Oswald in the Depository with the Rifle

[Gadarene]

**
One point that Posner makes very clear is how overwhelming the case was against Oswald. There were literally dozens of witnesses who actually watched Oswald firing the shots at Kennedy. Unlike most of what’s believed by conspiracy buffs, that’s real evidence.
**

Nemo, that’s simply not true. I’d love to see a cite.

And David, I wasn’t trying to imply that Posner’s explanation for the hole in the jacket, by itself, denoted a faulty use of Occam’s razor; I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. What I meant was that no theory in which Oswald was the lone shooter has successfully explained, or usually even tried to explain, all the possible problems with that theory–including
[ul]
[li]Oswald’s past intelligence connections and history in Russia[/li][li]Ruby’s intelligence connections[/li][li]the bullet mark under the overpass[/li][li]the problems with the rifle (including confusion about what type of rifle it was)[/li][li]the testimony of the doctors to initially examine Kennedy’s body (who saw the wound in the back of the head as an exit wound, not an entry wound)[/li][li]Oswald’s notoriously poor marksmanship while in the military, combined with the difficult multiple shots he had to make in a short amount of time with a faulty rifle[/li][li]the so-called “magic bullet”, found pristine after the fact[/li][li]testimony of those who saw or heard things by the grassy knoll, most of whom were not called by the Warren Commission[/li][li]the unreliability of Oswald’s wife as a witness against him[/li][li]the timing problem inherent in eyewitnesses who saw Oswald in the Depository, but several floors down from the spot where the rifle was found, only seconds after the shooting[/li][/ul]

That’s off the top of my head; I’ll try and find the book tonight. All I’m saying is that it’s bad science to shape evidence to fit your theory, rather than the other way round. And in the case of the Kennedy assassination, it’s always looked as if things which don’t fit the lone-gunman explanation–an explanation which was arrived at almost immediately following the shooting–have been discarded, rather than examine.

I’ve got no particular dog in this fight–I don’t have a pet assassination theory; I’ve got no clue who killed JFK. Hell, it could have been Oswald acting alone. But proponents of the lone gunman theory don’t ever tackle the discrepancies, preferring instead to (as Posner sometimes does) ridicule those who bring those discrepancies up.

And Occam’s razor? If there’s conflicting evidence about where the shots were fired from, how many shots there were, and how they entered the President (and there is), and if it takes sharpshooters with well-kept weapons to replicate the shots from the Depository (and even they can only do it half the time), and if there are a host of past connections that seem to lend the incident an air of complexity (and there are), and if the Commission set up to investigate the matter allows conflicting testimony in support of a single gunman while virtually ignoring all evidence to the contrary (and they did), then how is it applying Occam to posit that a historically bad shot fired multiple times in a short period with no help whatsoever before, during, or after the fact?

Call me a skeptic.

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gesh wrote:

How can all the information be known when some of it is held until 2038?

At which time, civilization will collapse because of the next date-based set of computer bugs: http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/Y2038.html

[Otto]

That’s off the top of my head

Yeah, that’s just what Kennedy said…

[Sam_Stone]

**
One point that Posner makes very clear is how overwhelming the case was against Oswald. There were literally dozens of witnesses who actually watched Oswald firing the shots at Kennedy. Unlike most of what’s believed by conspiracy buffs, that’s real evidence.
**

Not one witness ‘actually watched Oswald firing the shots’.

After the shots were fired, most people thought that they came from the Texas Book Depository. I think one or two people thought they saw movement in the window. No one saw anyone recognizable.

Oswald’s notoriously poor marksmanship while in the military, combined with the difficult multiple shots he had to make in a short amount of time with a faulty rifle

His marksmanship wasn’t ‘notoriously poor’. It was simply average for a person who had taken a couple of days of marine rifle training.

the so-called “magic bullet”, found pristine after the fact

It wasn’t pristine - it was quite flattened and missing a fair amount of material from the base. The conspiracy books that talk about a ‘pristine’ bullet always choose to print a photo of it taken from the side, which masked the extent of the deformity. Dishonest journalism.

testimony of those who saw or heard things by the grassy knoll, most of whom were not called by the Warren Commission

One thing rarely mentioned by either side of the debate is that there are two semicircular buildings in the Plaza (one right near the grassy knoll), which would reflect gunshot sounds and make it very difficult to determine where the shots came from. This would explain why people near the knoll thought the shots came from there, while the people near the TBD thought the shots came from the sixth floor.

the timing problem inherent in eyewitnesses who saw Oswald in the Depository, but several floors down from the spot where the rifle was found, only seconds after the shooting

This argument has always sounded rather thin to me. It depends on us believing that the cop who saw him knew exactly how many seconds had elapsed since the shooting. You should know that in a chaotic situation like that people just aren’t very good judges of small increments in time. And the difference between 20 seconds and 45 seconds is HUGE in this case.

[Jai_Pey]

Hey folks,

to answer the question, Oswald. But was he trying to hit Kennedy?

Has anyone ever seen the theory that Oswald had it in for Gov. Connaly, and not Kennedy? And in trying to hit Connaly, he accidentally pegged JFK with a headshot? I’ve been searching all afternoon to find a reference to this theory… I have one source I’m gonna contact to check it out. In the meantime, if anyone else knows a link I’d love it!

BTW, the whole “Accidental SS man’s gun discharges” is kinda convincing too, don’t you think?

Regards,

Jai Pey

[jab1]

**Has anyone ever seen the theory that Oswald had it in for Gov. Connaly, and not Kennedy? And in trying to hit Connaly, he accidentally pegged JFK with a headshot? I’ve been searching all afternoon to find a reference to this theory… I have one source I’m gonna contact to check it out.

