From: cortez@milton.u.washington.edu (Tom Warner)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Oswald's Photo, 3 Bums and JFK.
Date: 25 Jul 92 09:23:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: milton.cortez.712056217
Organization: University of Washington

dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:


>The following article appeared in the Sunday, February 9, 1992 edition
>of the Houston Post (Houston, Texas).

>Has anybody heard of any follow up work done on tracing those 3 bums
>yet??

>------------------------------------------------------------------------

>                    First Look at Dallas' JFK Files

>                           -----------------

>                 Evidence on Oswald Photo, Arrested 'Bums'

>                           -----------------

>        By Ray La Fontaine and Mary La Fontaine
>        Special to the Houston Post

>                           -----------------

>DALLAS - Recently released documents from Dallas Police Department files
>on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will add fuel to one
>argument favored by conspiracy buffs and raise new questions on another.

>        Lodged within the 18 legal-size standing file folders in the
>city's archives are several photos of accused presidential killer Lee
>Harvey Oswald and police arrest forms for three men who until now were
>nameless and identified only as "bums" or "tramps" who were picked up
>following the shooting of Kennedy and then-Texas Gov. John Connally.

>        One photo of Oswald's back yard in the Oak Cliff section of
>Dallas shows clear evidence of darkroom manipulation of a type long
>associated by some photo analysts with attempts to frame Oswald by
>"inserting" him into the background.

>        Whether the manipulation was done by conspirators or by police
>personnel seeking to duplicate the process has not been determined.
>Copies of the print, which ostensibly dates to 1963 and is part of the
>collection administered by Dallas city archivist Cindy Smolovik, have
>not yet been made available for publication.

	Chapter 22 of Livingstone's High Treason 2 is an interesting
interview with Marina Oswald. Marina tells him that she no longer
believes that Oswald killed Kennedy but that he did tell her he took
a shot at General Walker, did own the revolver and the rifle, and did ask
her to take photos of him in the backyard. She also refuted the idea that
she had been 'coached' by anyone, and that she had just said the facts as
she knew them and was honestly convinced at the time that by all of the
evidence turned up by investigators that Lee was guilty. On the other hand,
she said she had never carefully reviewed her recorded testimony and so
could not vouch for the accuracy of the translators.
	She also told Livingstone that she took some "backyard" pictures,
but that the pictures in evidence are not the pictures she took. "She said
that she had her back to the staircase, which we see in tha background of the 
present photographs, off to the left side ... Marina's belief is that she took
some photographs of Oswald in the backyard of the house where we see him in
the official pictures, but 'nobody ever asked me where I was standing.'"
	Livingstone also offers the comments of Larry Howard of the JFK
Assassination Research Center, who he says Marina told the same thing, and
that she had taken the pictures at 10 a.m., and the sun was out.
	"What I'm thinking is that the pictures she took -- maybe the quality
wasn't very good, so they had to redo them. Whoever faked them got the idea to
fake them from the ones she took. Who knows, maybe Oswald faked them.
	"She remembered the rifle and the pistol, but not the clothes that he
had on in the pictures. She said that Oswald went around to the mailbox and got the copies of the newspapers and posed with them."

	Although I'm sure many read Marina's explanation as basically saying
"I told the whole truth but I have to leave myself an
out in case something in my testimony is provably wrong"A
and be unserstandably skeptical, I think she seems reasonable and
believable. Since, as far as I'm aware of, she's not saying anything that
doesn't jibe with credible evidence, I tend to believe her -- she seems
to be basically a normal person with no real motivation to lie. That is,
unless you think she's a KGB plant, an idea which I'm sure some people still
cling to.
	I think it is highly possible if not probable that Oswald faked the
photos himself, since he worked at the photo lab, knew about such things, and
brought up the fakery himself.
	I can't remember where I read this, but I think the official line has
always been that Oswald didn't bring up the fakery issue the first time he was
shown the pictures, only the second time. (Of course, this whole issue rests
only on after-the-fact reports made by Oswald's questioners; apparently,
no contemporaneous notes exist. But who knows, the official line could be true.)
	Since there is ample evidence that Oswald was involved in quite a number
of public events meant to build his reputation as a Marxist, the posing with
the two papers seems to jibe, especially since there are records that confirm
Oswald did simultaneously subscribe to both papers.
 If Oswald did fake his own photos, the question is why?
My main comment would be that it would have to have been with the intent 
to convince someone uneducated about American Marxist groups that he was
a committed militant radical. Since the photos show him holding two papers
ideologically at war with each other -- One Trotskyist, one Leninist -- they
wouldn't likely have impressed any real American radicals, or anyone at the
top level of the FBI. They might have impressed police or local FBI, Walker
followers, or whatever.
	Or perhaps Oswald knew what he was involved in and did it as a
way to create an escape hatch for himself if he was arrested. If he was that
sophisticated, I guess it would beg the question: what other evidence could
Oswald himself have falsely planted?
	Or perhaps he was just practicing. Screwing around just to see how
convincing of a fake he could make, and this was his test product. Who knows?

