Chapter IV - The Assassin

Ownership and Possession of Assassination Weapon

Purchase of Rifle by Oswald

According to the vice president of Klein's, William Waldman, the scope was mounted on the rifle by a gunsmith employed by Klein's, and the rifle was shipped fully assembled in accordance with customary company procedures. The specific rifle shipped against the order had been received by Klein's from Crescent on February 21,1963. It bore the manufacturer's serial number C2766. On that date, Klein's placed an internal control number VC836 on this rifle.
According to Klein's shipping order form, one Italian carbine 6.5 X-4 x scope, control number VC836, serial number C2766, was shipped parcel post to "A. Hidell, P.O. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas," on March 20, 1963. Information received from the Italian Armed Forces Intelligence Service has established that this particular rifle was the only rifle of its type bearing serial number C2766. (See app. X, p. 554.) The post office box to which the rifle was shipped was rented to "Lee H. Oswald" from October 9, 1962, to May 14, 1963. Experts on handwriting identification from 'the Treasury Department and the FBI testified that the signature and other writing on the application for that box were in the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald, as was a change-of-address card dated May 12, 1963, by which Oswald requested that mail addressed to that box be forwarded to him in New Orleans, where he had moved on April 24. Since the rifle was shipped from Chicago on March 20, 1963, it was received in Dallas during the period when Oswald rented and used the box. (See Commission Exhibit No. 791, p. 120.) It is not known whether the application for post office box 2915 listed "A. Hidell" as a person entitled to receive mail at this box. In accordance with postal regulations, the portion of the application which lists names of persons, other than the applicant, entitled to receive mail was thrown away after the box was closed on May 1963. Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes of the Dallas Post Office testified, however, that when a package is received for a certain box, a notice is placed in that box regardless of whether the name on the package is listed on the application as a person entitled to receive mail through that box. The person having access to the box then takes the notice to the window and is given the package. Ordinarily, Inspector Holmes testified, identification is not requested because it is assumed that the person with the notice is entitled to the package.

Oswald's use of the name "Hidell" to purchase the assassination weapon was one of several instances in which he used this name as an alias. When arrested on the day of the assassination, he had in his possession a Smith & Wesson 38 caliber revolver purchased by mail-order coupon from Seaport-Traders, Inc., a mail-order division of George Rose & Co., Los Angeles. The mail-order coupon listed the purchaser as "A. J. Hidell Age 28" with the address of post office box 2915 in Dallas, handwriting experts from the FBI and the Treasury Department testified that the writing on the mail-order form was that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Among other identification cards in Oswald's wallet at the time of his arrest were a Selective Service notice of classification, a Selective Service registration certificate, and a certificate of service in the U.S. Marine Corps, all three cards being in his own name. Also in his wallet at that time were a Selective Service notice of classification and a Marine certificate of service in the name of Alek James Hidell. On the Hidell Selective Service card there appeared signature, "Alek J. Hidell," and the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald. Experts on questioned documents from the Treasury Department and the FBI testified that the Hidell cards were counterfeit photographic reproductions made by photographing the Oswald cards, retouching the resulting negatives, and producing prints from the retouched negatives.

The Hidell signature on the notice of classification was in the handwriting of Oswald. (See app. X, p. 572.) In Oswald's personal effects found in his room at 1026 North Beckley Avenue in Dallas was a purported international certificate of vaccination signed by "Dr. A. J. Hidell," Post Office Box 30016, New Orleans. It certified that Lee Harvey Oswald had been vaccinated for smallpox on June 8, 1963. This, too, was a forgery. The signature of "A. J. Hideel" was in the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald. There is no "Dr. Hideel" licensed to practice medicine in Louisiana.

There is no post office box 30016 in the New Orleans Post Office but Oswald had rented post office box 30061 in New Orleans on June 3, 1963, listing Marina Oswald and A. J. Hidell as additional persons entitled to receive mail in the box.
The New Orleans postal authorities had not discarded the portion of the application listing the names of those, other than the owner of the box, entitled to receive mail through the box. Expert testimony confirmed that the writing on this application was that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Hidell's name on the post office box application was part of Oswald's use of a nonexistent Hidell to serve as president of the so-called New Orleans Chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. (As discussed below in ch.VI, p. 292.) Marina Oswald testified that she first learned of Oswald's use of the fictitious name "Hidell" in connection with his pro-Castro activities in New Orleans. According to her testimony, he compelled her to write the name "Hidell" on membership cards in the space designated for the signature of the "Chapter President." The name "Hidell" was stamped on some of the "Chapter's" printed literature and on the membership application blanks. Marina Oswald testified, "I knew there was no such organization. And I know Hidell is merely an altered Fidel, and I laughed at such foolishness." Hidell was a fictitious president of an organization of which Oswald was the only member.

Latona, supervisor of the Latent Fingerprint Section of the FBI's Identification Division.

In his testimony before the Commission, Latona stated that when he received the rifle, the area where prints were visible was protected by cellophane. He examined these prints, as well as photographs of them which the Dallas police had made, and concluded that:

...the formations, the ridge formations and characteristics, were insufficient for purposes of either effecting identification or a determination that the print was not identical with the prints of people. Accordingly, my opinion simply was that the latent prints which were there were of no value.

Latona then processed the complete weapon but developed no identifiable prints. He stated that the poor quality of the wood and the metal would cause the rifle to absorb moisture from the skin, thereby making a clear print unlikely.

On November 22, however, before surrendering possession of the rifle to the FBI Laboratory, Lieutenant Day of the Dallas Police Department had "lifted" a palmprint from the underside of the gun barrel "near the firing end of the barrel about 3 inches under the woodstock when I took the woodstock loose. "Lifting" a print involves the use of adhesive material to remove the fingerprint powder which adheres to the original print. In this way the powdered impression is actually removed from the object. The lifting had been so complete in this case that there was no trace of the print on the rifle itself when it was examined by Latona. Nor was there any indication that the lift had been performed. Day, on the other hand, believed that sufficient traces of the print had been left on the rifle barrel, because he did not release the lifted print until November 26, when he received instructions to send "everything that we had" to the FBI. The print arrived in the FBI Laboratory in Washington on November 29, mounted on a card on which Lieutenant Day had written the words "off underside gun barrel near end of grip C2766." The print's positive identity as having been lifted from the rifle was confirmed by FBI Laboratory tests which established that the adhesive material bearing the print also bore impressions of the same irregularities that appeared on the barrel of the rifle.

Latona testified that this palmprint was the right palmprint of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the request of the Commission, Arthur Mandella, fingerprint expert with the New York City Police Department, conducted an independent examination and also determined that this was the right palmprint of Oswald. Latona's findings were also confirmed by Ronald G. Wittmus, another FBI fingerprint expert. In the opinion of these experts, it was not possible to estimate the time which elapsed between the placing of the print on the rifle and the date of the lift.

Photograph of Oswald With Rifle

One of the photographs taken by Marina Oswald was widely published in newspapers and magazines, and in many instances the details of these pictures differed from the original, and even from each other, particularly as to the configuration of the rifle. The Commission sought to determine whether these photographs were touched prior to publication. Shaneyfelt testified that the published photographs appeared to be based on a copy of the original which the publications had each retouched differently. Several of the publications furnished the Commission with the prints they had used, or described by correspondence the retouching they had done. This information enabled the Commission to conclude that the published pictures were the same as the original except for retouching done by these publications, apparently for the purpose of clarifying the lines of the rifle and other details in the picture.

From September 24, 1963, when Marina Oswald arrived in Irving from New Orleans, until the morning of the assassination, the rifle was, according to the evidence, stored in a green and brown blanket in the Paines' garage among the Oswalds' other possessions. About 1 week after the return from New Orleans, Marina Oswald was looking in the garage for parts to the baby's crib and thought that the parts might be in the blanket. When she started to open the blanket, she saw the stock of the rifle. Ruth and Michael Paine both noticed the rolled-up blanket in the garage during the time that Marina Oswald was living in their home. On several occasions, Michael Paine moved the blanket in the garage. He thought it contained tent poles, or possibly other camping equipment such as a folding shovel. When he appeared before the Commission, Michael Paine lifted the blanket with the rifle wrapped inside and testified that it appeared to be the same approximate weight and shape as the package in his garage.

