The Kennedy Assassination: Inside the Book Depository

Right here in Dallas, Texas, American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The accused assassin was a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. After being held in custody for less than two days, Oswald himself would meet a violent end. According to a later investigation, Oswald had fired three bullets from the Texas school

book

depository

. Police recovered three bullet casings and a bolt-action rifle from the sixth floor of the building. But Oswald's

assassination

immediately raised suspicions of conspiracy. Suspicions that persist to this day and have led most Americans to reject the government's conclusion that Oswald acted alone.

Arguments for and against conspiracy take many forms. In fact, too many to do them all justice in a single video. Instead, in this video I want to zoom in and focus on a very narrow portion of this case. Specifically, events related to the Texas School Book Depository. What exactly happened inside this building from where the shots that killed the president are believed to have been fired? In September 1963, a young man named Wesley Frazier received a call from an employment agency. There was a possible job opening at the Texas School Book Depository. On September 13, Frazier traveled from Irving, Texas... ...to downtown Dallas.

He met with Roy Truly, the building superintendent, and was hired on the spot. Back in Irving, Frazier lived with his older sister, Linnie Randle. A few houses down the street lived a woman named Ruth Paine. On October 14, both Randle and Paine had a cup of coffee at a neighbor's house. Paine brought with him a friend and Russian immigrant named Marina Oswald, Lee Oswald's wife. Marina barely spoke English and had been staying with Paine for a few weeks, in part because of her husband's unemployment. Paine and Marina returned home, spoke with Roy Truly on the phone, and secured a job interview on Lee Oswald's behalf.

The next morning he went to the Book Depository and on October 16 began his first day of work. Thus, an acquaintance where Oswald's wife was currently staying had an informal conversation with a neighbor. That neighbor had a brother who recently got a job at the Book Depository. This led his wife to ask an acquaintance to call the building superintendent to ask about vacancies. The position was not only temporary but existed due to a temporary staffing shortage. But the situation becomes even more tragic because Oswald was not the only one who applied for a job. If Oswald was somehow involved in a conspiracy, and the goal of that conspiracy was for him to work at the Book Depository, this indirect sequence of events is a very strange way to approach it.

As its name indicates, the Texas School Book Depository was dedicated to selling

book

s. For $1.25 an hour, Oswald's job was to prepare books for shipping. He did this by filling out forms and transporting boxes of books between the upper and first floors. The building had three elevators, two staircases and seven stories high. In the northwest corner, a staircase and two freight elevators provided access to all seven floors. A small passenger elevator near the main entrance stopped at level four, while floors one and two were connected by a second flight of stairs. Lacking a driver's license, Oswald relied on Wesley Frazier to carpool between Irving and Dallas every Friday night and Monday morning.

He spent workdays at a boarding house in Dallas and weekends with his wife and daughters in Irving. But on Thursday morning, November 21, the day before the

assassination

, Oswald decided to deviate from this routine. Frazier took Oswald back to Irving, where he arrived unannounced at Ruth Paine's house. Both Paine and Marina were surprised to see Oswald on a Thursday. They assumed that he had come to make peace with Marina over an argument they had had a few days before. The next day, Oswald said goodbye to his wife and left the Paine residence around 7:15 a.m. On top of a dresser in the bedroom, he left his wedding ring.

Linnie Randle saw Oswald walking down the street, carrying a package. She was soon joined by Frazier and the two took a seat in his car to begin their journey. Not only was Oswald carrying a large package, but he had also forgotten to bring a bag lunch. They arrived in Dallas a few minutes before 8:00 a.m. They usually walked together from the parking lot to the book

depository

. But on this particular Friday, Oswald grabbed the curtain rods and ran into the building. On the ground floor, within sight of the back entrance, his colleague Jack Dougherty worked. Frazier and Dougherty are the only two people known to have seen Oswald enter the building.

Frazier says he was carrying a package. Dougherty says no. Contradictions like this will become a recurring theme throughout the rest of this video. We'll take a closer look at the missing curtain rods in a later chapter, but for now, let's stick with Oswald. As the morning progressed, Oswald was seen working normally. Roy Truly described him as an above-average worker who kept to himself. In fact, he was a bit mysterious to his colleagues. But there were exceptions to his reticence, and one of them occurred this Friday morning. James Jarman was working downstairs when he observed Oswald looking out a window overlooking Elm Street.

It's a brief but fascinating moment. It almost seems as if Oswald had no idea that Kennedy would stop by the Book Depository. In fact, this was the case for some of his colleagues. Jarman himself had only learned of this fact shortly before speaking with Oswald. There is no doubt that Oswald knew that the president was coming to Dallas, but it is much more difficult to prove whether he knew the route of the motorcade. The route of the caravan had been defined only a few days before the visit and depended on its destination. Kennedy was supposed to attend a banquet in Dallas, but no one could agree on a location.

It came down to two options. The Trade Mart to the northwest of downtown or the Women's Building to the east. One of the Trade Mart's staunchest defenders was Texas Governor John Connally, and after much back and forth, he finally got his way on November 14. If the Women's Building had been chosen, the motorcade would have sped across Dealey Plaza, heading east along Main Street, much further away and perpendicular to the Book Depository. Not to mention that First Lady Jacqueline would have been sitting between the building and the President. The selection of the Trade Mart meant that the caravan would now head west on Main Street and make these turns through Dealey Plaza to reach the northbound lanes of the freeway.

Now, these turns could still have been avoided if the caravan had continued like this and not taken the highway. But since the highway was the most scenic and convenient route, it was the most attractive option. All of this means that the success of the assassination depended largely on the selection of the Trade Mart. Therefore, it might be tempting to suspect Governor Connally, but it should be noted that he was traveling in the presidential limousine along with the Kennedys and suffered serious injuries during the shooting. Not only that, but Connally opposed a caravan and favored a more direct route from the airport to the Trade Mart.

