Truly's False Roll

[Dan O'meara]

The reason Oswald is in custody so quickly is the murder of J D Tippit.
But this papers over an under-appreciated reality - that before Oswald was even approached in the Texas Theater he was already on the police radar as a suspect in the killing of JFK.
In a Dallas Morning News article entitled "Suspected Killer Defected To Russia In '59" [dated 11/23/63], Kent Biffle reports:

"Oswald later failed to report at a 1:15 p.m. roll call. Truly reported this to the police."

This is the first recorded mention (I can find) of the roll call that apparently took place in the TSBD during which it was noticed Oswald had left the building. As a result of this roll call, Truly goes to Fritz to tell him Oswald is missing and the wheels are set in motion. Standing close by was Biffle who overheard Truly talking to Fritz and wanted to know what was going on.
Truly recalls the moment in his WC testimony:

"There was a reporter followed me away from that spot, and asked me who Oswald was. I told the reporter, "You must have ears like a bird, or something. I don't want to say anything about a boy I don't know anything about. This is a terrible thing." Or words to that effect.
I said, "Don't bother me. Don't mention the name. Let's find something out."
So I went back downstairs with Chief Lumpkin."

There is a touch of "the lady doth protest too much" in Truly's account of his interaction with the reporter, as if he had nothing to say to him, but Biffle's article has a number of quotes attributed to Truly:

"Truly, who said he had interviewed and hired Oswald "a couple of months earlier", reportedly told the policeman that Oswald was a worker."
"Truly later said Oswald came to work as a temporary warehouse worker. "He was a pretty quiet individual. His work was fine and I had no reason to believe...no idea the man had ever been in Russia."
Truly said as far as he knew, Oswald and a few other workers repairing an old floor were the only persons on the sixth floor Friday morning.
He said most of the building's workers walked out in front to watch the President's motorcade."

In an article entitled "Assassin Crouched And Took Deadly Aim", placed earlier in the same newspaper, Biffle writes:

"R. S. Truly, superintendent of the textbook building, was standing in front of the building. "I just went blank at first...couldn't believe it was happening."
Truly said about 90 people work in the building but most of them were out front at the time the shooting started."

In the same article Biffle describes the moment the police are told Oswald is missing. Interestingly, he doesn't specifically name Truly as the man doing the talking:

"An employee of the textbook firm walked up, "I don't know if you're interested in this...but one of the fellows who works here is gone. Can't find him anywhere."
The police were interested.
"He's 23, about five-foot-nine and weighs around 150 pounds. I'd have to check the payroll records to be sure but I think he's been here a couple of months.
His name is Lee Oswald.""

Although unnamed in the article we can be sure Biffle is reporting the moment Truly tells Fritz that Oswald is missing. This is confirmed by Truly's WC testimony where he describes in detail what he said to Fritz:

"I just told him his name and where he lived and his telephone number and his age, as 23, and I said 5 feet, 9, about 150 pounds, light brown hair--whatever I picked up off the description there. I did not try to depend on my memory to describe him."

It is exactly the same description Biffle reports in his article. It must be remembered that this exchange is something that Biffle was not supposed to hear, he was not supposed to know, let alone report, that there had been a roll call taken at which Oswald was found missing. The problem this raised was simple - there was no roll call. Truly had made this up as a pretense to put the police on Oswald's trail. This becomes evident when we read Truly's testimony regarding the moments leading up to his decision to put Oswald in the frame:

"Then we continued on down, and we saw officers on the fourth floor.
I don't recall that we stopped any more until we reached the first floor. But I do recall there was an officer on the fourth floor, by the time we got down that far."
"When I got back to the first floor, at first I didn't see anything except officers running around, reporters in the place. There was a regular madhouse."
"Then in a few minutes--it could have been moments or minutes at a time like that--I noticed some of my boys were over in the west corner of the shipping department, and there were several officers over there taking their names and addresses, and so forth.
There were other officers in other parts of the building taking other employees, like office people's names. I noticed that Lee Oswald was not among these boys.
So I picked up the telephone and called Mr. Aiken down at the other warehouse who keeps our application blanks. Back up there.
First I mentioned to Mr. Campbell--I asked Bill Shelley if he had seen him, he looked around and said no."

At no point is a roll call mentioned. Truly is looking around and notices Oswald is missing [remember it's"a regular madhouse" at this time], so he asks Bill Shelley if he'd seen him and he says "no" [even though Oswald is reported to have gone home strictly on Bill Shelley's say so].
This brief glance around is enough to convince Truly that Oswald has left the building.
However, Biffle overhears Truly telling Fritz that Oswald had failed to show up for a roll call and that was the reason he was reporting it.

Why would Truly lie to Fritz about the roll call?

[Alan Ford]

Why would Truly lie to Fritz about the roll call?

The same reason he would lie about the lunchroom incident. He was crooked

[Dan O'meara]

The same reason he would lie about the lunchroom incident. He was crooked

He was crooked?
So he just decided to lie?
What a waste of space you are.

[Alan Ford]

He was crooked?
So he just decided to lie?

To deprive Mr Oswald of his alibi for the shooting, duh

What a waste of space you are.

SCENARIO A: Mr Truly is a liar who lies about the roll call.
O'MEARA TAKE ON SCENARIO A: I feel the need to consider this scenario

SCENARIO B: Mr Truly is a liar who lies about the lunchroom incident.
O'MEARA TAKE ON SCENARIO B: I don't feel the need to consider this scenario and anyone who does is a madman

[Charles Collins]

Buell Wesley Frazier said that there was definitely a roll call. If I remember correctly it is somewhere in this interview. I don’t remember the exact time in the interview that he states this. But if you are interested, you can check it out for yourself.

