JFK Special: Oswald was in the Doorway, after all!

NOVANEWS

by Dr. Ralph Cinque and Jim Fetzer

 

The release of the notes taken by Dallas Police Department Homicide Detective Will Fritz during his interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in which Lee told Fritz that he was “out with Bill Shelly in front” has resurrected a debate of long-standing over whether Oswald was the “Doorway Man” in the famous photograph taken during the assassination by Associated Press photographer James “Ike” Altgens.

In this study, we examine that question. Dr. Fetzer had previously concluded that Oswald was another figure in the Altgens photo, namely, the man who is standing to the right/front of Doorway Man as viewed in the photograph (to Doorway Man’s left/front from his perspective) but whose face and shirt have been obliterated. New observations, first advanced by Ralph Cinque, have convinced Fetzer that Cinque is right: the man in the doorway was Lee Harvey Oswald, after all.

In addition to Cinque’s arguments that the man in the doorway was wearing Oswald’s shirt, Fetzer adds the complementary argument that the shirt of the other figure had to be obscured for the obvious reason that it would have given the game away, which explains why his shirt as well as his face had to be removed. Doorway Man’s face, hairline and the pattern of his shirt were “tweaked” to more closely resemble Lovelady or his face may have been transferred to him, but the form, the fit, and the lay of his man’s outer-shirt and under-shirt are those of Oswald. So, unless Lovelady was wearing Oswald’s clothing, the evidence that we present leaves no room for reasonable doubt.

The Will Fritz Notes

In JFK: What We Know Now That We Didn’t Know Then (Veterans Today, 21 November 2011), Dr. James H. Fetzer provides a valuable summation of recent advances in JFK assassination research, including the discovery of the written notes of Detective Will Fritz concerning Oswald’s whereabouts during the shooting, as mentioned above. That Oswald told Fritz that he was “out with Bill Shelley in front” contravenes the established belief that he said he was in the lunchroom, where he was shortly before and would be confronted shortly after. Here are those notes:

Will Fritz’ handwritten interrogation notes

Will Fritz’ typed interrogation notes

This discovery led Dr. Fetzer to take another look at the Altgens, where he noticed that one of the faces had been obfuscated. See the object in the red circle below. Since the hairline looks like Oswald’s and Oswald had told Fritz he had been there, which should have been easy to confirm, he drew the inference that that person must have been Lee:

Fetzer’s hypothesis: The man with no face was Oswald

While the identity of the Man in the Doorway has been long disputed and generally supposed to be not Lee Oswald but Billy Lovelady, Ralph Cinque’s approach has been to focus on the shirt that the Doorway Man was wearing and to compare it with those worn by Lovelady and by Lee. While apologists for the Warren Report like to claim that Lee was on the 6thfloor firing at Kennedy, there are multiple witnesses who saw him both in and around the lunchroom at 11:50 AM, Noon, 12:15 PM and as late as 12:25 PM, as Dr. Fetzer explains in his study.

Since Lee was “the patsy,” and the conspirators were committed to that course, they had to seize the Altgens photo and obfuscate his image, according to Dr. Fetzer. But which figure was he? Even Oliver Stone concluded that, although Doorway Man bore a strong resemblance to Oswald, he actually was Lovelady. Most JFK researchers concluded the same thing, including Dr. Fetzer. But, I maintain that the likenesses to Lovelady, such as the hairline and the shirt pattern, were faked, and that other, more compelling evidence, especially relating to their respective shirts, proves that the Doorway Man was Oswald.

It’s easy to see why Warren Report devotees jumped on the bandwagon to endorse the Lovelady hypothesis and declare the matter settled. But, to my dying day, I will never understand why conspiracy researchers, of all stripes, were ever willing to concede that point, especially in light of all of the known subterfuge in the handling of evidence in this case.

Consider: The Zapruder film: altered; the medical evidence: altered; the President’s wounds: altered; the autopsy photos: altered; the alleged murder weapon: altered; the limousine: altered; and on and on. Dr. Fetzer’s three books on the assassination, Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000) and The Great Zarpruder Film Hoax (2003), are dedicated to sorting out the authentic from the non-authentic evidence. Why would a conspiracy advocate not assume that the Altgens photo might also have been altered?

Was there any chance that local or federal officials would release a photo of Oswald standing outside that building even if he was there? Weren’t they vigorously, adamantly, and doggedly committed to the lone gunman theory, to incriminating Oswald? Was there any chance they would do otherwise? By the time that blow-up of Doorway Man came out, they had already “crossed the Rubicon” as far as blaming Oswald. Skepticism among researchers and truth-seekers should have reigned then–and it should still reign today!

