I have written two pieces focused in on what I feel is a very important aspect into the case against Lee Harvey Oswald, which is how much time he would have had to get from where he killed the President to the lunchroom on the second floor where he was next seen. Both will be published here, but this was my first piece, written way back in 2006. Maybe you will see some of the differences between the two and what new information I learned.
Something that is very difficult to ignore in the whole scheme of things on the Kennedy assassination is that fact that the last time anyone saw the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before the shooting he was sitting in the second floor lunchroom and the next time he was seen was, presumably, 90 seconds after the assassination in the exact same place, the second floor lunchroom. Proponents of Oswald’s guilt still in all maintain that after he was last seen, some 15 minutes before the shooting, he went and retrieved his weapon, which was presumably wrapped up in a long paper package (that nobody working at the Depository saw him with that morning), and then travelled up to the second floor, which was onoccupied roughly after 12:20. This is very difficult to swallow however with any real common sense seeing as the President was planned to pass through Dealey Plaza there and past the Book Depository at roughly 12:24 or 12:25. For a man planning something as ruthless as the killing of the President, it stands to reason that Oswald would have been in his sniper’s perch some time before the President’s arrival, but instead we must believe that he left it to chance and only arrived on the scene some four or five minutes, maximum, before the planned arrival. This is because Depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams sat in the exact spot where Oswald presumably fired his rifle from, eating his lunch, till roughly 12:20. He stated he saw nobody up there when he left. Seeing as he had to walk the whole length of the sixth floor, go down one flight of stairs to the fifth floor, where he watched the Presidential motorcade pass, it stands to reason Oswald couldn’t have made up there till at least 12:21 or 12:22, leaving him even less time to be prepared. As it turned out the President didn’t pass through Dealey Plaza until 12:30, but Oswald, unless he had direct connections couldn’t have possibly known that the procession was running five minutes behind schedule.
The story then goes that Oswald preapred his sniper’s next, moved some boxes around to block the view of him within the building. Yet while the sniper’s next there appears to have been diligently put together it is funny then why Oswald apparently made little to no effort to shield himself from the onlookers outside on the street? Some nine different people made out someone in that location cause they could see him through the window. Is it possible the individual hiding there was no Lee Harvey Oswald? And furthermore, was it merely a set up so that a great deal of attention would be paid to that window and to that building, the one that Oswald just happened to work in? Now certainly I am not saying that Oswald was a complete patsy with no involvement, I refuse to believe that more than anything because of the question that if he wasn’t a or the actual assassin, then why would he be selected to take the fall? He had to have a connection or a tie-in somewhere.
When the President passed by, Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Depository, presumably one struck both the President and Texas Governor John Connally, one struck just the President’s head and another missed the Presidential vehicle all together. Upon completion of his dastardly deed, Oswald quickly fled the scene, stashing his gun on the sixth floor there en route to the stairs that would lead him four flights down and back to the second floor, where he returned to the lunchroom. Appearing unshaken and steady, Oswald bought a Coke from the vending machine and while in the process of drinking it a Dallas officer, the first inside the Depository after the shooting, Marion Baker, charged into the room with his gun drawn on him. Even at this Oswald remained unshaken and once the superintendent of the Depository arrived and reassured Baker that Oswald was just an employee in the building, the two men left the scene for pursuits higher up in the building. From there, Oswald simply left the lunchroom and reportedly exited the Depository another minute or so later, right out the main entrance where the crowds of people and police were gathered up. Another, much more defendable story, suggests that Oswald did not leave the scene immediately and that some 8 or 10 minutes after the assassination he was seen diving into a Nash Rambler Station Wagon driven by someone who appeared to be of Latin. Then vehicle sped, presumably never seen again. While there is only the official story and a later recanted admission on Oswald’s part while in police custody to prove that he left work immediately, there are elements in Oswald’s initial admission of what happened along with several witness that support that he actually left via this Rambler station wagon.
Faced with the ordeal of establishing exactly when Oswald and Officer Baker actually encountered each other, the Warren Commission, formed to investigate the President’s assassination, conducted tests to determine how much time there was between the last shot fired on the President and when Baker and Oswald met. The established that there was some 90 seconds to fill in this time, however this time figure was reached by the Commission based on tests where Baker walked the distance he covered inside the book Depository. However, by all accounts, Baker was anything but walking. Film taken immediately after the assassination (some 10 to 15 seconds after the last shot) captured footage of Baker’s bike already dismounted outside the book Depository, meaning he was already inside the Book Depository by this time. By all accounts he raced into the building looking for the quickest way to make it upstairs as he believed the shots came from high up in the building. Quickly realizing the elevator in the building wouldn’t get him up there he was directed to the staircase. The officer made for the staircase and raced upstairs, ultimately reaching the second floor and catching a glimpse of Oswald in the second floor lunchroom. There is nothing to suggest Baker walked, while in pursuit of the potential assassin of the President of the United States. Another test conducted by the Commission, in which they had Baker go at a brisker almost jogging speed, showed that Baker could have made this jaunt in 75 seconds. Since all accounts show that he was dismounted and into the Depository quickly and that at no time he was at a pace anything short of a run, it is hard to believe his encounter with Oswald occurred anymore than 60 to possibly 75 seconds after the assassination, and even 75 seconds is a stretch.
