DPD Ruses, Part I: Insp. Sawyer in the hot seat

[Donald Willis]

DPD Ruses, Part I: Insp. Sawyer in the hot seat

For me, the discovery of DPD Insp. Sawyer's actual source for his 12:44 suspect description somewhat vindicates him. Before that, I had thought that he was part of the conspiracy and that he was handed--*before* 12:30pm 11/22/63--a pre-fab description. But NTFH's discovery of the FBI dispatches re his encounter with a witness in back of the depository takes him off the conspiracy hook, though, yes, it leaves him dangling on the cover-up hook. The discovery also partially explains why Sawyer's Commission testimony was so full of holes. He used his unnamed witness's suspect description as the basis for his 12:44 transmission--unfortunately for Sawyer, that suspect description included a *weapon* description. And, on the money or not (good reason to believe not), a police inspector bought it--lock, stock, and barrel--and all-but-legitimatized it by putting it on the police airwaves. Perhaps there was something compelling about the witness's presentation. We'll never know because Sawyer had to forget that the person even existed.

The broadcasting of the weapon description put Sawyer in the hot seat, and the actual conspirators (including, I believe, DPD Homicide Capt. Fritz) had to scramble to attach it to a suspect in the depository, or it might sound as if there were *two* active rifles in Dealey that day. (There may have been, but Sawyer's witness's suspect was most probably not one of them.) Sawyer must have been a nervous wreck at the hearings: He was also in the hot seat for his 1:11 transmission situating the sniper on the fifth (or third) floor. Lotta scrambling going on before his Commission stint, and some 'splainin' to do for the Commissioners during it.


First, Sawyer, almost comically, gets off on the wrong foot when Counsel David Belin asks him why he "headed west on Main Street". Sawyer: "Because that was the way the car was pointed at the time I got in." (v6p316)

Secondly, Sawyer testified that he went to the depository because he had heard Sheriff Decker, at 12:30, invoke the "Texas School Book Depository".  Wrong--check the DPD radio logs.  

Thirdly--after being corrected by counsel--he then says that, yes, maybe he actually started to Dealey or got to Dealey or went into the building about 12:34, when the depository was first mentioned on the DPD radio. (v6p319)  Wrong again, because...

Fourth, Sawyer testified that officers at the building told him that they'd heard about shooting from the fifth floor, and he took an elevator up.  But the officers in question--that would have been Sgt. Harkness and Patrolman Hill--did not radio their data until, respectively, 12:36 and 12:37, then went down to the depository.  But even, say, 12:38 would have been wrong, because...

Fifth, at 12:44, Sawyer still seems not to have not heard from Harkness and Hill: He references no floors in the building, in fact does not reference the building at all, in his suspect description.

Sixth, Sawyer, at 12:45, radioed that he was not aware that the suspect had been in the building, though we now know that he had been told that a suspect had been seen running "from" the building.  It was the dispatcher who, finally, got Sawyer onto the scent of the depository, told him that the shooting "did come from about the 5th or 4th floor" (CE 1974 p171) But Sawyer's entry into the building perhaps has to be pushed out even further, to no earlier than about 12:52, because...

Seventh, the "couple of officers" with whom Sawyer says he entered the building must have been Sgt. Gerald Hill and Patrolman James Valentine (Hill/v7p45)--and they were only radioing, at 12:48 (DPD radio logs), that they were "en route Elm & Houston".  The two were the only officers who claimed to have gone in with him. So, Sawyer was, initially, some 20 minutes off on his entry time, though he had testified that he was down & out of the TSBD by 12:37. (v6p320)

As Claviger has said (on the old alt.assassination.jfk), Where the hell was Sawyer for those 20 minutes?  He was apparently, for at least part of that time, talking to a witness who saw someone run out of the depository--out the back apparently--the witness who gave him the suspect description, radioed in by Sawyer at 12:44, the description generally--and obviously incorrectly--attributed to witness Howard Brennan, who provided, never at all believably, a height and weight estimate of a suspect seen on an upper floor of the depository.  A suspect whom he thought was standing as he shot. Gamely, poor Brennan went along with the DPD ruse.

Eighth: Here is Sawyer, at the hearings, quoting--not entirely accurately--his 1:11 radio transmission, "We have found empty rifle hulls on the fifth floor." (v6p322) But even that correct-sounding quote from Sawyer is incorrect.  From "Pictures of the Pain (p523):  Sawyer, at 1:11: "On the third [sic] floor of this book company down here, we found empty rifle hulls."  (from Trask's transcription of an audio tape of the DPD radio logs.  See also the FBI transcription of the radio logs for that curious "3rd floor".)  (CE 1974p176)  Sawyer was testifying, falsely, in concert with Sgt. G.D. Henslee's transcription of the logs (Sawyer Exhibit B p400): "We have found empty rifle hulls on the fifth floor..." A double DPD ruse by Sawyer and Henslee...

The DPD invoked the fifth floor rather than the third because, I think--as everyone knows--the fifth was often confused with the sixth, at least from the outside of the building.  So "fifth" could be brushed off as a harmless confusion of floors.  But "third", not so much.  Certainly, "third" could not be interpreted as "sixth", from any point of view or angle--although it could be interpreted as "third floor from the top", or... "fifth". In fact, Sawyer elsewhere told reporters, "Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor." ([AP] Stockton [CA] Record 11/22/63 p8/And a tip of the hat to Walt Cakebread.) And if Sawyer, as has been shown, did not enter the depository until about 12:52, and achieved, at least, the fifth floor, in his search, then he might have been there, in person, when the hulls were found, or just after they were found, on an upper floor of the building. 

Why would Sawyer testify, falsely, re both times and floor numbers? Why would he seem to be frantic to get himself into the building so early--initially, about 12:32! Why would Sawyer and Henslee want to avoid any mention of the phrase "third floor"?

Ninth: Yes, sometimes it's what DPD witnesses omit rather than what they include that's the key. The Sawyer song-and-dance: "The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor... which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor... [that] he had talked about" with the officers at the scene--"the fifth floor". (v6p317) But that was a freight elevator which only went up as high as the fourth floor. Sawyer--what a maroon. But a useful maroon.

Meanwhile, Hill's complementary song-and-dance: "We went up to the seventh floor... and these two deputies and I went down to [the] sixth." (v7p46) So, Sawyer went to the fourth floor, and Hill went to the seventh, then down to the sixth, for him the "Eureka!" floor. Yes, they maintained--by omission--that they scrupulously avoided the fifth floor. But--suckers!--there was, you'll recall, a third member on their little foray, Patrolman Valentine, who later noted that, at the depository, he was "assigned to the fifth floor." (v25p914) And there are photos of Valentine standing around on what has been represented (for the rifle find) as the sixth floor. But, either way, that means that the Sawyer gaggle got as high as the fifth.

[Pat Speer]

OR...Sawyer went into the building as claimed, thought he'd gone to the floor pointed out by Brennan and Euins, and thought they were mistaken after talking to people on that floor. Whereby he heads over to the back elevator and encounters Baker and Truly, who tell him they saw no one on the top floors. As minutes pass, he realizes the search of the train yard is going nowhere, and that there may very well have been a shooter in the building. He then goes back in. 

One should not attribute to malice what can be more easily explained by incompetence, especially when talking about cops. My two cents. 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Alan Ford]

16 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

Fourth, Sawyer testified that officers at the building told him that they'd heard about shooting from the fifth floor, and he took an elevator up.  But the officers in question--that would have been Sgt. Harkness and Patrolman Hill--did not radio their data until, respectively, 12:36 and 12:37, then went down to the depository. 

Why would the officers in question have to have been these two?

Insp. Sawyer merely says he "talked to some of the officers around there".

 

[Donald Willis]

19 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

OR...Sawyer went into the building as claimed, thought he'd gone to the floor pointed out by Brennan and Euins, and thought they were mistaken after talking to people on that floor. Whereby he heads over to the back elevator and encounters Baker and Truly, who tell him they saw no one on the top floors. As minutes pass, he realizes the search of the train yard is going nowhere, and that there may very well have been a shooter in the building. He then goes back in. 

One should not attribute to malice what can be more easily explained by incompetence, especially when talking about cops. My two cents. 

I think the easier explanation IS that Sawyer was just following orders.  A bad witness, but a good soldier...

[Donald Willis]

3 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

Why would the officers in question have to have been these two?

Insp. Sawyer merely says he "talked to some of the officers around there".

 

And he added that they thought shots had come from the FIFTH floor.  And Harkness and Hill both singled out the fifth floor--Harkness with his "fifth" and Hill with his "second window from the end", on an upper floor, right-hand corner (not sure if that's exactly   how he phrased it).  The only "second window" open at 12:30 was on the 5th floor...

[Alan Ford]

On 11/29/2023 at 5:01 PM, Donald Willis said:

And he added that they thought shots had come from the FIFTH floor.  And Harkness and Hill both singled out the fifth floor--Harkness with his "fifth" and Hill with his "second window from the end", on an upper floor, right-hand corner (not sure if that's exactly   how he phrased it).  The only "second window" open at 12:30 was on the 5th floor...

Still doesn't have to be either/both of those two men. There were many officers in the area at this time. It could e.g. have been officers who had spoken with Mr. Ronald Fischer and/or Mr. Bob Edwards. All Insp. Sawyer is saying is he recalls some talk of shots from the fifth floor.

[Donald Willis]

20 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

Still doesn't have to be either/both of those two men. There were many officers in the area at this time. It could e.g. have been officers who had spoken with Mr. Ronald Fischer and/or Mr. Bob Edwards. All Insp. Sawyer is saying is he recalls some talk of shots from the fifth floor.

Neither Fischer nor Edwards saw a rifle.  And if Sawyer heard about shots from the fifth floor, he did not mention any such witnesses in his 12:44 suspect description.  

[Alan Ford]

16 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

Neither Fischer nor Edwards saw a rifle.  And if Sawyer heard about shots from the fifth floor, he did not mention any such witnesses in his 12:44 suspect description.  

Well, as we know, Insp. Sawyer's testimony is a hot mess. BUT! I don't see any great problem in principle with his having been told by an officer or two something along the lines of, "We've had people come up and tell us they saw a man up at that fifth-floor [sic.] window. They're sure he fired the shots". Leaving Insp. Sawyer with an as yet unconfirmed report at second hand

[Gerry Down]

On 11/28/2023 at 8:51 PM, Donald Willis said:

But NTFH's discovery of the FBI dispatches

What does NTFH stand for?

[Donald Willis]

14 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

What does NTFH stand for?

No True Flags Here.  

[Donald Willis]

19 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

Well, as we know, Insp. Sawyer's testimony is a hot mess. BUT! I don't see any great problem in principle with his having been told by an officer or two something along the lines of, "We've had people come up and tell us they saw a man up at that fifth-floor [sic.] window. They're sure he fired the shots". Leaving Insp. Sawyer with an as yet unconfirmed report at second hand

But he seems to be in the dark at 12:44 & 12:45, when, first, he radios his suspect description, with no mention of the depository; then, the dispatcher has to tell *him* re shots from the 5th or 4th floor.  To explain the latter:  The dispatcher heard the same thing I did, at 12:36, on the radio logs.  Harkness speaks of shots from the 4th/5th floor.  I played that back numerous times & couldn't quite tell which floor he was indicating.  Neither, apparently, could the dispatcher!

[Gerry Down]

7 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

No True Flags Here.  

Thanks