Fritz first hears about the shells--The Three Versions

[Donald Willis]

Fritz first hears about the shells--The Three Versions
... And the source for Insp. Sawyer's mysterious "3rd floor"

First version:  Sims/Boyd [Homicide] report (Sims Exh. A).  "We [Fritz, Sims, Boyd] went on up to the 7th floor... About that time someone yelled that some empty hulls had been found on the 6th floor... [We] went to the SE window on the 6th floor & saw 3 empty rifle hulls...The empty hulls were found about 1:15."  This first version is easily dismissed.  Perhaps--it might have been explained, retroactively--the "someone" was just belatedly yelling for Fritz to come and see the hulls, some 15 minutes after they had actually been found.  But as late as his Commission testimony (4/6/64), Det. Sims was still saying, "I think the hulls were found about 1:15." (v7p162)  By then, such a misapprehension would have been corrected.

Even the Warren Report, which got a little closer to the actual time of the finding of the hulls, pegged it as late as 1:12, about the time of Insp. Sawyer's DPD radio transmission re the shells on the "3rd [sic] floor" (CE 1974 p176/DPD transcription), which it footnotes.  But Deputy Luke Mooney, who found the shells, said that when he found them, it was "approaching 1 o'clock" (v3p285), confirmed by DPD Sgt. Harkness' call for the Crime Lab, at about 12:59 (CE 1974 p41).  One might surmise that the Sims/Boyd "1:15" was based on DPD Sgt. Hill's shout out a 6th-floor window, but for more on Hill, we turn to...

Second Version:  Sgt. Hill:  "We hadn't been there but a minute until someone yelled, 'Here it is!' or words to that effect... In front of the second window... were three spent shells... At this point, I asked the deputy sheriff to guard the scene... and went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the Crime Lab... I went to the back of the building... and Capt. Fritz & his men were coming up on the elevator.  I told him what we found... I [went down to] make sure that the Crime Lab was en route..." (v7pp45-6).  

Right away--contradiction.  Hill has Fritz coming UP to the 6th floor to see the shells.  Sims/Boyd has him going DOWN to the 6th floor.  And it is not "someone yelling" who first calls Fritz's attention to the discovery of the shells, it's Sgt. Hill, but not with his famous window shout, but with a briefing near the elevator.  In fact, the timing seems to track:  At 12:58, the shells are found inside, just as Fritz arrives outside.  And Hill runs into Fritz "coming up".  Note that Hill does not add something like, say, Fritz informed me that he had already heard about the shells.  So we must assume here that Fritz (to make good the Hill version) had heard neither Mooney's shout nor Hill's, supposedly coming just after Mooney's.  Hill's version is more credible, it seems, at first, than the Sims/Boyd version.

But Hill then proceeds to call the first part of his sequencing into question.  He does a little time traveling, oh only about 10 minutes, but still traveling:  "About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the Crime Lab was arriving" (p47).  Lt. Day: "Shortly before 1 o'clock I received a call from the police dispatcher to go to 411 Elm Street, Dallas... I arrived at the location on Elm about 1:12." (v4p249)  In 1960s French New Wave film terms, this would be called a jump cut.  Jumping from circa 1:02 to circa 1:12.  Hill:  "And [Day] went on into the building, and I went over to tell Insp. Sawyer... what we found." (p47)

A seemingly harmless advisory.  But, based on Sawyer's curious transmission (see above), about this same time, Sawyer heard Hill say that they had found shells on... the "3rd floor".  As Sawyer testified, "This was reported to me by somebody inside the building" (v6p322)  Hill fills the bill.  And, as we shall see, Fritz has fits.  DPD poetry.

But why did Hill have to tell Sawyer anything?  The two of them--along with a Patrolman Valentine--entered the depository together, about 12:52.  (CE 1974 p28: 12:48 radio transmission: Hill and Valentine "en route Elm & Houston"/Sawyer: "I went [in] with a couple of officers" [v6p317])  At some point, though, the three must have split up and gone their separate ways.  Valentine "was assigned to the fifth floor" (v25p914), and there are indeed photos of him watching over the 5th or 6th floor.  Hill was there for Mooney's find.

But Sawyer must, for some reason, have left the search party early, before anything had been found.  If he had been present at such a significant discovery, he would have radioed as soon as he got back out front.  And at 1:08, Harkness radioes, "Anyone that gets information regarding this incident down here, bring it to 9 [Sawyer] at Elm & Houston." (CE 1974 p50)  So, about 1:08, Sawyer begins processing information out front, but he doesn't use the radio himself until 1:12, after Hill catches him up on what the searchers found, some time after Sawyer splits off.

Re-creating the missing three or four minutes.  The sound of a police radio out front carried well that afternoon.  Det. Johnson, on the 6th floor, could hear a 1:20 transmission re the Tippit shooting (CE 2003 p210).  So... Filling in the time gap between Hill's reporting to Sawyer and his shout to the world:  At 1:12, someone upstairs must have heard Sawyer's "3rd floor" transmission, looked down, and saw Hill with Sawyer.  Cue a "Jerry!  Get your ass up here!" from an upstairs window.  Quick-study Fritz--to forestall any further damage from Hill's cockamamie "3rd floor"--instructs Hill, fetched back upstairs, to go to a nearby 6th-floor window and correct his "mistake", with a shout and a gesture towards the "nest" area, as if the shells had just been discovered there.  The apparent superfluousness of the Hill charade undermines its intended message, which was:  Shells found just now, right here.  But it was not "just now".  Was it also not "right here"?  How, that is, do you get "6th floor" out of "3rd floor"?  And, ever since, it has been a bit of a mystery as to why a second shell shout was even needed, because...

Third version:  ... Mooney reported, on 11/23/63, "I hung my head out of the half- opened window & signaled to Sheriff Decker and Captain Fritz who were outside the building..."  (v19p528)  Fritz, then, had heard Mooney at 12:59, no problem.  But he had to downplay the time of Mooney's discovery and align it more with Hill's later Fritz-inspired shout.

So, (1) by the time of his Commission testimony, Mooney is saying that no one "except the Sheriff" was looking up when he shouted (v3p284).  But we know that at least Harkness and Deputy Sweatt (Decker Exhibit 5323 p531) heard him too.  (2) Harkness is not asked, at the hearings, about his 12:59 request for the Crime Lab, and doesn't deign to mention it.  12:59pm, 11/22/63--one of the most important moments of the century, and the DPD diddles with it, and Counsel David Belin misses it.  And Fritz is off the hook.  A clean sweep.  (3) While several photos of Hill at his window were snapped, none exist re Mooney at *his* window.  (Although... check Trask (p519) for a photograph which shows someone at a SE corner 5th or 6th floor window--unfortunately unidentifiable, from about a block away--at "approximately 1:00".)

Finally, (4) Sawyer's advisory re the third floor is changed, in DPD Sgt. Henslee's transcription, to "fifth floor" (Sawyer Exh B p400), and (5) Sawyer dutifully reads this bogus transcription.  And everyone of course can then, justifiably, take his "fifth floor" to mean "sixth floor".  However, Trask's own transcription (p523), the FBI transcription (CE 1974 p176), and a subsequent DPD transcription (see above) all read "3rd floor".  That "3rd" remains a mystery.  As also the reason for Homicide's pernicious pretense that the shells were not found for about 17 minutes after they were found... All we know is that Fritz knew the secret of the third floor, and enlisted Mooney and fellow officers Sims, Boyd, Hill, Henslee, and Sawyer to help him keep it.  Closing ranks...
 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Donald Willis
correction in one paragraphj

[Tony Krome]

Tom Alyea was on the 6th floor when he heard someone call out to Fritz. Alyea and Fritz moved to the SN and were standing together. Alyea asked Fritz if he could enter the SN for photos. Fritz told him its best he stay outside. Alyea looked over and described the three shells were so close together that they could be covered with a bushel basket. Alyea later stated that alone he took photos of the boxes in their original position before they were re-arranged. I assume, since the shells were later photographed, so spread out that they would in no way fit together under a bushel basket, that they too were re-arranged.

You described a 10 minute difference in your post.

[Donald Willis]

16 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

Tom Alyea was on the 6th floor when he heard someone call out to Fritz. Alyea and Fritz moved to the SN and were standing together. Alyea asked Fritz if he could enter the SN for photos. Fritz told him its best he stay outside. Alyea looked over and described the three shells were so close together that they could be covered with a bushel basket. Alyea later stated that alone he took photos of the boxes in their original position before they were re-arranged. I assume, since the shells were later photographed, so spread out that they would in no way fit together under a bushel basket, that they too were re-arranged.

You described a 10 minute difference in your post.

I have long since learned to ignore Alyea.  For instance, there's a photo (pointed out by No True Flags Here)  of him looking out a 7th-floor window just as the shells are being found at 1:00.    And he maintained that he photographed the shells just as they were found, or as Fritz was holding them.  No such photo has been made public.  He wasn't even there.  

[Tony Krome]

3 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

And he (Alyea) maintained that he photographed the shells just as they were found, or as Fritz was holding them.  No such photo has been made public.  He wasn't even there.  

If Alyea wasn't there, how did he know Fritz picked them up?

Mr. BALL They were turned over to Captain Fritz?
Mr. MOONEY. Yes, sir; he was the first officer that picked them up, as far as I know, because I stood there and watched him go over and pick them up and look at them.

Alyea; Fritz then walked to the casings, picked them up and held them in his hand over the top of the boxes for me to get a close-up shot of the evidence. I filmed about eight seconds of a close-up shot of the shell casings in Captain Fritz's hand.

[Donald Willis]

3 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

If Alyea wasn't there, how did he know Fritz picked them up?

Mr. BALL They were turned over to Captain Fritz?
Mr. MOONEY. Yes, sir; he was the first officer that picked them up, as far as I know, because I stood there and watched him go over and pick them up and look at them.

Alyea; Fritz then walked to the casings, picked them up and held them in his hand over the top of the boxes for me to get a close-up shot of the evidence. I filmed about eight seconds of a close-up shot of the shell casings in Captain Fritz's hand.

It was apparently pretty common knowledge that he'd either picked them up or had them handed to him.  Deputies Mooney (as you quote) and Faulkner were both there for that moment and recount it.  But if Alyea was there, no one has seen that "eight second" close-up that I know of.  I talked with Faulkner's widow on the phone, some years back, and she was charming.  Apparently, CTs would visit, and she'd dissuade them from their fond beliefs... I used to correspond with Alyea  by email, and he had interesting things to tell.

[Tony Krome]

8 minutes ago, Donald Willis said:

But if Alyea was there, no one has seen that "eight second" close-up that I know of.

That does not mean that Alyea did not film that footage.

Alyea recounts that he saw the casings close together. Mooney also suggests they were closer together;

Mr. Ball. You mean the "B" cartridge should be closer to the "C"?

Mr. Mooney. Closer to the "C"; yes, sir.

Was this common knowledge too, that Alyea later picked up on? Or was he actually there?