The Shirt as the Key

As I see it, the shirt is the key to identifying the Doorway Man. They obfuscated the features of the man to Doorway Man’s left/front (from his perspective, right/front viewing him), but they left him, Doorway Man, largely intact. So we have the whole layout of him, with the unbuttoned, loose-fitting outer shirt and the v-necked t-shirt underneath–just as we see on Oswald.

I maintain that, while they were able to change some details, such as the hairline and the pattern of the shirt, which are features most often cited to support the Lovelady idea, they could not change the structural features of the outer-shirt or the way it hung over the t-shirt–and that that turns out to be the smoking gun.

Here in the high-tech world of 2012, the prospect of adding lines and blotches to a digital shirt to alter its pattern, to make it look more checkered and like Lovelady’s, is not only possible, but something that anyone can do. Ever hear of Photoshop? And forget Photoshop. Let’s take it down a notch.

I have watched my 6 year old granddaughter playing a computer game in which she changes the pattern of a little girl’s dress on the screen just by hitting a key. And I know that I myself could alter the hairline in a photo because I have done it. Using Picassa, I altered the hairline of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Here is what I did: In Picassa, under “Basic Fixes”, I chose “Retouch” and then I choose the smallest possible “Brush Size”. After clicking right at his hairline to indicate the target site, I duplicated a piece of clear skin from his forehead and moved it up to that little spot on his hairline and–presto! He instantly became more receding. It looked pretty authentic, too, I must say.

Now, I realize that back in 1963 there was no Picassa nor was there Photoshop. But just because they didn’t exist on the consumer level doesn’t mean that those capacities didn’t exist at all. Remember, this was during the Cold War, and there was a lot of espionage and counter-espionage going on, where altering photos was well-entrenched as a tactic of espionage. If you are willing to accept that they were able to alter the Zapruder film, then you have to concede that they had the ability to alter stills, as the Zapruder film was just a series of still photos, rapidly sequenced. And as we will explain, there are many anomalies in the Altgens photo which scream that it was altered.

But now, let’s compare these two photos to see the very strong resemblance between Lee Oswald and Doorway Man:

 Look at the obvious similarities in body size and type, the shape of the head, the shape of the face, and, of course, the clothing. Look at the unusual manner in which the shirt is being worn: unbuttoned, except at the bottom. He looks a lot like Oswald, doesn’t he?

When we consider just the loose-fitting, long-sleeved, unbuttoned outer-shirt over the v-necked t-shirt, it is distinctive in itself. How likely is it that Lovelady happened to get up that morning and dress himself the same way? What were the mathematical chances of that? Well, let’s use the Altgens photo as an example:

The Altgens’ photograph with the man in the doorway

Variations in Men’s Clothing

Let’s consider the variations in men’s clothing that we can see just in this one picture. And we won’t consider the policemen in their uniforms or the Secret Service agents in their suits. On the far right, there is a man wearing a jacket and white shirt. Between the rear cars, there is a man wearing a solid white shirt on the left, and a man wearing a solid black shirt on the right. In front of the façade of the building, there is a man wearing a fedora hat. The man to the left of Doorway Man with his hands raised seems to be wearing just a t-shirt with no outer shirt. The man to the right of Doorway Man is wearing a suit jacket and a fedora hat, and eerily, he is looking at Doorway Man instead of at the President. What’s up with that? Unfortunately, there are a lot more women in this picture than men, but further down to our left, there is an African-American man who is wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt.

So, every one of those men is dressed differently than Doorway Man, as we would expect. Clothing choices are quite plentiful. They are practically unlimited. To suggest that Doorway Man is Lovelady is to suggest that a tremendous coincidence took place that day, which is, that Lovelady and Oswald showed up to work as virtual twins. It’s not just that they wore the same clothes but that they wore them in the exact same manner- and an unconventional manner at that. Again, what are the odds? When you have a controversy and someone tries to tell you that an unlikely event happened by coincidence, you have every right to be skeptical.

The shirts look big on both Oswald and Doorway Man. Doorway Man is swimming in his; it’s billowing; and in Oswald, the material is bunching up and folding over. And in other pictures of Oswald, the shirt also looks big on him. So, that would have been another coincidence between Oswald and Lovelady, that they both just happened to wear large, loose-fitting shirts that day. We know that that is not true of Lovelady. We have a picture of him from that day, namely:

Does that look loose-fitting? I don’t think so. If anything, it looks tight. Across the chest, there is no excess capacity. In fact, that may be why his collar is flipping up. Also, you can see no loose material around the shoulder. It isn’t hanging low at the shoulder. At the bottom it’s wrinkled a little, but overall, the shirt seems snug. And notice that, unlike Doorway Man and Oswald, Lovelady’s shirt is mostly buttoned. Only the top button is unbuttoned, which is typical.

The above picture of Lovelady was taken on the day of the assassination after Oswald was arrested. If Lovelady was the Doorway Man, when did he button-up? And why was his shirt unbuttoned in the first place? We know why Oswald’s shirt was unbuttoned: his buttons were missing. But Lovelady’s buttons were not missing. So, why was he dressed so slovenly during the motorcade? And why did he fix himself up afterwards? And exactly when did he do so? To the best of our knowledge, nobody asked him. No one in the Dallas Police Department, the FBI, nor the Warren Commission thought it was important.

Obfuscating the Evidence

Let’s acknowledge that this whole controversy could have been easily resolved at the time. They had Lovelady; he had his shirt; they had Altgens; he had his camera. They could have put Lovelady on the landing in his same clothes and put Altgens on the spot from which he took his famous picture and then tried to duplicate it. Why didn’t they do it? The answer should be obvious. They were not trying to solve the crime but to frame the patsy. And they would do nothing to undermine that effort.

But, let’s continue our three-way comparison. Both Doorway Man and Oswald were wearing “v-necked” t-shirts. Was Lovelady? Well, we have three pictures of Lovelady, and in two of them he is clearly wearing a round-necked t-shirt. One of them was taken shortly after the assassination by the FBI, while the other was taken several years later. Most men wear one or the other. It’s like boxers or briefs. The third photo is the same one of Lovelady that you see above, taken on the day of the assassination. To my eye, as I blow the picture up, it looks like he is wearing a round-neck t-shirt. It certainly does not have that notched, descending quality that you see on Doorway Man and Oswald.

To head off an objection, I’ll admit that some have tried to say that the t-shirts are not v-necked. It’s just that the material is worn and stretched and pulled down. Dr. Fetzer informs me that Oswald tended to pull on the neck of his t-shirts. But both of them? That would amount to yet another coincidence between Oswald and Lovelady, that they shared the same quirk. And, in all the pictures we have of Lovelady, his t-shirts look pristine, undamaged. So, that is really just another arbitrary “what if”.

Much has been made of the pattern of Doorman’s shirt looking more like Lovelady’s. But, what if the white blotches had been added? If you look at the areas between the white blotches, you see that they look “grainy” much like Oswald’s tweed shirt. And what’s that black blotch above Doorman’s wrist? And there is another black blotch higher up on the other side. Don’t trust anything about that pattern. That plaid effect could easily have been faked. It was just a matter of overexposing and underexposing areas to create alternating darkness and light. And note that the pattern of the shirt was the only thing about it that matched Lovelady. Everything else about the shirt matched Oswald. And the pattern was hardly a great match to Lovelady. You see white blotches on Doorman’s shirt, but on Lovelady’s shirt, it’s only the lines between squares that are white. That inconsistency is disturbing.

The differences in the hair and the hairline would have been very easy to alter, especially since Doorway Man’s hair merges with the dark murky space above his head. The differences in minute facial details that tend to resemble Lovelady are subtle and could have been “fine tuned” or via a facial transfer. That, after all, is what they did with the backyard photographs, where Oswald’s face was imposed upon someone else’s body. They could just as easily imposed Lovelady’s face on Oswald’s body.

But, there is one more thing about Oswald’s shirt, and it’s what started me down this whole road in the first place, and that is: the lay of the shirt. It was a very unusual shirt he was wearing. It was very different from the ordinary, plaid, flannel shirt of Lovelady. Oswald’s shirt looks rather tweedy, and it had the uncanny tendency to fold over into a neat lapel below the collar, especially on the left side. We’ll look at it, but first, let’s look at an ordinary shirt, one worn by Billy Lovelady.

FBI photo of Lovelady wearing the shirt he told them he had worn

This picture was taken of Lovelady shortly after the assassination by the FBI. They asked him to leave his shirt unbuttoned, presumably to show that he could have been the Doorway Man. Notice that the margin of the shirt rises vertically and angles out as it approaches the collar. That’s the normal pattern that you typically see with most shirts. You know it isn’t a lapel. Now compare that with these pictures of Oswald:

 

 Do you notice how nicely the material folds over on his left side? It really does look like a lapel, doesn’t it? And whether it is really a lapel or a pseudo-lapel doesn’t matter. The point is that it’s folding over very nicely, very neatly, and it’s staying down, like a lapel. Here’s another photo of Oswald to compare with Doorway Man.

