Prints on the Dr Pepper Bottle

[Duke Lane]

As everyone knows, the remains of a chicken lunch and a Dr Pepper bottle were found on the sixth floor after the shooting. These were widely purported to have belonged to the assassin, depicting someone who calmly ate his lunch while waiting patiently to shoot the President of the United States, a clear psychopath. The bottle was photographed being removed from the TSBD being held by a pencil. It was presumably taken to DPD for fingerprint analysis, but the prints did not belong to Lee Oswald.

Eventually, Bonnie Ray Williams claimed to have eaten eaten the lunch and drank the Dr Pepper while awaiting the arrival of his friends to watch the parade. This claim has been debated by at least two authors, Sylvia Meagher and Patricia Lambert. My questions, specific to the Dr Pepper bottle, are these:

1) If DPD examined the bottle and found prints, is there a record of the prints they found? I've not been able to find anything on the Dallas Archives site, if so.

2) If such a record exists, have the prints been compared with those taken by the FBI in 1964 - eleven employees in all, I recall, just those who'd have had any contact with the boxes and other items on six - and, if so, are they in fact Bonnie Ray's?

Interestingly, Bill Shelley recalled having seen "an employee other than Oswald" eating chicken on the sixth floor early that morning, around 9:30 or 10:00; he didn't name that employee. He testified to this, and also noted that Slim Givens had been claiming to have been the one eating upstairs that morning - "or so he says" - but Slim denied not only having made the claim, but also having ever eaten on the sixth floor that day or any other.

Does anyone have any insight into this?

[Wim Dankbaar]

Could well have been Oswald's lunch. Dr. Pepper was his softdrink.

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/images/IMG_1212.JPG

Wim

Edited December 22, 2007 by Wim Dankbaar

[Duke Lane]

Could well have been Oswald's lunch. Dr. Pepper was his softdrink.

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/images/IMG_1212.JPG

Wim

Thanks. Is there more info out there, tho'?

[John Dolva]

I know this isn't exactly what you're loking for Duke, but it's probably worthwhile logging for future reference :

fingerprints of Oswald : http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box8.htm

request for bottle examination (3.20 pm 11/22) M.Johnson submitting specimen, W,E, Berner recieving) : http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/26/2610-001.gif

photo of bottle on sixth floor :

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/40/4037-001.gif

others :

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/26/2641-001.gif

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/26/2639-001.gif

[Duke Lane]

I know this isn't exactly what you're loking for Duke, but it's probably worthwhile logging for future reference: ....

Thanks, John. So far, I'm under the impression that I'm not going to find what I'm looking for since there doesn't seem to be anything either in WC Documents pertaining to the results of the examination, nor can I find anything in the HSCA or other files. It almost seems as if this piece of evidence - whatever value it may have had - ceased to exist when the prints on it turned out not to be Oswald's, without a clue as to whose they may have been.

What's interesting - did I say this elsewhere? - is that Bill Shelley had first reported (to the FBI, I think) that he had seen another employee, "who was not Oswald" but who otherwise remained unidentified, eating something on the sixth floor earlier in the morning, around 9:30 or 10:00. Shelley thought it was chicken because, he said, "those colored boys are always eating chicken." When he testified several months later, he recalled this and noted that Charles Givens had been saying of late that it was he who was eating up there that morning - "or so he says" - which Givens denied doing in his own testimony, that day or any other.

There seems to be more to the story than all of this, but what exactly it may have been is only open to speculation.