Bravo, Bill Binnie, for this brilliant piece on the Backyard Photos, which surely are bogus. To everyone, this is brilliant. Ralph Cinque
The Backyard Photos are another topic that people discuss despite knowing a fraction of what they should know- This might help: March 31, 1963- LHO- Backyard Pictures- Oswald appeared to have posed for two pictures taken by Marina in the backyard of the Neely Street apartment in which he held his rifle and copies of the Worker and the Militant with his revolver tucked in his belt. He supposedly gave one of the pictures to his wife and asked her to keep it for June.
Two pictures were obtained from the garage of the Paines house on the afternoon of November 23, 1963. The Dallas Police found and marked those photographs as 133A and 133B, as well as a negative for 133B. Eventually there were seven total photographs in the series. 133C and 133D were provided by the widow of Dallas Police Officer Roscoe White. 133A Stovall and 133C Stovall were provided by Officer Stovall. 133A de Mohrenschildt was provided by George’s widow, Jean. On the back of 133A de Mohrenschildt was inscribed To My Friend George from Lee Oswald, 5463. In darker ink another transcription reads in Russian acrylic Hunter of Fascists, ha ha ha. HSCA handwriting expert Joesph McNally and two other experts said that the first inscription was Oswald’s handwriting. The Hunter of Fascists writing was found to not match Lee, Marina or George de Mohrenschildt. McNally said the Hunter phrase was written by one person and then retraced by someone unfamiliar with Russian acrylic. de Mohrenschildt testified that his wife found this picture in a vinyl record sleeve from his storage unit after they returned from Haiti. Michael Paine had dropped off the records at Everett Glovers house. de Mohrenschildt had let Marina borrow some of his English language records to help her learn English was the explanation. The Dallas Police had inventoried the vinyl records at the Paine house exhaustively as they did with the entire contents so 133A de Mohrenschildt was somehow missed or it was put in the record sleeve after the records had been returned by the investigators.
The 133B negative was found to have come from the Oswald Reflex camera, which Marina eventually said Oswald owned. Three weeks after the assassination, Robert Oswald went to the Paine house to pick up items Ruth Paine said belonged to Oswald. On February 24,1964 Robert gave the camera to the FBI. Robert said Lee bought the Imperial Reflex camera in 1957 and left it with Robert when Lee went to Russia. When Lee returned from Russia in 1962, Lee reacquired the camera from Robert. But the Dallas Police inventory of Oswald’s belongings did not list the Reflex camera. The Police did inventory a Russian Quera 2 camera and Stereo Realist camera. When shown a picture of the Reflex camera all four officers who did the inventory were certain it was not among the Oswald possessions found at the Paine house. A fifth officer Detective John McCabe told the FBI that he saw a light gray box camera in the Paines garage, but did not consider the Reflex camera to have evidentiary value to list it.
The Reflex camera was difficult to use and pictures were taken by holding it at waist height and looking down onto a view finder. Marina said initially that the camera she used was a point and click type. On January 29, 1964, Marina said Oswald’s owned two cameras. The Russian Quera 2 and the Stereo Realist which was consistent with what the Police inventoried. On February 19 th Marina indicated that the Stereo Realist camera did not look familiar. On February 25 th Marina said the Reflex camera was the one Oswald owned and was the camera Marina used to take the backyard photographs. On August 12 th 1964, the Stereo Realist camera was returned to Ruth Paine who said it was hers.
Based on Marina’s testimony, the only picture she took was the backyard picture. But there were eleven pictures taken with the Reflex camera mostly of Marina and June taken in New Orleans. A letter from Marina to Ruth indicates that it was Ruth who took the other eleven pictures. Marina indicated that Oswald developed the backyard photographs but the HSCA photo panel determined that both of the 133A and 133B photographs found in the Paines garage were developed in a drug store. The 133A de Mohrenschildt was developed non- commercially. When Oswald was shown the backyard picture by Fritz, he did not want to discuss it and then indicated he understood photography very well and would prove the picture was a fake.
The black polo style shirt and black pants worn in the photographs were not among Oswald’s belongings and there is no evidence Oswald owned such clothes. Being a frugal man with limited means, it would be very unlikely Oswald would have purchased expensive clothes and disposed of them. The rifle sling in the pictures was not the sling that was on the TSBD Carcano. The sling in the picture was confirmed by the FBI expert Lindahl Schoenfeld to be a piece of rope and the TSBD sling was a strap. The gun owner could have upgraded the strap but it hard to believe the very frugal Oswald with minimal funds would have made this cosmetic investment. There is strong debate about shadows below the chin being inconsistent with those from the rest of the body. The FBI went to great lengths to prove the shadows were compatible and then undermined their work by printing a reproduction that removed the image of the face. Differences in the jaw bone and chin structure between the person in the backyard picture and the historical Oswald are cited. Another issue was the 1993 discovery of a ghost photograph in which the person is carefully cutout of the backyard picture and only the background remained. A photograph in which Police Officer Bobby Brown replicated the backyard photograph was also found. Brown claimed that the Secret Service asked him to take the picture a few days after the assassination. Brown said he cut his image out of the ghost photograph because he didn’t want to be identified with it. A short examination shows that the ghost photograph is instead an exact match for Oswald in image 133C. When confronted with the proof, Brown changed his testimony and said he had cut out the Oswald image because the FBI wanted to have Oswald’s image on a white background. There was never an explanation as to why.
