Washington : The famous backyard photo of Lee Harvey Oswald – the sniper who assassinated US President John F Kennedy – holding the same type of rifle used in the killing is authentic, a new study has claimed.
The findings refute continued claims that the photo was faked because Oswald’s pose is physically implausible. The study used a new digital image forensics technique and a 3D model of Oswald developed by researchers from the Dartmouth College in US.
“Our detailed analysis of Oswald’s pose, the lighting and shadows and the rifle in his hands refutes the argument of photo tampering,” said senior author Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College.
Oswald was killed before his trial, so he never gave a full accounting of the assassination, which fuelled theories that he was part of a conspiracy.
The theories point to purported inconsistencies in the events of November 22, 1963 in Dallas, and in the evidence collected against Oswald.
One such example is a photograph of Oswald in his backyard holstering a pistol and holding a rifle in one hand and Marxist newspapers in the other.
The photo was particularly damning because it showed Oswald holding the same type of rifle that was used to assassinate Kennedy.
At the time of his arrest, Oswald claimed the photo was fake. It has long been argued that the lighting and shadows in the photo are inconsistent; that Oswald’s facial features are inconsistent with other photos of him. It is also said that the size of the rifle is inconsistent with the known length of that type of rifle and that Oswald’s pose is physically implausible (it appears as if he is standing off balance). In the study, Farid and his team conducted a 3D stability analysis to determine if this claim is warranted.
Researchers built a physiologically plausible 3D model of Oswald and posed this model to match his appearance in the backyard photo.
By adding the appropriate mass to each part of the 3D model, they were able to perform a balance analysis on the 3D model.
This analysis showed that although Oswald appears off-balance, his pose is stable.
The analysis showed that the lighting and shadows are physically plausible and the length of the rifle is consistent with the length of the rifle used to kill the president.
“Our analysis refutes purported evidence of manipulation in the Oswald photo, but more generally we believe that the type of detailed 3D modeling performed here can be a powerful forensic tool in reasoning about the physical plausibility of an image,” Farid said.
“With a simple adjustment to the height and weight, the 3D human model that we created can be used to forensically analyse the pose, stability and shadows in any image of people,” Farid added. The study was published in the Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law. —PTI
