An Eyewitness Inside the 6th Floor of the TSBD?
Screenwriter Doug Stone, whose credits include Salvation Boulevard, has been working on his own documentary series on the JFK assassination supporting Howard Donahue’s AR-15 accidental shot thesis, entitled JFK: The Untold Story. I haven’t yet…quite…convinced Stone of my scenario (he still likes Donahue’s first-shot scenario, and like many who accept that the Z-film “may have been slightly altered” has difficulty believing it was “dramatically altered”) uncovered a very interesting article about a "Negro Janitor” who was a direct witness to Oswald shooting from the TSBD 6th floor window!
This is the article Stone sent me:
Screenwriter Doug Stone, whose credits include Salvation Boulevard, has been working on his own documentary series on the JFK assassination supporting Howard Donahue’s AR-15 accidental shot thesis, entitled JFK: The Untold Story. I haven’t yet…quite…convinced Stone of my scenario (he still likes Donahue’s first-shot scenario, and like many who accept that the Z-film “may have been slightly altered” has difficulty believing it was “dramatically altered”) uncovered a very interesting article about a "Negro Janitor” who was a direct witness to Oswald shooting from the TSBD 6th floor window!
This is the article Stone sent me:
A friend (Tim Cochran, Ph.D. student working on a doctoral thesis regarding Donahue’s theory) with a Newspapers.com account tracked down the original article for me. This is how the article originally appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 10, 1964:
Unfortunately, we still don’t have a name (actually, we do--see "Update" below!) for this Negro Janitor. There is some allegation (specifically by Mark Lane) that this account was a “false story” that was “deliberately planted” in order to further implicate Oswald. The Warren Commission documents reference the story (See https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2579.pdf link also sent to me by Stone). Thayer Waldo, the Star-Telegram reporter who wrote the story, was with Secret Service agent MIKE (MICHAEL) HOWARD and Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff PAT HOWARD (Michael Howard’s brother), who teased the story about the Negro Janitor while the three men were having coffee after accompanying Marguarite Oswald to a plane. (Mrs. Oswald apparently wanted someone she could trust, Thayer Waldo, along for the trip.) Later, in the car, more details were shared. This conversation was apparently reported the day before Waldo's Star-Telegram article in the May 9, 1964 issue of National Guardian as “OSWALD CASE: A NEW ANGLE” although I don’t yet have that article to share. However, the National Guardian article was apparently submitted by Mark Lane, with whom Waldo had apparently discussed the story after it was made public, so there is some discrepancy with the dates of when this information became publicly available.
Apparently the reason for the withholding of the story to that point was the Jack Ruby trial. After the Star-Telegram published the story, it was apparently broadcast over radio and TV. When the Howard brothers learned of the story, they asked that names not be revealed, which Thayer had not done. However, Mark Lane subsequently contacted Thayer Waldo, and Waldo (believing Lane to buy using his attorney privileges to keep the sources confidential) gave Lane his sources (the Howard brothers), and Lane was the one who gave the story to the National Guardian.
Pat Howard later apparently told the FBI that neither he nor his brother told Waldo about the Negro Janitor witness.
So…planted story or real story? That is the question. Either Pat Howard realized he messed up by breeching protocols when he and his brother leaked the story to Thayer Waldo, and therefore later denied doing so to the FBI (or dissembled—after all, it was his brother Michael who purportedly told Waldo the story), or Thayer Waldo made the whole thing up. But if true, why did Pat Howard later deny to the FBI telling Thayer Waldo about the Negro Janitor eyewitness, saying that he only mentioned a Black Fort Worth “detective” in their conversation? (which isn't consistent with the "amusing story" about the Black man who ran away simply because he had a criminal record and didn't want to be implicated). And where is the FBI interview with Pat Howard's brother Michael Howard?
