Tuesday, August 27, 2013

"Prayer Man" at the TSBD





Thanks to Randy Sorensen for putting this composite together. 

The photo on the upper left is a frame from a film taken by a reporter who was in the press car, a convertible in the motorcade. It shows the front door to the Texas School Book Depository moments after the last shot, and the film includes scenes of Dallas motorcyle policemen Marion Baker running to the front door where he will pass the man standing on the top step to the left of the door.

Under interrogation Oswald claimed that he was in the first floor lunchroomat the time of the shooting, then went out front to see what all the commotion was about.

While this person, dubbed "Prayer Man" because of the way his hands are folded in front of him, could be Oswald, it also could be Buel Wesley Frazer, the young man who gave Oswald a ride to work that morning.

For more on Frazer, see him interviewed at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/LeeHarv  in which he sticks to his story that the package Oswald carried into work that day was too small to be the rifle. He also claims that Capt. Fritz tried to get him to sign a "confession" that was drawn up by the police, which he refused to do.

If the man in the film is Oswald, or if Oswald was telling the truth as to his whereabouts at the time of the assassination - and he was last seen on the first floor by three other employees, then it seems like he went up the front stairs to the second floor and encountered Baker and Roy Truly in the lunchroom where he went to buy a coke.

Oswald then left the second floor lunchroom the same way he entered it, and then encountered Mrs. Reid in the office, where she saw Oswald walking with his coke.









Wesley Frazier 

Frazier at DPD on 11/22/63 in same clothes he wore that day
 
Despite Gary Mack's certainty that William Shelley is Prayer Man, Shelley is pictured in photos as wearing a suit and tie and testified that he and Lovelady immediately went across the street to the traffic island where he looked back and observed Officer Baker enter the front door. So it can't be Shelley. It is also troubling that Frazer can't identify himself in the photo, especially if he is Prayer Man, as I suspect.
 
On Sept. 19, 2013 Gary Mack wrote: The Prayer Man question has probably been answered.  I recently sent the Couch and Darnell frames to Buell Frazier and asked what he thought.  First, he wouldn’t confirm himself being on the top step because the image isn’t clear enough.  He then re-confirmed that Lovelady and Shelley were out on the steps with him, just as he has always said, but  he couldnt confirm Shelley, either, due to the image quality. 
Next I asked about Shelley’s appearance and learned he was a little taller than Lovelady (who was 5’8”), had red hair and a slender build.  When I asked if Shelley usually wore a coat and tie to work Buell said no, he “dressed daily in slacks and sport shirts.”  And he repeated that he, Lovelady and Shelley stayed on the steps for “a short time” after the last shot, but he didn’t estimate how long.
 
So unless Buell Frazier is still part of the cover-up plot, TSBD “Miscellaneous Department” manager William Shelley, by elimination, must be Prayer Man.  According to Shelley’s testimony, “I didn’t do anything for a minute” following the last shot, so the man was standing on the steps before, during and after the time Darnell and Couch filmed those brief scenes.
Gary Mack
 
 

1 comment:

DrTCH said...

Ha ha....I confess it took me an hour or so...to "get up to speed" on this specific issue (as a serious JFK ass. researcher for some forty years). Apparently the figure dubbed "Prayer Man" is based on the indistinct figure in the Wiegman and Darnell films. Now, I happen to suspect that this was LHO…but this IN NO WAY…changes my firm conviction that (in Altgens-6) “Door Man” is Oswald. The thing which REALLY “gets me” is that many who have recently been involved in the dialog on this issue have been taking as a “given” that “Door Man” is Lovelady. And, this lie is prominently featured in a book, “A Brief Guide to the Assassination of JFK,” which—among other things—shows Lovelady in a shirt he WAS NOT wearing on the day of the assassination. He wore, unlike Oswald, a short-sleeved, red vertically striped shirt, while LHO wore a dark, long-sleeved shirt, mostly open in the front (and, incidentally, "Prayer Man's" shirt appears to resemble Oswald's). I will add that the Altgens photo has OBVIOUSLY been manipulated, which is why it was initially difficult to identify this figure as Oswald.
This means that these people are among the many Warren Report apologists today who are determined to further darken the character of Lee Oswald (never more than a suspect, and the designated patsy for the killing) and to add mightily to the abundant confusion in this case. They are what Sylvia Meagher called “Accessories after the Fact.” Though I might allow that SOME are simply “True Believer” lunkheads, easily deceived by the disseminators of propaganda, such as Posner and Bugliosi, who have earned a warm place “down below,” when they “shuffle off this mortal coil.”