That's pretty damned thin. So Craig's "mental problem" invented the 7.65 Mauser part? And why do you believe that the rifle Craig was reading was the same rifle in the Alyea film? Was it because Fritz or Day said so?
Craig didn't claim that he saw "7.65 Mauser" stamped into the barrel until his videotaped interview with Lane in 1973. His 1971 account of the rifle's discovery "When They Kill A President" In '68 doesn't mention it. Nor did Craig mention it in his Shaw trial testimony. Craig and Penn Jones were given a joint interview by the LA Free Press in 1968. This is what Craig said in that interview:
"RC: ...I was also present when the rifle was found. Now this rifle — there's no possible way that a man could lay that rifle between those boxes. He had to drop It in there, I'm six feet tall, and I couldn't reach down and pick that, rifle out without climbing on top of those boxes and getting down in 'em by moving some of 'em to get to that rifle. And there wasn't a scratch on that rifle, and the scope was not one fraction out of kilter.
FP: Did you handle that rifle?
RC: Yes, I did. I couldn't give its name because I don't know foreign rifles. I know it was foreign made, and you loaded it downward into a built-in clip. The ID man took it and ejected one live round from it. The scope was facing north, the bolt facing upwards and the trigger south. But there was another rifle, a Mauser, found up on the roof of the depository that afternoon."
His '68 story excludes the '73 version, and vice versa. You'd think that he would have gotten his story straight, had it happened that way.
