The Girl on the Stairs

by Barry Ernest

  Miss Adams: Yes, sir. I went by the one directly in front of the building.

  Belin: What did you do when you got there?

  Miss Adams: When I got there, I happened to look around and noticed several of the employees, and I noticed Joe Molina, for one, was standing in front of the building, and also Avery Davis, who works with me, and I said, “What do you think has happened?”

  And she said, “I don’t know.”

  And I said, “I want to find out.” I think the President is shot.

  There was a motorcycle that was parked on the corner of Houston and Elm directly in front of the east end of the building, and I paused there to listen to the report on the police radio, and they said that shots had been fired which apparently came either from the second floor or the fourth floor window, and so I panicked, as I was at the only open window on the fourth floor.

  Belin: Did they say second floor or second floor from the top?

  Miss Adams: It said second floor. So then I decided maybe I had better go back into the building, and going up the stairs—

  Belin: Now at this time when you went back into the building, were there any policemen standing in front of the building keeping people out?

  Miss Adams: There was an officer on the stairs itself, and he was prohibiting people from entering the building, that is correct. But I told him I worked there.

  Belin: Did he let you come back in?

  Miss Adams: Yes, sir.

  Belin: Then what did you do?

  Miss Adams: Following that, I pushed the button for the passenger elevator, but the power had been cut off on the elevator, so I took the stairs to the second floor.

  Belin: You then went all the way back to the northwest corner of the building and took the same set of stairs you had previously taken to come down, or did you take the stairs by the passenger elevator?

  Miss Adams: By the passenger elevator.

  Belin: Do those stairs go above floor 2?

  Miss Adams: No, sir; they didn’t.

  Belin: What did you do when you got to the second floor?

  Miss Adams: I went into the Texas School Book Depository office and just listened for a few minutes to the people that were congregating there, and decided there wasn’t anything interesting going on, and went out and walked around the hall to the freight elevator meaning the one on the northwest corner.

  Belin: Would it have been the west or the east? The one nearest the stairs or the other one?

  Miss Adams: Yes; the one nearest the stairs.

  Belin: Then what did you do?

  Miss Adams: I went into the elevator which was stopped on the second floor, with two men who were dressed in suit and hats, and I assumed they were plainclothesmen.

  Belin: What did you do then?

  Miss Adams: I tried to get the elevator to go to the fourth floor, but it wasn’t operating, so the gentlemen lifted the elevator gate and we went out and ran up the stairs to the fourth floor.

  Belin: Then you went back to the Scott Foresman Company offices?

  Miss Adams: Yes, sir.

  Belin: Now trying to reconstruct your actions insofar as the time sequence, which we haven’t done, what is your best estimate of the time between the time the shots were fired and the time you got back to the building? How much time elapsed? If you have any estimate. Maybe you don’t have one.

  Miss Adams: I would estimate not more than 5 minutes elapsed.

  Belin: Is there any particular reason why you make this estimation?

  Miss Adams: Yes, sir; going down the stairs toward the back, I was running. I ran to the railroad tracks. I moved quickly to the front of the building, paused briefly to talk to someone, listened only to the report of the windows from which the shot supposedly was fired, and returned to the building.

  Belin: How long do you think it was between the time the shots were fired and the time you left the window to start toward the stairway?

  Miss Adams: Between 15 and 30 seconds, estimated, approximately.

  Belin: How long do you think it was, or do you think it took you to get from the window to the top of the fourth floor stairs?

  Miss Adams: I don’t think I can answer that question accurately, because the time approximation, without a stopwatch, would be difficult.

  Belin: How long do you think it took you to get from the window to the bottom of the stairs on the first floor?

  Miss Adams: I would say no longer than a minute at the most.

  Belin: So you think that from the time you left the window on the fourth floor until the time you got to the stairs at the bottom of the first floor, was approximately 1 minute?

  Miss Adams: Yes, approximately.

  Belin: As I understand your testimony previously, you saw neither Roy Truly nor any motorcycle police officer at any time?

  Miss Adams: That’s correct.

  Belin: You heard no one else running down the stairs?

  Miss Adams: Correct.

  Belin: When you got to the first floor did you immediately proceed to this point where you say you encountered Mr. Shelley and Mr. Lovelady?

  Well, you showed me on a diagram of the first floor that there was a place which was south and somewhat east of the front part of the east elevator that you encountered Truly [sic] and Lovelady?

  Miss Adams: I saw them there.

  Belin: I mean; you saw them?

  Miss Adams: Yes.

  Belin: Would that have been a matter of seconds after you got to the bottom of the first floor?

  Miss Adams: Definitely.

  Belin: Less than 30 seconds?

  Miss Adams: Yes.

  Belin: Do you know, or did you know Lee Harvey Oswald either by sight or by name?

  Miss Adams: I didn’t know Lee Harvey Oswald, per se. I didn’t know his name. I recognized him after I saw him on television, as having been with some men, but I had no dealing with him.

  Belin: By that, you mean having been employed with some men by the Texas School Book Depository?

  Miss Adams: That’s correct.

