by Eric Meece
M.A. from San Jose State University (Graduated 1973)
How did Lee Harvey Oswald get down the stairs from the 6th floor to the 2nd after shooting JFK, and not be seen by Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles coming down from the 4th to the 1st?
This timeline is not claimed as proof, but my best estimate based on the witness accounts and testimonies in affidavits, Warren Commission interviews, videos and other interviews.
Timeline of JFK shooting, Oswald’s escape from the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) and the girls on the stairs
Nov.22, 1963
AS = After Shooting
Imagine I am Perry Mason (Raymond Burr). It is episode #137, The Case of the Unwelcome Bride (first broadcast Dec.16, 1961)
Hamilton Burger (William Talman): "I don’t know what kind of a stunt this is", while pointing to Della Street (Barbara Hale) who is putting up a display at the defense table.
Judge (Willis Bouchey): "Can you explain just what it is your secretary is working on over there?"
Perry Mason: "The crucial aspect of this case is the timing of events". Perry proceeds to describe the timing of events that include a murder, with Della pulling out tabs revealing each item on the chart.
I have set up an imaginary display like Perry Mason’s, showing approximate timing of the JFK murder and events afterward:
Approx 12:30:30-40 PM CST: Oswald shoots JFK and John Connally from 6th floor SE window TSBD.
Officer Marion Baker hears the shots and sees pigeons flying off the roof of the TSBD and drives his motorcycle over to the building.
Railyard workers Rackley and Romack begin observing the back door of the TSBD at 12:30 or earlier and see no one enter or leave for about "5 minutes".
Richard Carr claimed to see a stocky white man wearing a sportcoat, glasses, and a hat on the 7th floor TSBD from 750 feet away from the 7th floor of a courthouse building under construction at SE corner of Houston and Commerce Streets.
10-20 seconds AS: Eddie Piper walks over to across from the stairway on the first floor and observes.
40 seconds AS: Baker meets TSBD manager Roy Truly inside the building, who starts guiding Baker how to go up inside, and accompanying him.
40-50 seconds AS: Oswald stashes rifle behind some boxes on his left, enters stairway from 6th floor.
40-70 seconds AS: After watching the events outside, Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles decide at their 4th floor window to walk over to the east elevator.
70-85 seconds AS: After waiting there, they walk over to the south-west stairway. Dorothy Garner sees them walk over there.
65 seconds AS: Baker and Truly reach elevator on 1st floor and yell for someone to send it down. No response.
75 seconds AS: Baker and Truly enter stairway on 1st floor. Eddie Piper then stops observing the stairway, having seen no one enter or leave the stairway there until Truly and Baker entered it.
80 seconds AS: Oswald reaches 2nd floor, leaves stairs and walks toward the lunchroom.
85 seconds AS, I propose: Adams and Styles enter 4th floor stairway, running down. Garner hears them enter the stairway and presumes that it is them.
85-100 seconds AS: Truly starts toward entering the stairs toward the 3rd floor. Baker leaves stairs on 2nd floor, glimpses and then confronts Oswald as he sees Oswald enter the 2nd floor lunchroom and calls him to "come here". Truly returns and joins Baker.
105-110 seconds AS: Baker points his gun at Oswald’s chest just inside the door to the 2nd floor lunchroom. Truly says Oswald works here at TSBD and Baker lets him go.
105 seconds AS: Adams and Styles leave the stairs and reach 1st floor.
115 seconds AS: Baker and Truly enter stairs on 2nd floor and start up. Oswald turns back around near 2nd floor lunchroom door and walks further into the room and buys a coke.
Carolyn Arnold claimed years later to have seen Oswald there eating lunch, but she gave no clear time for her observation, and other employees did not see her.
130 seconds AS: Garner on the 4th floor sees Baker and Truly going up the stairs.
130-140 seconds AS: Mrs. Reid sees Oswald with his coke walk by in the 2nd floor office next to the lunchroom.
140-145 seconds AS: Baker and Truly then see the elevator stuck on the 5th floor, and said later that no-one could have used it before this time. Truly and Baker get one of the elevators to work again on the 5th floor and take it up to the 7th floor, and from there take a stairway to the roof.
155-175 seconds AS: Baker and Truly reach the roof and found no sniper or rifle there.
110-200+ seconds AS?: Adams and Styles are lingering on the 1st floor in back and they encounter one of the 4 black workers that were on the first floor.
150-190 seconds AS: Oswald reaches 1st floor, drinks from and stashes his coke somewhere, directs reporter Robert McNeil (probably, or Pierce Allman) to a phone, then exits the building as Buell Wesley Frazier watched him leave and cross Houston St. to go east on Elm Street.
200 seconds AS, approximately: young black TSBD employees Norman, Williams and Jarman who had heard shots right above them while at the 5th floor SE windows at 12:30 come down the stairs from there.
240+ seconds AS?: Rackley and Romack probably stopped observing the back door, claiming they saw no-one exit or enter.
About 200-240+ seconds AS?: James Worrell claims he saw a man with a sportcoat, but thin and wearing no hat, leaving the back door and walking south on Houston St. toward Elm Street.
About 240+ seconds AS?: Richard Carr claims he went down to ground level and saw his stocky sportcoat man with a hat turn east walking from Houston onto Commerce and enter a station wagon. Later he claimed he saw this man enter a station wagon with two others outside the TSBD back door from about 780 feet away.
About 240+ seconds AS: Billy Lovelady and William Shelley, having walked around the building from the front steps west and returned to enter the back door, Lovelady may have seen Victoria Adams on the first floor by the back door. Adams and Styles then leave the back door and walk around east in the opposite direction back to the front door.
About 400+ seconds AS: TSBD is sealed off. Truly then conducts roll call of his employees and finds Oswald missing. At about 2PM Captain Fritz returns to police station after inspecting the 6th floor TSBD and asks for a warrant to pick up Oswald. Officer Gerald Hill says I will save you a trip, for there he sits.
The Reason for Conspiracies: The JFK Conspiracy Theory by Eric Meece