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,