THE FRAMING OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND THE GRANNY KNOT

THE FRAMING OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD:  RECENTLY A MARINE, HE DID NOT TIE THE STRING ON THE BLANKET THAT SUPPOSEDLY HELD THE “KILLER” RIFLE WITH A "GRANNY KNOT"
by Judyth Vary Baker


The blanket that held the “killer” rifle was used to “prove” Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy. Persons who were known to have seen and touched the blanket are Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina, their baby daughter June, Michael Paine (estranged husband of Ruth Paine and an “Oswald’ lookalike) and Ruth Paine (stepped on the blanket to show it was empty, to the [police—but how did she know it was empty?).
The blanket supposedly looked like this when tied up with the rifle inside:

Warren Commission placed a rifle inside and wrapped/tied blanket to show what it looked like.

Lee Harvey Oswald (foreground) was a well-trained Marine

                         
 Photo shows blanket tied at both ends with string.  The knot used was a “granny knot” plus a “bowtie” (shestring) knot, difficult to see in the WC photo.  Oswald (foreground in photo,below) was a Marine who passed all his training, which included tying knots properly –important for anyone in the Navy or the Marines
Eventually the Warren Commission questioned FBI experts about the blanket and the string that tied up the blanket at both ends.  


In the testimony below, the important parts are in bold face and underlined like this:

TESTIMONY OF PAUL MORGAN STOMBAUGH beginning at 4H56...

The CHAIRMAN. The Commission will come to order. The purpose of today's hearing is to take the testimony of Paul Stombaugh and James O. Cadigan. Mr. Stombaugh is a hair and fiber expert with the FBI, and Mr. Cadigan is a questioned documents expert with the FBI. They have been asked to provide technical information to assist the Commission in its work. 

Mr. EISENBERG. Did you notice anything else about the blanket which you would like to relate, Mr. Stombaugh?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. The blanket exhibited much wear.

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[NOTE  BY JVB: below, the “granny knot” is made to look—unless you are alert—as if it is a hard knot to untie instead of being a very easy knot to untie. This is either an accident of the stenographer or a deliberate misrepresentation. The word “not” has been added to make the information correct, below, as indicated by [not] ].
Mr. EISENBERG. In your opinion, would the blanket have made a secure package wrapped in the way and manner that it appeared to you?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. Yes, sir; it would have. With the crease at fold "A," had it been folded down, it would have made a very snug and secure package containing some type of item in it.
Mr. EISENBERG. Any distinctive accidental markings on it?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. No; I found none. 

Mr. STOMBAUGH. No; I found none.
Mr. EISENBERG. What kind--was it tied in a knot?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. Yes, sir; it was tied in a granny knot, and also a bow knot.
Mr. EISENBERG. Could you illustrate that for us? You are holding up a piece of string?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. This is another piece of string, not the original.
Mr. EISENBERG. Not the original.
Mr. STOMBAUGH. A granny knot is a common knot, tied with two simple thumb knots. It is [not ]  a very hard knot to open as opposed to the boy scout knot, or the square knot rather, which is tied in this manner. This knot is very easy to open because all one has to do is to pull one free end of it and the other free end slides out.
Mr. EISENBERG. You are referring to the so-called "boy scout" knot?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. It is actually not a boy scout knot but a square knot.
Mr. EISENBERG. And you tie that left over right, right over left, is that the formula? [E. refers to square, not granny knot]
Mr. STOMBAUGH. Yes; left over right and right over left.
Mr. EISENBERG. How do you spell that, by the way?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. G-r-a-n-n-y.
Mr. EISENBERG. The granny knot, Mr. Stombaugh, is this a common or an uncommon knot?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. It is a very common knot. I believe that knot is tied more than any other knot because it is right over right, right over right, and it is usually used by people wrapping packages who want it tied securely so the package will not come open.
Mr. EISENBERG. Did you say there was also a bow knot?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. Yes, sir.
Mr. EISENBERG. Could you illustrate that?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. This is the type of knot we use when we tie our shoe strings. It is made by forming a loop with the one free end, and wrapping the other free end around it and pulling it through.
Mr. EISENBERG. Is that a hard or an easy knot to slip out, Mr. Stombaugh?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. This is very easy, because you just take one of the loose ends and pull it and the knot falls apart.
Mr. EISENBERG. What was the relationship between the granny knot and the bow knot?
Mr. STOMBAUGH. I don't know. I have seen this numerous times, on numerous different occasions when one would either tie a granny knot or a square knot and follow it up with a bow knot. The granny knot would be to secure the package so it would not come loose. The bow knot is a temporary knot tied by one who wants the string to come off easily.
Now why they would tie a granny knot and follow this up with a bow knot I don't know, unless they had some long loose ends which they wanted to slacken up, shorten up, rather, so as they would not be hanging down. 

