The Girl on the Stairs

by Barry Ernest

  She lasted only two.

  “If life isn’t fair, how is death fair or how is anything fair,” she had asked, but not in anger. That would have been unlike her. “Is there really justice? You know me . . . gotta have answers.”

  She had not even hinted at her illness to me because, she said, she did not want that unhappy news to influence the way I was writing about her. That was the real Victoria Adams.

  Miss Adams, for that is how I will always remember her, was only sixty-six.

  “No one really wants to know the truth, or at least that seems to be my sense of things,” she wrote. “There is too much glamour in speculation and the concept of thrillers with open-ended questions.”

  This woman, alone for so long with those terrible memories from the past, had by now come to grips with all the fears that had once surrounded her every day. “Bravery, to me, has been acting heroically in spite of enormous fear,” she wrote, a month before her death. “It is setting one’s own needs and wants for comfort, ease, and convenience aside and sometimes reaching through the scared and fragmented parts of ourselves to help someone or something right now.”1

  Bravery was indeed what she had shown by her willingness to finally release the demons of Dallas.

  “It does not take courage to grow old,” she would say among her parting words. “It does not take courage to die. It takes courage to live in the moment. . . . To live is to be courageous.

  “Perhaps it is really brave of the listener to listen to the dying.”

  CHAPTER 32

  June 2011

  After Miss Adams went downstairs she (Miss Garner) saw Mr. Truly and the policeman come up. Those words kept haunting me, even years after Vicki’s death. So did all the associated questions.

  Where was Dorothy Garner when she observed this? What made her go there? What else might she have seen? To whom had she made that comment?

  When the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, Mrs. Garner was at the fourth-floor window of the Depository. At thirty-five years of age, the last ten of which she spent with Scott Foresman, she had moved her way up to become the office supervisor.

  She was there with three of her employees: Sandra Styles, Elsie Dorman, and Victoria Adams.

  During routine interviews conducted of all Depository employees on duty that terrible day, Mrs. Garner told the FBI on March 20, 1964, that following the shooting, she “remained on the fourth floor of the building in the Scott Foresman offices until approximately 2:30 p.m.”1 The impact of that otherwise harmless comment would not become apparent until more than three decades later when the Martha Joe Stroud letter surfaced. For it was there that Mrs. Garner’s quoted words put her into a position of not only proving Miss Adams to be truthful but also of challenging the Warren Commission’s scenario of how, or even if, Oswald fled from the sixth floor.

  Yet little was known about this woman, at least from the public record.

  One of the good things about writing a controversial book such as this is that it solicits tips along the way. Often those tips are anonymous and lead nowhere. Occasionally, they are gems. I was following one of the latter when I caught up with Dorothy Ann (sometimes known as May) Garner, a woman who otherwise had become a ghost, flickering in and out of occasional written reports. Now in her eighties, she still couldn’t shake the visions of that day in Dallas.

  I introduced myself on the phone by telling her I had written a book and was now continuing my inquiry into Victoria Adams. She had absolutely no idea why I had taken the time to pen a volume about one of her former employees. It occurred to me at that point (which Mrs. Garner soon confirmed) that she was completely unaware of the implications surrounding what that former employee had done.

  In my mind this was a good thing, since I felt that her comments might now lack any potential bias accumulated over the years and thus lend more credibility to anything she could tell me.

  I began with preliminaries, asking her what things were like that day.

  “It was total confusion,” she said. “The Dallas Police, FBI, Secret Service were coming up the stairs, in the elevators, in all the offices. The news media and workers and outsiders were going everywhere.”2

  The Dallas Police Department, she said, “took over our phones.” When I asked what that meant, she explained. “They wouldn’t allow personal calls to go out. After the employees were allowed to leave, I went to a nearby diner and called my husband.” It was her first opportunity for outside communications.

  The focus of my call was threefold: what she knew about Victoria Adams, whether she was in a position to have seen Officer Baker and Roy Truly or anyone else on the back stairs, and to whom she had made the comment that appeared in the Stroud letter.

  Did Miss Adams and Miss Styles leave the window right away? I asked her.

  “The girls did,” she responded. “I remember them being there and the next thing I knew, they were gone.” They had left “very quickly . . . within a matter of moments,” she added.

  What did Mrs. Garner do after that?

  “There was this warehouse or storage area behind our office, out by the freight elevators and the rear stairway, and I went out there.”

  Her move to that area clearly took her to a spot where she could have observed activity on the back stairs as well as on the elevators. But how fast had she arrived there?

  Mrs. Garner said she immediately went to this area, following “shortly after . . . right behind” Miss Adams and Miss Styles. She couldn’t remember exactly why she went there, other than “probably to get something.” Mrs. Garner said she did not actually see “the girls” enter the stairway, though, arriving on the fourth-floor landing seconds later. When I asked how she knew they had gone down right away, Mrs. Garner replied, “I remember hearing them, after they started down. I remember the stairs were very noisy.”

  Were the freight elevators in operation during this time?

  “I don’t recall that,” she answered. “They were very noisy too!”

