Prayer Man Trailer

Trailer for the book Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light, by Stan Dane.

First to Second Video Series

I started a series of videos based on the First to Second posts we went through in recent weeks. I hope you find them helpful.

First to Second Evolution – Conclusion

The First to Second Evolution series was created to consolidate most of the key evidence in one spot supporting relocation of the Oswald-Baker-Truly encounter from the front of the TSBD to the second floor lunchroom. What I've laid out here is not a totally thorough or exhaustive look at this—far from it. Evolution is not an entirely linear process, but it's branching as well. I've selected what I consider to be the main taproot of information. There are many other things that branch off from this that are relevant and connected to the story as well.

For example, I didn't talk here about Victoria Adams, Sandra Styles, Carolyn Arnold, Jack Dougherty, Buell Wesley Frazier, Billy Lovelady, Jeraldean Reid, Bill Shelley, or many others. They are all connected to the taproot and are important to the overall story.

More significantly, I never talked about what went on down on the front steps. There was no discussion of Darnell or Wiegman, no use of the term Prayer Man. There's a reason for that. The case for First to Second Evolution does not hinge on what is seen in some picture. It is only enhanced by it.

First to Second Evolution was the process used to deprive Lee Oswald of his air-tight alibi because he was the designated patsy.

First to Second Evolution – Part 18

When I was a boy growing up in rural Michigan, a man my father worked with gave us a black sheepdog he could no longer keep. The dog, Samson, was about six years old and he fit right in with our family. Many months after we got him, Samson got loose and escaped from our yard. We couldn't find him anywhere. A day later, the original owner, who lived about 5 miles away, called to let us know Samson was sitting on his front porch. We picked him up and had no more problems.

About three years later, we found Samson missing one morning. We drove around the countryside looking for him. He was nowhere to be seen. Then my dad got a hunch. He drove over to the original owner's house and viola, there was Samson sitting on the front porch!

We realized, even though he was totally familiar with us as a family and was happy and content, Samson was never able to shake the knowledge of where his first home was.

We have just seen where Marrion Baker was brought back to clarify some things for the Warren Commission. In March 1964, he had testified at length about catching a glimpse of a man through the window of a door leading to the second floor lunchroom. Now, six months later, Baker's handwritten statement looked different.

Why?

We've pointed out a lot of evidence for First to Second Evolution over the days and weeks following the assassination. It must have been difficult for Officer Baker to keep up with all of the changes.

We can be sure he was thoroughly briefed on the "game plan" prior to his Warren Commission appearance, but after six months, his original memory and the things he said in his November 22, 1963 affidavit kicked in and overshadowed his shaky WC testimony.

I believe, like Samson the sheepdog, Marrion Baker always ran back to what he first knew.

First to Second Evolution – Part 17

Believe it or not, on September 23, 1964, there was still something left for Roy Truly and Marrion Baker to do.

The next day, September 24 was to be the presentation of the final Warren Commission Report to President Johnson. Truly and Baker were asked to go back on the record to clarify an important point: was Oswald on his own in the Second Floor lunchroom when they saw him just after the assassination?

There had been press reports—based in large part upon statements made by Jesse Curry communicating with the press on November 23—that Oswald was with others in the room when the officer came in. Don't want to fuel any messy conspiracy theories over loose ends. Let's get it right!

Roy Truly Voluntary Handwritten Statement to FBI, 9.23.1964

I, ROY S. TRULY, do hereby furnish this voluntary statement to Richard J. Burnett who has identified himself to me to be a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I am the Superintendent of the Texas School Book Depository located at 411 Elm Street, Dallas Texas, and was so employed as of November 22, 1963.

On the above date and just as President Kennedy's motorcade passed in front of my building, I reentered the building with a Dallas police officer after some shots had been heard coming from the general vicinity.

The officer and I proceeded to the stairways located in the northwest corner of the Texas School Book Depository building in order to proceed to the upper part of the building to see if we could see who had fired the shots.

I was leading the way up the stairs and the police officer was following me. After I was starting to ascend the stairs towards the third floor from the second floor, I noticed that the police

– Page 2 –

officer was talking to someone in the lunch room located on the second floor.

I then went to the lunch room where I saw the officer facing Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was by himself in the lunch room. There was no one else in the vicinity of the lunch room on the second floor other than Oswald, the police officer and myself.

I identified Oswald to the police officer as an employee of the Texas School Book Depository.

I have read this statement consisting of this page and one other page and t is true and correct to the best of my recollection.

x RS Truly

  Roy S Truly

 

Witnesses

Richard J. Burnett Special Agent, F.B.I., 9/23/64, Dallas

William H. Shelley 126 S. Tatum Dallas 11, Tex 9-23-64
--------------------

Truly says no one else was in the lunchroom other than Oswald, himself and the police officer. Everything else is pretty much consistent with his Warren Commission testimony.  Either Truly dictated this statement to FBI Special Agent Richard J. Burnett or it was prepared for him and he signed it as being true.

Same with Baker here:

Marrion Baker Voluntary Handwritten Statement to FBI, 9.23.1964

I, Marrion L. Baker, do hereby furnish this voluntary signed statement to Richard J. Burnett who has identified himself to me as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I am employed as an officer with the Dallas police department and was so employed as of November 22, 1963.

On the early afternoon of that day after hearing what sounded like to me to be bullet shots, I entered the Texas School Book Depository Building on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston Streets in downtown Dallas.

I had entered the building in an effort to determine if the shots might have come from this building.

On the second or third floor floor, [line out with initials MLB] where the lunch room is located, I saw a man standing in the lunch room, drinking a coke [line out with initials MLB].  He was alone in the lunch room at this time.

I saw no one else in the vicinity of the lunch room at this time.

ML Baker

– Page 2 –

I have read this statement consisting of this page and one other page and it is true and correct to the best of my knowledge. I have initialed each page and each correction.

x Marrion L Baker

Witnesses

Richard J. Burnett Special Agent, F.B.I., 9/23/64, Dallas

Bobby W. Hargis #1082 Dallas Police Dept.
--------------------

Like Truly, Baker says no one else was in the lunchroom other than Oswald. But Baker's statement doesn't look like his Warren Commission testimony.

Forget about the corrections for a moment—why they may be there and what they may suggest—Baker doesn't mention catching "a glimpse of him" through a window going away from him as he ran to a door and opened it and looked on down in the lunchroom where Oswald was on down there about 20 feet moving about as fast as he was. He sees "a man standing in the lunch room."

It's as if Baker is having a hard time keeping up with First to Second Evolution.

First to Second Evolution – Part 16

Truly and Baker have now told their stories to the Warren Commission and it was what it was. They answered all the questions directed to them, and while some of those answers may not have been totally satisfactory, the questions were answered.

Looking back, we have absolutely nothing on-the-record from Baker himself between the end of November 1963 and his Warren Commission testimony in March 1964. While Baker was…somewhere, it was Truly who frog-marched us through the process of First to Second Evolution to get us to the point we were now at:

Baker glimpsed Oswald going into the second floor lunchroom and Truly said uh-huh.

Now the deal was done. The time for questions was over. Nothing left to do.

But like the Lord, First to Second Evolution worked in mysterious ways.

First to Second Evolution – Part 15

We have seen Roy Truly's lunchroom story evolve over the first ten days or so through the following stages:

● The officer saw Oswald in the lunchroom...

● The officer saw Oswald sitting at one of the tables in the lunchroom...

● The officer saw Oswald leaning against a counter in the lunchroom...

● The officer (what's his name again?) saw Oswald standing at the Coke machine sipping a Coke in the lunchroom...

Yet Truly's Warren Commission testimony made it clear that Truly himself could have seen none of these things. All he actually said he saw was the officer standing at the lunchroom door with his gun up against Oswald, who was standing just inside the lunchroom door.

Listen to Truly 'splain it all:

Warren Commission Testimony of Roy S. Truly, 3.24.1964

Mr. TRULY: I don't know. I think I opened the door. I feel like I did. I don't remember.

Mr. BELIN: It could have been open or it could have been closed, you do not remember?

Mr. TRULY: The chances are it was closed.

Mr. BELIN: You thought you opened it?

Mr. TRULY: I think I opened it. I opened the door back and leaned in this way.

Mr. BELIN: What did you see?

Mr. TRULY: I saw the officer almost directly in the doorway of the lunch-room facing Lee Harvey Oswald.

Mr. BELIN: And where was Lee Harvey Oswald at the time you saw him?

