Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 Matt Crumpton, we're in Daily Plaza. Daily. Daily, yes. All right, fair enough. Coming from the guy that can't pronounce Slum Burger. That's okay. Right, I can't pronounce anything. It has

0:32 no New Orleans, no chance. Perfect, way off. Okay, at my rehearsal dinner for my wedding, my brother, who's my best man, got up, turned to my soon-to-be wife and said, Hey Kim, now that

0:45 you're gonna be a member of the family, I can let you in on the family secrets Number one, grassy null assassin. It was my dad. Oh, really? Yeah. Were they serious? I don't know.

0:59 We'll see what happens with it as well. Yeah. So Matt, you're awesome. Solving JFK's blowing up. I mean, it's awesome stuff. I love it. We're in daily plaza. I'm just gonna go rapid fire.

1:10 You tell me what you think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the official version has shot number one, wildly missing, Kennedy And it hits down here at the Triple Underpass. hits TIG and then shot

1:24 number two and shot number three hit Kennedy. I think that's bizarre. I think you hit the first shot is going to be the closest. What do you think? They kind of actually debated it because the FBI,

1:36 in their original report, it was all three shots hit somebody. The first shot or the first shot hit Kennedy in the back, second shot hit Connolly, third shot was a Kennedy headshot. So that's the

1:48 FBI story But then they found out about James Tague down by the overpass here and that's kind of disputed as to whether that was the first shot or the second shot. But either way, you know, the

2:00 point is you got to account for that because the bullet hit the concrete, scraped up, you know, debris came up and his ear was bleeding. And he talked to one of the cops. I think it was Buddy

2:13 Walther. And

2:17 people loved a vroom over here. You know what, a date. Maybe they're worried, maybe they don't want to get jacks from the front.

2:26 Dude, yeah, it's like the speed limit here is like 70, you just go, it's like 5. Welcome to Texas. X to X, it's 70 from the marking the spots, exactly. When you look at the trajectory of the

2:38 of the take shot, that's where I can see people saying the Daltex building, because it does cut, you know, if you look at the sixth floor trajectory to where the take shot was, and if you look at

2:50 the Daltex, they're overlapping and Daltex building's behind the right. So really, it could be either, and you've got Braden, the mafia guy, who's found in the Daltex building, and he had just

3:02 come to visit HL Hunt that day, right, and it's like, you know, so, okay, but there's no, it's not like he, there's no report that he had a gun. There's no, nobody inside the Daltex building

3:13 hurt shots But, who knows, now here's what's here was fun, since we're on the hill. Now this is sort of the, you know, you're talking about the two Oswalds. The headline here is that five

3:26 witnesses, including a sheriff, Roger Craig. Saw a guy run out of the back of the schoolbook depository building and come running down this hill and get into a light green Nash Ramblar just minutes

3:39 after the Assassination. Yeah, and all five of those people said that the I'm sorry three of those people Said that the guy that that did that looked identical to Lee Harvey Oswald Yeah, didn't

3:52 didn't one of the witnesses say the driver was Jack Ruby. Did we go that far Julia Mercer? Okay says that she was here in Deli Plaza, and there was traffic. It was maybe it was a couple hours

4:04 before Maybe it was nine or ten in the morning The Sash nations were on 1230 and she's here. She's pulled over to the side and traffic and she's stopped behind I believe it was a green truck But I

4:18 forget what it was exactly But she said the guy that she saw was Jack Ruby and now they gave her a bunch of photos and she identified It has Jack Ruby that works It's on law and order. So yeah, and

4:32 I forget the details of it, but the way that they went about giving her the photos to choose from was in such a way that you go, okay, that's compelling. But I don't know how all these, that's a

4:43 puzzle piece. How does that fit in with everything else? I don't know. Right. Okay, while we're here too, literally about 15 feet from us is where Zapruder was standing with his camera. Give me

4:57 all things Zapruder Well, it's a big, it's interesting that they have no interest of maintaining it. It's kind of overgrown now. It really is. Yeah, you can't stand there. A big observation I

5:09 have. You know, Zapruder, the other observation I would have is directly across from the X. So Zapruder is right there with a front row seat for that headshot. I mean, it's truly directly across

5:22 from, you know, if in fact this X marks the spot where 313, believe it is is the the Zapurifil frame where you have the headshot. That's right there. And the other thing is the Pruder said, I

5:34 believe the Pruder said this. Could be wrong. I'm a citations guy. But the shots came from over his shoulder. I know the Newman's who were right down here, the family that had ducked down, they

