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

Thanks to David Von Pein, I now have a legible plat of the first floor.  It may still be too small for you to read, but I can read every word. 

And what it says in the center is: OPEN STORAGE SPACE. It says nothing about having a mailing station there. Just storage. So, they had boxes there, like they had all over. 

And then, when you consider Troy West, the mailer's, statement:

Mr. WEST - Well, my place was on the west side of the other building. 

And of course, he meant his work place. He wasn't talking about anything else. The other building was on Houston Street a couple of blocks away. David Belin ignored his statement and just went on as if he hadn't said it. Maybe he communicated with eyes, 

"Listen, Troy: You worked in this building, on Elm Street. If you know what's good for you, you'll say you worked there."

And maybe Troy got the message, and I do believe he did get the message. When you read these testimonies you get the impression that a lot of these people were scared.  The guy that I admire is Jack Dougherty because when Bulldog Joe Ball tried to get him to back down from saying that Oswald had nothing in his hands when he entered the building that morning, Jack refused to concede. Like Stonewall Jackson, he held his ground. But, with Troy West, I think he got it that Belin didn't want to hear anything about him working in another building, so he shut the pluck up about it and played along. 

But, where does that leave us? We have the plat that lacks any reference to a mailing station on the 1st floor and that accounts for the open space by saying that it was storage area. Not a mailing area but a storage area.  We have images of a dark mailing station with no distinguishing features of the first floor. We have Troy West's statement that he worked in another building. We are left with no reason to believe the claim that there was a mailing station on the first floor. And that means that Oswald could not have swiped wrapping paper and built a bag there. 

And look at the jam poor Troy West was in?

Mr. BELIN - Was it near the stairway? 
Mr. WEST - No; it wasn't close to the stairway. 
Mr. BELIN - Was it closer to the Elm Street side of the building? 
Mr. WEST - No, sir. 
Mr. BELIN - What was it close to? The west side is the side near the railroad tracks and the triple underpass. Is that what you think is the west side? 
Mr. WEST - Yes, sir; that is what I would call the west side. 

Belin gave up after that and moved on to something else, but poor Troy West didn't know how to tell him: I didn't work near anything you can name in connection with that building because I didn't work in that building. Troy West could not recall seeing any of the TSBD workers named by Belin, and he named 4. He said he never left his mailing station- not for coffee, and not for food. He had everything right there. He recalled police coming into the building, but he couldn't cite Truly and Baker coming in. He didn't cite them. He didn't recall them. Finally, Belin put the words in his mouth: did you see Truly? And you can tell that Belin was getting frustrated, as in irritated, and Troy West knew it and was trying to give the guy what he wanted. Belin said: 

Mr. BELIN - Did you see him (Mr. Truly) do you remember, while you were eating your lunch, come in the building? 
Mr. WEST - Yes, sir; I think he came in with the police. 

RC: Note that when people say "the police" they invariably mean more than one policeman, and usually more than two. Belin was trying to get him to say that he saw Truly come in with one other policeman, who was Marrion Baker, but Troy West just couldn't do it.

Mr. BELIN - Was he one of the first people in, or did other people come in ahead of him, if you remember? 
Mr. WEST - Really, I just don't know. 


Troy West didn't know anything. He was just winging it. 

So, Troy West wrapped small numbers of books with brown paper and then he tied them with string. It's interesting that today, the post office tells you not to tie packages with string. But, how were the parcels labeled and addressed? This was a business, so presumably, they didn't just take a felt pen and scratch a name and address on. So, did they have a label making machine that typed the name and address? Troy only spoke of wrapping and tying, so who did the labeling? And the postage was a separate matter, and so was the stacking of the ready-to-mail parcels. If they were doing the wrapping and tying on the first floor, then presumably, they were also doing the labeling, postaging, and stacking of mail-ready parcels on the first floor. So, how come we don't see any of that?

The whole "Oswald-made-a-bag" story is a load of crap.