CLAVIGER SAID:
JFK assassination witness Carolyn Walther describes seeing 2 different gunmen....
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
Other witnesses were looking at that window during the same time frame and saw only one man surrounded by brown boxes. A "man" in a brown jacket appears in the Dillard photo.
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
Way to go. So your claim is the second man was brown boxes and his brown suit was merely brown boxes. And what was his shorter rifle? A broom handle?
Do you stay up late at night dreaming up these bizarre excuses?
BTW, did any of the manual laborers at the TSBD ever wear suits to work? Especially when laying new flooring?
CLAVIGER SAID:
Jean,
Is there a colorized version of [that] photo? Is it really a person or a combination of dirty windows and imagination, as in the Rorschach Inkblot Test?
OTOH, LHO did wear a brown shirt home after he escaped the TSBD that some witnesses may confuse with a jacket [such as Marrion Baker].
CHARLES WALLACE SAID:
Jean,
Are you finally admitting that you see a man in the window in the Dillard photo?
This man matches up with Lillian Mooneyham's account that she saw a man there a moment or so after Dillard took his photo. In any event, this person that was seen in the window after the shots cannot be Oswald. He is on the second floor trying to buy a Coke, according to [Marrion] Baker and Roy Truly.
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
It's boxes, that's why I put "man" in quotes. In another interview, Walther said she saw NO boxes anywhere in the building. Instead she saw a "brown suit" from the shoulders to hips, no face, to the gunman's right. Check the Dillard photo again [pictured below]. (There's no colorized photo to my knowledge.)
Walther's story doesn't wash because other witnesses like Edwards, Fischer, and Brennan saw ONE man in the window during this time, someone surrounded by brown boxes. She made an honest mistake, imo.
WALT CAKEBREAD SAID:
Jean Davison wrote: "Other witnesses were looking at that window".
That's not correct, Jean. Carolyn Walther clearly says that she was looking at a window on either the "fourth or fifth floor". And since we have photographic proof that three young black men were behind the fifth floor window at the east end of the TSBD, then that leaves only the fourth floor where she saw the two men with a gun. We can be certain she wasn't referring to the sixth floor because she specificially said that the window where she saw the men was "about even with the top of that tree."
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
Many witnesses got the floor wrong. You know that, Walt.
Walther said it was the corner window in the southeast corner [see document below]:
Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2086
JOHN McADAMS SAID:
So [Charles Wallace] you think that some conspirator was hanging around in the Sniper's Nest for 4 1/2 or 5 minutes after the shooting [per Lillian Mooneyham's statement to the FBI on January 8, 1964; see CE2098]?
Just lolling around. Never occurred to him that he needed to get the hell out of there.
JOHN FIORENTINO SAID:
I don't know about "4 1/2 or 5 minutes after the shooting", but I do know this:
According to the HSCA.....
"There is an apparent rearranging of boxes within 2 minutes after the last shot was fired at President Kennedy." (6 HSCA 109).
JOHN McADAMS SAID:
It's difficult to reconcile without saying that the HSCA made a mistake.
Back in the 1990s, Dale Myers did a 3-D model of the Sniper's Nest and found that there was in fact no inconsistency.
I'm not aware of any online version of that recreation. If anybody knows, maybe they can chime in.
I find the "moved boxes" business questionable simply because I can't see why anybody, Oswald or a conspirator, would fool around with the boxes.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
There was nobody in the window moving boxes around a few minutes after the last shot was fired at the President. It's a ridiculous theory to begin with. Why on Earth would anyone have felt any need to move boxes around right after the shooting? It's dumb.
John Mytton has created a really nice gif clip which merges the Powell and Dillard pictures together, and the merged montage indicates that no boxes were moved at all. It's all a matter of perspective. Here's Mytton's montage gif:
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
So tell us [Jean Davison] what type of boxes walk around holding a rifle. Was that the famous UPS monster movie?
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
Walther's testimony has to be evaluated in the context of the other evidence. Wouldn't you agree? If she is right and there were two men in a southeast corner window and no boxes, what do you make of the testimony of the other witnesses, like Edwards and Fischer:
Mr. BELIN. What did you see?