If the "Negro janitor" story is true, it means there was a witness who could positively identify Oswald as the shooter in the window, and explains how the DPD was able to get such an accurate description of Oswald out over the radio so quickly (something that many researchers have wondered about). But also if true, one wonders why this witness has remained so obscure? (Stone thinks it was Bonnie Ray Williams; however, there is a same-day affidavit by Williams that he was on the 5th floor at the time). That question could be answered by how the DPD treated this poor guy. This janitor witness was terrified (who wouldn’t have been?), and instead of reassuring him that he would be protected, they arrested him! My God, were they going to put him in the same cell as Oswald? And the janitor’s minor criminal record (vagrancy and gambling) made him not the most respectable of witnesses. Since this witness was apparently terrified, given his criminal record, of having a target painted on his back for being a “conspirator” to the assassination, he could very well have declared that he would under no conditions testify.
There is also the possibility of a “misunderstanding,” in that the Howard brothers (according to Pat Howard) told an “amusing story” about a "Negro" who was in the building, and left because he was afraid of being implicated due to his criminal record, but in the story never said that this man was on the 6th floor. But in that case, how would Waldo have gotten the details of the janitor hiding behind the boxes, and so on?
Here is an article about the Acme Building Maintenance Company, with whom this janitor, assuming the story is true, had probably been employed. It explains the changing ownership, and why it is currently impossible to find the name of the janitor via any conventional search: https://jfkennedy1963.com/2016/11/17/access-to-the-texas-school-book-depository/
So unless there is something in the December 15 documents release, the reader will simply have to decide which side to believe. I like the story, as explaining the immediacy of the description matching Oswald being broadcast over the DPD radio, and explaining the government’s adamancy that Oswald (and no one else) was responsible for Kennedy’s death, and why, when Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater, he was immediately accused of killing Kennedy. It also explains the bag lunch found on the 6th floor of the TSBD, which seemed to not have been Oswald’s.
Update (12/8/22):
Doug Stone and I have recently been exchanging emails. There may actually be a name and a face to put to this "negro janitor." Doug emailed me with his belief that the janitor in question was Eddie Piper. Now that there is a specific name, Piper is relatively easy to Google. Although in every available statement made by Piper he says he was on the "first" or "lower" floor, there is reason to suspect that this may be a lie. There are certain consistencies with the actions of the janitor in Thayer Waldo's article and Piper's admitted movements (specifically, that he moved away from the window after the first shot), some internal I anomalies in Piper's accounts that may indicate that the "first" floor statements were a lie, and (as Doug pointed out) a good motive to perpetuate the lie.
So here are some of the highlights of our email discussion, plus some additional comments by me:
Young bystander Arnold Rowland (only 18 years old at the time) testified to seeing not only a man with a rifle at an eastern-most window of the sixth floor of the TSBD, but also a Black man "hanging out" of a window at the western-most side. (This seems to be the first mention of such a person in Rowland's various statements/reports.)
Piper was a janitor, but was he the only janitor who worked inside the TSBD at the time? An FBI interview with TSBD manager Roy Truly says he was the “only negro janitor" who worked there, which would certainly make him the only candidate. At any rate, he was the only known janitor, and certainly the only known "negro" janitor.
Eddie Piper claims that he saw nothing. Yet for someone who saw nothing, there are certainly a lot of interviews with him by official sources, and mentions of him by name in various other reports and documents:
The date of the "Intelligence Report" is very interesting, and would certainly seem to suggest a connection to the Thayer Waldo article. But that "FBI picture"--no other witness appears to have had his or her picture taken for any reason. So why would there be any reason for a witness who claimed, like Hogan's Heroes Sergeant Shultz, that "I saw nothing," to have his picture taken? There would not be any need--unless, of course, Eddie Piper was the janitor in question.
