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

So, who was the Babushka Lady? I don't know, but I rather doubt that it was Beverly Oliver, for several reasons.

First, Beverly was only 17 years old in 1963. Does this look like a 17 year old girl to you?

Look at the girth on her. She looks like a mature woman to me. I don't think there is any chance she was a 17 year old girl.

Second, the clothing. Why would a 17 year old be dressed like that?  And I mean both the scarf and the coat. And look how long her dress is; it's down to her knees. On a 17 year old? And you realize that "Babushka" means grandmother in Russian. So, this woman whom people are calling grandmother was actually a 17 year old girl? Is that what we're supposed to believe? No. I am not buying it. 

There are other reasons which I won't go into. Suffice it to say that I do not endorse the Beverly Oliver claim. 

So, if Babushka Lady was not Beverly Oliver, who was she? Well, the only other lead we have, that I know of, is the woman in the scarf next to Jim Featherston in Altgens4.

Now, let's remember who Jim Featherston is:

Mrs. HILL. Featherstone of the Times Herald and --Mr. SPECTER. Dallas Times Herald?
Mrs. HILL. That's right. . . . [He was] holding her (Mary Moorman) by the arm and her camera. and telling her she had to go with him, I started trying to shake his hand loose and grab the camera and telling him that "No, we couldn't go, we had to leave." . . . I was just wanting to get out of there and to get away and he kept telling me -- he insisted we go with him and . . . he just practically ran us up to the court house, I guess it is, and put us in this little room . . . we couldn't leave. He kept standing in front of the door and he would let a cameraman in or someone to interview us and they were shooting things in our faces, and he wouldn't let us out.

Jean Hill

Mrs. HILL. ["Featherstone"] said, "You know you were wrong about seeing a man running." He said, "You didn't."

Mr. SPECTER. Who told you you were wrong . . .
Mrs. HILL. Featherstone. . . . I said, "But I did," and he said, "No; don't say that any more on the air."
Mr. SPECTER. Who said, "Don't say that any more on the air?"
Mrs. HILL. Featherstone . . . [He said] that the shots had come from a window up in the Depository and for me not to say that any more, that I was wrong about it, and I said "Very well," and so I just didn't say any more that I ran across the street to see the man . . .

Now, in fairness, I am going to post Jim Featherston's rebuttal to Jean Hill:

 I ran to Dealey Plaza, a few yards away, and this is where I first learned the president had been shot. I found two young women, Mary Moorman and Jean Lollis Hill, near the curb on Dealey Plaza. Both had been within a few feet of the spot where Kennedy was shot, and Mary Moorman had taken a Polaroid picture of Jackie Kennedy cradling the president's head in her arms. It was a poorly focused and snowy picture, but, as far as I knew then, it was the only such picture in existence. I wanted the picture and I also wanted the two women's eyewitness accounts of the shooting.
I told Mrs. Moorman I wanted the picture for the Times Herald and she agreed. I then told both of them I would like for them to come with me to the courthouse pressroom so I could get their stories and both agreed. . . . I called the city desk and told Tom LePere, an assistant city editor, that the president had been shot. "Really? Let me switch you to rewrite," LePere said, unruffled as if it were a routine story. I briefly told the rewrite man what had happened and then put Mary Moorman and Jean Lollis Hill on the phone so they could tell what they had seen in their own words. Mrs. Moorman, in effect, said she was so busy taking the picture that she really didn't see anything. Mrs. Hill, however, gave a graphic account of seeing Kennedy shot a few feet in front of her eyes.
Before long, the pressroom became filled with other newsmen. Mrs. Hill told her story over and over again for television and radio. Each time, she would embellish it a bit until her version began to sound like Dodge City at high noon. She told of a man running up toward the now-famed grassy knoll pursued by other men she believed to be policemen. In the meantime, I had talked to other witnesses and at one point I told Mrs. Hill she shouldn't be saying some of the things she was telling television and radio reporters. I was merely trying to save her later embarrassment but she apparently attached intrigue to my warning.
As the afternoon wore on, a deputy sheriff found out that I had two eyewitnesses in the pressroom, and he told me to ask them not to leave the courthouse until they could be questioned by law enforcement people. I relayed the information to Mrs. Moorman and Mrs. Hill.
All this time, I was wearing a lapel card identifying myself as a member of the press. It was also evident we were in the pressroom and the room was so designated by a sign on the door.
I am mentioning all this because a few months later Mrs. Hill told the Warren Commission bad things about me. She told the commission that I had grabbed Mrs. Moorman and her camera down on Dealey Plaza and that I wouldn't let her go even though she was crying. She added that I "stole" the picture from Mrs. Moorman. Mrs. Hill then said I had forced them to come with me to a strange room and then wouldn't let them leave. She also said I had told her what she could and couldn't say. Her testimony defaming me is all in Vol. VI of the Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, the Warren Report.
Why Mrs. Hill said all this has never been clear to me -- I later theorized she got swept up in the excitement of having the cameras and lights on her and microphones shoved into her face. She was suffering from a sort of star-is-born syndrome, I later figured.

