Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. KennedyUnited States. Warren Commission
History
Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
Meanwhile, Truly had run up several steps toward the third floor.
Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the
lunchroom “facing Lee Harvey Oswald.”[C4-351] Baker turned to Truly
and said, “Do you know this man, does he work here?”[C4-352] Truly
replied, “Yes.”[C4-353] Baker stated later that the man did not seem to
be out of breath; he seemed calm. “He never did say a word or nothing.
In fact, he didn’t change his expression one bit.”[C4-354] Truly said
of Oswald: “He didn’t seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything.
He might have been a bit startled, like I might have been if somebody
confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind
on his face.”[C4-355] Truly thought that the officer’s gun at that time
appeared to be almost touching the middle portion of Oswald’s body.
Truly also noted at this time that Oswald’s hands were empty.[C4-356]
In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the
lunchroom from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived,
Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from
the time of the shot until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom.
Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about 200 feet from the corner
of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots.[C4-357]
Truly stood in front of the building.[C4-358] At a given signal, they
reenacted the event. Baker’s movements were timed with a stopwatch. On
the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and
Baker’s arrival on the second-floor stair landing was 1 minute and 30
seconds. The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds.[C4-359]
A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from
the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom
by stairway. Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried
a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east
aisle to the northeast corner. He placed the rifle on the floor near
the site where Oswald’s rifle was actually found after the shooting.
Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and
entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace,
required 1 minute, 18 seconds;[C4-360] the second test, at a “fast
walk” took 1 minute, 14 seconds.[C4-361] The second test followed
immediately after the first. The only interval was the time necessary
to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk
back to the southeast corner. Howlett was not short winded at the end
of either test run.[C4-362]
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