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

There really is no way for the other side to put a sunny spin on the issue of Lovelady's arrow.

Even if we put aside the issue of finding the location of his arrow and just say that it is elusive, controversial, and debatable, there are certain things that the other side cannot deny which are devastating to their cause.

1.the fact that neither Ball nor Lovelady claimed that he was Doorman. Neither expressed it in words. It is inconceivable that Ball would have refrained from saying so- for the record- if Lovelady had drawn his arrow to Doorman

2. the fact that no mention was made of Lovelady having drawn his arrow to the same figure as Frazier. Again: if he had, Ball would have publicized it. Obviously, Lovelady identifying himself as Doorman would have been 10X bigger than Frazier doing it. Bigger as in more valuable, more persuasive, more worth saying. But, Ball did not say it, and as soon as Lovelady drew his arrow, Ball quickly changed the subject

3. getting the photo to sing the result too would have been very valuable. Imagine if all this time there was a photo with an arrow to Doorman and Lovelady's signature or initials. To be honest, even then, I would just say that Lovelady lied. It would not change anything because the images show that Oswald was Doorman- same man; same clothes.  But still, it would have been valuable for the other side if they had such a thing. Ball wasn't a stupid man. If he had it, he'd have played it for all it was worth. Instead, he changed the subject as soon as Lovelady drew his arrow. 

4. in law, they speak of a defendant having a "consciousness of guilt" in other words, where he has acted guilty without admitting guilt. Well, Ball was so evasive after Lovelady drew his arrow- saying that "there's an arrow in the white and one in the black pointing to you" - which can easily be interpreted as having been drawn to the same figure but does not directly say it- and then when you add the fact that immediately after that he changed the subject and never came back to it, it sounds to me like a consciousness of cover-up and hiding. I would also call it very slick lawyering. 

5. The fact that just a month later, in May 1964, Lovelady did his first interview with a journalist, Jones Harris, in which he did claim to be Doorman, and that suggests that somebody talked to him and made him realize that it was imperative for him and his family that he get with the program.

 6. But, after that, Lovelady pretty much went into hiding: quitting his job, moving to Colorado, and getting into a different line of work, suddenly with the means to start his own freight company. This is a guy who was making $1.11/hr at the TSBD. Ultimately, a lot of Colorado real estate wealth were to come to him and his wife. 

7. But word must have spread quickly that talking to Lovelady was NOT a good idea. Tink Thompson addressed the issue in his book, Six Seconds In Dallas, but he did not try to talk to Lovelady. Instead, he reported what Lovelady told CBS- according to CBS. And remember that CBS, after producing a detailed and complex segment about the Doorman controversy for their 1967 JFK Special, wound up ditching the whole thing. 

8. As far as we know, Lovelady didn't talk to anybody until Ken Brooten and Robert Groden got to him in 1976 for the picture-taking for the HSCA. Ken Brooten at the time was the Chief Counsel of the HSCA, so he was like an 800 pound gorilla, and Lovelady could hardly say no to him.  And then when Brooten quit his job in order to represent Lovelady, it tells us something: that he realized that Lovelady needed help, that he did not want to testify, and that it would have been perilous if he did. Brooten quit his job, but it's not as though he changed his mind. It's not as though he switched sides. It's not as though he became an advocate for Oswald's innocence. So, he was on the same side, the government's side. Who was the alternate suspect if Oswald didn't do it? The government was. So, Brooten was still working for the government; it's just that he was working for them in a different way. I'm sure he thought that it was more important that he control and manage Lovelady than he do anything else for the HSCA. When Lovelady died suddenly of a heart attack at age 41 in January 1979, the same month the HSCA Final Report came out, Brooten blamed conspiracy theorists.  Brooten did an informal deposition of Lovelady which became available recently. Here's the link. Lovelady is very terse, and he sounds timid and nervous. Brooten leads him to a great extent. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PS9I5ZcDxI


Now, you would think that Brooten would have started the thing off by asking:

"Now, Billy, you know there has been a great deal of controversy, world-wide, as to whether you or Lee Harvey Oswald was the Doorway Man in the Altgens photo. Will you now state, for the record, and once and for all: were you the Doorway Man in the Altgens photo?"

But, Brooten didn't do that, and I'm not surprised.  

The point is that even without definitively proving my thesis that Lovelady drew his arrow to Black Hole Man, there is a ton of circumstantial evidence that he did NOT draw it to Doorman. And that is really what matters most. CE 369 is NOT a good piece of evidence for defenders of the official story of the JFK assassination.