  Belin: During the trip down the stairs on the way down did you ever encounter Lee Harvey Oswald?

  Miss Adams: No, sir.

  Belin: Is there any other information that you can think of that might be relevant to anything, connected with the assassination?

  Miss Adams: At the time I left the building on the Houston Street dock, there was an officer standing about 2 yards from the curb, and about from the curb across the street from the Texas School Depository, and about 4 yards from the corner of Houston and Elm, and when we were running out the dock, going around the building, the officer was standing there, and he didn’t encounter us or ask us what we were doing or where we were going, and I don’t know if that is pertinent.

  Belin: No one stopped you from getting out of the building when you left?

  Miss Adams: That’s correct.

  Belin: That is helpful information. Is there any other information you have that could be relevant?

  Miss Adams: There was a man that was standing on the corner of Houston and Elm asking questions there. He was dressed in a suit and a hat, and when I encountered Avery Davis going down, we asked who he was, because he was questioning people as if he were a police officer, and we noticed him take a colored boy away on a motorcycle, and this man was asking questions very efficaciously, and we said, “I guess he is maybe a reporter,” and later on on television, there was a man that looked very similar to him, and he was identified as Ruby.

  And on questioning some police officer, they said they had witnesses to the fact that he was in the Dallas Morning News at the time. And I don’t know whether that is relevant or what.

  Belin: That is all right, we want to get that information down. Was this before you got back in the front door of the building that you saw this?

  Miss Adams: Yes, sir; while I was standing by the motorcycles.

  Belin: Is there anything else?

  Miss Adams: That is all, I believe.

>   Belin: Miss Adams, you have the opportunity if you would like, to read this deposition and sign it before it goes to Washington, or you can waive the signing of it and just let the court reporter send it directly to us. Do you have any preference?

  Miss Adams: I think I will let you use your own discretion.

  Belin: It doesn’t make any difference to us. If it doesn’t make any difference, we can waive it and you won’t have to make another trip down here.

  Miss Adams: That is all right.

  Belin: We want to thank you for your cooperation. We know that it has taken time on your part. Would you also thank your employer?

  Miss Adams: Yes, sir.

  APPENDIX 2

  Relevant Testimony of Billy Nolan Lovelady

  This testimony was taken at 3:50 P.M. on April 7, 1964, in Dallas by Commission assistant counsel Joseph A. Ball (6H340-41).

  Ball: You came into the building from the west side?

  Lovelady: Right.

  Ball: Where did you go into the building?

  Lovelady: Through that, those raised-up doors.

  Ball: Through the raised-up doors?

  Lovelady: Through that double door that we in the morning when we get there we raised. There’s a fire door and they have two wooden doors between it.

  Ball: You came in through the first floor?

  Lovelady: Right.

  Ball: Who did you see in the first floor?

  Lovelady: I saw a girl but I wouldn’t swear to it it’s Vickie.

  Ball: Who is Vickie?

  Lovelady: The girl that works for Scott, Foresman.

  Ball: What is her full name?

  Lovelady: I wouldn’t know.

  Ball: Vickie Adams?

  Lovelady: I believe so.

  Ball: Would you say it was Vickie you saw?

  Lovelady: I couldn’t swear.

  Ball: Where was the girl?

  Lovelady: I don’t remember what place she was but I remember seeing a girl and she was talking to Bill or saw Bill or something, then I went over and asked one of the guys what time it was and to see if we should continue working or what.

  Ball: Did you see any other people on the first floor?

  Lovelady: Oh, yes; by that time there were more; a few of the guys had come in.

  Ball: And you stayed on the first floor then?

  Lovelady: I would say 30 minutes. And one of the policemen asked me would I take them up on the sixth floor.

  Ball: Did you take them up there?

  Lovelady: Yes, sir; I sure did.

  APPENDIX 3

  Relevant Testimony of William H. Shelley

  This testimony was taken at 4:10 P.M. on April 7, 1964, in Dallas by Commission assistant counsel Joseph A. Ball (6H330).

  Shelley: We walked on down to the first railroad track there on the dead-end street and stood there and watched them searching cars down there in the parking lots for a little while and then we came in through our parking lot at the west end.

  Ball: At the west end?

  Shelley: Yes; and then in the side door into the shipping room.

  Ball: When you came into the shipping room did you see anybody?

  Shelley: I saw Eddie Piper.

  Ball: What was he doing?

  Shelley: He was coming back from where he was watching the motorcade in the southwest corner of the shipping room.

  Ball: Of the first floor of the building?

  Shelley: Yes.

  Ball: Who else did you see?

  Shelley: That’s all we saw immediately.

  Ball: Did you ever see Vickie Adams?

  Shelley: I saw her that day but I don’t remember where I saw her.

  Ball: You don’t remember whether you saw her when you came back?

  Shelley: It was after we entered the building.

  Ball: You think you did see her after you entered the building?

  Shelley: Yes sir; I thought it was on the fourth floor awhile after that.

  Ball: Now, did the police come into the building?