Regards,

Jai Pey
**

I mentioned this Wacky Theory on Page One of that other JFK thread mentione above. I can’t remember where or when I first heard of it, though. Why would LHO try to kill Connally? Connally was Secretary of the Navy when Oswald was kicked out of the Marines. Perhaps LHO’s warped brain decided Connally was responsible?

beakerxf: I found something far more interesting on that website you provided: A diagram showing the ALLEGED path of the “magic” bullet:

http://www.celebritymorgue.com/jfk/

Unfortunately, this diagram is in error, though it doesn’t mean the Warren Commission was trying to cover up something. Everyone makes honest mistakes, even the best and brightest of us all.

“How is this diagram in error?” you may ask. Well, it depicts Connally and JFK as sitting at identical heights, but this is not so. JFK was seated on the rear seat, whereas Connally was seated on a jump seat which was much lower than JFK’s seat, about six inches lower, IIRC. If this difference is accounted for, then the bullet’s path changes to one that originates from a much higher point, about six floors up, in fact.

The other problem with the diagram is that it depicts Connally and JFK both facing forward at the time of the second shot. But the Zapruder film shows this is not the case. When the first, errant shot was fired, Connally heard it and was twisting around in his seat, looking for the gunman. In fact, he was looking BACK, indicating the shot sounded to him like it had come from behind him. At the moment of the second shot, Connally was twisted in his seat, turned to his right, trying to look over his shoulder at either JFK or the buildings behind them both. The bullet struck JFK in the back, passed through his body and exited below the throat. Still traveling at a high rate of speed, the bullet then struck Connally while he was still turned in his seat. The bullet passed through Connally’s body and left, then struck his right wrist, which was holding his Stetson hat. It left his wrist at a much lower velocity, having struck bone and just barely lodged itself in his thigh.

A link to the Zapruder film is provided on that other JFK thread.

Now you come up with a better theory.

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There was a show on The Learning Channel a few years back called What Happened?. Each episode of What Happened? featured this one computer-simulation company, Failure Analysis Inc., piecing together forensic evidence from a crime or an accident and putting together the best computer simulation of the events they could make which fit the evidence.

On one show, they decided to tackle the John F. Kennedy assassination.

According to the show, Failure Analysis Inc.'s simulation showed that a single bullet could have ricoched around enough to cause each and every bullet hole attributed to the so-called “magic bullet”.

Another part of Failure Analysis Inc.'s simulation on the show made it look really difficult for Oswald to have gotten off 3 aimed shots in 6 seconds with a bolt-action scope rifle. However, their simulation assumed that Oswald would have had to lower the rifle between shots to cycle the bolt action. If Oswald could keep the gun pointed at the target, and keep sighted along the rifle’s scope, while cycling the bolt (a feat that should be possible with practice), he could have done it easily.

[Gadarene]

His marksmanship wasn’t ‘notoriously poor’. It was simply average for a person who had taken a couple of days of marine rifle training.

Actually, not true. Oswald had been given a nickname while in the military which referred to his being such a poor shot. I’ll find a cite and provide it, hopefully tonight.

Your points about the bullet and the echoed sounds are interesting, though I’ll point out that there are also eyewitness accounts of puffs of smoke from behind the grassy knoll, and of men claiming to be credentialed agents patrolling the area between the train tracks and the knoll, of whom the FBI and Secret Service disavowed any knowledge.

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Puffs of smoke?! Firearm cartridges have been using smokeless powder since the beginning of the 20th century!

[Gadarene]

**
Puffs of smoke?! Firearm cartridges have been using smokeless powder since the beginning of the 20th century!
**

What, so you don’t buy the “John Wilkes Booth killed both Lincoln and Kennedy” argument?

[Wordsmith]

There were literally dozens of witnesses who actually watched Oswald firing the shots at Kennedy.

Dozens? I don’t think so. Granted, there were a few “eyewitnesses,” but calling them dozens is a gross overstatement. Furthermore, it is highly questionable what, exactly, these self-proclaimed witnesses actually saw. One Howard Brennan, for example, said that he not only saw Oswald fire the rifle, but also saw this so-called assassin “smirk with satisfaction” (to use the words of Richard Belzer, whom I cite) after the shot hit. But when Brennan was asked to identify Oswald in a lineup, he was completely unsuccessful; furthermore, in 1964, Brennan was part of a reconstruction of the events of the assassination and could not see even the existence, let alone any facial expression, of a man in the sixth-floor window. Another key witness in the case, Helen Markham, said that she actually saw Oswald hold a prolonged conversation with a police officer who was proven later to have died instantly from his wounds. This same woman also took nine tries (!) to identify Oswald in a lineup. Marina Oswald, one of the Warren Commission’s chief witnesses, was threatened with deportation if she did not comply with the demands of the investigating officers. These are not minor figures that I quote, but people upon whose testimony many pro-single bullet arguments hinge. No witness for either side seems to be absolutely unimpeachable; it would be simple to attribute all of this to the FBI, but I’m hesitant to go that far. Regardless, Case Closed does not close anything, neither does the Warren Commission, and certainly neither do any made-for-the-general-public documentaries.

[beakerxf]

**
What, so you don’t buy the “John Wilkes Booth killed both Lincoln and Kennedy” argument?
**

I do. There were just to many Lincoln/Kennedy similarities to be just coincidences, you know.

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Now that would be a Magic Bullet!