At the very moment Kennedy was shot, four female employees of the Texas School Book Depository at Dealey Plaza—Victoria Adams, Sandra Styles, Elsie Dorman, and Dorothy May Garner—were standing by the window of the fourth-floor office.
Twenty-three-year-old Victoria Adams initially thought she had heard a firecracker when the shooting began. But when she saw the chaos unfolding below on Elm Street, she realized that something dramatic had happened.
Grabbing her friend Sandra Styles by the arm, she suggested that they go downstairs to see what was happening. The two women passed through a storage room on their way to the rear staircase and hurried down the creaking stairs.
By this point, Victoria had begun to fear the worst and exclaimed that she thought the President had been shot.
The two friends then made their way toward the grassy knoll because they had seen people moving in that direction after believing they had heard shots coming from there and noticing what appeared to be gun smoke in the area.
At roughly the same time, motorcycle police officer Marrion Baker rushed into the Texas School Book Depository with his pistol drawn. He later stated that he found Lee Harvey Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom holding a Coca-Cola.
However, Baker was reassured by the Depository’s superintendent, Roy Truly, who had accompanied him from the first floor and, with a nod toward Oswald, explained that he worked there.
When police later questioned the Depository employees, Adams recounted her story, stating that she and her friend had hurried down the stairs immediately after the shooting.
When Adams was subsequently called to testify before Warren Commission counsel David Belin in April 1964, she had barely entered the room before Belin asked:
“You do know that people sometimes remember things incorrectly, don’t you? Is it possible that you may be mistaken in your recollection of these events?”¹
Adams firmly replied that she was not mistaken and was puzzled that Belin had begun questioning her before the court reporter had even arrived.
When Belin asked Adams how much time had elapsed between the gunfire and the moment she left the window to head for the stairs, she answered 15 to 30 seconds. When he asked how long it had taken her to reach the first floor, she explained that it had taken no more than one minute.
Despite persistent questioning from Belin, Adams stood by her account. She then asked why her friend Sandra Styles had not been called to testify, to which Belin replied that they did not need her testimony.
Adams subsequently suggested that the Warren Commission conduct a timed reenactment with her to verify the two women’s account, but the Commission refused.
What, then, made Victoria Adams’s testimony so controversial?
Because the Warren Commission’s analysis and conclusion held that the assassination had been carried out by a lone gunman who was on the sixth floor when the murder was committed and was then encountered in the Depository lunchroom four floors below shortly afterward, the Commission’s theory required that Lee Harvey Oswald had run down the stairs from the sixth floor immediately after the shooting and then entered the lunchroom.
If Victoria Adams and her friend were on the staircase immediately after Kennedy was shot (according to Adams’s testimony, it took between 15 and 30 seconds), they would, of course, have noticed if Oswald—or anyone else—had also been running down the stairs.
Since both Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles were completely certain that they neither saw nor heard Lee Harvey Oswald or anyone else running down the stairs, the author argues that the entire thesis of the Warren Commission was thereby undermined.
According to this account, the Warren Commission’s solution to the dilemma was to try to persuade Adams to change her testimony. When she refused, the Commission allegedly chose simply to alter her testimony instead—an action the author characterizes as both fraudulent and illegal.
When Adams later realized that the Commission had distorted her testimony, she began to fear the worst. She moved out of her home and stayed with a friend before eventually leaving Dallas permanently.
Adams then remained largely anonymous until author Barry Ernest, after twenty-five years of searching, finally succeeded in locating her.
Ernest was a longtime friend of former FBI agent and author Harold Weisberg and adopted Weisberg’s approach of avoiding speculation and relying solely on documented facts when writing his book The Girl on the Stairs about Victoria’s experiences.
In the book, Ernest argued that Adams had been treated unfairly by Commission counsel David Belin and that her testimony had indeed been altered.
Ernest also claimed to have demonstrated that the Commission, despite its efforts to obscure certain facts, made a significant mistake that supported Adams’s account. The Commission acknowledged that if Adams’s description of her actions after the shooting were correct, she would ”probably have seen or heard” the assassin. However, because this conflicted with the Commission’s theory, it concluded that:
“She came down the stairs several minutes after Oswald, and even after Truly and Baker.”²
The problem, according to the author, is that Adams’s supervisor, Dorothy May Garner, confirmed Adams’s account when she testified before the Commission.
