DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
BOTH [Buell Wesley Frazier and Linnie Mae Randle] confirmed that the bag found on the sixth floor after the assassination generally looked like the bag they saw Lee Harvey Oswald carrying on 11/22/63.
RICHARD VAN NOORD SAID:
A patent lie, David. So now we're resorting to a complete lie to make the case? Typical. They said the package was no more than two feet in length and carried with a cupped hand under the armpit.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In the 1964 motion picture "Four Days In November", Linnie Mae Randle said the package was "approximately two-and-a-half feet long" [see audio file linked below]. That's 30 inches, just a mere 8 inches shorter than the actual length of the package.
Plus -- There's the fact that both the top and the bottom ends of the bag were quite possibly "folded" in some manner as Oswald carried the bag. At least the top of the bag was "folded", per Frazier. (See later discussion in this post regarding Wesley Frazier's November 22nd affidavit, which involves information concerning the bag's "folds".)
Also -- Randle, in her Warren Commission testimony, said that the bag she saw Oswald carrying was about "27 inches" long. And 27 inches is, of course (just like her "2-and-a-half feet" estimate from the movie "Four Days"), more than two feet, which makes your above statement of "no more than two feet in length" incorrect (with respect to the estimates of the bag's length made by Linnie Randle).
Also from Randle's Warren Commission session:
JOE BALL -- "You figure about 2 feet long, is that right?"
LINNIE MAE RANDLE -- "A little bit more."
------------------
You might also be interested in this 11/22/63 FBI Report written by James Bookhout [which can also be seen in Commission Document No. 5], which states that Linnie Mae saw Oswald put "a long brown package, approximately
3 feet by 6 inches, in the back seat area" of her brother's Chevrolet sedan.
"3 feet" = 36 inches. The sixth-floor bag was 38 inches long. (And the lengthiest section of Lee Oswald's Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was 34.8 inches long when it was broken down.)
So, who's telling lies now, Richard Van Noord? Or don't you even know what these witnesses said?
Wesley Frazier told the Warren Commission:
"I just roughly estimate and that would be around two feet, give and take [sic] a few inches."
Via Frazier's 11/22/63 affidavit, we find something interesting regarding the bag's length too:
"Before I got in the car, I glanced in the back seat, and saw a big sack. It must have been about 2 feet long, and the top of the sack was sort of folded up, and the rest of the sack had been kind of folded under. I asked Lee what was in the sack, and he said "curtain rods", and I remembered that he had told me the day before that he was going to bring some curtain rods."
The intriguing part of the above affidavit, IMO, is:
"The top of the sack was sort of folded up, and the rest of the sack had been kind of folded under."
Therefore, Frazier is saying via his affidavit comments made on the very same day he saw Oswald with the paper bag that the "2-foot"-long bag had at least one of its ends "folded" in some fashion, which would certainly make the overall length of the bag longer when the bag is completely unfolded.
Frazier's other "folded" remark in his affidavit is a bit more ambiguous and hard to figure out.....
"And the rest of the sack had been kind of folded under."
The "folded under" comment could indicate the bottom being "folded under", I suppose. But it would seem he's referring to the bulk of the LENGTH of the bag in that "folded under" comment. I'm not quite sure.
But that could also explain why Frazier said that the full width of the bag looked too wide when he was shown the unfolded bag by the Warren Commission. If the WHOLE bag, for the most part, had been "folded under" itself in some fashion, then when Frazier saw Oswald with the bag on November 22, the bag would obviously have looked NOT AS WIDE in Frazier's eyes.
The above "folded" comments in Wes Frazier's November 22nd affidavit seem to have been overlooked by many conspiracy theorists who are bent on clearing dear, sweet Lee Harvey of the Presidential murder he so obviously committed with the object that was stuffed inside that paper bag (with multiple "folds") that he put in Frazier's car on the morning of November 22, 1963.
BTW, a man who is 5'9" tall can't fit a 27-inch object (or a 24-inch object) under his armpit while also cupping it in his hand (unless he's got monkeys for close relatives). So, the Randle/Frazier estimates as to the length of the package they saw are almost certainly wrong--even from a "conspiracy" POV.
In other words, Frazier can't possibly be exactly correct about BOTH things -- i.e., "under the armpit and cupped in his right hand" AND "roughly about two feet long" (via his WC testimony).*
Both of those things cannot be 100% true. But CTers like to think that Frazier's and Randle's bag-length estimates ARE, indeed, spot-on accurate.
* 2018 INTERJECTION....
For the record....
Allow me to correct what I said earlier about a 5-foot-9 man not being able to wedge a 2-foot object under his armpit while cupping it in his hand at the same time. I'm just under 5-9, and I can ALMOST do it. It comes out to 23 inches on me. Ray Mitcham [on The Education Forum] said he's 5-9 and it came out to 24 inches on him (which I can, indeed, accept).
But a 27-inch object? No way.
So even staunch CTers should admit that BOTH the famous "27-inch" measurement given by Linnie Randle AND the famous "armpit & cupped in the hand" scenario painted by Buell Frazier cannot BOTH be exactly accurate.
And I'm fully willing to eat some crow and say "I was wrong" when it comes to my earlier remark (from 2007), when I said a 24-inch object could not be wedged in the armpit by a 5-foot-9 man. That was, indeed, an incorrect statement (based on Ray Mitcham's test that he performed today [March 19, 2018]).
However, on a "27 inch" object, I stand firm. That couldn't have been done by the 5-foot-9 Oswald.
[End 2018 Interjection.]
And isn't it funny that the empty 6th-Floor bag just happened to have the RIGHT PALMPRINT of Lee Oswald on it....perfectly matching the way Wes Frazier said Oswald carried the bag "cupped in his right hand".
The "under the armpit" observation of Frazier's was obviously a mistake....and he said so, under oath:
VINCENT BUGLIOSI (during the 1986 Docu-Trial in London) -- "Did you recall how he [LHO] was carrying the bag?"
BUELL WESLEY FRAZIER -- "Yes sir. He was carrying it parallel to his body."
BUGLIOSI -- "Okay, so he carried the bag right next to his body....on the right side?"
FRAZIER -- "Yes sir. On the right side."
BUGLIOSI -- "Was it cupped in his hand and under his armpit? I think you've said that in the past."
FRAZIER -- "Yes sir."
BUGLIOSI -- "Mr. Frazier, is it true that you paid hardly any attention to this bag?"
FRAZIER -- "That is true."
BUGLIOSI -- "So the bag could have been protruding out in front of his body, and you wouldn't have been able to see it, is that correct?"
FRAZIER -- "That is true."
------------------
And now a passage from Vince Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History":
"Frazier's statements that the rifle was tucked under Oswald's armpit is hardly as definitive as the critics claim. While Frazier's description of how Oswald carried the rifle was consistent in all of his statements to investigators, it was clearly inferable from his Warren Commission testimony that this was only an assumption on his part based on his limited view.
"Frazier told the Commission that "the only time" he saw the way Oswald was carrying the package was from the back, and that all that was visible was "just a little strip [of the package] running down" along the inside of Oswald's arm. ....
"Since he could only see this small portion of the package under Oswald's right arm, and because he didn't notice any part of the package sticking above his right shoulder...Frazier assumed that it must have been tucked under his armpit, telling the Commission, "I don't see how you could have it anywhere other than under your armpit."
"Although the critics have been quick to embrace Frazier's conclusion, it should be repeated that he told the Commission over and over (no less than five separate times) that he didn't pay much attention to the package or to the way Oswald carried it. ....
"In other words, and understandably, Frazier was confused. So we don't even know, for sure, how Oswald was carrying the rifle in front of his body, which Frazier could not see. At the London trial [in 1986] I asked Frazier, "So the bag could have been protruding out in front of his body and you wouldn't have been able to see it?" and he responded, "That's true."
"The most likely scenario was postulated well by Dan Rather [of CBS News in 1967], who rhetorically told his audience, "You can decide whether Frazier, walking some fifty feet behind and, in his own words, not paying much attention, might have missed the few inches of the narrow end of such a package sticking up past Oswald's shoulder"." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 409-410 of "Reclaiming History" (Via the Endnotes on CD-ROM)(c.2007)
------------------
Anyway, my earlier comment, which was.....
"And BOTH [Randle/Frazier] confirmed that the bag found on the 6th Floor after the assassination generally looked like the bag they saw Oz carrying on 11/22."
