JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Michael T. Griffith on September 21, 2025, 06:00:15 PM
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Recently Lance Payette, a WC apologist, posted a video of witnesses who said they saw Oswald at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas. He even said the witnesses were believable and seemed to have no agenda, and that the reporters seemed to have no agenda either. Apparently, he was unaware that all the accounts of Oswald firing at the Sports Drome were rejected as “mistaken” by the Warren Commission (WC) and have been rejected as “mistaken” by the two most prominent WC apologists, Vincent Bugliosi (now deceased) and Gerald Posner.
Why have all these accounts been rejected as “mistaken” lone-gunman theorists? Because most of them put Oswald at the Sports Drome during times when he was known to be elsewhere, either when he was in Mexico City or when he was elsewhere in Dallas, providing unwanted evidence that Oswald was being impersonated in Dallas before the assassination.
The Sports Drome accounts are not the only accounts that have Oswald being seen in places and times when the official record says he was elsewhere. Some of the accounts are more credible than others.
We now know that the WC was aware of the possibility that Oswald was being impersonated, but they rejected all evidence of impersonations and ignored the issue.
Let us consider three of the most credible, corroborated accounts of a fake Oswald in Dallas: the account of Dr. Homer Wood, corroborated by his son Sterling Wood; the account of Silvia Odio, corroborated by her sister Annie Odio; and the account of Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, corroborated by Marvin Robinson and Helen Forrest.
According to the Woods, "Oswald," i.e., the Oswald lookalike, was using a "6.5 Italian carbine" but with a different scope than the one on the alleged murder weapon. The man was an excellent shot. The man was driven to and from the range by another man.
Both Homer Wood and his son Sterling Wood positively identified photos and footage of Oswald as being the man they had encountered at the rifle range.
Here's some of what one of the first and most scholarly WC critics, Sylvia Meagher, said about Homer and Sterling Wood's encounters with "Oswald" at the Sports Drome in her classic work Accessories After the Fact:
By treating these witnesses as a group, the Commission has
obscured the fact that the testimony of Sterling Wood and his father
is not subject to serious objections. Sterling and his father went
to the rifle range on Saturday afternoon, November 16, 1963,
when Oswald was not in Irving as usual. He had remained in Dallas,
at Marina Oswald's suggestion that he might be at the birthday
party for one of Mrs. Paine's children that weekend. It was therefore
physically possible for Oswald to be at the rifle range, as the Woods
testified he was. . . .
Dr. Wood testified (10H 387) that when he saw Oswald on the
television screen on the day of the assassination, he immediately told
his wife that Oswald looked like the man at the rifle range. He
decided to say nothing to his son and to see if the boy independently
recognized Oswald.
About half an hour later the boy came in and as soon as he saw
Oswald on the TV screen, he said, "Daddy, that is the fellow that
was sitting next to me out on the rifle range."
During his testimony Dr. Wood was shown photographs, first of
Larry Crafard, whom he failed to identify. Next he was shown
photographs of Oswald on the street, with other men in the
background. He unhesitatingly pointed to Oswald as the man
at the rifle range. . . .
Sterling, like his father, was shown photographs of Larry Crafard,
whom he failed to recognize. When he was shown a picture of Oswald
and other men on a street, he immediately pointed to Oswald as the
man he had seen at the rifle range. He also identified a photograph
of the rifle found in the Book Depository as the weapon he had seen
at the rifle range, but said that the telescopic sight was not the same.
(10H 396) Finally, he volunteered that he had looked at his neighbor's
target at the rifle range and that the man was "the most accurate of all."
(10H 397)
There is no reason to question the credibility of this thirteen-year-old
boy, and it is gratifying that the Commission did not do so. What the
Commission did was to obfuscate his story, lumping him together with
the other witnesses, and then dismissing them all. Only when the full
testimony is examined does it become obvious that the Woods' story
does not suffer from the same weakness as the others and that the
man they saw must have been Oswald's double if not Oswald himself.
If the Commission had accepted the Woods' testimony, it would have
helped to corroborate its thesis of Oswald's marksmanship—a thesis
which, as it stands, has been the subject of much justified criticism.
On the other hand, it would have introduced an unknown friend who
was driving Oswald to target practice.
If the Commission had accepted the Woods' testimony, it might have
lengthened the shadow of an unknown accomplice or of a man
deliberately engaged in impersonating Oswald. (Vintage Book Edition,
1992 reprint of 1967 edition, p. 371)
The Woods are the kinds of solid, credible witnesses that prosecutors dream of. But, nope, the WC had to reject them because the real Oswald could not have been at the Sports Drome when the Woods saw a man there who looked just like Oswald.
