Reference: 07:23 version of “The Ambulance Video” @ 00:00 – 02:55
00:00 – 01:24: Van, various angles/locations.
01:24: Black (or dark-colored) car stops just past fork in Graceland driveway, backs up, then changes direction from proceeding straight up the south side of the driveway to turning left and proceeding up the north side of the driveway.
01:34: Black car disappears from view.
01:34: Cut in tape.
01:43: Cut in tape.
01:48: Cut in tape.
01:51: Cut in tape.
01:54: Cut in tape.
01:54: 280Z appears, camera is zoomed in on 280Z. [Note: In this footage, when a shot begins (after a cut) with the camera zoomed in on an object, we must conclude that there has been film removed just before the zoomed shot since it would be unreasonable to suggest that the zoom was used/activated before the camera started filming.]
01:55-01:57: 280Z turns right (from second lane) and pulls through Graceland gate. Green/blue car in far right lane (to right of 280Z) moves in reverse.
01:57-02:03: 280Z proceeds up driveway, turns left at fork.
02:03: 280Z disappears from view.
02:03: Cut in tape.
02:03: Ambulance is seen in front of mansion. However, the camera has relocated south from where the 280Z was filmed, so at the 02:03 cut the person filming has moved and either stopped/started the tape, or removed a section of the tape. (This is a good example of how the timing of these events is thrown off, since we do not know how much film has been removed.)
02:08: Cut in tape.
02:15: Stretcher loaded into back of ambulance.
02:17: Cut in tape, after vehicle enters left view, cut at right. This is supposedly the vehicle driven by Dr. Nichopoulos and the cut in the tape here is obvious since the vehicle disappears. We do not know if the camera captured this vehicle entering at the main gate. The first image below shows the vehicle in the lower center of the frame (traveling left-to-right); the second image shows the following frame and the vehicle is gone.
02:22: Cut in tape.
02:28: Cut in tape.
02:30: Cut in tape.
02:31: Ambulance departs front of mansion, initially traveling south (facing right in film).
02:35: Cut in tape.
02:50: Ambulance exits through gate, turns right/north.
Now, the question here might be whether these cuts in the tape are important, and the answer is yes, they are critical. Why? Because the cuts in the tape indicate that something has been removed from the tape at these cut points, meaning the person editing the tape is trying to keep the viewer from seeing these actions/movements, not just in a literal sense, but in a contextual sense, as well. That is, Action A followed by Action B could meaning one thing, but absence Action B, Action A changes context/meaning. In fact, what we see here, to use a term that seems to be more and more applicable to these disinformation situations, are “lies of omission,” because we are being (visually) told that A and B happened, but C (which also happened) is being hidden from our view. Picture it this way:
A man is filmed walking through the park. He stops to play frisbee, then he sits down and reads a book, then he rides the merry-go-round. On this walk (which is Action A), he also did Action B (frisbee), Action C (book), and Action D (merry-go-round), but if this film were edited to remove B, C, and D, what would that leave us? Just Action A, the man walking in the park. We might ask the man, “When you were walking in the park did you do anything else?,” and if these other actions were removed from the video, he could say, “I only walked in the park.” He’d be telling us a lie of omission, because he did walk in the park, but he is leaving out the other three things he did. This is what we see in the ambulance video, where multiple cuts in the tape are likely removing actions that the editor/creator of this tape does not want us to see. And why would this person not want us to see certain things in this video? Because those things would likely change the meaning and/or context of what we are seeing as a whole.
As an example in the ambulance video, it is noteworthy that the video captures the 280Z driving north on Elvis Presley Boulevard and then turning right onto the Graceland property. Why? Because the cuts in the tape do not allow us, the viewers, to know what else happened during this time period in relation to the 280Z. We do not see the 280Z leaving the property, and heading south on EPB, do we? Why not? Did the 280Z leave the property and then return, or did the 280Z simply arrive at the mansion? You see, the 280Z traveling north is a singular action, but the context of that action changes if we know that the 280Z initially traveled south. Simply, is the 280Z arriving at the mansion, or is it returning to the mansion? This is a critical distinction.
