TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY DIAGRAM OF SECOND FLOOR SHOWING ROUTE OF OSWALD
The stairway is located in the northwest corner of the Depository Building. The stairs from one floor to the next are “L-shaped,” with both legs of the “L” approximately the same length. Because the stairway itself is enclosed, neither Baker nor Truly could see anything on the second-floor hallway until they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.[C4-337] On the second-floor landing there is a small open area with a door at the east end. This door leads into a small vestibule, and another door leads from the vestibule into the second-floor lunchroom.[C4-338] (See Commission Exhibit No. 1118, [p. 150].) The lunchroom door is usually open, but the first door is kept shut by a closing mechanism on the door.[C4-339] This vestibule door is solid except for a small glass window in the upper part of the door.[C4-340] As Baker reached the second floor, he was about 20 feet from the vestibule door.[C4-341] He intended to continue around to his left toward the stairway going up but through the window in the door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man walking in the vestibule toward the lunchroom.[C4-342]
Since the vestibule door is only a few feet from the lunchroom door,[C4-343] the man must have entered the vestibule only a second or two before Baker arrived at the top of the stairwell. Yet he must have entered the vestibule door before Truly reached the top of the stairwell, since Truly did not see him.[C4-344] If the man had passed from the vestibule into the lunchroom, Baker could not have seen him. Baker said:
He [Truly] had already started around the bend to come to the next elevator going up, I was coming out this one on the second floor, and I don’t know, I was kind of sweeping this area as I come up, I was looking from right to left and as I got to this door here I caught a glimpse of this man, just, you know, a sudden glimpse * * * and it looked to me like he was going away from me. * * *
I can’t say whether he had gone on through that door [the lunchroom door] or not. All I did was catch a glance at him, and evidently he was—this door might have been, you know, closing and almost shut at that time.[C4-345]
With his revolver drawn, Baker opened the vestibule door and ran into the vestibule. He saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom. Baker stopped at the door of the lunchroom and commanded, “Come here.”[C4-346] The man turned and walked back toward Baker.[C4-347] He had been proceeding toward the rear of the lunchroom.[C4-348] Along a side wall of the lunchroom was a soft drink vending machine,[C4-349] but at that time the man had nothing in his hands.[C4-350]
Meanwhile, Truly had run up several steps toward the third floor. Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the lunchroom “facing Lee Harvey Oswald.”[C4-351] Baker turned to Truly and said, “Do you know this man, does he work here?”[C4-352] Truly replied, “Yes.”[C4-353] Baker stated later that the man did not seem to be out of breath; he seemed calm. “He never did say a word or nothing. In fact, he didn’t change his expression one bit.”[C4-354] Truly said of Oswald: “He didn’t seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have been if somebody confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face.”[C4-355] Truly thought that the officer’s gun at that time appeared to be almost touching the middle portion of Oswald’s body. Truly also noted at this time that Oswald’s hands were empty.[C4-356]
In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the lunchroom from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived, Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from the time of the shot until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom. Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about 200 feet from the corner of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots.[C4-357] Truly stood in front of the building.[C4-358] At a given signal, they reenacted the event. Baker’s movements were timed with a stopwatch. On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker’s arrival on the second-floor stair landing was 1 minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds.[C4-359]
A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom by stairway. Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner. He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald’s rifle was actually found after the shooting. Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds;[C4-360] the second test, at a “fast walk” took 1 minute, 14 seconds.[C4-361] The second test followed immediately after the first. The only interval was the time necessary to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk back to the southeast corner. Howlett was not short winded at the end of either test run.[C4-362]
The minimum time required by Baker to park his motorcycle and reach the second-floor lunchroom was within 3 seconds of the time needed to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor down the stairway to the lunchroom. The time actually required for Baker and Truly to reach the second floor on November 22 was probably longer than in the test runs. For example, Baker required 15 seconds after the simulated shot to ride his motorcycle 180 to 200 feet, park it, and run 45 feet to the building.[C4-363] No allowance was made for the special conditions which existed on the day of the assassination—possible delayed reaction to the shot, jostling with the crowd of people on the steps and scanning the area along Elm Street and the parkway.[C4-364] Baker said, “We simulated the shots and by the time we got there, we did everything that I did that day, and this would be the minimum, because I am sure that I, you know, it took me a little longer.”[C4-365] On the basis of this time test, therefore, the Commission concluded that Oswald could have fired the shots and still have been present in the second-floor lunchroom when seen by Baker and Truly.
That Oswald descended by stairway from the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom is consistent with the movements of the two elevators, which would have provided the other possible means of descent. When Truly, accompanied by Baker, ran to the rear of the first floor, he was certain that both elevators, which occupy the same shaft,[C4-366] were on the fifth floor.[C4-367] Baker, not realizing that there were two elevators, thought that only one elevator was in the shaft and that it was two or three floors above the second floor.[C4-368] In the few seconds which elapsed while Baker and Truly ran from the first to the second floor, neither of these slow elevators could have descended from the fifth to the second floor. Furthermore, no elevator was at the second floor when they arrived there.[C4-369] Truly and Baker continued up the stairs after the encounter with Oswald in the lunchroom. There was no elevator on the third or fourth floor. The east elevator was on the fifth floor when they arrived; the west elevator was not. They took the east elevator to the seventh floor and ran up a stairway to the roof where they searched for several minutes.[C4-370]