MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
who was standing on the south side of Elm Street between the Triple Underpass and the Depository Building.
As the motorcade started its descent down Elm Street., Altgens snapped a picture of the Presidential limousine with the entrance to the Depository Building in the background.
Just before snapping the picture Altgens heard a noise which sounded like the popping of a firecracker.
Investigation has established that Altgens' picture was taken approximately 2 seconds after the firing of the shot
which entered the back of the President's neck.
In the background of this picture were several employees watching the parade from the steps of the Depository Building.
One of these employees was alleged to resemble Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Commission has determined that the employee was in fact Billy Lovelady, who identified himself in the picture.
Standing alongside him were Buell Wesley Frazier and William Shelley, who also identified Lovelady.
Chapter 4. The Assassin: Part 4. Oswald's Actions in Building After Assassination.
In considering whether Oswald was at the southeast corner window at the time the shots were fired,
the Commission has reviewed the testimony of witnesses who saw Oswald in the building within minutes after the assassination.
The Commission has found that Oswald's movements, as described by these witnesses,
are consistent with his having been at the window at 12:30 p.m.
The encounter in the lunchroom.
The first person to see Oswald after the assassination was Patrolman M. L. Baker of the Dallas Police Department.
Baker was riding a two-wheeled motorcycle behind the last press car of the motorcade.
As he turned the corner from Main onto Houston at a speed of about 5 to 10 miles per hour,
a strong wind blowing from the north almost unseated him.
At about this time he heard the first shot.
Having recently heard the sounds of rifles while on a hunting trip, Baker recognized the shots as that of a high-powered rifle; Quote,
it sounded high and I immediately kind of looked up,
and I had a feeling that it came from the building, either right in front of me [the Depository Building] or of the one across to the right of it, end quote,
He saw pigeons flutter upward. He was not certain, quote, but I am pretty sure they came from the building right on the northwest corner, end quote.
He heard two more shots spaced, quote, pretty well even to me.
end quote, After the third shot, he, quote, revved that motorcycle up, end quote,
drove to the northwest corner of Elm and Houston, and parked approximately 10 feet from the traffic signal.
As he was parking he noted that people were, quote, falling, and they were rolling around down there grabbing their children, end quote, and rushing about.
A woman screamed, quote, Oh, they have shot that man, they have shot that man, end quote.
Baker, quote, had it in mind that the shots came from the top of this building here, end quote, so he ran straight to the entrance of the Depository Building.
Baker testified that he entered the lobby of the building and, quote, spoke out and asked where the stairs or elevator was
and this man, Mr. Truly, spoke up and says, it seems to me like he says,
I am a building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you, end quote.
Baker and building superintendent Roy Truly went through a second set of doors and stopped at a swinging door where Baker bumped into Truly's back.
They went through the swinging door and continued at, quote, a good trot, end quote,
to the northwest corner of the floor where Truly hoped to find one of the two freight elevators.
Neither elevator was there.
Truly pushed the button for the west elevator which operates automatically if the gate is closed.
He shouted twice, quote, Turn loose the elevator, end quote,
When the elevator failed to come, Baker said, quote, let's take the stairs, end quote, and he followed Truly up the stairway, which is to the west of the elevator.
The stairway is located in the northwest corner of the Depository Building.
The stairs from one floor to the next are "L-shaped," with both legs of the "L" approximately the same length.
Because the stairway itself is enclosed, neither Baker nor Truly could see anything on the second-floor hallway until they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
On the second-floor landing there is a small open area with a door at the east end.
This door leads into a small vestibule, and another door leads from the vestibule into the second-floor lunchroom.
The lunchroom door is usually open, but the first door is kept shut by a closing mechanism on the door.
This vestibule door is solid except for a small glass window in the upper part of the door.
As Baker reached the second floor, he was about 20 feet from the vestibule door. He intended to continue around to his left toward the stairway going up
but through the window in the door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man walking in the vestibule toward the lunchroom.
Since the vestibule door is only a few feet from the lunchroom door, the man must have entered the vestibule only a second or two before Baker arrived at the top of the stairwell.
Yet he must have entered the vestibule door before Truly reached the top of the stairwell, since Truly did not see him.
If the man had passed from the vestibule into the lunchroom, Baker could not have seen him.
Baker said, quote, He [Truly] had already started around the bend to come to the next elevator going up,
I was coming out this one on the second floor, and I don't know, I was kind of sweeping this area as I come up, I was looking from right to left
and as I got to this door here I caught a glimpse of this man, just, you know, a sudden glimpse. And it looked to me like he was going away from me.
I can't say whether he had gone on through that door [the lunchroom door] or not.
All I did was catch a glance at him, and evidently he was -- this door might have been, you know, closing and almost shut at that time, end quote.