	I have to doubt that a conspirator was stupid enough to leave behind
evidence of the frame-up. I have always doubted that anyone would have bothered
to make phony photographs that were as dubiously circumstantially incriminating
as these.

>        The purported arrest records housed in the files -- recently
>ordered opened by the Dallas City Council -- reveal for the first time
>the stated names of three enigmatic "tramps" arrested within minutes
>of the Nov. 22, 1963 shooting of Kennedy and Connally as they rode in
>a motorcade through Dealy Plaza shortly before noon.

>        At the time of their arrests -- because of their efforts to
>reach boxcars in the rail yard behind the plaza -- the three were
>suspects in the assassination.

>        Until now, no arrest records were believed kept -- a frequent
>criticism leveled at Dallas police by assassination conspiracy
>researchers and widely repeated in the media, including a recent cover
>story in Newsweek magazine.

>        Conspiracy advocates such as Anthony Summers and Jim Marrs
>(author of 'Crossfire', an important source in Oliver Stone's contro-
>versial movie JFK) have claimed that certain Dallas film lab employees
>were summoned on the night of the assassination to process photographs
>for the FBI and Dallas police.

>        Among the photos processed that night, Marrs claims, was one of
>the back yard without Oswald in the picture.  Until now, there has been
>no direct evidence to support that claim.

In 'Crossfire,' Marrs says "two Dallas commercial photographic processors
have told this author they saw copies of the backyard photo the night of
the assassination -- more than twelve hourse before they were reported
found in the Paine garage.
	"Robert Hester, who was called from home on November 22, 1963, to
help process assassination-related photographs for the FBI and Dallas police
at  National Photo, said he saw an FBI agent with a color transparency of
one of these photos and that one of the backyard photos he processed showed
no figure in the picture. Hester's claim was corroborated by his wife, 
Patricia, who also helped process film on the day of the assassination."

	Unlewss the Hesters are wrong about the time they saw the photo,
or the Dallas Police falsified the timing of their discovery of the photos,
this sure makes it look like someone other than Oswald faked the photos.

	Marrs also writes that the backyard photo found in 1976 was in the
hands of Roscoe White's wife. She's the one who later claimed her husband
was involved in the assassination, and whose son is still trying to
make a living as a witness about to this day.

>        The archival files show records were indeed apparently kept on
>the three.  They list their names as Gus W. Abrams, 53, Harold Doyle,
>32, and John Forrester Gedney, 38.  Left empty on arrest forms, however,
>are spaces for an arrest number, ID number and right thumbprint.

>        The reports, filed by officer W. E. Chambers, are dated Nov. 22,
>1963, at 4 p.m.  They list charges against the three as vagrancy and
>robbery.

>        "These men were taken off a train boxcar in the rail yards right
>after President Kennedy was shot," Chambers writes on Abrams' arrest
>description.  Descriptions on the two other reports are similar.

>        The reports indicate the men were not released immediately, as
>previously believed, but four days later.

>        The files appear to dispute the claims of Chauncey Holt, an
>admitted felon from San Diego, Calif., who -- among others -- has
>confessed to being one of the tramps.

>        In Holt's account, the three men were not arrested, but "escorted"
>out of Dealy Plaza and released.

>        Previously available records show the tramps were taken by
>Dallas County Sheriff's Deputy Harold Elkins to Dallas Police Capt. Will
>Fritz.  There the trail ended.

	Livingstone's book was also the first publication of these records,
I believe. I haven't seen any attempt to check these three given names
against known aliases of anyone ever suspected of being a "tramp." I also
think it is a little interesting that three men would be held for four
days without any attempt to get anything more than a given name, or at least
without any record left of anything more than a given name.
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk