JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Bill Brown on August 16, 2025, 06:21:03 AM
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I don't think Oswald had a "Mexico plan" beforehand. Once he got out of the building, what does he do? Does he head toward Oak Cliff right away? Nope. He heads east on Elm, deeper into the downtown area (and completely away from Oak Cliff). This one fact alone tells me that he had no escape plan; only to indeed escape.
I believe that once Oswald made it to Whaley's cab, the idea of going to retrieve his revolver appealed to him. Once he had his revolver, does he head to the theater and/or south into Oak Cliff? Nope. He stands at a bus stop outside the rooming house, very near the corner of Beckley and Zangs. This particular bus stop would allow him to catch a bus going north, back toward the downtown area, NOT south into Oak Cliff or Mexico. I believe he wanted to board the first bus to get him the hell out of the area.
Then, after standing near that very busy intersection (Beckley & Zang is an incredibly busy intersection), he thought better of it. He was on full display standing out there at that particular bus stop. He left his rifle behind. He was missing from the building in which he was supposed to be working. Has his face been on the news already? He's been on foot, bus and taxi for a half hour. He doesn't know what has (or has not) transpired during those thirty minutes. Obviously we know his face wasn't on the news but he doesn't know that. In my opinion, he shows the same paranoia when he doesn't pay for a ticket at the theater. He doesn't want Julia Postal to see his face. Has his face been on the news? What if she immediately recognizes him? Or, perhaps she'll see his face on the news while he's hiding out inside the theater and recognize that face as belonging to a guy she sold a ticket to earlier. By the way, it is this same paranoia (has my face been on the news already?) which I believe causes him to switch directions as he's walking along Tenth Street. He doesn't want the approaching officer (Tippit) to see his face. In my opinion, he also avoids walking past a law enforcement vehicle (Deputy Sheriff Unit #109) moments before the Tippit encounter as he's walking toward the library and/or bus stop outside the library.
My opinion is that the Jefferson Branch Library and/or the bus stop right outside that library was his goal once he decided to bail on the idea of standing at the very busy intersection of Beckley & Zangs. If one is standing outside the rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley and the goal is now the library and/or the bus stop outside that library, walking east on Tenth at Lansing Street (exactly where Tenth Street makes it's drastic curve) is the most direct route, along with another route which would have him walking down Marsalis for most of the way. But he doesn't want to walk down Marsalis, a very busy street.
I guess my point in all of this is that, again, in my opinion, maybe making a run for Mexico is only something which occurred to him once he decided to bail on the bus stop outside the rooming house. Obviously there is no way to know for sure. Only Oswald himself knows the answer. When it comes to trying to determine Oswald's thoughts and movements after the assassination, all any of us can do is speculate. However, some of us speculate based on what we know while others (like the "Oswald never got on the bus" crowd) discard the known facts and speculate with no basis or foundation.
As for the sixth floor...
As I've always seen it play out in my head, Oswald has the brown shirt tied around his waist, as people typically do when they're originally wearing two shirts but it becomes too warm for both. I believe Oswald is still contemplating which end of the sixth floor to shoot from and is over at the southwest end of the sixth floor when Bonnie Ray Williams unexpectedly arrives up on the floor, surprising him. Oswald is standing near the southwest corner as Williams is eating his chicken on the bone sandwich (what's up with that, by the way?) over near the southeast corner. The south face of the Depository is captured in aftermath photos and the far west sixth floor set of windows are open. Arnold Rowland sees a guy with a rifle standing back from that west end window and says the guy is wearing a light-colored shirt opened at the neck. Perhaps Oswald still has the brown shirt (CE-150) tied around his waist.
Williams finally leaves for the fifth floor and Oswald decides that the southeast corner window is the easier shot (which it certainly was, study sniper fire and lead). Whether he still has the brown shirt tied around his waist or it's simply lying on the floor in the sniper's nest or atop one of the boxes doesn't matter. After firing the shots, he grabs the brown shirt and uses it to wipe the rifle as he makes his way across the floor. This is why a tuft of fibers matching that shirt were found in the crevice of the rifle between the metal butt plate and the wooden stock. He reaches the stairs, stashes/hides the rifle haphazardly and proceeds to put on the brown shirt as he's going down the stairs. He probably has the shirt on by the time he reaches the fifth floor.
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I don't think Oswald had a "Mexico plan" beforehand. Once he got out of the building, what does he do? Does he head toward Oak Cliff right away? Nope. He heads east on Elm, deeper into the downtown area (and completely away from Oak Cliff). This one fact alone tells me that he had no escape plan; only to indeed escape.
I believe that once Oswald made it to Whaley's cab, the idea of going to retrieve his revolver appealed to him. Once he had his revolver, does he head to the theater and/or south into Oak Cliff? Nope. He stands at a bus stop outside the rooming house, very near the corner of Beckley and Zangs. This particular bus stop would allow him to catch a bus going north, back toward the downtown area, NOT south into Oak Cliff or Mexico. I believe he wanted to board the first bus to get him the hell out of the area.
Then, after standing near that very busy intersection (Beckley & Zang is an incredibly busy intersection), he thought better of it. He was on full display standing out there at that particular bus stop. He left his rifle behind. He was missing from the building in which he was supposed to be working. Has his face been on the news already? He's been on foot, bus and taxi for a half hour. He doesn't know what has (or has not) transpired during those thirty minutes. Obviously we know his face wasn't on the news but he doesn't know that. In my opinion, he shows the same paranoia when he doesn't pay for a ticket at the theater. He doesn't want Julia Postal to see his face. Has his face been on the news? What if she immediately recognizes him? Or, perhaps she'll see his face on the news while he's hiding out inside the theater and recognize that face as belonging to a guy she sold a ticket to earlier. By the way, it is this same paranoia (has my face been on the news already?) which I believe causes him to switch directions as he's walking along Tenth Street. He doesn't want the approaching officer (Tippit) to see his face. In my opinion, he also avoids walking past a law enforcement vehicle (Deputy Sheriff Unit #109) moments before the Tippit encounter as he's walking toward the library and/or bus stop outside the library.
My opinion is that the Jefferson Branch Library and/or the bus stop right outside that library was his goal once he decided to bail on the idea of standing at the very busy intersection of Beckley & Zangs. If one is standing outside the rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley and the goal is now the library and/or the bus stop outside that library, walking east on Tenth at Lansing Street (exactly where Tenth Street makes it's drastic curve) is the most direct route, along with another route which would have him walking down Marsalis for most of the way. But he doesn't want to walk down Marsalis, a very busy street.
I guess my point in all of this is that, again, in my opinion, maybe making a run for Mexico is only something which occurred to him once he decided to bail on the bus stop outside the rooming house. Obviously there is no way to know for sure. Only Oswald himself knows the answer. When it comes to trying to determine Oswald's thoughts and movements after the assassination, all any of us can do is speculate. However, some of us speculate based on what we know while others (like the "Oswald never got on the bus" crowd) discard the known facts and speculate with no basis or foundation.
As for the sixth floor...
As I've always seen it play out in my head, Oswald has the brown shirt tied around his waist, as people typically do when they're originally wearing two shirts but it becomes too warm for both. I believe Oswald is still contemplating which end of the sixth floor to shoot from and is over at the southwest end of the sixth floor when Bonnie Ray Williams unexpectedly arrives up on the floor, surprising him. Oswald is standing near the southwest corner as Williams is eating his chicken on the bone sandwich (what's up with that, by the way?) over near the southeast corner. The south face of the Depository is captured in aftermath photos and the far west sixth floor set of windows are open. Arnold Rowland sees a guy with a rifle standing back from that west end window and says the guy is wearing a light-colored shirt opened at the neck. Perhaps Oswald still has the brown shirt (CE-150) tied around his waist.