Detectives Amadic and Rose were asked how they found the pictures. Both said the pictures were among a packet of 47 photographs they found. Adamic said he numbered and initialed each photograph which was evident in the Warren Commission evidence. But Rose said he and McCabe found the photographs, which is demonstrably untrue. The pamphlets were incongruous since the Militant had a Troskyite message in favor of an international communist revolutions versus The Worker which was aligned with the Soviet Union. Also three people claimed to have seen the backyard photographs before they were found in the Paine’s garage on the afternoon of November 23. Reporter Jerry O’Leary confirmed to the FBI that he was shown one of the backyard photographs the evening of November 22 or the morning of November 23 at the Dallas Police Station. Michael Paine told the Warren Commission that on the night of the assassination the police asked him where Oswald was standing when he was holding the rifle in the picture that ended up on the cover of Life Magazine. Paine told the police he thought it was taken in the back of the Neely Street apartment because of the clapboard, although Paine had never seen the back of the Neely Street residence. Fritz describes asking Oswald late in the morning of November 23 or the early afternoon about the backyard photographs. Fritz said Oswald was evasive about the location and told Oswald that Mr. Paine mentioned the Neely Street residence. Michael Paine was at the Police station on Friday night and not Saturday morning or afternoon, so it appears that the backyard photograph was being discussed among O’Leary, Paine and Fritz before they had been found.
A core concern about the backyard photographs were the Roscoe White 133C and D versions. White began working with Dallas Police on October 7 th 1963, in the photographic department. White also served in the Marines and was at the Atsugi Japan base at the same time as Oswald. White’s wife Geneva worked in some capacity at Ruby’s Carousel Club. White’s wife and son believe that White was involved in the assassination. It was asserted that the subject of the backyard photograph was White and Oswald’s face was superimposed as Oswald claimed, based on a deformation of the right wrist that White suffered. One important piece of evidence that was not present during the initial searches of the property, but turned up at a later date, was the Imperial Reflex duo-lens camera. This inexpensive, gray metal body camera was proven by FBI photographic expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt to have taken the Backyard Photos. Marina stated that she had taken the photos with an American-made box camera gray made of aluminum. She eventually indicated that she had to look down into the viewfinder located on the top of the camera while holding the camera at chest level. A problem is that the persons wedding ring changes fingers depending on which picture is viewed-
April 5, 1963- LHO- Backyard Photographs- de Mohrenschildt said he was in Haiti so this could not be the date referenced in the Hunter of Fascists in the 133A de Mohrenschildt photograph because he would not have seen Oswald at that date. But this was untrue as de Mohrenschildt did not go to Haiti until April 13 or 14-
November 23, 1963- LHO- Backyard Photographs- The infamous Oswald backyard photographs were initially obtained from a search of the Paine garage in the afternoon. The Dallas Police found 133A and 133B and the negative for 133B. These pictures were turned over to the FBI and later reviewed by the Warren Commission-
February 21, 1964- LHO- Backyard Pictures- Life Magazine printed a highly incriminating cover picture of Oswald that was believed to have been taken late March 1963. The Warren Commission Report had not been issued and Life Magazine was read by half of the US population-
3.00.00 PM- LHO- Minox Camera- At least two cameras were found at the Paines’ on November 22. Numerous inventories kept by the Dallas Police listed a third camera: Item 375 “Minox” camera, or “small German camera and black case on chain.” And item 377, four rolls of Minox film. Minox was smaller than a cigar and weighed less than a cigarette lighter, featuring an excellent lens. A costly item far beyond Oswald’s budget, the Minox camera gained notoriety as a spy camera.
Detective Rose testified “A couple of FBI agents made three different trips to our office to talk to me about this camera. After they had received all the property they found that I had made a mistake, and that that really wasn’t a camera, it was a Minox light meter. However, as I told them at the time, I was sure that I had not made a mistake; it definitely was a camera and definitely did have film in it. However, they wanted me to change that in our property invoice to read Minox light meter and not read Minox camera. We never did change it.”
By January 30, according to the FBI, there never was a Minox camera at the Paine home and later that day, Ruth Paine stepped forward to claim ownership of a Minox on behalf of her husband. A Minox camera with serial number 27259, was turned into the FBI by Michael Paine on January 31, and returned to him shortly thereafter. However, according to researcher John Armstrong, another Minox camera is still housed in the National Archives and has been altered to prevent its serial number from being retrieved. It was speculated that Oswald may have received a Minox camera as part of his military training-
