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Pat Speer

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  1. Keep reading. The controls were washed as well.
  2. This is all discussed in chapter 4f on my website. They stopped performing the nitrate test performed by the DPD within a few years of the shooting. But the use of NAA to uncover gsr on wax casts is still presumed to be solid science. The problem was that it was very expensive. And was replaced by a less expensive test, that is still performed today. But the results provided Weisberg, and discussed in chapter 4f, are still valid.
  3. If you keep reading you will see that Guinn washed his casts when performing his controls, and that by the end of the chapter I make the argument they were not actually washed.
  4. What? Not at all. 1. The crime lab person who took the casts home returned them to the FBI. The cheek cast was the only cheek cast the DPD had ever tested. So, no, it's unlikely he returned different casts than the ones he took home. And this becomes especially clear when one considers that someone tampered with the casts by adding barium. I mean, why would he or they have done that, if these were substitute casts, which could have been easily phoned up by having someone else fire a rifle and then testing his cheek? 2. Guinn never tested or even saw the paraffin cast from Oswald's cheek. Fearful the tests would be negative and that the press would find out, the FBI asked Guinn to conduct control studies using similar rifles--to see if one would expect to find gsr on the cheeks of someone who'd fired that rifle. His controls said yes. They then took this info and sat on it, and failed to tell Guinn both that they'd performed one control using the actual rifle which had led them to come to the same conclusion, and that their tests for the actual casts had found insufficient antimony, and had thereby provided a negative result. I go through all this in chapter 4f https://www.patspeer.com/chapter4fcastsofcontention If you can make it through you will know more about this topic than all but a handful... P.S. I wrote this response before seeing your most recent post, in which you make it clear you have taken a look at my chapter. I thank you for your interest.
  5. I have been following the Mantik spiral for decades. He correctly concluded there was a bullet defect on the Harper Fragment. In trying to make everything fit his belief the back of the head was blown out, he placed the Harper Fragment on the occipital bone, which put this defect near the EOP entrance described by Humes. So he claims the Harper fragment is occipital bone and the defect is the entrance defect identified by Humes. He pretty much ignores that this placement means the large defect extended well onto the left side of the head, when the Parkland witnesses had indicated it was on the right side only. And he avoids that the beveling at what he calls an entrance is exit beveling, and that pretty much all if not all the doctors studying the medical evidence claim what he calls an entrance, is an exit. I believe he has indicated as well that the bullet entering near the EOP did not exit, and was found and removed at autopsy. Note: this might be one of Horne's claims that is not shared by Mantik. So... bullet #1 enters near the EOP and does not exit. Well, this leaves him without an explanation for what he claims was the blow-out on the occipital bone. So he claims there was an entrance by the temple that blasted out the back of the head. Now, his placement for this entrance puts it right where I long ago pointed out is the location of the bullet defect on the Harper fragment when the fragment is properly oriented, only to have Mantik and his attack dogs engage in a prolonged attack on my character, which only came to an end when the Wecht family intervened and asked Mantik and I to debate at the 2013 Wecht Conference, where Mantik finally admitted I was correct. (But not for long--I recently viewed a 2021 presentation in which he has returned to making his false claim the bullet defect on the Harper fragment is at the top of the head in the Angel orientation--something he admitted wasn't true back in 2013). In any event... bullet #2 enters near the temple and blows out the Harper fragment...which is kind of weird when you think of it. Wouldn't a bullet creating a large defect create a hole near the middle of that defect, or on bone on the margins of that defect? Mantik cites no hole and no such defect. The only bullet defect he claims for the Harper fragment is the entrance by the EOP. Now here's where things get tricky/stinky. For over 20 years Mantik has been claiming there was a bullet entrance on the forehead. When doing so he has misrepresented the statements of Tom Robinson, who said there was a tiny hole that was not a bullet entrance by the temple, and then later on that there were two or three tiny holes on the cheek. In any event, Mantik has routinely claimed Robinson saw a bullet entrance high on the forehead, that was not observed by others. But no, he has now taken to claiming the spot of blood Marion Jenkins thought he saw by the left temple which was presumed to have confused McClelland was