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What he Saw; The Version of Events from Police Chief Curry

October 2, 2015 Jfkennedy1963 2 Comments

Recently I purchased a book written by Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry titled “JFK Assassination File”. This book was written in 1969, some 6 years after the assassination of President Kennedy and with conspiracy theories mounting around this time, this book would be an ideal way to get some monetary gain from the events in Dallas. Throughout this post I will highlight some of the parts of the book that stand out, and others that seem to be at odds of what he had said 6 years prior. This book was not on the bestseller list by no means, but it does give a viewpoint from the man that not only help set up the security surrounding the President of the United States visit, but also the security of the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Throughout the beginning of the book Chief Curry explains the tension that was around Dallas at the time and the divide the city was having when it came to politics. The shooting of General Edwin Walker on April, 10th 1963 was brought up in the beginning pages of the book, and the Chief points the finger to Oswald as the shooter, although this realization comes a month after the assassination of President Kennedy. The shooting of General Walker and the treatment of Ambassador Adlai Stevenson just a month before the Presidential visit prompted Chief Curry to use an unprecedented amount of the police force for the visit of President Kennedy.

In chapter two of his book, Chief Curry squarely puts the blame of the protection of the President on the Secret Service. As he mentions, “The Secret Service was entirely in charge of arranging the route and the press announcement was to be made by the host committee comprised of leading Dallas citizens”. Not known to Chief Curry at this time, one of the leading men on that committee would be the head of the Acme Building Maintenance Company Frank C. Jones, and it was his company that had access to the TSBD the night before the assassination. To Chief Curry, the Secret Service did not do enough prep work for the motorcade route and that areas of the route were not looked at closely. Instead, the area in which the President would be giving his speech, would be heavily guarded by Dallas Policemen. The Police Chief states, “The Secret Service were much more concerned about the security problems of the Trade Mart than any other single element of the President’s stay in Dallas”. Again, the Police Chief refuses to put any of the blame of the assassination onto his police force, and puts the entire blame onto the Secret Service. Many times in the book, Police Chief Curry highlights the things that the Secret Service did wrong, and we know that they did. But at the same time, he highlights things that his department did right. It is hard to think that anything went right during this trip with a President headed back in a casket. It should be noted that Police Chief Curry was aboard Air Force One while Lyndon Johnson was taking the oath of office. Instead of getting to the scene of the crime, he was instead trying to be a part of history that he didn’t need to be at.
Another aspect of the book that is intriguing, is the treatment of Oswald within police custody and the security that was in place for the accused assassin. According to Chief Curry the Dallas police department tried very hard not to let the suspect feel harassed in any way, and he says, “We were trying to be very certain that Oswald was not being coerced or harassed in any way”. Considering that it was the department that allowed the media to see the suspect inside of police headquarters shows that Chief Curry wanted to show that it was his department that captured the assassin of the President of the United States. In the interrogation of Oswald, Curry felt that the government agencies interfered too much and that his men could have gotten Oswald to talk more. As mentioned in the book, “Because of the constant pressure from other investigative agencies, Captain Fritz was never allowed to carry out an orderly private interview with Lee Harvey Oswald”. With the years of experience that Captain Fritz had, Curry believed that information could have come out with just a one on one talk. Again, the Police Chief puts the fault at the hands of the government and does not include any wrong doing that his department had in this process. Although Chief Curry states in his book that the interrogation process was corrupt, his Warren Commission statement seems to show otherwise,

Mr. Hubert.
It’s fair to say, then, that the interrogation of Oswald with respect to either the death of Tippit or of President Kennedy was in accordance with the normal procedures of the department ?
Mr. Curry.
That’s correct.

