The latest Paine apologist, Greg Doudna

Mr Doudna has made the following assertions.

That the 14 year old at Shasteen's barbershop with Lee had to be the 19 year old Buell Wesley Frazier.

Let that sink in. Because it is right up there with our Brian's assertion that PM is a 300 pound female.

Here is Shasteen's description. 

Mr. SHASTEEN. Well, he had on blue jeans and they fit tight and he had on an old striped shirt, I remember him just like I see a picture over there right now and he was a husky kid, he wasn't what you call fat, but he was strong--broad-shouldered--he had a real full, and when I say full, I don't mean a round fat face, he was a wide-faced kid. You know, he was a nice looking kid. I mean, if he had had the personality and the teaching and the understanding to go with his looks, he could have done anything he wanted to do, but his personality to me made him look terrible and what he thought, and naturally when somebody disagrees with you to the point you get angry with them, you don't think much of their looks, but if you bring it down to his looks, he was blue-eyed, blonde-headed--he was not a light blonde he was a dark blonde. In fact a lot of. people might call him brown-headed. But he wasn't nobody's dummy because a 14-year-old boy can't spit out--I wouldn't attempt to say just how he said everything, but the things t hat struck me when he belittled our country and our leaders as a whole I might disagree with our leaders but I'll stick up for them when it comes time down to the point.




Frazier

This is how far some will go in the blind defense of the indefensible.

It was pointed out to Doudna that i had pinpointed the 14 year old Bill Hootkins as the only viable candidate. He has not responded to this, but nor has he repeated his silly claim about Frazier.

Greg Doudna also states: "Some think Ruth concealed and perjured herself in saying that she never lent Oswald her car (with the motive for that perjury which carries heavy penalty, being unwillingness to admit to being party to Oswald illegally driving if Oswald had no license), whereas in reality Ruth did lend her car to Oswald to drive. I don't think Ruth knowingly perjured herself on lending Oswald her car." 

I would be pleased if Mr Doudna would show in Ruth's testimony that she states she never loaned Lee her car. 

This is as close as she gets to that, as far as I can find: 

Mrs. PAINE - I thought that he was not very intelligent. I saw as far as I could see he had no particular contacts. He was not a person I would have hired for a job of any sort; no more than I would have let him borrow my car [anyway].


That is is one of her patented Quaker non-denial denials.  If I said I would no more hire Ed Ledoux than I would let him borrow my car... it is NOT a denial that I would do either. It is just saying that one is no more likely than the other.

He further claims that Oswald may have "borrowed" Ruth's car while Ruth was out.

Where would Ruth go without her car? How would she go without her car? 

Moreover, Oswald would have had to jump start it  hot wire it. She sez she kept her keys in her bag. Would she go out without her bag?

But oops. She forgot what she had said before...

Mr. JENNER - Did you leave the key in the car?
Mrs. PAINE - I never leave the key in the car; I always lock it.
Mr. JENNER - That was your habit with respect to the ignition key?
Mrs. PAINE - I always lock the car and leave the ignition key in my purse.
Mr. JENNER - You never leave the ignition key around your home?
Mrs. PAINE - Well, my purse was in the home.
Mr. JENNER - So it was not in the open?
Mrs. PAINE - He had to go in the purse, never. Just how he got the car started, I recall my shock that he had. But I must have laid out the key or something because I did not intend for him to start it.
Mr. JENNER - You didn't give him the key on that occasion to go out and start the motor?
Mrs. PAINE - Absolutely not.
Mr. JENNER - But when you came out of the house he had already started the motor and backed the car into the street?
Mrs. PAINE - No, no; I let him back it out.
Mr. JENNER - You did?
Mrs. PAINE - I was deciding what I was going to do.
Mr. DULLES - You were in the car at that time?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes, I had gotten in the car at that time.
Representative FORD - And he was in the driver's seat?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes.
Representative FORD - Yes.
Mr. JENNER - Was he in the driver's seat when you came out of the house?
Mrs. PAINE - That is my recollection. Then, referring now to the practice of his parking.

Oh dear. She had already testified that Lee started the car. Here she testifies that she always locks the car and keeps the keys in her purse. So realizing she has contradicted herself, she makes up some BS that oh  this one time, I must have left the keys out.

This was 1963. Needing a license to drive was still a contentious issue in Texas. She let him use the car. Without doubt. 

If Mr Doudna would like to debate the testimony and honesty of Ruth Paine, I would be happy to accommodate him.  He just has to sign up here.

I'm always nervous when the geniuses over at D.O.N.G.( Doppelgangers Or Nude Geriatrics) go quiet....I have my suspicions Jimbo Baggins has summoned the main "Gang of Four"  Dongers round to his cosy little hobbit hole round the back end of sleepy Bell End hill for a " Strategy Meeting " ( and to enjoy some of Professor Larsen's famous PCP laced pork pies).



Don't be surprised if Ol'Jimbo starts a new thread....trumpeting the D.O.N.Gs latest, epochal discovery ..

John Butler's extensive research having uncovered a hitherto unknown 14 year old wimpy Hungarian doppelganger...
Buell HARVEY Frazier ..

If I remember correctly, Doudna knew/knows RP and believes she's a great person and anything negative said about her isn't true.

Locc wrote:If I remember correctly, Doudna knew/knows RP and believes she's a great person and anything negative said about her isn't true.

Yes, I think he said he had met her at Friends meetings.

He is quite obviously far from stupid. 

I have no real issue with anyone defending someone else... but it crosses the boundary when either

you fail to read the description offered of someone, but go ahead and claim the person discussed must be a particular person

or you did read the description offered of a  person and go ahead and claim it is someone  5 years older and physically nothing like the description. 

Apart from the physical side of it, can you imagine Frazier waxing lyrical on the virtues of One World Government to the Barbershop Quartet?

The Frazier claim jumped the shark and shows he has no regard for the facts when they get in the way of the canonizing of RP.

Mick_Purdy wrote:He is quite obviously far from stupid. 


But it would appear he is less than honest as far as a researcher goes.

 
Being a Quaker means never having to worry that any other Quaker would ever lie -- hence he doesn't have to research. If Ruth said so, so it is.

greg_parker wrote:

Mick_Purdy wrote:He is quite obviously far from stupid. 


But it would appear he is less than honest as far as a researcher goes.

 
Being a Quaker means never having to worry that any other Quaker would ever lie -- hence he doesn't have to research. If Ruth said so, so it is.

Indelibly so.

For some researchers Ruth is like a protected species. That nice charitable humble church lady act seems to have worked quite a lot.

Hi Greg Parker, Greg D here. I am responding to your invitation to register on your site. Focusing first on the matter of the identity of the "14 year old" seen with LHO by Irving barber Shasteen, I would like to say first that your argument that the young man was William Hootkins intrigued me greatly and is specifically responsible for prompting my thinking that led me to a different conclusion, that it was Buell Wesley Frazier. So maybe you can take that as a backhanded compliment even if you disagree with the conclusion. However, if you will consider it I would like to show why the Frazier identification is not quite as "nuts" as you seem to think. 

Quickly, you say: "I would be pleased if Mr Doudna would show in Ruth's testimony that she states she never loaned Lee her car." I got that from an undated, ca. Sept. 1964 FBI interview 

"Mrs. Paine has previously advised, as reflected on pages 635 and 636 of the report of SA Robert P. Gemberling, dated December 23, 1963, that she did not know of any boy about 14 years of age with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood and that she had never allowed Oswald to take her car anywhere by himself."
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59645&search=shasteen#relPageId=157&tab=page

So that is a fairly clear and categorical denial. 

As I understand it, the argument that Shasteen's 14-year-old was William Hootkins is that it matches the description of the 15-year old Hootkins associated with Ruth Paine (though in Dallas), and who else could it be.

Although the suggestion is intriguing, I see two main objections. First, there is no supportive sourced corroborative testimony* for a 14-year old seen or known in the Paine house in Irving. Marina never mentions a 14-year old. None of the neighbors mention seeing a 14-year old there. Ruth Paine denies it. 

Second, all known sourced testimony* has the location of Ruth's Russian tutoring of William Hootkins taking place in Dallas, on the campus of St. Mark's of Dallas, the school where Ruth offered the summer class in 1963, then by arrangement allowed use of a location at that site to continue tutoring of Hootkins on a private paid basis. Twice in Ruth Paine's WC testimony she refers to driving in to Dallas on Saturdays, in the Oct-Nov 1963 time frame, to give her tutoring lessons to Hootkins. It is difficult to see logic in William Hootkins, 14 years old, coming out to Irving and staying overnights in the Ruth Paine home, especially during a school year, when he lives with his parents in Dallas.

Still, what is to be made of the 14-year old with Oswald at Shasteen's barbershop? Many issues in JFK assassination research in the end come down to judgments and assessments of witness credibility and reliability, which by their nature can never be absolutely certain, but are based on best experience and judgment; the same here. As I struggled with making sense of the Shasteen testimony I reasoned as follows. I rejected impersonator or doppelganger explanations. I rejected Shasteen hallucinating or lying. He did come across as a little bit of a raconteur or blowhard, the type who might get details wrong in memory but insist dogmatically. But still, he was not making his stuff up. He saw a young man with Oswald, who waited and did not get a haircut, twice, while Oswald did, entering and leaving the shop with Oswald. Was it possible Oswald and this other young man were in the shop together by coincidence and not with each other, and Shasteen was mistaken on that point? I considered but rejected that too, because of Shasteen saying the young man did not get a haircut himself, and Shasteen remembered him leaving with Oswald too. Who then could he possibly be?

It hit me: it could only be Buell Wesley Frazier, the one young man--the only young man--known to be in association with Oswald in Irving. Lee would get a ride with Frazier to Irving on Friday nights, then back to the TSBD in Dallas with Frazier Monday morning, staying with Marina at the Paine house on weekends. The time of the haircuts fit: Friday evenings, exactly in agreement with on the way home from work at the TSBD in Frazier's car. Oswald had to get his hair cut somewhere.

From Shasteen's WC testimony:"he [Oswald] either got a haircut on Friday night or Saturday morning" ... "every 2 weeks" ... "Either on Friday night or Saturday morning?" "Yes." ... "five or six times" ... "On how many of these occasions [was] he accompanied by the 14-year-old boy?" "Twice..." ... "on Friday" ...


When Oswald did not get his biweekly haircut on a Friday night it was a Saturday morning. Shasteen: "probably 6:45 in the morning". "Saturday morning?" "Yes, sir." 

I checked the locations of the addresses of Shasteen's shop and Ruth Paine's house in Irving on a map, and they are only 1/2 mile apart, an easy walk. Other incidental testimony suggests Oswald was an earlier riser than Marina...so he goes for a walk, gets his haircut on a Saturday morning, returns, barely noticed that he was gone. Shasteen does not have Oswald getting a haircut any other time than Friday evening or Saturday early morning, completely consistent with Oswald's known pattern of staying at the Paine house in Irving on weekends in Oct-Nov 1963--completely consistent for the Friday evening time with the ride to Irving provided by Buell Wesley Frazier. 

But what about the physical description? The "14 years" age comes solely from Shasteen, not from any of his other barbers. Shasteen told of getting angry at the young man and says he asked him his age and was told "fourteen". All that has to be supposed is that in the heat of Shasteen's temper and/or storytelling (with some discrepancies otherwise in details evident) that Shasteen just got the age wrong. Look at photos of 19-year old Frazier from Nov 1963--he looks young for his age. In Marina's testimony she consistently refers to Frazier as a "boy", the same word Shasteen uses for him. One of the Buell Wesley Frazier photos from 1963 even has him in a vertically-striped shirt exactly agreeing with Shasteen saying at one point that he saw the young man in a striped shirt, perhaps that very shirt. But what about Shasteen's description which you quote of "blue-eyed, blonde-headed...a dark blonde...a lot of people might call him brown-headed"? Yes,Shasteen did say that in his WC testimony in description of the young man. But that differs from what he said in his original FBI interview of Dec. 2, 1963 conducted by SA David Barry. Here is what Shasteen said in his first known record of a physical description:

"On several occasions, Shasteen said that Oswald came to the shop in the company of a fourteen-year-old boy, whom he described as a white male, short hair, not a flat top, dark brown in color. He described him as a little bit freckled with brown eyes and stated he usually wore blue jeans."

So there it is: simply brown hair and brown eyes, no mention of blond hair and blue eyes. When details disagree such as this, and there are no larger issues at stake such as motivation to dissemble or alter testimony, all else being equal the one closer in time--earlier--is more likely to be accurate. The description above agrees with photos of Buell Wesley Frazier, apart from what I interpret as Shasteen mistakenly speaking of him as "fourteen years old", in the aftermath of taking a dislike to him.

That Frazier would accommodate the older Oswald, whom Frazier seems to have respected, by waiting twenty minutes or so patiently while Oswald got a haircut, stopping at the barbershop before dropping them both off at home on a Friday night, agrees with Frazier's generally accommodating nature with Oswald, though if Shasteen is correct that the young man and Oswald came on Friday nights occurred only two times, that means the other times, most of the time, Oswald would get his haircuts at Shasteen's place early Saturday mornings on his own, without Frazier, an early morning walk for Oswald from the Paine house, per Shasteen's testimony of when Oswald would most commonly show up.

As for the argument over politics involving the young man in the barbershop, Shasteen, who seems to be a right-winger, lost his temper over what Shasteen regarded as this shockingly offensive statement uttered by the young man: "We will only be free when everyone has the same, when everyone is equal" (FBI interview), or, as later paraphrased in Shasteen's telling to the WC, "when everybody has a say, when one man is not allowed to hog up the whole country and let another man starve, that's when we are going to quit having wars and all this junk". Could that come from quiet, humble, self-effacing Wesley Frazier? Evidently so. To my knowledge Frazier's political views are never expressed in the various times he testified, nor in any interview I have seen of him in later years--I cannot think of ever having heard Frazier express a political opinion. That does not mean he does not have any (or that he necessarily holds the same views that he did at 19 either). Frazier describes himself as a country boy and not intellectual then and now, but that kind of idealism at age 19 does not require any particular educational level to express.

On the driving, Shasteen tells of seeing Lee with Marina and Ruth shopping across the street, with Ruth driving (the young man is not with them). But Shasteen insisted he saw Lee drive up in a car with the young man to his shop on a Friday night (the early-Saturday morning visits, Lee walked). But Friday night--when Shasteen saw this--is exactly when we know from other information that Lee is in FRAZIER's car with FRAZIER driving. Shasteen, who as noted I think has a slight tendency to get details wrong and be dogmatic about it at the same time, had mistakenly spoken of Frazier as 14, which would be too young to drive, so in Shasteen's mind a car pulling up with Oswald and a "14 year old" and coming into his shop must obviously have been Lee driving--even though it was actually Frazier driving. It turns out the one and only instance that Shasteen cited in particular in proving that Lee drove, was after dark, at night, when Shasteen could not even see! In other words it seems Shasteen only assumed, did not actually know, that Lee was the driver of the car that pulled up in front of his shop after dark when all Shasteen could see was headlights, despite Shasteen's dogmatism. How I interpret this anyway. Here is the relevant exchange from Shasteen's WC testimony:

"Mr. JENNER. Was there ever an occasion when you saw him driving up that he had the 14-year old boy with him?


"MR. SHASTEEN. Yes; the night he got the haircut.


"Mr. JENNER. The night of November 8?


"Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes; you see the difficulty was, I was wanting to get out of giving a haircut and I had just gotten through with a guy, and I was trying to get my tools put up and they pulled up in front and I kind of left them half cocked, half cleaned up, and I ran back in the closet to try to get away, because I saw there was two of them, you see, and I figured they both would want a haircut. When they pulled up with the headlights and I saw two get out I figured they both would want a haircut.


"Mr. JENNER. That was night, was it?


"Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes.


"Mr. JENNER. And it was dark?


"Mr. SHASTEEN. Well, yes; it was done dark outside I couldn't tell who they were when they drove up but he was driving that night and I was huyrrying trying to get out and I went out the back door, because ordinarily, if there had been two, one of them would have wanted me to cut his hair and the other one would want the other boy to, and I thought, well, maybe they can wait and let me go to the football game. It's hard for me to get away for a football game and that night was when the boy was with him and he drove up there."

Lee and a younger man in a car on a Friday night in Irving after work at the TSBD in Dallas, when Lee is independently established to be in a car driven by Frazier at that very time. Who could the young man with Oswald possibly be? q.e.d.

Therefore, although it has not to my knowledge previously been recognized, I think the young man with Oswald in Shasteen's Irving barber shop on two Friday evenings was simply Frazier, and Shasteen simply had Frazier's age wrong. I think it is the only solution that makes sense.

A final point is that according to online film history sources William Hootkins was born July 5, 1948. This means he would have turned 15 years old on July 5, 1963. All of Shasteen's sightings of the young man with Oswald occurred after July 1963 when William Hootkins was 15, not 14. Yet Shasteen according to his testimony insisted the young man with Oswald was 14, and claimed the young man had told him that. William Hootkins would not have said in Oct or Nov 1963 that he was 14 years old when he was really 15.

