THE RIFLE IN THE BUILDING
The Commission has evaluated the evidence tending to show how Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number C2766, was brought into the Depository Building, where it was found on the sixth floor shortly after the assassination. In this connection the Commission considered (1) the circumstances surrounding Oswald’s return to Irving, Tex., on Thursday, November 21, 1963, (2) the disappearance of the rifle from its normal place of storage, (3) Oswald’s arrival at the Depository Building on November 22, carrying a long and bulky brown paper package, (4) the presence of a long handmade brown paper bag near the point from which the shots were fired, and (5) the palmprint, fiber, and paper analyses linking Oswald and the assassination weapon to this bag.
The Curtain Rod Story
During October and November of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald lived in a roominghouse in Dallas while his wife and children lived in Irving, at the home of Ruth Paine,[C4-115] approximately 15 miles from Oswald’s place of work at the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald traveled between Dallas and Irving on weekends in a car driven by a neighbor of the Paines, Buell Wesley Frazier, who also worked at the Depository.[C4-116] Oswald generally would go to Irving on Friday afternoon and return to Dallas Monday morning. According to the testimony of Frazier, Marina Oswald, and Ruth Paine, it appears that Oswald never returned to Irving in midweek prior to November 21, 1963, except on Monday, October 21, when he visited his wife in the hospital after the birth of their second child.[C4-117]
During the morning of November 21, Oswald asked Frazier whether he could ride home with him that afternoon. Frazier, surprised, asked him why he was going to Irving on Thursday night rather than Friday. Oswald replied, “I’m going home to get some curtain rods * * * [to] put in an apartment.”[C4-118] The two men left work at 4:40 p.m. and drove to Irving. There was little conversation between them on the way home.[C4-119] Mrs. Linnie Mae Randle, Frazier’s sister, commented to her brother about Oswald’s unusual midweek return to Irving. Frazier told her that Oswald had come home to get curtain rods.[C4-120]
It would appear, however, that obtaining curtain rods was not the purpose of Oswald’s trip to Irving on November 21. Mrs. A. C. Johnson, his landlady, testified that Oswald’s room at 1026 North Beckley Avenue had curtains and curtain rods,[C4-121] and that Oswald had never discussed the subject with her.[C4-122] In the Paines’ garage, along with many other objects of a household character, there were two flat lightweight curtain rods belonging to Ruth Paine but they were still there on Friday afternoon after Oswald’s arrest.[C4-123] Oswald never asked Mrs. Paine about the use of curtain rods,[C4-124] and Marina Oswald testified that Oswald did not say anything about curtain rods on the day before the assassination.[C4-125] No curtain rods were known to have been discovered in the Depository Building after the assassination.[C4-126] In deciding whether Oswald carried a rifle to work in a long paper bag on November 22, the Commission gave weight to the fact that Oswald gave a false reason for returning home on November 21, and one which provided an excuse for the carrying of a bulky package the following morning.
The Missing Rifle
Before dinner on November 21, Oswald played on the lawn of the Paines’ home with his daughter June.[C4-127] After dinner Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald were busy cleaning house and preparing their children for bed.[C4-128] Between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. they were occupied with the children in the bedrooms located at the extreme east end of the house.[C4-129] On the west end of the house is the attached garage, which can be reached from the kitchen or from the outside.[C4-130] In the garage were the personal belongings of the Oswald family including, as the evidence has shown, the rifle wrapped in the old brown and green blanket.[C4-131]
At approximately 9 p.m., after the children had been put to bed, Mrs. Paine, according to her testimony before the Commission, “went out to the garage to paint some children’s blocks, and worked in the garage for half an hour or so. I noticed when I went out that the light was on.”[C4-132] Mrs. Paine was certain that she had not left the light on in the garage after dinner.[C4-133] According to Mrs. Paine, Oswald had gone to bed by 9 p.m.;[C4-134] Marina Oswald testified that it was between 9 and 10 p.m.[C4-135] Neither Marina Oswald nor Ruth Paine saw Oswald in the garage.[C4-136] The period between 8 and 9 p.m., however, provided ample opportunity for Oswald to prepare the rifle for his departure the next morning. Only if disassembled could the rifle fit into the paper bag found near the window[C4-137] from which the shots were fired. A firearms expert with the FBI assembled the rifle in 6 minutes using a 10-cent coin as a tool, and he could disassemble it more rapidly.[C4-138] While the rifle may have already been disassembled when Oswald arrived home on Thursday, he had ample time that evening to disassemble the rifle and insert it into the paper bag.