actually a bullet hole on the right forehead. And, If I'm not mistaken, that McCelland had in fact observed this as well, even though McClelland had long-claimed he saw no such wound. Well, it should come as no surprise then that Mantik would encourage Chesser to go to the Archives, and that Chesser would come out claiming there was evidence for an entrance wound high on the forehead on the lateral x-rays that had gone unnoticed and unreported by all the radiologists to view the x-rays...that was not visible on the A-P x-ray in which the forehead is featured. Well, okay, so why was this largely unsupported and unsupportable entrance wound necessary? Well, Mantik had long observed that the "trail of fragments" on the skull x-rays ran pretty much straight across the head, and that was inconsistent with trajectories of BOTH the bullet entering by the EOP and the bullet he presumes entered near the temple and exited low on the skull. So a third bullet was required. I mean, why not, the more the merrier. So where did this bullet exit? Well, he has it exit at the beveled bone on the mystery photo, which, he interprets as existing at the LEFT side of the back of the head--due to his placement of the Harper fragment within the photo. So...yeah, Mantik and Horne claim a bullet entered high on the right forehead (where no credible witness noted a wound) and exit from the left side of the head (where no witness of any kind saw a wound). And that's bullet #3. Well, there's still a back wound and throat wound, which Mantik attributes to separate bullets, with the bullet creating the back wound falling out and the throat wound being caused by a shard of glass created when a bullet passed though the windshield. Now, I tend to agree with the former, but the glass shard theory was debunked decades ago when clear copies of Altgens' photos became available which proved the the crack on the windshield appeared at the time of the head shot, and not at the timeJFK reached towards his throat.
  6. This is just not true. I go through the 11-22-63 statements of the Dealey Plaza witnesses one by one on my website and show how they thought the wound was on the face or right side. And no, none of them were claiming they thought they saw a bullet enter in one place and exit another. They saw an explosion on the skull...on the right side near the face. As far as Bill Newman...please. Bill Newman was on TV claiming the skull exploded by the temple within minutes of the shooting. While he initially pointed to his left temple, he did this because he was holding his kid with his right arm. His wife, moments later, pointed to her right temple. And Bill himself was filmed depicting an explosion from the right temple before he left the studio. The Newmans were looking at the back of JFK's head as he drove past. And yet they saw an explosion on the right side of his head by his ear and failed to see an explosion from the back of his head. And they have repeated this on camera and in person hundreds of times. And that's because no such explosion occurred.
  7. Oswald's work would not entail his moving around the Scott-Foresman boxes unless the items inside were needed for an order. So one might think the DPD and FBI would isolate the orders pulled by Oswald throughout the day and see if any of them involved the items in those boxes, or even neighboring boxes. But they failed to do so. In fact, if memory serves, they even failed to note that the orders on his clipboard were for items on the sixth floor, and gave him a perfectly logical reason to be on that floor...even if Givens was telling the truth when he said he saw him on that floor. As a former warehouse worker I can tell you that there is NOTHING suspicious about Oswald's clipboard being found near the back stairs. An order puller would take a number of orders for a location and grab as much of those orders as he could before going down to drop them off in the shipping department. If heading out to lunch, he would leave his clipboard in the vicinity of where he was to resume work. The discovery of his clipboard by the stairs and elevator then is as suggestive of his innocence as his guilt.
  8. It was a subsequent article. I remembered Griggs' claiming the photo showing the barrel and scope beside the stock and bag was misleading, and I remembered this correctly, but I was wrong about his reasoning--as he said the scope and barrel need not be separated. But I recalled his saying the disassembly of the rifle would mess with the alignment of the scope. And found his saying as much, here: https://docplayer.net/60141044-The-mannlicher-carcano-disassembly-and-reassembly.html
  9. Well, I wrote a book on this topic because, whether or not the tests prove Oswald's innocence, the DPD and FBI's behavior regarding these tests is proof THEY thought they were suggestive of Oswald's innocence, and were scared this would come out. As far as the paraffin (wax) casts, they were taken home by the DPD crime lab employee who'd conducted the tests, and brought back a few days later when the FBI expressed an interest in them. This makes their chain of custody better than average (for this case)...certainly better than the chain-of-custody for the shells.