You have been at JFK assassination research a lot longer than me. But this is how I came to this conclusion, and again it started for me provoked by reading your discussion of William Hootkins and trying to figure out what actually was going on there, and this is how it ended up for me. I hope you will see now that the Frazier identification is not outlandish, but a reasonable solution.

-------
* There is an unsourced, undocumented statement in an article on the "Vintage News" popular history site asserting that William Hootkins did visit the Ruth Paine house in Irving for his Russian lessons (google "hootkins jfk vintage news", first search result). I have located and reached out to a living sibling of the late William Hootkins to ask if she may be able to shed light on this detail from childhood memory. Any information responsive to this question I receive in reply I will pass on here, though no response to date.

Greg Doudna wrote:However, if you will consider it I would like to show why the Frazier identification is not quite as "nuts" as you seem to think. 

With all due respect, Greg, the only thing even more "nuts" (your word, not mine) is the length and contortions you've gone to coming up with this Frazier theory. 

Quickly, you say: "I would be pleased if Mr Doudna would show in Ruth's testimony that she states she never loaned Lee her car." I got that from an undated, ca. Sept. 1964 FBI interview 

"Mrs. Paine has previously advised, as reflected on pages 635 and 636 of the report of SA Robert P. Gemberling, dated December 23, 1963, that she did not know of any boy about 14 years of age with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood and that she had never allowed Oswald to take her car anywhere by himself."
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59645&search=shasteen#relPageId=157&tab=page

Please read it again, Greg. What it actually says is that she
had never allowed Oswald to take her car anywhere by himself." A perfectly true and perfectly misleading statement because it does not rule out letting Oswald use the car if he had at least one other person with him. But it is a statement in the true tradition of modern Quakers.

The word of a quaker, however, has lost a lot of its reputation. People no longer trust arbitrary statements by most quakers more than those same statements made by non-quakers. This is because quakers have, over time, become less serious about telling the truth. Quakers have become much more integrated into society than they used to be, and now mostly have accepted the prevailing norms on truth telling. Which isn't to say that quakers lie all the time any more than most people lie, but that requesting promises not to lie from quakers makes sense.


Further, you're being asked to tell the "whole truth". Quakers who take not lying very seriously have traditionally still occasionally used not telling the whole truth as a way around that strictness. There are stories about people giving intentionally misleading but not technically false responses to questions like "why would you think that?" and non quakers warning each other to force a quaker into giving a straight answer and not to be misdirected by apparent denials that aren't actually making any claim. So even if you do believe that you should be always telling the truth and nothing but the truth, I'm not sure about the whole truth. https://www.jefftk.com/p/quakers-and-affirming

Ruth's statements are littered with such misleading answers.

So that is a fairly clear and categorical denial.

You're too smart to actually believe that. A categorical denial is destroyed by the "by himself". And you and I both know, she chooses her words very deliberately.

As I understand it, the argument that Shasteen's 14-year-old was William Hootkins is that it matches the description of the 15-year old Hootkins associated with Ruth Paine (though in Dallas), and who else could it be.

That is part of it. The timing is another and the fact that Shasteen knew all the kids in Irving but didn't know this kid - who mysteriously stopped coming after the assassination.

Although the suggestion is intriguing, I see two main objections. First, there is no supportive sourced corroborative testimony* for a 14-year old seen or known in the Paine house in Irving. Marina never mentions a 14-year old. None of the neighbors mention seeing a 14-year old there. Ruth Paine denies it. 

Neither Marina nor neighbors were asked. 

And Ruth's denial was another non-denial. 

"Mrs Paine 2515 West 5th Street, Irving, Texas advised that she has no child even as old as school age and knows of no boy of about 14 with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood ."


Again true, again non-responsive, again misleading since Hootkins was not a local kid and as you point out, he was actually 15, not 14. A real denial would be "lee never went to the any barber here in Irving, alone or with anyone else." ,  


Ruth had obviously had a lot of practice at these types misleading responses because she was very good at them.

Second, all known sourced testimony* has the location of Ruth's Russian tutoring of William Hootkins taking place in Dallas, on the campus of St. Mark's of Dallas, the school where Ruth offered the summer class in 1963, then by arrangement allowed use of a location at that site to continue tutoring of Hootkins on a private paid basis. Twice in Ruth Paine's WC testimony she refers to driving in to Dallas on Saturdays, in the Oct-Nov 1963 time frame, to give her tutoring lessons to Hootkins. It is difficult to see logic in William Hootkins, 14 years old, coming out to Irving and staying overnights in the Ruth Paine home, especially during a school year, when he lives with his parents in Dallas.

Who said anything about his staying overnight?  There would be nothing preventing Ruth from taking him to Irving for lessons on Friday evening or Saturday. 

Indeed, the whereabouts of the lessons are not as clear-cut as you think. Asst Headmaster of St Mark's, Edward Oviatt told the FBI they took place at the home of the student. Whereas Bill's mother said the lessons were at St Mark's. A perfect deception is it not? St Mark's thinks Bill is being taught in is own home and his mother thinks he is being taken to the school for the lessons.  Meanwhile Bill is actually out at Irving playing pin the tale on the commie and having his Russian honed by am actual native speaker. 


As for her testimony about driving in twice to give lessons in Dallas - no exact dates were given. Unless you can show the dates match up with the barber shop visits, it is meaningless. She may well have given some lessons in Dallas. Just not on the dates of the barber shop visits. 

Still, what is to be made of the 14-year old with Oswald at Shasteen's barbershop? ...As I struggled with making sense of the Shasteen testimony I reasoned as follows. I rejected impersonator or doppelganger explanations. 

Because you are a smart guy.

I rejected Shasteen hallucinating or lying. He did come across as a little bit of a raconteur or blowhard, the type who might get details wrong in memory but insist dogmatically. But still, he was not making his stuff up. He saw a young man with Oswald, who waited and did not get a haircut, twice, while Oswald did, entering and leaving the shop with Oswald. Was it possible Oswald and this other young man were in the shop together by coincidence and not with each other, and Shasteen was mistaken on that point? I considered but rejected that too, because of Shasteen saying the young man did not get a haircut himself, and Shasteen remembered him leaving with Oswald too.

All wise rejections.

Who then could he possibly be?

Bill Hootkins.

Who could it not possibly be?

Buell Frazier.

It hit me: it could only be Buell Wesley Frazier, the one young man--the only young man--known to be in association with Oswald in Irving. Lee would get a ride with Frazier to Irving on Friday nights, then back to the TSBD in Dallas with Frazier Monday morning, staying with Marina at the Paine house on weekends. The time of the haircuts fit: Friday evenings, exactly in agreement with on the way home from work at the TSBD in Frazier's car. Oswald had to get his hair cut somewhere.

There are issues with this line of logic and I am barely able to believe they never occurred to you.  In fact the description is still an issue... on Buell's side.

Buell was at least 6 feet tall. That is not the sort of detail you leave out of a description of a 14 or 15 year old boy. 

Buell never mentioned any of this (and he was asked about associating with Lee apart from at work).

The "boy " used lots of big fancy words. Buell lacked education according to the testimony of his sister. His own testimony seems to support that notion.

Shasteen knew Ruth's car and that was the car he saw, not Buell's.

I doubt there was more than one barber shop in the still small community of Irving at the time. But even if there was another, Shasteen's was the closest and the one Buell was most likely to use. Shasteen almost certainly knew him. And Buell almost certainly continued getting his hair cut there - unlike the "boy".  We can add this as a question to put to this still living witness.

But what about the physical description? The "14 years" age comes solely from Shasteen, not from any of his other barbers. Shasteen told of getting angry at the young man and says he asked him his age and was told "fourteen". All that has to be supposed is that in the heat of Shasteen's temper and/or storytelling (with some discrepancies otherwise in details evident) that Shasteen just got the age wrong. Look at photos of 19-year old Frazier from Nov 1963--he looks young for his age. In Marina's testimony she consistently refers to Frazier as a "boy", the same word Shasteen uses for him. One of the Buell Wesley Frazier photos from 1963 even has him in a vertically-striped shirt exactly agreeing with Shasteen saying at one point that he saw the young man in a striped shirt, perhaps that very shirt. But what about Shasteen's description which you quote of "blue-eyed, blonde-headed...a dark blonde...a lot of people might call him brown-headed"? Yes,Shasteen did say that in his WC testimony in description of the young man. But that differs from what he said in his original FBI interview of Dec. 2, 1963 conducted by SA David Barry. Here is what Shasteen said in his first known record of a physical description:

"On several occasions, Shasteen said that Oswald came to the shop in the company of a fourteen-year-old boy, whom he described as a white male, short hair, not a flat top, dark brown in color. He described him as a little bit freckled with brown eyes and stated he usually wore blue jeans."

So there it is: simply brown hair and brown eyes, no mention of blond hair and blue eyes. When details disagree such as this, and there are no larger issues at stake such as motivation to dissemble or alter testimony, all else being equal the one closer in time--earlier--is more likely to be accurate. The description above agrees with photos of Buell Wesley Frazier, apart from what I interpret as Shasteen mistakenly speaking of him as "fourteen years old", in the aftermath of taking a dislike to him.

Whether or not Frazier looked young for his age is very debatable. He obviously shaved and few six foot 19 year olds look 14 or 15. You say Shasteen just got the age wrong. He did, You proved it with his date of birth. He was indeed 15 not 14 - and certainly not a skinny-assed and lanky 19. 


The description in the FBI document differs from the testimony about  eye color. The hair color is a bit more fluid in description in the testimony. The lack of body shape, facial features etc in the FBI report is no indication that his testimony in those respects was incorrect. 


What actually appears to have happened is that Shasteen initially could not recall if the boy said he was 14 or 15 [url=https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142&relPageId=833&search=shasteen_and 15](accorded to Bert Glover, his employee, Shasteen told him the boy was 14 or 15[/url]). By the time of his Warren Commission testimony, he seems to have settled on 14. It was not the only number he got wrong. 


Shasteen at one time told the FBI that Oswald had been in for a hair cut 6 or 7 times. But he told the WC it was 5 or 6 times. Neither are correct and possibly just the result of poor math. 

Shasteen was interviewed by the FBI on Dec 3, 1963. He told the interviewer that Oswald's first cut was 2 or 3 months prior. If we take it as 2 months, that makes it on or about October 5 when he arrived at the Paines. Then every 2 weeks, so his next was on or about Oct 18 and his last on November 8.  Three in total and 2 of those with the young thespian tagging along. 

* There is an unsourced, undocumented statement in an article on the "Vintage News " popular history site asserting that William Hootkins did visit the Ruth Paine house in Irving for his Russian lessons (google "hootkins jfk vintage news", first search result). 

Though it goes in my favor, it looks more like an assumption. I would not use it as evidence.

I have located and reached out to a living sibling of the late William Hootkins to ask if she may be able to shed light on this detail from childhood memory. Any information responsive to this question I receive in reply I will pass on here, though no response to date.

Since not even Bill's mother, let alone the school agreed about where the lessons took place, and since you only have Ruth mentioning picking him up (not where she took him), and since the relative who came here was equally as deceptive as Ruth, I doubt you will get an honest answer - even if the sibling knows more than the mother or deputy headmaster did.

greg_parker wrote:

Quickly, you say: "I would be pleased if Mr Doudna would show in Ruth's testimony that she states she never loaned Lee her car." I got that from an undated, ca. Sept. 1964 FBI interview 

"Mrs. Paine has previously advised, as reflected on pages 635 and 636 of the report of SA Robert P. Gemberling, dated December 23, 1963, that she did not know of any boy about 14 years of age with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood and that she had never allowed Oswald to take her car anywhere by himself."

Please read it again, Greg. What it actually says is that she 
had never allowed Oswald to take her car anywhere by himself." A perfectly true and perfectly misleading statement because it does not rule out letting Oswald use the car if he had at least one other person with him. 

Until your comment, the reading you give never occurred to me. I read the sense as her not allowing Oswald to take the car as the driver by himself unassisted, as opposed to with Ruth driving with him, not a reference to whether there were passengers or not. 

I am sure the FBI agent would have understood this as the sense too. You are saying Ruth Paine was doing a tactic of hair-splitting technical accuracy with ambiguity over what is the opposite of "(driving) by himself" with intent to dissemble, giving the FBI agent an answer which would be understood as the opposite of what Ruth actually knew was the truth.

Has Ruth been caught out doing that in any other case? No. You speak as if she does this but establish no examples of it beyond speculating such and then concluding such. So far as I can tell, your argument is basically that Quakers do this; Ruth could have done this here; therefore Ruth did that here.  

I have attended many Friends Meetings (Quaker), unprogrammed (silent meeting), in North America. My father was raised in the Conservative Friends of eastern Ohio, the most conservative branch of Quakers in North America who wear black and white and speak "thee" and "thou" to the present day and of which there are only a few hundred, mostly old, now left in existence. I have read a lot of Friends history. I think I know most of the nuances of Friends culture and history, both strengths and weaknesses. I can just tell you that there is no culture of supporting "lying by other means (by being technically accurate)" that I have ever seen or read. I don't doubt there are anecdotes, maybe from Underground Railroad or slave-abolitionist days or whatever, but I have no sense that this is distinctive to Quakers per se. The blog post you cite--I looked up the author and see that he was raised Quaker and lives by Quaker-like values as an adult, so do not doubt his knowledge of Quakers--only claimed he had heard stories, unspecified, of anecdotes in the past of what you are attributing, without any evidence or cause whatsoever, to Ruth Paine.

I agree that if Ruth lent her car to Oswald to drive unaccompanied by Ruth--whether Oswald then did or did not take passengers is immaterial here--and gave the answer she did to the FBI and Warren Commission when asked about this, that would be dishonest and untruthful. You are saying if you contort her words grammatically you could construe them as technically accurate even though 100% of reasonable hearers would think she meant the opposite. Someone has said they have heard stories of Quakers doing that in the past. Ruth is a Quaker. Therefore you conclude that is what Ruth was doing here. If we had some bread we could have a ham sandwich, if we had some ham. Same logic. 

If in Ruth Paine's voluminous testimony you had evidence that Ruth did this type of thing elsewhere, say two or three clear or undisputed or specific examples that most serious researchers would agree upon--or where Ruth later was caught out and admitted it, by claiming the "technically accurate" construal of words defense--that would be a different matter. Then, one would have a context to look at this case and consider which way to assess this one. But there is nothing like that in Ruth's record. Ruth's testimony is truthful and also (distinct issue) highly accurate. She has been smeared and smeared, without evidence, in the assassination research community, on the basis of suspicion, also (I believe to be contributing causes) (a) because of family members having CIA employment; (b) because her testimony was relied upon in the construction of the WC narrative by which Oswald was convicted; and (c) because she, like maybe 40-60% or whatever the percentage is of literate thinking people in America, supposes that Oswald killed JFK acting alone. 

None of these last three reasons qualify as evidence or grounds to conclude Ruth Paine was untruthful in her testimony. The second and third are entirely irrelevant to the issue of truthfulness of her testimony, and the first, "a", is grounds for investigation or questions or suspicion but not grounds for conclusion, because there is no evidence, direct or circumstantial, that either Ruth Paine herself or her husband Michael Paine were CIA, or intelligence agency operatives, or that she or Michael had anything to do with or had ever met Allen Dulles. Ruth Paine has denied, under what a court considered oath, that she was CIA; Ruth Paine's mother stated categorically that Ruth was not CIA; and there has never been evidence, as distinguished from suspicion, otherwise. 

Just as wrongful convictions is a serious issue in the American justice system--some estimates as high as 10-15% of convictions in America are of actually innocent persons, caused in large part by prosecutors' and public pressure to see crimes solved and close cases--so I see with dismay on the real issue of the JFK assassination--which was a contract hit with both overt and tacit approval from a sector of the power structure in America, an attempt at casus bellus for war with Cuba, an attempt at the ultimate Northwoods or false flag I am convinced--I see what I believe are almost certainly wholly innocent people, who had nothing whatsoever to do with assassinating JFK--wrongfully "convicted" by researchers, often viciously rhetorically. Ruth Paine. Buell Wesley Frazier. Clay Shaw. Michael Paine. 

Witchhunt and McCarthyism. Ruth Paine from start to end of her life has walked the Quaker walk, has practiced good values, has never been charged or convicted of a crime, never been shown to be guilty of the many charges grounded on speculation and suspicion only that many researchers take for granted as if they are just God's truth of the matter. 

Bill Simpich's latest Part 12 argues that Ruth and Michael Paine were not wittingly involved in any wrongdoing, though he argues they were manipulated and used. That is at least movement in the right direction that others might wish to consider.

Now I will return to Shasteen. You do make a case for the William Hootkins identity. The physical description of being husky and wide face, the 14 years age as mistaken by 1 rather than 5 years, and the spirited expression of socialism or communism, I admit seem to weigh better in favor of precocious, politically-articulate (according to his relative in your former discussion), Russian-language learner 15-year-old Hootkins, than 19-year-old Wesley Frazier. 