As for Silvia Odio, I don’t think much needs to be said about her account, since it has been discussed in JFK assassination works, especially in books that reject the lone-gunman view.
About two months before the assassination, Silvia and Annie Odio were visited by three men who claimed they were from New Orleans. Two of the men, Leopoldo and Angelo, said they were members of the Junta Revolucionaria. The third man, Leon, was introduced as an American sympathizer who was willing to take part in the assassination of Fidel Castro. After she told them that she was unwilling to get involved in any criminal activity, the three men left.
The following day Leopoldo phoned Silvia Odio and told her that Leon was a former Marine and that he was an expert marksman. He added that Leon had said “we Cubans, we did not have the guts because we should have assassinated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.” Disturbed, Sivia told Annie about the phone call.
When Sylvia and Annie saw Oswald on TV after he was arrested, they were horrified. They immediately recognized him as the American “Leon” who had visited their apartment with the two anti-Castro Cubans.
The WC rejected Silvia Odio’s account, mainly because the WC believed Oswald was in Mexico City at the time, even though WC attorney David Slawson said Odio was “checked out thoroughly” and that “the evidence is unanimously favorable, both as to her character and reliability, and as to her intelligence." The HSCA concluded that Ms. Odio was credible and that her account was truthful.
When interviewed repeatedly, Annie Odio strongly corroborated Silvia’s story, since she was there when the visit occurred (she and Silvia shared the apartment), and since Silvia told her about the phone call from Leopoldo.
One of the reasons the WC rejected Odio's account, and the reason that Posner rejects it as well, is that it shows that Oswald was being framed for the assassination weeks before it occurred. Her account also suggests someone was impersonating Oswald, either in Mexico City or in Dallas, before the assassination.
Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig’s account of an Oswald imposter is especially interesting because he and two other witnesses saw the imposter in Dealey Plaza 10-15 minutes after the shooting. Craig reported that he saw a man who looked like Oswald run from the TBSD and jump into a waiting Nash Rambler station wagon driven by another man. Craig was certain the man was Oswald.
Helen Forrest likewise saw a man who was a dead ringer for Oswald run from the TSBD and jump into a waiting Rambler station wagon. Mrs. Forrest said that if the man was not Oswald, he was “his identical twin.”
Marvin Robinson likewise saw a man get into a Rambler station wagon in Dealey Plaza about 15 minutes after the shooting, but he did not describe the man’s appearance, probably because he was driving at the time he saw the man and may not have gotten a good look at him. Robinson gave his account to the FBI on 11/23, the day after the shooting.
In a fascinating exchange pregnant with implications, when Captain Will Fritz told Oswald that he had been seen leaving the TSBD in a station wagon, Oswald expressed the firm belief that the station wagon belonged to Ruth Paine, and he then became dejected and said, “Everyone will know who I am now.”
The accounts of a man leaving the TSBD and getting into a waiting Rambler station wagon are supported by photographic evidence. One photograph shows Craig standing on the south side of Elm Street looking toward the Book Depository building. In the same photograph, a light-colored Rambler station wagon can be seen heading west on Elm Street. In another photograph, Craig is seen looking toward Elm Street in the general direction of the station wagon.
The Dallas police claimed that Oswald told them he traveled to his house after he left the TSBD by riding a bus and then taking a taxi. If Oswald did indeed take a bus and taxi to get home, then the man who jumped into the Rambler station wagon was an imposter who bore an amazing resemblance to Oswald, the same imposter seen by Homer and Sterling Wood and the Odio sisters.
For more information on the evidence that Oswald was being impersonated, I recommend the following links (I don’t agree with one or two of them in every detail, but they contain much useful information on the subject):
http://22november1963.org.uk/silvia-odio-visitors
http://22november1963.org.uk/robert-vinson-jfk-assassination
https://www.history-matters.com/frameup.htm
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/The_Odio_Incident.html
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKodioS.htm
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I found this interesting news clip that was broadcast at 8:15 PM on 11/22/63 on a local Dallas news station that reported on Roger Craig's sighting of Oswald getting into a station wagon in Dealey Plaza after the shooting. This was before Fritz and the FBI realized that Craig's account was too problematic for the lone-gunman scenario and would have to be rejected. The segment on Craig's account starts at 00:23 in the video.
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And here's an excellent 10-minute presentation by Steve Cameron, author of The Deputy Interviews, on Roger Craig's account--it includes the news clip mentioned in my previous reply, along with part of Craig's 1974 interview: