First to Second Evolution

Although the picture of an unidentified man resembling Lee Oswald is the visual focal point for Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light, the real substance of the book is showing how the Officer Baker-Roy Truly-Lee Oswald encounter that took place on the first floor of the TSBD near the entrance was ultimately relocated to the second floor to eliminate Oswald's alibi. The next series of posts will focus on this evolution process.

The first reference to a second floor lunchroom incident does not come until the evening of November 22, 1963 when Roy Truly is interviewed by the FBI. This interview takes place as a result of Lee Oswald’s first interrogation which concluded earlier. We know this because Truly is asked to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made:

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

Truly’s story was investigated and found to check out, but the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer. The same report provides Truly’s response to that claim:

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

The above text constitutes the earliest reference to a Second Floor lunchroom incident. And it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, could be of explosive significance:

…he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building…

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

"'They saw no one there.' The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely 'there,' inside the front of the building on the First Floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is he is disclaiming, said Sean.

"Whether Truly fed the FBI the Second Floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the FBI who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder."

First to Second Evolution had just begun.