RIP to the Single-bullet theory?

[Dan O'meara]

Where was it answered how the print disappeared by the time it got to Latona? Latons had the rifle dismantled and examined every part of it.

I should have said that all the questions were answered satisfactorily to the WC. People who try to make something out of nothing will never be satisfied. The answer is the irregularities on the rifle matching the marks on the palm print lift. This shows that the lift came from the rifle just as Day testified. It’s supposed “disappearance” is in your imagination. There are several possible explanations for how Latona could have missed it, but none of them will ever be able to be proven.


Where was it answered why Day didn't have enough time to compare the print he lifted with Oswald's print? He had the print in his possession for days and, according to Rusty, the print was doing the rounds later that day.

Ummm, that isn’t one of the WC’s questions.



Where was it answered why Day didn't protect the print with cellophane like he did with the trigger housing prints?

I believe Day said it was because it was protected by the wooden fore stock.

People who try to make something out of nothing will never be satisfied.

Making something out of nothing??

Latona is the supervisor of the latent fingerprint section of the identification division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is the FBI's main man for fingerprint identification with decades of experience.
He was examining the weapon that was supposed to have murdered the President, trying to ID the murderer. He had the weapon taken apart and examined every part of the rifle in full.
Not only did he find no palm print, he found no attempt had been made to lift such a print. There was no print on that rifle when it reached Latona a few hours after it had been released by Day.
So, perhaps the print was somehow completely wiped from the barrel in transit. That is the only feasible explanation if Day is being truthful.

That Day insists he had no time to examine the lift he had taken from the rifle with the print taken from Oswald is clearly nonsensical. It's got nothing to do with being asked to stop work on the rifle. Day had the palm print for days and had more than enough time to examine it. Remember, this was the piece of evidence that put the murder weapon in Oswald's hands. To imagine that this would not have been a top priority is delusional.

Something about this really stinks and for you to infer I'm making something out of nothing is unreasonable, to say the least.

[Alan Ford]

From another discussion that took place in March 2013, I can offer up the following information regarding the palmprint that Lieutenant J.C. Day lifted off of Oswald's rifle....

JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

In an actual court proceeding, [Dallas Police Lieutenant J.C.] Day would have been impeached by Drain and LaTona [sic] to the point that he would [have] been laughable.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

And just exactly HOW would Vince Drain and Sebastian Latona have "impeached" Lt. Carl Day of the DPD?

You actually think something Drain and Latona said means that Day couldn't possibly have lifted Oswald's palmprint from the rifle on November 22?

If you DO really believe that, you've taken a trip deeper into Rod Serling's T-Zone than even I had figured.

I'll also add this:

Anyone who thinks that J.C. Day was a liar regarding the palmprint matter needs to read "Reclaiming History", starting on Page 799.

A key excerpt:

"Warren Commission assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler told the HSCA that in "late August or September" of 1964, he suggested questioning [DPD Lieutenant J.C.] Day further in an attempt to resolve the multitude of questions that remained surrounding the discovery of the palm print.

It had occurred to Liebeler and a few other assistant counsels, as it would later to Mark Lane, that perhaps the palm print didn't come from the rifle at all. The Commission, at that time, only had Day's word for it. It wanted something stronger. But when Liebeler approached Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin about it, he objected. "Mr. Rankin was not terribly enthusiastic about having a couple of Commission lawyers go down to Dallas and start questioning the Dallas Police Department," Liebeler told the HSCA in 1978. "Quite frankly . . . it would have raised all kinds of questions at that time as to what in the hell was going on, what are we doing going down and taking depositions from the Dallas Police Department two months after the report was supposed to be out?"

But Liebeler said they realized the problem could be resolved "in another way." Several Commission assistant counsels subsequently met with FBI inspector James R. Malley, the bureau's liaison with the Commission, and FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona. Liebeler asked Latona whether there was a way to prove that the lift came from the rifle. Latona reexamined the lift submitted by Lieutenant Day and noticed pits, marks, and rust spots on it that corresponded to identical areas on the underside of the rifle barrel--the very spot from which Day said the print had been lifted.

J. Edgar Hoover sent a letter by courier to the Commission on September 4 to confirm this finding, along with a photograph showing the corresponding marks on the barrel and the lift. Liebeler was satisfied. Now, there was no doubt whatsoever--the palm print Day had lifted had come from Oswald's rifle."

-- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 803 of "Reclaiming History"

[Also See: 11 HSCA 254-255.]
https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/html/HSCA_Vol11_0130b.htm


PAT SPEER SAID:

Ah, yes, the Hoover letter. Note that Hoover's letter was just that, a letter. It was NOT sworn testimony. Note also that the exhibit itself is nearly impossible to make out, and that NO corresponding photo was taken showing where the heck this lift came from on the rifle.

Note also that Hoover had no problem lying even when under oath, as proved by his testimony, where he claimed the FBI had no reason to put Oswald on the watch list, months after he'd ordered an internal witch-hunt in which those failing to put him on the watch list had been persecuted.

And then there's this... The rifle was returned to the DPD on the 24th. The FBI didn't find out about the lift until the 26th. It remains possible, therefore, that the print was somehow added to the rifle, and THEN lifted.

As stated, I never came to a conclusion as to this possibility...but the evidence presented by Hoover and Bugliosi in support of the print's authenticity, is weak, weak, weak...


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Let's leave Hoover and Bugliosi out of this for a moment and talk about the people who actually set the ball in motion for re-examining the palmprint that Lt. Day lifted off of the rifle -- namely Wesley Liebeler and (most importantly) fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona:

It was LATONA, not Hoover or Bugliosi, who said the palmprint contained the rust spots and other marks that EXACTLY matched the place on the rifle where Lt. Day said he lifted the print. Or do you think Mr. Liebeler was telling a big fat lie in the HSCA testimony shown below? (I would guess that some conspiracy theorists will rake Liebeler over the coals for using the word "happily" in this testimony, even if those CTers don't have the nerve to come out and call him an outright liar regarding this palmprint issue.) ....

"Latona went back and looked at the lift [CE637; Oswald's palmprint]. He found that there were indications in the lift itself of pits and scores and marks and rust spots that had been on the surface from which the print had been lifted, and happily they conformed precisely to a portion of the underside of the rifle barrel and the FBI so reported to us. As far as I was concerned that conclusively established the proposition that that lift had come from that rifle." -- Wesley J. Liebeler; HSCA Testimony [11 HSCA 254]

So what we have here, folks, is a situation where the Warren Commission and its staff (namely Wesley J. Liebeler) weren't totally satisfied with something associated with their investigation into President Kennedy's death (the palmprint of Oswald's lifted by DPD Lieutenant Carl Day), and so Liebeler did something about it. He had Latona re-examine the print to see if further information could be obtained in order to find out whether or not it could be proven that that print had, indeed, been taken off of Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

And even when such proof and corroboration is discovered, the conspiracy theorists (such as Pat Speer) are still not satisfied at all. The theorists will still cry foul and say that the print COULD have possibly been lifted on November 24 after the rifle was returned to Dallas (to use Pat Speer's exact words, he speculated that it was certainly possible that "the print was somehow added to the rifle, and THEN lifted").

In response to that speculation brought forth by Mr. Speer which I just quoted above, let me offer up the following excerpt from Vincent Bugliosi's book:

"Apart from the absurd notion that for some reason Lieutenant Day would decide to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for Kennedy's assassination, as he told me in 2002, "I don't even think such a thing [transferring Oswald's prints on the finger and palm print samples, or exemplars, he gave to the Dallas Police Department, onto the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle] could be done. In this day and age they might be able to figure out some way to transfer the ink print on the card to the weapon, but I wouldn't know how to do it myself. Sounds like an impossible task to me."" -- Page 802 of "Reclaiming History"

Conspiracists are quite good at offering up a wide variety of convenient excuses in order to avoid the obvious truth. With that truth being:

Lee Harvey Oswald's palmprint was lifted off of Oswald's OWN RIFLE just hours after that same rifle was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dallas, Texas.

Pat Speer says the evidence is "weak, weak, weak". But in my opinion, it's simply a case of a conspiracy theorist offering up more "excuses, excuses, excuses".


PAT SPEER SAID:

Latona did the comparison. Why was HIS report on this not entered into evidence, and why was he not asked to testify on this point, or, at the very least, sign a statement?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Good points, Pat. And I don't have the answers to those questions. But maybe Latona didn't prepare an official report or statement concerning this matter. How can we know whether he did or not? And I'm certainly not going to jump on the "everybody's lying" bandwagon (as many CTers seem to like to do). I'm not going to call Wesley Liebeler a liar when he says Latona came to the conclusions he came to about the Oswald palmprint.

