The Oswald Time Trials

...ORIGINALLY WRITTEN OCTOBER 7, 2010...

            More getting on my soapbox, sorry to all, but I love these little things and I’ve I wrote one I might as well do justice to the other aspects in the case. The primary aspect of Lee Harvey Oswald’s connection to the case, in terms of the legitimate evidence alone and not a bunch of speculation, that intrigues me the most is the time trial.

            As the official story goes, the last person to see Oswald was Depository employee Carolyn Arnold, at approximately 12:15 p.m. The President passed by and was shot at 12:30. Furthermore, Depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams was on the sixth floor right where Oswald supposedly shot the President from; he was there until 12:20 (and the President was schedules to pass by at 12:25). This left Oswald a maximum of five minutes to sneak into that sniper’s nest and kill the President; it seems to me this would be an absurd time figure as Oswald would have most certainly would have allowed himself more time to be prepared. But I’m slipping into the realm of speculation. Anyway, he was last seen at 12:15 in the lunchroom on the second floor. Intriguingly enough, the next time he was seen was at approximately 12:32, less than two minutes after the assassination. Dallas Officer Marion Baker heard the shots and looked up to see a flock of pigeons fly away from the rooftop of the Book Depository. He responded quickly, presuming the shots to be from some high floor in the building. After running inside he encountered Oswald, seeing him in the lunchroom. He pulled his gun on him, asking the building’s superintendent Roy Truly if he knew the man and Truly identified him as an employee of the building. Baker accepted this and moved on.

            This all quickly became an area of contention in the case, because if Baker encountered Oswald so quickly after the shooting was it even possible for him to finish his shooting feat that took place on the sixth floor of the assassination and then race all the way down to the second floor. The Warren Commission, put together by new President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the matter of President Kennedy’s death (seeing as Oswald was dead and could not stand trial), performed timed tests for both Oswald and Officer Baker (Baker performing these tests himself). In two tests performed using a man of roughly the same build as Oswald, the Commission performed timed tests for Oswald’s feat racing down to the second floor and came out with times of seventy-four and then seventy-eight seconds (a mean of seventy-six seconds). This satisfied the Commission, because in their timed test with Officer Baker they came to a count of ninety seconds for him to perform his feat. This satisfied the Commission in that these tests proved in their eyes that Oswald would have reached the second floor lunchroom at least twelve seconds before Baker made his arrival there. And as far as the official record is concerned, that closed the case on the matter.

            However, there is much more to this overall case than meets the eye. Addressing Officer Baker’s issues first; it is known by very few that the Commission also performed two timed tests for him. The first test, for whatever reason (as is an equally obscure fact), had Baker travelling at a walking pace. For what reason the Commission would assume Baker would walk in his efforts to pursue a possible assassin, of the President of the United States no less, is beyond me. But for some reason they deemed this test valid. The second test they performed had Baker travelling at a “trotting” pace, meaning he was probably travelling at a light jogging pace. The time figure for this second test came out at seventy-five seconds, something in the realm of the figures they reached for Oswald. Seeing as the Commission’s goal was not to investigate and genuinely solve the assassination but rather prove the case against the then deceased Oswald, it did not behoove them to admit that Baker could have covered the distance in roughly the same time that Oswald covered his. Beyond this, when Baker passed by the lunchroom on the second floor superintendent Truly was with him and actually ahead of him. Therefore, if Baker reached the lunchroom in the realm of seventy-five second, Truly only did it quicker.

            But still, this seventy-five second figure only accounts for Baker travelling at a jogging pace. However, every account of Baker’s actions immediately after the shooting, as would make sense, describes a man racing at a frantic pace to find an assassin. He was captured on film within ten seconds of the shooting dismounting his motorcycle and making a mad dash into the Book Depository. Upon entry he immediately inquired as to where the elevator was located. Interestingly though, only moments before the shooting all the power went out in the Depository (and yet the Dal-Tex Building right across the street, and in fact any other building’s nearby was not effected), and this left the elevator immobile. According to Depository employees Baker then joined Superintendent Truly and made a move for the staircase, which took them to the second floor and in-line with the lunchroom. With the fact that every element of these moments after the shooting show an Officer reacting aggressively and expediently to the shooting suggest that Baker’s encounter with Oswald was no more than a minute after the assassination. And if it took Oswald between seventy-four and seventy-eight seconds there is no way he could have beat Baker to the second floor, and therefore, even if Oswald was not specifically in the lunchroom at the moment President Kennedy was shot there is no way he could have been all the way up on the sixth floor at that time.

