From: willisdonald824@gmail.com   
      
   Mooney vs Alyea, and the two depository shooting sites   
      
   To hear Deputy Luke Mooney and newsman Tom Alyea talk about the site of the   
   shooting from the depository, you'd think that they were talking about two   
   different locations.  And perhaps they were.  The Mooney version:  "I saw the   
   expended shells on the    
   floor [inside] a cubby hole which had been constructed out of cartons..."   
   (11/23/63 report/Decker Exh 5323p528)   
      
   The Alyea version:  "At the time it was suspected that the assassin had stayed   
   quite a time there.  There was a s[t]ack with a stack of chicken bones on it.    
   There was a Dr. Pepper bottle..." (12/19/63 statement)  [Crime Scene Det.   
   Studebaker verifies    
   the bones:  "One of the officers...later emptied the sack, leaving the chicken   
   bones on the floor near the area where they were found... in the third aisle   
   from the [east] side" (FBI interview 5/28/64)]  It appears that Alyea at first   
   thought that the    
   sniper shot from the window at which Bonnie Ray Williams--who claimed the   
   chicken and the bottle--had sat eating lunch.  In fact, nowhere in Alyea's   
   statement does he mention expended shells or hulls or a "nest" or "cubby   
   hole", only a "gun".  As No True    
   Flags Here has found, there is a photo of Alyea at a seventh-floor window,   
   taken about the same time that the shells were found.   
      
   In "Facts and Photos"--Alyea's contribution to Connie Kritzberg's "Secrets   
   from the Sixth Floor Window"--he excludes Mooney from the scene of the finding   
   of the shooting location:  "When we arrived on the 6th floor and the location   
   was found, there were    
   no detectives or officers at the location..." (p44)  "You can totally   
   disregard any statements made by Mooney.  He didn't arrive [at the "nest"   
   location] until much later.  He neither saw the casings in their original   
   location nor did he see the    
   barricade until after Studebaker dismantled it, and this was over 30 minutes   
   after the SN was found." (Alyea email to Willis 5/18/98)  Mooney sans "nest",   
   Alyea sans shells.   
      
   And to that "no detectives or officers", Det. Studebaker adds, No chicken:   
   Commission Counsel Joseph Ball:  One witness, a deputy sheriff named Luke   
   Mooney said he found a piece of chicken partly eaten up on top of one of the   
   boxes [in the SE corner, over near where you found the cartridges]; did you   
   see anything like that?   
   Mr. STUDEBAKER. No.   
   Mr. BALL. Was anything like that called to your attention?   
   Mr. STUDEBAKER. I can't recall anything like that. It ought to be in one of   
   these pictures, if it is. (vp147)   
      
   So, no detectives, no officers, no chicken.  Alyea didn't see Mooney;   
   Studebaker didn't see Mooney's chicken.   
      
   For his part, Mooney excludes Alyea from the finding of the nest".  He   
   testifies that he was on his own:  "I went straight across to the SE corner...   
   and I saw all those high boxes." (hearings v3p284)  But no Alyea.   
      
   Mooney and Alyea seem to have mutually exclusive versions of the discovery of   
   the sniper's location.  Certainly, Alyea is most insistent that Mooney was   
   very late getting to the "nest".  Whom to believe?  Both, I think, in part.    
   There is verification    
   for Mooney's discovery of the empty shells--about the time that Mooney found   
   the shells and, in turn, shouted out the window--as it was "approaching 1   
   o'clock" (p285)--there is a 12:59 call on the police radio for the Crime Lab   
   to come to the TSBD. (CE    
   1974p41)   
      
   And there is verification that Alyea saw the "nest", though at the time he   
   apparently did not know exactly what it was:  In "Pictures of the Pain"   
   (p534), there's a frame blow-up from the film Alyea took that day of the   
   "nest".  However, no shells are    
   visible, and there's no picture of Capt. Fritz holding up the shells for Alyea   
   to photograph, as, in later years, he insisted Fritz had done.     
      
   And yet Mooney and Alyea each maintain that the other was not there.  Perhaps   
   because there were two "theres" there.  Chief Criminal Deputy Allan Sweatt   
   reported that Mooney did indeed holler out the window re "some spent cartridge   
   cases" that had been    
   found.  (Decker Exh 5323p532)  And, as noted, the 12:59 call on the radio   
   verifies the find, if not the exact location.  Apart from the hard evidence of   
   that call and the frame blow-up in Trask, there are only the words of Mooney   
   and Alyea and others to    
   go on that they saw the shells and/or the "nest" early on.     
      
   So all we know for sure, then, is that Mooney found the shells, and that Alyea   
   was at least on the right floor about the time that the "nest" was found.    
   But, as I say, Alyea did not, initially, even mention shells, and seemed to   
   put the place "where [   
   the assassin] fired" outside the "nest", a few windows away from the end   
   window.  And as No True Flags Here has found, there's a photo of Alyea at a   
   7th-floor window about the time that the shells were found.  Mooney:  "At that   
   time [just before he found    
   the shells], some news reporter... was coming up with a camera... So I went   
   back down... to the sixth floor".(p284)   
      
   One way to reconcile the Mooney and Alyea stories, then, is to conclude that   
   there were two separate discoveries (apart from that of the rifle) that   
   afternoon--the shells in one place, the "nest" in another.  Mooney in one   
   place, Alyea in another... We    
   know that Mooney found the shells.  At the same time, Alyea is adamant that   
   he, Mooney, got to the "nest" late.  I believe that, on their respective   
   points here, they're both right.  How could that be?  As suggested by Alyea's   
   statement above, the shells    
   were not in the "nest" when he was on the floor at the rifle find.  Mooney had   
   found them earlier, and perhaps elsewhere.  Alyea, then, would have seen the   
   "nest"--but empty--long before Mooney did.  However, Mooney seems to have seen   
   the shells long    
   before Alyea did, if the latter saw them at all.  In the end, both men said   
   that they saw the shells in the "nest", but each one--at least according to   
   the other's version--must have "placed" them there retroactively.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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