Draft:Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald

• Comment: This reads like it's primarily about the prayer man theory/Murphy's book, rather than Dane's book. I'm not really seeing good sources about the Dane book. I would want to see 2-3 sources substantive coverage of this book. Rusalkii (talk) 21:30, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: Can you add anything more to the "reception" section? Right now it doesn't look like this passes WP:NBOOK. We need in-depth coverage of the book itself. asilvering (talk) 08:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

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Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald

Author	Stan Dane
Language	English
Subject	Lee Harvey Oswald, United States conspiracies
Publication date	August 13, 2015
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover, paperback)
Pages	342 pp
ISBN	1944205012

Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald (released under the subtitle Out of the Shadows and Into the Light) is a 2015 book by Stan Dane, published by Martian Publishing. The book examines the research by Sean Murphy who hypothesized that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "prayer man", an unidentified man filmed on the steps of the Texas School Book Depository by Dave Wiegman, Jr., of NBC, and James Darnell, of WBAP-TV during the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The book is drawn from many sources, including the Warren Report.

Background

NBC cameraman Dave Wiegman, Jr. and James Darnell of WBAP-TV, were passengers in President Kennedy's motorcade when Kennedy was assassinated. In 2013, attention was noted towards a figure standing in the doorway to the Texas School Book Depository on the steps in both Wiegman's and Darnell's films, with Sean Murphy dubbing the figure "Prayer Man" (on account of the posture of the figure's arms). Murphy came to theorize that the figure was Lee Harvey Oswald, and that the official first sighting of Oswald after the assassination by Dallas policeman Marion Baker and Depository superintendent Roy Truly in the depository second-floor lunchroom was a fabrication, suggesting that early newspaper reports indicated the lack of a mention of the lunchroom encounter, that Depository vice president Occhus Campbell first saw Oswald in the first-floor storage room, and that Oswald's interrogations note suggest he was "out with [depository foreman William Shelley] in front" and that he was at the "front entrance to the first floor". Murphy examined the accounts and testimonies of various book depository employees in order to rule who could have been the "prayer man", depending on their location and apperance. After Murphy stopped researching on November 22, 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination, the research into the identity of the "prayer man" has been continued mainly by the Australian research group "REOPEN KENNEDY CASE" (ROKC).

Critical and commercial reception

In the 2014 book 22 November 1963: A Brief Guide to the JFK Assassination, Jeremy Bojczuk mentioned the prayer man and Sean Murphy's research, concluding that only with the discovery of better quailty versions of the Darnell and Wiegman films, could Oswald be "definitively eliminated either as the figure in the doorway or as (the killer of President Kennedy)."

The Mary Ferrell Foundation featured the book as amongst the most featured and reviewed of 2015. A 2015 podcast praised Murphy's research and concluded that "while it remains a hypothesis, Sean Murphy's incredible deducing manages to make a possible and sound case that the unknown man standing on the steps in the Darnell and Wiegman films can only reasonbly be Lee Oswald." A website had readers call it "A must read for anyone who doesn't believe the official version of the JFK assassination events."

Bart Kamp later indicated his support in a 2018 podcast. One theorist scoffed at how "detractors say it is “someone else” or “a stranger” on the steps if not hallucinating completely and calling the figure a woman, an alien, or some species closely related to the unicorn."

Ed Ledoux phoned Marina Oswald after Stan Dane had sent enlargements of the Darnell and Wiegman films showing the "prayer man" figure and a copy of his book Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald. An unprompted Marina volunteered, "It’s Lee". Marina maintains her belief that Oswald was the "prayer man", though she expressed that she was not positive that NBC would ever allow access to the original Darnell and Wiegman films for analysis.

In a 2016 interview, Bart Kamp, who wrote the 2023 book Prayer Man: More Than a Fuzzy Picture, offered his support for the prayer man hypothesis, stating his belief that the film images "more or less exonerate him [Lee Harvey Oswald]".

In a 2021 book, Vince Palamara disputed the hypothesis, suggesting the figure was actually depository employee Sarah Stanton, though he admitted that the figure did resemble Oswald.