.....wasn't referring to the exact LENGTH of the sixth-floor bag (quite obviously). I was referring to the TYPE and GENERAL LOOK of the brown paper bag (CE142) that was shown to Frazier and Randle by the Warren Commission.
Frazier, in his usual confused, odd, and hard-to-understand way of expressing himself, told the WC that the color of the bag Oswald carried closely matched the color of the replica bag made by the FBI for general identification purposes (CE364).
And Frazier said that the untreated and lighter portion of CE142 (the actual Sniper's-Nest bag) "could have been, and it couldn't have been" similar to the color of the bag he saw in the back seat of his car on the morning of November 22nd.
So, once again, we're forced to try and figure out some of Wesley Frazier's rather odd phraseology. But the words "could have been" are certainly in there. So use your proverbial grain of salt here, as we should do with all of Frazier's testimony to a certain extent, especially when he starts to talk in strange ways, which he often did in front of the Warren Commission.
------------------
Now, with respect to Linnie Mae Randle's testimony regarding the general look and color of the paper bag [at 2 H 249]:
JOE BALL -- "Looking at this part of the bag which has not been discolored, does that appear similar to the color of the bag you saw Lee carrying that morning?"
LINNIE MAE RANDLE -- "Yes; it is a heavy type of wrapping paper."
------------------
I'll offer up this common-sense question once again, because it's worth repeating numerous times:
I wonder what the odds are of Lee Oswald having carried a DIFFERENT brown bag into work from the one WITH HIS TWO IDENTIFIABLE PRINTS ON IT that was found by the cops in the Sniper's Nest on the 6th Floor?
Care to guess at what those odds might be? They must be close to "O.J. DNA" type numbers (in favor of the empty brown bag that was found by the police on the 6th Floor of the Book Depository being the very same bag that Buell Wesley Frazier and Linnie Mae Randle saw in Lee Harvey Oswald's hands on the morning of November 22, 1963).
I'm eagerly awaiting the logical and believable conspiracy-slanted explanation that will answer the question of why a 38-inch empty paper bag (which could house Oswald's 34.8-inch disassembled rifle [see the comparison photo below]), which was an empty bag with Oswald's fingerprints on it, was in the place where it was found after the assassination (the sixth-floor Sniper's Nest) and yet still NOT have Lee Oswald present at that sniper's window on 11/22/63.
I, for one, cannot think of a single "Oswald Is Innocent" explanation for that empty paper sack being where it was found after the assassination of John Kennedy....AND with Oswald's fingerprints on it.
David Von Pein
October 2007
March 2018
MORE “PAPER BAG” DISCUSSION....
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I think it's quite possible that the police officers who later said they did not see any paper bag on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building might have actually physically seen the bag on the floor but simply didn't associate it with "evidence" in the JFK case.
Maybe they thought it was merely a piece of trash lying in the corner (akin to the many cigarette butts that were littering the TSBD floorboards; and I don't think every one of those cigarette butts was retrieved as "evidence" by the Dallas Police Department), and therefore even though some of those officers (the ones who stood right in the Sniper's Nest itself) must have caught at least a glimpse of the bag, it was something that just didn't register in their minds as anything of importance that they should retain in their memory.
We must also remember that the bag was not found directly underneath the sniper's window. It was found east of the window, as indicated in Commission Exhibit No. 1302.
According to Dallas Police Detective Robert Studebaker, who saw the paper bag lying on the floor before he himself picked it up, the bag was located "in the southeast corner of the building, in the far southeast corner, as far as you can get is where it was" [Studebaker; WC Testimony; at 7 H 144].
Studebaker also testified [at 7 H 143-144] that when he saw and picked up the bag (or "sack") in the corner of the sixth floor, it was "folded" and "doubled over".
And according to DPD Officer Marvin Johnson [at 7 H 103], the bag he saw in the corner was "folded and then refolded. It was a fairly small package":
-----------------------
JOSEPH BALL -- "Now, did you at any time see any paper sack around there?"
ROBERT L. STUDEBAKER -- "Yes sir."
MR. BALL -- "Where?"
MR. STUDEBAKER -- "Storage room there—in the southeast corner of the building—folded."
[Later...]
MR. BALL -- "Does that sack show in any of the pictures you took?"
MR. STUDEBAKER -- "No; it doesn't show in any of the pictures."
MR. BALL -- "Was it near the window?"