  Mrs. Garner said she remained at that spot and was alone for a moment before “several came out back from the office to look out those windows there.” The view from these windows, facing west and situated near the stairway, included the grassy knoll and railroad yards, where many people ran following the shooting.

  The presence of other employees at the west windows was confirmed by Bonnie Ray Williams, who, with Harold Norman and James Jarman, had watched the motorcade from the fifth floor. The three had used the same stairs as they made their way down to the first floor. Williams testified he arrived on the fourth floor “where we saw these women looking out of the window.”3

  Mrs. Garner was now confirming how quickly Victoria Adams had entered the stairway. Perhaps it was so quick that Miss Adams was ahead of the lagging assassin. This possibility was actually addressed when the Warren Report wrote, “If her estimate of time is correct . . . she must have run down the stairs ahead of Oswald and would probably have seen or heard him.”4

  With Mrs. Garner being in the position she was as quickly as she was, I asked her if she happened to notice whether Lee Oswald came down the stairs after Miss Adams and Miss Styles entered the stairway.

  She laughed at the question. “No, I don’t remember that. I don’t remember seeing him at all that day . . . except on TV.”

  Later in the interview, she would reflect back on the question she found so amusing, saying she felt sure she would have remembered if she had seen Oswald on the stairs, or anywhere that day for that matter, based on his later notoriety and the fact that it would have made a distinct impression on her mind.

  Had she seen Roy Truly on November 22?

  “I saw him several times that day,” she said, “but I’m not sure when or where.”

  How about a policeman accompanied by Truly coming up the stairs?

  “I remember I saw a policeman or police officers on the stairs, yes.”

  I pressed a bit more and asked the question again, recognizing that th
e passage of time, the “confusion of the moment” as she had called it, and the fact that its significance was lost on her may have made my query seem unimportant. Did she remember seeing Roy Truly and a police officer come up the stairs together?

  “I could have,” she answered, “but there was so much confusion. It was, after all, a few years ago!”

  Mrs. Garner was providing two key pieces of evidence: one that corroborated Victoria Adams regarding how quickly she and Sandra Styles left the window and moved to the back staircase and a second that corroborated the Stroud letter by placing herself at a location where she could have observed activity on the stairs immediately after the shooting.

  Like Sandra Styles before her, Dorothy Garner had been neglected by the Warren Commission. Or had she?

  Although no public record exists of an interview or conversation between Mrs. Garner and the Commission or its staff, apparently one did take place. From the moment I discovered the Stroud letter, I was always intrigued as to whom Mrs. Garner had made her statement. Was it David Belin, charged with this area of the investigation? After all, he had been in Dallas not long before that, taking depositions from other Depository employees.

  So I asked Mrs. Garner if she recalled someone from the Warren Commission talking with her.

  “Yes, I do remember that,” she replied quickly. According to her, the questioning occurred “several months later . . . quite a few months later,” a timeframe that fit with the June date shown on the Stroud letter. She could not remember who the man was. The name David Belin did not ring a bell. She also could not recall where the questioning had taken place or specifically what had been asked. She did say, however, that the conversation, which she admitted could even have been by telephone, was “brief.”

  When I then asked if she was sure of the agency the questioner was from, she replied firmly, “Yes.” When I inquired how she could be so definite the person had been from the Commission, she answered, “He identified himself as being from the Warren Commission.”

  In retrospect, I found Mrs. Garner to be an honest and forthright woman. She appeared credible and without any reason to embellish her story, which was evident from her lack of knowledge to its overall importance. The characteristics other employees attributed to her were evident throughout much of our discussion. She spoke well for her age and often asked me to repeat a question, not because she was hard of hearing, she assured me, but to ensure she had understood it correctly.

  The intervening years had no doubt caused her to forget some specifics, but her memory seemed clear on when Miss Adams and Miss Styles left the window, how fast both women got to the stairs, where Mrs. Garner had gone after the shooting, and what she had or hadn’t observed while there.

  She was completely unaware of the significance of the story regarding Miss Adams or the role Mrs. Garner played in it, which may account for why some details did not make a more indelible mark on her memory.

  The key points of the interview remain:

  Coupled with Sandra Styles’ story and the meaning behind her statement in the Stroud letter, Mrs. Garner is strong corroboration for what Miss Adams did and when she did it.

  Mrs. Garner was indeed in a position to observe activity on the back stairs immediately after the assassination.

  Mrs. Garner did not see Lee Oswald on the stairs but felt she would have had he been there. This is noteworthy regarding the idea that Oswald may have come down the stairs after Miss Adams had descended.

  Mrs. Garner talked with someone from the Warren Commission.

  Somewhere along the line, Mrs. Garner joined Sandra Styles and Victoria Adams, as well as a host of others, in having their actions and observations discredited or, even worse, ignored. This lack of further investigation on the part of those who had a duty to do so is unsettling in itself. It becomes worse when one considers how each of those slighted was so critical to the conclusions of the official inquiry.

  And it continues to cast a dark and growing shadow over the guiding principle Earl Warren stressed to his staff, that “truth is our only client here.”

