Roger Craig

[Mitch Todd]

I agree with you Mitch...EXCEPT.....the film does NOT show Captain Fritz slowly pulling the bolt handle back....

Fritz appears to be completely  unaware that the cartridge could be flung up and away from the rifle ...and it does not require a hard rapid pull of the bolt to fling the cartridge out and away.   The manner in which Fritz opened the bolt would have caused the live round to have been flipped out and away...It would not have simply dropped out and fell at his feet.

Thank you  for the intelligent response....

What version of the Alyea film is this? I've heard a couple of people say this is in the film, but I've never seen a copy of it that contains a shot of Fritz bulling the bolt.

[Jack Nessan]

Thanks for sending me the material from Connie Kritzberg's "Secrets from The Sixth Floor." I never read the book. Many years ago she interviewed me about what I saw during the search. I gave her some pictures to use in her story. This is the first time I have seen the story. I regret to say that there are some inaccuracies, which is to be expected in an interview. You must remember that she was not on the sixth floor. She was at her desk in the city room at the Dallas Times Herald newspaper. It is disjointed and out of sequence, which makes it difficult to follow. This is often the case when the interviewer asks the questions and was not at the scene. Connie is a friend of mine, and a good reporter, but I did not see the final draft before it went to press. There is always the possibility that I failed to make my answers clear, and she derived a different meaning. Please remember that these short statements contained little detail and circumstances behind the situation.

"...I ran on upstairs with the Secret Service men. Then other units came in - the Riot Squad. I thought I was going to film a gun fight. They ran to the 4th floor and I went with them. Some of the other units went to the top of the building. They were conducting a systematic search. It boiled down to the sixth floor. After awhile it was obvious that the assassin was not in the building. They looked for the gun. I filmed 400 ft. of film of the Secret Service men looking for the assassin, climbing over boxes, over the rafters, and the actual finding of the gun. At the time it was suspected that the assassin had stayed quite a time there. There was a stack with a stack of chicken bones on it. "There was a Dr. Pepper bottle which they dusted for fingerprints. The fingerprints were not Oswald's."
Alyea writes this statement as if the police were looking for evidence to use against Lee Oswald ....but at the time the Dr Pepper bottle was dusted for prints they were simply looking for evidence and they did find prints on the Dr Pepper bottle, but they made no attempt to identify those prints until after Lee was arrested. The police have never revealed who had drank the Dr Pepper......    


You know how he piled the boxes up? The gun was found across the length of the room from where he fired. It was stashed between boxes. I had difficulty in filming. They did not want me closeto the window or to the gun. I asked permission to go to the window to film. A Secret Service man said, 'You are close enough.' I asked the Secret Service man to take pictures of the stashed gun. I set the camera but he wiggled the camera. 'I got a picture of them taking the gun from the hiding place'

Here Alyea writes as though he got a single photo of (" I got a picture" ) but we've all seen his movie camera footage of detective  Day picking up the rifle FROM THE FLOOR  and holding it up to Captain Fritz.

 
and dusting it for fingerprints. After this the Crime Lab man, Captain Will Fritz - and I have footage of this - pulled the bolt back and a live round came out. They dusted the gun for fingerprints.

Here Alyea writes as though they dusted the rifle twice looking for prints..... Detective Day dusted the rifle for prints only once and that was AFTER he and Captain Fritz Checked the rifle for live cartridges.....

I have footage of this - pulled the bolt back and a live round came out.

Alyea writes as though he has film footage of Captain Fritz PULLING THE BOLT BACK and a live round "came out"... (I'd love to see that footage)

Alyea does NOT accurately describe the actions of a man extracting a live round from a carcano.....He said that Fritz simply pulled the bolt back and the live round "Came out" .  This wording indicates that  the bolt was not closed and latched, and the film footage does in fact agree with Alyea's words and that footage does show that the bolt was NOT closed and latched

Others who witnessed Fritz open the breech of the carcano have also said the the live round simply fell to the floor at Captain Fritz' feet .....   Big F--ing deal you say....  So What?   
 The fact that the bolt was not  latched and the live round simply dropped out of the carcano indicates that the live round was NOT served up to the face of the bolt by the cartridge elevator and the live round was not married to the face of the bolt.   The live round was NOT  EXTRACTED and flipped up and away from the rifle by the action of the ejector. ( it simple fell out of the rifle)

I can only hope that this isn't too technical for the average reader.....  But it is a FACT that the carcano was NOT fired that day. 