Mr. TRULY: He was at the front of the lunchroom, not very far inside he was just inside the lunchroom door.

Mr. BELIN: All right.

Mr. TRULY: 2 or 3 feet, possibly.

Mr. BELIN: …What did you see or hear the officer say or do?

Mr. TRULY: When I reached there, the officer had his gun pointing at Oswald. The officer turned this way and said, "This man work here?" And I said, "Yes."

Mr. BELIN: And then what happened?

Mr. TRULY: Then we left Lee Harvey Oswald immediately and continued to run up the stairways until we reached the fifth floor.

Mr. BELIN: All right. Let me ask you this now. How far was the officer's gun from Lee Harvey Oswald when he asked the question?

Mr. TRULY: It would be hard for me to say, but it seemed to me like it was almost touching him.

Mr. BELIN: What portion of his body?

Mr. TRULY: Towards the middle portion of his body.

Mr. BELIN: Could you see Lee Harvey Oswald's hands?

Mr. TRULY: Yes.

Mr. BELIN: Could you see--

Mr. TRULY: I am sure I could, yes. I could see most of him, because I was looking in the room on an angle, and they were this way.

Mr. BELIN: When you say you were looking in the room on an angle--

Mr. TRULY: What I mean--this door offsets the lunchroom door.

Mr. BELIN: By this door, you mean door No. 23 is at an angle to door No. 24?

Mr. TRULY: Yes. One this way and the other one is this way.

Mr. BELIN: All right. Could you see whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald had anything in either hand?

Mr. TRULY: I noticed nothing in either hand.

Mr. BELIN: Did you see both of his hands?

Mr. TRULY: I am sure I did. I could be wrong, but I am almost sure. I did.

Mr. BELIN: About how long did Officer Baker stand there with Lee Harvey Oswald after you saw them?

Mr. TRULY: He left him immediately after I told him--after he asked me, does this man work here. I said, yes. The officer left him immediately.

Mr. BELIN: Did you hear Lee Harvey Oswald say anything?

Mr. TRULY: Not a thing.

Mr. BELIN: Did you see any expression on his face? Or weren't you paying attention?

Mr. TRULY: He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have been if somebody confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face.

…

Mr. DULLES: May I ask you a question? Do you know why it was that the officer didn't follow you up the stairs, but instead was distracted, as it were, and went with Lee Harvey Oswald into the lunchroom?

Mr. TRULY: I never knew until a day or two ago that he said he saw a movement, saw a man going away from him.

Mr. DULLES: As he was going up the stairs?

Mr. TRULY: As he got to the second floor landing. While I was going around, he saw a movement.

Mr. DULLES: And he followed that?

Mr. TRULY: That is right.

Representative FORD: He saw a movement in the lunchroom or a man go into the lunchroom?

Mr. TRULY: He saw the back of a man inside the door--I suppose door No. 23. But that isn't my statement. I didn't learn about that, you see, until the other day.

…

Mr. BELIN: Now, by the way, I have used the name Officer Baker. When did you find out what his name was?

Mr. TRULY: I never did know for sure what his name was until he was down to the building and you were interviewing him last week.

Mr. BELIN: This was on Friday, March 20th.

Mr. TRULY: I had heard his name was Baker or Burton or various other names. But I never did try to find out what his name was.

("Never did try to find out what his name was"…huh?)

This is where First to Second Evolution has taken us.

But are we done yet?

First to Second Evolution – Part 14

It's a new day and a new opportunity to excel. Marrion Baker steps up to the plate:

Warren Commission Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, 3.25.1964

Mr. BAKER: As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I come out I was kind of scanning, you know, the rooms, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this—I happened to see him through this window in this door. I don't know how come I saw him, but I had a glimpse of him coming down there.

...

Mr. BAKER: Now, through this window you can't see too much but I just caught a glimpse of him through this window going away from me and as I ran to this door and opened it, and looked on down in the lunchroom he was on down there about 20 feet so he was moving about as fast as I was.

Oswald was "moving about as fast" into the lunchroom as Baker was moving from the landing just off the stairway to the door? How did that happen?

Baker's story is that he "ran" to the door in order to go after a man he had glimpsed "walking away." Yet we are to believe that they covered about the same distance in the same time—i.e., that Baker running did not cover more ground than Oswald walking.

Evolution is not without irony.

