Appeal to ridicule. Invalid. Whether you think your assumption is reasonable or not, it's still an assumption based on no evidence.
Any particular reason you truncated the full statement? Just to spin it into a "no"?
"I asked the girl if she had sold the man a ticket and she replied that she did not think so, that she had been listening to the radio and did not remember."
You're also ignoring the fact that she asked Brewer "what man?". The various parts of her story are inconsistent with each other.
I agree that she would know that nobody bought a ticket at that time.
Where did you get that estimate?
Yup, agreed. If she in fact knew that "that man" did not buy a ticket then she would have consistently said so. Not said different things to different people and/or burst into tears.
Huh? When?
Why? I'm not claiming that Oswald bought a ticket. I don't know if he did or not -- just like Julia Postal told Brewer and the FBI. I'm responding the the argument that definitively claims that Oswald did not buy a ticket, merely because he did not buy a ticket at the time Brewer saw somebody turn a corner.
Agreed.
How would you know that? I think what you mean is that no reports mentioned such things.
To my knowledge, John Gibson never claimed he'd purchased a ticket either. So what?
No, but he did say he sold popcorn to Oswald about 20 minutes before Brewer saw his man who looked funny. And if you're going to challenge Burroughs on "mental health" grounds, then why are you using him for your argument?
Let me start off by answering your questions.
The estimate for the time between That Man disappearing from Brewer's view and Brewer's appearance to Postal is based on the time it would take Brewer to find the door to Hardy's locked added to the time it would take Brewer to walk to Postal's box office. It's 240 feet as the Google flies from the sidewalk in front of what was Hardy's to the sidewalk in front of the box office. Average human walking speed is 2.5mph, I seem to remember, which is about 220 feet per minute. The "lobby" (as Brewer called it) in front of Hardy's front door looks to be 15 feet deep. Therefore, I stationed myself 16 feet from a locked door, and timed myself walking to it at a normal pace, pulling it twice to make sure it was locked, turning around, and walking back to the starting point. That took 7 seconds. So the total time is a bit over a minute, maybe faster if he walks at a quick pace, slower where he might have paused. But I see no reason to believe much faster or much slower.
I truncated "that she had been listening to the radio and did not remember" from Brewer's statement because it doesn't negate or modify "she replied that she did not think so," and is therefore superfluous. While we're at it, why do you keep on deleting the Cosellequely veritable plethora of statements on the subject:
'This is what she said:
In her 12/4/63 affidavit: "I told him no, I didn't"
In the 2/29/1964 FBI report: "she said she was unable to recall whether he bought a ticket, but she believed that he walked right by her ticket booth..."
In her WC testimony: "I said, 'No; by golly, he didn't'"
What Brewer said:
In his 12/4/63 affidavit: "she replied that she did not think so"
In his WC testimony: "she said no, she hadn't"
To Ian Griggs: "she said no, she hadn't"'
You also seem to have not really read the various statements where Brewer and Postal identify the arrested man as Oswald. In Postal's affidavit, she said, "the officers came out with the man that I called about...[l]ater on I found out that the man's name who the officers arrested at the Texas Theater, was Lee Harvey Oswald." In her Commission testimony, she explicitly identifies the man she saw taken out the front door as Oswald. We know it was Oswald, because we have photos of him being pulled out wearing handcuffs. Brewer identified Oswald in his WC testimony without being prompted.
I'll bet John Gibson wasn't badly in need of an alibi at the time. Oswald was.
Now, lets get to the meat of this. From what I'm reading, your argument boils down to whether Julia Postal remembered selling Oswald (aka That Man) a ticket. In furtherance of this line of reasoning, you note that she replied to Brewer's initial question, "Did you sell a ticket to that man" with her own question "what man?" You place far to much emphasis on this, or rather you simply misunderstand the situation. By the time Brewer got to Postal, That Man (or maybe he meant the notorious Vietnamese assassin Dat Manh) had already disappeared into the theater. Now, if someone walked up to me and asked, out of the blue, something involving "that man," my first response would be "what man?" or "whatchyoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" or "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot are you talking about?" or some variation of the same. I'm pretty sure you would respond no differently; just about anyone would. The exception would be if Brewer pointed at the guy or otherwise indicated from the beginning who he meant. But he didn't. From the available testimony, Brewer just threw it in cold, and the one guy whose presence could have cleared things up was already out of sight in the theater. She doesn't understand who Brewer is talking about, because, well, who would have in that situation? It's not until Brewer clarifies who "that man" is that Postal knows who he's talking about. So, Postal's question-to-a-question, "what man?" doesn't help you at all.
That being said, let's get to the core of Postal's uncertainty. I've already pointed out that, of the six versions of the exchange that we know of, in four she responds with "no," once with "I don't think so," and once with "unable to recall." I'll repeat my self here noting that "unable to recall" was a paraphrase from the one person in this who wasn't a the scene at the time. That leaves us with four noes, one "I don't think so" and an "unable to recall" of secondhand reliability. You've ignored the four nos, recast the "I don't think so" to remove the negativity inherent in the phrase, and cast you lot with the secondhand account. As a modified limits hangout, you've also pushed the idea that her statements are "inconsistent." But they really aren't once you think about it.
I believe you agree that she would have known for a fact whether or not she'd sold a ticket to That Man, if he'd bought one after he'd rounded the corner out of Brewer's view. The time between his appearance in Julia Postal's world and Brewer's initial question is about a minute; it would be hard swallow that she wouldn't have remembered with certainty when asked. So, her uncertainty must be based on her inability to remember if That Man had bought a ticket at some earlier point (i.e., about 1PM or just before) with the rest of the Friday "crowd." In her mind, maybe he could have bought a ticket and went to do something nearby first, returning later. Or maybe he bought a ticket, went in, came out for some reason, then came back. However, as Postal learns more of Friday afternoon's calamities, things change. Once Oswald's adventures that afternoon got into her head, the possibility that she could have sold him a ticket at an earlier time vanishes. Now she's facing an Oswald that could only have appeared within a couple of minutes before Brewer arrived, and she knows that she didn't sell him a ticket then. "I doubt it" and even "not sure" disappear underneath a big, fat
No. No, as in "no inconsistency."
The only thing you have left is to claim is that maybe Oswald really did show up at 1PM, but all you have is Burroughs's 25-years-after-the-fact statements that LHO came in around 1:07 and came down from the balcony to buy popcorn at 1:15. This account contradicts his WC testimony, and it would further evolve a second Texas Theatre arrest by the time Jim Douglas started talking to him in 2005. Julia Postal testified that Burroughs was "excitable" and already inflating his account by early 1964; at some point he started becoming "assistant manager" (I strongly suspect that he's the character identifying himself as "acting manager on duty" to one of the DPD officers searching the balcony just before the arrest). The other problem is that Oswald was identified at 1025 Beckley at 1PM and at the Tippit murder scene by Markham, Scoggins, Benavides, and Calloway at about 1:15. You can pick at Markham and Benavides all you want, but Scoggins is harder, and not even Gary Spence could crack Calloway.
