Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime lab...
Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD Crime Lab
was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab station
wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (
v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke of
Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from the
transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to be
accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:
12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he found
at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially
rewritten by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--
witness and police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the
shells, unlike the rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve
minutes of squeezing? Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes fools of
Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the location
of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human presence
in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle hulls"
found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than fried
chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/63. "
I saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it [was]."
(v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds, "It
looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain why
there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were also
in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in
their original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day
Evidence", p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which shows
someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the Where
wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

dcw

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 9:50:08 PM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime lab...

Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD Crime
Lab was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab station

wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (

v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke of

Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from the

transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to be
accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he found

at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially rewritten
by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--witness and
police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the shells, unlike the
rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve minutes of squeezing?
Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes fools of

Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the location

of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human

presence in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle
hulls" found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than fried

chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/63. "I
saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it [was].

" (v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds, "It
looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain why

there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were also
in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in their
original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day Evidence",
p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which shows

someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the Where
wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

dcw

Yeah. Mooney found it before 1:00. Hill was playing games.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 9:50:08 PM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime lab...

Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD Crime
Lab was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab station

wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (

v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke of

Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from the

transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to be
accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he found

at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially rewritten
by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--witness and
police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the shells, unlike the
rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve minutes of squeezing?
Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes fools of

Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the location

of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human

presence in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle
hulls" found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than fried

chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/63. "I
saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it [was].

" (v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds, "It
looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain why

there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were also
in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in their
original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day Evidence",
p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which shows

someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the Where
wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

Don thinks it's some how suspicious that different officers would not all remember the
sequence of events exactly right down to the minute. I would find it more suspicious if they
did all agree. It would be an indication they had colluded to get their stories in sync.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 6:26:13 AM UTC-4, John Corbett wrote:

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 9:50:08 PM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime lab.

.. Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD Crime
Lab was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab

station wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (

v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke of

Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from the

transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to be
accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he

found at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially
rewritten by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--
witness and police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the shells,
unlike the rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve minutes
of squeezing? Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes fools

of Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the location

of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human

presence in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle
hulls" found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than fried

chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/63. "I
saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it [

was]." (v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds,
"It looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain why

there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were also
in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in their
original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day Evidence",
p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which shows

someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the Where
wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

Don thinks it's some how suspicious that different officers would not all remember the
sequence of events exactly right down to the minute. I would find it more suspicious if they
did all agree. It would be an indication they had colluded to get their stories in sync.

Perhaps Dumb Ass Corbett should stick to crosswords and sitcom trivia.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 3:26:13 AM UTC-7, John Corbett wrote:

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 9:50:08 PM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime lab.

.. Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD Crime
Lab was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab

station wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (

v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke of

Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from the

transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to be
accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he

found at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially
rewritten by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--
witness and police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the shells,
unlike the rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve minutes
of squeezing? Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes fools

of Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the location

of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human

presence in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle
hulls" found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than fried

chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/63. "I
saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it [

was]." (v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds,
"It looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain why

there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were also
in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in their
original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day Evidence",
p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which shows

someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the Where
wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

Don thinks it's some how suspicious that different officers would not all remember the
sequence of events exactly right down to the minute. I would find it more suspicious if they
did all agree. It would be an indication they had colluded to get their stories in sync.

Could John Robot GET any more vague? (in my best Chandler impersonation)

And the deputies WERE all in sync re the discovery of the "nest". For some reason, they all mentioned "chicken". Hoist by their own rubber chicken! Thank you, Mr. Robot.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 11:52:43 AM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 3:26:13 AM UTC-7, John Corbett wrote:

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 9:50:08 PM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime

lab... Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD
Crime Lab was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab

station wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (

v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke

of Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from

the transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to
be accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:
12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he

found at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially
rewritten by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--
witness and police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the shells,
unlike the rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve minutes
of squeezing? Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes

fools of Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the

location of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human

presence in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle
hulls" found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than fried

chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/63. "I
saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it [

was]." (v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds,
"It looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain why

there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were also
in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in their
original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day Evidence",
p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which shows

someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the Where
wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

Don thinks it's some how suspicious that different officers would not all remember the
sequence of events exactly right down to the minute. I would find it more suspicious if they
did all agree. It would be an indication they had colluded to get their stories in sync.

Could John Robot GET any more vague? (in my best Chandler impersonation)

And the deputies WERE all in sync re the discovery of the "nest". For some reason, they all mentioned "chicken". Hoist by their own rubber chicken! Thank you, Mr. Robot.