In his March 18 FBI interview, Piper said that he was on the "first floor" and "sitting on a box" to eat his lunch while he watched the motorcade. Would there have been any boxes on the first floor? Piper also said he saw Oswald on the “first” floor filling orders. IIRC, the first floor was mostly offices. The boxes of books to fill orders were on the higher floors. So that seems odd. In most of the accounts, he "couldn’t see anything” in the motorcade because there were too many spectators between his window and the street, although in his Sheriff's Department statement, he says, "I saw the president pass." Aside from the Sheriff's Department statement anomaly, if there were too many people in the way between his window and the street, why was he even trying to bother to see the parade? Maybe it was the tree that blocked his view of the President's limo for the first shot? Piper said he “moved” after the first shot, as did the janitor of the Thayer Waldo article. Of special note is that Piper was consistent in saying that the shots came from "inside the building." In his Warren Commission testimony, he said he thought they came from inside the building because of the "vibration" of his window. (Elsewhere, he said the window "shook.") So I have to wonder, if Piper was separated by five floors from the shooter's window, would his window have "vibrated" or "shook"? It seems much more likely to me that the window would have "vibrated" or "shook" if it had been on the same floor, rather than on the first floor.
Then there's that DPD "Intelligence Report" dated so close on the heels of the Thayer Waldo article. In this report, Piper claims of the shots, "Someone said they were coming from the railroad tracks, I said no they are coming from the top of the building." If Piper only knew they were coming from within the building because of the "vibration" or "shaking," how could he have known that they were coming from the "top" of the building? Unless, of course, he had some additional knowledge as to where within the building they came from.
And finally, there is that FBI picture of Eddie Piper, which was made after Arnold Rowland's Warren Commission testimony, and after J. Lee Rankin sent a letter to J. Edgar Hoover asking the FBI to investigate the Rowland/Piper situation. (And, of course, after the Thayer Waldo article was published.)
So I think Doug Stone was right about Piper being the "Negro Janitor" of the Thayer Waldo story, that the "chicken with bones" lunch found on the sixth floor was Piper's (not Oswald's), and that Piper really did witness Oswald firing three shots.
That leaves open the question of why Piper would have lied about being on the "first" floor if he was actually on the sixth floor? The Warren Commission testimony was a sworn deposition, and lying to the FBI is a crime, and with Oswald dead just two days after the assassination, Piper would have had nothing to fear from Oswald. And the Warren Commission would Doug Stone had a good answer for that: "I think both Piper and the cops did not want Piper to be identified because Piper could have easily been accused of helping Oswald and lynched, and there could have even been anti-black violence in Dallas and other cities if racists believed that a black man helped kill JFK."
Which makes sense. In fact, it makes better sense to me than the claim that Thayer Waldo was "set up" to tell a false narrative about the "negro janitor"--especially since there is no mention of TSBD superintendent Roy Truly and DPD motorcycle officer Marion Baker encountering Piper anywhere near the lunch room where they saw Oswald. There was more reason to lie about Piper being a sixth floor witness in order to protect Piper than there would have been to set up a false narrative--at least, as far as I can see. (The Vickie Adams claim in the video linked below is convoluted, at best.)
So I think Doug Stone is probably right about Eddie Piper. I think that, even though Piper said he was on the "first" floor, he was on the sixth floor. I think Piper lied in order to keep from being accused of being an accessory to the President's murder, and I think that others went along with it because Piper was innocent of any wrongdoing during the assassination. Having a criminal record, albeit a non-violent one, and being a Black man in 1963 Texas (just look at what Abraham Bolden went through!) made Piper a witness whose credibility might have been questioned, and if he admitted to being on the sixth floor, he might have been in real danger of being accused of being an accessory to Kennedy's murder, perhaps even in danger of being lynched. And since Oswald was dead, what would have been the point of calling out Piper's inadvertent role, anyway, except to make his life miserable and potentially put him in danger? Piper recognizing Oswald as the shooter would explain how a description so closely matching Oswald was broadcast so immediately over the police radio after the assassination.
Maybe we'll find out for sure on December 15.
