Read Reclaiming History Online
Authors: Vincent Bugliosi
Both of the Paines recalled seeing the bundle on the garage floor from time to time, though neither realized that it might contain a rifle. Michael Paine had moved the bundle several times while working in the garage, but never opened the bundle to see what it contained.
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As we know, on the afternoon of the assassination, Marina led several police officers into Ruth Paine’s garage, where they found the bundled blanket, looking very much as though the disassembled rifle was still in it, but the bundle went limp when they picked it up. It was empty.
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While the evidence does not prove conclusively that the rifle was continuously in Oswald’s possession or in Ruth Paine’s garage from late in March when he received it to November 22, 1963, that is the most reasonable assumption and there is no evidence to suggest that it was anywhere else.
More to the point is how it came to be on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. As we saw earlier in the text, from the time he returned to Dallas from New Orleans, by way of Mexico City, in early October Oswald lived alone in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, while his wife continued to stay with Ruth Paine in Irving, fifteen miles away.
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Summarizing what is set forth in the “Four Days in November” section of this book, beginning in mid-October when he found a job at the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald spent most weekends at Ruth Paine’s house, invariably riding out from work on Friday evening and returning to work on Monday morning with coworker Wesley Frazier, Paine’s neighbor.
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But on the week of the assassination, for the very first time he came out to Irving on a Thursday evening, the night before the president’s motorcade was scheduled to pass beneath the windows of the Texas School Book Depository.
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That morning Oswald asked Frazier for a ride out to Irving after work. Frazier wondered why Oswald was going there on a Thursday evening rather than the more customary Friday, and Oswald told him he was going home to get some curtain rods “to put in an apartment.”
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Frazier’s sister, Linnie Mae Randle, with whom Frazier was living, also noticed the oddity of Oswald’s midweek trip home, and Frazier mentioned the curtain rods to her as well.
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On the morning of the assassination Frazier’s sister saw Oswald arrive for the ride back to work carrying a long brown paper package. Frazier saw it on the backseat of his car, asked about it, and was told that it was curtain rods. Later he watched Oswald walk into a back door of the Depository with the package under his arm.
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After the shooting, a bag, handmade from brown wrapping paper and three-inch-wide packing tape, was found folded on the floor directly east of three book cartons stacked at the sniper’s nest window.
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Since the bag appeared to have been custom-made to a size that conveniently fit the rifle when disassembled (the longest component of the rifle, when disassembled, is the wooden stock, which measures 34
4
/
5
inches,
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while the homemade bag found on the sixth floor was 38 inches
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),
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there was a good presumption that it had been used for that purpose.
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FBI agent James C. Cadigan, a questioned-documents expert, testified that although he observed “some scratch marks and abrasions” inside the bag that were caused by “a hard object,” he found “no marks on this bag that I could say were caused by [the Carcano] rifle or any other rifle or any other given instrument.”
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However, prints from Oswald’s left index finger and right palm were found on the bag by the supervisor of the FBI’s Latent Fingerprint Section, Sebastian F. Latona.
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No other finger or palm prints were found on the bag.
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These findings were reconfirmed fifteen years later by HSCA fingerprint expert Vincent J. Scalice.
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On the day of the assassination, samples of the wrapping paper and tape used in the Texas School Book Depository were forwarded to the FBI laboratory for fiber and spectrographic analysis. They were found to be in all respects identical to the materials used to construct the bag.
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The packing tape even bore the impression of the knurled roller in the shipping room’s tape dispenser.
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The Commission pointed out that “the complete identity of characteristics between the paper and the tape in the bag found on the sixth floor and the paper and tape found in the shipping room of the Depository on November 22 enabled the Commission to conclude that the bag was made from these materials.”
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Also, a “single brown, delustered, viscose fiber and several light-green cotton fibers found inside the bag…matched in all observable microscopic characteristics” fibers from the blanket in Ruth Paine’s garage, where Oswald stored his Carcano. However, because there were so few fibers found inside the paper bag, and the blanket in the garage also consisted of other fibers (e.g., brown and green woolen fibers), the FBI crime lab was unable to make a positive match between the fibers found inside the bag and the blanket.
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Oswald’s claim that he went out to Irving on Thursday to get some curtain rods turns out to be another of the many lies he told both before and after the assassination. His rented room on North Beckley was already fitted with curtains and rods, and his landlady testified that Oswald never discussed redecorating with her.
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Nor did Oswald mention curtain rods to either Marina or Ruth Paine.
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Mrs. Paine did in fact have two curtain rods in the garage among her stored household goods, but they were still there after the assassination.
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Additionally, no curtain rods were ever discovered in the Texas School Book Depository Building.
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Starting with Oswald’s journey out to Irving on Thursday night, an odd departure from his routine of going out only on the weekends, all of the evidence points toward his going there to retrieve his rifle from its place of storage in Ruth Paine’s garage and carrying it to the Depository the next morning in a bag he constructed himself from materials evidently taken from his place of employment. The Warren Commission also gave weight to the fact that Oswald lied twice to Wesley Frazier, since he neither went to Irving for curtain rods nor returned with curtain rods the next morning.
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L
ee Harvey Oswald’s ownership and possession of the rifle found on the sixth floor is further demonstrated by the fact that he physically handled it, as evidenced by his right palm print being found on it. Like everything else in the case against Oswald, though, this palm print was to become embroiled in controversy. And there were fingerprint problems too.