Mr. EISENBERG. The Exhibit Paine No. 2 is tied into a knot at this point. Can you tell us what kind of a knot that is?

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Mr. STOMBAUGH. This was a simple bow knot which I put into it. 

In the above statements, we clearly see that the ends of the string were still long, so whoever tied the ends then made a bowknot to bring the ends shorter. Mothers who tie their children’s shoelaces do this, of course, so the child will not trip. Ruth Paine had a young son who wore laced shoes. Those interested in reading more about Ruth Paine and the blanket are invited to read my blog entry of June 3, 2011 at:  http://judythbaker.blogspot.com/2011/06/lee-harvey-oswald-and-blanket-bag-and.html

Ruth and Michael Paine’s connections with the blanket are established and suspicious.

The question: did Lee Harvey Oswald tie the knots in the string?

Answer: Every Marine learned to tie the Square Knot, Bowline, Figure-Eight Retrace, and the Round Turn with Two Half Hitches. People who have not been in the Navy or Marines may not know how to tie a reliable knot and are most likely to use the granny knot. 

What is a granny knot?

granny knot

–noun

an incorrect version of a square knot in which the bights cross each other in the wrong direction next to the end, so as to produce a knot that is insecure.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/)

Wikipedia: “The reef knot is commonly taught as left over right, tuck under then right over left, tuck under. The granny knot is the first step repeated twice, left over right, tuck under. This is a very common mistake made by people learning to tie a reef knot.”

I knew Lee Harvey Oswald.  And I knew Lee knew how to tie a reef knot: as mentioned in my book, Me & Lee, he had tied string across the two posts of my bed at 1032 Marengo, upon which he had hung balloons and a “welcome home” sign written in crayon.  He used reef knots: he did not use granny knots.  I’m the one, after all, who finally had to untie the string and take the sign down! I had training of my own in tying knots after years in Girl Scouts.  The knots Lee tied were reef knots.  So, when I came across the testimony (above) while researching the blog that eventually became a paper about the blanket, that  “granny knot” information took a few days to sink in. Then I realized that I was looking at evidence—real evidence—that Lee had been framed.

NO Marine would have used granny knots to tie that blanket.

We had already established in the blog article that Lee, who adored his little girl June, would not have used the blanket Marina said Junie “loved to play with” in which to wrap a rifle.

Knots are so important in the Navy, Marines and CAP (Civil Air Patrol) that everyone enrolled is expected to learn them. Lee Harvey Oswald was taught how to properly tie knots when a young teen.  He was in the CAP and learned knot-tying there even before he entered the Marines and got yet more course instructions on knot tying, which is used on boats and ships as well as in rescue and search and rescue operations.  The USNSCC manual has an entire chapter (#7) devoted to knots.  Lee Harvey Oswald tied knots under military-style supervision for more than three years and was barely 24 in November, 1963. 

Other names for the granny knot show it’s the kind of knot an uninstructed person uses:

Names	Granny knot, False knot, Lubber’s knot, Calf knot, Booby knot
Caveat	Should not be used as a bend. Inferior to reef knot for binding purposes, it can release suddenly and unpredictably.

(Wikipedia)

Conclusion: yet another indication that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed for the murder of JFK, in this instance with the help of someone who did not know how to make a proper knot -- possibly a woman.

Lee Harvey Oswald and His Daughter,June: Insight into Lee's Heart

On Saturday, a day after the assassination, during a ten-minute meetings through panes of glass, using telephones (3:30-3:40 P.M) Robert Oswald, Lee's brother,  reported that Lee Harvey Oswald told him, "Junie needs a new pair of shoes."

Marina with little June soon after JFK died

Ask yourself if a man who worried about new shoes for his little girl --at the time he was charged with the murder of the President of the United States, if this harried, stressed and exhausted subject of national attention could have actually killed Kennedy.