A short trip that would have bypassed Dealey Plaza entirely. Unfortunately, he was rejected by Kennedy himself, who wanted to see and be seen by the people of Dallas. Okay, so all of that was happening behind the scenes. But as far as the public knew, there wasn't even going to be a caravan. As late as November 15, the Dallas Morning News reported that a caravan seemed unlikely to form. But the next day the parade was finally confirmed. While the precise route, followed by maps and detailed descriptions, was not officially revealed until November 19, someone familiar with Dallas could have approximated the route a few days in advance.

That is, the first time a member of the public could have deduced that Kennedy would pass the Book Depository was November 16, less than a week before the visit. Oswald most likely saw these articles because he had been observed reading political columns in the same newspapers. Furthermore, we know from other aspects of Oswald's life that he had political leanings. Well, I have studied Marxist philosophy, yes sir. And other philosophers too. But are you a Marxist? I think he admitted in a previous radio interview that he considers himself a Marxist. Well, I would definitely say I'm a Marxist, that's right.

But that doesn't mean he's a communist. What is the difference between the two? Well, there is a big difference. Several American parties and several countries are based on Marxism, such as Ghana, er, Ghana. Certain countries have characteristics of a socialist system like Britain with its socialized medicine. These then are the differences between an openly communist country and countries that adhere to leftist or Marxist principles. On the contrary, a lack of interest in politics is precisely the reason why at least one of Oswald's colleagues remained unaware of the caravan. So while it's understandable that a presidential visit would take someone apolitical by surprise, it makes much less sense for someone like Oswald.

We will never know what Oswald was thinking when he spoke to James Jarman shortly before the assassination. But it is worth repeating, however, that Oswald was hired on October 15. That's a full month before the caravan route was decided, much less announced to the public. On the morning of November 22, a handful of employees had been assigned to install a new plywood floor on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. From time to time, they saw Oswald. Shortly before noon it was time for lunch. To have a little fun, they decided to take the two elevators down to ground level.

As they began to descend, they observed Oswald now standing on the fifth floor. He yelled at them to stop or close the elevator door when they reached the first floor. Charles Givens then realized that he had left his jacket and his cigarettes on the sixth floor. About to return to ground level, Givens saw Oswald approaching. And with that, Givens became the last person inside the Book Depository known to have seen Oswald before the assassination. At least, that's the official story. The meeting was scheduled for 11:55 a.m., more than half an hour before the shooting. But other employees claimed to have seen Oswald in other parts of the building around the same time or even after Givens.

Givens himself provided conflicting accounts. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Despite this encounter, Givens was not the last person to visit the sixth floor. Shortly after Givens left, Bonnie Williams took her lunch and headed upstairs. She sat here, waiting for the President's arrival. The southeast corner is where the shots that killed the president are believed to have been fired. The so-called Sniper's Nest. Williams says she was alone, but she admits her view was obstructed by tall stacks of boxes. Meanwhile, near the main entrance, someone was trying to access the building. This individual was never identified and is the only unknown person known to have entered the Book Depository prior to the shooting.

After finishing her lunch on the sixth floor, Bonnie Williams heard the voices of James Jarman and Harold Norman emanating from the floor below. Feeling a little alone, Williams went down to the fifth floor and met up with her two colleagues. The exact time of Williams' departure is unclear, but it was probably no more than 10 or even 5 minutes before the shooting. On the field below, a sea of ​​spectators lined Elm and Houston streets. From time to time, one of them would look at the Book Depository. In fact, Jarman, Williams and Norman were seen on multiple occasions leaning out of the windows on the east end of the fifth floor.

But movement could also be seen on the ground above them. A floor that, by all indications, was now supposed to be empty. Waiting for the motorcade on Houston's east sidewalk was a young newlywed couple named Arnold and Barbara Rowland. About 15 minutes before the shooting, Arnold saw a white man in the westernmost window of the sixth floor of the Book Depository. The man was carrying a rifle. His gaze settled on Houston. Despite being a few meters away from an officer, Arnold decided not to report the gunman. If Rowland's recollection is accurate, it directly conflicts with that of Bonnie Williams, who she claimed to have had lunch on the same floor at the same time.

Williams did not see or hear anyone despite having an unobstructed view toward the southwest corner of the building where Rowland claimed to have seen the gunman. A few minutes later, a different viewer named Howard Brennan saw a white man pacing back and forth from the easternmost window on the sixth floor. At 12:30 p.m. m., the presidential limousine emerged from behind a building and began driving north on Houston. As the car made a sharp left turn onto Elm, a high school student named Amos Euins looked toward the Book Depository and saw a rodof metal that protruded. Few realized what had happened.

Was it a firecracker, a motorcycle that backfired, or a presidential salute? The people near Rowlands even burst out laughing. He may feel a little silly for being scared by the seemingly harmless explosion. Standing on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston was James Worrell. He thought the explosion had come from directly above. Sure enough, on one of the upper floors, Worrell could see the barrel of a gun. At that moment, a second explosion echoed through Dealey Plaza. Worrell and Euins witnessed the recoil and flash of the rifle at the same time as the sound. Brennan had yet to realize what was happening.

He thought they had thrown a firecracker from the Book Depository. He looked up and the man he had seen walking just a few minutes before was now aiming the sights of a rifle. Brennan could only remember hearing two gunshots, but his testimony implies that he may have heard three. He confusedly said that he saw the gunman fire the last shot, but denied seeing the rifle discharge. Immediately after the shooting, a handful of witnesses saw the rifle as the gunman cautiously backed away from the window. Neither Euins nor Worrell saw the gunman's face and therefore could offer little to no information about his appearance.

Arnold was quite far away but provided a basic description of the man he had seen about a quarter of an hour before the shooting. A description quite similar to that provided by Brennan, who was able to see the gunman better. Together, these accounts paint a picture of an assassin on the sixth floor of the Book Depository aiming a rifle and shooting at the President from the Sniper's Nest. But other accounts leave room for a bit of doubt. As mentioned above, Arnold Rowland saw a white man with a rifle at the westernmost window of the sixth floor around 12:15 p.m.