5:45 said the shots came from over their shoulder on that little hill. It came from over here on that little hill. Yeah, 'cause I mean, 30 some odd people said they thought the shots came from the

5:55 grassy knoll, right? Something like that. There have been like quantitative studies done, looking at all the statements, and I believe it's like

6:05 44 said, book depository, 41 said grassy knoll, and a lot of them said both. Right. And I think it was both. I think there were shots fired from the book depository, and I think there were

6:18 shots fired from behind this fence, which is right behind where the recruiter was. All right, so we're on the grassy knoll in kind of the structure. Give me your take here. So there's either a

6:29 film or a photo that shows somebody walking back here just after the shooting, or right around the time of the shooting And

6:40 I had always, you know, I've been here. a few times, but I think I had thought that this was all open all the way through. And in this little room, there's like little nooks you can hide behind.

6:51 There's even like a little hole that you could totally shoot out of. Yeah, all right, Jacob, come over here and shoot over our shoulder real quick and look at this. Yeah, there's like a nook you

6:60 could totally hide behind. But here's the counter-argument that I think would be persuasive. There's a people lined up on the street right here. So if you're gonna stand right here and shoot, even

7:12 though this is pretty shielded and there's not a lot of people over there. I would think somebody would have seen this person. Now interestingly, Buell Wesley Frazier in his new book, he's the guy

7:23 that gave Oswald the ride to the schoolbook to Pository, allegedly had curtain rides, that whatever. He says that he saw a guy that was dressed fancy walking around in this area with a gun. Yeah.

7:36 And he never mentioned it until he had a book that came out, and that's something. Was the advance? I don't know.

7:44 But yeah, so, I mean, I don't know, I would think if I had to make a spot call on this, I don't think it's likely that someone would have shot from here because I think somebody would have

7:53 actually, I think there would have been - You need a getaway path, and you don't really have a getaway here. Yeah. But let's go to the getaway path. Let's go to the getaway, because that's where

8:03 the person flashing the Secret Service badge was. at the exact point where people are coming up the hill. All right, let's go check it out.

8:15 So, yeah, this is the spot where several witnesses, three or four, said that immediately after the shots were fired, everyone starts running up the hill. That's weird, huh? I wonder why they

8:26 do that. Why would they do that? Why is everybody running up the hill? Yeah. But so, they start doing that,

8:31 and Officer Joe Smith, I know, I believe Sheriff Seymour Whitesman and a few other folks, they came up and they said that they saw a

8:42 person with the Secret Service badge that said, Get out of this area, I'm Secret Service. Now, what's interesting about that is that Ed Hoffman, the Deaf Mute superstar witness, a lot of people

8:53 who don't believe him, a lot of people just throw out Ed Hoffman's testimony. But if Ed Hoffman is right, That's GameStop Match. He's literally describing what happens. We'll talk about it here

9:02 when we go over there. But one of the things he says, he confirms the story about a guy showing a badge and over here as people were coming up the hill. Yeah, and supposedly the part of Hoffman is,

9:15 I mean, he told his family like that weekend, right? I mean, and that's at least the family lore, right? Yeah, it's always contemporaneous. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the key, and we'll

9:25 go look at it here, the big question with him is whether or not He could have seen it from his vantage point. All right, Matt. So we're basically in the parking lot behind the Texas Book

9:38 Depository. Got Elm Street right there. Tell me what happened. Well, we're looking right at this X, which is the spot where Kennedy's head was shot. And yeah, I mean, in terms of the badge man

9:49 photo, it's about right here. It says on the back of all these things, this is the place That's pretty Trump did it. That's fun. That's always

10:01 the Mary Mormon photo. Some people think, and I think it's potentially compelling. I'll tell you why here in a second, that this woman, Mary Mormon, who was in the ground, who was in the

10:11 infield area there, took a picture that captures the assassin standing there with a hat on. because there are four railroad witnesses, SM Holland and Company, that are right over there on the

10:25 railroad bridge. And they said, at the time of the shots were fired, they saw a little puff of smoke come out from under this tree, right? And people always say, a puff of smoke is just a civil

10:36 war. Is it the Revolutionary War? Were they loaded? Was it a musket? Yeah, was it a musket? And it's like, they didn't see a puff of smoke. What did they see? They saw the shot. You know,

10:46 when you find a shot, like you can see, like, if you're watching the area, they came running over here and there were cigarette butts and footprints right here, but there was nobody here. SM

10:57 Holland that later spoke with this guy, Josiah Thompson, who wrote Six Seconds in Dallas, one of the first books to look at the assassination from a scientific perspective. And Thompson came here,