You note also that Shasteen's fellow barber, Bert Glover, told the FBI that although he had never seen the young man, he had heard about him from Shasteen who Glover recalled telling him he was "14 or 15" years old. 

You raise the question of uncertainty concerning where the tutoring sessions were held. Irving is about 12 miles from Dallas, and one could easily imagine, if Hootkins was a serious young student of Russian as he seems to have been, Ruth telling him about Russian-speaker Marina Oswald from Russia living at her home and would Hootkins like to meet her and speak in Russian with her? (Given these circumstances it could almost be asked: how could that not have happened.) Then Hootkins saying, yes he would love to meet Marina, and Ruth taking Hootkins on the occasion of (or distinct from) one of his tutoring sessions to Irving to meet Marina. As you say, this need not involve Hootkins staying overnight since it is not so far for Ruth to return him the same day to his home in Dallas.

Then one might imagine Hootkins, following a Friday school day, being picked up by Ruth, driven to her Irving home where she introduces him to Marina, whereupon Lee arrives dropped off by his ride Frazier, then Ruth introducing Hootkins to Lee and Lee wants a haircut and Ruth obliges and invites Hootkins to accompany as she drives Lee and Hootkins to Shasteen's for Lee's haircut. She drives, parks, Shasteen sees only headlights and the two men get out, it is dark and seeing only headlights Shasteen does not notice Ruth as the actual driver, Ruth then drives them back home for conversation and then Ruth drives Hootkins home late Fri. evening. Shasteen never gave any specifics concerning an alleged second Friday in which he saw the young man with Oswald and maybe we could conjecture he expanded one (with non-haircut Friday with Oswald) plus one (Hootkins haircut alone on a Mon. or Tue.) into "two" times with Oswald.

You are also right that Frazier insists that he had no socializing nor went anywhere with Lee apart from the rides to and from work only. Of course he may have had a desire to minimize his contact with Oswald, and he might also reason that stopping with Oswald at a barbershop as part of a commute on the way home would not count as extra-commute socializing.

But there are problems with the scenario I just outlined. First, Shasteen says the young-man-alone haircut (the one with the political argument) occurred maybe 3 or 4 days later than the Fri. Nov. 8(?) visit of Oswald with the young man. How would Hootkins, if that is who it was, be getting a haircut in Irving on a school day? Why is he in Irving at all on a school day? Would he not get his haircuts at home in Dallas? It does not quite make sense. Or was that Nov 11 a holiday and Shasteen was cutting hair on a holiday? Wouldn't Shasteen's shop be closed on a holiday? Shasteen described it as a normal workday with other barbers and customers present, on the weekday of the young man and the political argument.

Second, Ruth denied she knew anything about a Lee haircut, denied she knew anything about a ca. 14-year-old boy associated with Oswald in Irving. 

You suggest that Shasteen was maybe the only barber in the neighborhood and would have been the barber patronized by Frazier such that Shasteen would have known him. I don't know what the population of Irving was then, but today it is over 200,000 people. Within a half-mile or mile radius of the Linnie Randle home surely were a number of barbers, not just Shasteen's. You are right that this would be a good question to ask the living Frazier, if he had his hair cut at Shasteen's. Since Frazier was a recent arrival to Irving (shortly before Oswald started work at TSBD in October) Shasteen would not obviously have known him, and since the young man never returned after Shasteen blew up at him and ordered him out of his shop, that could be compatible with either Hootkins or Frazier in itself.

The case for the young man being Frazier is that it matches the timing and known association of Oswald for a Friday evening and mechanism for Oswald being seen to arrive in a car, so well with Frazier. Since none of the other barbers in Shasteen's shop remembered seeing the young man (per their FBI interviews)--only having been told about the young man by Shasteen--there is no independent witness estimate of the young man's age. The issue then is could Shasteen confuse or remember a 19-year-old as "14 or 15". From a certain way of looking at it, downgrading a male teenager's age is a way to disparage. Shasteen, seeing red when hearing the young man espouse what sounded like communism, thinks along lines of "upstart", "the twerp", "how much does he know of the world", etc. and belittles him saying he was only age "14 or 15" in telling the story a few times to fellow barbers and patrons, perhaps like a fish story becoming a slightly better story with repeated tellings. A missing link is Frazier's political views and expression of them--conceivably Frazier today could shed light on this--but because so little is known of Frazier's actual political views it is not clear that this is an argument against Frazier, simply because the possibly-irrelevant Hootkins would be a more known plausible fit. 

Against Frazier though is that Frazier says he never ever talked politics with Oswald on their commutes. A teenager who actually did hold socialist or communist ideas, one would think, would be very curious and want to talk to Oswald about that, given his experience of living in Russia. On the other hand, Frazier's testimony has its own questions concerning how complete and consistent it is in details. Frazier underwent a harrowing experience Fri. eve Nov. 22 at the Dallas police station, and while I do not think Frazier had anything to do with the assassination, that experience may or may not have shaped his narrative and telling thereafter. For all we know he could have talked to Oswald about his time in Russia--maybe even picked up from Oswald the ideas the young man got up his courage to express in Shasteen's barbershop that day!--but simply decided his life would be a lot simpler just to "never go there" in talking about his relationship with Oswald, given the hysteria of the times (and in later years, just easier to stick with the long-told earlier story than raise all the questions that would be raised if he amended it now).

Back to the physical description: perhaps "husky" as Shasteen's way of alluding to Frazier being tall. Again Shasteen was in the business of storytelling--that is part of running a successful barbershop! (my own long-time barber--a woman who operates an old-timey decor barbershop that caters to men--is like that! One not only gets a first-rate haircut, catch up on all the latest town gossip, hear stories of the latest drama in the barber's life, lots of community, customers come back partly for that reason...). An hypothesis that Shasteen was better at storytelling than precise accurate memory of details, combined with the physical established association of Oswald with the young man Frazier both as to time and mechanism of a Friday night haircut for Oswald at Shasteen's shop, remains for me the more likely of the two possibilities (Hootkins or Frazier). That is setting aside the factor of the testimony of Ruth Paine, which weighs further in favor of the Frazier solution.

Until your comment, the reading you give never occurred to me. I read the sense as her not allowing Oswald to take the car as the driver by himself unassisted, as opposed to with Ruth driving with him, not a reference to whether there were passengers or not. 

Doesn't matter what you interpret. The words stand on their own. You are doing above what she did - answering a  completely different question.

You claimed that she stated that she never loaned her car to him. I asked for that statement. You responded with this:

"Mrs. Paine has previously advised, as reflected on pages 635 and 636 of the report of SA Robert P. Gemberling, dated December 23, 1963, that she did not know of any boy about 14 years of age with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood and that she had never allowed Oswald to take her car anywhere by himself."

Does she say there she never loaned her car to him? No. Nevertheless is that what she wants everyone to believe? Absolutely.

A clear denial of ever loaning her car to him would be "I never loaned him my car to him at any time". 

I am sure the FBI agent would have understood this as the sense too. You are saying Ruth Paine was doing a tactic of hair-splitting technical accuracy with ambiguity over what is the opposite of "(driving) by himself" with intent to dissemble, giving the FBI agent an answer which would be understood as the opposite of what Ruth actually knew was the truth.

Wow! My head is spinning after reading that. We have no idea what question she was responding to. We only have her response which has to be taken on its own merit. And on its own merit, it was not an unequivocal denial that she ever let Lee take her car. End of story, except to say that I am certain that the FBI was very eager to interpret it in the same blind manner as you.

Has Ruth been caught out doing that in any other case? No. You speak as if she does this but establish no examples of it beyond speculating such and then concluding such. So far as I can tell, your argument is basically that Quakers do this; Ruth could have done this here; therefore Ruth did that here.  

I already gave you another example. Here it is again even though you yourself have quoted it from an FBI report.

"she did not know of any boy about 14 years of age with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood..."

Technically true, but still deceptive. Hootkins - as you found - was 15 at the time and was not a resident "in the neighborhood".

I wonder what her response would have been if the question was "Do you know of any 15 year old boys from anywhere at all, who associated with Lee?" 

I have come across other examples from her but never noted them because they were not part of my Hootkins investigation. 

I have attended many Friends Meetings (Quaker), unprogrammed (silent meeting), in North America. My father was raised in the Conservative Friends of eastern Ohio, the most conservative branch of Quakers in North America who wear black and white and speak "thee" and "thou" to the present day and of which there are only a few hundred, mostly old, now left in existence. I have read a lot of Friends history. I think I know most of the nuances of Friends culture and history, both strengths and weaknesses. I can just tell you that there is no culture of supporting "lying by other means (by being technically accurate)" that I have ever seen or read. I don't doubt there are anecdotes, maybe from Underground Railroad or slave-abolitionist days or whatever, but I have no sense that this is distinctive to Quakers per se. The blog post you cite--I looked up the author and see that he was raised Quaker and lives by Quaker-like values as an adult, so do not doubt his knowledge of Quakers--only claimed he had heard stories, unspecified, of anecdotes in the past of what you are attributing, without any evidence or cause whatsoever, to Ruth Paine.

Well, I am certain he speaks at least partly from personal experience, even though clearly, some of it was anecdotal.

Doesn't matter though if we are talking about Quakers, the Teamsters, Republicans, the KKK, Mormons, Southern Baptists, Lions or Greenpeace. Her words can be read and understood for what they say regardless of the White Noise around Quaker integrity. Her words are far from the unambiguous denials you claim they are. 

I agree that if Ruth lent her car to Oswald to drive unaccompanied by Ruth--whether Oswald then did or did not take passengers is immaterial here--and gave the answer she did to the FBI and Warren Commission when asked about this, that would be dishonest and untruthful. You are saying if you contort her words grammatically you could construe them as technically accurate even though 100% of reasonable hearers would think she meant the opposite. Someone has said they have heard stories of Quakers doing that in the past. Ruth is a Quaker. Therefore you conclude that is what Ruth was doing here. If we had some bread we could have a ham sandwich, if we had some ham. Same logic. 

I am saying you are creating a lot of noise to distract from the fact that the responses I have quoted from her are not the clear, unambiguous denials you claim they are. They are factual, yet still misleading. And that has all the hallmarks of a practiced art-form. I have not and do not contort her words. I merely quote them. Words have meanings and she chooses her words very carefully.

If in Ruth Paine's voluminous testimony you had evidence that Ruth did this type of thing elsewhere, say two or three clear or undisputed or specific examples that most serious researchers would agree upon--or where Ruth later was caught out and admitted it, by claiming the "technically accurate" construal of words defense--that would be a different matter. Then, one would have a context to look at this case and consider which way to assess this one. But there is nothing like that in Ruth's record. Ruth's testimony is truthful and also (distinct issue) highly accurate. 

You've mistaken me for someone who cares what other researchers think.  Her words stand on their own merits. If no one else has noticed her deceptions in the examples I have given, that is on them, not me. She has never been afforded the chance to to come clean. Jeff Meeks recent interview with her for example, where he omits asking her about Hootkins. I would love to question her. I know what questions to ask and how to ask them.  

She has been smeared and smeared, without evidence, in the assassination research community, on the basis of suspicion, also (I believe to be contributing causes) (a) because of family members having CIA employment; (b) because her testimony was relied upon in the construction of the WC narrative by which Oswald was convicted; and (c) because she, like maybe 40-60% or whatever the percentage is of literate thinking people in America, supposes that Oswald killed JFK acting alone. 

Some of that may have substance, but has nothing to do with me. My concern here is with her own words.  Those words mean what they mean. It is you wanting to put spin on them, not me.

None of these last three reasons qualify as evidence or grounds to conclude Ruth Paine was untruthful in her testimony. The second and third are entirely irrelevant to the issue of truthfulness of her testimony, and the first, "a", is grounds for investigation or questions or suspicion but not grounds for conclusion, because there is no evidence, direct or circumstantial, that either Ruth Paine herself or her husband Michael Paine were CIA, or intelligence agency operatives, or that she or Michael had anything to do with or had ever met Allen Dulles. Ruth Paine has denied, under what a court considered oath, that she was CIA; Ruth Paine's mother stated categorically that Ruth was not CIA; and there has never been evidence, as distinguished from suspicion, otherwise. 

I have not said she was "untruthful". I have consistently said she was "deceptive". There is a difference. The difference here is that she hid important truths behind irrelevant truths. For example, it was true but completely irrelevant that Lee did not associate with any Irving 14 year old boys. It is very relevant that he did associate with a 15 year old boy from Dallas. 

Just quickly on some other issues.

On the size of Irving, according to Wiki, it had a population of about 45,000 by the early 1960s, so I readily concede I was wrong on that point and that there would have been more than one barber shop.  But Shasteen's would still be the closest and since back then, all barbers cut the same, it hardly mattered where you went, so you may as well go to the closest, most convenient. 

Shasteen never ordered the kid out of the shop, nor does he indicate that he even argued with the kid. All he states is that he asked his age.

Your defense of your assertion that it was Buell is tortured beyond belief. Including that Shasteen used  "husky" to describe the boy's height! If you read what he says, he is using it to differentiate from the kid being "fat". Clearly he knew it was a body type, and that clearly was the way he was using it. You also attempt to throw Buell under the bus in your apologia of Ruth by stating in so many words that he may have hidden certain facts or downright lied - but Ruth... never! She was a Quaker!!!!

Greg Parker, you have convinced me that I erred on the Buell Wesley Frazier identification of the 14-year-old of Shasteen's shop. I think now that is not right, I got that wrong.  

However as I think further on this and read and reread the WC testimony and FBI interview reports of the three barbers of Shasteen's shop--Shasteen, Glover, and Lowe--I want to question a prior premise which has gone unquestioned here: was that Lee Harvey Oswald in Shasteen's shop at all?

I am not talking doppelganger or impersonation. Rather I mean a question of mistaken identification, someone in Shasteen's shop who never claimed to be Oswald, was not Oswald, but who was claimed and believed, post-assassination, by two of those three barbers, Shasteen and Glover, to have been Oswald. The question, as with all post-assassination witness claims of having seen Oswald pre-assassination, is assessment of validity of such claims. 

So I would like you to turn your analysis to the prior question of the security of the Oswald identity. What is the evidence pro and con? 

There is no report that the man ever gave his name, ever said his name was "Lee" or "Oswald". There is no mention that he identified himself as a Marine, or as having been in Russia, or as working in the School Book Depository in Dallas, or as having a Russian wife, etc. Of course Shasteen says he did not talk much at all, except about a yellow pair of shoes he said he had gotten in Mexico. 

Shasteen's own story is that he made the identity with Oswald really from two things: the man had driven up several times to Shasteen's shop in a car which looked like Ruth Paine's station wagon (Ruth Paine's station wagon he knew from having seen it in the neighborhood). And Shasteen and Glover thought from memory that the man looked like Oswald's pictures on TV after the assassination in terms of physical description. That's it: that is the positive case for the identification.

Well it is one thing slightly more than that: Shasteen saw the same car driven by the man at Hutchison's grocery store across the street, and recognized the same man--from the back of his head and the haircut--along with two women, one of whom was driving. Based on Shasteen's equation of the car as Ruth Paine's car, and Oswald as having been at Ruth Paine's house (in the post-assassination TV reports), Shasteen concluded the two women with Oswald must have been Ruth and Marina. He did not claim to have visually identified Ruth Paine or Marina. It was the same car and same patron of his barbershop, seen across the street at Hutchison's, which was the basis for that identification.

Well this seems supported by separate and independent analysis of Hutchison's testimony concerning visits of Oswald to his grocery store, including Oswald walking early mornings to buy milk and cinnamon rolls, as well as a separate attempt to cash a check for $178. One time Hutchison says he observed Oswald and Marina (and an unidentified older woman who seemed to be with them) arguing in a foreign language. My assessment of Hutchison's testimony is that that was Oswald in the cases Hutchison cited in his store, and that that was not mistaken identification. If you agree with that, let that be stipulated and turn to the question of whether Shasteen's "Oswald" in fact was Oswald, distinct issue, and which the more I look at it I think is questionable.

A first key observation is that the sighting of Shasteen's "Oswald" with two women in the station wagon across the street at Hutchison's market does not correspond in timeline with Hutchison's actual Oswald sightings. There is no convergence of the two sets of claimed witness sightings. Hutchison said that in all cases of Oswald coming in early mornings to buy milk and cinnamon rolls, he walked--arriving from the direction of Ruth Paine's house to the north, and then when leaving walking north in the same direction back. Hutchison never mentions seeing or describing a car associated with any of his Oswald sightings.

A second observation is that one of the three barbers--Lowe--denied altogether that he had ever seen anyone who looked like Oswald in the barber shop. And he cut the hair at least once of Shasteen's "Oswald", by Shasteen's testimony. Of course, it could be argued Lowe's "I didn't see nuthin'" could be motivated by not wanting anything to do with being an Oswald witness. But that is speculation. The other possibility is Lowe, who cut the man's hair at least once, simply is counter-witness testimony in which the individual is not identified as Oswald by that barber because he was not Oswald. 

