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

Rob Caprio has been an active JFKer for a long time. I have seen him on several forums, although I do not recall ever having an exchange with him. 

But, I see that he and I are of like mind about Ruby not shooting Oswald, and I am going to post some of his writing here. 

Note that he takes the position that Ruby shot a blank. But, he points out that Ruby had no memory of having any interaction with Oswald, that he remembered reaching the bottom of the ramp and then being pounced upon by police, but nothing in-between. He also makes reference to Ruby being an MK-ULTRA subject. 

Note that this write-up is fairly new: it was written after the 50th anniversary. What follows is mostly Caprio, who quotes a Michael Schweitzer and Greg Szymanski, but I also intersperse some comments of my own. 

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Caprio: The Warren Commission (WC) said Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) on November 24, 1963, but did he? This will be one of those posts that will ask you to broaden your mind in regard to what you think you know about the JFK assassination and the subsequent killing of his alleged assassin.

This post will look at something that I never even considered myself in 25 plus years of studying the case. Keep an open mind and then reach your own decision. Try to think outside the box here as many people are shot on television and live to tell about it.

Did Ruby actually shoot LHO as we have been told for fifty plus years?

There was a 4th year medical student available to LHO, Fred Bieberdorf, following the shooting, but he was NOT a full-fledged doctor who had experience with gunshot wounds. 

There is an article entitled Who Assassinated President Kennedy and Why? by Michael B. Schweitzer, who was a lawyer for over 30 years. He believed that the CIA killed JFK and that it was orchestrated by Allen Dulles and included Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Texas oilmen Clint Murchison, John Mecom and H.L. Hunt. I shall quote from that article.

Schweitzer: THE RUBY-OSWALD CASE-CLOSER: Ruby actually fired a blank! Oswald, who had asked to wear a dark sweater before the transfer so he would look better on television, groaned twice and dropped to the ground in an Oscar-worthy performance. The CIA then double-crossed him in the ambulance and shot him for real. The necessity: The coup required 2 assassinations: JFK and Oswald. Letting Oswald live would have kept questions alive for years – during the prolonged process of trial and appeal – which would not only have delayed legitimizing the Johnson presidency, but given the public time to think about what happened and a jury a chance to acquit. That door had to be shut at once – and it was, within 48 hours. Planners selected Ruby so the second killing, like the first, could be pinned on a “lone nut” gunman. But the scenario required a single shot to play out plausibly. Ruby had to lunge at Oswald through a throng of police, reporters and photographers – a multiplicity of variables to hinder him.

A fatal shot could only be guaranteed if someone else fired it. Absent this precaution, there may well have been a second “magic bullet” to explain: how a single shot by Ruby caused two wounds to Oswald. 

Caprio: This floored me as it was something I never even thought about and just took for granted, but he raises some valid points in his statement. I realize elements of the Dallas Police Department (DPD) did all they could to assist Ruby by having the transfer vehicle NOT in place, bright lights for the media that blinded the officers who were protecting LHO and assistance for Ruby in entering and getting near LHO, but still there are things that could go wrong as the author says. 

Cinque: The officers who were protecting LHO were in on it. And Ruby just walked down the Main Street ramp, as he said. Nobody opened any doors for him.  


Caprio: Furthermore, the image of LHO being shot is fresh in our minds because of the iconic photograph taken by Bob Jackson who was a Dallas Times Herald photographer. Here it is.

Caprio: When you look at the photograph you see that he would have been shot in the stomach area and we see confirmation of this in Bieberdorf Exhibit 5123 as well.

Cinque: WC Exhibit 5123 was NOT a statement by Bieberdorf. It was an account of what he said by two FBI agents. And it is weird. It states that in the Jail Office, Bieberdorf found that Oswald had no pulse, no heart beat, and wasn't breathing. Then how could he still be alive at the hospital minutes later? How long do you think you can live without a heartbeat and pulse and without breathing? And, it stated that Oswald was shot in the stomach (meaning the abdomen) but at his WC testimony, the Bieb changed it to the ribcage. 

Mr. HUBERT. All right. What do you want to change?

