Donald Willis

Whaley's "Neches" wrecks Warren Report's Oswald/Tippit timeline Apparently, the Warren Commission panicked when witness William W. Whaley went off-script, on 3/12/64, and testified that he dropped Oswald off at "Neches and North Beckley". (In his 11/23/63 affidavit, Whaley mentions only "500 block of North Beckley".) That would have screwed up the official eta of Oswald at 10th & Patton of 1:16. (Warren Report p158) As the WR says, "Neches is within one-half block of the rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley where Oswald was living." (WRp162) That would, in fact, seem to have been an ideal spot for Oswald to get out of the cab--not right in front of the house, but close, as Norman Redlich here acknowledges. Close enough perhaps, that is, for Oswald to see without being seen. The Commission--which had all the time in the world--went so far as to recall Whaley, who capitulated and now said that he left Oswald off at "the intersection of Beckley and Neely" (4/8/64 testimony p429), at (as per the WR p158) 12:54. That would have meant a walk of about 6 minutes to get to the rooming house. (WR pp158, 163) Then another 3 minutes before departing, arriving at 10th & Patton about 1:16. (WRp158) A 13-minute walk. However, Whaley's blundering, out-of-left-field reference to "Neches" throws that timeline a bit out of whack. Dutifully, he retains "Beckley" through it all, from affidavit to testimony to corrected testimony. But as a cab driver, he must have known that Neches and Beckley did not actually intersect--certainly he did know by 11/22/63. In fact, that might have been where Oswald actually instructed him to go, Neches near Beckley. How else would Whaley have latched on to "Neches"? To reconstruct the adjusted timeline: Out of cab 12:54 on Neches. Rooming house 12:55. Leaving rooming house 12:58. 10th & Patton 1:11. Leaving Oswald patiently waiting around for Tippit to show up, four or five minutes later. However, no witness saw the gunman do any such waiting, just walking. Revised, adjusted timeline, then, for Oswald: Leaving rooming house 12:58. Arriving Texas Theatre 1:16. No stopovers.

Claviger would be pleased. That was one of his causes, when last seen on alt.assassination.jfk, several years ago. He questioned, specifically, the official bullet-trajectory figures. Has anything been done on this (important) sub-issue since?

Thank you. I used one of Mark Stevens' posts therein as a jumping-off point for my own observations re Brennan.

I think that Brennan was clearly conflating what he saw in different windows, but that the conflation was between the 5th & 6th floors of the TSBD. Consider: In CE 477, he circles both the 1st & 2nd windows from the SE end on the 6th floor, his "A" representing the sniper here. These are the same two windows which he leaves empty on the floor below. The implication is that, after putting "A" on the 6th floor, he then had no one with whom to replace "A" on the 5th floor. But why would he seem to relocate the sniper at two windows? Because he saw a rifle at the SE end window on the 5th floor, then saw what he thought was the same man (only partially seen at best there) at the 2nd single window from the end, on the same floor, who "maybe paused for another second as though to assure hisself that he hit his mark", as Brennan put it. The Dillard photo(s), as well as the Powell slide, then, captured this moment with the man Brennan mistakenly thought was the sniper pausing, Bonnie Ray Williams. Brennan was later persuaded that he was mistaken both as to his identity of the sniper and the number of the floor, yet he retained the mistake of that second window in his diagramming of the 6th-floor "A". And then, necessarily, left both halves of the SE end double window on the 5th floor vacant.

And yet he circled only one single window on the 5th floor. However, I just realized, that if Brennan saw the man leave the window a couple of times, he might have seen him in the 2nd window as he passed by it. I believe that that's where the exit/entrance to the cubby hole (as Mooney put it) was. Maybe that's what Mr. B meant. Though it's curious,l still, that he put the two witnesses in the same single window, on the 5th, when the latter was closed at the time...

Notice that Howard Brennan circled only ONE single window on the 5th floor, and put Norman and Jarman in that same single window . And it was a window CLOSED at 12:30pm 11/22/63. His A (sniper) and B (Norman, Jarman) circling is very specific--one window for the latter, TWO for the sniper. Why did he allot two windows to the sniper? It could be the key to the whole shebang...