 You may need a magnifying glass and bright light to see clearly, but on Oswald’s right, which is your left, you can see the collar and a small lapel, and it looks uncannily like Doorway Man’s. Shift your eyes back and forth and compare. Then, on Oswald’s left, which is your right, you can see the prominent lapel. It looks more like a jacket than a shirt. With Doorway Man on his left side, it’s rather hazy, but the material does look thicker on that side. I believe it is thicker because the material is folded over, doubled over, into a lapel. Compare it to his right side, which looks weak and flimsy.

And what is that white striping over Doorway Man’s left shoulder? It looks like some kind of artifact, but was it accidental or put there on purpose? Were they trying to prevent us from seeing his left collar? I think that if those stripes weren’t there, the resemblance of those two left collars would be riveting and startling.

Some have suggested that that white artifact is really another man, and that the line between the white stripes is his black tie. Hence, he is “Black Tie Man”. But, it is one freaky image. Why is the top of his head missing? And, is he standing in front of or behind Doorman? If he is behind, as he seems to be, then how is it that he is covering up Doorman’s shoulder? And if he is in front, how is it that Doorman is covering up his shoulder? How can they both be covering up each other’s shoulder at the same time? One of them should have a visible shoulder. It’s like they are conjoined twins. If that is a man, it is one weird fusion of two people, and surely, it is photographically impossible. No physical arrangement of two people could produce an image like that. And I think I know the explanation for it: it’s fake. The conspirators were making sure that we couldn’t see Doorway Man’s left collar because if we did, the resemblance to Oswald’s would have been so striking, the jig would have been up long ago. Take a look at this close-up of Oswald’s shirt, and focus on his left side, with the collar, the lapel, and the button-loop jutting out at the top of the lapel. It’s very distinctive and unusual, and they had to cover it up. That was the purpose of Black Tie Man.

Here is what I consider to be the money shot. It’s a comparison of Doorman’s and Oswald’s right collars. Notice how perfectly they match. And it’s not typical for most shirts because the margins here are rising quite vertically on both. Do you think that Lovelady’s shirt behaved like that? It did not.

 And why did they take away Oswald’s shirt and march him around in a t-shirt? It was practically December in Dallas. He complained about it, too. He wanted to know why he couldn’t have his shirt back. Were they trying to keep us from forming too many visual and mental images of him in that shirt?

Now let’s do the same kind of analysis between Lovelady and Doorway Man. The picture on the left was taken years after the assassination, where he is supposed to be all dressed up like Doorway Man.

 It’s amazing to me that Dr. Megen Knuth, who writes for Dr. John McAdams on his JFK website, had the nerve and the gall to say that the above picture of Billy Lovelady “was entirely consistent with all the photos from the day of the assassination.” Oh, really? No one who has read this study this far, I think, would be inclined to agree with that.

Lovelady’s attempt to duplicate the appearance of Doorway Man strikes me as pathetic. First, he’s got that shirt pressed with an iron. That is not the natural lay and look of that shirt–and it is certainly not the way he wore it on November 22. Second, look at the exposed button. That button would have been secured. Third, higher up, his shirt would have spread apart in the normal fashion and not be all pressed down . Remember how his collar was flipping up on Assassination Day? It isn’t doing that here. It practically looks sewn down, although I’m sure it’s just pressed down. The margin of Doorway Man’s shirt is rising vertically, whereas Lovelady’s is going off at a steep angle. Fourth, notice how Doorway Man’s shirt is billowing, even sprawling, while Lovelady’s looks sleek and tight. No way is that the same fit. No way is that the same shirt.

Billy Lovelady surely knew that he did not go to work that way on 22 November 1963. So at the time this latter picture was taken, he was a minor part of the conspiracy; he was engaged in a fraud. But it may well have been involuntary. More than 100 witnesses related to the assassination came to untimely ends. Perhaps he did not want to join them.

But, alas, Billy Lovelady died of a fatal first heart attack at the young age of 42 right before he was to testify before the House Subcommittee on Assassinations in 1979. The odds of that happening were less than 1 in 10,000. Notice also that Lovelady is wearing a round-necked t-shirt. It’s ironic that, even when he is trying to look like Doorway Man, it doesn’t occur to him to wear a v-necked t-shirt.

Other weird figures in the Altgens

Let’s look at some other disturbing features of the Altgens photo.

Let’s look at some other disturbing features of the Altgens photo.

Consider the man next to Doorway Man, who is wearing a t-shirt with his arms raised. Notice he has no head. Why does he have no head? It seems strange, doesn’t it? Some have tried to tell me that it was due to shading from the lintel, but why just his head so exclusively? He’s like the Headless Horseman. And his arms are very wide–too wide to blacken his whole face. No way are his arms blocking the light.