  APPENDIX 4

  The Martha Joe Stroud Letter

  Notes

  Foreword

  1. Among those who did view the Zapruder motion picture back in 1965-66 were some of the “first generation” critics of the Warren Report: Vincent Salandria, Stewart Galanor, Thomas Stamm, and Josiah Thompson.

  2. David S. Lifton, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 7.

  3. This writing provides a true account of my original perception of the “head-snap” controversy—that the sudden backwards motion represented critical evidence of a shot from the front. By 1970, based on my awareness that dozens of witnesses thought that the limousine briefly halted, I believed that the Zapruder film was altered and that the primary significance of the head-snap is that it represents evidence of editing (i.e., removal of frames) from the Zapruder film. See my essay “Pig on a Leash,” which can be found on the Internet.

  4. Warren Report (hereinafter listed as WR) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 152.

  5. Ibid., vol. 3, 362.

  6. In his first FBI interview, on November 22, 1963, Truly described the situation after the president’s car passed and he heard shots fired. “He then noticed a Dallas City police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running towards the entrance of the depository building, and he accompanied the officer in the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed Oswald in a snack bar there, apparently alone” (Commission Document 5, 322, hereinafter listed as CD). Interviewed the next day, he described it this way: “As they reached the second floor landing, the officer opened a door to a small lunch room next to the business office on that floor, and stuck his gun in the door. Lee Oswald was in the lunch room” (CD 5, 324).

  7. Commission Exhibit 1381 (hereinafter listed as CE).

  8. The last half of the article was devoted to the issue of a grassy-knoll assassin and featured a detailed statement from UCLA physics professor James Riddle. Dr. Riddle noted that when one shoots at targets at a rifle range, the little ducks “fall away from you, not towards you.”

  9. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 17, 48. Citations referring to the twenty-six volumes are listed as 17H48, for example, to indicate vol. 17, page 48.

  10. The president’s assassination occurred at 12:30 P.M. CST; the official “start time” for the autopsy was 8 P.M. EST.

  11. This thesis is developed, in detail, in Best Evidence: specifically, that the character (i.e., size and shape) of the wounds in both the head and neck was dramatically altered between the time the president was pronounced dead and the time the autopsy officially began. The Dallas doctors reported an egg-sized wound, approximately 35 square centimeters, at the right rear of the head; at Bethesda, the defect was recorded at 170 square centimeters, i.e., the entire top of the head (the “skullcap”) was recorded as “missing” in a diagram made by one of the autopsy surgeons. With regard to the neck wound: the Dallas doctors made a small (2-3 centimeters) horizontal tracheotomy incision. At Bethesda, Commander Humes listed that incision as “6.5 cm” (and testified that it was “7-8 cm.”) and that it had “widely gaping irregular edges.” These issues are in Best Evidence in chapter 13 (“The Head Wound: Dallas versus Bethesda”) and chapter 11 (“The Tracheotomy Incision: Dallas vs. Bethesda”).

  12. See chapter 9 of Best Evidence: “October 24, 1966: A Confrontation with Liebeler.”

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid., 224.

  15. As I later learned, the chief autopsy surgeon made this statement—in front of the two FBI agents—because of the huge size of the hole in the president’s head (a hole much larger than anything seen in Dallas). See chapter 12 of Best Evidence, “An Oral Utterance.” So it looked to him as if a craniotomy had already been p
erformed. This matter is discussed in detail in chapter 13 of Best Evidence, devoted to the head wounding.

  16. I ascertained this information not only in telephone interviews with key personnel at Bethesda but in filmed interviews I conducted with these key witnesses in the fall of 1980, two months prior to the publication of my book.

  17. The letter—dated June 2, 1964—was transmitting a corrected version of the Adams transcript. It volunteered that Dorothy Garner, Adams’ supervisor, noted that Officer Baker and building superintendent Roy Truly appeared on the fourth floor after Vicki had descended the stairs. Garner’s account didn’t prove exactly when Adams descended the stairs—for that, we have to rely on Adams herself. When interviewed two days after the assassination, Adams said she and Sandra Styles “ran immediately to the back of the building to where the stairs were located and then ran down the stairs” (CD 5, 39). In her signed statement to the FBI dated March 23, 1964 (CE 1381), she said “after she observed the car carrying President Kennedy speed away,” she and Styles “then ran out of the building, via the stairs.” What the Martha Stroud letter does is rule out the notion that Vicki Adams had been in error by minutes, i.e., that she had descended the stairs not seconds later, as she claimed (remember, she used the word “immediately”), but several minutes later. Despite the importance of this letter, Dorothy Garner was not called to testify. But then, neither were Sandra Styles or Elsie Dorman. The probable reason for this lapse was the truly arrogant attitude of the late David Belin. Barry described the scene on April 7, 1964, when Adams gave her deposition in Dallas to Belin, who often behaved like a true believer. “Belin leaned back in his chair and said he didn’t believe a word she was saying.” Well then, asked Vicki, “Why don’t you interview Sandra Styles?” “We don’t need her, we have you,” replied Belin. This was the sort of investigation conducted by the Warren Commission.

  Chapter 1

  1. Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), 110.

  2. WR, 154.

  Chapter 3