In 1999, Ernest discovered a revealing document in the National Archives: a letter dated June 2, 1964, written by assistant counsel Martha Joe Stroud to the Warren Commission’s chief counsel J. Lee Rankin.
The letter contains the only known reference in the Commission’s records to an interview with Dorothy May Garner, Victoria Adams’s supervisor, who had been standing with Victoria at the fourth-floor window when the shots were fired.
The letter states:
“Miss Garner, Miss Adams’s supervisor, stated this morning that after Miss Adams went downstairs, she (Garner) saw Mr. Truly and the policeman coming up.”³
Ernest later tracked down Garner to determine whether her memory would confirm the contents of the letter.
When he interviewed her, Garner confirmed that Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles had left the window immediately after the shots were fired, with Garner following “close behind” them.
She further explained that she had not gone down the stairs with her coworkers. Instead, she had gone into a storage room adjacent to the stairway. She remained there long enough to see police officer Marrion Baker and Depository superintendent Roy Truly coming up the stairs after their encounter with Lee Harvey Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom.
However, she did not see Oswald during the brief period in which he was allegedly running down from the sixth floor.
According to the author, this point is crucial because it means that Oswald could not have descended the stairs before Styles and Adams.
If Oswald did not come down before Adams and her friend Sandra descended the staircase and before Baker came up, then, according to this line of reasoning, he could not have been on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination.
The corroborating accounts given by Victoria Adams, Sandra Styles, and Dorothy May Garner are therefore much more consistent with Oswald’s own claim that he was on the first floor eating lunch at the time of the assassination and then shortly afterward went to the second floor to buy a Coca-Cola from the vending machine.
The information above means that we have, in black and white from the Commission’s own records, that Victoria Adams’s supervisor—just like her friend Sandra Styles—confirmed that Adams had already gone downstairs by the time Roy Truly and Marrion Baker appeared on the fourth floor.
If Adams and Styles had already descended the stairs when Baker and Truly reached the fourth floor, then this could not have occurred after Baker and Truly had spoken with Garner.
Otherwise, how could Garner have encountered Truly and Baker on the stairway to the fourth floor after Adams and Styles had left the office?
According to this line of reasoning, Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles must therefore have made it down the stairs before Baker’s and Truly’s alleged encounter with Lee Harvey Oswald on the second floor.
This means that Oswald could not have used that time to run down the stairs.
In other words, Adams and Styles had indirectly provided Lee Harvey Oswald with an alibi.
As a result, they also became a problem for the Warren Commission, which was committed to the conclusion that there had been only one assassin. This likely explains why the Commission did not call Adams’s friend Sandra Styles to testify. It was troublesome enough to have one witness contradicting the claim that Oswald had rushed down the stairs immediately after the assassination. The last thing the Commission wanted was additional witnesses providing Oswald with an alibi.
Adams also revealed two other interesting details to author Barry Ernest.
When she and her friend left the Texas School Book Depository and stepped onto Houston Street, a police officer was standing across the street by the curb, yet he made no attempt to stop or question them.
Later, at the front of the Depository building, she noticed a man in civilian clothes standing at the corner of Houston and Elm Streets, questioning people. When she asked an employee named Avery Davis who the man was, he did not know.
That same weekend, Victoria saw someone on television who looked remarkably like the man she had observed.
It was Jack Ruby.
Roger Craig was known as a conscientious law enforcement officer in Dallas. He had been promoted four times and was selected as “Officer of the Year” in 1960.
At 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, Craig was near Dealey Plaza when he suddenly heard gunfire. He ran toward the grassy knoll above Elm Street and began interviewing witnesses.
About ten minutes later, he heard a whistle and saw a man come running out of the rear door of the Texas School Book Depository and down the slope toward Elm Street. According to Craig, the man then jumped into a Nash Rambler station wagon driven by a dark-complexioned man.
Craig attempted to intercept the vehicle by crossing the street, but heavy traffic prevented him from doing so. Instead, he proceeded to the Depository building.
There, when he asked who was in charge of the investigation, a man stepped forward and identified himself as a member of the United States Secret Service.
