“
Questions surround nearly every aspect of the assassination. The chain
of possession regarding each piece of evidence was tainted beyond repair.
The presidential limousine, which represented the literal crime scene,
was taken over by officials immediately after JFK’s body was carried into
Parkland Hospital and tampered with. The Secret Service apparently cleaned
up the limousine, washing away crucial evidence in the process. Obviously,
whatever bullet fragments or other material that was purportedly found
there became immediately suspect because of this. On November 26, the
windshield on the presidential limo was replaced.
The supposed murder weapon—a cheap, Italian Mannlicher-Carcano
rifle with a defective scope, allegedly ordered by Oswald through a post office
box registered to his purported alias, Alex Hidell—is similarly troublesome.
The two Dallas officers who discovered the rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, Seymour Weitzman and Eugene Boone,
both swore in separate affidavits that the weapon was a German Mauser. As
was to become all too common in this case, they would later each claim to be
“mistaken” in a curiously identical manner.
In fact, as late as midnight on November 22, Dallas District Attorney
Henry Wade would refer to the rifle as a Mauser when speaking to the press.
Local WFAA television reported the weapon found as both a German Mauser
and an Argentine Mauser. NBC, meanwhile, described the weapon as a British
Enfield. In an honest court, the Carcano would not even have been permitted
into the record, because no reliable chain of possession for it existed. Legally
speaking, the rifle found on the sixth floor was a German Mauser, and no one
claimed Oswald owned a weapon of that kind.
”
”
Donald Jeffries (Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics)