All:
After a tumultuous couple of weeks of comments regarding my paper that
was written on the man in the doorway, with its corresponding animated
gifs, only two arguments were received that we consider the least bit valid:
1. The use of the flipped test images, which changed the hairline of Lee
Oswald, and
2. The provenance of the control image.
Both of these issues have been addressed in this, the latest and final version of the paper.
I thank all who have supported me in this project in the pursuit of
truth.
Larry Rivera
The Man in the Doorway identified
By Larry Rivera © 10/22/15
The man in the doorway in the Altgens6 photograph can now be positively identified using modern computer graphics techniques. The techniques used here can be completely and reliably reproduced using the materials and methods described herein.
Introduction:
At 12:30PM, on November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in broad daylight, on the streets of Dallas in the presence of a multitude of people who were hoping to get a
glimpse of the President of the United States as he drove through that city in a motorcade. As soon as A.P. photographer Ike Altgens 5th photograph, now known as the Altgens6, was published nationwide and around the world, many people noticed a figure in the background standing in the entrance of the Texas School Book Depository Building, who resembled the accused assassin, Lee Oswald. The obvious implication being that the image offered the
perfect alibi for Mr. Oswald. On the weekend of the assassination, the FBI immediately went out of its way to proclaim the man in the doorway as another employee of the TSBD company by the name of Billy Nolan Lovelady. The issue was further compounded when the FBI photographed Lovelady on 2/29/64 in the shirt he claimed to have worn, which was a short-sleeved vertical-striped, red and white shirt, a shirt which in no way resembled the one worn
by the man in the doorway.
Commission Exhibit 4576 found in Commission Document 457
Within months, Jones Harris would become the first person to commission special enhancement studies of the photograph, by having Bernard Hoffman scan the image and construct a mosaic which detailed every last pixel, which at the time technologically offered the most sophisticated enlargement for study.1
According to Dom Bonafede, this exercise proved inconclusive because Harris could not obtain contemporary photographs of Lovelady for comparison basis.2
Lovelady and his employer fiercely resisted every attempt by
photographers to obtain images of the famous "man in the doorway".3
Lovelady claimed that he did not want some "crazy S.O.B. take a shot" at him.4
Despite all of this, Mark Lane was successful in taking this photograph of Lovelady, some time after the assassination.
Even though the area in question is extremely small, one of the arguments among early critics was the fact that the shirt worn by Doorman very closely resembled and seemed to match the
shirt worn by the accused assassin Lee Oswald. Harold Weisberg was the first author to publish a nine point study which documented these similarities.5
The FBI, the Warren Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) never conducted reenactments of the figures in the doorway using the same
equipment and film Altgens had used that day. Weisberg complained repeatedly that they should have brought Lovelady with the shirt he claimed to have worn and simply stood him in
the doorway and taken pictures to settle the matter once and for all.6 It was not until November 2012, 49 years later, that a Texas researcher by the name of Ralph Cinque decided to commission a thorough reenactment of the figures in the doorway of Altgens
photograph by utilizing the exact same equipment, position, camera, film and focal length settings that Altgens had used.7
Cinque conducted his experiment at the exact same time of
day (12:30PM) that the photograph had been taken in order to ascertain the effect of the shadows cast by the figures seen in the doorway. Moreover, despite the passage of time, Cinque was able to prove the exact position of Doorman in the center of the stairway, standing on the landing that led to the glass door of the front entrance. Because of the strange parallax effect seen in the photograph, many had assumed that Doorman was standing against the West wall of the entrance.
The first clear enlargement of the photograph was later conducted by Robert Groden, where he also proclaimed the figure as Lovelady.
Image Overlaying
Facial recognition using image overlaying software is widely used and accepted in the field of Forensic Science. (See "Face Recognition in Forensic Science (Part 1)" page 4-5 :
The following is quoted verbatim from this source:
"The procedure of the comparison can be qualitative or quantitative, using relative or absolute dimensions. In a morphological comparison, the location and size of facial
features is measured relatively, not absolutely. If the perspectives of the questioned and known images are similar and the position of the head is similar, the image depicting the known individual can be scaled to that of the questioned individual by using the interpupillary distance or other consistent features within the image."
