MARTIN HAY SAID:
I keep hearing Vince Bugliosi harping on about his 53 pieces of evidence pointing to Oswald's guilt but as of yet I haven't heard him say what they are. Can anyone fill me in?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
For several examples of "The VB 53", CLICK HERE. [Or scroll down this page.]
"YEUHD" SAID:
The first 20 of Bugliosi's evidence of Oswald's guilt....
[GO HERE to see those twenty items.]
MARTIN HAY SAID:
Certainly nothing new there. I won't bother parting with my cash.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And if it's not brand "new", it's not good enough evidence against Oswald...is that it?
Did you expect the #1 item on VB's list to say:
"OSWALD CONFESSED TO CAPTAIN FRITZ! AND ONLY I (VINCE BUGLIOSI) HAVE THIS INFORMATION!" ??
Actually, in a way, Vince DOES kind of think Oswald DID confess....via the many, many lies that came from Oswald's own lips. And Vince told the jury just that at the 1986 Mock Trial too. Here's an excerpt.....
"When he was interrogated, Oswald, from his own lips, he TOLD us he was guilty....he told us he was guilty....almost the same as if he had said 'I murdered President Kennedy'....he told us. How did he tell us? Well, the lies he told, one after another, showed an UNMISTAKABLE consciousness of guilt.
If Oswald were innocent, why did he find it necessary to deny purchasing that Carcano rifle from the Klein's store in Chicago? Why did he even deny owning any rifle at all? Why did he find it necessary to do that if he's innocent?
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing to do with President Kennedy's assassination and was framed....this otherwise independent and defiant would-be revolutionary, who disliked taking orders from anyone, turned out to be the most willing and cooperative frame-ee in the history of mankind!! Because the evidence of his guilt is so monumental, that he could have just as well gone around with a large sign on his back declaring in bold letters 'I Just Murdered President John F. Kennedy'!!!" -- Vincent Bugliosi; July 1986; Via TV Docu-Trial, "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald"
Back to Bugliosi's "53 Pieces Of Evidence".....
Among the "VB 53", I can think of only ONE item that really doesn't belong there (and even THAT item has an asterisk beside my explanation of why I think that)....that item being the paraffin test.
[EDIT: Since this 2007 post, I've added one more thing that appears on Mr. Bugliosi's list that I really don't think belongs there--item #23 about Oswald changing his trousers.]
From my "Reclaiming History" book review:
DVP: In [the "Summary Of Oswald's Guilt"] chapter, Vincent Bugliosi lists every one of his "53 pieces of evidence" that point toward Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt in the JFK assassination. The only item on Vince's list that I think really doesn't belong there is #41, where VB talks about the results of the paraffin test on Oswald's hands being positive.
In my opinion, it was a mistake for Vince to have placed that particular item on his list because he knows that paraffin tests are not considered very reliable. And VB even discusses the unreliability of such tests on page 164 of this book.
However, in VB's defense of including the paraffin test results on his 53-item list, I'd like to add this .... While it is, indeed, true that paraffin tests are inherently unreliable (since the presence of nitrates on a person's hands can be caused by various other things besides just gunpowder residue) -- I'd also ask this question with respect to Lee Oswald's "positive" paraffin results in this case:
What do you suppose the odds are of something OTHER than gunpowder residue causing that "positive" result in his paraffin test when we also know that Lee Oswald was CARRYING A GUN ON HIM when he was apprehended in the Texas Theater on November 22nd, 1963?
I'd say, given these circumstances (plus the fact that the very gun Oswald had on him when he was arrested was determined beyond all doubt to be the weapon that killed Officer J.D. Tippit), the odds would be pretty doggone low that something other than gunpowder resulted in that positive paraffin conclusion.
I think Vince Bugliosi should have probably included the above "What are the odds?" argument as an addendum to his 41st item on page 965, but he did not include any such addendum.
But other than that one quibble I have with #41, VB's large list is excellent, with several "powerful new inferences" (as Bugliosi would say) emerging along the way.
