Their copper metal jackets had the dull color of a worn penny, giving testimony to their age. Alongside the bullets were bullet fragments that revealed the contorted deformation of the lead and jacket metal when they expended a huge amount of energy upon impact. These items were very typical of firearm evidence that I examined in my 30 years as a forensic scientist.
Although the fired bullets were not unusual looking, they were extraordinary historically. These were the bullet artifacts from the John F. Kennedy assassination. My family found out about it the next day via a Voice of America radio broadcast where we lived in West Germany. My father was in the U.
I was 8 years old, and my family lived in a village just outside the base. President Kennedy was revered by the German populace, primarily due to the U. It was typical to see his portrait in German households. Thus, the outpouring of grief was probably as strong in Germany as it was in the U. My own sadness was paired with the anxiety and sadness of my father and mother, who were concerned that the assassination might have been perpetrated by an enemy nation, and, if so, the NATO base where my father worked might be called upon to send out its fighter-bombers in retaliation.
In addition to many other items collected during the investigations that followed the assassination, the bullet and two bullet fragments that killed Kennedy and injured Texas Gov. John Connally are housed at the National Archives in a secure and climate-controlled environment.
These items are closely controlled by NARA experts, as are a bullet that the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the same rifle seven months earlier in his attempt to assassinate retired Maj.
Researchers or investigators sometimes inquire about seeing the assassination bullets, but NARA officials rarely release them for physical examination. Instead, photographs of the bullets have been made available to researchers. However, the technology was now available for an improved means of dissemination and preservation: creating virtual copies of the bullets and bullet fragments.
If the actual ballistic items were accurately measured in 3D, then the National Archives could release the virtual copies for examination without risk of damage to or loss of the originals. But how were we to accomplish this, since it would be impossible to move our huge research microscopes to the National Archives to scan the bullets? Prior to the artifacts ever coming to NIST, our team carried out dry-run preparations for many weeks so that we would be well prepared for scanning the actual specimens.
I had previously acquired similar ammunition and a 6. This was the kind of rifle the assassin used in the shooting. Because I had already closely examined the actual bullets and bullet fragments at NARA, I was able to fire the Carcano rifle at the ATF forensic science laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, to produce a similar collection of test-fired bullets and fragments. We used these items as training sets that mimicked the actual Kennedy bullets that we would be working with.
Employing these samples, we refined our methods and solved instrument challenges well before the actual artifacts arrived. Paine was certain that she had not left the light on in the garage after dinner. Paine, Oswald had gone to bed by 9 p. Only if disassembled could Page the rifle fit into the paper bag found near the window from which the shots were fired. A firearms expert with the FBI assembled the rifle in 6 minutes using a cent coin as a tool, and he could disassemble it more rapidly.
On the day of the assassination, Marina Oswald was watching television when she learned of the shooting. A short time later Mrs. Paine told her that someone had shot the President "from the building in which Lee is working. I then went to the garage to see whether the rifle was there and I saw that the blanket was still there and I said 'Thank God.
She saw that it was in its usual position and it appeared to her to have something inside. Paine pointed out that most of the Oswalds' possessions were in the garage. Paine, who had no knowledge of the rifle, first said "No," but when the question was translated, Marina Oswald replied "Yes. Paine testified: As she [Marina] told me about it I stepped onto the blanket roll And she indicated to me that she had peered into this roll and saw a portion of what she took to be a gun she knew her husband to have, a rifle.
And I then translated this to the officers that she knew that her husband had a gun that he had stored in here I then stepped off of it and the officer picked it up in the middle and it bent so Paine had the actual blanket before her as she testified and she indicated that the blanket. Paine saw him leave the house. Randle stated that on the morning of November 22, while her brother was eating breakfast, she looked out the breakfast-room window and saw Oswald cross the street and walk toward the driveway where her brother parked his car near the carport.
He carried a "heavy brown bag. Page gripped the bag in his right hand near the top. It was Randle estimated that the package was approximately 28 inches long and about 8 inches wide. He asked, "What's the package, Lee? Oswald left the car first, picked up the brown paper bag, and proceeded toward the building ahead of Frazier. Frazier walked behind and as they crossed the railroad tracks he watched the switching of the cars. Frazier recalled that one end of the package was under Oswald's armpit and the lower part was held with his right hand so that it was carried straight and parallel to his body.
When Oswald entered the rear door of the Depository Building, he was about 50 feet ahead of Frazier. It was the first time that Oswald had not walked with Frazier from the parking lot to the building entrance. Randle saw, the Commission has carefully considered the testimony of these two witnesses with regard to the length of the bag. Frazier and Mrs. Randle testified that the bag which Oswald was carrying was approximately 27 or 28 inches long, whereas the wooden stock of the rifle, which is its largest component, measured When Frazier appeared before the Commission and was asked to demonstrate how Oswald carried the package, he said, "Like I said, I remember that I didn't look at the package very much Page but when I did look at it he did have his hands on the package like that," and at this point Frazier placed the upper part of the package under his armpit and attempted to cup his right hand beneath the bottom of the bag.
The disassembled rifle was too long to be carried in this manner. Similarly, when the butt of the rifle was placed in Frazier's hand, it extended above his shoulder to ear level. The distance between the point on the seat and the door was 27 inches. Randle said, when shown the paper bag, that the bag she saw Oswald carrying "wasn't that long, I mean it was folded down at the top as I told you.
It definitely wasn't that long. Frazier doubted whether the bag that Oswald carried was as wide as the bag found on the sixth floor, although Mrs. Randle testified that the width was approximately the same. Randle against the evidence here presented that the bag Oswald carried contained the assassination weapon and has concluded that Frazier and Randle are mistaken as to the length of the bag.
Randle saw the bag fleetingly and her first remembrance is that it was held in Oswald's right hand "and it almost touched the ground as he carried it.
He continually advised that he was not paying close attention. I didn't pay too much attention the way he was walking because I was walking along there looking at the railroad cars and watching the men on the diesel switch them cars and I didn't pay too much attention on how he carried the package at all.
Location of Bag A handmade bag of wrapping paper and tape was found in the southeast corner of the sixth floor alongside the window from which the shots were fired. It was not a standard type bag which could be obtained in a store and it was presumably made for a particular purpose.
It was the appropriate size to contain, in disassembled form, Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial No. C, which was also found on the sixth floor. A person seated on the fourth carton could assemble the rifle without being seen from the rest of the sixth floor because the cartons stacked around the southeast corner would shield him. The presence of the bag in this corner is cogent evidence that it was used as the container for the rifle.
At the time the bag was found, Lieutenant Day of the Dallas police wrote on it, "Found next to the sixth floor window gun fired from. May have been used to carry gun. Sebastian F. No other identifiable prints were found on the bag. Furthermore, it was consistent with the bag having contained a heavy or bulky object when he handled it since a light object is usually held by the fingers.
It was from Oswald's right hand, in which he carried the long package as he walked from Frazier's car to the building. Cadigan, a questioned-documents expert with the Bureau, compared the samples with the paper and tape in the actual bag. He testified, "In all of the observations and physical tests that I made I found When asked to explain the similarity of characteristics, Cadigan stated: Well, briefly, it would be the thickness of both the paper and the tape, the color under various lighting conditions of both the paper and the tape, the width of the tape, the knurled markings Page on the surface of the fiber, the texture of the fiber, the letting pattern Cadigan concluded that the paper and tape from the bag were identical in all respects to the sample paper and tape taken from the Texas School Book Depository shipping room on November 22, This was done as an investigatory aid since the original bag had been discolored during various laboratory examinations and could not be used for valid identification by witnesses.
On the other hand, since two rolls could be made from the same batch of paper, one cannot estimate when, prior to November 22, Oswald made the paper bag. However, the complete identity of characteristics between the paper and tape in the bag found on the sixth floor and the paper and tape found in the shipping room of the Depository on November 22 enabled the Commission to conclude that the bag was made from these materials.
The Depository shipping department was on the first floor to which Oswald had access in the normal performance of his duties filling orders. Stombaugh of the FBI Laboratory examined the paper bag, he found, on the inside, a single brown delustered viscose fiber and several light green cotton fibers. He concluded: All I would say here is that it is possible that these fibers could have come from this blanket.
We found no brown cotton fibers, no green viscose fibers, and no woolen fibers. So if I found all of these then I would have been able to say these fibers probably had come from this blanket. But since I found so few, then I would say the possibility exists, these fibers could have come from this blanket.
Return to Top Conclusion The preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald 1 told the curtain rod story to Frazier to explain both the return to Irving on a Thursday and the obvious bulk of the package which he intended to bring to work the next day; 2 took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle; 3 removed the rifle from the blanket in the Paines' garage on Thursday evening; 4 carried the rifle into the Depository Building, concealed in the bag; and, 5 left the bag alongside the window from which the shots were fired.
Page Palmprints and Fingerprints on Cartons and Paper Bag Below the southeast corner window on the sixth floor was a large carton of books measuring approximately 18 by 12 by 14 inches which had been moved from a stack along the south wall. Behind these boxes was another carton placed on the floor on which a man sitting could look southwesterly down Elm Street over the top of the "Rolling Readers" cartons.
The cartons were forwarded to the FBI in Washington. Latona, supervisor of the Latent Fingerprint Section, testified that 20 identifiable fingerprints and 8 palmprints were developed on these cartons. The Commission has considered the possibility that the cartons might have been moved in connection with the work that was being performed on the sixth floor on November Depository employees were laying a new floor at the west end and transferring books from the west to the east end of the building.
The box on the floor, behind the three near the window, had been one of these moved by the floor layers from the west wall to near the east side of the building in preparation for the laying of the floor. This print Page which had been cut out of the box was also forwarded to the FBI and Latona identified it as Oswald's right palmprint.
The freshness of this print could be estimated only because the Dallas police developed it through the use of powder. Since cartons absorb perspiration, powder can successfully develop a print on such material only within a limited time.
When the FBI in Washington received the cartons, the remaining prints, including Oswald's on the Rolling Readers carton, were developed by chemical processes. The freshness of prints developed in this manner cannot be estimated, so no conclusions can be drawn as to whether these remaining prints preceded or followed the print developed in Dallas by powder. Most of the prints were found to have been placed on the cartons by an FBI clerk and a Dallas police officer after the cartons had been processed with powder by the Dallas Police.
Wittmus, conducted a separate examination and also agreed with Latona that the prints were Oswald's. Since other identifiable prints were developed on the cartons, the Commission requested that they be compared with the prints of the 12 warehouse employs who, like Oswald, might have handled the cartons.
They were also compared with the prints of those law enforcement officials who might have handled the cartons. The results of this investigation are fully discussed in chapter VI, page Although a person could handle a carton and not leave identifiable prints, none of these employees except Oswald left identifiable prints on the cartons.
During the morning of November 22, Givens was working with the floor-laying crew in the southwest section of the sixth floor. The employees raced the elevators to the first floor.
Givens said to Oswald, "Boy are you going downstairs? It's near lunch time. When you get downstairs, close the gate to the elevator. When he reached the first floor, the west elevator--the one with the gate was not there. Givens thought this was about a. Brennan was an eyewitness to the shooting. As indicated previously the Commission considered his testimony as probative in reaching the conclusion that the shots came from the sixth floor, southeast corner window of the Depository Building.
III, pp. Brennan also testified that Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he viewed in a police lineup on the night. He was sitting Page on a concrete wall on the southwest corner of Elm and Houston Streets, looking north at the Depository Building which was directly in front of him. In the 6- to 8-minute period before the motorcade arrived, Brennan saw a man leave and return to the window "a couple of times.
He testified that "this man I saw previously was aiming for his last shot Within minutes of the assassination, Brennan described the man to the police.
When arrested, he gave his weight as pounds. The suspect was described as "a white male about 30, 5'8", black hair, slender Although Brennan testified that the man in the window was standing when he fired the shots, most probably he was either sitting or kneeling. The half-open window, the arrangement of the boxes, and the angle of the shots virtually preclude a standing position.
A photograph of the building taken seconds after the assassination shows three employees looking out of the fifth-floor window directly below the window from which the shots were fired. Brennan testified that they were standing, which is their apparent position in the photograph. C and D, pp. But the testimony of these employees, together with photographs subsequently taken of them at the scene of the assassination, establishes that they were either squatting or kneeling.
Since the window ledges in the Depository Building are lower than in most buildings, a person squatting or kneeling exposes more of his body than would normally be the case. From the street, this creates the impression that the person is standing.
Brennan could have seen enough of the body of a kneeling or squatting person to estimate his height. Shortly after the assassination Brennan noticed two of these employees leaving the building and immediately identified them as having been in the fifth-floor windows. I remember him talking and I believe I remember seeing him saying that he saw us when we first went up to the fifth-floor window, he saw us then.
Immediately after the assassination, however, Brennan described to the police the man he saw in the window and then identified Oswald as the person who most nearly resembled the man he saw. The Commission is satisfied that, at the least, Brennan saw a man in the window who closely resembled Lee Harvey Oswald, and that Brennan believes the man he saw was in fact Lee Harvey Oswald. Two other witnesses were able to offer partial descriptions of a man they saw in the southeast corner window of the sixth floor approximately 1 minute before the assassination, although neither witness saw the shots being fired.
He looked like he was looking down toward the Trinity River and the Triple Underpass down at the end--toward the end of Elm Street. Just was there transfixed. That that could have been the man that I saw in the window in the School Book Depository Building, but that I was not sure. Their testimony is of probative value, however, because their limited description is consistent with that of the man who has been found by the Commission, based on other evidence, to have fired the shots from the window.
Another person who saw the assassin as the shots were fired was Amos L. Euins, age 15, who was one of the first witnesses to alert the police to the Depository as the source of the shots, as has been discussed in chapter III. According to Euins, however, as the man lowered his head in order to aim the rifle down Elm Street, he appeared to have a white bald spot, on his head.
In evaluating the evidence that Oswald was at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor at the time of the shooting, the Commission has considered the allegation that Oswald was photographed standing in front of the building when the shots were fired.
Investigation has established that Altgens' picture was taken approximately 2 seconds after the firing of the shot which entered the back of the President's neck. One of these employees was alleged to resemble Lee Harvey Oswald. The Commission is satisfied that Oswald does not appear in this photograph. See Commission Exhibit. Return to Top Oswald's Actions in Building After Assassination In considering whether Oswald was at the southeast corner window at the time the shots were fired, the Commission has reviewed the testimony of witnesses who saw Oswald in the building within minutes after the assassination.
The Commission has found that Oswald's movements, as described by these witnesses, are consistent with his having been at the window at p. The encounter in the lunchroom. Baker of the Dallas Police Department. Baker was riding a two-wheeled motorcycle behind the last press car of the motorcade. He was not certain, "but I am pretty sure they came from the building right on the northwest corner.
Truly, spoke up and says, it seems to me like he says, 'I am a building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you. Neither elevator was there. The stairs from one floor to the next are "L-shaped," with both legs of the "L" approximately the same length. Because the stairway itself is enclosed, neither Baker nor Truly could see anything on the second-floor hallway until they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
This door leads into a small vestibule, and another door leads from the vestibule into the second-floor lunchroom. The lunchroom door is usually open, but the first door is kept shut by a closing mechanism on the door. Yet he must have entered the vestibule door before Truly reached the top of the stairwell, since Truly did not see him. Baker said: He [Truly] had already started around the bend to come to the next elevator going up, I was coming out this one on the second floor, and I don't know, I was kind of sweeping this area as I come up, I was looking from right to left and as I got to this door here I caught a glimpse of this man, just, you know, a sudden glimpse All I did was catch a glance at him, and evidently he was--this door might have been, you know, closing and almost shut at that time.
He saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom. Baker stopped at the door of the lunchroom and commanded, "Come here. Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the lunchroom facing Lee Harvey Oswald. In fact, he didn't change his expression one bit. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face.
Truly also noted at this time that Oswald's hands were empty. Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about feet from the corner of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots. Baker's movements were timed with a stopwatch. On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing was 1 minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds. Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner.
He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald's rifle was actually found after the shooting. Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a "fast walk" took 1 minute, 14 seconds. The only interval was the time necessary to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk back to the southeast corner.
Howlett was not short winded at the end of either test run. The time actually required for Baker and Truly to reach the second floor on November 22 was probably longer than in the test runs. For example, Baker required 15 seconds after the simulated shot to ride his motorcycle to feet, park it, and run 45 feet to the building.
That Oswald descended by stairway from the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom is consistent with the movements of the two elevators, which would have provided the other possible means of descent. When Truly, accompanied by Baker, ran to the rear of the first floor, he was certain that both elevators, which occupy the same shaft, were on the fifth floor. Furthermore, no elevator was at the second floor when they arrived there.