The Rifle in the Building

The Curtain Rod Story

During the morning of November 21, Oswald asked Frazier whether he could ride home with him that afternoon. Frazier, surprised, asked him why he was going to Irving on Thursday night rather than Friday. Oswald replied, "I'm going home to get some curtain rods ... [to] put in an apartment." The two men left work at 4: 40 p.m. and drove to Irving. There was little conversation between them on the way home. Mrs. Linnie Mac Randle, Frazier's sister, commented to her brother about Oswald's unusual midweek return to Irving. Frazier told her that Oswald had come home to get curtain rods, It would appear, however, that obtaining curtain rods was not the purpose of Oswald's trip to Irving on November 21.

Mrs. A. C. Johnson, his landlady, testified that Oswald's room at 1026 North Beckley Avenue had curtains and curtain rods, and that Oswald had never discussed the subject with her. In the Paines' garage, along with many other objects of a household character, there were two flat lightweight curtain rods belonging to Ruth Paine but they were still there on Friday afternoon after Oswald's arrest. Oswald never asked Mrs. Paine about the use of curtain rods, and Marina Oswald testified that Oswald did not say anything about curtain rods on the day before the assassination.

At approximately 9 p.m., after the children had been put to bed, Mrs. Paine, according to her testimony before the Commission, "went out to the garage to paint some children's blocks, and worked in the garage for half an hour or so. I noticed when I went out that the light was on." Mrs. Paine was certain that she had not left the light on in the garage after dinner. According to Mrs. Paine, Oswald had gone to bed by 9 p.m.;Marina Oswald testified that it was between 9 and 10 p.m. Neither Marina Oswald nor Ruth Paine saw Oswald in the garage. The period between 8 and 9 p.m., however, provided ample opportunity for Oswald to prepare the rifle for his departure the next. morning. Only if disassembled could the rifle fit into the paper bag found near the windowfrom which the shots were fired. A firearms expert with the FBI assembled the rifle in 6 minutes using a 10-cent coin as a tool, and he could disassemble it more rapidly. While the rifle may have already been disassembled when Oswald arrived home on Thursday, he had ample time that evening to disassemble the rifle and insert it into the paper bag. On the day of the assassination, Marina Oswald was watching television when she learned of the shooting. A short time later Mrs. Paine told her that someone had shot the President "from the building in which Lee is working." Marina Oswald testified that at that time "My heart dropped. I then went to the garage to see whether the rifle was there and I saw that the blanket was still there and I said 'Thank God.'" She did not unroll the blanket. She saw that it was in its usual position and it appeared to her to have something inside.

Soon afterward, at about 3 p.m., police officers arrived and searched the house. Mrs. Paine pointed out that most of the Oswalds' possessions were in the garage. With Ruth Paine acting as an interpreter, Detective Rose asked Marina whether her husband had a rifle. Mrs. Paine, who had no knowledge of the rifle, first said "No," but when the question was translated, Marina Oswald replied "Yes." She pointed to the blanket which was on the floor very close to where Ruth Paine was standing. Mrs. Paine testified:

As she [Marina] told me about it I stepped onto the blanket roll. * * * And she indicated to me that she had peered into this roll and saw a portion of what she took to be a gun she knew her husband to have, a rifle. And I then translated this to the officers that she knew that her husband had a gun that he had stored in here... I then stepped off of it and the officer picked it up in the middle and it bent so...

Frazier met Oswald at the kitchen door and together they walked to the car. After entering the car, Frazier glanced over his shoulder and noticed a brown paper package on the back seat. He asked, "What's the package, Lee?" Oswald replied, "curtain rods." Frazier told the Commission "... the main reason he was going over there that Thursday afternoon when he was to bring back some curtain rods, so I didn't think any more about it when he told me that." Frazier estimated that the bag was 2 feet long "give and take a few inches," and about 5 or 6 inches wide. As they sat in the car, Frazier asked Oswald where his lunch was, and Oswald replied that he was going to buy his lunch that day.

Frazier testified that Oswald carried no lunch bag that day. "When he rode with me, I say he always brought lunch except that one day on November 22 he didn't bring his lunch that day." Frazier parked the car in the company parking lot about 2 blocks north of the Depository Building. Oswald left the car first, picked up the brown paper bag, and proceeded toward the building ahead of Frazier. Frazier walked behind and as they crossed the railroad tracks he watched the switching of the cars. Frazier recalled that one end of the package was under Oswald's armpit and the lower part was held with his right hand so that it was carried straight and parallel to his body. When Oswald entered the rear door of the Depository Building, he was about 50 feet ahead of Frazier. It was the first time that Oswald had not walked with Frazier from the parking lot to the building entrance. When Frazier entered the building, he did not see Oswald. One employee, Jack Dougherty, believed that he saw Oswald coming to work, but he does not remember that Oswald had anything in his hands as he entered the door. No other employee has been found who saw Oswald enter that morning.

In deciding whether Oswald carried the assassination weapon in the bag which Frazier and Mrs. Randle saw, the Commission has carefully considered the testimony of these two witnesses with regard to the length of the bag. Frazier and Mrs. Randle testified that the bag which Oswald was carrying was approximately 27 or 28 inches long, whereas the wooden stock of the rifle, which is its largest component, measured 34.8 inches. The bag found on the sixth floor was 88 inches long.(See Commission Exhibit No. 1304, p. 132.) When Frazier appeared before the Commission and was asked to demonstrate how Oswald carried the package, he said, "Like I said, I remember that I didn't look at the package very much ... but when I did look at it he did have his hands on the package like that," and at this point Frazier placed the upper part of the package under his armpit and attempted to cup his right hand beneath the bottom of the bag. The disassembled rifle was too long to be carried in this manner. Similarly, when the butt of the rifle was placed in Frazier's hand, it extended above his shoulder to ear level. Moreover, in an interview on December 1, 1963, with agents of the FBI, Frazier had marked the point on the back seat of his car which he believed was where the bag reached when it was laid on the seat with one edge against the door. The distance between the point on the seat and the door was 27 inches.

Mrs. Randle said, when shown the paper bag, that the bag she saw Oswald carrying "wasn't that long, I mean it was folded down at the top as I told you. It definitely wasn't that long." And she folded the bag to length of about 28 inches. Frazier doubted whether the bag that Oswald carried was as wide as the bag found on the sixth floor, although Mrs. Randle testified that the width was approximately the same.
The Commission has weighed the visual recollection of Frazier and Mrs. Randle against the evidence here presented that the bag Oswald carried contained the assassination weapon and has concluded that Frazier and Randle are mistaken as to the length of the bag. Mrs. Randle saw the bag fleetingly and her first remembrance is that it was held in Oswald's right hand "and it almost touched the ground as he carried it." Frazier's view of the bag was from the rear. He continually advised that he was not paying close attention. For example, he said,

...I didn't pay too much attention the way he was walking because I was walking along there looking at the railroad cars and watching the men on the diesel switch them cars and I didn't pay too much attention on how he carried the package at all.