Lee's concern was not only for Junie, his toddler, or for little Audrey Rachel. He also cared for Marina, his wife, though he and I had desperately wished to live together in a marriage of our own.

He cared for  his babies to the end.

To me, Lee said, when I asked him, a short time before midnight (late Nov. 20th) to flee from involvement with the assassination, he replied in a grief-filled voice,"Even if I wanted to, which I do not, I couldn't. We've talked about this before, Juduff. They'd not only do me in, they'd come after my family. They'd find you. You'd all die." A little later, he said, "Tomorrow,I'll go say goodbye to Junie, and Rachel,and Marina--" Lee almost choked when he told me this. We were both crying by then.

Lee cared --more than records show--about his wife during her pregnancy. It's important for you to read the following statement from the anti-Oswald writer,Priscilla McMillan, because in New Orleans, Lee Oswald had matured and was taking more responsibility for his wife and child.  He was sorry when Marina'a advancing pregnancy created problems for her:

"The veins had burst in Marina'a legs and her legs and ankles ached. He rubbed them and kissed them and cried.  He told Marina that he was sorry to put her through such an ordeal and he would never do it again."(p. 675)

We must then consider if Lee Oswald was a perfect, wretched cad when the baby was finally born. Ruth Paine, with whom Marina and Junie were living at the time, implies as much.  YOU decide, after reading what I have to tell you next:

I remember how angry Lee was at Ruth Paine when little Audrey Rachel was born. When Marina went into labor, Ruth persuaded Lee to stay with her little kids and Junie. Ruth argued that Lee's ride to work was with the next-door neighbor and that if he stayed at the hospital with Marina, he wouldn't have a ride to town that he could count on.  Besides, little Junie would have to leave both mother and father at the hospital and return to Paine's house to stay there--the very first time Junie had ever been left without either parent. Junie would be certain to be terribly upset.

Ruth added that since she spoke Russian fluently, she would be able to comfort Marina despite the foreign surroundings. Marina might even feel more comfortable knowing the children weren't in the waiting area making noise. Reluctantly,Lee agreed to the arrangement.

Imagine, then, how Lee felt when Ruth Paine returned quickly--obviously having simply dropped Marina off at the hospital -- saying she saw no reason to stay!
"She took Marina to Parkland--and just left her there!" Lee reported to me. Lee said he was so angry he gave Paine some verbal insults, then went into the bedroom and refused to speak to her again, though he overheard enough from Ruth's call to the hospital to know that Marina gave birth about 45 minutes after she had been admitted to the hospital, and that the birth had been quick and easy.

Ruth Paine herself confirmed in her testimony that she didn't remain with Marina, but she calumniates Lee,making it look like he simply went to bed and didn't even care about what happened to his wife, or to the baby!

Would the man who asked his brother Robert to make sure his little Junie had new shoes really not care about what was happening? Ruth Paine actually got away with it to the Warren Commission, and one of the Commission defenders, David Von Pein (yet another "pain") fell for the lie--for it gave him a chance to further defame Lee Oswald. I have placed in bold face the bold faced lies of Ruth Paine. Wrote Von Pein:

MRS. PAINE -- "I informed him [LHO] in the morning that he had a baby girl. He was already asleep when I got back--no, that is not right. He was not asleep when I got back from the hospital, but he had gone to bed, and I stayed up and waited to call the hospital to hear what word there was.
So, that I knew after he was already asleep that he had a baby girl. I told him in the morning before he went to work. ...."

She later added,  "He went to bed; I stayed up and waited until what I considered a proper time and then called the hospital to hear what news there was...and learned that he had a baby girl. I then went to bed and told him in the morning."

MR. JENNER -- "You did not awaken him then?"

MRS. PAINE -- "I did not awaken him. I thought about it and I decided if he was not interested in being awake I would tell him in the morning."

Von Pein then comments:

[DVP -- The above comments by Ruth strike me as quite humorous (and kind of sad at the same time). Lee Oswald, who knows his wife is going to have a baby any minute, doesn't seem to care about the impending birth of his child in the slightest degree -- he decides to go to bed, while Ruth waits up to find out if Marina gave birth or not and what her condition is. Unbelievable."

