From: willisdonald824@gmail.com   
      
   Fritz first hears about the shells--The Three Versions   
   ... And the source for Insp. Sawyer's mysterious "3rd floor"   
      
   First version:  Sims/Boyd [Homicide] report (Sims Exh. A).  "We [Fritz,   
   Sims, Boyd] went on up to the 7th floor... About that time someone yelled that   
   some empty hulls had been found on the 6th floor... [We] went to the SE window   
   on the 6th floor & saw    
   3 empty rifle hulls...The empty hulls were found about 1:15."  This first   
   version is easily dismissed.  Perhaps--it might have been explained,   
   retroactively--the "someone" was just belatedly yelling for Fritz to come and   
   see the hulls, some 15 minutes    
   after they had actually been found.  But as late as his Commission testimony   
   (4/6/64), Det. Sims was still saying, "I think the hulls were found about   
   1:15." (v7p162)  By then, such a misapprehension would have been corrected.   
      
   Even the Warren Report, which got a little closer to the actual time of the   
   finding of the hulls, pegged it as late as 1:12, about the time of Insp.   
   Sawyer's DPD radio transmission re the shells on the "3rd [sic] floor" (CE   
   1974 p176/DPD transcription),    
   which it footnotes.  But Deputy Luke Mooney, who found the shells, said that   
   when he found them, it was "approaching 1 o'clock" (v3p285), confirmed by DPD   
   Sgt. Harkness' call for the Crime Lab, at about 12:59 (CE 1974 p41).  One   
   might surmise that the    
   Sims/Boyd "1:15" was based on DPD Sgt. Hill's shout out a 6th-floor window,   
   but for more on Hill, we turn to...   
      
   Second Version:  Sgt. Hill:  "We hadn't been there but a minute until   
   someone yelled, 'Here it is!' or words to that effect... In front of the   
   second window... were three spent shells... At this point, I asked the deputy   
   sheriff to guard the scene...    
   and went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the   
   street for them to send us the Crime Lab... I went to the back of the   
   building... and Capt. Fritz  & his men were coming up on the elevator.  I   
   told him what we found... I [   
   went down to] make sure that the Crime Lab was en route..." (v7pp45-6).     
      
   Right away--contradiction.  Hill has Fritz coming UP to the 6th floor to see   
   the shells.  Sims/Boyd has him going DOWN to the 6th floor.  And it is not   
   "someone yelling" who first calls Fritz's attention to the discovery of the   
   shells, it's Sgt. Hill,    
   but not with his famous window shout, but with a briefing near the elevator.    
   In fact, the timing seems to track:  At 12:58, the shells are found inside,   
   just as Fritz arrives outside.  And Hill runs into Fritz "coming up".  Note   
   that Hill does not    
   add something like, say, Fritz informed me that he had already heard about the   
   shells.  So we must assume here that Fritz (to make good the Hill version)   
   had heard neither Mooney's shout nor Hill's, supposedly coming just after   
   Mooney's.  Hill's    
   version is more credible, it seems, at first, than the Sims/Boyd version.   
      
   But Hill then proceeds to call the first part of his sequencing into   
   question.  He does a little time traveling, oh only about 10 minutes, but   
   still traveling:  "About the time I got to the street, Lt. Day from the Crime   
   Lab was arriving" (p47).  Lt.    
   Day: "Shortly before 1 o'clock I received a call from the police dispatcher to   
   go to 411 Elm Street, Dallas... I arrived at the location on Elm about 1:12."   
   (v4p249)  In 1960s French New Wave film terms, this would be called a jump   
   cut.  Jumping from    
   circa 1:02 to circa 1:12.  Hill:  "And [Day] went on into the building, and   
   I went over to tell Insp. Sawyer... what we found." (p47)   
      
   A seemingly harmless advisory.  But, based on Sawyer's curious transmission   
   (see above), about this same time, Sawyer heard Hill say that they had found   
   shells on... the "3rd floor".  As Sawyer testified, "This was reported to me   
   by somebody inside the    
   building" (v6p322)  Hill fills the bill.  And, as we shall see, Fritz has   
   fits.  DPD poetry.   
      
   But why did Hill have to tell Sawyer anything?  The two of them--along with a   
   Patrolman Valentine--entered the depository together, about 12:52.  (CE 1974   
   p28: 12:48 radio transmission: Hill and Valentine "en route Elm &   
   Houston"/Sawyer: "I went [in]    
   with a couple of officers" [v6p317])  At some point, though, the three must   
   have split up and gone their separate ways.  Valentine "was assigned to the   
   fifth floor" (v25p914), and there are indeed photos of him watching over the   
   5th or 6th floor.  Hill    
   was there for Mooney's find.   
      
   But Sawyer must, for some reason, have left the search party early, before   
   anything had been found.  If he had been present at such a significant   
   discovery, he would have radioed as soon as he got back out front.  And at   
   1:08, Harkness radioes, "Anyone    
   that gets information regarding this incident down here, bring it to 9   
   [Sawyer] at Elm & Houston." (CE 1974 p50)  So, about 1:08, Sawyer begins   
   processing information out front, but he doesn't use the radio himself until   
   1:12, after Hill catches him up    
   on what the searchers found, some time after Sawyer splits off.   
      
   Re-creating the missing three or four minutes.  The sound of a police radio   
   out front carried well that afternoon.  Det. Johnson, on the 6th floor, could   
   hear a 1:20 transmission re the Tippit shooting (CE 2003 p210).  So... Filling   
   in the time gap    
   between Hill's reporting to Sawyer and his shout to the world:  At 1:12,   
   someone upstairs must have heard Sawyer's "3rd floor" transmission, looked   
   down, and saw Hill with Sawyer.  Cue a "Jerry!  Get your ass up here!" from an   
   upstairs window.  Quick-   
   study Fritz--to forestall any further damage from Hill's cockamamie "3rd   
   floor"--instructs Hill, fetched back upstairs, to go to a nearby 6th-floor   
   window and correct his "mistake", with a shout and a gesture towards the   
   "nest" area, as if the shells had    
   just been discovered there.  The apparent superfluousness of the Hill charade   
   undermines its intended message, which was:  Shells found just now, right   
   here.  But it was not "just now".  Was it also not "right here"?  How, that   
   is, do you get "6th floor"    
   out of "3rd floor"?  And, ever since, it has been a bit of a mystery as to why   
   a second shell shout was even needed, because...   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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