I shall point out that I think it's very strange for a journalist to tell a witness to stop saying something. Jim said the following:

"At one point, I told Mrs. Hill she shouldn't be saying some of the things she was telling radio and television reporters. I was merely trying to save her later embarrassment."

WHAT???  What business of it was his? Since when is it the job of a reporter to save a witness from embarrassment? What did he care if she was embarrassed? He didn't even know her. Are we supposed to believe that, out of the goodness of his heart, he was trying to help her?????


If you are a reporter, a journalist, your job is to just hear what people have to say- not tell them what they can or can't say. I mean: even if he thought she was outright lying, he shouldn't have done what he did, to tell her what she can say. The job of a reporter is to gather information, not to tell people what they can or can't say. This was terribly out of line. Alarmingly so.  


So, for me, I've got alarm bells going off about Jim Featherston.

But, let's get back to the Babushka Lady and the Scarfed Woman next to Featherston. Were they the same woman? I don't know, but I think it's possible. I certainly don't consider it a ridiculous thing to contemplate.

Joseph Backes ridiculed the very idea of considering that they were the same person. But why? He's the one being ridiculous. We have every right to consider it.

First, I'll point out that the woman with Featherston seems to be in disguise because she's wearing both a scarf and sunglasses. I have to suspect that she was trying to hide her identity so that she would not be easily recognized. 

How many women who were watching the motorcade were wearing scarfs like that? I'm sure there were some, but as a percentage, how many? So, Babushka Lady and Scarf woman were definitely in a small set within the female population watching the motorcade. But, both are also wearing what I call a female trench coat. 

Here are some pictures of female trench coats on Google, so that you see what I mean:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1600&bih=775&q=female+trench+coat&oq=female+trench+coat&gs_l=img.12..0j0i7i30j0i5i30j0i8i30l4j0i24.980.3354.0.6069.18.16.0.2.2.0.124.1322.13j3.16.0....0...1ac..64.img..0.18.1339.-p6Li3oVsoc

Again, they both appear to be wearing some kind of trench coat. So that makes two pieces of clothing that line up between them.  So, how small does that make the set of women who watched the motorcade wearing both scarfs and trench coats?

But, let's go back to Altgens4. I think Jim Featherston and Scarf Woman were together. 

It's confusing because Connally's hair is distracting, and there may have been someone else standing in front of Featherston and Scarf Woman. It seems like there is another head popping up there of which we are barely seeing the top of. But, I have to think that the odds are darn good that Featherston and Scarf Woman were together. There is no sign she was with anyone else. Look at it again a little larger. 

They're standing mighty close. Her shoulder is overlapping his. Don't you think there is a darn good chance that Featherston and Scarf Woman were together?  And, if it's true, holy-moley, that ups the ante tremendously. If it's true, it's like a 4-alarm blast that something terribly sinister was going on. 

And as I look at it, something sinister was definitely going on. A woman took a photo or a film of the JFK assassination; she turned it over to police with the promise and expectation that it would be returned to her, and not only was it not returned, but the film never surfaced, nor was it ever acknowledged to even exist.

How would you react if that happened to you? And what would you do about it?  

So, why didn't she come forward? Why didn't she scream bloody murder? And again, I know about Beverly Oliver, but I've already told you that I don't recognize her as the Babushka Lady. 

So, in my view, not only did this woman's photo or film disappear, but so did she. Now you tell me how that doesn't look sinister.

And I'm NOT suggesting that they killed her. On the contrary, I'm suggesting that she was part of it, that she was with Featherston, and that they had a role in managing the situation on the ground.

Unlike Mary Moorman, Babushka Lady was in the perfect position to take the Moorman photo.

  
That is an eccentric photo, and when I say it is eccentric, I mean: IN RELATION TO ELM STREET. In other words, both Babushka Woman and Marie Muchmore were not facing Elm Street squarely the way Mary Moorman was, and that's why the Moorman photo looks as it does. It was not taken by someone who was facing Elm Street squarely. 

Whoever took that picture was not standing on Elm facing the road squarely the way Mary Moorman was. Whoever took that picture was standing the way Babushka Woman was, facing Elm Street unsquarely, not at a right angle, but rather, eccentrically, with a diagonal line of sight in reference to Elm Street. Again, that's IN REFERENCE TO ELM STREET.  

And this below may be when Babushka Lady actually captured the frame or photo that became the Moorman photo:

Can't you see how it matches perfectly? That she has the motorcycle cops in position just like in the Moorman photo?

There's no picture of Mary Moorman positioned like that. There is no picture of her positioned anywhere close to that. Look how in both photos, the wheel of the motorcycle has reached the wheel of the limo.

Hells' Bells, that's it!  Or at least darn close. We're talking within a tiny fraction of a second. Again: there is no time that Mary Moorman was in any position to take such a picture.

The fact that Mary Moorman did NOT take the Moorman photo, and the fact that Babushka Lady's work never surfaced- nor did she- makes it extremely likely that Babushka Lady is the one who took the Moorman photo.