I have recently
started this Tumblr page, focused entirely on the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, which is something I have been studying for
some nineteen years now. This is merely a place to publish writings I
have done on the event. I am more than happy to discuss the issue or
even answer questions (I’ll gladly answer questions) but I will not get
into debates with people over this case. I know it’s a political issue
and one that has attracted the attention of a good many people and it’s
something, unfortunate though it is, that people have boosted their
ego’s studying. Practically everyone who studies the Kennedy
assassination does it with the intention of reaching a conclusion at the
end that they can boost their own self-worth over. But that’s not what
that event was about. It’s not about being some silly murder mystery
that we can all just throw around like a hot potato and let every fool
who’s had a basic thought toss their two cents in over. It’s a tragic
event and it’s a representation of the time when American’s first
started seriously questioning their government (of course our
involvement in the Vietnam War and ultimately Watergate fueled this
distrust in later years). Now a days everyone spits at the government,
it’s just another thing now. In fact, no one is deemed really normal
anymore if they don’t have an adverse perspective on our current
government and those that are in charge of it. To still believe in the
goodness and the righteousness of those who govern us is, and many times
rightly so, deemed to be both naïve and almost infantile. So in that
vein the Kennedy Assassination can be seen as something of a genesis to
all of this and the things that went in motion, culminating in that
event, are still most definitely in effect today. Why else has it been
nearly fifty years and yet so much evidence on that case is still locked
away (and whatever is released is often heavily censored)? The odds are
anyway that anything that would point to any one person or any
particular establishment or government institution have long since been
destroyed. Regardless of who is in power now, they have the obligation
to make it look like we have a proper and functioning government, and
while most people in our government were children or teenagers at best
when Kennedy was assassinated (hence have no connection to the event, or
whomever may have been involved, whatsoever) they still believe and
know they would be doing our current government a serious disservice if
they were to reveal that elements of the U.S. government were possibly
tied to the killing of one of its leaders (and such a famous one).
So the Kennedy assassination is still a mystery, but that’s not what it should be best known for. I have, again, be studying that event for nearly two decades and I’m only 26 years of age as it is, and while I have studied practically every aspect of it I still do not have my own solid theory on who did it. That’s not what it’s about and even if one is to reach a definitive believe on what led to that tragic event back in 1963, before they can honestly promote their personal claims the first thing they have to do is disprove the official one. That’s been more my focus, especially in my studies into the assassination over the past five years or so. My focus has been Lee Harvey Oswald and not just whether or not he “could” have killed President Kennedy, but more directly, was it even possible that he did. And after all these years of studies, of nothing else is certain in this case, I have reached the certainty that while I am sure he had a connection to the event at some level, he was not the, or even one of the assassins of President Kennedy. I spent the better part of 2007 and 2008 putting all my thoughts to work. After about six months of solid research and about nine solid months of writing I completed a 478 page book on the Kennedy assassination. While it addresses practically all aspects of the event the focus was put on Oswald. It focused on his background. What was true and what wasn’t? What were his rifle capabilities? What were the reasons behind his time in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962? Why was he so easily allowed back in the states from the Soviet Union (while it was the height of the Cold War)? But the primary focus is put simply into all aspects of Oswald’s supposed lone guilt in the killing of Kennedy. I look at all the physical evidence recovered in connecting him to the crime (such as the rifle and the empty rifle cartridges found in the Book Depository where Oswald worked [and let us not forget Commission Exhibit 399, or the “magic bullet”], and the package he supposedly transported the rifle with, and even the two photographs found that showed Oswald with the rifle he supposedly used to kill Kennedy and the revolver he supposedly used to kill Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit afterward) as the greatest proof of his innocence. Not a single one of these pieces of evidence can be unequivocally connected to Oswald, not one! Every single piece of evidence has it’s faults, and in many cases these faults are simply broken chains of evidence. For example: Oswald supposedly purchased the rifle through the mail using the alias of “A. Hidell”. I won’t even start with the argument that he could have easily avoided being I.D.’ed by simply going into any gun store, using a fake name and purchasing a gun that couldn’t be traced to him (but then again, the single-assassin theorists have told us time and again that Oswald was just a stupid loner so that handles that [sarcasm implied]). It was later found that Oswald did not clear for any mail to be delivered to his post office box that was addressed to anyone but him. Therefore, a package mailed to an “A. Hidell”, even if it had Oswald’s post office box number on it, would not have been placed in his box and rather would have been returned to sender. However, this rifle, purchased from Chicago, was never returned. So what we have is a broken chain of evidence and yet somehow this rifle found its way from Chicago in the Spring of ‘63 to Dallas in the Fall of ‘63.