Scientific Evidence Linking Rifle and Oswald to Paper Bag

Oswald's palmprint on the bottom of the paper bag indicated, of course, that he had handled the bag. Furthermore, it was consistent with the bag having contained a heavy or bulky object when he handled it since a light object is usually held by the fingers. The palmprint was found on the closed end of the bag. It was from Oswald's right hand, in which he carried the long package as he walked from Frazier's car to the building. Materials used to make bag.On the day of the assassination, the Dallas police obtained a sample of wrapping paper and tape from the shipping room of the Depository and forwarded it to the FBI Laboratory in Washington. James C. Cadigan, a questioned-documents expert with the Bureau, compared the samples with the paper and tape in the actual bag. He testified, "In all of the observations and physical tests that I made I found ... the bag ... and the paper sample ... were the same."Among other tests, the paper and tape were submitted to fiber analysis and spectrographic examination. In addition the tape was compared to determine whether the sample tape and the tape on the bag had been taken from the tape dispensing machine at the Depository. When asked to explain the similarity of characteristics, Cadigan stated:

Well, briefly, it would be the thickness of both the paper and the tape, the color under various lighting conditions of both the paper and the tape, the width of the tape, the knurled markings on the surface of the fiber, the texture of the fiber, the letting pattern...
I found that the paper sack found on the sixth floor ... and the sample ... had the same observable characteristics both under the microscope and all the visual tests that I could conduct.
The papers I also found were similar in fiber composition, therefore, in addition to the visual characteristics, microscopic and UV [ultra violet] characteristics.

Mr. Cadigan concluded that the paper and tape from the bag were identical in all respects to the sample paper and tape taken from the Texas School Book Depository shipping room on November 22, 1963. On December l, 1963, a replica bag was made from materials found on that date in the shipping room. This was done as an investigation aid since the original bag had been discolored during various laboratory examinations and could not be used for valid identification by witnesses. Cadigan found that the paper used to make this replica sack had different characteristics from the paper in the original bag. The science of paper analysis enabled him to distinguish between different rolls of paper even though they were produced by the same manufacturer.

Since the Depository normally used approximately one roll of paper every 3 working days, it was not surprising that the replica sack made on December 1, 1963, had different characteristics from both the actual bag and the sample taken on November 22. On the other hand, since two rolls could be made from the same batch of paper, one cannot estimate when, prior to November 22, Oswald made the paper bag. However, the complete identity of characteristics between the paper and 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. The Depository shipping department was on the first floor to which Oswald had access in the normal performance of his duties filling orders.

Fibers in paper bag matched fibers in blanket.When Paul M. Stombaugh of the FBI Laboratory examined the paper bag, he found, on the inside, a single brown delustered viscose fiber and several light green cotton fibers. 'The blanket in which the rifle was stored was composed of brown and green cotton, viscose and woolen fibers. The single brown viscose fiber found in the bag matched some of the brown viscose fibers from the blanket in all observable characteristics. The green cotton fibers found in the paper bag matched 'some of the green cotton fibers in the blanket "in all observable microscopic characteristics." Despite these matches, however, Stombaugh was unable to render on opinion that the fibers which he found in the bag had probably come from the blanket, because other types of fibers present in the blanket were not found in the bag. He concluded:

All I would say here is that it is possible that these fibers could have come from this blanket., because this blanket is composed of brown and green woolen fibers, brown and green delustered viscose fibers, and brown and green cotton fibers... We found no brown cotton fibers, no green viscose fibers, and no woolen fibers. So if I found all of these then I would have been able to say these fibers probably had come from this blanket. But since I found so few, then I would say the possibility exists, these fibers could have come from this blanket.

Oswald At Window

Palmprints and Fingerprints on Cartons and Paper Bag

They could be easily adjusted and were still solid enough to serve as a gun rest. The box on the floor, behind the three near the window, had been one of these moved by the floor layers from the west wall to near the east side of the building in preparation for the laying of the floor. During the afternoon of November 22, Lieutenant Day of the Dallas police dusted this carton with powder and developed a palmprint on the top edge of the carton on the side nearest the window. The position of this palmprint on the carton was parallel with the long axis of the box, and at right angles with the short axis; the bottom of the palm rested on the box. Someone sitting on the box facing the window would have his palm in this position if he placed his hand alongside his right hip. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1302, p. 139.) This print which had been cut out of the box was also forwarded to the FBI and Latona identified it as Oswald's right palmprint. In Latona's opinion "not too long" a time had elapsed between the time that the print was placed on the carton and the time that it had been developed by the Dallas police. Although Bureau experiments had shown that 24 hours was a likely maximum time, Latona stated that he could only testify with certainty that the print was less than 3 days old.

The print, therefore, could have been placed on the carton at any time within this period. The freshness of this print could be estimated only because the Dallas police developed it through the use of powder. Since cartons absorb perspiration, powder can successfully develop a print on such material only within a limited time. When the FBI in Washington received the cartons, the remaining prints, including Oswald's on the Rolling Readers carton, were developed by chemical processes. The freshness of prints developed in this manner cannot be estimated, so no conclusions can be drawn as to whether these remaining prints preceded or followed the print developed in Dallas by powder. Most of the prints were found to have been placed on the cartons by an FBI clerk and a Dallas police officer after the cartons had been processed with powder by the Dallas Police. (See ch. VI, p. 249;.app. X, p. 566.) In his independent investigation, Arthur Mandella of the New York City Police Department reached the same conclusion as Latona that the prints found on the cartons were those of Lee Harvey Oswald. In addition, Mandella was of the opinion that the print taken from the carton on the floor was probably made within a day or a day and a half of the examination on November 22. Moreover, another expert with the FBI, Ronald G. Wittmus, conducted a separate examination and also agreed with Latona that the prints were Oswald's.

At about 11:45 a.m. the floor-laying crew used both elevators to come down from the sixth floor. The employees raced the elevators to the first floor. Givens saw Oswald standing at the gate on the fifth floor as the elevator went by.
Givens testified that after reaching the first floor, "I discovered I left my cigarettes in my jacket pocket upstairs, and I took the elevator back upstairs to get my jacket with my cigarettes in it." He saw Oswald, a clipboard in hand, walking from the southeast corner of the sixth floor toward the elevator. (See Commission Exhibit No. 2707, p. 142.) Givens said to Oswald, "Boy are you going downstairs? ...It's near lunch time." Oswald said, "No, sir. When you get downstairs, close the gate to the elevator." Oswald was referring to the west elevator which operates by push-button and only with the gate closed. Givens said, "Okay," and rode down in the east elevator. When he reached the first floor, the west elevatorthe one with the gate was not there. Givens thought this was about 11:55 a.m. None of the Depository employees is known to have seen Oswald again until after the shooting.

Brennan's description should also be compared with the eyewitness description broadcast over the Dallas police radio at 1:22 p.m. of the man who shot Patrolman J. D. Tippit. The suspect was described as "a white male about 30, 5'8", black hair, slender..." At 1:29 p.m. the police radio reported that the description of the suspect in the Tippit shooting was similar to the description which had been given by Brennan in connection with the assassination. Approximately 7 or 8 minutes later the police radio reported that "an eyeball witness" described the suspect in the Tippit shooting as "a white male, 27, 5'11", 165 pounds, black wavy hair." As will be discussed fully below, the Commission has concluded that this suspect was Lee Harvey Oswald. Although Brennan testified that the man in the window was standing when he fired the shots, most probably he was either sitting or kneeling. The half-open window, the arrangement of the boxes, and the angle of the shots virtually preclude a standing position. It is understandable, however, for Brennan to have believed that the man with the rifle was standing. A photograph of the building taken seconds after the assassination shows three employees looking out of the fifth-floor window directly below the window from which the shots were fired. Brennan testified that they were standing, which is their apparent position in the photograph. (See Dillard Exhibits Nos. C and D, pp. 66-67.) But the testimony of these employees, together with photographs subsequently taken of them at the scene of the assassination, establishes that they were either squatting or kneeling. (See Commission Exhibit No. 485, p. 69.) Since the window ledges in the Depository Building are lower than in most buildings, a person squatting or kneeling exposes more of his body than would normally be the case. From the street, this creates the impression that the person is standing.

Brennan could have seen enough of the body of a kneeling or squatting person to estimate his height. Shortly after the assassination Brennan noticed two of these employees leaving the building and immediately identified them as having been in the fifth-floor windows. When the three employees appeared before the Commission, Brennan identified the two whom he saw leave the building. The two men, Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr., each confirmed that when they came out of the building, they saw and heard Brennan describing what he had seen.

