Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light

by Stan Dane, Greg R. Parker (Introduction)

When Lee Harvey Oswald is mentioned, many people think of him as the sniper who assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. They are undoubtedly influenced by the Warren Commission and other US government investigations that conclude Oswald shot and killed Kennedy as he traveled by motorcade in Dallas, Texas. This is reinforced by the mainstream media. He was declared guilty without the benefit of a trial.

But did Oswald really kill Kennedy? What are the facts?

Lee Harvey Oswald said that he didn't kill anybody. He claimed he was a patsy. No one can place him on the Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository building at the time of the assassination - the place where he is said to have fired the fatal shots.

According to the official investigations, Oswald ran down to the Second Floor lunchroom after the shooting and was then spotted by a police officer. But Oswald said he was on the First Floor, and went out the front door to see what the excitement was about. Was Oswald telling the truth?

This book answers that question.

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 2, 2015

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oswald stood in the doorway of the TSBD as the shots were fired in Dealey Plaza. I have been a firm advocate of this fact for many years. Some time back I edited a website 'Oswald Innocence Campaign' and for my pains was admitted to the group as a Senior Member, which in turn allowed me to be part of a large and distinguished e-mail group that included Vince Salandria, Jim Fetzer, Mark Lane, Gerald McKnight, Dr. David Wrone, Peter Janney, Philip Nelson and other published researchers. The thrust of this group has been to discuss the evidence of the Altgens photograph along with other movie and still photographic images, focussing on the front steps of the TSBD. A controversial and much debated topic.
In 2015 Dealey Plaza U.K. held a presentation by a researcher named Bart Kamp which studied the image known as 'Prayer Man'. Mr. Kamp hopes to publish his findings in 2016. His video is available on You Tube. In the meantime I found out about this 2015 publication from Stan Dane.
Born from a website thread on The Education Forum, the research of Sean Murphy has been collected and presented here by Dane. Not just the shadowy figure known as 'Prayer Man' in films taken just seconds after the gunfire by James Darnell and Dave Wiegman, but Murphy postulates many fascinating theories based on Oswald's interrogation notes, early affidavits and press quotes that point to the framing of the patsy. The official W.C. verdict of Oswald on the sixth floor is refuted, and the accused is placed in the doorway of the TSBD at the time of the shooting. Also charged as never having occurred is the Baker/Truly meeting with Lee in the lunchroom on the second floor. Murphy claims Marrion Baker met Oswald on the front steps as he entered the building. These are just a few of the startling and controversial points brought to the fore in this thought provoking book. So, for those who believe that the accused assassin was telling the truth while in police custody 'Prayer Man' will reinforce that belief. This is a book that I will certainly need to read over again.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The term Prayer Man refers to the pixelated, visually unidentifiable image of someone standing back in the shadows of the top steps leading into the Texas School Book Depository as captured in an image taken in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of JFK. The author of this book endorses the argument that the person captured here is Lee Harvey Oswald – an argument which, if true, conclusively demonstrates Oswald’s complete innocence in the assassination. The weird thing about this book, though, is that the author is offering up the evidence of another researcher rather than his own – in essence, this book is a thorough recounting of discussion threads and arguments hashed out on several JFK assassination Internet forums. The evidence offered is that of Irish JFK researcher Sean Murphy, and author Stan Dane is essentially a reporter and cheerleader for Murphy’s efforts. Dane tells us that this is the book he wishes Sean Murphy would have written, but – somewhat confusingly – he does not tell us why Murphy did not do just that. Murphy seemingly just rides off into the proverbial JFK research forum sunset after presenting and defending his evidence that Oswald is Prayer Man, and Stan Dane takes it upon himself to offer Murphy’s argument to a wider audience.

As someone who wholeheartedly support Oswald’s innocence in both the JFK and Tippit murders, I would love to believe that Oswald was captured in an image standing outside the entrance of the TSBD seconds after he was supposedly shooting Kennedy from the sixth floor, but the evidence offered in this book does not convince me that Prayer Man is indeed Oswald. The argument here actually goes far beyond identifying a blurred image in a picture, as Murphy extends his argument into the building itself and Oswald’s location during the encounter with Officer Marrion Baker and TSBD Superintendent Roy Truly. The Murphy argument is that this encounter did not happen in the second floor lunchroom at all – but at the front door on the first floor. Thus, Murphy expects us to believe that the Dallas Police, as early as the night of November 22 itself, coerced numerous TSBD witnesses (numerous office workers as well as Baker and Truly themselves) to change their testimony in such a way that the lunchroom encounter is invented as a means of disproving any possible claim by Oswald that he was on the first floor during the assassination. The twisted logic that Murphy employs to “prove” that this has to be what happened more than satisfies Dane – but not me. The argument itself is not convincing, and I cannot believe that a significant percentage of the employees of the TSBD knowingly lied in order to perpetuate the story that Oswald had to be the assassin.

We are treated to a lot of quotes from the JFK assassination boards, and the same images are shown over and over again across the chapters of the book. The entire argument here is highly repetitive – to the point of becoming tiresome, really. Yes, there are definitely contradictions among the testimonies of Baker, Truly, and some other witnesses, but there is very little in the way of compelling evidence offered here to make Sean Murphy’s argument convincing. Twisting and rewriting words is no better when a JFK researcher does it than it was when the Warren Commission did it, and Sean Murphy (and Stan Dane) would have us believe that Murphy figured out exactly what numerous witnesses really meant, despite what they actually said, when they testified or spoke to researchers years later. You will find nothing more than conjecture in the pages of Prayer Man. I believe Oswald was innocent, but this book does not prove the case for his innocence at all.