Might as well double down on my out-of-left-field maintaining of a 5th-floor sniper's perch in the TSBD. You'll recall witness Brennan's confusion re the double windows, which he at first thought were just long long windows. Notice on CE 477 he crams Norman and Jarman into one single window ("B") on the 5th floor, leaving all the other windows on the floor vacant. Then notice that he allots the sniper a full double-window ("A") on the 6th floor. Why? I think because he saw the sniper, or at least the rifle, first in the east window of a double-window, then thought he saw the same man in the west window of the same double-window. So he has to circle both halves of the double window in question. Clearly, though, (if anything in Brennan's testimony can be said to be clear) the location of that double window is in error. The west window of the SE corner double window on the 6th floor was closed at 12:30. But both sides of the SE end double window on the 5th floor were open. But Brennan has to leave those windows vacant when he is persuaded that the sniper was on the floor above. "A" has to have been on the 5th floor.

The reason for the 5th-floor ruse should be apparent. No one would hire on without some safeguards, at least against being photographed or immediately shot in the 6th-floor sniper's "nest". Even with that, as I noted, Williams was apparently picked out by three witnesses--Brennan, Euins, and Jackson--as having been a shooter, which I don't believe that he was.

The sniper's perch on the 5th floor 1> Bonnie Ray Williams claimed to have left chicken bones and a Dr. Pepper bottle, on the floor, after eating lunch on the 6th floor. (v3pp170-71) Perhaps they were his, but... 2> "[Det.] Studebaker was dusting the Dr. Pepper bottle which had been brought up to him from the 5th floor". (Tom Alyea, in "Secrets from the Sixth-Floor Window" p45) 3> In a 12/19/63 statement, Alyea notes "a s[t]ack with a stack of chicken bones on it" and a "Dr. Pepper bottle which they dusted for fingerprinting", all supposedly on the 6th floor. However, he does not note a sniper's nest, and seems to believe that the bottle and chicken mark the window (location on floor not specified) from which the sniper fired. Taken together, these two statements indicate that he was writing about the 5th floor. [In his reference to Studebaker, Alyea does not mention the chicken bones, perhaps because their transporter had bagged them.] 4> Everyone accepts Williams' 6th-floor-foray story, which he seemed to have recounted from the get-go. But the get-go was his 11/22/63 affidavit: "I went back up on the 5th floor with a fellow called Hank and Junior." No 6th floor. Initially, then, Williams corroborates Alyea. By Saturday, however, he had retroactively wended his way up to the next floor for his lunch. The 6th-floor magnet... 5> But Saturday damage control yielded more damage. In an 11/23/63 FBI statement, Williams now avers that he did go up to the 6th floor to eat his lunch, and that he then took the stairs back down to the 5th floor, leaving the elevator which he took up to the 6th floor behind. But, in his Commission testimony, he has to correct his correction: "I didn't tell [the FBI] that I was using the stairs." (v3p172) Perhaps he has to make the retraction because Roy Truly testified that when, accompanying Patrolman Baker upstairs, he first looked up the elevator shaft and saw that "both [elevators] were on the 5th floor at that time." (v3p223) Of course they were, since Williams had not gone up to the 6th floor. 6> Truly and Alyea, independently, nix the Williams version of the chicken-and-bottle story. Williams' prevarications were necessitated by a 1:12 DPD radio transmission from Insp. J.H. Sawyer, and his later advisory to reporters. In the former, he mentions "empty rifle hulls", and notes that "the man had been there for some time" (Trask p523); in the latter, he mentions "remains of fried chicken and paper", and again notes that "the person had been there quite a while". (Stockton Record, S.F. Examiner, Oakland Tribune [AP] 11/22/63) The shells, then, were inextricably linked with the chicken. Everywhere the shells went, the chicken (and bottle) was sure to go. And, in an elaborate ruse to keep the chicken with the shells, several sheriff's deputies and DPD Sgt. Gerald Hill falsely reported seeing chicken adorning the 6th-floor "nest". But Alyea and DPD Crime Scene detectives Studebaker and Day put the kibosh on that scenario--none of the three reported seeing chicken remains there. As Studebaker testified, if they had been there, they would have appeared in his photographs of the area. 7> Studebaker did photograph the shells in the "nest", but apparently a good deal later than they were supposed to have been photographed. Alyea: "Fritz handed the casings to Studebaker to include them in the crime scene shot of the window..." (email from Alyea to Tony Pitman 5/6/98) Apparently, the photographing took place *much* later: Dets. Johnson & Montgomery were assigned to assist in the "nest" and window areas on the 6th floor, beginning about 1:05, until about 2:30, but their respective reports mention no shells nor photographing of same on the 6th floor during that period, although: damage control again: the later Sims/Boyd report has them, supposedly, left guarding the phantom shells while Capt. Fritz, Sims, & Boyd go over to check out the rifle site. Unlike the chicken, the shells finally do show up in the "nest", but why the delay? 