The Girl on the Stairs

by Barry Ernest

  59. Signed affidavit of Francis X. O’Neill, HSCA Document No. 013073, November 8, 1978, 3.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Ibid. “The autopsy room had a phone and a coffee pot,” O’Neill had written on p. 4.

  62. HSCA Document No. 180-10089-10178, 2.

  63. Ibid., 3.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid., 4.

  66. Ibid., 8.

  67. Journal of the American Medical Association (May 27, 1992): 2794-2803. The other member of the autopsy team, Pierre Finck, was living in Switzerland and declined an invitation to be interviewed. Included in the article is a picture of Humes and Boswell with JAMA editor George Lundberg. The caption ironically reads that the trio “finally got together on a grassy knoll in Florida to discuss the 1963 autopsy of President John F. Kennedy [author’s emphasis].” See p. 2799.

  68. Ibid., 2794.

  69. Ibid., 2799.

  70. Ibid., 2800.

  71. 2H374-75.

  72. See, for example, transcript, Executive Session Meeting, December 16, 1963, 23. At that meeting, Warren made the comment, “I would think a man who was a trial lawyer and who had that experience in the biggest police department in this country should be an asset to this Commission.”

  73. Office Files of Staff, Francis Adams and Arlen Specter, box 1, entry 44. The application was signed on January 10, 1964.

  74. HSCA, volume 11, attachment G, 388.

  75. Staff Working Papers, Adams, Francis W. H. His objectives were listed in a 106-page memo to Rankin dated February 18, 1964, and titled, “Phase I—The Assassination: President Kennedy’s Agenda and Activities From Planning the Dallas Trip Through Autopsy.”

  76. Edward J. Epstein, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (New York: Viking, 1966), 79. When I wrote Epstein about this matter, he responded that Adams had told him “Rankin did not correctly represent what his [Adams’] work would be” (Edward J. Epstein, e-mail to author, June 9, 2001). Epstein did not reply when I sought clarification on that comment and also denied me access to his transcript of the Adams interview. When I asked on September 13, 2001, if his interview with Adams would be posted on Epstein’s Web page or anywhere else, he answered, “They will eventually be listed there. They are not available elsewhere.” To date, it has not appeared.

  77. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Adams, June 6, 1999.

  78. Arlen Specter briefly discussed his association with team member Adams in his autobiography, Passion for Truth: From Finding JFK’s Single Bullet to Questioning Anita Hill to Impeaching Clinton (New York: William Morrow, 2000). He described his relationship with Adams as “difficult” and said Adams thought the Commission’s work was “too microscopic” and should instead be a more “incisive, piercing investigation” (48-49). Specter portrayed him as a man too busy with his New York law firm to pay much attention to the Commission’s work. “By mid-March Adams seemed to feel removed from the commission’s activities,” Specter wrote. “He came less frequently and was even less engaged than before. He seemed troubled by his situation but unable to change it” (51). Specter went on to say that Adams “was not popular at the commission” (50). I wondered why Adams was disliked so much, especially when Commission members spoke so highly of him when he was hired. On two separate occasions, I sought clarification on that issue by attempting to speak with Specter at his Washington, D.C. office. Both times I left detailed messages regarding my request with his subordinates. I never received a response.

  79. In his November 22, 1963 (15), Belin reminisced about Adams, even though he couldn’t get his name straight. “One of the best-kept secrets inside the Commission,” Belin offered, “was that Francis W. K. [sic] Adams, one of the two lawyers assigned to Area I, performed virtually no work. He should have been asked to resign when it first became apparent that he was not going to undertake his responsibilities, but because of some mistaken fear that this might in some way embarrass the Commission, Mr. Adams was kept on in name only and the entire burden in Area I fell upon Arlen Specter.”

  Chapter 21

  1. The Commission gratefully acknowledged the able assistance that had been provided to it by both of these individuals, thanking “in particular Harold Barefoot Sanders, Jr., U.S. attorney for the northern district of Texas, and his conscientious assistant, Martha Joe Stroud.” See WR, 481.

