Chain of custody of CE 399 - big problem or much ado about nothing?

[Lance Payette]

If you want him to ignore you just say you think Ruth Paine was the shooter behind the fence. Or Jackie shot JFK. Or Greer. And everything was faked, Oswald was framed, then everything was covered up, then the coverups were covered up ad infinitum. Promote the Lifton theory. The two Oswalds theory. The leprechauns theory. Whatever. Any conspiracy theory. Every conspiracy theory.

Will he challenge your evidence? Ask about chain of possession for that evidence? Raise legal questions? Demand this or that? Nope. Not a thing. You won't hear from him again.

I'm currently hard at work on the Alien Angle. Will that suffice? This video, posted at the Ed Forum today by Douglas Caddy, is somewhat more interesting than it looks. I first heard this theory at the 1989 MUFON conference in Las Vegas, where wacky John Lear and scary Bill Cooper assured us credulous UFO types that JFK had been shot by Greer (with a .45!) because he was about to reveal the Alien Presence.

[Lance Payette]

I tried timestamping it at 19:40. Just to let you know in case it doesn't open there for you.

WHAT THE HECK???

This was a 2003 symposium. Tink says Odum called him "two days after" their visit to his home (and in fact tried to call them before they left Dallas) and pretty much cleared up the mystery. Their seminal article, "The Magic Bullet: More Magical Than We Knew," HAD to have been written more than two days after their visit to Odum, so WHY does it trumpet the "Odum mystery" as though it were highly significant ("Bardwell Odum, one of the key links, says he was never in the chain at all and the FBI’s own, suppressed records tend to back him up.")? The online version of the article has a 2005 editor's note but nothing new about Odum, and the supposed Odum mystery is still a favorite of CTers.

Is this just raw dishonesty? Tink was a professor of philosophy and has an engaging way that makes you want to like and believe him, but this isn't the first time he's taken me aback.

[Tom Graves]

I'm currently hard at work on the Alien Angle. Will that suffice? This video, posted at the Ed Forum today by Douglas Caddy, is somewhat more interesting than it looks. I first heard this theory at the 1989 MUFON conference in Las Vegas, where wacky John Lear and scary Bill Cooper assured us credulous UFO types that JFK had been shot by Greer (with a .45!) because he was about to reveal the Alien Presence.

Unfortunately, Caddy (who is one of my FB "friends"), at *Harley Schlanger's request in early 2016, set up a meeting in Houston between Roger Stone and Schlanger shortly after the latter had returned from Moscow, where Caddy believes he attended the 10 December 2015 RT Dinner with Vladimir Putin, Mike Flynn, and Jill "Anti-Vax" Stein. After the meeting, Stone sent Caddy a thank-you e-mail in which he mentioned that and Schlanger were working together to destroy "The Globalists," and that he had a backchannel to Trump.

*Schlanger is a member of the pro-Russia Lyndon LaRouche organization.

[David Von Pein]

In the [1986] mock trial of Oswald, the defense did object to CE 399 - Spence being no fool - and the judge, a sitting federal judge, ruled it admissible at a pretrial evidentiary hearing.

"The admissibility of CE 399 (along with other items of evidence) was, indeed, dealt with in London by Judge
Lucius Bunton at a pre-trial evidentiary hearing, and Bunton, a sitting federal judge in Texas at the time,
ruled in my favor that CE 399 (not the actual bullet, of course, which we did not have in London) was admissible
at the London trial." -- Vincent Bugliosi (Via letter to DVP); August 2009

More here:

https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/vince-bugliosi-on-ce399.html

And still more "CE399 Chain of Custody" talk here:

https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2016/05/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1135.html#The-SBT-And-Chain-Of-Custody-For-CE399

[Tim Nickerson]

WHAT THE HECK???

This was a 2003 symposium. Tink says Odum called him "two days after" their visit to his home (and in fact tried to call them before they left Dallas) and pretty much cleared up the mystery. Their seminal article, "The Magic Bullet: More Magical Than We Knew," HAD to have been written more than two days after their visit to Odum, so WHY does it trumpet the "Odum mystery" as though it were highly significant ("Bardwell Odum, one of the key links, says he was never in the chain at all and the FBI’s own, suppressed records tend to back him up.")? The online version of the article has a 2005 editor's note but nothing new about Odum, and the supposed Odum mystery is still a favorite of CTers.

