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: 

<Quote on>---------------------------------------

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." 

<Quote off>-----------------------------------------------------

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