The brown paper bag and witness evidence
12 March 2001

    I think many people feel that I make too much of the distinction between witness evidence and the much stronger physical evidence. I don't. The story of the long brown paper bag is a classic example of why.
    The bag in question is of course the famous one that Lee Harvey Oswald brought to the Depository the morning of Friday 22 November after his unscheduled visit to Irving the previous Thursday night. When Oswald asked Buell Wesley Frazier Thursday morning whether he could have a ride to Irving that afternoon, a major deviation from his normal pattern of going there only on Fridays, Frazier surprisedly asked why, whereupon Oswald said that he wanted to get some curtain rods from Mrs. Paine. The next morning, as Frazier approached his car and saw the bag on the rear seat, he inquired of Oswald what the package contained (short memory?), and Oswald again said curtain rods. Later when the empty package was found on the sixth floor of the Depository right next to the sniper's nest and Oswald's rifle was found missing from the Paines' garage, the obvious conclusion was that Oswald had brought the rifle to work concealed in the brown paper bag.
    Arguments have been raised against this idea, though. The simplest is that there is no proof that the bag actually contained the rifle. This conclusion is correct—no one actually saw the rifle in the bag. But there are several good reasons why the bag would not have contained curtain rods, some of which are seldom advanced: (1) Oswald didn't take the two curtain rods from the garage; (2) he didn't discuss curtain rods with Marina, with Ruth Paine, or with Mrs. Johnson, his landlady in Dallas; (3) his room in Dallas already had enough curtain rods; and (4) no curtain rods were found in the Depository.
    But the most common argument that the bag did not contain the rifle is that the bag was too short. Linnie Mae Randle, Frazier's sister, saw Oswald putting the bag into her brother's car and said that it was about 28 inches long, not counting the top part, which was folded over so that Oswald could carry it from the top. Frazier saw the bag lying on the back seat of his car and estimated it to be two feet long (24 inches), plus or minus a few inches. These lengths are far too short to have accommodated Oswald's broken-down rifle, which required 35 inches. There was another problem, too. Frazier testified that Oswald carried the bag into the Depository cupped in his right hand and nestled into his right armpit, so that Frazier couldn't see it while walking behind Oswald. A bag of 24 inches would have done that, but one 35 inches long would have extended above Oswald's shoulder. When the FBI had Frazier hold the rifle in that way, it reached to his ear.
    Well, you say, we shouldn't take the casual observations of two ordinary folk too seriously. But the brother and sister were emphatic. Mrs. Randle said the bag was folded down at the top and "definitely wasn't that long." She then demonstrated by folding the bag in the way she remembered, and got 28˝ inches. Buell Wesley marked the point on the back seat to which the package extended from the door, and got 27 inches. So both witnesses were insistent and consistent.
    Many conspiracists have seized upon these observations to show that Oswald could not have brought his rifle into the Depository Friday morning. How could these two people have been both reproducible and wrong? Wouldn't Frazier have known where in his own car the bag extended to? A classic case of persuasive witnesses. But they were indeed both wrong. The actual bag, found on the sixth floor next to the window from which the shots were fired, containing one fingerprint and one palm print from Oswald (with the palm print at the bottom, consistent with Oswald's having cupped it in his hand just as Frazier had described), made of wrapping paper and tape that matched those in the Depository's first-floor shipping room that day, and containing fibers that matched the blanket used to store the rifle in the Paines' garage, was 38 inches long—easily long enough to accommodate the 35-inch rifle and be folded over at the top. Assuming that the bag had been folded back to 35 inches, Buell Wesley and his sister had estimated short by 10–14 inches out of 35, or 30%–40%. They remembered wrong by one foot out of three.
    So much for eyewitness testimony. This little example shows how careful we must be when trying to use it, and, conversely, how important physical evidence is. Oswald could certainly have used that bag to carry his rifle into the depository that morning, and almost certainly did (unless there just happened to be two brown paper bags, both with his prints and with fibers from his blanket). One more aspect of the assassination that is simple and straightforward when viewed through the clarifying lens of physical evidence.