There was no elevator on the third or fourth floor. The east elevator was on the fifth floor when they arrived; the west elevator was not. They took the east elevator to the seventh floor and ran up a stairway to the roof where they searched for several minutes.
They had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon. Truly was probably correct in stating that the west elevator was on the fifth floor when he looked up the elevator shaft from the first floor. The west elevator was not on the fifth floor when Baker and Truly reached that floor, probably because Jack Dougherty took it to the first floor while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs or in the lunchroom with Oswald.
Neither elevator could have been used by Oswald as a means of descent. Oswald's use of the stairway is consistent with the testimony of other employees in the building. Three employees-- James Jarman, Jr. They rushed to the west windows after the shots were fired and remained there until after they saw Patrolman Baker's white helmet on the fifth floor moving toward the elevator. In all likelihood Dougherty took the elevator down from the fifth floor after Jarman, Page Norman, and Williams ran to the west windows and were deciding what to do.
None of these three men saw Dougherty, probably because of the anxiety of the moment and because of the books which may have blocked the view. Actually she noticed no one on the back stairs.
If she descended from the fourth to the first floor as fast as she claimed in her testimony, she would have seen Baker or Truly on the first floor or on the stairs, unless they were already in the second-floor lunchroom talking to Oswald. When she reached the first floor, she actually saw Shelley and Lovelady slightly east of the east elevator. Shelley and Lovelady, however, have testified that they were watching the parade from the top step of the building entrance when Gloria Calverly, who works in the Depository Building, ran up and said that the President had been shot.
They reentered the building by the rear door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance? Oswald's departure from building. Reid, clerical supervisor for the Texas School Book Depository, saw him walk through the clerical office on the second floor toward the door leading to the front stairway. Reid had watched the parade from the sidewalk in front of the building with Truly and Mr.
Campbell, vice president of the Depository. As she approached her desk, she saw Oswald. As Oswald passed Mrs. Reid she said, "Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him. The only exit from the office in the direction Oswald was moving was through the door to the front stairway. Reid testified that when she saw Oswald, he was wearing a T-shirt and no jacket. Reid believes that she returned to her desk from the street about 2 minutes after the shooting. Reid ran the distance three times and was timed in 2 minutes by stopwatch.
After leaving Mrs. Reid in the front office, Oswald could have gone down the stairs and out the front door by p. At that time the building had not yet been sealed off by the police. While it was difficult to determine exactly when the police sealed off the building, the earliest estimates would still have permitted Oswald to leave the building by One of the police officers assigned to the corner of Elm and Houston Streets for the Presidential motorcade, W.
Barnett, testified that immediately after the shots he went to the rear of the building to check the fire escape. He then returned to the corner of Elm and Houston where he met a sergeant who instructed him to find out the name of the building.
Barnett ran to the building, noted its name, and then returned to the corner. The sergeant did the same thing at the rear of the building. According to Barnett, "there were people going in and out" during this period. Harkness of the Dallas police said that to his knowledge the building was not sealed off at p.
Sawyer's car was parked in front of the building. Sawyer heard a call over the police radio that the shots had come from the Depository Building. Special Agent Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service, who had been in the motorcade, testified that after driving to Parkland Hospital, he returned to the Depository Building about 20 minutes after the shooting, found no police officers at the rear door and was able to enter through this door without identifying himself.
Truly, who had returned with Patrolman Baker from the roof, saw the police questioning the warehouse employees. Approximately 15 men worked in the warehouse and Truly noticed that Oswald was not among those being questioned.
The address listed was for the Paine home in Irving. Truly gave this information to Captain Fritz who was on the sixth floor at the time. Fritz believed that he learned of Oswald's absence after the rifle was found. Conclusion Fingerprint and palmprint evidence establishes that Oswald handled two of the four cartons next to the window and also handled a paper bag which was found near the cartons.
Oswald was seen in the vicinity of the southeast corner of the sixth floor approximately 35 minutes before the assassination and no one could be found who saw Oswald anywhere else in the building until after the shooting. An eyewitness to the shooting immediately provided a description of the man in the window which was similar to Oswald's actual appearance. This witness identified Oswald in a lineup as the man most nearly resembling the man he saw and later identified Oswald as the man he observed.
Oswald's known actions in the building immediately after the assassination are consistent with his having been at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor at p.