But just 5 minutes before the shooting, Arnold observed an elderly black man leaning out of the easternmost window on the same floor. He might have mistaken the sixth floor for the fifth, where James Jarman, Bonnie Williams and Harold Norman were peering through the windows. In fact, they were the only black employees to observe the caravan from a floor above the first. Except they could hardly be described as elderly. But then listen to this. This question was repeated to Arnold a few minutes later, by which time his response had changed dramatically. Then, in the span of a few minutes, Arnold went from "I wasn't paying much attention" to describing the man's complexion, hair, clothing, age, height, build, and even the imperfections on his face.

As direct as that line of questioning was, Barbara wasn't the only one who doubted the credibility of her husband. Officials at two different high schools Arnold attended explicitly warned authorities not to trust everything he says. He was characterized as someone who "would not hesitate to invent a story" and "not tell the truth about any matter." In fact, Rowland lied or exaggerated on multiple occasions when he testified. Another witness who claimed to have seen a gunman at the Book Depository was Carolyn Walther. Shortly before the arrival of the delegation, Walther had seen a man with blonde or light brown hair in one of those windows on the fourth or fifth floor.

She explicitly ruled out the sixth. It should be noted, however, that, during filming, this window was closed with the blinds drawn while this one, as you know, was occupied by Bonnie Williams and Harold Norman. In any case, the blonde man seen by Walther was holding a machine gun, and next to him was another man dressed in a brown suit. Like Arnold Rowland, Walther assumed the gunman was a presidential guard and refrained from telling the police. In fact, there is no evidence that he told anyone what he had seen. She didn't even the colleague with whom she saw the caravan.

In Walther's defense, two other witnesses recalled seeing a man with light or light brown hair on the fifth or sixth floor. Except they never saw a gun or an accomplice. Disagreements over the floors were due, at least in part, to the ground floor lacking visible windows. Another source of confusion was the clear visual difference between the seventh floor and those below. Not only that, but several witnesses described the sixth floor as the second floor from the top. But in the chaos that followed, it seems the end of that sentence didn't always register. Amos Euins is another curious witness because, although he never saw the gunman's face, he did see the top of his head... ...somehow.

Oswald did not have a single bald spot. He was thinning a little in the front, but otherwise he had a full head of hair. But the force of Euins' story is somewhat diminished by his inability to remember much else. Long after the murder, 15 years to be precise, a journalist working for the Dallas Morning News located a man named Johnny Powell. Powell had allegedly seen two men fiddling with a rifle scope in the Sniper's Nest. He described his complexion as darker than white, but that was all. Once again, one has to wonder if he mistook the gunman for Jarman, Williams and Norman downstairs.

I mean, after 15 years of silence, there's no telling how Powell's memory could have been distorted. A good example of such distortion is Richard Carr. A few minutes before the shooting, Carr had been standing abruptly here when he saw a man on the seventh floor of the Book Depository up here. The man was white and was wearing a hat, glasses and a sports jacket. Immediately after the shooting, Carr returned to ground level and saw what he believed to be the same man now jogging south on Houston. He turned left and right around here before being picked up by a pickup truck.

By 1969, however, Carr's story had changed markedly. The man in the sports jacket was now on the fifth floor, not the seventh. After the shooting, Mr Sportcoat emerged from behind the book depository, accompanied by two other men. They were also picked up by another van before speeding away. It's unclear how Carr is supposed to have seen all of this, given what he told the FBI in '64. In Carr's defense, James Worrell had seen a man leave the back entrance of the Book Depository about three minutes after the shooting. . This man was also wearing a sports jacket and headed south on Houston.

Except the man seen by Carr was a bit stocky and was wearing a hat, while the man seen by Worrell had a slim build and was not wearing a hat. Additionally, anyone associated with the shooting who left through the back entrance would likely have headed north and not toward the crime scene. As if that were not enough, two other witnesses, James Romack and George Rackley, remained here for several minutes after the shooting. Both paid special attention to the back entrance of the building. Unfortunately, the conflicting accounts were not limited to the Book Depository. Among the hundreds of witnesses in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, nothing was as disputed as the number and origin of the shots.

And the shots were almost simultaneous, right? Yes sir. They were probably 10 seconds apart. Do you know who fired the third shot? I didn't hear a third shot. I don't remember a third shot. There may have been. We hit- My family fell to the ground and I don't remember a third shot. I just couldn't... I'm not sure about that. I know I heard two shots. Well, I heard three. I know there were three. I told Jerry after the second shot, "Oh my God, those are shots." No one knows exactly how many spectators were in or near Dealey Plaza at the time of the murder.

More than two hundred were questioned at some point by a combination of authorities, journalists and others. Attempts have been made to consolidate the various accounts, and from all these attempts it is clear that most witnesses heard three gunshots. What is a little less clear is the origin of the explosions. The gunman was located in the vicinity of the Book Depository, marked here in red, or in an area west of the building, marked in green, known as Grassy Knoll. But, as you can see from these pie charts, the evaluation of earwitness testimony is very susceptible to bias.

It's a surprisingly subjective exercise that can lead to very different results. However, there were a substantial number of witnesses who pointed out the Grassy Knoll, located approximately here, and many of them were scattered throughout the square. To give you some examples, Ochus Campbell was standing near the main entrance to the Book Depository, but he believed the shots had come from Grassy Knoll. Meanwhile, Marilyn Sitzman was standing at Grassy Knoll, but she believed the shots were coming from the Book Depository. Standing next to Campbell was a woman named Jearaldean Reid, who believed the shots came from the Book Depository.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of Sitzman was William Newman, who believed the shots came from Grassy Knoll. Therefore, one could conclude that there must have been two murderers. One at the Book Depository and one at Grassy Knoll. In fact, countless authors and even a Congressional investigation have done just that. Now, the scope of this video is not exhaustive enough to be able to draw conclusions about a second gunman. But I want to leave you with this. You may have seen these unlabeled blue slices before? Well, that's how many witnesses heard gunshots coming from multiple directions.