Norman stated, "...I remember him talking and I believe I remember seeing him saying that he saw us when we first went up to the fifth-floor window, he saw us then." Jarman heard Brennan "talking to this officer about that he had heard these shots and he had seen the barrel of the gun sticking out the window, and he said that the shots came from inside the building." During the evening of November 22, Brennan identified Oswald as the person in the lineup who bore the closest resemblance to the man in the window but he said he was unable to make a positive identification. Prior to the lineup, Brennan had seen Oswald's picture on television and he told the Commission that whether this affected his identification "is something I do not know." In an interview with FBI agents on December 17, 1963, Brennan stated that he was sure that the person firing the rifle was Oswald. In another interview with FBI agents on January 7, 1964, Brennan appeared to revert to his earlier inability to make a positive identification, but, in his testimony before the Commission, Brennan stated that his remarks of January 7 were intended by him merely as an accurate report of what he said on November 22.

Brennan told the Commission that he could have made a positive identification in the lineup on November 22 but did not do so because he felt that the assassination was "a Communist activity, and I felt like there hadn't been more than one eyewitness, and if it got to be a known fact that I was an eyewitness, my family or I, either one, might not be safe."When specifically asked before the Commission whether or not he could positively identify the man he saw in the sixth- floor window as the same man he saw in the police station, Brennan stated, "I could at that timeI could, with all sincerity, identify him as being the same man."Although the record indicates that Brennan was an accurate observer, he declined to make a positive identification of Oswald when he first saw him in the police lineup. The Commission, therefore, does not base its conclusion concerning the identity of the assassin on Brennan's subsequent certain identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw fire the rifle. Immediately after the assassination, however, Brennan described to the police the man he saw in the window and then identified Oswald as the person who most nearly resembled the man he saw. The Commission is satisfied that, at the least, Brennan saw a man in the window who closely resembled Lee Harvey Oswald, and that Brennan believes the man he saw was in fact Lee Harvey Oswald. Two other witnesses were able to offer partial descriptions of a man they saw in the southeast corner window of the sixth floor approximately 1 minute before the assassination, although neither witness saw the shots being fired. Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards were standing on the curb at the southwest corner of Elm and Houston Streets, the same corner where Brennan was sitting on a concrete wall. Fischer testified that about 10 or 15 seconds before the motorcade turned onto Houston Street from Main Street, Edwards said, "Look at that guy there in that window." Fischer looked up and watched the man in the window for 10 or 15 seconds and then started watching the motorcade, which came into view on Houston Street. He said that the man held his attention until the motorcade came because the man:

...appeared uncomfortable for one, and secondly, he wasn't watching ... he didn't look like he was watching for the parade. He looked like he was looking down toward the Trinity River and the Triple Underpass down at the endtoward the end of Elm Street. And ... all the time I watched him, he never moved his head, he neverhe never moved anything. Justwas there transfixed.

Fischer placed the man in the easternmost window on the south side of the Depository Building on either the fifth or the sixth floor. He said that he could see the man from the middle of his chest to the top of his head, and that as he was facing the window the man was in the lower right-hand portion of the window and "seemed to be sitting a little forward."The man was dressed in a light-colored, open-neck shirt which could have been either a sports shirt or a T-shirt, and he had brown hair, a slender face and neck with light complexion, and looked to be 22 or 24 years old. The person in the window was a white man and "looked to me like he was looking straight at the Triple Underpass" down Elm Street. Boxes and cases were stacked behind him.

Approximately 1 week after the assassination, according to Fisher, policemen showed him a picture of Oswald. In his testimony he said, "I told them that that could have been the man...That that could have been the man that I saw in the window in the School Book Depository Building, but that I was not sure." Fischer described the man's hair as some shade of brown"it wasn't dark and it wasn't light." On November 22, Fischer had apparently described the man as 'light-headed" Fischer explained that he did not mean by the earlier statement that the man was blond, but rather that his hair was not black.

Robert Edwards said that, while looking at the south side of the Depository Building shortly before the motorcade, he saw nothing of importance "except maybe one individual who was up there in the corner room of the sixth floor which was crowded in among boxes." He said that this was a white man about average in size, "possibly thin," and that he thought the man had light-brown hair. Fischer and Edwards did not see the man clearly enough or long enough to identify him.

Their testimony is of probative value, however, because their limited description is consistent with that of the man who has been found by the Commission, based on other evidence, to have fired the shots from the window. Another person who saw the assassin as the shots were fired was Amos L. Euins, age 15, who was one of the first witnesses to alert the police to the Depository as the source of the shots, as has been discussed in chapter III. Euins, who was on the southwest corner of Elm and Houston Streets testified that he could not describe the man he saw in the window. According to Euins, however, as the man lowered his head in order to aim the rifle down Elm Street, he appeared to have a white bald spot, on his head. Shortly after the assassination, Euins signed an affidavit describing the man as "white," but a radio reporter testified that Euins described the man to him as "colored." In his Commission testimony, Euins stated that he could not ascertain the man's race and that the statement in the affidavit was intended to refer only to the white spot on the man's head and not to his race. A Secret Service agent who spoke to Euins approximately 20 to 30 minutes after the assassination confirmed that Euins could neither describe the man in the window nor indicate his race. Accordingly, Euins' testimony is considered probative as to the source of the shots but is inconclusive as to the identity of the man in the window. In evaluating the evidence that Oswald was at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor at the time of the shooting, the Commission has considered the allegation that Oswald was photographed standing in front of the building when the shots were fired. The picture which gave rise to these allegations was taken by Associated Press Photographer James W. Altgens, who was standing on the south side of Elm Street between the Triple Underpass and the Depository Building. As the motorcade started its descent down Elm Street., Altgens snapped a picture of the Presidential limousine with the entrance to the Depository Building in the background. Just before snapping the picture Altgens heard a noise which sounded like the popping of a firecracker. Investigation has established that Altgens' picture was taken approximately 2 seconds after the firing of the shot which entered the back of the President's neck.

The encounter in the lunchroom.The first person to see Oswald after the assassination was Patrolman M. L. Baker of the Dallas Police Department. Baker was riding a two-wheeled motorcycle behind the last press car of the motorcade. As he turned the corner from Main onto Houston at a speed of about 5 to 10 miles per hour, a strong wind blowing from the north almost unseated him. At about this time he heard the first shot. Having recently Heard the sounds of rifles while on a hunting trip, Baker recognized the shots as that of a high-powered rifle; "it sounded high and I immediately kind of looked up, and I had a feeling that it came from the building, either right in front of me [the Depository Building] or of the one across to the right of it." He saw pigeons flutter upward. He was not certain, "but I am pretty sure they came from the building right on the northwest corner." He heard two more shots spaced "pretty well even to me." After the third shot, he "revved that motorcycle up," drove to the northwest corner of Elm and Houston, and parked approximately 10 feet from the traffic signal. As he was parking he noted that people were "falling, and they were rolling around down there * * * grabbing their children" and rushing about. A woman screamed, "Oh, they have shot that man, they have shot that man." Baker "had it in mind that the shots came from the top of this building here," so he ran straight to the entrance of the Depository Building. Baker testified that he entered the lobby of the building and "spoke out and asked where the stairs or elevator was... and this man, Mr. Truly, spoke up and says, it seems to me like he says, 'I am a building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you.' " Baker and building superintendent Roy Truly went through a second set of doors and stopped at a swinging door where Baker bumped into Truly's back. They went through the swinging door and continued at "a good trot" to the northwest corner of the floor where Truly hoped to find one of the two freight elevators. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1061, p. 148.) Neither elevator was there. Truly pushed the button for the west elevator which operates automatically if the gate is closed. He shouted twice, "Turn loose the elevator." When the elevator failed to come, Baker said, "let's take the stairs," and he followed Truly up the stairway, which is to the west of the elevator.