That leaves some real individual described by Shasteen who had his hair cut in Shasteen's shop ca. 5-7 times of whom two of the three barbers thinks looked like Oswald on TV, combined with Shasteen--upon hearing on TV that Oswald's wife lived at Ruth Paine's house in Irving, in the neighborhood--remembered that his customer's vehicle looked like the station wagon that was Ruth Paine's. That double match--resemblance of the person, and resemblance of the kind of vehicle--was the basis for everything. Nothing stronger than that. Just that.

How decisive is that?

There is no license plate match. There is no match of names. There is nothing in anything the man said (except for a reference to having bought something in Mexico) that is a match. The vehicle match was really just color and kind of car. The physical description is a general match. But how decisive is this? How is it certain or established beyond reasonable doubt that this adds up to a secure identification that it really was Oswald?

Then one looks at all the other details and finds numerous conflicts, which arguably add up to disconfirmation. The yellow house shoes--never known in Oswald's belongings. Shasteen described in detail the man wearing very large and loose-fitting coveralls or overalls with huge pockets--nothing like anything found in Oswald's belongings. (I erred in characterizing the man as walking to Shasteen's on Saturday mornings--I mistakenly conflated there Hutchison saying his customer--who really was Oswald--walking in to his store early mornings. Shasteen refers to his "Oswald" as arriving normally if not in every instance by driving the Ruth Paine-like car. The only difference is sometimes it was with the 14-year old and sometimes he arrived alone, but the impression Shasteen gives is "Oswald" always arrived by driving a car.) 

As noted one of the three barbers flatly said Oswald from photos was never in the shop to his knowledge, even though he personally cut Shasteen's "Oswald"'s hair. Glover, who thought the man was Oswald, said the man looked 34-35 years old and was 5' 11". Shasteen, apart from citing two prominent clothing items which have nothing to do with anything known of Oswald, said Oswald had thick black hairy arms, a physical description to my knowledge not otherwise known for Oswald. Although Shasteen remembers his "Oswald" as having had a clean head and hair, Glover remembers the man's hair as being dirty when he cut it (but one distinctive feature common to testimony of the real Oswald is that Oswald was a very clean person). Then there is the 14-year old kid, no other known association of Oswald with a 14-year old kid (or 15 or 16 or 13...). Ruth Paine knew nothing of any haircuts of Oswald in Irving. How secure is the assumption that this mah was Oswald?

It seems to me it is not secure at all. Here is an alternate interpretation: the man and the 14-year old driven by the man in the Ruth Paine-like car were real enough but it was a simple mistaken identity. The identity of the 14-year old, if it was not Oswald to begin with, becomes a non-issue, and perhaps was the man's son. The reason the man and his son (if that is who the 14-year old was) stopped coming to Shasteen's shop could plausibly be explained as a consequence of the 14-year old's unpleasant scene with the politics discussion in which Shasteen had become irritated with the young man (though oddly neither of the other two barbers, including Glover cutting the young man's hair at the time, remembered such a politics discussion or words exchange happening as described by Shasteen).

The sighting by Shasteen of his "Oswald" across the street at Hutchison's with the same car, but this time being driven by a woman with one other woman passenger, which Shasteen put at about 8 am on a Saturday morning, would not be Ruth Paine and Marina or Oswald, but Shasteen's "Oswald". There never was an identification visually of the two women as Ruth or Marina. The only identification Hutchison gave was the similar-looking car and his "Oswald", with two unidentified women one of whom was driving. Ruth failed to recognize any such shopping trip at Hutchison's market with Oswald and Marina as Shasteen described. Ruth and Marina with small children at home and a new baby, has plausibility issues for whether they would load up just the two adult women, with Oswald, that early on a morning, to shop for groceries. Where were the children and the baby at this 8 am time? Arguably more likely is that Ruth and Marina at 8 am are just waking up and tending to children and baby when they do wake up, at home, not on a trip without the children and baby shopping with Oswald at 8 am at Hutchison's market. 

So I am now thinking that the Hutchison Oswald sightings are accurate, but that the Shasteen sightings of both "Oswald" and "Ruth Paine's car" driven by that "Oswald" are ambiguous and far from certain identifications. If they are uncertain or ambiguous identifications, then all of the negatives or seeming contradictions with other testimony which involve postulating deception or great error on the part of e.g. testimony of Ruth Paine, are unwarranted. And the issue of "who was the '14 year old' with Oswald, it would follow, becomes a non-issue, for that young man in Shasteen's barbershop had nothing to do with the real Oswald or the real Ruth Paine.

I realize I erred in the Buell Wesley Frazier identification for Shasteen's 14-year old, for which I apologize. But I think I also erred prior to that in too quickly assuming that it was Oswald in Shasteen's shop at all. There are so many other cases of mistaken identifications with Oswald as in other high-profile criminal cases, and this was not a case of anyone who already knew Oswald saying "I saw him at xyz location at xyz time". This is in the genre or class of more questionable retroactive claims of witness identification retroactively generated from the TV reports and photos of Oswald after the assassination. As has been brought out by others, Oswald was a fairly nondescript person whose basic physical description generally speaking was characteristic of many men. The same would be true for a make and model of a car, the identification of which was never established as being Ruth Paine's on the basis of a license plate or a specific distinctive trait. Shasteen's description of his "Oswald" contains a number of discrepancies with other testimony and knowledge of Oswald, and since it is less than a secure identification to begin with, these other discrepancies may weigh against the identification being correct.

How secure do you think is the identity of Shasteen's "Oswald" as being the real Oswald?

Greg, we all make mistakes, so need for an apology. The main thing is being open to mistakes when made, and you have been.

My concern however remains that in admitting that mistake, you have immediately looked for some other avenue to extricate Ruth Paine from any hint of involvement in something that bathes her in a less than pristine light.

And there really was nowhere else to go in that endeavor but to claim mistaken ID of Oswald which you believe makes the presence of the 14 or 15 year old moot.

Credulity is fine for biblical archaeology or other fields where science might be subsumed and diminished by faith and zeal, but it is not fine not in a cold case murder investigation.

Firstly let me say, I agree with you in part. The other two barbers are remembering cutting someone else's hair. 

From Shasteen's testimony:

"So, I drove up there... you couldn't get within 4 blocks of that house [the Paine house], and knew then I was not mistaken that that was the guy that came in my barber shop, and when I came back to the shop--when I got back to the shop somebody else had already seen me. up there and said they saw Cliff up there and everybody in that community knows me. When we got back to the shop, then, we began to talk about it. All three of- the barbers in there have cut his hair, but I cut it more, I guess, than the rest of them did. I think the boy on the front chair cut it once and the boy in the middle chair cut it a couple of times, but I think I cut his hair three or four times."

I can just imagine the scene. Cliff recognizes Oswald on TV, knows the car he saw him in and goes down to the owner's home where he sees police cars and crowds. That confirms it. He goes back and starts talking to his employees. They don't really remember Oswald because it really was only three times he had been in and Shasteen had cut his hair each time. But they get caught up in the talk and don't want to contradict the boss, so they rack their brains and recall some oddball that they have had in their chairs and convince themselves and Shasteen that they all cut Oswald's hair. That is the real way memory works. It can easily be "enhanced". Although the part time guy did end up disavowing ever seeing him. Barbershops were busy places in those days. No reason for the other two to take notice of a quiet guy who only got his hair cut there 3 times - each time by someone else, 

TIMING
I say Shasteen only cut it 3 times and previously explained why, but I'll explain again. On December 3 he told the FBI that Oswald started coming in 2 or 3 months ago and had a cut every 2 weeks thereafter, with the last being November 8. If we go back 2 months from Dec 3, it coincides with Oswald reemerging from wherever he had been (Houston - but that's another story). So the first cut is on or about October 5, the second is on or about October 18 and the third and last is as Shasteen stated, November 8. He would have been due for another on the 22nd or 23rd, but his arrest stopped that. 

So the start and finish of the cuts fit the Oswald timeline like a glove.

-------------------
HAIRY ARMS
Another of your objections is Shasteen testifying that "Oswald had thick black hairy arms", a physical description you say is not otherwise known for Oswald. 

But Oswald did in fact have thick black hair on his arms.



Zoom in from an autopsy photo.

The compete photo can be seen here 

So that's two from two in favor of it being Oswald. 
--------------------

The clothing is not as clear cut but still explicable.

THE COVERALLS
Shasteen said they were military but could not tell if they were army or marines. Here's a clue though from his testimony:

Mr. SHASTEEN. Well, I think most usually, like I said, the only time I ever saw him with anything but those coveralls on was that night he came in the shop--he had those on--those old coveralls on when he was over there and another thing, they were big for him. I always noticed they were big enough for him and somebody else.

Mike Paine tinkered in that garage. He testified for example that he had to keep moving Oswald's blanket and whatever was inside, out of his way because he was afraid he would get it covered in sawdust. Mike was at least 6 feet tall and had been in the army. It makes perfect sense that Mike left those coveralls in the garage to use when he was tinkering and Oswald used them when he got his haircut at Shasteens. Being Mike's, "they were big for him" just as Shasteen said.

YELLOW HOUSE SHOES
I have not found where anyone was asked about these. Shasteen said Oswald picked them up cheap in "Old Mexico". Everyone has assumed that this was a reference to Mexico City, but I doubt Oswald would call Mexico City "Old Mexico". There are numerous references to "Old Mexico" in the MFF database. Most often it is referring to parts of the US annexed from Mexico, or to places in the north of Mexico... one place in the north of Mexico is Tijuana and Oswald had indeed been to Tijuana while stationed at Santa Ana. I believe that is where he bought them and they had probably been in storage with Robert Oswald until he picked them up on return from the Soviet Union. Who knows what became of them? souvenired by Detective Gus Rose (there were lots of "souvenirs" taken that weekend)? Thrown out because they were cheap and falling apart? 

 
Your first instinct was correct. It was Oswald. Which brings us full circle back to the boy who could only be Bill Hootkins.

Thanks Greg P., but I found one more thing (below) which you might want to consider in rethinking this, on whether the man in Shasteen’s shop was Oswald, whether that was a true or a mistaken identity. 
 
The issue should not be a requirement to disprove the man is Oswald, but rather how s it established that the man had anything to do with Oswald in the first place.
 
In your scenario, if Ruth did have Hootkins out in Irving, meeting with Lee and Marina at her home, why would Ruth not simply say so? What would be the big secret? Also, I do not understand in your scenario the detail about claiming Hootkins was “acting” in the matter of the 14-year-old’s expressing his political views, instead of that 14-year old not acting but simply saying what he thought? Are you suggesting conspirators enlisted a 14-year-old for a cameo appearance in an elaborate operation? Seems a little far-fetched to me. 
 
It comes to the claimed match of the car. The whole claim that an odd customer and his 14-year old son in Shasteen’s shop was Oswald (and a 14-year-old non-son) started based on Shasteen, in the fevered time following the assassination, claiming from memory a match with Ruth Paine’s car to the customer with the 14-year old son (or stepson or nephew or whatever).
 
How many times do we all see cars the same make and model as our own, but they are not ours? There is no need to suppose anything more than that was going on here. Shasteen remembered an odd customer who drove a car which he remembered—as he thought about it--looked just like Ruth Paine’s car. Bear in mind Shasteen did not make this connection until after the assassination, and was in no position to recheck both cars to compare or verify, nor was there a photo of the customer’s car to consult. Shasteen never saw either car up close. It is entirely a retroactive match of cars based on memory of similar make and maybe color in Shasteen’s memory.
 
But the most important point is this, which is stand-alone smoking-gun decisive that Shasteen’s customer was not Oswald, i.e. exculpatory evidence moving the issue out of ambiguity and judgment of fallible but possible retroactive claims of recognition of a car or a retroactive witness match of a person to a photo or the witness’s memory.
 
It is found in a document from Barto posted by you on Fri 18 Sept 2020 0:18 pm on the subject thread on this site, "Re: the latest installment of the 12 who built the Oswald legend", 3rd link of 4 there. 
 
The document is handwritten notes of an investigator (FBI?) referring to interviews of Irving barbers Glover and Shasteen. Under the handwritten name of Bert Glover a quotation from Glover: "I cut his (14-year old) hair and Cliff cut Oswalds." Then, to the right on a separate space on the sheet: "Shasteen said his 'Oswald' had prominent widow's peak + real Oswald didn't--"
 
Although I could not find reference to a widow's peak description of Shasteen’s customer in Shasteen's WC testimony, it is there in these handwritten firsthand interview notes. A check on "Google Images" for examples of "widow's peak" forehead hairlines, and then "Lee Harvey Oswald" photos, will show Oswald did not have a widow's peak, and that this point is not in any sense ambiguous. The man in Shasteen's shop, apart from any other factor, is disconfirmed from being Oswald on this single point alone.
 
A separate and almost as important and decisive detail also related to Oswald’s hair but a distinct point, is Shasteen describing what kind of haircut his “Oswald” wore: 
 
"It was almost short enough to stand up but it was too long to stand up. He just wore a rough shod haircut because many times I thought, 'Boy, you sure ought to let this grow out up here where it will lay down and comb nice or either cut it off where it would stand up.' But like I say, he wanted that little bit taken off."
 
But all photos of Oswald from the fall of 1963 to my knowledge show Oswald's hair longer than Shasteen describes, in which Oswald’s hair was long enough that there was no problem combing it down flat. 
 
A recognition that Shasteen’s “Oswald” was a false positive, involving in the end a car that looked like Ruth’s but was not Ruth’s and was a simple mistaken car identification, may not be a very dramatic or exciting interpretation, but seems indicated on the basis of the widow’s peak and length of hair of Shasteen's customer, details in which Shasteen’s testimony would be the most knowledgeable and credible of all. Whereas Shasteen never saw the customer's car up close or paid much attention to it when he did see it, he said he had clear memories of his customers' hair that he did, and I believe him on that. This is not a matter of conflict of this with other evidence, but conflict of this with scenario--my previous and your present scenarios.  

Greg, honestly, you are starting to sound a little desperate.

You are now relying on hand-written notes, the author and agency of which is unknown to you.

FBI and police notes are used to make typed reports. Can you point to any typed report with this information? I can't. But if you do find it, let me know and if your 7 days is still not up, I'll post it for you. My guess is the author of the notes realized he had misunderstood something said so it didn't make it into the report. That is supported by the lack of any similar statement in testimony.

You also want to interpret this in a way that was never intended:

"It was almost short enough to stand up but it was too long to stand up. He just wore a rough shod haircut because many times I thought, 'Boy, you sure ought to let this grow out up here where it will lay down and comb nice or either cut it off where it would stand up.' But like I say, he wanted that little bit taken off."

Shasteen also said this:

"The fact is, he never did want his hair cut--he always wanted it to look like it was about a week old when he cut it and he got a haircut about every 2 weeks, and I don't think he ever went over 2 weeks--he either got a haircut on Friday night or Saturday morning, and in running that back through my mind, and I thought about it then and I have since."

and this:

"To me, he didn't have a full head of hair. It was rather short and thin around here by the temples and the way his hair lies back, he would have been bald if he had been 40 years old."

None of those statements are mutually exclusive.

Let's look at your position:

You have a skinny father who rarely talks. He has thinning hair on top and hairy arms. He has a wide-faced, broad-shouldered and husky son with a very high IQ and both started attending the barbershop in early October and never returned after the assassination. The father owned a car that looked the same as the car owned by Ruth Paine. He also wore coveralls that looked like they were borrowed from someone a lot taller and wore shoes he bought in "Old Mexico".

That sounds exactly like Lee Oswald and Bill Hootkins to me.  So exact that if it is not them, it has to be doubles - which (I think?) is Bill Simpich's current thinking but not mine, nor yours. 

Your bias - not the evidence - is forcing you to deny it is them, otherwise I think you would be agreeing with me. 

You ask why Ruth would deny it. She hasn't. All that she has denied in a clear cut fashion is being aware of anywhere Lee got his hair cut. That may be true. Maybe Lee just never mentioned which barbershop he was going to. 

Her denial about loaning her car to him was a patented Quaker non-denial.

Her denial about any boy Lee associated with was specifically a denial about any 14 year old local boys. Hootkins was a 15 year old from Dallas. 

So please - cease stating she denied these things when she never.

Every time you claim she denied these things, you are really accusing her of lying - whether or not you yourself see it that way. I prefer to say she is being evasive, without technically lying. 

You also ask why I believe Bill was acting when giving his spirited socialist colloquy and claim that "conspirators enlisted a 14- 15 year-old for a cameo appearance in an elaborate operation which seems a little far-fetched to you.  

