STEVE THOMAS SAID:
If you don't have any eyewitnesses, "We can't place Oswald at that window with a gun in his hand." (Jesse Curry)
and you don't have Oswald's prints on the rifle that was found in the TSBD, even if you could prove it was his rifle,
and he's got an alibi by being seen on the second floor within 90 seconds of the shooting, and nobody saw him coming down the stairs...
there's no court in the land that would convict him beyond a reasonable doubt of being the shooter.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Hogwash!
There's tons of evidence to show that Lee Harvey Oswald (and nobody else!) was the shooter:
...OSWALD'S rifle was the murder weapon without doubt -- with CE567 & CE569, the front-seat bullet fragments, providing the proof that Oswald's C2766 rifle was definitely being used by SOMEONE to fire bullets at Kennedy's car on November 22. No reasonable person can possibly deny this fact.
Plus, there are the three spent bullet shells (which were tied to Oswald's rifle as well) lying on the floor below the assassin's window, providing additional proof that OSWALD'S RIFLE was being used to shoot at President Kennedy on 11/22/63.
And as I've asked conspiracy theorists in the past --- Who is MORE likely to use Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle on any day of the week (11/22/63 or any other day)---the rifle's owner himself or someone else? That simple and basic observation, all by itself, makes OSWALD much more likely to be JFK's murderer than any other person on the planet.
...OSWALD'S prints are on various things in the exact same tiny area where we know JFK's killer was located--in the Sniper's Nest.
...OSWALD is identified as the assassin by a witness. (Yes, conspiracy believers despise Howard L. Brennan, but his testimony is still part of the official record in this case and it always will be, despite the persistent and noisy protests from the conspiracy crowd--and despite that famous quote from Jesse Curry, which is a quote that is just flat-out wrong, to boot.)
...OSWALD is the only Book Depository employee who fits into this very incriminating category --- He was the only employee who is known to have been INSIDE the TSBD Building at the time of the assassination who left the building immediately after the shooting and did not return.
...OSWALD kills Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, which is a crime that is irrevocably linked to the JFK murder, with Oswald killing Tippit while in full flight from his Dealey Plaza murder.
All reasonable people realize that the last sentence I just wrote is 100% accurate and sensible.
...OSWALD lies repeatedly to the police after his arrest.
...And, despite what Steve Thomas said above, OSWALD'S prints were most definitely found on the C2766 Carcano rifle. More on that here.
...And why you, Steve, are saying that Oswald has "an alibi by being seen on the second floor within 90 seconds of the shooting" is a real mystery to me --- because you surely have got to know that anybody who wasn't walking on crutches could easily descend those Depository stairs and travel from the sixth floor to the second floor in under 90 seconds. The Secret Service man who performed such a test (twice) for the Warren Commission managed to travel that distance—at merely a "NORMAL WALKING PACE"—in just 78 seconds [Warren Report, p.152]. So to say that a "90-second" timeline provides Oswald with an "alibi" is just not accurate at all.
More about Oswald's very doable journey from the Sniper's Nest to the 2nd-floor lunchroom can be found here.
...And the reason why "nobody saw him [Oswald] coming down the stairs" isn't very difficult to figure out at all (whether you're referring to Victoria Adams, Sandra Styles, Dorothy Garner, Jack Dougherty, or all four of those people). More about that here.
And so much more here....
Twelve jurors who would acquit Oswald must also be related (mentally) to all 12 O.J. jurors.
STEVE THOMAS SAID:
Oswald could easily have run down the stairs in 90 seconds.
But, I'm sorry. I must have missed something. Could you please provide me the name of the eyewitness who saw him running down the stairs?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And since Oswald wasn't seen by anyone running down the stairs, you think that means it was IMPOSSIBLE for him to have done so?
Did Adams and Styles see Baker and Truly coming up the same stairs they were on?
Answer: No.
Does that mean that Baker & Truly never went up those stairs?
Answer: No.
STEVE THOMAS SAID:
Don't you think it's odd that you have the only eyewitness to the man committing the greatest crime of the 20th Century, and neither the Chief of Police, or the Captain of the Homicide Bureau could bother to be at the lineup where the perpetrator is identified?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
So I assume the above comment, Steve, means that you now believe that Howard Brennan never even attended a lineup at the Dallas Police Department at all, is that right?
If so, you must think this testimony is just a bunch of made-up crap invented by Mr. Brennan, correct?....
DAVID BELIN -- "Now, taking you down to the Dallas Police Station, I believe you said you talked to Captain Fritz. And then what happened?"
HOWARD BRENNAN -- "Well, I was just more or less introduced to him in Mr. Sorrels' room, and they told me they were going to conduct a lineup and wanted me to view it, which I did."
