I'm talking about Craig's claim to have actually seen "Mauser" and "7.65" stamped into the barrel of the rifle. I apologize if I didn't state it clearly enough. The "I saw'Mauser 7.65' stamped on the barrel of the rifle" part of his story doesn't appear until the 1973-75 time frame.
BTW, this is an excerpt from Ed Tatro's "Roger Craig and 1984:"
Meanwhile my major concern of the Craig allegations continued to be the Mauser stipulation, "A 7.65 Mauser so stamped on the barrel." Craig did not cite this information in his deposition, but of course that affidavit was a brief summary primarily concerned with the station wagon story. No reference to the Mauser is cited in Craig's testimony to Belin, but that transcript can not be trusted anyway considering Belin's unreliable performance married to his selected preference attitude. There is also no reference to the Mauser identification by Craig in the Forgive My Grief series which is difficult to ignore since almost every other allegation leveled by Craig was published by Penn Jones at one point or another.
I checked the Clay Shaw trial newspaper coverage of Craig's testimony, February 15, 1969 in the New Orleans Picayune. Craig was shown a Carcano and he is quoted as saying that the rifle in the courtroom was "similar with one exception - the one in the building had a strap". Craig obviously did not make any Mauser references at the trial or the New Orleans journalists would have jumped on it. Even in Craig's own unpublished manuscript entitled When They Kill A President, Craig was not as precise as he was in his letter to me. Craig's manuscript details the scenario as follows -
"Lt. Day inspected the rifle briefly then handed it to Capt. Fritz, who had a puzzled look on his face. Seymour Weitzman, a deputy constable, was standing beside me at the time. Weitzman was an expert on weapons. Being in the sporting goods business for many years, he was familiar with all domestic and foreign weapons. Capt. Fritz asked if anyone knew what kind of rifle it was. Weitzman asked to see it. After a close examination (much longer than Fritz or Day's examination), Weitzman declared that it was a 7.65 Mauser.. Fritz agreed with him."
Therefore anyone who seriously questions Craig's allegation about a 7.65 Mauser identification is justified. The reader must keep in mind that by 1974 Craig was financially, physically, psychologically , and maritally a far cry from the man who the witnessed the rewriting of history in I963. Another reliable critic informed me after Craig's death that Craig knew the identity of his shotgun assailant of January, 1975 and that the incident was a personal matter. Craig had never informed me of this information and was not being totally honest with me, omission by silence, as it were.
