Second Floor Shooter

[Bernice Moore]

Gents...

The photos, Don & Robin, some are the same as seen in Groden's phamplet,

though his are much clearer.....in the book they are all in black and white..

and poor copies...and some too dark, others too light...

In the "Cover-Up" acknowledgments they give thanks to Robert Groden as well as many

other researchers , for their contributions..information and photographs...

P.S......Lee :

Good one above....There was and is simply too much information given on too many hits...

as they say where there is smoke..

Don here is what information I found on the sidewalk hit....There are a couple of photos that I will

re-scan from the book to show the hit clearly.....hopefully they will scan somewhat better..

For now, all take care....

B....

"Mrs. Donald Baker saw a bullet strike the pavement near the Stemmons Freeway sign:

Mr.Liebeler: You say you saw something hit the street after you heard the first shot: is that right?

Mrs. Baker: "Yes, ...I saw the bullet hit on down this way. I guess, right at the sign angling out."

Mr.Liebeler: And you think that it was approximately near the first sign?

Mrs. Baker: As I can remember (V11H509).

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/baker.htm

Royce G. Skelton: Saw a bullet strike the pavement:

" ......I saw bullet, or I guess it was a bullet ......I take for granted it was...hit in the left front of the President's car on the cement, and when it did, the smoke carried with it...away from the building." V1H238.

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/skelton.htm

Motorcycle Policeman James Chaney told a reporter that the first shot missed. (Houston "Chronicle", 11, 24, 63.)

Mary Woodward wrote in a newspaper article that the first shot missed.( Dallas "Morning News" 11. 23.63).

On September 29, 1964, Eugene P.Aldredge, 9304 Lenel, Dallas, Texas. telephonically advised that he disagreed with the President's Commission report that Oswald did not have help in the assassination.

Aldredge said he saw a television program shortly after the assassination, believed to be on Channel Four, in which a mark on the sidewalk was pointed out..

Approximately three months ago, he stated he viewed such mark, which he is sure was caused by a bullet, and that this mark is approximately 6 inches long. He described the location of this mark as being in the middle of the sidewalk on the North side of Elm Street, which side is nearest the TSBD. He stated there is a lamp post. near the sidewalk, which is about even with the West end of the TSBD and that the above mark is approximately eight feet east of the lamp post on the sidewalk. He stated that as reporter for the "Dallas Morning News" Carl Freund, has also stated this is a bullet mark.

When asked as to why he had waited until this time to furnish the foregoing information, he stated he felt that such an important point would be covered in the President’s Commission report and did not want to become involved by furnishing the information at this time, but felt that such information, if overlooked should be made available.. Gemberling report pp. 66-68.

Mr. Aldredge told Dallas radio talk show host Lou Staples that five days after the making his report to the FBI he went to inspect the bullet mark again and found that some type of filler substance had been used to fill the indentation in the pavement. The Lou Staples Show, KRLD, Dallas. This bullet scar on the Elm Street sidewalk can still be seen today, ( 1976) It is not mentioned in the Warren Report.

From “Cover-Up”……..J. Gary Shaw & Larry Ray Harris.76/96

In its report on the mark, the FBI admitted to locating it and described it as being approximately 4 inches long, 1/2 inch wide, and "dug out." And why did the FBI dismiss the significance of this mark? Because, explained the Bureau, it could not have been made by a shot from the window from which Oswald allegedly fired.

Mike Griffin.....

********************************************

With permission.......

EXTRA BULLETS AND MISSED SHOTS IN DEALEY PLAZA

Michael T. Griffith

1996

@All Rights Reserved

Revised on 3/4/98

With the discovery that the single-bullet theory (SBT) is very probably a physical impossibility, it is perhaps appropriate to review the evidence of extra bullets and misses in Dealey Plaza. Since it now seems clear that the SBT is impossible, we can be very confident that more than one gunman fired at President Kennedy. We can also be virtually certain that, contrary to the lone-gunman theory, more than three bullets were fired during the shooting. This being the case, researchers need to take another look at the accounts of extra bullets striking in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and to reconsider the implications of the subsequent finding of additional bullets and weapons in the area.

Extra Bullets and Weapons

* Among the files released by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was an FBI evidence envelope (FBI Field Office Dallas 89-43-1A-122). Although the envelope was empty, the cover indicated it had contained a 7.65 mm rifle shell that had been found in Dealey Plaza after the shooting. The envelope is dated 2 December 1963, so the shell was found sometime between 11/22/63 and 12/2/63. Nothing was known about the discovery of this shell until the FBI evidence envelope was released along with other assassination-related files.

* Other documents released by the ARRB discuss a Johnson semi-automatic 30.06 rifle that was apparently found in Dealey Plaza soon after the shooting. The documents strongly link this rifle to two men who have long been suspected of being involved in the assassination plot, Loran Hall and Jerry Patrick Hemming. The files also reveal that the FBI took a strong interest in the history and ownership of this rifle within hours of the shooting. A man named Richard Hathcock, who lived in California at the time, had kept the rifle in his office for a while. The day after the assassination, an FBI agent questioned him about the weapon. Among other things, the agent wanted to know if Hathcock had an employee named Roy Payne, who apparently knew a great deal about the rifle. In one of the released files, we read that Hathcock said the following:

It's my opinion that the reason he [the FBI agent] wanted to see Mr. Payne was because Payne's fingerprints undoubtedly were all over that rifle from his having handled it many times. It's also my opinion that unless that particular rifle had been found [near the scene of the crime] or in some way involved in this whole thing [the assassination], that the FBI would have no interest in it. (HSCA 180-10107-10443)

This rifle had quite a history. It was used in CIA-connected anti-Castro raids in Cuba. Roy Payne said the weapon could "put a hole in a dime at 500 yards" (HSCA 180-10107-10440). Loran Hall and an unidentified Hispanic man took the weapon from Payne about a week before the assassination. Hall's associate, Jerry Hemming, is known to have been in Dallas on the day of the shooting, and Hall himself told Hathcock five days prior to the assassination that he had to catch a flight to Dallas (HSCA 180-10107-10440).

* In 1975 a maintenance man named Morgan, while working on the roof of the County Records Building in Dealey Plaza, found a 30.06 shell casing lying under a lip of roofing tar at the base of the roof's parapet on the side facing the plaza, according to his son, Dean Morgan. The shell casing is dated 1953 and marks on it indicate it was made at the Twin Cities Arsenal. One side of the casing has been pitted by exposure to the weather, suggesting that it was exposed on the roof for some time. The casing, which is still in Morgan's possession, has an odd crimp around its neck (Marrs 317; Roberts 80-81).

Extra Misses

The term "extra misses" implies that one miss has already been documented. This miss is the bullet which struck the south Main Street curb in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. It landed about 25 feet from James Tague, who was standing next to the triple underpass. The bullet made a visible scar in the curb, and the mark was immediately recognized by those who saw it as a fresh bullet mark. (The mark might have been made by a sizeable fragment from a bullet that struck nearby, but it was probably caused by a bullet.)

Warren Commission (WC) supporters strain to explain this mark. Most now deny it was made by a bullet. Instead, they say, it was caused by a fragment. But the closest bullet they can produce from which this fragment could have come is the missile that struck the President in the head at frame 312 in the Zapruder film. However, the mark on the curb was over 200 feet from the limousine's position at Z312. In addition, a fragment from the head shot would have just finished plowing through a human skull, and, to make matters worse, would have had to somehow fly over the limo's support bar and windshield just to clear the car.

Another theory has been advanced by Gerald Posner in his book CASE CLOSED. Posner opines that the sixth-floor gunman fired at around Z160, that this missile struck a branch of the intervening oak tree, that the lead core separated from the bullet's jacket as a result of striking the tree branch, and that this lead fragment traveled over 400 feet and struck the curb! Even many WC supporters reject this forced, unlikely theory. The WC stated that the sixth-floor gunman would have had a clear view of the limousine until Z166 (see also CE 889).

Now, let us consider some of the accounts of extra misses striking in Dealey Plaza during the shooting:

* Dallas policeman J. W. Foster, who was positioned on top of the triple underpass, saw a bullet strike the grass on the south side of Elm Street near a manhole cover, about 350 feet from the TSBD. He reported this to a superior officer and was instructed to guard the area (Shaw and Harris 72-75; Marrs 315).

Journalists and bystanders were kept at a distance from the spot where the bullet landed. An unidentified blond-haired man in a suit was photographed bending down, reaching out his left hand toward the dug-out point on the ground as if to pick up something, standing back up, apparently holding a small object in his hand, and then putting his hand in his pocket (Shaw and Harris 73-74). The hole made by the bullet was even photographed, and the picture appeared in the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM on 11/23/63.

In his WC testimony, Officer Foster denied a bullet was recovered from near the manhole cover, though he did not explain what the man in the suit picked up and put into his pocket. Foster did, however, say that a bullet "had hit the turf there at that location [near the manhole cover]."

Contemporary press accounts reported that a bullet was retrieved from the dug-out hole in the grass near the manhole cover. For example, when the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM published a photo of the hole in the grass, it included the following caption:

One of the rifle bullets fired by the murderer of President Kennedy lies in the grass across Elm Street. . . .

The next day the DALLAS TIMES HERALD, in referring to the hole in the grass, reported:

Dallas Police Lt. J. C. Day of the crime lab estimated the distance from the sixth-floor window . . . to the spot where one of the bullets was recovered at 100 yards.

Newsman Richard Dudman said the following about this miss and the recovered bullet in the 12/21/63 issue of the NEW REPUBLIC:

On the day the President was shot I happened to learn of a possible fifth [bullet]. A group of police officers were examining the area at the side of the street where the President was hit, and a police inspector told me they had just found another bullet in the grass.

Richard Trask, dismissing all evidence to the contrary, argues that the blond-haired man did not pick up a bullet from the hole in the grass (Trask 497-498, 542-543). Trask rests his case almost totally on the fact that the two of the photographers who took pictures of the event, Jim Murray and Bill Allen, later denied that a bullet was found. But neither Murray nor Allen could say positively that a bullet was NOT found; rather, they simply did not BELIEVE that a bullet had been found. Nor did either of them explain exactly what it was that the unidentified man picked up and put in his pocket. Trask concedes that the photographic record of the event does not refute the accounts of a bullet being recovered from the hole in the grass. He also acknowledges that in the photos the left hand of the unidentified man in the suit is "cupped" after he stands up, which would certainly suggest he was holding something.

Murray said he accepted "the later speculation" that the hole and accompanying mound in the grass were made by "brain matter from Kennedy's skull." Are we to believe that the unidentified man in the suit picked up brain matter and put it in his pocket? If the hole was made by brain matter, why did the Dallas police maintain a guard over the hole for the next several hours? Why did not a single police or FBI report mention the finding of brain matter at this location? And what about the credible contemporary accounts that a bullet was recovered from the hole in the grass?

Allen said he didn't believe a bullet was found because neither Walthers, Foster, nor the blond-haired man specifically mentioned having just picked up a bullet after the man stood up. But this was surely a rather weak reason for concluding the man didn't pick up a bullet. Furthermore, as mentioned, when newsman Richard Dudman entered the area at the side of Elm Street where the President had been shot, a police inspector informed him that they had "found another bullet in the grass." In point of fact, the discovery of the bullet in the grass near the manhole cover was photographed and widely reported in the press. It was, however, quickly dismissed and then ignored by federal investigators because they were already committed to a scenario of only three shots fired by a lone gunman from the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building.

In the photos taken of this event, i.e., the finding and removal of the bullet, one can see Officer Foster and a civilian-clothed Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers standing over the spot where the bullet landed, along with the unidentified man in the suit. It has been suggested that the man was a federal agent of some kind. Given the man's dress and appearance, this is not an unreasonable suggestion. Dallas police chief Jesse Curry believed the man was an FBI agent, and some researchers have tentatively identified the man as FBI Agent Robert Barrett.

As mentioned, the identity of the blond-haired man is unknown. The recovered bullet was never entered into evidence, and its present whereabouts are not known.

* Officer Foster also reported that a bullet struck the concrete part of the abovementioned manhole cover. It is not known if this was the same missile that made the dug-out hole in the grass a few feet from the manhole cover. The bullet might have skipped off the manhole cover and then imbedded itself in the grass. Or, the mark on the concrete could have been made by a separate bullet, and thus would represent another miss fired from the same approximate location. The sewer cover and the hole in the turf were about 3-5 feet apart, and the latter was farther down the side of Elm Street (that is, it was slightly farther away from the TSBD than was the sewer cover).

About two and a half hours after the shooting, Dealey Plaza witness John Martin came across the mark on the manhole cover. He immediately identified it as a bullet mark. He then told a policeman, "you better get your boss down here to check this thing out, because that will show where the bullet came from" (Trask 573).

Researchers have noted that the photo of the mark indicates it did NOT come from the TSBD. The mark can be seen on the twelfth photo page in the second set of photographs in Harrison Livingstone and Robert Groden's book HIGH TREASON. One can readily see that the angle of the mark does not line up with the Book Depository, but that it does line up with the County Records Building. It might be worth recalling that a 30.06 rifle shell casing was later found on the roof of the County Records Building.

* Just after President Kennedy's limousine passed the front steps of the TSBD, five witnesses saw a bullet strike the pavement on Elm Street near the right rear of the limousine. Witnesses saw this bullet kick up concrete toward the car (Weisberg 187-189; cf. Posner 324; Moore 198) (Posner attempts to explain this miss with his bullet-limb-collision theory.)

* Within a day or two of the assassination, Dallas resident Eugene Aldredge saw a dug-out, four-inch-long bullet mark in the middle of the sidewalk on the north side of Elm Street, which is the side nearest the TSBD. Aldredge did not tell the FBI about the mark until shortly after the release of the WARREN COMMISSION REPORT because he assumed, logically enough, that the mark had surely been noticed by law enforcement officials and would be discussed in full in the Commission's report. When he realized that the mark apparently had been "overlooked," he immediately contacted the FBI and told them about it (Weisberg 383-390). Aldredge related to the FBI that Carl Freund, a reporter for the DALLAS MORNING NEWS, had also identified the mark as a bullet mark.

Less than a week after Aldredge informed the FBI of the mark's existence and location, he took a friend to see it. They found the mark, but saw that it had been altered--it had been filled in. Said Aldredge,

. . . we went to the site and found the mark, [which was] formerly about 1/4 inch deep, had been filled in with what appeared to be a mixture of concrete and asbestos. . . .

A crude attempt had been made to make the altered mark appear to be weather-worn to match the surrounding concrete.

In its report on the mark, the FBI admitted to locating it and described it as being approximately 4 inches long, 1/2 inch wide, and "dug out." And why did the FBI dismiss the significance of this mark? Because, explained the Bureau, it could not have been made by a shot from the window from which Oswald allegedly fired.

---------------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael T. Griffith is a two-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. He is the author of four books on Mormonism and ancient religious texts. His articles on the assassination have appeared in DALLAS '63, in DATELINE: DALLAS, in THE ASSASSINATION CHRONICLES, and in THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO. He is also the author of the book COMPELLING EVIDENCE: A NEW LOOK AT THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY (Grand Prairie, Texas: JFK-Lancer Productions and Publications, 1996).

Bibliography

Groden, Robert and Harrison Edward Livingstone, HIGH TREASON, Berkley Books Edition, New York: Berkley Book, 1990.

Marrs, Jim, CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY, New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989.

Moore, Jim, CONSPIRACY OF ONE, Ft. Worth: The Summit Group, 1991.

Posner, Gerald, CASE CLOSED, New York: Random House, 1993.

Roberts, Craig, KILL ZONE: A SNIPER LOOKS AT DEALEY PLAZA, Typhoon Press, 1994.

Shaw, J. Gary and Larry Harris, COVER-UP, Second Edition, Austin: Thomas Publications, 1992.

Summers, Anthony and Robbyn, "The Ghosts of November," VANITY FAIR, December 1994, pp. 86-139.

Trask, Richard, PICTURES OF THE PAIN: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY, Danvers, Massachusetts: Yeoman Press, 1994.

Weisberg, Harold, NEVER AGAIN: THE GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION, New York: Carroll and Graf/Richard Gallen, 1995.

http://ourworld-top.cs.com/mikegriffith1/id35.htm

***************************

You will note below within the "Freud _Aldridge" FBI reprt how the information has been confused with the Tague shot..

[Lee Forman]

With many thanks to Robin Unger - a view of the Records Building around 12:43pm, from a higher quality Murray.

The crops have been enlarged and slightly tweaked for contrast. It would be nice to be able to use a negative or a first day glossy B&W print for higher res.

Assuming Don is correct, in 1963 these 4 windows would represent two separate offices. Are these the individuals that normally occupied these offices in 1963? If so, what are their names, and what do they remember that day? How long were they in, or out, of their offices?

Wish I could get a better look at the window in red.

- lee

[Robin Unger]

This is the best i can do Lee with the photo i had to work with.

[Lee Forman]

It has the appearance of being three individuals - a man at the left, then a woman, and a child.

Still think it would be worthwhile to figure out who was in this office - however, doesn't look like anything suspicious, and may match what we see in the Willis photo - in which case, this office could perhaps be eliminated in the process.

I enhanced this crop from your last post Robin - and added a bit of coloring.

- lee

[Don Bailey]

The Murray photograph was taken around 12:43, more than enough time for the assassins to escape. The windows are also closed in the photo.

In the Hughes film near the end in the part where the people are running towards the grassy knoll, you see the two center windows are still open… one open all the way and one open partially. You see the two windows open the same way at the beginning of the Hughes film.

It doesn’t make sense for someone to watch the parade with the windows open then shut the windows to watch the aftermath.

The people seen in the window could possibly be part of a clean-up crew… the power of Pine-Sol will make it smell like someone just shot a Christmas tree.

Don

[Chris Davidson]

The amount of people still on the corner might indicate a time earlier than 12:43.

Anyhow, window positions for comparison with Murray photo.

chris

[Don Bailey]

Thanks Chris,

In the bottom picture you posted, the two center window openings on the second floor are inconsistent with the window openings during the aftermath in the Hughes film and the Murray photo at 12:43. These inconsistencies in the window openings have always boggled my mind when reviewing the aftermath films and photos of the Records Building.

Don

[Robin Unger]

Lee Forman Photo.

Modern day view of the "Records Building"