From the book Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light

It's a nonsensical scenario, said Sean, so nonsensical that one wonders why Baker is making such a transparently unrealistic claim. Why doesn't he just say that Oswald was running? Or, alternatively, that Oswald was only a few feet into the lunchroom by the time he himself opened the door and looked into the lunchroom? The short answer is Baker has to merge by force two stories that cannot easily be merged:

1.) I saw a man walking away (as per Baker's November 22 affidavit).

2.) I saw Oswald standing by the coke machine (as per a later draft of the story, as told by [or to?] Roy Truly).

Baker has a real problem here: his November 22 affidavit talked of "a man walking away from the stairway." For Oswald, just behind the glass pane, to be "walking away" in any commonsense meaning of the words, he would need to be walking into—a wall.

From Baker's vantage point "A," the lunchroom is sharply off to the left, not straight ahead—not even close. So Baker, in his Warren Commission performance, has to split his affidavit's single description of a man "walking away" into two incidences of walking away.

The result is an awful mess.

The one thing Baker desperately needs to say—that his first glimpse of Oswald had him "walking away from the stairway"—is the one thing the layout of the landing/door/lunchroom disallows him from saying. And so we get a hesitation around the words "walking away":

Warren Commission Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, 3.25.1964

Mr. BAKER: As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I come out I was kind of scanning, you know, the rooms, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this—I happened to see him through this window in this door. I don't know how come I saw him, but I had a glimpse of him coming down there.

Mr. DULLES: Where was he coming from, do you know?

Mr. BAKER: No, sir. All I seen of him was a glimpse of him go away from me.

"I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this—"…if only Baker could finish the thought with the one magic word indelibly etched into his mind: "stairway."

But he can't, for to do so would be to make a ridiculous claim that would only draw attention to the discrepancies between his current story and the story told in his affidavit.

Excruciatingly, Oswald walking directly away from Baker's position such that Baker can call to him and have him turn around and come back to where Baker is, has to be held back until Baker has left the stairway and gone over to the door:

Warren Commission Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, 3.25.1964

Mr. BAKER: There is a door there with a glass, it seemed to me like about a 2 by 2, something like that, and then there is another door which is 6 foot on over there, and there is a hallway over there and a hallway entering into a lunchroom, and when I got to where I could see him he was walking away from me about 20 feet away from me in the lunchroom.

Mr. BELIN: What did you do?

Mr. BAKER: I hollered at him at that time and said, "Come here." He turned and walked right straight back to me.

Baker is now, at last, giving a story that sounds a little more like his November 22 affidavit story:

Police Officer Marrion Baker's First Affidavit, 11.22.1963

As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to that man and he turned around and came back toward me.

But only a little.

Baker's two stories—his November 22 affidavit plus his Warren Commission testimony—are still irreconcilable. Even after the heavy coaching that Baker has been put through ahead of his Warren Commission appearance (you see much evidence of this reading his entire WC testimony), we still are being asked to believe that an indeterminate glimpse of a man moving behind a door located well off the stairway could be described as a sighting of "a man walking away from the stairway."

The plain sense of those words in Baker's November 22 affidavit cannot be ignored: the man had just left the stairway and was putting distance between it and him. That's what "walking away from" means, and it's how Baker himself is using those words in his Warren Commission testimony.

But with the Warren Commission, all things—including plain, common sense—are ignored if they don't support First to Second Evolution.

First to Second Evolution – Part 13

French Le Figaro correspondent Leo Sauvage was puzzled by press references to Oswald's sipping a coke when the police officer saw him, so he asked Roy Truly about it in early 1964. Truly told him: "From where I stood, I couldn’t see if Oswald held something in his hand."* 

Huh?

Showtime. Warren Commission. Roy Truly is up to bat.

Warren Commission Testimony of Roy S. Truly, 3.24.1964

Mr. BELIN: All right. Could you see whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald had anything in either hand?

Mr. TRULY: I noticed nothing in either hand.

Mr. BELIN: Did you see both of his hands?

Mr. TRULY: I am sure I did. I could be wrong, but I am almost sure. I did.

Why the change? To cut to the chase, it had become painfully clear to the Warren Commission that an Oswald with a Coke already in his hand—meaning an Oswald who had already reached into his pocket, already had pulled out change, already had inserted the correct change, already selected his beverage of choice, already had waited for the "chunk clunk" of the machine to deliver his pop, already had uncapped it and commenced to drinking—this is an Oswald with even less time to descend from the sixth floor (and in case you're wondering, time was critical folks).

