Lack Of Damage To CE-399

[Tim Nickerson]

So it's your position that what it says in CE2011 is the same as it says in SAC Shanklin's airtel?

Yes.

[Martin Weidmann]

Yes.

Then I understand why you don't understand what the problem is.

[Tim Nickerson]

Actually, Odum denied ever having in his possession bullet CE399 or showing it to anyone, which is a far cry from having no recollection. But I don't care how you want to categorize Odum.

Tomlinson was pretty clear that he was only shown a bullet by an FBI agent once (he said it twice, if I remember correctly) and that was by Shanklin about a week after the murder.

Where can we view Odum's statement?

[Jerry Freeman]

The day before the interview with Holland, Thompson interviewed Marilyn Sitzman who stood about 150 ft closer to the fence corner than was Holland. Sitzman was also elevated and could see down towards the fence line and into the parking lot. She had no recollection of a figure standing there. Thompson therefore ignored the better witness.

Now Jerry...you've been out there and know better than that. For those who haven't--- A brief 15 sec. clip shows the area pretty well. We know where all the persons mentioned were located. Sitzman looking east to the right of the frame at the motorcade moving west...How would she be able to see a 'figure' behind her? There is abundant blockage in the parking lot behind. A perfect lair for an assassination.

   

[Andrew Mason]

It seems it was you who wasn't paying attention, so don't blame that on me.

Furthermore, I have destroyed your entire argument. You can not simply assume that Tomlinson found the bullet now in evidence as CE399 simply because you don't have reasonable knowledge about who it is that could have been lying. There is a circumstantial case to make that shows that the bullet now in evidence as CE399 isn't the one that Tomlinson found, but you probably don't want to know about it.

It is not an assumption that Tomlinson found CE399. It is based on evidence. The only assumption is that no one in the chain is lying and was part of a conspiracy to falsify evidence.  Somehow you think it is reasonable to assume that someone was lying and was part of a conspiracy. That is not reasonable.

The fact that people in the chain of possession cannot remember what the bullet looked like is immaterial.  That is why police seal exhibits in little bags and put their initials on them and put them in lockers. They can't rely on memory to recognize these things later.

Suppose you have a chain of 5 people digging in a dark tunnel, A, B, C, D and E.  A finds an object that feels like a bullet and hands it to the person next to him and says pass it on.  That is repeated to the end of the chain and E, the last person, puts his initials on the object and identifies it as a bullet CE399.  Each other person in the chain says they can't recognize the bullet-like object that they were handed but they handed over whatever it was that was handed to them and said "pass it on".  I say that this is evidence that CE399 was the object found by A.   You would you say that there is circumstantial evidence that the object isn't and that at least one of A, B, C, D or E is lying. If not, what is the difference between that scenario and Tomlinson, OPWright, Johnson, Rowley and Todd?

[Andrew Mason]

You haven't though. You claimed that a pristine bullet striking at an angle x to the perpendicular to the surface will make an elliptical entrance wound whose length to width is in proportion to:1/cos x. You haven't shown where you came up with that. Even still, with using it, the length of the entrance wound would be 3.86 cm.

1/cos75? = 3.86

Length/Width = 1/cos x.  So L = W/cos x.  The width is not 1 cm. It is roughly .75 cm, a bit bigger than the diameter of the bullet.

The relationship is just based on geometry. When a cylindrical object passes through a flat surface at an angle, it makes an elliptical shaped hole on the surface.  The width, W,  of the ellipse is the diameter of the cylinder. The length of that ellipse, L,  is the hypotenuse of a right triangle, one side of which is the bullet diameter, W. The angle between those two sides, x,  is the angle that the bullet axis makes to the perpendicular to the surface (90 deg. - bullet angle to the surface).  By trigonometry, Lcos x = W

Poke a bullet into a wad of flattened plasticine and you will see this.

[Martin Weidmann]

Where can we view Odum's statement?

Why so disingenuous, Tim? Why are you asking only for Odum's statement and not Tomlinson's?

Could it possibly be that you know full well that there is no testimony or deposition from Odum? But that doesn't mean he didn't say what he said, does it now?

As we have discussed this before, I also know that you already know where the information came from. If you didn't, you wouldn't have been able to incorrectly claim earlier that "Bardwell Odum had no recollection of handling CE-399 four decades prior".

Odum told Gary Alquiler on 09/12/02 that he never had CE399 or showed it to anyone.

We find confirmation for this in two statements made by Tomlinson. On March 23, 1964 Tomlinson gave a deposition to Specter in which he said;

Mr. SPECTER. Have you been interviewed about this matter by any other Federal representative?
Mr. TOMLINSON. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Who interviewed you about it?
Mr. TOMLINSON. I don't remember the name of either one of them, but one was the FBI man and one was the Secret Service man.
Mr. SPECTER. How many times did the FBI interview you?
Mr. TOMLINSON. Once.
Mr. SPECTER. How many times did the Secret Service interview you?
Mr. TOMLINSON. Once.
Mr. SPECTER. When did the FBI interview you?
Mr. TOMLINSON. I believe they were the first to do it.
Mr. SPECTER. Approximately when was that?
Mr. TOMLINSON. I think that was the latter part of November.
Mr. SPECTER. And when did the Secret Service interview you?
Mr. TOMLINSON. Approximately a week later, the first part of December.

Btw, the Secret Service interview, which took place on December 4 - 5, 1963, is recorded in a report by SA Roger C Warner dated December 5, 1963

The second interview was with Raymond Marcus on July 25, 1966. In the verbatim report of the interview, which is held by the National Archives as part of the HSCA files, Tomlinson clearly says that he was only shown the bullet once, which was by SAC Shanklin about a week after the murder. 

Combined, these two statements made by Tomlinson make it beyond obvious that Odum never showed Tomlinson CE399, which in my mind not only shows that the reference in CE2011 to Odum showing both men the bullet is a lie. It also provides an explanation for why SAC Shanklin wrote in his airtel that Tomlinson and Wright could not identify the bullet. I am convinced that when Shanklin received the bullet now in evidence as CE399 in mid 1964 he instantly knew that it wasn't the same bullet he had seen and shown to Tomlinson and Wright in December 1963. There was no need for Odum to show the bullet to Tomlinson and Wright (and risk a firm denial from two key witnesses) and it was far easier to deal with the matter as he did in the airtel.

[Martin Weidmann]

It is not an assumption that Tomlinson found CE399. It is based on evidence. The only assumption is that no one in the chain is lying and was part of a conspiracy to falsify evidence.  Somehow you think it is reasonable to assume that someone was lying and was part of a conspiracy. That is not reasonable.

The fact that people in the chain of possession cannot remember what the bullet looked like is immaterial.  That is why police seal exhibits in little bags and put their initials on them and put them in lockers. They can't rely on memory to recognize these things later.

Suppose you have a chain of 5 people digging in a dark tunnel, A, B, C, D and E.  A finds an object that feels like a bullet and hands it to the person next to him and says pass it on.  That is repeated to the end of the chain and E, the last person, puts his initials on the object and identifies it as a bullet CE399.  Each other person in the chain says they can't recognize the bullet-like object that they were handed but they handed over whatever it was that was handed to them and said "pass it on".  I say that this is evidence that CE399 was the object found by A.   You would you say that there is circumstantial evidence that the object isn't and that at least one of A, B, C, D or E is lying. If not, what is the difference between that scenario and Tomlinson, OPWright, Johnson, Rowley and Todd?

It is not an assumption that Tomlinson found CE399.

Wrong. It is not an assumption that Tomlinson found a bullet. It is a massive assumption to say that bullet is the one now in evidence as CE399.

It is based on evidence.

No it isn't. There isn't a shred of evidence that shows the bullet found by Tomlinson is the same one that is now in evidence as CE399.

The only assumption is that no one in the chain is lying and was part of a conspiracy to falsify evidence.  Somehow you think it is reasonable to assume that someone was lying and was part of a conspiracy. That is not reasonable.

How in the world is assuming that nobody was lying more reasonable than assuming that someone was lying? Both are assumptions

The fact that people in the chain of possession cannot remember what the bullet looked like is immaterial.  That is why police seal exhibits in little bags and put their initials on them and put them in lockers. They can't rely on memory to recognize these things later.

Expect in this case that didn't happen, despite the fact that Parkland Hospital had evidence bags available. Johnson did not put the bullet in an envelope until he gave it to Rowley.

Suppose you have a chain of 5 people digging in a dark tunnel, A, B, C, D and E.  A finds an object that feels like a bullet and hands it to the person next to him and says pass it on.  That is repeated to the end of the chain and E, the last person, puts his initials on the object and identifies it as a bullet CE399.  Each other person in the chain says they can't recognize the bullet-like object that they were handed but they handed over whatever it was that was handed to them and said "pass it on".  I say that this is evidence that CE399 was the object found by A.   

And I would say that you would be correct because inside a tunnel there would not be a possibility to substitute or manipulate the piece of evidence. However, Tomlinson, Wright, Johnson, Rowley and Todd were not in a tunnel

You would you say that there is circumstantial evidence that the object isn't and that at least one of A, B, C, D or E is lying. If not, what is the difference between that scenario and Tomlinson, OPWright, Johnson, Rowley and Todd?

Already explained. The men were not in a tunnel, so your example goes nowhere.