I mean, almost no one did. All the shots came from the east or the west, not both. Ochus Campbell was not the only one who was fooled by the pronounced echoes of gunshots. This auditory illusion was not a coincidence. Not only did the buildings surrounding Dealey Plaza act as an echo chamber, but even experienced hunters may have difficulty identifying the number and origin of gunshots by sound alone. Here is a quote from a book on that same topic published a few years before the murder. The book depository employees were no less confused by the gunshots than the onlookers outside.

To give you some examples. On the first floor, Eddie Piper heard three gunshots that appeared to come from inside the building. On the third floor, Edna Case and Sandra Elerson heard nothing. Meanwhile, Steven Wilson, on the same floor, heard three gunshots. Came from the west. On the fourth floor: Elise Dorman. Multiple shots. It came from this building across the street. Victoria Adams. Three shots, from the west. Mary Hollies. Three shots, inside the building. But some employees not only heard the gunshots, they could literally feel the explosions shake the building. Like Geneva Hine on the second floor, Bonnie Williams could feel the explosions on the fifth.

It appeared to Williams as if the shots had been fired from upstairs. Her colleague, James Jarman, initially thought the shots were coming from somewhere below, but later changed his mind and agreed with Williams. Meanwhile, Harold Norman heard much more than gunshots. The explosions shook the building and a piece of loose plaster or dirt broke off from the top edge and hit Williams in the head. Meanwhile, onlookers on the streets below could see them leaning out of the windows, looking up at the sixth floor. Frightened and somewhat fascinated by the chaos outside, the three men remained on the fifth floor for several minutes.

Meanwhile, the apparent killer upstairs was now in a race against time. When the shooting began, motorcycle police officer Marrion Baker had just turned right from Main Street onto Houston. Baker recognized the explosions as gunshots and could see a flock of pigeons hovering over two buildings ahead. Baker made a split-second decision and headed to the Book Depository. Once inside, he was greeted by Roy Truly. Truly directed Baker to the elevators, but none were available. He pressed the button as he yelled down the elevator shaft for someone above to close the door. No response. Instead, they started running up the stairs.

The man Baker and Truly found in the second floor dining room was none other than Lee Havey Oswald. The meeting was brief and lasted no more than 30 seconds. Oswald seemed calm and failed to arouse suspicion, so Truly and Baker left him in the dining room and went upstairs. They spent some time searching the ceiling but did not find any killer. By the main entrance, Jearaldean Reid was still trying to process what had just happened. She decided to return to her office on the second floor of the building. Here, about two minutes after the shooting, Reid became the last known person to see Oswald inside the Book Depository.

Oswald allegedly went up the main stairs and, upon exiting through the main entrance, encountered someone looking for a telephone. There are at least two candidates as to who this person could have been, but Oswald appears to have pointed to a phone inside the building before blending into the chaos outside. He was then observed getting on a bus a few blocks east of Elm. Almost four months after the murder, Truly and Baker participated ina crude reconstruction of the shooting to time their movements. The experiment was repeated twice. On the first attempt, it took them 1 minute and 30 seconds to reach the dining room on the second floor.

Then, 1 minute and 15 seconds. These time trials were conducted primarily to determine if Oswald could have fired from the sixth floor and still reached the second in time for his meeting with Truly and Baker. After all, if there wasn't enough time, Oswald couldn't have been the killer. Several different routes were tried and, although in theory Oswald could have taken one of the elevators or even the fire escape, in practice there was not enough time. The only other means of descent was the ladder. A replacement for the gunman jogged down from the sixth floor to the second in 1 minute and 18 seconds.

Then at a slightly faster pace, in 1 minute and 14 seconds. There was enough time. Therefore, it is possible that Oswald stopped on the second floor, perhaps hearing Truly screaming in the elevator shaft, and attempted to hide in the dining room just seconds before Truly and Baker arrived. But it's not that simple because Oswald wasn't the only person who used the ladder to escape the building. As mentioned above, Victoria Adams observed the caravan from an office on the fourth floor of the Book Depository. Within 30 seconds of the shooting, Adams ran down the stairs to the first floor along with her colleague Sandra Styles.

There are two major problems with Adams's account. The first is that she and Styles supposedly left the fourth floor 30 seconds after the shooting and then ran down the stairs to the first. This would put them roughly in sync with Oswald descending from the sixth floor to the second. But hey, maybe Oswald was a few floors higher and his footsteps were drowned out by his own. This would mean that Styles and Adams left the fourth floor just seconds before Oswald's arrival, arrived on the ground floor just seconds before Roy Truly and Marrion Baker's ascension, before meeting William Shelley and Billy Lovelady right around here. .

But this is where problem number two appears. When the president was shot, Shelley and Lovelady were on the front steps of the Book Depository. They spent several minutes wandering outside before returning to the building. And that is the problem. How did Styles and Adams meet Shelley and Lovelady seconds after the shooting if it took them several minutes to get back into the building? Shelley could not remember any such incident. Assuming Lovelady was right and Shelley had a memory error, it's possible that her encounter with Styles and Adams may have occurred minutes rather than seconds after the shooting.

After all, Adams could have been wrong. This scenario implies that Oswald escaped, Truly and Baker went upstairs, and then several minutes later, Styles and Adams left the building. But it's not that simple. Watching the caravan alongside Styles and Adams was her supervisor, Dorothy Garner. This account not only corroborates Adams's, meaning they left in seconds, not minutes, but implies that Garner was in a position to observe the staircase from somewhere on the fourth floor. Despite this, Garner did not mention seeing Oswald running down the stairs between Styles and Adams' departure and Truly and Baker's arrival. What makes this conflict so difficult to resolve is that neither Styles nor Garner were called to testify.