And next to his right arm, you see a weird white blotch, what looks like an artifact. But you can also make out the outline of another man’s head. And below his head, you see his body in black, presumably as though he were wearing a black sweater, where the black of his sweater merges with the black of the hair of the African-American woman in front of him. And thereby his whole presence is very cleverly disguised. Who is he? Dr. Fetzer, when he encountered the obliteration of the face, thought that that must have been Lee Oswald. The obliteration of the shirt as well as the face, however, has caused him to reconsider.

My argument is that, since Doorway Man is wearing Oswald’s unique clothing, he has to have been Oswald. And that means that the likenesses to Lovelady have to have been faked. Clearly, no one was attempting to exonerate Oswald by inserting him into the Altgens. On the contrary, a concerted effort was being made to frame him for the crime, which included faking the backyard photographs and planting his palm print on the Mannlicher-Carcano, as others have long since explained. So, we have no reason to suspect that likenesses to Oswald were superimposed over Lovelady. It could only have been the other way around. And Lovelady would not have been wearing Oswald’s shirt.

Moreover, if Oswald was in front of Lovelady, Lovelady would have seen him, which he didn’t report doing. And I do not presume that Lovelady was lying that early in the investigation. He had the courage to tell the Warren Commission and the FBI that he thought the shots came from the Grassy Knoll. He was standing right below the supposed sniper’s nest, and yet, he never said that the shots came from overhead, as they wanted to hear. So, if he was willing to tell the truth about the direction of the shots, then I presume that he also told them the truth about not having seen Oswald.

Read through Lovelady’s testimony to the Warren Commission, as I have. He starts out observing that he was on the same floor as was Oswald and that everyone was coming down the elevator to go outside and watch the motorcade, when Oswald yelled to them to hold the elevator for him. But they didn’t do it, whether it was inadvertent or deliberate. And so Oswald missed that elevator and had to wait for the next one. So, there are good reasons to think that Oswald was later getting outside than the others.

Notice that Lovelady’s testimony already suggests that Oswald was not on the 6th floor. Now, what do people do when they are forming a line or a group that is facing a certain direction? Everyone goes forward. That’s because they know that other people are coming in from behind to fill up the space. If you got there first, would you stop on the landing so that others had to move around you? Of course not. And why wouldn’t you want to be as close to the front as possible?

Since Lovelady got outside before Oswald, it means that we should find Lovelady in front of Oswald in the crowd and not behind him. And if Oswald was behind him, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that Lovelady didn’t see him.

It’s true that nobody that we know of reported seeing Oswald outside. But, take a look at Doorway Man. Can you see that he is standing partially behind the pillar? Doesn’t it seem possible that he could have slipped in back there at the last second and have been hardly noticed?

A “more reasonable” explanation

Remember that all the attention, all the focus, all the eyes, were to the front. What I am suggesting is a more credible scenario than placing Oswald in front of several people and their saying that they didn’t see him. To use Dr. Fetzer’s phrasing, mine appears to be a “more reasonable alternative explanation.”

And at this point in time, I am very glad to say that Dr. Fetzer has expressed his agreement with me. Our contention is that the obfuscated man in front of Doorway Man appears to have been the real Lovelady. Once it was decided to convert Oswald into Lovelady, they had to get rid of the real Lovelady–which they did.

Finally, here is another, larger take of the above picture.

Do you see the man on the left in the Fedora hat? He bears a striking resemblance to Jack Ruby. Dr. Fetzer agrees and says so in his article. In fact, I didn’t notice it until he pointed it out. And doesn’t it look as though he is looking at Doorway Man? Why is he looking at Doorway Man while the President is driving by? And why do the Secret Service agents seem to be looking at Doorway Man? Perhaps they’re just looking at the crowd in general, but it looks to me as though they realized it was Oswald.

Still it does look, eerily, like all three of them are focused on Doorway Man. And if so, what interest could they possibly have had in Doorway Man if Doorway Man was Billy Lovelady? He had no connections to Ruby, which Lee Oswald most certainly had. And he didn’t have any connections to any clandestine agencies of the federal government, which Lee Oswald most certainly had.

And just look at that hair on the African-American woman on our right. A beautiful cheerful smile, a radiant face, but look how the contour of her hair looks fake, artificial, and exaggerated. Compare it to the hair on the woman next to her, which looks natural and normal. My guess is that they exaggerated her hair to further obfuscate the features of the man behind her, namely, Billy Lovelady. His shirt had such a distinct pattern that it had to be covered-up and blackened out, a question to which I return below.

