01-04-2023, 08:31 PM
Brian, there are some accuracy problems in your posts here that are going to necessitate a re-working of your hypotheses...
You say that Holmes "had overheard Oswald describing two stops by cops in the Depository..."
But Holmes said nothing about Officer Baker (i.e. a cop in the 2nd-floor lunchroom), neither in his Dec. 17th memorandum nor in his testimony. His testimony did give us some details about his encounter with a cop on the landing, and about a coke. But nothing about an encounter with a cop in the 2nd-floor lunchroom. We don't have any indication that Oswald talked about encountering a cop in the lunchroom during his Sunday-morning interrogation.
I have never been comfortable with Armstrong's idea that "Lee Oswald" went through the 2nd-floor office, in his t-shirt carrying a coke. This was "Harvey Oswald", in my view, and Mrs. Reid simply had a blind spot trying to recall his clothing and guessed wrong. "Lee Oswald" I agree was in the 6th-floor west window; he went out the west freight elevator and escaped the building via the West Annex.
You further conjecture that Shelley helped alleviate the confusion of having two Oswalds in the lobby/landing area (rather poor planning by the plotters!!) so that "Lee saw what was happening and ducked into the Utility Closet under the NE front stairs..." where Ochus Campbell saw him.
As I detailed in the section Biffle's Error and the Cloaking of Carolyn Arnold on p. 72 of Death of the Lunchroom Hoax, Biffle said he had "furiously scrambled" about 150 pages of notes , hadn't ever been in the building before, and as he went back to his news desk and hurried off an article about Oswald's first post-assassination sighting, simply made a mistake about the Oswald-Baker encounter taking place "in a 1st-floor storage room." It makes no sense that Baker would look for an upper-floor gunman in a cramped little room on the 1st floor. Please re-read that section. It was written with care and with an eye toward future accuracy. There is a world of difference between writing on a forum post and writing an essay.
In your second post you talk about how "the Depository electrician told [me] that the elevator breakers were located separately." This, again, is not accurate. As I detail on p. 27 of my 2021 essay Two Big Problems with the Passenger Elevator, I contacted a university professor of electrical engineering- someone who knew about engineering capabilities in the 1900s and 1960s. And he held the firm opinion that a modernized system definitely would have had a kill switch in the basement.
The important point- regarding whether the 1st-floor breaker box could be used to shut off the passenger elevator- I found more information about through an online post by an elevator electrical engineer/licensed elevator mechanic. He informed me that elevators are usually powered by an AC/DC motor-generator that electrically isolates it from the rest of the building's electrical system.
Theoretically, the 1st-floor breaker box could still be used to shut off the AC/DC motor-generator and therefore the passenger elevator. But Lovelady's presence there is further speculated by Armstrong for shutting off electrical power in the building- which demonstrably did not happen. And his passenger elevator escape theory is supported by nothing more than his own supposition. There is good reason to maintain that Lovelady did not go directly back into the building after the shots. And the freight elevator escape theory is supported by several pieces of evidence.
Lastly, I beg to differ that "a scenario becomes possible where it took 10 seconds for Adams & Styles to reach the 4th Floor NW staircase..."
Initially, she said, "we had to run around a group of three tables, like banquet tables, and then out the door to the stairway." Additionally (although she didn't specify, and there are no available photos) the storage area was crammed with book cartons (so was the basement, and 2nd-floor landing)- so they traveled the perimeter (not a bee-line) as they made their way to the corner stairway.
It is simply wishful thinking to say that they arrived downstairs 50 seconds after the shots. It is more like 75 seconds. They would have been seen by Truly & Baker, crossing the rear of the warehouse, when they reached the will-call counter. Adams & Styles passed by the 2nd-floor lunchroom while the men were inside.
You say that Holmes "had overheard Oswald describing two stops by cops in the Depository..."
But Holmes said nothing about Officer Baker (i.e. a cop in the 2nd-floor lunchroom), neither in his Dec. 17th memorandum nor in his testimony. His testimony did give us some details about his encounter with a cop on the landing, and about a coke. But nothing about an encounter with a cop in the 2nd-floor lunchroom. We don't have any indication that Oswald talked about encountering a cop in the lunchroom during his Sunday-morning interrogation.
I have never been comfortable with Armstrong's idea that "Lee Oswald" went through the 2nd-floor office, in his t-shirt carrying a coke. This was "Harvey Oswald", in my view, and Mrs. Reid simply had a blind spot trying to recall his clothing and guessed wrong. "Lee Oswald" I agree was in the 6th-floor west window; he went out the west freight elevator and escaped the building via the West Annex.
You further conjecture that Shelley helped alleviate the confusion of having two Oswalds in the lobby/landing area (rather poor planning by the plotters!!) so that "Lee saw what was happening and ducked into the Utility Closet under the NE front stairs..." where Ochus Campbell saw him.
As I detailed in the section Biffle's Error and the Cloaking of Carolyn Arnold on p. 72 of Death of the Lunchroom Hoax, Biffle said he had "furiously scrambled" about 150 pages of notes , hadn't ever been in the building before, and as he went back to his news desk and hurried off an article about Oswald's first post-assassination sighting, simply made a mistake about the Oswald-Baker encounter taking place "in a 1st-floor storage room." It makes no sense that Baker would look for an upper-floor gunman in a cramped little room on the 1st floor. Please re-read that section. It was written with care and with an eye toward future accuracy. There is a world of difference between writing on a forum post and writing an essay.
In your second post you talk about how "the Depository electrician told [me] that the elevator breakers were located separately." This, again, is not accurate. As I detail on p. 27 of my 2021 essay Two Big Problems with the Passenger Elevator, I contacted a university professor of electrical engineering- someone who knew about engineering capabilities in the 1900s and 1960s. And he held the firm opinion that a modernized system definitely would have had a kill switch in the basement.
The important point- regarding whether the 1st-floor breaker box could be used to shut off the passenger elevator- I found more information about through an online post by an elevator electrical engineer/licensed elevator mechanic. He informed me that elevators are usually powered by an AC/DC motor-generator that electrically isolates it from the rest of the building's electrical system.
Theoretically, the 1st-floor breaker box could still be used to shut off the AC/DC motor-generator and therefore the passenger elevator. But Lovelady's presence there is further speculated by Armstrong for shutting off electrical power in the building- which demonstrably did not happen. And his passenger elevator escape theory is supported by nothing more than his own supposition. There is good reason to maintain that Lovelady did not go directly back into the building after the shots. And the freight elevator escape theory is supported by several pieces of evidence.
Lastly, I beg to differ that "a scenario becomes possible where it took 10 seconds for Adams & Styles to reach the 4th Floor NW staircase..."
Initially, she said, "we had to run around a group of three tables, like banquet tables, and then out the door to the stairway." Additionally (although she didn't specify, and there are no available photos) the storage area was crammed with book cartons (so was the basement, and 2nd-floor landing)- so they traveled the perimeter (not a bee-line) as they made their way to the corner stairway.
It is simply wishful thinking to say that they arrived downstairs 50 seconds after the shots. It is more like 75 seconds. They would have been seen by Truly & Baker, crossing the rear of the warehouse, when they reached the will-call counter. Adams & Styles passed by the 2nd-floor lunchroom while the men were inside.