            Perhaps everything is still fine in this case, however. Several years later another test was performed, addressing two significant elements of the Oswald feat. One was directly to determine how accurate the Commission feat was and two, they wanted to determine how much of a physical effect the feat would have had on Oswald. According to Officer Baker, even in pointing his gun directly at him, Oswald appeared to him calm, cool and collected; not the slightest inclination of any exhaustion or nervous tension. It becomes necessary then to account for this as well. Unfortunately, the only way to account for this is, as with Officer Baker, to have Oswald walk the whole way. Obvious if one walks a certain distance he will appear less winded than if he ran (even if running would have got him there faster). The subject, matching Oswald’s build approximately, performed the test at a walking pace and the figure they came to was between forty-eight and forty-nine seconds. With this figure being so much less than what the Warren Commission came to it must be presumed that they also performed their test with a figure moving at a walking pace. But since this new figure (whose results are only known through the television program it was shown on, of which the film is split between the feat being performed and film of the assassination, making is only presumable that the test was really completed as quickly as it was relayed) is so much less than what the Warren Commission came it, I will address the issue through that figure because it puts things right back where they were before. I suggest Baker encountered Oswald roughly sixty seconds after the assassination and in this test Oswald went the distance roughly twelve seconds faster.

            First off, as with Officer Baker, what kind of a fool would assume Oswald would have walked down to the second floor lunchroom? If he shot the President on the sixth floor and then went down to the lunchroom it was obviously in an effort to establish an alibi for himself. This being the case, he would have been down on that second floor as fast as possible, there is no justifiable reason why he would have casually walked downstairs from the sixth floor. None! He would have had to assume someone might have seen him firing from that location or at least some people would have heard him and thus there would have been reason the suggest the shooting came from there and that people would have flocked to the building. He would have had no time for delay. And yet, so these lone-assassin theorists want us to believe, he walked downstairs, at no time ever being seen by anyone (as was the case when he reportedly went upstairs). While there are at least six witnesses to his whereabout s between 11:45 and 12:15, people seeing him everywhere, nobody was remarkably around to see or hear him between five different floors. This makes the whole forty-eight second figure eronious. However, if Oswald did run then the figure becomes considerably less, but at the same time there has to be given time for Oswald to regain his breath and look completely relaxed at the time of his encounter with Officer Baker. Whatever the case, the figures of Oswald seem jumbled, but when all is said and done Officer Baker’s time of approximately sixty seconds is much more definitive.

            This is where things get interesting because in both the tests performed by the Warren Commission and this test performed many years later there are particular elements that are left unaddressed that could only add to Oswald’s total time. First of all there is the account of eyewitness Howard Brennan, who was the only witness to watch the assassin immediately after the shooting was over. He said the assassin paused and watched the Presidential limousine as it went under the triple overpass, as though admiring his work, and then he just slowly slipped away from the window. This had to engulf a series of a few seconds, perhaps five to seven, but none of these tests address this issue. They both had their subjects perform the final shot fired and then immediately get up and leave the scene. The later test did not even give the Oswald subject a sniper’s nest to sneak out of, which would have been necessary. For the sake of giving these lone-assassin theorists the benefit of the doubt, lets just say with Brennan’s account and the need to slip from the sniper’s nest took up all of five seconds (even though it likely took more).

            In addition to this, matching photographs taken seconds before and seconds after the shooting show that the boxes in the sniper’s nest were altered meaning, for whatever reason, right after the shooting Oswald adjusted these boxes in some way. Now these are heavy book boxes, not very mobile, but their adjustment must add a minimum ten seconds to Oswald’s time, putting him at roughly fifteen seconds before even leaving the sniper’s nest area.

            Another inaccuracy of these tests performed is that to simulate the hiding of the rifle that was found on the sixth floor the subjects involved merely pause to set the rifle on the floor and then kept moving. However, the location of the rifle was located deep within stacks of boxes, a location someone would have had to climb through and over in order to reach. In fact, the weapon was so well stashed that Dallas Officer Eugene Boone, who found the weapon, had already searched that location twice before finding it there. Oswald would have had to climb over boxes and drop the rifle perfectly into a small nitch between boxes. Again giving the lone-assassin theorists the benefit of the doubt, this instance must have taken Oswald at least tive seconds; added to his total makes twenty seconds.

            As far as reaching the staircase, which was located completely on the other side of the sixth floor, I actually performed a series of tests on my own using a flat field that I measured the dimensions of the sixth floor along. Looking at numerous photos I determined the exact route Oswald would have had to take, without crossing an area where there were box boxes. At a running pace, not walking, I reached the location of the staircase at a fastest time of sixteen seconds (but some tests went over seventeen, again though I’ll give the benefit of the doubt). This means Oswald would have reached the staircase down to the fifth floor some thirty-six seconds after the assassination at the earliest.

            I also performed tests using a staircase practically identical to the ones in the Book Depository, running down them as fast as possible. After again performing a series of tests running downstairs, in which that alone left me a good length of time I needed to recapture my breath, I came to an overall figure of thirty seconds minimum to descend these four stair cases. This makes Oswald’s overall time, at a minimum, sixty-six seconds. This already is more time that it likely took Baker to reach the floor. And there still has to be allowed time for Oswald to reach the lunchroom, purchase a Coke (of which Baker saw in Oswald’s hands, partially consumed), and of course regain control of his breath. This would have taken an excessive amount more time to Oswald’s overall figure. When all is said and done there is no way Oswald could have made it to the second floor, unseen, relaxed and calm before he was encountered by Officer Baker. And this is proof that he was not even on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination, and thus not the assassin of President Kennedy.