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

Backes, considering your own preferences, I think it's pretty pretentious of you to call me a "tranny hunter." And, for the record, I have never at any time in my life been with any person who was in possession of a penis.  

Now, let's sum up what is going on with Bill Newman in the Moorman photo. It's not just that his arm is missing. And, it's not just that his arm is missing and his chest is partially missing. And, it's not just that his arm and part of his chest are missing and his face and neck and shoulder are deformed to where he looks like a monster. It's all of the above plus the fact that the 4th motorcycle is extremely washed out. It almost looks like somebody drew it in. Maybe someone did. 

You see how faint it is in the area below where his arm should be. You see the faint suggestion of the handlebars of another motorcycle. And, it continues like that further down. Do you think maybe the chemicals just didn't get distributed right in that area? Or maybe too much got distributed in that area? But, notice that the body of the motorcycle cop looks OK. He's a little bit mottled but he certainly looks intact; he looks whole. He looks like he essentially got what he needed to manifest in the picture. So, how could a random, spontaneous chemical mishap follow the contour of a man's back to where he looks pretty much whole while the thing contiguous with him in the picture is almost completely washed out? In other words, the contrast between the cop and the other bike is too great, too neat, and too orderly.  

Note that when it comes to Polaroid developing going awry, it's hard to find examples that compare to this, and I've looked. Usually, when it's washed out, the whole picture is washed out.

Notice that the rear motorcycle looks essentially white with a grey outline. 

Well, why didn't his arm come out like that? Why don't we see his arm white with a grey outline? How could his arm be totally and completely missing and replaced with grey background? Where did the background come from? The background throughout the Moorman photo is essentially grass, the grass of the Grassy Knoll. But, if his arm was there, the grass didn't get captured in that spot. But, the grey-scale below his stump looks pretty consistent with the background elsewhere. It wouldn't be. It shouldn't be. We should see photographic nothingness in the area where the missing arm was. 

But, one thing is for sure: as Polaroid defects go, this one is extremely unusual, and so far, no one has put up anything comparable to it. 

The area of defect includes all of Bill Newman, all of the area of the missing arm, and all of the area of the 4th motorcycle, which goes down pretty far. Yet, somehow, the motorcycle cop in view came out pretty much unscathed. Again: I'm not buying it, and it won't play in Peoria. 

So, what this is, I believe, is the complete revamping of that side of the picture, in which they took something out that was there that they didn't want shown, and then they rebuilt it. They repaired it as best they could. They vanished something from the photograph.