For more information about the voice stress analysis, “Malcontent - Lee Harvey Oswald’s confession by Conduct” by Sean R. DeGrilla (section 2) is a good read.
Yes, let’s take a look at DeGrilla’s section on O’Toole’s PSE analysis of Oswald’s declarations of innocence (Part II:1 in DeGrilla’s book). DeGrilla pretends that PSE experts Mike Kradz and Lloyd (“Rusty”) Hitchcock did not confirm what O’Toole said about their PSE analyses, and that they gave “less than ringing endorsements” when asked about O’Toole’s PSE research. If you actually read DeGrilla’s quotes from Kradz and Hitchcock, you see that he is rather clumsily misrepresenting what they said, even though he quotes them.
With Kradz’s statement, DeGrilla underlines the part where, clearly for rhetorical effect, Kradz describes O’Toole’s research as “a strange, different, and bizarre system of explanations and interpretations.” Perhaps DeGrilla hoped that by underlining these words, the reader would not notice that Kradz then goes on to say that O’Toole’s system of explanations and interpretations is “creditable” and “has not been denied nor refuted.” So even though Kradz said that O’Toole’s research was creditable and had not been denied or refuted, DeGrilla pretends that Kradz denigrated O’Toole’s research.
Furthermore, we should remember that when O’Toole asked Kradz to analyze the Oswald PSE charts, he did not tell him that the charts were of Oswald’s statements. He simply told Kradz that the charts were of statements made by someone who had been accused of murder, so Kradz had no idea that he was looking at charts of statements made by Oswald. I mention this because DeGrilla does not.
Also, when Kradz learned that the PSE charts were of Oswald, he suspected the O’Toole had misused his PSE equipment, so he checked all the settings that O’Toole had used.
DeGrilla’s attempt to minimize Hitchcock’s endorsement of O’Toole’s PSE research on Oswald’s declarations of innocence is perhaps even more misleading and sophomoric than his treatment of Kradz’s statement. DeGrilla quotes an FBI memo that opined that Hitchcock’s letter to O’Toole was “far from an unqualified endorsement.” Really? Hitchcock said that unless Oswald was so crazy that he was unaware of his own actions, he, Hitchcock, could state “beyond reasonable doubt” that Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and did not shoot anyone else. Let’s read what the memo itself quotes Hitchcock as saying:
“Assuming that he (Oswald) was not suffering from a psycho-pathological condition that made him ignorant of his own actions, I can state, beyond reasonable doubt, that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy and did not shoot anyone else.”
And this is not all that Hitchcock said. DeGrilla conveniently fails to inform his readers that Hitchcock also said in his letter that his own PSE analysis of the recordings of Oswald’s innocence declarations “clearly” indicated that Oswald believed he was telling the truth when he made them. I quote from Hitchcock’s letter:
“My PSE analysis of these recordings indicates very clearly that Oswald believed he was telling the truth when he denied killing the president.”
Humm, I wonder why DeGrilla did not see fit to quote that part of Hitchcock’s letter.
I would encourage everyone to read O’Toole’s article on his PSE analysis of Oswald’s innocence declarations. O’Toole’s article contains a lot more information than what I’ve presented so far, such as information on O’Toole’s methodology and how he used the PSE equipment. Here’s the link to the article again:
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/O%20Disk/O%27Toole%20George/Item%2021.pdf
