Two men, brothers-in-law aged 20 and 16, were taken into custody. The report continued, “A .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle and a full box of .22 long rifle ammunition was seized.” Both men admitted “pointing the gun out the window on the parade route.”
Source: History News Network | JFK. A Motorcade. A Rifle. But this Wasn’t Dallas.
(h/t Larry)
I am reading Nexus by Larry Hancock at the moment. He says there were police reports and newspaper articles of a report of a potential Cuban exile sniper at the Orange Bowl in Miami, when President visited in December, 1962. I am not sure how accurate the report was though.
Practice? A test to see who might notice?
What’s interesting to me about this is the implication that the lax nature of the Secret Service on 11-22-63 was not a unique thing. I think many of us have seen the Prouty interviews when he talks about all the detailed advance work, checking every window, etc. as if there’s no way Dealey Plaze could have been allowed by the usual Secret Service prep. I certainly don’t buy the official story of Oswald and the SBT, but this may suggest that not everything shoddy is necessarily devious. Agree? Disagree?
The Godfather Part 2: Michael Coreleone: “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, is that you can kill anyone.” So to your question SaxD….yes, lax security can lead to deadly consequences irregardless of intentions.
What these 2 young guys were up to that day, we may never know, but it looks a lot more troublesome to me in retrospect than it looked to the local authorities at the time. Fearfaxer was correct that one or two of these individuals might still be alive….would be interesting to find out what the real story was about that day.
“However, they claimed that they had merely been testing the power of the telescopic sight to determine if it would be worthwhile to remove it in order to get a better look at the President when the motorcade returned. As there was no evidence to the contrary, and neither man had any previous record, prosecution was declined.”
They could have gone to the local Woolworth’s or Kresge’s and gotten themselves a cheap but effective-for-the-purpose toy telescope. There’s a good chance at least one of these two are still alive, it would be interesting to hear what they have to say about this today.
First time I’ve ever heard of this. Interesting how they just let them go without much of an inquiry; considering they really did not seem to delve into just what they planned to do with all that ammunition ? Odd story.
Good question. If they were planning on just using the scope for a better view, why bring a full box of ammo in with the gun?
Combined with the recent Miami and Chicago threats, why, in Dallas of all places (Ambassador Stevenson spat on, the mink coat affair in 60, Dealy and Caroline’s tricycle) were there SS agents on the bumper and the military was told to stand down from planned security assistance.
.22 Long Rifle ammunition was and is sold in boxes of 50 cartridges. The box is said to have been full and there is no mention of the rifle having been loaded. Nothing of a criminal nature is imputed to either, which would seem to be of considerable importance to the nature of the article. Assuming that a good computer search offers no evidence of subsequent violent acts, I would assume this was not a deliberate threat.
It seems the police assumed that these two individuals were not a threat, and acted accordingly by releasing them, but we don’t know all the particulars of the case.
We don’t know if the rifle was loaded or not. I suppose the police took them at their word, that when Kennedy came back on the parade route, they were going to use the gun scope to get a closer look at him, but that defies common sense to me, to be honest.
I’m in no way claiming this was part of some “hit team” sent to shoot at the president, it seems to be the actions of two young guys who were either exceedingly stupid, or really were going to take a pot-shot at the president. There’s so much we don’t know about these two guys….hope someone can dig up some names since they very well might still be alive.