GARRY PUFFER SAID:
1. Why did he [Lt. J.C. Day of the Dallas Police Department] not photograph it [the palmprint on Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle #C2766] before lifting?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In hindsight, he probably wished he had photographed the palmprint before lifting it. But in the FBI report seen in CE3145 [linked below in blown-up form], Lt. Day said this to Vincent Drain of the FBI:
"Lt. Day stated he had no reason for not photographing this palm print first before attempting to lift it other than in the interest of time."
You can say the above reason that Day gave to Drain in Sept. '64 is a pretty weak reason, but that's what Lt. Day said nonetheless.
Plus, there's also this from Day's Warren Commission session:
Mr. DAY --- "On the bottom side of the barrel which was covered by the wood, I found traces of a palmprint. I dusted these and tried lifting them, the prints, with scotch tape in the usual manner. A faint palmprint came off. I could still see traces of the print under the barrel and was going to try to use photography to bring off or bring out a better print. About this time I received instructions from the chief's office to go no further with the processing, it was to be released to the FBI for them to complete."
[End Quote.]
Do you REALLY think J.C. Day was lying in the above testimony? If so, why do you think he'd tell such a tall tale about lifting a print off of the assassination rifle if he had really done no such thing?
IOW---What motive did Lt. Carl Day have to want to start framing Lee Oswald for the murder of an American President?
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
2. Why was the lift not sent to the FBI along with the other evidence on 11/22?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
That is also explained by Lt. Day (via Vince Drain's words in Drain's written report in CE3145). Drain states that Day told him that the palmprint was not sent to Washington until November 26th because "he [Day] wanted to make further comparisons of this palm print with the known palm print of Lee Harvey Oswald."
You'll now want to know this, I would guess:
Well, Dave, since Lt. Day was ordered by Chief Curry to turn over everything to the FBI at 11:45 PM on 11/22, then why would Day take it upon himself to NOT do that with the palmprint he said he lifted off of the rifle? After all, wasn't that print part of the overall package of evidence that was supposed to be relinquished to the Feds in Washington on the night of November 22nd, 1963 AD?
Not a bad question you just asked there, Garry/Dave. :-) And I have no definitive answer to it....other than to say that Lt. Day was certainly of the opinion that a palm print was STILL on the gun after he did his initial lift. He thought the FBI would be able to lift the print AGAIN (evidently). That's what he told the WC at any rate. And that's something I've never quite understood at all. If Day had already used tape to lift the print, how could he expect the FBI to be able to lift it a second time?
But I'm not a "fingerprint" expert. Lt. Day was. So he'd know more about those things than I would. And I'm guessing that Lt. Day even surpasses the great Garry Puffer in "print lifting knowledge" too.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
3. Why did Day claim he kept the lift because he was still working on it and why was he still working on it (as per his WC testimony) when Henry Wade announced on 11/24 that prints on the rifle had been identified as Oswald's?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You've got me stumped on that one, Garry. I haven't a clue.
(Does this mean I now have to believe Carl Day was a rotten, evil liar?)
~strokes chin, wondering~
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
4. If Day's "explanations" were sound, why was the FBI still doubting him in 1964?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Just to cover all the bases, I guess. And it appears to me as if those bases were all touched via that FBI report found in CE3145. In fact, you'll notice how Drain keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again in the report.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
5. Why would Day have to lie at all?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
He didn't.
I see no reason whatsoever to paint Lieutenant J.C. Day as a liar. Nothing I've read makes me think Lt. Day was anything but forthright and honest regarding his handling of the evidence associated with JFK's murder.
Many conspiracy theorists who have made it their life's work (or their #1 hobby) to try and exonerate the double-murderer named Lee Harvey Oswald will (naturally) disagree with my last remark above.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
Why did Lt. Day refuse to sign an affidavit concerning his lifting of the palm print?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
That's also explained in CE3145. Didn't you even bother to read it?
Lt. Day told the FBI's Vincent Drain in CE3145 that since he (Day) had already written a fairly detailed report about the finding of the palmprint on January 8, 1964, he thought that report would suffice for the September '64 inquiry. And that January '64 report of Lt. Day's is even included (verbatim) in Drain's report that appears in CE3145.
But I guess conspiracy theorists like Garry Puffer must be of the odd opinion that Lieutenant Carl Day lied multiple times when he said he lifted a palmprint off of Rifle C2766 (even lying under oath to the Warren Commission) -- but he didn't want to fill out an official affidavit in September of 1964 because he felt he just couldn't lie one more time about the palmprint. He lied and lied and lied UP UNTIL SEPTEMBER--but he just wouldn't lie again.
Is that about the size of it, Garry?
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
First of all, thanks for answering all the questions I asked. I appreciate it. I am fully aware of Day's explanations and find them wanting in several ways. I wanted to know if you simply accept them at face value, and you obviously do.
