From: dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy,sci.skeptic
Subject: Oswald's Photo, 3 Bums and JFK.
Date: 22 Jul 92 00:56:58 GMT
Organization: Electrical and Electronic Eng., University of Adelaide



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.

        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.

        The newly released photo print shows the familiar stairs, fence
and shrubbery found in a set of three backyard photos in which Oswald
is seen holding a rifle in his left hand and left-wing newspapers in
his right.

        Those pictures were taken by Oswald's wife, Marina, at their
Oak Cliff residence, according to testimony collected by the Warren
Commission, which investigated the assassination.  The commission
concluded Oswald was acting alone when he murdered Kennedy and wounded
Connally, firing at them from behind and from a sixth-floor window in
the Dallas School Book Depository.

        Numerous photo analysts have since contended, as did Oswald
himself the day following the assassination, that the backyard photos
were articially created to produce an incriminating image.

        Two of the photos were discovered by Dallas police immediately
after the assassination.  The third came to light in 1975.  One of the
photos appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1964.

        In the manipulated print in police files Oswald does not appear.
Instead, there is a white silhouette of a human figure holding an
apparent rifle and newspapers.  The silhouette appears to be an example
of matting, a darkroom technique that can serve as an intermediate step
in the combining of photographic images.

        The silhouette print was not seen by the Warren Commission.

        Photographic experts Hershal Womack of Texas Tech University
in Lubbock and Jack White of Fort Worth have noted a variety of
alleged technical inconsistencies with the backyard pictures.  They
have theorized the artificial addition of Oswald's image to the
background by means of matting as the most likely explanation.

        Until now, no evidence of such an attempted matting has surfaced.

        Among the newly opened files are more photos of the Oswald home
back yard, but without Oswald in them.

        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.

        The matted print and other photos without human figures in them
appear similar in background to the long-available backyard photos
showing Oswald with rifle and newspapers, but could vary slightly from
known prints.  That cannot be determined until they are released for
full examination.

        The significance of the photographic finds in the police files,
Womack suggests, is that "they may represent part of the necessary
steps -- an empty background, for example -- for faking backyard photos
of Oswald.

        "The real question is, what was the purpose of this exercise?
To fake the photos or to demonstrate that the faking could be done?"
Womack said.  "I'd have to ask why anyone -- in or out of police
uniform -- would be trying to demonstrate this back in 1963 or 1964.
No one but Mark Lane was talking conspiracy then, and his complaints
were about the retouching done by major news organizations, not anything
as sophisticated as matting."

        The authenticity of the backyard photos was also addressed in
the final report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations
issued in 1979.

        "Fake backyard photographs," the congressional document noted,
"would indicate a degree of conspiratorial sophistication that would
almost necessarily raise the possibility that a highly organized group
had conspired to kill the president and make Oswald a 'patsy'."

        The photos lodged in the police department files are certain
to increase the conspiracy firestorm swirling within and around Stone's
movie.  The police department information on the three "tramps" or
"bums" will only add more fuel to it.

        There have been many unanswered questions concerning the three
men -- one apparently in his 50s, the others in their early 30s --
arrested within minutes of the shooting in Dealy Plaza.

        Though allegedly vagrants pulled from boxcars, the men were
noted in photographs to sport fresh haircuts and suspiciously good shoes.
The supposed lack of official arrest documentation -- including the
failure to even retain their names and their immediate release and
disappearance -- has raised the greatest consternation among conspiracy
researchers.

        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.


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