The Mystery of a Murder Weapon
While I personally don’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald ever owned or possessed the rifle that was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, and attributed to him as his murder weapon, for the sake of argument I will go along with the idea that it did belong to him. It only bolsters the strength of his innocence by giving the official story more than it’s share of breaks.
Before delving into the evidence behind the transportation of the supposed assassination weapon, it is important to start at the very beginning. On Thursday, November 21st, the day before Kennedy’s death Oswald approached his co-worker and friend, Buell Wesley Frazier, asking if he could catch a ride home with him from work that day. As things were, Oswald living in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff, which his wife, Marina, lived with a couple in the suburb of Irving. While the two lived in separate places, Oswald would often spend the weekends with his wife in Irving. Frazier just happened to live down the street in Irving, and he often gave Oswald rides on Friday’s so he could be there with his wife on weekends (because he did not drive, or so we are led to believe). Realizing that Oswald was asking for a ride on a Thursday, Frazier approached him and inquired why he needed a ride that day, to which Oswald reportedly told him that he wanted to pick up some curtain rods out there to put up in his apartment. Oswald denied after his arrest to this story, but a photograph taken of his room around the time of the assassination showed that a window in there was without curtains.
Frazier, by his own account, accepted this reasoning and gave Oswald a ride home on Thursday. The following day he took Oswald to work. Both Frazier and his sister, Linnie Mae, stated that when Oswald approached them that morning he was carrying a paper package with him. When Frazier asked about it, Oswald reportedly told him the package contained the curtain rods he spoke of the day before. The Warren Commission took great pains to prove that this paper package was what Oswald used to transport the rifle later found on the sixth floor to that location. However, even when broken down, the rifle was over thirty-five inches long. Frazier and his sister both described the package Oswald had as being roughly two feet long (or twenty-four inches in length). Under harsh pressure from the Commission, Frazier ultimately admitted the package could have possibly been a few inches longer, but certainly not a whole foot longer as would have been necessary. Frazier even testified, and maintained later on, that after Oswald got out of his car at the Book Depository that Oswald tucked one end of the package up under his armpit and supported the other end with his hand. Being approximately five feet, nine inches tall, had the package been thirty-six inches in length, as would have been necessary if the rifle had been stashed within it, if Oswald had tucked one end under his armpit the other end would have hung down past his knees. And yet, Oswald was able to balance the other end of the package under his hand, meaning this package was no longer than the length of Oswald’s arm.
This is all quite significant for several reasons, but namely two. One is the fact that nobody else besides Frazier and his sister saw Oswald carrying a large package like this for the rest of the day (or at least up until the time of the assassination). This puts all the legitimacy of the package as the device used to transport the accused assassin’s rifle on the testimony of Frazier and his sister. But neither one of them would say the package was anywhere near long enough to hold a thirty-six inch, broken down rifle. Therefore, the whole story is illegitimate.
But let’s give the Warren Commission and the lone assassin crowd another benefit of the doubt, and let’s just say Frazier and his sister had poor vision and were seeing optical illusions and let’s say Oswald had transported a rifle in the package he carried with him. This would mean the package was at least thirty-six inches long, again, and with Oswald standing at only sixty-nine inches tall the package would have been over half his height. With a package so large it is absurd to believe that nobody would have seen Oswald lugging this giant package around. And from the other side of things, what kind of a fool would lug a three-foot long paper package to work with him on that day if he were intending to shoot the President and conceal that he did it (again as I have mentioned many times before, while some lone-assassin theorists want to argue that Oswald was a deadbeat loner who wanted to be caught so he could have his day in the spotlight as an infamous assassin, all of Oswald actions after the assassination up until the time of his death do not support that motive). It is more than obvious by Oswald’s actions that if he was the assassin he didn’t want anyone to know about it. And yet we are to presume that he would lug s large package around his workplace, an action that most certainly would not have been commonplace for him, something that most certainly would have been seen by several of his co-workers. The whole idea is preposterous, unless Oswald was an unmitigated fool.
No one ever saw this package however. Oswald never admitted to having anything with him that day except a small paper back that he carried his lunch in. Depository employee Jack Daugherty saw Oswald as he entered the Depository that day, literally seconds after he left Frazier’s car. He saw nothing in Oswald’s hands. Certainly a small lunch sack could have escaped his vision, but not a three-foot long paper package. An officer was photographed holding the “official” paper sack reportedly found in the sniper’s nest and it’s astonishing how massive this package was. And yet not only did nobody see Oswald with it, but he was able to ascend six floor to the sniper’s next with the package without being seen. This is beyond improbable, and Oswald would have had to know, if her were the sole assassin, that people would have suspected the shooting came from the Depository because that would have, in fact, been the only place the shooting came from. He had to know, even if the focus wasn’t put on him, that the building would have been meticulously searched and that any actions conducted by any employees that day would have been closely scrutinized. Nevertheless, he wanders into his place of business with a huge paper package? He may as well have stenciled, “I HAVE A GUN IN HERE” on the side of it.