As for Latona not testifying about the "rust spots" and other markings he found in the Oswald palmprint -- well, it was a September 1964 discovery by Latona, and the final WC report was coming out in 20 more days, so that might be the answer there. No "testimony" was taken at that eleventh hour.

However, we do have J. Edgar Hoover's letter to the Warren Commission, dated September 4, 1964. It's Commission Exhibit No. 2637, at 25 H 897:

https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0464a.htm

That letter from Hoover to J. Lee Rankin makes it very clear that a comparison of the print and rifle was made by "Laboratory examiners" (plural) at the FBI lab in Washington. The letter goes on to say:

"The Laboratory examiners were able to positively identify this lift as having come from the assassination rifle in the area near the foregrip."

That letter in CE2637 is certainly enough proof for me. I see no reason to disbelieve or doubt the contents and conclusions reached in that letter. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will always cast doubt on anything written by the FBI. So I'm not the least bit surprised to find out that CTers don't think the letter in CE2637 is reliable information. They always want more. Just like they want much more proof regarding the "CE399" topic and CE2011 too. The written words we find in that Commission exhibit aren't nearly enough to satisfy the conspiracy theorists either (re: Tomlinson and Wright both saying that CE399 "looked like" the bullet they each saw on Nov. 22 and the additional fact revealed in CE2011 about Elmer Todd physically marking CE399 with his own initials). So, the CTers distrust the FBI completely. But, what else is new?

Can you please give us a link to the full exchange, Mr. von Pein? Thank you! 

[Martin Weidmann]

People who try to make something out of nothing will never be satisfied.

Making something out of nothing??

Latona is the supervisor of the latent fingerprint section of the identification division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is the FBI's main man for fingerprint identification with decades of experience.
He was examining the weapon that was supposed to have murdered the President, trying to ID the murderer. He had the weapon taken apart and examined every part of the rifle in full.
Not only did he find no palm print, he found no attempt had been made to lift such a print. There was no print on that rifle when it reached Latona a few hours after it had been released by Day.
So, perhaps the print was somehow completely wiped from the barrel in transit. That is the only feasible explanation if Day is being truthful.

That Day insists he had no time to examine the lift he had taken from the rifle with the print taken from Oswald is clearly nonsensical. It's got nothing to do with being asked to stop work on the rifle. Day had the palm print for days and had more than enough time to examine it. Remember, this was the piece of evidence that put the murder weapon in Oswald's hands. To imagine that this would not have been a top priority is delusional.

Something about this really stinks and for you to infer I'm making something out of nothing is unreasonable, to say the least.

The whole thing is an absurd fiasco. It's the most important murder case of the decade and the chief forensic officer of the DPD treats it as if he's on the job for his first day.
The fact that the WC was not convinced by Day's initial story and wanted further investigation, tells you enough of how pityfull this whole thing is.

Rankin and Liebeler wanted authentication for the palmprint, because they considered it possible that the print came from another source. It actually said so in Rankin's memo. But they soon learned that they were not going to get anything out of Day beyond his initial narrative. Desperate to resolve the matter one way or the other they ask Latona to compare the palmprint on the index card with the rifle (it took them nearly a year to come up with that one!) and low and behold suddenly Latona sees some markings on the rifle which he thinks he can identify on the palmprint as well.... Oh well, case closed, right?

That palmprint must have been lifted from the rifle, yes? So, now they get really superficial and fail to ask the question how and when that print could have gotten on the rifle. They also forget to wonder how it was possible that Day said there was residue of the print on the rifle on 11/22/63 but when Lotana examined the weapon the next they it had magically disappeared.

But let's not get sidetracked. How did the print get on the rifle..... Could that only be because Oswald actually touched the rifle and left a parcial print, or is there another possibility. Well, actually, yes there is; if you have a print on cellophane it is beyond easy to apply that print, with the tape, to the rifle and it will give you, on the print, exactly the same markings of the rifle. Don't believe me? Well try it yourself and find out (as if that's going to happen   ).

But the bottom line is that this amateur hour like mess doesn't only occur here. It's all over the case. There is not a single piece of physical evidence that is without an evidentiary problem. And it happened in the single most important murder investigation of the decade.

Could it be sheer incompetence of the investigators? Yes, it could be but I somehow don't think so....

Just imagine a prosecutor having to take this mess to court and convince a jury.......

[David Von Pein]

Can you please give us a link to the full exchange, Mr. von Pein? Thank you! 