It would appear that Chief Curry thought the interrogation of Oswald was within standard procedure, but 6 years later he changed his mind.
The protection of Lee Oswald was something that did fall squarely into the hands of the Dallas Police Department and Police Chief Curry. The transfer of Oswald from Police Headquarters to the County Jail is something that will be looked at for a long time. How could the prime suspect in the murder of the President of the United States be killed while being transferred? The protection of Oswald has been questioned for years and Curry points out many times that he wanted to give Oswald space and rest so that he would be more willing to talk. During the planning process for the transfer it was determined that an armored truck would be taking Oswald to the county jail and that the media would be able to film the transfer. In actuality the armored truck was going to be used as a decoy and Oswald would be in a squad car. It would appear in the reading that the scope of the moment in history may have gotten to Curry because he felt the need to showcase this suspect. Not having been in a situation like this, and feeling the pressure of the national media, Curry decided to let the media into the basement for the transfer of Oswald. In true form as to the rest of this book, Curry states that his department is fully prepared for this event and says, “The security plans for the basement were entirely adequate”. History would prove otherwise to this statement, and Curry refuses to believe that his men let Ruby into the basement. If the security was well placed, then no one other than those from the national media would have been in that basement.
In the book, Curry states that the media was designated an area within the basement away from where Oswald was to be. An area that the media could set up and film the transfer without them seeing the police use the decoy vehicle. As Oswald came out from the elevator and headed into the basement, the media seemed to be right on top of him. This so-called designated area was so close to Oswald that each of them could reach out and touch him. It is Curry that states that he believed that the media made a mad rush to Oswald as he came out of the elevator and this enabled Ruby to get as close as he did within the commotion, he states, “In the enthusiasm of the moment, newsmen spilled across the drive toward the police elevator”. In all of the television broadcasts, it is apparent that all of them were able to set up their cameras in the locations that they were filming from and that they did not move. In the coverage from NBC, the camera is stationary and did not move. This book is a good informative inside look at the details that surrounded the security plans for the President’s visit to Dallas and the aftermath. The details in this book come from a Police Chief that believed his police force did everything they could to protect the President of the United States, and when it did not, he put the blame on others involved. Although the Secret Service was in charge of protecting the President, it was Curry’s police department that was in charge of protecting the truth and it failed when Oswald was killed inside of police headquarters. I recommend this book to those that have followed the assassination so that they can get a look from the view of Jesse Curry.

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Jack ruby, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald, Uncategorized

The Shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald

Video September 30, 2015 Jfkennedy1963 2 Comments

1963, Articles, Assassination, Conspiracy, educational, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald, Uncategorized, Witnesses

Connecting The Dots…

February 5, 2015 Jfkennedy1963 3 Comments

As the years and months go by since the assassination of President Kennedy, we as researchers find ourselves looking at the same material over and over again. Was there something that we missed? Could I have overlooked something? Questions like this will continue to linger on for years and decades to come, but there might be some truth in the overlooking aspect. There has been many research topics available for people to read about regarding the assassination and some point in either a direction of a lone gunman or a conspiracy. As my development into a historian continues, I am trying to make it an effort to show both sides of the story. I want to provide pieces of material for people to read and to make observations based on these findings. The latest finding that I was able to uncover centers around a man named Robert Taylor.
Many people may not even be aware of Mr. Taylor’s story and how he is linked to the assassination. In March or April of 1963, Mr. Taylor, who was a service mechanic at a Shell gas station in Irving, Texas, purchased a gun from an individual who came to the station. The story goes, that two men came to the station to get their 1959 Chevy looked at because of battery problems. When Mr. Taylor informed the men that the price would be $11.50 to fix the generator, the men offered to sell Mr. Taylor a rifle instead. They did not have the money to cover the cost of the repairs and the passenger in the car offered the gun for $12.00 to Mr. Taylor. The driver according to Mr. Taylor said, “You’re not going to let it go for that. You paid $35.00 for it”. It is important to note that Mr. Taylor believed that the person in the passenger seat was Lee Harvey Oswald. The man in the driver’s seat was described by Mr. Taylor as a white male, about 20 years of age and with a thin face. The man that Mr. Taylor was describing was Buell Wesley Frazier, although it is never mentioned in any of the F.B.I reports or even in the Warren Commission testimony that Mr. Taylor gives, no mention of the driver is ever mentioned again, besides in the original statement given to police. It is worth noting that Buell Frazier owned and still owns the 1959 Chevy Bel Air that he was driving when he would take Oswald back and forth to work each morning.

The mechanics story is much more than about purchasing a rifle from Oswald, it shows that others could have been with him as well. The car that Frazier drove each day, also had battery problems and he states this in both written and oral presentations about the activities before the assassination. As Frazier describes how he had to stay in the car to keep the battery charging while Oswald reached into the back seat and retrieved the “curtain rods”, we should think back to that gas station incident in March. Everything in this world can be looked at as a coincidence, but when you have two individuals matching the descriptions of both Oswald and Frazier months before they say they actually met, shows us there is more out there to look at.

