Haiku

I want to tell the

Truth, and I can't tell it here.

I can't tell it here.

– Jack Ruby (to Earl Warren)

Forthcoming e-book: a little more

The approximate target date for the e-book version of Praise from a Future Generation is this fall.

That's it, so far. Just, "this fall."

The plan is for me to read through the existing book and mark it up with any corrections I might want to make, more than three years after its original publication. I've already begun this and expect to finish no later than the end of summer.

For the most part, I'm making little changes most wouldn't even notice. A dash becomes a semi-colon, for example.

But I'm also adding some new material. Not a lot – but stuff that probably should have been there all along. For example, there was, at the invitation of the House Select Committee, a meeting of seven or eight WC critics in 1977. This included four of the people I wrote about in Praise.

I've got a long HSCA document pertaining to this meeting. "For the most part," a staffer summarized, "it was agreed by the researchers that our number one priority must be to focus on the Warren Commission."

I'm also replacing some stuff about Mary Ferrell with some better stuff about Mary Ferrell. I interviewed her a few years before her death and she described to me how she learned of the assassination. But I subsequently found a better description in a letter Mrs. Ferrell wrote to Sylvia Meagher, and I shall use that description for the e-book.

There's other little stuff. Just enough, I suppose, for me to call the e-book a "revised second edition" with a clean conscience.

Mary Ann Moorman

Mary Ann Moorman, an eyewitness to the assassination of President Kennedy who took a famous picture of that killing, appeared recently at an antiques mall about half an hour from where I live.

As I understand it, her May 24th appearance had something to do with selling the original of her famous picture (left). She agreed to participate in a live webcast interview. This was considered a pretty big deal, because she never testified to the Warren Commission way back when, and has granted very few interviews in the years since. Mrs. Moorman was among those closest to the presidential limousine when the assassination occurred.

Naturally I had to be there. I phoned the antiques mall and reserved myself a place in the audience.

Now, a few weeks later, I still haven't satisfied myself on the question, why? Why would she travel all the way to Colorado – she still lives in the Dallas area – to be interviewed in, as it turned out, a nondescript building along a cheerless frontage road running parallel to a freeway on the outskirts of Denver?

Mrs. Moorman during the interview, with
replica of her original camera.

And yet she did. The interview lasted about an hour, and took place on a cramped set adjacent to a refreshment area. One of the most interesting things to come out of it was her statement that when she took the picture, she was standing in the grass behind the curb in Dealey Plaza, not in the street, as some believe she did.

This is an important question to some, who have detected the notorious "Badgeman" image in the murky background shadows of her picture. Verifying where she stood when she took it is critical to establishing its legitimacy.

Her position on the grass has been confirmed by a photo analyst who used a technique called Reverse Projection Photogrammetry to recreate her picture and substantiate where she stood.

•

I made extensive notes of this interview. They're somewhat lengthy, but I reproduce them here:

Mary Ann Moorman, the amateur photographer who took one of the most famous pictures of the assassination of JFK, appeared at an antique mall in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, just west of Denver, on the evening of May 24, 2011.

Her appearance was for an Internet-based video program hosted by Gary Stover, an antiques enthusiast. Stover hosts a weekly webcast on iantiques.com, which is described as a social networking site for dealers, collectors, and antique enthusiasts.

I first heard about this event in early May. I only live about half an hour away, so I telephoned the antique mall, the Brass Armadillo, to arrange to be there for Moorman’s show. After I asked some very specific questions, they said they’d have Stover give me a call.

Something about this event seemed odd to me. Mary Ann Moorman lived in Dallas at the time of the assassination. That’s a long time ago – she could have relocated to the Denver area. I asked Stover when he called back, and he said no, she still lived in Texas.

(As I understand it, a dealer associated with iantique.com met Mary Moorman by chance five or six months ago in Texas. She is interested in selling the original Polaroid print of her famous photo, which she still has all these years later. And so they made arrangements to get her up to Colorado for an Internet interview. Last night’s interview dealt almost exclusively with Moorman’s experiences in November 1963, so the linkage between that and the sale of this historic photo is a little unclear to me. I’m sure there is some behind-the-scenes stuff I’m not privy to.)

Whatever the case, I showed up last night around 5:45. The Brass Armadillo Antiques Mall is located in a rundown area on a street that is parallel to Interstate 70. This cheerless setting seemed all the gloomier because of a steady rain that fell most of the day.

I found my way to the area where the interview would take place. The Brass Armadillo is a big building, raw and mostly unfinished, partitioned into sections where individual antique dealers sell their stuff and cut their deals.

The interview took place in a refreshment area, where during regular business hours stuff like soda and hot dogs are sold. There were a few tables and chairs but not many. An unlikely place for a live show, but probably the best spot available.

So I headed toward this refreshment area. Even as I noted the cramped setting, and the TV lights and cameras, I saw a woman seated at a small round table scribbling away. On closer inspection I saw she had a stack of 5x7 prints of the Moorman photograph, and that she was signing each one. And she turned out to be Mary Moorman.

I introduced myself and she smiled pleasantly. We shook hands. But I could see I was interrupting and did not want to be a nuisance. Quickly I learned these signed prints were being sold for two dollars.

