Heads Up!

[Drew Phipps]

I'm no "commission," but here's what I got:

Based on Don Robardeau's Dealy Plaza map, and the motorcade positions: Darnell is sitting near but slightly to the right of Couch in "camera car 3" (car 10 in the motorcade). Couch's position at the start of his film (probably very close in time to when Darnell started filming, too) is marked of the Robardeau map. Moving a bit up (to account for Darnell sitting right of Couch) and a bit closer to the TSBD (the car 10 was midway thru the turn onto Elm when it stopped), I mark a spot, which would correspond to Darnell's position next to Couch, pixel 433, 534 on Robardeau's map.

The west inside corner of the landing is unfortunately not displayed on Robardeau's map, but thanks to David's information on the dimensions and placement of the landing (from earlier in this thread) we can mark a spot 10 feet deep and 26.6 feet along the south face of the building. That particular pixel is 243, 603 on Robardeau's map. (It correlates to a pixel one down and one right of the end of the small horizontal line in the letter "F" in the phrase "next to Frazier" on Robardeau's map.)

The angle therefore (column->corner->Darnell) is inv.tan ((680-534)/(433-243)) = 33 degrees (rounding down).

Since we can tell from the picture that there's a straight line from Darnell to PP to the corner, PP must also be at the same angle. If we guess that there is 2 feet between the wall and the center of PP's head (it's probably less, cause PP seems small, and if PP is leaning against the wall, it's a lot less), then PP is this far (in a straight line) from the aluminum frame corner:

2 feet / (sin 33) = 2 / .544 = 3.67 feet

PP's distance from the glass window is therefore 3.67 * cos (33) = 3.67 * .839 = 3.08 feet. That must still be on the landing, since we know the landing is 5 feet deep. Since PP is now definitely on the landing, it cannot be Oswald.


If we put PP closer to the wall, i.e. leaning on it, the distance to the corner (and the corresponding distance to the glass window) will be less. In order for PP to be 5.5 feet from the glass (on the first step down), PP would have to be 3.6 feet from the western wall of the landing, i.e. barely able to touch it with out-stretched arms.

You can watch an animation of car 10's position and Officer Baker moving to the building (captured on the Darnell film) here: http://jfkassassination.net/russ/animation2.htm