Another man at this same gas station, Mr. G.E Smith, was not working at the station at the time of the rifle purchase but had heard about it. In his statement to police and the Warren Commission, he tells of a story involving a woman who drove a 1957 station wagon. Mr. Smith says that this woman would come to the station on several occasion to get her car looked at. There was a time when he fixed this lady’s car and offered to take it home for her, and he even helped bring her groceries inside of the house. The woman who had children inside of the house, mentioned that the children in the house spoke better Russian than they did English. The address of this house was 2515 West Fifth Street, and we know that Ruth Paine lived at this address. Mr. Smith did not know the name of the woman, only that she had come there several times before. So, we have evidence that shows that Ruth Paine would go to this station to get her car fixed and even had the serviceman bring it home for her. It is very possible that having the car trouble that Mr. Frazier had with his own car at that time and he admits it several times, Mrs. Paine told him about the Shell gas station.
The Warren Commission did do an interview with Mr. Smith regarding the situation with Mrs. Paine, but in typical form, failed to address or even go into further detail about her being at the station. They also did not put Mr. Taylor’s statements into the finding because they believed that he was misidentifying Oswald in the car. The dots are there if they wanted to connect them and yet they failed to push it further. More indication that the investigation did not fully cover everything to uncover the truth. Although we get the opportunity to look back at things and see it from a distance, it is not hard to connect that Ruth Paine visited this same gas station on multiple occasions that Oswald and a man that fit the description of Frazier were at. The issues with the car that Mr. Taylor serviced that day, were in fact the same problem that Frazier had with his own car. It is all about showing the people information, and every day the research community looks for things like this story.

References

National Archives. Accessed January 29, 2015. http://media.nara.gov/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/taylor_robert/taylor_robert-0006.jpg.

National Archives. http://media.nara.gov/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/taylor_robert/taylor_robert-0007.jpg.

National Archives. http://media.nara.gov/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/smith_glenn_emmett/smith_glenn_emmett-0002.jpg
http://www.c-span.org/video/?287933-1/kennedy-assassination-buell-wesley-frazier-part-1
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/garage.htm
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/smith_g.htm

1963, Articles, Assassination, Conspiracy, educational, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald, Uncategorized, Witnesses

Digging Deeper into the JFK Assassination.

February 28, 2014 Jfkennedy1963 1 Comment

Well, it has been a while since my last posting because of a much needed job promotion and now that I am finally settled in, its time to get back to the research. In the last post I wrote, I mentioned a company by the name of Acme Building Maintenance. This company was a janitorial company that specialized in cleaning the high rises of downtown Dallas. The company was well known in the city, and over 200 companies in downtown Dallas used them as their primary cleaning service. The company the was founded in 1920 by Frank C. Jones was also the cleaning service provider of The Texas School Book Depository.

In early Secret Service reports, the company is mentioned a few times. In his statement Roy Truly mentions that a cleaning service comes in after everyone has left the building and they have keys to the building for that reason. Seems odd that I was only able to find this company mentioned only a few times and none of which seems to be investigated really well. I have spent a few months looking into this company and learning more about their history and how they simply just disappeared.

The founder of the company Frank C. Jones wanted to start a company that would be able to not only clean buildings but also the streets of downtown Dallas. A resident himself of the city, the company followed his vision of a cleaner Dallas throughout the next several decades. In articles published in the Dallas Morning News, the company is featured several times about how they go about their business and how they are able to maintain low costs. The names of the top executives are mentioned which include Milt Thomas, Paul Clark, Robert Whitener, and Buck Butler. The company was located at 1901 Laws Street, Dallas Texas ( It has since been demolished).

What has troubled me while doing research on this company, is the fact that it simply disappeared. A company that had been around for 40 years suddenly went away, and any files on the company seemed to have gone with them. During my research, the Secretary of State of Texas, informed me that it seems that this company never existed because they had no information on it. I had sent several letters to the secretary of state, and they thought I had the name wrong. I emailed pictures of news articles that I had, and they told me to contact different organizations. The next step to finding out more about the company would be the Historical Society of both the State of Texas and the Dallas County Historical Society. Nothing to be found was what I was told. Again, I showed them the articles and they had nothing in their files. The company was featured in a Dallas Chamber of Commerce pamphlet in the early 1960’s and yet when I tried to get information about the company, they had nothing.

Since these organizations claim that this company did not exist, I just kept digging away. I found an article from Sept 1969 that showed the company was bought out by CT (Chemtech) Corporation of Dallas. I keep finding articles about this company, but when I want to get more information about them, I am stopped dead in my tracks. When I was able to get a phone number of the business ( RI 2-7660), I went back to the Chamber of Commerce to see if that would help with providing me more information. Nothing. Trying to find out information about Frank C. Jones is just as hard as to finding out how much money is kept at Fort Knox. No one wants to tell you, but there are people that know something. A company that existed and was successful as the Acme Building Maintenance Company would leave behind some sort of trail, and yet this company seems to have been taken off the grid.