I thought: is Mary Moorman reduced to this? Selling prints of her famous photo for two bucks apiece? I don’t think so; each print had a Brass Armadillo sticker on back, so it was probably some special arrangement she had agreed to. Anyway, I bought one.

I left her then, and found a place to situate myself. The Stover Hour has been webcasting JFK-themed shows for the entire month of May, and the Moorman appearance was the highlight.

There weren’t many places to sit and I wound up standing for the whole thing. I did find a ledge to put my stuff down, and also lean against as I scribbled copious notes.

Gary Stover’s interest in the JFK case is genuine, and he seems to have a good grasp of what can be a very complex set of issues. As the program began, he had a Polaroid camera that was the same model as the one Mary Moorman used. It isn’t clear to me what happened to hers. It may be at the Sixth Floor Museum, or it may have just got lost over the years – I’m not sure.

They talked a lot about the camera and her familiarity with it. “We were not a photographic-type family,” Moorman said. “We just snapped pictures.” Stover asked a series of somewhat technical questions I didn’t really care about. He used the phrase “retro-fit light kit” several times, and asked whether the frames on Polaroid film were numbered. Moorman wasn’t sure.

Next they talked about the familiar story of how Moorman and Jean Hill arrived at Dealey Plaza together. (This story is told in detail in Richard Trask’s Pictures of the Pain, and I won’t belabor it here.) It was drizzly when they first arrived, but Jean Hill of course wore a bright red raincoat mainly to attract the attention of a Dallas Police Officer she was dating.

Mary Moorman said she knew a number of Dallas cops from her high school days, including Officer Glen McBride. McBride rode one of the lead motorcycles that day, a few blocks ahead of the Presidential party, and Moorman took his picture. Stover asked where she was standing when she took the McBride picture. She replied that she stepped into the street for this photograph.

She said she also stepped into the street to take a picture of George Lumpkin, another cop friend who rode a motorcycle about half a block in front of the motorcade’s lead car.

Finally the presidential limousine turned from Houston onto Elm. As it neared the two women, Jean Hill called out, “Hey Mr. President!” or something like that. Mary Moorman raised her camera; as she took the picture she heard what she called “a sound,” followed by two more in quick succession. Firecrackers, she thought.

Stover pointed out that by the time Moorman took her famous picture, two shots had already been fired, according to the Warren Report: one that missed, and another, the second, that wounded JFK. Yet Moorman said the shot as she took the picture was the first she heard. So here is evidence of five shots. (Jean Hill, in her WC testimony, said she heard four to six shots.)

Why did Moorman and Hill pick that particular location? Stover asked. “I think God has a plan for everyone. We wandered all over green grassy spots. Why we chose that one, I don’t know... It was providence I took that picture.”

He asked whether she stepped into the street to take that picture, as she had to take the pictures of the two cops. “I’m pretty sure I stepped back just on the very edge of the curb to get on the grass,” she replied.

(I found this rather ambiguous. Did she step back after taking the photo? Or did she take it from the curb? After the Stover Hour ended I had a chance to put this question to her again, and she told me then that she took the picture from the curb. She noted that between the limo and the motorcycle cops there wasn’t a lot of room in the street; it wasn’t safe.)

Stover asked her whether she noticed the limousine slowing down. Yes, she said; it slowed almost to a stop. She clearly heard Jackie Kennedy’s cry, “My God, he’s been shot!” She had no sense of where the shots originated from. Neither, she said in response to another question, did she see evidence of shots having hit the sidewalk or turf; nor was she hit by any debris.

When the shooting stopped, she said, there was a brief stillness. This is when Jean Hill testified she saw a man resembling Jack Ruby run from the TSBD area toward the railroad bridge area. Mary Moorman did not see this man.

People began running up the grassy knoll area, Moorman said, and Jean Hill took off across the street in this direction. Hill had the Polaroid fixative, which she called a gel, and so it was not applied to the photo right away. (I don’t know how soon it needed to be applied. When I was a kid my parents had a Polaroid camera and I recall they usually put this goo on it right away, rolled from a plastic cylinder over the photograph.)

While Jean Hill was gone – and she was only gone a few minutes, Moorman said – Moorman was approached by a man she later learned was Jim Featherstone of the Dallas Times-Herald. 

“Someone told me you took a picture,” he said to her.

“Yes, I did.” Moorman was crying at this point. She showed him the picture and he said, “Come with me. We’ll go to the press room.” He wanted Moorman and Hill, who soon returned, to go with him to the press room in the Criminal Courts Building, conveniently located on Houston Street there in Dealey Plaza.

Jean Hill, in her WC testimony, portrayed Featherstone as almost sinister in insisting they accompany him to the CCB, where both women ended up spending most of the afternoon. Moorman does not recall it that way. And this wound up being one of the themes that Stover followed for the rest of his show: the differences in the recollections of Moorman and Hill.