"An overlay of the scaled known image and the questioned image can then be made in order to determine if the relative alignment of other facial features is consistent. This overlay of images is also referred to as the superimposition method
and can be performed with video editing or image processing equipment [19]. A variation of the overlay approach is a photogrammetric one: a side-by-side of the
images is prepared and two sets of 3 or more parallel lines are drawn through facial features, such as the jawline, pupils, nasal bridge, on both images and compared by position [4]."
"For both a photogrammetric and overlay approach, the images must be of the same perspective, but the key difference is that an overlay allows one to view the length and width simultaneously although viewing the lines in the photogrammetric approach leaves more to human perception as one looks across both images.
Superimposition can appear to be doctoring the evidence if not properly explained because scaling implies changing the images to effect alignment, but the method is sound." (Emphasis ours) Consider that if you scale an image of Abraham Lincoln to
the same eye corner-to-corner distance as that of George Washington, that scaling will not force the length of the face or shape of the jaw to match up, and rightly so because
they are different individuals. Just as scaling two images of Abraham Lincoln to the same interpupillary distance will demonstrate the similar locations of facial marks and
the consistent sizes of facial features because the images do depict the same individual. Therefore a superimposition can provide extremely beneficial information to determine if features appear to be the same and if the relative locations and dimensions relate."
"With an overlay, the examiner can “blink” back and forth between questioned and known imagery to assist in the comparison by identifying similarities and dissimilarities. In this type of comparison, facial landmarks, standard reference marks generally
defined by the underlying structure of the skull [6, 10], are used in the main as guides and are not typically measured."
As far as we know, no researcher has ever taken the task of performing overlay experiments using the image of Doorman as a control image, and superimposing confirmed photographs
of the two possible candidates cited by those on either side of the issue, Lee Oswald and Billy Lovelady. This paper will explain the procedure of image processing and overlay, and offer
new empirical data that should enable us to make an informed decision as to the true identity of the man in the doorway.
The symmetry of the faces of the gallery (test) images
In order to validate the procedures in this study, it is important to establish the symmetrical properties of the faces of the individuals being tested. The following images show a high degree of facial and cranial symmetry for both individuals:
Indications of this near perfect symmetry are revealed when we bisect both faces:
This exercise will be extremely important when we move on to the methodology portion of this paper. The only area of non-symmetry is the hairline of Lee Oswald, however this feature will
not be used in this study for the obvious reason.
About the Control image or "probe":
The image or photograph to be tested is known as the "probe". The provenance of our probe or control image is an enlargement (or scaling up) of the Groden scan seen above.
Control or "Probe" Image (Doorman)
This enlargement of the Doorman image first appeared in the book "The search for Lee Harvey Oswald", published in 1995 by Robert Groden. Many in the JFK research community have used the image to either confirm or refute the identity of Lovelady as Doorman. It is not known how Groden enhanced the photograph to
obtain the enlargement. Dennis Cimino removed the haze and "mottled" condition of Groden's image to facilitate its study. No other adjustment has been made. Bear in mind that Groden has already used this scan to identify Billy Lovelady as the man in the doorway and has continued to promote Lovelady as Doorman as recently as the weekend of October 17-18, 2015, where he addressed a gathering of researchers in New Orleans observing the
76th birthday of Lee Oswald. To our knowledge, Groden has never submitted the image to any bona fide, peer reviewed scientific analysis, and published the results in the manner we
are doing here. The JFK community has merely accepted his proclamation of Lovelady as Doorman.
However, in 2014, Judyth Vary Baker conducted a computerized study of the pixel pattern exhibited by Doorman's shirt and determined it more closely resembled the brownishred,
richly textured shirt worn by Oswald the day and night of November 22, 1963.8
Materials and Methods
1. There are only two images in the public domain that offer the unique opportunity to perform overlay experiments on Doorman, because of the angle in which he is presented in the Altgens6 photograph, where he is showing the right side of this face and ear, which is an approximate 3/4 profile. Despite the fact that there are no images that satisfy this criteria, there are two photos of our subjects that offer the opposite orientation, which would be the left
side of the face and ear. Assuming the symmetrical properties of human faces prevail in these individuals, and which we have already proven in our introduction, when these images are flipped, we should be able to produce these two workable facsimiles, which in forensic face recognition jargon are known as the "gallery":
2. The computer program which allows us to conduct these experiments is one which is extremely popular, powerful and sophisticated - Photoshop. Another very good and open
source program by the name of GIMP can also be used, however we have chosen Photoshop for this study because of our familiarity with the program.
