by Jim Marrs
Ricky was taken to FBI offices in Midland and questioned for five hours by agents Ron Butler and Tom Farris. They alternately coaxed Ricky for information and threatened him with charges of withholding evidence. After reading the diary, Agent Butler told Ricky, “Your father has a fanciful imagination.”
Exhausted, Ricky was finally allowed to return home with his materials. As he rested, Agent Farris arrived and asked to retrieve a notepad he said he had inadvertently left in Ricky’s belongings. The agent quickly returned from where Ricky had laid out his materials, said, “I got what I came for. Sorry for the interruption,” and left. The diary has not been seen since.
However, in June 1990, further support for Roscoe’s involvement came with the discovery of a steel canister at his grandfather’s house. Inside were three coded messages that today are in the hands of an assassination researcher. All three messages carried the same heading, which read:
Navy Int.
Code A M R C
Remark data
1666106
NRC VRC NAC
The first message was dated on “? . . . 63.” It stated:
Foreign affairs assignments have been cancelled. The next assignment is to eliminate a national security threat to worldwide peace. Destination will be Houston, Austin or Dallas. Contacts are being arranged now. Orders are subject to change at any time. Reply back if not understood.
All are signed, “C. BowerS, OSHA, Re-rifle Code AAA destroy / on/”
A message dated September 1963 read:
Dallas destination chosen. Your place hidden within the department. Contacts are within this letter. Continue on as planned.
The final message dated December 1963 stated:
Stay within department. Witnesses have eyes, ears and mouth. You [unclear] do of the mix up. The men will be in to cover all misleading evidence soon. Stay as planned. Wait for further notice.
By 1990, the story of the diary had become known and Ricky was thrown into a world of publicity and entrepreneurs, culminating in an August 1990 press conference in the now-defunct JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas. Here the entire story was made public along with the results of a lie detector test Ricky took a month earlier. It indicated truthfulness in all questions. Researchers rushed to examine the Roscoe White story.
It was learned that Roscoe White was stationed at the Marine base at El Toro, California, at the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald. Further, White shipped out from California to duty in Japan aboard the USS Bexar, the same ship carrying Oswald. Both White and Oswald served in the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. Both Rock and Oswald were released from the Marines with a hardship discharge, like John Christian.
Based on White’s broad, flat chin and a knot on his right wrist, it has been claimed that it was Roscoe White’s body onto which Oswald’s face was superimposed in the famous backyard photographs. In 1992, Beverly Oliver, the “babushka lady,” told researcher Mark Oates that just after the shooting she saw a Dallas policeman coming down from the Grassy Knoll. She said she did not know him but recognized him as the husband of Geneva White, who she knew worked for Jack Ruby. Even Texas attorney general Dan Morales opened an investigation file on the Roscoe White issue.
Then it all fell apart.
Since the diary was missing and the coded messages did not specifically connect to the assassination, stronger proof was needed. Suddenly a second diary was made public but was almost immediately found to be a forgery. Someone—Geneva White was accused—had fabricated it. With this evidence of falsification, the attorney general, the media, and the public quickly lost interest in the Roscoe White case.
Today this issue is largely forgotten, although no one has explained the coded messages or even the original diary, which was seen by several people before disappearing into the hands of the FBI, yet another example of conspiracy evidence being suppressed by the government.