The stairway is located in the northwest corner of the Depository Building. The stairs from one floor to the next are "L-shaped," with both legs of the "L" approximately the same length. Because the stairway itself is enclosed, neither Baker nor Truly could see anything on the second-floor hallway until they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
On the second-floor landing there is a small open area with a door at the east end. This door leads into a small vestibule, and another door leads from the vestibule into the second-floor lunchroom. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1118, p. 150. ) The lunchroom door is usually open, but the first door is kept shut by a closing mechanism on the door. This vestibule door is solid except for a small glass window in the upper part of the door. As Baker reached the second floor, he was about 20 feet from the vestibule door. He intended to continue around to his left toward the stairway going up but through the window in the door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man walking in the vestibule toward the lunchroom.

Since the vestibule door is only a few feet from the lunchroom door, the man must. have entered the vestibule only a second or two before Baker arrived at the top of the stairwell. Yet he must have entered the vestibule door before Truly reached the top of the stairwell, since Truly did not see him. If the man had passed from the vestibule into the lunchroom, Baker could not have seen him. Baker said:

He [Truly] had already started around the bend to come to the next elevator going up, I was coming out this one on the second floor, and I don't know, I was kind of sweeping this area as I come up, I was looking from right to left and as I got. to this door here I caught a glimpse of this man, just, you know, a sudden glimpse ... and it looked to me like he was going away from me. ...I can't say whether he had gone on through that door [the lunchroom door] or not. All I did was catch a glance at him, and evidently he wasthis door might have been, you know, closing and almost shut at that time.

With his revolver drawn, Baker opened the vestibule door and ran into the vestibule. He saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom. Baker stopped at the door of the lunchroom and commanded, "Come here." The man turned and walked back toward Baker. He had been proceeding toward the rear of the lunchroom. Along a side wall of the lunchroom was a soft drink rending machine, but at that time the man had nothing in his hands.
Meanwhile, Truly had run up several steps toward the third floor. Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the lunchroom "facing Lee Harvey Oswald. Baker turned to Truly and said, "Do you know this man, does he work here?" Truly replied, "Yes." Baker stated later that the man did not seem to be out of breath; he seemed calm. "He never did say a word or nothing. In fact, he didn't change his expression one bit." Truly said of Oswald: "He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have been if somebody confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face." Truly thought that the officer's gun at that time appeared to be almost touching the middle portion of Oswald's body. Truly also noted at this time that Oswald's hands were empty.

In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the lunchroom from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived, Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from the time of the shot until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom. Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about 200 feet from the corner of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots. Truly stood in front of the building. At a given signal, they reenacted the event. Baker's movements were timed with a stopwatch. On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing was 1 minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds.

A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom by stairway. Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner. He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald's rifle was actually found after the shooting. Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a "fast walk" took 1 minute, 14 seconds. The second test followed immediately after the first. The only interval was the time necessary to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk back to the southeast corner. Howlett was not short winded at the end of either test run.

The minimum time required by Baker to park his motorcycle and reach the second-floor lunchroom was within 3 seconds of the time needed to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor down the stairway to the lunchroom. The time actually required for Baker and Truly to reach the second floor on November 22 was probably longer than in the test runs. For example, Baker required 15 seconds after the simulated shot to ride his motorcycle 180 to 200 feet, park it, and run 45 feet to the building. No allowance was made for the special conditions which existed on the day of the assassinationpossible delayed reaction to the shot, jostling with the crowd of people on the steps and scanning the area along Elm Street and the parkway. Baker said, "We simulated the shots and by the time we got there, we did everything that I did that day, and this would be the minimum, because I am sure that I, you know, it took me a little longer." On the basis of this time test, therefore, the Commission concluded that Oswald could have fired the shots and still have been present in the second-floor lunchroom when seen by Baker and Truly. That Oswald descended by stairway from the sixth floor to the second floor lunchroom is consistent with the movements of the two elevators, which would have provided the other possible means of descent. When Truly, accompanied by Baker, ran to the rear of the first floor, he was certain that both elevators, which occupy the same shaft, were on the fifth floor. Baker, not realizing that there were two elevators, thought that only one elevator was in the shaft and that it was two or three floors above the second floor. In the few seconds which elapsed while Baker and Truly ran from the first to the second floor, neither of these slow elevators could have descended from the fifth to the second floor. Furthermore, no elevator was at the second floor when they arrived there. Truly and Baker continued up the stairs after the encounter with Oswald in the lunchroom. There was no elevator on the third or fourth floor. The east elevator was on the fifth floor when they arrived; the west elevator was not. They took the east elevator to the seventh floor and ran up a stairway to the roof where they searched for several minutes.

Jack Dougherty, an employee working on the fifth floor, testified that he took the west elevator to the first floor after hearing a noise which sounded like a backfire. Eddie Piper, the janitor, told Dougherty that the President had been shot, but in his testimony Piper did not mention either seeing or talking with Dougherty during these moments of excitement. Both Dougherty and Piper were confused witnesses. They had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon. Truly was probably correct in stating that the west elevator was on the fifth floor when he looked up the elevator shaft from the first floor. The west elevator was not on the fifth floor when Baker and Truly reached that floor, probably because Jack Dougherty took it to the first floor while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs or in the lunchroom with Oswald. Neither elevator could have been used by Oswald as a means of descent. Oswald's use of the stairway is consistent with the testimony of other employees in the building. Three employees James Jarman, Jr., Harold Norman, and Bonnie Ray Williamswere watching the parade from the fifth floor, directly below the window from which the shots were fired. They rushed to the west windows after the shots were fired and remained there until after they saw Patrolman Baker's white helmet on the fifth floor moving toward the elevator.

While they were at the west windows their view of the stairwell was completely blocked by shelves and boxes. This is the period during which Oswald would have descended the stairs. In all likelihood Dougherty took the elevator down from the fifth floor after Jarman, Norman, and Williams ran to the west windows and were deciding what to do. None of these three men saw Dougherty, probably because of the anxiety of the moment and because of the books which may have blocked the view. Neither Jarman, Norman, Williams, or Dougherty saw Oswald.

Victoria Adams, who worked on the fourth floor of the Depository Building, claimed that within about 1 minute following the shots she ran from a window on the south side of the fourth floor, down the rear stairs to the first floor, where she encountered two Depository Shelley and Billy Lovelady. If her estimate of time is correct, she reached the bottom of the stairs before Truly and Baker started up, and she must have run down the stairs ahead of Oswald and would probably have seen or heard him. Actually she noticed no one on the back stairs. If she descended from the fourth to the first floor as fast as she claimed in her testimony, she would have seen Baker or Truly on the first floor or on the stairs, unless they were already in the second-floor lunchroom talking to Oswald. When she reached the first floor, she actually saw Shelley and Lovelady slightly east of the east elevator. Shelley and Lovelady, however, have testified that they were watching the parade from the top step of the building entrance when Gloria Calverly, who works in the Depository Building, ran up and said that the President had been shot.

Lovelady and Shelley moved out into the street. About this time Shelley saw Truly and Patrolman Baker go into the building Shelley and Lovelady, at a fast walk or trot, turned west into the railroad yards and then to the west side of the Depository Building. They reentered the building by the rear door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance. On entering, Lovelady saw a girl on the first floor who he believes was Victoria Adams. If Miss Adams accurately recalled meeting Shelley and Lovelady when she reached the bottom of the stairs, then her estimate of the time when she descended from the fourth floor is incorrect, and she actually came down the stairs several minutes after Oswald and after Truly and Baker as well.