The greatest question in all of this is: how did Oswald get the rifle from Frazier’s car all the way up to the sixth floor? Obviously he would have had to pull a vanishing act with Daugherty when he walked into the Depository seemingly empty-handed. Nobody described Oswald’s actions that morning as anything out of the ordinary. It is of significance to mention here that on the morning of the assassination several workers, many of whom were not employees of the Book Depository, were up there laying new flooring. With numerous employees walking all around up there it is obscene to even think Oswald stashed the rifle up there at an early time and came back and recovered it there right before shooting the President. Beyond the incredible risk he would have been undertaking and the likelihood that someone working up there might have stumbled upon it, how would he have snuck it up there without being seen? Those workers were up their all morning and did not leave the sixth floor till approximately 11:45 for lunch.
This would still leave Oswald some forty-five minutes in which he could have placed the rifle on the sixth floor. But again, the whole idea is thrown into chaos. The employees going down from the sixth floor passed Oswald by on the fifth floor, where he called out to them to send the elevator back up for him. None of them saw Oswald with the package at this time and there had been other employees on the fifth floor of the Depository as well. It would have been foolish for him to try and transport the package even that far, knowing at any time someone up there could have seen him or possibly encountered him on the stairs going up the floors. But once more, let’s give the Warren Commission and the lone-assassin theorists a break, and presume, as we must in so many instances, that Oswald just got lucky and managed to reach the fifth floor with his three-foot long paper package without being seen.
Oswald was seen down on the first floor a few minutes before noon, as legitimates the case for him wanting to go down when he called out to the other workers to send the elevator back up form him. This leaves only a space of a few minutes wherein he could have stashed the rifle on the sixth floor. Then, of course, we have the testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams, who claimed he was up on the sixth floor eating his lunch from approximately 12:00 to 12:20 p.m. What are the odds that William’s and Oswald wouldn’t have encountered one another up there. And furthermore, if Williams was going up and Oswald was going down at roughly similar times, the fact that Williams didn’t not see Oswald means that Oswald must have gone down before he went up. So the odds that Oswald was lucky again and managed to find a small area of a few minutes wherein he was able to stash the rifle and, again, not be seen by anyone, coupled with all the breaks that lone-assassin theorists have been given it’s beyond absurd to believe that Oswald could have legitimately transported the rifle found on the sixth floor in the manner in which he was presumed to have done it.
And another thing, if Oswald was storing the rifle up there to be used to kill Kennedy later, why wouldn’t he stash it right in the sniper’s nest? Such would make sense if that’s where he was going to shoot from. Interestingly enough, the sniper’s nest is where Bonnie Ray Williams ate his lunch. So had the package been there, he most certainly would have noticed. Furthermore, all the officers who initially discovered the sniper’s nest and the spent rifle shells there never reported seeing the large paper package there. Dallas Captain Will Fritz ordered that nothing be moved until everything had been photographed and yet amidst the large collection of police photos taken of the sniper’s nest that day, not one shows a large paper package there. In an effort to legitimize its placement there, the Warren Commission used a later picture taken of the sniper’s nest area and outlined the area where the package had been “discovered”. There is no legitimate proof that a package was ever there. All we know is that a package was supposedly found and that there is an “official” brown paper package that Oswald presumably used to transport a rifle into the Depository with. Of course, when Frazier was shown this package he was unable to identify it as the one he saw Oswald with. What a shock!
Based on eyewitness accounts, Oswald was down on either the first and/or second floors from some time around noon until no earlier than 12:15 p.m. when Depository employee Carolyn Arnold saw him eating his lunch. He had no package with him and did not appear in a rush. So either we must then presume, through a mix of lucky breaks, that he managed to place the rifle on the sixth floor before, for some reason or another, walking down to one of the lower floors to eat his lunch. Then, I suppose, he went back up. If he stashed the rifle on the sixth floor before eating his lunch it’s a wonder why he would bother leaving that location at all. He couldn’t have known that Bonnie Ray Williams would be arriving shortly after. The only logical reason for Oswald to do this would have been to potentially establish an alibi. And yet he made no effort to attract attention to himself during this 12:00 to 12:15 period and when Arnold saw him eating his lunch his back was turned to her (thus he likely didn’t even know she caught sight of him and even if he heard her close by he couldn’t have presumed that she saw him). The whole establishing an alibi concept is as absurd as the idea that Oswald killed the President so he could finally be seen as a “somebody”.
The last ditch effort to legitimate the already crumbling possibility that Oswald could have transported the rifle up to the sixth floor is to assume he did in in that small time period between 12:15 and 12:30. But again, Bonnie Ray Williams was up on the sixth floor until about 12:20. Regardless however, Oswald wouldn’t have known this, as he was down on one of the Depository’s lower floors by the time Williams started his lunch on the sixth floor. But since Williams saw no one we must assume Oswald arrived on the sixth floor some time after 12:20 (another lucky break). Eyewitness Arnold Rowland claimed to see a man at the southwest corner sixth floor window with a rifle in his possession. Rowland assumed this man was with the secret service and there to protect the President. This is when Oswald was still downstairs eating his lunch. Rowland also mentioned seeing a man of dark complexion down by the southeast corner window (the sniper’s nest). With it being still around 12:15, this individual was no doubt Bonnie Ray Williams. More than one witness claimed to see activity on the sixth floor still several minutes before the President’s arrival, putting it only moments after Williams departed the floor. Considering the fact that the room was filled with stacked book boxes it is definitely possible that conspirators could have been up there in accordance with when Williams was up there. If they were still and quiet they could have easily hid from view. But even if there was someone else up there at that time, it could not have been Oswald.
No matter which way you try and turn things, even with several breaks and gimmies, the idea that Oswald carried a rifle to work with him, concealed or not, on the morning of the assassination and managed to transport it up to the sixth floor of his place of business where he killed President Kennedy is completely full of holes and there are broken chains of evidence everywhere. With the fact that there was no prints from Oswald or markings from the rifle found on the paper bag, there is no proof whatsoever that Oswald carried a package or a rifle with him to work that day. Only one man reportedly saw him in such a way and even his story doesn’t support the proposition that there was a long rifle inside that package. No one else saw the package. It was never photographed in the sniper’s nest. There is simply nothing to substantiate the story whatsoever except the words of Buell Wesley Frazier, and man who was friends with Oswald and who, like many others, never believed him to be the killer of the President.
Before delving into the evidence behind the transportation of the supposed assassination weapon, it is important to start at the very beginning. On Thursday, November 21st, the day before Kennedy’s death Oswald approached his co-worker and friend, Buell Wesley Frazier, asking if he could catch a ride home with him from work that day. As things were, Oswald living in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff, which his wife, Marina, lived with a couple in the suburb of Irving. While the two lived in separate places, Oswald would often spend the weekends with his wife in Irving. Frazier just happened to live down the street in Irving, and he often gave Oswald rides on Friday’s so he could be there with his wife on weekends (because he did not drive, or so we are led to believe). Realizing that Oswald was asking for a ride on a Thursday, Frazier approached him and inquired why he needed a ride that day, to which Oswald reportedly told him that he wanted to pick up some curtain rods out there to put up in his apartment. Oswald denied after his arrest to this story, but a photograph taken of his room around the time of the assassination showed that a window in there was without curtains.
Frazier, by his own account, accepted this reasoning and gave Oswald a ride home on Thursday. The following day he took Oswald to work. Both Frazier and his sister, Linnie Mae, stated that when Oswald approached them that morning he was carrying a paper package with him. When Frazier asked about it, Oswald reportedly told him the package contained the curtain rods he spoke of the day before. The Warren Commission took great pains to prove that this paper package was what Oswald used to transport the rifle later found on the sixth floor to that location. However, even when broken down, the rifle was over thirty-five inches long. Frazier and his sister both described the package Oswald had as being roughly two feet long (or twenty-four inches in length). Under harsh pressure from the Commission, Frazier ultimately admitted the package could have possibly been a few inches longer, but certainly not a whole foot longer as would have been necessary. Frazier even testified, and maintained later on, that after Oswald got out of his car at the Book Depository that Oswald tucked one end of the package up under his armpit and supported the other end with his hand. Being approximately five feet, nine inches tall, had the package been thirty-six inches in length, as would have been necessary if the rifle had been stashed within it, if Oswald had tucked one end under his armpit the other end would have hung down past his knees. And yet, Oswald was able to balance the other end of the package under his hand, meaning this package was no longer than the length of Oswald’s arm.