The keys to the Texas School Book Depository were in the hands of the employees of the Acme Building Maintenance Company and yet not one employee was interviewed by either the Dallas Police, or the Warren Commission. The company is only mentioned in a few reports that seem to show just how easy it was to get into the building before the assassination. As I mentioned before, I believe that employees of this company were able to get into the building the night before the assassination and set up the snipers perch. We do know that workers on the sixth floor were installing new flooring, but yet no of them mention about moving those boxes by the southeast corner window. There was no need, these boxes were set up the night before with Oswald’s gun tucked away, awaiting for the police to find it.

Photo Courtesy of:

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1963, Articles, Assassination, Conspiracy, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald, Uncategorized, Witnesses

Who Had Keys to The Texas School Book Depository..

January 31, 2014 Jfkennedy1963 5 Comments

For many JFK assassination researchers, the daunting task of going through the many files that are available to them can be very challenging at times. However, their comes a time when you find that one thing in the files that makes you just go “all in” on it. I came across that file about two months ago, and over the course of the next few posts I will go more in depth with it. The file that I found was only in a couple of reports that I have seen in the many hours of looking through them. It involved a company named the Acme Building & Maintenance Company. Not familiar with it? Neither was I, and in the report I found some key things that should have been investigated further by the Warren Commission.

The report which was in the file of Roy Truly ( TSBD Supervisor), showed in one of the paragraphs about a cleaning company that would come in each and every night and work inside of The Texas School Book Depository. The cleaning company which is named in the file as Acme Building & Maintenance would have 2 employees come into the building after hours and work inside of the building alone until about 12:00 in the morning. The most alarming part about the paragraph was that the Acme Building & Maintenance Company had two employees who had a key to the Texas School Book Depository.

So here we have a company that has access to the TSBD after every employee of the warehouse is gone for the day. In looking through various files I can not find anywhere that the Warren Commission looked into this matter. We know that the Warren Commission refused to look at anything other than what would benefit their own version of what happened that day. The company which was located at 1901 Laws Street in Dallas, was one of the leading cleaning companies in the city. The Texas School Book Depository was a fairly new account and to be able to have access to the building at this time would benefit any potential assassin. The names of the employees who has keys are not listed in the report, and this should have been of some concern to law enforcement looking into the assassination. At no time did any of the officials look into this matter.

At any time during the night someone could have planted the gun that was found on the sixth floor. This would have given the conspirators plenty of time to set up the boxes without the worry about anyone seeing them up there. At no time does anyone see Oswald stacking boxes on the sixth floor near the southeast corner. Some of the fingerprints found on the cartons of boxes did not match those that were employees of the Texas School Book Depository. The employees who would have had access to those particular cartons were not found anywhere on them. The fingerprints that were found were not matched up to anyone who may have worked for the Acme Building & Maintenance Company during this time.

What I found in this file about the Acme Building & Maintenance Company may not be new to some, but for me it was something that I was not aware of. It sparked a new interest as to who else might have had keys and who were the ones handing out the keys to the building. A simple paragraph that seems to have been forgotten about in the many pages of the JFK assassination files. In the coming weeks I will be posting about the owner of the Acme Building & Maintenance Company and how the company completely went away and the location of the company is now a parking lot.

Sources:

Roy truly. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://research.archives.gov/description/7461227

1963, Articles, Assassination, Conspiracy, educational, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald, Uncategorized, Witnesses

Oswald Seen at Rifle Range By Many Witnesses..

January 18, 2014 Jfkennedy1963 1 Comment

In a post that I put together a few weeks ago, I talked briefly about a rifle range that Lee Harvey Oswald was seen at. During the course of November, Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by witnesses at the SportsDome Rifle Range in Irving. As many as 9 witnesses are able to place Oswald at this location on several different dates in the month of November. To some people this may not seem too important because they believe that Oswald did not shoot the rifle on November 22nd, 1963. There is evidence that points to the paraffin tests that conclude that Oswald only had residue from a pistol on his hands that day and that he did not fire that rifle. I am with the opinion that he may not have shot the rifle on that day but he did shoot it on other days in that month. The witnesses not only saw Oswald, but they saw him with other people as well. These other individuals that were seen with Oswald could have been key witnesses had the Warren Commission not left them out.