Oswald's departure from building.Within a minute after Baker and Truly left Oswald in the lunchroom, Mrs. R. A. Reid, clerical supervisor for the Texas School Book Depository, saw him walk through the clerical office on the second floor toward the door leading to the front stairway. Mrs. Reid had watched the parade from the sidewalk in front of the building with Truly and Mr. O. V. Campbell, vice president of the Depository. She testified that she heard three shots which she thought came from the building. She ran inside and up the front stairs into the large open office reserved for clerical employees. As she approached her desk, she saw Oswald. He was walking into the office from the back hallway, carrying a full bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand, presumably purchased after the encounter with Baker and Truly. As Oswald passed Mrs. Reid she said, ''Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him."Oswald mumbled something and walked by. She paid no more attention to him. The only exit from the office in the direction Oswald was moving was through the door to the front stairway. (See Commission Exhibit 1118, p. 150.) Mrs. Reid testified that when she saw Oswald, he was wearing a T-shirt and no jacket. When he left home that morning, Marina Oswald, who was still in bed, suggested that he wear a jacket. A blue jacket, later identified by Marina Oswald as her husband's, was subsequently found in the building, apparently left behind by Oswald.

Mrs. Reid believes that she returned to her desk from the street about 2 minutes after the shooting. Reconstructing her movements, Mrs. Reid ran the distance three times and was timed in 2 minutes by stopwatch. The reconstruction was the minimum time. Accordingly, she probably met Oswald at about 12:32, approximately 30-45 seconds after Oswald's lunchroom encounter with Baker and Truly. After leaving Mrs. Reid in the front office, Oswald could have gone down the stairs and out the front door by 12:33 p.m.3 minutes after the shooting. At that time the building had not yet been sealed off by the police.

While it was difficult to determine exactly when the police sealed off the building, the earliest estimates would still have permitted Oswald to leave the building by 12:33. One of the police officers assigned to the corner of Elm and Houston Streets for the Presidential motorcade, W. E. Barnett, testified that immediately after the shots he went to the rear of the building to check the fire escape. He then returned to the corner of Elm and Houston where he met a sergeant who instructed him to find out the name of the building. Barnett ran to the building, noted its name, and then returned to the corner. There he was met by a construction workerin all likelihood Howard Brennan, who was wearing his work helmet. This worker told Barnett that the shots had been fired from a window in the Depository Building, where upon Barnett. posted himself at the front door to make certain that no one left the building. The sergeant did the same thing at the rear of the building. Barnett estimated that approximately 3 minutes elapsed between the time he heard the last of the shots and the time he started guarding the front door. According to Barnett, ''there were people going in and out" during this period.

The Killing of Patrolman J.D. Tippit

Oswald's Movements After Leaving Depository Building

The transfer was dated "Fri. Nov. 22, '63" and was punched in two places by the bus driver. On the basis of this punch mark, which was distinctive to each Dallas driver, the transfer was conclusively identified as having been issued by Cecil J. McWatters, a bus driver for the Dallas Transit Company. On the basis of the date and time on the transfer, McWatters was able to testify that the transfer had been issued by him on a trip which passed a check point at St. Paul and Elm Streets at 12:36 p.m., November 22, 1963.

McWatters was sure that he left the checkpoint on time and he estimated that it took him 3 to 4 minutes to drive three blocks west from the checkpoint to Field Street, which he reached at about 12:40 p.m. McWatters' recollection is that he issued this transfer to a man who entered his bus just beyond Field Street where a man beat on the front door of the bus, boarded it and paid his fare. About two blocks later, a woman asked to get off to make a 1 o'clock train at Union Station and requested a transfer which she might use if she got through the traffic.

...So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about two blocks [back] asked for a transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did... It was the intersection near Lamar Street, it was near Poydras and Lamar Street. The man was on the bus approximately 4 minutes.
At about 6:30 p.m. on the day of the assassination, McWatters viewed four men in a police lineup. He picked Oswald from the lineup as the man who had boarded the bus at the "lower end of town on Elm around Houston," and who, during the ride south on Marsails, had an argument with a woman passenger. In his Commission testimony, McWatters said he had been in error and that a teenager named Milton Jones was the passenger he had in mind. In a later interview, Jones confirmed that he had exchanged words with a woman passenger on the bus during the ride south on Marsalis.

McWatters also remembered that a man received a transfer at Lamar and Elm Streets and that a man in the lineup. was about the size of this man. However, McWatters' recollection alone was too vague to be a basis for placing Oswald on the bus. Riding on the bus was an elderly woman, Mary Bledsoe, who confirmed the mute evidence of the transfer. Oswald had rented a room from Mrs. Bledsoe about 6 weeks before, on October 7, but she had asked him to leave at the end of a week. Mrs. Bledsoe told him "I am not going to rent to you any more." She testified, "I didn't like his attitude... There was just something about him I didn't like or want him... Just didn't want him around me." On November 22, Mrs. Bledsoe came downtown to watch the Presidential motorcade. She boarded the Marsalis bus at St. Paul and Elm Streets to return home. She testified further:

And, after we got past Akard, at MurphyI figured it out. Let's see. I don't know for sure. Oswald got on. He looks like a maniac. His sleeve was out here... His shirt was undone...
Was a hole in it, hole, and he was dirty, and I didn't look at him. I didn't want to know I even seen him...
...he looked so bad in his face, and his face was so distorted.
...Hole in his sleeve right here.

As Mrs. Bledsoe said these words, she pointed to her fight elbow. When Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre, he was wearing a brown sport shirt with a hole in the right sleeve at the elbow. Mrs. Bledsoe identified the shirt as the one Oswald was wearing and she stated she was certain that it was Oswald who boarded the bus. Mrs. Bledsoe recalled that Oswald sat halfway to the rear of the bus which moved slowly and intermittently as traffic became heavy. She heard a passing motorist tell the driver that the President had been shot. People on the bus began talking about it. As the bus neared Lamar Street, Oswald left the bus and disappeared into the crowd.

The Marsalis bus which Oswald boarded traveled a route west on Elm, south on Houston, and southwest across the Houston viaduct to service the Oak Cliff area along Marsalis. A Beckley bus which also served the Oak Cliff area, followed the same route as the Marsalis bus through downtown Dallas, except that it continued west on Elm, across Houston in front of the Depository Building, past the Triple Underpass into west Dallas, and south on Beckley.
Marsalis Street is seven blocks from Beckley. Oswald lived at 1026 North Beckley. He could not reach his rooming house on the Marsalis bus, but the Beckley bus stopped across the street. According to McWatters, the Beckley bus was behind the Marsalis bus, but he did not actually see it. Both buses stopped within one block of the Depository Building. Instead of waiting there, Oswald apparently went as far away as he could and boarded the first Oak Cliff bus which came along rather than wait for one which stopped across the street from his rooming house.

In a reconstruction of this bus trip, agents of the Secret Service and the FBI walked the seven blocks from the front entrance of the Depository Building to Murphy and Elm three times, averaging 6.5 minutes for the three trips. A bus moving through heavy traffic on Elm from Murphy to Lamar was timed at 4 minutes. If Oswald left the Depository Building at 12:33 p.m., walked seven blocks directly to Murphy and Elm, and boarded a bus almost immediately, he would have boarded the bus at approximately 12:40 p.m. and left it at approximately 12:44 p.m. (See Commission Exhibit No.1119-A, p. 158.) Roger D. Craig, a deputy sheriff of Dallas County, claimed that about 15 minutes after the assassination he saw a man, whom he later identified as Oswald, coming from the direction of the Depository Building' and running down the hill north of Elm Street toward a light-colored Rambler station wagon, which was moving slowly along Elm toward the underpass: The station wagon stopped to pick up the man and then drove off. Craig testified that later in the afternoon he saw Oswald in the police interrogation room and told Captain Fritz that Oswald was the man he saw.

Craig also claimed that when Fritz pointed out to Oswald that Craig had identified him, Oswald rose from his chair, looked directly at Fritz, and said, "Everybody will know who I am now." The Commission could not accept important elements of Craig's testimony. Captain Fritz stated that a deputy sheriff whom he could not identify did ask to see him that afternoon and told him a similar story to Craig's. Fritz did not bring him into his office to identify Oswald but turned him over to Lieutenant Baker for questioning. If Craig saw Oswald that afternoon, he saw him through the glass windows of the office. And neither Captain Fritz nor any other officer can remember that Oswald dramatically arose from his chair and said, "Everybody will know who I am now." ' If Oswald had made such a statement, Captain Fritz and others present would probably have remembered it. Craig may have seen a person enter a white Rambler station wagon 15 or 20 minutes after the shooting and travel west on Elm Street, but the Commission concluded that this man was not Lee Harvey Oswald, because of the overwhelming evidence that Oswald was far away from the building by that time.

