What kind of gun killed kennedy

He saw a man walking away from him in the lunchroom. Baker stopped at the door of the lunchroom and commanded, "Come here. Missing Baker, he came back to find the officer in the doorway to the lunchroom facing Lee Harvey Oswald. In fact, he didn't change his expression one bit. He might have been a bit startled, like I might have. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face. Truly also noted at this time that Oswald's hands were empty. Baker placed himself on a motorcycle about feet from the corner of Elm and Houston Streets where he said he heard the shots.

Baker's movements were timed with a stopwatch. On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing was 1 minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required 1 minute and 15 seconds. Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner.

He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald's rifle was actually found after the shooting. Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a "fast walk" took 1 minute, 14 seconds.

The only interval was the time necessary to ride in the elevator from the second to the sixth floor and walk back to the southeast corner. Howlett was not short winded at the end of either test run. The time actually required for Baker and Truly to reach the second floor on November 22 was probably longer than in the test runs.

For example, Baker required 15 seconds after the simulated shot to ride his motorcycle to feet, park it, and run 45 feet to the building. That Oswald descended by stairway from the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom is consistent with the movements of the two elevators, which would have provided the other possible means of descent. When Truly, accompanied by Baker, ran to the rear of the first floor, he was certain that both elevators, which occupy the same shaft, were on the fifth floor.

Furthermore, no elevator was at the second floor when they arrived there. There was no elevator on the third or fourth floor.

The east elevator was on the fifth floor when they arrived; the west elevator was not. They took the east elevator to the seventh floor and ran up a stairway to the roof where they searched for several minutes.

They had no exact memory of the events of that afternoon. Truly was probably correct in stating that the west elevator was on the fifth floor when he looked up the elevator shaft from the first floor. The west elevator was not on the fifth floor when Baker and Truly reached that floor, probably because Jack Dougherty took it to the first floor while Baker and Truly were running up the stairs or in the lunchroom with Oswald. Neither elevator could have been used by Oswald as a means of descent.

Oswald's use of the stairway is consistent with the testimony of other employees in the building. Three employees-- James Jarman, Jr. They rushed to the west windows after the shots were fired and remained there until after they saw Patrolman Baker's white helmet on the fifth floor moving toward the elevator.

In all likelihood Dougherty took the elevator down from the fifth floor after Jarman, Page Norman, and Williams ran to the west windows and were deciding what to do.

None of these three men saw Dougherty, probably because of the anxiety of the moment and because of the books which may have blocked the view. Actually she noticed no one on the back stairs. If she descended from the fourth to the first floor as fast as she claimed in her testimony, she would have seen Baker or Truly on the first floor or on the stairs, unless they were already in the second-floor lunchroom talking to Oswald.

When she reached the first floor, she actually saw Shelley and Lovelady slightly east of the east elevator. Shelley and Lovelady, however, have testified that they were watching the parade from the top step of the building entrance when Gloria Calverly, who works in the Depository Building, ran up and said that the President had been shot. They reentered the building by the rear door several minutes after Baker and Truly rushed through the front entrance? Oswald's departure from building.

Reid, clerical supervisor for the Texas School Book Depository, saw him walk through the clerical office on the second floor toward the door leading to the front stairway. Reid had watched the parade from the sidewalk in front of the building with Truly and Mr. Campbell, vice president of the Depository.

As she approached her desk, she saw Oswald. As Oswald passed Mrs. Reid she said, "Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him. The only exit from the office in the direction Oswald was moving was through the door to the front stairway. Reid testified that when she saw Oswald, he was wearing a T-shirt and no jacket. Reid believes that she returned to her desk from the street about 2 minutes after the shooting. Reid ran the distance three times and was timed in 2 minutes by stopwatch.

After leaving Mrs. Reid in the front office, Oswald could have gone down the stairs and out the front door by p. At that time the building had not yet been sealed off by the police. While it was difficult to determine exactly when the police sealed off the building, the earliest estimates would still have permitted Oswald to leave the building by One of the police officers assigned to the corner of Elm and Houston Streets for the Presidential motorcade, W.

Barnett, testified that immediately after the shots he went to the rear of the building to check the fire escape. He then returned to the corner of Elm and Houston where he met a sergeant who instructed him to find out the name of the building. Barnett ran to the building, noted its name, and then returned to the corner. The sergeant did the same thing at the rear of the building. According to Barnett, "there were people going in and out" during this period.