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.” Marina Oswald testified that at that time “My heart dropped. 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 did not unroll the blanket. She saw that it was in its usual position and it appeared to her to have something inside.[C4-139]
Soon afterward, at about 3 p.m., police officers arrived and searched the house. Mrs. Paine pointed out that most of the Oswalds’ possessions were in the garage.[C4-140] With Ruth Paine acting as an interpreter, Detective Rose asked Marina whether her husband had a rifle. Mrs. Paine, who had no knowledge of the rifle, first said “No,” but when the question was translated, Marina Oswald replied “Yes.”[C4-141] She pointed to the blanket which was on the floor very close to where Ruth Paine was standing. Mrs. 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. * * *[C4-142]
Mrs. Paine had the actual blanket before her as she testified and she indicated that the blanket hung limp in the officer’s hand.[C4-143] Marina Oswald testified that this was her first knowledge that the rifle was not in its accustomed place.[C4-144]
The Long and Bulky Package
On the morning of November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald left the Paine house in Irving at approximately 7:15 a.m., while Marina Oswald was still in bed.[C4-145] Neither she nor Mrs. Paine saw him leave the house.[C4-146] About half-a-block away from the Paine house was the residence of Mrs. Linnie Mae Randle, the sister of the man with whom Oswald drove to work—Buell Wesley Frazier. Mrs. 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.”[C4-147] Oswald gripped the bag in his right hand near the top. “It tapered like this as he hugged it in his hand. It was * * * more bulky toward the bottom” than toward the top.[C4-148] She then opened the kitchen door and saw Oswald open the right rear door of her brother’s car and place the package in the back of the car.[C4-149] Mrs. Randle estimated that the package was approximately 28 inches long and about 8 inches wide.[C4-150] She thought that its color was similar to that of the bag found on the sixth floor of the School Book Depository after the assassination.[C4-151]
Comission Exhibit No. 1304
C2766 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and paper bag found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Frazier met Oswald at the kitchen door and together they walked to the car.[C4-152] After entering the car, Frazier glanced over his shoulder and noticed a brown paper package on the back seat. He asked, “What’s the package, Lee?” Oswald replied, “curtain rods.”[C4-153] Frazier told the Commission “* * * the main reason he was going over there that Thursday afternoon when he was to bring back some curtain rods, so I didn’t think any more about it when he told me that.”[C4-154] Frazier estimated that the bag was 2 feet long “give and take a few inches,” and about 5 or 6 inches wide.[C4-155] As they sat in the car, Frazier asked Oswald where his lunch was, and Oswald replied that he was going to buy his lunch that day.[C4-156] Frazier testified that Oswald carried no lunch bag that day. “When he rode with me, I say he always brought lunch except that one day on November 22 he didn’t bring his lunch that day.”[C4-157]
Frazier parked the car in the company parking lot about 2 blocks north of the Depository Building. 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.[C4-158] When Frazier entered the building, he did not see Oswald.[C4-159] One employee, Jack Dougherty, believed that he saw Oswald coming to work, but he does not remember that Oswald had anything in his hands as he entered the door.[C4-160] No other employee has been found who saw Oswald enter that morning.[C4-161]
In deciding whether Oswald carried the assassination weapon in the bag which Frazier and Mrs. 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,[C4-162] whereas the wooden stock of the rifle, which is its largest component, measured 34.8 inches.[C4-163] The bag found on the sixth floor was 38 inches long.[C4-164] (See Commission Exhibit No. 1304, [p. 132].) 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 * * * but when I did look at it he did have his hands on the package like that,”[C4-165] 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.[C4-166] Moreover, in an interview on December 1, 1963, with agents of the FBI, Frazier had marked the point on the back seat of his car which he believed was where the bag reached when it was laid on the seat with one edge against the door. The distance between the point on the seat and the door was 27 inches.[C4-167]
Mrs. 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.”[C4-168] And she folded the bag to a length of about 28½ inches. Frazier doubted whether the bag that Oswald carried was as wide as the bag found on the sixth floor,[C4-169] although Mrs. Randle testified that the width was approximately the same.[C4-170]
The Commission has weighed the visual recollection of Frazier and Mrs. 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. Mrs. 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.”[C4-171] Frazier’s view of the bag was from the rear. He continually advised that he was not paying close attention.[C4-172] For example, he said,
* * * 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.[C4-173]
Frazier could easily have been mistaken when he stated that Oswald held the bottom of the bag cupped in his hand with the upper end tucked into his armpit.
