Chris Bristow

I don't know what that light area is other than it being an artifact of the alteration they made to the stock. Once we find alterations like the Butt end of the stock the rest of the photo can't be trusted enough to evaluate what we see. That little 'reflection' I pointed to in my last post is not proof of anything either.The only conclusion I think I can make on it is the shirt is too dark to allow the dark scope to be visible. Marinas photos look correct to me. The left image of her is a tiny bit smaller than the other one and they are not aligned vertically.

The image of 133a from the newspaper looked extra weird because the width was shrunk by roughly 25%. I corrected the width and now the head does not look so strange. Some objects will change size significantly as exposure increases. Light objects get bigger and dark ones smaller. So not everything in the 2 photos will match perfectly. They also lost some things due to the contrast, exposure or the low resolution. Much of the subtle shades were lost. They added some things like his ears that must have been lost in the over exposed area around his head.. Because the shirt has no detail I don't think we would be able to see the scope whether it is there or not. The arrow points to the brightest part of the scope on the left image and the same reflection may be visible in the newspaper photo. I think it is likely that the scope is there but not visible against the blackness of the shirt.

When you ascribe a specific motive to Oswald's Behavior the contradictions become apparent. Marina said his Russian was so good she thought he was native born. That's not a dumb guy.

I do think Oswald's actions are that of an innocent man. I only posed these questions has an interesting thought experiment.

Seeing some of these other versions of 133a that are altered draws attention to a big question for me. How do we know that the photo was not altered by a news service of magazine? If it was altered by a media outlet then issues I have raised about exposure not being able to hide a dark scope over a lighter background without washing out everything lighter, is moot. If they go beyond just adjusting exposure they can manufacture what we see in the photo. The Life photo makes for a stronger case because the tiny 'nub' that is the rear of the scope cannot be said to be an alteration that was added to correct the rear of the scope. That 'nub' is too short to be a correction. That rules out alteration to correct the image and leaves no other explanation for a scope that is way to short. The only argument left to dispute the Life Mag image is to say a lack of exposure caused the scope to disappear. But if that is the case and the image was not altered then the lack of exposure issue is back on the table. That is that you can't make a dark image disappear before the lighter images behind it are washed out. You can't make the back of the scope disappear into the shirt and still have the middle and front stand out against the same shirt with the same light levels coming off of it. The Life "nub' image makes a much stronger case for fakery, imo.

Yes 133a and the TSB rifles are cocked and ce139 was not. You are right the standard thing to do is close the chamber (Which cocks the weapon) then dry fire it to be sure you didn't miss a round. I use an old Mauser for photographic comparisons and it has never been fired or had a round in it in over 30 years, yet I still cock and dry fire when I use it. That assures I will live to be paranoid another day.

You made some good point like why didn't he just pay cash for the Carcano? I just remembered Oswald Used the Carcano to try and kill General Walker in April! Then he gives a copy to De Mohrenschildt a month later. He didn't feel any need to destroy the evidence that connected him to Walkers assassination attempt from just weeks before. March 30th he takes the BYP's. April 5th he gives De Mohrenschildt a copy of 133a. April 10th he tries to kill Walker.

completely agree.

If the gun was planted by the Dallas PD it would make sense to fix it so it would misfire and not shoot a cop.

Who removed the last 4th round Oswald or Day? I wonder why either of them would slide the bolt forward as if to chamber another round. The 133a rifle was cocked too. Those two reflection look like they are coming from the lower part of that x shape on the scope mount. Maybe due to the light in ce139 coming from higher than the TSB photo which appears to be illuminated by a flash on the camera. just a guess.

Well the Detroit photo is obviously altered by someone, maybe the Detroit Press. The TSB scope looks like the FBI scope to me, different lighting and in the TSB photo the camera is lower. Nothing stands out to me as wrong.

That is fascinating and that crazy photo is comical.

The easiest way to do 133 would be to place a photo of White holding the rifle onto the backyard and add Oswald's head. The only scenario I can think of that accounts for the missing scope would be White forgot to put a scope on the Carcano then added it after and accidentally cut off the end of the scope. That would be the Life version. What makes no sense to me is how the end of the nub could be so distinct and show none of the scope beyond that. The rest of the scope was as dark as the rear but it is clear, it isn't in the process of disappearing. The scope is the darkest object around Oswald's hips and I would think it would be the last object to disappear when the exposure is increased. To get rid of the darkest object(If it is not to small or thin) you have to crank the exposure way up and the shirt washes out before the scope does. The clamps on the scope are well defined from the darker scope and are similar in brightness to the shirt yet both elements are well defined from each other, so how did the rear disappear into the shirt? Another strange thing is the scopes shadow is much lighter and more subtle than the scope end but it remains and the scope is gone.