Here it is (below). The stuff about Lt. Day and the palmprint appears on Pages 8 thru 10 of this EF Forum thread:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130423005722/http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19977&st=105#entry269239

[Alan Ford]

Here it is (below). The stuff about Lt. Day and the palmprint appears on Pages 8 thru 10 of this EF Forum thread:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130423005722/http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19977&st=105#entry269239

Thank you! 

[John Iacoletti]

That letter in CE2637 is certainly enough proof for me.

Of course it is.

[Charles Collins]

People who try to make something out of nothing will never be satisfied.

Making something out of nothing??

Latona is the supervisor of the latent fingerprint section of the identification division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is the FBI's main man for fingerprint identification with decades of experience.
He was examining the weapon that was supposed to have murdered the President, trying to ID the murderer. He had the weapon taken apart and examined every part of the rifle in full.
Not only did he find no palm print, he found no attempt had been made to lift such a print. There was no print on that rifle when it reached Latona a few hours after it had been released by Day.
So, perhaps the print was somehow completely wiped from the barrel in transit. That is the only feasible explanation if Day is being truthful.

That Day insists he had no time to examine the lift he had taken from the rifle with the print taken from Oswald is clearly nonsensical. It's got nothing to do with being asked to stop work on the rifle. Day had the palm print for days and had more than enough time to examine it. Remember, this was the piece of evidence that put the murder weapon in Oswald's hands. To imagine that this would not have been a top priority is delusional.

Something about this really stinks and for you to infer I'm making something out of nothing is unreasonable, to say the least.

Not only did he find no palm print, he found no attempt had been made to lift such a print.

That’s not true. He said he found no indication (as in cellophane for an indicator, like the prints on the trigger guard) that a print had been lifted from the bottom of the barrel. There is no way Latona could have determined that no attempt had been made by simply examining the rifle.


So, perhaps the print was somehow completely wiped from the barrel in transit. That is the only feasible explanation if Day is being truthful.

There are plenty of explanations. If you read Latona’s testimony you will learn that he chose to use gray powder. Day had used black powder. That difference could have contributed to the problem. Latona also said that even using a lot of various lighting techniques he could barely discern the partial prints on the trigger guard. Yet Day could see these prints clearly in the less than ideal lighting in the TSBD. The differences in powder colors and eyesight perceptions could explain some things. Maybe Latona could see gray on the rifle finish better than he could see black.
You can suspect that there is “something that stinks” if you wish to do that. I really don’t care. If you want to convince others, you might need some evidence.


That Day insists he had no time to examine the lift he had taken from the rifle with the print taken from Oswald is clearly nonsensical. It's got nothing to do with being asked to stop work on the rifle. Day had the palm print for days and had more than enough time to examine it. Remember, this was the piece of evidence that put the murder weapon in Oswald's hands. To imagine that this would not have been a top priority is delusional.

 Just because you (in hindsight) think Day should have kept working on the palm print lift, doesn’t mean that Day felt that way. He had already done a preliminary examination and believed it was Oswald’s print. He had been told to stop the examination. I could easily understand that he might have decided to not continue until he was told to do so.


Something about this really stinks and for you to infer I'm making something out of nothing is unreasonable, to say the least.

I didn’t have anyone specific in mind regarding that generalization. You shouln’t take it personally.

[John Iacoletti]

But Liebeler said they realized the problem could be resolved "in another way." Several Commission assistant counsels subsequently met with FBI inspector James R. Malley, the bureau's liaison with the Commission, and FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona. Liebeler asked Latona whether there was a way to prove that the lift came from the rifle. Latona reexamined the lift submitted by Lieutenant Day and noticed pits, marks, and rust spots on it that corresponded to identical areas on the underside of the rifle barrel--the very spot from which Day said the print had been lifted

While this is convenient hearsay, Speer is right in asking why there is no report or testimony from Latona confirming any of this. The WC called William Whaley back just to clarify where he dropped off Oswald, but the supposed confirmation of an Oswald print being lifted from the rifle wasn’t important enough to pursue?

Speer’s entire chapter on the whole palm print debacle (as well as the other prints) is well worth the read. He also covers how Carl Day’s story morphed over the days, weeks, and years.

https://www.patspeer.com/chapter4e-un-smoking-the-gun

One interesting tidbit is that there was an earlier version of the Pinkston memo that makes clear that it is referring to the trigger guard print that Day was examining in the TSBD.