Dr. BIEBERDORF. Okay. On page 2, the first paragraph; about the third sentence there begins, "He noticed that someone had pulled Oswald's shirt up to his chest, and he could see a puncture wound in the left side of Oswald's stomach just below the rib cage."
He did have this puncture wound on his left side, but it wasn't below his rib cage. It was--I'd like to correct that "stomach". Just below the rib cage to the left side of his lower chest. I don't really--I didn't count what rib it was under, but I believe it was between the two ribs, probably down just below the fifth or sixth.
Mr. HUBERT. All right, any others?
Dr. BIEBERDORF. Oh; I skipped one or two.

Cinque: But, the Bieb never corrected the statement about finding Oswald lifeless: with no heart beat and no respiration, and that he really thought and presumed that Oswald was dead. I mean, think about it: He was a near-doctor. Right? So, if he came upon a person who had no heart beat and wasn't breathing, wouldn't he have performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation if he thought he was still alive? But, did the Bieb? 

That is weird. Why would they leave Oswald's wound exposed? And regarding the heartbeat, he'd have only listened for it directly if he had a stethoscope. Otherwise, he would have just used pulse detection as a proxy for the heartbeat. Or else what? Press his naked ear to Oswald's naked chest? No way! Look, the carotid artery comes right off the ascending aorta. If there is no carotid pulse, there is no heartbeat. Then, the agents wrote that he "massaged the sternum"? But, he would have done sternal compressions if he thought the heart had stopped. But, nobody except those two FBI agents said that. And, what would be the point unless he also restored respiration?  of So, did the Bieb give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Oswald as well. But, I don't believe that for a second. If he had done cardiopulmonary resuscitation, everyone would have seen it and reported it, but nobody did. I think those FBI agents lied. But, why didn't the Bieb correct it with the Warren Commission?

What comes next in Rob Caprio's article is a long meandering account about there having been two wounds, and it's not worth publishing. Oswald only had one gunshot wound, plus, he had surgical wounds, from where doctors incised him. Remember, they opened him up. But, Caprio did point out that in the Jackson photo, it looks like Oswald was shot directly in his abdomen. 

That was reportedly taken .3 sec after the shot, so no one can assume any re-positioning. How you do explain it? You can't! The answer is that the Jackson photo is bull shit. Caprio keeps trying to reconcile what the photo shows with what the autopsy says, but you can't. They are in conflict, and that's the way it is. But then, he returns to Schweitzer's article: 



Michael Schweitzer: "The evidence that Ruby did not shoot Oswald: photographer Bob Jackson, who took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the “shooting,” said there was “not a speck of blood anywhere” on the body or at the crime scene; the two “stretcher photos” of Oswald being carried to the ambulance show not only no blood on his sweater, but no damage to a single fiber; and a shot by Ruby would have passed straight through him, but the trajectory of the bullet that killed him was upward." 

Cinque: I checked the autopsy report, and it states that the course of the bullet was left to right and backward. It says nothing about upward. Furthermore, it states that the bullet notched the undersurface of the 7th rib upon going in and fractured the 11th rib before settling under the skin, from which it was excised. Well, the 11th rib is below the 7th rib. Right? Therefore, the course of the bullet was DOWNWARD, not upward.

Schweitzer continued: "And Ruby, recounting the “incident” (his word) in an interview three weeks before he died, said: “I can’t recall what had happened from the time I came to the bottom of the ramp until the police officers had me on the ground.” His mind was blank about everything he said and did during his encounter with Oswald, as if programmed by MK-ULTRA to auto-erase."

Cinque: Auto-erase? That is highly presumptuous. It's not that he auto-erased it; it's that he didn't do it. He had no memory of shooting Oswald because he didn't shoot him. 

Schweizer continued: To those who doubt the proposition that the Ruby-Oswald “shooting” was staged, consider this: in a plot that required two assassinations, what is the probability the first occurred by conspiracy and the second by chance?"

Caprio: His first reference was to what Bob Jackson said. Jackson went on the Greg Szymanski Radio Show back in 2006. Here is what Mr. Szymanski wrote about it later on.


Szymanski: Bob Jackson, former photographer for the Dallas Tiimes Herald who captured on film Ruby shooting Oswald, reveals for the first time on American radio that he didn't see a speck of blood on the body or at the crime scene. Jackson was on assignment for the Dallas paper on the morning of Nov. 24, 1963, when Oswald was being transferred from his holding cell and snapped the picture "seen around the world," a Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Oswald grimacing with Jack Ruby fully visible with pistol in hand, shooting Oswald.