8> Back to that 1:12 transmission and subsequent Sawyer briefing of reporters... The problem with *what* Sawyer reported having been found upstairs was compounded by the problem with *where* it was supposedly found. The radio message says, "3rd floor". Baffling, until you realize that some 20 minutes earlier, Sawyer and Hill had been involved with a suspect detained on the 3rd floor who was, at the time, thought to have been a shooter. (HSCA interview with Officer Ira Trantham, 11/23/63 report of Chief Criminal Deputy Allan Sweatt) Apparently, Hill--who had entered the depository at about 12:52 and sent the suspect out--had later brought Sawyer (who hadn't gone in with him) up-to-date on what had been found inside the building. But either Hill did not mention the number of the (higher) floor where the subsequent discovery of shells had occurred, or Sawyer mis-heard--hence, "3rd floor". Sawyer, however, told reporters later that the discovery had actually happened on the 5th floor. And that, apparently, was *not* a mistake. Between the time of his transmission and the time of the briefing, someone must have told Sawyer "5th floor". Most likely informant: Sweatt, whose report put the finding of the hulls on the 5th floor. Sawyer and Sweatt were both out front about this time, and the latter must have heard his broadcast and gone over to correct him. 9> Homicide Captain Fritz must not have been very happy with Sawyer's 1:12 radio broadcast. And maybe because he had been informed that it was Hill who had put him up to it, he had Hill rushed to a window on the 6th floor to declare that empty shells had just been found on that floor. The Homicide (Boyd/Sims) report put the time of the finding at 1:15, which would also, then, most likely have been the time that Hill gave his emergency shout. The problem with this is that, no, the shells had not just been found then. They were found shortly before one o'clock, according to their finder, Deputy Luke Mooney. Hill's breathless bulletin must have puzzled onlookers who had heard Mooney shouting the discovery some 15 minutes earlier... And its hapless belatedness indicates that it was not the Hill of the 6th-floor belated shout, nor the Hill and Sawyer of the "3rd floor" confusion, but the Sawyer of the "5th floor" briefing who was the one to listen to re the floor number of the finding of the shells. 10> Most sheriff's deputies pegged the sniper's "nest" as the site of the discovery of the shells, but these same deputies, obviously erroneously, also named it as the site of the discovery of the chicken bones. A few deputies, however--namely Jack Faulkner and John Wiseman--put the find on the 5th floor. 11> Faulkner and Wiseman also put the rifle find on that same floor. And an ATF agent famously reported the rifle as having been found on a floor lower than the 6th. 12> Other "mistaken" floor-numbering witnesses whom I believe were actually not mistaken include Amos Euins and Mrs. Carolyn Walther. The latter was "positive that [the window that she saw a man with a rifle] was not as high as the 6th floor." (FBI interview 12/4/63) (Her account of a man leaning out the window and holding a rifle, however, seems an embellishment. But her designation of the "fourth or fifth" floor does not.) Two reporters, independently, heard Euins say that he thought the shooter was a "colored man", and Deputy Sheriff C.L. Lewis recorded Euins as saying that he "saw man on 5th floor". (v19p526) 13> The Patrolman, James Valentine, who rode to Dealey with Sgt. Hill, and apparently entered with him, stated in 1964 that he had been assigned to the "5th floor". 14> At 12:37, another Patrolman, Leonard L. Hill, radioed that the shots had seemed to have come from a "second window from the [east] end", on an upper depository floor. The only open such "second window" was on the 5th floor. His witness was apparently news photographer Bob Jackson, who testified that he was in a car in Dealey and, supposedly, did not get out of the car there. But fellow newsperson Malcolm Couch said that he and Jackson in fact did alight in Dealey, near the triple underpass, where Hill was temporarily located. (Like Sgt. Hill, Patrolman Hill seems to have turned up everywhere that day.) Apparently, Jackson saw Williams looking out his second-window-from-the-end, just after the shots had been fired, and pegged him, erroneously, as the shooter. "Bob Jackson is reported to have seen the rifle and the man that fired the shots"--undated info from DPD Sgt. W.G. Jennings. (v19p517) 15> Howard Brennan testified that the shooter shot from a wide-open window--like (he exampled) the east-end 5th-floor windows. But then, when Brennan--as well as fellow witness Bob Edwards--were independently persuaded that the man they thought they saw at that wide-open window was actually at the half-open window on the 6th floor, that left them no recourse but to adjust as best they could and leave