The story of the SportsDome Rifle Range, which is owned and operated by Floyd Davis and his wife , could be a link to other individuals involved in the assassination. The Warren Commission in their report put the rifle range story into their “rumors and speculation” part of the report. They only mention Oswald practicing with the rifle with his brother during a hunting trip. So why would they want to leave the rifle range out? It would seem to fit their intention of putting Oswald behind the trigger on November 22nd, but yet they choose to leave out these witnesses. It is simple, the witnesses at the rifle range saw Lee Harvey Oswald, but he was not alone. The rifle range was opened to the public towards the end of October 1963, and during the time before the assassination, Oswald is seen at least 3 different times at this rifle range.

On November 16th, 1963, Dr. Homer Wood and his 12-year-old son Sterling were at the SportsDome Rifle range when they noticed an individual firing a rifle in the booth next to them. It seemed to them that he was acting strange. The individual in the booth next to them was firing his weapon and catching the shell casings as they were being ejected from the weapon. This caught the attention of the son, who then started to watch this individual more. According to the son, the individual who looked identical to Oswald according to their statements, was firing his weapon and the weapon would have a spark come from the rifle after each shot. An important clue, because no one in Dealey Plaza who looked up at the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository noticed any sparks coming from the window. So, if this was Oswald using his gun at the rifle range, then the gun seen by others during the assassination would have noticed these sparks. No sparks were reported by any of the witnesses in Dealey Plaza. These two witnesses noticed someone was with Oswald at the time he was at the rifle range, and they describe this person to be about 6 ft. tall, weighing anywhere from about 220-240 pounds. There is no indication that the Dallas Police ever tried looking for this man. This same description of the individual with Oswald was given by others who also saw both of these men at the rifle range together.

Another witness to Lee Harvey Oswald being at the SportsDome Rifle range was Garland Slack. This individual is interesting because of not only him seeing Oswald at the rifle range, he was also present in Dealey Plaza when the motorcade came by. According to the statement given by Mr. Slack, he had an incident with the man he later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. According to Mr. Slack, he got into a slight argument with Oswald because of him shooting at Mr. Slack’s target. There were some words exchanged by the two men, and eventually Oswald left the rifle range without further incident. According to his statement, Mr. Slack kept the target paper that Oswald was shooting at the day of the incident, and that he handed it over to police. On November 22nd, 1963, Garland Slack is standing near the intersection of Houston and Elm Street when the Presidential motorcade goes by. He is unable to see the President, as the crowds had pushed him too far back. As the motorcade made the turn onto Elm, he heard the first shot which he thought came from the Triple Underpass. When the third shot went off, he was more convinced that some of the shots came from the depository. It is interesting to note, how a man who claims he saw Oswald at the rifle range just a few days before, is able to be in the prime location of the assassination. The statements that Mr. Slack gives, states that he was at the rifle range November 9th, 10th, and 17th. Again, he mentions that Oswald is not alone at the rifle range when he sees him. In some of his statements, Mr. Slack mentions that Oswald was being driven to the rifle range by a man named “Frazier”. The Warren Commission decides that this does not fit their story too well, and they decide to leave out these witnesses in the final report.

The decision to not further investigate the individual who was seen with Oswald at the rifle range, further fuels speculation that others were involved. The Warren Commission could have used these witnesses to back up their story of Oswald using the rifle before the assassination, but instead they decided to leave it out, because of the mention of others with Oswald at the time. Another witness at the rifle range is Malcolm Price. In his statements he claims that he helped sight the scope on Oswald’s rifle, and that Oswald tried out the new scope right in front of him. Their are lots of these types of stories and not all of them may be true, but when you have witnesses that are all seeing the same thing, then maybe these types of things should have been looked into further. The rifle range story is just one of many stories that were never fully told by the Warren Commission. The description of the man seen with Oswald on these dates, fits the description of a man walking in Dallas with a rifle case, on the morning of November 22nd, 1963.

Sources:

Dallas (Tex.). Police Dept.. [Information Regarding Oswald’s Firing His Rifle on the Sporting Gun Range #1], Text, December 2, 1963; digital images, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337276/ : accessed January 13, 2014), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Municipal Archives , Dallas, Texas.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/92342012@N00/262357965/in/set-72157594306610138

1963, Articles, Assassination, Conspiracy, educational, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, LBJ, Oswald, Uncategorized

Who do we blame for JFK’s Assassination?