Craig explained that he had seen a man run from the Depository and get into a car, but the agent appeared uninterested in the information.
Delores Reid, who worked in an office on the second floor of the Texas School Book Depository, testified before the Warren Commission that Oswald had passed through her office shortly after the shooting.
According to Reid, Lee Harvey Oswald had walked calmly through the room carrying a Coca-Cola in his hand. This, according to the author, further supports the claim that he had been on the second floor purchasing a soft drink.
When Reid was asked by Commission attorney David Belin what Oswald was wearing, she replied that he was dressed in a white T-shirt and some kind of faded trousers.
When Reid was shown photographs of a pair of trousers that Oswald had worn at the Depository on November 22 and asked whether they resembled the ones she had seen, she could not answer with certainty.
Belin then asked whether Oswald had been wearing a shirt or jacket over the T-shirt. Reid firmly maintained that he had not.
Mrs. Reid was never shown a photograph of the shirt Oswald had worn that day. According to the author, this may not have been a coincidence.
All of the other witnesses who reported seeing Oswald that day—including Depository employees as well as police officer Marrion Baker—stated that Oswald had been wearing a dark brown long-sleeved shirt.
Reid, however, testified that Oswald was wearing a white T-shirt.
Given that Reid had seen Oswald at close range, the author argues that it is difficult to imagine she could have mistaken a dark brown long-sleeved shirt for a white short-sleeved T-shirt.
Since the man Reid encountered and identified as Oswald was not wearing any additional clothing—either on his upper body or carrying any in his hands—Belin allegedly realized there was a problem.
What had happened to Oswald’s shirt?
In some unexplained manner, Oswald’s shirt had apparently vanished without a trace after Marrion Baker and Roy Truly saw him, and just before Delores Reid encountered him immediately afterward.
Later that day, when police officer Roger Craig arrived at police headquarters, Lee Harvey Oswald had already been arrested.
Captain J. Will Fritz asked Craig to take a look at the prisoner, whereupon Craig stated that it was the same man he had seen running down the grassy knoll after the assassination and jumping into a car.
The problem, however, was that according to witness accounts and the conclusions of the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald had left the Texas School Book Depository on foot after the assassination and walked several blocks before boarding a bus.
The fact that there are witness accounts describing two individuals near the Depository, both identified as Oswald but dressed differently—with one allegedly seen leaving Dealey Plaza in a car while the other supposedly walked away—suggests, according to the author, that something very unusual was taking place at the Depository.
Sometime between 1:01 p.m. and 1:16 p.m., a police officer named J. D. Tippit was shot in the Oak Cliff area, not far from Oswald’s residence.
Shortly after 1:00 p.m., a ticket seller at the Texas Theatre in downtown Dallas named William Burroughs heard someone sneak into the theater and head up to the balcony.
By approximately 1:15 p.m., the individual had apparently come down from the balcony and purchased popcorn from Burroughs—a curious detail, given that he had allegedly entered the theater without paying.
He then took a seat downstairs next to moviegoer Jack Davis.
Davis later testified that Oswald sat down beside him near the beginning of the film at approximately 1:20 p.m.
This took place four minutes after Oswald had allegedly shot Tippit, according to the Warren Commission. (How did he manage to get from the murder scene into downtown Dallas, spend time in the balcony, and then buy popcorn within that time frame?)
Oswald then moved and sat next to another man. A few minutes later, Jack Davis noticed that he changed seats again, this time sitting next to a pregnant woman. Shortly before the police arrived, the pregnant woman went up to the balcony and was never seen again.
Apart from Oswald, there were now six people in the theater’s main auditorium (seven before the pregnant woman left), and within the span of ten minutes, Oswald had sat beside half of them.
According to the author, it therefore does not seem implausible that he had been instructed to go to the theater to meet a contact and that this was why he behaved as he did. Perhaps it was only when none of the people he sat beside spoke to him that Oswald began to suspect that he had been lured into a trap.
It should also be noted that when Oswald was arrested, he was carrying one half of a coupon in his pocket. In addition, two halves of dollar bills were reportedly found in his rented room.⁴
The author argues that it cannot be ruled out that Oswald had been instructed to use these items to identify a contact carrying the matching halves.