I'm not the one trying to make the case for conspiracy. That's your job. I'm only here to point out
how badly you are failing.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 9:43:31 AM UTC-7, John Corbett wrote:

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 11:52:43 AM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 3:26:13 AM UTC-7, John Corbett wrote:

On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 9:50:08 PM UTC-4, donald willis wrote:

Joining Sgt. Hill, the Warren Report gets dragged into the spent-shells morass

"We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!... On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime

lab... Not knowing or not getting any indication from the street that they heard me, I asked the deputies again to guard the scene & I would go down & make sure that the Crime Lab was enroute... About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the DPD
Crime Lab was arriving" (v7p45,46,47)--Sgt. Gerald Hill's Commission testimony.

With that last statement, Hill's tale begins to self-destruct. Two other DPD officers and a deputy sheriff help him along the road to self-destruction.

"I saw the expended shells... So I leaned out the window, the same window from which the shots were fired, looked down... well, so I hollered, or signaled... It was approaching 1 o'clock." (Deputy Luke Mooney/v3pp284-5) "Give us 508 (Crime Lab

station wagon) down to the TSBD"--DPD Sgt. Harkness, DPD transcription of police radio logs. Dispatcher: "508 is enroute." (CE 1974p43, circa 12:59)

Crime Lab's Lt. Day picks it up from there: "Shortly before 1 o'clock, I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm St. [the TSBD]... I went out of my office almost straight up l o'clock... I arrived at the location about 1:12." (

v4p249) Mooney, Harkness, and Day are in sync, leaving Hill high and dry.

Sgt. Hill would have one believe that it was only two or three minutes between the finding of the shells and the arrival of Day. But the way that Mooney, Harkness, and Day describe it, it was more like 13 minutes. The extra 10 minutes make a joke

of Hill's breathless yell (apparently re the finding of the shells)--13 minutes after the fact! A long walk from one window to another. Hill--yesterday's news today.

DPD Homicide liked timing the finding of the shells at about 1:15 (Sims/Boyd report p2), based apparently on DPD Lt. Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re their discovery, on the "3rd [sic] floor". The hapless Warren Report picked up the latter time from

the transmission (p79). Which produces the howler that Lt. Day arrived at the depository the same minute that the shells were purportedly found. Homicide--which quickly took charge of the shells-- of course wanted the belated timing of their finding to
be accepted so that Hill wouldn't look like a total idiot. To that end, Harkness--in his Commission testimony--skips the part of his story where he calls the dispatcher (v6p312). But Day couldn't ellipse the call which got him to the depository about 1:
12.

As for the third link in the chain, Mooney... The Warren Report absurdly rewrites his testimony: "Around 1pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the SE corner of the sixth floor. Searching that area he

found at approximately 1:12pm three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window." (page 79) (The main sources here: Mooney's testimony and Sawyer's 1:12 transmission.) This portion of the report was written by Arlen Specter, and "substantially
rewritten by [Norman] Redlich." (Epstein, "Inquest", p130) Who, then, to blame, the writer or the re-writer? Whoever gets the blame, it's a grotesque reconciliation of the irreconcilable. A marriage made in hell of two disparate pieces of evidence--
witness and police-radio. Had Specter or Redlich consulted Day's testimony, he would have seen the continuity between Mooney and Day. And if he had seen a police photo such as DP#20 (Savage, "First Day Evidence", p153), he would have seen that the shells,
unlike the rifle, were not hidden. Mooney himself indicates that they were not that difficult to find amongst the boxes: "And the minute I squeezed between these two stacks of boxes... that is when I saw the expended shells..." (v3p284) Twelve minutes
of squeezing? Not.

Instead, Specter (or Redlich) assumed that Sawyer, at 1:12, had just seen Mooney. A natural assumption, but one that's contradicted by the Mooney-Harkness-Day connection, at about 1pm. The issue of the discovery of the shells, equitably, makes

fools of Hill and Specter (or Redlich), as well as Homicide's own Sims and Boyd and, ultimately, also, its Johnny-come-latelies, Johnson and Montgomery. (See "In short, Hill lied.")

We know what prompted Mooney's holler just before 1pm. But what prompted Hill's day-late-and-a-dollar-short holler from the 6th floor, at about 1:10? The answer is lost in the mists of history. Why would anyone want yet more "proof" that the

location of the finding of the shells was, as commonly accepted, the 6th-floor "nest", apparently superfluous, easily discredited "proof"? Why take such a big chance?

Perhaps to counter an immediate problem with the apparently unphotographed holler from Mooney, 10 minutes earlier. A problem hinted at by a photo taken at "approximately 1:00" of the depository (Trask, p519), which photo shows no apparent human

presence in the "nest" on the 6th floor, but does show someone AT THE WINDOW just below, the corner 5th-floor window. The photo was taken at such a distance as to make identification impossible. However, recall Sawyer's 1:12 transmission re "empty rifle
hulls" found "on the third floor" (Trask, p523), in which "third" could translate as "third from the top", or fifth floor.

