by Barry Ernest
“I didn’t say that,” she objected, her memory laser sharp.
“I said the shots sounded like they came from below me to my right. I didn’t know where they had come from.”
Then came my most important question of all.
CHAPTER 29
February 10-12, 2002
I was, quite naturally, always bothered by her statement that she saw and briefly spoke with William Shelley and Billy Lovelady on the first floor. After all, that was what the Warren Commission and others used to discredit Victoria Adams.
At first, it seemed clear to me. If she saw those men, who each claimed they didn’t return to the building until several minutes after the shooting, then Ms. Adams descended the steps later than she figured. This was the preeminent point in her story.
“I honestly can’t remember seeing them [on the first floor],” she told me one day. “No, I don’t remember them being there.”
Did she know those two well?
“Not at all, except to see them around. I doubt I could even recognize them today as they were then. I really did not associate with anyone who worked at the Depository, except for the people in my office and there was very little socializing with them.”
My mention of the Shelley/Lovelady encounter, however, prompted Ms. Adams to ask that I send her a copy of her official testimony. She wanted to recheck what she actually said about the incident. She had not kept a duplicate of her deposition and had read it only once, in California some thirty-five years earlier.
“This makes me really wonder about that section in my testimony,” she wrote after reviewing her words. “It sounds like the way I did in the rest of the testimony, but I am beginning to wonder if that [her statements regarding Shelley and Lovelady] was inserted into my testimony later.”
Ms. Adams’ testimony quoted her as saying she spoke in passing to both men, offering the thought that Kennedy may have been shot. She told me she did, in fact, recall making that comment to someone on the first floor. But it was not, she said, to Shelley or Lovelady.
“I remember saying to a fairly big black man inside the building right near the loading dock right after I got down the stairs that I thought the president may have been shot. I don’t know what his name is. I do know that he worked for the Depository and I think he was a warehouse worker.1
“You would think that if I said that to them [Shelley and Lovelady], ‘I believed the President was shot,’ they would have said something or done something, instead of saying nothing, as I am quoted as saying.
“And, if they had been away for some time running around the railroad tracks, I can’t imagine that they would have returned to the building and been standing in the back of the building when all the action was outside.
“And how could I have seen them on the first floor anyway if they were outside the building for that long. When I came down they wouldn’t have returned yet.
“They weren’t there,” she emphasized.
Ms. Adams was clearly uneasy about this matter. “Also, Belin appears to make a big deal out of the Shelley and Lovelady encounter. Another thing—and this may seem really minor, but I think it is important—whenever I answer a question ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ by habit I always said ‘sir.’ Unless I happened to continue on with a sentence. If you will notice, my ‘yes’ in that section is not followed by ‘sir.’ At that time in my life, that was a habit with me. Just like simple Southern courtesy.
“There’s something wrong with that whole section.”
When I showed her a copy of Detective Leavelle’s evening interview with her on February 17, 1964, she was equally mystified. Leavelle’s report has her saying, “The elevator was not running and there was no one on the stairs. I went down to the first floor. I saw Mr. Shelly [sic] and another employee named Bill. The freight elevator had not moved, and I still did not see anyone on the stairs.”
“That sentence about Mr. Shelley and Mr. Lovelady seems out of context to the rest of my statement,” she noted. “Like it’s been inserted. It doesn’t seem to fit. And if I didn’t see them, why would the police put that in there? Is this why the Dallas police lied to me about there being a fire, so they could interview me again?”
Ms. Adams also seemed concerned about the end of her Warren Commission testimony, where it stated she voluntarily waived her rights to review what she had said before having it sent to Washington. “If I waived my rights to sign my deposition,” she remarked, “why did they send someone to my office to ask me to read my testimony and make corrections and then not include them in the final transcript?
“I suspect my testimony has been doctored, but I have no proof since I never had a copy of the original.”
I asked if she remembered seeing the Shelley/Lovelady incident in the copy of testimony she was given to correct.
“I don’t recall seeing that section at all,” she answered. “If it had been in there, and since I didn’t see them, I would have edited it out.”
Still bothered, Ms. Adams brought up Sandra Styles. “Since Sandra was specific with other names and people, I would think she would have mentioned seeing them [Shelley and Lovelady], too, when she gave her deposition to the FBI.” Miss Styles had not.
“I was pretty confused by all of this at the time, and for awhile didn’t even know why what I had to say was important. However, once I realized it, I kept asking why the Warren Commission wasn’t calling for Sandra Styles. In fact, during the initial briefing before my testimony was taken by the attorney [Belin], I asked him why didn’t they call Sandra Styles. He said they didn’t need her. They had me. That was enough. Looking backwards I think they didn’t want to corroborate any evidence.
“I repeatedly asked all of the agencies that interviewed me to interview and question Sandra Styles. They kept saying they didn’t need to. I always thought that very strange, since what I did and when I did it was so important to them, and Sandra was with me until we got outside. She returned to the building before I did, but her descent was at the same time as mine.