Some links for Eddie Piper:
Apparently the reason for the withholding of the story to that point was the Jack Ruby trial. After the Star-Telegram published the story, it was apparently broadcast over radio and TV. When the Howard brothers learned of the story, they asked that names not be revealed, which Thayer had not done. However, Mark Lane subsequently contacted Thayer Waldo, and Waldo (believing Lane to buy using his attorney privileges to keep the sources confidential) gave Lane his sources (the Howard brothers), and Lane was the one who gave the story to the National Guardian.
Pat Howard later apparently told the FBI that neither he nor his brother told Waldo about the Negro Janitor witness.
So…planted story or real story? That is the question. Either Pat Howard realized he messed up by breeching protocols when he and his brother leaked the story to Thayer Waldo, and therefore later denied doing so to the FBI (or dissembled—after all, it was his brother Michael who purportedly told Waldo the story), or Thayer Waldo made the whole thing up. But if true, why did Pat Howard later deny to the FBI telling Thayer Waldo about the Negro Janitor eyewitness, saying that he only mentioned a Black Fort Worth “detective” in their conversation? (which isn't consistent with the "amusing story" about the Black man who ran away simply because he had a criminal record and didn't want to be implicated). And where is the FBI interview with Pat Howard's brother Michael Howard?
If the "Negro janitor" story is true, it means there was a witness who could positively identify Oswald as the shooter in the window, and explains how the DPD was able to get such an accurate description of Oswald out over the radio so quickly (something that many researchers have wondered about). But also if true, one wonders why this witness has remained so obscure? (Stone thinks it was Bonnie Ray Williams; however, there is a same-day affidavit by Williams that he was on the 5th floor at the time). That question could be answered by how the DPD treated this poor guy. This janitor witness was terrified (who wouldn’t have been?), and instead of reassuring him that he would be protected, they arrested him! My God, were they going to put him in the same cell as Oswald? And the janitor’s minor criminal record (vagrancy and gambling) made him not the most respectable of witnesses. Since this witness was apparently terrified, given his criminal record, of having a target painted on his back for being a “conspirator” to the assassination, he could very well have declared that he would under no conditions testify.
There is also the possibility of a “misunderstanding,” in that the Howard brothers (according to Pat Howard) told an “amusing story” about a "Negro" who was in the building, and left because he was afraid of being implicated due to his criminal record, but in the story never said that this man was on the 6th floor. But in that case, how would Waldo have gotten the details of the janitor hiding behind the boxes, and so on?
Here is an article about the Acme Building Maintenance Company, with whom this janitor, assuming the story is true, had probably been employed. It explains the changing ownership, and why it is currently impossible to find the name of the janitor via any conventional search: https://jfkennedy1963.com/2016/11/17/access-to-the-texas-school-book-depository/
So unless there is something in the December 15 documents release, the reader will simply have to decide which side to believe. I like the story, as explaining the immediacy of the description matching Oswald being broadcast over the DPD radio, and explaining the government’s adamancy that Oswald (and no one else) was responsible for Kennedy’s death, and why, when Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater, he was immediately accused of killing Kennedy. It also explains the bag lunch found on the 6th floor of the TSBD, which seemed to not have been Oswald’s.
Update (12/8/22):
Doug Stone and I have recently been exchanging emails. There may actually be a name and a face to put to this "negro janitor." Doug emailed me with his belief that the janitor in question was Eddie Piper. Now that there is a specific name, Piper is relatively easy to Google. Although in every available statement made by Piper he says he was on the "first" or "lower" floor, there is reason to suspect that this may be a lie. There are certain consistencies with the actions of the janitor in Thayer Waldo's article and Piper's admitted movements (specifically, that he moved away from the window after the first shot), some internal I anomalies in Piper's accounts that may indicate that the "first" floor statements were a lie, and (as Doug pointed out) a good motive to perpetuate the lie.
