E v i d e n c e & s t a t e m e n t s
p a r t 6
An important piece of evidence in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald is clothing.
Like everything else there shouldn’t be an abundance of, there seems to be an almost overstock of clothing that is linked to Lee Oswald.
Buell Wesley Frazier, the TSBD co-worker who sometimes drove Oswald to work, never seemed to notice what Oswald wore to work.
Charles Givens, another co-worker, did.
Givens claims that on the day of the assassination he saw Oswald wearing light green/blue trousers with a light green/blue shirt and a gray jacket, “like he always wore to work”.
Frazier didn’t pay attention to Oswald’s clothes but remembers he wore a gray flanel, wool-like jacket on the morning of the assassination. He failed to identify the jacket found in the domino room (CE-163).
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Mr. BALL – “I have here Commission's 163, a gray blue jacket. Do you recognize this jacket?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “No, sir; I don't.”
Mr. BALL – “Did you ever see Lee Oswald wear this jacket?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “No, sir; I don't believe I have.”
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Mr. BALL – “Commission Exhibit No. 162, which can be described for the record as a gray jacket with zipper, have you seen Lee Oswald wear this jacket?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “No, sir; I haven't.”
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Mr. BALL – “I have here Commission 150, which is described as sort of a rust brown shirt. Have you ever seen Lee Oswald wear this shirt? It has a hole in the sleeve near the elbow.”
Mr. FRAZIER – “No, sir; I don't believe I have because most time I noticed when Lee had it, I say he put off his shirt and just wear a T-shirt the biggest part of the time so really what shirt he wore that day I really didn't see it or didn't pay enough attention to it whether he did have a shirt on.”
Mr. BALL – “On that day you did notice one article of clothing, that is, he had a jacket?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “Yes, sir.”
Mr. BALL – “What color was the jacket?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “It was a gray, more or less flannel, wool-looking type of jacket that I had seen him wear and that is the type of jacket he had on that morning.”
Mr. BALL – “Did it have a zipper on it?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “Yes, sir; it was one of the zipper types.”
Mr. BALL – “It isn't one of these two zipper jackets we have shown?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “No, sir.”
Mr. BALL – “Do you know what kind of trousers he had on, what color?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “Not that day, I don't remember.”
Mr. BALL – “You wouldn't remember that day?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “I had seen him wear some gray ones before.”
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Mr. BALL – “Here is Commission's Exhibit No. 157 which are gray trousers. Had you ever seen him wear these?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “Yes; to be frank with you, I had seen something more or less of that order, that type of material, but so far as that, being sure that, was his pants or some of his clothes, I couldn't be sure.”
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Mr. BALL – “Here is Commission No. 156 which is a pair of gray trousers. Did you ever see him wear trousers of that type?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “Not that I know of.”
Mr. BALL – “You are not able to tell us then anything or are you able to tell us, describe any of the clothing he had on that day, except this gray jacket?”
Mr. FRAZIER – “Right.”
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And then there is CE-158.
Judging from the known arrest pictures (you can see two of them below), all we can really see is that Oswald wore dark trousers when he was dragged from the Texas Theater. I've seen them described as dark gray. But whether they are CE-156 or CE-158 no one seems to be sure. I'll go so far as to say that CE-157 could be the trousers Oswald wore when he was at work. But no one knows for certain.
Anyway, if we take the words of Givens and Frazier, then Oswald wore light colored trousers and a light colored shirt and a gray jacket to work that morning. However, none of the jackets that were found that day, or during the next few days after, resembled the jacket that Frazier described as "gray, more or less flannel, wool-looking type of jacket".
After the assassination Oswald leaves the book depository and purportedly gets into a cab driven by Wiliiam Whaley.
Mr. Whaley describes Oswald’s clothing as khaki material pants (faded blue), brown shirt (identified by Whaley as the one worn during arrest), and a work jacket that matched the pants. Mr. Whaley was also certain it was the Oswald we know, and not someone else.
So apart from the brown shirt, his description of Oswald’s clothing more or less matches that of Givens and Frazier.
But where did this brown shirt suddenly come from?
And what happened to the jacket that Frazier saw Oswald wearing that morning? None of the jackets found that day matched the one Oswald wore on his way to work, so where did it go?
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Oswald being dragged out of the Texas Theater Oswald being escorted down a hall at a Dallas Police station
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On first glace there are some oddities. The collar of the t-shirt in the right picture seems more like a v-neck, compared to the collar of the
t-shirt in the left picture, but that's quickly attributed to tearing as a result of struggling. But the material of the brown shirt in the left picture looks different to the material of the brown shirt in the right picture. Not to mention looking a lot shorter and tighter.
The sunlight hits a few spots of his brown shirt in the left picture.
I have no doubt this is the same brown shirt in both pictures, but I just wanted to point out how difficult it can sometimes be to rely on pictures as evidence.
Keep in mind he was not given a change of shirt until late the next day, and then again on Sunday, so it could have only been the same shirt.
Oswald came home at 1:01 and left at 1:04. In just under three minutes he managed to change his shirt and pants.
