Reply to Duke Lane from ed forum re Bledsoe

Sat 29 Jan 2011, 8:25 pm

Only Fritz knows why he didn't order a line-up for Bledsoe or anyone else, and I don't think that Graves' saying" it would have been up to Captain Fritz" means that Fritz's actions one way or the other depended upon whether Graves found them plausible or appropriate.

True: only Fritz made those decisions. But Belin asked Graves why it didn't happen while at the same time, acknowledging he did not know if it was Graves' responsibility. Graves indicated he could not think of any reason it wasn't done. If the answer should be as obvious as you want to believe, then the obvious escaped him.

If it was that important, there was ample opportunity to ask him directly; nobody did. Asking "if" something happened, and why it did or did not, doesn't necessarily mean that anyone thought it should have happened. Reading people's minds from toneless words printed on a page is a rather arcane science that I'm not particularly adept with.

I have come across other occasions where the WC asked questions of the wrong person and failed to ask the right person – even when told who that was.

A line-up is completely unnecessary when someone says that they're personally acquainted with an individual. They are designed to pick out people from those you don't know. What useful purpose would be gained by putting in a bunch of strangers with your neighbor? To see if you really did know him as you claimed? They're not intended to test the veracity of witnesses, but to identify - or eliminate - possible suspects.

Like I said, the neighbor analogy just doesn't work. Apples and oranges. It is not a matter of testing her veracity. It is a matter of making certain that the person they had in custody was the person she saw on the bus – whether or not she was mistaken in her memory that he was a former lodger.

You're saying the DPD believed it was impossible for her to have been mistaken. It's not like Oswald was 7' tall with a wooden leg, a bald head and humped back. He was pretty much non-descript. And they had to realise pretty quickly in their dealings with her that she was frail of mind (being 67 and all…).

I'd suggested that she could have read it in the papers or something (no, I said "in the papers," I shouldn't be taking credit for asking about other media, other persons, or anything other than "the papers"). If in fact these descriptions were being broadcast, then there's the possibility I was looking for (well, I was looking for one in the papers, and this came over the radio and/or TV, so it's not really what I was asking about since radio and TV are quite different from print, and if I'd meant radio and/or TV, I should've included it)....

Your suggestion was close to the mark so untie those knickers. It's become obvious that few had bothered reading all of her testimony, or if they did, that key elements sailed on by...

So, from the top: it appears that it's at least possible if not probable that Bledsoe got the shirt description from public sources, as opposed to having seen it. If her recollection about the "brown shirt" business was actually aired: someone could have told her that as well, and it doesn't appear that her recollections were all terribly dependable.

Not dependable... up to a point. I think she heard what she claimed to hear on the radio and that Porter got home an hour later and he phoned the cops. I believe someone arrived with the shirt for identification and I understand why she thought it was the Secret Service (I'll explain below), and prior to all that, I believe she had been watching the parade and caught a bus home on which she saw a former lodger.

Because of the shirt description and a probable slight resemblance, she believed this lodger whose name she couldn't recall at the time she saw him, was the person in custody. Now she had a name to put to her Lodger: Oswald.

Since she was pretty much convinced that her false premise was reality, the DPD had no trouble convincing her she must have been on McWatter's bus and not the one she had actually been on.

I'd just as soon have her not on the bus, and this is one step toward taking her off of it. Now, how'd she find out about the train station lady?

The cops or the FBI - take your pick. I'm not sure it matters which – but it had to be one or the other.

Is it possible that the decision was made not to have her view him in a line-up - besides a purported personal acquaintance - is because she didn't witness him commit a crime?

What crime was he committing riding a bus or catching a cab?

About all her statement amounted to is "I know the guy and saw him today." How many line-ups do you think they're doing for people who claim to know the guy - worked with him, commuted with him, been to class with him, whatever - who shot the Congresswoman in Arizona recently?

Apples and oranges. He never made a getaway for any one to "see" him on a bus – not actual former acquaintances who may or may not have seen the right guy, instead of just someone who looked a little like him from a sideways glance; not people deluded about being a former acquaintance; nor even total and non-deluded strangers.