the window below the relocated sniper unoccupied. (Brennan: v3p152/Edwards: v6p204) If, that is, the man were spuriously moved up to the 6th floor, then that necessarily leaves--at least for Brennan and Edwards--the 5th-floor east-end window empty... (Harold Norman was supposedly at that window at 12:30, but the testimonies of Brennan and Edwards creates some doubt.) Accordingly, Brennan testified that the two men he said he saw on the 5th floor, Norman and Jarman, "were one window over below the man that fired the gun". (p152) In fact, Brennan moved Norman *two* windows over to the west, leaving both halves of the end double-window vacant, and moved Jarman one single-window over to the east. (See CE 477.) Brennan's configuration of the 5th-floor witnesses is so far from that seen in the photos that it's almost surreal. It would, clearly, take more than mere misremembering to achieve that level of incongruity between witness and photos. Consider: If Norman were at the window just under the sniper--as Norman said that he was--then--in the Brennan version--that sniper would, accordingly, have to have been at the third window from the end! The 5th-floor double-window vacancy--in the Brennan version--was, I believe, filled, in part, by the sniper, at the very end SE window. (And by Williams, at the next single window, though not until after the sniper had left *his* window.) Part of Brennan's (very understandable) confusion can be attributed to the fact that counsel David Belin did not tell Brennan, while questioning him, that the photo of the wide-open windows (CE 481) was "taken shortly after the firing of the third shot". (p153) Not even when his witness stated that he did not "recall this ["nest"] window at the time of the shooting being that low." (p153) So Brennan does not even realize that he is challenging the official Dealey story. Belin includes the comment re 481, a bit later, in a general discussion of photo exhibits, to which Brennan was either not privy or not listening. So he doesn't get a chance to review his earlier observations re 481. Less risky, apparently, to leave the man in abject confusion, superimposing the shooter and the wide-open window, below, over the empty half-open window, above. In the end, however, Brennan wins--the window was not "that low". He at least got the chance to pointedly reject the "nest" shooting window (whether or not counsel admits it) and, consequently, to reject his own, earlier fixing of the location of the shooter as having been on the "second row of windows from the top" of the building, as he put it in his 11/22/63 affidavit. The window was not "that low". For his part, counsel simply ignores the implications of what the witness has said and goes on, in his business-like way, to another matter--the same tactic used by commissioner Allen Dulles with W.W. Scoggins when the latter testified that he went in a car with the police after returning to the Tippit scene with Ted Callaway. (Leaving no explanation whatsoever as to why Scoggins could not have attended a same-day lineup.) 16> Check the photos of Williams looking out his window at the departing Presidential limo, and compare them with Brennan's well-known, The shooter paused for a second as if to admire his handiwork comment. (It may have been at this moment that Euins and Jackson, too, mistakenly came to the conclusion that Williams was the shooter.) Then look up, in Williams' testimony, Williams being asked if a man named Brennan had ID'd him as the man he saw on the 5th floor. (Williams said, No way, but, again, compare the photos and Brennan's comment.) Supposedly, Brennan, after 12:30, introduced Williams' fellow 5th-floorers, Norman and Jarman, to the police as the ones he had seen on the 5th floor, but that encounter was never verified by anyone outside Norman, Jarman, and Brennan--not even by SS Agent Forrest Sorrels, to whom Brennan said he presented the two. 17> The next day, 11/23/63, Jarman made out an affidavit, and did not mention the 5th floor but did mention Williams as having been out front with the spectators. Williams never verified that. Meanwhile, Williams' other 5th-floor compatriot, Norman, was incommunicado until the next Tuesday. For some reason, the two seemed reluctant to admit their presence on the 5th floor. But once they did admit it, they plunged hopefully on, and described debris as having fallen on, first, Norman's head, then, later, no, actually, on Williams' head, then, no again (for the HSCA), on Norman's. The mysterious debris--a most questionable indicator of a 6th-floor shooter... Photos show Norman and Jarman on the 5th floor, at 12:30, on 11/22, but apparently, if they were there, it was not completely in accordance with their will. Whereas Williams seemed to embrace his role on the 5th floor, whatever that role was. Though I don't think that he realized, until afterwards, the full import of what was done that day on the 5th floor. As building superintendent Roy Truly testified, "I do know that [depository employees] have been rather, as the expression goes, shook up about this thing, especially this tall one, Bonnie Williams. He is pretty superstitious, I would say." Perhaps even haunted.