Oswald is thus said to have slipped into the theater without paying, which appears illogical, since doing so would have risked attracting attention.
According to William Burroughs, Oswald arrived at the Texas Theatre at approximately 1:07 p.m.
If Oswald killed J. D. Tippit, this would mean, according to the author’s argument, that he would have had to be in two places at once. The reason is that the Warren Commission concluded that Tippit was shot at 1:16 p.m., a time when Oswald, according to both Burroughs and Davis, was already at the theater.
The Commission reportedly avoided questioning Burroughs about Oswald’s activities before 1:35 p.m.
Twenty-seven minutes after Tippit was shot, a female theater employee named Julia Postal telephoned Dallas Police headquarters and stated that a man in the theater had behaved suspiciously and was fleeing from the police.⁵
The question, according to the author, is:
How did she know that the man was fleeing from the police?
At the same time, a transport aircraft landed just outside Dallas. The sole passenger on board was Robert G. Vinson, a pilot with the United States Air Force and the North American Air Defense Command, who had found a last-minute flight that could take him back to his base in Colorado.
Vinson was puzzled that neither the pilot nor the co-pilot spoke to him and that there was no flight engineer or crew chief on board. Even stranger was the fact that the aircraft suddenly made a 180-degree turn and headed for Dallas after an announcement came over the cockpit speaker that the President had been shot.
When the aircraft arrived in Dallas, it did not land at an airport. Instead, it landed on a strip of roadway outside the city, while the engines remained running.
Looking through the aircraft window, Vinson suddenly noticed two men approaching. The taller of the two appeared to be of Latin American descent, while the other was a thin-haired young white man.
The men boarded the aircraft and, without saying a word, walked past Vinson and continued forward to the cockpit.
The plane then flew on to Roswell Air Force Base in New Mexico, where the two men were dropped off.
The following day, Vinson was sitting in his living room watching television with his wife when he suddenly saw a familiar face on the screen.
“That guy looks exactly like the little fellow who was on the plane,”⁶
he exclaimed, referring to the young white man who had arrived with the taller, darker-complexioned individual.
Vinson’s wife looked at him skeptically and wondered whether he had lost his senses.
“It can’t be him,” she objected. “That guy is in jail.”⁷
But Vinson persisted:
“I swear it’s the same guy who boarded that plane.”⁸
His wife advised him to keep quiet about what he had seen, and he did.
It was a decision that may very well have saved Robert Vinson’s life.
The man they had seen on television was none other than Lee Harvey Oswald.
Michael Delavante, The Assassination of President Kennedy – Part 5
Also read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 6
Sources:
1. The Adams/Belin Encounter, https://thegirlonthestairs.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/the-adams-belin-encounter/
- Warren Commission: Complete Investigation & Commission’s Report 552 Testimonies Regarding All the Circumstances of JFK’s Assassination, President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy – U.S. Government , Good Press, 2023, (sidan 154)
3. Barry Ernest, The Girl on the Stairs: My Search for a Missing Witness to the Assassination , Barry Ernest, 2010, (sidan 283)
- Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartmann, ”Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination,” Counterpoint, 2008, (sidan 127)
- Harvey, Lee and Tippit: A New Look at the Tippit Shooting, By John Armstrong, PROBE, January-February, 1998 issue (Vol. 5 No. 2)
- James P. Johnson, Joe Roe, Flight from Dallas: New Evidence of CIA Involvement in the Murder of President John F. Kennedy, 1st Books Library, 2003, (sid. 29,30,31) Se även: Robert G Vinson Statement Nov 2 1996, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cpc4Z2t_HA
- James P. Johnson, Joe Roe, Flight from Dallas: New Evidence of CIA Involvement in the Murder of President John F. Kennedy, 1st Books Library, 2003, (sid. 29,30,31) Se även: Robert G Vinson Statement Nov 2 1996, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cpc4Z2t_HA
- James P. Johnson, Joe Roe, Flight from Dallas: New Evidence of CIA Involvement in the Murder of President John F. Kennedy, 1st Books Library, 2003, (sid. 29,30,31) Se även: Robert G Vinson Statement Nov 2 1996, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cpc4Z2t_HA