Shortly after the rifle was discovered, Lieutenant J. C. Day of the Dallas police crime lab pulled it carefully from its hiding spot, grabbing it by the wooden stock, which he had determined was too rough to hold fingerprints. After examining the polished surface of the bolt knob with a magnifying glass and determining that it contained no prints, Day allowed homicide captain Will Fritz to grab the bolt knob and pull it, ejecting a live round from the firing chamber. Day then turned his attention to the trigger housing, dusting the metal surface with a fine, black fingerprint powder. He quickly noticed traces of three fingerprints on the left side of the trigger housing, two of which showed ridge patterns. He turned to Captain Fritz and told him he wanted to take the rifle to the crime lab, where he had the proper equipment to develop the fingerprint traces.
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Lieutenant Day carried the rifle from the building around 2:00 p.m. and took it to the fourth-floor crime lab in the Identification Bureau at police headquarters, where he locked it in an evidence box until later that evening. Day returned to the Depository and supervised the taking of fifty photographs of the southeast corner of the sixth floor, the dusting of the boxes in the sniper’s nest for fingerprints, and the drawing of a scale map of the sixth-floor crime scene.
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Returning to the crime lab about 7:00 p.m., Day began examining the fingerprint traces he had seen on the trigger housing earlier that afternoon. Despite the fingerprint powder adhering to them, the traces were still unclear. Day decided to photograph them rather than try to lift them with an adhesive material similar to Scotch tape, since the latter actually removes some of the oil, dust, and fingerprint powder making up the visible print.
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Day later testified that because the prints were only “traces” and “unclear,” he “could not positively identify them.” However, Day added he “thought” the fingerprints “appeared to be the right middle and right ring finger” of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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(Day, long since retired, told me that “the general pattern of the two prints were the same as Oswald’s but the ridges just were not clear enough for me to say they were his.”)
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Day then began dusting the rest of the rifle and noticed a print on the bottom of the barrel, partially covered by the wooden stock. Taking the stock off, it looked to him like a palm print, and he could tell by the way the powder was sticking to the print that it had been there quite a while. Day placed a strip of two-inch cellophane tape over the print, then peeled the tape off, lifting “a faint palm print” off the barrel. He made a quick comparison between the palm print lifted from the rifle and Oswald’s palm prints taken earlier in Captain Fritz’s office
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and tentatively identified the palm print on the rifle as Oswald’s, but he wanted to do some more work before declaring that he had a positive match. He did, however, tell both Captain Fritz and Chief Curry that night that he had a tentative match.
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After doing the lift, Day was about to photograph what remained of the palm print on the barrel when he was interrupted by crime-lab captain George M. Doughty, who instructed him to stop working on the rifle and prepare to release it to the FBI. Arrangements had been made for FBI agent Vince Drain to fly the rifle and other pieces of important evidence to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., that night.
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At 11:45 p.m., 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.”
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Though Drain denied that Day showed him the palm print,
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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.”
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(The FBI agents were in a hurry to catch a C-135 jet tanker, its crew waiting on the runway at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth to fly the evidence to Washington.)
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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.”
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The morning after the assassination (November 23), FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona examined the rifle in Washington. His attention was first drawn to the cellophane used to protect the surface of the trigger housing. Removing the cellophane, he could see “faint ridge formations.” Latona testified before the Warren Commission that he then took a look at the three film negatives of the trigger housing that Day had enclosed, but he didn’t think the photographs were of any help in clarifying the ridge formations. Latona had an experienced photographer rephotograph the trigger housing in hopes of improving the condition of the fingerprint traces, but the effort was unsuccessful. Although Latona could see that the pattern formations were consistent with those on Oswald’s hands, they were “insufficient” to make a definitive determination. The lack of detail forced Latona to conclude that the fingerprint “fragments” were of “no value” in determining with certainty who had handled the rifle.
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Latona then proceeded to dust the entire rifle for prints, including the clip, the bolt, and the underside of the barrel, where, according to Lieutenant Day, traces of the palm print he had lifted remained. Despite a careful examination, Latona was unable to find any identifiable print.
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The rifle was returned from Washington, by the FBI’s Drain, to the Dallas police on Sunday morning, November 24, around the same time Oswald was being rushed to Parkland Hospital after having being fatally shot by Jack Ruby. Lieutenant Day told me the FBI put the Carcano in a box in his office “and I was instructed not to do anything with it. The FBI had pretty well taken over the case.”
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Five days later, on November 29, the card containing the palm print that Day had lifted on the night of November 22, along with the notation “off underside of gun barrel near end of foregrip C 2766”—the serial number of Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano—reached the FBI crime lab.
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Though he had been unable to see or lift any palm print of Oswald’s on his own at the FBI crime lab on November 23, Latona told the Warren Commission that when he received Day’s actual lift card on November 29, “the palm print which appears on the lift was identified by me as the right palm print of Lee Harvey Oswald.”
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Lee Harvey Oswald, if he had lived, was now precluded from making the argument that even if the
ownership
of the Carcano was linked to him, he had never been in
possession
of the weapon. This is so because fingerprint and palm print evidence is conclusive. There has been no reported case of two people having the same finger or palm prints. Desperate attempts by criminals to destroy or alter their fingerprints, for instance, by burning or filing the skin, have proved unsuccessful. The original patterns reappear with the healing of the epidermis (outer layer of skin), the most famous FBI case like this being of fugitive Roscoe Pitts. Only skin grafts have worked.
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