===note by JVB: Of course it's unbelievable, because it's a lie. The same man who planed the doors in Ruth Paine's house so they would close properly (see Ruth Paine's testimony,below), who played with Paine's children, who cared about Junie's shoes, and who rubbed his wife's sore feet, DID NOT GO TO SLEEP, NOT CARING WHETHER OR NOT HIS WIFE HAD SAFELY DELIVERED THEIR BABY.

But Von Pein is not a witness--he exists only to besmirch a man who, I assert, with all my strength, has been maligned, lied about, and defamed to the point of absurdity. Lee Harvey Oswald loved his babies!

Ruth Paine

Von Pein has to repeat the horrible lie, to make sure it sinks in, connecting it with the assassination so that the reader will believe that Lee was a monster:
"While her husband Lee went to sleep in Irving, Marina gave birth to Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald at 10:41 PM, Sunday night, October 20, 1963. Rachel's place of birth was, ironically, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas -- the same hospital where President John F. Kennedy would die 33 days later after having been shot in the back of the head by Rachel's father."
Not so.
Read what another enemy admits...
Near the end of September, 1963, when Lee was set to go to Mexico City --sent on a mission to deliver a dangerous bioweapon , after which mission he had been promised he could STAY there (a point that has been hidden by anti-Oswald writers, who do not wish any link to exist between me and Lee) -- that same country where I was to meet him---we'd divorce quickly and marry there---Lee was heartsick.
Why was he heartsick?   Because when he said goodbye to Marina at that time, with Ruth Paine standing there, waiting to leave for Texas, Lee broke down and wept,believing he might never see little Junie again.

The reason? Lee thought it highly possible that he'd never see little Junie again because he believed he was going to stay out of the country --in Mexico--after his mission in mexico city had been completed. Nor would he see his unborn child.

Here's what the anti-Oswald writer Priscilla McMillan-Johnson had to say about this event, in her book 1977 book, Marina and Lee:

"..when he kissed Marina goodbye, his lips were trembling and it was all he could do to keep from crying." (p.402) "...Lee warned Marina, above all, she was not to tell Ruth he was going to Cuba."(p.463)

Lee had told Marina he was 'going to Cuba' --but only so she would not think about  trying to contact him again. At the same time, he sent letters out to various parties, saying he planned to move to certain American cities, such as Philadelphia.

These letters, we believed, would keep everybody guessing as to Lee's final location, which was going to be in Mexico, likely at Merida, though Lee never mentioned that city as our final destination.  At first, we'd planned to meet on a beach near what is now known as Cancun, then go inland and climb Chichen-Itza. That region of Cancun (which I recalled as the "village of Kankun" from an anthropologist's paper on file in the Tulane library's special "Latin America" collection ) was extremely remote at the time. Later, when the Mexico City assignment fell through drastically, we decided we'd first have to hide in the Cayman Islands for a year or so.

The Real Lee Oswald, in Ruth Paine's Own Words


Ruth Paine did have some decent words to say about Lee, which are buried in Warren Commission records and rarely quoted. On p.509,Vol. II of the 26 volumes,she says this about Lee (who was nevertheless described by the Warren Commission as a murderous loser and lone nut):

Mrs.Paine: ...I saw him as a person who cared for his wife and child, tried to make himself helpful in my home,tried to make himself welcome although he really preferred to stay to himself..."
Paine then mentions W.C. Exhibit No. 425 -- a letter Paine wrote to her mother. Quoting from the letter, Paine stated, "He...was a happy addition to our expanded family. He played with Chris" --my 3 year old, then 2 --"watched football on the TV,planed down the doors that wouldn't close they had shifted and generally added a needed masculine flavor."

When Lee stood his ground on November 22, he found himself unable to save the President he admired, and for whom he had risked his life--and would now give his life.  I also believe that he also saved my life, Marina's life, the lives of Junie and Rachel, and the lives of his double agent contacts in the USSR.  He could not say "I'm CIA--I was a spy, I was sent to Mexico to try to eliminate Castro, after posing as pro-Castro to hide my true identity!"

Instead, knowing what little he could say in his own defense, which would not implicate or endanger others, Lee cried out, "I'm just a patsy!"



SPREAD THE WORD.TELL PEOPLE ABOUT ME & LEE, THE BOOK!
thank you.
JVB