By this time it should be abundantly clear that I do not, in any way, support the conclusions reached in the Warren Commission report, which is the official government account of what happened. I, hopefully, will be writing a great deal of short pieces on the assassination, mostly one’s expressing defense against Oswald as the assassin. So why then have I chosen to title this account as “Stranger on the Sixth Floor”. Well, to those with a novice or even no background knowledge into the Kennedy assassination, the official account of what happened states that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the President from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (which was his place of employment). Hence the sixth floor statement has obvious meaning. But while I support Oswald’s innocence as an assassin and don’t even believe he was on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination, I believe there is far too much evidence to prove that there was someone up on that six floor, if not more than one person. Several witnesses claimed to see multiple people up there. Such seems to be a logical starting place in discussing a defense for Lee Harvey Oswald; a simple examination into what is known for certain about what went on up there on the sixth floor. The Warren Report, published in 1964, understandably had a very skewed perspective on what happened and thus their time line for what occurred and who was where with regards to Oswald and the sixth floor of the Depository is quite inconsistent and in numerous cases is flat out incorrect. I can sit here and throw every theory and every random conception about what happened up there around and can sit here writing a Bible’s worth of information, but it wouldn’t do much good because it would be mixing facts with theory. Obviously theory plays it’s role because no one, no matter how cocky an attitude they may have about their perspectives, knows for sure what happened or who shot from what window or grass hill. In many cases then theory must be used, if anything to get us from point A to point B. But for the sake of an introduction, I will focus strictly on what is known for sure about the goings on of that sixth floor around the time of President Kennedy’s assassination. And for simplicity sake I will break them down into individual elements.
*THE CASE OF CHARLES GIVENS: One of the key witnesses to the Warren Commission was Depository employee Charles Givens, who testified that at approximately 11:55 a.m. (thirty-five minutes before the President’s assassination) he saw Oswald walking around by himself on the sixth floor. This was very helpful to the official account that Oswald shot the President from that floor. Interestingly though, in the affidavit Givens gave on his actions on November 22nd he never mentioned this, even though by then Oswald had been arrested form the crime, and such an admission would have been highly significant. Roughly ten minutes before this encounter, at 11:45 a.m., multiple witnesses, Givens included, went down from the sixth floor to the first floor for their lunch break. As they went down they passed Oswald on the fifth floor, who called out to them to send the elevator back up so he could ride it down for his break. At least two witnesses, Eddie Piper and William Shelley, saw Oswald on the first floor around noon or maybe a few minutes before. This throws Givens’ account into disarray. There is no evidence whatsoever, besides the account from Givens, that Oswald went to the sixth floor after 11:45. He was seen down on the first floor around noon. Another Depository employee, ignored by the Warren Commission, Carolyn Arnold, recalled seeing Oswald while he ate his lunch roughly around 12:15 either on the first or second floor. This gives total credence to the idea that Oswald had the intention of going down when he called out to his co-workers to send the elevator back up for him. He was seen down there shortly after and then about fifteen minutes after that was seen eating. Furthermore, at that time, Oswald appeared in no rush.