With his revolver drawn, Baker opened the vestibule door and ran into the vestibule.
He saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom.
Baker stopped at the door of the lunchroom and commanded, quote, Come here, end quote.
The man turned and walked back toward Baker.
He had been proceeding toward the rear of the lunchroom.
Along a side wall of the lunchroom was a soft drink rending machine, but at that time the man had nothing in his hands.
Meanwhile, Truly had run up several steps toward the third floor.
Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the lunchroom facing Lee Harvey Oswald.
Baker turned to Truly and said, quote, Do you know this man, does he work here? end quote.
Truly replied, "Yes."
Baker stated later that the man did not seem to be out of breath; he seemed calm. Quote, He never did say a word or nothing.
In fact, he didn't change his expression one bit, end quote.
Truly said of Oswald: quote, He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have been if somebody confronted me.
But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face, end quote.
Truly thought that the officer's gun at that time appeared to be almost touching the middle portion of Oswald's body.
Truly also noted at this time that Oswald's hands were empty.
In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the lunchroom
from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived, Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from the time of the shot
until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom.
Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about 200 feet from the corner of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots.
Truly stood in front of the building.
At a given signal, they reenacted the event. Baker's movements were timed with a stopwatch.
On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing
was 1 minute and 30 seconds.
The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds.
A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom by stairway.
Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner.
He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald's rifle was actually found after the shooting.
Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom.
The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds;
the second test, at a "fast walk" took 1 minute, 14 seconds.
The second test followed immediately after the first.
The only interval was the time necessary to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk back to the southeast corner.
Howlett was not short winded at the end of either test run.
The minimum time required by Baker to park his motorcycle and reach the second-floor lunchroom was within 3 seconds of the time needed to walk
from the southeast corner of the sixth floor down the stairway to the lunchroom.
The time actually required for Baker and Truly to reach the second floor on November 22 was probably longer than in the test runs. For example,
Baker required 15 seconds after the simulated shot to ride his motorcycle 180 to 200 feet,
park it, and run 45 feet to the building.
No allowance was made for the special conditions which existed on the day of the assassination
possible delayed reaction to the shot, jostling with the crowd of people on the steps and scanning the area along Elm Street and the parkway.
Baker said, quote, We simulated the shots and by the time we got there, we did everything that I did that day,
and this would be the minimum, because I am sure that I, you know, it took me a little longer, end quote,
On the basis of this time test, therefore,
the Commission concluded that Oswald could have fired the shots and still have been present in the second-floor lunchroom when seen by Baker and Truly.
That Oswald descended by stairway from the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom
is consistent with the movements of the two elevators, which would have provided the other possible means of descent.
When Truly, accompanied by Baker, ran to the rear of the first floor,
he was certain that both elevators, which occupy the same shaft, were on the fifth floor.
Baker, not realizing that there were two elevators, thought that only one elevator was in the shaft and that it was two or three floors above the second floor.
In the few seconds which elapsed while Baker and Truly ran from the first to the second floor,
neither of these slow elevators could have descended from the fifth to the second floor. Furthermore, no elevator was at the second floor when they arrived there.
Truly and Baker continued up the stairs after the encounter with Oswald in the lunchroom.
There was no elevator on the third or fourth floor.
The east elevator was on the fifth floor when they arrived; the west elevator was not.
They took the east elevator to the seventh floor and ran up a stairway to the roof where they searched for several minutes.
Jack Dougherty, an employee working on the fifth floor,
testified that he took the west elevator to the first floor after hearing a noise which sounded like a backfire.
Eddie Piper, the janitor, told Dougherty that the President had been shot,
but in his testimony Piper did not mention either seeing or talking with Dougherty during these moments of excitement.
Both Dougherty and Piper were confused witnesses. They had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon.
Truly was probably correct in stating that the west elevator was on the fifth floor when he looked up the elevator shaft from the first floor.
The west elevator was not on the fifth floor when Baker and Truly reached that floor,
probably because Jack Dougherty took it to the first floor while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs or in the lunchroom with Oswald.
Neither elevator could have been used by Oswald as a means of descent.
Oswald's use of the stairway is consistent with the testimony of other employees in the building.
Three employees -- James Jarman, Jr.,
Harold Norman, and Bonnie Ray Williams -- were watching the parade from the fifth floor, directly below the window from which the shots were fired.
They rushed to the west windows after the shots were fired and remained there
until after they saw Patrolman Baker's white helmet on the fifth floor moving toward the elevator.
While they were at the west windows their view of the stairwell was completely blocked by shelves and boxes.