Mr. EDWARDS. .... one individual who was up there in the corner room of the sixth floor which was crowded in among boxes.
Mr. BELIN. You say on the sixth floor?
Mr. EDWARDS. Yes.
[...]
Mr. BELIN. Did you see any other people on the sixth floor?
Mr. EDWARDS. No.
[VI, 203-204]
~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. BELIN. Could you see any other objects in the window?
Mr. FISCHER. There were boxes and cases stacked all the way from the bottom to the top and from the left to the right behind him.
[VI, 194]
~~~~~~~~~~
Fischer, Edwards, Brennan, Euins saw one man and boxes in the SN [Sniper's Nest] window. Photos show boxes where Walther said she saw a second man's brown jacket. They were all looking up there just before the motorcade arrived. They're all wrong and she's right?
JEAN DAVISON ALSO SAID:
She [Carolyn Walther] didn't say Brown Suit man was holding a rifle or walking around.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes she did, Jean. Walther told CBS News in 1967 that BOTH men she saw in the TSBD were holding guns. See the video below:
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
I don't hear her saying that both men had guns, though it's hard to follow at times. She said the second man had on a "brown suit" and "all I could see" was half of his body from the shoulders to the hips. I think she could've easily misinterpreted the boxes in the Dillard photo.
JOHN FIORENTINO SAID:
David:
You're mistaken about this. She never indicates BOTH men had a rifle.
In fact, her statements are remarkably in tune with her FBI interview.
I used to listen to depositions, etc. quite frequently during my law firm years. It's not easy sometimes when you're not asking the questions.
In any event, listen again, then read her FBI interview.
Jean, you are correct.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You [Jean] may be right. Mrs. Walther might have been talking about seeing TWO men with ONE gun. But it is a bit muddled and unclear.
And, of course, we know she didn't really see two men in that window--period. So she is simply mistaken on that point in the first place.
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
But I still like [Jean's] idea that the brown suit was the brown boxes holding a rifle.
Now, can you explain for me how the SECOND gun being shorter than the first gun equals only one gun?
Maybe you think it was a take-apart gun.
JEAN DAVISON SAID:
That's not what she said.
She said one of the men "was holding a short gun. It wasn't as long as a rifle."
That's "A" not "THE" rifle -- which wouldn't imply a second gun.
Josiah Thompson quotes another interview (1966) which makes it clearer.
QUOTE:
Mrs. Walther: ...The man that was holding the gun was partially leaning out, just slightly, and he had his forearms on the window and it was not a long rifle. This was a short gun. Not a pistol. I had never seen one like it. The other man was standing beside him, but I could only see a part of his face, and he was dressed in brown.
Interviewer: And was he holding anything?
Mrs. W: Not that I could see.
UNQUOTE
JEAN DAVISON LATER SAID [RE: THE ALLEGED MOVEMENT OF BOXES IN THE TSBD WINDOW]:
I may be wrong, but I disagree with the HSCA about this (among other things).
I found this old post by Dale Myers that gives his take on it.
JOHN FIORENTINO SAID:
David says............
"And, of course, we know she didn't really see two men in that window--period."
I say..............
You "know" that, do you?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
If she's really referring to the SIXTH floor--yes. I do know that. Don't you?
And if she's referring to the fourth floor, she's dead wrong too, because that window is closed:
And if she's referring to the fifth floor, she's dead wrong, because I think we can all agree that neither Bonnie Ray Williams nor Harold Norman were holding any firearms when they were watching the motorcade.
David Von Pein
April 2013
September 2013
ADDENDUM #1:
From Vincent Bugliosi's book, "Reclaiming History".....
"Another Dealey Plaza witness quoted often by conspiracy theorists is Carolyn Walther. She told the FBI on December 5, 1963 [it was actually December 4th], that from her vantage point on the east side of Houston near Elm, within a minute before the shooting she saw a man standing in the southeasternmost window of either the fourth or the fifth floor of the Book Depository Building. (She said she was "positive" the window wasn't as high as the sixth floor.)