  10. The paraffin tests were not considered reliable, even in 1963. The NAA tests are considered reliable, even today. But, as to your larger point, yes, you are correct. The tests were performed too late to be conclusive. But there was plenty of gsr on his hands, and he was not believed to have washed his face, so the negative result for antimony on his cheek is undoubtedly suggestive of his innocence. When one takes into account, moreover, that the cheek casts ended up with more barium on the control side of the cheek cast than the side that had been applied to his face, the suspicion someone tried to rig the tests is justified.
  11. Upon double-checking it is clear you are correct in that Griggs didn't say the scope had to be removed. He did say, however, that one couldn't remove the scope and barrel without mis-aligning the scope. "The main metal component consists of the barrel and the firing mechanism. The latter includes the chamber, firing pin, bolt and trigger. For the purposes of this exercise the telescopic sight, permanently screwed to the top of this metal section, can be described as being part of it. It is not necessary to remove the scope when disassembling the rifle. It is inevitable, however, that during disassembly/reassembly, the precise alignment of the scope must be affected. This may be only minimal but nevertheless, it must have an effect."
  12. The possibility exists that Oswald washed his face at the rooming house, and that the gsr on his hands came from the Tippit shooting. BUT... the housekeeper insisted he was in and out and had not visited the bathroom. AND...despite constant claims of as much, it's clear the rifle was not wiped down for fingerprints. Well...it makes little sense for Oswald--assuming he was the shooter--to not wipe down the rifle--when the study of fingerprints at crime scenes was common knowledge--and then turn around and wash his face to remove gsr--when the testing of cheeks for gsr was not nearly as commonplace or well-known--and he had no intentions of getting captured. So, perhaps he got "lucky" on two counts--he washed his face without realizing it might help him claim his innocence--AND no one noticed.
  13. Minor point, Joe. The problematic Hosty notes are clearly a draft for a report, and not notes taken down during the interrogation itself. As this draft would have to have been written within a day or two of the assassination, it still carries some weight. It raises a secondary question, moreover. Bookhout wrote a solo report and a joint report with Hosty, but Hosty wrote no solo report. The notes/draft may very well have been the draft of a report which Hosty wrote, but was destroyed. Just spit-balling here. But the thought occurs that Hosty did in fact believe Oswald had said he'd been outside, and had put this in a report. And that his superiors noticed this, and said well this isn't what Bookhout remembers! And tossed his report. Now, we can recall here that Hosty was severely reprimanded after the WR was out and about, and shipped out of town/basically demoted. And I'm wondering if there's a paper trail within the FBI's records spelling out exactly what he'd done that was so embarrassing to Lord Hoover. We know, for one, that he wasn't supposed to mention Mexico City to Oswald. And we know, for two, that he went behind the backs of his superiors at times. But I'm curious if there's any mention of his writing an inaccurate report or some such thing in his records. Now, I think Hosty actually confronted this issue in his book, and said he tried to get access to his file, but that they'd refused to give it to him, or said it had been destroyed. I don't recall. But the thought remains that there could be some evidence somewhere that he did in fact write a report and that it was then thrown in the trash.
  14. Ian Griggs bought a rifle like the one found in the building, and wrote an article and gave a number of presentations on the disassembly and re-assembly of the rifle. As I recall, Mark, among his findings was that the WC image showing the scope attached to the barrel was deceptive, as the scope would have to be removed from the barrel during disassembly, and added back on during assembly.
  15. Thanks, Martin. It's good to know someone could watch the video and appreciate it for what it is.
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