Running down a footnote to assassination

Ventura County Star ^ | 11-23-2003 | Colleen Cason

[whammerjammer]

Running down a footnote to assassination

By Colleen Cason November 23, 2003

In the one day and four decades since President Kennedy died in Dallas, we Americans have been served a cafeteria of conspiracy theories.

Almost nothing is too tough for some to swallow. They take heaping helpings of the Mafia and CIA, garnish with an evil cabal of Texas businessmen and sprinkle on LBJ and Castro.

Advertisement

A recent ABC News poll indicates 70 percent of Americans believe JKF's assassination was a plot.

Only 22 percent accept the official finding that Lee Oswald acted alone.

Most Americans favor conspiracy scenarios even without knowledge of the oracle of Oxnard -- the mysterious whispering woman who predicted Kennedy's death 20 minutes before shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.

This tantalizing tidbit ran in the former Star-Free Press the day after the assassination. The Los Angeles Times and Associated Press carried similar accounts.

According to the unbylined story in The Star, a call came into the old General Telephone office on C Street in Oxnard at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Standard Time Nov. 22.

Two supervisors manning the switchboard overheard a woman whisper: "The president will be killed at 10:10."

Moments later the woman reportedly revised her statement, saying softly "It won't be 10 after 10; it will be 10:30."

The operators dismissed it as a prank -- until news reached them that the president indeed had been shot around 10:30 California time

[whammerjammer]

See the whole article. It includes the original story.

[Waco]

Several years after the day, Look or Post Mag. ran some "never before released" pics. It was very clear that many of the crowd were pointing toward the knoll. Cops were hurrying in it's direction.

[Az Joe]

Oswald did it, alone, from the 6th floor of the TSBD. At least one eyewitness saw him do it.

[Sapper26]

A recent ABC News poll indicates 70 percent of Americans believe JKF's assassination was a plot.

I wonder how many of them those 70% base that belief on the facts or the myths that have entered into the assassination over the last 40 years.

[MattAMiller]

Here's the original article about the incident.

MINUTES BEFORE TRAGEDY COUNTY CALLER PREDICTS DEATH

A whispered warning from an Oxnard area telephone predicted President John F. Kennedy would be killed only moments before he was shot in downtown Dallas yesterday.

A woman’s voice whispered to two General Telephone Co. operator supervisors about 10:05 a.m.: "The President will be killed at 10 minutes after 10."

Moments later the same voice told the supervisors, "It won’t be 10 after 10, it will be 10:30."

Then word came to the Oxnard telephone office that the president had been shot.

Ray Sheehan, Oxnard division manager for the company said today the call came to the office switchboard like a regular toll call. One of the supervisors could not make out what the woman was saying and called the other supervisor onto the line to try to help.

Sheehan said the woman spoke aloud only once when one of the supervisors said she was the operator and asked if she could help place the cell. The woman said aloud, "I’m using the line" and then began whispering again.

Sheehan, who declined to identify the supervisors who received the call, said there was no undue concern about the warning because the company operators receive numerous abnormal calls similar to this one.

"We get many more calls like this than most people would recognize; the misuse of the telephone is scarey (sic) sometimes," Sheehan said.

Sheehan said when the call first came in the whispering was so faint the operator couldn’t make out what was being said. "We thought someone was in trouble and kept pumping her," he explained.

The call had to come from Oxnard, Port Hueneme or Point Mugu, the general service area of the Oxnard office, Sheehan said.

[raynearhood]

I used to be
into the whole lone killer/conspiracy theory thing. Then one day I realized something; if there was a lone assassin he's dead, killed by Jack Ruby. If there was an elaborate plot to assassinate Kennedy almost all of the people who would have had the power and/or ability to act on such a plot are dead (or Castro).
Most likely, we'll never know. And in the grander scheme of things, it doesn't matter whether Oswald did it or not.

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?....

[JLS]

This is just one of those random chance things. In the 1970s in my younger more liberal days, I worked in a presidential campaign. While working the PA primary someone came into the local office and claimed the candidate would be shot. I fought my way through city traffic to the event to tell the SS of the comment knowing it was likely untrue. It was of course untrue. But candidates and particularly presidents draw such comments all the time.