  2. Based on a review of Miss Adams’ testimony in the twenty-six volumes, the corrections were never made. Curious also was the fact that a copy of Miss Stroud’s letter was not in Rankin’s correspondence or working files, nor could I find it in any “Victoria Adams” files.

  3. Martha Joe Stroud, letter to J. Lee Rankin, June 2, 1964.

  4. Ibid. The parenthetical notation of “(Miss Garner)” is as shown in the original.

  5. WR, 154.

  6. Ibid.

  7. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Weisberg, May 2, 1999.

  8. The comment was made in court papers filed during the case of Harold Weisberg v. United States Department of Justice (Civil Action 75-226), his lawsuit to acquire the results of spectrographic analysis tests conducted by the FBI for the Warren Commission. “In the motion to strike,” those papers say, “plaintiff [Weisberg] also alleges the existence of certain documents which he claims have not been provided by the FBI. In a sense, plaintiff could make such claims ad infinitum since he is perhaps more familiar with events surrounding the investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination than anyone now employed by the FBI.” See p. 3.

  Chapter 22

  1. Harold Weisberg, letter to Robert Groden, September 10, 1993.

  2. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Groden, October 3, 1999.

  3. On his personal Web page, Groden includes this unusual message: “$5000 Reward. For information leading to the return of all of the unique JFK assassination photo slide transparencies, photographic materials and other items which were stolen from Robert Groden’s home on September 9, 1999, and the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators of the thefts. The identities of the culprits are known.”

  4. When I returned home, I wrote Groden a letter, reminding him who I was and specifically asking for information about purchasing a video he had for sale. I received no reply.

  Chapter 23

  1. Gary Mack, letter to author, June 30, 1999.

  2. Joseph Cody, letter to author, July 13, 1999.

  3. Ibid.

  4. From the taped interview with Cody, October 4, 1999.

  5. City of Dallas Archives, JFK Collection, box 15, folder 3.

  6. 7H268.

  7. Joseph Ball, memorandum to Alfred Goldberg, June 26, 1964.

  8. Dallas Morning News, December 5, 1992.

  9. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Leavelle, October 7, 1999.

  10. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Day, October 6, 1999.

  11. See, for example, CE 718 (as shown in 17H501).

  12. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Walther, October 6, 1999.

  13. In Case Closed (New York: Random House, 1993), a celebrated book that defends the Warren Commission, author Gerald Posner discusses Mrs. Walther in a single paragraph on page 231. It is important to examine how Posner shaded her words from her FBI statement in an attempt to discredit this witness. First, Posner writes, “She claimed one man had his arms extended and was holding a machine gun outside the window, for all to see.” The reader can judge Posner’s accuracy from what the FBI quoted Mrs. Walther as saying (CE 2086, as shown in 24H522): “This man had the window open and was standing up leaning out this window with both his hands extended outside the window ledge. In his hands, this man was holding a rifle with the barrel pointed downward, and the man was looking south on Houston Street. The man was wearing a white shirt and had blond or light brown hair. She recalled at the time that she had not noticed the man there a few moments pre
viously when she looked toward the building and thought that apparently there were guards everywhere. The rifle had a short barrel and seemed large around the stock or end of the rifle. Her impression was that the gun was a machine gun. She noticed nothing like a telescopic sight on the rifle or a leather strap or sling on the rifle. She said she knows nothing about rifles or guns of any type, but thought that the rifle was different from any she had ever seen.”

  Posner also writes, “Walther also said a second man, with another gun, stood directly behind the first one.” That is not what Mrs. Walter stated, and it displays a lack of care on Posner’s part in his reading of the FBI report. Immediately following what she said about the man in the window, Mrs. Walther was quoted by the FBI as saying, “This man was standing in about the middle of the window. In the same window, to the left of this man, she could see a portion of another man standing by the side of this man with a rifle.” It is clear that “this man with a rifle” was in reference to the individual Mrs. Walther had already described and in no way was intended to mean that the second man also held a gun. That is apparent moments later in her statement, when she is quoted as saying, “Almost immediately after noticing this man with the rifle and the other man standing beside him, someone in the crowd said ‘Here they come,’ and she looked to her left.”

  Posner then cites the fact that Mrs. Walther had a companion with her: “A friend, Pearl Springer, was with her and did not notice any gunmen.” The implication was that because Mrs. Springer did not see any “gunmen,” the erroneous use of the plural “men” notwithstanding, then Mrs. Walther must have been wrong. But Posner does not share with his readers why Mrs. Springer saw no one in the window, a reason that is clear in that woman’s FBI statement (CE 2087, as shown in 24H523): “They [Mrs. Walther and Mrs. Springer] stood there for about fifteen minutes waiting for the parade. During that time, she [Mrs. Springer] looked around at the crowd but never looked up above the ground floor of the Texas School Book Depository building located diagonally across the street from where she was standing.” Posner also undermines Mrs. Walther’s testimony when he tells readers she never told Mrs. Springer about what she had seen. Since the source of the shots was unknown at this point and she believed “there were guards everywhere,” her silence does not necessarily induce suspicion, unless one wants it to do just that.

  14. A sign on this display reads, “Investigators disturbed the arrangement of book cartons and other evidence in searching the corner window area. Official photographs taken on Friday and Monday at the scene were all reconstructions of the arrangement, and showed different configurations of cartons.”

  15. Portions of Mrs. Dorman’s film became part of an updated video produced and sold by the Sixth Floor Museum titled, JFK: The Dallas Tapes (1998).

  16. From a taped interview with Mack, October 7, 1999.

  17. Lovelady died on January 14, 1979, after suffering a heart attack. He was forty-one years old.

  18. Figure IV-67 (as shown in HSCA, vol. 6, 288).

  Chapter 26

  1. The real Victoria Elizabeth Adams, e-mail to author, February 3, 2002.

  Chapter 27

  1. Quoted material and details regarding the story of Ms. Adams are compiled from numerous e-mails and telephone conversations that began in February 2002.

  2. At the time, Ms. Adams was five feet, three and three-quarters inches tall.

  3. There is nothing on record indicating such a fire occurred. If it had, it is a sure bet the story would have been picked up, since the media basically had been monitoring every move of the Dallas Police.

  Chapter 29

  1. Curiously, Officer Marrion Baker also saw a black man in the same general area. During a December 2004 telephone interview, the now-retired Baker told me when he and building manager Roy Truly reached the rear of the Depository on their way to the stairs, he noticed an “older, large black man sitting toward the back stairs, near the elevators there.” Baker said the man was the only person he saw in that area. When he asked Truly about him, Truly replied that the man was an employee and was “slightly retarded.” Baker went on to say that when he arrived on the second floor, he saw a man later identified as Oswald through a window in the vestibule door. The door was definitely closed when he spotted Oswald, Baker recalled. Oswald said nothing during the entire encounter with the police officer, which took about thirty seconds, Baker said, and he appeared “very calm.” I asked Baker if he heard any other sounds at the time, such as general office noise or perhaps commotion as someone ran down the stairs behind him. He said he heard nothing, although he admitted he was preoccupied with Oswald during that time.

  Chapter 30

  1. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Butler, February 13, 2002.

  2. Quoted material and details regarding the story of Mrs. Butler are compiled from numerous e-mails to the author from February 14 to 19, 2002.

  3. Still nagged by this the following year, I would send another e-mail to Mrs. Butler, asking whether she had seen Shelley or Lovelady at any time on November 22, 1963. “I don’t recall seeing them in person,” she answered on January 26, 2003, “just in photographs later, in which they were identified as being among the group standing on the front steps watching the parade.”

  Chapter 31

  1. The quote is from “I Did It My Way,” a 1,200-word summation of her life that she struggled to compose during her final weeks.

