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General Discussion & Debate / Re: Free Book Now Available -- Hasty Judgment: Why the JFK Case Is Not Closed
« Last post by Martin Weidmann on Today at 02:35:55 AM »Klein's Vice President assumed that the company's records were accurate? WOW! Imagine that.
Mr. BELIN. Mr. Waldman, you have just put the microfilm which we call D-77 into your viewer which is marked a Microfilm Reader-Printer, and you have identified this as No. 270502, according to your records. Is this just a record number of yours on this particular shipment?
Mr. WALDMAN. That's a number which we assign for identification purposes.
Mr. BELIN. And on the microfilm record, would you please state who it shows this particular rifle was shipped
Mr. WALDMAN. Shipped to a Mr. A.--last name H-i-d-e-l-l, Post Office Box 2915, Dallas, Tex.
Mr. BELIN. And does it show arts' serial number or control number?
Mr. WALDMAN. It shows shipment of a rifle bearing our control number VC-836 and serial number C-2766.
Mr. BELIN. Is there a price shown for that?
Mr. WALDMAN. Price is $19.95, plus $1.50 postage and handling, or a total of $21.45.
Mr. BELIN. Now, I see another number off to the left. What is this number?
Mr. WALDMAN. The number that you referred to, C20-T750 is a catalog number.
Mr. BELIN. And after that, there appears some words of identification or description. Can you state what that is?
Mr. WALDMAN. The number designates an item which we sell, namely, an Italian carbine, 6.5 caliber rifle with the 4X scope.
Mr. BELIN. Is there a date of shipment which appears on this microfilm record?
Mr. WALDMAN. Yes; the date of shipment was March 20, 1963.
Mr. BELIN. Does it show by what means it was shipped?
Mr. WALDMAN. It was shipped by parcel post as indicated by this circle around the letters "PP."
Mr. BELIN. Does it show if any amount was enclosed with the order itself?
Mr. WALDMAN. Yes; the amount that was enclosed with the order was $21.45, as designated on the right-hand side of this order blank here.
Mr. BELIN. Opposite the words "total amount enclosed"?
Mr. WALDMAN. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. Is there anything which indicates in what form you received the money?
Mr. WALDMAN. Yes; below the amount is shown the letters "MO" designating money order.
Mr. BELIN. Now, I see the extreme top of this microfilm, the date, March 13, 1963; to what does that refer?
Mr. WALDMAN. This is an imprint made by our cash register indicating that the remittance received from the customer was passed through our register on that date.
Mr. BELIN. And to the right of that, I see $21.45. Is that correct?
Mr. WALDMAN. That's correct.
Waldman wasn't just saying that he assumed that the rifle was shipped to a Mr. A. Hidell, Post Office Box 2915, Dallas, Tex. He asserted positively that rifle was shipped to a Mr. A. Hidell, Post Office Box 2915, Dallas, Tex. He trusted what his own company's records were showing him.
Handwriting identification is consistently accepted as evidence in courts of law. The money order and CE 773 were examined by four or five experts in forensic document analysis. Maybe more.
Waldman wasn't just saying that he assumed that the rifle was shipped to a Mr. A. Hidell, Post Office Box 2915, Dallas, Tex. He asserted positively that rifle was shipped to a Mr. A. Hidell, Post Office Box 2915, Dallas, Tex. He trusted what his own company's records were showing him.
Thanks for showing the contradiction in your own argument.
If Waldman "trusted what his own company's records were showing him" he was in fact making an assumption. He may have confidently believed that the rifle was shipped to Hidell, but unless he actually shipped it himself, all he could do was assume that the rifle was actually send to the person mentioned on the form.
Handwriting identification is consistently accepted as evidence in courts of law. The money order and CE 773 were examined by four or five experts in forensic document analysis. Maybe more.
Appeal to a majority is a logical fallacy. The fact that more than one expert examined the photocopies and compared them to other writings claimed to be by Oswald's hand, do not make the conclusion true or correct. If you let several people do the exact same flawed test over and over again, you'll still end up with the same result every time.
Of course handwriting identification is accepted as evidence in the courts. I've been involved in several cases over the past 30 years where that was the case. It's not the findings of the expert that is the problem, it's the quality of the test. In this case, the experts had to work with photocopies of only a few handwritten words. They had no certified handwritings of Oswald to compare the documents with. All they had were some documents which they were told were written by Oswald. There was no authentication in the normal prescribed manner. And there was no way to examine the documents for the pressure applied to the paper by the pen and/or the flow of the pen over the paper during the writing. In other words, the procedure followed to make a determination was seriously flawed and probably wouldn't have held up in court. I have worked with handwriting experts enough to know that any "expert" that declares to 100% certainty that a text was writen by one particular person, to the exclusion of all others, should be instantly kicked out of the profession.
But after all this having been said, the bottom line is that the only thing that connects Hidell to the purchase of a rifle from Klein's are a few handwritten words on a order form and a money order, which some handwriting experts declared was Oswald's handwriting. That's it.... That's all there is.
