for posting it.

There is a difference between being guilty, and guilty beyond reasonable doubt. A man might be guilty in truth, but in court enough doubts are raised that a jury would have to vote not guilty. And you need 12-0 to convict. 

LHO found not guilty in court would not necessarily mean LHO was not guilty in real life. (OJ got off, for example.)

In regards to your excellent post, I suspect the FBI "leaned on on the evidence" in the JFKA, on instructions from Hoover, and LBJ, and so that WC-LNT narrative would prevail. No nuke war with Russia motivated LBJ through this period. A sensible enough concern.

However, the strong possibility that the FBI leaned on the evidence does not, in real life, exonerate LHO. It is possible to frame a guilty man.

For example, I suspect the FBI switched out evidence bullets in Walker shooting, and CE-399 sure looks funny. It may be the FBI introduced false evidence.

However, for me, the best suspect for the TSBD6 sniper remains LHO. The HSCA looked at the BYP and said they were real. LHO was in the building. LHO was invisible at the time shots rang out---not one witness ever said they saw LHO when shots rang out.

A slender white male was seen firing a rifle in the direction of the limo, by Brennan.

LHO's post-JFKA behavior in entirely consistent with that of a guilty man. It may be LHO thought himself framed, or more likely, hung out to dry---hence the bitter "patsy" comment.

I gotta say, LHO as a totally innocent bystander...just does not hold water.

Unfortunately, LHO was murdered before he could spill the beans.

I suspect LHO was part of a very small plot, including possibly G2, or Alpha-66'ers.

IMHO.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

 

John Corbett:

--- Quote from: Michael T. Griffith on Today at 02:50:18 PM ---I still remember being surprised in the early days of my research into the JFK case to see Norman Mailer say in a TV interview that he could have gotten Oswald acquitted in a trial. In 2015, Jeremy Gunn, the former general counsel for the Assassination Records Review Board, said he believed Oswald would have been acquitted--found not guilty--if he had stood trial. Said Gunn,

If we actually ask the question was Oswald guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, I am convinced that Oswald would have been found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To me there is just no question he is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

What led Mailer and Gunn to say these things? Answer: There are gaping holes and numerous problems with the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald. Here are just a few of them:

-- The Dallas post office where the alleged murder rifle was supposedly picked up should have retained the signature of the person who picked up the rifle for four years. However, the FBI said the signature form was "missing" when they tried to obtain it from the post office.
--- End quote ---

Somebody misplaced a piece of paper. BFD. We have a paper trail proving Oswald ordered the rifle. We have pictures of him with the rifle. The rifle was found at his workplace. The rifle had his palm print on it. The rifle had fibers matching the shirt he was wearing when arrested. His fingerprints were on the top of boxes where a shooter was seen and shells were found that matched his rifle. His palm and fingerprint were on the bag found next to the sniper's nest. But we're supposed to disregard all of that because somebody misplaced a piece of paper. Some reasonable doubt.
--- Quote ---
-- The alleged murder rifle was ordered under the name "A. Hidell." Yet, Oswald stipulated on his PO Box form that "Lee H. Oswald" was the only person authorized to receive mail from his  box. Moreover, U.S. Postal regulations required that "Mail addressed to a person at a PO Box who is not authorized to receive mail shall be endorsed 'addressee unknown' and returned to sender."
--- End quote ---

A government employee didn't follow a rule to the letter. Gee, that never happens. [/quote]

It should also be pointed out that the FBI was unable to find anyone at the post office who recalled giving Oswald the large package that contained the mail-order rifle. Additionally, the money order that was allegedly used to buy the rifle was purchased at a time when Oswald was at work.[/quote]

How many packages do you suppose a USPS employee in a big city handle in the course of one day. Do you really think one of those employees would remember handing Oswald a package 8 months earlier? I thought these were suppose to be REASONABLE doubts.
--- Quote ---
-- Oswald supposedly carried his disassembled rifle into the TSBD in a long paper bag that he allegedly made from wrapping paper and tape from the TSBD. However, no such bag appears in any of the official crime scene photos of the sixth-floor sniper's nest, and the first police officers on the scene did not see it there. For example, Sergeant Gerald Hill told the WC that the only paper bag he saw was a "small lunch sack" and said, "... if it was found up there on the sixth floor, if it was there, I didn't see it" (7 H 65).
--- End quote ---

Silly. A picture was taken of a cop taking the bag out of the TSBD.
--- Quote ---

DPD Detective R.D. Lewis showed Buell Wesley Frazier the long paper bag supposedly found in the sniper's nest. Frazier told him "he did not think that it resembled ... the crinkly brown paper sack that Oswald had when he rode to work with him that morning..." (FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 17, p. 100) Frazier got the best look at the bag that Oswald carried that morning.
--- End quote ---