This story is clearly way out there as you can tell because:

1. Someone phoned the Oxnard Telephone switchboard???? Cleary sounds like a crazy.

2. If the news came through at 10:30 CA time, then he was not shot at 10:30 but some time earlier.

3. If the earlier time had coincidentally been 10:10 CA time, then that aspect of the call would have been play up.

Finally as you say, it does not matter. Kennedy was not the great figure in American history some play him up to be. It does not matter it James Reston made his bones covering JFK, or Teddy White wrote his first book about JFK's campaign or Ben Bradley covered JFK. That Kennedy was important in the lives of some people who later became important in press circles DOES NOT make Kennedy important.

Even if one argues Kennedy would have been important had he had longer than a 2.8 year presidency, he didn't so he is not. All I can say is that I am happy I am of the baby boom generation not one of these others who have had us demographically dominate the last 60 years and push them out of the way. Just because it happened when we were young does not make it important.

[Fledermaus]

The fact bullets travel faster than sound, it's easy to confuse where the sound came from. I find it more than likely they pointed forward, towards the knoll, becuase that was the direction the sound traveled.

It's like hearing a commercial jet fly over and you first look up to when you heard the sound but your eyes tell the brain it's in a forward position. Thus, your brain then points to the acutal plane you see and not where you first heard the sound.

[John Valentine]

The fact bullets travel faster than sound, it's easy to confuse where the sound came from. I find it more than likely they pointed forward, towards the knoll, becuase that was the direction the sound traveled.

It's like hearing a commercial jet fly over and you first look up to when you heard the sound but your eyes tell the brain it's in a forward position. Thus, your brain then points to the acutal plane you see and not where you first heard the sound.

I hate to tell you this old son, but this theory of yours doesn't hold up.

Our ears don't hear where a sound is heading - NEVER - we hear the sound at it's source.

And that is why when we hear a high altitude jet passing overhead, the sound seems to emanate from bbehind the plane. The sound is heard where it came from, not where it's going. While the sound was travelling to our ears, the plane continues flying. Since the speed of light is essentially instantaneous at these distances, and especially in comparison with the speed of sound, we see the plane whre it is at the moment the sound reaches or ears, which is a different place than it was when it's sound started its journey to our ears.

OK, now just what the hey you think this has to do with the percieved direction of the shot(s) fired that day in Dealy Plaza completely escapes me.

People would hear the sound coming from where ever the rifle was fired, even if the bullet had already passed through the victim when the sound reached the hearer's ear.

If people heard shots from the grassy knoll, then that's exactly where the sounds came from, and misdirected analogies about planes passing overhead can't overcome that fact.

[ronnieb]

"facts or the myths that have entered into the assassination over the last 40 years."
Most peole are not into the haggling over the various details of the assination, they simply find the larger facts of the case unbelievable, for example, that LHO, was paraded into a room literally brimming with people, one of them Jack Ruby, was allowed to walk right up to him and blow him away. People found that a tad suspicious. Magic Bullets didn't help much either. In any case, most people regard the Warren Commision report as a myth.

[Fledermaus]

You are not getting my point while also confirming it.

I know how fast light travels compared to sound. Which is why, at long distances, you hear a plane and then see it ahead of the sound. The bullet was fired in much closer proximity. I was simply pointing out how the brain takes sight over hearing into account.

There are plenty of other pictures showing people looking up at the book depository. Again, it depends on where they stood and what they saw. As you can see in the pictures and the Magruder film, people are looking all over. Shots ringing out in that type of setting create richochet sounds as they focus on the forward movement of the vehicles. Their brains convince them the shots came from a forward position. Many others heard it from behind. Also, many are convinced the shot to the head had to come from the front because it exploded from the front when any hunter knows the exit wound is where the damage occurs, not the entrance point.

Orientation is key. Haven't you ever had a cricket in the house and you just can't seem to find where the chirping is coming from? As you move more towards where you THINK you heard it from, it changes. Not because the cricket is moving, but because once you change orientation it effects your perception.

Again, my point was the difference between seeing and hearing and how the brain interprets those inputs. My analogy is far from misdirected. It proves my point. Some people SAW the head shot before they heard it and their brain just convinced them it was from the knoll and not behind them at the book depository. The sound came too late for them to make a correct judgement.

Thanks for proving my point.