Through "unnatural selection," First to Second Evolution determined that Oswald drinking a Coke when a police officer came barging through the door was a trait that no longer was useful so it was excised out of the story.

Not that the story got appreciably better, but it was different, and that was the important thing.

*The Oswald Affair: An examination of the contradictions and omissions of the Warren report, Leo Sauvage, 1966, p. 30.

First to Second Evolution – Part 12

On 11.23.1963 while Jesse Curry was talking to reporters in the corridors of Dallas City Hall, there were three interesting exchanges:

REPORTER: Has he admitted that he was in the building at the time the shots were fired.

CURRY: Yes.

Curry seems to think twice here.

CURRY: Well, we know he couldn't deny that, we have witnesses.

REPORTER: But he did deny it, didn't he?

CURRY: He denies everything.

…

REPORTER: Did you say, Chief, that a policeman had seen him in the building?

CURRY: Yes.

REPORTER: After the shot was fired?

CURRY: Yes.

REPORTER: Why didn’t he arrest him then?

CURRY: Because the manager of the place told us that he was an employee, that he’s alright, he’s an employee.

REPORTER: Did he look suspicious to the policeman at this point?

CURRY: I imagine the policeman was checking everyone he saw as he went into the building.

…

REPORTER: Does he say he was anywhere else at the time this was happening?

Again Curry seems hesitant to commit to a straight answer:

CURRY: I don’t know. He says he was at the building, he says he was there because he worked there.

Sean Murphy said it seemed that Curry's answers were pointing to a front entrance encounter between Oswald and Baker: a boundary/threshold place that is technically "in the building," certainly "at the building"—but not really inside the building. Curry cannot quite say that Oswald is "admitting" to being "in the building." Nor, however, can he quite say that Oswald is denying being "in the building."

If Curry was aware that Oswald had been naming the front steps or front entrance or vestibule/lobby area as his location, then Curry's ambiguous answers make sense. Especially as his words about the policeman "checking everyone he saw as he went into the building" seal the deal: "out in front."

But First to Second Evolution was already well along in the process of messing up the deal.

First to Second Evolution – Part 11

Oswald's on second in the lunchroom. But what was he actually doing there when Baker spotted him?

At first Truly did the Evolution Two-Step to evade the question. In a series of statements, he simply has him "in" the lunchroom; specific location and activity are left to the imagination. Then, pretty quickly, Truly has Oswald sitting at one of the tables.

Within a week or so, Oswald is brought to his feet. Truly describes him, first, as leaning against the counter, and then as standing right over by the Coke machine.

Why the Coke machine? Because Oswald had talked about purchasing a Coke before the assassination, and having him over by the Coke machine turned this into a cool-as-a-cucumber post-assassination act.

But there was a second reason.

In February 1964, French writer Leo Sauvage called Roy Truly and grilled him about the lunchroom incident. Truly revealed the game plan as he and Baker were getting ready for their meet up with the Warren Commission a few weeks later in March: the officer (name still unknown to Truly!) evidently had heard a noise coming from the lunchroom, the noise, evidently, of a coke machine delivering up its product to the man who had just shot the President.

This was a crucial addition, for it gave Baker a reason for checking out the lunchroom—a reason he badly needed—as the lunchroom was nowhere near being in his line of sight as he came off the landing.

Just look how far he would have had to swing over to the right to get a line into the lunchroom:

The door of the lunchroom being open, the "cluck-clunk" noise of the Coke machine would have been heard by Baker. Except it...wouldn't've. For there was another door between Baker and the coke machine, and it was an automatically self-closing door.

Ruh roh!

Washington Post, 12.1.1963

This news story seemed beautifully clean and convincing. However its lack of acoustic plausibility meant that a further evolutionary step would be necessary.

First to Second Evolution – Part 10

A quick recap so far:

The Oswald-police officer-Truly encounter at the front entrance initially reported was moved deep into the building, at or near the rear stairs. The third-or-fourth-floor-rear-stairway story was quickly superseded by the lunchroom story. This became: the lunchroom stories—Oswald sitting at a table, Oswald leaning against a counter, Oswald standing by the Coke machine drinking a Coke.