Here's a sampling of some of the things listed on "The VB 53":
>>> "Before Oswald got into Frazier's car that Friday morning, the day of the assassination, he placed a long, bulky package on the rear seat, telling Frazier it contained...curtain rods." -- VB; Page 956 <<<
------------------
>>> "During Sunday's interrogation Oswald slipped up and placed himself on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination. .... In his Sunday-morning interrogation he said that at lunchtime, one of the "Negro" employees invited him to eat lunch with him and he declined. .... He said before he could finish whatever he was doing, the commotion surrounding the assassination took place and when he "WENT DOWNSTAIRS," a policeman questioned him as to his identification, and his boss stated that he was one of their employees. .... WHERE WAS OSWALD AT THE TIME THE NEGRO EMPLOYEE INVITED HIM TO LUNCH, AND BEFORE HE DESCENDED TO THE SECOND-FLOOR LUNCHROOM? [Answer:] The sixth floor." [All emphasis Bugliosi's.] -- VB; Page 957 <<<
------------------
>>> "There is another very powerful reason why we can know that Oswald, at the time of his confrontation with Baker in the second-floor lunchroom, had just come down from the sixth floor, not up from the first floor, as he claimed. .... Indeed there was a Coca-Cola machine in the [second-floor lunch] room. But to my knowledge, there is no direct reference in the assassination literature to a SECOND soft drink machine in the Book Depository Building. .... Neither Williams nor Frazier expressly said what floor this machine was on. .... Through a few phone calls I was able to reach Wesley Frazier, whom I hadn't talked to since 1986, when he testified for me at the London trial. Still living in Dallas, he told me that "there was a Dr. Pepper machine on the first floor." Where, specifically, was it? "It was located by the double freight elevator near the back of the building." .... And indeed, I subsequently found proof of the existence of the machine, with the words "Dr. Pepper" near the top front of it, in an FBI photo taken for the Warren Commission of the northwest corner of the first floor, and it is located right next to the refrigerator. .... So we see that apart from all the conclusive evidence that Oswald shot Kennedy from the sniper's nest, and therefore HAD to have descended from there to the second floor, his story about going UP to the second floor to get a Coke doesn't even make sense. Why go up to the second floor to get a drink for your lunch when there's a soft drink machine on the first floor, the floor you say you are already on, particularly when the apparent drink of your choice [Dr. Pepper by all accounts] is on this first floor, not the second floor?" -- VB; Pages 957-958 <<<
------------------
DVP: Via a source note Vince provides, I located the WC photo in question....and sure enough, there's the forgotten-about Dr. Pepper machine, in "Warren Commission Document CD496; Photo 7". Here's a direct link to that photograph.
------------------
>>> "There is yet another reason why Oswald's statement that he was on the first floor eating lunch at the time of the shooting makes no sense at all. If he had been, once he heard the shots and the screaming and all the commotion outside, if he were innocent, what is the likelihood that he would have proceeded to go, as he claims, up to the second floor to get himself a Coke? How could any sensible person believe a story like that?" -- VB; Page 958 <<<
------------------
DVP: This is yet another very good common-sense inference made by VB here. In fact, even from the point-of-view of Oswald being merely a "patsy" (as he is portrayed in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie), i.e., he knows SOMETHING about the assassination plot but Oswald, himself, wasn't one of the triggermen, his story about going UP to the second floor (a floor NEARER THE DEPOSITORY ASSASSIN) to get a drink at that critical time is totally unbelievable. Oswald was obviously telling a lie when he told the police he went UP to get a Coke.
------------------
>>> "Forty-five minutes after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, out of the close to three-quarters of a million or so people in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald is the one who just happened to murder Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. .... For all intents and purposes there were...ten witnesses who identified Oswald as the murderer [including the several witnesses who watched Oswald flee the Tippit murder scene, gun in hand]." -- VB; Pages 960-961 <<<
------------------
>>> "No one knew Oswald as well as his wife, Marina. .... Marina told [author Priscilla] McMillan that when she visited her husband in jail on the day after the assassination, she came away knowing he was guilty. .... She said she knew that had he been innocent, he would have been screaming to high heaven for his "rights," claiming he had been mistreated and demanding to see officials at the very highest levels." -- VB; Page 962 <<<
------------------
>>> "In a city of more than 700,000 people, what is the probability of one of them being the owner and possessor of the weapons that murdered both Kennedy and Tippit, and yet still be innocent of both murders? Aren't we talking about DNA numbers here, like one out of several billion or trillion? Is there a mathematician in the house?" -- VB; Page 964 <<<
------------------
>>> "When he [Oswald] was asked [by police] to furnish all of his previous residences since his return from Russia...he gave all of them...with one notable exception. He omitted any reference to the Neely residence, the residence, of course, where he knew his wife had photographed him with the murder weapon in the backyard. .... Oswald flat-out denied ever living there." -- VB; Page 966 <<<
------------------
>>> "Oswald told Fritz he had bought his .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in Fort Worth, when he actually purchased it from a mail-order house in Los Angeles." -- VB; Page 966 <<<
------------------
DVP: Yes, indeed. Even though Oswald was caught red-handed with the Tippit murder weapon ON HIM in the Texas Theater, he still felt the need to distance himself from the revolver he used to kill Officer Tippit (just as he had done by continuously trying to distance himself from the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle he had used to assassinate President Kennedy).
Lee Harvey Oswald's lies were almost non-stop from the moment he was arrested in the theater on November 22, 1963. If you want to see just how many more lies Oswald told, check out THIS ESSAY.
------------------
>>> "I can tell the readers of this book that if anyone in the future maintains to them that Oswald was just a patsy and did not kill Kennedy, that person is either unaware of the evidence against Oswald or simply a very silly person. .... Any denial of Oswald's guilt is not worthy of serious discussion." -- VB; Page 969 <<<
------------------
David Von Pein
October 18, 2007
