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The Case for a Mauser -- Part I

Gil Jesus

By Gil Jesus
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Gil Jesus

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Mr. BALL. Didn't he ( Oswald ) say that he had seen a rifle at the building ?
Mr. FRITZ. Yes sir; he told me that he had seen a rifle at the building 2 or 3 days before that Mr. Truly and some men were looking at. ( 4 H 214 )

The Warren Commission concluded that two Dallas Sheriff's Deputies and a Deputy Constable who identified the rifle found on the sixth floor were mistaken in their identification of it as a 7.65 Mauser.


The "misidentifcation" was blamed on Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman who was first to identify it. The Commission said:

"Weitzman did not handle the rifle and did not examine it at close range... thought it was a Mauser ... [and eventually] police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly identified the weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle." ( Report 645-646 )

The Commission never considered that more than one rifle had been found in the building. They, as well as researchers over the decades, have considered the identification of the rifle found on the sixth floor as a Mauser just a simple error.
But other evidence indicates that might not be the case.

Wednesday, November 20, 1963 : a Mauser in the building
But the evidence may say otherwise because two days before the assassination an employee in the building, Warren Caster, brought two rifles into the building, one a single shot .22 ( a Christmas gift for his son ) and the other, a 30.06 Mauser that had been sporterized.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever bring any guns into the School Book Depository Building?
Mr. CASTER. Yes; I did.
Mr. BALL. When?
Mr. CASTER. I believe it was on Wednesday, November 20, during the noon hour.
Mr. BALL. Whose guns were they?
Mr. CASTER. They were my guns.
Mr. BALL. And what kind of guns were they?
Mr. CASTER. One gun was a Remington, single-shot, .22 rifle, and the other was a .30-06 sporterized Mauser. ( 7 H 387 )

William Shelley handled the .22 rifle Caster brought into the building that Wednesday and described the 30.06 in testimony:

Mr. BALL. And was there another make of gun too---there was, wasn't there?
Mr. SHELLEY. Yes; I believe there was a .30-06 Mauser that had been converted. It was a foreign make converted to a .30-06. ( 7 H 390 )

November 22, 1963: An imported 30.06 in the window
Assassination witness Arnold Rowland was standing across the street from the TSBD and saw a man in the sixth floor window. He described the rifle he saw in the hands of the man:

Mr. SPECTER - Can you describe the rifle with any more particularity than you already have?
Mr. ROWLAND - No. In proportion to the scope it appeared to me to be a .30-odd size 6, a deer rifle with a fairly large or powerful scope.
Mr. SPECTER - When you say, .30-odd-6, exactly what did you mean by that?
Mr. ROWLAND - That is a rifle that is used quite frequently for deer hunting. It is an import. ( 2 H 170 )

An Argentine rifle
In a June 1964 interview with KSFO in San Francisco, Sgt. Gerald Hill said that he was told by another officer that the rifle found on the sixth floor of the TSBD "was made in Argentina".
 


So this evidence indicates that Caster's deer rifle was a sporterized version of an foreign-made rifle converted to a 30.06 and the rifle found on the sixth floor was made in Argentina. A witness who saw the rifle in the hands of the man in the window described it as an imported 30.06 deer rifle.

The Argentine 7.65 Mauser
In those days, one of the most sought after rifles to convert to a 30.06 was the model 91 7.65 Argentine Mauser. The Model 91 was an exceptionally accurate weapon and in its sporterized version, it left 10 or 12 inches of barrel beyond the end of the wooden stock.
 

 

A sporterized rifle firing at the President is what witness James Worrell described. He was standing in front of the TSBD when the shooting started and at the sound of the first shot he said he looked up and saw "12 inches of a gun barrel sticking out of a window of the building".
 


The 12" barrel he described could not have been belonged to the Mannlicher-Carcano ( CE 139 ), whose barrel only extended a few inches beyond the stock.
 

 
Of course, this account of Worrell's never made it to the 26 volumes. By his March, 1964 testimony, the 12 inches of barrel had changed to 4 inches of barrel and 2 inches of wooden stock for a total of only 6 inches. ( 2 H 193 )
 

In light of all this evidence, we must reconsider the descriptions given by the Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Sheriff's Deputies Eugene Boone and Roger Craig of the rifle found on the sixth floor.
Warren Commission supporters have always relied on two things: 1.) that Seymour Weitzman was mistaken and 2.) that Roger Craig was a xxxx.

But there is no documentation by any of the deputies who were present when the rifle on the sixth floor was discovered that listed it as a Mannlicher-Carcano or being "6.5 cal." or "Made in Italy".

Deputy Boone is credited with finding the rifle, but his report submitted to the sheriff's department indicates that he found the rifle at 1:22 pm and it "appeared to be a 7.65 Mauser with a telescopic sight".
 


Police officers are trained to be precise when describing evidence in their reports. How Boone could be so precise with the time he found the rifle and be so wrong as to the type of rifle is puzzling.
Boone also testified that Capt. Will Fritz identified the rifle as a 7.65 Mauser, a fact that Fritz, in his testimony denied.
 


Then there is the question if the deputies didn't inspect the rifle, why did they choose the caliber of 7.65 ? Did they pick it out of thin air and if so, why ? Why not 7.63 ? Or 7.92 ? Or even the 6.5 that was supposedly on the rifle ? If they were describing the rifle by its action only, why didn't they just describe it as a Mauser ? Where did the 7.65 come from ?

Did Fritz lie about calling it a Mauser ? Was Boone just repeating what he heard Fritz say ?
The Commission never asked. They accepted Fritz's denial and concluded the deputies were mistaken.

Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman arrived at the time Fritz was examining the rifle. In his sworn affidavit, Weitzman described the rifle found on the sixth floor as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action."
 


But this is not a case of mistaken indentity. Deputy Roger Craig told Lincoln Carle in 1976 that not only did Weitzman identify the rifle as a 7.65 Mauser, he walked over to it and POINTED to the Mauser label on the rifle.
 

 

Weitzman suffered over the years for his honesty. He was hounded by the press and even researchers about his "mistake" until he finally gave in and "admitted" he was wrong about the rifle.

But one Deputy did not waver and maintained to his dying day that the rifle found on the sixth floor was a 7.65 Mauser.
 

That Deputy was Roger Craig.

In this 1976 documentary, Two Men in Dallas, Craig describes to Lincoln Carle the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the rifle.
 


The news outlets took the deputies' description of the rifle as being a Mauser and ran with it.
 


In fact, the "corrected" identifcation of the murder weapon as being a Mannlicher-Carcano didn't hit the airwaves until Saturday afternoon, after documents had been "found" connecting the Depository rifle to "A.Hidell."


Coming in Part II: The Conflicting accounts of Warren Caster

Edited by Gil Jesus
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Denny Zartman Proficient

Denny Zartman

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I no longer have any doubt that a 7.65 Mauser was found that day and correctly identified as such. It seems to me in order to believe a Mauser was not found, one would also have to believe the cops could not read. The MC had "made Italy 6.5 cal" stamped on it.

Now some of the questions for me personally are: was the Mauser the rifle that was intended to be found? Was the Mauser also linked to Oswald, or to someone else? Do the backyard photos have something to do with replacing the Mauser with the Mannlicher? Is there anything useful we can learn from the type of ammunition used by the Mauser?

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Sean Coleman Rising Star

Sean Coleman

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3 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:


Mr. BALL. Didn't he ( Oswald ) say that he had seen a rifle at the building ?
Mr. FRITZ. Yes sir; he told me that he had seen a rifle at the building 2 or 3 days before that Mr. Truly and some men were looking at. ( 4 H 214 )

The Warren Commission concluded that two Dallas Sheriff's Deputies and a Deputy Constable who identified the rifle found on the sixth floor were mistaken in their identification of it as a 7.65 Mauser.


The "misidentifcation" was blamed on Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman who was first to identify it. The Commission said:

"Weitzman did not handle the rifle and did not examine it at close range... thought it was a Mauser ... [and eventually] police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly identified the weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle." ( Report 645-646 )

The Commission never considered that more than one rifle had been found in the building. They, as well as researchers over the decades, have considered the identification of the rifle found on the sixth floor as a Mauser just a simple error.
But other evidence indicates that might not be the case.

Wednesday, November 20, 1963 : a Mauser in the building
But the evidence may say otherwise because two days before the assassination an employee in the building, Warren Caster, brought two rifles into the building, one a single shot .22 ( a Christmas gift for his son ) and the other, a 30.06 Mauser that had been sporterized.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever bring any guns into the School Book Depository Building?
Mr. CASTER. Yes; I did.
Mr. BALL. When?
Mr. CASTER. I believe it was on Wednesday, November 20, during the noon hour.
Mr. BALL. Whose guns were they?
Mr. CASTER. They were my guns.
Mr. BALL. And what kind of guns were they?
Mr. CASTER. One gun was a Remington, single-shot, .22 rifle, and the other was a .30-06 sporterized Mauser. ( 7 H 387 )

William Shelley handled the .22 rifle Caster brought into the building that Wednesday and described the 30.06 in testimony:

Mr. BALL. And was there another make of gun too---there was, wasn't there?
Mr. SHELLEY. Yes; I believe there was a .30-06 Mauser that had been converted. It was a foreign make converted to a .30-06. ( 7 H 390 )

November 22, 1963: An imported 30.06 in the window
Assassination witness Arnold Rowland was standing across the street from the TSBD and saw a man in the sixth floor window. He described the rifle he saw in the hands of the man:

Mr. SPECTER - Can you describe the rifle with any more particularity than you already have?
Mr. ROWLAND - No. In proportion to the scope it appeared to me to be a .30-odd size 6, a deer rifle with a fairly large or powerful scope.
Mr. SPECTER - When you say, .30-odd-6, exactly what did you mean by that?
Mr. ROWLAND - That is a rifle that is used quite frequently for deer hunting. It is an import. ( 2 H 170 )

An Argentine rifle
In a June 1964 interview with KSFO in San Francisco, Sgt. Gerald Hill said that he was told by another officer that the rifle found on the sixth floor of the TSBD "was made in Argentina".
 


So this evidence indicates that Caster's deer rifle was a sporterized version of an foreign-made rifle converted to a 30.06 and the rifle found on the sixth floor was made in Argentina. A witness who saw the rifle in the hands of the man in the window described it as an imported 30.06 deer rifle.

The Argentine 7.65 Mauser
In those days, one of the most sought after rifles to convert to a 30.06 was the model 91 7.65 Argentine Mauser. The Model 91 was an exceptionally accurate weapon and in its sporterized version, it left 10 or 12 inches of barrel beyond the end of the wooden stock.
 

 

A sporterized rifle firing at the President is what witness James Worrell described. He was standing in front of the TSBD when the shooting started and at the sound of the first shot he said he looked up and saw "12 inches of a gun barrel sticking out of a window of the building".
 


The 12" barrel he described could not have been belonged to the Mannlicher-Carcano ( CE 139 ), whose barrel only extended a few inches beyond the stock.
 

 
Of course, this account of Worrell's never made it to the 26 volumes. By his March, 1964 testimony, the 12 inches of barrel had changed to 4 inches of barrel and 2 inches of wooden stock for a total of only 6 inches. ( 2 H 193 )
 

In light of all this evidence, we must reconsider the descriptions given by the Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Sheriff's Deputies Eugene Boone and Roger Craig of the rifle found on the sixth floor.
Warren Commission supporters have always relied on two things: 1.) that Seymour Weitzman was mistaken and 2.) that Roger Craig was a xxxx.

But there is no documentation by any of the deputies who were present when the rifle on the sixth floor was discovered that listed it as a Mannlicher-Carcano or being "6.5 cal." or "Made in Italy".

Deputy Boone is credited with finding the rifle, but his report submitted to the sheriff's department indicates that he found the rifle at 1:22 pm and it "appeared to be a 7.65 Mauser with a telescopic sight".
 


Police officers are trained to be precise when describing evidence in their reports. How Boone could be so precise with the time he found the rifle and be so wrong as to the type of rifle is puzzling.
Boone also testified that Capt. Will Fritz identified the rifle as a 7.65 Mauser, a fact that Fritz, in his testimony denied.
 


Then there is the question if the deputies didn't inspect the rifle, why did they choose the caliber of 7.65 ? Did they pick it out of thin air and if so, why ? Why not 7.63 ? Or 7.92 ? Or even the 6.5 that was supposedly on the rifle ? If they were describing the rifle by its action only, why didn't they just describe it as a Mauser ? Where did the 7.65 come from ?

Did Fritz lie about calling it a Mauser ? Was Boone just repeating what he heard Fritz say ?
The Commission never asked. They accepted Fritz's denial and concluded the deputies were mistaken.

Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman arrived at the time Fritz was examining the rifle. In his sworn affidavit, Weitzman described the rifle found on the sixth floor as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action."
 


But this is not a case of mistaken indentity. Deputy Roger Craig told Lincoln Carle in 1976 that not only did Weitzman identify the rifle as a 7.65 Mauser, he walked over to it and POINTED to the Mauser label on the rifle.
 

 

Weitzman suffered over the years for his honesty. He was hounded by the press and even researchers about his "mistake" until he finally gave in and "admitted" he was wrong about the rifle.

But one Deputy did not waver and maintained to his dying day that the rifle found on the sixth floor was a 7.65 Mauser.
 

That Deputy was Roger Craig.

In this 1976 documentary, Two Men in Dallas, Craig describes to Lincoln Carle the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the rifle.
 


The news outlets took the deputies' description of the rifle as being a Mauser and ran with it.
 


In fact, the "corrected" identifcation of the murder weapon as being a Mannlicher-Carcano didn't hit the airwaves until Saturday afternoon, after documents had been "found" connecting the Depository rifle to "A.Hidell."


Coming in Part II: The Conflicting accounts of Warren Caster


Gil, I like the idea that the Mauser was used by the SW window shooter as per Arnold Rowland’s testimony (maybe causing all JC’s injuries as he twisted around?) then ditched by the 6th floor NW corner as escape was made from the front of the building to the rear where stairs & elevator located. Not sure if Mac Wallace was there…

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Henry Frost Contributor

Henry Frost

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4 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

Police officers are trained to be precise when describing evidence in their reports.

One thing to remember is how poorly the Dallas Police department investigation of the crime scene really was.  Sherry Fiester, a Certified Senior Crime Scene Analyst and court certified expert in Louisiana, devoted a whole chapter in her book "Enemy of the Truth, Myths, Forensics, and the Kennedy Assassination" about this. Basically she says the DP failed to follow existing procedures and protocols.

In her words:

"The Dallas Police Department’s investigation of the Texas School Book Depository created doubt concerning their ability and truthfulness that is still being addressed today.

Not all evidence was collected, the authenticity of the collected evidence is in question, and there is no documented and uninterrupted chain of custody for the collected evidence.


Conflicting testimony is a strong indication of critical evidence being compromised and of crime scene staging for photography purposes. Overwhelming evidence suggests officers conducting the investigation inside the Texas School Book Depository were improperly supervised and failed to follow national or departmental protocols.

The media had unrestricted access to the crime scene and evidence, compromising the integrity of the investigation. Officers improperly collected key evidence and then re-created the scene in an attempt to disguise that fact; and then these same officers testified under oath the crime scene had not been compromised."

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Pete Mellor Experienced

Pete Mellor

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4 hours ago, Sean Coleman said:

Not sure if Mac Wallace was there…

Sean, Prof. Joan Mellen in her 'Faustian Bargains' book should provide food for thought on that idea.

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Sean Coleman Rising Star

Sean Coleman

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1 hour ago, Pete Mellor said:

Sean, Prof. Joan Mellen in her 'Faustian Bargains' book should provide food for thought on that idea.

Not read that so just read a quick synopsis n got it off fleabay! What a shady murky bag of shenanigans…should be a good read, thanks 

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Michael Griffith Mentor

Michael Griffith

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10 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:
The Commission never considered that more than one rifle had been found in the building.

I think it's interesting to note that there were two other incidents of multiple items being left behind/planted: the two Oswald wallets and the three bullets (the bullet found at Parkland Hospital, the bullet that dropped out of JFK or his wrappings at the autopsy, and the bullet that was found in the limo in DC by CPOs Martinell and Mills during the autopsy). The plotters could not be sure which planted items would make it into the record and which might not, so they may have hedged their bets in some cases.

As for the Mauser, WC apologists can only speculate Weitzman was somehow "mistaken" and that Craig was either "mistaken" or lying. I don't buy it. I believe Weitzman and Craig were correct and that they told the truth. 

 

Edited by Michael Griffith
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Gil Jesus Mentor

Gil Jesus

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4 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

 

As for the Mauser, WC apologists can only speculate Weitzman was somehow "mistaken" and that Craig was either "mistaken" or lying. I don't buy it. I believe Weitzman and Craig were correct and that they told the truth. 

 

Mike, these officers' credibility should never have been called into question. The credibility gap lies with the guy who brought the rifles into the building, as I will show in part II.

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Denis Morissette Proficient

Denis Morissette

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A few questions:

1) Craig said that the police took photos of the Mauser? Where are those photos? Has any of you contacted the DPD, City of Dallas, NARA, etc asking them to locate them or examine their negatives to see if there are such photos?

2) Alyea filmed the Carcanno. Why did not he film the Mauser too?

3) If Boone found the Mauser, then who found the Carcanno?

4) Since two rifles, including the Carcanno were found, then why doesn't any of those on the 6th floor remember seeing 2 rifles?

5) Why did Day always said that only one rifle was found since he is the one who would have been called for identification?

6) Where was the Mauser found on the 6th floor?

7) Any photos or films of that Mauser inside or outside the building, or at the DPD offices?

😎 Had the Mauser been brought outside, don't you think that all the press photographers been all over the person carrying it as they were on Day when he was carrying the Carcanno?

Sorry, but not sorry for deflating people's balloon. 

Edited by Denis Morissette
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