“What I kept saying over and over was that Sandra could affirm what we did immediately after the gunshots.”
And then, another light bulb went on in my head.
CHAPTER 30
February 13, 2002
I had tried on several occasions to locate Sandra Styles. Admittedly, it was only with the hope that she could somehow lead me to Victoria Adams. But through the years, I found even less information on Miss Styles than on Ms. Adams.
The Warren Commission never questioned Miss Styles. Few others had either. Therefore, there were no records of her birthplace, the schools she had attended, or her former work experiences.
The end of her trail came quickly.
What would she have said to the Warren Commission? Would she have corroborated Ms. Adams? Did she happen to see Shelley and Lovelady?
“I liked Sandra Styles,” Ms. Adams replied when I sought details about her former coworker. “As I remember, she went to a school in Waco. I’m pretty sure she graduated from a college there, but she wanted to get married and be a stay-at-home mom. Sandra and I did nothing together socially, nor do I remember the office having any social events, so there was little reason for a connection.”
That was all interesting, but it was certainly not enough.
“Regarding Sandra Styles—I am not sure she was born in Waco,” Ms. Adams added a few days later. “I think I remember she said she went to college there. She went to a Christian college. I think it was Baylor. She was right around my age—maybe a year older. That’s basically all I know about her except she was concerned about bad hair days and always wore a pretty dress, hoping people would look at her dress instead of her hair. Women are always vain.”
Cyberspace quickly took me to Baylor University. Either I was getting better, or this Web site was more “user friendly.” In a matter of only minutes, a “Sandra Styles Butler” popped up as an alumna. I immediately wrote to the college for more information. Surprisingly
, I received an answer within hours, giving me Mrs. Butler’s current residence in Texas, her telephone number—even her e-mail address.
This one was just too easy.
“Yes, I remember Vicki Adams very well,” Mrs. Butler said when I telephoned her that evening. “We worked together; we were buddies.”1
Not wanting to influence her recollections, I didn’t mention what Ms. Adams and I had been discussing. Instead, after she agreed to talk, I asked what Mrs. Butler remembered about the assassination. She spoke in general terms for several minutes. I narrowed the sights and asked if she recalled when she and Ms. Adams left the fourth-floor window.
“I can’t remember exactly, but we moved away from the window fairly quickly,” she replied. “And I’d say we moved quickly down the stairs too.”
“Fairly quickly” was too vague.
Ms. Adams said she left the window as the presidential limousine was about to enter the Triple Underpass. Taking a different approach, I now asked Mrs. Butler what she could recall seeing that day.
“Well, I watched the motorcade as it approached and turned the corner,” she said. “I saw Jackie’s pink suit, and then it went behind a big tree in the front of the building. I heard the shots and thought they were firecrackers. The car was moving slowly and I saw Jackie get onto the trunk—there was lots of movement by Jackie. I saw the Secret Service agent get on the car and push her back in. I can’t remember anymore.”
“Mrs. Butler,” I said, “think hard. Do you remember whether you actually saw Kennedy’s car go into the underpass?”
She paused. “No, I don’t remember seeing that at all,” she answered. “That was when we left.”
That was when we left. This was right when Victoria Adams said they had left the window, right before the car went into the underpass.
That was when we left. It was corroboration. And that was what others had ignored over the years, either from disregard or deceit. This woman had just confirmed what Ms. Adams had been saying all along. With Mrs. Butler in tow, Ms. Adams had left the window when she said she did, certainly before when the Warren Report said she did and certainly within a timeframe in which she should have seen or at least heard Oswald, if Oswald had been coming down from the sixth floor.
The implications were chilling.
“Are you still there?” I heard Mrs. Butler ask.
“Yes . . . yes, I am,” I finally said. I cleared my throat. “It’s been thirty-nine years since this happened, Mrs. Butler. Are you sure of what you saw and did?”
“It’s a hard thing to forget,” she replied, slowly.
I asked why she decided to leave the office in the first place.
“I don’t know,” she answered, hesitated, then laughed. “It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. Vicki wanted to go, so I went.”
She told me she saw and heard no one on the back stairs, no sounds whatsoever. The stairs were old, wooden, and creaky, she explained. She would have heard some sounds if anyone else had been anywhere on them—above or below. There were, she repeated, “no other sounds.”
“A few people were milling around on the first floor,” she said. “One was a black man.” That was apparently the same man Ms. Adams had mentioned. I casually asked her if William Shelley or Billy Lovelady were there.
“No,” she said, emphasizing she would have recognized them, since she knew both men well.
Mrs. Butler said she went outside the rear of the Depository, then returned to the front of the building when a police officer told her and Ms. Adams they could go no farther. Before she went back inside, she said she heard a radio squawking on a parked motorcycle. She could not recall what was being said.
When I told her what Ms. Adams had heard—mention of where the shots may have originated—it still did not jog her memory.
“Vicki was more observant than I was,” she admitted.