After 43 years, Jackson told listeners of Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal, he witnessed no blood on Oswald after the shooting, as well as "not a speck of blood" at the crime scene leading all the way to when Oswald was put in the ambulance.

"I sure did think it was strange not to see any blood whatsoever," said Jackson, whose award-winning photo was later published first on the Times Herald front page and then in the Saturday Evening Post.

"I stayed on the scene well after Oswald was taken away in the ambulance and I never did see any blood, not one drop."
  
Jackson's startling revelation adds fuel to the fire of researchers who claimed Oswald was never shot by Ruby, but later killed by CIA operatives in the ambulance after Oswald was sedated against his will.

On the Investigative Journal, Jackson was joined by researcher Brian David Andersen, a long time JFK truth advocate, who said Jackson's testimony gives further credibility to the discrepancy to the type and angle of the wound reported in Oswald's autopsy and the angle of the gunshot would captured in Jackson's photo taken as Ruby supposedly fired the pistol into Oswald's chest.

"The bullet should have went straight through Oswald if you look at Bob's photo, but later the attending physician said the angle of the bullet was at an upward angle" said Andersen after he questioned Jackson on the radio show, indicating the possibility that Oswald was actually shot after he was placed in the ambulance. "The absence of blood also indicated this to be a real possibility." (By Greg Szymanski, Arctic Beacon.com, October 19, 2006)


How could LHO have been shot for real, but display no blood or leave blood on the ground? Stomach wounds usually cause a good bit of blood to exit the body (probably second only to head wounds) so how could Mr. Jackson see none? Mr. Jackson would be corroborated by Fred Bieberdorf as well as he said this in Bieberdorf Exhibit 5123 about what he saw "…but that NO external bleeding was evident."

Cinque: Again, that was FBI agents speaking for the Bieb. However, the Bieb did not retract that statement at his WC hearing. So, if he saw no blood at the site of the wound, how could this be Oswald's blood on the floor?

Any blood on the floor had to come from that wound, right? So, if the wound was clean- bloodless, according to the Bieb- how could all that blood have gotten on the floor? And if Oswald got all that blood on the floor, imagine how bloody his clothes must have been. The blood had to go from his wound to his clothes to the floor, right? Wouldn't some of it have stayed on his clothes? Isn't blood sticky and doesn't it clot quickly outside the body? 

Caprio: Again, how could LHO have been shot as claimed and NO external bleeding having been seen? Mr. Szymanski’s article mentions conspiracy researchers discussing this issue, but I have to be honest, I have NEVER seen this discussed before. I always assumed it was a given that Ruby did in fact shoot LHO, but I have to say there is some evidence in this post (autopsy report, and eyewitness statements by Bob Jackson and Fred Bieberdorf) that makes me at least reconsider what may have gone on that day and that it may NOT match the official claim. 

I guess when you really think about it, why would we expect this area to be cut and dry when the JFK, J.D. Tippit (JDT) and General Edwin Walker areas are NOT? If anyone has any information on this area of research I would greatly appreciate you sharing it with me in this thread. Thank you in advance.

I would have to think this evidence greatly calls into account the official conclusion the WC gave us regarding LHO’s death and the fact the WC did NOT investigate this crime fully calls into question that idea of their conclusion being accurate. This was the “case closer” for the WC and I don’t think they even showed, via the DPD, that Ruby’s handgun was the murder weapon of LHO! I just did a quick check of Cortland Cunningham and Robert Frazier’s WC testimonies and Ruby is not even mentioned in them. I think because we saw this on television we all assumed there was NO way we could have been lied to in that area of the case, but think about this, people are “killed” on television all the time and yet they are very much alive. Were we hoodwinked? 

Cinque: The Oswald shooting was a ruse, as Rob Caprio suggests. However, the one playing the shooter in the ruse wasn't Jack Ruby; it was James Bookhout pretending to be Jack Ruby. Ruby had no memory of shooting Oswald because he didn't shoot him. It's not that his mind auto-erased it. Auto-erased it? That's just movieland stuff.  He didn't do it. You can't have a memory of something you didn't do.