Weisberg’s doubts about Lovelady’s shirt

There is some uncertainty about which of his shirts Lovelady actually wore that day. In his book, PHOTOGRAPHIC WHITEWASH (1967), Harold Weisberg displayed an FBI document in which Billy Lovelady testified that he wore a red and white vertically striped shirt that day and not the checkered one. Dated 3/2/64, its key passages are as follows:

BILLY NOLAN LOVELADY appeared at the Dallas FBI Office at which time he consented to being photographed.

LOVELADY advised that, on the day of the assassination of President JOHN F. KENNEDY November 22, 1963, at the time of the assassination and shortly before, he was standing in the doorway of the front entrance to the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) Building, 411 Elm Street, Dallas, Texas, where he is employed. He stated he was wearing a red and white vertically striped shirt and blue jeans.

LOVELADY stated that his picture has appeared in several publications which depicts him on the far left side of the front doorway of the TSBD. Lovelady was exhibited a picture appearing on pages 4-5 of the magazine entitled “Four Dark Days in History”, Copyright 1963 by Special Publications, Inc. LA, CA. He immediately identified the picture of the individual on the far left side of the doorway of the TSBD as being his photograph. He stated that this same photograph or one identical to it has appeared in the Dallas Times Herald newspaper of November 23, 1963 and in the Cincinnati Inquirer of December 3, 1963. It also appeared in an edition of the Saturday Evening Post the date of which he does not know [which was the December 14, 1963 issue.] (PHOTOGRAPHIC WHITEWASH, p. 194)

Since Lovelady identified himself as Doorway Man, which now appears to be false, we have to wonder why he did it. He must have known that it was expected of him. He may have been threatened. His family may have been threatened. He may have been bribed. And his untimely death from a first heart attack at the age of 42 is very disturbing, considering how fit he looked. As JFK observed, “Life is not fair!”

The complementary argument

The subtleties of the shirt of Doorway Man have been missed by several generations of JFK students. But it was a very distinctive shirt and had features that were not present on the checkered shirt that Lovelady was alleged to have worn that day. If the checkered shirt was the shirt that Lovelady wore that day, then he was not Doorway Man. And if he was wearing the vertically striped shirt instead, then the argument is even more compelling. The complementary argument can therefore be made about both: since the shirt that the man whose face was obliterated WAS ALSO OBLITERATED, there had to have been something distinctive about the shirt that required concealment. When Lovelady subsequently demonstrated the shirt he said he was wearing for the FBI–with its broad and bright strips–it became obvious why they had to obfuscate the shirt as well as the face.

So either way–whether Lovelady was wearing either the checkered shirt or the vertically striped shirt–the shirt being worn by “Obfuscated Man” had to be blackened out, which it was. That there is a real issue of importance here is confirmed by the tactics adopted by Professor John McAdams, perhaps the most vociferous defender of the “lone nut” theory. On his website, McAdams admits that in a letter to the Warren Commission, the FBI stated that Billy Lovelady told them that,

On February 29, 1964, Billy Nolan Lovelady was photographed by Special Agents of the FBI at Dallas, Texas. On this occasion, Lovelady advised that on the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, at the time of the assassination, and shortly before, he was standing in the doorway of the front entrance to the TSBD where he is employed. He stated he was wearing a red and white vertical striped shirt and blue-jeans (CD 457, pp. 4-5).

Vertically striped shirt he told the FBI he was wearing

Even though the FBI photos show Lovelady in a red and white vertical striped, short sleeved shirt, McAdams suggests this was simply a “misunderstanding” and that Lovelady later recanted and said that he was wearing the checkered shirt instead. But that’s quite a stretch. Many of the Parkland doctors were harassed and intimidated to change their observations and findings, where Malcolm Perry, M.D., was a classic example. Having three times described the shot to JFK’s throat as a wound of entry, he was subjected to mental and emotional abuse. It is overwhelmingly more likely that Lovelady was threatened to revert to the checkered shirt than that he would “mistakenly” appear in the vertically striped shirt for an interview with the FBI.

Three Shirts and a “Magic Button”

There are several more pictures worth looking at because they make the case even stronger for Oswald being the Doorway Man. Remember, the whole case is built around the proposition that unusual coincidences are suspect. They just don’t happen. When you see a lot of likenesses between two figures, there is probably a lot more to it than sheer luck. The first picture is a collage of the three right collars: Doorman’s, Oswald’s, and Lovelady’s. You can see the likeness of Doorman’s and Oswald’s, but Lovelady’s looks different. His shirt is folding over at a different angle. That is significant; it is not trivial. Cast your eyes back and forth and see.

