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

第四章

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.