*THE ACCOUNT OF ARNOLD ROWLAND: At this time when Oswald was seen on a lower Depository floor, onlooker in Dealey Plaza there, Arnold Rowland, saw a man through the southwest corner window of the Depository building. This man had a rifle and Rowland assumed he was with the secret service, stationed there as protection for the President. He even asked his wife there if she wanted to see an agent, but once they both looked up there the man had vanished from the window. Regardless who this man was it couldn’t have been Oswald. It’s worth also mentioning here that the President was planned to come through Dealey Plaza at roughly 12:24. It sounds absurd then that Oswald was sitting leisurely on a lower depository floor eating his lunch less than ten minutes before the President’s arrival if he were the assassin.
*THE ACCOUNT OF BONNIE RAY WILLIAMS: Arnold Rowland also recalled seeing a man of dark complexion in the southeast corner window, where Oswald presumably shot the President from, around 12:15 p.m. This was likely Depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams, who’s account makes the idea that Oswald acted alone from the sixth floor even more improbable. According to Williams, an admission that he was unshaken on even when the Warren Commission tried to convince him otherwise, he went up to the sixth floor to eat his lunch. His food remains were found in the sniper’s next during the search of the floor after the assassination, and were originally presumed to have been eaten by Oswald. Williams said that he remained on the sixth floor until approximately 12:20 p.m. when he went down to the fifth floor. He saw no one on that floor. This is only four minutes before the President was planned to arrive in Dealey Plaza, and yet Oswald was still not there. And if Williams left at about 12:20 he still had to walk the full length of the sixth floor and go down to the fifth floor, which would have taken at least another minute.
*WITNESS ACCOUNTS AT TIME OF SHOOTING: There were several witnesses to men on or around the sixth floor in the moments surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. First I will address the accounts of Ruby Henderson and Carolyn Walther because while they claimed to see something strange through one of the Depository windows they were unable to tell what floor it came from. Henderson noticed two men on one of the higher floors. One man, the taller of the two, she couldn’t make out well but the other she described as having dark complexion. It is worth mentioning here that three employees of dark complexion watched the motorcade from the fifth floor. Of those three, who were directly below the presumed sniper’s nest on the sixth floor, only one of them heard anything on the sixth floor. In fact, only one was even convinced the shooting came from the Depository, even though they were presumably only a few feet from the origin of the shooting. Walther also saw two men on a high floor in the Depository. One of them had a gun, which she gave a description for that did not match the rifle supposedly used by Oswald. She also described the man with the weapon as having light-colored clothes and having light-colored hair. Oswald wore dark-colored clothes and had dark brown hair. Teenager Amos Euins saw what he thought was a pipe sticking out of the sixth floor window. He quickly realized it was a weapon and the only description he could give of the man there was that he had a bald spot on top of his head. Oswald had slightly receding hair but did not have a bald spot. Two employees at the Dal.-Tex. Building across from the Depository, Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards, claimed to see a man with blond hair on the sixth floor, who appeared to be trying to conceal himself. From a building across from the plaza from the Depository witness Richard Randolph Carr saw a man who appeared to be heavy set. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and a sports coat; not matching Oswald whatsoever. There were also several witnesses in the Dallas County Jail who saw two men on the sixth floor of the Depository, one with a rifle. They, like others, presumed they were with the secret service. While the official account claims Oswald was up on the sixth floor by himself where he killed the President, all eyewitness accounts not only conflict with descriptions that could match Oswald but they also suggest more than one person was on that floor. Therefore, even if Oswald was one of the assassins, it is beyond presumption that he had at least one accomplice, and thus was not a lone assassin.
