The Sawyer Memo and a Winchester

[Lance Payette]

LP:

Evidently you contend you know more about Inspector Sawyer saw and did on 11.22 than Sawyer himself, and as he testified under oath to the WC. 

Well, hubris is sometimes a trait of CT'ers and LNT'ers.

Is this some game? Is deliberate obtuseness a new debating technique?

I don't have any problem at all with what Sawyer told the WC or with anything else that Sawyer ACTUALLY SAID. Neither I nor anyone else seems to know where the "Winchester" came from. Speculation is that Euins described the sound as being like an "automatic" rifle and that Sawyer or someone expanded this into a Winchester (not an automatic rifle!) because "Rifleman" was then extremely popular and opens with Chuck Connors firing his Winchester about 20 times in three seconds.

We have NO EVIDENCE AT ALL of Sawyer saying anything about a mystery man running from the rear of the TSBD with a rifle. The actual evidence - Sawyer's WC testimony and the FBI report I linked - is to the CONTRARY.

FWIW, Chuck's Winchester was not a 30-30 but a 44-40:

[Lance Payette]

In my quest, I reviewed the WC testimony of Sorrels, Brennan and Euins - really nothing helpful. Brennan and Euins both said "high-powered rifle." Nothing specifically suggesting a 30-30 or Winchester. Hard to believe Sawyer would just substitute that phrase for "high-powered rifle." And where did "carrying" come from? And then we have the fact that the rifle was omitted (I believe) from the description that was then transmitted more widely.

Brennan did say that he told Sawyer that those officers running toward the knoll and railroad yard were "running in the wrong direction." Could this be the source of confusion that the assassin was running out the rear of the TSBD?

I did discover at Ken Rahn's site a lengthy excerpt from Brennan's 1987 book, Eyewitness to History. https://kenrahn.com/JFK/History/The_deed/Brennan/Brennan_book.html.

If we can believe him - a big if - he observed Oswald at considerable length before any shots were fired, so this could explain why he seemed to have a better description than we might expect. He also goes on at length about a mystery Oldsmobile with a white driver that was parked oddly and illegally on Houston Street near the side entrance at the rear of the TSBD before the JFKA. Even though it was parked oddly and illegally - and, Brennan obviously thinks, suspiciously - he saw a policeman approach the car and laugh with the driver. After the JFKA, Brennan immediately noticed the mystery car was gone.

One might think that this might account for the confusion about a mystery man with a rifle running from the rear of the TSBD - but, alas, Brennan never reported the illegally parked Oldsmobile.

Here is DVP's stuff on Brennan: https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/howard-brennan.html. He suggests Sawyer's conversation with Brennan had to be considerably after Sawyer's. However, the FBI report I linked seemed to have Sawyer saying Sorrels was present.

And on it goes. I see no basis for anyone, including Sawyer, actually having said a man was running from the rear of the TSBD with a Winchester. It all just sounds like understandable chaos and confusion.

[John Corbett]

I doubt anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time around rifles could determine from sound alone whether a rifle was high powered or not. The first time I heard a gun fired was when I went to a Thanksgiving turkey shoot with my Dad. I still remember how I jumped when I first heard the crack of a rifle. They were firing a little old .22 LR. It sure sounded high powered to me.

[Lance Payette]

Mark is going to call me a dog with a bone next  , but here's the latest ...

Reviewing the 2025 thread at the Ed Forum, I see the connection Ben is making. He is assuming that Sawyer’s WC testimony, in which he simply confirmed the physical description that he relayed, was referring to the citizen described in the 1/9/64 Airtel as having seen someone running from the TSBD with a rifle. (I was wrong in one statement above: The transmission to all units by Sgt. Henslee did refer to the suspect as “believed to be armed with a .30 caliber rifle.”) But as I have stated, the Airtel is not Sawyer speaking – it is a multiple-hearsay description of what Shanklin is telling Hoover that Malley told him that Batchelor told Drain as to what Sawyer had supposedly said (and we don’t know where Batchelor heard it). There is no compelling reason to make the connection Ben is making – i.e., that Sawyer at the WC was confirming the part about someone running from the TSBD with a rifle.

The provenance of the Airtel is odd. It stands alone, among many other documents, in FBI Oswald Headquarters File (105-82555), Section 64, page 117: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57753#relPageId=117.

At the 2025 thread, Steve Thomas provided further information (as previously gathered by Bill Simpich):

On January 19, 1964, Hoover responded to Rankin concerning the description of Oswald that was broadcast. This is in the same HQ File, page 109: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57753#relPageId=109. Hoover wrote that the DPD said that the description was “by an unidentified citizen who had observed an individual approximating Oswald’s description running from the Texas School Book Depository Building immediately after the assassination. Although this citizen was requested by Dallas authorities to proceed to the Sheriff’s Office for further questioning, he apparently never appeared as the Dallas Sheriff’s Office can locate no record on this citizen.” (How weird would that have been?)

Unless Hoover is just making stuff up to make the issue go away – entirely possible – it sounds as though he had at least a bit more information than was contained in the Airtel. Petrhaps there was a follow-up call that made clear there was nothing on whoever supposedly saw the man running from the TSBD.

On November 12, 1964 – after the WR had been issued – Hoover reiterated to Rankin that the information for the transmitted description came from an unidentified citizen and stated that he didn’t think further follow-up would be productive: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60311#relPageId=72. A follow-up letter from Rankin to Hoover refers to Hoover’s letter of November 12 and the desirability of nailing down the source of the description: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60312#relPageId=33. Simpich says there didn’t seem to be anything further.

At the WC, all that Sawyer could remember was that the information for the description came “mainly from one witness,” a “white man” who “wasn’t young” but “wasn’t old” and who “claimed to have seen the rifle barrel in the fifth or sixth floor of the building, and claimed to have been able to see the man up there.”

That’s Brennan.

My guess: The whole “man running from the rear of the TSBD with a rifle” is a red herring, all flowing from the multiple-hearsay 1/9/64 Airtel. It is inconceivable that if someone had actually said he had seen a man running from the rear of the TSBD with a rifle, Sawyer would have failed to immediately relay this critical information to anyone and would have simply said, “Go on down to the Sheriff’s Office and tell them your story, willya?” At the Ed Forum, however, the whole thing spiraled off into the conspiracy ozone.