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

It's eerie for me to reflect on how the discovery of James Bookhout as the Garage Shooter of Lee Harvey Oswald came about. It was a process of elimination. I knew that Oswald glanced over at the shooter with a very tell-tale look- like he knew the guy. And I knew that the only ones whom Oswald could have gotten to know were law enforcement. So, my first thought was that it was probably a Dallas detective. Charles Dhority came to mind, but I knew it couldn't be him because he was the one backing up Fritz' car. And there was no one else among "Fritz' men" who came even remotely close to matching the shooter. 

So, that's when I started looking at FBI agents, and the first two who came to mind were James Hosty and James Bookhout. Hosty was too tall, so that ruled him out. So then, I sought to rule out Bookhout, which was my attitude. But, as soon as I realized that there were no images of Bookhout from the assassination, or anywhere else, not even his obituary, it set off alarm bells in my head. HOW COULD THERE BE NO IMAGES OF BOOKHOUT WHEN HE FOLLOWED OSWALD AROUND LIKE HIS SHADOW THE WHOLE WEEKEND? 

The complete absence of any images of Bookhout is what threw me into a frenzy. And keep in mind that when I say no images, I mean no images, as in none. The only way I eventually came up with year book images of him (starting with Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas up to his graduation from SMU Law School in 1937) was by joining Ancestry.com and searching there. And I could see that those yearbook images of him were altered, such as the thick, s-shaped eyebrows. Nobody has eyebrows like this. 

 And as I look at this image again, his hair has a weird depression, where it bulges and then flattens, which may have been done to alter the shape of his head. But, when we compare him to this image of the Garage Shooter, it's a match, even though both images were altered.  

That is an excellent match, and I challenge any gerontologist to deny that it's the same man affected by 26 years of aging. 

But then, I asked myself: "Where did Bookhout say he was during the Oswald shooting?" So, I looked it up and found out that he claimed to remain in Fritz' office- for no explicable reason. It wasn't his office. He didn't claim to use the phone. He didn't claim to write anything. What could he have been doing there? And then he said that when he got word Oswald had been shot, that he went down to the jail office to gaze at Oswald, and then he followed the stretcher as Oswald was rolled to the ambulance to be driven away. 

That's him, James Bookhout, looking down and guilty. He never should have come out. He didn't have to. Nobody would have missed him. He let his curiosity get the better of him. 

Look how good that is. Compare the noses. Compare the shape of the eyes and the distance between them. And although it would help if his eyes were more open on the right (he was deliberately looking down) you can still see the somewhat Asiatic eyes in both pictures, and I am saying that as someone who has been told numerous times that I have Asiatic eyes. But, one big difference is that on the right, his guilt is written all over his face. He looks nervous. He looks uncomfortable.  He certainly doesn't look like he wanted to have his picture taken. You should have stayed in the Jail Office, Jimmy. You did not have to come out, but you did, and there is no undoing it. 

But then, I did as I have often done, and started searching to see if anyone came up with this before me. And that led me to Maxim Irukutsk, from Russia, who discovered it in 2013. When I first came upon his video, it had only a few hundreds views. Now, it has over 7,000. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3zvoj9HVc


And then I came upon the Education Forum discussion in which someone asked why there are no images of James Bookhout, and someone responded by saying, if you go to this video, you can see Oswald going up to Bookhout in the hall and talking to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04aL80prg7U

I wish I knew who it was who had that insight, but I didn't write his name down, and I can no longer find that discussion on Education Forum. I have to think they took it down. The Education Forum has never been anything but an Op-infested swamp. But, that guy Oswald went up and spoke to, asking him, "What have you got against Broby?" (although I'm sure they made sure the sound of the name didn't register anything) was James Bookhout, a short man, who said that he never got to see JFK at the motorcade because there were people in front of him, and whom James Hosty said had to stand on a pedestal in the crowded hallway in order to find him because he couldn't see over the reporters. 

  
He was the Garage Shooter.

I wish I could know who that guy was who posted that on Education Forum because if he knew that that guy was Bookhout, then he knew everything.