  EPILOGUE

  Yesterday

  This time I do not have to stop to get his mail from the oversized box along the side of the road, something I did each time I visited to save him an arduous trip down the driveway. The gesture is no longer necessary.

  The tall pines have shed their old needles everywhere, littering the ground and contrasting starkly against the pure-white drifts of snow beneath. His well-worn automobile no longer sits in the carport, its former presence always a sign I would find him at home.

  Deer still scurry about in the surrounding woods. Birds still drop down to an outdoor feeder. It is empty of nourishment.

  To the left, water in his run-down swimming pool rests frozen. To the right is the large plate-glass window behind which he used to sit, hunched over his old Royal in such concentration that he would not notice me for several minutes as I stood outside and watched.

  He is not there on this day. Nor are his typewriter, numerous filing cabinets, desk, books, papers, pictures, cushioned chair and footrest, or cane. They are all gone now.

  Because so is Harold Weisberg.

  He had died February 21, 2002, from “a kidney ailment and sepsis,” so his obituary reported. He had been “a prolific writer and persistent critic of the official report that found a lone gunman responsible for the death of President John F. Kennedy.”1 More than that, he had been my mentor.

  He took me under his wing when I was a mere fledgling. He taught me from the start how to do it the right way. He granted me liberties with his files, materials, and thoughts that he would few others.

  And he encouraged me to start what I now seem to be trying to end.

  What a journey this has been, this rite of passage no less bizarre or revealing than those of Holden Caulfield or Nick Adams. It started with Terry’s persistent question. Still believe the Warren Report?

  I could not answer him back then. My results had not as yet been tabulated.

  I joined the ranks of fellow researchers, who, always maligned and often rightfully so, sought the same as I. Or so I once thought.

  The places I had only read about sprang to life, becoming real in sight, sound, and smell. The witnesses—sometimes corrupted, occasionally crazy, more often courageous—turned into flesh and blood right in front of me.

  And somewhere along the way, without warning, things were not the same for me anymore. My youthful innocence—some might say exuberance—had been lost, just as had America’s when, whether he was loved or hated, John F. Kennedy was killed in a place called Dealey Plaza.

  “Truth” is a word mentioned often and by many throughout these pages, from those who claimed to seek it to those who claimed they possessed it. Truths and fancies abound when one studies the Kennedy assassination. The Warren Report stated as early as 1964, for instance, that it “found no evidence of conspiracy.” That is hardly the truth. The record clearly indicates that the Commission was aware of evidence in its possession that did indicate a conspiracy. It just chose to ignore it or, as Miss Adams would say, “disregard” it.

  Oswald ordered the rifle. Handwriting tests confirm this. But who picked it up from his post-office box? Records routinely kept that would answer that question are strangely missing in this case.

  So too are all his military files and a lot of other routine documentation that in any other circumstance would be readily available.

  No fresh fingerprints belonging to Oswald were found on the rifle. No proof was established that Oswald fired the rifle that day, let alone that the rifle had even been discharged. Its barrel was not swabbed, a common police procedure.

  Evidence that he actually used the weapon is weak, with what little there is conveniently coming from his wife, Marina, a woman the government otherwise considered to be unreliable. Evidence that he bought ammunition for that weapon, or even practiced firing live rounds with it, is simply nonexistent.

 
No one saw or heard Oswald as he hurriedly left the sixth floor—not the men on the floor below and not the women who should have heard or seen him on the stairs. He just suddenly appeared in the lunchroom, calm, collected, and exactly where he said he had gone after eating his noon meal on the first floor. No one believed him, of course. After all, he was the assassin. That was why he “escaped” from the Depository, acted so strange as he rushed home to grab his revolver, shot Tippit, fled to a darkened movie theatre, scuffled with police, and seemed so cocky and defiant while in custody.

  The list goes on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

  Facts of this case are still, to this day, being stretched to their limits. Misinformation has become routine.

  Weeks before the fortieth anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, in one example, ABC News enticed audiences using this blurb about its upcoming documentary on the event: “One of the greatest crimes. One of the most respected reporters. And now, the truth.”2 There was that word again.

  On the appointed night, host Peter Jennings quickly tipped his hand by charging that, one, Oswald was the only person absent from an employee roll call held shortly after the shooting, and two, Oswald was a “sharpshooter.”3

  The first accusation was provably false, as any respectable reporter should have known. The fact that Oswald was not the only one missing from the roll call had been confirmed years earlier.4 The second accusation—Oswald the sharpshooter—was such a blatant stretching of the truth that even the Warren Commission had refused to use it.5

  It should not be necessary to frame a guilty man.

  Even Victoria Adams, rare though her appearances may be in published literature concerning the assassination, has not been spared the occasional glib remark. In his 1,600-page tome supporting the Warren Commission, author Vincent Bugliosi actually proposes that she might well have been Kennedy’s assassin. “Why not?” he asks. “Women can pull triggers too, you know.”6

  In 1964, the Warren Commission wrote that there was no conspiracy. In 1979, the HSCA concluded there most likely had been. That supreme contradiction remains unresolved, even today.