*HOWARD BRENNAN (SUPERSTAR WITNESS): Howard Brennan was deemed by the Warren Commission as the key witness to the assassination, most likely because he was the only one to claim that it WAS Oswald who shot the President from the sixth floor. Brennan watched the President’s motorcade directly from below the Depository and across the street. His account however is mired by faults. For instance, he claimed that he both saw the assassin fire the head shot and then saw the President be struck by that bullet. This means he would have had to turn his head at a speed faster than the bullet fired, something that is unequivocally impossible. He also bolstered Oswald’s innocence by saying that he didn’t immediately leave the sniper’s next after the shooting, but rather admired the aftermath for a few seconds before slowly slipping away from the window. This is critical because Oswald was seen, presumably, some seventy-five to ninety seconds after the assassination back on the second floor, unshaken and appearing to have just finished his lunch; a half drank Coke was in his hands. If Oswald did shoot the President he would have had to sprint across the sixth floor and down four flights of stairs to reach the second floor in just over a minute. By Brennan’s account the shooter seemed in no rush to leave, and perhaps he wasn’t in a rush. A witness to the aftermath, Lillian Mooneyham, claimed to see someone on the sixth floor some five minutes after the assassination. This obviously couldn’t have been Oswald. Later on, Brennan was brought to a line-up that Oswald was presented in, before he stated that he was the assassin. In this line-up he was unable to identify Oswald as the assassin. He would later claim that he feared Oswald had killed the President as a part of a Communist conspiracy and that his life would have been in danger if he identified him. In his own book on the case he put a much different and better light on the subject, claiming that he felt forced to identify Oswald but didn’t because it was unnecessary seeing as they already had a mountain of evidence against him. However, at this time evidence was still being gathered and Oswald hadn’t even been charged for the assassination yet. It’s certainly interesting that the one witness who the Commission put the most basis on was the one witness with excessive conflict in his accounts as to what happened. Obviously there was someone or more than one person on the sixth floor, but there is nothing to prove or even really suggest that Oswald was one of them or even the one.
*PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: Photographs taken capturing the southeast corner window of the sixth floor moments before and moments after the assassination show that the boxes around that sniper’s nest had been moved about. This is highly critical because, again, Oswald didn’t have time to linger about, and he most certainly wouldn’t have had time to move boxes around up there. Another photograph, taken seconds after the assassination, capturing the whole south wall of the Depository, taken by Tom Dillard, under close examination exposed the shadowy figure of a man in the southwest corner window of the Depository. He is crooked-looking and is merely poking out from behind the wall up there as though trying to conceal himself. While the figure is very shadowy and grainy he appears to be of thick build with a thick, rounded face and a buzz cut. None of this matches with Oswald. A more famous photograph taken by Associated Press photographer James Altgens captures a man, who looks a great deal like Oswald, standing in the entryway to the Book Depository at the time of the assassination. The Warren Commission argued that this was Depository employee Billy Lovelady. However, Lovelady recalled sitting on the Depository steps at this time and the clothes he wore that day do not match those of the man in the photograph. Interestingly enough, they do match closely with what Oswald wore. If it is Oswald in the photograph then obviously he wasn’t the assassin or even on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting.
*THE AFTERMATH: During the search of the sixth floor of the Depository after the assassination a rifle was discovered, well-hidden between book boxes and three empty rifle shells were found beneath the southeast sixth floor window. One of the officers who discovered the shells, Roger Craig, claimed they were all sitting lined up directly by each other, as though they had been placed there intentionally. Another officer who discovered them, Luke Mooney, claimed they were more in a triangular pattern, but they were still huddled close together. The type of rifle that was found, purportedly used by Oswald to kill the President, an Italian 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano, was a very erratic weapon. One of it’s quirks is that when a round is fired, and the empty shell is ejected, it shoots out violently to the right. However, these shells were all found right under the window, practically at the assassin’s feet. Also, a row of boxes stacked there, running parallel to the south wall and presumably constructed to keep the assassin concealed from within the building, was rather close to the wall, leaving very little space between them and the wall. Officers trying to retrieve the shells struggled just to get back there. The window there was only halfway open, meaning an assassin there would have been forced to squat down. Furthermore, there was a large black pipe right along that window that would have effected an assassin’s ability to aim the gun down Elm Street as the President drove away. While much of this bolsters Oswald’s innocence even more it also shows the unlikelihood that this sniper’s nest was even planned to be the primary assassin’s location. More than likely, whoever was up there was there for two reasons: to help incriminate Oswald by firing from the location in which he worked, but to also serve as a decoy assassin’s location to distract onlookers from other firing locations such as the infamous “grassy knoll” or the Dal.-Tex. Building.