On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that. Oswald, at the time of the assassination, was present at the window from which the shots were fired.
He arrived at approximately 1 p. At Page about p. Tippit, was shot less than 1 mile from Oswald's roominghouse. In deciding whether Oswald killed Patrolman Tippit the Commission considered the following: 1 positive identification of the killer by two eyewitnesses who saw the shooting and seven eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the gunman flee the scene with the revolver in his hand, 2 testimony of firearms identification experts establishing the identity of the murder weapon, 3 evidence establishing the ownership of the murder weapon, 4 evidence establishing the ownership of a zipper jacket found along the path of flight taken by the gunman from the scene of the shooting to the place of arrest.
He probably walked east on Elm Street for seven blocks to the corner of Elm and Murphy where he boarded a bus which was heading back in the direction of the Depository Building, on its way to the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. See Commission Exhibit A, p. When Oswald was apprehended, a bus transfer marked for the Lakewood-Marsalis route was found in his shirt pocket.
On the basis of this punchmark, which was distinctive to each Dallas driver, the transfer was conclusively identified as having been issued by Cecil J. McWatters, a busdriver for the Dallas Transit Co. Paul and Elm Streets at p. So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about two blocks [back] asked for a transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did.
Page The man was on the bus approximately 4 minutes. He picked Oswald from the lineup as the man who had boarded the bus at the "lower end of town on Elm around Houston," and who, during the ride south on Marsalis, had an argument with a woman passenger.
Riding on the bus was an elderly woman, Mary Bledsoe, who confirmed the mute evidence of the transfer. Oswald had rented a room from Mrs. Bledsoe about 6 weeks before, on October 7, but she had asked him to leave at the end of a week.
Bledsoe told him "I am not going to rent to you any more. There was just something about him I didn't like or want him Just didn't want him around me. Bledsoe came downtown to watch the Presidential motorcade. She boarded the Marsalis bus at St. Paul and Elm Streets to return home. Let's see. I don't know for sure. Oswald got on. He looks like a maniac.
His sleeve was out here. His shirt was undone. I didn't want to know I even seen him Hole in his sleeve right here. Bledsoe said these words, she pointed to her fight elbow. Bledsoe identified the shirt as the one Oswald was wearing and she stated she was certain that it was Oswald who boarded the bus. Oswald asked his wife Marina in late March to take several photographs of him posing in their backyard with the rifle and pistol and holding copies of the newspapers The Worker and The Militant.
Marina Oswald testified that Lee told her on April 10, that he had used the rifle earlier that night in an attempt to assassinate retired U.
Oswald escaped, hiding the rifle and retrieving it a day or two later. When she told George what she had just seen, he joked to Lee, "Did you take a pot shot at Walker by any chance? The De Mohrenschildts later found a copy of one of the backyard photographs, autographed on the back with the message "To my friend George from Lee Oswald," in a record album they had loaned to Marina before the De Mohrenschildts moved to Haiti in May The Warren Commission found that in the weeks before the assassination, Oswald kept the rifle wrapped in a blanket and hidden in the garage of friends Michael and Ruth Paine , where Marina was living at the time, and Oswald would occasionally visit.
Michael Paine described "a package wrapped in a blanket," which he thought was camping equipment. He did find this odd, saying to himself "they don't make camping equipment of iron pipes any more. The Commission concluded that Oswald had smuggled the rifle into the Texas School Book Depository on the morning of the assassination, November 22, , in a brown paper package, which he had told a co-worker contained "curtain rods," [19] although Oswald later denied this, and said that he carried only a lunch bag that day.
About half an hour after the assassination of President Kennedy, a floor-by-floor search of the Texas School Book Depository Building was commenced by Dallas police, joined by sheriff's deputies. The two officers who found the rifle — and later Captain Fritz — picked it up by the sling, but did not handle it until the arrival of Lt. Carl Day of the crime scene search section of the identification bureau.
Day then held the rifle by the stock, in one hand, "because it was too rough to hold a fingerprint" and inspected the rifle with a magnifying glass in his other hand. Also found in the same vicinity were three 6. One of the empty cases, CE , was dented in the area of the neck. Ballistic experts testified to the HSCA that this likely occurred when the rifle was rapidly fired and the case was ejected. When four test bullets were fired from the rifle, one of the four had a dented neck on its ejected case similar to CE The rifle was subjected to further forensic examination at the laboratory.