January 4, 2014 Jfkennedy1963 1 Comment

For many people, the answer to who was involved in the killing of President John F. Kennedy stems from either years of research or is formed from an opinion based on everything they have heard from the media. The answer is not simple and it is something that still has not been answered completely. There are those that want to believe that Oswald acted alone in this and they have every right to that opinion. Then, there are those that believe that one man could not have planned and executed this crime in front of hundreds of people. I, for one, believe that Oswald could not have done this by himself and that others were behind this assassination. I have been reading books about the assassination since I was a kid and it seems that I still find new and interesting things in each of these readings. For example, I recently came across a book that shows some motive as to why someone would want JFK killed.

The book, which I found at a local flea market, is titled “Robert F. Kennedy: Assistant President”. The title of the book says it all for me. The authorclearly believes that RFK had more influence inside the government than the Vice President of the United States. My own daughter (who is 12) noticed the title and asked me if Robert Kennedy was the Vice President and why they would title the book that way. The book, which was published in 1962, shows how RFK fell into the position of Attorney General. At the time, it received reviews from Look magazine and U.S News and World Report which described RFK as “the man who is second only to the President in power and influence”. Now, put yourself in the shoes of Lyndon Baines Johnson. This is a man that, at one time, was the most powerful man in the Senate, only to find himself a few years later, playing second fiddle to a young, inexperienced lawyer who happened to be the President’s brother. How can he compete with that? The answer to that question is simple. He could not. So, it would seem to me that publications like this would serve as a means of motive.

In most crimes, there has to be a motive involved for someone to commit a crime. Whether it is to get back at someone or maybe even to get ahead in some faction. I am not saying that Johnson was the man behind the Kennedy assassination nor am I denying his possible involvement in it. I am simply showing those that are interested a possible means of motive. Here we have a book, published in 1962, that refers to Robert Kennedy as the Assistant President. The author goes into detail about decisions that he helps make on a daily basis and the trips around the world he takes during his first couple of years as Attorney General. These feelings that Johnson harbored towards RFK would carry on even after the assassination and would last until RFK himself was assassinated in 1968. Lyndon Johnson would go on to become President after the assassination of JFK, finally attaining the power that he so desperately wanted. It could be possible that Lyndon Johnson saw books like this and became so angered by them that he felt he had to do something. All I know is that questions still remain about the assassination. Maybe finding little clues like this book could help those that feel they have the answer.

Sources:

Gordon, G. (1962). Robert F.Kennedy Assistant President. Derby, Connecticut: Monarch Books, Inc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25727909@N04/3116939730/in/set-72157611372396118

1963, Assassination, Conspiracy, educational, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Oswald, Uncategorized

Witnesses see man with a rifle..

December 27, 2013 Jfkennedy1963 9 Comments

My search into the truth about what happened that day in Dallas 50 years ago has lead me down some very different paths. As a young boy I was intrigued by the assassination and was convinced that there was more than one person involved. The movie JFK came out at about the time I was 11 and this further convinced me to continue to search for answers. As time goes on, we tend to go with the flow sometimes and I was seeing documentary after documentary pointing to one assassin. As I got older, the use of the internet enabled me to search for things that I would not have been able to see because I would have had to go to the archives to look at it. This past week as I was doing my routine search of documents, I came across two witnesses that claim they saw a man carrying a gun case through the streets of Dallas on November 22nd, 1963.

The witnesses that came forward were Phillip Hathaway and John Lawerence. If you try looking for these individuals in the Warren Commission testimonies you will not be able to find them. It would seem that the Warren Commission decided that witnesses coming forward would not be important to their investigation. I understand that many witnesses have come forward claiming things, but this voluntary statement given by these two gentleman on the afternoon of the assassination would seem to me something that would be important to further investigate.

According to the witnesses they state that they were getting ready for the motorcade sometime before 12 noon, when a individual who seemed to be about 6’5 weighing somewhere around 250 pounds came walking through the crowd. In his statement to the Dallas Police, Mr. Hathaway mentioned that he took notice of this man because of the suit he was wearing and the package that the man was carrying. The package was a rifle case and according to the witness it had something in it, because the angle the man was holding the case indicating it had something in it. The direction that the man was heading towards was Main Street. At first the witness thought the man was a Secret Service agent, but once they realized the president had been shot, they decided to go to the police station.

The importance of these witness statements is because, at some point during the month of November, Oswald was seen at the Sportdome Rifle Range with another individual. The other individual seen with Oswald on a few occasions, was described as being around 6’4 and about 250 pounds. Could this be the same man that these witnesses saw that day? He would have had enough time to make it to the depository and plant Oswald’s gun on the sixth floor. This man would have had the gun, with the palm print on it and been able to have shell casings. At the rifle range, Oswald was seen collecting his shell casings after each shot, trying to catch them as they came out of the gun.

