A time to receive and give (CE399)

[Andrew Mason]

What are you really saying? That Johnsen and/or Rowley couldn't possibly be involved in a high level conspiracy because they are law enforcement? Really? Are you actually this naive?

I don't assume that all people are lying, although some do in just about every case, but I am also not foolish enough to believe that witness testimony is always reliable. As a lawyer you seem to be willing to ignore that the chain of custody's sole purpose is to protect the authenticity of the evidence against possible manipulation by law enforcement.

A chain of custody is required to guard against accidents or mistakes that can happen within a busy police force where evidence from cases could get mixed up. It is not intended to guard against deliberate evidence tampering by police, nor does it.

It is apparent that the bullet found by Tomlinson did not get accidentally mixed up here because CE399 is definitely related to the C2766 rifle.

You seem to think that everyone has to be able to identify the bullet, months even years later. There is no expectation that Tomlinson or Wright should have put their initials on the bullet. Why should they be expected to identify it later? There is no reason for 3 Secret Service agents to put their initials on it.

Even if Johnsen had put his initial on it, that would not prove that he hadn't deliberately switched the bullet that Wright gave him.

If you are willing to accept evidence simply because a cop said so, then we are indeed living in different universes. I can't help but notice that you are willing to overlook the problem caused by the way Johnsen and Rowley handled the bullet. Why is that?

I just don't have any evidence that leads me to suspect, let alone conclude, that Johnsen, Rowley or Todd fabricated evidence. Unless you have evidence that someone planted CE399 after Tomlinson, what reason would there be to find that Tomlinson did not find CE399?

For starters, it is in no way certain that it was Oswald's rifle that was found at the TSBD. The only evidence that links Oswald tentatively  to any rifle are easy to manipulate photocopies of a Klein's order form, a money order and an envelope, allegedly in his handwriting, taken from a microfilm which since has mysteriously been lost, just as the original documents. As the order document is in name of A. Hidell, it can not be ruled out that Oswald was manipulated to fill out the documents. In any case, we only have the word of an FBI handwriting expert that it is Oswald's handwriting on the forms in the first place. The most troubling part, as far as I am concerned, is that the rifle ordered was a 36" and the rifle found at the TSBD was a 40". Nothing seems to match up and most of the "evidence" is extremely vague to say the least.

Some jurors had doubts that OJ Simpson was guilty. I didn't.

As for the "unmeasured package", that's not really true, is it now? Frazier described it as being held by Oswald in the cup of his hand and under his armpit. Randle said she saw Oswald carry the package next to his leg and it didn't reach the ground. Frazier showed FBI agents to where on the backseat the package reached from the door and they measured it at 27". Although the package itself was not physically measured, these descriptions make it beyond clear that the package couldn't have been long enough to conceal a rifle.

You just admitted it was not measured.

No, I am not convinced of a conspiracy. Unlike you, who seems to be convinced Oswald did it alone, I don't know what really happened. Unlike you, I am willing to consider both possibilities and I am more than happy to be convinced either way by actual evidence.

I am open to the possibility that there may be reliable, credible evidence somewhere of a conspiracy. But none has been found and it is highly improbable that any will be found.

[Martin Weidmann]

A chain of custody is required to guard against accidents or mistakes that can happen within a busy police force where evidence from cases could get mixed up. It is not intended to guard against deliberate evidence tampering by police, nor does it.

The chain of custody is the most critical process of evidence documentation. It is a must to assure the court of law that the evidence is authentic, i.e., it is the same evidence seized at the crime scene.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551677/

This is exactly what I said all along. The chain of custody is required to authenticate the evidence by keeping it safe from any kind of manipulation. This is done by registering every person who handled that piece of evidence and retracing the chain of custody to it's origin. A piece of evidence can not be considered authentic when the chain of custody is broken or non-existent.

It is apparent that the bullet found by Tomlinson did not get accidentally mixed up here because CE399 is definitely related to the C2766 rifle.

There is nothing apparent about it. It is in fact completely ignorant to say that CE399 matches C2766 and so Tomlinson must have found that bullet at Parkland.

Tomlinson may in fact have found a completely different bullet which in no way was related to C2766. In order to establish which bullet Tomlinson actually found you need an unbroken chain of custody. If - as you seem to suggest - a chain of custody is unimportant, why did the WC ask the FBI to authenticate a large number of pieces of evidence, including CE399?

You seem to think that everyone has to be able to identify the bullet, months even years later. There is no expectation that Tomlinson or Wright should have put their initials on the bullet. Why should they be expected to identify it later? There is no reason for 3 Secret Service agents to put their initials on it.