Location of Bag
A handmade bag of wrapping paper and tape[C4-174] was found in the southeast corner of the sixth floor alongside the window from which the shots were fired.[C4-175] (See Commission Exhibit No. 2707, [p. 142].) 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. C2766, which was also found on the sixth floor.[C4-176] Three cartons had been placed at the window apparently to act as a gun rest and a fourth carton was placed behind those at the window.[C4-177] (See Commission Exhibit No. 1301, [p. 138].) 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.[C4-178] (See Commission Exhibit No. 723, [p. 80].) 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. Lt. J. C. Day.”[C4-179]
Scientific Evidence Linking Rifle and Oswald to Paper Bag
Oswald’s fingerprint and palmprint found on bag.—Using a standard chemical method involving silver nitrates[C4-180] the FBI Laboratory developed a latent palmprint and latent fingerprint on the bag. (See app. X, [p. 565].) Sebastian F. Latona, supervisor of the FBI’s Latent Fingerprint Section, identified these prints as the left index fingerprint and right palmprint of Lee Harvey Oswald.[C4-181] The portion of the palm which was identified was the heel of the right palm, i.e., the area near the wrist, on the little finger side.[C4-182] These prints were examined independently by Ronald G. Wittmus of the FBI,[C4-183] and by Arthur Mandella, a fingerprint expert with the New York City Police Department.[C4-184] Both concluded that the prints were the right palm and left index finger of Lee Oswald. No other identifiable prints were found on the bag.[C4-185]
Oswald’s palmprint on the bottom of the paper bag indicated, of course, that he had handled 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.[C4-186] The palmprint was found on the closed end of the bag. It was from Oswald’s right hand, in which he carried the long package as he walked from Frazier’s car to the building.[C4-187]
Materials used to make bag.—On the day of the assassination, the Dallas police obtained a sample of wrapping paper and tape from the shipping room of the Depository and forwarded it to the FBI Laboratory in Washington.[C4-188] James C. 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 * * * the bag * * * and the paper sample * * * were the same.”[C4-189]
Among other tests, the paper and tape were submitted to fiber analysis and spectrographic examination.[C4-190] In addition the tape was compared to determine whether the sample tape and the tape on the bag had been taken from the tape dispensing machine at the Depository. When asked to explain the similarity of characteristics, Cadigan stated:[C4-191]
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 on the surface of the fiber, the texture of the fiber, the felting pattern * * *
* * * * *
I found that the paper sack found on the sixth floor * * * and the sample * * * had the same observable characteristics both under the microscope and all the visual tests that I could conduct.
* * * * *
The papers I also found were similar in fiber composition, therefore, in addition to the visual characteristics, microscopic and UV [ultra violet] characteristics.
Mr. 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, 1963.[C4-192]
On December 1, 1963, a replica bag was made from materials found on that date in the shipping room. 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.[C4-193] Cadigan found that the paper used to make this replica sack had different characteristics from the paper in the original bag.[C4-194] The science of paper analysis enabled him to distinguish between different rolls of paper even though they were produced by the same manufacturer.[C4-195]
Since the Depository normally used approximately one roll of paper every 3 working days,[C4-196] it was not surprising that the replica sack made on December 1, 1963, had different characteristics from both the actual bag and the sample taken on November 22. 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.[C4-197]
Fibers in paper bag matched fibers in blanket.—When Paul M. 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.[C4-198] The blanket in which the rifle was stored was composed of brown and green cotton, viscose and woolen fibers.[C4-199]
The single brown viscose fiber found in the bag matched some of the brown viscose fibers from the blanket in all observable characteristics.[C4-200] The green cotton fibers found in the paper bag matched some of the green cotton fibers in the blanket “in all observable microscopic characteristics.”[C4-201] Despite these matches, however, Stombaugh was unable to render an opinion that the fibers which he found in the bag had probably come from the blanket, because other types of fibers present in the blanket were not found in the bag. He concluded:
All I would say here is that it is possible that these fibers could have come from this blanket, because this blanket is composed of brown and green woolen fibers, brown and green delustered viscose fibers, and brown and green cotton fibers. * * * 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.[C4-202]
Stombaugh confirmed that the rifle could have picked up fibers from the blanket and transferred them to the paper bag.[C4-203] In light of the other evidence linking Lee Harvey Oswald, the blanket, and the rifle to the paper bag found on the sixth floor, the Commission considered Stombaugh’s testimony of probative value in deciding whether Oswald carried the rifle into the building in the paper bag.