The backyard photographs

The FBI’s Lyndal Shaneyfelt matched the negative of one picture to Oswald’s Imperial Reflex camera by the marks its film gate left on the edges, and found no sign of compositing or retouching. Oswald, shown the picture in custody, said it was a fake. [1][2]

Doubts grew when copies differed from the originals. A British forensic photographer, Malcolm Thomson, told the BBC in 1978 that copies he examined were fakes; a Canadian defense photo analyst said the same. [1]

The House committee found more originals. A first-generation print came from the widow of George de Mohrenschildt on 1 April 1977. A third pose, 133-C, came from the widow of Roscoe White, a former Dallas policeman. Former detective Richard Stovall, who was at the search, produced two more prints. [1]

The panel studied the shadows, the chin, the head and the background, measured them, and viewed the photos in stereo. It concluded: “The panel detects no evidence of fakery in any of the backyard picture materials.” Thomson, shown its report, deferred to its conclusions and said his earlier view was based on copies, though he still thought the chin looked different. [1]

In 2010 Dartmouth computer scientist Hany Farid built a 3-D model of Oswald’s head and the scene and found that the nose shadow critics call impossible is consistent with a single sun. In 2015 his group modeled Oswald’s center of mass and found the pose critics call off-balance physically stable. [1][2]