If Oswald did Kill JFK he didn't care much about covering his tracks. I wonder why he didn't do the following. 1. Destroy the backyard photos. 2. Remove his A. Hidell I.D from his wallet because it tied him to the rifle. 4, Remove his fingerprints from the rifle or maybe wear thin rubber gloves if that isn't to clumsy. 5. Bring his revolver under a coat. If you think you may need it to escape, that escape starts right after you shoot. you shouldn't have to go home to get it. 6. Don't take in a movie, go back to work. 7. Don't bring the rifle with you to work the same day you plan to use it. Carrying a package that looks like a rifle into a 6 story building on the presidential parade route, a few hours before the president arrives, looks suspicious. 8. Maybe find another building to shoot from. Maybe pose as a delivery guy with a long package and invoice and smuggle the rifle into the DalTex building through the loading dock days in advance. find a place to hide it and a location to shoot from. The roof may suffice but an unused office on a low floor would make a quicker getaway. Getaway from the rear and across the street to the SBD and eat your lunch. I'm sure #8 has fatal flaws, it's all just an interesting thought experiment. We could also assume Oswald didn't do it and speculate as to when his behavior suggested he had realized he was the patsy. Some time before he picked up his revolver I think.

Jim, they say the Life version was altered to bring out the rear of the scope but in the Life image the rear of the scope is just a nub. I don't get it. Your copy of 133a and others show more scope but are still too short. That may mean Life Mag is the original fake that shows Rosco's botched work and your version is the attempt to fix the original error. The rear end of the Life Mag scope is fairly sharp and it just disappears leaving a shade that matches Oswald's shirt where several inches of scope should be. The stark contrast between your version and Life Mag, I think, strengthens your case. When people claim yours must be the version Life altered, you can show the Life image is even shorter than yours. I find it hard to believe Life tried to bring out the scope and then made it this tiny nub. Most of that nub is already visible in the bad copies of 133. It seems the Life image proves the scope end was missing and yours proves someone tried to add it back in and made it too small. The distinct end of the Life image eliminates the possibility that the difference between your scope and the Life image is just due to being processed/developed differently, imo.

If Oswald lied about Neeley St to keep the backyard photos from implicating him then he must have forgotten about their existence until minutes after the assassination. He forgot about them even though he would have known in advance that he would leave the rifle behind at his workplace. He Gave DeMohrenschildt a copy in May that he captioned and signed. Sounds like he had a little pride in that image of himself, yet he forgot all about it. So I guess he could have shot JFK and as he placed the rifle down behind some boxes he suddenly remembered those photos and almost sh*t himself. But in reality if he really left his rifle and fingerprints at his workplace, then he never intended to get away with it. So then why would he lie about Neely St when he intentionally left a trail of breadcrumbs that would lead straight to him?

Not sure what you are demonstrating. The faint shadow that extends out from the bottom rear of the stock looks to me like it also sits just below the stock and lines up with the Sandy's shadow under the stock. That same shadow lays behind the butt and creates an illusion that the butt has a curvature to it. But you can see the shadow is a bit lighter than the butt and if you look close or play with the contrast the demarcation between the shadow and butt is visible. The photo on the right has a long arrow, is that representing the Sun's direction? Your shorter arrow shows the direction of the shadow but the shadow is misleading because it is a 2 dimensional representation of a 3d shadow. The shadow falls toward the side of his leg so the shadow is running into the background. We all know objects that run into the background(objects that have depth) will appear higher in the frame of the photo because depth is translated into height in a 2d image. ( actually objects appear higher if they are below the vanishing point and lower if above the vanishing point. everything with depth will be bent towards the vanishing point) So anytime an object in a photo has depth it will be distorted. I recall the Sun was 47 degrees but would only cast a 47 degree shadow under certain conditions. First the shadow has to fall on a plain perpendicular to the camera. Second that plain has to sit at a 90 angle to the Sun. Oswald was facing 22 degrees away from the Sun.

Jim, In this image I see the rear part of the scope is barley protruding at all. It is only about 1/3 as long as the rear portion in your comparison. Did you take the comp image from different copy of the Life Mag photo?

It is the magnification of the barrel end and how it decreases in a gradient as you move toward the rear. Barrel end to stock is a bit more magnified that from stock to bolt or bolt to butt etc. The simplest solution as to why that type of magnification happened is that the rifle or the camera was leaning (Actually the camera was pointed down a bit and would also cause some of that magnification). Any optical distortion of the camera or printing error would not be limited to the rifle. When I put myself in Oswald's stance with the right leg back and the rifle against his thigh, I find the rifle leans barrel end towards the camera, even if I really suck my gut in. EDIT: I deleted a paragraph about my speculation on the shadow because I realized it was no good.