This is all quite significant for several reasons, but namely two. One is the fact that nobody else besides Frazier and his sister saw Oswald carrying a large package like this for the rest of the day (or at least up until the time of the assassination). This puts all the legitimacy of the package as the device used to transport the accused assassin’s rifle on the testimony of Frazier and his sister. But neither one of them would say the package was anywhere near long enough to hold a thirty-six inch, broken down rifle. Therefore, the whole story is illegitimate.
But let’s give the Warren Commission and the lone assassin crowd another benefit of the doubt, and let’s just say Frazier and his sister had poor vision and were seeing optical illusions and let’s say Oswald had transported a rifle in the package he carried with him. This would mean the package was at least thirty-six inches long, again, and with Oswald standing at only sixty-nine inches tall the package would have been over half his height. With a package so large it is absurd to believe that nobody would have seen Oswald lugging this giant package around. And from the other side of things, what kind of a fool would lug a three-foot long paper package to work with him on that day if he were intending to shoot the President and conceal that he did it (again as I have mentioned many times before, while some lone-assassin theorists want to argue that Oswald was a deadbeat loner who wanted to be caught so he could have his day in the spotlight as an infamous assassin, all of Oswald actions after the assassination up until the time of his death do not support that motive). It is more than obvious by Oswald’s actions that if he was the assassin he didn’t want anyone to know about it. And yet we are to presume that he would lug s large package around his workplace, an action that most certainly would not have been commonplace for him, something that most certainly would have been seen by several of his co-workers. The whole idea is preposterous, unless Oswald was an unmitigated fool.
No one ever saw this package however. Oswald never admitted to having anything with him that day except a small paper back that he carried his lunch in. Depository employee Jack Daugherty saw Oswald as he entered the Depository that day, literally seconds after he left Frazier’s car. He saw nothing in Oswald’s hands. Certainly a small lunch sack could have escaped his vision, but not a three-foot long paper package. An officer was photographed holding the “official” paper sack reportedly found in the sniper’s nest and it’s astonishing how massive this package was. And yet not only did nobody see Oswald with it, but he was able to ascend six floor to the sniper’s next with the package without being seen. This is beyond improbable, and Oswald would have had to know, if her were the sole assassin, that people would have suspected the shooting came from the Depository because that would have, in fact, been the only place the shooting came from. He had to know, even if the focus wasn’t put on him, that the building would have been meticulously searched and that any actions conducted by any employees that day would have been closely scrutinized. Nevertheless, he wanders into his place of business with a huge paper package? He may as well have stenciled, “I HAVE A GUN IN HERE” on the side of it.
The greatest question in all of this is: how did Oswald get the rifle from Frazier’s car all the way up to the sixth floor? Obviously he would have had to pull a vanishing act with Daugherty when he walked into the Depository seemingly empty-handed. Nobody described Oswald’s actions that morning as anything out of the ordinary. It is of significance to mention here that on the morning of the assassination several workers, many of whom were not employees of the Book Depository, were up there laying new flooring. With numerous employees walking all around up there it is obscene to even think Oswald stashed the rifle up there at an early time and came back and recovered it there right before shooting the President. Beyond the incredible risk he would have been undertaking and the likelihood that someone working up there might have stumbled upon it, how would he have snuck it up there without being seen? Those workers were up their all morning and did not leave the sixth floor till approximately 11:45 for lunch.
This would still leave Oswald some forty-five minutes in which he could have placed the rifle on the sixth floor. But again, the whole idea is thrown into chaos. The employees going down from the sixth floor passed Oswald by on the fifth floor, where he called out to them to send the elevator back up for him. None of them saw Oswald with the package at this time and there had been other employees on the fifth floor of the Depository as well. It would have been foolish for him to try and transport the package even that far, knowing at any time someone up there could have seen him or possibly encountered him on the stairs going up the floors. But once more, let’s give the Warren Commission and the lone-assassin theorists a break, and presume, as we must in so many instances, that Oswald just got lucky and managed to reach the fifth floor with his three-foot long paper package without being seen.
Oswald was seen down on the first floor a few minutes before noon, as legitimates the case for him wanting to go down when he called out to the other workers to send the elevator back up form him. This leaves only a space of a few minutes wherein he could have stashed the rifle on the sixth floor. Then, of course, we have the testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams, who claimed he was up on the sixth floor eating his lunch from approximately 12:00 to 12:20 p.m. What are the odds that William’s and Oswald wouldn’t have encountered one another up there. And furthermore, if Williams was going up and Oswald was going down at roughly similar times, the fact that Williams didn’t not see Oswald means that Oswald must have gone down before he went up. So the odds that Oswald was lucky again and managed to find a small area of a few minutes wherein he was able to stash the rifle and, again, not be seen by anyone, coupled with all the breaks that lone-assassin theorists have been given it’s beyond absurd to believe that Oswald could have legitimately transported the rifle found on the sixth floor in the manner in which he was presumed to have done it.
And another thing, if Oswald was storing the rifle up there to be used to kill Kennedy later, why wouldn’t he stash it right in the sniper’s nest? Such would make sense if that’s where he was going to shoot from. Interestingly enough, the sniper’s nest is where Bonnie Ray Williams ate his lunch. So had the package been there, he most certainly would have noticed. Furthermore, all the officers who initially discovered the sniper’s nest and the spent rifle shells there never reported seeing the large paper package there. Dallas Captain Will Fritz ordered that nothing be moved until everything had been photographed and yet amidst the large collection of police photos taken of the sniper’s nest that day, not one shows a large paper package there. In an effort to legitimize its placement there, the Warren Commission used a later picture taken of the sniper’s nest area and outlined the area where the package had been “discovered”. There is no legitimate proof that a package was ever there. All we know is that a package was supposedly found and that there is an “official” brown paper package that Oswald presumably used to transport a rifle into the Depository with. Of course, when Frazier was shown this package he was unable to identify it as the one he saw Oswald with. What a shock!
Based on eyewitness accounts, Oswald was down on either the first and/or second floors from some time around noon until no earlier than 12:15 p.m. when Depository employee Carolyn Arnold saw him eating his lunch. He had no package with him and did not appear in a rush. So either we must then presume, through a mix of lucky breaks, that he managed to place the rifle on the sixth floor before, for some reason or another, walking down to one of the lower floors to eat his lunch. Then, I suppose, he went back up. If he stashed the rifle on the sixth floor before eating his lunch it’s a wonder why he would bother leaving that location at all. He couldn’t have known that Bonnie Ray Williams would be arriving shortly after. The only logical reason for Oswald to do this would have been to potentially establish an alibi. And yet he made no effort to attract attention to himself during this 12:00 to 12:15 period and when Arnold saw him eating his lunch his back was turned to her (thus he likely didn’t even know she caught sight of him and even if he heard her close by he couldn’t have presumed that she saw him). The whole establishing an alibi concept is as absurd as the idea that Oswald killed the President so he could finally be seen as a “somebody”.
The last ditch effort to legitimate the already crumbling possibility that Oswald could have transported the rifle up to the sixth floor is to assume he did in in that small time period between 12:15 and 12:30. But again, Bonnie Ray Williams was up on the sixth floor until about 12:20. Regardless however, Oswald wouldn’t have known this, as he was down on one of the Depository’s lower floors by the time Williams started his lunch on the sixth floor. But since Williams saw no one we must assume Oswald arrived on the sixth floor some time after 12:20 (another lucky break). Eyewitness Arnold Rowland claimed to see a man at the southwest corner sixth floor window with a rifle in his possession. Rowland assumed this man was with the secret service and there to protect the President. This is when Oswald was still downstairs eating his lunch. Rowland also mentioned seeing a man of dark complexion down by the southeast corner window (the sniper’s nest). With it being still around 12:15, this individual was no doubt Bonnie Ray Williams. More than one witness claimed to see activity on the sixth floor still several minutes before the President’s arrival, putting it only moments after Williams departed the floor. Considering the fact that the room was filled with stacked book boxes it is definitely possible that conspirators could have been up there in accordance with when Williams was up there. If they were still and quiet they could have easily hid from view. But even if there was someone else up there at that time, it could not have been Oswald.
No matter which way you try and turn things, even with several breaks and gimmies, the idea that Oswald carried a rifle to work with him, concealed or not, on the morning of the assassination and managed to transport it up to the sixth floor of his place of business where he killed President Kennedy is completely full of holes and there are broken chains of evidence everywhere. With the fact that there was no prints from Oswald or markings from the rifle found on the paper bag, there is no proof whatsoever that Oswald carried a package or a rifle with him to work that day. Only one man reportedly saw him in such a way and even his story doesn’t support the proposition that there was a long rifle inside that package. No one else saw the package. It was never photographed in the sniper’s nest. There is simply nothing to substantiate the story whatsoever except the words of Buell Wesley Frazier, and man who was friends with Oswald and who, like many others, never believed him to be the killer of the President.
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