Harkness of the Dallas police said that to his knowledge the building was not sealed off at p. Sawyer's car was parked in front of the building. Sawyer heard a call over the police radio that the shots had come from the Depository Building. Special Agent Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service, who had been in the motorcade, testified that after driving to Parkland Hospital, he returned to the Depository Building about 20 minutes after the shooting, found no police officers at the rear door and was able to enter through this door without identifying himself.

Truly, who had returned with Patrolman Baker from the roof, saw the police questioning the warehouse employees. Approximately 15 men worked in the warehouse and Truly noticed that Oswald was not among those being questioned. The address listed was for the Paine home in Irving. Truly gave this information to Captain Fritz who was on the sixth floor at the time.

Fritz believed that he learned of Oswald's absence after the rifle was found. Conclusion Fingerprint and palmprint evidence establishes that Oswald handled two of the four cartons next to the window and also handled a paper bag which was found near the cartons.

Oswald was seen in the vicinity of the southeast corner of the sixth floor approximately 35 minutes before the assassination and no one could be found who saw Oswald anywhere else in the building until after the shooting. An eyewitness to the shooting immediately provided a description of the man in the window which was similar to Oswald's actual appearance. This witness identified Oswald in a lineup as the man most nearly resembling the man he saw and later identified Oswald as the man he observed.

Oswald's known actions in the building immediately after the assassination are consistent with his having been at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor at p. On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that.

Oswald, at the time of the assassination, was present at the window from which the shots were fired. He arrived at approximately 1 p.

At Page about p. Tippit, was shot less than 1 mile from Oswald's roominghouse. In deciding whether Oswald killed Patrolman Tippit the Commission considered the following: 1 positive identification of the killer by two eyewitnesses who saw the shooting and seven eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the gunman flee the scene with the revolver in his hand, 2 testimony of firearms identification experts establishing the identity of the murder weapon, 3 evidence establishing the ownership of the murder weapon, 4 evidence establishing the ownership of a zipper jacket found along the path of flight taken by the gunman from the scene of the shooting to the place of arrest.

He probably walked east on Elm Street for seven blocks to the corner of Elm and Murphy where he boarded a bus which was heading back in the direction of the Depository Building, on its way to the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.

See Commission Exhibit A, p. When Oswald was apprehended, a bus transfer marked for the Lakewood-Marsalis route was found in his shirt pocket. On the basis of this punchmark, which was distinctive to each Dallas driver, the transfer was conclusively identified as having been issued by Cecil J. McWatters, a busdriver for the Dallas Transit Co.

Paul and Elm Streets at p. So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about two blocks [back] asked for a transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did. Page The man was on the bus approximately 4 minutes. He picked Oswald from the lineup as the man who had boarded the bus at the "lower end of town on Elm around Houston," and who, during the ride south on Marsalis, had an argument with a woman passenger.

Riding on the bus was an elderly woman, Mary Bledsoe, who confirmed the mute evidence of the transfer. Oswald had rented a room from Mrs.

Bledsoe about 6 weeks before, on October 7, but she had asked him to leave at the end of a week. Bledsoe told him "I am not going to rent to you any more. There was just something about him I didn't like or want him Just didn't want him around me. Bledsoe came downtown to watch the Presidential motorcade. She boarded the Marsalis bus at St. Paul and Elm Streets to return home.

Let's see. I don't know for sure. Oswald got on. He looks like a maniac. His sleeve was out here. His shirt was undone. I didn't want to know I even seen him Hole in his sleeve right here. Bledsoe said these words, she pointed to her fight elbow. Bledsoe identified the shirt as the one Oswald was wearing and she stated she was certain that it was Oswald who boarded the bus.

Bledsoe recalled that Oswald sat halfway to the rear of the bus which moved slowly and intermittently as traffic became heavy. As the bus neared Lamar Street, Oswald left the bus and disappeared into the crowd.

Instead of waiting there, Oswald apparently went as far away as he could and boarded the first Oak Cliff bus which came along rather than wait for one which stopped across the street from his roominghouse. In a reconstruction of this bus trip, agents of the Secret Service and the FBI walked the seven blocks from the front entrance of the Depository Building to Murphy and Elm three times, averaging 6.

Roger D. Craig, a deputy sheriff of Dallas County, claimed that about 15 minutes after the assassination he saw a man, whom he later identified as Oswald, coming from the direction of the Depository Building and running down the hill north of Elm Street toward a light-colored Rambler station wagon, which was moving slowly along Elm toward the underpass The station wagon stopped to pick up the man and then drove off.

