Donald Willis

I should note that these mystery solutions play hob with my old argument that Sawyer's "3rd floor" meant 3rd-floor down, or 5th floor. That was one of my arguments for a 5th-floor shooting site. But, no, it means "3rd floor", and it was misinformation to begin with. Fooey. Still, I continue to maintain that the 5th floor was the unofficial "nest". For two reasons: Brennan, Fischer, Edwards, and Jackson all testified that the shooter's window was wide open--thank you, David Belin, for pursuing this; no thanks for not liking the inevitable conclusion. (There have been rather feeble LN arguments against the validity of this four-way corroboration.) And LL Hill's "second window" transmission was doubly covered up: The witness who pointed it out was "lost", and the ID of the patrolman who reported it was obfuscated by attributing it to the wrong cop, Haygood, by both Haygood himself (who maintained he knew nothing about the "lost" witness) and by transcriber Sgt. Henslee. Subsequent, more-honest transcriptions by the DPD & the FBI restored the transmission to Hill, but too late to recall the dishonest witnesses. (LBJ was in much too much of a hurry.) However, as I'm fond of noting, the Warren Report agreed with the restoration to Hill! Oh--and I believe that the supposedly "lost" witness was Robert (wide open) Jackson. And the only wide-open, 2nd-window from the SE end was on the 5th floor. Yes, that was B.R. Williams' window, and note that he was asked at the hearings if a man named Brennan ID'd him coming out of the building. He of course denied all--Brennan was supposed to have seen Norman & Jarman, not him. Also note that Brennan told reporters that the gunman was "nice looking". That fits Williams somewhat more than it does Oswald. Yes, that "second window" was a mistake--Williams was not the shooter--but the Commission, or rather the DPD, did not allow "mistakes", that is, anything which took the focus off Oswald or the 6th-floor "nest". As also, see the treatment of the other early suspect, the suspicious man on the 3rd floor! Or was that a mistake?

How "Braden"/Florer got on the police airwaves It all started with Insp. Sawyer, Sgt. Gerald Hill, Patrolman James Valentine, and Officer Ira Trantham, at the front of the TSBD. "Jerry Hill and [Trantham] went inside. Hill continued upstairs and an officer approached him with a prisoner. Advised this subject had been observed 'acting suspiciously' on the third floor without a reasonable explanation for being up there... At the front doorway, Sawyer was apprised of this development" and had Trantham take the suspect to the sheriff's.--Trantham's HSCA interview. "Shortly after, a DPD officer brought a boy in a sport coat up and said, 'Here is the man that had done the shooting'... Insp. Sawyer was informed of this..."--Chief Criminal Deputy Allan Sweatt, Investigation Report 11/23/63. Quite a jump--from "acting suspiciously" to "the man that had done the shooting". Why was the "prisoner" thought to be the man who shot Kennedy? The man, as far as we know, had no weapon or bullets on him. Did he try to run? Did he confess? The "Braden"/Florer end of this puzzle will remain a puzzle. But, at the other end... The Trantham interview corrects Sgt. Hill, who testified he went into the building with Sawyer. The latter apparently went in a little later. How do I know that he didn't go in earlier? Because, at 1pm, DPD Captain Talbert radios, "I think that 5 and 9 (Lumpkin & Sawyer) both are still in the building." (CE 1974 p43) By 1:08, Sawyer seems to be out front again--Sgt. Harkness radios that information & persons should be brought to Sawyer. (CE 1974 p50) And at 1:12, Sawyer radios that hulls were found on the "3rd floor". The Braden/Florer puzzle helps clear up the 1:12 puzzle. Sawyer has heard that a man has been arrested, on the 3rd floor, for shooting. About 1:10, Sgt. Hill brings Sawyer up-to-date. He says that shells and scraps of chicken have been found. Whether or not Hill indicated the number of a floor for this find, we don't know. But Sawyer ties Hill's information to the earlier 3rd-floor information and radios that the shells were found on the "3rd floor". The old mystery solved... But there was a secondary mystery. Sawyer told reporters that day that shells and remains of fried chicken were found on the *fifth* floor. Where did he get *that*? Educated guess: Chief Deputy Sheriff Allan Sweatt reported that weekend that fellow deputy Luke Mooney yelled out the "5th floor window" that "spent cartridge cases" had been found there. Sawyer was apparently inside when Mooney cried out and did not hear him. But I think that Sweatt must have heard Sawyer's broadcast and went over to tell him about the "fifth floor window". Hence, the adjusted story told to reporters... Another mystery solved?

Fascinating video posted by No True Flags Here, accessed on alt.conspiracy.jfk, which, however, once again won't let me post. But there really seems to have been something going on behind the scenes on the third floor of the depository. "Braden" apparently wasn't documented at all, except for his affidavit, while Florer was all over the news. But what did Insp. Sawyer mean by saying the cops found hulls on the third floor? Were they transported from the floor from which the shooter shot, or...??? Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

Oh. I forgot to mention. Speaking of possible ground-level shooting... Maybe Claviger was right about a shot from behind... from the SS car. Though the 3 agents aren't looking directly behind...

Where did the shots come from? The first indication of the direction is in the Altgens. Three of the four SS agents on the limo running boards are looking back, but not at all up, looking, that is, right at the entrance to the TSBD. What did they hear? Could they have heard something from lower than an upstairs floor? Say, as low as the third floor? Was Sawyer's strange "3rd floor" transmission on the money? Is the object that the front-steps guy holding up not just a camera? The three agents seem to be looking right at him. (The fourth does not seem to have heard anything.) Or (harmless explanation) is the sound of a shot from above just muffled by that tree?

Did Trantham mix up the County Rec bldg with the TSBD? Hill & Sawyer means TSBD. Still, that was 15 years later, & memories fade. BUT: (and here things get complicated, as usual) In "Pictures of the Pain, Trask quotes a Dallas Times Herald 11/22/63 story: "Patrolman W.E. Barker ["Barnett", Trask corrects, and those are his initials & Barnett was around there at that time. But I'm informed that they are also Barker's initials, so... But I'm also informed that Barker denied the story, so maybe it was Barnett ???]... Barker/Barnett "saw workers in the TSBD pecking on a window from the 3rd floor and pointing to a man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a plaid coat, and raincoat. The officer immediately arrested the man for questioning" & took him to the sheriff's. In his 11/23/63 report, Chief Deputy Sweatt speaks of the incident, too: "A DPD officer brought a boy in a sport coat up & said, 'Here is the man that had done the shooting'." Rush to judgment, eh? Sweatt does not say where the officer & the arrestee came from, but he, Sweatt, was mainly taking in the TSBD in his report. So... ??? Same-day Barker/Barnett confirms '78 Trantham. And Trantham said "prisoner", which would apply to B/B's "arrested" man. And, yes, I know that Florer himself said "County Records building... 3rd floor", in his own 11/22/63 county affidavit. But "Hill"/"Sawyer"/"TSBD" (Trantham & Times Herald)/"3rd floor" says TSBD to me. My best educated guess is that the DPD did not want any ambiguity re the TSBD (hence nixing Sawyer's story of a man with a rifle out back of the building) and had Florer subtly transfer his story to the 3rd floor of another building. Especially as Florer was the first man suspected of killing JFK. (Bonnie Ray Williams, at the "second window from the end", was the second suspect, I believe. Again--no TSBD ambiguity was wanted.) And Sawyer's "3rd floor" shells, in his 1:12 transmission? All the blinds seem to have been drawn on that floor at 12:30, except Stephen Wilson's...

I thought Dal-Tex and County Records were two different buildings. Florer sez "County Records". At any rate, Florer or Braden was stopped on the 3rd floor of the TSBD--the presence, at the same time, of Sgt. Hill and Sawyer (in Trantham) means TSBD, circa 12:50.

"Seeing Inspector Sawyer at the front door [of the TSBD] he reported for instructions. Sawyer advised they still were not certain where the gunfire came from, but the best guess at that time was the TSBD. By this time they were joined by Jerry Hill and he and Hill went inside. Hill continued upstairs and an officer W.H. Desham (#7140 DPD) approached him with a prisoner. Advised this subject had been observed 'acting suspiciously' on the third floor without a reasonable explanation for being up there." Very tantalizing. Especially as Sawyer about 20 minutes later said on the DPD radio that they had found shells on the "3rd floor". Also note that Hill bumped into Sawyer at the front of the building. In his testimony, he says that he went inside with him. Trantham was with Sawyer, and Patrolman Valentine was with Hill, so it seems that all four went in at the same time. (Valentine later reported that he was "assigned to the fifth floor", so we know that he went in & up. And Sawyer testified that he'd gotten at least as high as the 4th floor. So all four would have been there for the 3rd floor incident.) This grand entrance would have been about 12:50 or so, since Hill & Valentine radioed at 12:48 that they were on their way to "Elm & Houston". And this pretty much proves that Sawyer--despite testifying that he went in earlier, about 12:34, actually went into the building about 12:50. And thus may have actually been there at the discovery of the shells... on the "3rd floor". Dunno... Note: He said "3rd floor" on the police radio, but, for reporters, he said "5th floor". Did he mix up events on the two floors? Or three, if you think Sawyer confused "fifth" with "sixth". Either 3rd or 5th would have been bad news for the official 6th-floor version. No True Flags, on alt.conspiracy.jfk, says the suspect might have been Florer.

It was apparently pretty common knowledge that he'd either picked them up or had them handed to him. Deputies Mooney (as you quote) and Faulkner were both there for that moment and recount it. But if Alyea was there, no one has seen that "eight second" close-up that I know of. I talked with Faulkner's widow on the phone, some years back, and she was charming. Apparently, CTs would visit, and she'd dissuade them from their fond beliefs... I used to correspond with Alyea by email, and he had interesting things to tell.

Do we know who the suspicious person on the third floor was?

I have long since learned to ignore Alyea. For instance, there's a photo (pointed out by No True Flags Here) of him looking out a 7th-floor window just as the shells are being found at 1:00. And he maintained that he photographed the shells just as they were found, or as Fritz was holding them. No such photo has been made public. He wasn't even there.