MR. STUDEBAKER -- "Yes, sir."
MR. BALL -- "Which way from the window?"
MR. STUDEBAKER -- "It was east of the window."
MR. BALL -- "Over in the corner?"
MR. STUDEBAKER -- "Over in the corner—in the southeast corner of the building, in the far southeast corner, as far as you can get is where it was." [Emphasis added by DVP.]
[...]
DAVID BELIN -- "Did you find anything else up in the southeast corner of the sixth floor? We have talked about the rifle, we have talked about the shells, we have talked about the chicken bones and the lunch sack and the pop bottle by that second pair of windows. Anything else?"
MARVIN JOHNSON -- "Yes, sir. We found this brown paper sack or case. It was made out of heavy wrapping paper. Actually, it looked similar to the paper that those books was [sic] wrapped in. It was just a long narrow paper bag."
MR. BELIN -- "Where was this found?"
MR. JOHNSON -- "Right in the corner of the building."
MR. BELIN -- "On what floor?"
MR. JOHNSON -- "Sixth floor."
MR. BELIN -- "Which corner?"
MR. JOHNSON -- "Southeast corner."
MR. BELIN -- "Do you know who found it?"
MR. JOHNSON -- "I know that the first I saw of it, L.D. Montgomery, my partner, picked it up off the floor*, and it was folded up, and he unfolded it."
MR. BELIN -- "When it was folded up, was it folded once or refolded?"
MR. JOHNSON -- "It was folded and then refolded. It was a fairly small package." [Emphasis added by DVP.]
-----------------------
* This part of Marvin Johnson's testimony conflicts with that of L.D. Montgomery. Montgomery testified [at 7 H 98] that it was Detective Studebaker who physically picked the bag up off of the floor.
There are other possible explanations for why some of the officers did not notice the bag, such as:
They weren't in a position to see the bag at all (which would certainly be the explanation for those officers who never actually stepped INSIDE the Sniper's Nest area itself prior to the bag being picked up on 11/22/63).
Or:
Perhaps some of the policemen in question just simply weren't as observant as other officers, and for one reason or another they missed seeing the paper bag in the far southeast corner of the 6th floor.
But there's ample testimony from multiple other police officers who said they did see the bag to indicate that the paper bag (CE142) was most definitely found on the sixth floor of the Depository on November 22nd.
Do conspiracy theorists really think all of these officers were lying when they each testified that they saw the bag on the 6th floor?:
J.C. Day [4 H 267].
L.D. Montgomery [7 H 97].
Marvin Johnson [7 H 103].
Robert Studebaker [7 H 143-144].
PAT SPEER SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Why you're saying "all of them" missed seeing the paper bag is mystifying (and just dead wrong too). I already linked to the testimony of FOUR different DPD officers who said the bag was there. And I think there are 2 others who said they saw it too.
Plus....
I haven't checked every officer's testimony in this regard, but let me repeat something I said in my last post (which certainly might apply to several officers):
Isn't it possible that some of the officers who said they didn't see the bag simply were never in a position to see the bag at all? Maybe some of those officers were at least partially blocked out by the Sniper's Nest boxes, so they didn't have a good view of the far southeast corner.
Plus, according to Marvin Johnson, the bag was folded over TWICE, not just once, which made it (per Johnson) "a fairly small package".
Shouldn't those two things I just mentioned at least be considered as possible explanations for why more people failed to see the bag that 4 to 6 other officers absolutely confirmed WAS there on 11/22/63?
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
Important Paper Bag Addendum....
On October 22, 2019, Patrick Jackson (in this post at Duncan MacRae's JFK Assassination Forum) noticed something in one of the original DPD photographs taken on the sixth floor of the Book Depository on 11/22/63 that apparently nobody else had ever noticed prior to that time in 2019. Jackson noticed that the empty paper bag (which became Commission Exhibit No. 142, as well as CE626) was actually visible in this picture (also seen below) which shows the boxes around the sixth-floor Sniper's Nest.
