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Mauser Rifle Was Found

There’s a huge problem with the Mannlicher rifle that was supposedly found on the sixth floor and was used to connect Oswald to the assassination. When the rifle was first found, it was not identified that way. It was identified instead as a 7.65 millimeter Mauser rifle. That identification was made— and made quite clearly—by law enforcement officials themselves who were right at the scene. It was even made by law enforcement officials at the scene who were closely familiar with rifles!

Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone discovered the rifle and then wrote the following words in his official statement:

I was assisting in the search of the 6th floor of the Dallas County Book Depository at Elm St. and Houston St. proceeding from the east side of the building. Officer Weitzman DPD and I were together as we approached the Northwest corner of the building. I saw the rifle partially hidden behind a row of books with two (2) other boxes of books against the rifle. The rifle appeared to be a 7.65mm Mauser with a telescope sight on the rifle.¹³¹

That Officer Weitzman of the Dallas Police Department, whom Deputy Boone refers to above, not only agreed with Boone on the rifle, but, now get a load of this: Weitzman was a “gun buff” who had even “had a sporting goods store at one time” and was hence, an expert on rifles.

In Deputy Boone’s second report, he again made the point of describing the rifle they found on the 6th floor as a 7.65 Mauser:

In the northwest corner of the building approximately three (3) feet from the east wall of the stairwell and behind a row of cases of books, I saw the rifle, what appeared to be a 7.65mm Mauser with a telescopic site. The rifle had what appeared to be a brownish, black stock and blue steel, metal parts.¹³²

Deputy Sheriff Boone also told the Warren Commission that Captain Will Fritz himself—the Chief of the Homicide Detail—also described the rifle as a 7.65mm Mauser. Notice though, that when covering such a delicate matter in the official transcript, they sort of hedge the issue:

MR. BALL: Who referred to it as a Mauser that day?

DEPUTY BOONE: I believe Captain Fritz. He had knelt down there to look at it, and before he removed it, not knowing what it was, he said that is what it looks like. This is when Lieutenant Day, I believe his name is, the ID man was getting ready to photograph it. We were just discussing it back and forth. And he said it looks like a 7.65 Mauser.¹³³

But, according to Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, Officer Weitzman and the others were not just “discussing it back and forth”¹³⁴—they had positively identified that rifle as a Mauser 7.65:

I believe Day [Lieutenant Carl Day who was in charge of the Dallas Police Crime Lab] pulled the rifle out and handed it to Captain Fritz, who held it up by the strap . . . and asked if anyone knew what kind of rifle it was. By that time, Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman had joined us. Weitzman was a gun buff. He had a sporting goods store at one time and he was very good with weapons and he said it looks like a Mauser. And he walked over to Fritz and Captain Fritz was holding the rifle up in the air and I was standing next to Weitzman who was standing next to Fritz. And we were no more than 6 to 8 inches from the rifle and stamped right on the barrel of the rifle was “7.65 Mauser”. And that’s when Weitzman said, “It is a Mauser,” and pointed to the 7.65 Mauser stamp on the barrel.¹³⁵

That sounds pretty damn clear to me. The rifle they found was a Mauser. That would even make sense. A Mauser 7.65 is a darn good rifle. An assassin could actually do some shooting with a weapon like that; as opposed to the Mannlicher which, we’ve already established, is a total piece of junk.

So, just to further complicate matters that are already ridiculously complicated regarding that rifle, the entire provenance of the rifle is also highly suspect; there’s no way to be sure that the Mannlicher rifle they say was used in the shooting—actually was or was not used in the shooting. There are even a lot of reasons to doubt that the Mannlicher rifle was the rifle that was actually found! And that’s not because of me or because of some “conspiracy theorist”—that’s because of the direct testimony from the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department! The record proves one thing very clearly—at first they said the rifle that they found was a Mauser rifle, not a Mannlicher.

