From jmcadams@primenet.com Tue Nov 26 21:57:34 CST 1996 Article: 1204 of alt.conspiracy.jfk.moderated From: jmcadams@primenet.com (John McAdams) Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk.moderated Subject: La Fontaines' Use of Evidence - I Date: 20 Nov 1996 18:32:04 -0700 Organization: PrimeNet Lines: 55 Approved: jmcadams@netcom.com Message-ID: <570bek$2ke@nnrp1.news.primenet.com> X-Posted-By: jmcadams@206.165.5.102 (jmcadams) Path: mcadams.posc.mu.edu!news.primenet.com!jmcadams I've had OSWALD TALKED for a couple of weeks now, and the more carefully I look at it, the more I'm disappointed with the way the La Fontaines' handle evidence. In the first place, they consistently base their theories on the *weakest* available evidence, not the strongest. Consider, for example, the question of whether a Mauser was found on the 6th Floor of the Depostory. Conspiracy authors have long claimed that the gun on the 6th Floor was a Mauser, using the "at a glance" impressions of Seymour Weitzman and some other officers. The LaF's up the ante on this theory by concluding that *two* rifles were found in the Depository: a Mauser on the 6th floor, and an MC on the 4th or 5th floor. Their *sole* source of the "lower floor" theory is former ATF agent Frank Ellsworth. According to the La Fontaines: --------------------------------------- Former AFT agent Frank Ellsworth, who participated in a *second* search of the book depository conducted after 1:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, according to a Secret Service document, confirms that the Mannlicher-Carcano was found by a DPD detective on the fourth or fifth floor of the building, "not on the same floor as the cartridges." He adds: "I remember we talked about it, and figured that he must have run out from the stairwell and dropped it as he was running downstairs." ----------------------------------------------------- What is striking about this account is that it's admittedly hearsay -- and probably third or fourth-hand hearsay. When Ellsworth was in the building, the rifle had already been discovered and removed. Elsworth is their *entire* basic for claiming a "two rifle" scenario. Nobody else described any rifle found anywhere but on the sixth floor. And nobody described *two* rifles found that day. The only confusion was over whether the rifle found was a Mauser, a British rifle, or an MC. Tom Alyea's 16 mm. footage of the rifle being recovered, shot on the sixth floor, shows it to be a Mannlicher-Carcano. Still photographs of J.C. Day carrying the rifle out of the building show him to be carrying an MC. By insisting on believing the least reliable evidence -- including the very weak evidence of Weitzman's "in a glance" impression of the make of the rifle (he didn't remove it from where it was hidden), and Ellsworth's hearsay idea of a rifle found on a lower floor -- and ignoring the reliable evidence -- the Alyea film and Day's testimony that the gun was an MC -- they come up with a cumbersome and implausible scenario. But that's what usually happens when one insists on believing unreliable accounts. .John