Mark Gagnon

By early morning, Frank Olson would be dead.

So the official story goes like this.

November 28, 1953, around 2.30 a.m., in the middle of the night, Frank has a mental breakdown.

He wakes up and suddenly jumps through a closed 13th floor window and falls to his death.

But the details don't exactly all line up.

According to Lashbrook, he was awakened by the sound of breaking glass.

He says that he rolled over, saw the shattered window, sees the bed and Frank Olson's not in it.

And he says that he did not rush to the street.

He didn't scream for help and he did not immediately call the police.

Instead, the hotel switchboard operator overheard Lashbrook make a phone call and calmly say, well, he's gone.

Not, oh my God, he jumped or something terrible happened.

Just simply, he's gone.

Which, you know, some people have said is a weird thing to say if, you know, your roommate and your buddy that you're in charge of looking after just jumps out of a window.

But perhaps, you know, a hardened, you know, operative and deputy of one of the top scientists, he'd seen some stuff and knew that this guy was having a mental break and that's all he could muster at the time.

Later examinations of the scene and Frank Olson's injuries also raised some questions.

There's no clear evidence he had actually run through the window.

I mean, this is a thick hotel window and trying to jump through it from a standing position is really difficult to do.

There's also no usable fingerprints on the window.

So if he opened it or pushed it or braced himself before hitting it, there would be some type of smear.

He also had a large contusion on his head that some forensic experts say look like a blow from behind.