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Author Topic: The Floor-Laying Crew  (Read 30730 times)

Offline Alan Ford

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The Floor-Laying Crew
« on: January 21, 2023, 02:02:16 PM »
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Friends, consider two facts:

1. The floor from which shots were fired just happened to be the one floor where renovation work was being done.

2. The floor from which shots were fired just happened to be the one in-use floor from which not a single member of the Depository building workforce chose to watch the P. Parade from.

Probative of anything in particular? Hardly! But interesting? Yes!

Well!

What if the above facts are in fact intimately related? What if these three circumstances are functionally intertwined?
----------------Renovation work on 6
----------------No spectators on 6
----------------Shots fired from 6


**

Now!

On 5 December 1963, Mrs. Toney (Ruby) Henderson told FBI that, at some point between the departure of the ambulance (carrying the epileptic man) and the arrival of the motorcade, she noticed two men on an upper floor of the Depository----------and could not recall seeing "anyone on a floor higher up than the one they were on".

One of these men (in a white shirt) appeared dark-complected; the other (in a dark shirt) was taller than him, but she not could speak to this man's ethnicity.

Here was the distinct impression as to activity which Mrs. Henderson got from these two men:

"She said these men were standing back from the window and she got the impression they were working and yet looking out the window in anticipation of the motorcade passing that building."

**

But! How could there have been any men working on an upper floor just a few minutes before the motorcade? Had not everyone broken for lunch?

Indeed so! But that would hold only for all those manual workers in the building who were actually employees of the building.

'Leaving whom, exactly?' I hear you ask................

Well, what if there was a carpentry team--------outside contractor---------in charge of the laying of plywood on the sixth floor? And what if they did NOT take a lunch break at the normal time? What if they kept working through even after all the internal manual workers went downstairs for their break? Why? In order to disincentivize any of the internal crew from choosing the sixth floor as the place to come back to once they'd got their lunch. It would be a noisy place, not conducive to a relaxed lunch break.

**

'But,' I hear you cry, 'there is no evidence of any such outside team having been brought in for the plywood-laying project!'

Wrong.

Mr. Harold Norman* was NOT (like Messrs. Arce, Williams, Lovelady et al) a member of the floor-laying crew, so he may not have been told to shut up forever about the true number and mix of people who had been putting that new floor down.

(*Credit to Mr. G. Parker for coming upon the below information..............)

In 1991, he told the Sixth Floor Museum this:

------------"we [= Messrs. Norman, Williams & Jarman] had plans of waiting until the mororcade arrived and then going up to the 5th floor to watch"
------------An outside carpentry team had been brought in for the floor-laying project (he even remembered one of its men, a "kind of a rugged-looking guy", white, about 6'2"-6'3"/210-20 pounds, and chatty about boxing)

In 1993, Mr. Norman fleshed out his recollections on this to Mr. Glen Sample. What he has to say is truly startling. Read and you will hear the sound of a very big penny dropping.............................

“Now, you ate your lunch on the fifth floor, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, we got up there a little before twelve.”
“Why the fifth floor? Why not the sixth floor, or the seventh floor?”
“Well, at first, we were going to do it on the sixth floor, but they were working, they were putting down some flooring, some 3/8” plywood, so there was quite a bit of noise, and they were painting up there too."
[...]
“Now you were telling about the construction that was going on up on the sixth floor. Why were they laying down plywood?”
“They were putting it over the hardwood flooring. You see, some of the hardwood was rotting in places; it was in really bad shape.”
“I see. So it was noisy up there you said. What was it that was so noisy? Were there any kind of saws, or machinery, or anything like that?”
“Yeah, they had one of those saws, you know, one of those table saws, but there wasn’t any noise going on during the motorcade, everything was quiet.”
[...]
“Did you help lay down the new flooring?”
“No, we went up there sometimes to move stuff around for the floor construction guys. They didn’t work for the Book Depository, but if our work got slow, we would give them a hand.”
“So there was an outside contractor doing the work on the floors, right?”
“Right. There was a crew of about five or six, maybe up to eight men.”
“Were they only doing work on the sixth floor?”
“At that particular time, I think they were. They were planning on doing something up on the seventh floor after they were finished with the sixth floor.”


**

Is the floor-laying crew the great secret of how the sixth floor was requisitioned for the assassination?

If so, then we can confidently identify not just the men seen by Mrs. Henderson, but also those seen by Mr. Arnold Rowland, and those seen by Mrs. Carolyn Walthers, as members of that floor-laying (and, of course, altogether more nefariously-minded) crew that had been brought in from outside. They were not 'strangers' in the building, and so their presence would have raised no eyebrows amongst regular employees. But any of the Depository manual workers who had unsuspectingly helped them lay the floor that day will have been told afterwards to erase their presence from the collective memory of who had been up on that sixth floor that day.

