DAVID MAGGS SAID:
Where did the police get the description of Oswald? Inspector Sawyer did not remember speaking to Brennan.
JOHN McADAMS SAID:
But he [Sawyer] didn't remember getting the description from anybody else, did he? And we know what the description was. If there was another witness who produced a description virtually identical to that of Brennan, it hardly impeaches the case against Oswald.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You're quite correct there, John. ....
"Another theory that CTers seem to like quite a bit is the one that claims it wasn't really [Howard] Brennan who gave the first description of the Depository sniper to the police just a few minutes after the shooting. Conspiracists want to believe, evidently, that either the police simply made up out of thin air the description of the assailant in the TSBD .... or .... that it was some other (unknown and never identified) person who gave DPD Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer the description of the killer....which was a description that almost perfectly matched the one Brennan gave in his 11/22 affidavit.
I don't deny that there was/is some confusion regarding who exactly it was who gave the first description of the assassin to the police (which was the basis for the initial APB broadcast by the DPD at 12:44 PM on 11/22/63). But to believe that it was someone other than Brennan who gave Inspector Sawyer the description of the killer is to also believe that two strange things occurred in relation to this "other" witness (with #2 belonging in a separate "Very Odd And Amazingly Coincidental" category):
1.) It was a witness who was never identified (and never bothered to come forward to be identified), even though he is providing some of the most important info in history.
2.) This unknown witness' physical description of the assassin just happens to perfectly coincide with the info that Brennan supplied the police and the Secret Service and (later) the Warren Commission.
Also -- If there WAS, in fact, yet ANOTHER witness who saw the exact same thing that Brennan saw, this would tend to buttress (even more) the notion that Oswald, or someone who looked very similar to Oswald, was firing from just where Brennan said the man was firing from in the Book Depository Building."
-- DVP; February 2006
CLAVIGER SAID:
Oswald's supervisor at the TSBD, Roy Truly, gave a description to the police, when Oswald failed to return to his department. Truly had seen Oswald earlier in the lunchroom, so LHO was conspicuous by his absence.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
That was well after the initial 12:44 PM ABP DPD broadcast. Truly could not possibly have been the source of the description of the sixth-floor shooter at 12:44. Besides, Truly didn't see the sixth-floor gunman anyway.
CLAVIGER SAID:
David,
Good point, but Truly knew LHO had reason to be on the 6th floor where the rifle was found and he was the only one unaccounted for. He had seen Oswald only a few minutes earlier in the lunchroom, so Truly gave a description of LHO based on this suspicious behavior. Does anyone know the description he gave the police and did they use it? I'm wondering how close it matched Brennan's description?
"THALIAC" SAID:
How the sniper's height was known is another mystery.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Why is that a "mystery"? That info was supplied by Howard Brennan too (quite obviously). And Brennan estimated the gunman's height to be 5'10" from having observed the killer (Oswald, of course) in the sniper's window before, during, and after the shooting.
Do you think the police just MADE UP the "5-feet-10" part of the 12:44 APB description? Or is your question more along these lines instead:
How could Brennan (or anyone) have possibly known what the height of the gunman was when the gunman was partially hidden behind a dirty window?
My answer to that last question would be:
Brennan merely guessed. (And he was off by just one inch.)
David Von Pein
February 28, 2009