And while discounting the difference between color and black and white, you should still note the tremendous contrast and pattern of Lovelady’s collar and compare it to the bland and uniform patterns of Oswald’s and Doorman’s. Of course, Oswald’s collar looks bland and uniform because it was, as we have seen in all of his pictures. But, what about Doorman’s? If he is Lovelady, shouldn’t we see some evidence of that rich, exorbitant, and complicated pattern in his collar? And if you think it’s because the collar is too small to show the contrast, realize that you can find comparable areas on the sleeve and body of Doorman’s shirt which do show contrast.

Of course, Dr. Fetzer and I maintain that the pattern elsewhere on the shirt was “touched up”. The plain truth is that when committing a forgery of this kind, it’s difficult to cover every detail. A lot slips through the cracks. And they forgot about the collar. Besides, the pattern of Doorman’s shirt does not make a good match to Lovelady’s- in any respect. For example, the only thing white on Lovelady’s shirt are the lines, so why are there white blotches on Doorman’s shirt? Remember, this isn’t horseshoes or hand grenades. Close isn’t good enough. Either it is an exact match or no match at all. There can’t be contradictions in the patterns. None.

Notice also the exposed button, what I have come to call the “Magic Button.” You’ve heard of the Magic Bullet? Well, say hello to the Magic Button. It is “magical” because such a small, ordinary, inconsequential, everyday object is exonerating Lee Harvey Oswald for all time. The presence of that button proves that the normal use of that shirt was to button it up, including that button, and when it is buttoned, that spreading effect of the margins of the shirt that you see, creating that space, goes away. Lovelady took action to make his shirt lay the way you see it here–and he did it for the camera–whereas the configurations you see on Oswald and Doorman were spontaneous. That’s a big difference. Lovelady did not wake up on the morning of 22 November 1963 and do those things. And it proves that when the picture below was taken, Lovelady was part of the conspiracy. He was trying hard to be the Doorman, but he wasn’t thinking very clearly. He should have removed that button.

Do you remember those IQ tests where you had to pick out the dissimilar item from a lineup? Try it here. Who is the odd man out among these three? Just look for that “magic button”.Next, we have a collage of Oswald and his shirt from the National Archives. When you look closely, you can see that there is only one button remaining on Oswald’s shirt , (referring to the one he is wearing) and it is the very bottom button. For some reason, the shirt from the National Archives has two bottom buttons. Hmmm. I don’t know what to make of that. I have heard of buttons popping off, but have you heard of them popping on? You may need a magnifying glass to see it, but there is exactly one button at the bottom of Oswald’s shirt that he is wearing.

But now follow me: On Doorman (above and below), it looks like he has, perhaps, the three bottom buttons buttoned. See what you think. It may be only 2, but certainly no more than 3. But if the arrested Oswald only had one button, what do we make of that? Was there a progressive loss of buttons? I say, “Yes.” I say Lee started the day with no upper buttons but with 2 or 3 lower buttons. But during his scuffle with the police at the Texas Theater, more buttons came off, at least one, and perhaps two.

And that occurred because the shirt was already open and gaping which provided leverage–a hook–for force to be applied to remove those buttons. Plus, it was a well-worn shirt that had already lost buttons, so the thread of the remaining buttons was weak and vulnerable. And that is why he lost one or more buttons during the ruckus. The stitching was getting threadbare and susceptible.

Note that buttons don’t usually come off in a fight. And in this case, the fight was very short; not more than a few seconds. How long do you think it took them to subdue him? It wasn’t long. But, that already battered shirt got even more battered during that brief altercation, and because of its susceptibility, another button or two came off, and that’s why we see Oswald with hardly any buttons left afterward. The progressive loss of buttons also supports the idea that Doorman’s shirt and Oswald’s were one and the same.

“Once more, with feeling!”

Now here is a collage consisting of Doorman and another attempt by Lovelady to look like Doorman. Notice again the exposed button on Lovelady. I am sure there was another unbuttoned one above that one, although we can’t see it because it’s shaded. Or did he remove it? Perhaps he wised up this time and did so. Remember, that shirt would normally be buttoned up– except for the top button. That is the normal way to wear it, and that spreading effect you see on Lovelady is contrived, fake. He is play-acting as the Doorway Man.

Notice also how tight and sleek the shirt looks on Lovelady compared to the billowing effect you see on Doorman. Lovelady was 40 pounds heavier than Oswald, and he filled out his shirts much better. Oswald was, frankly, a scrawny guy, and he didn’t fill out his shirts very well, and that’s why you see Doorman swimming in his shirt. And notice the round-neck t-shirt on Lovelady, which is so different in form than Doorman’s. Poor Lovelady just couldn’t get it into his head that matching the t-shirts was part of the gig. No wonder they had to “heart attack” him out at age 42 before he could testify before the House Subcommittee on Assassinations. I bet that they (the conspirators) couldn’t trust him to keep his story straight. Dead men tell no tales. Look at him. Does he look like the kind of guy who would die of a first heart attack at age 42?