If the Cold War had a middle name it would be "Far-Fetched". 

here is my thinking behind the claim:

( a ) nothing he said was what he believed
( b ) he had already started acting at St Mark's
( c ) he went twice with Oswald, saying nothing either time but establishing the relationship. The third time he went alone and played the part of the One World Utopian. He could not do it in front of Oswald because Oswald was unaware that a frame-up of him being a Comsymp was underway. Oswald would be blamed for feeding the boy this stuff. Job done for Hootkins. There was no need for him to return - and downright silly to do so post-assassination. 
( d ) Asst Headmaster Oviatt came to St Mark's from a school that ran this story in the school paper:



This is the sort of program a Catholic school in the 1950s and 1960s would run for the entitled little shits who attended. Junior G-Men. Is that far-fetched enough? I believe Oviatt may have brought the program with him from that previous school (Williams College).

Shasteen had been part of the FBI defense plant contact program as an informant working in Chance Voght during the Korean War. 

If you were going to pull a stunt like this in Irving, you would pick Shasteen to do it in front of. A virtual guarantee that it will get reported. 

The FBI knew all of this. They knew the kid was Hootkins.

Oh yeah. One more thing.

Why would someone of Russian heritage need to pay for lessons from a non-native speaker in a city that had a well-established Russian community - mainly in oil - the same business his father was in? That never made sense to me. There should have been multiple options for him to learn from actual native speakers. In fact, I would be surprised if his father spoke Russian.

Based upon a request from the Warren Commission, FBI in Sept 1964 suggested the Dallas office re-interview Ruth Paine concerning the alleged Oswald visits to Shasteen's barbershop.

"It is pointed out Oswald, during his week-end stays at Irving, Texas, stayed at Ruth Paine's. If not already done, Dallas should consider interview with Ruth Paine to determine if she ever recalls Oswald going out for a haircut on a week-end during October or November, 1963, and if so, who would be a logical 14- or 15-year old boy in the neighborhood who might have accompanied him."

Note the final wording, "boy in the neighborhood". You have been saying the wording in the Dallas FBI office's report of Ruth Paine's answer to this question was Ruth Paine giving a deceptive Quaker non-denial denial, so to speak. You focus on the words "in the neighborhood" as not ruling out a young man from Dallas with Oswald in the neighborhood. The wording is not Ruth Paine's, the wording is the question asked by FBI. In the Dallas FBI's report of Ruth Paine's answer to the question Dallas FBI had been instructed to ask, the Dallas FBI gave Ruth Paine's answer: 

"Mrs. Ruth Paine, 2525 West Fifth, Irving, Texas, advised that she has no child even as old as school age and knows of no boy of about fourteen with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood. She further repeated that she had never allowed Oswald to take her car by himself anywhere."

You misunderstood me in continuing to pound me over the "denial" issue. I did not say that (in my most recent to which you were responding). I asked why would Ruth Paine not tell of Hootkins in Irving, if that were so? (She did not do so, did not volunteer to FBI that 15-year old Hootkins was with Oswald in Irving; why?) Why would she not volunteer that, if that were the case? What would be the big secret about that, from Ruth's point of view? Also, Ruth Paine's answer of "no boy of about fourteen", you are saying--incredibly to me--is not a denial that a 15-year old known to her was with Oswald in Irving. This to me is unbelievably and implausibly hair-splitting. Ruth is simply answering the question asked of FBI with "no", instead of "yes", when asked if she knew of "any boy of about fourteen" who might have been hanging around with Oswald in Irving. It is not any more complicated than that (in terms of Ruth's answer to FBI). "About fourteen" includes age 15. Ruth was not engaging in an unclear answer. She in fact not only failed to volunteer Hootkins' presence in Irving and association with Oswald in Irving, I do read her answer to FBI's question as a denial that Hootkins was accompanying Oswald in Irving. You are making a big deal out of Ruth's reply to wording that was FBI's wording, not Ruth's. Ruth simply and trivially gave a clear answer to FBI's question. You are arguing Ruth's answer was deceptive but not technically untrue if you parse the wording of the FBI report a certain way. But why would Ruth be deceptive at all, concerning Hootkins in Irving, is my question. Why didn't she tell FBI, "well yes, I had my student young Bill Hootkins--I think he had just turned 15 recently--out here several times, to meet Lee and Marina." Why, in your scenario, did Ruth not simply say so, if that were so? 

On answering to the FBI that she never let Oswald take her car by himself, this again is FBI's wording, no doubt because Ruth explained in her answer that she had let Oswald drive with her in the car for the driving lessons, but never lent her car to him to drive by himself. I interpret Ruth's answer as a straight answer, "no", to FBI's question asked her if Oswald ever drove Ruth's car. That answer agrees with Marina's testimony who said that she never in her life saw Oswald drive a car by himself. Marina is not a second case of what you are interpreting (unconvincingly to me) as Ruth's practice of Quaker non-denial denial. English-as-second-language-speaker Marina's testimony contains both truths and untruths, but no sign of intentional deception by means of intentional word-parsing based on nuances or precise meanings of English words, that I can see.

A note at the end of the FBI document telling of FBI hq's request to Dallas FBI in Sept 1964 to ask Ruth about the Oswald/barbershop issue, says this:

"The information from Dallas was furnished as a result of a Commission request. Briefly, this phase of the Commission's request deals with an allegation that a barber in Irving, Texas, claimed Oswald had visited his shop on three occasions. One other barber substantiated this, however, no other information has been developed to indicate Oswald was in this barbershop. When the results are received, the Commission will be appropriately advised."

Now on the basis of this very weak positive basis for supposing Shasteen's customer with the 14-year old was Oswald--really weak positive basis if you think about it--you have a scenario in which 15-year-old Hootkins from Dallas is with Oswald driving Ruth's car on multiple trips of multiple days to the barbershop. Hootkins is nowhere placed in Irving, nowhere associated with Oswald, in any other testimony. Shasteen specifically remembered asking, and the young man answering, that he was "14" years old, which (correcting from what I said before) I think should be taken as an accurate detail. (Fellow barber Bert Glover's telling the FBI the hearsay about the 14 or 15 year old is better understood as Glover's uncertainty over what Shasteen had said exactly, not original uncertainty on Shasteen's part concerning the age.)

Glover thought the customer looked mid-30s age. A mid-30s father would be consistent with a 14-year old son. Shasteen remembered the kid was dropped off for his haircut (on that one occasion, the final visit of either father or son in Shasteen's shop) by someone in a different car who waited for him outside. That could have been the kid's mother, or whoever. The kid's "communist" views could be reconstructed as echoing what he picked up from either his father or mother (or both). It is possible father and/or mother would be more circumspect in telling political views in rabidly conservative John-Bircher climate deep South 1963, but 14-year olds do not always have the same good sense on when to keep quiet. The parents hearing the kid telling of the incident in the barbershop and the reaction of Shasteen on that occasion is a fully sufficient and satisfactory explanation for why all further visits of that family to Shasteen's barbershop would cease after that visit, which by coincidence occurred the week of the JFK assassination. Shasteen, horrified at what the kid was saying, asked the kid his age and the kid said "14". I do not think the kid said "15" and Shasteen changed his memory to 14. I think the kid said he was 14 because he was 14. But Hootkins of Dallas was 15. The kid was not Hootkins. The kid was with his father.

The entire basis for Shasteen saying his customer was Oswald was because the day the news of the assassination was announced and Oswald was involved, Shasteen remembered the Ruth Paine house with Marina and Lee there at times, and then he wondered whether Lee had been in his barbershop and remembered that odd customer with the 14-year-old kid--was that man Oswald?--who had driven a car which, now that he thought of it, was the same kind of car that he thought he remembered Ruth Paine drove! Shasteen tells of, the very afternoon of the assassination, telling his fellow barbers he is going to drive over to Ruth Paine's house and check what her car looks like to check this point. He could not get to her house that day due to all the cars already piling up around her house, but that is when Shasteen made the connection: car = car, therefore customer = Oswald. Shasteen in his Warren Commission testimony could not remember the color of the car he remembered of the customer, whether it was two-tone blue and white, or two-tone green and white. But he remembered it was a Chevy wagon two-tone, which Shasteen decided was the same as Ruth Paine's car.

Shasteen never saw Lee up close in Ruth's yard or house to identify him, though he was aware of their presence due to visiting a rental house on that block. Shasteen never saw the customer in his shop with Marina or Ruth. He saw the same man in the Chevy wagon with two unidentified women at a distance, whom he did not claim he could recognize or identify, shopping across the street at Hutchison's once. (Ruth said she could not recognize herself in that description of a shopping trip at Hutchison's, and Ruth otherwise showed good memory.)

In JFK assassination research there are coincidences, with which mundane and ordinary life is filled, and there are, idiomatically put, "one hell of a coincidence"'s, which either alone or in concert with other information may be productive of real further information (though some of those in the end also turn out to be coincidences). A lot of wisdom depends on judgment to distinguish one from the other.

I think now that the two-tone Chevy wagon driven by this age-30's man with his 14-year old son--not too sociable--and that Ruth Paine drove a two-tone Chevy wagon--was a coincidence of the mundane kind, and not of the "one hell of a coincidence" kind. 

It would be another matter if there was anything--anything--specific in the testimony (as distinguished from scenario) that further weighs in favor of the customer being Oswald (or the 14-year old being 15-year old Hootkins from Dallas). But there is not, other than the equally less-than-certain claim of two out of three of the barbers saying the man looked like Oswald, and the third barber denying he had seen or heard anything related to Oswald in that barbershop, even though Shasteen told him he had cut his hair. Claims of people who think they saw Oswald after seeing him on TV after the assassination I think you will agree cannot simply be taken at face value but must be assessed, due to a majority of such claims that poured in being cases of mistaken identifications. If this case really was Oswald, why then is there that FBI agent's interview note--it is certainly genuine and not forged, whoever was the identity of the FBI agent--saying Shasteen said his customer had a widow's peak, when Oswald did not. (Incidentally, John Armstrong of the "Harvey and Lee" theories has claims, which are online, that Shasteen did say his customer in his barbershop had a widow's peak in Shasteen's WC testimony. That is incorrect as stated so far as I can tell, but one place has John Armstrong supposedly citing a slide showing that in a conference presentation. What was on the slide John Armstrong showed to back up that point? Unknown.) You suggest it may be significant that the widow's peak never showed up in a known FBI agent's interview report document when typed up, with the possibility that the reason it did not is perhaps the FBI agent had reason to question its validity or whatever. Possibly, hard to know for sure. 

But as you have noted--and I agree--even the sole thing in the man's conversation which some think link to Oswald, the shoes which the man said he had gotten from "Old Mexico" and he would be happy to pick up another pair for Shasteen next time he went there--that is probably better understood as an allusion to some store or shopping venue or neighborhood or locale, in Texas, not a reference to going to Mexico. If it was a reference to going to Mexico, Shasteen understood the man to be saying he would be going there again and could pick up a pair of the same shoes for Shasteen next time he went. But Oswald never made or talked about multiple trips to Mexico. If Oswald was reported as denying he went to Mexico City to Fritz after his arrest (if Fritz's, Hosty's, and Bookhout's reports on that are accurate on that point, who knows), why would he talk openly about it to Shasteen, if it was a secret? But neither the yellow shoes nor any talk of future Mexico trips are known for Oswald. 

Some sightings of Oswald reported after the assassination were real ones, and some were mistaken identifications. I think the Hutchison's Grocery, Furniture Mart, and Silvia Odio sightings, were of Oswald. I think the Sports Drome and the Shasteen barbershop claims were not, mistaken identifications. The Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership case was a man who gave his name as Oswald (unlike at Shasteen's barbershop or at the Sports Drome). The supposed timeline contradiction with the Downtown Lincoln Mercury visit set on Nov 9 and Ruth Paine locating Oswald in Irving that weekend is removed by one of the other salesmen giving convincing reason, in a Dallas newspaper story, for correcting the date to Nov 2, instead of Nov 9, for that Oswald test drive, and Ruth Paine said separately that it was possible Oswald had not come out to Irving the weekend of Nov 2 until Saturday, not Friday, that particular weekend, leaving a window of possibility in the timeline for it. However, since Oswald is supposed to not have been an experienced driver, and since a man taking the wheel of a car and driving recklessly at 70 mph on a slick highway scaring the salesman Bogard half to death assumes a driver who knows how to drive (inexperienced drivers tend to drive slowly and cautiously), there is a problem in making sense of that. Like you, I have not been enamored with all of the assumptions of intentional impersonations of Oswald in the Dallas and Irving area. But in the case of the Downtown Lincoln Mercury was that one a setup of Oswald and an impersonator as Bill Simpich says?--with the reference to coming into a lot of money in 2-3 weeks, at the time of the (future) assassination, being the point of that? That one is unresolved and a puzzle to me. Is it possible the Downtown Lincoln Mercury sighting was of another Oswald, not a doppelganger, not a second Lee or Harvey Oswald, but an unrelated Oswald? There were multiple people named Oswald in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, most not of family relation to Lee Harvey Oswald, one of whom was a young man at a military base in Fort Worth. I don't think his first name was Lee or Harvey, but if he was around town and people remembered the name "Oswald", that could cause confusion. Both Bogard at the Lincoln Mercury as well as another salesman's wife remembered a written note with Oswald's name on it from the incident; however the name on the note was only remembered since the notes themselves had been destroyed and could not be checked. Is it possible there was a real Oswald whose full name with a different first name had been on those notes, not an impersonator but not Lee Harvey Oswald either, and the memory of the real name "Oswald" but lack of accurate memory of the first name with the last name, could account for the Lincoln Mercury incident?

Let me add another two points. First, on the length of Shasteen's customer's hair, I think the point of Shasteen's WC testimony is stronger on that point than you realize. Shasteen basically described a customer with hair not short enough to be a buzz cut, but close to it. The man liked it cut just long enough that it looked ragged, such that it could sort of but not easily be combed flat. Oswald's hair was not that short. Shasteen said that the man wanted his hair cut in exactly that way--just a bit longer than buzz-cut length such that the hair was in-between standing up straight and combing down flat easily--a "ragged" look as Shasteen put it. Therefore that was how this man always looked and wanted to look. But none of the photos of Oswald show Oswald with hair matching that description of length. Shasteen is accurate in his testimony on this point and it is inconsistent with his customer having been Oswald.

The second point involves cross-examination of your Hootkins scenario. You have rightly criticized the "Harvey and Lee" doppelganger ideas. But without meaning offense, I would like to suggest, in this case, a cross-examination similar to the cross-examination you give of the doppelganger ideas. On 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas as intentionally acting in Shasteen's Irving barbershop, pretending to be a communist, as part of an intelligence agency op--do you think Hootkins had his own FBI handler? Was he paid? And if the point was to have Shasteen--who we know otherwise was an FBI informant--report to the FBI that a kid associated with Oswald was talking like a communist--if the FBI was already putting Hootkins up to it were they doing so in order to get it reported to themselves? It is difficult to see the point here. If it was to plant a story into the public eye of Oswald as communist, I mean, there already was more than enough from Oswald himself available to give that public narrative of Oswald, so how is this very indirect "acting" worth the trouble for what it produces?

And even more, how does it work to ensure Hootkins never would tell that he had been put up to acting in a way that he in retrospect could see was part of a framing of Oswald? From the Hootkins' relative or friend report, whichever it was, that was on your list earlier briefly, who knew him from those days, she said Hootkins was a strong Kennedy supporter. If you had been enlisted to pretend-act as a communist in a barbershop in order to make Oswald look bad (surely he would have not have been told of the upcoming assassination plan/attempt itself) ... and then JFK was assassinated, such a horrible and traumatic shock ... don't you think you would be very angry about having been manipulated or instructed by a handler to do something related to Oswald in the runup to the assassination? If that had happened, would not Hootkins--an honorable man from all accounts--have talked, told, found some way to get the information out? An idea that he would keep silent for life out of fear--the explanation John Armstrong gives for all of the witnesses never talking about the doppelgangers--is ad hoc. Rather than all of these complications, a simpler explanation is that Hootkins of Dallas had nothing to do with the man and his 14-year old son in Shasteen's barbershop, and the political discussion of the young man was no acting at all, and had nothing to do with the JFK assassination.

Greg, I have no intention of being side-tracked by other Oswald sightings, so that gets that out of the way.

Instead, I want to look at your various positions on the Shasteen story:

1. The customer was Oswald; the kid unknown/unnowable

After you became aware of my Hootkins work, you came up with number 2

2. The customer was Oswald. The kid was Wesley Buell Frazier.

When the Frazier nonsense was dismantled, you came up with number 3

3. The customer was not Oswald but a random guy. The kid was not Hootkins but Random Guy's son. They just happened to look like Oswald and Hootkins respectively, drive a similar car to Ruth Paine's and appear and disappear from the scene at the same time as Oswald and Hootkins - but were not doubles for them.

Your father/son concoction is solely based on the description of the customer given by Glover as being in his 30s. Glover is simply recalling a different customer. He never cut Oswald's hair and even the FBI and WC knew Oswald had only been there 3 times. As you quoted:

"The information from Dallas was furnished as a result of a Commission request. Briefly, this phase of the Commission's request deals with an allegation that a barber in Irving, Texas, claimed Oswald had visited his shop on three occasions."