So here are some of the highlights of our email discussion, plus some additional comments by me:
Young bystander Arnold Rowland (only 18 years old at the time) testified to seeing not only a man with a rifle at an eastern-most window of the sixth floor of the TSBD, but also a Black man "hanging out" of a window at the western-most side. (This seems to be the first mention of such a person in Rowland's various statements/reports.)
Piper was a janitor, but was he the only janitor who worked inside the TSBD at the time? An FBI interview with TSBD manager Roy Truly says he was the “only negro janitor" who worked there, which would certainly make him the only candidate. At any rate, he was the only known janitor, and certainly the only known "negro" janitor.
Eddie Piper claims that he saw nothing. Yet for someone who saw nothing, there are certainly a lot of interviews with him by official sources, and mentions of him by name in various other reports and documents:
- Sheriff's Department Statement (Dated 11/23/63, the day after the assassination, although most other witness statements were made the day of the assassination;
- FBI report dated 3/18/64;
- Warren Commission tetimony of April 8, 1964;
- Dallas Police Department "Intelligence Report" dated February 17, 1964 (one week after the Thayer Waldo article was published);
- and the extremely interesting "FBI picture" taken of Piper to show to Arnold Rowland, who told the Warren Commission that he saw a second man "hanging out of" a 6th floor window at the opposite side of the TSBD building. (https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/289637819764868705/)
The date of the "Intelligence Report" is very interesting, and would certainly seem to suggest a connection to the Thayer Waldo article. But that "FBI picture"--no other witness appears to have had his or her picture taken for any reason. So why would there be any reason for a witness who claimed, like Hogan's Heroes Sergeant Shultz, that "I saw nothing," to have his picture taken? There would not be any need--unless, of course, Eddie Piper was the janitor in question.
In his March 18 FBI interview, Piper said that he was on the "first floor" and "sitting on a box" to eat his lunch while he watched the motorcade. Would there have been any boxes on the first floor? Piper also said he saw Oswald on the “first” floor filling orders. IIRC, the first floor was mostly offices. The boxes of books to fill orders were on the higher floors. So that seems odd. In most of the accounts, he "couldn’t see anything” in the motorcade because there were too many spectators between his window and the street, although in his Sheriff's Department statement, he says, "I saw the president pass." Aside from the Sheriff's Department statement anomaly, if there were too many people in the way between his window and the street, why was he even trying to bother to see the parade? Maybe it was the tree that blocked his view of the President's limo for the first shot? Piper said he “moved” after the first shot, as did the janitor of the Thayer Waldo article. Of special note is that Piper was consistent in saying that the shots came from "inside the building." In his Warren Commission testimony, he said he thought they came from inside the building because of the "vibration" of his window. (Elsewhere, he said the window "shook.") So I have to wonder, if Piper was separated by five floors from the shooter's window, would his window have "vibrated" or "shook"? It seems much more likely to me that the window would have "vibrated" or "shook" if it had been on the same floor, rather than on the first floor.
Then there's that DPD "Intelligence Report" dated so close on the heels of the Thayer Waldo article. In this report, Piper claims of the shots, "Someone said they were coming from the railroad tracks, I said no they are coming from the top of the building." If Piper only knew they were coming from within the building because of the "vibration" or "shaking," how could he have known that they were coming from the "top" of the building? Unless, of course, he had some additional knowledge as to where within the building they came from.
And finally, there is that FBI picture of Eddie Piper, which was made after Arnold Rowland's Warren Commission testimony, and after J. Lee Rankin sent a letter to J. Edgar Hoover asking the FBI to investigate the Rowland/Piper situation. (And, of course, after the Thayer Waldo article was published.)
So I think Doug Stone was right about Piper being the "Negro Janitor" of the Thayer Waldo story, that the "chicken with bones" lunch found on the sixth floor was Piper's (not Oswald's), and that Piper really did witness Oswald firing three shots.