3. A screen capture program which shows precise coordinates on a computer monitor is necessary to copy each individual rendition as the overlay is increased in opacity. In the case that an animation constructed from each progressive image is required, it is of utmost
importance to avoid shifting of the resultant images to provide a much smoother transition.
For our purpose we have chosen the program Gadwin Printscreen 4.7 (www.gadwin.com)4. Optional. In case animation is required, as mentioned in number 3 above, a very good
open source program to use is Photoscape, which can be found here: www.photoscape.org
Procedure:
1. The control or probe (background) image is opened in Photoshop, followed by the two gallery or overlay images that will be used for testing:
2. In separate procedures, the image which will be superimposed, is selected with the select tool:
Alternatively, (above right) the user can right click on the image and select the entire image. The next step is to copy it into the clipboard, via Edit->Copy
Then right click on the control image to activate, and paste the contents of the clipboard over the control image:
3. We have thus defined our first layer. We now move over to "Layers" at the top of the screen. The definition and assignment of layers allows manipulation of opacity values of the test image which can be overlaid onto the control image. There are two ways to control this function: 1. By directly entering the percentage value in the dialog box, or 2. By sliding the control triangle right or left:
By slightly changing the opacity it is now possible to line up features. In this experiment, we lined up the eyes and ears, and sized the separation and angle to match the control image,
Doorman. At this juncture, the move tool is indispensable to tilt, size and move the overlay image to match it as much as possible with the control image:
4. Once satisfied with the position of the overlay, we are ready to start capturing the results. Unfortunately, this is not a function of Photoshop. In order to capture different degrees of opacity, it is necessary to use the screen capture program mentioned earlier, Gadwin print screen. The process has to be repeated after every adjustment of the opacity levels mentioned above. In this experiment we went from zero (0), to 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%
and 30% opacity. After each capture, the opacity value is raised to the next level. Gadwin will place the captured image into the clipboard. Returning to Photoshop, we go to File -> New
->OK to create the new image with the correct dimensions:
Paste the contents of the clipboard into Photoshop with Edit-> Paste. Each resultant file is saved in jpeg format with a distinctive name which allows and defines an ascending order: (i.e.: LHO5%.jpg, LHO10%.jpg, etc).
By experimenting with the opacity levels it is possible to obtain as many different versions of the overlay onto the control image with varying intensities.
Results and measurements:
The following two collages show the results of our tests and procedures.
Here they are in gif format:
Discussion:
After superimposing and overlaying both exemplars onto our control image of Doorman, it is clear that there is quite a bit of difference between one and the other:
Lovelady: When we align the eyes and ears and adjust the overlay to match the control image we note the following features that do not line up:
1. Nose is rounder, larger, and more bulbous. The bridge is different. Nose shifts to the right. Nostrils barely visible.
2. There is more distance between the lower lip and the tip of the chin which brings the mouth higher.
3. Eyebrows are more rounded and there is more distance between eyes and brow ridge.
4. Chin is pointier.
5. The forehead is swept back at a different angle.
Oswald:
1. Nose matches, including bridge and general form. Oswald had large visible nostrils, and on Doorman, we see Oswald's large right nostril.
2. The lips, which are pursed together tightly, are a match.
3. The eyes line up and are a match.
4. Eyebrows are more horizontal and are a match. There is a perfect match of the distance between the eyes and the eyebrows.
5. Chin matches in size and shape.
6. Vertical angle of forehead matches.
(Note: Oswald suffered a bruise over his left eye which caused swelling. When the image is flipped, that swelling gets falsely transferred to the right eye, but just ignore it.)
Conclusion:
The methodology used in this study and the empirical data derived, unequivocally prove that the man in the doorway is really Lee Oswald. The significance and implications of this finding
are beyond the scope of this paper.
Notes:
1. Dom Bonafede, New York Herald Tribune 5/24/64 "A picture with a life of it's own", page 2
2. Ibid page 4
3. Ibid. Francis Beckman, who had been sent by Harris to take a picture, was almost thrown in jail for
"harassing" Lovelady (http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us Document 2782-001)
4. Ibid page 5
5. Harold Weisberg, Whitewash II 1966
6. Ibid
7. Cinque used a Cannon 35mm which was similar to the 35mm Nikkorex camera with 105mm telephoto lens used by Altgens. Both used Eastman Kodak Tri-X film set at 30 feet focal length
8. See http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.ca/2015/07/jfk-judyth-vary-baker-cements-oswald-in.html
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