If you have ever been to Dallas you would know that the walk is not that far, and being that rifles have entered the building on occasion, this would not have been anything out of the ordinary. Someone could have easily made it to the depository and planted that gun, making Oswald the patsy he claimed he was. All of the investigative agencies involved failed to look further into this matter, and it is finding witness statements like this that make the search for the truth continue for me.

Sources

[Voluntary Statement by Phillip Ben Hathaway #1], Legal Document, November 22, 1963; digital images, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338788/ : accessed December 27, 2013), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Municipal Archives , Dallas, Texas

1963, Assassination, Conspiracy, educational, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Oswald, Uncategorized

Warren Commission likes to leave out witnesses..

December 19, 2013 Jfkennedy1963 3 Comments

It has become an almost everyday occurrence to find witnesses that the Warren Commission wanted to ignore. There are many individuals who were in Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963, yet they choose to pick the ones that made their story fit. From the start, the Commission had to find a way to put Oswald in the building and at that window at the time of the assassination. So they needed to place Oswald in the building at the time, and find a way for him to leave the building. When someone told a different story then the one they had predetermined, they would deem this individual as being mistaken. Today, I want to bring about the statements given by Roger Craig.

In the early afternoon of November 22nd, 1963, Dallas Deputy Roger Craig was standing on Main Street close to Dealey Plaza. As the shots rang out, Craig followed the crowd that was heading up the grassy knoll. He had seen an officer heading into that direction and decided to follow suit. When they arrived they searched the area and were unable to find anything up there. As he was walking back he encountered Arnold Rowland who was a witness that claimed he saw a man with a rifle on the sixth floor. Not only did he see a man with a rifle at the southwest corner ( Oswald was supposedly at the southeast), he saw another man on the sixth floor as well. Mr. Rowland pointed this out to his wife, and he constantly looked in that direction before the motorcade arrived in Dealey Plaza.. More on the Rowland story in another post, because there is much more to that story then I can fit.

So Officer Craig, listens to the man give his account of the scene and directs him to other officers that are in the area. About 15 minutes after the shooting, Craig hears someone whistle. At this time he sees a man, that is slender in build, looks to be in his early 20’s running towards a station wagon. Officer Craig gets a good look at this man that is running down the grassy knoll and tries to get the license plate number of the vehicle. His initial reaction at the time was that,why would anyone be running away, when it seemed everyone was running towards the situation. As the scene is unfolding in Dealey Plaza, Officer Craig is told to head into the Texas School Book Depository. While on the sixth floor, it was him and another officer named Seymour Weitzman along with another officer that find the alleged rifle that was used in the shooting. When the weapon was found, they were told to leave it alone until the identification team could have a look at it. Upon looking at the weapon Weitzman described the weapon as a 7.65 Mauser rifle, and Officer Craig thought the same thing at the time. It wasn’t until pressure from the Warren Commission that Weitzman changed his story. His initial statement to Dallas investigators was that it was a Mauser and he knew weapons from being in the Sporting Goods business.

It was not until later in the evening of November 22nd, that Officer Craig is able to figure out who that man was running down the grassy knoll. He identified him as Lee Harvey Oswald. According to Craig, he went into Police Headquarters to talk to Captain Fritz about what he saw in Dealey Plaza. When told, Fritz and Craig went into the room where Oswald was staying and Fritz asked Oswald about the station wagon. Oswald was quoted as saying ” leave Mrs. Paine out of this, she had nothing to do with it”. A little side note, Ruth Paine was the woman who Oswald’s wife was staying with, and where his rifle was located. At the time, she drove a light green station wagon like the one Officer Craig had seen that day.

So here we have an Officer who sees a man he believes his Oswald about 15 minutes after the shooting, get into a car and take off. The final determination by the Warren Commission was that Oswald left the Texas School Book Depository after the shooting, got on a bus, but when the bus got caught in traffic he took a cab into Oak Cliff. When Oswald was arrested, he had on him a transfer ticket from the bus he was supposedly on. Before November 22nd, 1963, Officer Roger Dean Craig was an outstanding and decorated police officer for the city of Dallas. He was awarded the Man of the year award in 1960 for his work in a jewelry thief arrest. But once word gets out about his talk of Oswald being on the grassy knoll after the shooting, he is quickly ridiculed by his fellow officers. They simple do not believe his story, and he is eventually forced out of the police department by 1967. There were many threats made against his life in the following years, and following being shot at and injured, and driven off the road in an automobile accident, Mr. Craig decided to end his life in 1975. Until the moment of his passing, he believed that the man he saw that day was Oswald.