Alyea continues.....This was my third camera. They wouldn't let me out of the building and they wouldn't let anyone else in. I never saw my film on the air because I had to get the film to someone outside. This was the first film from there. We had Mal Couch's film of the crowd but not of the President being hit. [How did you get the film out?] There's a story for you. I actually handed it out through the door but it had been publicized over the air and established everywhere that I had thrown it out of the building through a window. I hesitate to tell you the real story. I started to throw it out of the building but being so close and knowing that we had the other film, I wanted our station to be the first to show a film of the assassination. A A.J. L'Hoste was under the window. I yelled out to him. In actuality I tossed the film out the front door to Ron Reiland who had gotten back from covering the apprehension of Oswald at the Texas Theater. This was another ABC exclusive. There were 2 policemen at the Depository door. They were not sure that I should get things outside. Ron was outside and I was inside. One of the policemen there called a Lieutenant and while they were calling him, I threw the film out....."

"Others who witnessed Fritz open the breech of the carcano have also said the the live round simply fell to the floor at Captain Fritz' feet .....   Big F--ing deal you say....  So What?   
 The fact that the bolt was not  latched and the live round simply dropped out of the carcano indicates that the live round was NOT served up to the face of the bolt by the cartridge elevator and the live round was not married to the face of the bolt.   The live round was NOT  EXTRACTED and flipped up and away from the rifle by the action of the ejector. ( it simple fell out of the rifle)"

The carcano is a controlled feed loading system. The cartridge could not help but be inserted under the extractor and then accordingly ejected by Fritz.

[Jack Nessan]

In what he calls "the sixth-floor scam," Alyea described a chaotic investigation that didn't exactly go by the book but was later "cleaned up" in official reports.
Before taking crime-scene photos, for example, a detective dropped the spent shell casings back on the floor, as if they had never been picked up, Alyea said.
"Obviously his photos aren't right," he said. "He couldn't put them where they had been because he had never seen them."


. . .

But Alyea was shocked by police reports — some written by officers who he said weren't even there — that failed to mention how the crime scene was treated in the early, hectic phase of the case."The lies," Alyea said. "The lies bother me. The historical record is not accurate."

— “Cameraman followed police as they searched for sniper”, Tulsa World, Nov 22, 2013
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/jfk-assassination-cameraman-followed-police-as-they-searched-for-sniper/article_9679af95-d45f-502b-b094-2a09bc29c16f.html

Is this from Kritzberg's book?

[Jack Nessan]

I was responding about the time frame of how DPD could've have staged the 6th floor. Someone said it wasn't possible given how "quickly" Alyea went to the 6th floor to film. Also he didn't dispute the time of when he started the process which was over an hour.

Kennedy's wounds were inflicted by a carcano. What is gained by staging the finding of the rifle?

[John Iacoletti]

Is this from Kritzberg's book?

No, it’s from an interview of Alyea by the Tulsa World.

[John Iacoletti]

Kennedy's wounds were inflicted by a carcano. What is gained by staging the finding of the rifle?

How could you possibly know that Kennedy’s wounds were inflicted by a Carcano?

[Paul J Cummings]

Disagree about the wounds by a carcano. The timeline and staging of the rifle is part of the process of setting up the patsy.

Kennedy's wounds were inflicted by a carcano. What is gained by staging the finding of the rifle?

[Jack Nessan]

How could you possibly know that Kennedy’s wounds were inflicted by a Carcano?

Bullet and bullet fragments.