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« Last Edit: January 21, 2023, 02:14:23 PM by Alan Ford »

JFK Assassination Forum

The Floor-Laying Crew
« on: January 21, 2023, 02:02:16 PM »


Online Richard Smith

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2023, 04:24:31 PM »
What are you suggesting now?  That the entire TSBD work force was in on the plot?   How about this?  Oswald selected a location in the building that provided him with the best combination of shooting location and seclusion.  And that was the window on the 6th floor.  It would not have taken Nostradamus to predict that most folks would not be on an upper floor at lunch time on the day in which the presidential motorcade was passing the building.  Oswald couldn't control the movements of everyone in the building, but his plan to assassinate the president involved accepting risk.   How do you know that Oswald didn't scout out more than one location?  It's entirely possible that if a group of employees had decided to watch the motorcade on the 6th floor that he might have fired the shots from the 7th floor etc.

Offline John Iacoletti

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2023, 05:00:01 PM »
Except for that pesky little detail that Bonnie Ray Williams was having his lunch on the sixth floor as late as 12:28.

JFK Assassination Forum

Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2023, 05:00:01 PM »


Offline Alan Ford

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2023, 06:04:58 PM »
What are you suggesting now?  That the entire TSBD work force was in on the plot?

~Grin~

No, Mr. Smith, but you'd know that if you'd properly read what I actually wrote

Offline Alan Ford

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2023, 06:14:39 PM »
Except for that pesky little detail that Bonnie Ray Williams was having his lunch on the sixth floor as late as 12:28.

Only pesky if one believes he's telling the truth about that. I don't. (Nor do I believe he would have been mistaken by Mr. Arnold Rowland for a plaid-shirt-wearing, bald, 'elderly Negro'.)

Mr. Tom Alyea insisted the chicken remains were found on the FIFTH floor and brought up to six by cops--------who then made a big noise about them to the press at first. After that, they needed 'splainin' away: enter Mr. Williams.

Mr. Norman, in his 1991 Sixth Floor interview, states that all three men (he, Mr. Williams, Mr Jarman) ate up on the fifth floor, and that Mr. Williams was the one with the chicken sandwich.

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2023, 06:14:39 PM »


Online Richard Smith

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2023, 06:17:15 PM »
~Grin~

No, Mr. Smith, but you'd know that if you'd properly read what I actually wrote

Maybe because your nonsense is rambling and incoherent. 

Online Richard Smith

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2023, 06:20:27 PM »
Only pesky if one believes he's telling the truth about that. I don't. (Nor do I believe he would have been mistaken by Mr. Arnold Rowland for a plaid-shirt-wearing, bald, 'elderly Negro'.)

Mr. Tom Alyea insisted the chicken remains were found on the FIFTH floor and brought up to six by cops--------who then made a big noise about them to the press at first. After that, they needed 'splainin' away: enter Mr. Williams.

Mr. Norman, in his 1991 Sixth Floor interview, states that all three men (he, Mr. Williams, Mr Jarman) ate up on the fifth floor, and that Mr. Williams was the one with the chicken sandwich.

So why would BRW lie about this?  Wouldn't it have been better for the WC if BRW had not had his lunch on the 6th floor since he claimed not to have seen anything.  But here you have him lying to place him on the 6th floor.  HA HA HA. 

Offline Alan Ford

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Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #7 on: January 21, 2023, 06:46:30 PM »

Is the floor-laying crew the great secret of how the sixth floor was requisitioned for the assassination?


If so, then we find ourselves with a bunch of men in the Depository 11/22/63 who were legitimately working there, were not 'strangers' to the building who did not 'belong' there, yet were not on any list of Depository employees.

The implications of such a scenario are profound.

To take just two examples....................

1. "The [building] manager said I know that man he works here": from Officer Baker's 11/22 affidavit account. If this incident by the rear stairway several floors up really happened, then Mr. Truly could have truthfully said these words about EITHER an employee of the Depository OR one of the construction guys brought in to lay the new plywood floor.

2. From Officer Baker's WC testimony:

Mr. BAKER - On the first floor there were two men. As we came through the main doorway to the elevators, I remember as we tried to get on the elevators I remember two men, one was sitting on this side and another one between 20 or 30 feet away from us looking at us.
Mr. DULLES - Were they white men?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.


Mr. Harold Norman's information releases us from the binary option of EITHER these two white men were Depository employees OR they were 'strangers'.
They need have been neither. For now a third option presents itself: they were two of the construction guys belonging to the outside contractor (in fact, the assassination team)

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JFK Assassination Forum

Re: The Floor-Laying Crew
« Reply #7 on: January 21, 2023, 06:46:30 PM »