Fritz first hears about the shells--The Three Versions ... And the source for Insp. Sawyer's mysterious "3rd floor" First version: Sims/Boyd [Homicide] report (Sims Exh. A). "We [Fritz, Sims, Boyd] went on up to the 7th floor... About that time someone yelled that some empty hulls had been found on the 6th floor... [We] went to the SE window on the 6th floor & saw 3 empty rifle hulls...The empty hulls were found about 1:15." This first version is easily dismissed. Perhaps--it might have been explained, retroactively--the "someone" was just belatedly yelling for Fritz to come and see the hulls, some 15 minutes after they had actually been found. But as late as his Commission testimony (4/6/64), Det. Sims was still saying, "I think the hulls were found about 1:15." (v7p162) By then, such a misapprehension would have been corrected. Even the Warren Report, which got a little closer to the actual time of the finding of the hulls, pegged it as late as 1:12, about the time of Insp. Sawyer's DPD radio transmission re the shells on the "3rd [sic] floor" (CE 1974 p176/DPD transcription), which it footnotes. But Deputy Luke Mooney, who found the shells, said that when he found them, it was "approaching 1 o'clock" (v3p285), confirmed by DPD Sgt. Harkness' call for the Crime Lab, at about 12:59 (CE 1974 p41). One might surmise that the Sims/Boyd "1:15" was based on DPD Sgt. Hill's shout out a 6th-floor window, but for more on Hill, we turn to... Second Version: Sgt. Hill: "We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!' or words to that effect... In front of the second window... were three spent shells... At this point, I asked the deputy sheriff to guard the scene... and went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the Crime Lab... I went to the back of the building... and Capt. Fritz & his men were coming up on the elevator. I told him what we found... I [went down to] make sure that the Crime Lab was en route..." (v7pp45-6). Right away--contradiction. Hill has Fritz coming UP to the 6th floor to see the shells. Sims/Boyd has him going DOWN to the 6th floor. And it is not "someone yelling" who first calls Fritz's attention to the discovery of the shells, it's Sgt. Hill, but not with his famous window shout, but with a briefing near the elevator. In fact, the timing seems to track: At 12:58, the shells are found inside, just as Fritz arrives outside. And Hill runs into Fritz "coming up". Note that Hill does not add something like, say, Fritz informed me that he had already heard about the shells. So we must assume here that Fritz (to make good the Hill version) had heard neither Mooney's shout nor Hill's, supposedly coming just after Mooney's. Hill's version is more credible, it seems, at first, than the Sims/Boyd version. But Hill then proceeds to call the first part of his sequencing into question. He does a little time traveling, oh only about 10 minutes, but still traveling: "About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the Crime Lab was arriving" (p47). Lt. Day: "Shortly before 1 o'clock I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm Street, Dallas... I arrived at the location on Elm about 1:12." (v4p249) In 1960s French New Wave film terms, this would be called a jump cut. Jumping from circa 1:02 to circa 1:12. Hill: "And [Day] went on into the building, and I went over to tell Insp. Sawyer... what we found." (p47) A seemingly harmless advisory. But, based on Sawyer's curious transmission (see above), about this same time, Sawyer heard Hill say that they had found shells on... the "3rd floor". As Sawyer testified, "This was reported to me by somebody inside the building" (v6p322) Hill fills the bill. And, as we shall see, Fritz has fits. DPD poetry. But why did Hill have to tell Sawyer anything? The two of them--along with a Patrolman Valentine--entered the depository together, about 12:52. (CE 1974 p28: 12:48 radio transmission: Hill and Valentine "en route Elm & Houston"/Sawyer: "I went [in] with a couple of officers" [v6p317]) At some point, though, the three must have split up and gone their separate ways. Valentine "was assigned to the fifth floor" (v25p914), and there are indeed photos of him watching over the 5th or 6th floor. Hill was there for Mooney's find. But Sawyer must, for some reason, have left the search party early, before anything had been found. If he had been present at such a significant discovery, he would have radioed as soon as he got back out front. And at 1:08, Harkness radioes, "Anyone that gets information regarding this incident down here, bring it to 9 [Sawyer] at Elm & Houston." (CE 1974 p50) So, about 1:08, Sawyer begins processing information out front, but he doesn't use the radio himself until 1:12, after Hill catches him up on what the searchers found, some time after Sawyer splits off. Re-creating the missing three or four minutes. The sound of a police radio out front carried well that afternoon. Det. Johnson, on the 6th floor, could hear a 1:20 transmission re the Tippit shooting (CE 2003 p210). So... Filling in the time gap between Hill's reporting to Sawyer and his shout to the world: At 1:12, someone upstairs must have heard Sawyer's "3rd floor" transmission, looked down, and saw Hill with Sawyer. Cue a "Jerry! Get your ass up here!" from an upstairs window. Quick-study Fritz--to forestall any further damage from Hill's cockamamie "3rd floor"--instructs Hill, fetched back upstairs, to go to a nearby 6th-floor window and correct his "mistake", with a shout and a gesture towards the "nest" area, as if the shells had just been discovered there. The apparent superfluousness of the Hill charade undermines its intended message, which was: Shells found just now, right here. But it was not "just now". Was it also not "right here"? How, that is, do you get "6th floor" out of "3rd floor"? And, ever since, it has been a bit of a mystery as to why a second shell shout was even needed, because... Third version: ... Mooney reported, on 11/23/63, "I hung my head out of the half- opened window & signaled to Sheriff Decker and Captain Fritz who were outside the building..." (v19p528) Fritz, then, had heard Mooney at 12:59, no problem. But he had to downplay the time of Mooney's discovery and align it more with Hill's later Fritz-inspired shout. So, (1) by the time of his Commission testimony, Mooney is saying that no one "except the Sheriff" was looking up when he shouted (v3p284). But we know that at least Harkness and Deputy Sweatt (Decker Exhibit 5323 p531) heard him too. (2) Harkness is not asked, at the hearings, about his 12:59 request for the Crime Lab, and doesn't deign to mention it. 12:59pm, 11/22/63--one of the most important moments of the century, and the DPD diddles with it, and Counsel David Belin misses it. And Fritz is off the hook. A clean sweep. (3) While several photos of Hill at his window were snapped, none exist re Mooney at *his* window. (Although... check Trask (p519) for a photograph which shows someone at a SE corner 5th or 6th floor window--unfortunately unidentifiable, from about a block away--at "approximately 1:00".) Finally, (4) Sawyer's advisory re the third floor is changed, in DPD Sgt. Henslee's transcription, to "fifth floor" (Sawyer Exh B p400), and (5) Sawyer dutifully reads this bogus transcription. And everyone of course can then, justifiably, take his "fifth floor" to mean "sixth floor". However, Trask's own transcription (p523), the FBI transcription (CE 1974 p176), and a subsequent DPD transcription (see above) all read "3rd floor". That "3rd" remains a mystery. As also the reason for Homicide's pernicious pretense that the shells were not found for about 17 minutes after they were found... All we know is that Fritz knew the secret of the third floor, and enlisted Mooney and fellow officers Sims, Boyd, Hill, Henslee, and Sawyer to help him keep it. Closing ranks...