11:12 stood where Mary Mormon was standing, And he had SM Holland, the railroad witness, stand at the spot where he thought the - smoke came out from underneath and have a hat on. Right. And it looks

11:23 just like the Mormon photo. Did it really? It's just a little photographic artifact and you can see it and it looks exactly the same. Now this is a grainy picture. Oh yeah, no, it's not super

11:34 high res. And you blow it up and it's even grainier, yeah. There's room for interpretation. Artistic license. By no means is it a home run. But yeah, to the extent there's a grassy null shooter

11:47 or a shot from the front, this is one of the prime spots it would be. Another spot, people say the railroad overpass. We can go look at that. Some people say the south null. I've just never seen,

11:59 I've never heard any witnesses talk about seeing anything on the south null. Another thing to note here in this parking lot. So there's a railroad tower over there. And that's where Lee Bowers was.

12:09 He's the operator up in the tower. These trees were not nearly as thick than as they are today. He could see this area He says that at the time, the shots were f - fired he saw a puff of smoke and

12:21 a flash of light or no he saw a flash of light something caught his eye people always say well why didn't he bring why didn't he because he told Mark lane that in his nineteen sixty six documentary

12:31 people always say well why didn't he say flash of light to the Warren Commission and the answer is if you go read his testimony At the time he's talking about that. He's talking about what he saw and

12:42 starting to describe it Alan Dulles cuts him up and I asked him another question and changes the topic. Oh interesting Yeah, I believe it's dullest and I've been someone else but but that's that's

12:50 sort of a little weasel Arlen specter And then and then you know well, and then yeah, Lee Bowers then dies in a single car crash one of them is and then and people say well He had a he had a car

13:01 crash psycho. What do you what do you want? Like like, you know, everything's not a conspiracy fair enough But all bets are off when the CIA admits before the church committee that they have a

13:14 heart attack gun, right? Are we supposed to believe they've never used it mate? Maybe they just make things and never use them the things they make one of my favorite sayings that I don't kill me

13:25 One of the favorite things I've seen recently is they did bad bad things in the 60s and the 70s 80s and 90s But they're not doing it. Wow. Yeah. Give me a break. Stop. Well. Yes, sure. So So

13:38 anyway, yeah, but another interesting thing about this parking lot, there were, at the time, right before the shots, there were two cars driving around back here, and Lee Bowers saw one of

13:50 those cars had a walkie-talkie. Oh, dark-collected man had a walkie-talkie. Oh, interesting. All right. Real quick, I just wanna talk about what Ed Hoffman says he saw. Oh yeah, yeah. So Ed

13:60 Hoffman, he says that he saw a guy dressed in a suit standing here and a guy dressed in work clothes standing, you know, like right over here, like right in this area. And the guy in work clothes

14:12 has a bag and he, like a, you know, whatever, like a work bag. And he takes something out of the bag, puts it together and throws it to the guy that's dressed in the suit, okay? He said it

14:25 looked like a pipe, he thought it was a pipe. But it was a pipe, okay. And then he sees the guy put it up and then he realizes it's a gun and they see it's a shot fired The guy fires a shot,

14:36 tosses it to the guy. The railroad worker guy, railroad worker guy breaks it apart, puts it in the bag, runs down the tracks. Right.

14:48 So Hoffman is deaf, he's mute, doesn't talk very well, right? Contemporaneously tells his family that that that weekend over dinner or something. He makes what? Multiple attempts to go talk to

15:03 the Dallas police. Right. Yes. And eventually gets the FBI. What are the? If you look at this file, the FBI says, yeah, you did come talk to us. Let's look here. Let's look at our report.

15:13 It says you talked to us and you said that you just remembered you saw nothing. So if you, you have to believe the FBI fabricated the document to believe that Hoffman, okay, that's the period.

15:28 But once you understand that Lyndon Johnson has, has told, you know, everyone, including J. Edgar Hoover, that, that if they investigate the, you know, investigate the assassination and find

15:43 that there was a conspiracy, then it could lead back to the the Soviet Union, then we have to do a. first response, then it's gonna lead to nuclear war, total Armageddon. So save your country,

15:53 save the world, and cover this up. Right, right. So that's how people are always like, well, how could they, you have to have all these people in on it. They were in on, help it. They were

16:01 in on saving the world. Yeah, what do you mean, and on what? They're not in on some nefarious secret. So yeah. Well, and you know, knowing Lyndon Johnson and his morals. Right. I could see a

16:14 telegram to the Kremlin saying, Thanks guys, we're good. Well, yeah, that's a whole other thing. But yeah, let's come over here. We'll get to Ed Hoffman. So Ed was standing somewhere over

16:25 here. Was he not watching the president or was he? This grass, this is all overgrown. This is how it was today But he was on the second one. See how this one is like brownish and is one that's

16:34 like whitish? Yeah. He was on the second, but it's not that far over. That's not, and when you get over there, they're at the same height. Yeah, I mean, that's not, that's not hugely

16:45 ridiculous. All right, we're at the exact spot where the umbrella man was and the dark, complex demand. You be dark, complex demand, I'm umbrella man. I'm doing that. What was their story?

