Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Rifle Range Witness Inconsistencies

The testimony of witnesses who claimed to have seen Oswald at the Sports Drome Rifle Range is undermined by internal inconsistencies and contradictions with established facts: Slack recalled the man had blond hair when interviewed on December 2, 1963, and Price recalled the man wore a “Bulldogger Texas style” hat and had bubble gum or chewing tobacco in his cheek when interviewed on December 3, neither of which match Oswald’s known appearance. The date Price adjusted the scope for the man (September 28, 1963) conflicts with confirmed records that Oswald was in Mexico City that day, and Slack’s claimed November 10 sighting conflicts with evidence Oswald was at the Paine residence that day and did not travel to the range. The witnesses’ descriptions of the man’s rifle (a Mauser-type bolt-action rifle with an ammunition clip in front of the trigger and a mounted scope) align with Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano, leading the Commission to conclude the witnesses likely misidentified the man they saw due to this similarity, rather than actually observing Oswald.

第八章 She did not then know Oswald’s address in Dallas.[C6-367]

The Commission evaluated extensive evidence demonstrating that the weapon witnesses observed being fired at a Texas firing range differed significantly from Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano assassination rifle, with discrepancies including a shortened “sporterized” barrel, missing components, visible flame discharge, and a different Japanese-manufactured scope of lesser value. The Commission also scrutinized the testimony of automobile salesman Albert Guy Bogard, who claimed that a man identifying himself as “Lee Oswald” test-drove a car on November 9, 1963, with the help of coworkers Frank Pizzo, Eugene Wilson, and Oran Brown, but found significant inconsistencies in their accounts, conflicting descriptions of the customer’s appearance and behavior, and a verified alibi placing Oswald elsewhere that day. Finally, the Commission examined Sylvia Odio’s testimony that she was visited in late September 1963 by an American introduced as “Leon Oswald” alongside two men of Cuban or Mexican background, concluding after extensive investigation and the FBI’s location of Loran Eugene Hall, William Seymour, and Lawrence Howard that Oswald was not in Dallas at the time and therefore could not have been the American in her apartment.