Jack Edwin Dougherty

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Warren Commission reservations concerning Jack Dougherty


March 12, 1964, a memo was sent from Warren Commission lawyer Melvin A. Eisenberg to J. Lee Rankin. Eisenberg set out his suspicions concerning the testimony and actions of Jack Edwin Dougherty who was employed as an order-filler at the Texas School Book Depository.



The memo was sent approximately one month before Dougherty was due to give his sworn testimony concerning events in the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963 in front of the Warren Commission.



Although TSBD superintendent Roy Sansom Truly tried to paint a picture of Jack Dougherty as being mentally retarded I believe the facts claim otherwise. He finished High School in Dallas. He was accepted into the Army where he served for just over two years. He was also quite articulate according to his Warren Commission testimony even though he did seem to make errors concerning times and dates.



The “retardation” is simply a cover story.



Here is the memo:



MEMORANDUM

TO: J Lee Rankin

FROM: Melvin A. Eisenberg

SUBJECT: Identity of Assassin



I think a thorough investigation should he run on a TSBD employee named Jack Dougherty.



On the morning of November 22, Dougherty was part of a crew laying a new plywood floor on the sixth floor of the TSBD. This crew consisted of Danny Arce, Dougherty, Charles Givens, James ("Junior") Jarman, Billy Lovelady, and Bonnie Rae Williams, all regular employees in the TSBD shipping and. order-filling department.

They were apparently working under the direction of William Shelley the senior employee in that department.



In a written statement to the Dallas police on November 22,

Dougherty gave the following story: On the morning of November 22, he had worked [with the floor laying crew] on the sixth floor until 12:00, when he went down to the first floor to eat his lunch. After lunch he returned to work [on the sixth floor] and then went down to the fifth floor "to get some stock," when he heard a shot, which sounded as if it had come from inside the building. He then went down to the first floor and asked Eddie Piper, the TSBD Janitor, whether Piper had heard anything. Piper said yes, he had heard 3 shots. Dougherty then returned to the sixth floor. (81B.20)[


SA Blake of the Secret Service, who interviewed Dougherty between December 2 and December 5, reported that "when Dougherty was interviewed he seemed to be very confused about time and places. Mr. Truly [Roy S. Truly, Superintendent of the TSBD] finished the information that although Dougherty is a very good employee and a hard worker, he is mentally retarded and has difficulty in remembering facts, such as dates, times, places, and. has-been especially confused since the assassination." (SS 1*91 at p. 7)



I am suspicious of Dougherty for several reasons.



(1) He has no alibi. Of the six employees on the floor laying crew, Givens claims to have been with a friend at a parking lot several blocks away when the assassination took place; Williams and Jarman were together on the fifth floor with another employee named Norman; Lovelady was standing outside the TSBD (and was photographed); and Arce claims to have been standing outside the TSBD.

Dougherty was inside the TSBD and all alone.


(2) His story is very thin.

(a) It does not make sense that Dougherty, one of a six-man floor laying crew, should begin working before the other five members returned from lunch.

(b) It is questionable that Dougherty would have had to go to the fifth floor to get "stock" in connection with the floor-laying project.



1/ Dougherty’s father told the FBI that Dougherty had received a medical discharge from the U.S. Army and had considerable difficulty coordinating his mental facilities and his speech. (5.367)





(c) Jarman, Norman, and Williams, who were at the southeast window of the fifth floor at the time of the assassination, and ran from there to the southwest window, make absolutely no mention of having seen Dougherty on the fifth floor.

(d) It does not seem credible that Dougherty would have gone down to the first floor, found out that the three shots had been fired, and then casually returned to the sixth floor.

(e) No report indicates that Dougherty or anyone else was on the sixth floor when that floor was searched

(f) Since Dougherty heard the shots on the fifth floor, and since the shots were fired at approximately 12:32, Dougherty must have returned to the sixth floor, allegedly to go back to work, before 12:30. This seems odd, since the TSBD lunch period extends until 12:45.

(3) If Dougherty is “mentally retarded,” it may explain some of the inconsistencies in his story. On the other hand, the “mental retardation” may be an emotional problem, which would itself be grounds for suspicion. In this connection, I find disturbing Truly’s comment that Dougherty “has been especially confused since the assassination.”



cc: Ball

Belin

Craig

Adams

Specter

Redlich



A couple of questions jump out of this:

• None of these “concerns” or “suspicions” were explicitly discussed with Dougherty when he was on the stand and from the existing record they weren’t discussed with him by the FBI or the Dallas Police after Eisenberg had raised them.
  
  
• Eisenberg claims the time of the shots was 12:32PM. This is the time also laid out in other documents relating to the assassination investigation. So what time was Kennedy actually shot?
  

Here's one for you, Ed. If Worrell was a parasite that jumped into Dealey after the fact, why has he ventured outside the circle of trust and gone with the 4 shots? That's outer limits stuff if you wish to be believed. The WC had every chance to expose the guy as a charlatan before they asked him to testify, but they didn't/couldn't. hmmm

No worries Tony,
He said he rounded the corner of tbe TSBD then while running hears two (more) shots.