Keep in mind, please, the context of the situation. This is the “Crime of the Century”; the President of the United States has just been assassinated in broad daylight. They find the rifle. They hold it up. The head of Homicide is there. The head of the crime lab is there. A cop who’s a gun expert is there. Doesn’t it defy credulity to say that they all got it wrong on such a simple point at an extremely important time? It sure in hell does to me. They said it was even stamped on the rifle, for Pete’s sake. If these guys knew how to read, then it was a Mauser.

I don’t know why they changed the official version to read that a Mannlicher was used in the assassination, but I do say that the rifle they found on the 6th floor was a Mauser, not a Mannlicher. In fact, I don’t even have to say that. The Dallas authorities are clearly on record as having said that themselves.

Various news reports, including Walter Cronkite on CBS News, also verified that the rifle was a Mauser.¹³⁶ The CIA also described the rifle as a Mauser.¹³⁷

And if you listen to Sheriff Craig describe the discovery of the rifle in a clip that is available right on the Internet,¹³⁸ it sure in hell sounds like they found a Mauser.

There are also other serious discrepancies regarding the search and discovery of the rifles—that’s right, plural—that were found that day.

Frank Ellsworth was an ATF agent (Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and was in his office not far from the Depository when he was told of the shooting. He ran to the Depository and entered the building with Captain Will Fritz. Ellsworth said that he found the so-called “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor, but was sure that the “gun was not found on the same floor as the cartridges, but on a lower floor by a couple of city detectives . . . I think the rifle was found on the fourth floor.”¹³⁹

Agent Ellsworth said he then participated in a second search of the Depository after 1:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963. The gun that was found during that later search was the Italian Mannlicher-Carcano and it was hidden behind boxes near the “stairwell back in the northwest corner.”¹⁴⁰

Numerous other reports distinctly named a completely different rifle being found during one of the searches of the building—not a Mannlicher-Carcano or a Mauser. NBC reported that police found a British Enfield .303 rifle—and they sounded sure about it.

Gary Mack, the archivist for the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, noted that this was even in the NBC book There Was A President. Tom Whalen was a reporter for the NBC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, WBAP-TV. And there is even a news videotape that shows Whalen being given the following announcement from the WBAP studio in Fort Worth:

Reporter Tom Whalen, at 2:13 p.m. CST, said, “The weapon which was used to kill the president, and which wounded Gov. Connally, has been found in the Texas School Book Depository on the sixth floor—a British .303 rifle with a telescopic sight. Three empty cartridge cases were found beside the weapon. It appeared that whoever had occupied this sniper’s nest had been here for some time.”¹⁴¹

So I’m not sure what exactly was going on with all of that musical rifles game, but I can tell you this—our government sure in hell isn’t giving us the straight story on that.

¹³¹ Savage, Gary, JFK: First Day Evidence (The Shoppe Press: 1993), 158.

¹³² Ibid.

¹³³ Savage, JFK: First Day Evidence, 159.

¹³⁴ Ibid.

¹³⁵ Savage, JFK: First Day Evidence, 162.

¹³⁶ Wim Dankbaar, “A 7.65 Mauser,” retrieved 19 April 2013: youtube.com/watch?v=-RGZPa8FdbA

¹³⁷ The JFK History Forum, “The Mauser Explained,” retrieved 19 April 2013: jfkhistory.com/forum/index.php?topic=736.0

¹³⁸ Wim Dankbaar, “A 7.65 Mauser,”: youtube.com/watch?v=-RGZPa8FdbA

¹³⁹ Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much: Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK (Carroll & Graf: 2003), 568.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid, 569.

¹⁴¹ Gary Mack, 16 July 1999, “NBC Announces Enfield .303 Rifle Found on TSBD 6^th,” citing NBC, There was a President: 70 Hours & 30 Minutes-The Weekend No One Will Ever Forget (Random House: 1966): educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=feb030e01b96e1d3b8680ac5fece9439&showtopic=19810&st=15