[leadpenny]

It does matter. It matters because IF there was a conspiracy and a cover-up, then the United States of America had a change in the Office of the President that is not prescribed in The Constitution of the United States.

It matters not what kind of President he had been or would have been or what you or I thought of him.

[archy]

Oswald did it, alone, from the 6th floor of the TSBD. At least one eyewitness saw him do it.

Was that also Oswald behind the previous attempts on JFK's life in Miami and Chicago? You do know about the one in Chicago, in which a former Marine with a rifle had planned to shoot the president from an upper story window of a multistory building.

Just a coincidence, right?

-archy-/-

[norton]

1. It matters because the direction of the dem party and US politics changed with the death of kennedy. The dem machine left over from FDR adopted the rabid street theater of protest as its new centerpiece - and remains in that form today.

2. It matters because our foreign policy fell into chaos and remained there until Reagan came along.

3. It matters because the turmoil left behind when JFK decided to escalate in Indo China (by way of assasination) resonates today whenever hollywood, welfare pimps, or potential dem candidates have the opportunity to open their mouths.

4. Finally, I watched the coverage all that day and I had a chance to review it on tape several years later. Virtually everyone on site was focused on the grassy knoll. There were photographs and sightings on the knoll. There may or may not have been a shot recorded from the knoll.
(If anything comes from the sound/direction talk on this thread it would be that the echo of a grassy knoll shot could have bounced off of the repository - not the other way around.)
(Internal PS: all the talk about which direction K's head would move when hit seems to ignore that hitting a skull is NOT like hitting a watermelon - the deformed round would push and any 'jet' caused by impact should have been overwhelmed.)
And, one of the most unlikely elements of the whole affair was that while they were still picking up pieces in the plaza, someone was already tracking Oswald down, and, Oswald managed to shoot a cop dead, in a theate, across town, just to make darn sure he was known as the bad guy.

Oh, yeah, and then there was Ruby, botched autopsies, lost coffins, lost photographs, sealed evidence, and national gnashing of teeth over a lost prince. What's to doubt in all that?

[The Mayor]

Bump for later

[archy]

It does matter. It matters because IF there was a conspiracy and a cover-up, then the United States of America had a change in the Office of the President that is not prescribed in The Constitution of the United States.

It matters not what kind of President he had been or would have been or what you or I thought of him.

Indeed. It"s almost as accurate to say that it doesn't really matter whether president Kennedy was murdered with the foreknowledge of those who replaced him in office because whether true or not, if more than half of the American people believe that they are governed by the inheritors of such a government, it's certainly unworthy of defense at any personal cost or sacrifice.

The conspirators and those others who profitted from the murder and who find it in their best interest to try and perpetuate the *one lone gunman* fiction must find considerable amusement from such noble but misdirected efforts.

-archy-/-

[archy]

As you can see in the pictures and the Magruder film...

That would presumably be the Zapruder film? Shot by Dallas clothier Abraham Zapruder with his new 8mm Bell & Howell Model 414PD Zoomatic Director Series camera with Kodachrome II color film through a Varamat 9-27mm f1.8 zoom lens, set to the 27mm telephoto setting? Or have I overlooked another film all these years?

-archy-/-

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?....

Three.

[archy]

And, one of the most unlikely elements of the whole affair was that while they were still picking up pieces in the plaza, someone was already tracking Oswald down, and, Oswald managed to shoot a cop dead, in a theate, across town, just to make darn sure he was known as the bad guy.

Oh, yeah, and then there was Ruby, botched autopsies, lost coffins, lost photographs, sealed evidence, and national gnashing of teeth over a lost prince. What's to doubt in all that?

You are aware that the fired cartridge cases in the revolver reportedly taken from Oswald did not match the bullets taken from Dallas Police Department officer Jefferson Davis Tippett's body, and that a second Smith and Wesson revolver similar to the one reportedly in Oswald's possession was submitted for tracing by the DPD at the same time as the *Oswald handgun* aren't you?

-archy-/-

[Rebelbase]

The farther we get from the assassination, the more the "official" story becomes the "truth".

There are many unrecorded encounters and happenings experienced by those who lived in Dallas and New Orleans during that time that arouse suspicions of Oswald being the only player. These stories will die with those who lived them and that will be that.