The man was leaning out the window holding a weapon that looked like a machine gun. He had blond or light brown hair. In the same window, to the left of this man, she saw a portion of another man in a brown suit coat. She could not see his head and she gave no description of him.
Walther repeated her story to "the investigators" for a 1967 book and in 1978 to the Dallas Morning News. Apart from the fact that we know from photographs and testimony that the fourth-floor window was closed and the fifth-floor window occupied by identified Book Depository employees (James Jarman, Bonnie Ray Williams and Harold Norman, one of whom, Norman, can be seen leaning out the window in the Robert Hughes film, and undoubtedly is the person whom Walther saw), there is another very serious problem with Walther's statement.
She was watching the motorcade with her friend, Pearl Springer, who told the FBI that not only didn't she see any armed man standing in the window, but much more importantly, Walther, after the shooting, did not mention to her anything about seeing any man in the window holding a rifle, machine gun, or any other type of weapon.
Apparently Walther never considered her observation important enough to waste a breath on. I understand."
-- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Pages 835-836 of "Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy"
ADDENDUM #2:
Excerpt from Page 20 of the book "Crossfire" by Jim Marrs. This excerpt includes a quote by Carolyn Walther taken from her November 1978 interview with Dallas reporter Earl Golz....
"They [the FBI] tried to make me think that what I saw were boxes. Now the boxes are much lighter colored. And this was definitely the shape of a person or part of a person. I never read their report. I talked to them and it seemed like they weren’t very interested. They were going to set out to prove me a liar, and I had no intention of arguing with them and being harassed. I felt like I had told them all I knew. And I had relieved myself of the burden of it. And if they didn’t want to believe it or had some reason not to, well, then, that was all right with me."
-- Mrs. Carolyn Walther; 11/21/78
ADDENDUM #3:
Excerpts from the book "The Girl On The Stairs" by Barry Ernest....
"[Carolyn Walther] was not interviewed by the Warren Commission.
"I fully expected to be questioned by them," Mrs. Walther told me in a phone conversation [on March 27, 1968]. "I guess they weren't interested in what I had to say."
[...]
She told the FBI the man was "on either the fourth or fifth floor" and was "positive this window was not as high as the sixth floor."
"But I now know it was the sixth floor," she added.
Mrs. Walther explained to me she initially thought and thus told authorities that the man with the rifle was on the "fourth or fifth floor because I just wasn't sure which it was at the time."
But she said she clearly remembers that this man was on the floor directly above where "two colored men were hanging out a window looking at the motorcade."
[...]
[Again quoting Walther:]
"Next to the man with a rifle and in the same window was another man. I could only see him from about his waist up to his shoulders and never got a good look at his face. But there was definitely another man there."
That second man was wearing "a brown suit coat."
Could she have been looking at the brown cardboard boxes that were stacked in that window?
"That's what the FBI accused me of doing," she answered.
"But boxes don't move on their own, do they?"
Point taken."
-- Barry Ernest; Pages 83-84 of "The Girl On The Stairs: My Search For A Missing Witness To The Assassination Of John F. Kennedy"
ADDENDUM #4:
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The best (and most hilarious) part of Mrs. Carolyn Walther's 12/4/63 FBI interview (CE2086) is this part....
"This man had the window open and was standing up leaning out the window with both his hands extended outside the window ledge. In his hands, this man was holding a rifle with the barrel pointed downward."
Now, I do think it's true that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald did "advertise" (in a sense) the fact he had a rifle with him on the sixth floor about 15 minutes before the assassination when he was seen by witness Arnold Rowland on the WEST end of the sixth floor holding his rifle, which was (IMO) a very stupid thing for Oswald to do.
But can you imagine any would-be assassin wanting to lean out of a window while holding a rifle in his hand? Talk about brazen. That takes the cake.
Hence, I'm taking some of Mrs. Walther's statements with a large grain of salt.
David Von Pein
June 21, 2015
