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Tom Alyea's Sniper's Nest Mystery Hull
The mystery follows from Warren Commission testimonies of Lt. Carl Day and Detective Richard Sims. Per their testimonies the three hulls found in the sniper's nest were collected and fingerprinted by Lt. Day and then put into an envelope and given to Sims for custody. This is just as the rifle was discovered and the detectives were sent to that area. Later Tom Alyea filmed the sniper's nest just a few minutes before 2 p.m. Therefore, Alyea filmed a hull that should not be there at that time.

I used a technique of “frame registration and stacking” to obtain a clearer image compared with single video frames of Alyea's film of the Sniper's Nest. The technique and software are widely used in the astronomy community. An enhancement of a 171 frame stack from WFAA video shows an apparent hull near the hull “B” area (DPD Crime Lab photos) but is now rotated towards Alyea's camera. It is similar in shape and size with Mannlicher Carcano spent hulls. There is no gouge or defect in the flooring at this location. The artifact is not viewable in single frames of the film. Perhaps it is viewable in the original 16mm film, if it still exists.
I've timed Alyea's filming that scene at just a very few minutes before 2:00 p.m. when Studebaker and Alyea returned to the sniper's nest after filming the rifle. This is about the same time Lt. Day left the building with the rifle. If I recall correctly the Warren Commission testimonies the hulls were fingerprinted and bagged just before the rifle was found. There should not be any hull on the floor at the hull “B” location in Alyea's film. It is missing in a crisp photo taken by William Allen around 3 pm. What is this if not a spent rifle shell?
The source of the Tom Alyea film clip was the WFAA 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition of the “the story behind the story JFK”. Jay Watson played some of the Alyea film as soon as it was processed for TV. The sniper nest scenes contained the chyron “DALLAS”. This is important as you will read later.
The stacking procedure is almost standard practice for armature astronomers. I was doing this myself during Covid 19 using cell phone video taken of moon features with an 8” telescope. It is this experience that gave me the idea to try it on JFK videos. I don't know of anyone else doing this for JFKA video.
The process of stacking first involves registration of the source frames. This is done automatically after fixed reference features of the SCENE are selected and marked. The software then will internally register the 8 bit frames and stack them into a 16 bit buffer. The final output is a single frame that is the sum of the input frames. The stack then includes all of the features of the input frames as an average frame. The entire process relies on the improvement of signal-to-noise (S/N) as more registered frames are stacked. Video noise in these video frames is essentially averaged and smoothed. The signal to noise improves with a theoretical square root of the number of source images. Thus, for my 171 frame image there is roughly 13x improvement of S/N. The raw image at this point is usually blurrier than any single frame might be.
The next step processes the raw stack using special sharpening tools based on “wavelets”. The math is a little beyond me but the image is sharped just by moving sliders until a desired result is (hopefully) found. It is a fairly steep learning curve to get decent results. The end result is an apparent sharpening of fixed points in the scene. Features in the individual frames that change in location and not part of the scene will become blurred or even “ghosted”.
Alyea filmed his scenes as a human tripod. Almost, but he held the camera on his subject fairly steady. But for these 171 frames the camera did move slightly during his filming and, therefore, become blurred with the fixed scene remaining sharp. The same thing holds for possible imperfections, (e.g. a scratch or spec of dirt,), in the camera lens. It too would become blurred as the camera moved. Film development imperfections would also be ghosted. The DALLAS chyron appears blurred because is was not part of the subject scene but added to all frames at a fixed location.
The hull is visible due to being a fixed feature in the scene. Alyea filmed the sniper's nest scene with a second take at a lower light exposure level. The scene is darker, and plagued with his “film loop” malfunction. Moreover, a similarly processed stack of this second take shows this same hull in the same location.
I'm attaching the registered 171 frame stack before sharpening. I can't see any evidence for the hull. The registered frames are available to the user and ready for making an un-sharpened stabilized gif. I've done that and playing the video,
and knowing where to look, can see fleeting, random sections but never a clear indication that something is actually present. There is just too much video noise. I wonder if the original film might show something there, if the film still exists. Below is an example of another scene from Alyea taken after he and Studebaker left the nest area and are now at the area of the rifle and NW stairs. In the enhanced frame below one can easily identify a flash bulb and Speed Graphic camera atop the boxes. Can you see the bulb in the single frame? Can you even tell that is a camera atop the boxes?

As for the timing of the SN views I relied on the sun interacting with the window's east vertical bricks. In the Alyea film the sun is just beginning to shine on the northern edge of these window bricks. A forum member and I were independently 3D modeling the sniper nest to estimate the timing of the film. Between the two of us there was almost 20 minutes difference of when we simulated the Alyea sun. I was having issues with the various dimensions of the window, that greatly affected the timing. I decided the only way I could get an accurate time would be boots-on-the-ground at the upcoming 2021 November 22'nd anniversary. Buell Frazier was to be the guest speaker and I wished to see him. The weather prediction was clear sky so I planned to spend a few nights in Dallas. Frazier's talk ended about 12:30 p.m. which gave me time get downstairs in order to take a series of photographs. There were many people touring at this time and I had to kinda blend in and orbit around the SN exhibit. Finally at about 13:51 the first rays of sun hit the bricks edge. By about 13:55 the sun was at good match to Alyea's view. By 14:00 the sun appears to have already passed the Alyea view. Thus, I'm confident the true timing is a few minutes before 2:00 p.m.