Such a palm print could not be placed on this portion of the rifle when assembled because the wooden foregrip covers the barrel. Police Chief Jesse Curry testified that - despite believing that the FBI had no jurisdiction over the case - he complied with FBI requests to send the rifle and all other evidence to their laboratories in Washington.
He testified that he kept it in the FBI office until November 27, , whereupon it was sent back to Dallas and given back to someone at the Dallas Police Department for reasons unclear. It was later sent back to the FBI headquarters in Washington. Experts agree that palm prints are as unique as fingerprints for purposes of establishing identification. Initially mis-identified as being a German-made Mauser rifle, the Dallas police, upon examination in their lab, determined it to be an Italian-made Carcano.
The Warren Commission concluded that the initial identification of the rifle as a Mauser was in error. The Committee compared photos taken by the Dallas police of the rifle in place, a news film of the rifle being recovered, news photos of the rifle being carried from the Depository, numerous news photos and films of the rifle being carried through the halls of the Dallas police headquarters, as well as photos later taken by the FBI and the Dallas police, and compared them to the Carcano rifle held at the National Archives.
They concluded the rifle depicted in the photos and films was the same rifle held in the Archives and therefore was the Carcano and not a Mauser.
This surplus-sold rifle had the markings: "CAL. The 4-power japanese telescope, made by Ordnance Optics, had been attached to the rifle by the gunsmith at Klein's Sporting Goods, an American retailer, shortly before being sold as a single unit with the surplus rifle, to Oswald.
Joseph D. This bullet CE , see single bullet theory , and two bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine, were ballistically matched to the rifle found in the book depository building. A partial palm print of Oswald was also found on the barrel of the gun. On the morning of November 23, Klein's found the order coupon and shipping record, showing the rifle was ordered by and shipped to "A.
Hidell" at post office box in Dallas, Texas. The handwriting on the order coupon perfectly matched that of Oswald's when compared to his passport application and letters he had written. The Italian Armed Forces Intelligence Agency reported that the rifle with the serial number of C was unique in its records. In , photographic analysis by the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that the rifle in the National Archives was photographically identical, in a number of distinctive marks, to the one found in the book depository and photographed at the time by numerous journalists and the police.
The rifle was also identical in its dimensions to the one seen in the Oswald backyard photos, and both had the same damage mark on the stock.
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald used the revolver to shoot and kill Dallas police officer J. Tippit about forty-five minutes after the assassination when Tippit stopped Oswald on a residential street. On the day Kennedy was killed, Oswald was wearing a shirt of dark blue, grey-black and orange-yellow cotton fibers over a white T-shirt, the same type of fibers that were recovered from the rifle after close examination by experts.
In the crevice between the butt-plate and the wooden stock of the rifle, a tuft of several cotton fibers of dark blue, grey-black and orange-yellow shades were found. During his Marine Corps service in December , Oswald scored a rating of sharpshooter twice achieving 48 and 49 out of 50 shots during rapid fire at a stationary target yards [ m] away using a standard issue M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle , although in May , he qualified as a marksman a lower classification than that of sharpshooter.
Military experts, after examining his records, characterized his firearms proficiency as "above average" and said he was, when compared to American civilian males of his age, "an excellent shot". However, Nelson Delgado, a Marine in the same unit as Oswald, used to laugh at Oswald's shooting prowess and testified that Oswald often got "Maggie's drawers"; meaning a red flag that is waved from the rifle pits to indicate a complete miss of the target during qualification firing.
He also said that Oswald did not seem to care if he missed or not. Skeptics have argued that expert marksmen could not duplicate Oswald's alleged feat in their first try during re-enactments by the Warren Commission and CBS In those tests the marksmen attempted to hit the target three times within 5.
This time span has been heavily disputed. The Warren Commission itself estimated that the time span between the two shots that hit President Kennedy was 4. If the second shot missed assuming the first and third shots hit the president , then 4.
If the first or third shot missed, that would give a minimum time of 7. Many of CBS's 11 volunteer marksmen, who unlike Oswald had no prior experience with a properly "sighted" Carcano, were able to hit the test target two times in under the time allowed.
The only man who scored three hits was a firearms examiner from Maryland by the name of Howard Donahue.
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