STEVE THOMAS SAID:
Again, I'm sorry, but were Lee Harvey Oswald's fingerprints found anywhere else on the sixth floor?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, indeed, his prints most certainly were found in various places on the sixth floor---on two different boxes which were located DEEP INSIDE the assassin's Sniper's Nest. Plus, two LHO prints on the 38-inch brown paper bag that several police officers said they saw in the corner of the Nest before it was picked up. And, of course, Oswald's prints were, as already mentioned, on the Carcano rifle that Oswald ditched between some boxes in the northwest corner of the sixth floor.
And, IMO, the reason there weren't more of LHO's prints on the rifle is because he very likely utilized his brown shirt as a fingerprint-wiping rag right after the assassination, wiping as many prints from the rifle as he could as he ran across the sixth floor. He then ditched the rifle near the stairwell and then put the brown shirt back on as he ran down the stairs, leaving it untucked and unbuttoned (hence the reason Marrion Baker thought the brown SHIRT resembled a JACKET).
All that stuff I just mentioned is my own opinion, and needs to be identified as just that--my OPINION--but it fits very nicely with some of the physical evidence in the case, and it fits fairly well with some of the witnesses who said the shooter was wearing only a "light-colored" or a "white" shirt (which would have been Oswald's white T-shirt, of course). He probably had the brown shirt resting on the floor (or on a box) as he pulled the trigger at 12:30.
Plus, my "Used The Shirt To Wipe Fingerprints" theory fits nicely with the evidence of similar shirt fibers being wedged in the butt plate of the rifle. As he was wiping off prints, fibers from the shirt could have easily found their way under the butt plate.
STEVE THOMAS SAID:
Please show me the fingerprints taken off the rifle. I'd like to see the actual prints please.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Check out Commission Exhibit No. 637 (which is Oswald's palmprint, taken off the rifle by Lieutenant J.C. Day on 11/22/63). Also see this important (often overlooked) document.
Now, if you were referring to the FINGERprints on the trigger guard of the rifle....well, those prints were definitely photographed and were examined in detail by many fingerprint experts---one of whom (Vincent Scalice) said:
"We're able for the first time to actually say that these are definitely
the fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald, and that they are on the rifle.
There is no doubt about it." -- Vincent J. Scalice; 1993 [See the first video
on this page; the video is also embedded below.]
And although I myself have never seen the photos of the trigger guard fingerprints, some of the pictures of those prints are shown on camera in the 1993 PBS program "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" (during the Scalice segment above).
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
David,
What test proved that those fragments [CE567 and CE569] came from the Carcano?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The same type of "striation" test the FBI has always used. Both fragments came from the C2766 rifle without a doubt. [See Robert Frazier's testimony here.]
MICAH MILETO SAID:
Joseph Nicol (the only expert out of 7 to claim the Tippit slugs matched the revolver in evidence)...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You're overstating Nicol's testimony. Nicol only said that ONE of the 4 Tippit bullets could be matched to Oswald's revolver. Not all four.
But the thing that CTers never like to admit is that Tippit was killed by bullets that each exhibited unique and different characteristics. And OSWALD owned a revolver that fired such erratic bullets.
That's kind of interesting, don't you think?
It's only a circumstantial thing, but it certainly goes in the direction of OSWALD'S revolver being in the mix of potential weapons that could have killed Tippit. And then when you add in the ballistics PROOF that it was Oswald's gun (which he was holding 35 minutes after the murder)--namely the 4 bullet shells--then LHO's guilt becomes ironclad.
MIKE KILROY SAID:
David,
I've always wanted to ask the lone nut theorist -- where and when did Oswald assemble the rifle? There was no screwdriver found in the 'sniper's nest.' I never heard of any screwdriver being found on the Sixth Floor. He HAD to assemble it on the 6th floor but there were people up there until as late as 12:15 - 10 minutes before the motorcade was due to pass by. He couldn't assemble it on another floor and bring it up to the 6th.
The Carcano also broke down into about 9 different parts as I recall with screws. Was all that stuff rattling around in the "lunch" bag that Wesley Frazier said in no way was big enough to even carry the disassembled rifle? (And Wesley made a good point to me personally at the recent JFK Lancer conference - did the WC ever place the disassembled Carcano back in the bag that was found themselves to see if it fits instead of badgering him to say it did?).
And one more thing - the majority of witnesses said the shots came Pow!......[long pause].........Pow!Pow!
How did the Carcano, which the FBI said takes at least 2.5 seconds to recycle, manage those last two shots that were nearly on top of each other?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Hi Mike K.,
There's testimony in the WC volumes to the effect that the Carcano can be assembled using nothing but just a regular ol' ten-cent piece. (Do you disagree with that?)
Re: the spacing of the shots....