The bulk of the evidence suggests most definitely, regardless if there were other assassin’s in other locations, suggests that there was at least one man on the sixth floor with a weapon that he fired at the President. There is too much evidence to legitimate this. However, practically all of this evidence presented states that Oswald was not the man or one of the men on the sixth floor firing at the President at 12:30. This is the primary reasoning behind the title of this page as the “Stranger on the Sixth Floor”. He most definitely was there, but who it was is still a mystery.
So the Kennedy assassination is still a mystery, but that’s not what it should be best known for. I have, again, be studying that event for nearly two decades and I’m only 26 years of age as it is, and while I have studied practically every aspect of it I still do not have my own solid theory on who did it. That’s not what it’s about and even if one is to reach a definitive believe on what led to that tragic event back in 1963, before they can honestly promote their personal claims the first thing they have to do is disprove the official one. That’s been more my focus, especially in my studies into the assassination over the past five years or so. My focus has been Lee Harvey Oswald and not just whether or not he “could” have killed President Kennedy, but more directly, was it even possible that he did. And after all these years of studies, of nothing else is certain in this case, I have reached the certainty that while I am sure he had a connection to the event at some level, he was not the, or even one of the assassins of President Kennedy. I spent the better part of 2007 and 2008 putting all my thoughts to work. After about six months of solid research and about nine solid months of writing I completed a 478 page book on the Kennedy assassination. While it addresses practically all aspects of the event the focus was put on Oswald. It focused on his background. What was true and what wasn’t? What were his rifle capabilities? What were the reasons behind his time in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962? Why was he so easily allowed back in the states from the Soviet Union (while it was the height of the Cold War)? But the primary focus is put simply into all aspects of Oswald’s supposed lone guilt in the killing of Kennedy. I look at all the physical evidence recovered in connecting him to the crime (such as the rifle and the empty rifle cartridges found in the Book Depository where Oswald worked [and let us not forget Commission Exhibit 399, or the “magic bullet”], and the package he supposedly transported the rifle with, and even the two photographs found that showed Oswald with the rifle he supposedly used to kill Kennedy and the revolver he supposedly used to kill Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit afterward) as the greatest proof of his innocence. Not a single one of these pieces of evidence can be unequivocally connected to Oswald, not one! Every single piece of evidence has it’s faults, and in many cases these faults are simply broken chains of evidence. For example: Oswald supposedly purchased the rifle through the mail using the alias of “A. Hidell”. I won’t even start with the argument that he could have easily avoided being I.D.’ed by simply going into any gun store, using a fake name and purchasing a gun that couldn’t be traced to him (but then again, the single-assassin theorists have told us time and again that Oswald was just a stupid loner so that handles that [sarcasm implied]). It was later found that Oswald did not clear for any mail to be delivered to his post office box that was addressed to anyone but him. Therefore, a package mailed to an “A. Hidell”, even if it had Oswald’s post office box number on it, would not have been placed in his box and rather would have been returned to sender. However, this rifle, purchased from Chicago, was never returned. So what we have is a broken chain of evidence and yet somehow this rifle found its way from Chicago in the Spring of ‘63 to Dallas in the Fall of ‘63.