We only have a few brief statements of what they witnessed. All we know about Sandra Styles is that she went downstairs with Adams. Did it happen a few seconds after the shooting? We do not know. Did she see or hear anyone else as she ran down the stairs? We do not know. Did she meet Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor? We do not know. Authorities appear to have assumed that Adams was unreliable and then ignored witnesses who could have easily refuted or confirmed that presumption. A simple recreation like the one granted to Truly and Baker could have gone a long way toward solving this problem.

But that never happened. Many decades after the murder, author Barry Ernest was able to locate Sandra Styles, Dorothy Garner, and Victoria Adams. Styles confirmed that she and Adams left the window seconds after the shooting, but she does not explicitly say that they left the fourth floor within seconds. In any case, as they "quickly descended the stairs," she heard no footsteps other than theirs. Garner confirmed that she never witnessed Oswald's descent despite seeing Truly and Baker walking up the stairs. Adams went a step further and accused investigators of altering her testimony. Sandra Styles apparently told Ernest something similar.

The only black employees who could have made it to the back staircase in time were Carl Jones, Roy Lewis, Eddie Piper and Troy West. What you see here are their approximate positions at the time of the shooting, but for the seconds and minutes that followed, Piper is only known to have paid attention to the stairs in the back. As soon as the shooting started, Piper crossed the first floor to get a better look at a clock. She remained at approximately this location until she observed Truly and Baker running up the stairs. Remember James Romack and George Rackley?

I mean, I wouldn't blame you if you don't. There are like a hundred different names to keep track of. But they were the ones who couldn't see anyone leaving the Book Depository through the back entrance for several minutes after the shooting. Well, the thing is, according to Styles and Adams, they left the book depository through the back entrance upon reaching the first floor. So if Romack and Rackley are to be believed, then once again, Styles and Adams' descent must have taken place minutes and not seconds after the shooting. Not only that, but when another investigator contacted Sandra Styles, she apparently expressed great uncertainty regarding the descent of the ladder and thought that it may, in fact, have occurred "a couple of minutes" after the shooting.

I don't know what to do with all this. The conspirators, of course, will amplify the most suspicious elements, while those who support the official narrative will focus on what discredits Adams. But ultimately, we don't know the exact chronology of events. It's hard enough to pin down the chronology minute by minute. Once you get to the seconds, there's a lot of guesswork involved. The Truly and Baker time trials give us a rough estimate, but they are not set in stone. They could have easily been a little faster, a little slower. Shelley, Lovelady, Garner, Styles, Adams and Oswald could also have done it.

I should also mention that we don't know much about the layout of the fourth floor beyond this rough sketch. If the other floors are any indication, much of this space was taken up by shelves and tall stacks of boxes. This is significant because Dorothy Garner never saw Styles and Adams enter the staircase. She only heard footsteps of what she assumed were them running down the stairs. After a quick sweep of the roof, Roy Truly and Marrion Baker returned to the ground floor of the Book Depository. Oswald wasn't the only one absent, but he was the only one Truly knew for sure who had left the building after the shooting.

Meanwhile, on the sixth floor, a stack of boxes in the southeast corner attracted the attention of deputy Luke Mooney. Two windows west of the Sniper's Nest, authorities found a Dr. Pepper bottle and some chicken bones. Remains of the lunch that Bonnie Williams ate shortly before the murder. But according to some officers, including Mooney, remains of a similar meal were also found in the Sniper's Nest. Despite this, objects of this type were never photographed. Aside from the sack of chicken bones found here, there are no records of remains being recovered from anywhere else near the Sniper's Nest.

But it wasn't just the chicken bones. There were similar disagreements regarding the three cartridge cases. According to Mooney, Dallas Police Captain William Fritz tampered with the evidence. Mooney did not explicitly state, but strongly implied, that Captain Fritz moved at least one of the cartridges before they were photographed. According to Fritz, he did everything according to the rules. Amid the swarm of agents guarding the sixth floor was a lone journalist named Thomas Alyea. Alyea was equipped with a camera and filmed much of the frantic search effort. Some three decades later, Alyea made some rather surprising claims that were largely consistent with Mooney's, but also expanded on them.

While these alleged parts of Alyea's film have never come to light, preservation took a backseat as the film was prepared for broadcast. Parts of the film were carelessly cut and discarded and fragmentary clips are all that remain today. In any case, after allegedly filming the shell casings in Captain Fritz's hands, Alyea recalled how they were deceptively returned to the ground. To counter these accusations of foul play, I should also mention that there were those who found nothing wrong with the cartridge cases. Even Mooney agreed that the casings had not been moved immediately after explaining that they had been.

In the testimony we heard a few minutes ago, Mooney was shown this photograph. He then examined this one, taken from a different angle, before being shown this one. Now, these two are simply differently cropped copies of the same photograph. That doesn't really match the fact that the shell casing was supposedly picked up and thrown randomly on the ground, as Thomas Alyea would claim decades later. While there are question marks surrounding the chicken bones and shell casings, there is no doubt that some of the boxes in the Sniper's Nest were moved before being photographed. Several minutes after the Sniper's Nest was discovered, a bolt-action rifle was found between two rows of boxes near the staircase.

Now, there was some initial confusion regarding its make and model. Some thought it looked like a Mauser but upon closer inspection it was identified as an Italian Carcano. The officer who misidentified the rifle later explained that he did so at a glance. However, more than a decade after the murder, in 1976, a former sheriff's deputy named Roger Craig claimed to have seen the marking "7.65 Mauser" stamped on the barrel of the rifle. For some, this is evidence that a Mauser was in fact discovered on the sixth floor before being exchanged for a Carcano. But Craig was the only person to make this specific claim, he did so many years after the murder and after telling a reporter the following.

There were also no reports that a Mauser had been found on the roof. Furthermore, the only rifle seen in the film made by Thomas Alyea is without a doubt a Carcano. Unique markings on the casings would later prove that this was indeed the rifle with which the three had been shot. Before the day was over, the rifle had been traced to a company in Chicago, Illinois. The company had sold the rifle to someone named A. Hidell and shipped it to a post office box in Dallas in early 1963. Alek James Hidell was a pseudonym Oswald was known to have used.

