Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

On the afternoon of the assassination, Detective Montgomery showcased the self-made paper bag that was found in the corner of the Sniper's Nest. The story became that it was a bag that Oswald made from shipping paper and tape that was available in the shipping room. But later, the FBI posted the image of a bag that became CE 142. Are they the same bag?

I maintain that they are not for the simple reason that: they look like different bags. But, Tony Fratini from JFK Assassination Forum, a supposed Oswald defender, on the grounds that there is a matching stain on both bags.

But, if they are the same bag, then isn't it true that everything had to match, not just the stain?

The thing that jumped out at me right away is that the Montgomery bag looks pyramidal or you could say triangular in shape. It's mostly oblong, but it isn't perfectly rectangular. It's tapered. It's narrower at the opening than at the bottom of the bag. Others have tried to claim that that is just an optical illusion from the bottom of the bag being closer to the camera than the open end. But, I think it is greater in magnitude than can be attributed to that alone. And, it's also true that others described the bag as being triangular in shape "like a rifle case."  

The collage below was made by Tony Fratini, and he circled the matching stains. But, he should not have stopped there. Tony should have noticed that there are scrunches in Montgomery's bag where the bag got crumpled. When you scrunch up paper, it damages the internal fibers of the paper, and the effect is permanent. You can unscrunch it as best you can, but it's never going to look pristine again. It's never going to lie flat. It's never going to go away that that paper got scrunched. I circled three areas of scrunch in Montgomery's bag for which there are no corresponding scrunches on the FBI bag.

So, at the bottom left on each bag, you say that stained area that Tony noticed. But, the other things are my observations. The FBI bag looks perfectly smooth where the Montgomery bag is scrunched.

And that, among other things, tells me that they are NOT the same bag.

Now, keep in mind that there is no rational reason to think that Oswald had anything to do with either bag. After all, he didn't own a rifle, and he didn't bring one to work. And he never claimed to bring curtain rods. Hence, he had no reason whatsoever for such a bag. I assume that the only bag he had was a small lunch bag which contained his cheese sandwich and apple. And, I suspect that if they had examined the trash can in the first floor lunch room, they would have found that bag- along with the remnants from his lunch. And who is to say they didn't?

You notice that they did report that Oswald said that he brought a cheese sandwich and an apple for lunch, and it would have made perfect sense for them to try to confirm it or deny it by looking for the remnants and the discarded bag in the trash. But, why didn't they? And, who is to say they didn't?

But, just for the sake of argument, let's go with the idea that Oswald needed a bag for his rifle. Why would he use materials obtained from the TSBD when the bag itself would alert police to the idea that a TSBD employee did it? That wasn't a given. A non-employee could have snuck up there. But, how could a non-employee obtain shipping supplies from the TSBD? And since most of the 70 TSBD employees could have easily and swiftly been ruled out, that bag alone would have put Oswald on a very short list of contenders. So, why would Oswald have done that when he could easily picked up some shipping paper and tape elsewhere? He had plenty of cash at the time. Was he that much of a penny pincher?

And why would he make a bag at all? He didn't need one. He could have just secured some shipping paper and tape and when he got to Ruth Paine's garage, he could have placed the rifle parts on the paper and then wrapped and taped it up. In other words, he could have wrapped it like a present. That's all CBS when they did their reenactment. He didn't actually have to make a bag. But, if he did make one, I doubt he could have made one as good as this one on the right:

He supposedly did that in the shipping room of the TSBD. But, it was a business that shipped books. That's what it did. They were book distributors, and the distributed them by mail. So, how could he possibly have had the time to do that in there when he could never have the place to himself? If someone saw him make the bag, that person surely would have alerted police afterwards. So, why would Oswald do that? Do you think he was stupid?

And then finally, why did they change the bag? Why did they go from one bogus bag to another bogus bag?
It's because the first bag, Montgomery's bag, was too good. It was too authentic, too impressive, too much like a real, professional, manufactured bag. How could Oswald have made such a thing from paper and tape? Could you? In 52 years, nobody has duplicated that bag. Both the FBI and CBS made "replica" bags but neither one replicated the bag that Montgomery showcased.

So, I think that someone decided that it was time to switch bags, that a mistake was made in claiming that Oswald made such a fancy bag, so they went with a simpler design. They wanted the world to forget about Montgomery's bag. There are several images of it, but none were published in the Warren Report. They weren't published by the HSCA either. I'm telling you; they bailed on that bag. It was too good. It was overkill.