By this time it should be abundantly clear that I do not, in any way, support the conclusions reached in the Warren Commission report, which is the official government account of what happened. I, hopefully, will be writing a great deal of short pieces on the assassination, mostly one’s expressing defense against Oswald as the assassin. So why then have I chosen to title this account as “Stranger on the Sixth Floor”. Well, to those with a novice or even no background knowledge into the Kennedy assassination, the official account of what happened states that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the President from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (which was his place of employment). Hence the sixth floor statement has obvious meaning. But while I support Oswald’s innocence as an assassin and don’t even believe he was on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination, I believe there is far too much evidence to prove that there was someone up on that six floor, if not more than one person. Several witnesses claimed to see multiple people up there. Such seems to be a logical starting place in discussing a defense for Lee Harvey Oswald; a simple examination into what is known for certain about what went on up there on the sixth floor. The Warren Report, published in 1964, understandably had a very skewed perspective on what happened and thus their time line for what occurred and who was where with regards to Oswald and the sixth floor of the Depository is quite inconsistent and in numerous cases is flat out incorrect. I can sit here and throw every theory and every random conception about what happened up there around and can sit here writing a Bible’s worth of information, but it wouldn’t do much good because it would be mixing facts with theory. Obviously theory plays it’s role because no one, no matter how cocky an attitude they may have about their perspectives, knows for sure what happened or who shot from what window or grass hill. In many cases then theory must be used, if anything to get us from point A to point B. But for the sake of an introduction, I will focus strictly on what is known for sure about the goings on of that sixth floor around the time of President Kennedy’s assassination. And for simplicity sake I will break them down into individual elements.
*THE CASE OF CHARLES GIVENS: One of the key witnesses to the Warren Commission was Depository employee Charles Givens, who testified that at approximately 11:55 a.m. (thirty-five minutes before the President’s assassination) he saw Oswald walking around by himself on the sixth floor. This was very helpful to the official account that Oswald shot the President from that floor. Interestingly though, in the affidavit Givens gave on his actions on November 22nd he never mentioned this, even though by then Oswald had been arrested form the crime, and such an admission would have been highly significant. Roughly ten minutes before this encounter, at 11:45 a.m., multiple witnesses, Givens included, went down from the sixth floor to the first floor for their lunch break. As they went down they passed Oswald on the fifth floor, who called out to them to send the elevator back up so he could ride it down for his break. At least two witnesses, Eddie Piper and William Shelley, saw Oswald on the first floor around noon or maybe a few minutes before. This throws Givens’ account into disarray. There is no evidence whatsoever, besides the account from Givens, that Oswald went to the sixth floor after 11:45. He was seen down on the first floor around noon. Another Depository employee, ignored by the Warren Commission, Carolyn Arnold, recalled seeing Oswald while he ate his lunch roughly around 12:15 either on the first or second floor. This gives total credence to the idea that Oswald had the intention of going down when he called out to his co-workers to send the elevator back up for him. He was seen down there shortly after and then about fifteen minutes after that was seen eating. Furthermore, at that time, Oswald appeared in no rush.
*THE ACCOUNT OF ARNOLD ROWLAND: At this time when Oswald was seen on a lower Depository floor, onlooker in Dealey Plaza there, Arnold Rowland, saw a man through the southwest corner window of the Depository building. This man had a rifle and Rowland assumed he was with the secret service, stationed there as protection for the President. He even asked his wife there if she wanted to see an agent, but once they both looked up there the man had vanished from the window. Regardless who this man was it couldn’t have been Oswald. It’s worth also mentioning here that the President was planned to come through Dealey Plaza at roughly 12:24. It sounds absurd then that Oswald was sitting leisurely on a lower depository floor eating his lunch less than ten minutes before the President’s arrival if he were the assassin.