Captain Fritz stated that a deputy sheriff whom he could not identify did ask to see him that afternoon and told him a similar story to Craig's. If Craig saw Oswald that afternoon, he saw him through the glass windows of the office. And neither Captain Fritz nor any other officer can remember that Oswald dramatically arose from his chair and said, Page "Everybody will know who I am now. Craig may have seen a person enter a white Rambler station wagon 15 or 20 minutes after the shooting and travel west on Elm Street, but the Commission concluded that this man was not Lee Harvey Oswald, because of the overwhelming evidence that Oswald was far away from the building by that time.

The taxicab ride. He was taken to the lineup room where, according to Whaley, five young teenagers, all handcuffed together, were displayed with Oswald. Whaley picked Oswald. He said, It was him all right, the same man. They knew what they were doing and they were trying to railroad him and he wanted his lawyer. There were four men altogether, not six men, in the lineup with Oswald. Only two of the men in the lineup with Oswald were teenagers: John T.

Horn, aged 18, was No. Whaley testified that he did not keep an accurate time record of his trips but recorded them by the quarter hour, and that sometimes he made his entry right after a trip while at other times he waited to record three or four trips.

The man was dressed in faded blue color khaki work clothes, a brown shirt, and some kind of work jacket that almost matched his pants. I asked him where he wanted to go. And he said, " North Beckley. I wonder what the hell is the uproar? So I figured he was one of these people that don't like to talk so I never said any more to him. But when I got pretty close to block at Neches and North Beckley which is the block, he said, "This will do fine," and I pulled over to the curb right. He gave me a dollar bill, the trip was 95 cents.

He gave me a dollar bill and didn't say anything, just got out and closed the door and walked around the front of the cab over to the other side of the street [east side of the street]. Of course, the traffic was moving through there and I put it in gear and moved on, that is the last I saw of him. He marked what, he thought was the intersection of Neches and Beckley on a map of Dallas with a large "X.

Neches is within one-half block of the roominghouse at North Beckley where Oswald was living. The block of North Beckley is five blocks south of the roominghouse. The route of the taxicab was retraced under the direction of Whaley.

Oswald could not possibly have been wearing the blue jacket during the trip with Whaley, since it was found in the "domino" room of the Depository late in November. Bledsoe saw Oswald in the bus without a jacket and wearing a shirt with a hole at the elbow.

If the cab ride was approximately 6 minutes, as was the reconstructed ride, he would have reached his destination at approximately p. If he was discharged at Neely and Beckley and walked directly to his roominghouse, he would have arrived there about to 1 p. From the block of North Beckley, the walk would be a few minutes longer, but in either event he would have been in the roominghouse at about 1 p.

This is the approximate time he entered the roominghouse, according to Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper there. Arrival and departure from roominghouse. She first saw him the day he rented a room at that address on October 14, Lee on the roominghouse register. Roberts testified that on Thursday, November 21, Oswald did not come home.

On Friday, November 22, about 1 p. She recalled that it was subsequent to the time the President had been shot.

After a friend had called and told her, "President Kennedy has been shot," she turned on the television. When Oswald came in she said, "Oh, you are in a hurry," but Oswald did not respond. He hurried to his room and stayed no longer than 3 or 4 minutes. Roberts saw him a few seconds later standing near the bus stop in front of the house on the east side of Beckley.

If Oswald left. Tippit joined the Dallas Police Department in July He drove a police car painted distinctive colors with No. Tippit rode alone, as only one man was normally assigned to a patrol car in residential areas during daylight shifts. The dispatcher ordered Tippit to be: " About feet past the intersection Tippit stopped a man walking east along the south side of Patton.

The man's general description was similar to the one broadcast over the police radio. Tippit stopped the man and called him to his car. He approached the car and apparently exchanged words with Tippit through the right front or vent window. Tippit got out and started to walk around the front of the car As Tippit reached the left front wheel the man pulled out a revolver and fired several shots. Four bullets hit Tippit and killed him instantly. The gunman started back toward Patton Avenue, ejecting the empty cartridge cases before reloading with fresh bullets.

Page Eyewitnesses At least 12 persons saw the man with the revolver in the vicinity of the Tippit crime scene at or immediately after the shooting. By the evening of November 22, five of them had identified Lee Harvey Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. A sixth did so the next day.