How many people does it take to show an incidental witness a picture? One. How many people does it take to conduct a line-up? Prisoners, jailers, detectives, guards ... do you think cops should have line-ups for everyone who says they're acquainted with a suspect?

Nope. Only witnesses to certain events, regardless of any alleged former acquaintanceship.

Looking at the testimony about her going to DPD "the next night," i.e., 23/11 (or 11/23 in my parlance),

Sorry. I usually have to remember to right it dd/mm in personal matters because I'm so used to writing it mm/dd for the sake of US members.

is there any correlation between this FBI interview and Bledsoe's recollection of "about an hour my son came home, and I told him and he immediately called the police and told them, because we wanted to do all we could, and so, I went down the next night. He took me down, and I made a statement to them, what kind of---Secret Service man or something down there?" She doesn't mention also going to the FBI, and FBI is easy enough to confuse with being Secret Service, as many people have. Did an FBI agent sit in on an interview between Bledsoe and Graves and write his own, separate report on the same interview? Might they have" co-interviewed" her and wrote up what each of them felt was pertinent? Or did one interview her and turn her over to the other when done?

Okay. Having given all this further thought, doesn't it strike you as odd that Porter phoned the cops but she never mentions being talked to by the cops – even though we know a cop took her affidavit? The solution is right in front of us. She wasn't conflating or confusing the Secret Service and the FBI.

Whenever she spoke of the Secret Service, she was actually referring to the DPD Special Services Bureau – i.e. Det. Graves and friends. I'm now confident that Graves or someone from Special Services took the shirt to her within a short period of time following Porter's phone call (which could have been as early as 3:00 or4: 00 pm), and that she was taken in for interview the next day when they'd had a chance to sought out a story that would fly for her. The whole bus/taxi getaway was about to be born solely on the basis of Bledsoe misidentifying a former lodger on a bus and the fact that the DPD had been ordered to drop conspiracy inquiries they'd been following – including looking for the getaway car and driver described by Craig.

The whole exchange over her having seen the shirt - "no, I've never seen it before, but he had it on when I saw him" - sounds more like someone trying to convince themself that their recollection was real.

Why the quote marks when that is not exactly what she said? But otherwise... yeah... I'm on that page with you now in that I agree, she had convinced herself – though I suspect deep down she had doubts and those doubts came out in her use of language.

There are also the exchanges leading up to the one we've just discussed (when shown the exhibit) which point in that same direction where she keeps saying "that is it" but when asked to explain, she does not say it is the shirt she had seen Oswald wearing, she instead states it is "the one he had out there that day" – the "he" being the Special Services detective who brought the shirt to her.

Bledsoe was a lonely and bitter "old" lady who seems to have alienated anyone who spent time around her. The attention paid to her over this story must've been quite pleasantly unusual for her.

I don't see any evidence for that. Porter came back to live with her (something Marguerite's boys would never have done), and she claims a young boy had come around and turned the radio on when she got home from the motorcade. Young boys in particular stay clear of bitter old crones.

That's all well and good, but having disposed(?) of the shirt question, still there remains the "train transfer lady" recollection, also recalled by McWatters. If you posit that she was on another bus, then which one that went near her house at around the same time?

Transferlady dealt with previously. I don't know which bus – but if I can't put her on CmcW's, yet accept she got home by bus, it must have been another. It is not possible to tie every detail down. The best that can be done sometimes is to rule out some possibilities. Can the possibility of another bus be ruled out? The important question is this: is the hypothesis supportable using all known data? I believe this one works with the evidence and that there is nothing that makes any part of it impossible or even improbable. You don't have to buy into it, but if you don't, then I'd appreciate being shown where it doesn't work.

Son Porter is a complete non-issue other than his possible (probable?) manufacture of fake memorabilia that can't be called "evidence" if money was his motive in creating it. Absent that, it's possible if not likely that Bledsoe would have been found later as investigators delved into Oswald's background.

Not a complete non-issue. I think he encouraged her delusion for personal gain. If he had not done so – or had actually disabused her of her fantasy, we would be here discussing it now. History would have accepted Roger Craig.

Incidentally, 67 is not "advanced years and failing memory," nor "on galloping dotage." It used tobe once, but I was younger then.

You're a modern medical marvel.