This is the period during which Oswald would have descended the stairs. In all likelihood
Dougherty took the elevator down from the fifth floor after Jarman, Norman, and Williams ran to the west windows and were deciding what to do.
None of these three men saw Dougherty, probably because of the anxiety of the moment and because of the books which may have blocked the view.
Neither Jarman, Norman, Williams, or Dougherty saw Oswald.
Victoria Adams, who worked on the fourth floor of the Depository Building,
claimed that within about 1 minute following the shots she ran from a window on the south side of the fourth floor,
down the rear stairs to the first floor, where she encountered two Depository employees -- William Shelley and Billy Lovelady.
If her estimate of time is correct, she reached the bottom of the stairs before Truly and Baker started up,
and she must have run down the stairs ahead of Oswald and would probably have seen or heard him.
Actually she noticed no one on the back stairs. If she descended from the fourth to the first floor as fast as she claimed in her testimony,
she would have seen Baker or Truly on the first floor or on the stairs, unless they were already in the second-floor lunchroom talking to Oswald.
When she reached the first floor, she actually saw Shelley and Lovelady slightly east of the east elevator.
Shelley and Lovelady, however, have testified
that they were watching the parade from the top step of the building entrance when Gloria Calverly, who works in the Depository Building,
ran up and said that the President had been shot.
Lovelady and Shelley moved out into the street.
About this time Shelley saw Truly and Patrolman Baker go into the building
Shelley and Lovelady, at a fast walk or trot, turned west into the railroad yards and then to the west side of the Depository Building.
They reentered the building by the rear door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance.
On entering, Lovelady saw a girl on the first floor who he believes was Victoria Adams.
If Miss Adams accurately recalled meeting Shelley and Lovelady when she reached the bottom of the stairs,
then her estimate of the time when she descended from the fourth floor is incorrect,
and she actually came down the stairs several minutes after Oswald and after Truly and Baker as well.
Oswald's departure from building.
Within a minute after Baker and Truly left Oswald in the lunchroom, Mrs. R. A. Reid, clerical supervisor for the Texas School Book Depository,
saw him walk through the clerical office on the second floor toward the door leading to the front stairway.
Mrs. Reid had watched the parade from the sidewalk in front of the building with Truly and Mr. O. V. Campbell, vice president of the Depository.
She testified that she heard three shots which she thought came from the building.
She ran inside and up the front stairs into the large open office reserved for clerical employees.
As she approached her desk, she saw Oswald.
He was walking into the office from the back hallway,
carrying a full bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand, presumably purchased after the encounter with Baker and Truly.
As Oswald passed Mrs. Reid she said, quote, Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him, end quote.
Oswald mumbled something and walked by. She paid no more attention to him.
The only exit from the office in the direction Oswald was moving was through the door to the front stairway.
Mrs. Reid testified that when she saw Oswald, he was wearing a T-shirt and no jacket.
When he left home that morning, Marina Oswald, who was still in bed, suggested that he wear a jacket.
A blue jacket, later identified by Marina Oswald as her husband's, was subsequently found in the building, apparently left behind by Oswald.
Mrs. Reid believes that she returned to her desk from the street about 2 minutes after the shooting.
Reconstructing her movements, Mrs. Reid ran the distance three times and was timed in 2 minutes by stopwatch.
The reconstruction was the minimum time. Accordingly, she probably met Oswald at about 12:32,
approximately 30 to 45 seconds after Oswald's lunchroom encounter with Baker and Truly.
After leaving Mrs. Reid in the front office, Oswald could have gone down the stairs and out the front door by 12:33 p.m.
3 minutes after the shooting.
At that time the building had not yet been sealed off by the police.
While it was difficult to determine exactly when the police sealed off the building,
the earliest estimates would still have permitted Oswald to leave the building by 12:33.
One of the police officers assigned to the corner of Elm and Houston Streets for the Presidential motorcade, W. E. Barnett,
testified that immediately after the shots he went to the rear of the building to check the fire escape.
He then returned to the corner of Elm and Houston where he met a sergeant who instructed him to find out the name of the building.
Barnett ran to the building, noted its name, and then returned to the corner.
There he was met by a construction worker -- in all likelihood Howard Brennan, who was wearing his work helmet.
This worker told Barnett that the shots had been fired from a window in the Depository Building,
where upon Barnett posted himself at the front door to make certain that no one left the building.
The sergeant did the same thing at the rear of the building.
Barnett estimated that approximately 3 minutes elapsed between the time he heard the last of the shots and the time he started guarding the front door.
According to Barnett, quote, there were people going in and out, end quote, during this period.
Sgt. D. V. Harkness of the Dallas police
said that to his knowledge the building was not sealed off at 12:36 p.m. when he called in on police radio
that a witness (Amos Euins) had seen shots fired from a window of the building.
