…the cartridge cases ( shells ) found near the scene of the shooting were fired from the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the exclusion of all other weapons..” ( WC Report, pg. 176 )

Based on the evidence I’ve seen, I would concede that the empty shells currently in evidence were, in fact, fired from the revolver. I base this opinion on the fact that the breech and firing pin markings on the shells in evidence matched the breech and firing pin markings on the test shells fired by the FBI.

But I cannot accept that they were fired at the Tippit murder scene. I believe that there is sufficient evidence to cast doubt on whether the shells currently in evidence are the same shells recovered from the Tippit murder scene.

Back in 1964, at least one member of the Warren Commission suspected this.

A question of substitution

Warren Commission member Rep. Hale Boggs ( D-La. ) began a line of questioning of FBI expert Cortlandt Cunningham that suggested that Boggs suspected evidence tampering by police.

He asked Cunningham if the Oswald bullets were the same bullets used by police departments:

Representative BOGGS. Is this a police weapon as well?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Yes; and a very good one. Not in that particular caliber. In other words, the caliber—-
Representative BOGGS. That is what I meant.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. 38 S&W is not a popular cartridge in this country. The .38 Special is.
Representative BOGGS. 38 Special is?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Yes, sir. That cartridge.
Representative BOGGS. With police forces?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We use it. Most of your larger police forces use the . 38 Special. It is a better cartridge. ( 3 H 478 )

Boggs’ line of questioning was then cut off by assistant counsel Eisenberg, who changed the subject.

The point is that the .38 Special was very popular among police departments and readily available to authorities who wanted to substitute .38 Special shells for the original shells.

There are several pieces of evidence that cast more than a reasonable doubt on whether the shells currently in evidence are the same shells recovered from the crime scene.

No chain of custody forms exist for any of the shells

In criminal and civil law, the term “chain of custody” refers to the order in which items of evidence have been handled during the investigation of a case. Proving that an item has been properly handled through an unbroken chain of custody is required for it to be legally accepted as evidence in court.

In practice, a chain of custody is a chronological paper trail documenting when, how, and by whom individual items of physical or electronic evidence—such as cell phone logs—were collected, handled, analyzed, or otherwise controlled during an investigation. Under the law, an item will not be accepted as evidence during the trial—will not be seen by the jury—unless the chain of custody is an unbroken and fully documented trail without gaps or discrepancies. In order to convict a defendant of a crime, the evidence against them must have been handled in a meticulously careful manner to prevent tampering or contamination.

A typical chain of custody form would look like this:

Since the shells were collected when Oswald was still alive and since the implementation of the form is made by the first person to handle it and it is assumed that police intended to take the case to trial, chain of custody forms documenting the trail of the shells, SHOULD have been filled out.

And because the four shells were found by three different people, there should be three chain of custody forms in the record for the four shells.

There’s no evidence that these forms were ever filled out.

Not only was a chain of custody documentation never filled out, there are more problems with authenticating the four shells in evidence.

The shells were not photographed in position as found

This is somewhat bizarre from a crime scene investigation standpoint. Like the paper “gunsack” allegedly found on the sixth floor by police, the shells were not photographed “in situ” ( as found ). Even though there were police photographers present at the scene when 3 of the shells were found by witnesses.

Witnesses could not identify the shells currently in evidence as the shells they found

Four shells were found at the scene: two by Domingo Benavides, which he gave to Officer J.M. Poe. One by Barbara Davis, who lived in the corner house, which she gave to Capt. G.M. Doughty and the last by her sister-in-law Virginia Davis later that day, which she gave to an unidentified Dallas Officer. ( they say Detective C.N. Dhority )

Commission Exhibit 2011 is the FBI report on the shells recovered at the Tippit murder scene. It says that NONE of the three witnesses who found the shells were able to identify the shells currently in evidence as the shells they found.

In addition, Officer Poe, who told the FBI that he marked the shells, was unable to find his initials on ANY of the shells and thus could not identify ANY of the shells as the ones Benavides gave him.

In spite of this lack of evidence that the shells were found near the Tippit murder scene, the Commission accepted the identification of officers who handled the shells further down the chain of custody as evidence that the shells were, in fact, found at the murder scene.

Off. Poe misidentifies the shells Benavides gave him

Off. J.M. Poe, who told the FBI he marked the two shells he got from Domingo Benavides, before giving them to Sgt. Barnes, ( CE 2011 / 24 H 415 ) could not find his mark on any of the shells when asked to do so. During his testimony, he chose the wrong shell ( Q-75 ) as one of the shells he got from Benavides and marked. ( 7 H 69 ) But that shell ( Q-75 ), was identified by Detective C.N. Dhority as having been found by Virginia Davis. ( CE 2011 / 24 H 415 )

Shell Q-75 could not have been found by BOTH Virginia Davis AND Benavides.

The lack of a chain of custody documentation and the inability of the witnesses who found the shells to identify the shells in evidence are not the only problems authenticating the shells in evidence as the shells found at the crime scene.

The shells in evidence did not match the bullets removed from Tippit’s body in number and manufacturer.

The shells in evidence DO NOT match the bullets removed from Tippit’s body

Four bullets were removed from Tippit’s body, one at the hospital so the Dallas Police would have a “known” for their bullet tests and the other three at his autopsy. Three of the bullets in evidence ( CE 602, 603 and 605 ) are Winchester-Westerns and the fourth ( CE 604 ) is a Remington-Peters. ( 3 H 475 )

But of the four shells in evidence, two are Winchester-Westerns and two are Remington-Peters. ( 3 H 465 )

How is it that the shells don’t match the bullets ? The Commission and its apologists theorize that there was a fifth shot ( a Remington-Peters bullet ) that missed and was never found and a Winchester-Western shell that was never found.

