JFK Assassination Forum

Your whole premise assumes Oswald was hoping to get away with the crime. I think he was perfectly willing to trade his life for JFK's. If that was his mindset, none of the above items could be classified as mistakes.

You think Oswald had already contemplated shooting JFK before  Oswald ( or whomever ) ordered a rifle by mail?

Shocker. So, they switched bullets the big question is why?

As most JFK researchers know, the “Walker Bullet,” or CE 573, was purportedly extracted from the home of General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963, and was contemporaneously described in official Dallas Police Department (DPD) reports as “steel jacketed.”

Someone had taken a potshot at Walker that night, through the window on the rear side of his house, in front of which the General was seated. Or so Walker had related to the DPD that night.

Not one, but rather two, DPD detectives, by the names of Ira Van Cleave and Don E. McElroy, put their signatures on a General Offense Report, and authored and signed a Supplementary Offense Report on April 10.

In the Supplementary Offense Report, both detectives observed “a bullet of unknown caliber, steel jacket, had been shot through the window” at Walker’s home, as the General sat his desk.[1]

Two DPD patrolmen, B.G. Norvell and J.P. Tucker authored the General Offense Report, which also identified the Walker Bullet as a “steel jacketed bullet.”  DPD officers had held the Walker Bullet that night in their hands, and inscribed initials into it, as did a Lt. Day of the DPD a day later, according to official reports.

Months later, the Warren Commission (WC) would conclude it was Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) who shot at and attempted to murder Walker that night. The WC reached that conclusion after the FBI said the Walker Bullet, or CE 573, was in fact the same type of Western-brand ammo that LHO used in his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

Of course, the problem is the Walker Bullet in the possession of the Warren Commission, CE 573, is copper jacketed, and obviously so.

CE 573, whatever its true origins, is a severely mangled bullet; so much so that its copper-jacketing has been torn asunder. Thus any observer, even a layman, can easily see the copper jacket is in fact copper through-and-through, and not a relatively uncommon steel-jacketed bullet with copper-gilding. It would not be surprising if a photo of CE 573 is used in police-cadet training courses somewhere as a classic example of a copper-jacketed bullet.

Moreover, there are initials carved into CE 573, though of mysterious origin. Anyone carving initials into a copper-jacketed bullet would immediately know it was copper-jacketed, and not steel-jacketed, as copper is softer than steel.

In addition, anyone carving initials into a copper-gilded steel jacketed bullet would notice the steel color and hardness emerging from under the microscopically thin copper gilding. It is inexplicable that even one big-city police detective would describe CE 573 as “steel-jacketed.”

But two DPD detectives and two DPD patrolman authored and signed brief one-page reports prominently describing the Walker Bullet as exactly that, “steel jacketed”—after having handled the slug and marking it with their initials.

---30---

Here is a photo of the CE-573, the bullet that the WC says that the FBI says is the bullet that was retrieved from Walker's residence April 10 1963. Remember, the WC had to rely on the FBI for investigative work, and much else.



I doubt even a novice weekend plinker would identify CE-573 as a "steel-jacketed" bullet.

So why is this important?

Sadly, it indicates that FBI was willing to manipulate evidence. It is inconceivable that two DPD detectives, and also two DPD patrolmen, all identified the CE-573 as a steel-jacketed bullet, in official reports, in what was the most important attempted murder case in Texas history, up to that point, in April of 1963.

Walker was then a major public figure. The would-be assassin's slug found in the Walker house was key evidence.

The reasonable deduction from the above, that someone switched out the true Walker bullet for a copper-jacketed version, does not exonerate LHO in the JFKA, or necessarily suggest a wide-ranging Deep State plot to assassinate JFK.

It does make uncomfortable placing 100% faith in the FBI's investigation of the JFKA. And remember, it was the FBI that did legwork for the WC---a commission that was leaning heavily to the LNT before it was even formed.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.



 

Channeling the late Perry, I believe he would have laid the foundation I suggested: Oswald's complete lack of expressed animosity toward JFK and his inexplicably normal behavior the night before and morning of. With that foundation, he would have poked the holes that CTers always attempt to poke in the evidence. Obviously, a conspiracy that Oswald was knowingly part of would do him no good, so the focus would have had to be on his complete innocence. That would have been a very uphill battle. (For those who don't know, Raymond Burr was a weird guy. Apparently to conceal his homosexuality, he created an entire fabricated history about a wife who had died in an airplane crash and a son who had died of leukemia.)

Here is Larry Schnapf's substack article on the various mock trials that have been held, which is more than I had realized: https://larryschnapf.substack.com/p/what-do-the-jfk-assassination-mock.

An interesting question is to what extent the murder of Tippit could have been mentioned. Surprisingly, it was apparently a major feature of the famous 1986 made-for-TV mock trial. I am skeptical about this. The murder of Tippit could be used to show consciousness of guilt, but not unless Oswald were guilty of that murder. Possibly the trial of that murder would have been held first in real life. To try the two murders together would have been very confusing and prejudicial to Oswald. I have to believe Bugliosi and Spence stipulated to the use of the Tippit murder for dramatic effect for the TV show.

The 1986 mock trial was little more than a TV movie. Flamboyant showman Gerry Spence was probably the wrong choice and not reflective of how a serious defense would have been conducted, but even he complained that the rules of evidence were not followed and that what should have been a four-month trial was limited to four days. If Oswald had competent, serious counsel with adequate resources, the trial could have been much longer than four months.

I knew an attorney who litigated against Spence. He said that when Spence finished with a witness and turned him over to the opposing attorney, he would politely say "Your witness, counsel" for all to hear and then mutter under his breath as he walked back to the defense table something like "you stupid incompetent motherf***er" just to throw the attorney off his game. I also met his ex-son-in-law at a rock and mineral show in Quartzsite, which is as close to old Gerry as I ever got. My wife picked up a "pretty rock" and asked how much. When the guy said $25,000, she was literally trembling as she carefully put it back down.

I am not applauding or condoning whatever he did in connection with the JFKA, up to and including being a Lone Nut. I'm saying that I have empathy for who he was and what factors likely led him to do it. I would have the same empathy if he'd assassinated the local dogcatcher. The fact that JFK was the victim really doesn't change that analysis. I don't see anything about Oswald that should give me some visceral hatred for him. I guess we could debate what "harm to the country" he actually did, but LBJ was firmly at the helm within a matter of days and in some ways was a far more qualified President. About the only thing to which JFK worshippers can point is that the Vietnam War likely would not have escalated to the same extent if JFK had lived and been reelected. Even that is speculation to some degree, but the rest is mostly the rose-colored glasses that people wear when a leader dies young and tragically. Probably the whole JFKA thing has created a great deal of public skepticism about government, which can be viewed as a harm (or maybe not), but the way the WC proceeded largely justifies that skepticism.

I hope Oswald never had a minute of happiness in his life. After what he did, he deserved everything bad that happened to him including Jack Ruby shredding his guts with a well place .38 Special bullet. I hope he was conscious up until he went into surgery and was feeling excruciating pain. People choose to be what they are. He chose to be an evil monster.