You are correct that Tomlinson and Wright could not be expected to mark the bullet, but you are wrong about the three Secret Service agents. When Wright gave him the bullet, Johnsen should have marked it and started the chain of custody, at Parkland Hospital. He failed to do so, yet after his arrival in Washington he put his initial on an envelope allegedly containing the bullet now known as CE399. Why did Johnsen do this if - as you claim - there was no reason for him to do so?

Even if Johnsen had put his initial on it, that would not prove that he hadn't deliberately switched the bullet that Wright gave him.

That's true. Which is why Wright's claim that he gave Johnsen a pointed bullet is so relevant. The only way the chain of custody would be able to authenticate the bullet was if Johnsen had put it in an evidence envelope at Parkland and sealed it in the presence of Wright. Johnsen made the mistake and can not expect that the bullet he gave to Rowley is authenticated simply by him saying that it is the same bullet.

I just don't have any evidence that leads me to suspect, let alone conclude, that Johnsen, Rowley or Todd fabricated evidence. Unless you have evidence that someone planted CE399 after Tomlinson, what reason would there be to find that Tomlinson did not find CE399?

First of all, there is no assumption of evidence being authentic simply because manipulation can not be proven. It's the other way around. In order for evidence to be considered authentic it needs to be proven to be so. The WC did not ask the FBI for authentication for nothing. Secondly, Wright is on record saying that he gave Johnsen a pointed bullet, which CE399 clearly is not. That alone justifies the questioning of the authenticity of CE399. It's just too bad that nobody was willing to investigate Wright's claim after the book "Six seconds in Dallas" was released. One can only wonder why Specter introduced CE399 during Humes' testimony, subject to later authentication which of course never came, or why CE399 was never shown to Tomlinson when he testified...

Some jurors had doubts that OJ Simpson was guilty. I didn't.

I'm not sure what this comment has to do with anything but I also believed OJ was guilty. Having said that, I did consider the jury verdict correct because the state failed to prove it's case.

You just admitted it was not measured.

Word games! There are several ways of measuring an object. One of those is placing it next to another measurable object. It's really very simple. Frazier said that Oswald carried the package under his armpit and in the cup of his hand. There is nothing to suggest that this observation is not correct and that means there simply is no way that the package could have contained a much larger broken down MC rifle.

I am open to the possibility that there may be reliable, credible evidence somewhere of a conspiracy. But none has been found and it is highly improbable that any will be found.

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence! Where it comes to a possible conspiracy you seem to put the bar as high as you possibly can (by asking for reliable, credible evidence) but when it comes to Oswald being a lone gun man you keep the bar so low it nearly touches the ground and even then you can not produce "reliable, credible evidence" as we have just seen when to made a giant leap from a rifle that was possibly in Ruth Paine's garage to a paper bag that allegedly was found in the sniper's nest at the TSBD. Why the double standard?

[Mitch Todd]

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence!

This might be a bit of a quibble, but....

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. After all, if something doesn't exist, then the would be no evidence of it existing. Absence of evidence is not absolute proof of absence, since there may be some as-yet-unknown fact sitting out there in the dark waiting to rear its ugly head when you least expect. However, in cases where complete information is available, then absence of evidence is absolute proof of absence.

[Martin Weidmann]

This might be a bit of a quibble, but....

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. After all, if something doesn't exist, then the would be no evidence of it existing. Absence of evidence is not absolute proof of absence, since there may be some as-yet-unknown fact sitting out there in the dark waiting to rear its ugly head when you least expect. However, in cases where complete information is available, then absence of evidence is absolute proof of absence.

This might be a bit of a quibble,

Yes it is.

However, in cases where complete information is available, then absence of evidence is absolute proof of absence.

Only in theory, because it can never been determined with 100% certainty that complete information is available in a particular case.

[Dan O'meara]

So the case is solved! The chain of custody together with the definitive proof the CE399 was substituted for the real bullet by James Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service, perhaps with the knowledge and assistance of SA Richard Johnsen means that Rowley is the co-conspirator behind the assassination! Amazing!

 
It is unlike you to be so facetious but, the fact of the matter is, you have nothing else to offer on this aspect of the case.
O P Wright, the civilian who handed the bullet into the official chain of custody, categorically denies that CE399 is the bullet he handed over to SA Johnsen. He is specific that the bullet he handed over had a pointed tip, he even produces an example of such a bullet to demonstrate exactly what type of bullet he is talking about. He then repeats his denial of CE399 in front of other witnesses.
Wright is unequivocal, he is absolutely certain that CE399 is not the bullet he handed over to SA Johnsen.

Obviously, this is a massive problem for you and your beliefs concerning this case, and your response reflects the corner you have painted yourself into.