Three others subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. A taxi driver, William Scoggins, was eating lunch in his cab which was parked on Patton facing the southeast corner of 10th Street and Patton Avenue a few feet to the north.

About feet from the comer the police car pulled up alongside a man on the sidewalk. This man, dressed in a light-colored jacket, approached the car. Scoggins lost sight of him behind some shrubbery on the southeast corner lot, but he saw the policeman leave the car, heard three or four shots, and then saw the policeman fall. Scoggins hurriedly left his seat and hid behind the cab as the man came back toward the corner with gun in hand.

The man cut across the yard through some bushes, passed within 12 feet of Scoggins, and ran south on Patton. Scoggins saw him and heard him mutter either "Poor damn cop" or "Poor dumb cop. He had not seen Oswald on television and had not been shown any photographs of Oswald by the police.

As he crossed the intersection a block east of 10th and Patton, he saw a policeman standing by the left door of the police car parked along the south side of 10th. Benavides saw a man standing at the right side of the parked police car. He then heard three shots and saw the policeman fall to the ground. By this time the pickup truck was across the street and about 25 feet from the police car. Benavides stopped and waited in the truck until the gunman ran to the corner.

He saw him empty the gun and throw the shells into some bushes on the southeast corner lot. Poe who arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting. When questioned by police officers on the evening of November 22, Benavides told them that he did not think that he could identify the man who fired the shots. As a result, they did not take him to the police station. Page He testified that the picture of Oswald which he saw later on television bore a resemblance to the man who shot Officer Tippit.

Helen Markham, a waitress in downtown Dallas, was about to cross 10th Street at Patton. As she waited on the northwest corner of the intersection for traffic to pass, she noticed a young man as be was "almost ready to get up on the curb" at the southeast corner of the intersection, approximately 50 feet away.

The man continued along 10th Street. Markham saw a police car slowly approach the man from the rear and stop alongside of him. She saw the man come to the right window of the police car. As he talked, he leaned on the ledge of the right window with his arms. The man appeared to step back as the policeman "calmly opened the car door" and very slowly got out and walked toward the front of the car. The man pulled a gun.

Markham heard three shots and saw the policeman fall to the ground near the left front wheel. She raised her hands to her eyes as the man started to walk back toward Patton. I didn't know what he was doing. I was afraid he was fixing to kill me. Markham then ran to Officer Tippit's side and saw him lying in a pool of blood.

Markham, who had been greatly upset by her experience, was able to view a lineup of four men handcuffed together at the police station. Graves, who had been with Mrs.

Markham before the lineup testified that she was "quite hysterical" and was "crying and upset. Markham started crying when Oswald walked into the lineup room. Markham confirmed her positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man she saw kill Officer Tippit. Markham's identification of Oswald, the Commission considered certain allegations that Mrs. Markham described the man who killed Patrolman Tippit as "short, a little on the heavy side," and having "somewhat bushy" hair.

Markham is alleged to have provided such a description. Markham strongly reaffirmed her positive identification of Oswald and denied having described the killer as short, stocky and having bushy hair. She stated that the man weighed about pounds.

See Pizzo Exhibit No. Although in the phone conversation she described the man as "short," on November 22, within minutes of the shooting and before the lineup, Mrs. Markham described the man to the police as 5'8" tall. Markham initially denied that she ever had the above phone conversation.

Markham's contemporaneous description of the gunman and her positive identification of Oswald at a police lineup, the Commission considers her testimony reliable. However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit. Two young women, Barbara Jeanette Davis and Virginia Davis, were in an apartment of a multiple-unit house on the southeast corner of 10th and Patton when they heard the sound of gunfire and the screams of Helen Markham.

They ran to the door in time to see a man with a revolver cut across their lawn and disappear around a corner of the house onto Patton.

Later in the day each woman found an empty shell on the ground near the house. These two shells were delivered to the police. She was not sure whether she had seen his picture in a newspaper on the afternoon or evening of November 22 prior to the lineup. When they made him turn sideways, I was positive that was the one I seen. Each testified that she was the first to make the identification. He looked west on 10th and saw a man running to the west and a policeman falling to the ground.

Smith failed to make himself known to the police on November Several days later he reported what he had seen and was questioned by FBI Page agents. In the picture the hair was brown. They heard the sound of shots to the north of their lot. Both ran to the sidewalk on the east side of Patton at a point about a half a block south of 10th.