Is this just raw dishonesty? Tink was a professor of philosophy and has an engaging way that makes you want to like and believe him, but this isn't the first time he's taken me aback.

I do give credit to Tink for sharing the content of Odum's phone call, even though he downplayed it and never included it in the article. Tink does come across as a very likeable guy. I don't get the same vibes from his co-author of "Even More Magical Than We Knew". Aguilar seems to have a bit of a nasty streak in him.

[Charles Collins]

"The admissibility of CE 399 (along with other items of evidence) was, indeed, dealt with in London by Judge
Lucius Bunton at a pre-trial evidentiary hearing, and Bunton, a sitting federal judge in Texas at the time,
ruled in my favor that CE 399 (not the actual bullet, of course, which we did not have in London) was admissible
at the London trial." -- Vincent Bugliosi (Via letter to DVP); August 2009

More here:

https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/vince-bugliosi-on-ce399.html

And still more "CE399 Chain of Custody" talk here:

https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2016/05/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1135.html#The-SBT-And-Chain-Of-Custody-For-CE399

Thanks DVP, that first link you provided (to the email from Vince Bugliosi) is very interesting. Here is a short exerpt with some underlining by me:

About the issue in your e-mail, the whole purpose behind the chain of
possession requirement is to insure that the item being offered into
evidence by the prosecution or defense is what they claim it to be. It
is particularly important when there is no other evidence that the
item is what it is purported to be. We don't have that situation here.

Based on that, and what follows in the email, I am led to believe that the other evidence would be considered at a pre-trial evidentiary hearing. And, that therefore, in this case anyway, the chain of custody is not the only consideration that determines the admissibility of the evidence. And that seems to me to be the way it should be for justice to be served.

[Michael Capasse]

Speculation & opinion doesn't mean very much 30+ years too late.

[Lance Payette]

Thanks DVP, that first link you provided (to the email from Vince Bugliosi) is very interesting. Here is a short exerpt with some underlining by me:

About the issue in your e-mail, the whole purpose behind the chain of
possession requirement is to insure that the item being offered into
evidence by the prosecution or defense is what they claim it to be. It
is particularly important when there is no other evidence that the
item is what it is purported to be. We don't have that situation here.

Based on that, and what follows in the email, I am led to believe that the other evidence would be considered at a pre-trial evidentiary hearing. And, that therefore, in this case anyway, the chain of custody is not the only consideration that determines the admissibility of the evidence. And that seems to me to be the way it should be for justice to be served.

Prepare yourself, CTers: I think Bugliosi was dead wrong! Comically, ludicrously wrong!

Somewhere early in this thread, I saw this quote from Bugliosi on DVP's site and winced:

What is that evidence? Mainly that we know that CE 399 was fired from
Oswald's Carcano rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons (3 H
428-429). This alone and all by itself (and certainly in conjunction
with all the other evidence I set forth in "Reclaiming History" such
as the orientation of Connally's body vis-a-vis Kennedy's, the ovoid
configuration of the entrance wound to Connally's back, etc.), is
highly persuasive evidence that CE 399 not only hit Kennedy but went
on to hit and exit Connally's body.

Uh, no. The issue with the chain of custody of CE 399 is whether it is the bullet found at Parkland - that any nothing more.

You don't get to argue backwards: "Hey, it was fired from Oswald's rifle and explains the SBT, ergo it must have been found on a stretcher at Parkland."

The fact it was fired from Oswald's rifle and might explain the SBT is precisely why the defense would suggest it was PLANTED.

Perhaps mock trials have mock chains of custody, but in the real world the chain of custody would be confined to what Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen, Rowley, Todd and Frazier - those who had custody of it - had to say. As I stated, the issue would be a likelihood CE 399 came into the possession of the authorities in the circumstances they say it did and remained in their custody until trial.

You HAVE TO GET IT ADMITTED INTO EVIDENCE. Then the prosecution and defense can start making their arguments as to how it fits into the case. Whether it was fired from Oswald's rifle or could explain the SBT could still be hotly debated. Indeed, the defense could still argue it was planted at Parkland for Tomlinson to find.

As I've suggested, this isn't a super-demanding standard. Unless Tomlinson and Wright just flat denied CE 399 was the bullet or anything like it, there wouldn't be a problem.

But you don't get to argue backwards from evidence and speculation having nothing to do with the chain of custody.