The Missing Rifle
On the evening of November 21, Oswald played with his daughter June on the lawn before dinner, after which Ruth Paine and Marina cleaned house and tended to the children in the east bedrooms. The west end of the house contained the attached garage, where the Oswalds’ belongings, including the rifle wrapped in the brown and green blanket, were stored. Around 9 p.m., Ruth Paine went to the garage for half an hour to paint children’s blocks and noticed the light was on, which she was certain she had not left on. Both Marina and Ruth Paine testified Oswald was in bed by 9 p.m., and neither saw him in the garage, but the 8 to 9 p.m. window provided ample opportunity for Oswald to retrieve and prepare the rifle. Only if disassembled could the rifle fit into the paper bag found near the shooting window; an FBI firearms expert assembled the rifle in 6 minutes using a coin as a tool and could disassemble it faster. After the assassination, Marina checked the garage and was relieved to see the blanket in its usual position with something inside, not yet knowing the rifle was gone. When police arrived around 3 p.m., Marina indicated the rifle was in the blanket; Mrs. Paine stepped onto the blanket-roll while translating, and an officer picked it up, revealing it to be empty, confirming the rifle had been removed.
The Long and Bulky Package
On the morning of November 22, Oswald left the Paine house in Irving at approximately 7:15 a.m. while Marina was still in bed, and neither she nor Ruth Paine saw him leave. About half a block away, Linnie Mae Randle observed Oswald from her breakfast-room window walking toward Frazier’s car carrying a heavy brown bag, gripping it near the top in his right hand; the bag was more bulky toward the bottom and tapered toward the top, and she estimated it was approximately 28 inches long and 8 inches wide, with color similar to the bag found on the sixth floor. She saw Oswald place the package in the back seat of Frazier’s car. Frazier noticed the brown paper package on the back seat and asked about it; Oswald replied, “curtain rods,” which Frazier accepted given Oswald’s stated reason for the Thursday trip. Frazier estimated the bag was about 2 feet long and 5 to 6 inches wide. Frazier also noted Oswald carried no lunch that day, despite his usual habit of bringing lunch when riding with Frazier.
CHAPTER IV
Chapter IV of the Warren Commission report investigates whether Lee Harvey Oswald carried the assassination weapon into the Texas School Book Depository concealed in a brown paper bag and fired shots from the southeast corner window of the sixth floor. The chapter reviews eyewitness testimony about Oswald’s arrival, analyzes discrepancies in witnesses’ estimates of the bag’s length, examines the physical and forensic evidence linking Oswald, the bag, the rifle, and the window, and concludes that Oswald assembled the rifle on the sixth floor and fired from that location.
Arrival at the Depository
Buell Wesley Frazier parked about two blocks north of the Depository. Oswald exited first, picked up the brown paper bag, and walked ahead toward the building while Frazier followed, his attention diverted by railroad switching operations. Oswald carried the package with one end under his armpit and the lower portion in his right hand, held straight and parallel to his body. By the time Oswald entered the rear door, he was approximately fifty feet ahead of Frazier—the first time he had not walked alongside Frazier. Once inside, Frazier did not see Oswald. Employee Jack Dougherty believed he saw Oswald arriving but did not recall him carrying anything, and no other employee reported seeing Oswald enter that morning.
Discrepancy in Bag Length
The Commission addressed the discrepancy between witness estimates of the bag’s length and the actual dimensions of the disassembled rifle. Frazier and Mrs. Randle estimated the bag at roughly twenty-seven to twenty-eight inches, while the wooden rifle stock measured 34.8 inches and the bag recovered from the sixth floor measured thirty-eight inches. When Frazier demonstrated how Oswald carried the package, he showed the disassembled rifle was too long to fit comfortably under the armpit. Mrs. Randle folded the recovered bag down to about twenty-eight and a half inches, saying it “wasn’t that long.” The Commission concluded the witnesses were mistaken about length, noting Randle saw the bag only fleetingly and Frazier’s view was distracted by the railroad operations.
The original text of this work is in the public domain. This page focuses on a guided summary article, reading notes, selected quotes, and visual learning materials for educational purposes.