Anna Marie Kuhns-Walko presented photographs and documents covering four subjects, three of which will be discussed here: Roger Craig, Rose Cheramie, and the Zapruder film.
The night before her presentation, Kuhns-Walko told me she would be "pulling out all the stops" at this conference. Her discussion consisted of many documents she had discovered at the National Archives, plus new interpretations of data that has been available for years.
She began with Roger Craig, the Dallas County Sheriff's Deputy who was in Dealey Plaza at the time of the JFK assassination. He told the Warren Commission that about ten minutes after the shooting, he saw a man flee the Texas School Book Depository building, run down to Elm Street, and jump into a waiting Rambler station wagon driven by a dark-complected man. The station wagon drove off; Craig was unable to stop it, or get its license plate number. But at police headquarters later that day, he said he saw Lee Harvey Oswald in custody, and insisted that Oswald was the man he saw flee the TSBD and jump into the waiting Rambler.
Craig's story was rejected by the Warren Commission, but until his death in 1975, Craig maintained that the man he saw at Police headquarters --- Oswald --- was the same man he saw leave the TSBD and escape in a Rambler station wagon.
Kuhns-Walko presented a slide of a photograph taken by freelance news photographer Jim Murray. This photo, a detail of which is reproduced in much poorer quality below, shows Craig (white arrow) along Elm Street looking toward the TSBD. Just visible in her slide (and even less so here) was a small figure (black arrow) in the background, which she said is the fleeing man, thus offering corroboration to Roger Craig's story.
"It's not that clear," she conceded of this image. "The funny thing about all these important photographs and motion pictures that we get --- there is always something blurry. Shucks."
Kuhns-Walko pointed out that she tries to work from a first-generation print as often as possible. In this instance a first-generation print would be enlarged directly from a negative. She used a "photographic expert" in this work; to bring out the details in the images she worked with, including the Murray photograph, they used a "dark/light" technique --- that is, if I understand it correctly, she viewed the image in over- and under-exposed prints, to view its full contrast range. "You have to go dark, light, light, dark --- and make sure that what you're seeing is there, whether you go light or dark," she said.
Concerning the image (black arrow) that may be a figure fleeing from the direction of the TSBD at the same time Craig said he saw someone fleeing, Kuhns-Walko said, "The photogrpahic expert said, 'You know, this has been whitewashed right down in front of his face,' to obliterate his face. But there's enough to show you that Roger Craig was correct."
Is this Lee Harvey Oswald? "Well, it kinda looks like the shirt he was arrested in," Kuhns-Walko said. "Kinda looks like his physical [characteristics]." Or, she wondered, could it have been a lookalike?
Another Jim Murray photograph taken about this same time seems to show a Rambler in traffic along Elm Street. "Craig was correct in what he said," Kuhns-Walko concluded.
She also expressed suspicions about a photograph by Richard Bothun (see Pictures of the Pain, p. 156.) This familiar picture shows a view of Elm Street looking to the north, and was taken moments after the assassination. The so-called "Umbrella Man" and "Dark Complected Man" are sitting along the side walk side by side.
What raised Kuhns-Walko's suspicion is a dark image behind and to the right of these two men. According to the researcher, this may be another assassin fleeing the scene. Assuming it is a person, he appears to be fleeing along the sidewalk extending from the pergola, nearly adjacent to the Elm Street extension in front of the TSBD.
Next, Kuhns-Walko turned to the subject of Rose Cheramie, a drug addict and Jack Ruby employee who was dumped from a moving car in rural Louisiana three days before the JFK assassination. After she was hospitalized she told doctors of the impending assassination. And after the assassination, and after Ruby killed Oswald, she refuted Ruby's claim that he had never met his victim, saying the two men knew each other.
Kuhns-Walko conceded that Cheramie was a shady character. "This lady had so many aliases --- I don't believe anybody, even in the CIA, had as many aliases as this woman did." Bear this in mind over the next few paragraphs. In any case, Kuhns-Walko went on, "she was a person that had accurate information."
