Reasoning about Doorman
“When you have eliminated
the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”.
– Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle)
Jim Fetzer
Jim Fetzer
Since there appears to be
considerable confusion about reasoning scientifically in a case of this kind,
the most valuable contribution I can make to the discussion of Doormån and
Oswald concerns the pattern of reasoning that applies here. Having offered courses in logic,
critical thinking and scientific reasoning to college students for 35 years, I
am well positioned to explain the principles that apply in cases of this kind,
which are part and parcel of the application
of the scientific method.
Scientific method is a process involving four steps or stages
of investigation or inquiry, beginning with PUZZLEMENT,
where some phenomenon or event does not fit into your background knowledge and
understanding; SPECULATION, where the full range of appropriate alternative explanations are advanced; ADAPTATION, where those alternatives are tested relative to the
available relevant evidence; and finally, EXPLANATION, where the alternative that is best supported is acceptable
as true but in the tentative and
fallible fashion of science.
Scientific Reasoning
The key stage is ADAPTATION,
which involves the application of inference to the best explanation to the
available evidence. This requires
comparing the relative degrees of evidential support for alternative hypotheses
by calculating the probability of the data on the assumption that the hypothesis
is true. Do that for each of them
and see which of them confers the highest probability on the evidence, if it
were true. It sounds like a
process of reasoning backwards and, in a way, it is: you are treating the evidence as the effect of a cause and
comparing the probability with which various causes could have brought about an
effect. If you found a tree that
had been cut in half and felled, what is the probability that that had been
done with a pen-knife, a Swiss Army knife or a chain saw? Consider the effects and figure out
which among its possible causes is most likely.
An hypothesis with a
higher likelihood is preferable to one with lower, where the one with the
highest likelihood is acceptable as true when the evidence has “settled
down”. It is always possible to
return to make a recalculation when new evidence or new alternatives become
available. Here I want to
highlight a few of the key considerations that have led me to conclude that
Doorman and Oswald are indeed one and the same, where, in this case, we are
essentially dealing with only two alternatives, namely: that Doorman was Billy Lovelady, as the
government contends, or that Doorman was Lee Oswald, as David Wrone, Ralph
Cinque, Richard Hooke, Orlando Martin and I – among others – contend. Because there are only two serious
candidates, evidence that favors one of them disfavors the other, and evidence
that disfavors one of the favors the other. Doorman is one or the other. If Doorman was Oswald, he wasn’t Lovelady; if he was
Lovelady, he wasn’t Lee.
“Out with Billy Shelley in
front”
It was astonishing to me to learn – only last year, 2011 – that the
Assassination Records Review Board had discovered the handwritten
interrogation notes of Will Fritz, the DPD Homicide Detective who had
interrogated Lee Oswald, notes that had been released way back in 2007, that said
Oswald told Will Fritz that he had been “out
with Bill Shelley in front” during the assassination. This discovery led me to take a second
look at Altgens6 and to revist the question of whether Doorman could have been
Oswald.
The
Altgens6 was Altered
It would have been unbelievably
remiss of Detective Fritz not to have asked Lee Oswald where he was at the time
of the shooting; that is the most pertinent question Will Fritz would have
needed to ask. Three questions therefore arise about what Lee told Fritz:
(1) Why would Lee have said he was “out in
front” if it were not true?
(2) Why mention Shelley unless Lee believed
that he would confirm it?
(3)
How could he have known Shelley was there if Lee had not been?
These questions
appeared to me to create a prima facie presumption that Lee was telling the truth during his
interrogation. I therefore began
to take a closer look at Altgent6 and was astonished to discover—and on a John
McAdams site!—that Altgens6 was altered:
Notice I am NOT
talking about Doorman but the figure to his left / front (our right / front viewing
the images). I original inferred
that the face that was obfuscated must
have been that of Lee Oswald, but I now believe—based on new research by Richard
Hooke-- that it was instead that of Bill Shelley. For Shelley to have been in the immediate vicinity of the
enigmatic Doorman would have made Lee’s remark to Will Fritz just a bit too
intriguing, which would have invited taking a closer look and risk exposing the
entire charade. As we have taken a
closer and closer look, it is remarkable how many of the features used to pull
off this charade are present in this composite image, including not only Billy and
Lee but the man in a checkered shirt, who was a Lovelady imposter, and frames
from a faked film.
Taking
a Closer Look
That the Altgens6
was altered at all creates the presumption that something was wrong. Surely it would only have been altered
if someone had been there who should not have been there. The only candidate for that role would
have been Lee Oswald. While I now
believe that the face that was obfuscated was that of Bill Shelley, his
importance there would only become apparent when Oswald’s remarks to Fritz
would eventually become available.
And, to the best of my knowledge, that did not occur until 1997. I published my first article accenting
this discovery, “JFK: What we know now that we didn’t know then” (21 November
2011), mistakenly asserting that the obfuscated face was that of Lee, which led
Ralph Cinque to contact me to explain why he thought that I was right about my
conclusion—that Oswald HAD been in the doorway—but that I was wrong about my
reasons for thinking so, where the clothing that Doorman was wearing was the
key!
It did not take
long for Ralph to convince me that he was right, which led to our joint
article, “JFK
Special: Oswald was in the doorway, after all!” (25 January 2012). The uniqueness of Oswald’s clothing had
never really been addressed before.
Well, perhaps it had, but not in a long time, and not with any widespread
recognition. When you compare the
clothing of Oswald and Doorman in detail, you realize it had to be the same
clothing, which means it had to be the same man. Unless Billy was wearing Lee’s clothing, the probability
that Doorman was Lovelady approaches zero and the probability Doorman was Lee
approaches one. Not only is there
no serious chance that Billy Lovelady just happened to dress himself exactly
the same way as Lee Oswald on that particular day, but Billy himself would go
to the FBI and show them the shirt he had been wearing that day —an
incredibly implausible thing to do unless it was true—and it was not the same
shirt!
Inference to the Best
Explanation
As you will find on the pages of The Oswald Innocence Project, Ralph Cinque and Richard Hooke have done brilliant work
in displaying the full range of alterations to which this photo has been
subjected, where the more they have done, the stronger the case has become. Any
one familiar with the principles of scientific reasoning--most importantly, of
inference to the best explanation--will have no difficulty appreciating that
the case for alteration has been made, again and again. The complexity of what was done is
rather astonishing, but the price of failure would have been to blow apart the
greatest hoax in American history, namely: that JFK had been killed by Lee
Harvey Oswald, a lone, demented gunman.
We know that cannot
be true on multiple grounds, but this proof is as powerful as they come.
An hypothesis has been proven
beyond reasonable doubt when no alternative hypothesis is reasonable. There would have been no reason to
alter Altgens6 unless someone had been there who should not have been. Altgens6 was altered. Therefore, someone was there who should
not have been. The only person
that could have been was Lee Oswald, the designated “patsy”. Questions have long revolved over the
identity of Doorman, but they have been pursued in the past in ignorance of
what Lee told Fritz and that Altgens6 had been altered in at least one
respect—and now turns out to have
been altered in many others. We
have found that the man in the checkered shirt appears to have been used as a
“target of opportunity” to explain away the differences between the shirt
Doorman was wearing and the shirt that Billy was not. As you will discover here, there is no reasonable
alternative to the hypothesis that Lee was Doorman, which has been further
confirmed in detail by more recent studies. Beyond a reasonable doubt, the charade has been exposed.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer and journalist with Veterans Today, has joined The Oswald Innocence Project (now aka The Oswald Innocence Campaign) which he highly recommends. Fifty years of deceit and deception are enough.
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