The paper bag, with its creases and folds plainly visible, is sitting on top of some of the Sniper's Nest boxes. I've drawn a blue box around the paper bag, which has been, quite literally, hiding in plain sight for over 50 years:
And here's an extra-large zoomed-in version of the photo, produced in 2019 by Patrick Jackson, highlighting the paper bag on top of the boxes (click to enlarge):
The Warren Commission utilized the above photograph showing the outside of the Sniper's Nest as Commission Exhibit No. 508 and Commission Exhibit No. 723. And the back side of the original photograph taken by the Dallas Police Department indicates that that photo was taken on "11-22-63" on "6th floor, 411 Elm, SE Corner where shots fired from window".
And here's another high-quality version of the very same photo (from the Dallas Municipal Archives). Click for a bigger view:
So, the above 11/22/63 photo showing an empty paper bag sitting atop boxes which are bordering the Sniper's Nest (which is a location just a few feet from where the police originally discovered the folded-up paper sack) is providing pretty good evidence for CE142 being a legitimate and valid piece of evidence in the JFK murder case.
Because if there was never any paper bag found near the Sniper's Nest at all on November 22nd, as many CTers claim, then how can they explain the presence of what certainly looks like the CE142 bag sitting on top of those SN boxes on November 22?
After looking at the above picture, will conspiracists now contend that the evil DPD cops decided to haul their "fake" paper bag back up to the sixth floor and place it atop the Sniper's Nest boxes?
But if the evil Dallas cops did something like that, why in the world wouldn't they have wanted to take a photograph of the fake bag in the place where they say it was originally discovered (the far southeast corner, on the floor)?
In my opinion, the above photo of the bag creates quite a problem for the many conspiracy theorists who currently reside in the "There Was Never Any Paper Bag Found On The Sixth Floor On November 22nd" club.
BENJAMIN COLE SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Nonsense. It's the SIZE and the SHAPE of the paper bag that's the key (of course). How many hunks of TSBD wrapping paper shaped like the one on top of those boxes do you think were in the building at that moment on 11/22?
The likely answer to that question is: 1 (which is the same one Lee Oswald brought to work in Buell Frazier's car that morning).
TOM GRAM SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The DPD didn't "make up" anything. The bag was first found folded up and on the floor near the pipes in the far southeast corner of the sixth floor. It was then picked up and unfolded and placed on the boxes surrounding the Sniper's Nest. It was then photographed by the DPD (with that photo later becoming CE508).
But, of course, the purpose of the CE508 photograph was most certainly not an effort to document the paper bag. (That's fairly obvious, seeing as how nobody on Earth even noticed that the bag was sitting on top of those boxes until 56 years later.) The bag just happened to show up (just barely) in one of the crime scene photos.
CHARLES BLACKMON SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Of course it looks bigger that the estimates provided by Frazier and Randle. That's because it IS bigger than those incorrect 24-to-27-inch estimates.** It's really a 38-inch bag (when unfolded and fully extended).
** Linnie Mae Randle, however, did provide this "36-inch" estimate to the FBI on the very same day of the assassination [also available to view in Commission Document No. 5]. She apparently revised that "3 feet" estimate later on and decided the bag was only about 27 inches in length.
CHARLES BLACKMON SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I agree with you about Buell Wesley Frazier with respect to his observations about the way Lee Oswald was carrying the package. Buell is not a good witness in that regard. At the 1986 mock trial, Frazier admits that the bag could have been "protruding" out in front of LHO's body, but in other interviews he insists that the package HAD to be under Lee's armpit AND cupped in his right hand.
So, you're right, he's not a good (or reliable) witness to that part of the day's events. He has, in effect, admitted that he really has no idea just how Oswald was carrying the package as he walked toward the TSBD on 11/22.
GREG DOUDNA SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
If Lee Oswald really did have curtain rods in his large paper package on Nov. 22, then why did Lee tell this lie to Captain Fritz? ....
"I asked him [Lee Oswald] if he had told Buell Wesley Frazier why he had gone home a different night, and if he had told him anything about bringing back some curtain rods. He denied it." -- Captain Will Fritz' written report [Warren Report; Page 604]
So, you're going to try to convince people that LHO really did have curtain rods in that package on 11/22, but he then deliberately LIES to the police after he's arrested concerning that very thing---whether he did or did not bring curtain rods into the building?!
Come on! Let's not allow all common sense to go sliding down the drain here!
Or am I supposed to believe that Captain Fritz was the real liar in the above quote from his report?