*THE ACCOUNT OF BONNIE RAY WILLIAMS: Arnold Rowland also recalled seeing a man of dark complexion in the southeast corner window, where Oswald presumably shot the President from, around 12:15 p.m. This was likely Depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams, who’s account makes the idea that Oswald acted alone from the sixth floor even more improbable. According to Williams, an admission that he was unshaken on even when the Warren Commission tried to convince him otherwise, he went up to the sixth floor to eat his lunch. His food remains were found in the sniper’s next during the search of the floor after the assassination, and were originally presumed to have been eaten by Oswald. Williams said that he remained on the sixth floor until approximately 12:20 p.m. when he went down to the fifth floor. He saw no one on that floor. This is only four minutes before the President was planned to arrive in Dealey Plaza, and yet Oswald was still not there. And if Williams left at about 12:20 he still had to walk the full length of the sixth floor and go down to the fifth floor, which would have taken at least another minute.
*WITNESS ACCOUNTS AT TIME OF SHOOTING: There were several witnesses to men on or around the sixth floor in the moments surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. First I will address the accounts of Ruby Henderson and Carolyn Walther because while they claimed to see something strange through one of the Depository windows they were unable to tell what floor it came from. Henderson noticed two men on one of the higher floors. One man, the taller of the two, she couldn’t make out well but the other she described as having dark complexion. It is worth mentioning here that three employees of dark complexion watched the motorcade from the fifth floor. Of those three, who were directly below the presumed sniper’s nest on the sixth floor, only one of them heard anything on the sixth floor. In fact, only one was even convinced the shooting came from the Depository, even though they were presumably only a few feet from the origin of the shooting. Walther also saw two men on a high floor in the Depository. One of them had a gun, which she gave a description for that did not match the rifle supposedly used by Oswald. She also described the man with the weapon as having light-colored clothes and having light-colored hair. Oswald wore dark-colored clothes and had dark brown hair. Teenager Amos Euins saw what he thought was a pipe sticking out of the sixth floor window. He quickly realized it was a weapon and the only description he could give of the man there was that he had a bald spot on top of his head. Oswald had slightly receding hair but did not have a bald spot. Two employees at the Dal.-Tex. Building across from the Depository, Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards, claimed to see a man with blond hair on the sixth floor, who appeared to be trying to conceal himself. From a building across from the plaza from the Depository witness Richard Randolph Carr saw a man who appeared to be heavy set. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and a sports coat; not matching Oswald whatsoever. There were also several witnesses in the Dallas County Jail who saw two men on the sixth floor of the Depository, one with a rifle. They, like others, presumed they were with the secret service. While the official account claims Oswald was up on the sixth floor by himself where he killed the President, all eyewitness accounts not only conflict with descriptions that could match Oswald but they also suggest more than one person was on that floor. Therefore, even if Oswald was one of the assassins, it is beyond presumption that he had at least one accomplice, and thus was not a lone assassin.
*HOWARD BRENNAN (SUPERSTAR WITNESS): Howard Brennan was deemed by the Warren Commission as the key witness to the assassination, most likely because he was the only one to claim that it WAS Oswald who shot the President from the sixth floor. Brennan watched the President’s motorcade directly from below the Depository and across the street. His account however is mired by faults. For instance, he claimed that he both saw the assassin fire the head shot and then saw the President be struck by that bullet. This means he would have had to turn his head at a speed faster than the bullet fired, something that is unequivocally impossible. He also bolstered Oswald’s innocence by saying that he didn’t immediately leave the sniper’s next after the shooting, but rather admired the aftermath for a few seconds before slowly slipping away from the window. This is critical because Oswald was seen, presumably, some seventy-five to ninety seconds after the assassination back on the second floor, unshaken and appearing to have just finished his lunch; a half drank Coke was in his hands. If Oswald did shoot the President he would have had to sprint across the sixth floor and down four flights of stairs to reach the second floor in just over a minute. By Brennan’s account the shooter seemed in no rush to leave, and perhaps he wasn’t in a rush. A witness to the aftermath, Lillian Mooneyham, claimed to see someone on the sixth floor some five minutes after the assassination. This obviously couldn’t have been Oswald. Later on, Brennan was brought to a line-up that Oswald was presented in, before he stated that he was the assassin. In this line-up he was unable to identify Oswald as the assassin. He would later claim that he feared Oswald had killed the President as a part of a Communist conspiracy and that his life would have been in danger if he identified him. In his own book on the case he put a much different and better light on the subject, claiming that he felt forced to identify Oswald but didn’t because it was unnecessary seeing as they already had a mountain of evidence against him. However, at this time evidence was still being gathered and Oswald hadn’t even been charged for the assassination yet. It’s certainly interesting that the one witness who the Commission put the most basis on was the one witness with excessive conflict in his accounts as to what happened. Obviously there was someone or more than one person on the sixth floor, but there is nothing to prove or even really suggest that Oswald was one of them or even the one.
*PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: Photographs taken capturing the southeast corner window of the sixth floor moments before and moments after the assassination show that the boxes around that sniper’s nest had been moved about. This is highly critical because, again, Oswald didn’t have time to linger about, and he most certainly wouldn’t have had time to move boxes around up there. Another photograph, taken seconds after the assassination, capturing the whole south wall of the Depository, taken by Tom Dillard, under close examination exposed the shadowy figure of a man in the southwest corner window of the Depository. He is crooked-looking and is merely poking out from behind the wall up there as though trying to conceal himself. While the figure is very shadowy and grainy he appears to be of thick build with a thick, rounded face and a buzz cut. None of this matches with Oswald. A more famous photograph taken by Associated Press photographer James Altgens captures a man, who looks a great deal like Oswald, standing in the entryway to the Book Depository at the time of the assassination. The Warren Commission argued that this was Depository employee Billy Lovelady. However, Lovelady recalled sitting on the Depository steps at this time and the clothes he wore that day do not match those of the man in the photograph. Interestingly enough, they do match closely with what Oswald wore. If it is Oswald in the photograph then obviously he wasn’t the assassin or even on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting.
*THE AFTERMATH: During the search of the sixth floor of the Depository after the assassination a rifle was discovered, well-hidden between book boxes and three empty rifle shells were found beneath the southeast sixth floor window. One of the officers who discovered the shells, Roger Craig, claimed they were all sitting lined up directly by each other, as though they had been placed there intentionally. Another officer who discovered them, Luke Mooney, claimed they were more in a triangular pattern, but they were still huddled close together. The type of rifle that was found, purportedly used by Oswald to kill the President, an Italian 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano, was a very erratic weapon. One of it’s quirks is that when a round is fired, and the empty shell is ejected, it shoots out violently to the right. However, these shells were all found right under the window, practically at the assassin’s feet. Also, a row of boxes stacked there, running parallel to the south wall and presumably constructed to keep the assassin concealed from within the building, was rather close to the wall, leaving very little space between them and the wall. Officers trying to retrieve the shells struggled just to get back there. The window there was only halfway open, meaning an assassin there would have been forced to squat down. Furthermore, there was a large black pipe right along that window that would have effected an assassin’s ability to aim the gun down Elm Street as the President drove away. While much of this bolsters Oswald’s innocence even more it also shows the unlikelihood that this sniper’s nest was even planned to be the primary assassin’s location. More than likely, whoever was up there was there for two reasons: to help incriminate Oswald by firing from the location in which he worked, but to also serve as a decoy assassin’s location to distract onlookers from other firing locations such as the infamous “grassy knoll” or the Dal.-Tex. Building.
The bulk of the evidence suggests most definitely, regardless if there were other assassin’s in other locations, suggests that there was at least one man on the sixth floor with a weapon that he fired at the President. There is too much evidence to legitimate this. However, practically all of this evidence presented states that Oswald was not the man or one of the men on the sixth floor firing at the President at 12:30. This is the primary reasoning behind the title of this page as the “Stranger on the Sixth Floor”. He most definitely was there, but who it was is still a mystery.
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