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

 

They realized they had a problem in that James Bookhout was considerably shorter than Ruby. So, they tried to make up for it by altering the Beers photo. In it, the Shooter appears to be very outstretched, with a huge span between his two feet. In fact, the span is so great that you don't even see his left foot. In this collage, I have added his left foot to complete the perspective.

First, nobody would do that. The span between his feet was determined by his stride, and he wouldn't have been thinking about his stride. He would have left it alone. And you can see in the picture that his left leg is much longer than his right. I added the image of Gene Kelly, whose legs are the same length.

Gene Kelly was dancing; Bookhout was not. If we were to believe the Beers photo, we would have to accept that the Shooter stopped short, far from Oswald, and leaned in a great distance in order to make what was practically a contact shot.

But, the Shooter didn't do that. Watch him in action in this NBC film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjXRQXlBU3g&t=81sv The Shooter rushed in and got close to Oswald. He was upright and snug with Oswald when he pulled the trigger. He didn't stop short and stretch in, as it appears in the Beers photo.

In the Beers photo, we see the disparity in the length of the legs of the Shooter, where his left leg is long and way out of proportion to his right; where he has stopped short of Oswald and leaned in.

And then, I added the image of dancer Gene Kelly showing a similar stance, in which you can easily see that his legs were the same length and in balance.

So, what should we make of this? I have been saying for years that the Beers and Jackson photos were taken at a posed photo-shoot in the basement beforehand. And it's part of the record that the Police cleared out the garage at 9:45. Remember: reporters and cameramen expected the Jail Transfer to occur at 10 AM. So, of course they were there at 9:45. They had started taking positions for this 40 foot walk to a car. But then, they were ordered out, and that included Jail Doctor Fred Bieberdorf. Beers shot his photo from a ladder; he was up on a ladder. And he was about as far back as he could be. You can't attribute the disparity to the angle. It's disproportionate due to dalliance. The Shooter's left leg is too large and too long, and it was done to compensate for James Bookhout's short height.