That leaves open the question of why Piper would have lied about being on the "first" floor if he was actually on the sixth floor? The Warren Commission testimony was a sworn deposition, and lying to the FBI is a crime, and with Oswald dead just two days after the assassination, Piper would have had nothing to fear from Oswald. And the Warren Commission would Doug Stone had a good answer for that: "I think both Piper and the cops did not want Piper to be identified because Piper could have easily been accused of helping Oswald and lynched, and there could have even been anti-black violence in Dallas and other cities if racists believed that a black man helped kill JFK."
Which makes sense. In fact, it makes better sense to me than the claim that Thayer Waldo was "set up" to tell a false narrative about the "negro janitor"--especially since there is no mention of TSBD superintendent Roy Truly and DPD motorcycle officer Marion Baker encountering Piper anywhere near the lunch room where they saw Oswald. There was more reason to lie about Piper being a sixth floor witness in order to protect Piper than there would have been to set up a false narrative--at least, as far as I can see. (The Vickie Adams claim in the video linked below is convoluted, at best.)
So I think Doug Stone is probably right about Eddie Piper. I think that, even though Piper said he was on the "first" floor, he was on the sixth floor. I think Piper lied in order to keep from being accused of being an accessory to the President's murder, and I think that others went along with it because Piper was innocent of any wrongdoing during the assassination. Having a criminal record, albeit a non-violent one, and being a Black man in 1963 Texas (just look at what Abraham Bolden went through!) made Piper a witness whose credibility might have been questioned, and if he admitted to being on the sixth floor, he might have been in real danger of being accused of being an accessory to Kennedy's murder, perhaps even in danger of being lynched. And since Oswald was dead, what would have been the point of calling out Piper's inadvertent role, anyway, except to make his life miserable and potentially put him in danger? Piper recognizing Oswald as the shooter would explain how a description so closely matching Oswald was broadcast so immediately over the police radio after the assassination.
Maybe we'll find out for sure on December 15.
Some links for Eddie Piper:
- https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth190277/ For the DPD "Intelligence Report" (image is reproduced below).
- https://www.history-matters.com/analysis/witness/witnessMap/Piper.htm for the original Sherriff's Department reports, FBI reports, & Warren Commission testimonies for both Arnold Rowland and Eddie Piper (among other alphabetically listed witnesses).
- https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/289637819764868705/ For the "FBI Picture" of Eddie Piper. This link no longer seems to be functioning, but it is where I got the image of Piper that I posted on this website page. The caption is also posted elsewhere
- https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/pdf/WH25_CE_2579.pdf for the Warren Commission published voluntary statement by Thayer Waldo for the FBI, wherein Waldo names his sources (Mike and Pat Howard).
- https://gregwagnersite.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/thayer-waldo-story.pdf An FBI report made after the Thayer Waldo article was published.
- https://www.bitchute.com/video/pchjcODzKVxk/ Although the poster believes that Thayer Waldo was "set up" to tell a "false" story, and that Eddie Piper was being "coerced" into telling a "false" narrative of being a witness on the 6th floor, this video presents all the Eddie Piper evidence. Watch it for the evidence, not the conclusions. Among the unique things presented in this video are a letter from Warren Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin to J. Edgar Hoover after Arnold Rowland's testimony regarding the "elderly negro" that Rowland (who apparently described himself as having a very high IQ of 147, which is either true, or self-aggrandizing exaggeration, or a mis-representation in Rankin's letter to Hoover) reported seeing in the window. (Note that Rowland apparently said he told the FBI about the "elderly Negro" on November 23 and 24, although no mention appears on those reports), an FBI interview report of TSBD superintendent Roy Truly (who thought the Thayer Waldo story was "without basis") stating that Eddie Piper was "the only Negro janitor" who worked there, an "extensive" report by Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels on Arnold Rowland (who apparently had a minor criminal history himself). The video gives the opposite perspective that, rather than the Thayer Waldo story being true, Waldo was set up to publish a false story. The motive that the video poster gives for creating that set-up is convoluted, that it was meant to discredit Piper's account of not having seen TSBD worker Vickie Adams come down the stairs.