The initial plan was simply to transplant Oswald up to the lunchroom, stretch the timeline and worry about the details later. Oswald was still alive and had every prospect of going to trial, so his damaging ability to describe a police officer and Truly coming in to the building needed to be preempted by a story involving the police officer and Truly coming into the lunchroom.

Truly's inflated time estimate in the very first reference to the second floor lunchroom incident gives us a clue how this would be played out:

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963)

Two or three minutes? Yeah, right. The Warren Commission would struggle mightily to stretch the time to 90 seconds. But the state of the evolution process on the evening of November 22 was to simply to chunk out enough time to allow Oswald to run down from the sixth floor, but not too much time to delay his exit from the TSBD. The details could be finessed later. Then all the Oswald accusers had to do was drive home how very odd it was for a man to be alone and loitering in a lunchroom while everyone else was outside or looking outside.

FBI Teletype from Dallas to Washington, 11.23.1963

Like Ol' Man River, First to Second Evolution just keeps rolling along.

First to Second Evolution – Part 9

So in the first week following the assassination, we now have Oswald smack dab in the middle of the second floor lunchroom (aka "snack bar") sitting at one of the tables. And recall that even the Secret Service reenactment of Oswald's supposed movements made shortly after the assassination shows Oswald walking over and sitting down at a table in the lunchroom. That was the prevailing thinking.

But evolution is a process and more evolution was needed to try to work out a large number of kinks. One such kink, a big one, was this: if the translation of the front-stairway-to-lunchroom story to the rear-stairway-to-lunchroom story was to be completed successfully, the officer needed a good reason for interrupting his flight upstairs, going all the way over to the passageway to the door to the lunchroom and checking out what's in the lunchroom.

The Evening Star, 11.29.1963

As Sean Murphy pointed out, one gets the impression given that the lunchroom was simply a room—one of several here—passed by the officer on his way to the rear stairway. But what Sean wanted to focus on here is the "counter" detail. Note that Truly is the obvious and sole source of this information. How does the reporter know there is indeed a counter in the lunchroom? Because Truly has told him. He has given the reporter a clear picture of Oswald leaning against the counter just inside the door.

Truly cannot possibly be inferring this image from having himself come on the scene just seconds after this, when Oswald is (as per his and Baker's Warren Commission testimony) at the door with Baker holding his revolver up to him. Nor can he have learned it from the officer, whom he "has not seen [him] since."

No, just like the now discarded "sitting at one of the tables" image, this is an invention that Truly is giving—or has been directed to give.

But why has Oswald been brought to his feet? The answer comes in two parts:

1) Timeline. It has become increasingly evident that Oswald, "The Sixth Floor Assassin," needs to be made appear as though he has only just arrived in the lunchroom. Sitting down at a table doesn't cut it.

2) Motivation. Baker needs a reason to check out the lunchroom in the first place. By early December, this becomes that much clearer as Oswald is moved from the "counter" over to the coke machine. (Evolution, baby!)

Again, bear in mind that Truly—as he will later tell the Warren Commission—is not supposed to have had any contact with Baker since they parted ways on November 22. Yet he is "guessing" with uncanny accuracy what Baker will months later testify to as to the location of Oswald in the lunchroom when he caught his first sighting of him in there.

Sunday Bulletin of Philadelphia, 12.1.1963

   

Washington Post, 12.1.1963

End of installment quiz:

Q: Why do you think Oswald is now being put over by the Coke machine?

A: In order to push the explanation that Baker took his significant detour over to the lunchroom because of a noise he heard: the noise of a coke machine in operation, that's why.

For those who passed, give yourself a pat on the back. For those who failed, reread and try again.

First to Second Evolution – Part 8

On the evening of 11.22, Police Chief Jesse Curry was caught up in the evolution process as well. Curry was telling the press that Oswald had been stopped leaving the building almost immediately following the assassination.

Washington Post, 11.23.1963

Elsewhere in the newspaper was this: 

"Police first became aware of Oswald when they learned he had been seen leaving the building immediately after the President was shot from one of its upper windows." 

Another news article quotes Curry saying: 

Washington Post, 11.23.1963

At this time, Curry may not have been fully aware of what Oswald was saying in custody ("out with Bill Shelley in front"), so perhaps his knowledge of Oswald's presence down in front was more, in his mind, an indicator of a guilty man trying to make a hasty getaway rather than a situation that would exonerate him as the sixth floor shooter.