And if you think that Fritz was actually the person telling tall tales about the curtain rods, instead of Mr. Oswald being the liar, then you also have no choice but to add FBI agent James Bookhout to your Liars List in this regard as well. Because Bookhout, in this 11/23/63 FBI report, said he also heard Oswald denying all knowledge of any curtain rods:
"He [LHO] denied telling Wesley Frazier that the purpose of his visit to Irving, Texas, on the night of November 21, 1963, was to obtain some curtain rods from Mrs. Ruth Paine." -- James W. Bookhout
GREG DOUDNA SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thanks for your post above, Greg. It's refreshing to hear a conspiracy believer utter the words "I do not have a good answer to it" when talking about a particular sub-topic associated with JFK's assassination. Thank you for admitting that.
In putting myself in the shoes of the CTers who believe in Oswald's innocence, I've been straining my brain today trying to come up with some kind of at least halfway logical and semi-sensible reason for why an innocent Lee Harvey Oswald, if he really had brought some curtain rods with him to work on Nov. 22 (instead of bringing his Carcano rifle to work with him that morning), would have had any desire at all to want to tell the police after his arrest that he hadn't brought any curtain rods into the TSBD Building on that day.
And I'm coming up blank. Because I can't understand why Oswald (via the scenario in which he really did take curtain rods to work instead of his rifle) would have thought it was actually better for him to tell a lie to the cops about the curtain rods instead of simply telling Fritz & Company the truth about the rods (and the associated reason for why Oswald decided to not take those rods with him when he left the building at approximately 12:33 PM on 11/22, which seems to me would be another sticky problem for conspiracists to reconcile in a scenario which has Oswald totally innocent of shooting the President).
The chronology of Captain Fritz' interrogations of Oswald, per Fritz' written report, indicates that the "curtain rod" subject (and Oswald's denial of all knowledge of that topic) occurred during the interrogation session on Saturday (November 23) at 10:25 AM. And by that time on Saturday, of course, Oswald had already been officially charged with JFK's murder and Officer Tippit's slaying.
So when Oswald denied all knowledge of the curtain rods, he certainly knew the full reasons for why he was being held in custody by the DPD, which makes any "curtain rods" denial coming from an innocent Lee Oswald all the more perplexing. For Lee certainly didn't think that possession of an innocuous and harmless item like curtain rods on the day of the President's visit to Dallas would (or could) be looked upon as something suspicious that he would want to hide from the authorities. Right? Right. So what would be his incentive for denying any knowledge of the curtain rods story?
The answer to my last question is, in my opinion, very simple and very logical (after weighing the sum total of evidence in the JFK case). But the answer comes from my perspective as a "Lone Assassin" advocate, instead of coming from an "Oswald Didn't Shoot Anybody" point-of-view:
Oswald's incentive for denying that he said anything to Wesley Frazier about "curtain rods" was:
Mr. Oswald was (quite obviously, IMO) attempting to distance himself from that large paper package as much as he could because he knew that that package contained the rifle that he used to shoot President Kennedy.
PAT SPEER SAID (VIA AN E-MAIL DISCUSSION):
Please present any evidence you have suggesting that those first on the scene saw the bag and dismissed it as trash. It seems clear you just made that up.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I have no direct evidence relating to my "trash" comment. It's merely guesswork on my part. (And please don't tell me I shouldn't ever rely on "guesswork", because virtually every single thing that conspiracy theorists do regarding their analysis of the JFK case revolves largely around that very word—"guesswork". Without guesswork, in fact, CTers might as well pack up and go home, because they'd have nothing to pin their hopes on without relying on "guesswork" and "gut feelings", and everybody here knows it.)
Actually, I think my "trash" theory makes quite a bit of (common) sense. The notion that some of the officers could have merely thought the twice-folded-up paper bag that was resting in the farthest reaches of the dusty and dirty sixth floor's southeast corner was simply a piece of discarded trash lying in that corner makes a great deal of sense to me.
Plus, some officers who might have caught a glimpse of the bag might not have even realized it was a "paper bag" at all, seeing as how it had been folded up twice (per the testimony of Police Officer Marvin Johnson), thus reducing its size considerably as it lay in the corner. Johnson testified that the package he saw in the southeast corner was "a fairly small package".
Also....
Another possible answer to the "mystery" as to why some officers never saw the bag at all could be because those officers were simply never in a proper position within (or near) the Sniper's Nest itself to have seen the paper bag in the first place.
