Steve Roe: Please Reveal Your Mystery Witness!

[Benjamin Cole]

13 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:

I think we all knew that, Gil. The WC already had Norvell (via the FBI) and Day identify the bullet, of course, but showing it to Walker would have been a nice touch.

Meanwhile, do not hunt bear in Pennsylvania in 1931...with steel-jacketed bullets. 

 

Actually, this 1931 Farmer's Almanac reference to the outlawing of steel-jacketed bullets is puzzling in some regards. Some authors write that there were almost no steel-jacketed bullets in the US pre-WWII, but evidently Pennsylvania outlawed the bullets for hunting anyway.

My understanding is that steel-jacketed bullets are thought to cause fires, through sparking. Target range operators commonly bar steel-jacketed bullets. 

Game wardens distinguished between copper- and steel-jacketed bullets. 

I guess game wardens are exempt from the category of "some people" who say all rifle bullets are steel-jacketed. 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Well, this author would take a dim view, a very, very dim view of even a witness, let alone a police detective, who did not distinguish between steel- and copper-jacketed bullets. 

 

 

I guess the Dallas Police Department detectives McElroy and Van Cleave are "justifiably suspected of knowing very little about firearms and ammunition." 

 

[Mark Ulrik]

10 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Meanwhile, do not hunt bear in Pennsylvania in 1931...with steel-jacketed bullets.

But I'm allowed to use FMJ bullets? Let's hope I'm a crack shot then; otherwise we might end up having a bunch of mortally wounded bears running around. Remember the shootout scene in "Scarface"? It was the guy with the shotgun who got him in the end. Not a great analogy, but you get the picture ...

15 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I guess the Dallas Police Department detectives McElroy and Van Cleave are "justifiably suspected of knowing very little about firearms and ammunition." 

I guess you're free to suspect anything you like.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Benjamin Cole I believe there are only two living witnesses remaining to the Walker shooting. One of the sons of Surrey(sp?) and the 15 year old kid who saw two cars drive away. take your pick   

[Mark Ulrik]

PS: I notice that it's prohibited to "take bears with steel trap". Wow! I'm allowed to bring my traps made of iron or brass!? Do you think that's a reasonable inference? Or could the term "steel trap" refer to a certain type of animal trap where "steel" is not necessarily supposed to be taken literally?

Edited June 21, 2023 by Mark Ulrik

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

@Benjamin Cole I believe there are only two living witnesses remaining to the Walker shooting. One of the sons of Surrey(sp?) and the 15 year old kid who saw two cars drive away. take your pick   

Well, the shooting was 60 years ago, so someone in their 20s then might be alive. 

However, unless a small neighborhood crowd gathered in the Walker home (not reported, but maybe), it does seem like the number of non-official witnesses of the true Walker bullet is rather small.

Steel-jacketed bullets were usually copper-washed anyway. If a boy saw a copper-washed steel-jacketed bullet 60 years ago, he would say he saw a copper-colored bullet. 

8 hours ago, Mark Ulrik said:

PS: I notice that it's prohibited to "take bears with steel trap". Wow! I'm allowed to bring my traps made of iron or brass!? Do you think that's a reasonable inference? Or could the term "steel trap" refer to a certain type of animal trap where "steel" is not necessarily supposed to be taken literally?

Pennsylvania legislators of the 1930s needed a wordsmith like you to avoid ambiguities. I concur they probably meant, but did not write, any type of trap for the feet of bears, invariably manufactured from steel. 

However the legislators obviously meant steel-jacketed bullets, and presented the restriction accurately. 

More interesting is this book, published just one year before the Walker incident. 

 

This strikes to the heart of the matter. 

Sure, "some individuals" might conflate steel- and copper-jacketed bullets in 1963. Some members of the lay public might refer to all rifle bullets, or all handgun bullets, as "steel jacketed."

But two detectives on a big-city police department, in official reports, after collecting a slug as evidence at the scene of an attempted murder? 

The two detectives, who passed civil service exams, look at CE 573, perhaps the most obviously copper-jacketed bullet in police annals, but author and sign a report that CE 573 is "steel jacketed?" 

There is often a variance in what the lay public might say about a topic, versus professionals. Frazier is correct in that rather broad statement. 

The squirrelly way everything happened to the true Walker bullet thereafter...sure raises questions about the true Walker bullet. 

 

 

 

 

[Tom Gram]

23 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Well, the shooting was 60 years ago, so someone in their 20s then might be alive. 

However, unless a small neighborhood crowd gathered in the Walker home (not reported, but maybe), it does seem like the number of non-official witnesses of the true Walker bullet is rather small.

Steel-jacketed bullets were usually copper-washed anyway. If a boy saw a copper-washed steel-jacketed bullet 60 years ago, he would say he saw a copper-colored bullet. 

Pennsylvania legislators of the 1930s needed a wordsmith like you to avoid ambiguities. I concur they probably meant, but did not write, any type of trap for the feet of bears, invariably manufactured from steel. 

However the legislators obviously meant steel-jacketed bullets, and presented the restriction accurately. 

More interesting is this book, published just one year before the Walker incident. 

 

This strikes to the heart of the matter. 

Sure, "some individuals" might conflate steel- and copper-jacketed bullets in 1963. Some members of the lay public might refer to all rifle bullets, or all handgun bullets, as "steel jacketed."

But two detectives on a big-city police department, in official reports, after collecting a slug as evidence at the scene of an attempted murder? 

The two detectives, who passed civil service exams, look at CE 573, perhaps the most obviously copper-jacketed bullet in police annals, but author and sign a report that CE 573 is "steel jacketed?" 

There is often a variance in what the lay public might say about a topic, versus professionals. Frazier is correct in that rather broad statement. 

The squirrelly way everything happened to the true Walker bullet thereafter...sure raises questions about the true Walker bullet. 

 

 

 

 

That book was a really good find, Ben. From 1962! 

[Benjamin Cole]

39 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

That book was a really good find, Ben. From 1962! 

TG-

Thanks.

Yes, game wardens, target-range operators, police, military, federal law enforcement agencies, hunters, gun hobbyists all promptly distinguished between steel- and copper-jacketed bullets in 1963. And still do. 

Someone who said something like, "All rifle bullets are steel-jacketed" would indeed be "justifiably suspected of knowing very little about firearms and ammunition."

Does that definition apply to a 13-year veteran and police detective with the DPD in 1963? 

Seems rather unlikely, no?

And then the veteran detective incorrectly used the term "steel-jacketed" to describe evidence, a slug collected at the crime scene of an apparent murder attempt on a nationally prominent political figure? 

That stretches credulity, to put it mildly.