Williams finally leaves for the fifth floor and Oswald decides that the southeast corner window is the easier shot (which it certainly was, study sniper fire and lead). Whether he still has the brown shirt tied around his waist or it's simply lying on the floor in the sniper's nest or atop one of the boxes doesn't matter. After firing the shots, he grabs the brown shirt and uses it to wipe the rifle as he makes his way across the floor. This is why a tuft of fibers matching that shirt were found in the crevice of the rifle between the metal butt plate and the wooden stock. He reaches the stairs, stashes/hides the rifle haphazardly and proceeds to put on the brown shirt as he's going down the stairs. He probably has the shirt on by the time he reaches the fifth floor.
That all makes very good sense to me Bill. And it is pretty much the way I think (and speculate) about it. I would add that Hugh Aynesworth wrote in his book that the housekeeper told him on 11/22/63 that LHO hurried out of the rooming house and went the other way (away from the bus stop and toward the Tippit murder scene). She didn’t say anything about seeing him at the bus stop to Aynesworth. So, I think it is okay to believe either story. I spoke to the late Hugh Aynesworth on the phone for a few minutes a few years ago about another aspect. Hugh was pleasant and seemed like he was a straight shooter. Have you ever met Hugh Aynesworth? I would tend to believe Hugh Aynesworth and think that the housekeeper probably just got a little confused about this.
The other small difference is that I do think LHO intended to shoot from the SE corner window all along. I think he probably stashed the rifle in the bag near the stairwell on the sixth floor when he arrived that morning. Stashing it there gave him an option to sneak up to the seventh floor if a group of workers came back to the sixth floor to watch the motorcade. He could have simply have been in the process of retrieving the rifle from the hiding place when BRW came back up. Then I think he just quietly stayed on that end out of sight. The noise (siren, etc) of the ambulance approaching Dealey Plaza might have caused LHO to expose himself long enough to see what was going on outside when Rowland saw him. I think that LHO probably would have fired his shots from one of the western windows if it had been the motorcade instead of the ambulance.
One other thought is that when LHO boarded the bus just after the assassination he would have known it was going to pass right by the scene of his crime. Many criminals have been known to pass back by the scenes of their crimes. It makes me wonder if LHO did that at the Walker residence also.
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That sounds about right. Here are my working assumptions when thinking about Oswald's post-assassination acts:
1) There is no good plan for escaping after assassinating JFK.
2) Oswald knew that he was likely going to be killed or arrested. He accepted that outcome as part of his decision to carry out the act. That doesn't mean he was just going to give himself up, however. Like most every criminal, he kept moving while he had the ability to do so until he was caught. Nothing to lose from playing out his hand.
3) Oswald would have known that he would quickly be identified as a suspect based on his background and prior connections with the FBI once they discovered that he worked in the building and was missing. He only had a brief window to make tracks before being a wanted man. He had to operate on the assumption that he was a suspect and perhaps his picture had been disseminated to the public by the time he encounters Tippit.
4) Oswald was familiar with bus routes including the drill to get to Mexico. Maybe he would be welcomed as a hero if he could reach Cuba. That was a hopeless fantasy, but the best of a lot of bad options. It is not inconceivable that in 1963 he could have gotten out of Dallas and perhaps made his way to the border. Holding out hope that Cuba or Russia might give him asylum if he could reach their embassy. Cuba gave asylum to other murders.
5) If caught, he would play the victim of some rush to judgement theory that the police were targeting him because of his political beliefs. He becomes a martyr for the Marxist cause. He would have been convicted or pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. If James Earl Ray is any guide, he would spend the rest of his life teasing that others were involved to garner sympathy and bargain for privileges.
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Never thought he'd leave the building alive and made it up as he went along.
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It is possible that Oswald took his shirt off and laid it on a box or on the floor, and then put it back on in order to alter his apparel immediately following the shooting. But, this would indicate premeditation on his part and therefore Not explain his leaving behind a murder weapon that traced directly back to him.
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Never thought he'd leave the building alive and made it up as he went along.