The taxicab ride.William Whaley, a taxicab driver, told his employer on Saturday morning, November 23, that he recognized Oswald from a newspaper photograph as a man whom he had driven to the Oak Cliff area the day before.
Notified of Whaley's statement, the police brought him to the police station that afternoon. He was taken to the lineup room where, according to Whaley, five young teenagers, all handcuffed together, were displayed with Oswald. He testified that Oswald looked older than the other boys. The police asked him whether he could pick out his passenger from the lineup. Whaley picked Oswald. He said,

...you could have picked him out without identifying him by just listening to him because he was bawling out the policeman, telling them it wasn't right to put him in line with these teenagers and all of that and they asked me which one and I told them. It was him all right, the same man.
He showed no respect for the policemen, he told them what he thought about them. They knew what. they were doing and they were trying to railroad him and he wanted his lawyer.

Whaley believes that Oswald's conduct did not aid him in his identification "because I knew he was the right one as soon as I saw him." Whaley's memory of the lineup is inaccurate. There were four men altogether, not six men, in the lineup with Oswald. Whaley said that Oswald was the man under No. 2. Actually Oswald was under No. 3. Only two of the men in the lineup with Oswald were teenagers: John T. Horn, aged 18, was No. 1; David Knapp, aged 18, was No. 2; Lee Oswald was No. 3; and Daniel Lujan, aged 26, was No. 4.

When he first testified before the Commission, Whaley displayed a trip manifest which showed a 12 o'clock trip from Travis Hotel to the Continental bus station, unloaded at 12:15 p.m., a 12:15 p.m. pickup at Continental to Greyhound, unloaded at 12:30 p.m., and a pickup from Greyhound (bus station) at 12:30 p.m., unloaded at 500 North Beckley at 12:45 p.m. Whaley testified that he did not keep an accurate time record of his trips but recorded them by the quarter hour, and that sometimes he made his entry right after a trip while at other times he waited to record three or four trips. As he unloaded his Continental bus station passenger in front of Greyhound, he started to get out to buy a package of cigarettes. He saw a man walking south on Lamar from Commerce. The man was dressed in faded blue color khaki work clothes, a brown shirt, and some kind of work jacket that almost matched his pants. The man asked, "May I have the cab?", and got into the front seat. Whaley described the ensuing events as follows:

And about that time an old lady, I think she was an old lady, I don't remember nothing but her sticking her head down past him in the door and said, "Driver, will you call me a cab down here?" She had seen him get this cab and she wanted one, too, and he opened the door a little bit like he was going to get out and he said, "I will let you have this one," and she says, "No, the driver can call me one."
...I asked him where he wanted to go. And he said, "500 North Beckley." Well, I started up, I started to that address, and the police cars, the sirens was going, running crisscrossing everywhere, just a big uproar in that end of town and I said, "What the hell. I wonder what the hell is the uproar?" And he never said anything. So I figured he was one of these people that don't like to talk so I never said any more to him. But when I got pretty close to 500 block at Neches and North Beckley which is the 500 block, he said, "This will do fine," and I pulled over to the curb right. there. He gave me a dollar bill, the trip was 95 cents. He gave me a dollar bill and didn't say anything, just got out and closed the door and walked around the front of the cab over to the other side of the street [east side of the street]. Of course, the traffic was moving through there and I put it in gear and moved on, that is the last I saw of him.

Whaley was somewhat imprecise as to where he unloaded his passenger. He marked what, he thought was the intersection of Neches and Beckley on a map of Dallas with a large "X." He said, "Yes, sir; that is right, because that is the 500 block of North Beckley." However, Neches and Beckley do not intersect. Neches is within one-half block of the rooming house at 1026 North Beckley where Oswald was living. The 500 block of North Beckley is five blocks south of the rooming house.

After a review of these inconsistencies in his testimony before the Commission, Whaley was interviewed again in Dallas. The route of the taxicab was retraced under the direction of Whaley. He directed the driver of the car to a point 20 feet north of the northwest corner of the intersection of Beckley and Neely, the point at which he said his passenger alighted. This was the 700 block of North Beckley. The elapsed time of the reconstructed run from the Greyhound Bus Station to Neely and Beckley was 5 minutes and 30 seconds by stopwatch. The walk from Beckley and Neely to 1026 North Beckley was timed by Commission counsel at 5 minutes and 45 seconds.

Whaley testified that Oswald was wearing either the gray zippered jacket or the heavy blue jacket. He was in error, however. Oswald could not possibly have been wearing the blue jacket during the trip with Whaley, since it was found in the "domino" room of the Depository late in November. Moreover, Mrs. Bledsoe saw Oswald in the bus without a jacket and wearing a shirt with a hole at the elbow. On the other hand, Whaley identified Commission Exhibit No. 150 (the shirt taken from Oswald upon arrest) as the shirt his passenger was wearing. He also stated he saw a silver identification bracelet on his passenger's left wrist. Oswald was wearing such a bracelet when he was arrested. On November 22, Oswald told Captain Fritz that he rode a bus to a stop near his home and then walked to his rooming house. When queried the following morning concerning a bus transfer found in his possession at the time of his arrest, he admitted receiving it. And when interrogated about a cab ride, Oswald also admitted that he left the slow-moving bus and took a cab to his rooming house.

The Greyhound Bus Station at Lamar and Jackson Streets, where Oswald entered Whaley's cab, is three to four short blocks south of Lamar and Elm. If Oswald left the bus at 12:44 p.m. and walked directly to the terminal, he would have entered the cab at 12:47 or 12:48 p.m. If the cab ride was approximately 6 minutes, as was the reconstructed ride, he would have reached his destination at approximately 12:54 p.m. If he was discharged at Neely and Beckley and walked directly to his rooming house, he would have arrived there about 12:59 to 1 p.m. From the 500 block of North Beckley, the walk would be a few minutes longer, but in either event he would have been in the rooming house at about 1 p.m. This is the approximate time he entered the rooming house, according to Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper there. (See Commission Exhibit No. 1119-A, p. 158.) Arrival and departure from rooming house-Earlene Roberts, housekeeper for Mrs. A. C. Johnson at 1026 North Beckley, knew Lee Harvey Oswald under the alias of O. H. Lee. She first saw him the day he rented a room at that address on October 14, 1963. He signed his name as O. H. Lee on the rooming house register.

Mrs. Roberts testified that on Thursday, November 21, Oswald did not come home. On Friday, November 22, about 1 p.m., he entered the house in unusual haste. She recalled that it was subsequent to the time the President had been shot.
After a friend had called and told her, "President Kennedy has been shot," she turned on the television. When Oswald came in she said, "Oh, you are in a hurry," but Oswald did not respond. He hurried to his room and stayed no longer than 3 or 4 minutes. Oswald had entered the house in his shirt sleeves, but when he left, he was zipping up a jacket. Mrs. Roberts saw him a few seconds later standing near the bus stop in front of the house on the east side of Beckley.

At about 12:44 p.m. on November 22, the radio dispatcher on channel 1 ordered all downtown patrol squads to report to Elm and Houston, code 3 (emergency). At 12:45 p.m. the dispatcher ordered No. 78 (Tippit.) to "move into central Oak Cliff area." At 12:54 p.m., Tippit reported that he was in the central Oak Cliff area at Lancaster and Eighth. The dispatcher ordered Tippit to be: "...at large for any emergency that comes in." According to Chief Curry, Tippit was free to patrol the central Oak Cliff area. Tippit must have heard the description of the suspect wanted for the President's shooting; it was broadcast over channel 1 at 12:45 p.m., again at 12:48 p.m., and again at 12:55 p.m. The suspect was described as a "white male, approximately 30, slender build, height 5 foot 10 inches, weight 165 pounds."A similar description was given on channel 2 at 12:45 p.m.