You don't believe in Betty Boop?

Alyea's report in December sounds as if he still thought the chicken & bottle site was a scene of shooting. But whatever the authorities made of the chicken references in Sawyer's bulletins, they weren't taking a chance and "moved' the chicken to the "nest"--just to make us civilians happy... Unfortunately for them, Studebaker wasn't notified, and gave away the charade.

... in which he seems to think that Bonnie Ray Williams' chicken and soda bottle indicated a shooting site: It started me thinking (always a bad sign) that Insp. Sawyer's police-radio message and his briefing for reporters might have been based on the same mistaken assumption. The radio version: "We have found empty rifle hulls on the fifth floor and from all indications the man had been there for some time" (from Sawyer's testimony). The news briefing: "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor. Apparently, the person had been there quite a while." (quoted in the Stockton (CA) Record, the San Fransisco Examiner, and the Oakland (CA) Tribune) Someone at Cop HQ, though, must have panicked and believed that Sawyer's briefings might be taken as saying that there were chicken scraps in & around the "nest" itself. So the DPD and the sheriff's office industriously enlisted several hapless deputies and police officers to concoct a shells-and-chicken's-nest story, including deputies Mooney, McCurley, and Weatherford and DPD Sgt. Hill. I say "concoct" because, dutifully, photographers Det. Studebaker (of the DPD Crime Lab) and Alyea insisted that no chicken remains were found in and about the "nest" itself, or it would have appeared in some of their photos and film there. As it turns out, though--if Sawyer was referring simply to the Williams stash--the officers perpetrated the hoax all for nothing. The police and sheriff's departments, then, somewhat hilariously, colluded in a cover-up of something which didn't need covering up, a conspiracy to cover up... nothing!

The Fritz & Alyea Show is meant, I think, to obfuscate the (apparent) fact that Fritz picked up the hulls (or was handed them) in another location--the place where Mooney found the shells--and much later passed on to Studebaker to film in the "nest". As if they had originally been found there. In his December '64 statement, Alyea seems to have no idea what the "nest" was for. Not surprising if he saw the shells, earlier, in the other, undisclosed location, and he thought the chicken and Dr. Pepper window might be where a second shooter shot from. Alyea admitted that he didn't want to ask too many questions or he might be escorted out of the building. He even ID'd, in that original statement, Fritz as a Crime Lab man. As for the chicken adorning the "nest"--principally in the reports of Sheriff's deputies--mention of it originated in Insp. Sawyer's briefing for reporters that afternoon: "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor. Apparently the person had been there quite a while"--Stockton Record (AP) 11/22/63 p8. (It's only in his 1:12 radio message that Sawyer mentions the shells.) That "fifth" would seem to have been a miscounting error for "sixth". However, both photographers in the building that day--Alyea and Studebaker--insisted that no chicken remains were found in or near the "nest" or they would have shown up in the pictures they took. So what "fifth" actually meant is anybody's guess. Just to make things more interesting: In his 1:12 dispatch Sawyer said "3rd floor".

Then there's Deputy Faulkner reporting that the shells had been "given" to Fritz.

Does that piece of film survive? Are you sure it wasn't just the shell popped out of the rifle?