  Chapter 32

  1. CE 1381 (as shown in 22H648).

  2. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Garner, June 27, 2011.

  3. 3H182.

  4. WR, 154.

  Epilogue

  1. Washington Post, February 23, 2002. On March 4, 2002, the New York Times wrote, “Unlike many other critics of the investigation, Mr. Weisberg cannot accurately be called [a] conspiracy theorist, because he did not speculate about who might have been involved in the assassination.”

  2. People (November 24, 2003): 15.

  3. The show, “The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy,” aired November 20, 2003.

  4. The implication of Oswald’s absence from the roll call, which was held shortly before 2 P.M. on the day of the assassination, was that he had fled the scene of the crime. It was in fact the basis on which Dallas Police labeled him a prime suspect. By the mid-1990s, though, many authors were reporting on and showing a document uncovered in the Dallas Police Archives that contained a partial list of employees of the Depository. Among those on that list were the names of four employees who were described as being still outside the building at 2:55 P.M. or later and therefore also not present for any roll call.

  5. While it is true that Oswald once achieved “sharpshooter” status during his stint in the U.S. Marines, that designation occurred in 1956 after weeks of “extensive” weapons training and a subsequent score of 212 on the rifle range, two points above the minimum needed to be classified a sharpshooter. At that time, he was evaluated as being a “fairly good shot.” But what Jennings failed to mention, even though it was clearly stated in the Warren Report, was the fact that when Oswald was tested again in 1959, he scored 191, just one point above the minimum necessary to be ranked a “marksman.” That was the lowest level on the Marines’ marksman-sharpshooter-expert classification scale. Oswald, at that point, was evaluated as being a “rather poor shot.” See WR, 191.

  6. Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 832. In a related endnote, the author writes, “Conspiracy theorists see Victoria Adams’s testimony as evidence Oswald couldn’t have used the stairs to get to the second floor (otherwise Adams would have seen or heard him), and therefore couldn’t have been Kennedy’s assassin.” Bugliosi, without any further analysis or factual foundation, believes Miss Adams came down the stairs later than she thought. And also like the Warren Commission, he discredits Miss Adams because she said she saw Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor. But he goes a step farther and cites the testimony of Eddie Piper, a Depository e
mployee who told the Commission he was standing on the first floor moments after the shooting and did not see Miss Adams come down the stairs before Officer Marrion Baker and Roy Truly ran up them (7H389). Bugliosi, who is quick to dismiss other researchers for their dependence on unreliable and dubious witnesses, does not tell his readers that even the Warren Report called Piper a “confused” witness who “had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon” (WR, 153).

  7. Theodore H. White, in The Making of the President 1964 (New York: Signet, 1966), 48, writes that on the return flight to Washington aboard Air Force One, “the party learned that there was no conspiracy; learned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest.” This occurred only a few hours after Kennedy had been shot.

  Vincent Salandria related the story that Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, received the same message while he was on a Cabinet-level plane returning to Washington from Hawaii. Salinger personally instructed the National Archives to release copies of the cockpit transmission tapes to Salandria in order to confirm the incident. Those copies, however, were reported to be missing from the Archives. Salandria then requested the information from the White House Communication Agency and was told the radio tapes were made for official use only and could not be released. That incident is “conclusive evidence of high-level U.S. government guilt,” Salandria would say. “The first announcement of Oswald as the lone assassin, before there was any evidence against him, and while there was overwhelmingly convincing evidence of conspiracy, had come from the White House Situation Room. . . . This announcement had been made while back in Dallas, District Attorney Henry Wade was stating that ‘preliminary reports indicated more than one person was involved in the shooting’” (from a transcript of the speech Salandria delivered to the Coalition on Political Assassination conference in Dallas, Texas, November 21, 1998, 14). Wade’s comment was published in the Dallas Morning News on November 23, 1963.

  8. I was able to obtain several handwriting samples of Victoria Adams from her son. Although I don’t claim to be an expert, those samples do appear to be a match with the signature and correctional notations made on this later version of her testimony.