Each of those three times, his hair was cut by Shasteen. Glover can and should be ignored.

I may have missed/forgotten some sub-categories there.

Changing your mind is no crime. It is in fact  to be encouraged when new/more evidence demands it. But it is not evidence driving your changes. It is your need to defend Ruth Paine (and possibly Quakers in general) from even the vaguest whiff of impropriety, let alone witting involvement in helping to frame Oswald. 

Your latest attempt is to claim that the hair style of Oswald and type of hair, as described by Shasteen, alone rules Oswald out. You do this by zeroing in on one comment and ignoring others in the testimony.

Here are all the descriptions again:

"It was almost short enough to stand up but it was too long to stand up. He just wore a rough shod haircut because many times I thought, 'Boy, you sure ought to let this grow out up here where it will lay down and comb nice or either cut it off where it would stand up.' But like I say, he wanted that little bit taken off."

"The fact is, he never did want his hair cut--he always wanted it to look like it was about a week old when he cut it and he got a haircut about every 2 weeks, and I don't think he ever went over 2 weeks--he either got a haircut on Friday night or Saturday morning, and in running that back through my mind, and I thought about it then and I have since."

"To me, he didn't have a full head of hair. It was rather short and thin around here by the temples and the way his hair lies back, he would have been bald if he had been 40 years old."

You concentrate on the first one and ignore the other two. We both know why. But you are also misinterpreting the first one.

In total, the three comments paint a picture of someone who had his cut shorter ON TOP than the sides and back, and that the person had a receding hairline and would more than likely be bald by 40. 

That is a very good description of Oswald.

You also want to hang onto a handwritten comment by an unknown person from an unknown agency that the customer had a "widow's peak". You get desperate enough to cite Armstrong as a secondary source. Armstrong is a snake-oil salesman.

Moving on to the kid, you now keep citing him as 14. Why? Because you know Hootkins was 15.

This is what you posted. It was a request for more information by the WC to the FBI

"It is pointed out Oswald, during his week-end stays at Irving, Texas, stayed at Ruth Paine's. If not already done, Dallas should consider interview with Ruth Paine to determine if she ever recalls Oswald going out for a haircut on a week-end during October or November, 1963, and if so, who would be a logical 14- or 15-year old boy in the neighborhood who might have accompanied him."

The result of the interview was summarized as:

"Mrs. Ruth Paine, 2525 West Fifth, Irving, Texas, advised that she has no child even as old as school age and knows of no boy of about fourteen with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood. She further repeated that she had never allowed Oswald to take her car by himself anywhere."

The above indicates that Shasteen not only told Glover he could not recall if the boy said he was 14 or 15, but that was also what he told the FBI.

You then try and parse Ruth's answer as including  any 15 year olds - despite it being apparent that the FBI ignored the exact request and only asked about 14 year olds. "About" is imprecise enough to mean just "about" whatever you want. It is especially fraught with danger in accepting she even used that word when the FBI do not use exact quotes. 

The FBI, it appears to me, framed the question in such a way as to allow Ruth to answer it honestly without giving away the total truth. 

I do think it is possible, as you say, that the shoes were not bought in Mexico at all, but in some part of Texas considered to be "Old Mexico". Or even that "Old Mexico" was the name of the shop. Whatever the case, no one (as far as I can tell) was asked about them to verify that he owned anything like that. As to what happened to them, refer to my previous answer - souvenired or thrown out due to being cheap and falling apart. Oswald was known to wear slip-ons and flip-flops - both, like these house shoes, no doubt more comfortable in warm humid climates than "normal" footwear.

They just happened to look like Oswald and Hootkins respectively, drive a similar car to Ruth Paine's and appear and disappear from the scene at the same time as Oswald and Hootkins - but were not doubles for them.

Agree with you Greg P., on the counsel to stick to one topic at a time, the Shasteen barbershop. The above quotation from you I think distills the positive argument that the customer Shasteen in Irving thought was Oswald, was Oswald. (1) the man looked like Oswald. (2) he drove a two-tone Chevy like Ruth Paine's car. (3) the 14-year old was stocky, and 15-year-old Hootkins in Dallas, Ruth Paine's Russian student, looks like he may have been stocky too at age 15. (4) the man and the 14-year-old appear and disappear in Shasteen's barber shop the same time frame Oswald was visiting Marina and Ruth Paine in Irving.

That is the positive argument. 

How strong is that positive argument?

On looking like Oswald, you are saying that of the three barbers in Shasteen's shop, Shasteen alone, and neither of the other two, confirmed an Oswald identity of that customer. You are saying Glover thought one of his customers was Oswald, unrelated to the customer Shasteen thought was Oswald. You have Glover's Oswald-identity, for which Glover gave a physical description which disagrees with Oswald, as a mistaken identification, but you interpret Shasteen's as an accurate identification. Actually I think Shasteen's WC testimony and the FBI reports read that they were talking about the same customer, such that there was only one, not two, alleged Oswalds in the Shasteen barbershop. But I don't want to be absolutely dogmatic on that, there is a slight possibility you could be right. But if you are correct, the credibility of the Shasteen identification is further weakened in that  both of the two out of two of the other two barbers in that shop fail to corroborate the presence of Oswald in Shasteen's shop in terms of the customer Shasteen thought was Oswald.

Shasteen himself never gave a physical description of his "Oswald", only of his hair, which was pretty specific: (a) early-going-bald, in agreement with Oswald and ca. 50% of all men ("half of fifty-year-olds [men] are quite bald"--I just read online on a men's health website, in checking this point), and, much more specific and therefore of greater interest in focus: (b) distinctive short hair length, of a length a little longer than buzz-cut but not long enough to comb down flat easily--hair on top neither short enough to stand up nor long enough to lay down flat easily. Was that Oswald? Does Oswald's hair look like it does not lay down flat and comb down flat easily? Not to me from photos of Oswald that I see.

Shasteen had never met Oswald in person. If Shasteen previously knew Oswald in person, testimony that he then saw Oswald in his shop would be highly credible. But that is not the case. Shasteen saw Oswald's appearance only from television and newspapers after the assassination. Then he struggled to remember.

The two-tone Chevy. It is not established that the color of the two tones was even the same as Ruth's, only that it may have been, that Shasteen said it was a blue-and-white or green-and-white Chevy wagon. Shasteen noted that Ruth Paine had a Chevy wagon like that. Shasteen had seen the man drive up in a two-tone Chevy wagon more than once to his shop. Shasteen made the connection, that it was Ruth Paine's, driven by his customer.

The 14-year old. The reason for referring to the 14-year-old as a 14-year-old is because that is the only age ever given by Shasteen for the kid. Shasteen says his information on the kid's age was not a guess either, he asked the kid his age and the kid told him he was 14. Shasteen never himself in his WC or FBI interview reports expressed any ambiguity over this or said the kid might have been 15. Of course it could be argued Shasteen misremembered, or that the kid, if he was 15-year-old Hootkins doing an acting role in an intelligence operation in Shasteen's barbershop, might have deceptively said he was 14, not 15. But that would be just scenario or speculation. The known testimony from Shasteen is consistently that the young man was 14, whereas Hootkins was 15. 

The timing. Oswald is visiting Irving only in Oct and Nov. The man and the 14-year-old patronize Shasteen's barbershop only starting ca. Sept-Oct. Shasteen is uncertain, though Aug-Sept start for the patronization is arguably the most likely, based on ca. 5-6 visits as the final best estimate of number of visits of the customer, from Shasteen; spaced @2 weeks apart per Shasteen except Shasteen remembered a "gap" or maybe 1-2 missed normal barbership visits... likely going back to Sept. I realize you separate Glover's Oswald visits from Shasteen's Oswald visits such that you think Shasteen (and Glover) were mistaken in combining them, and you have only 3 actual visits of Shasteen's Oswald such that only Oct and Nov are at issue.

By all accounts, the visits of the customer with the 14-year-old cease after the JFK assassination, and after Oswald himself is killed. Is that an argument that the customer was Oswald?

I don't think so. Here is how I interpret the timeline. The last visit, of the 14-year-old by himself in the barbershop, seems to have occurred ca. Nov 11 or 12, per the best and latest estimate of Shasteen's WC testimony (as I recall). There was a bad scene in the barbershop on that occasion in which there was a disagreement over politics, and Shasteen rebuked the young man. That provides a reasonable explanation for why neither father nor son, neither the man nor the 14-year-old, came back again. 

As for the start of the visits, they may correspond with a school year. Shasteen remembers the customer driving to the shop some times but entering by walking other times. However, if the customer had parked out of sight of the front of the shop, it would look like he entered walking, when actually he had driven and parked, then walked in. So it is unclear if the man or the 14-year old lived within the neighborhood or not. Since nobody in the barbershop ever saw either that customer or the 14-year-old again, and Shasteen who tried to be familiar with the school kids of the neighborhood did not know who the 14-year-old was, I interpret the customer and the 14-year-old as a father and son who may not have lived in the neighborhood. Yet they were there frequently during that school semester. When Shasteen saw the man in the same two-tone Chevy wagon with two unidentified women on a Saturday morning at 8 am across the street shopping at Hutchison's market--women who almost certainly were NOT Ruth and Marina because Ruth and Marina would be at home with two toddlers and one new baby to tend to at 8 am! but Shasteen saw no toddlers or baby with the three adults and why would an entire household of six persons from the Ruth Paine house all load up in a car to go shopping for groceries at 8 am in a morning anyway?

On the similarity of the 14-year-old in the barbership with 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas, the similarity seems to be that both were close in age and the 14-year-old was described as stocky and 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas also looks stocky from his school photos. But lots of teenage kids look stocky. Nobody in the barbershop had seen Hootkins in person or by photo, so this is a way too weak basis to make an identification of two teenagers in two different cities.

Then one has to consider how much surgery one has to do on existing sworn testimony to make this work. Ruth Paine says she never was on a shopping trip at Hutchison's grocery of the kind that Shasteen saw with his customer and two adult women. Ruth Paine said she did not lend her car to Oswald to drive. Marina said Oswald never drove a car by himself. Ruth Paine said Oswald did not know how to drive well. Ruth Paine said Oswald did not have a drivers license. Ruth Paine said she knew of no kid of about 14 years of age associated with Oswald. Ruth Paine said she knew nothing of Oswald getting a haircut in Irving. Neither Ruth nor Hootkins' parents ever mentioned Hootkins going to Irving. If Hootkins was in Irving driven there by Ruth Paine all the different times Hootkins went to the barbershop, would not Hootkins' mother know that? Why would Hootkins' mother not say so? Is it reasonable that Ruth Paine and Hootkins himself would keep secret from Hootkins' mother that he was repeatedly being taken to a different city by Ruth Paine for Russian lessons? I don't think so.

But why do neither Hootkins' mother, nor Ruth Paine, volunteer to FBI agents questioning them about this, that young Hootkins was in Irving, if that was the case? What motive for keeping that undisclosed? If Hootkins was with Oswald getting haircuts on multiple occasions, would not Ruth know that (from Hootkins mentioning it to her, since Ruth might want to know where her 15-year old guest was)? Why would Ruth deceitfully deny knowledge of Oswald or Hootkins going to a barbershop? In your scenario, you have to suppose Ruth is inexplicably deceitful on all of these completely mundane things, just to make the scenario work.

How often was Hootkins going to Irving, in your scenario? No testimony otherwise has Hootkins going to Irving at all. But if he was, does he go only when Oswald is due for a haircut? If he was just accidentally accompanying Oswald by chance when Oswald needed a haircut, how many times does Hootkins need to be in Irving for there to be two separated visits with Oswald to the barbershop (per Shasteen), plus a third time when the young man goes by himself? 

A simpler explanation is that the 14-year-old is the man's son, and that is why he is there with the man, because the man is his father. It is not that Hootkins visits from Dallas a dozen or so times and by accident happened to want to accompany when Oswald decided to drive 1/2 mile to get a haircut two of those times. It is not that Ruth scheduled Hootkins' visits to Irving only on days when Oswald would be going for haircuts.

The solution is that 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas was not in Irving, let alone in Shasteen's barbershop--there is no testimony or evidence of that. Nor is it credible that 15-year-old Hootkins was an intelligence agency operative put up to acting out a scene in the barbershop, as I understand your proposed scenario. I do not think it likely that FBI or other U.S. intelligence agencies had much to do with running minors as operatives. If you are going to stick with that scenario, would that not require an assumption that Hootkins' parents would know of and approve, and withhold as secret thereafter, Hootkins as a young 15-year-old intelligence agency operative? 

But this is all scenario spun out of scenario, not called for from evidence. More likely is that it was a father and son in Shasteen's barbershop, and the two-tone Chevy driven by the father was not Oswald driving Ruth Paine's car. The adults Shasteen saw with his customer shopping at 8 am on a Saturday morning makes no sense as being the Paine household because it was not the Paine household. 

The start of the barbershop visits of this father and son in ca. Sept or Oct, and Oswald's visits to Irving starting in Oct, is coincidence, and the end of the barbershop visits of this father and son after Nov. 12 was because of an unpleasant scene in the barbershop not because of the Nov. 22 assassination of President Kennedy. The two-tone Chevys driven both by the man and by Ruth Paine, which may or may not have been the same color of two tones, is a coincidence. The reason for the shorter-hair-length-than-Oswald remembered by Shasteen, and the mid-30s age and 5'11" height estimated by Glover for what Shasteen and Glover said was this same individual, in the only known physical description told of this individual, is because this individual was not Oswald, but instead the 14-year-old's father.

There is no need to do massive surgery on the testimony of Ruth Paine in supposing gratuitous deceptions without known motive. There is no need to suppose lifelong silence of Hootkins' cameo role as an intelligence operative, on the part of Hootkins and both of his parents minimally, and whichever of his siblings knew or friends he told the rest of his life. There is no need for any of that. And what is at stake here? What is "lost" in an understanding of the circumstances of the JFK assassination if Shasteen's customer which Shasteen thought was Oswald accompanied by a 14-year-old was not more complicated than a simple mistaken identification of an unknown father and son who patronized Shasteen's barbershop a few times and drove a car which was similar to the one driven by Ruth Paine?

Shasteen said the young man--the 14-year-old--was dropped off for a haircut on the day of the scene in the shop, by an adult in a car which was not the two-tone Chevy driven by the customer when he came in with the 14-year-old. This is an interesting detail. If Shasteen's testimony is correct, then this could not have been Ruth Paine's car. Whose car was this then, and who was the adult, who dropped off the 14-year-old--Hootkins in your reconstruction? I realize Ruth Paine (or was it Michael Paine, I forget) had another car, or a second car. But the point is this scenario gets more and more complex, and the question is why go to all the work and revisionism to have the scenario when a mistaken identity explanation is just orders of magnitude simpler? You have not explained a motive for such deceptions, nor is it clear what is at stake making it necessary to place Oswald in that barbershop, or Hootkins in Irving or in that barbershop.

In your description of my three phases, actually there was no #1. I am recent to JFK assassination research and before reading you re the Hootkins theory I had not studied and had no opinion on the Shasteen alleged Oswald sighting. So for me there was only what you describe as #2 and then #3, just one change in understanding of the identity question for the man and the 14-year-old with him in that barbershop. 

You think I am driven by a desire to not accept deception in Ruth Paine's testimony. No, I would if there were evidence. Let me give another explanation for my view: I don't see deception in Ruth Paine's testimony because, as shocking as this may sound, its not there.

I do not mean this cross-examination of your Shasteen barbershop scenario as impugning the other work you do. I respect the work you do on the JFK assassination and this website with its primary documents and serious attempts to grapple with the issues and solve problems.

Greg, we just seem to be going round in circles.

You say: 

On looking like Oswald, you are saying that of the three barbers in Shasteen's shop, Shasteen alone, and neither of the other two, confirmed an Oswald identity of that customer. You are saying Glover thought one of his customers was Oswald, unrelated to the customer Shasteen thought was Oswald. You have Glover's Oswald-identity, for which Glover gave a physical description which disagrees with Oswald, as a mistaken identification, but you interpret Shasteen's as an accurate identification. 

I have covered Glover previously. When Shasteen came back from Ruth's place and began talking to Glover and his part-time employee, neither recalled Oswald immediately, but as can happen with memory, Glover racked his brain trying to think of anyone who was a little odd. Or a lot odd. He could only recall the 30 plus year old, so in his mind, he became Oswald. Memory is always overlaid with other memories, current pressures and the eagerness to please. 

Neither of those two barbers recalled Oswald because neither cut his hair in what was no doubt a busy shop, and Oswald was not exactly screaming "notice me! Notice me!"

Actually I think Shasteen's WC testimony and the FBI reports read that they were talking about the same customer, such that there was only one, not two, alleged Oswalds in the Shasteen barbershop. But I don't want to be absolutely dogmatic on that, there is a slight possibility you could be right. But if you are correct, the credibility of the Shasteen identification is further weakened in that  both of the two out of two of the other two barbers in that shop fail to corroborate the presence of Oswald in Shasteen's shop in terms of the customer Shasteen thought was Oswald.

