Oswald and the Shot at Walker: Redressing the Balance

[Steve Roe]

14 hours ago, Allen Lowe said:

Earth to Steve Roe: Where is your proof? You LN nuts are all the same - you demand material, empirical proof until you don't demand material, empirical proof, which is when YOU make an argument. And honestly, the concealment idea is the dumbest effing thing I have heard in the whole JFK LN fiasco. Yeah, he could have buried it, you might have helped him. Anything is possible in LN Land. Try again, we on the other side are not that dumb.

Mr. Lowe nice trying to make this into another LN vs. CT polarization game. 

Benjamin Cole wrote an article on DiEugenio's K&K stating he believed Oswald did fire at Walker.

 https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/walker-oswald-and-the-dog-that-didn-t-bark

DiEugenio said this about Ben's article:

Benjamin Cole reexamines the “Walker Incident” and offers a better explanation than the one provided in the Warren Report by accounting for all of the anomalies in the evidence and witness accounts.

DiEugenio said this in his book:

For they were now saying that it was a 6.5 caliber, copper-jacketed bullet. One compatible with the alleged rifle in evidence. Yet, this was not the bullet the police retrieved from Walker’s house that night and Walker had held in his hand. That bullet was a 30.06, steel jacketed bullet.129 As the reader can see, the combination of Ruth Paine with the FBI allowed the Warren Commission to manufacture a case that likely did not exist. As we will see, this will recur.

DiEugenio, James. Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (p. 202). Skyhorse. Kindle Edition. 

Problem here with Mr. DiEugenio's research is he misleads his readers. He cites (129) the DPD case report on the Walker shooting. Yes, the DPD case report did state the steel jacketed bullet, but nowhere in the case report did it describe the bullet as a 30.06. It clearly states the bullet was of unknown caliber. 

Lockstep with DiEugenio, Ben Cole states this in his article: 

But after the Kennedy murder, the DPD sent the steel-jacketed bullet—stated in police reports to be a 30.06 calibre—to the FBI. 

Again, there is no 30.06 caliber mentioned in the DPD case report from the investigating detectives. 

This is not the tired old LN vs. CT game: it's about getting the facts straight. 

Who is holding the baloney sandwich now? 

[Steve Roe]

22 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

My story has not changed. 

Here is what I wrote:

"In all fairness, I think Walker's letter to the HSCA was in error, so to speak. 

For whatever reason, the HSCA, during hearings, broadcast some images of unfired steel-jacketed bullets, which were not copper-gilded.

It looked as though the HSCA was saying, "See, these are steel-jacketed bullets, like the one found in Walker's home." 

Walker then fired off a letter to the effect the bullet found in his home was badly mangled etc."

---30---

It has been a number of decades since the HSCA hearings, and that is about as much as I remember about this particular point.

IMHO, the HSCA was bungling matters, and besides that everyone had bad hairdos. 

If you remember Blakey himself holding up steel-jacketed bullets at the HSCA hearings, I do not contest that. I just do not remember that exact episode. 

Well, ok, so you were just speculating that Blakey held up a steel-jacketed pristine bullet. I accept that answer, now that you cleared it up. 

I went through all the Walker papers I could find regarding this protest of the HSCA hearing, and I could not find anything of Walker saying it was a "steel-jacketed" bullet. He was objecting to a pristine bullet held by Blakey in numerous letters stating it was damaged. 

This steel jacketed bullet description in the DPD case report was a question posed to Robert Frazier (FBI) by Eisenberg of the Warren Commission. 

Eisenberg: Is this a jacketed bullet?

Frazier: Yes, it is a copper-alloy jacketed bullet having a lead core.

Eisenberg: Can you think of any reason why someone might have called this a steel-jacketed bullet? 

Frazier: No sir; except that some individuals commonly refer to rifle bullets as steel-jacketed bullets, when they actually in fact just have a copper-alloy jacket. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=39#relPageId=447&search=steel_jacketed bullet

That is most likely the explanation as the DPD case report states a high-powered rifle, then steel-jacketed bullet. 

[Steve Roe]

18 hours ago, Mark Ulrik said:

Whatever was used to conceal the rifle during transport (raincoat?) would also have helped protect it from the elements.

That's an excellent observation Mark, makes sense. He would have used that raincoat for transporting to and from, why not keep it with the rifle to protect it against the elements. 