They saw a man coming south on Patton with a revolver held high in his right hand. According to Callaway, the man crossed to the west side of Patton. Callaway picked up the gun. Early in the evening of November 22, Guinyard and Callaway viewed the same lineup of four men from which Mrs.

Markham had earlier made her identification of Lee Harvey Oswald. Both men picked Oswald as the man who had run south on Patton with a gun in his hand. I stepped to the back of the room, so I could kind of see him from the same distance which I had seen him before.

And when he came out I knew him. I pointed him out right there. As Oswald ran south on Patton Avenue toward Jefferson Boulevard he was moving in the direction of a used-car lot located on the southeast corner of this intersection. Lewis were on the lot at the time, and they saw a white male with a revolver in his hands running south on Patton.

When the man reached Jefferson, he turned right and headed west. Reynolds and Patterson decided to follow him. When he reached a gasoline service station one block away he turned north and walked toward a parking area in the rear of the station.

Neither Reynolds nor Patterson saw the man after he turned off Jefferson at the service station. Russell and Patterson were shown a picture of Oswald and they stated that Oswald was the man they saw on November 22, Russell confirmed this statement in a sworn affidavit for the Commission.

He was then shown two photographs of Oswald and he advised that Oswald was "unquestionably" the man he saw. Lewis said in an interview that because of the distance from which he observed the gunman he would hesitate to state whether the man was identical with Oswald. But how were we to accomplish this, since it would be impossible to move our huge research microscopes to the National Archives to scan the bullets?

Prior to the artifacts ever coming to NIST, our team carried out dry-run preparations for many weeks so that we would be well prepared for scanning the actual specimens. I had previously acquired similar ammunition and a 6. This was the kind of rifle the assassin used in the shooting. Because I had already closely examined the actual bullets and bullet fragments at NARA, I was able to fire the Carcano rifle at the ATF forensic science laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, to produce a similar collection of test-fired bullets and fragments.

We used these items as training sets that mimicked the actual Kennedy bullets that we would be working with. Employing these samples, we refined our methods and solved instrument challenges well before the actual artifacts arrived. These early efforts would prove invaluable for the work that would ensue. In addition, the NIST team designed a special apparatus made of a soft material to gently, but firmly, hold a bullet or fragment so no marks would be added to its surfaces during the 3D topography measurements.

Initially we estimated that it would take less than two weeks to scan the forensically relevant surface areas of the assassination bullets and test-fired bullets. We based this estimate on the existing photographs of the bullets and on visual examination of the bullets.

However, when the items arrived and we viewed them using a 3D surface-topography microscope, we could see that the fragments and bullets had twice the surface area we had estimated. Compounding the challenge, advances in 3D topography technology were made during this time, allowing for an even more realistic virtual capture of the artifacts.

The field of forensic science has recently undergone tremendous technological advances. These measurements are subjected to powerful mathematical algorithms to numerically quantify the similarity between the marks on a crime-scene bullet imparted by the rifling of the gun barrel compared with the barrel-rifling marks on a bullet subsequently test-fired from the gun suspected to have been used in the crime.

It was probably because of that reputation that I was contacted by my former crime-laboratory supervisor to assist NARA in preserving the JFK assassination bullets. I was constantly impressed by their expertise, ingenuity, care and perseverance in what was a historic undertaking. I am proud to have taken part in it with them. If you'd like to learn more about the work my colleagues and I did, and also get some historical context for this unique project, check out the article " Kennedy Assassination Bullets Preserved in Digital Form " and the video below.

Robert M. Thank you for your detailed explanation of the examination, scanning and publishing of the JFK bullets and fragments. I anticipate this method of preserving the images will be used in other disciplines, such as forensic odontology.

Tonn, Thanks for your kind words. Actually, your idea regarding 3D capture of forensic odontology is already being researched and validated. Taking Measure Just a Standard Blog. Share Facebook. Credit: NIST. Connally, who was sitting just in front of Kennedy, survived.

All were imaged with a specialized microscope that scanned their surfaces, charting their features much like a satellite recording the topography of a mountain range. The pictures were then stitched together by NIST ballistics specialists to generate a vivid 3-D rendering detailed enough to show grooves left by the barrel of the gun.

The collaborative project was conducted strictly for historic preservation, so neither team has conducted forensic analysis on the bullets. But any researchers interested in taking a fresh stab at the fragments will be able to do so once the scans go live sometime next year.