That you refuse to acknowledge any lying on his part is not surprising, but if he wasn't lying at all, I don't think you'd be stroking your chin at question #3.
Both the WC and FBI thought he was lying as well, and the request to have him sign an affidavit shows that. Day was not stupid. He stood by his report, which was not given under oath, and refused to confirm his report, which would have been under oath. I find that suspicious. You don't. No surprises there.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But Day's testimony in front of the Warren Commission in April of '64 was certainly "under oath". And you think Lt. Day lied in that testimony, right? So why in the world would he be hesitant to tell the same lies again in a September affidavit?
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
"Lifting" a print does not mean it is moved from one place to another. Day claims the print could still be seen. The FBI claims it couldn't. Someone was not telling the truth. I'll pick Day on this one.
The "interest of time" excuse is not only weak, it makes no sense. Day didn't know the FBI was taking the evidence until after the print was lifted. He had as much time as he needed, as far as he knew.
I don't contend that Day lied about lifting the print, but I do contend he lied in just about everything after that involving this print. Would it be your contention that NO DPD employee lied about anything in this case? Just curious.
Secondly, the subtle dig at "conspiracy theorists who have made it their life's work (or their #1 hobby) to try and exonerate the double-murderer named Lee Harvey Oswald" is kind of odd, considering that you have made it such a mission to see that LHO remains convicted. I daresay you spend far more time in your pursuit than any of us here, or even most people who have written books.
Thirdly, I find it difficult to believe that you are actually David Von Pein. Your posts here are way short of the nastiness I have previously encountered with you. Calling me "Einstein" in an ironic manner, or referring to "the great Garry Puffer" in a similar manner are kind of soft, really. I guess you could be taking something for your condition that has mellowed you out. I hope this continues. It's far better than stuff like "Your post makes me want to vomit." I appreciate the kinder, gentler DVP.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I don't have any reason to suspect anyone at the Dallas Police Department of "lying" about anything in this case.
About the closest to a lie I can think of (regarding any DPD members specifically) would possibly be associated with Patrick Dean's Warren Commission testimony. Dean could possibly have "fudged" (I'll put it that way, instead of saying the word "lied") about some of his testimony as it related to the security precautions that the Dallas Police, led by Pat Dean, supposedly took in the DPD basement just prior to Lee Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby.
But even there, I certainly can't prove that Dean told any outright "lies". But I think at least a small amout of "CYA" could have possibly been going on with respect to the testimony of some of the DPD officers and their activities in the DPD basement on November 24th, 1963. For I doubt that any DPD officer who was near that basement on 11/24/63 would have had a desire to come out and admit the following:
"Yep, Chief Justice Warren, we blew it. We let our guard down and Ruby managed to slip into the basement because all of us here at the DPD are a bunch of boobs who couldn't even guard a simple ramp or keep a door locked."
The same kind of after-the-fact CYA stuff was most certainly going on with the FBI too, regarding the destroying of the Hosty note (which involved the "CYA" activities of both James Hosty and Gordon Shanklin, at Shanklin's request).
But, in my opinion, any CYA that did occur with respect to the FBI or the Dallas Police Department was not being done to hide their culpability in the murders of either John Kennedy or Lee Harvey Oswald. They were merely trying to shield themselves from the lifelong embarrassment and shame at having two such terrible murders occurring while they were supposed to be on guard to prevent such events from taking place.
BTW, Garry, when I was "stroking my chin" in a previous post, I was doing so in a tongue-in-cheek manner. (You apparently missed the humor that existed in my chin-stroking.)
BEN HOLMES SAID:
If you held a gun to the head of a Warren Commission believer, he'd be forced to admit that the FBI didn't see the palmprint on the rifle. They'll admit easily enough that Lt. Day saw one.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And that is undoubtedly due to the fact that there was MUCH MORE TO SEE when Lt. Day lifted the print. There was a lot more THERE to see (and lift).
By the time Day had lifted Oswald's print off the barrel, very little in the way of a visible print remained (although, yes, Day said he thought enough of a remaining print was still present on the barrel for the FBI to find). And, yes, it is strange that Lt. Day didn't say something like this to Vince Drain (or somebody at the FBI), or at least pin a note to the rifle saying this:
"I've lifted a partial palmprint off of the barrel of this gun. You FBI guys should be able to lift some more of the print."