There is circumstantial evidence that the bullet is not the one Wright handed over to SA Johnsen:

A declassified 6/20/64 FBI AIRTEL memorandum from the FBI office in Dallas (“SAC, Dallas” – i.e., Special Agent in Charge, Gordon Shanklin) to J. Edgar Hoover contains the statement, “For information WFO (FBI Washington Field Office), neither DARRELL C. TOMLINSON [sic], who found bullet at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, nor O. P. WRIGHT, Personnel Officer, Parkland Hospital, who obtained bullet from TOMLINSON and gave to Special Service, at Dallas 11/22/63, can identify bullet … .”

The men who originally discovered and examined the bullet cannot identify it! The reason they cannot identify it is revealed by O P Wright in his interview with Thompson - it was not the same bullet. More importantly, when shown the bullet, neither SA Johnsen or Rowley can identify the bullet as the one given to Johnsen by Wright. Todd has no problem immediately recognising the bullet, neither does Frazier.
So why can't Johnsen and Rowley recognise it?
Is it something to do with why they destroyed the chain of custody?
It is inconceivable that an experienced agent like Johnsen would knowingly destroy the chain of custody by not putting his initials on the bullet.
It is inconceivable that Rowley, head of the Secret Service, would be unaware that by not putting his initials on the bullet he was destroying the chain of custody for such a key piece of evidence. Are we supposed to believe that both men simply forgot to perform this most basic task?
Neither agent can identify the bullet and both agents "forgot" to put their initials on this fundamentally key piece of evidence.
Todd has no problems recognising the bullet and neither does Frazier. And both men remember to put their initials on the evidence!
And Wright is adamant that CE399 is not the bullet he handed over to Johnsen. This is surely why Johnsen cannot identify CE399 - because Wright gave him a pointy-tipped bullet. This is surely why Johnsen's initials weren't on CE399 - because he put them on the pointy-tipped bullet and never saw CE399 until he was asked to identify it as the bullet he received from Wright. Something he refused to do.
We can assume Johnsen handed over the pointy-tipped bullet to Rowley, who also put his initials on it before handing over to Todd. Rowley can't identify CE399 as the bullet he dealt with that day- because he had never seen it before. The bullet he received from Johnsen was pointy-tipped.

It is with Todd that CE399 seems to materialise out of thin air. If only Todd had been asked to give evidence before the WC. But, incredibly, he wasn't.

[Alan Ford]

So the case is solved! The chain of custody together with the definitive proof the CE399 was substituted for the real bullet by James Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service, perhaps with the knowledge and assistance of SA Richard Johnsen means that Rowley is the co-conspirator behind the assassination! Amazing!

No wonder Mr. Mason is getting whupped on this thread. Let's fix his non sequitur nonsense for him:

So the case is solved! The chain of custody together with the definitive proof the CE399 was substituted for the real bullet by James Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service, perhaps with the knowledge and assistance of SA Richard Johnsen means that Rowley is one of the the co-conspirators behind the assassination cover-up! Amazing!

 

[Dan O'meara]

Rather than this rabbit-hole nonsense, are there any "LNers" on the Forum who would like to start up a new Forum (or a sub-Forum here with invitation-only posters)?

There are some posters here who want to research the assassination and/or recreate it through 3D. No problem with an "LNer" like Mason who accepts most of the evidence and official findings in its totality but who has a unique theory, which I found interesting enough to investigate through 3D. Other "LNers" might want to make a full-scale build of the SN box arrangement or the paper package used to transport the rifle, or conduct Carcano firing tests, for example. Maybe some medical experts might be tempted to join.

The rabbit-hole CTs and impossible-standard "skeptics" can stay with the Forum or request their own sub-Forum.

So when O P Wright categorically denies that the bullet he gave to SA Johnsen is CE399 - that's rabbit-hole nonsense??
That we are supposed to simply accept experienced agents, Johnsen and Rowley, knowingly destroyed the chain of custody by not putting their initials on this crucial piece of evidence - that's rabbit-hole nonsense is it??
When Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen and Rowley refuse to identify CE399 as the bullet they handled that day - that's rabbit-hole nonsense??

Yeah Jerry, you go ahead and start your own sub-forum.

"There are some posters here who want to research the assassination..."

And you believe you're one of those, do you?

[Alan Ford]

Rather than this rabbit-hole nonsense, are there any "LNers" on the Forum who would like to start up a new Forum (or a sub-Forum here with invitation-only posters)?

There are some posters here who want to research the assassination and/or recreate it through 3D. No problem with an "LNer" like Mason who accepts most of the evidence and official findings in its totality but who has a unique theory, which I found interesting enough to investigate through 3D. Other "LNers" might want to make a full-scale build of the SN box arrangement or the paper package used to transport the rifle, or conduct Carcano firing tests, for example. Maybe some medical experts might be tempted to join.

The rabbit-hole CTs and impossible-standard "skeptics" can stay with the Forum or request their own sub-Forum.

 

They really are in mourning for their McAdams Safe Space!