Bonus: Exploring Prayer Man with Bart Kamp

About this episode

This episode explores the identity of 'Prayer Man' and the implications of his presence during the JFK assassination.

For sixty-three years, a shadowed figure has been standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository, hiding in plain sight in the Wiegman and Darnell films of the JFK assassination. The Warren Commission never asked who he was. The House Select Committee on Assassinations never asked. The JFK research community calls him "Prayer Man" and there is now a serious, document-driven case that he is Lee Harvey Oswald, watching the motorcade from the front steps at the exact moment the official story says he was firing a rifle from six floors up. If that case is right, there is no case to answer. In this bonus episode, Matt sits down with Bart Kamp, author of the 2023 book Prayer Man: More Than a Fuzzy Picture, for a deep dive into who Prayer Man is and into the second-floor lunchroom encounter between Oswald and Officer Marrion Baker that may never have happened at all. Along the way: the FBI agent who appears to have built the encounter from whole cloth, the smoking-gun Hosty interrogation note that has Oswald telling agents he went "outside to watch the parade," the Ochus Campbell quote in the New York Herald Tribune that puts Oswald on the first floor right after the shots…

People in this episode

Host: Matt Crumpton

Guest: Bart Kamp

Topics covered

• JFK assassination
• Prayer Man
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• historical analysis
• documentary
• true crime

Keywords

• JFK
• Prayer Man
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Texas School Book Depository
• assassination
• document-driven case
• historical evidence

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: FBI, New York Herald Tribune

Books & works: Prayer Man: More Than a Fuzzy Picture

More episodes of Solving JFK

• Bonus: The Warren Commission's CIA Psychiatrists with Jeffrey Kaye · June 3, 2026 · 1h 6m
• Recap & Rebuttals Part 20 (Ep 90-94) Soviet Union with Larry Hancock · May 6, 2026 · 1h 40m
• Ep 94: Soviet Union (Part 5) · April 29, 2026 · 20 min
• Ep 93: Soviet Union (Part 4) · April 15, 2026 · 28 min
• Ep 92: Soviet Union (Part 3) · April 8, 2026 · 29 min
• Bonus: PBS Nova - JFK Cold Case Review · April 1, 2026 · 23 min