Lieutenant Day told the WC this:
MR. DAY -- "The gun was being sent in to them [the FBI] for process of prints. Actually I thought the print on the gun was their best bet, still remained on there, and, too, there was another print, I thought possibly under the wood part up near the trigger housing." [4 H 261-262]
-------
Interestingly, Lt. Day did, in effect, tell the FBI about the partial prints on the trigger guard of the rifle by the fact he placed some cellophane over the prints to protect them during transit. Here's what the FBI's Sebastian Latona told the Warren Commission about that:
MR. LATONA -- "There had been placed over that area a piece of cellophane material. My attention had been directed to it, to the effect that a prior examination had been made of that area, and that there were apparently certain latent prints available—visible under that area." [4 H 20]
-------
But I see nothing in the record to indicate that anything like that was done with regard to the palmprint on the barrel. But, however, it must also be understood that Lt. Day put the gun back together again after he lifted the palmprint, which would have, in effect, served as some "protection" by having the wooden stock covering the print entirely (or almost entirely).
I'll also add this testimony given by FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona:
MR. LATONA -- "We had no personal knowledge of any palmprint having been developed on the rifle. The only prints that we knew of were the fragmentary prints which I previously pointed out had been indicated by the cellophane on the trigger guard. There was no indication on this rifle as to the existence of any other prints. This print which indicates it came from the underside of the gun barrel, evidently the lifting had been so complete that there was nothing left to show any marking on the gun itself as to the existence of such—even an attempt on the part of anyone else to process the rifle." [4 H 24]
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
The palm print, even if real, does not incriminate LHO in the shooting on 11/22. If it does anything it actually absolves him. An old and dry print makes it more likely that the rifle was not brought in disassembled in the famous "paper bag."
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But that print most certainly connects Lee Harvey Oswald to the weapon that killed President Kennedy.
And that particular fact is something that a whole lot of conspiracists will not admit if their lives hung in the balance. They, instead, like to pretend that Oswald never once touched Rifle C2766. And that, Garry, is called living in a fantasy world.
And it's also called: Ignoring The Evidence. Which is something the CTers do very well.
BEN HOLMES SAID:
It's a FACT that Lt. Day claims he could still see what the FBI states that they could not.
You either provide a credible explanation for this ... or you admit that someone was lying. Which is it?
DVP whines piteously... but fails to answer the question...
Tell us DVP... why the cowardice?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Holmes should know by now that Lt. J.C. Day told the FBI's Nat Pinkston on 11/22/63 (the day of the assassination) that he (Day) had been "successful in raising a partial latent print" off of Rifle C2766. [See Pinkston's FBI report below.]
Also see this post.
So the people who like to claim that there's no record whatsoever of Lt. Day ever telling anybody that he found a print on Oswald's rifle PRIOR to the rifle being returned by the FBI to Dallas on 11/24/63 are just flat wrong--as the FBI document shown above readily establishes.
As for Lt. Day being able to see some faint ridges of a partial palmprint on the rifle after he had lifted the print with Scotch tape, while the FBI apparently saw no such traces of the palmprint, all I can do is refer Holmes and everyone else to Lt. Day's own testimony on this matter. If Ben Holmes wants to think Carl Day is lying here--well, I can't stop him from believing that, now can I?....
MR. DAY -- "The gun was being sent in to them [FBI] for process of prints. Actually I thought the print on the gun was their best bet, still remained on there, and, too, there was another print, I thought possibly under the wood part up near the trigger housing."
MR. BELIN -- "You mean the remaining traces of the powder you had when you got the lift, Exhibit 637, is that what you mean by the lift of the remaining print on the gun?"
MR. DAY -- "Yes, sir. Actually it was dried ridges on there. There were traces of ridges still on the gun barrel."
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LIEUTENANT DAY ADDENDUM....
QUOTING VINCE BUGLIOSI:
"At 11:45 p.m. [CST on 11/22/63], the rifle and film negatives of the prints were turned over to the FBI's Vince Drain. In a 1984 interview, Day said that he pointed out to the FBI man the area where the palm print was, adding that he "cautioned Drain to be sure the area was not disturbed."
Though Drain denied that Day showed him the palm print, crime-lab detective R.W. "Rusty" Livingston, who was standing nearby, recalled that another FBI agent was there pressuring Drain to leave. "Drain was half listening to Lieutenant Day and half to the other FBI man and evidently didn't get the word about the palm print at that time."
[...]
Also, Day told me that technically he didn't "show" Drain where the print was because "you couldn't see it. It was under the stock. But I told him where it was."
[...]
Lieutenant Day, in looking back on the event, told me [in a telephone conversation on August 29, 2002], "I don't fault the FBI for not being able to find the palm print. It was already faint when I lifted it, and it's even more difficult to lift the same print a second time because some of the detail has been removed from the first lifting of the print."
For the great numbers of conspiracy theorists who maintain that the Carcano did not belong to Oswald and was planted on the sixth floor, how do they then explain Oswald's right palm print being found on the weapon? How did it get there if he wasn't in possession of it?" -- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 800-802 of "Reclaiming History"
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
Some evidence that the "Oswald weapon" was not even fired that day [11/22/63] was given by our old friend Robert Frazier, not exactly a guy we expect to be giving testimony that favors Oswald.