"so much depends"... "third floor--a bit arcane, yes, but Sawyer was also telling *reporters*, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor" (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8) You can't get further away from arcane than

fried chicken. Sheriff's deputies took this unavoidably amusing reference to chicken deadly seriously--"I saw three expended rifle shells and a partially eaten piece of chicken on [the 6th-floor] barricade"--Harry Weatherford, supplementary report 11/23/
63. "I saw the three expended shells... along with a half-eaten piece of chicken that was laying on a cardboard carton"--A.D. McCurley, supp. report 11/22/63. All the better to counter Sawyer's "fifth floor" chicken.

However, Crime Scene Det. Studebaker (in answer to counsel's "Did you see... a piece of chicken partly eaten on top of one of the boxes [in the 6th-floor "nest"]?") replies, "No. It ought to be in one of these pictures [of the "nest" area], if it

[was]." (v7p147) So, over-industrious deputies try to tie the chicken to the 6th floor and shells, but Studebaker returns the chicken right back down to Sawyer's fifth (or third) floor, where it awaits confirmation. (In his 1:12 transmission, Sawyer adds,
"It looked like the man had been here for some time." Hence, that reference to "remains of fried chicken" in his briefing of reporters.)

Trask's timing is right for that person at the 5th-floor window, in the photo--taken about 1pm--to be... Mooney, shouting down. In the end, *someone* was there, apparently shouting down. Yes, only circumstantial evidence. But that would explain

why there are no *extant* photos of the scene, from closer range. Mooney & co. invoke "6th floor" and "nest", and cartons or boxes. But if they were in error re the presence of fried chicken on the 6th floor--as Studebaker maintains--perhaps they were
also in error re the presence of *shells* on the 6th floor. Fifth, sixth, or third, shells and loose chicken seemed to be inextricably linked. Supporting Studebaker's take: Dets. Montgomery & Johnson--"protectors" of the 6th floor between 1pm & 2:30--in
their original reports (CE 2003, pp223 & 210), make NO reference to either scraps of chicken or shells there. (Johnson did find a "paper lunch sack", but that was in the "third aisle over from the east wall", not in or around the "nest". ["First Day
Evidence", p169])

So it's a standoff between Mooney & a gaggle of deputies, on the one hand, and Studebaker, the Montgomery and Johnson of their reports, and the Sawyer of his transmission and news briefing, on the other. In-between: that photo in Trask which

shows someone in the SE 5th-floor window about 1pm, no one discernable in the "nest", and Hill's hollering window not yet opened. If the Warren Report, as it did, got the When of the finding of the shells embarrassingly wrong, perhaps it also got the
Where wrong. After all, the person, Sgt. Hill--who was responsible for that embarrassment--also testified that the spent shells that he lied about were found in the "nest".

Don thinks it's some how suspicious that different officers would not all remember the
sequence of events exactly right down to the minute. I would find it more suspicious if they
did all agree. It would be an indication they had colluded to get their stories in sync.

Could John Robot GET any more vague? (in my best Chandler impersonation)

And the deputies WERE all in sync re the discovery of the "nest". For some reason, they all mentioned "chicken". Hoist by their own rubber chicken! Thank you, Mr. Robot.

I'm not the one trying to make the case for conspiracy. That's your job. I'm only here to point out
how badly you are failing.

Then you are doing a very bad job of it!

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On Tue, 15 Aug 2023 09:43:29 -0700 (PDT), John Corbett <geowright1963@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not the one trying to make the case for conspiracy. That's your job. I'm only here to point out
how badly you are failing.

Polling proves how badly *YOU* have failed.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 1:07:41 PM UTC-4, Ben Holmes wrote:

On Tue, 15 Aug 2023 09:43:29 -0700 (PDT), John Corbett
<geowri...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not the one trying to make the case for conspiracy. That's your job. I'm only here to point out
how badly you are failing.

Polling proves how badly *YOU* have failed.

Who reads here?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 15 Aug 2023 10:35:03 -0700 (PDT), Bud <sirslick@fast.net>
wrote:

On Tuesday, August 15, 2023 at 1:07:41?PM UTC-4, Ben Holmes wrote:

On Tue, 15 Aug 2023 09:43:29 -0700 (PDT), John Corbett
<geowri...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not the one trying to make the case for conspiracy. That's your job. I'm only here to point out
how badly you are failing.

Polling proves how badly *YOU* have failed.

Who reads here?

So, according to Bugliosi, it was this "oval" shape that was
"virtually conclusive evidence" of an SBT?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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