At that time, Inspector Herbert V. Sawyer's car was parked in front of the building.
Harkness did not know whether or not two officers with Sawyer were guarding the doors.
At 12:34 p.m. Sawyer heard a call over the police radio that the shots had come from the Depository Building.
He then entered the building and took the front passenger elevator as far as it would go -- the fourth floor.
After inspecting this floor, Sawyer returned to the street about 3 minutes after he entered the building.
After he returned to the street he directed Sergeant Harkness to station two patrolmen at the front door and not let anyone in or out;
he also directed that the back door be sealed off.
This was no earlier than 12:37 p.m. and may have been later.
Special Agent Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service, who had been in the motorcade,
testified that after driving to Parkland Hospital, he returned to the Depository Building about 20 minutes after the shooting,
found no police officers at the rear door and was able to enter through this door without identifying himself.
Although Oswald probably left the building at about 12:33 p.m., his absence was not noticed until at least one-half hour later.
Truly, who had returned with Patrolman Baker from the roof, saw the police questioning the warehouse employees.
Approximately 15 men worked in the warehouse and Truly noticed that Oswald was not among those being questioned.
Satisfying himself that Oswald was missing, Truly obtained Oswald's address, phone number, and description from his employment application card.
The address listed was for the Paine home in Irving.
Truly gave this information to Captain Fritz who was on the sixth floor at the time.
Truly estimated that he gave this information to Fritz about 15 or 20 minutes after the shots,
but it was probably no earlier than 1:22 p.m., the time when the rifle was found.
Fritz believed that he learned of Oswald's absence after the rifle was found.
The fact that Truly found Fritz in the northwest corner of the floor, near the point where the rifle was found, supports Fritz' recollection.
Fingerprint and palmprint evidence establishes that Oswald handled two of the four cartons next to the window
and also handled a paper bag which was found near the cartons.
Oswald was seen in the vicinity of the southeast corner of the sixth floor approximately 35 minutes before the assassination
and no one could be found who saw Oswald anywhere else in the building until after the shooting.
An eyewitness to the shooting immediately provided a description of the man in the window which was similar to Oswald's actual appearance.
This witness identified Oswald in a lineup as the man most nearly resembling the man he saw and later identified Oswald as the man he observed.
Oswald's known actions in the building immediately after the assassination are consistent with his having been at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor
at 12:30 p.m
On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that Oswald, at the time of the assassination,
Chapter 4. The Assassin: Part 5.
The Killing of Patrolman J. D. Tippit
After leaving the Depository Building at approximately 12:33 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald proceeded to his roominghouse by bus and taxi.
He arrived at approximately 1 p.m. and left a few minutes later.
At about 1:16 p.m., a Dallas police officer, J. D. Tippit, was shot less than 1 mile from Oswald's roominghouse.
In deciding whether Oswald killed Patrolman Tippit the Commission considered the following:
(1) positive identification of the killer by two eyewitnesses who saw the shooting
and seven eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the gunman flee the scene with the revolver in his hand,
(2) testimony of firearms identification experts establishing the identity of the murder weapon,
(3) evidence establishing the ownership of the murder weapon,
(4) evidence establishing the ownership of a zipper jacket
found along the path of flight taken by the gunman from the scene of the shooting to the place of arrest.
Oswald's Movements After Leaving Depository Building
According to the reconstruction of time and events which the Commission found most credible,
Lee Harvey Oswald left the building approximately 3 minutes after the assassination.
He probably walked east on Elm Street for seven blocks to the corner of Elm and Murphy
where he boarded a bus which was heading back in the direction of the Depository Building, on its way to the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.
When Oswald was apprehended, a bus transfer marked for the Lakewood-Marsalis route was found in his shirt pocket.
The transfer was dated "Friday November 22, '63" and was punched in two places by the bus driver.
On the basis of this punchmark, which was distinctive to each Dallas driver,
the transfer was conclusively identified as having been issued by Cecil J. McWatters, a busdriver for the Dallas Transit Co.
On the basis of the date and time on the transfer, McWatters was able to testify that the transfer had been issued by him
on a trip which passed a check point at St. Paul and Elm Streets at 12:36 p.m., November 22, 1963.
McWatters was sure that he left the checkpoint on time
and he estimated that it took him 3 to 4 minutes to drive three blocks west from the checkpoint to Field Street,
which he reached at about 12:40 p.m.
McWatters' recollection is that he issued this transfer to a man who entered his bus just beyond Field Street,
where a man beat on the front door of the bus, boarded it and paid his fare.
About two blocks later, a woman asked to get off to make a 1 o'clock train at Union Station
and requested a transfer which she might use if she got through the traffic.
So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about two blocks [back]