In offering up these various "Paper Bag" scenarios, I'm just trying to present some possible non-sinister and non-conspiratorial reasons to explain why we have one group of police officers who said they did see something on the sixth floor, while another group of officers said they didn't see it.
And if some of the members of that second group had actually seen the bag but failed at the time to associate the "fairly small package" with the crime scene, and instead had merely thought it was a piece of paper debris that had been swept into the far southeast corner, then that could (IMO) certainly account for some of the confusion revolving around the testimony of the various witnesses concerning the paper bag.
PAT SPEER SAID:
Those arriving on the scene before its discovery said they saw no such thing ["trash"] and those claiming to have discovered it said it was out in the open covering much of the open floor by the boxes, where anyone inspecting the boxes or looking out the window would have seen it. It’s a mystery.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The things you just said about the bag being "out in the open" and "covering much of the open floor by the boxes" are things that are totally contradicted by two of the officers who said they definitely did see the paper bag on the 6th floor:
MR. STUDEBAKER -- "Over in the corner—in the southeast corner of the building, in the far southeast corner, as far as you can get is where it was."
MR. JOHNSON -- "It was folded and then refolded. It was a fairly small package. .... That sack was right in the corner. .... I would say that the sack was folded up here and it was east of the pipes in the corner."
That doesn't sound to me like Studebaker or Johnson saw the bag "out in the open".
Also....
Can anyone explain to me how the following four Dallas Police Department officers could have seen a brown paper object in the southeast corner of the sixth floor that was never ever there? ....
Robert Studebaker, L.D. Montgomery, J.C. Day, and Marvin Johnson.
PAT SPEER SAID:
It seems apparent you don't know the record, David.
None of the witnesses who saw the sniper's nest before the arrival of Day and Studebaker recalled seeing the bag in the corner, even though the official story has the bag covering most of the open space by the so-called seat box, and at least three of these witnesses--Mooney, McCurley, and Fritz, actually stood in the SN within a foot or so of where the bag was supposedly discovered.
As far as witnesses claiming they saw it, they were all brought forth by Belin after he realized none of the first witnesses remembered anything about the bag. Most notoriously, he dredged up two motorcycle officers whose recollections were so meaningless to the investigation that they were never even asked to write a report on what they saw that day.
And yet, somehow, after going 0 for 7 or 8 or whatever, Belin suddenly coughs up two previously uninterviewed witnesses with foggy recollections of maybe seeing a bag.
It's clear from this--crystal clear--that he put out an APB... "Hello!! Will anyone testify to seeing that freaking bag?" and that he found but two takers.
The other supposed bag witnesses were either involved in its supposed discovery, or blurry headed and clearly incorrect in much of their testimony, like Sims.
And it's worse than that. On my website, I run through the evolution of the statements of Montgomery, Johnson, Studebaker, and Day, and show how they are contradictory and not remotely credible.
I also show how at least one print on the bag was disappeared from the record and how the Warren Commission itself lied about the locations of the prints on the bag.
It's a minefield.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You, Pat, ACTUALLY think ALL FOUR of those Dallas police officers were liars (Montgomery, Johnson, Day, and Studebaker)?? Such a belief is simply ridiculous and over-the-top.
And you've also got to believe that Studebaker's lies concerning the bag were multi-layered....because he said he actually picked up the bag and dusted it for prints. (More lies?)
Plus --- Any idea how the patsy-framing plotters managed to plant Oswald's fingerprints on the paper bag? Lieutenant J.C. Day, as of 2002, didn't even think such a transfer of prints was possible (and he's talking about the rifle in the book excerpt below, but I think it's safe to assume that Lt. Day would have had the same opinion about the "impossible" nature of being able to transfer an inked print to a paper bag as well).
Via Page 802 of Vincent Bugliosi's book, "Reclaiming History"....
Click to enlarge:
In some of my comments above, I've been attempting to reconcile the controversy surrounding the "Paper Bag Witnesses" without having to resort to calling any of the witnesses "liars". I think I accomplished that goal. I'm wondering if any conspiracy theorist could do the same. I doubt they can.
David Von Pein
January 2023
December 7-9, 2023
RELATED ARTICLES:
Oswald, His Rifle, And The Paper Bag
Linnie Mae, Essie Mae, & Oswald
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