16:56 Dark, complex demand, no one knows No one's ever determined who he was. It's a mystery to me. it's one of the biggest mysteries in the case, but he's got his fist up right as the shots are

17:07 happening. Umbrella man is pumping his umbrella up and down. Umbrella man later came forward as a guy named Stephen Louie Witt to the House Select Committee on Assassinations and he said he was an

17:18 insurance salesman and he had an office nearby and he came down that day. Basically he was protesting Kennedy's father being the ambassador to

17:31 England and the appeasement of that man. He's a Hitler, Neville Chamberlain. I don't know if the umbrella has to do with it but. Chamberlain always had an umbrella with him. Right, okay. That

17:44 was the thing. Now the talk is is that there was some kind of communication, right? Pumping the umbrella is signaling the shooter. Well, he sits down, dark, complex demand, after the

17:57 assassination happens. And I'm looking at this. This is literally where he was because of the pictures in the background. Shits down right here. We're sitting in the exact spot. We're dark. I

18:05 just sat on my sunglasses. That's fun So we're sitting in the exact spot where dark complex a man was and then you see we're gonna sit down next to me Oh, yeah, there's a film of this guy and he

18:16 turns like this

18:19 Like he's got a walkie-talkie in his hand now, it's a little grainy, but it looks like there's a little antenna Okay, so maybe it's a walkie-talkie. Maybe it's not a walkie-talkie Umbrella man

18:29 walks that way and by the way We never conclusively identified that Umbrella man was Stevie Steven Louis Wood. He just said he was, right? It's not like you can really tell for sure, but we still

18:40 don't know who this guy was. They sit down this close to each other Well and and with story of being Umbrella man was he didn't know the dark complex didn't right right that Yeah, which is like he

18:51 said the dark complexed man just mumbled. They done shot some folks And that's all they very much had a silent bob and shave vibe totally the two of them hanging out together for sure But if you've

19:04 just witnessed the assassination of a president, are you going to go and sit down on the curb as if you're waiting on your mom to pick you up from soccer practice and you're the last kid that day?

19:14 Yeah. You know what I mean? And then, so, Umbrella Man goes this way. Dark, Complexed Man gets up. Whatever this thing was he had in his hand, maybe it's nothing, whatever. He then puts

19:25 something behind his back like this, tucks it into his back, and walks under the overpass, never to be seen again. So, we have no idea who that guy was. The idea of people saying, What were

19:38 they doing? It's not a poisoned dart. If anything, it's a signal that, Hey, he hasn't been shot yet, keep shooting. Okay, so, tell me this. This is an entrance wound. Where did it come out?

19:53 Because the exit wound back here I think that's

19:60 the bullet that pulled off the stretcher. Alright Yes so where did it this is an entrance wound where did it exist that's a great question and that's one of the best arguments on the one report side

20:12 of things right but I think the answer is that it went to his body and and they just didn't recover it and then efficient Yeah Doug Horne I believe asked him that question and he's sort of like you

20:25 know on the on the critic side of things he's the Medical Guru I would say I Haven't and David Mantic but he basically said that you know, must have been in his body cavity. Yeah. And they would

20:38 hit the backbone and go down 'cause they put the trach over on top now. The autopsy wasn't that thorough, so they didn't know that there would have, what now, they didn't know that there was a

20:48 shot there because of the tracheotomy. Right, until they called. Right. They called Dallas. But they never, the Dallas doctors never, I don't know that they affirmatively, they talked about

21:01 the tracheotomy, I don't know if they told the

21:04 Bethesda autopsy doctors that there had been a shot in the front, but they did all say their statements were there had been a shot in the front. In fact, Dr. Perry, who was, I believe, the main

21:14 attending surgeon that did the tracheotomy,

21:17 said that

21:20 it was a shot in the front during a news conference, and he was told not to say that again. And then he just changed the story, and then later he told his peer at University of Washington where he

21:33 was teaching. uh, as a, as a medical school, he told this peer that he had been, they made him change the story. Well, and I told you the Yates family story when you and I did the podcast

