Six seconds in Dealey Plaza

The consensus among witnesses was three shots. Some heard only two; others heard four, five or six. The Warren Commission reported this spread itself and said gunshots in a plaza ringed by buildings are hard to count. [1]

Howard Brennan, a steamfitter sitting on a retaining wall about 120 feet from the window, promptly told a policeman he had seen a slender man of about 5 feet 10 inches take deliberate aim from the sixth-floor corner window and fire. At 12:45 p.m. the police radio broadcast a description based mainly on what he said. [5][1]

That evening Brennan picked Oswald out of a lineup as the man who most closely resembled the gunman, but said he could not make a positive identification. He had already seen Oswald’s picture on television. In December he told the FBI he was sure; in January he seemed to back off again. To the Commission he said he could have made a positive identification on the first night but held back out of fear: he thought it was “a Communist activity” and that his family “might not be safe.” Because of the wavering, the Commission said it did not base its conclusion on his later certainty. [2]

Two other witnesses, Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards, described a man in that window about a minute before the shots, though neither saw any shooting. [2]

The House committee later sorted 178 witness statements on where the shots came from: 49, or 27.5%, said the Depository; 21, or 11.8%, said the grassy knoll; 30 named somewhere else; 78 could not say. Only four said shots came from more than one place. [3]

James Tague, standing near the triple underpass far down the street, was stung on the cheek by debris. A mark was found on the curb near him. This is the strongest evidence that at least one shot missed. [1][4]

Around 1 p.m. Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the southeast corner window on the sixth floor. At about 1:12 he found three empty cartridge cases on the floor near the window; they were photographed before anything was moved. At 1:22 two deputies found a bolt-action rifle with a telescopic sight between two rows of boxes in the northwest corner near the staircase. When it was picked up and the bolt opened, a live round was ejected. It was an Italian 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano, serial number C2766. [2]

The FBI linked all three cases to that rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons, and linked the nearly whole bullet found at Parkland and two large fragments from the front seat of the limousine to it the same way. [1][3]

The rifle had been bought by mail from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago in March 1963 under the name A. Hidell and shipped to a Dallas post office box rented by Oswald. A hand-made paper bag long enough to carry the rifle disassembled was found near the window, and Oswald’s palm print was lifted from the barrel. Those links are in the rifle file. [4]