Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!vms.csd.mu.edu!6489MCADAMSJ
From: 6489mcada...@vms.csd.mu.edu (John McAdams)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Hunt a Tramp?
Date: 17 Feb 1994 05:26:31 GMT
Organization: Marquette University - Computer Services
Lines: 124
Message-ID: <0097A2AC.27DBCD20@vms.csd.mu.edu>
Reply-To: 6489mcada...@vms.csd.mu.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: vmse.csd.mu.edu

In article <2jbieg$...@nova.umd.edu>, 
CHO...@UMUC.UMD.EDU (Eric Chomko) writes:

>I'm currently reading Groeden's book, Killing of a President. He mentions
>a possible JFK assination, Watergate link.
>
>I guess the common thread is E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis as they
>were the "plumbers" in various breakins occurring during the Nixon
>administration.
>
>These two were thought to be the bums from the trainyard near Dealy Plaza
>on Nov. 22, 1963.
>Hunt tryed to sue for a million bucks but could not prove he was in
>Washington DC that day.
>Does anybody know the latest with these two?


The HSCA Photographic evidence panel closely reviewed the tramp
photos, and concluded that neither Sturgis nor Hunt was a tramp.

See their Volume 6, pp. 257-273.

Then there is the fact that two Texas researchers named La Fontaine
have uncovered the arrest records of the tramps. 

Below I'm posting an edited version of the article they wrote for the
Houston Post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following article appeared in the Sunday, February 9, 1992 edition
of the Houston Post (Houston, Texas).


                    First Look at Dallas' JFK Files

                           -----------------

    	         Evidence on Oswald Photo, Arrested 'Bums'

	                   -----------------

	By Ray La Fontaine and Mary La Fontaine
	Special to the Houston Post

                           -----------------

DALLAS - Recently released documents from Dallas Police Department files
on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will add fuel to one
argument favored by conspiracy buffs and raise new questions on another.

	Lodged within the 18 legal-size standing file folders in the
city's archives are several photos of accused presidential killer Lee
Harvey Oswald and police arrest forms for three men who until now were
nameless and identified only as "bums" or "tramps" who were picked up
following the shooting of Kennedy and then-Texas Gov. John Connally.

	One photo of Oswald's back yard in the Oak Cliff section of
Dallas shows clear evidence of darkroom manipulation of a type long
associated by some photo analysts with attempts to frame Oswald by
"inserting" him into the background.

	Whether the manipulation was done by conspirators or by police
personnel seeking to duplicate the process has not been determined.
Copies of the print, which ostensibly dates to 1963 and is part of the
collection administered by Dallas city archivist Cindy Smolovik, have
not yet been made available for publication.

	The purported arrest records housed in the files -- recently
ordered opened by the Dallas City Council -- reveal for the first time
the stated names of three enigmatic "tramps" arrested within minutes
of the Nov. 22, 1963 shooting of Kennedy and Connally as they rode in
a motorcade through Dealy Plaza shortly before noon.

	At the time of their arrests -- because of their efforts to
reach boxcars in the rail yard behind the plaza -- the three were
suspects in the assassination.

	Until now, no arrest records were believed kept -- a frequent
criticism leveled at Dallas police by assassination conspiracy
researchers and widely repeated in the media, including a recent cover
story in Newsweek magazine.

	...

	There have been many unanswered questions concerning the three
men -- one apparently in his 50s, the others in their early 30s -- 
arrested within minutes of the shooting in Dealy Plaza.

	Though allegedly vagrants pulled from boxcars, the men were
noted in photographs to sport fresh haircuts and suspiciously good shoes.
The supposed lack of official arrest documentation -- including the
failure to even retain their names and their immediate release and
disappearance -- has raised the greatest consternation among conspiracy
researchers.

	The archival files show records were indeed apparently kept on
the three.  They list their names as Gus W. Abrams, 53, Harold Doyle,
32, and John Forrester Gedney, 38.  Left empty on arrest forms, however,
are spaces for an arrest number, ID number and right thumbprint.

	The reports, filed by officer W. E. Chambers, are dated Nov. 22,
1963, at 4 p.m.  They list charges against the three as vagrancy and
robbery.

	"These men were taken off a train boxcar in the rail yards right
after President Kennedy as shot," Chambers writes on Abrams' arrest
description.  Descriptions on the two other reports are similar.

	The reports indicate the men were not released immediately, as
previously believed, but four days later.

	The files appear to dispute the claims of Chauncey Holt, an
admitted felon from San Diego, Calif., who -- among others -- has
confessed to being one of the tramps.

	In Holt's account, the three men were not arrested, but "escorted"
out of Dealy Plaza and released.

	Previously available records show the tramps were taken by
Dallas County Sheriff's Deputy Harold Elkins to Dallas Police Capt. Will
Fritz.  There the trail ended.

-------------------------------------