21:45 originally. Dad and Earl Rose, 'cause Earl Rose was the medical examiner for Dallas County. He should have done the autopsy on Kennedy 'cause Oswald would have had the right to have that as part of

21:58 his defense. And Earl Rose was in the emergency room He saw it and Dad and Earl got along really well during med school 'cause Dad was there in '65. So Dad's talking to Earl after class. So student

22:17 walks up and says, Hey, Dr. Rose, can I ask you aboutthe Kennedy assassination? Dr. Rose says, No, everything I've saidis in the Warren Commission. That's that, that guy walked off. It was

22:29 just my Dad and Earl Rose and Earl Rose goes, That was no exit wound So, you

22:36 know, and. Earl Rose knew, so he was there, isn't that witness? He was an eyewitness, he was very new. And I called years later when I'm at Rice writing my senior thesis and Earl Rose was at

22:48 Iowa, I think, the University of Iowa. And I called and I said, Hey, Dr. Rose, Chuck Yates, my father, Charles Yates had

22:57 you in med schoolin the '60s. And he said, Ah, yes. He goes, I was quite fond of your father. And I go, Well, he liked you a lot tooCan I ask you a question about the Kennedy assessment? I'm

23:08 writing my paper on it at Rice. I told the story, Dad's told me that. Is that true? And he hung up. Well, didn't he say, I bet you'd like to know. Yeah, yeah, there's

23:24 a version of that story, too, that gets told. But I did actually make the phone call. Wow. And I did actually talk. He didn't definitively deny it. Yeah You know, people give Lyndon Johnson

23:35 such grief. About yanking the body out and getting home but I'm kind of with Johnson on that because Jackie was not leaving without day of day there's so I'm actually OK with Johnson and I don't know

23:48 that that's a conspiracy I think the reality is I mean look look at every movie in the nineties and early two thousands National Security They'd just take your car they'll do Whatever I like it so

24:01 it's not surprising at all that in the name of national security they would say we're taking the Dead President's body with US says that I agree with you that did that certainly does not show

24:10 conspiracy at all one of the CIA's

24:14 hypothetical situations was the Russians invaded the first thing is they shoot the President to cause disarray so Johnson You Know what he didn't have an iPhone so his ASS needed to be back in DC I'm

24:28 Okay with that Yeah he thought there was a he said of the nukes in the area vessels in the area they yeah he he thought that that it could have been a soviet plot so all right we got seven more

24:41 minutes what do you want to do tanger do you want to go talk about could Oswald have actually shot from there

24:49 have you heard of a prayer man for well supposedly it's Oswald this Guy Bark camp this great researcher from the UK he went through everyone who's in this photos all gens photo shows a guy standing

25:05 here on the steps and barcamp looked at all of the witness statements and determined that nobody reported any unknown people being in the building in a separate conversation for those a different

25:16 shooter up there but also everybody was accounted for in the photos of the people sitting in the front except for that guy and everybody else's account Afford and they said where they were in the

25:24 building so in other words it couldn't be anyone other than Oswald Oswald unless everybody's mistaken who was standing there was somebody that they didn't know that's why I hadn't heard he literally

25:34 went person by person were sitting by the Fountain where on the other side of Elm Street from the book depository was US and board says the corner of

26:45 I will do that so I think Howard Brennan saw what a young white Guy in the window right the idea that Huh You'd be able to identify someone's face from this far away that you had never seen before if

26:59 it's somebody you knew they were up there you're like is that wait a minute is that you know what I mean maybe maybe you could but you don't you never see somebody and you're looking at them up there

27:08 you're just glancing so how did his identification go down did he was there a lineup that he chose oswald out of or he went to the police department that night and said that he had seen of a white guy

27:21 in the window now he actually said that I forget the exact details of it but the way that he described seeing this guy it's actually not possible that that that's what you get up there and the

27:36 building is not possible someone could be standing the way that he just say they were leaning out of the window it's been a minute since I looked at that but

28:42 and it wasn't the other thing too is is it wouldn't be weird for somebody to be in that window so I don't know that I stare exactly sound like you're like oh here yeah there is Yeah Okay so the one

28:55 thing I want to bounce off you that I think I bounced off you on the first podcast but we're actually here the craziest thing about where we're standing right now is Houston comes down this is

29:07 actually a one hundred and eleven degree turn this is ninety degree right so secret service rules were violated president can never make more than a ninety degree turn and my whole point is if you're

29:19 oswald and you're right there and you're shooting and you don't you're not triangulating with other tutors why do you not shoot right there when the Limo in effect comes to a stop making that turn

29:31 that to me seems like the easy shot not maybe or maybe not shooting through branches Down Elm street