DEALEY PLAZA, DALLAS, TEXAS, 1963
1.Texas School Book Depository (today the Dallas County Annex)
2.The DalTex Building (today 801 Elm Building)
3.The Dallas County Records Building
4.The Dallas County Criminal Courts Building (then housing the sheriff’s office and county jail)
5.Union Terminal Railroad Tower
6.The Grassy Knoll
7.Wooden picket fence
8.Concrete pergola
9.Parking lot
10.Old County Courthouse
11.Union Terminal Building
LOCATIONS OF SELECTED WITNESSES
A.Policeman J. W. Foster, Sam Holland, and other railroad workers
B.James Tague
C.Jean Hill and Mary Moorman
D.Beverly Oliver (the “babushka lady”)
E.Charles Brehm and son
F.Emmett Hudson
G.Abraham Zapruder and Marilyn Sitzman
H.Railroad supervisor Lee Bowers
I.The Bill Newman family
J.AP photographer James Altgens
K.The John Chism family and A. J. Millican
L.Phillip Willis and family
M.Roy Truly, Billy Lovelady, and other Depository employees
N.Howard Brennan
O.Charles Bronson
P.Roger Craig and other deputy sheriffs
Q.The “umbrella man” and the “dark-complected man”
EVIDENCE IN FILM—The famous Zapruder film has provided evidence of misunderstanding and manipulation in the JFK assassination case. Alteration of Zapruder film frames (top) is demonstrated by comparing a painted black patch on the rear of JFK’s head (frame 317) with normal shadow (frame 257). Hollywood film experts have agreed that the signs of retouching are both obvious and crude. Many people still believe the erroneous conspiracy theory that the driver, Secret Service agent William Greer, turned and shot Kennedy with a pistol. A clear blowup of Zapruder film frame 314 (bottom) clearly shows no pistol and that Greer’s hands remained on the steering wheel. However, Greer’s testimony contradicted his actions as seen in the film, prompting some suspicion of Secret Service complicity. What some people believed to have been a gun is merely sunlight reflecting off of Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman’s greased hair.
SURVEYORS’ MAP ALTERED—Dallas County surveyor Robert West and his associate, Chester Breneman, were both hired to survey Dealey Plaza, first by Time-Life, Inc., and later in 1964 by the Warren Commission. In both studies they said it was apparent that the assassination involved more than one gunman. Here is a copy of their original plat map provided by Breneman. They mention among other things a tree that obstructed any early shot from the Depository’s sixth floor as well as an extraneous bullet strike on the south curb of Elm Street. These notations contradicted the government’s conclusion of a lone assassin. Along with certain Zapruder film-frame numbers used to time the assassination, the West-Breneman information was altered by the Warren Commission before being made public. Without absolute accuracy in time, distances, and elevations, no computer analysis of the assassination can be considered valid.
SMOKE ON THE GRASSY KNOLL—The long-standing controversy over whether or not smoke from a rifle was seen drifting down from the Grassy Knoll ended in the 1980s when this frame of a film by NBC cameraman Dave Weigman was made public. A modern rifle can produce a white puff of smoke, especially if recently oiled. This photo confirmed the presence of the puff of gun smoke (circled upper right) both seen and smelled by several witnesses as the Kennedy limousine entered the Triple Underpass (circled center). Bystanders quickly rushed up the Grassy Knoll where most of those in the west end of Dealey Plaza believed shots originated.
GUNMAN ON THE GRASSY KNOLL—A blowup of a section of the Polaroid picture taken by Mary Moorman at the time of the fatal head shot reveals a man in the classic rifle-firing position behind the wooden picket fence atop the infamous Grassy Knoll. The smudge on the right of the photo is a fingerprint due to the failure to apply a fixative to the photo at the time. In the blowup, one can discern the figure’s hairline,
eyebrows, and left ear over a bright spot that could be either a muzzle flash or smoke from a weapon. The man is wearing a dark shirt with a bright spot on his left chest, which computer analysis showed to be metal, along with a semicircular patch on his left shoulder. These accoutrements have been compared to the black Dallas police uniforms with their badges and their semicircular patches on their left arms, leading the figure to be called the “badgeman.”
Photoanalysis by Jack White and Gary Mack
THE SNIPER’S NEST—This view from the “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository reveals several problems with the lone-assassin theory of the JFK assassination. The dark triangle at bottom right is the floor, only about a foot below the window, which was only half open on November 22, 1963, as shown here. Two pipes to the immediate left of the window provide serious obstacles to anyone attempting to aim a rifle down Elm Street. Additionally, the live oak tree on the street below obscures the line of sight from the window to the center of Elm where today an overhead highway sign marks the location of the first shot to strike Kennedy. This photo was taken in 1977, soon after the tree was trimmed back to its 1963 configuration for a television documentary. Today, no one can see this view because the window area has been closed off to the public with Plexiglass by the Sixth Floor Museum.