So there was now a direct link between the projectiles, the rifle, and Oswald. Not only that, but Oswald's prints were taken from both the rifle and the boxes in the Sniper's Nest. In addition to the spent shell casings and the rifle, authorities discovered another key piece of evidence. The bag was supposedly found here, but this space is suspiciously empty in all crime scene photographs. Detective Robert Studebaker, who had worked as a coroner's assistant for less than two months, did not explain why he never photographed the bag. In Studebaker's defense, no one was looking for a brown paper bag.

Killer? Sure. Rifle? Housings? Absolutely. But some debris in a dark corner of the room? It wasn't until they picked up and inspected the bag that its meaning became apparent. Now, as you may recall, Wesley Frazier took Oswald back to Irving on November 21 to pick up some curtain rods. The next morning, Frazier and his sister, Linnie Randle, saw Oswald carrying a package. According to Frazier, Oswald told him that the package contained curtain rods that he then brought back to Dallas. But he will also remember that Jack Dougherty denied ever seeing such a package. The thing is, Dougherty was not a reliable witness.

When questioned by the FBI and Secret Service, he seemed "very confused about times and places." He required help from his father due to "considerable difficulty coordinating his mental faculties with speech." While Dougherty denied having any such problems, his testimony is riddled with contradictions. While Dougherty insisted that Oswald had nothing in his hands when he arrived at work, it turned out that this certainty was based on nothing more than a glance. Given that Frazier had his eyes on Oswald for several minutes, the weight of the evidence suggests that he brought a package to work on the morning of November 22.

A much more contentious question is whether the package Oswald was carrying was the same as the brown paper bag discovered. on the sixth floor. According to Randle and Frazier, the only two witnesses known to have seen the package, theanswer was a resounding no. His main bone of contention was that the package Oswald was carrying was shorter than the brown paper bag. The bag was long enough to hold the disassembled rifle, so if the pack Oswald was carrying was much shorter, then it could not have contained the rifle. Except Randle briefly saw him from a distance, through the window, while Frazier never paid much attention to him.

In fact, to Frazier the length of the package seemed as safe as his lack of attention. The tape and paper from which the brown paper bag had been constructed matched the tape and paper used to wrap books for shipment on the first floor of the Book Depository. Not only that, but a fingerprint and palm print matching Oswald's were also found on the bag. Despite all this, some authors refuse to accept that the brown paper bag and the package Oswald was carrying were the same thing. Instead, the argument tends to be that the bag was fabricated by authorities in an effort to frame Oswald.

But then you have to square that so that there are no curtain rods inside the Book Depository. Oswald already has curtains in his rented room in Dallas. He did not get permission from his landlady to redecorate. He supposedly needed curtain rods so badly that he had to return to Irving on Thursday rather than wait another day. He then forgot to mention anything about the curtain rods to his wife and Ruth Paine upon his arrival. And that's even though Paine had some spare curtain rods in her garage. The same garage where Oswald kept his rifle. Around the time the rifle was discovered on the sixth floor of the Book Depository, Captain William Fritz was informed of Oswald's absence.

Fritz immediately left the building and returned to police headquarters. After escaping from the Book Depository, Oswald boarded a bus right here. But traffic stopped after the assassination, so Oswald soon got off the bus and took a taxi. After returning to his boarding house in Oak Cliff, a neighborhood in southwest Dallas, Oswald changed his clothes, grabbed a gun and hurried away. Police patrolman J.D. Tippit met up with Oswald about 45 minutes after the shooting a little further south, about here. As soon as Tippit exited the vehicle, Oswald pulled the gun from him and fired four shots in rapid succession.

Oswald was then caught sneaking into a nearby movie theater without purchasing a ticket. A large contingent of officers descended on the theater. They surrounded the building, turned on the lights and approached the suspect. Flanked by officers, Oswald pulled out a gun and a brief fight ensued. But this time, he was quickly subdued, handcuffed and taken to police headquarters in downtown Dallas. Over the next two days, between his arrest and his untimely death, Lee Harvey Oswald was interrogated by members of the Dallas Police, the FBI, and the Secret Service, among others. None of that was recorded. So no one knows exactly what was said inside this room.

Instead, we have to settle for the cliff notes, and what we are especially interested in is Oswald's alibi. Did you shoot the president? I didn't shoot anyone, no, sir. You just heard Oswald say that he didn't shoot anyone. Oswald vehemently denied any involvement in the assassination. Instead, he claimed to have had lunch with two co-workers on the first floor of the Book Depository. One of them was a black co-worker whose name Oswald did not remember. The other was James Jarman. But according to another interrogator, Oswald's claim was not that he had lunch with Jarman and this unnamed co-worker, but simply that he saw them passing through the dining room while he ate.

So, according to this version of events, Oswald's alibi was that he possibly saw two co-workers, one whose name he did not remember, enter and pass through the dining room, together or separately, for an unspecified period of time. If Oswald claimed to have had lunch with or near his colleagues, it does not matter because no alibi could be corroborated. Instead, James Jarman had last seen Oswald taking the elevator up the stairs between 11:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. m. and 12:00 p.m. m. William Shelley and Eddie Piper had last seen Oswald wandering around the first floor around noon.

At that time, Oswald had told Piper that he was "going out" or "up" to lunch. Then there is the story of Charles Givens. You may remember that Givens is officially recognized as the last person inside the Book Depository known to have seen Oswald before the assassination. Their meeting was set for 11:55 a.m. and it is supposed to have taken place on the sixth floor. But before telling this version of events, Givens had allegedly told the FBI that he saw Oswald on the first floor at 11:50 a.m. A statement he later denied having made. Either way, the fact that Oswald is on the first floor at noon does absolutely nothing to prevent him from being on the sixth half an hour later.