I know that he said that they were definitely not found on the sixth floor.

Then that would tally with what Alyea wrote about the photos of the shells being photographed later than circa 1:15. The Sims/Boyd report has Fritz watching Lt. Day take pictures of the hulls. But Alyea has Fritz, much later, giving the shells to Studebaker to photograph. That would account for Alyea not having seen anything of the shells circa 1:20, when he photographed the rifle find. Do you know where I can see the Studebaker scene?

Mooney vs Alyea, and the two depository shooting sites To hear Deputy Luke Mooney and newsman Tom Alyea talk about the site of the shooting from the depository, you'd think that they were talking about two different locations. And perhaps they were. The Mooney version: "I saw the expended shells on the floor [inside] a cubby hole which had been constructed out of cartons..." (11/23/63 report/Decker Exh 5323p528) The Alyea version: "At the time it was suspected that the assassin had stayed quite a time there. There was a s[t]ack with a stack of chicken bones on it. There was a Dr. Pepper bottle..." (12/19/63 statement) [Crime Scene Det. Studebaker verifies the bones: "One of the officers...later emptied the sack, leaving the chicken bones on the floor near the area where they were found... in the third aisle from the [east] side" (FBI interview 5/28/64)] It appears that Alyea at first thought that the sniper shot from the window at which Bonnie Ray Williams--who claimed the chicken and the bottle--had sat eating lunch. In fact, nowhere in Alyea's statement does he mention expended shells or hulls or a "nest" or "cubby hole", only a "gun". As No True Flags Here has found, there is a photo of Alyea at a seventh-floor window, taken about the same time that the shells were found. In "Facts and Photos"--Alyea's contribution to Connie Kritzberg's "Secrets from the Sixth Floor Window"--he excludes Mooney from the scene of the finding of the shooting location: "When we arrived on the 6th floor and the location was found, there were no detectives or officers at the location..." (p44) "You can totally disregard any statements made by Mooney. He didn't arrive [at the "nest" location] until much later. He neither saw the casings in their original location nor did he see the barricade until after Studebaker dismantled it, and this was over 30 minutes after the SN was found." (Alyea email to Willis 5/18/98) Mooney sans "nest", Alyea sans shells. And to that "no detectives or officers", Det. Studebaker adds, No chicken: Commission Counsel Joseph Ball: One witness, a deputy sheriff named Luke Mooney said he found a piece of chicken partly eaten up on top of one of the boxes [in the SE corner, over near where you found the cartridges]; did you see anything like that? Mr. STUDEBAKER. No. Mr. BALL. Was anything like that called to your attention? Mr. STUDEBAKER. I can't recall anything like that. It ought to be in one of these pictures, if it is. (vp147) So, no detectives, no officers, no chicken. Alyea didn't see Mooney; Studebaker didn't see Mooney's chicken. For his part, Mooney excludes Alyea from the finding of the nest". He testifies that he was on his own: "I went straight across to the SE corner... and I saw all those high boxes." (hearings v3p284) But no Alyea. Mooney and Alyea seem to have mutually exclusive versions of the discovery of the sniper's location. Certainly, Alyea is most insistent that Mooney was very late getting to the "nest". Whom to believe? Both, I think, in part. There is verification for Mooney's discovery of the empty shells--about the time that Mooney found the shells and, in turn, shouted out the window--as it was "approaching 1 o'clock" (p285)--there is a 12:59 call on the police radio for the Crime Lab to come to the TSBD. (CE 1974p41) And there is verification that Alyea saw the "nest", though at the time he apparently did not know exactly what it was: In "Pictures of the Pain" (p534), there's a frame blow-up from the film Alyea took that day of the "nest". However, no shells are visible, and there's no picture of Capt. Fritz holding up the shells for Alyea to photograph, as, in later years, he insisted Fritz had done. And yet Mooney and Alyea each maintain that the other was not there. Perhaps because there were two "theres" there. Chief Criminal Deputy Allan Sweatt reported that Mooney did indeed holler out the window re "some spent cartridge cases" that had been found. (Decker Exh 5323p532) And, as noted, the 12:59 call on the radio verifies the find, if not the exact location. Apart from the hard evidence of that call and the frame blow-up in Trask, there are only the words of Mooney and Alyea and others to go on that they saw the shells and/or the "nest" early on. So all we know for sure, then, is that Mooney found the shells, and that Alyea was at least on the right floor about the time that the "nest" was found. But, as I say, Alyea did not, initially, even mention shells, and seemed to put the place "where [the assassin] fired" outside the "nest", a few windows away from the end window. And as No True Flags Here has found, there's a photo of Alyea at a 7th-floor window about the time that the shells were found. Mooney: "At that time [just before he found the shells], some news reporter... was coming up with a camera... So I went back down... to the sixth floor".(p284) One way to reconcile the Mooney and Alyea stories, then, is to conclude that there were two separate discoveries (apart from that of the rifle) that afternoon--the shells in one place, the "nest" in another. Mooney in one place, Alyea in another... We know that Mooney found the shells. At the same time, Alyea is adamant that he, Mooney, got to the "nest" late. I believe that, on their respective points here, they're both right. How could that be? As suggested by Alyea's statement above, the shells were not in the "nest" when he was on the floor at the rifle find. Mooney had found them earlier, and perhaps elsewhere. Alyea, then, would have seen the "nest"--but empty--long before Mooney did. However, Mooney seems to have seen the shells long before Alyea did, if the latter saw them at all. In the end, both men said that they saw the shells in the "nest", but each one--at least according to the other's version--must have "placed" them there retroactively. Either that or the shells were simply gone by the time that Alyea got back down to the sixth floor. But--according to the Homicide recap of the scene--they should still have been there: "Someone called for Capt. Fritz, and he left Dets. Montgomery and Johnson to stay with the hulls... Someone said the gun had been found." (Sims/Boyd report p3) And Alyea, we know, was there when the gun was found. In the original Alyea version, Fritz, Sims, Boyd, Montgomery, and Johnson are staying with hulls that don't seem to have been there. Mooney and the shells in one place, Alyea and the "nest" in another.

Yes, either that or Tippit got close enough to 10th & Patton to have heard the shots, and checked it out.

That explanation is complicated by the fact that the dispatcher ordered two cops to the area.

That "why" is answered by comparing two sets of DPD radio-log transcriptions. Sawyer Exh. B duly records a 12:54 exchange between the dispatcher and Tippit: Disp: You are in the Oak Cliff area, are you not? Tippit: At Lancaster & 8th. Disp: You will be at large for any emergency that comes in. This makes it sound as if Tippit just happened to be in the area, about 8 blocks from 10th & Patton. But only because the Sawyer Exhibit omitted an earlier order from the dispatcher. From the later, more complete FBI transcription: 12:46: Disp: 87 & 78 (Nelson & Tippit), move into Central Oak Cliff area. (There are two later, inconclusive exchanges between the dispatcher and Nelson.) The Sawyer Exhibit makes it difficult to determine the omission of the 12:46 order. The pertinent pages of Sawyer Exhibit A & B are swapped--the A page is inserted into Exhibit B, and vice versa. A ends at 12:45 and picks up at 12:48. B also ends at 12:45 and picks up at... 12:48. A suspicious person might find this convenient. THERE ARE NO ENTRIES FOR 12:46 in either A or B. The Sawyer Exhibit, most unfortunately, was the transcription used for almost all Commission questioning of DPD officers. Therefore, this omission was never brought up, to my knowledge, at the hearings. The 12:46 transmission and its omission from the Sawyer Exhibit almost make it sound as if Tippit was being set up. Sins of transmission and sins of omission...

I remember noticing all those upward angles and wondered, what the hellj??

There were two DPD-radio channels. My tape of one of them does indeed end very early. The other goes on past 2pm, I believe, and it covers the Tippit time frame. And, yes, we can then hear Sgt. Hill calling re his witness at 12th & Bowley, er Beckley. In his testimony, he implicitly denied calling or even having been near Beckley.

Whyever was he brought in, in the first place? To explain a CU shot to the head??

NoTrueFlags Here tells me (at alt.conspiracy.jfk, whose days are numbered) that the DPD radio-logs are "available online". (See below.) You don't have to wait for me to do my Alyea thing! Do Donald's friends on the Ed Forum know that DPD radio recordings are available online? I would think so! https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/JFK_audio/