Look next at this image of Doorway Man with his shoulder line drawn in by me. I have it wider than it would be, just for the sake of visibility, but it is still the correct plane. How wide would it be? I can’t say for sure because I can’t see his right shoulder, but it would definitely extend into the white area. I know that by estimating the width of his collar bone or clavicle and then adding the width of the acromium process of the scapula and then allowing for reasonable musculature, particularly the cap of the deltoid. Considering the various elements, his shoulder would have to extend well into the white area. But, it doesn’t. It is being covered up by the white, which is photographically impossible. Remember that Black Tie Man is supposed to be standing behind him. How does someone standing behind block a person in front? Therefore, that is an impossible image. I am a chiropractor of 35 years experience, and I know very well where that man’s shoulder should be. Something’s missing, and it’s his shoulder.

Finally, I think this picture of Oswald is very valuable. You can see the right collar with the small, compact pseudo-lapel folding over on the right side, exactly like Doorman. And on the left you see the collar, lapel, and button loop- that very distinctive construction which had to be covered up by that phony Black Tie Man. And it’s easy to see that that shirt is quite big on him. He’s not filling it out; it’s loose on him. And, it’s easy to see that standing outside the TSBD in the open air with breezes blowing, that it would start to billow–as it did. What you are looking at here is the shirt of the Doorway Man–minus a couple more buttons. Even the cuffs of this shirt match Doorway Man’s very well.

Even when we compare the shape of the face and the head between the two, any differences are subtle and small. They could have been accomplished by “tweaking” the image. Look at them side-by-side. Even after doing all they could to lovelady-i-fy him, he still looks a great deal like Lee, where the shirt is the absolute “dead ringer”.

This should have been settled long ago. Lee Harvey Oswald WAS the Doorway man. It can’t be anyone else: not because of the face, which was apparently not his, but because of the shirt, which was. Bigger, burlier Lovelady, wearing a totally different shirt, could not possibly be him. The tremendous likeness that you see above cannot be denied or dismissed by those whose beliefs are governed by logic and evidence.

The lone-nutters will never admit it because it destroys their entire foundation. They will fight it to the end. And, the end is coming. But, if you are a conspiracy advocate, you no longer have any excuse. Lee Harvey Oswald was the Man in the Doorway. He is the Doorway Man. And if you accept anything about the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy, you need to accept and espouse that.

The Demise of the “Lone Nut” Theory

In conclusion, even though a lot of manipulation went into transforming Oswald into Lovelady, it didn’t work. We can still tell that it’s him, Oswald–and I would bet my life on it. The preponderance of the evidence is overwhelming, and the meager challenges to it are riddled with suspicion and doubt. The worst thing that ever happened to the JFK research community was relinquishing Doorway Man.

We need to take him back. We need to add the Altgens photo to the list of physical evidence that the conspirators altered and corrupted. We need to shout from the rooftops that Oswald could not have killed Kennedy because he was standing outside in front of the building at the time. This settles it. This ends it. This is checkmate for THE WARREN REPORT (1964).

The cover-up of the murder of President Kennedy, by our government and our media, has been going on for 48 years, and it must stop. It has been poisoning us as a people, that is, our society and our culture. To heal, to recover, and to start anew, we need to know the truth.

Consider the long-held lies that were uncovered in another country. After the Soviet Union fell, the truth about the fate of the Romanov family, at the hands of the Bolsheviks, was made public. The family was gunned down in close quarters. It was a blood bath, a slaughter, where their bodies were dissolved in acid afterwards to destroy the evidence. It was covered up for 75 years. There was also the Katyn Forest Massacre which took place in Russia during World War II in which 22,000 Poles were executed and buried in a mass grave. For decades, it was blamed on the Nazis, but it was actually carried out by the Soviet Secret Police, by order of Stalin. It took around 50 years for that lie to be dispelled.

We are now approaching the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état that killed President Kennedy and changed the whole direction of the United States–and greatly for the worse. I say we draw the line at 50 years. We can’t let this drag on into another half-century. It’s long past time for the truth to come out. The American people deserve to know who did and who did not kill JFK.


YouTube – Veterans Today –


Ralph Cinque, a chiropractor, health spa operator, and entrenpreneur, has published a series of articles on JFK at lewrockwell.com. His video series, “Visible Proof That Oswald Was Innocent”, is archived on YouTube.

James H. Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a columnist for Veterans Today, where his most recent studies of the assassination of JFK can be found.

 

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