Unless you believe Carolyn Arnold. So, that would be over here. In a later statement, Arnold claimed to have been outside until 12:25 p.m. In this way, she accelerated the timing of her possible sighting of Oswald on the ground floor as close as 5 minutes before the shooting. Leaving aside the fact that her remark was described as a "fleeting glimpse" and that she could not be sure of the man's identity, Arnold herself would later deny that this had happened. Instead, Arnold claimed that this encounter had actually taken place in the second-floor dining room. The problem with both accounts is that none of her colleagues reported anything remotely similar.

Whether it was the first or second floor, Oswald was apparently invisible to everyone but Arnold. Furthermore, it took Arnold 15 years to recount her revised version of events. Not ideal for such an urgent topic. That said, depending on which conspiracy theory he's willing to entertain, there are ways to interpret what Oswald told his interrogators to line up with any of Arnold's accounts. Take this one, for example. This claim is interesting because, in the early days of the murder, it seemed to be supported by photographic evidence. But this figure was quickly identified as Billy Lovelady. A man who looked so much like Oswald that when pictures of Oswald first appeared on television, Lovelady's stepchildren thought it was him.

Now, speaking only for myself, really? Am I missing something here because they aren't exactly doubles right? Anyway, in recent years, another similar figure, this time with even fewer pixels to work with, has, once again, been the subject of debate. Because this stain of a person cannot be positively identified, some believe it must be Oswald. On the other hand, Oswald explicitly denied having seen the caravan when he spoke to another interrogator. Not to mention, his presence outside of it went completely unnoticed by everyone watching the caravan. Now, there is one final account of Oswald's supposed alibi that stands out from the rest.

It stands out because he really skirts the line of self-incrimination. If this is an accurate recollection of what Oswald said, he was positioned on one floor above the second at the time of the shooting. While he did not mention which floor, he described a conversation between him and an anonymous black co-worker, which sounds remarkably similar to the one described by Charles Givens. This would mean that Oswald, apparently by accident, placed himself on the sixth floor during the shooting. After that horribly confusing mix of stories, what have we learned? Well, Oswald seems to have contradicted himself by offering multiple alibis.

It is also possible that what he said was misinterpreted or distorted by the interrogation participants. As mentioned at the beginning of all of this, we don't actually know what Oswald said. All of this is based on second-hand accounts, relating to days, weeks or even months after the murder. But the main conclusion has to be the lack of corroboration. With the exception of Carolyn Arnold, a very unreliable witness, no one saw Oswald between about noon and the shooting. At least, no one inside the Book Depository. Among those who witnessed a sniper at the Sniper Nest, Howard Brennan was the only one who thought he could identify the gunman.

At least that's what he initially claimed. Within hours of the shooting, Brennan had become much less confident. Brennan was then taken to the basement of the police station to view a lineup of suspects. Among them was Oswald. So, that's not ideal. While Brennan chose Oswald from a lineup, that identification was far from certain. But, if Brennan is to be believed, this uncertainty was not genuine but simply an act meant to protect his family. Then, according to Brennan, within hours of the murder, he was worried that it was the product of a communist conspiracy. He feared that, if he tried to identify the gunman, he could become a target and thus endanger his family.

So when Brennan was brought in to watch a lineup later that night, he feigned uncertainty to protect his family. At least that's what he claimed. I'll let you decide whether or not you believe Brennan's story. On Sunday morning, November 24, Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from the city to the county jail. A local news correspondent, reporting from outside the police station, couldn't help but curse the whole thing. This is the armored truck that will transport Lee Harold Oswald from the basement here at Dallas Police Headquarters downtown to the Dallas County Sheriff's Office and the Dallas County Jail.

Strict security precautions have been in place from the beginning and have been increased even this morning as fears emerge and grow stronger that someone will try to take the life of the man accused of assassinating the President of the United States. They've shot him! They've shot him! Lee Oswald has been shot! Doctors at Parkland Hospital said a single gunshot could hardly have done more damage to a body than it did to Lee Harvey Oswald. It penetrated his spleen, pancreas, aorta, kidney and liver. Oswald expired at 1:07 p.m. He died? He died at 1:07 p.m. We have arrested the man.

The man will be charged with murder. Who is he? The man... The suspect's name is Jack... ...Rubenstein, I believe. His name is Jack Ruby. That's all I have to say. Throughout this video we have encountered witnesses who not only contradicted each other, but also themselves. Central to many conspiracy arguments is that these contradictions represent attempts by the conspirators to conceal the truth. To give you an example, Charles Givens initially claimed to have seen Oswald on the first floor at 11:50 a.m. He later denied saying that and claimed to have spoken to Oswald on the sixth floor at 11:55 a.m.

Some authors have found this change too convenient and suspect that the conspirators forced Givens to change his story. In support of that conclusion, we have this document in which Dallas Police Lt. Jack Revill said the following. About two months later, Givens did just that. He changed the story of him. But let's think about this. According to this interpretation of the facts, the conspirators had free rein to dictate Givens' testimony. They could have told him what to say or, perhaps, rewritten his testimony after the fact. You may remember that's precisely what Victoria Adams claimed and Carolyn Arnold implied earlier in the video.

That someone had put words in their mouths by altering the written record. Well, exercising that almost unlimited power, what words did the conspirators choose to put in Givens' mouth? Well, they supposedly made up a brief conversation about lunch and elevators, away from the Sniper's Nest, more than half an hour before the shooting. I guess "I saw Oswald sitting in the Sniper's Nest", or even "I saw Oswald carrying a large package heading to the Sniper's Nest" was a little too direct? Of course, the same applies to all the other witnesses at Dealey Plaza. Aside from Howard Brennan's dubious identification, no one was able to locate Oswald in the Sniper's Nest at the time of the shooting.