I can throw out the too often used explanation of hearing a shot and its echo. Works for Warrenati.

Why no one asked him how loud these two shots were, where they were from, or how close together they were is beyond me...unless the interviewer sensed his mixed bag of answers and thought not to entertain him.

And "that's about all I got to say about that" hehe

Can we find Ben Dougherty?
I want to give a go at him to see what falls out of his family tree.
He is grandson of Redfern Clive Dougherty.
Any leads would be much appreciated!

Ed,

So Ben's grandfather's brother is Jack.

Ben's grandfather married Josephine C Nash in 1949

They had 4 kids, David, Paul, Patrick and Kathleen

Ben could be the son of one of the above.

Worrell doesnt mention being near the entrance or next to mail boxes. (As seen in AF's TSBD image)
He would be nearer the corner of the building by his account.
Man by TSBD doesnt appear to have any Worrell likeness, aka Matt Damon in glasses.
We can examine him further if need be, but on face of it that dog dont hunt.

And as I pointed out I don't trust Carr's vision of someone in the seventh floor wearing a tan jacket. You can't see that from that distance. It's just a muddy speck smudge through a distant window. Also, he says he goes down from the ninth floor down to ground level when he's still seeing this guy.  That's nearly impossible, he's obviously seeing someone that might resemble some smudge in a window, or it might be somebody completely different. This is a crowd, a huge crowd in Dallas and the President been been shot yet he's gonna track this guy through this chaos. This crowd of people running around.  No I i'm not buying carrs bs. Sure he might have witnessed all of this, but leads to no one. And how does Bang get In-N-Out of the Texas Scope Depository? Without anybody else seeing him besides Baker?
so did Baker run into Carr's 7th floor tan jacket man on 3rd or 4th floor?
Did Truly then has to pin Tan jacket man as lee harvey oswald he had no other option or let the misson be exposed.

I can state with confidence No Shots Fired From The TSBD. That snowballs into no one directing Police, three on that corner, to That Window.
And a cascade of other facts that support NSFFTTSBD.

Sure, a Rambler was in the vicinity. Rambler drove down elm street. Ramblers were common sights in Dallas, watch the films and spot the Ramblers.
Someone might have gotten into the Rambler. Does that mean somebody ran out of the building and jumped into the car? No, it means somebody was somewhere else in that car, ran down the street to go See what was going on.. and the car caught up to the person down by the grassy knoll... nothing at all sinister.
The point of the man running out of the building was at first it was supposed to be a guy with a Winchester or a rifle. That morphed into a guy in a tan jacket, whom ran down houston street empty handed ...who cares.
Now get a License Plate of the Rambler and show who owned it and I'll show they were doing exactly as I pointed out, guy ran down Elm from the car to get a look.

These old theories, this is a Cuban guy driving Lee away. The mixing of Ruth's car with Rambler by Craig et al in Will Fritz's office makes matters worse for the Ramblin Man Getaway Mobile.
Its not ike a Cuban guy couldn't drive a Rambler in Dallas. No, oh no, you had to be part of a conspiracy if youre a dark complected driver. I mean let's be fair let's be honest this is all just superfluous garbage.
A lot of people look like Oswald. Nearly everybody in dallas who is dark haired light complexion twenty to thirty years old around his height is a ringer.
I think all this Rambler stuff would have been nailed down in Nineteen sixty four and just sticks around as myth and superstition.
Again, if we take all the b******* stories if we can buy them of course, they'll all sort of corroborate each other. Oh yeah, Lee leaned out the window, uh, yeah, a guy had a rifle barrel sticking out the window., Oh yeah, he put the whole gun out the window. No, he was waving at the crowd and then waved the rifle for all to see, the crowd cheered at this sight... utter rubbish! 
. But nobody can identify this leaning man again. Let's be fair. Let's be honest.  No shots were fired from the Texas book depository. So nobody needs to run out the back door.
What we're gonna wait till last moment and run up there and plant a rifle. That doesn't seem like a very logical approach to framing someone. Or throwing off the trail.
I'd be more inclined to think it was Givens. Givens admits he went back up. "To get my cigarettes" Maybe Givens went back up to throw some shells on the floor and make the rifle more findable after the floor was empty and no employees were around.
And Givens sure did change his story, sure did have a lot of reasons to do whatever anybody wanted, maybe the cops wanted to put the rifle up there. You know, maybe they told him he better work with them. Or else, you know, and what's he gonna do squeal on the cops, in Dallas  

James Romack 

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt, scan by me.

End of the Worrell debate which had no place in this thread anyhow.

Thanks Tony,
Pretty sure David, Paul, and Patrick are goiden.
and Kathleen wouldnt likely keep/pass on the Dougherty Name. So she's out.
Paul seems most likely as he has a son named Ben.
I'll give em a shout.

barto wrote:James Romack 

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt, scan by me.

End of the Worrell debate which had no place in this thread anyhow.

Nailed it.
Thx B!