This man, dressed in a light-colored jacket, approached the car. Scoggins lost sight of him behind some shrubbery on the southeast corner lot, but he saw the policeman leave the car, heard three or four shots, and then saw the policeman fall.
Scoggins hurriedly left his seat and hid behind the cab as the man came back toward the corner with gun in hand. The man cut across the yard through some bushes, passed within 12 feet of Scoggins, and ran south on Patton. Scoggins saw him and heard him mutter either "Poor damn cop" or "Poor dumb cop." The next day Scoggins viewed a lineup of four persons and identified Oswald as the man whom he had seen the day before at 10th and Patton. In his testimony before the Commission, Scoggins stated that he thought he had seen a picture of Oswald in the newspapers prior to the lineup identification on Saturday. He had not seen Oswald on television and had not been shown any photographs of Oswald by the police.

Another witness, Domingo Benavides, was driving a pickup truck west on 10th Street. As he crossed the intersection a block east of 10th and Patton, he saw a policeman standing by the left door of the police car parked along the south side of 10th. Benavides saw a man standing at the right side of the parked police car. He then heard three shots and saw the policeman fall to the ground. By this time the pickup truck was across the street and about 25 feet from the police car.

Benavides stopped and waited in the truck until the gunman ran to the corner. He saw him empty the gun and throw the shells into some bushes on the southeast corner lot. It was Benavides, using Tippit's car radio, who first reported the killing of Patrolman Tippit at about 1:16 p.m.: "We've had a shooting out here." He found two empty shells in the bushes and gave them to Patrolman J. M. Poe who arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting. Benavides never saw Oswald after the arrest. When questioned by police officers on the evening of November 22, Benavides told them that he did not think that he could identify the man who fired the shots. As a result, they did not take him to the police station. He testified that the picture of Oswald which he saw later on television bore a resemblance to the man who shot Officer Tippit.

Just prior to the shooting, Mrs. Helen Markham, a waitress in downtown Dallas, was about to cross 101h Street at Patton. As she waited on the northwest corner of the intersection for traffic to pass, she noticed a young man as be was "almost ready to get up on the curb" at the southeast corner of the intersection, approximately 50 feet away. The man continued along 10th Street. Mrs. Markham saw a police car slowly approach the man from the rear and stop alongside of him. She saw the man come to the right window of the police car. As he talked, he leaned on the ledge of the right window with his arms. The man appeared to step back as the policeman "calmly opened the car door" and very slowly got out and walked toward the front of the car. The man pulled a gun. Mrs. Markham heard three shots and saw the policeman fall to the ground near the left front wheel. She raised her hands to her eyes as the man started to walk back toward Patton. She peered through her fingers, lowered her hands, and saw the man doing something with his gun. "He was just fooling with it. I didn't know what he was doing. I was afraid he was fixing to kill me." The man "in kind of a little trot" headed down Patton toward Jefferson Boulevard, a block away. Mrs. Markham then ran to Officer Tippit's side and saw him lying in a pool of blood?Helen Markham was screaming as she leaned over the body. A few minutes later she described the gunman to a policeman? Her description and that of other eyewitnesses led to the police broadcast at 1:22 p.m. describing the slayer as "about 30, 5'8", black hair, slender." At about 4:30 p.m., Mrs. Markham, who had been greatly upset by her experience, was able to view a lineup of four men handcuffed together at the police station. She identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who shot the policeman. Detective L. C. Graves, who had been with Mrs. Markham before the lineup testified that she was "quite hysterical" and was "crying and upset." He said that Mrs. Markham started crying when Oswald walked into the lineup room. In testimony before the Commission, Mrs. Markham confirmed her positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man she saw kill Officer Tippit.

In evaluating Mrs. Markham's identification of Oswald, the Commission considered certain allegations that Mrs. Markham described the man who killed Patrolman Tippit as "short, a little on the heavy side," and having "somewhat bushy" hair. The Commission reviewed the transcript of a phone conversation in which Mrs. Markham is alleged to have provided such a description. A review of the complete transcript has satisfied the Commission that Mrs. Markham strongly reaffirmed her positive identification of Oswald and denied having described the killer as short, stocky and having bushy hair. She stated that the man weighed about 150 pounds. Although she used the words "a little bit bushy" to describe the gunman's hair, the transcript establishes that she was referring to the uncombed state of his hair, a description fully supported by a photograph of Oswald taken at the time of his arrest. (See Pizzo Exhibit No. 453-C, p. 177.) Although in the phone conversation she described the man as "short," on November 22, within minutes of the shooting and before the lineup, Mrs. Markham described the man to the police as 5'8" tall.

During her testimony Mrs. Markham initially denied that she ever had the above phone conversation. She has subsequently admitted the existence of the conversation and offered an explanation for her denial. Addressing itself solely to the probative value of Mrs. Markham's contemporaneous description of the gunman and her positive identification of Oswald at a police lineup, the Commission considers her testimony reliable. However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit. Two young women, Barbara Jeanette Davis and Virginia Davis, were in an apartment of a multiple-unit house on the southeast corner of 10th and Patton when they heard the sound of gunfire and the screams of Helen Markham. They ran to the door in time to see a man with a revolver cut across their lawn and disappear around a corner of the house onto Patton. Barbara Jeanette Davis assumed that he was emptying his gun as "he had it open and was shaking it." She immediately called the police. Later in the day each woman found an empty shell on the ground near the house. These two shells were delivered to the police.

On the evening of November 22, Barbara Jeanette and Virginia Davis viewed a group of four men in a lineup and each one picked Oswald as the man who crossed their lawn while emptying his pistol. Barbara Jeanette Davis testified that no one had shown her a picture of Oswald before the identification and that she had not seen him on television. She was not sure whether she had seen his picture in a newspaper on the afternoon or evening of November 22 prior to the lineup.
Her reaction when she saw Oswald in the lineup was that "I was pretty sure it was the same man I saw. When they made him turn sideways, I was positive that was the one I seen." Similarly, Virginia Davis had not been shown pictures of anyone prior to the lineup and had not seen either television or the newspapers during the afternoon. She identified Oswald, who was the No. 2 man in the lineup, as the man she saw running with the gun: she testified, "I would say that was him for sure." Barbara Jeanette Davis and Virginia Davis were sitting alongside each other when they made their positive identifications of Oswald. Each woman whispered Oswald's number to the detective. Each testified that she was the first to make the identification.

William Arthur Smith was about a block east of 10th and Patton when he heard shots. He looked west on 10th and saw a man running to the west and a policeman falling to the ground. Smith failed to make himself known to the police on November 22. Several days later he reported what he had seen and was questioned by FBI agents. Smith subsequently told a Commission staff member that he saw Oswald on television the night of the murder and thought that Oswald was the man he had seen running away from the shooting. On television Oswald's hair looked blond, whereas Smith remembered that the man who ran away had hair that was brown or brownish black. Later, the FBI showed Smith a picture of Oswald. In the picture the hair was brown. According to his testimony, Smith told the FBI, "It looked more like him than it did on television." He stated further that from "What I saw of him" the man looked like the man in the picture.

Two other important eyewitnesses to Oswald's flight were Ted Callaway, manager of a used-car lot on the northeast corner of Patton Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard, and Sam Guinyard, a porter at the lot. They heard the sound of shots to the north of their lot. Callaway heard five shots, and Guinyard three. Both ran to the sidewalk on the east side of Patton at a point about a half a block south of 10th. They saw a man coming south on Patton with a revolver held high in his right hand. According to Callaway, the man crossed to the west side of Patton. From across the street Callaway yelled, "Hey, man, what the hell is going on?" He slowed down, halted, said something, and then kept on going to the corner, turned right, and continued west on Jefferson. Guinyard claimed that the man ran down the east side of Patton and passed within 10 feet of him before crossin