Oswald wasn't seen with a Coke until after the Baker encounter. Baker said he did not have a Coke when he confronted Oswald. Baker did not write his official statement. It was written up for him and he was asked to sign it. He read the prepared statement and refused to sign it because it said Oswald had a Coke in his hand and he knew that he hadn't said that. They asked him to cross out the reference to the Coke and initial his correction, which he did and then signed the statement
My guess is the person who prepared the statement for Baker did so from notes taken when he was interviewed. It's possible that same person had also prepared Reid's statement and conflated what Reid said with what Baker said. Whatever the reason for the mistake was, Baker made a point to say he did not see Oswald with a Coke in his hand.
Oswald would not have had time to buy a Coke because he had just entered the lunchroom seconds before Baker reached the landing. Baker spotted him through the window of the outer door. There was an inner door which didn't have a glass window and that door had an automatic closer. The only reason Baker was able to see Oswald was because Oswald had just gone through that inner door and it had not closed behind him. Had Oswald ben in the lunchroom for more than a few seconds, that inner door would have been closed and Baker wouldn't have even known he was there.
Yes, I know all that. I have no convincing explanation for why the person who prepared Baker's original affidavit would have gratuitously inserted "holding a Coke" - yet another quirk of the wildly quirky JFKA that only adds to the mystery. With one's CT beanie on, one can see how eliminating the Coke from Baker's story is critical, because if Oswald had a Coke at the time then he had been there longer than a few seconds and buying a Coke before the Baker encounter would be exceedingly odd behavior for an escaping Presidential assassin. On the other hand, even buying a Coke after the assassination would be somewhat odd. Would he really have the presence of mind at that point to think "It will look better if I walk out of here with a Coke in my hand?" The zombie-like encounter with Mrs. Reid, assuming it occurred as she described, is likewise odd. The escaping assassin who had the presence of mind to buy a Coke didn't have the presence of mind to say, "No, really? I'm going to go out and see what I can find out."
It seems that staunch defenders of the LN narrative want to go to immediately to "He had a motive!" and "Here are all the reasons he's guilty!" For purposes of this discussion, I accept all that. I simply ask how we account for behavior that seems (to me, anyway) seriously inconsistent with that?
Things like his behavior in Irving and the Baker encounter have always stuck in my craw. I have explained his post-assassination lack of cooperation and lies on the basis that he was saving everything for a long, theater-like trial in which Abt would guide him through an exploration of his political philosophy and he would at least go down in history as a deep-thinking, ideologically motivated assassin - but even this is pretty iffy. But the more I think about it, his behavior with Marina and his beloved children in Irving, and his lack of any Oswald-like manifesto prepared at Beckley the night before, are really puzzling. To say he had a motive and there is lots of evidence of his guilt avoids these puzzles but doesn't solve them.
My LN-oriented explanation has been that he wasn't fully committed to the JFKA until the very, very last minute, after Marina had rebuffed his attempts at reconciliation. But even this is kind of bizarre: "Maybe I'll buy Marina a washing machine and set up her and the kids in an apartment in Dallas or maybe I'll assassinate the President. Well, that it didn't go so well in Irving - I guess I'll go ahead and assassinate the President and leave Marina and the kids to deal with the aftermath and fend for themselves."
What?