Curry needed to stress the "immediate" nature of the Oswald-Officer incident and the incriminating immediate nature of Oswald's departure from the building. But as soon as it becomes clear just how "immediate" the incident was and how soon after the last shot had been fired, Curry gets with the program and shuts up.

The next day we find him going out with a very different story altogether:

Teletype (date not provided, estimated 11.24.1963 by context):

"He was seen sitting in the lunchroom and one of my officers drew a weapon on him," Curry said.

New York Times, 11.24.1963

From Oswald being stopped as he made his quick departure out the front entrance, to Oswald being seen sitting in a second floor lunchroom.

The process of evolution was now in full swing.

First to Second Evolution – Part 7

For this installment, let's look a little deeper into Kelley's document:

"First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley

"He said he ate his lunch with the colored boys who worked with him. He described one of them as 'Junior,' a colored boy, and the other was a little short negro boy. He said his lunch consisted of cheese, fruit, and apples, and was the only package he had with him when he went to work."

The two black men referred here are James Jarman and Harold Norman. When they were asked if they had lunch with Oswald they said no.

But did Oswald ever really say he had lunch with them in the first place?

If we check Fritz's transcription notes—which again record what Bookhout originally wrote—we see that Oswald said he "saw two negroes come in." 

So Kelley was twisting things a bit here to make Oswald look like a liar.

(Bookhout did a degree of twisting in this instance as well. In his second, reworked, FBI report, he states that Oswald "recalled possibly two Negro employees walking through the room during this period," contrary to his original notes "saw two negroes come in.")

Some might argue that these are small, minor points. I would disagree. I think these are examples of a larger process underway that was just beginning to pick up steam: the Evolution from First to Second.

First to Second Evolution – Part 6

Two items for this installment.

"First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley

"At this time Captain Fritz showed a Selective Service Card that was taken out of his wallet which bore the name of Alex Hidell. Oswald refused to discuss this after being asked for an explanation of it, both by Fritz and by James Bookhout, the FBI Agent. I asked him if he viewed the parade and he said he had not. I then asked him if he had shot the President and he said he had not. I asked him if he has shot governor Connally and he said he had not."

All of the words above were spoken during the interrogation, except the underlined sentence. How do we know this? Well, Kelley didn't keep the notes he used to write this report. They took a one-way trip down the memory hole.

But we do have the handwritten notes of Fritz, which are a transcription of the contemporaneous interrogation notes of Bookhout. If you read through these five pages of Fritz's handwritten notes (Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light, pages 86-98), you won't find the underlined sentence.

Those words were added.

Now why do you suppose that happened?

The second item:

On the evening of 11.22.1963, Captain "Case Closed" Fritz filed a Case Report naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the defendant. On page 2 of the report "Officer Witnesses" are listed, and at the very top is:

Dallas Police Department Case Report, Filed 11.22.1963 by Capt. Fritz, Page 2

The "Identified him in line up" part is not correct. It wasn't true. It never happened. Saying something isn't true is a nice way of saying something is...a lie. "Identified him in line up" is a lie.

But on the evening of 11.22.1963, a lie was good enough. You see, the process of First to Second Evolution had just begun and Oswald was fingered as the "Missing Link." The bugs in the theory could be worked out later.

First to Second Evolution – Part 5

Recall Marrion Baker's first affidavit, 11.22.1963:

"The elevator was hung several floors up so we used the stairs instead. As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to that man and he turned around and came back toward me."

Now consider this:

Letter from J. W. Fritz to Jesse Curry of 12.23.1963

Here we are, a month after the assassination, and "Case Cinched" Fritz says NOTHING about a second floor lunchroom encounter!

Jesse Curry must have scratched his head when he read Fritz’s reference to a "third or fourth floor" rear stairway meeting. Wasn't Fritz aware that Oswald had been stopped in the lunchroom on the second floor?

And get this: Fritz would tell the Warren Commission only a matter of weeks later that Oswald had personally confirmed the details of the second floor lunchroom incident while in custody!

Something stinks bad. Let's call it a day and let the place air out.

First to Second Evolution: The process of selectively suppressing facts and creating new ones as necessary to mold a desired reality.