SHELLEY/LOVELADY AND MISS ADAMS
| MISS ADAMS DESCENDED THE STAIRS, TOP LEFT, AND FOLLOWED THE PATH IN RED |
Did Victoria Adams see William Shelley and Billy Lovelady on the first floor when she arrived there? Miss Adams is quoted as saying she did. In fact, that was the basis used by the Warren Commission to discredit her and dismiss her entire testimony. But her admission she saw and even spoke to those men was contained in only two official interviews, the circumstances surrounding each being highly suspect. In several previous interviews given to additional authorities, not a word was mentioned by her of those two men despite the fact she remained consistent throughout with descriptions of various other supplementary details. Current evidence never explored by the Commission now corroborates that the encounter didn’t take place. Let’s take a look at the two men involved.
William Shelley
From his affidavit filed with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department on the afternoon of November 22, 1963:
“I ran across the street to the corner of the park and ran into a girl crying and she said the President had been shot. This girl’s name is Gloria Calvery who is an employee of this same building.”
Five months later during his April 7, 1964, appearance before the Warren Commission, this is what he said regarding the same incident:
“Gloria Calvary [sic] from South-Western Publishing Co. ran back up there crying and said “The President has been shot” and Billy Lovelady and myself took off across the street to that little, old island and we stopped there for a minute.”
Notwithstanding the lapse of time between these two official statements, note that Shelley distinctly remembered specifics like the woman’s name and especially the comment she had made to him.
Now take a look at what Victoria Adams is quoted as saying to both Shelley and Lovelady when she supposedly encountered them on the first floor of the Depository:
“I said I believed the President was shot.”
It is curious that despite Gloria Calvery’s comment about what had happened, which seemed to impress Shelley so much it stuck in his memory banks for months, he could not remember Miss Adams making the very same statement. In fact, he didn’t even recall seeing her on the first floor. This is what he said:
[Warren Commission counsel Joseph] 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.
Billy Lovelady
From Lovelady’s Commission testimony on April 7, 1964:
Lovelady: It didn’t occur to me at first what had happened until this Gloria came running up to us and told us the President had been shot.
Ball: Who was this girl?
Lovelady: Gloria Calvary [sic].
Ball: Where does she work?
Lovelady: Southwestern Publishing Co.
Note that just like Shelley, Lovelady knew the woman’s name and particularly what she had said that day. But what about Victoria Adams and her similar comment:
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.
From that exchange, this is what appears in the Warren Report regarding Lovelady’s sighting of Miss Adams:
“On entering, Lovelady saw a girl on the first floor who he believes was Victoria Adams.”
The reader can judge whether that is an accurate appraisal.
| WERE WILLIAM SHELLEY AND BILLY LOVELADY REALLY HERE WHEN MISS ADAMS ARRIVED? |
If the “girl” seen by Lovelady was “talking to Bill,” an obvious reference to Shelley, shouldn’t Shelley have remembered her, especially when this girl said the same thing as Gloria Calvery, a woman Shelley did remember meeting under similar circumstances only minutes earlier that same day?
Odd too is that Lovelady’s initial mention of Victoria Adams—I saw a girl but I wouldn’t swear to it it’s Vickie—was the first time her name had been brought up in his testimony. In four previous pages of questioning, not a single reference was made to Vickie, Victoria Adams, Miss Adams, or any derivation of that name.
Where had his sudden reference to her come from? Could he have been a “pliable” witness?
Interestingly enough, Lovelady was on the lam for a federal charge when he first walked through the Depository’s front doors as a newly hired employee in December 1961. Only six months before, on June 14, then airman second class Lovelady was kicked out of the military after he was found guilty of stealing four .38 caliber revolvers while stationed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C. The arrests made headlines in local papers.
Part of the penalty assessed to Lovelady, in addition to an immediate discharge, was a $200 fine. Lovelady paid back $125 of it, then reneged on the balance due.
By January 1963, the FBI had tracked him down in Dallas and immediately threw him into jail.
O.V. Campbell, vice president of the Depository, advanced Lovelady the outstanding amount of his fine, putting Lovelady back on the job. The case was officially closed as of January 29, 1963.
The FBI would not go looking for Lovelady again until that November.
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