From: willisdonald824@gmail.com   
      
   The sniper's perch on the 5th floor   
      
   1>  Bonnie Ray Williams claimed to have left chicken bones and a Dr. Pepper   
   bottle, on the floor, after eating lunch on the 6th floor. (v3pp170-71)    
   Perhaps they were his, but...   
      
      
   2>  "[Det.] Studebaker was dusting the Dr. Pepper bottle which had been   
   brought up to him from the 5th floor".  (Tom Alyea, in "Secrets from the   
   Sixth-Floor Window" p45)   
      
   3>  In a 12/19/63 statement, Alyea notes "a s[t]ack with a stack of chicken   
   bones on it" and a "Dr. Pepper bottle which they dusted for fingerprinting",   
   all supposedly on the 6th floor.  However, he does not note a sniper's nest,   
   and seems to believe    
   that the bottle and chicken mark the window (location on floor not specified)   
   from which the sniper fired.  Taken together, these two statements indicate   
   that he was writing about the 5th floor.  [In his reference to Studebaker,   
   Alyea does not mention    
   the chicken bones, perhaps because their transporter had bagged them.]   
      
   4>  Everyone accepts Williams' 6th-floor-foray story, which he seemed to have   
   recounted from the get-go.  But the get-go was his 11/22/63 affidavit:  "I   
   went back up on the 5th floor with a fellow called Hank and Junior."  No 6th   
   floor.  Initially, then,    
   Williams corroborates Alyea.  By Saturday, however, he had retroactively   
   wended his way up to the next floor for his lunch.  The 6th-floor magnet...   
      
   5>  But Saturday damage control yielded more damage.  In an 11/23/63 FBI   
   statement, Williams now avers that he did go up to the 6th floor to eat his   
   lunch, and that he then took the stairs back down to the 5th floor, leaving   
   the elevator which he took up    
   to the 6th floor behind.  But, in his Commission testimony, he has to correct   
   his correction: "I didn't tell [the FBI] that I was using the stairs."    
   (v3p172)  Perhaps he has to make the retraction because Roy Truly testified   
   that when, accompanying    
   Patrolman Baker upstairs, he first looked up the elevator shaft and saw that   
   "both [elevators] were on the 5th floor at that time."  (v3p223)  Of course   
   they were, since Williams had not gone up to the 6th floor.   
      
   6>  Truly and Alyea, independently, nix the Williams version of the   
   chicken-and-bottle story.  Williams' prevarications were necessitated by a   
   1:12 DPD radio transmission from Insp. J.H. Sawyer, and his later advisory to   
   reporters.   In the former, he    
   mentions "empty rifle hulls", and notes that "the man had been there for some   
   time" (Trask p523); in the latter, he mentions "remains of fried chicken and   
   paper", and again notes that "the person had been there quite a while".   
   (Stockton Record, S.F.    
   Examiner, Oakland Tribune [AP] 11/22/63)  The shells, then, were inextricably   
   linked with the chicken.  Everywhere the shells went, the chicken (and bottle)   
   was sure to go.  And, in an elaborate ruse to keep the chicken with the   
   shells, several sheriff's    
   deputies and DPD Sgt. Gerald Hill falsely reported seeing chicken adorning the   
   6th-floor "nest".  But Alyea and DPD Crime Scene detectives Studebaker and Day   
   put the kibosh on that scenario--none of the three reported seeing chicken   
   remains there.  As    
   Studebaker testified, if they had been there, they would have appeared in his   
   photographs of the area.     
      
   7>  Studebaker did photograph the shells in the "nest", but apparently a good   
   deal later than they were supposed to have been photographed.  Alyea:  "Fritz   
   handed the casings to Studebaker to include them in the crime scene shot of   
   the window..." (email    
   from Alyea to Tony Pitman 5/6/98)  Apparently, the photographing took place   
   *much* later:  Dets. Johnson & Montgomery were assigned to assist in the   
   "nest" and window areas on the 6th floor, beginning about 1:05, until about   
   2:30, but their respective    
   reports mention no shells nor photographing of same on the 6th floor during   
   that period, although: damage control again: the later Sims/Boyd report has   
   them, supposedly, left guarding the phantom shells while Capt. Fritz, Sims, &   
   Boyd go over to check    
   out the rifle site.  Unlike the chicken, the shells finally do show up in the   
   "nest", but why the delay?     
      
   8>  Back to that 1:12 transmission and subsequent Sawyer briefing of   
   reporters...  The problem with *what* Sawyer reported having been found   
   upstairs was compounded by the problem with *where* it was supposedly found.    
   The radio message says, "3rd floor".   
     Baffling, until you realize that some 20 minutes earlier, Sawyer and Hill   
   had been involved with a suspect detained on the 3rd floor who was, at the   
   time, thought to have been a shooter.  (HSCA interview with Officer Ira   
   Trantham, 11/23/63 report of    
   Chief Criminal Deputy Allan Sweatt)  Apparently, Hill--who had entered the   
   depository at about 12:52 and sent the suspect out--had later brought Sawyer   
   (who hadn't gone in with him) up-to-date on what had been found inside the   
   building.  But either Hill    
   did not mention the number of the (higher) floor where the subsequent   
   discovery of shells had occurred, or Sawyer mis-heard--hence, "3rd floor".    
   Sawyer, however, told reporters later that the discovery had actually happened   
   on the 5th floor.  And that,    
   apparently, was *not* a mistake.  Between the time of his transmission and the   
   time of the briefing, someone must have told Sawyer "5th floor".  Most likely   
   informant: Sweatt, whose report put the finding of the hulls on the 5th   
   floor.  Sawyer and Sweatt    
   were both out front about this time, and the latter must have heard his   
   broadcast and gone over to correct him.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)