I really can't emphasize this enough. It apparently did not occur to the conspirators that at least one witness unequivocally identified Oswald as the assassin. Better yet, take a photo. For all this talk about witness coercion and evidence tampering, it seems a bit of an oversight. What I'm trying to illustrate is that it's surprisingly trivial to take a misplaced document here, an unfounded accusation there, and add a few ideas about means and motive, and you'll end up with a conspiracy theory that, at least broadly speaking, surface, it sounds convincing. Whether it's organized crime, a foreign government, or a domestic agency, there is enough material here to make a compelling case against countless groups and individuals.

Something that many authors, filmmakers and others have capitalized on with great success. I don't know if everyone is right or not. This video clearly doesn't cover enough ground for me to determine. But attributing a conspiracy motive to anything remotely suspicious seems irresponsibly black and white in a case so clouded by shades of gray. A person who acts in an illegal, unethical and lying manner does not provewho conspired in a plot to assassinate the president of the United States. These exciting conspiracy leaps make for entertaining stories, but that doesn't make them true. Do you remember Thomas Alyea?

He was the journalist filming on the sixth floor during the initial search for the killer. Decades later, Alyea began accusing officers of tampering with evidence, staging photographs and lying under oath. The veracity of those accusations aside, what's fascinating about Alyea is that he never believed Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. Alyea took a refreshing and nuanced view of the assassination by recognizing that evidence of corruption is not the same as evidence of conspiracy. Sloppy police work did not begin or end with the Kennedy assassination and people lie for all kinds of reasons. Loyalty, shame, fear, pride, attention, power, money.

There is no shortage of motivations to choose. Besides, what kind of clueless brains would allow a cameraman to casually film his alleged cover-up? Something I found myself doing a lot while making this video was trying to see the murder from the perspective of the alleged conspirators. You might, for example, question the logic of placing an assassin in this specific window. A window in which he ran the risk of being caught red-handed by other workers inside the building. A window in which onlookers and the approaching caravan could easily have seen him, and in fact he was seen.

A window from which his view was partially obstructed... ...by a tree. First of all, you might also question the logic of using a sniper to shoot a moving target. Especially when that person had a tendency to stay still in very exposed public places. If Oswald acted alone and the murder was a crime of opportunity, these less than ideal decisions start to make a lot more sense. He found himself in the right place at the right time, had just a few days to prepare, and used the only building he had access to. But for a group of conspirators to thwart their own assassination plot takes a little more ingenuity to explain.

He was a scapegoat, he was supposed to get caught, there were multiple killers, you know the drill. But there is a lot of that in this case. Many things had to go right for a conspiracy and subsequent cover-up to be successful. From the indirect process by which Oswald was hired at the Book Depository to the choice of the caravan route. From Oswald's narrow escape and his subsequent arrest to the multiple opportunities he had to speak to the press. From the alleged tampering, suppression and planting of evidence to dozens of expert witnesses who were successfully misled or persuaded to lie under oath.

A plan as complex and lengthy as this would not only have been difficult to predict with countless points of failure, but it seems, and pardon my language, a bit excessive. Yes, Kennedy was the president of the United States, but he wasn't exactly difficult to access. He was quite famous for abandoning his Secret Service detail and wandering around the crowd. In fact, that is precisely what he did on multiple occasions during this same trip. ...shake hands with one or two more people. But this is the moment when the Secret Service has its point of tension. They say, "When the president stops moving, that's when we worry, because that's when the possibility of trouble comes to the fore." This was one of those impromptu moments that President Kennedy is so known for.

Many times you have heard that the men of the Secret Service suddenly found themselves without the President, that he suddenly left them and stepped into the crowd and decided to shake their hands and give them his personal greetings. Perhaps you could say this is more the norm now than unexpected because it has been done so many times. As this news correspondent alluded to, just a few minutes before the actual shooting, all it takes is one person with a gun at point-blank range. Not unlike the Oswald shooting. Think about that the next time you watch a documentary or read one of the thousands of books involving members of the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, the Dallas Police Department, politicians, lawyers, doctors, investigators, witnesses, etc. .

Think about how all these alleged co-conspirators had no business being a part of any of this. Just one person in a crowd whose guilt is assured the moment he pulls the trigger. By including this set of characters, he inadvertently makes the conspirators appear clueless. I like to imagine a conference room and, against one wall, there is a board on which they have everything mapped out. All the people they need to manipulate. They have to manufacture all the evidence. The entire mosaic of unnecessary risk-taking was laid bare before them. And they looked at it and then they looked at each other and they said, "Yeah, that's a solid plan." But, even then...

Even if we assume that the conspirators didn't really think it through or, I don't know, made it up as they went along, that doesn't really jive with them not getting caught. Something that would have required a lot of planning, skill and ingenuity. So I guess you somehow have to convince yourself that they had no idea how to improvise the crime of the century, but smart enough to get away with it. And therefore there was no conspiracy! No, I don't think any of these arguments make it impossible for others to have been involved. They just make it a little harder to keep that tinfoil hat firmly in place.

I mean, if there were an argument with which to close the book on this case, I wouldn't be the first to think of it almost six decades and a continent away from the events in question. I can guarantee you that. Furthermore, the word conspiracy does not even necessarily mean that there were other people involved in the planning and execution of the murder. For example, there is what some call a benign conspiracy. This usually means that there was a cover-up, but that it was not motivated by complicity concealment as is often assumed. Instead, Oswald acted alone, but there was some other motive behind the suppression of evidence.

A common one is that federal agencies attempted to save face by hiding or minimizing the full extent of their failure to prevent the assassination. I mean, a known communist with ties to Russia taking the entire intelligence community by surprise by assassinating the Commander in Chief on a public street in broad daylight at the height of the Cold War isn't exactly resume material. The point is that there are countless ways to interpret the evidence in a case as vast as this. I'm not exaggerating when I say you could easily make dozens of these videos and still have plenty left to talk about.

After all, the Texas School Book Depository is but one piece of a much larger puzzle. Thanks for watching. Support me on Patreon if you want. Okay, bye.