Kuhns-Walko recounted the familiar Cheramie story outlined above, adding that she was placed in the psycho ward of the Louisiana hospital she was in. There, according to Kuhns-Walko, she made her predictions that Kennedy was about to be hit, some two hours before it actually happened. Kuhns-Walko presented copies of documents from FBI files, unearthed from FBI files in the National Archives (Archives II), which seem to support the story.
She also presented documents that appear to place the Cheramie story in an entirely different light. These documents, which Kuhns-Walko found during Cheramie research, are also from FBI files in Archives II. But they discuss Lee Harvey Oswald and his Soviet sojourn, saying that the State Department gave the Warren Commission a "coded message" in which the CIA reported on Oswald's activities in the USSR. "You have --- they're talking about Rose Cheramie, and your bringing [in] the major agencies here!" Kuhns-Walko said. "So they were afraid of what was going to come out in the Cheramie stuff."
The exact meaning of these documents is unknown. "More people need to go up there [Archives II] and, under the different aliases, check up on [Cheramie]. Because her arrest record alone is at least five inches thick."
Next, researcher Kuhns-Walko shifted her attention to the Zapruder film. The authenticity of this film was seriously challenged during the course of the Lancer conference (see "The Z-Film: Evidence of Tampering," this issue). Kuhns-Walko shed valuable light on certain aspects of this movie.
During the summer of 1994, she saw a version of the Zapruder film released out of FBI field office files. This version is no longer available for viewing, she said.
But Kuhns-Walko presented some very interesting documents relating to the history of the film. One was a copy of Secret Service notes dated November 22, 1963, which state the Secret Service recieved a copy of the film. Officially, she said, the Zapruder film was not made available to anyone until the day after the assassination.
She also presented an intriguing document which seems to establish an agreement to suppress the Zapruder film, but its origin was not clear to me; I think it was a Time-Life document. It states: "Be assured it [the film] will not be shown to anyone outside of the government unless for official investigation purposes." Kuhns-Walko observed, "There you have instructions, right there. The people can't see it."
Referring to the copy of the Z-film she saw in 1994, Kuhns-Walko said that it can no longer be viewed by the public because, she was told, it was damaged. Officially it is undergoing restoration, she said, and won't be seen again until that is completed. "That was the clearest copy I have ever --- there were no blurs, there were no scratches, the color was perfect, and there were frames galore."
This last comment obviously refers to the tampering issue. She presented a very interesting visual aid here. Although the film is no longer available for viewing, she said she was allowed to make a photocopy of the reel and the film it contained. The reel of this film is full. Next to it, on the overhead projector she was using, she placed a photocopy of the Penn Jones version of the Z-film; a simple visual inspection shows, in about two seconds, that the Jones version is much shorter than the version Kuhns-Walko saw in 1994. The Jones version she showed in photocopy form appeared to be the same as a copy in my possession; the celluloid on that film occupies just over one-eighth of an inch on the reel.
Kuhns-Walko said, we need to get them to do the restoration and make the version of the Zapruder film in the National Archives available. "It is there, folks, and it is beautiful."
There were other issues raised before the end of her talk, but due to time constraints, I am giving them just fleeting reference. An HSCA document Kuhns-Walko presented discussing the Nix film contained the following statement: "The subject of interest is the gunman in the classic military firing position."
Kuhns-Walko had another document which she said suggests "There are copies of the alleged Oswald note out there." This was an apparent reference to the alleged note written by Oswald to FBI agent James Hosty in which Oswald tells Hosty if he wants to know something about him [Oswald] to talk to him, and stop bothering his wife. News of this note did not surface until 1975. At that time Hosty claimed the note was destroyed after Oswald's murder, on orders of his superior, Gordon Shanklin.
Finally, an FBI document dated November 27, 1963, stated: "Oswald served in the United States Marine Corps and went to Russia with the State Department's approval, to accept employment as a radar specialist." It didn't say who he was employed by, but of course, he was trained in radar techniques and air traffic control, and was certified as an aviation electronics operator.
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