Of course there was only one Oswald in the shop. I have no idea what you think I have said in the past but what I actually said is that there is no discrepancy between what he said to the FBI and what he said to the WC as far as describing his hair. 

Shasteen had never met Oswald in person. If Shasteen previously knew Oswald in person, testimony that he then saw Oswald in his shop would be highly credible. But that is not the case. Shasteen saw Oswald's appearance only from television and newspapers after the assassination. Then he struggled to remember.

"later on in the evening when we began to see the pictures, you know, after they had him over here the first I remember seeing him to recognize that I had saw the face before was about----over there around 5 o'clock, when I saw him over at the jail or something and I seen him when they come out there and when he looked toward the cameras.  I didn't say anything to anybody. I had before told them, you know, what I said was just a gag--I said, "You can't tell. That guy might live here in Irving." You know how guys pop off or something, but I didn't know a thing about it. I was just going on, but anyhow, when that come on there, there was several in the shop and so I decided when I saw his picture I remembered him coming in the shop and I just knew that. "

Doesn't sound like he struggled to me.

The two-tone Chevy. It is not established that the color of the two tones was even the same as Ruth's, only that it may have been, that Shasteen said it was a blue-and-white or green-and-white Chevy wagon. Shasteen noted that Ruth Paine had a Chevy wagon like that. Shasteen had seen the man drive up in a two-tone Chevy wagon more than once to his shop. Shasteen made the connection, that it was Ruth Paine's, driven by his customer.

Of course it is not established as an unassailable fact. Should Shasteen have noted the number plate? The fact that the description fit the Paine car however, is another in a long list of things that point to it being Oswald and Hootkins. You need each piece of evidence to be sheer coincidence.  At some point, coincidences stacked on top of each other will collapse under the weight.

The 14-year old. The reason for referring to the 14-year-old as a 14-year-old is because that is the only age ever given by Shasteen for the kid. Shasteen says his information on the kid's age was not a guess either, he asked the kid his age and the kid told him he was 14. Shasteen never himself in his WC or FBI interview reports expressed any ambiguity over this or said the kid might have been 15. Of course it could be argued Shasteen misremembered, or that the kid, if he was 15-year-old Hootkins doing an acting role in an intelligence operation in Shasteen's barbershop, might have deceptively said he was 14, not 15. But that would be just scenario or speculation. The known testimony from Shasteen is consistently that the young man was 14, whereas Hootkins was 15. 

LOL. The reason is because it suits your agenda. Again, 

1. Glover told the FBI that Shasteen told him that the boy was 14 o 15. 

2. The WC asked the FBI to investigate a 14 or 15 year old boy who had allegedly been in the barbershop with Oswald

3. The only conclusion from the above is that Shasteen could not recall if the boy said he was 14 or 15. No one could seriously claim that the WC was basing its request on Glover's hearsay when Shasteen was available to talk for himself. Clearly, prior to his testimony, Shasteen could not recall which it was, despite one FBI report stating he said 14.  

Mr. JENNER. Sure. Did you receive a letter from Mr. Rankin; the General Counsel of the Commission?
Mr. SHASTEEN. No; the chief of police came out yesterday afternoon. He's a good friend of mine. and he came out yesterday evening and had me to call----
Mr. JENNER. The Secret Service--Mr. Sorrels?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes.

I know of only one other witness who was referred to Sorrels prior to appearing before the WC - Mary Bledsoe - a witness who needed her story straightened out. In her case so much so that she turned up with notes written at the suggestion of Sorrels. She was a key witness for the "prosecution". The problem with Shasteen was the opposite - giving testimony that was not welcome considering the driving and the boy. While Sorrels helped Bledsoe straighten out the kinks in her tale, I think his task with Shasteen may have been the opposite - sew some curve balls into the narrative to stretch out the time factor and "confirm" to Shasteen that boy was indeed 14 in an attempt to throw doubt on the story.

The timing. Oswald is visiting Irving only in Oct and Nov. The man and the 14-year-old patronize Shasteen's barbershop only starting ca. Sept-Oct. Shasteen is uncertain, though Aug-Sept start for the patronization is arguably the most likely, based on ca. 5-6 visits as the final best estimate of number of visits of the customer, from Shasteen; spaced @2 weeks apart per Shasteen except Shasteen remembered a "gap" or maybe 1-2 missed normal barbership visits... likely going back to Sept. I realize you separate Glover's Oswald visits from Shasteen's Oswald visits such that you think Shasteen (and Glover) were mistaken in combining them, and you have only 3 actual visits of Shasteen's Oswald such that only Oct and Nov are at issue.

Again - this has been covered.

In early December, Shasteen said Oswald had begun coming in 2 or or 3 months prior. So, yes - early September or early October. How does that rule Oswald out? It rules him IN.

The WC, in its request to the FBI, stated Oswald had been there 3 times. We know Shasteen said the last time was Nov 8 with two weeks intervals. Do the math. Oswald started coming there in early October as soon he arrived in Irving. His statement about 5 or 6 times is simply caused by wanting to incorporate Glover's memories of some oddball whose hair he cut and who, in his memory became Shasteen's Oswald.

On the similarity of the 14-year-old in the barbership with 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas, the similarity seems to be that both were close in age and the 14-year-old was described as stocky and 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas also looks stocky from his school photos. But lots of teenage kids look stocky. Nobody in the barbershop had seen Hootkins in person or by photo, so this is a way too weak basis to make an identification of two teenagers in two different cities.

I think you meant to say "On the similarity of the 14 or 15 year-old in the barbershop with 15-year-old Hootkins of Dallas..."

"Stocky" was not the word used. 

"...he was a husky kid, he wasn't what you call fat, but he was strong--broad-shouldered--he had a real full, and when I say full, I don't mean a round fat face, he was a wide-faced kid. You know, he was a nice looking kid. I mean, if he had had the personality and the teaching and the understanding to go with his looks, he could have done anything he wanted to do...  But he wasn't nobody's dummy because a 14-year-old boy can't spit out--I wouldn't attempt to say just how he said everything..."


"As an actor has played several blusterous roles in many school plays."


blusterous


1.

characterized by strong winds; stormy.

"the weather turned wintry and blusterous"

2.

loud and aggressive.

"a blusterous speech"



The identification of Hootkins goes way beyond the obvious physical match.

The physical match, the timing, not known to Shasteen as a local kid, the car looking like one owned by his Russian teacher, his impressive intellect, and last but not least... his ability to deliver a blusterous and memorable performance.

This is the last reply Greg, unless you have something new to add. Even I get tired of repeating myself.

Until now I have not questioned that Shasteen saw his customer with a Chevy wagon that he thought was Ruth Paine’s Chevy wagon. I am now questioning that. It may be not that there were two similar Chevy wagons which were confused, but rather that there never was a first Chevy wagon associated with Shasteen's customer.
 
It may be that Shasteen DID see the back of the head of the real Oswald with Ruth Paine and Marina, in the parking lot of Hutch's Market across the street, emerging from Ruth's Chevy wagon driven by Ruth on that occasion (though it must have been at a different time of day than the early-morning time Shasteen thought he remembered). From Shasteen's testimony, that incident specifically was how he identified his customer with Ruth Paine’s car--by remembering seeing the back of the real Oswald's head from across the street and thinking that that was his customer. That is not a very secure basis for belief.
 
The only time Shasteen tells of his customer driving up to his shop in what he says was Ruth Paine's car was the Friday night incident, dated Nov. 8, the last time Shasteen's customer came in for a haircut, when Shasteen saw the man with the teenager arrive after dark in a car. Shasteen saw that Buddy Law was there cutting the customer's hair that time. It is just questionable that Shasteen can have securely identified that car as a two-tone Chevy wagon, as Ruth Paine’s Chevy wagon, when he was in the back of his shop going out the back door as he saw the headlights pull in after dark. All of his assumptions regarding his customer’s car were derivative, post-assassination, from thinking he saw his customer with Ruth Paine’s car, and Ruth Paine, that time across the street in Hutch’s Market parking lot. When actually he saw the back of the head of the real Oswald on that occasion, but not the back of the head of his customer. That is the whole basis for Shasteen's association of Ruth's car with his customer.
 
Further: Shasteen's "Oswald" was a mistaken identification on grounds of timeline. You do not need to repeat your interpretation of only three barbershop visits of Oswald's customer. I am aware and understand what you have said there. I am just saying you have got that wrong, from the plain evidence of Shasteen's testimony. Shasteen observed his customer, the one he believed was "Oswald", get a haircut from Buddy Law, on Nov. 8 (if that date for his customer's last haircut is correct, which it likely is). But Shasteen repeatedly said he remembered at least three haircuts of himself personally to his "Oswald". One more that he saw given by Law makes four. Law did not remember that, but Shasteen did. This is purely Shasteen's testimony and witness statements, no one else's. That is a minimum of four barbershop visits. That is his testimony.
 
The real Oswald was in New Orleans until almost the end of September, then in Dallas/Irving for only about six or seven weeks between early October and the date of Shasteen’s customer’s final haircut of Nov. 8. Shasteen said the man got his hair cut at least three times by himself and that he, Shasteen, witnessed the same man getting his hair cut at least once by Buddy Law, making at least four haircuts claimed witnessed by Shasteen for certain, though Shasteen himself thought there were more than that. Here is Shasteen:
 
"It finally dawned on me [post-assassination] where I had saw him [his customer]. I knew where he lived. Actually, I knew where the station wagon was that was parked, that I saw him and this lady in [= the Hutch's Market sighting across the street]"
 
"I think I cut his hair three or four times ... I know of three times that I cut it and I might have cut it more than that, but I don't think I did ... it seemed to me like there was a dead spot in there. Sometime--maybe a month or 6 weeks that we might not have saw him ... but the last three haircuts--it seemed to me like he was pretty regular ... He was pretty regular--at the last three [the last of which was the Buddy Law haircut Nov 8] ... In other words, 2 or 3 or 4 months that we had been seeing him, but I don't know just exactly to the date or nothing...” 
 
[on the Hutch's Market parking lot sighting with Ruth's car] "they got out of the car and we saw their backs [viewed from Shasteen’s shop across the street], and I would see him and I just knew it was him. Once you cut somebody's hair that close you are close enough so that you know them outside or when you see them ... I do remember he [the real Oswald] wasn't driving when they would come to the grocery store, there would be a lady driving [Ruth Paine] and I'm assuming that that was Mrs. Paine [yes] ... I saw him [the real Oswald] and two ladies get out and go in the store ... whenever I saw him come with somebody else in the car he wasn't driving, but occasionally he drove himself up there to get a haircut..."
 
The whole case for Shasteen’s 4x-plus-haircuts customer who always wore large overalls (likely related to his work) and drove and had a teenage son with him, being Oswald, was that he (Shasteen) mistook the real Oswald viewed from the back in a parking lot across the street—viewed from the back—for his customer. On that incredibly slender basis for witness identification, you have constructed an elaborate structure not simply of Ruth Paine’s testimony being deceitful in major ways, but also FBI lying in their written filed confidential reports to their superiors (you say the FBI “knew better” than what they wrote) and you now suggest Secret Service SA Sorrels suborning perjury and Shasteen being influenced to lie by Sorrels, all in order to make your story work of having a coverup of the time the teenager told several persons in the barbershop that capitalism was wrong, as if that incident had anything to do with anything that matters. So the teenager criticized capitalism in a barbershop! Big deal! Who cares? You see a huge coverup involving deception of a major witness and two government agencies, to cover up that! 
 
And as I understand it, that is your #1 primary example of claim that Ruth Paine’s testimony is shown deceptive.
 
I see, which I had not noticed before, in the thread “Hyde my Paine” on this forum, cartoons saying the most vicious things of Ruth Paine (via the character Saint Peter in heaven), calling her “bitch” and “lying” and so on. Apparently those sentiments have close to 100% approval on this forum from the active participants, all of whom are men piling on abuse of the demonized woman for whom there has never been evidence, whether hard or circumstantial, set forth establishing that she was CIA, or involved in assassinating JFK, or involved in coverup afterward, or deceptive in her testimony. Unsubstantiated suspicion and assertions alone are quoted and represented as if they are known facts, and a living woman is just completely smeared. 
 
This is like in an earlier age (metaphorically speaking) burning of a witch at the stake in some medieval Europe village setting. The “witch” would be some marginalized woman, accused. Anyone who defended the witch would themselves be accused, and people would remain silent while others would be caught up in the dynamics of the mob. Here, there is a mob, of men breathing terrible words against this woman. I step in front of her, standing alone speaking to the lynch mob, the men speaking vile things to and of her. I say, “you have no proof, no evidence, that she has done anything wrong. What if you are condemning a woman who has done nothing vile, who is innocent?” The mob howls back, “We know she is vile! People have accused her! We have heard things! She looks suspicious! Her sister was a witch! Her mother-in-law was friend in her youth with a woman who later had an affair with the Dark Lord Allen C. Dulles!!!!!!! If that isn’t evidence what is?? SHE is vile! Evidence?!?—we don’t need no stinkin’ evidence of the kind you are talking about!! To the stake with her!!” I say, “Stop! It is not right to condemn someone without evidence being shown! How do you know you are right on this?” The mob howls, “YOU are defending HER! We are going to come after YOU!”
 
The cartoons portray Ruth Paine as unwilling to answer the question whether she was CIA or FBI informant. That is a misrepresentation. She did answer and never refused to answer those questions. When asked in the Garrison grand jury the CIA question she said she was not and had never been CIA. In a document authored by Ruth Paine either for or turned over to WC investigator Jenner entitled “Oswald”, with a date of typing 3/19/64, Ruth Paine wrote that Hosty’s visit to her house of Nov 1, 1963, “was the first time I had talked personally with an FBI agent” (pp. 12-13). There is a video online in which Ruth Paine says she was not some sort of “CIA minder” for Marina, that that was not true. There has been no evidence or convincing argument set forth establishing differently on any of these points. There is only Vince Salandria logic that because she helped Lee get his job at the TSBD, therefore she was party to whoever framed Oswald for the murder of JFK involving that location, which is not logical. How could Ruth Paine possibly prove her innocence to those among the JFK assassination researchers who are certain she is vile?
 
I knew Ruth Paine. From study of this issue I have not seen evidence, documentary or argued circumstantially in any specific or convincing way, establishing these suspicions and accusations that have become common currency, and I would be very surprised if unknown evidence of such nature were to turn up in the future not yet known in the existing documents and discussions. I will stick around here, Greg Parker permitting who invited me, long enough for any civil discussion on this subject that anyone wishes to ask or discuss with me, if that is helpful to this forum. If there is little further interest on this topic, I will fade away. 

Until now I have not questioned that Shasteen saw his customer with a Chevy wagon that he thought was Ruth Paine’s Chevy wagon. I am now questioning that. 

Of course you are, Greg! As soon as one of your notions gets toppled by the facts, you move on to something else to question. At this rate, it won't be long before you are questioning whether Shasteen was really Shasteen.

It may be that Shasteen DID see the back of the head of the real Oswald with Ruth Paine and Marina, in the parking lot of Hutch's Market across the street, emerging from Ruth's Chevy wagon driven by Ruth on that occasion (though it must have been at a different time of day than the early-morning time Shasteen thought he remembered). 

Not sure why it has to be a different time, unless Quakers are not allowed to go to any shops before noon on a Saturday?

From Shasteen's testimony, that incident specifically was how he identified his customer with Ruth Paine’s car--by remembering seeing the back of the real Oswald's head from across the street and thinking that that was his customer. That is not a very secure basis for belief.

Intentionally or not, you reach your conclusions on cherry-picked evidence.

Mr. SHASTEEN. Well, I was trying to think of that coming over here and I know of twice and one of the times that I'm saying--it was the next morning after he had gotten a haircut the night I went to the football game, the next morning they were over to the store. You see, I open up early around 7 in the morning and it was 8 o'clock, or so, not knowing the exact hour. I would say it was 8 o'clock or 8:30 when they were over at the store that Saturday morning.

Mr. JENNER. That would be the 9th of November?

Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes; because. one reason it made me remember that, I had just come back--I had just come back from across the street to get some cigarettes and they come up and pulled in and I walked over and naturally I looked back across the street and I saw them getting out and he wasn't driving at that time. I will agree but whenever I saw him come with somebody else in the car he wasn't driving, but occasionally he drove himself up there to get a haircut and Mr. Odum says, "Now, that contradicts with some of the other information." I said, "I can't help what it contradicts with, that's just the fact and that's it." 

So  emphatically, no. He did not just see the back of his head from his barbershop. Nor was Hutch's the only place Shasteen had seen Oswald.

Mr. SHASTEEN. I remember seeing him, you know, other than just going in the grocery store across the street, Mr. Hutchison's food market, and I was down at the drugstore one night, down at Williamsburg's and he was in there.

Mr. JENNER. Williamsburg's--that's in Irving?

Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes; it's down on Rock Island and Rogers Road. And, why I remembered seeing him in there, I knew I couldn't understand his wife, and that was before--- I believe it was before she had her baby. The best I remember she was pregnant.

Marina being pregnant places this incident as sometime between October 4 and October 20 when the second daughter was born.

Ruth Paine confirms that apart from Hutch's, Oswald was at the drug store at least once.

Mrs. PAINE - He went with my children to buy some popsicles while I was teaching a student, so I was not at home that time.

The above also confirms that she did sometimes teach Hootkins somewhere else. Which is as I thought because I can only prove that Hootkins was in Irving 3 times. As she  gave him more than 3 lessons, some must have been somewhere else.  You might recall this: Asst Headmaster of St Mark's, Edward Oviatt told the FBI that the lessons took place at the home of the student. Whereas Mrs Hootkins was under the impression that the lessons were being held at St Marks. You would think a simple thing like this would be perfectly easy to get straight. Especially for the mother and the Deputy Headmaster. Yet it seems as though neither had any idea where the lessons were held.

But to get back to Shasteen, we have him seeing Lee in the barbershop on 3 occasions, seeing him more than once at Hutch's and at least once at the drugstore.

What was the person he saw wearing on each and every occasion he saw him except once? Ill-fitting coveralls...

Mr. JENNER. On the occasions you saw this man would you describe his appearance so far as his attire is concerned? How was he dressed?

Mr. SHASTEEN. The best I remember is that he had on some kind of coveralls, nearly every time he came in.

And when he saw him at Hutch's?

Mr. JENNER. And you occasionally saw him--is the grocery store across the street?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. That's Hutch's Market?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And how was he dressed on those occasions?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Well, I think most usually, like I said, the only time I ever saw him with anything but those coveralls on was that night he came in the shop--he had those on--those old coveralls on when he was over there and another thing, they were big for him. I always noticed they were big enough for him and somebody else.
Mr. JENNER. They were very loose-fitting?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. And even on those occasions when you saw him across the street at Hutch's, he had the coveralls, the military- type coveralls on?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes; of course. He could have went in there times I didn't see him. And I don't know how many times I saw him but I have seen him over there.


Same ill-fitting coveralls when seen with Ruth Paine and when seen without her. Same person. End of this latest attempt at an apologia.

Shasteen observed his customer, the one he believed was "Oswald", get a haircut from Buddy Law, on Nov. 8 (if that date for his customer's last haircut is correct, which it likely is). But Shasteen repeatedly said he remembered at least three haircuts of himself personally to his "Oswald". 

Yet Buddy Law denied cutting Oswald's hair at any time. From the Gemberling Report, p127. Interview of Buddy Law. "Mr Law stated that Mr. Shasteen told him that Oswald had been in the barbershop on three occasions and that on one of those occasions he (Law) had cut his hair, but that he could not recall it. He stated definitely that he had no recollection of the incident mentioned by Shasteen."

It is interesting to note that at the time of the interview, Law was no longer working for Shasteen but was employed in the Production Control Department of Ling Temco Vought. 

Even more interesting is that the owner of the Texas School Book Depository, Harold Byrd, was part owner of Ling Temco Vought.

Buddy knew which side of his bread was buttered. Buddy was lying.
 
The only fact in Buddy's statement is that initially Shasteen believed and stated that Oswald had only been in the barbershop three times. The expansion of that to 5 or 6 and the possibility it started before October is simply the result of (as I have said before) the way memory works. All the exposure of Oswald in the media. Trying too hard to recall OTHER times he might have been in and confusing memory of Oswald with older memories of other oddball characters. What we have in testimony is this:

Mr. JENNER. Do you recall telling Agent Berry that when he interviewed you on the 3rd of December 1963, that your faint recollection of Oswald was when he appeared in the shop, your shop on a Saturday, "2 or 3 months ago at 6:30 in the morning," when you had just opened your shop?

Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes, sir. The first time I remember him was early one morning.

You say you know my point about three times. But obviously you need to be told again. Two months back from early December is early October. That is when Lee started coming in getting haircuts approximately every two weeks ending on November 8. That equals 3 haircuts - just as Shasteen initially said. 

On another occasion when pressed on when the first visit was, he replied

Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes; it was. In other words, 2 or 8 or 4 months that we had been seeing him, but I don't know just exactly to the date or nothing.

In other words, all the news reports and interviews with the FBI and private discussions with others, had confused Shasteen's memory to the point where he became unsure as to when he did start seeing Oswald in the shop. That confusion is consistent with every study on memory that was ever done.

I see, which I had not noticed before, in the thread “Hyde my Paine” on this forum, cartoons saying the most vicious things of Ruth Paine (via the character Saint Peter in heaven), calling her “bitch” and “lying” and so on. Apparently those sentiments have close to 100% approval on this forum from the active participants, all of whom are men piling on abuse of the demonized woman for whom there has never been evidence, whether hard or circumstantial, set forth establishing that she was CIA, or involved in assassinating JFK, or involved in coverup afterward, or deceptive in her testimony. Unsubstantiated suspicion and assertions alone are quoted and represented as if they are known facts, and a living woman is just completely smeared. 

The evidence against her is substantial. That you do not like it, doesn't make it disappear. 

The cartoon strip is an excellent example of a pasquinade. Your reaction is exactly that of some Muslims to the French satirical publication, Charlie Hebdo. 

This is like in an earlier age (metaphorically speaking) burning of a witch at the stake in some medieval Europe village setting. The “witch” would be some marginalized woman, accused.

Oh dear. If raising the Hitler analogy is the most prevalent form of defense for some who can't argue the facts, the "witch" analogy runs a close second. Ho hum.

Anyone who defended the witch would themselves be accused, and people would remain silent while others would be caught up in the dynamics of the mob. Here, there is a mob, of men breathing terrible words against this woman. I step in front of her, standing alone speaking to the lynch mob, the men speaking vile things to and of her. I say, “you have no proof, no evidence, that she has done anything wrong. What if you are condemning a woman who has done nothing vile, who is innocent?” The mob howls back, “We know she is vile! People have accused her! We have heard things! She looks suspicious! Her sister was a witch! Her mother-in-law was friend in her youth with a woman who later had an affair with the Dark Lord Allen C. Dulles!!!!!!! If that isn’t evidence what is?? SHE is vile! Evidence?!?—we don’t need no stinkin’ evidence of the kind you are talking about!! To the stake with her!!” I say, “Stop! It is not right to condemn someone without evidence being shown! How do you know you are right on this?” The mob howls, “YOU are defending HER! We are going to come after YOU!”

You've got quite a vivid fantasy life going on there, Greg!

I called you out for the same reason I call anyone out. It has zero to do with you "defending" Ruth Paine. If I wanted to call out everyone who defended her, it would be a full-time job. You made an absolutely ridiculous claim in saying the "boy" was Buell Frazier. If you had not made that claim, I would have left you alone. The case has enough silly claims as it is.

I knew Ruth Paine. From study of this issue I have not seen evidence, documentary or argued circumstantially in any specific or convincing way, establishing these suspicions and accusations that have become common currency, and I would be very surprised if unknown evidence of such nature were to turn up in the future not yet known in the existing documents and discussions.

You have seen it, You just can't admit it.

Here is yet another example:

While Marina was in the custody of the Secret Service, she called Ruth and said she was going to get someone from the FBI to come around and pick a couple of things up. Ruth stated in testimony that a wedding ring was not one of the items specified. Nevertheless, Ruth testified  that Odum did specifically ask for it.

Mr. JENNER - I mean did you look inside (the ring) to see if there was an inscription on it or were you curious about that?

Mrs. PAINE - I gave it to Mr. Odum who was with me in the room
.
Mr. JENNER - Mr. Odum accompanied you?

Mrs. PAINE - Went with me to the bedroom. I am pretty sure he was the one.

She and Mike were so familiar and so comfortable with Odum that they were on a first name basis with him. 

Now move forward to 2004 and the discovery of a wedding ring in the files of one of Marina's lawyers which was allegedly given to the lawyer by the Secret Service who allegedly picked it from Ruth Paine on Dec 2, 1963. Hugh Aynesorth phoned Ruth Paine to confirm this story. Ruth replied that it was all so long ago but it may be true that she gave it the Secret Service on that date. She was not reminded at that time as to what she had told the Warren Commission about it. Aynesworth was not interested in the facts, only in "confirming" the official account.  The importance (to Oswald's ongoing prosecution) of confirming that account can be viewed here. 

I will stick around here, Greg Parker permitting who invited me, long enough for any civil discussion on this subject that anyone wishes to ask or discuss with me, if that is helpful to this forum. If there is little further interest on this topic, I will fade away. 

You're welcome to stick around. Civility here may depend on no one detecting obfuscation. Civility has it's place. But getting to the facts is more important. If you simply want polite debate with little regard for the facts, the Ed Forum is the place to be.

Greg, I would like to engage some of the specifics you mention re Shasteen but before that I would like you to address directly and simply a question that I have raised maybe 4-5 times now which I have not seen you address (normally you do address relevant matters): the question of rational explanation for a coverup of 15-year old Hootkins in a barbershop in Irving, Texas.

To review, Shasteen claimed an identification of a customer in his shop, who was associated with a 14- (or 15-) year-old teenage boy, with Oswald. As in all cases of claimed sightings of Oswald, the first question is assessment of whether the identification is correct or mistaken. This was not a matter of a witness picking a person out of a lineup, with time to study and examine compared to what they remember. In cases of lineup witness identifications, I might guess the percentage of accuracy might be maybe ca. 85% (in cases of a witness of sound mind who intends to be truthful and is not corrupted in his/her testimony), i.e. convictions based on a single witness identification out of a lineup alone, will only get the wrong guy put away or executed only 1 out of 6 or 7 times. In cases of post-assassination claims of sightings of Oswald before the assassination, I am again guessing, but the percentage of accuracy is going to be lower, I am going to guess maybe something like ca. 60%. There are going to be a lot of "false positives". Some of these when checked out can be excluded and/or confirmed, but in some cases the additional information is also ambiguous, in the sense that it can be interpreted in more than one way depending on who is doing the interpreting.

In the case of Shasteen, his Oswald-identification conflicts with a lot of other on-the-record testimony, additional information. As for the possibility of a barber being mistaken on remembering a customer as Oswald, you agree that one other barber in that very shop, Glover, was mistaken when expressing certainty (according to his FBI interview) that a customer he remembered as mid-30's age, whose hair he had cut, was Oswald. Shasteen and Glover seemed to think that was the same customer as Shasteen's "Oswald", but you suggest or argue Glover's customer was a different "Oswald" in that barbershop (obviously not a real Oswald, the quote marks signifies "claimed by someone to be Oswald"), i.e. two claimed "Oswald"'s by these two barbers, one of whom you and I agree was a mistaken identity (the one of Glover), the other of which you interpret as accurate (Shasteen's) and which I interpret as also a mistaken identity (Shasteen's). 

Against accuracy of the Shasteen identification is the testimony of Ruth Paine, the major witness for timeline relied upon by nearly all investigators of the assassination. Whereas investigative staff of both Warren Commission and HSCA questioned the credibility of other witnesses, notably Marina but also a number of others, I am not aware that any investigative staff closest to the investigation of either of these investigations seriously questioned the credibility of Ruth Paine's testimony. That does not mean it is beyond question but it is the track record. In the present case, Shasteen's claimed "Oswald" is inconsistent with Ruth Paine's testimony concerning Oswald's driving; concerning any teenager of about 14 years old with Oswald; any disclosure of her Dallas student Hootkins being in Irving; any knowledge of Oswald getting a haircut in Irving. You have some explanation for some of these as Ruth Paine doing "Quaker deception" by technically speaking truthfully even though intended to deceive which I consider quite imagined and crazy (there is no evidence Ruth Paine has done this elsewhere, and there is zero knowledge on my part of this being a Quaker practice in court or otherwise, in any form statistically above what the general population practices).

But never mind the side-debate over "lie" versus "deception"; what you call Ruth Paine's (alleged) Quaker "deception" is de facto lying or perjury, in the sense of intending to be understood by hearers as the opposite of the truth. Either way, Ruth Paine's testimony conflicts with the idea of Oswald with Hootkins getting haircuts in Shasteen's barbershop. Either Shasteen has a mistaken identification, or Ruth Paine is being repeatedly dishonest and/or deceitful, one or the other. The question is which.

But that is not all. Hootkins' mother seems to know nothing of Hootkins going to Irving for his lessons (though this is admittedly not completely clear on the part of Hootkin's mother's knowledge--but certainly nothing is volunteered or mentioned of that). If it was innocuous, why would not either Hootkins' mother or Ruth Paine mention the Irving visits of Hootkins, if they happened? Well, you propose something is being covered up. I get that, but the question is, in your narrative, why? Who cares if Hootkins was in Irving or accompanied Oswald to a barbershop or criticized capitalism in that barbershop in the hearing of maybe five or eight people? 

On this site there are detailed serious arguments concerning the "prayer man" photo. There are arguments concerning the Tippit killing and the arrest of Oswald. Each of these involve cross-examination of testimony of police as well as civilian witnesses, with issues of false and tampered testimony. But in these arguments the motives or reasons for tampering or perjured testimony, if that is true, is clear. But here, you do not explain what Hootkins in Shasteen's barbershop has to do with anything.

Not only do you have Ruth Paine's testimony seriously impeached (based on the premise that Shasteen's was not a mistaken identification), but you also have Hootkins as being some sort of operative at age 15 himself, when it is just implausible that US intelligence agencies would run a 15-year-old minor as an operative, or at least you have not shown how that is reasonable from comparative parallels. Shasteen testified the young man was 14, not 15, and originally told the FBI that the young man had brown eyes, not Hootkins' blue eyes. You interpret this as either lapses or changes in Shasteen's memory, which of course on any individual point is always a possibility. You discount Shasteen's testimony that his "Oswald" customer was very meticulous in how he had his hair cut and always wanted it "just so", at a length slightly above what would stand straight up, but not long enough to comb down flat, "in between" those two lengths. Whereas Oswald's hair always looks easily combed down flat, and furthermore Hutchison of Hutch's Market across the street, who remembered Oswald (the real Oswald) in his store said that Oswald (the real Oswald) looked like he always needed a haircut. Oswald was a clean person, but he was also usually poor and there is no other testimony that he got haircuts frequently or of the kind of the man in Shasteen's barbershop. 

There is the acknowledged-less-reliable testimony of Marina that conflicts: Marina denied Oswald drove a car (apart from with Ruth, by himself). You also suggest that since Shasteen was friends with Sorrels, who headed the Dallas Secret Service office, and had discussed his forthcoming testimony with Sorrels, that Sorrels may have influenced, suborned perjury on the part of Shasteen, and that Shasteen cooperated in that. Both of those are crimes, if true. Shasteen comes across to me as one who saw himself as a patriotic American who would resist being told to lie under oath--is this credible that Shasteen would just say, "OK--I'm happy to put myself in legal jeopardy by shaping my testimony deceptively under oath--no problem!" You also have suggested that FBI agents reporting on the Shasteen and Glover interviews actually knew better than what they reported, which since that is not the usual FBI field agent practice in writing up interview reports, again supposes coverup and conspiracy on the part of those field agents too.

All of these things you propose, almost necessarily, generated out of the premise that Shasteen's identification of his customer as Oswald (unlike Glover's identification of his customer as Oswald) was correct, and not mistaken. You have a coverup--a lot of work to deceive on the part not only of the witness considered one of the most credible witness testimonies by staff investigators in all of the history of the formal investigations; but also apparently of Hootkins' mother; Hootkins himself in an acting episode in the barbershop; and persons of two government intelligence agencies; as well as memory problems and passive cooperative with influenced/perjured testimony on the part of Shasteen himself. All in order to have a narrative constructed to be consistent with a premise that Shasteen's identification was correct. None of the ones involved in what you propose was this rather elaborate network of deception and coverup ever did any whistleblowing revelation later of being suborned to give perjured testimony.

And so with this context, the question arises, and it is exceedingly relevant at the center of your reconstruction: what (in your reconstruction) was the point of all of this extensive deception and coverup of Hootkins in an Irving barbershop? And I request that this time you answer this question. Why such a coverup at all? 

It is not as if the young man (Hootkins per your reconstruction) went into that barbershop and spoke of assassinating JFK, or spoke of getting money from Castro shortly, or said, "remember the man with whom I came in to this barbershop before? His name is Lee Oswald and he is a communist and he thinks Kennedy should be assassinated", or anything like that.

Instead, nothing that anyone would care about, nothing that has anything to do with anything related to the assassination of JFK or incrimination of Oswald thereof. So, please address directly: WHY would there be a coverup of Hootkins, or Oswald, in that barbershop or their actions thereof? You have an elaborate coverup involving, in your narrative, serious issues of witness deception and perjury and influence of intelligence agencies--all to cover up visits to a barbershop of no known relevance to anything! WHY, Greg? How does that make any sense? EXPLAIN. OK, that is my single question here. Thanks in advance for your answer, and once you answer this I will continue with what else I want to say, but I want to get this relevant single question addressed from you first.