- https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth190277/ For the Dallas Police Department "Intelligence Report" on Eddie Piper (re-published below).
- http://www.prayer-man.com/tsbd/eddie-piper/#lightbox[group]/8/ does not say that Piper had any arrests for gambling, but does say he had a DUI record--which would be in keeping with the Thayer Waldo janitor. There are also a November 24, 1964 Washington Post article saying Oswald had asked a "porter" (assumed to be Piper) to send the elevator back up for him (interestingly, this article says that "One shot hit Mr. Kennedy in the head, one in the neck" with a third shot hitting Connally*), pages from Piper's Warren Commission testimony and a page from Commission Document 87 (a Secret Service report dated January 8, 1964) which says pretty much the same thing as the other reports about Piper being on the first floor), and a page from the FBI report stating that 3 photos of Piper were taken with his permission (the front view posed on this site, and two profile views that I haven't seen online) This site also has the FBI picture (although the Pinterest link had a higher resolution) and a picture of Piper's gravestone with the dates of his birth (1-23-1908) and death (11-27-1984).
- https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t34-was-eddie-piper-on-the-6th-floor has some interesting analysis of Piper's account (which I found after I already made my own analysis). Mainly, this article focuses on the inconsistency of Piper claiming that the time on the clock was "12:25," when it was known to have been 12:30. "12:25" was the expected time. The poster believes that Piper's story was fabricated, using the published expected time rather than the actual time of the motorcade's appearance. It also includes Billy Shelly's testimony that he saw Piper in the "shipping room" as he was "coming back" well after the last shot, after Truly and Baker had already entered the building (not immediately after the first shot as in Piper's accounts) indicating that that part of Piper's story was untrue. Also, if you read the footnotes, it gives an argument for Piper being the "porter" of the Washington Post article.
- https://gregwagnersite.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/thayer-waldo-story.pdf FBI report of an interview with Thayer Waldo. Interestingly, Waldo's source apparently called him later to say that the witness was on the "fifth" floor rather than the sixth--which seems bizarre to me, but there it is.
The "FBI Picture" showing Eddie Piper is below. The posted description reads: "Front view of Eddie Piper. This is one of the photos taken by the FBI of Eddie Piper for the express purpose of showing them to Arnold Rowland. No record can be found however, verifying that they were in fact shown. If they were kept from Rowland, the reason appears to be that Piper is a perfect match for Rowland's description." From https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/289637819764868705/
Below is Commission Exhibit number 356, marked by Arnold Rowland to show the two windows in which he saw a man with a gun (presumably Oswald) on the right, and the window where another man (presumably Piper) "hanging out of the window" on the left, on the sixth floor of the TSBD:
The Dallas Police Department "Intelligence Report" on Eddie Piper, published about a week after the Thayer Waldo article (from https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth190277/):
* The WaPo 112463 Washington Post article said "One shot hit Mr. Kennedy in the head, one in the neck." Interestingly, the "head" is mentioned first. I'm guessing the "head" was the first shot, as I've presented in my documentary, and the "neck" was a referring to the Parkland Hospital doctors' belief that the throat wound was caused by a bullet "entry." However, given Jerrol Custer's C3/C4 bullet fragments in the now missing neck X-ray, the neck wound was created by a small exiting fragment from the first head shot, and then came the AR-15 accidental "slam-fire" shot as the second head shot, in keeping with medical experts' opinion on the X-rays that Kennedy was shot in the head at least twice, and the same-day CBS news reporting that "President Kennedy was shot once or twice in the head." All this is outlined in Part 6 ("The Kill Shot") and Part 7 ("The Four Shots") of my documentary.