Photo by Jim Marrs
DISAPPEARING EVIDENCE—Here is one of a series of photos published by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry in 1967. Deputy sheriff Eddy Walters and uniformed policeman J. W. Foster watch as a sandy-haired man identified by Curry as an FBI agent picks something from the grass on the south side of Elm Street immediately following the assassination. It was at this location that witnesses, including Foster, claimed a bullet struck the ground near a manhole cover. This extraneous bullet was depicted in a news photograph published the next day. However, once taken away, there was no acknowledgement or even mention of this vital evidence.
TWO SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS—Two of the most suspicious men in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination were a man brandishing an open umbrella despite the warm, balmy day and a dark-complected man with a bulge in his jacket. Although these men arrived and left separately, in the moments after the shooting they sat together on the Elm Street curb. While the umbrella lies at the man’s feet, in other photos the dark-complected man appears to be speaking into a walkie-talkie. For nearly twenty years the federal government failed to identify these men and made no mention of them in official reports. Belatedly, the “umbrella man” was identified as a Louie Steven Witt by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. However, Witt’s account did not correspond with the actions of the man depicted in assassination photos and many researchers have rejected him as a legitimate witness.
EVIDENCE ODDITIES—Oswald carried a draft card with his picture but in the name of Alek James Hidell. No Selective Service card in 1963 carried a photograph, which led researchers to suspect that this card was fabricated by Oswald himself. When the police demanded to know if he was Oswald or Hidell, Oswald was uncooperative. Yet at this same time—only two hours after the assassination—FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was already presenting a full background on Oswald’s Marine service and attempted defection to Russia, declaring him a “mean-minded individual…in the category of a nut.” How could Hoover have known more than the Dallas authorities, who were uncertain of their suspect’s identity?
THREE TRAMPS?—These three men were arrested in a railroad car a short time after the shooting and were marched through Dealey Plaza under armed guard. For nearly thirty years their identities were unknown and no arrest records were found. But in 1992, when Dallas police opened their assassination files, three arrest reports listing three men were found, all written in the same hand and on the same date. Two of the men were located and they acknowledged being arrested on November 22, 1963. But the sudden appearance of the reports along with timing problems led many researchers to question whether the men in the photos were the same as the three tramps depicted in the arrest reports.
MOVING SANDBAGS—In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations recreated the JFK assassination gunshots in Dealey Plaza as part of acoustical studies that ultimately led to its official conclusion that more than one gunman fired on the president. Notice that just below the light-colored van a pile of sandbags had been placed near the south curb of Elm Street. A sharpshooter on the Depository’s sixth floor, using live ammunition, had ordered the bags moved from the center lane of the street, the actual location of the first shots into Kennedy’s limousine. The police shooting expert said he ordered the move because he could not gain an unobstructed line of sight into the center of Elm because of an intervening live oak tree. The same problem existed in 1963. Two years before this test, the tree had been trimmed back to its 1963 configuration for the filming of a television documentary on the assassination. Neither the sharpshooter nor Oswald could have sighted a target in the center lane through the tree.
Photo copyright 1979 by Tom Blackwell
PATH OF THE MAGIC BULLET—The federal government’s official “lone-assassin” theory rests on the idea that a single bullet, acting in the manner as seen in this diagram, caused seven wounds to two men, emerged in a “pristine” condition, and was fortuitously found on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. In detail, this theory states that a rifle slug fired from sixty feet above ground level struck Kennedy in the back, at the level of the third thoracic vertebra, at a downward angle. Without hitting any bone, it coursed upwards to exit from his Adam’s apple, then turned downward again to strike Connally near his right armpit, shattering his fifth rib. It then exited near Connally’s right nipple and somehow struck and shattered his right wrist before turning left and lodging in his left thigh.
BULLET HOLES IN JACKET AND SHIRT—Adding confirmation to the fact that Kennedy was never shot through the neck but in the back is the bullet hole in his bloody jacket, which is still available for viewing in the National Archives. It has been argued that Kennedy’s jacket bunched as he raised his arm to wave at the crowd, causing the bullet hole in the jacket to be much lower than the actual wound in his body. However, the bullet hole in his shirt also indicates that the shot from the rear was in the back rather than the neck. One’s shirt does not bunch up when waving.
