The JFK 100

Two Men on the Sixth Floor of the Book Depository

Bill Bolender as Johnny Powell

Oliver Stone's JFK makes the claim, via the closing arguments of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), that:

JIM (VOICE OVER) Six witnesses see two gunmen on the sixth floor of the Depository moving around. Some of them think they're policemen with rifles.

From Houston Street we look up at the sixth floor of the Book Depository and see the shooter moving around. Arnold Rowland points him out to his wife.

ARNOLD . . . probably a security agent.

In the Dallas County Jail, Johnny Powell is one of many convicts housed on the sixth floor -- the same height as the men in the Book Depository. We look across to the Depository through cell bars. Johnny and various cell mates are watching two men in the sixth floor of the Depository.

JIM (VOICE OVER) John Powell, a prisoner on the sixth floor of the Dallas County Jail, sees them.

POWELL . . . quite a few of us saw them. Everybody was hollering and yelling and that. We thought it was security guys . . .⁽¹⁾

According to the JFK documented screenplay, Stone's six witnesses are Arnold Rowland, Barbara (Mrs. Arnold) Rowland, Norman Similas, Ruby Henderson, Johnny Powell, and Carolyn Walther.⁽²⁾

Do these six witnesses prove there were two men on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository? Let's see what they said.

On November 22, 1963, Arnold Louis Rowland dictated and signed a statement in which he described in detail seeing one man with a rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository; he spoke to several law enforcement officers that day and told them the same thing. It was only months later, when he was deposed for the Warren Commission, that he added a second man to his story.⁽³⁾

In JFK's documented screenplay, Oliver Stone claims that "Barbara Rowland corroborated her husband's story."⁽⁴⁾

This is completely false, however. When Barbara Rowland was asked by Commission counsel David Belin whether her husband had mentioned anything about a second man on the sixth floor, she replied, "I don't believe he said whether or not he saw any other people on the sixth floor."⁽⁵⁾

Oliver Stone fares even worse with Norman Similas, a Canadian fraud who claimed to have photographed two men in the "sniper's nest" window, and whose story was quickly shown to be a hoax.⁽⁶⁾

Ruby Henderson reported seeing "two men on one of the upper floors of the building," shortly before the motorcade arrived. She did not see a gun, however, nor did she see anything that would indicate that either man had anything to do with the assassination. Judging from her description of both men as having been dark-complexioned, possibly Mexican or black, it seems likely that the two men she saw were Harold Norman and Bonnie Ray Williams, who were viewing the motorcade from the easternmost window on the fifth floor of the Book Depository, directly below the "sniper's nest" window.⁽⁷⁾

Johnny Powell claimed to have witnessed the assassination from a jail cell window overlooking Dealey Plaza. Like Ruby Henderson, he said that the men were dark-skinned. Unlike Ruby Henderson, Powell claimed he had seen one of the men holding a rifle.⁽⁸⁾

Unfortunately, Powell waited fifteen years to tell his story. Assuming that he indeed witnessed the assassination, as he claims, the most likely explanation is that he is conflating a gunman on the sixth floor with the two black men he may have seen in the window below, on the fifth floor. His claim that numerous other prisoners witnessed the same thing he did rings particularly false, given that none of these alleged witnesses has come forward, even belatedly.

In Carolyn Walther, however, Oliver Stone does finally have a witness who came forward shortly after the assassination and said she saw a man holding a rifle in one of the Texas School Book Depository windows, and she also caught a glimpse of another man standing beside him.⁽⁹⁾

So why didn't Oliver Stone use her in his movie, instead of relegating her to a footnote? One can only guess. Perhaps because Carolyn Walther repeatedly insisted the men with the rifle were on a lower floor of the building, possibly the third or fourth; she was "positive this window was not as high as the sixth floor."⁽¹⁰⁾ Or perhaps because Walther had viewed the motorcade with a co-worker, Pearl Springer, and Mrs. Springer "said that she had noticed no one standing in the windows of the upper floors of the Texas School Book Depository building, and Mrs. Walter [sic] did not mention to her anything about seeing a man standing in a window of that building holding a rifle."⁽¹¹⁾

What Oliver Stone does not say in his movie, of course, is that numerous eyewitnesses who did come forward to law enforcement officials following the assassination reported seeing one, and only one, man in the sixth floor "sniper's nest" window. Amos Lee Euins, for example, pointed out the window to police immediately after the assassination, and described seeing a man fire a rifle there. Howard Leslie Brennan saw a gunman fire from that window, and positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman. Robert Fischer and Robert Edwin Edwards, watching the motorcade together, both noticed someone fitting Oswald's description standing in the window shortly before the motorcade turned onto Houston Street from Main.⁽¹²⁾

Readers can decide for themselves which witnesses are more credible. Of course, even if there were two men in the "sniper's nest" window, why would anyone assume that one of them could not have been Lee Harvey Oswald, the individual whose rifle was found nearby -- a rifle linked ballistically to the bullet and bullet fragments recovered from the motorcade?

Oliver Stone never allows for such a possibility. Perhaps a conspiracy of two just wouldn't be cinematic enough.

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