12:55: Patrolman Hill Finds Shells under the Second Window from the
End, Fifth Floor
Interviewed in 1964, news photographer Tom Alyea--not a conspiracy
buff--said of his fellow searchers & himself, "First, we went to the
fifth floor. No one seemed sure of from where the shots had
come." (Pictures of the Pain p521). But we know more than he did, at
least more than he did at that time. We know *why* that first, hardy
band of searchers went to the fifth floor first--they went there
because two police-radio alerts, at 12:36 & 12:37, pinpointed exactly
where officers felt--rightly or not--that the shooting originated:
the fifth floor (12:36) of the TSBD, second window from the end,
upper
right hand corner (12:37).
And we know that the sender of the 12:37 message--either Patrolman
Leonard Hill or Officer Clyde Haygood (the Warren Re****t sez the
former; at the hearings, the latter said the latter, but apparently
he
was not believed)--we know that the sender was probably one of
Alyea's
fellow searchers. Because the dispatcher told the officer, "Re****t
on
down there [to the depository]." And the officer responded, "I'll
leave these witnesses here [at the underpass]" (JFK First Day
Evidence
p408).
In fact--in looking closely at Alyea's version--it may have been this
very policeman who first zeroed in on the spent hulls:
A uniformed policeman called out... "Take a look at this...." [We]
saw... the three shell casings...
in front of the second window [from the SE end]. (Alyea e-mail to
Tony
Pitman 5/7/98)
A "uniformed policeman" finding hulls under the "second window"!
Alyea apparently did not know that, at 12:37, a patrolman had radioed
re shooting from the "second window from the end" & that the only
such
window open, at 12:30, in the upper right-hand corner, was on the
fifth floor... where Alyea says that the first search party began, &
where, apparently, then, that "uniformed policeman" found the three
hulls. That policeman--we'll go with the Re****t & say Hill--would
have known right where to go.
There's another reason to doubt that Haygood was the uniformed
policeman (as per Alyea) who was the discoverer of the hulls. In
1964, he told the Warren Commission that he saw some shells "there
under the window" (v6p300). But read this excerpt from Haygood's
9/27/77 HSCA interview:
When [Haygood & ED Brewer] got to the sixth floor, they observed the
cardboard boxes stacked, chicken bones & a soda bottle. A short
distance away in a corner they saw brown paper...."
What's missing here? Yes, those "shells" he supposedly saw. He
recalls some apparently quite memorable "brown paper", a bottle, &
chicken, but no hulls! Was a bottle more significant to him than
were
the empty hulls from the rifle which apparently killed the President?
Or, much more likely, did Haygood neither discover nor even see the
hulls? Certainly, he would have remembered finding them, if indeed
he
had.
The more familiar, deputy-sheriffs version has Luke Mooney finding
the
hulls (two under the end window, one under the second window), but
perhaps he was just the one who shouted the find out the window.
Alyea really has it in for Mooney: "You can totally disregard any
statements made by Mooney. He didn't arrive until much
later." (5/18/98 Alyea e-mail to me) Alyea seems genuinely irked
that
someone seems to have gotten credit for something he did not do. He
blames this injustice on the sheriffs themselves: "I think Mooney &
some of his fellow deputies invented stories to impress Sheriff
Decker
that they were there at the time." (Alyea 5/18/98)
The principal blame, tho, may have lain elsewhere. Picture the
patrolman who radioed re shots from the second window from the end,
on
the fifth floor, finding hulls "in front of the twin window to the
right" (looking *out*; Alyea 5/18/98), on any floor. A tad risky.
Safer, instead, for the cover-uppers to give credit for the finding
of
the hulls to a deputy sheriff who had, happily, *not* radioed (about
15 minutes before the former event) re shooting from the very spot
where the hulls were found. Wanted: plainclothesman. Police-radio
experience discouraged. Sixth-floor cover story encouraged.
Maybe Alyea is onto something re his main point here--maybe Mooney's
story should be examined a little more closely. One hears a lot
about
various search parties wending their way thru the depository in the
hour after the shooting, but not much is heard about The Lone
Searcher... Mooney.... "I was the only person on the 6th floor when I
was searching it & was reasonably sure there was no one else on this
floor as I searched it & then criss-crossed it...." (11/23/63 re****t/
v
19p528)
Mooney: I stopped on six & didn't even know what floor I was on.
Ball: You were alone?