Frazier said he didn't pay much attention to how Oswald carried the bag. Why the hell would he? Why would that detail have seemed the least bit important AT THAT TIME.
--- Quote ---
WC defenders not that Oswald's partial right palmprint and partial left index fingerprint were found on the bag. Yet, this raises an obvious question: How could Oswald have left only two partial prints on the bag when he supposedly made it himself using paper and tape from the TSBD, carried it with him to the Paine home, used it to wrap his rifle, carried it into the TSBD, and unwrapped it off his rifle on the sixth floor?
--- End quote ---

Fingerprints don't last forever, especially on absorbent materials. Here is what AI has to say:

"The type of surface plays a significant role; non-porous materials like glass, metal, or plastic can preserve fingerprints for weeks, months, or even years if undisturbed. Porous surfaces such as paper or fabric absorb the residue, causing prints to fade more quickly, often within hours or days."

If you dispute this explanation, I'm sure I'd have no problem finding a specific source.
--- Quote ---

Oswald worked at the TSBD and handled boxes and wrapping paper as part of his job. It is likely that the DPD either found wrapping paper that Oswald had touched and used it to make the large paper bag or they made the large paper back and manipulated Oswald into handling it during one of his interrogations. Either scenario would explain why only two partial Oswald prints were found on the bag.
--- End quote ---

WTF???!!! You are getting desperate. That's about as asinine as anything I've ever seen your write and that is a high bar.
--- Quote ---
If Oswald had actually made the bag and carried it as claimed by the WC, his prints would have been all over it--he certainly would have left more than just two partial prints on it.
--- End quote ---

Your ignorance is showing. AGAIN!!!
--- Quote ---
Oswald told the police that the bag was a regular small brown grocery bag from a grocery store and that it merely contained his lunch and nothing else. There are compelling reasons to believe he was telling the truth.
--- End quote ---

You're getting comical. What reason would Oswald have to lie??? On, maybe because he was facing a capital offense.
--- Quote ---
-- WC defenders point out that Marina Oswald "identified the rifle in testimony to the Warren Commission during its 1964 hearings." When asked, "Is that the scope that it had on it, as far as you know?", Marine said "Yes" (1 H 119). However, when she was interviewed months earlier by the Secret Service, Marina said the only rifle her husband ever owned did not have a scope. In fact, she said that before she saw the sixth-floor rifle on TV, "she did not know that rifles with scopes existed" (CD 344, p. 24).
--- End quote ---

The scope was detachable. It could easily be put on and put back on the rifle as needed.
--- Quote ---
Needless to say, this also calls into question the backyard rifle photos, which Marina allegedly took (although in later years she insisted they were not the photos she took). Thus, it is no surprise that the backyard photos contain impossible variant shadows that no one has ever been able to duplicate, despite repeated attempts.
--- End quote ---

Asinine. The photos have been authenticated. Investigators even found negative. Marina even wrote "Hunter of facists" on he back of one of the photos. [/quote]

-- WC defenders note that the FBI said it found a "tuft of cotton fibers ... clinging to the butt of the rifle" and that the fibers "matched those in the shirt worn by Oswald the day of the assassination." However, the shirt to which the fibers were "matched" was the one Oswald was wearing when he was arrested, but this was not the shirt he wore to work that day. [/quote]

Wrong again. He was wearing that shirt when he got on McWatters bus. His former landlady Mary Bledsoe recognized him and noticed the shirt he was wearing had a hole in the elbow. The shirt Oswald was wearing when arrested had a hole in the elbow. It also had a transfer from McWatters bus in the pocket of that shirt. So how the hell do you explain that if he was wearing a different shirt at work that day?
--- Quote ---
During his interrogations, when he knew nothing about any fibers found on the rifle, Oswald told police that between the time of the shooting and the time of his arrest, he returned to his rooming house and changed his shirt and pants. Oswald's statement was corroborated by Dallas Policeman Marrion Baker. Baker saw Oswald on the second floor of the TSBD less than two minutes after the shooting and saw him again at the police station a few hours later. Baker told the WC that when he saw Oswald the second time, "He looked as though he did not have the same thing on" (3 H 262).