From: http://www.giljesus.com/jfk/rifle.htm ....
"Frazier KNEW when he visually inspected the rifle that rust in the barrel meant that the rifle had not been fired, because just one round fired through it would have removed all rust. The fact that he visually saw rust in the barrel made it clear to him that there was no need to conduct a "swab test" to test for metal shavings and fouling in the barrel." -- Gil Jesus
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As usual, a conspiracy theorist (in the above case, Gil J. Jesus), has misrepresented the facts.
Robert A. Frazier never once said in his Warren Commission testimony that he found "rust" in the barrel of Oswald's CE139 Carcano rifle. Frazier said the barrel showed some "wear" and "corrosion", but nowhere did he say the barrel had "rust" in it. He said "IF a barrel is allowed to rust..." [DVP's emphasis], but he was not implying that Oswald's rifle had rust in it.
Maybe Gil Jesus should learn how to read better---and how to comprehend better too.
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
Of course he was implying that. Why would he [Bob Frazier] mention rust if it had nothing to do with what he was being asked?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, I can see your point on this. But since I firmly believe that Oswald's rifle WAS definitely fired on 11/22/63 (and the front-seat bullet fragments which were traced back to LHO's gun provide the proof that it was fired that day), obviously I cannot believe that that same gun could have had rust in its barrel when Bob Frazier examined it the very next day, particularly if this statement by Frazier is 100% accurate:
"If a barrel is allowed to rust, one round will remove that rust and wear the barrel to the same extent as 10 or 15 or 50 rounds just fired through a clean barrel." -- Robert A. Frazier; March 31, 1964 [at 3 H 395]
I think Frazier was speaking in terms of general rifle barrel characteristics when he used the word "rust" in his above WC testimony.
In other words, given Frazier's "50 to 1" ratio regarding a rusty barrel vs. a clean barrel, Frazier therefore can't possibly say for sure how many rounds were fired through LHO's rifle (or ANY rifle really, when you come to think about it), because Frazier can't possibly know if the gun had been allowed to become rusty at some previous time (possibly many years earlier), with the gun then being cleaned free of all rust by the owner, and then the "rusty then clean" cycle could be repeated numerous times over a period of years.
And CE139 was made in 1940, so for all Bob Frazier knew, 23 years worth of "rusty then clean" cycles could have taken place prior to the assassination in 1963.
David Von Pein
January 8-10, 2014
[Note -- The Amazon.com link above is no longer available. All of the Amazon forums were discontinued and completely deleted on October 6, 2017.]
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BEN HOLMES SAID:
The report, of course, only states that Lt. Day "...had been successful in raising a partial latent print." And, as it was "dictated" on the 24th, the rifle was already back in Dallas on that date.
David knows quite well that it's the *PALMPRINT* that allegedly connects Oswald to the rifle. This FBI document does not refer to a palmprint, nor does the date help the believer's faith if one were to assume that it did refer to the palmprint.
David's a liar.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Ben Holmes can't read. The Pinkston FBI report clearly indicates the DATE when Lieutenant J.C. Day was successful in "raising a partial latent print" -- that date being "November 22, 1963". And that same date (11/22/63) is indicated in the lower left corner of the report as well, after the word "On" --- meaning: Nat Pinkston is referring to something he did (interview Lt. Day) ON NOVEMBER 22.
Therefore, the top date of 11/24/63 and the "Date dictated" in the lower right (also 11/24/63) mean nothing when it comes to determining WHEN things were being done that are referred to in the report. It's always the LOWER-LEFT date that is the KEY date on all of the FBI's FD-302 reports.
I guess Holmes didn't know this basic fact. Now he does. (You're welcome, Ben.)
BEN HOLMES SAID:
And only a moron would think I didn't know that...
The problem, AS I STATED, was that this was actually documented AFTER the rifle had been returned to DPD control.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Ben wants to theorize that just because the Pinkston report was "dictated" on Nov. 24, this indicates the POSSIBILITY of some kind of foul play on the part of somebody in connection to the print on the rifle.
But I will point out to Ben that Pinkston's FD-302 report was actually dated a day AFTER his original "memorandum" on this matter was filed. The "memo" version of that report was dated "11/23/63" at the top, which was still a day PRIOR to the rifle ever being sent back to Dallas. And the INK STAMP in the lower right part of Pinkston's memo is dated "Nov. 22, 1963".
So Ben's argument about the "Nov. 24" date is rendered worthless when we compare the FD-302 report to Pinkston's original memo, which is identical in its verbiage with the later FD-302 version.
David Von Pein
March 29, 2017