This, I have to say, bothered me. I understand that many consider Jean Hill a problematic witness. I have not read The Last Dissenting Witness and don’t have a firm opinion on her one way or the other. But Stover seemed like he wanted to use Moorman in order to discredit Jean Hill – and that didn’t sit well with me. Jean Hill, for better or worse, gave sworn testimony while Moorman never did, apart from a Sheriff’s statement given on 11-22. And Jean Hill is dead and thus not able to defend herself. Much of this boils down to one person’s word against another’s.

Stover asked a lot of questions about what Moorman might have seen. Yes, she and Hill both saw that Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop truck. (He kept calling it Uncle Joe’s...my recollection is Honest Joe’s.) No, Moorman said, she did not see a Nash Rambler, let alone a Rambler that might have picked up LHO or a lookalike. (I don’t know how the Rambler fits into John Armstrong’s work.) No, she didn’t see an epileptic guy shortly before the motorcade arrived in Dealey. She didn’t see the Babushka lady.

Moorman completed her story of the afternoon of November 22. Sheriff Decker made an appearance in the press room, learned that Featherstone had taken Moorman’s photo (which wound up on the newswires), and demanded he retrieve it. She got it back in minutes. Moorman and Hill both made several phone calls, and at one point Moorman ran outside to get a newspaper. A cop stopped her on her way and said, “You can’t leave yet!” but she knew this cop, too – Wiseman – he let her continue to a newspaper box, buy an Extra edition of the paper, then come back to the press room. Not long after that she and Hill both gave their depositions.

Not long after the assassination Shirley Martin, an early critic of the Warren Commission, reported telephoning Jean Hill:

Before the interview I forwarded a PDF of this to Stover, and he asked Moorman about it. “I was never afraid,” she said. Any threatening calls? “No, absolutely not.” Stover seemed a little smug about this, like he’d just punctured another of Jean Hill’s stories.

Anyway it wasn’t long after giving the depositions that Moorman and Hill were finally allowed to go home.

Why, Stover asked, did you not testify before the Warren Commission? She had scheduled a time to testify, she replied. But before it happened she hurt her ankle when she jumped off the back deck of her house. The ankle wasn’t broken, just twisted, perhaps sprained – it was painful to get around. She contacted a WC representative, said she couldn’t make the scheduled time, and never heard from them again.

I had also emailed Stover a question about whether Moorman ever had any lingering effects from witnessing the assassination – any sleeplessness or nightmares, any flashbacks, whatever. No, she said, she had not. “God took care of me.”

On the night of 11-22-63, sometime after midnight – around 12:30, she said – the doorbell rang at her home. Two FBI guys were there asking to see the photo. They showed their ID, which Moorman said she was able to verify. She turned over the picture, they wrote out a receipt – scrawled it out on a piece of scratch paper, was the impression I got – took the photo, and returned it a few days later.

After that, she said, the CIA took the photo and returned it, as did the Secret Service, and the FBI again. Each agency left a receipt, apparently scrawled out like that first FBI receipt – “It was nothing official.”

The second time the FBI returned it, Moorman said, the picture had its notorious thumbprint.

In answer to another question, she said that while UPI sent out the picture worldwide on the day of the assassination (with her permission), and gave her a photo credit, she never sold the rights to it.

She jumped forward a few years after this. She mentioned Gary Mack and Jack White becoming interested in the picture, studying its background, making blowups, and finding the so-called “badgeman” image. “That was interesting,” she observed.

In 1965, David Lifton first discovered other possible human-like figures in the picture’s background. [Here's more.] He brought these to the attention of Ray Marcus, and the two of them identified five areas of interest by the late spring of that year. Mary Moorman did not mention these and it wasn’t clear to me whether she was aware of them (just as it has never been clear to me whether #2 man and Badgeman are one and the same).

Moorman said that the Sixth Floor Museum had the original print in a vault for about 15 years, “for safekeeping.” It is no longer with them; she has it stored in another vault somewhere. Its condition, she says, is “good,” although she concedes it has faded somewhat. “You can still see ... what’s there,” she said.

There is some dispute about this, but I'll address it in another post.

She said that yes, she is interested in selling the original photo, but she gave no indication how much she would like to get or thought it might be worth. Its historical value is certainly on her mind, though. “I would like for it to be put in a museum somewhere, for its historical [value]...it really is a part of history.”

In answer to a question, Mary Moorman said she has never profited from the assassination.

She did not see Oliver Stone’s JFK. She was asked to participate in it but declined. One reason, she said, is that Jean Hill was an advisor on the film and Moorman didn’t want any conflicts with her.

What are her thoughts on the assassination? “I don’t think it’s final...the government can hide a lot...I believe there is a whole lot more to the story than has been told.”

•

After the webcast ended, there was a reception. Most in the small audience (I’d estimate 25-30 people) hung around for it. I got a chance to speak with Mrs. Moorman again and ask a few questions, like clarifying (or attempting to clarify) where she was when she took her picture.

I also wanted to ask her about a snippet of Jean Hill’s testimony, about “We have three shots...” I actually read a quote I’d written into my notes. Jean Hill told the Warren Commission: “They keep saying three shots ... I said, ‘I know I heard more... He said, 'Mrs. Hill, we heard more shots too, but we have three wounds and we have three bullets, three shots is all that we are willing to say right now.”

Mrs. Moorman said she had no recollection of that.