It's going to be long. I'll be holding nothing back. It's going to include everything. It's going to be my magnum opus on the subject.
“Out with Bill Shelley
in front”: Oswald’s alibi
On November
20, 1997, the Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB) announced that the
person left in charge of the papers of the late Captain Will Fritz had donated
his handwritten interrogation notes to them. It was 13 years after his death in
1984.
Officially,
Fritz denied taking any notes during the 12
hours of interrogations with Oswald.
But, there was a clue that he did, for in Holmes’ report, he stated that
when Fritz asked Oswald, again, about the Hidell identity, Oswald said,
sarcastically,
“I am not
saying any more about that. You’ve been taking notes, so why don’t you read
them and refresh your memory?”
I maintain
that it is untenable that Fritz didn’t take the notes during the interrogations
for the following reasons:
1) There was reportedly no stenographer
or tape recorder in use, and the idea that Fritz would expect he could to keep
every detail in his head is preposterous. The notes contain details such as
street addresses, dates, times, names, places, a cab fare, etc. It would have
taken an encyclopedic memory to retain it all.
2) What’s worse is that Fritz did not
say that he transferred his mental contents onto paper at the end of each day.
He actually maintained that he wrote nothing down- at all- until days after
Oswald was dead; then he got started. That is NOT tenable.
3) The Fritz Notes look like they were
written hurriedly in cryptic shorthand, and that defies the idea that he wrote
them at his leisure days later.
4) We know that Fritz lied to the Warren
Commission. He told them that Oswald told him that he was “eating lunch with
other employees” at the time of the assassination. It’s amazing that he didn’t name those
employees, since he was citing them as Oswald’s alibi. And, it’s even more
amazing that Warren Commission lawyer Joseph Ball didn’t ask him to name them. Did I mention that Joseph Ball was a lawyer
who knew the importance and significance of a defendant’s alibi? We know from
the Fritz Notes that Oswald said he ate his lunch in the 1st floor
lunch room at a time that James Jarman and Harold Norman were milling around-
which was well before the assassination since they wound up watching the
motorcade from the 5th floor window, where they were photographed.
Bonnie Ray Williams joined them.
5) Oswald’s reference to Fritz taking notes,
as reported by Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, has tremendous credibility.
So, we can
safely dismiss Will Fritz’ claim of not taking interrogation notes during the
interrogations. Chalk it up as another
lie.
But, (and
this is probably the most important point) since the notes were taken during the
interrogations- which is a very hurried situation for writing- and since Fritz
was taking them only for himself, with no intention of revealing them to anyone
or even admitting their existence to anyone, there is no reason to think that
he lied. First, one doesn’t lie to oneself, at least not in that manner. And
second, there was no time to lie. Oswald was talking; he was writing; and they
quickly went on to something else. There was barely enough time to write down
what Oswald said- never mind recraft it into something else. That’s what makes the Fritz Notes so valuable,
the fact that they were spontaneous, extemporaneous, and quick.
This article deals with only the first page which has the famous inclusion: “out with Bill Shelley in front.” That
line was Oswald’s alibi for the shooting, and it is the single most important
piece of evidence to be discovered in the JFK assassination since November 22,
1963.
To be continued.
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