In addition, the superintendent of the Depository was a step ahead of Baker in their efforts to race upstairs. He never saw Oswald, which means even by the time he made it up to the second floor Oswald was already in the lunchroom. This figure legitimately must put the time available for Oswald’s four floor descent at little more than 60 seconds legitimately. For the sake of argument however, let’s just leave the figure at 75 available seconds. Could Oswald have done it?
All his actions here must be taken into account. First of all, how quickly was he out of that sniper’s nest. The only witness who seemed to gage much of a view of the sixth floor assassin after the assassination was over was the only witness to see a man on the sixth floor and state beyond any doubt that it was Oswald (even though he didn’t identify Oswald as such when presented to a police line-up), Howard Brennan. By Brennan’s own account, when the shooting was over and the Presidential limousine was quickly off for Parkland Hospital, he looked back up at that corner sixth floor window and saw that the assassin actually stood there for a few seconds, seemingly admiring the work he had done. When a few seconds passed he casually slipped away from the window.
It must be presumed then that once away from the window Oswald suddenly realized he needed to flee the scene as soon as possibly and took off for the stairwell down to the second floor. However, the issue as to how fast he slipped away from the sniper’s nest is not the only timing issue to be concerned about with regards to the sniper’s nest. Two individual photographs that captured that southeast corner window where the assassin loomed, one taken a few seconds before and one taken approximately 30 seconds after the shooting, show that the formation of the boxes that formed the barricade around the nest had been moved around. The only justification for this, in Oswald’s case, is that for some reason or another, he felt the need to move around some of those boxes, which would have required more time. These were heavy boxes, filled with thick, dense school textbooks. These were not lightweight or easy to shift around. This creates a further time discrepancy and it has to be presumed that Oswald couldn’t have escaped the sniper’s nest area till anymore than a bare minimum 15 seconds after the final shot.
The next issue here is the stashing of the rifle. When found by Dallas officer Eugene Boone, the rifle purportedly used by Oswald had been stashed so well that the area where it was discovered had already been searched more than once, turning up nothing. However, in nearly all tests performed trying to recreate the Oswald descent down to the second floor (a majority of these tests performed with an agenda to try and prove that is WAS possible for Oswald to go this distance and in doing so appear calm, cool and collected), the performance of stashing the rifle only took a few seconds and was often the matter of stopping for a split second, setting the rifle on the floor and then continuing walking. However, the rifle, if Oswald hid it where it was found had been stashed deep into a collection of boxes. It was not the simple matter of Oswald just finding a random spot, dropping the weapon there and then continuing off. It would have taken at least a few seconds for him to just climb over and reach the point where the gun had been stashed. In all reality with a bare minimum 20 to 25 seconds to be accounted for putting together the delayed departure from the nest, the moving of the boxes, and then the stashing of the rifle, coupled with the distance Oswald would have had to travel in order to reach the stairwell to go down it’s implausible that he would have made it to the stairs anymore than 35 to 40 seconds after the last shot was fired.
A majority of testing regarding how long it would have taken Oswald to travel down the four flights of stairs, including a personal test I performed, it is plausible to come to a conclusion that this distance could have been travelled in roughly 20 to 25 seconds at best. If Oswald’s exiting the stairwell onto the second floor and then reaching and entering the lunchroom to the point of the Cok machine, from the sixth floor stair well to that Coke machine it would have likely taken no less that 30 seconds, most likely more in the 35 to 40 second range. And again these figures are best case scenarios compared to a highly unlikely 75 second figure for time Oswald would have had before Officer Baker’s arrival.
All these figures combined together and it’s hard to put Oswald’s arrival in the second floor lunchroom, next to that Coke machine at any less than maybe 65 or 70 seconds after that final shot was fired. And furthermore, this time figure does not include the time it would have taken for Oswald to purchase the Coke from the machine and then consume approximately half of it, as Baker would recall that Oswald had a partially drank Coke in his hands when he encountered him. But again, giving the Warren Commission and the lone-assassin buffs yet another pass for the sake of exposing how ridiculous the whole thing is, we won’t even include the some 10 to 15 seconds it would have taken for Oswald to do this.