That's always been my belief. Realistically, what WOULD have been the likelihood of Oswald walking out of the TSBD and hopping a bus? Yes, it happened -but how incredibly unlikely was it? Add in the sixth floor being conveniently empty and the lunchroom encounter going as it did, and you're definitely in the realm of truth being stranger than fiction. I believe the JFKA was the act of a guy who thought his life was over and had zero plan for anything after pulling the trigger. If he'd had a plan, there were other locations for the shooting that would have given him a far better chance of escape.
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That's always been my belief. Realistically, what WOULD have been the likelihood of Oswald walking out of the TSBD and hopping a bus? Yes, it happened -but how incredibly unlikely was it? Add in the sixth floor being conveniently empty and the lunchroom encounter going as it did, and you're definitely in the realm of truth being stranger than fiction. I believe the JFKA was the act of a guy who thought his life was over and had zero plan for anything after pulling the trigger. If he'd had a plan, there were other locations for the shooting that would have given him a far better chance of escape.
Self-described Marxist that he was, you may be right in positing that Lee Oswald figured his life would be over (and therefore didn't give much thought to his escape route), but that it would have been worthwhile, gosh darn it, because, as Mark Riebling says in his fine 1994 book, Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA, "Out was Kennedy, a charismatic leader who could 'sell' a socially conscious anticommunism in the Third World and even to Western liberals, and in was Johnson, who would only 'heighten the contradictions' between East and West and therefore hasten (by Leninist dialectical reasoning) the ultimate collapse of late capitalism."
But maybe the little Marxist did have an escape plan, and it involved his buying, before he shot JFK (and to use as a "prop"), a Coca-Cola from the dedicated Coca-Cola machine in the second-floor lunchroom instead of a bottle of his favorite, Dr. Pepper, from the dedicated Dr. Pepper machine on the first floor. Put another way, why in the world would he (allegedly) leave his delicious "cheese sandwich and apple" lunch unattended in the first-floor Domino Room for a few minutes and go up to the second floor to buy a bottle of his second-favorite soft drink, and right as the most powerful man in the world and his beautiful wife were passing by within a few feet of the TSBD's front steps, at that?
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It is possible that Oswald took his shirt off and laid it on a box or on the floor, and then put it back on in order to alter his apparel immediately following the shooting. But, this would indicate premeditation on his part and therefore Not explain his leaving behind a murder weapon that traced directly back to him.
Oswald had to leave the weapon behind. He couldn't carry it out of the building, could he? Come on now.
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Never thought he'd leave the building alive and made it up as he went along.
That's always been my belief. Realistically, what WOULD have been the likelihood of Oswald walking out of the TSBD and hopping a bus? Yes, it happened -but how incredibly unlikely was it? Add in the sixth floor being conveniently empty and the lunchroom encounter going as it did, and you're definitely in the realm of truth being stranger than fiction. I believe the JFKA was the act of a guy who thought his life was over and had zero plan for anything after pulling the trigger. If he'd had a plan, there were other locations for the shooting that would have given him a far better chance of escape.
Another thing to keep in mind re: Oswald making it out of the building...
The simple fact that Oswald did indeed make it out of the building should tell all of us that there was no conspiracy involving him as a patsy. If he were a patsy, he would have been killed before ever making it out, much less be allowed to wander the streets jumping on busses and in taxis.
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Officer Baker quickly flushing Oswald out of the 2nd Floor Lunchroom threw a monkey wrench into The Plan. Oswald being the "inside man" knew the Huge Gates were "Wide Open". (He probably opened them to begin with). He exited the 2nd Floor Lunchroom and just strolled out those Huge Gates which were right off the 1st Floor. Quick and Easy.
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Officer Baker quickly flushing Oswald out of the 2nd Floor Lunchroom threw a monkey wrench into The Plan. Oswald being the "inside man" knew the Huge Gates were "Wide Open". (He probably opened them to begin with). He exited the 2nd Floor Lunchroom and just strolled out those Huge Gates which were right off the 1st Floor. Quick and Easy.
Storing,
Please stop taking those red pills.
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Another thing to keep in mind re: Oswald making it out of the building...