Over the next several days, I peppered her with more questions in e-mails, some fresh, some redundant, in hopes of eliciting more details. For instance, I asked again why she had left the building.
“The blind, unquenchable curiosity of youth?” she wrote rhetorically. “It was obvious that something was going on down there. Probably if I had been able to see and know more from where I was, I would have stayed put.”2
I asked again whether she saw Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor.
“No, I didn’t. I believe they were at the front entrance, and we went out the back door and around to the front of the building. I believe most of the Depository employees were watching from the front entrance. I have seen at least one picture in which Billy is with that group.”
I told her that Ms. Adams’ testimony referred to Shelley and Lovelady being on the first floor when both women arrived there.
“I can’t imagine why Vicki would have said that—if she did,” Mrs. Butler commented. “They definitely weren’t there.”
I explained that the Shelley/Lovelady sighting was the sole reason the Commission disbelieved Ms. Adams. I asked for her opinion on whether that incident might have been inserted into Ms. Adams’ testimony for that express purpose. There was a long silence.
“All I can say,” she finally answered, “is that Shelley and Lovelady were definitely not on the first floor when we got there.”3
How many shots did she hear?
“Three shots; my first instinct was to look down to the left. I don’t know whether that was because of the location of the shooter or because of reverberation.”
What was it like in Dealey Plaza in those first moments?
“Lots of rushing around and chaos.”
How fast did she move from her office and down the stairs?
“I was moving fast but not running. The stairs were not well lighted, and I was probably wearing high heels.”
Who questioned her about what?
“I was never questioned outside the office and acknowledged that I had no information pertinent to the investigation. They [the FBI] mainly wanted to know whether I knew LHO [Lee Harvey Oswald] or recalled ever having seen him. I did not. I don’t recall any questions re: the trip down the stairs. If the WC [Warren Commission] representative didn’t interview me, he probably didn’t feel I had anything to add.”
Yet she did have something to add, something vitally important.
Ms. Adams’ actions were so consequential that the Commission elected to comment on them in its final Report, even though it chose not to believe a single word she said. Why, then, comment at all? The Commission certainly had remained mute on more noteworthy matters than “some girl on the fourth floor.”
The Commission had the means and opportunity to check out her story. It would have been so easy to question Mrs. Butler back then. It would have been so easy to conduct the necessary time tests.
An agent could have duplicated Oswald’s moves by running from the sixth-floor window down the back stairs to the second-floor lunchroom. An agent could have duplicated Officer Baker’s moves by running from the street outside the building and up the stairs to the same second-floor lunchroom. An agent could have duplicated what Ms. Adams did by running from the fourth-floor window to the first floor.
Where would those paths have crossed?
The Commission had conducted the first two tests—the movements of Oswald and the policeman—on several occasions. It had even gone so far as to time the actions of Mrs. Reid, her significance only being that she saw Oswald after the lunchroom encounter. Why had it failed to do one of the more important tests: the timing of Ms. Adams’ descent?
The Commission never once sought answers from any supporting witness, as it in all honesty should have. It never diligently tried to resolve the timing questions, as it with all integrity should have. It never considered an alternative, as it with all objectivity should have.
Why not?
Ms. Adams was not surprised when I told her of Mrs. Butler’s comments concerning when they had left the window and the absence of both Shelley and
Lovelady on the first floor. Again, it was something she had known already. But she was happy that, for the first time, someone else now knew. Someone had finally talked with both her and Sandra Styles and had uncovered the truth.
“I just want someone to hear the truth and not just hear it, but recognize the truth,” Ms. Adams told me one day. “I hope someone, somewhere, sometime will at least consider that maybe things were not really as they appeared to be, no matter how many degrees the person had who said they were such and such a way. Just because something is in print doesn’t necessarily make it true.
“Each of us, in our own way, wants to make a lasting contribution to life. At this point, one lasting contribution I can make is to have my truth heard and eventually shared.”
She would tell me she always wanted to be a writer and a teacher. She had been both, if only briefly. She would display over the ensuing months a piercing, dry sense of humor. She would say all she ever wanted to do, from the first moment on, was to let others know that what she had said a long time ago was the truth, had always been the truth, and was nothing but the truth.
“So, who am I today?” she asked. “I am a responsible, honest, supportive woman with a passion for learning to discern between perceived and factual truth. In short, I am just an ordinary woman living an ordinary life doing ordinary things.”
Ms. Adams had grown up.
In this ever-expanding mess called the Kennedy assassination, she had turned out to be anything but ordinary. And somehow, I had known that all along. I just had to prove it, if to no one but myself.
CHAPTER 31
September 18-November 15, 2007
“Life isn’t fair,” she wrote to me one day, “and, oh yeah, neither is death.”
The words were chilling. Never before in the nearly six years I had known her had the otherwise-upbeat Vicki Adams sounded like this. It was September 18, 2007, a Tuesday morning, and that was her way of introducing me to the news she was dying from cancer, the seriousness of which she had kept from me until now. Doctors days earlier had given her six months.