The plausible reality is that Baker arrived on the scene and confronted Oswald no less than 75 seconds after the last shot was fired and most likely he encountered him sooner than that. And yet with every benefit of the doubt given to Oswald, including such other anomalies such as the fact that during this time two Depository employees, Sandra Styles and Victoria Adams, ventured onto the stairwell at the fourth floor and took it all the way down to the first floor and never saw Oswald during any of this time even though he would have been flying like a wild animal down the stairs directly behind them, with all these breaks being given it is implausible to suggest that Oswald made it to the lunchroom where Baker discovered him in any less than about 65 to maybe 75 seconds. This almost lines the two up really if it took Baker more time that is likely and if everything in Oswald’s case worked out perfectly.
It is ridiculous then here to suggest that Oswald made it to the lunchroom in any significant amount of time before Baker did. In fact, any sane thinking person would presume right there that Oswald must have been in the lunchroom all the time, especially considering again the fact that the superintendent of the Depository was actually a few seconds ahead of Baker, and never even saw Oswald at all. He was on his way up to the third floor when he suddenly realized that Baker was no longer following and went back to see that he had Oswald stopped in the lunchroom. Beyond all of this, it means Oswald had to time to regain whatever composure that was surely shaken up seeing as he had just assassinated the President of the United States (a fairly tall order) and also been likely in an all out sprint for that lunchroom before Officer Baker arrived. And yet when Baker arrived, and then shouted down Oswald while pointing his revolver directly at him, at not time did Oswald appear shaken in the least. There was nothing that made him suspect Oswald as a possible guilty party other than the fact that he caught sight of him in the lunchroom and deemed it necessary to establish with any certainty who this man was. Such explains why when the superintendent explained to him that Oswald was an employee in the building he was quick to divert his attention away from Oswald and continue in he search for the gunman in a place higher up in the building. It is absurd to believe that after all of this that Oswald would not have appeared shaken and/or winded by what had just happened.
To handle this quite obvious issue both the Warren Commission and several other independent individuals bent on proving the lone-assassin theory, conducted tests in which they had individuals walk the distance to prove that Oswald could have walked the distance inside of 90 seconds. When the tests proved this to be possible it seems there was little more needed to be discussed on the issue. Of course these tests ignored many significant items such as the delayed departure mentioned by Howard Brennan, the relocation of boxes in the sniper’s next, they spared only a second or two in having the Oswald actor stash the rifle, and furthermore did not account for the time it would have taken for Oswald to enter the lunchroom, purchase his Coke and drink a fair portion of it. All that mattered was that he could have walked the distance inside of 90 seconds and in walking he could have arrived in the lunchroom unwinded. This of course doesn’t take into account the probably shakiness he would have been experiencing just in carrying out the act of assassinating the President. But beyond proof and evidence and tests the who thing can be cleared up with one key question, and that question is ‘why would Oswald walk this distance?’ Sure one can argue that in walking Oswald would have fained attention in that he might have appeared just like a normal guy walking about as oppose to a frantic man sprinting downstairs. This is feasable, however it seems obvious, if Oswald was the assassin, he intended to create an alibi for himself by being placed on the second floor lunchroom before and immediately after the assassination. If this was the case, as it most certainly would have had to be, he wouldn’t have delayed a moment in returning to that lunchroom because the moment someone else arrived on the scene there without him being there his whole alibi would have been blown. And think things through. We have a police officer, dismounted and inside the Depository within 10 to 15 seconds of the last shot, who by all accounts was frantically running around looking for the fastest way upstairs compared to Oswald, the assassin, who walked all the way from the sniper’s perch down to the second floor lunchroom. Even with the 10 to 15 seconds to sacrifice for Baker’s arrival outside the Book Depository, what are the odds that a man needing to walk the entire length of a floor before walking down four flights of stairs and then entering the lunchroom would beat a police officer who was running and only needed to cover a small part of the first floor and one stair flight to that same lunchroom location? The whole concept is ridiculous, as is the idea that Oswald would have simply walked back down to the second floor.
All things considered in this one very significant aspect of the assassination of President Kennedy and the man officially held accountible for his death, the bulk of the available evidence along with all the common sensical and logical thinking in the world shows that Oswald could not have done everything he would have had to do, even up against the best possible odds in the world, and been able to meet the barrel of police officer Baker’s revolver with a straight and steady face. It’s simply not credible, along with the fact that only one of several witnesses who saw a man at that sixth floor sniper’s nest even said that man there was Oswald, to suggest in the light of this evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was up there on that sixth floor firing at the President at 12:30, the time in which he was fatally gunned down. Oswald’s story that he was there in that lunchroom all along, even if that as well is inaccurate, is a much more believable story. And such is evidence alone that while it is nearly impossible to suggest that he was not involved in the assassination at all, it proves that he was not THE assassin that day in Dallas.
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