I am not going to say whether or not I believe this story, but it would be hard pressed not to believe a decorated police officer, who from day one stated he saw Oswald after the shooting. His observations and that of other witnesses fell on deaf ears to the Warren Commission and although he was called in as a witness, Officer Craig’s statements never made it to the final report. The final report will never be final in the eyes of many, and it is stories like this and witness statements from that day which keep this flame burning. I along with everyone else just want to know everything that transpired that day.

Sources:

John F. Kennedy assassination homepage. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol6/page260.php

Simkin, J. (1997, 09). Roger dean craig. Retrieved from http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcraigR.htm

1963, Assassination, Conspiracy, History, JFK, Kennedy Assassination, Oswald, Uncategorized

Another person claims Curtain Rods!!!

December 13, 2013 Jfkennedy1963 11 Comments

I know I may be a little late to this discussion about someone else claiming curtain rods, but I feel the need to share it with everyone who is not familiar. As I was looking through some of the FBI files on the case I found another person that claims he was told by Oswald that he had curtain rods. My journey to this discovery came as I was looking through old telephone records of the home of Michael Paine. In the notes that the FBI had, was a memo that stated a man named Robert Yates voluntarily came into the office on November 26th, 1963. In his statement he claimed that he picked up a hitchhiker in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on Beckley Street on either November 20th or 21st (Note that Oswald’s rooming house was located on Beckley Street). The man according to the witness had a package with him as he was standing on the side of the road. When Mr. Yates offered him a ride in his pickup truck, he told the man that he could put the package in the bed of the truck. The man stated that he wanted to hold on to him, because they were “curtain rods”.

The witness stated that once he saw the television coverage of the assassination he immediately recognized the man as Lee Harvey Oswald. How could Oswald be in two places at the same time? As the statements given by employees of the Texas School Book Depository mentioned, Oswald was at work on these two days leading up to the assassination. The witness said that he picked this Oswald up at around 10:30am and he was certain it was the Oswald on the television. The witness went on to further say that during the ride, that Oswald was asking him questions about “if someone could shoot the president”, “ever been to the carousel club”, “you think this rifle in this picture can kill him”. Even questions about the motorcade route of the president were talked about in this less then 15 minute drive into Dallas. The hitchhiker wanted to be dropped off at the intersection of Houston and Elm ( Texas School Book Depository) These kinds of questions raised some suspicion in the witness because when he arrived back to work that day, he mentioned his encounter with the hitchhiker to another co-worker. This witness was never brought before the Warren Commission and was completely left out of the final report. The FBI did not find that Mr. Robert Yates to be telling a lie, because they interviewed the other co-workers who claimed that he did mention to them about the hitchhiker story when he came back to work that day.

So how can there be two Oswald’s doing things at the same time on November 20th or 21st. My guess is that this witness Mr. Yates did not know Lee Harvey Oswald at the time, and that he did not want any fame from this. In the FBI memo, it states that the witness does not want publicity from it. The Warren Commission found this to go against the things they had already thought happened, and they did not want any part of it as well. We know from witness testimony at the Texas School Book Depository ( TSBD), that many of them take lunch at 12:00 but that they do not punch out for their break. Could Oswald have left the building unnoticed and caught a ride to his rooming house to retrieve a different gun to be used in the assassination? Then caught a ride back into the city before his lunch break would be over. Remember, it is only a 15 minute ride to the rooming house. We also know that someone has already brought a rifle into the building a few days before and that everyone was glancing over it. If Oswald was to bring a package in then, nobody would notice.

The real question should be, if he was able to get a gun into the building on either the 20th or 21st, why would he need to bring another package on the 22nd. The story that Buell Frazier mentions is the one that the Warren Commission is so readily wanting to accept instead of Mr. Yates’s story. Could it be that Frazier’s link to getting Oswald the job, and the every Monday car rides seemed so much better. Or are they trying to hide the fact that there was two rifles found that day, and the gun they wanted to find was right where they thought it would be and the other rifle used went missing. I’m not saying that Oswald pulled the trigger, but I do believe that there was involvement on his part, and to figure out what it was is another mystery to uncover. Two Dallas Police Officers make a mention about finding another rifle and not the one that had been shown to the world. They have made statements about finding this other gun but yet again, this gets overlooked. But that discussion will be for another day and time to examine.

Sources:

F.B.I, (1963). (DL 44-1639). Retrieved from website: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/FBI%20Records%20Files/105-82555/105-82555%20Section%20071/71c.pdf