--- End quote ---

Gee, we can believe Oswald or we can believe all that forensic evidence of his guilt. I guess that's how we should look at every murder case. Ask the suspect if he did it and if he says no, then set him free. Why would someone lie about something like that.
--- Quote ---
In other words, an FBI man, not realizing that Oswald had changed shirts after he left the TSBD, took the shirt he was wearing when he was arrested and rubbed the butt of the alleged murder rifle into the shirt to plant fiber evidence against Oswald.
--- End quote ---

We have a choice here. We can believe the real evidence or we can believe crap like this that you just pulled out of your ass.
--- Quote ---
-- WC defenders claim that Oswald's palmprint was found on the barrel of the alleged murder weapon and that this proves he was the assassin. Leaving aside the highly doubtful, extremely suspicious circumstances of the alleged discovery of the latent palmprint, it should be pointed out that the man who supposedly (and belatedly) found the palmprint, Lt. J. C. Day, told the WC the print was an "old dry print" (26 H 831) and said in a 1994 interview that the print "had been on the gun several weeks or months" Anthony Summers, Not In Your Lifetime, p. 84).
--- End quote ---

Anthony Summers is full of crap too. Do you have any credible sources for his amazing assertion?
--- Quote ---
Suffice it to say that when the FBI's fingerprint expert, Sebastian Latona, examined the rifle a few days later, he found no indication that the rifle had even been processed for prints and saw no prints on the rifle barrel, even though Lt. Day claimed the palmprint was still visible on the barrel after he allegedly lifted it.
--- End quote ---

When a print is lifted, it doesn't remain on the surface it was lifted from.
--- Quote ---
-- We still here some WC apologists cite Vincent Scalice's 1993 claim that he positively identified the fragmentary fingerprints on the alleged murder rifle's trigger guard as Oswald's prints. Scalice claimed he found 18 "points of identity" by using a composite of four enhanced Dallas police photos.
--- End quote ---

Just who are these WC apologists who have cited that. It has been known for 62 years that the partial prints on the trigger guard did not conain enough matching points for the FBI to say positively that the prints were Oswald's. That doesn't mean they were not, only that it could not be firmly established by strict FBI standards.
--- Quote ---
Yet, when Scalice examined the trigger-guard prints for the HSCA, he said they were "of no value for identification purposes" (8 HSCA 248). Moreover, when FBI latent print expert George Bonebrake reviewed the prints for the PBS documentary Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, he concluded the prints were "simply not clear enough to make an identification." In addition, in 2003, an FBI laboratory computer software analysis of the prints failed to match the prints with Oswald's prints (Donald Thomas, [i[Hear No Evil[/i], p. 85).
--- End quote ---

You are trying to insinuate that because the partial prints didn't contain enough matching points for a positive identification, that they did not belong to Oswald. The truth is if the prints had not matched, the FBI could have said they were not Oswald's. They didn't do that.
--- Quote ---
-- Voice stress analysis (VSA) of Oswald's declarations of innocence while in police custody indicate he was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody. VSA polygraphs are more effective than traditional polygraphs because they can be administered without the person's knowledge and/or can be administered after the fact from recordings of the person's statements. George O'Toole, an ex-CIA agent, discussed the VSA results of Oswald's statements in his book The Assassination Tapes.
--- End quote ---

Neither voice stress analysis or traditional polygraphs are a reliable means of determining if a person is lying. Both produce false positives and false negatives.
--- Quote ---
A forensic psychologist who is also an expert in body language has likewise concluded from video footage of Oswald in police custody that Oswald was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody:
--- End quote ---

You are arguing that Oswald would have been acquitted at trial yet you are trying to make that argument by citing evidence that never would have been admitted at trial. How silly is that?
--- Quote ---
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_qrtx8YApU
--- End quote ---

All you have demonstrated with this long list of nonsensical arguments is that you are really, really bad at weighing evidence. Most CTs have that same shortcoming. You have given us one more example of what I have said about CTs for decades. CTs don't want to explain the evidence. They want to make excuses to explain away the evidence. You don't even make good excuses. Yours are half-assed. You think these silly excuses are a valid reason for dismissing all the rock-solid evidence of Oswald's guilt. Evidence that would have been admitted at trial.

John Corbett:

--- Quote from: Benjamin Cole on Today at 03:43:14 PM ---
Unfortunately, LHO was murdered before he could spill the beans.


--- End quote ---

I consider that a good thing. It was the only way justice could be served. Had Ruby not killed him, Oswald would have been convicted and sentenced to death but it is highly unlikely he would have been executed if he exercised his rights in the appellate courts. That little bastard might still be doing time in the Texas Penitentiary just as Sirhan Sirhan is doing in the California slammer. And there would be plenty of a-holes arguing that he should be paroled, just as there is for Sirhan. In this case, I'll take vigilante justice over no justice. I have no doubt Oswald was looking forward to being the center of attention that his trial would have brought him. Ruby took that away from him. Nice shot, Jack.

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