There were several witnesses (at least 7 or 8) who said the shots were more "evenly spaced", instead of the last 2 being closer together. So there's certainly SOME conflicting testimony regarding that subject (although you'll never hear a CTer ever mention the eight witnesses I talk about in the post below when it comes to this topic)....
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-710
MIKE KILROY SAID:
Thanks for replying, David. .... Did Oswald have a dime on him when arrested?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, he sure did. He had three of them, in fact. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1148 for the coinage breakdown.)
MIKE KILROY SAID:
So you think he dropped his bag in [the] sniper's nest when he came into the building and then later put it together with a dime with the clock ticking there?
I'd love to see a re-creation of someone putting together a working Carcano with a dime in a few minutes. At least one writer I've seen said he couldn't do it.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I don't know exactly how, when, and where Lee Harvey Oswald managed to assemble his rifle within the Book Depository on 11/22/63. Nobody knows those details. Oswald took that information with him to his grave, unfortunately. But I have speculated about some of the things Oswald might have done after he got to work on November 22nd, and when he might have done them --- here.
Plus, FWIW, I think it's quite possible that Oswald might have temporarily hidden his rifle package out on the loading dock of the Depository when he first got to work on 11/22. More about that here.
SANDY LARSEN SAID:
David,
Apparently there remains fodder for us CTers surrounding the palm print on the rifle.
First, we know that DPD Lt. Carl Day could find no identifiable fingerprints on the rifle. And his work was interrupted and the rifle sent to FBI Headquarters in Washington D.C. The FBI found no prints at all on the rifle.
According to this document, Day at one point had "raised" a latent partial palm print but ran out of time before photographing and lifting it. The pertinent question is, did Day actually photograph and lift the print before the gun was taken to Washington? He claimed he did, and claimed that he showed the print to FBI agent Vince Drain when he came to take the rifle. But Drain said he had no recollection of that.
In an October 1993 interview, Lt. Day said, "The prints on the rifle weren’t made the day of the assassination - or the day before that, or the day before that. The prints were at least weeks, if not months, old." So no prints from the day of the shooting were found.
According to Gerald Posner's book, the HSCA was able to determine that the lifted print came from the rifle.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Sandy,
From another discussion that took place in March 2013, I can offer up the following information regarding the palmprint that Lieutenant J.C. Day lifted off of Oswald's rifle....
JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
In an actual court proceeding, [Dallas Police Lieutenant J.C.] Day would have been impeached by Drain and LaTona [sic] to the point that he would [have] been laughable.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And just exactly HOW would Vince Drain and Sebastian Latona have "impeached" Lt. Carl Day of the DPD?
You actually think something Drain and Latona said means that Day couldn't possibly have lifted Oswald's palmprint from the rifle on November 22?
If you DO really believe that, you've taken a trip deeper into Rod Serling's T-Zone than even I had figured.
I'll also add this:
Anyone who thinks that J.C. Day was a liar regarding the palmprint matter needs to read "Reclaiming History", starting on Page 799.
A key excerpt:
"Warren Commission assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler told the HSCA that in "late August or September" of 1964, he suggested questioning [DPD Lieutenant J.C.] Day further in an attempt to resolve the multitude of questions that remained surrounding the discovery of the palm print.
It had occurred to Liebeler and a few other assistant counsels, as it would later to Mark Lane, that perhaps the palm print didn't come from the rifle at all. The Commission, at that time, only had Day's word for it. It wanted something stronger. But when Liebeler approached Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin about it, he objected. "Mr. Rankin was not terribly enthusiastic about having a couple of Commission lawyers go down to Dallas and start questioning the Dallas Police Department," Liebeler told the HSCA in 1978. "Quite frankly . . . it would have raised all kinds of questions at that time as to what in the hell was going on, what are we doing going down and taking depositions from the Dallas Police Department two months after the report was supposed to be out?"
But Liebeler said they realized the problem could be resolved "in another way." Several Commission assistant counsels subsequently met with FBI inspector James R. Malley, the bureau's liaison with the Commission, and FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona. Liebeler asked Latona whether there was a way to prove that the lift came from the rifle. Latona reexamined the lift submitted by Lieutenant Day and noticed pits, marks, and rust spots on it that corresponded to identical areas on the underside of the rifle barrel--the very spot from which Day said the print had been lifted.
J. Edgar Hoover sent a letter by courier to the Commission on September 4 to confirm this finding, along with a photograph showing the corresponding marks on the barrel and the lift. Liebeler was satisfied. Now, there was no doubt whatsoever--the palm print Day had lifted had come from Oswald's rifle."
-- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 803 of "Reclaiming History"
[Also See: 11 HSCA 254-255.]
[Another related discussion can be found here.]
David Von Pein
December 22-24, 2017
