Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

It speaks very badly for the JFK community that anybody would be attracted to the Oswald-as-PrayerMan idea, and it is baffling that some people who couch themselves as "researchers" actually go for it. 

There are four quick talking points that completely destroy the Oswald-as-PrayerMan idea, and they are all anybody needs to extinguish it. 

1) PrayerMan is way too stocky to be Oswald. Oswald was very slender. He was 5'9" and his weight at that time was 131 pounds. He had noticeably lost weight since New Orleans, where the police weighed him at the time of his arrest and found him to be 140 pounds. A 9 pounds weight loss is a lot for a man like him who was not overweight to begin with. Our whole impression of Prayer Man is that he was full-bodied and not slender at all. He particularly had a lot of girth through the mid-section. He could not possibly be Oswald for that reason alone.

2) PrayerMan is not dressed correctly. He is wearing a one-piece, pull-over garment, either a shirt or a sweater. There is no divide in the material. It is one continuous expanse of fabric. Oswald was wearing the same clothes in which he was arrested. The Warren Commission concluded that, and in the very first Fritz notes, Fritz wrote down that Oswald told him that he changed his britches. Not his shirt, just his pants. Also, Marrion Baker described Oswald's clothes as a "light brown jacket over a white shirt": his arrest clothes.  In fact, his "shirt" was more of a hybrid between a shirt and a jacket, and there were others who also used that term to describe it. I strongly suspect that it was of Russian origin. Also, Mary Bledsoe described his shirt on the bus as being the same as his arrest shirt. Oswald had the bus transfer ticket in the pocket of his arrest shirt, and there is no reason to think that he would have transferred it from one shirt to another, since he was not to ride the bus again. Odds are VERY GREAT that that transfer ticket was completely out of his consciousness at that point. Oswald did NOT change his shirt.  

3) PrayerMan was still there when Officer Marrion Baker reached the steps, moving at a swift speed. And I don't think that anyone has the right to assume that PrayerMan immediately took off to get the jump on Baker. When you see a policeman running in your direction, what do you do? You don't jump in front of him; you wait for him to pass, and then you may fall in behind him or you may not, but YOU LET THE POLICEMAN GO FIRST.  You might say that the sight of a running policeman is paralyzing. It freezes you. When you hear a police siren as a motorist, you pull over if you think he wants you, but otherwise, you stay out of his way. You certainly don't get in front of him. And it's the same way in person. Even if PrayerMan was going to move and react, he'd wait until Baker passed. So, how's he going to beat Baker to the lunch room and without being the least bit winded or working up a sweat? 

4) We have a spot-on match between Doorman and Oswald pertaining to both the anatomical man and the clothing. In fact, we have more than that because Doorman is doing Oswald's stance, clasping his hands in front of his body. Even Doorman's facial expression, with the tightly pursed lips, is a match to Oswald. The only non-Oswald feature of Doorman is his hairline, and that, as I have explained, was moved over from an image of Lovelady. It was the opposite of what they did with the Backyard photo where they moved Oswald's face, except for his chin, onto the body of another man. In the Altgens photo, they started with Oswald, and they moved the "cap" of Lovelady over to make the transformation. But, it was a hapless effort because Doorman is still wearing Oswald's clothes, and all his other features are Oswald's except for that one thing. It is simply impossible for Oswald NOT to be Doorman. It is Oswald in the doorway (as Doorman) as sure as it is Jesus on the Cross.    

So, where is this movement towards PrayerMan coming from? And if it's such a great idea, why did they wait so long? The world reacted immediately to the Altgens photo, and prominent figures like Mark Lane and Harold Weisberg and Penn Jones made it a rallying cry for JFK truth. 

I can't answer the question but I suspect that it involves a desire to distract away from Oswald as Doorman, that they are backing another horse just because they envy the impact- the loud noise- that the Oswald Innocence Campaign has made. 

However, unwittingly, they are aiding and abetting us, and that's because THEY ARE GETTING OSWALD INTO THE DOORWAY. They're putting him there. They are admitting that there are NO obstacles to Oswald being in the doorway. They are confirming that arguments put forward that he couldn't be there because he spent the time of the motorcade in the lunch room or the domino room or because he was getting change from Geneva Hine for a Coke (like the Robert Groden contends) are all nonsense. In actual fact, once you dismiss the idea of Oswald being on the 6th floor shooting at Kennedy, then there is NO other place but the doorway for him to be. 

Why wouldn't he be there? Why do some CTs indulge in the delusion that Oswald, of all persons, had no desire to see Kennedy? 

There were 75 employees of the Texas Book Depository, and most of them went outside to watch the motorcade. Of the few who didn't, most of them watched it from windows. 

Like everyone else, Oswald had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis where we almost went to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He was married to a Soviet woman who had family in Russia, and they both had many friends in Russia. So, if anything, the risk of war with Russia had to impact them greater than it did most Americans, and at the center of it was John F. Kennedy. The one who got us through it without a war was John F. Kennedy. Why wouldn't Oswald want to see him? 

Oswald ate his lunch in the Domino room, and he did so in the presence of Junior Jarman and Harold Norman. That had to be BEFORE the assassination because by the time of the assassination, Jarman and Norman were up on the 5th floor watching the motorcade from the window right below the Sniper's Nest. 

So, Oswald ate lunch early, meaning around 12:20. Bugliosi has him finished by 12:15, but that's probably too early. Bug is just trying to leave enough time for Oswald to get up to the 6th floor, which, of course, he didn't do. But, what he did do is finish his cheese sandwich and apple from Mrs. Paine's house, and then he stepped outside into that doorway, and we can see him there as the Doorman in the Altgens photo. It is a perfect match of the man and his clothing, except for the hairline, and it can't not be him. Asserting Oswald to be PrayerMan is nothing short of insane.