The simple fact that Oswald did indeed make it out of the building should tell all of us that there was no conspiracy involving him as a patsy. If he were a patsy, he would have been killed before ever making it out, much less be allowed to wander the streets jumping on busses and in taxis.
The other oft-repeated absurdity is that he was "on his way to the Texas Theater to meet a contact." Uh-huh, so you hop a bus, hail a taxi, take the taxi past your rooming house, backtrack to the rooming house, stroll down the sidewalk to Tenth Street, shoot Tippit as you are walking in the opposite direction from the TT, scramble your way to Hardy's Shoes, lurk suspiciously in the vestibule of the shoe store, and unnecessarily enter the TT without paying.
Right, those are the actions of a guy on his way to "meet a contact."
Those dang conspirators were so clever they carefully instructed Oswald to "Make sure it doesn't look like you're on your way to meet a contact at the Texas Theater. Don't do anything as obvious as simply taking a bus or taxi to the theater and buying a ticket. And, by the way, don't ask why it's necessary to rendezvous at the Texas Theater at all or why someone can't simply give you a ride. We know what we're doing here, Mr. Patsy."
Here's kind of a nice illustration of Oswald's route.
(https://www.progresspond.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/killing-kennedy-oswald-escape-693x1024.jpg)
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Another thing to keep in mind re: Oswald making it out of the building...
The simple fact that Oswald did indeed make it out of the building should tell all of us that there was no conspiracy involving him as a patsy. If he were a patsy, he would have been killed before ever making it out, much less be allowed to wander the streets jumping on busses and in taxis.
Wouldn't it be suspicious if Oswald were gunned down simply because he was a suspect? That seems more aligned with Trump's America, if you axe me.
I find it more suspicious that Oswald was allowed to leave the building at all. Surely, there was an intention to eliminate him wherever he was set to meet a contact, and his wandering was likely meant to shake off any followers. What I find preposterous is the notion that the grossly incompetent DPD Keystone Cops could identify and converge on Oswald within an hour of the assassination unless they were aware of his intended location, which was the Texas Theatre. His alleged encounter with Tippit is fraught with inconsistencies, including testimony from eyewitness Aquilla Clemons.
They allowed him to leave the building so that he could lead them on a manhunt, enabling them to take him out at a predetermined location. However, by the time he reached the Texas Theatre, Oswald was aware he was being set up. The DPD failed to assassinate him because he resisted, and there was too much confusion regarding which Oswald was which. Did you know that two Oswalds were arrested at that theatre? This likely contributed to the failure of the operation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/1960s/comments/x8a5cy/were_there_two_lee_harvey_oswalds_arrested_in_the/
As a result, they had to resort to Plan B, which involved Ruby brazenly taking Oswald out at the DPD. Did you know that Ruby made several frantic calls to the DPD the day prior, warning them that someone was going to attempt to kill Oswald? Clearly, Ruby wanted no part in killing Oswald, but he felt it was his fate if the DPD did not take his warnings seriously. Ruby understood the consequences for those who defied the plans of the "Big Event."
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Wouldn't it be suspicious if Oswald were gunned down simply because he was a suspect? That seems more aligned with Trump's America, if you axe me.
I find it more suspicious that Oswald was allowed to leave the building at all. Surely, there was an intention to eliminate him wherever he was set to meet a contact, and his wandering was likely meant to shake off any followers. What I find preposterous is the notion that the grossly incompetent DPD Keystone Cops could identify and converge on Oswald within an hour of the assassination unless they were aware of his intended location, which was the Texas Theatre. His alleged encounter with Tippit is fraught with inconsistencies, including testimony from eyewitness Aquilla Clemons.
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Clemmons' testimony isn't inconsistent with the other witnesses. According to her, both in her stint Lane and her initial recorded interview with Shirley Martin, the interaction between the gunman and the other man occurred across Patton. Then she said that the gunman continued down Patton while the other guy ran up 10th Street In the filmed version, she even has her arms at a right angle when she indicates the direction the two men went. In fact, Clemons' description of the event very much resembles Ted Calloways' encounter with the gunman across Patton.