[James DiEugenio]

Recall, and I think Scobey wrote about this, Marina could not be compelled to testify against her husband.

You would have had Kirk Coleman as the best eyewitness. Exculaptory,

You would have had the mutating bullet. Exculpatory.

You would have today, with Scott Reid's work, a Walker note that likely did not refer to Walker. Hmm.

The pictures taken with the same Imperial Reflex that took the BYP. Ugh.

Nice case. 🤑

 

 

[David Andrews]

How come no Warren Report accusation that Oswald disassembled the rifle before concealing it after the Walker shooting?

You know - so it could fit in a curtain rod bag...

Edited March 28, 2023 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

David:

Recall, the assumption is he buried it in the ground with an overcoat on top.

BTW, I just read Morley's substack article.

He assumes that the Surrey son is correct about Walker shooting around with Oswald?

Fifty years later this story comes out.  And it just happens to jibe with what we know about the mutating bullet and the two cars leaving that night?

[James DiEugenio]

Here is what Alfredda Scobey said about Marina's testimony:

There must first be deleted the testimony of his wife, Marina, for although she testified on three occasions and was questioned by the press and investigative agencies on scores of others, it is difficult to find any statement which would not be more hurtful than helpful to her husband. Under Texas law, “The husband and wife may, in all criminal actions, be witnesses for each other; but they shall in no case testify against each other except in a criminal prosecution for an offense committed by one against the other.” [9] Considering the transcript and exhibits as the “brief of evidence” on a trial, there are many facts which appear only in the uncorroborated testimony of Marina Oswald. Chief among them are facts laying the basis for the admission of other criminal transactions—the attempt on the life of Major Edwin A. Walker on April 10, 1963, and the reputed threat to make some assault on former Vice President Richard Nixon. Whether either of these transactions would have been admissible in any event is extremely doubtful.

 

[Leslie Sharp]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

David:

Recall, the assumption is he buried it in the ground with an overcoat on top.

BTW, I just read Morley's substack article.

He assumes that the Surrey son is correct about Walker shooting around with Oswald?

Fifty years later this story comes out.  And it just happens to jibe with what we know about the mutating bullet and the two cars leaving that night?

I'm having similar questions, Jim. Why now.

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Steve Roe said:

Well, ok, so you were just speculating that Blakey held up a steel-jacketed pristine bullet. I accept that answer, now that you cleared it up. 

I went through all the Walker papers I could find regarding this protest of the HSCA hearing, and I could not find anything of Walker saying it was a "steel-jacketed" bullet. He was objecting to a pristine bullet held by Blakey in numerous letters stating it was damaged. 

This steel jacketed bullet description in the DPD case report was a question posed to Robert Frazier (FBI) by Eisenberg of the Warren Commission. 

Eisenberg: Is this a jacketed bullet?

Frazier: Yes, it is a copper-alloy jacketed bullet having a lead core.

Eisenberg: Can you think of any reason why someone might have called this a steel-jacketed bullet? 

Frazier: No sir; except that some individuals commonly refer to rifle bullets as steel-jacketed bullets, when they actually in fact just have a copper-alloy jacket. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=39#relPageId=447&search=steel_jacketed bullet

That is most likely the explanation as the DPD case report states a high-powered rifle, then steel-jacketed bullet. 

Interesting question:

Since no one saw the Walker shooting, and the "steel-jacketed bullet" in evidence was badly mangled, evidently beyond accurate recognition...why was it assumed from the get-go that a rifle had been used? 

There are were large-bore handguns, even in the 1960s. The snub-nose .38 bore is even larger than the Mannlicher-Carcano bore. 

Steel-jacketed bullets are manufactured for handguns. 

Yet, it has always been assumed, by all sides, that a rifle was used in the Walker shooting.

Even without a single eyewitness, and the evidence left behind---the badly mangled bullet---of uncertain origin.

In fact, it might be possible to miss at short range with a snub-nose....missing at that short distance with a rifle...maybe Inspector Clouseau could....

BTW, was the DPD detective on the Walker case named "Clouseau" by any chance? Or an Americanized spelling, such as "Clewso"? 

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[David Andrews]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

David:

Recall, the assumption is he buried it in the ground with an overcoat on top.

 

Well, I know that.  He must've been in hurry if he didn't disassemble it like he did for the morning of 11/22...

He didn't even disassemble to to carry it to Walker's house under the raincoat.  That's unlike him.

Edited March 29, 2023 by David Andrews

[Benjamin Cole]

22 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Well, I know that.  He must've been in hurry if he didn't disassemble it like he did for the morning of 11/22...

He didn't even disassemble to to carry it to Walker's house under the raincoat.  That's unlike him.

Why assume whoever shot into the Walker window...used a rifle?

The original evidence, the Walker bullet, was described as heavily mangled, and steel-jacketed. 

Steven Roe is correct that original DPD police reports do not describe the bore of the Walker bullet. Evidently, the original Walker bullet was so distorted, that knowing its true origin or bore was iffy. 

There were plenty of handguns at the time with similar or larger bores than the Walker bullet, and gilded steel-jacketed ammo was available for handguns. 

So...why assume a rifle in the Walker shooting, but not an easily concealable handgun? 

 

[David Andrews]

The point is, the WR claims LHO disassembled a rifle in the Paines' garage so he could carry it unnoticed in a vehicle on 11/22.

But when he had to carry the rifle on the street and on a bus to supposedly shoot Walker, he left it full-length and covered it in a raincoat.  Then he buried it full-length.

Must have been really dark, and he didn't have a dime to turn the screws.

[Greg Doudna]

16 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

I'm having similar questions, Jim. Why now.

If you’re asking why the match of colors of Robert Surrey's 1963 car to the car of Coleman’s man No. 2 did not suggest a car identification to anyone before now, even though that information was published in 2017, I can answer that in my own case: I did not notice and focus on that detail before Nov 2022 even though I had the book long before then. I assume the reason nobody else did either, including David Surrey, his friend Allen Kent, the authors of Pieces of the Puzzle, or anyone else is the same reason. 

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

In addition there is something else: the Robert Surrey car match to Coleman's No. 2 was in a sense there as at least a suggestion all along in a written report of an FBI interview of Robert Surrey of 1964, but nobody picked up on it or noticed: it is when Robert Surrey told the FBI that he had used that same church parking lot, implied similar position in the church parking lot nearest to the Walker house, to park his car a few days earlier, as where Coleman saw the No. 2 man getting into the parked car the night of April 10, 1963 moments after the shot. Although the color match of Robert Surrey's and the No. 2 car was not known in any FBI or WC information or MFF document prior to Pieces of the Puzzle in 2017, the same location of parking of those two cars, just days apart, was in the public record to researchers all along (in an FBI interview WC exhibit, available to researchers since 1964?). But nobody picked up on it, nobody noticed, nobody said, "could that car of man No. 2 seen by Kirk Coleman in the same position as Robert Surrey's car a couple of days earlier, possibly be Robert Surrey's car the night of the shot?" 

Why did nobody pick up on that earlier? I don't know. You tell me.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

Ruminations on the identity of Kirk Coleman's man No. 1

I also think I know who Kirk Coleman's man No. 1 was, though I did not put that in my paper and it does not affect anything in the argument if this isn't right. Kirk Coleman gave a description of man No. 1 that had specific details: about 19-20 years of age, skinny, long hair, long narrow face, prominent nose.

In the odd story which appeared in Dick Russell from Brad Angers, Angers claimed that Larrie Schmidt told him, Angers, in early 1964 that Larrie's brother Robert "Bob" or "Robbie" Schmidt knew Oswald, drove Oswald the night of the shot, accompanied and assisted Oswald in taking the shot the night of the shot. Then the record shows Bob Schmidt happily went to work for Walker as Walker's chauffeur a few months later starting ca. later Oct 1963. Normal thing to do after helping Oswald take a shot which supposedly was attempted murder of General Walker, right?

On the hunch that Angers' strange story might reflect some strange decades-later hearsay version of the staged shot involving Surrey and Oswald as developed in my paper, naming a participation of Robert Schmidt and his car as assisting Oswald in that staged shot that evening, I wondered if Robert Schmidt in fact could be the missing identity of No. 1.

In my paper I wrote of the movements of man No. 1 seen by Kirk Coleman, of his standing outside of a car with the engine running (Coleman first sees him apart from his car in the parking lot walking toward an otherwise-empty car idling with its engine running and headlights on moments after the shot, then getting into the already-running car and driving away out to Turtle Creek Blvd) ... and man No. 1 from where he was standing away from his car with the engine running would have been standing with line of sight into the alley capable of eye contact with the shooter in the alley ... and that that all made excellent sense interpreted as No. 1 as a signaler in the parking lot part of the shot, capable of signal communication with both inside the Walker house and the shooter in the alley, i.e. No. 1 as part of the shot and not a car and person unrelated to the shot. However I left No. 1 unidentified in my paper apart from the argument that No. 1 too was involved in the staged shot, and was not some unrelated random church or other person standing like that, line of sight to the shooter in the alley, away from a car with its engine running, at the moment of the shot. 

From a passing mention in the WC testimony of Bernard Weissman, Robert Schmidt was 29 years old in 1963, a bit older than Kirk Coleman thought from seeing No. 1. But I found letters of Larrie Schmidt in 1963 on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site confirming that Larrie knew Robert Surrey since at least Feb 1963--moved in the same right-wing circles, Larrie mentions Robert Surrey by name in a letter of Feb 1963--and separately those letters confirm Larrie's brother Bob was in Dallas in early-mid 1963, no known employment, and that Larrie's brother Bob in fact months later began direct paid employment with General Walker as a chauffeur starting ca. late Oct 1963--brought into that paid employment for Walker by Robert Surrey.

I think Bob Schmidt is Robert L. Schmidt, 1934-1981, born and died Lincoln, Nebraska, 29 years old in 1963, US Navy vet in Korea, photo of tombstone here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/74093487/robert-l-schmidt. 

I looked up Robert L. Schmidt's high school yearbook photo from his high school in Lincoln, Nebraska. That is the only photo known of Larrie Schmidt's brother Bob known to me in existence, nor was Larrie's brother Bob Schmidt ever interviewed by anyone re things 1963 or Walker or JFK assassination related. There is no known personal information, no obituary, no knowledge of whether he had wife or kids, no knowledge of employment, nothing about him even though his name is familiar in the Larrie Schmidt/CUSA documents and investigations following the assassination in Nov 1963. The one detail of interest learned from the photo of his tombstone (assuming this is the right person) is he was a Navy vet in Korea and not part of the Army vets in Gemany of the Larrie Schmidt and Weissman CUSA circles as generally assumed. On rechecking Larrie Schmidt's 1963 letters I cannot find any evidence Larrie's brother Bob served in Germany or in the Army, even though that has been assumed. 

Anyway, Robert L. Schmidt's high school photo, the only known photo in existence known to me for Larrie's brother Bob who was in Dallas in 1963--the same individual named in the strange Angers story in which Angers says Larrie told him ca. early 1964 (over a few drinks? with Angers, who was in the electronic surveillance business, recording Larrie without Larrie's knowledge as Larrie spun him a tall one?--who knows) ... that strange story says Larrie's brother Bob Schmidt was with and assisted Oswald the night of the Walker shot--Robert L. Schmidt's Lincoln, Nebraska high school photo struck me for having a long, narrow face, in agreement with Kirk Coleman's physical description of man No. 1.

The plausibility of some unemployed vet already in circles known to Robert Surrey in early 1963 who could be trusted to do a job and keep his mouth shut, being the missing identification of man No. 1 with Surrey in the staged Walker shot, came together as intriguing to me.

And the known months-later explicit employment of Larrie's brother Bob Schmidt, recommended to Walker by Robert Surrey for paid employment for General Walker says if Bob Schmidt was involved with the shot April 10, 1963 it was part of a staged shot working with Surrey, not actual intent to murder Walker. (Because Bob Schmidt did not try to kill Walker when he was later hired as chauffeur and had opportunity!!!!!!--because that Walker shot of April 10, 1963 never was about trying to kill General Walker!)

There is no other candidate for Coleman's No. 1 to my knowledge. In favor of Bob Schmidt as No. 1 is the plausibility of vet Bob Schmidt known to be in Dallas and in Robert Surrey/Walker circles in early 1963 via his brother Larrie, possible need for money (reflected in the Larrie Schmidt letters), and there is the decades-later hearsay claim.

And then the long narrow face.

When I saw the long narrow face I said to myself, "Self, I think this may be a match." Anyway that's my best guess at identity of No. 1. Robert L. Schmidt seems to check most of the boxes as at least possible for No. 1--if this isn't a false positive.