Mooney: I was alone at that time. (hearings v3p284)
Other searchers, including Alyea, worked as teams, & couldn't
discount
a possible shootout with an armed killer (Pictures p521). The
intrepid Mooney's day-late re****t seems unintentionally predicated on
the by-then common knowledge that the shooter was not cornered in the
building, that the latter was nowhere near the "cubby hole" when,
Mooney states, he "saw the expended shells on the floor" (11/23
re****t). Under those cir***stances, certainly, a Lone Searcher could
go it... alone: "I kept going up.... I don't know why [I went to the
sixth floor]" (v3p284). No reason. No backup. No context. Like a
(very) smart missile, Mooney--on his second foray into the sixth
floor--"went direct[ly] to the far corner & then discovered a cubby
hole...." (11/23 re****t) He might simply be on a scavenger hunt in
an
old warehouse in which nothing has happened, from which no shots have
been fired. In a void, Mooney comes across the hulls. Or not.
There were about 20 minutes between the time that the first search
group (Hill & Alyea's) would have reached the fifth floor--circa
12:45--and the time that Homicide Capt Fritz (who was out front of
the
TSBD at 12:58 [Pictures photo p502]) would have gotten there:
Captain Fritz joined us on the fifth floor. (Alyea, in Secrets from
the Sixth Floor Window p43)
Did Fritz--some 20 minutes later--also go first to the fifth floor?
Supposedly, nothing was found there, & DPD Sgt Gerald Hill testified
that he met Fritz on his, Hill's, way down, circa 1:07, & directed
Fritz to the *sixth* floor (Pictures p523). But *no one*--not Alyea,
not Fritz, not his detectives, Sims & Boyd--sez that Fritz went
directly to the sixth floor. (Alyea, it's true, generally goes with
the sixth-floor "nest" story, but he doesn't seem to have the proof
to
back up the latter, such as the film he says he took of the hulls
from
"over the top of the barricade" [see Secrets from the 6th Floor
Window
p40], before that barricade was partially dismantled.)
All three Homicide detectives testified, respectively, that they
stopped on random floors as they searched from the ground level up.
(Fritz: v4p105/Boyd: v7p121/Sims: v7p160) But this seems unlikely,
as
all signs of the shooter were pointing to a specific floor, whether
it
was the fifth or the sixth, or whether the sign was a radio alert or
a
person, upstairs or down (see below), directing newcomers to the
site,
where Homicide & the Crime Lab would be needed ASAP. The 12:36 &
12:37 radio messages sent the first group to the fifth floor. As
late
as 12:46, the dispatcher was telling Insp JH Sawyer, in front of the
depository,
All the information we have received, 9, indicates that [the
shooting]
did come from about the fifth or fourth floor of that building.
And Mooney's shouted directions out the window, between 12:55 (as per
Alyea's timing/4/23/98 e-mail to Pitman) and 1 o'clock (as per
Mooney/
Pictures p523), sent folks from outside to... which floor, exactly?
Well, Sawyer told re****ters
Police found the remains of fried chicken & paper on the fifth floor.
Apparently, the person
had been there quite a while. (Stockton Record 11/22/63 p8)
Now, not only Sawyer's dispatcher & the officers in Dealey were
saying
"fifth floor"--Sawyer was, too. And at 1:11, Sawyer radioed the
dispatcher that hulls were found on the "third floor" (Pictures
p523),
which tallies with his other designation: The fifth floor *up* is
the
third floor *down*. Sawyer, at least, *thought* that he saw Mooney
on
the fifth floor, & thus would have sent all later arrivals, such as
Fritz, to that floor. He was reiterating the 12:36, 12:37, & 12:46
police-radio information, with no attempt to correct same.
If nothing was found on the fifth floor, why was Alyea still there,
or
back there, some 20 minutes later? Why was Fritz apparently directed
to the *fifth* floor, after Mooney leaned out the window with his
news, circa 12:55-1:00? In fact, Mooney testified that when he
shouted down to those below, "Fritz [was] standing right on the
ground" (v3p284).
While I was still in front of the building, Deputy Sheriff Luke
Mooney
stuck his head out of the 5th floor window of the building & stated
he
had found some spent cartridge cases=85.=94 (Chief Criminal Deputy Allan
Sweatt/v19p531)
=93The 5th floor window=85.=94 But, whether Sawyer or Mooney or both were
Fritz's source, Fritz hooked up with Alyea on the... fifth floor. He
and Sims and Boyd didn't have to guess which floor they were to go
to.
In sum: Mooney shouted out the fifth-floor window, where the hulls
were found, "in front of the second window" (Alyea's words), where
Alyea was waiting, & where Fritz found him and Mooney and (Patrolman)
Hill et al. For some reason, no one was paying attention to (Sgt)
Hill....
Mooney called down to Fritz. Where did Fritz go? To the fifth
floor.
Again: Mooney called down to Fritz. Where did Fritz go? To the
fifth floor....
copr 2008 dcw
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