A COMPOSITE PHOTOGRAPH—When shown the famous photos depicting Oswald in his backyard with weapons and a communist publication, Oswald stated they were composite pictures with his face pasted on another’s body. Proof of his statement came when graphics expert Jack White made the two known photos (Commission Exhibits 133 A and B) into transparencies and overlaid them. Nothing in the two separate pictures matched exactly, except Oswald’s face. To create such a match with a handheld camera is impossible. Only a slight discrepancy was found on his mouth, apparently the result of later retouching. A third backyard photo turned up fifteen years after the assassination in the hands of Dallas policeman Roscoe White’s widow. There was no chain of evidence or explanation for this photo. Yet when investigators recreated the backyard pose for the Warren Commission, they chose the pose of the third photo, proving suppression of evidence. Again, Oswald’s face matched perfectly.
A CHIN TRANSPLANT—It is clear that the figure in the incriminating Oswald backyard photo has a broad flat chin. However, as seen in Oswald’s Dallas police photo, he had a pointed, cleft chin. In the backyard photos, a perceptible line breaking the emulsion of the picture can be seen stretching from one side of the neck to the other. If Oswald was correct in stating that his face was pasted onto another’s body, it would have been above the line across the chin.
Photoanalysis by Jack White
FRAGMENTS IN CONNALLY’S WRIST—The X-ray of Texas governor John Connally’s right wrist shows bright spots, which are metal fragments from the bullet that shattered his radius, the largest and thickest of the wrist bones. Many other fragments were removed from his chest, wrist, and thigh. Still, there remained more bits of metal in his wrist and leg than w
ere missing from Commission Exhibit 399 (left), the bullet the government claimed caused the wound. The small indention at the top of the slug is where FBI lab technicians chipped off a piece for spectrographic studies, the analysis of which remains in controversy.
CRITICAL EVIDENCE ALTERED—On the right is the Dallas Police Evidence Sheet as presented to the public as Warren Commission Exhibit 2003. In accordance with its “lone-assassin” theory, this inventory of assassination evidence shows that three spent 6.5 mm shell casings were recovered from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The bottom of the sheet is clear. However, as can be seen on the evidence sheet from the Dallas police files, only two spent shell casings were found and logged. A Dallas police official belatedly turned over a third shell casing. He said he forgot he carried it around in his pocket for several days. At the bottom of the actual evidence sheet it states that the paraffin test on Oswald showed “positive on both hands and negative on face.” However, though the paraffin report itself showed traces of nitrates on Oswald’s hands, it showed no gunpowder on his hand or face—evidence that he did not fire a rifle that day. The Warren Commission concluded the paraffin test was unreliable but instead of explaining this, they chose to delete reference to the test on the evidence sheet, an explicit example of alteration and suppression of evidence.
A COMPOSITE OSWALD—The Warren Commission published this picture of Lee Harvey Oswald (Commission Exhibit 2963), reportedly taken about the time of his attempted defection to Russia. According to some researchers, this is a composite picture of two separate individuals—Lee Oswald on the left and Harvey Oswald on the right. Retouching can be seen on the lips and eyebrow. Also, although there is a light source from the person’s right, his shadow on the rear wall falls to the left. An obvious line separating the two faces can be drawn from a break in the hairline at the top of his head through his mouth and chin and on through his necktie. Such composite photos have been used by intelligence agencies to allow an operative to pass cursory official examination when impersonating a similar-looking person. Adding to the evidence that Oswald was impersonated at various times are a memo from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover three years before the assassination, warning that an imposter was using the birth certificate of Lee Harvey Oswald, and a letter to the Russian embassy dated November 9, 1963, and signed by Lee Harvey Oswald, stating that he could not obtain a new Mexico visa “without using my real name.” There are a number of accounts of Oswald’s being seen in widely separated locations at the same time. When brought to same size, the Marine Oswald (left) appears to be taller than the Russian Oswald (right).