The barrel end to the stock is larger in 133a because Oswald leaned the barrel end toward the camera and that magnified the barrel end of the rifle. Because the rifle will appear shorter the less perpendicular it is to the camera, leaning the barrel end toward the camera shrinks the 133a rifle overall. The shrinking is greater than the magnification, so to compare 133a and the FBI rifle you have to increase the size of 133a which adds to the magnification of the barrel end. What I can't make sense of is although 133a has to be enlarged for a sized comparison, the overlay I posted earlier shows the 133a buttstock fits inside the FBI image. It is a smaller image even though 133a was magnified. At the same time the distance from the top of the notch to the rear of the buttstock is equal. Maybe the right combination of distance to camera, angle to the camera and the rotation of the rifle may reproduce the distorted rifle in 133a. I have been attempting it with a Mauser but no success yet.

The lower blemish sits right where the traffic light facing West on Elm St was. Google Earth Street View places the current light right there too. I didn't find a good reference photo for the the 2nd light that hangs over the street but the second blemish is at about the correct location.

I will only quibble a little with this. You could also say it appears the image of the rifle and scope may have been tampered with. It could be a different scope used by Roscoe White or it is the same rifle with photographic alteration to bring out the dark image of the scope or correct an error in the cut and paste. When I draw a horizontal line along the scope and base it on the front and middle section it all looks good. But if I extend the line that was based on the front and middle thru the back of the scope it suddenly shows a pronounced angle. That rear section does not line up with the front and middle. I could be seeing things but take a look at that issue for yourself and see what you see.

John, when I tried to do the overlay image I found the two rifles were not at the same angle. I rotated the FBI photo about 2 degrees counterclockwise. That is why they compare differently. Using the 'Arbitrary line' from the barrel to the top of the butt as a baseline to measure scope angle will also give incorrect results. Notice in the overlay image the barrels are perfectly aligned vertically while the butt of 133a is smaller(The top has a lower vertical position relative to the barrel). That means the arbitrary red line is at a steeper angle in the FBI photo than in 133a and that that throws off the scope angle comparison. The most accurate way, imo, to test the scope angle is to use the barrel for comparison. In another copy of 133a I noticed there is a shadow of the butt extending leftward at the very bottom rear of the buttstock. It is slightly visible above. It looks like it extends from a shadow under the stock which I assume is what Joseph said Sandy had referred to. Even if the is no shadow extending down from the stock, the underside of the stock is in shadow and, I think, is visible. It may be the reason the bottom of the stock looks rougher than the top is because the top is lit and the bottom is dark.

Jim, regarding the rear part of the scope, it is possible that if the rifle itself was added by the CIA, Maybe they accidentally cut off the rear of the scope and had to draw it in. Another possibility is the photo came out too dark to show the scope and Life Magazine or someone else drew in the scope and the lighter pants behind it. It is also possible that it is a different scope as you say. I just don't what to think yet. Right now it looks to me like the rear portion does not align with the middle and front parts and that makes me wonder.

Looking at the notch on the top of the stock behind and below the scope and I noticed something that had fooled me. I thought the distance between the notch and the rear of the slide mechanism was too short, but it turns out the rifle in 133a is cocked. That pushes the slide to the rear about one inch. To me it looks like there is a shadow just behind the slide that fills in the long gradual line of the stock and makes the notch look extra short and deep. I think taking those two observations together explains the weird looking notch. There are several points I want to make about the image below. First to Josephs point about the butt of the stock having different angles than 133a, the lower image has an overlay of the two stocks in which you can verify that the angles do not match. The tops match but the bottoms do not. 133a is the smaller stock and fits inside the FBI/WC stock. How the 133a stock is smaller even though the length of the rifles matches maybe due to magnification of the barrel end of the rifle length in 133a. If the barrel is magnified then you would have to decrease the overall length of the rifle when comparing to the FBI photo. That would cause the stock to look smaller than the FBI image. On John Butlers point about the scopes being at different angles I found that in the FBI photo the scope does point slightly downward when compared to the barrel. Not as much as John found though. Looking at the overlay I made of the stocks it is apparent that the 133a image has a smaller stock making the top rear of the stock slightly lower than the FBI image. So using that point on the stock as a reference resulted in two different angles for 133a and the FBI photo making the difference in the scope angles appear greater than they are. Still the angle of the scope in the FBI photo does appear to angle down very slightly. I wonder if they realigned the scope for the test firing before or after the FBI photo was taken? The angle of the 133a scope is a different matter. In the magnified image of the 133a scope below it looks to me like the front and middle parts of the scope are aligned with each other. but the rear is not straight. It angles down and does not align with the rest of the scope. I can't find any other Carcano image that does that. It is not rotation or the barrel leaning towards the camera, I can't find anything that would explain it. So I am suspicious that the the rear of the scope may be added in. Joseph pointed out something Jack White noticed about the white discoloration where the butt meets Oswald's pants. I have seen this many times before on photos that had no reason to be faked. I don't know if it means something was faked in this instance because I have never come across a reason why those white areas happen in the first place.