The theory that a shot missed is just that —- a theory.

Not evidence.

All of these many years later, no evidence of a missed shot has ever surfaced. You would think that the fame associated with the discovery of that bullet would drive any Dale Myers wannabe to his local TruValue store for a metal detector.

But there were other possibilities that the Commission never considered. One of those was that the shells in evidence were NOT found at the Tippit murder scene, but substituted in from another criminal case. If that were the case, the shells might contain the initials of persons not in the chain of custody of this case, but rather those in the chain of custody in that other case.

And the evidence indicates that at least in the case of three of the shells, that was true.

There were initials on the shells that did not correspond to anyone in the chain of custody

According to the Dallas Police, the two Remington-Peters shells found at the Tippit murder scene bore the initials “RD”. This is revealed in the CSSS form they used when they released the four spent shells to FBI agent Vincent Drain on 11-28-63.

The initials “RD” do not correspond to any police officer known to have been in the chain of custody of the evidence. In addition, no police officer with the initials “RD” or using the mark “RD” testified before the Warren Commission. So who is “RD”?

Similarly, one of the Western shells bears the initials “DC” or “DO, again, not corresponding to any officer known to have been in the chain of custody. And no police officer with those initials or who used those markings was ever called to give testimony for the Warren Commission.

So who were these people and how did they end up in the chain of custody for this evidence ? Were these the markings of people who handled the evidence but used letters that were not necessarily their initials ?

Were these the actual shells found at the scene or were they substituted in ?

Could they have been fired from the “Oswald” handgun at another location, say a police firing range and marked by the officers who fired them ? Officers who would not appear in the “chain of custody” ?

Now you know why it is so important to fill out the chain of custody forms.

And then there was the original description of the shells reported by police.

The shells found at the scene were originally identified as automatics

More evidence of substitution comes in the radio broadcast of Sgt. Gerald Hill. He allegedly got two shells from Sgt. Pete Barnes who got them from Officer Poe.

Sawyer Exhibit A is a transcript of the Dallas Police radio traffic. In that transcript, Sgt. Hill radioed that “the shells at the scene indicate the suspect is armed with an automatic 38 rather than a pistol.”

The fact that he used the terminology “the shells indicate” says he read them.

A mistake ?

Over the years, Hill has admitted making a mistake in his description of the shells. He claimed that he saw “38” and assumed they were automatics.

But this is not a mistake anybody, let alone a veteran detective could have made because these shells, like all shells, are clearly head-stamped with identification.

And the ONLY way to positively identify a spent shell is by READING THE HEADSTAMP.

38 automatic shells are clearly marked “38 AUTO”, 38 Special shells are clearly marked “38 SPL” and regular 38 shells are marked “38 CAL”.

One would think that if he were assuming the shells were one thing or another, he would assume that they were the more popular shell. But in this case, he assumed that they were the less popular automatics.

I find that hard to believe.

In addition, there are notable differences between the .38 Special shell and the .38 Automatic shell.

The difference in length has to do with the fact that the .38 Special carries a larger gunpowder load. The difference at the base is because the .38 Special shell is designed to stay in the revolving cylinder once fired and the .38 Automatic is designed to be extracted and ejected from the handgun automatically.

The Dallas Police delayed sending these four shells to the FBI for examination until November 28th, and the FBI lab did not receive them until November 30th, some eight days after the Tippit killing. ( 3 H 465 ) Plenty of time for substitution.

And if the shells were substituted, the corrosion on them may give an indication of who was behind the substitution.

Corrosion on the shells

Upon closer examination of these shells, we see corrosion.

Those of us who have carried guns or worked with guns know that this corrosion is a result of the cartridge having been in a gunbelt or bullet slide for a long period of time. Leather absorbs moisture and when that moisture is trapped between the leather “loop” and the bullet cartridge, it causes corrosion on the shell part of the cartridge.

Before the days of speed loaders and bullet pouches, this was the way we carried extra ammunition for revolvers.

It is unlikely that Lee Harvey Oswald was the source of these shells. Oswald owned neither a gunbelt nor a bullet slide. And the corrosion on these shells and cartridges indicate a timeline that they were in a gunbelt or bullet slide long before Oswald “purchased” his handgun.

Conclusion

Absent the word of the police, there is NO EVIDENCE that the shells currently in evidence were fired at 10th and Patton.

1. No chain-of-custody forms were ever filled out for the shells currently in evidence.
2. The official “chain of custody” begins with the second or third person to handle the shells.
3. The shells were not photographed as found, even though there were police photographers present at the scene when 3 of the shells were found by witnesses.
4. The persons who found the shells could not identify the shells currently in evidence as the shells they found.
5. The police officer who marked two shells given to him could not identify ANY of the shells currently in evidence as the shells he marked. During his testimony, he misidentified one of the shells as the shell he marked.
6. Initials appear on three of the four shells that do not correspond to anyone known to have been in the chain of custody.
7. The shells do not match in number and manufacturer the bullets that were removed from Off. Tippit’s body.
8. The shells were originally identified by police as “.38 automatics”.
9. The shells contain corrosion consistent with having been in a gunbelt or a bullet slide for a considerable amount of time.

When you consider all of these facts combined, is it possible that these are just a series of coincidences or is there enough evidence here to suspect that the Dallas Police tampered with the empty shells in this murder ?

A final thought

It is well known that .38 Special ammunition was commonly used by police departments at that time and was readily available to anyone who wanted to make a switch.

There was only one group who handled the evidence prior to 11/28, had bullet slides and gunbelts, had these cartridges and the handgun readily available to them and had the means, motive and opportunity to substitute the shells currently in evidence for the original shells:

The Dallas Police.