Today, I think...

Much longer than I thought. I thought it would be the work of 20 minutes. I see it has now been 19 hours. But I came across something entirely unexpected when coordinating the testimonies of Hill & Sawyer, and it will all have to go under a new topic I think. And soon, I hope!

It's taking longer than I thought. I began it, but haven't finished it yet...

Good point. Fritz was talking about someone yelling inside the building to others in the building, not yelling out a window. And this last quote echoes Mooney in his 11/23/63 report, which is part of a post I'll begin right now...

The only problem with this is that Hill ties his shout so closely with the discovery of the shells: "We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!'...On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells... At this point, I asked the deputy sheriff to guard the scene... and I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street..." The time gap between discovery and Hill shout here is, according to Hill, maybe a minute or two. And yet Sims & Boyd have their party (including Fritz) visit several floors--after entering the building at 12:58--before the discovery of the shells and Hill's shout. DPD can't have it both ways: Hill shouting about 12:59 and Hill shouting about 1:15.

Mooney testified that he found the shells just before 1pm. Harkness radios about 12:59 for the Crime Wagon--that's on the DPD radio-log record. So, at least Harkness, Decker (according to Mooney), and Sweatt heard Mooney. By the time that Hill gives his shout--1:10 as you earlier suggested--Day is almost at the depository. (Day testified that he arrived at 1:12, not 1:20.) As for Fritz's arrival... From Det. Marvin Johnson's undated report: "We drove to Elm & Houston, arriving there at about 12:50pm. We went immediately to the 6th floor of the TSBD & reported to Captain Will Fritz." Fritz, famously, got there at 12:58, so Johnson & Montgomery probably didn't get there until about 1pm or a little after, and found Fritz already there--on the 6th floor, not wandering the 7 floors of the building.

That can't be right. Mooney didn't shout until about 12:59, just after he found the shells, at about which time Harkness called the Crime Lab. And even if Hill ran right to the next window, after hearing Mooney and instructing the other deputies, that wouldn't have been until just after l o'clock. And a Trask photo (p519) taken at "approximately 1:00" shows Hill's window still closed.

That "12:55" he based on what?

1:10 sounds about right, 2 minutes before Lt. Day got to the depository. (Hill says that he got downstairs and out front just as Day was arriving.) Although, in another thread, I tried to coordinate the movements--as reported, by Hill, Day, & Sawyer--of the latter three individuals, and it seemed as if the Hill shout might have been even a few minutes later. (Sims & Boyd of Homicide placed the discovery of the shells at 1:15, 10 minutes or so after the fact.) Walt Cakebread used to use shadows to determine the time of various photos of the building.

And I assume that he was kneeling in order to look through the window. The Portal seems to mis-identify the man as a "Dallas Police detective". Or can sheriff's deputies also be called police?

Like Brennan & the shooter shooting--he thought that he was standing--I at first thought McCurley was standing. But he must be kneeling. What time about was this taken? And it was taken while Hill's window was still closed?

By, I assume, SS agent Sorrels. In his book, didn't Brennan say that Sorells took him over?