The dark trousers he was wearing at the time of his arrest do not resemble the light gray / faded blue trousers described by Frazier, Whaley and Givens. So that by itself is proof he wasn't lying about that.
Also keep in mind that “faded blue” and “light green” and “light gray” can look very similar in different light settings, as opposed to khaki (which is generally beige / light brown).
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According to Marina Oswald, Lee only owned two jackets: a dark colored one (possibly blue), and a light colored, gray one.
William Whaley stated that he saw Oswald wearing a brown shirt, but then also said in another statement that he must have been wearing two jackets! Unfortunately because of this we can’t rely on his testimonies containing any truthful information.
And, in all honesty, even the whole cab ride becomes hard to believe.
But since there is no other explanation as to how Oswald got to Oak Cliff in just a few minutes, coupled with the fact that Oswald himself confirms he took a cab home after the bus seemed to be stuck in heavy traffic, we have to stick to the cab ride story as being something that genuinely happened. But it’s more than plausbile that Whaley wasn’t paying attention to what Oswald was wearing, and that he didn’t want to seem like the kind of driver who doesn’t pay attention to details. And while fabricating the story to make the ride seem more interesting than it was, he completely messed up the details in such a way that it made his testimony next to impossible to believe.
Mrs. Earleane Roberts didn’t see him wearing a jacket when he came in at 1:01 pm, but she saw him zip up a jacket as he left at 1:04 pm.
She didn’t notice the color of his trousers.
Two jackets were found that day: a light blue Eisenhouwer windbreaker in the TSBD first floor domino room, and a gray jacket under a car behind the Texaco station on Jefferson Blvd.
Neither belonged to Oswald, yet both are linked to him nevertheless.
The gray jacket was tossed by one of the men who ran from the Tippit murder scene. The question is: why toss the jacket?
No actual perpetrator would do such an idiotic thing, so the only reason to toss the jacket would be to set up Oswald because the jacket was somehow linked to him in the first place.
Back to William Whaley. He’s one of two people to have seen 'Oswald' wearing a brown shirt before he went home.
James Worrell said in his affidavit to the Dallas FBI: “While I was running I heard the gun fire two more times. I ran from Elm Street to Pacific Street on Houston. When I was about 100 yards from the building I stopped to get my breath and looked back at the building. I saw a w/m, 5'8" to 5'10", dark hair, average weight for height, dark shirt or jacket open down front, no hat, didn't have anything in his hands, come out of the building and run in the opposite direction from me.”
Either Givens and Frazier were both mistaken, or Whaley and Worrell weren’t sure about Oswald’s clothing and described the shirt after seeing the arrest pictures. Or, as a worst case scenario, Oswald never took the cab ride to Oak Cliff.
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The man Worrell saw exiting the back of the depository was running from the building along Houston street towards Main street.
Oswald, according to his own words, boarded a bus there. But this was a few minutes after the shooting, and not immediately after like Worrell described in his full Warren Commission testimony.
Worrell never said the man he saw exiting the building was the same man he saw firing the shots.
In fact, Worrell never even described the shooter.
It’s noteworthy to mention specifically that James Worrell heard four reports: “I heard loud noise like a fire cracker or gun shots.” … “While I was looking at the gun it was fired again.” … “While I was running I heard the gun fire two more times.”
So he too counted the so called back-fire. He wasn’t sure what it was.
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TSBD supervisor Roy Truly recalls Oswald being missing approx. 20 minutes after the shooting, which was when Truly was on the sixth floor with Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, at a time he recalls a rifle being found there.
This could never have been the Mannlicher-Carcano, which wasn't found until 1:22 pm!
Unwittingly Truly corroborates the finding of the first rifle: the Mauser!
During Truly's Warren Commission testimony, attorney Joseph Ball tries to convince Truly that it had to have been later, because the rifle hadn’t been found until after 1:00 pm, and he won’t give him the exact time.
Truly told Patrolman Marrion Baker he didn’t think the shots came from the TSBD, and that they were wasting their time looking for a gunman there. It almost seems that Truly was trying to direct Baker away from the building, doesn't it?
Truly is never asked by the WC what Oswald was wearing that day. He was only asked by Gerald Ford if Capt. Fritz ever asked to describe the clothes Oswald was wearing before a search party was sent out. Truly couldn’t recall what Oswald was wearing.
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[with regards to what Oswald's escape route could have been ]
Mr. Dulles – “Is it your view he went out the front door rather than one of the back doors?”
Mr. Truly – “Yes, sir; it is. From the nature. From the direction he was walking through the office, and the front stairway, to reach the second floor--it is my view that he walked down the front stairs and just out through the crowd there, probably a minute or two before the police had everything stopped.”
Which means that the man that James Worrell saw exiting the back of the building wasn’t Oswald. Why run out the back if you’re not involved? In my opinion, the man James Worrell saw was one of the men involved with the assassination.
Danny Arce, Billy Lovelady, Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman, Junior Jarman, Bill Shelley and Roy Truly were never asked by anyone what Oswald was wearing that day, or what he wore regularly.
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