As discussed previously, how did the person making this film know to focus on the 280Z? Why did the person zoom in on the 280Z? Did he/she know the car, and know David Stanley (assuming this is his car)? Or was the return of the 280Z captured on film because it was captured departing the property earlier?
Did the 280Z arrive just before the ambulance departed, or did the 280Z arrive after the ambulance departed?
[Note: Regardless of the answers to these questions, one thing is clear: the person filming this footage knew to capture the 280Z.]
The ambulance call came in at the fire station at 2:30pm, and the ambulance arrived at Graceland at 2:33pm. To reach Graceland in 3 minutes we might conclude that the siren was used on the ambulance. And yet this person filming these events just happened to miss the arrival of the ambulance? Was there something about the arrival of the ambulance that we should not be seeing?
It is my position that, unfortunately, this video can no longer be used as a reliable tool for estimating the timing of events that day (in relation to other events), nor the sequence of events that day, since the cuts in the tape would drastically alter the clock and the timeline. We can still make a judgment on what we see, in individual sections of the footage, but not on the sequence of what we see.
Question: Could these cuts in the tape have been done simply to remove “dead air,” when nothing was happening?
This is possible, sure, but there are key parts of the footage that are missing, and the logic of cutting out the arrival of the ambulance, for example, does not square with long, rather tedious shots of the van. If the 280Z drove up the driveway and disappeared, and then the video was cut up until there was activity at the ambulance, this would actually support the timing of one of David Stanley’s claims, that he arrived upstairs at the same time as the paramedics* (placing the 12-13-minute gap back in the footage would place the 280Z arrival at around 2:30pm, which would make sense). The issue, though, is the timing of the cuts in the tape, as some critical parts seem to have been removed. In the 280Z example, we’d also have the assume that the person filming this footage saw no importance in an ambulance sitting in front of the mansion, even if its arrival was missed, and failed to capture it on film for 12-13 minutes.
[*No one places David Stanley in the upstairs suite at the critical time; this example simply references one of his claims.]
Finally, something to think about:
We have been told for decades about a series of events that took place at and around Graceland on August 16, 1977. These claims and accounts comprise what I refer to as “the official story,” some of which makes sense, but a lot of which either doesn’t make sense, or runs counter to the larger fact pattern. The ambulance video should be a visual documentation of what happened that day as seen from the vantage point of a camera moving around a ~50-foot stretch of land on the west side of Elvis Presley Boulevard from roughly 2:30pm that day. But, the critical question here is, does the visual document align with the written and verbal record? Given the butchering of the ambulance video, the answer has to be “no,” that the video footage of these events does not match what we’ve been told. Perhaps if we were watching a video that hadn’t been edited numerous times we might have a visual account that sort of aligns with the record, give or take a few minutes here and there, or a person here when he should have been there. (This assumes everyone involved is telling the truth, of course.)
Now, take the edited version of the video and try to align it with what we’ve been told by Esposito, the Stanley brothers, the Smiths, Nichopoulos, et al, and see if things make sense. In a way, they do. That is, the edited video is a very rough representation of the official story. But then factor in the cuts in the tape and the large gaps in time and the sequence anomalies. What do you see?
The question must be asked then, even as merely an academic exercise, whether the edited video is showing us what happened that day, or if the storytellers are simply adopting what is seen in the edited video as their own accounts. That is, the people telling us these stories are basing their stories on the edited video, and on the footage that roughly supports their claims and accounts.
Is it possible…just something to think about here…that the UNedited video would show what really happened, and that the storytellers have simply edited out the same things from their stories as the editors removed from the video footage…? Is the video informing the story, and not reflecting it…?
ElvisDecoded 