[Dan O'meara]

Buell Wesley Frazier said that there was definitely a roll call. If I remember correctly it is somewhere in this interview. I don’t remember the exact time in the interview that he states this. But if you are interested, you can check it out for yourself.

Not one of the TSBD employees who worked under Truly and who testified before the WC ever mentioned a roll call. Including Frazier, even though he was questioned in detail about what happened after he came back inside the building after the shots until he left.
After going down to the basement for his lunch:

Mr. Ball: Come back up?
Mr. Frazier: No, sir; I didn't come back up. I was sitting eating my lunch. I looked at my watch and didn't have but 10 minutes, so I naturally ate faster than normal, so I was eating a couple of sandwiches, and eat an apple or something and come right back up and the guys, the people who worked there, standing around on the first floor, some of them eating their lunches and others merely talking.
Mr. Ball: You never went back to work?
Mr. Frazier: No, sir; we didn't. I didn't work any more that day.
Mr. Ball: You stayed there on the job until you were told to go home?
Mr. Frazier: Yes, sir.
Mr. Ball: What time did they tell you to go home?
Mr. Frazier: It was between 1 and 2 there sometime, roughly, I don't know what time it was.
Mr. Ball: Had the police officers come in there and talked to you?
Mr. Frazier: Yes, sir; they come in and talked to all of us. They asked us to show our proper identification, and then they had us to write our name down and who to get in touch with if they wanted to see us.
Mr. Ball: Did they ask you where you had been at the time the President passed?
Mr. Frazier: Yes, sir; they had. I told them I was out on the steps there.
Mr. Ball: Asked you who you were with?
Mr. Frazier: Yes, sir; I told them and naturally Mr. Shelley and Billy vouched for me and so they didn't think anything about it.
Mr. Ball: Did you hear anybody around there asking for Lee Oswald?
Mr. Frazier: No, sir; I didn't.
Mr. Ball: At any time before you went home, did you hear anybody ask for Lee?
Mr. Frazier: No, sir; I don't believe they did, because they, you know, like one man showed us, we had to give proper identification and after we passed him he told us to walk on then to the next man, and we, you know, put down proper information where he could be found if they wanted to see you and talk to you any more, and then we went on up to a little bit more to the front entrance more toward Mr. Shelley's office there with another man and stood there for a little while and told us all that was there could go ahead and go home.


Not one of the TSBD workers who testified before the WC mentions a roll call - Shelley, Lovelady, Dougherty, Frazier, Jarman, Norman, Williams, Arce, Piper, West - not one.
More importantly, Truly doesn't mention in his testimony. On the contrary, he describes having a quick look around and then deciding Oswald was the one, even though he'd run into him in the building shortly after the shots.
The point is that Biffle wasn't supposed to overhear Truly's conversation with Fritz, it was the only time a roll call was mentioned but once it had been reported it created a real problem for the official narrative.
As much as I get a good vibe from Frazier, some of his later "additions" have undermined his credibility as a witness and I think it is safer to trust his earlier testimony.
To a certain point.

[Dan O'meara]

From an article entitled "Reporter Recalls The Day Camelot died In Dallas", Biffle gives a bit more information about Truly's encounter with Fritz:

"Hours dragged by. The building
superintendent showed up with some
papers in his hand. I listened as he
told detectives about Lee Oswald failing
to show up at a roll call.
"My impression is that there was
an earlier roll call that had been inconclusive
because several employees were missing. This time,
however, all were accounted for but Oswald.
"I jotted down the Oswald information. The
description and address came from company records.
The superintendent would recall that he and a
policeman had met Oswald as they charged into the
building after the shots were fired."

There can be no doubt that Biffle overhears Truly talking about a roll call.
And there can be very little doubt this roll call is an invention of Truly's.
The only reason I can imagine Truly would have for doing such a thing is so he can put Oswald in the frame for the shooting of the president.
He wasn't to know that, at more or less the time he was talking to Fritz, officers a few miles away were closing in on Oswald. But as soon as he passed on this message the investigation immediately turned towards Oswald:

Mr. Ball: While you were there Mr. Truly came up to you?
Mr. Fritz: Yes, sir; where the rifle was found. That was about the time we finished Mr. Truly came and told me that one of his employees had left the building, and I asked his name and he gave me his name, Lee Harvey Oswald, and I asked his address and he gave me the Irving address.

Mr. Ball: How long did you stay at the Texas School Book Depository after you found the rifle?
Mr. Fritz: After he told me about this man almost, I left immediately after he told me that.
Mr. Ball: You left almost immediately after he told you that?
Mr. Fritz: Almost after he told me that man, I felt it important to hold that man.

It appears to me that the sole purpose of Truly inventing the roll call was so that he had a pretense on which he could put the spotlight of suspicion immediately on Oswald and set the course of the investigation towards apprehending him.

LATER EDIT:

As I understand it, the company records for Oswald didn't have the Irving address. The address was for Elsbeth Street.
I could be mistaken about that but, if not, one must wonder where the Irving address came from.

[Richard Smith]

Is the suggestion here that Truly was involved in a conspiracy to frame Oswald in the assassination of the President by staging a fake roll call?  What point would there be in that?  Oswald was gone.  His name was going to come up once the FBI learned that a former defector to the USSR and avowed Marxist worked in the building from which the shots were fired and was missing.  There was no apparent urgency from a conspirator's perspective to raise Oswald's name once he is gone.  His flight is evidence of guilt.   If anything, their incentive would have been to silence Oswald in the TSBD before he got away.  But Truly was his ticket to escape by vouching for him when Baker had him cornered.  Not exactly consistent with a role in framing Oswald.  If there is no contention, however, being made that Truly was involved in a conspiracy, then whether there was a roll call or not is just a historical curiosity (like whether John Wilkes Booth's horse was brown or black).