THE UBIQUITOUS BARD
Raymond
On page 783, in Vol. 15, of the Warren Commission Hearings, we see the
name Odum listed twice, once as Bardwell D. Odum and again as Hart
Odum. Both listings are the same man. He was a special agent of the
FBI and was stationed in Dallas at the time of the JFKassassination.
His name is seldom mentioned by researchers, yet he was probably the
most assiduous investigator involved in the 1963-1964 investigation.
Odum was in the TSBD at the time that the murder weapon was found.
Later, Lt. Day drove Odum to the police station with the weapon. Odum
was seen and photographed leaving the building with Day at sometime
close to 1:45 pm.
Acording to Day, the agent used the car radio to contact his FBI
office to describe the rifle. 4H264, Meager, p.100.
SA James P. Hosty Jr. mentions the Bard numerous times, and it is
Hosty who is witness and reporter to the spirit-like nature of SA
Odum. It was between 1:45 and 2:00 pm. that Odum and Day made the
delivery to Lt. Day's office at Main and Harwood Streets in downtown
Dallas. At the very same time, according to Hosty, Bardwell was at
the
Texas Theater witnessing the arrest of LHO. Odum, himself made a
statement (HSCA document #01431) describing his observing the arrest.
His statement begins: "At approximately 2 p.m., November 22, 1963, I
was informed by an unidentified policeman of the DPD that a suspect
had been seen entering the back door of the Texas Theater. I
immediately proceeded to the Texas Theater...."
Dallas police radio transcripts reveal that at 1:51 pm. car No. 2
radioed to the dispatcher that they were on their way in with the
suspect (WR. p, 179).
Talk about double Oswalds, now we have a double Odum.
In Dallas, the agent was well acquainted with Michael and Ruth
Paine. Mike called the agent BOB; Ruth called him Mr. Odum and
sometimes Bardwell .
From Mike's testimony:
Mr. Liebeler: Do you remember being interviewed by FBI Agents Odum
and Peggs on Nov. 24?
Mike: Well, of course, I have seen BOB Odum frequently. Peggs ia an
unfamiliar name. It doesn't mean that he couldn't have been there,
That night I mostly went to the police station. I was introduced to
Odum PRIOR TO THE 22nd. 9H444.
Ruth felt comfortable enough with "BOB" to visit Marina's bedroom
alone with SA Odum, who was at the Irving home to pick up Lee's
wedding ring for Marina.3H 111-112, 9H385.
Ruth also had a conversation with the "Bard"about the General
Walker shooting BEFORE there was reason to believe that Lee was
involved, 9H387.
Ruth: Agent Odum has been out a great deal. 3H106.
Ruth: I would guess that I REPORTED to MR.ODUM other things-... I
talked with him a great deal. 3H107.
Lt. Day released the slug from the Walker shooting to the "Bard."
Day: I released it to the FBI Agent B.D. Odum on Dec.2, 1963
10H273.
Odum interviewed; Mrs. Markham 3H319.
Bonnie Williams 3H171-172.
Sylvia Odio 11H369.
Capt. G.M. Doughty
Domingo Benavides
Officer J.M. Poe
Dr. Paul Mollenhoff, Methodist Hospital
Dr. Earl Rose, Parkland
Marguerite Oswald
From the Texas Employment Commission: Helen P. Cunningham
Louise Latham
Robert L. Adams
The "Bard" made a replica bag from material found in the TSBD
(Dec) and showed it to Frazier/Randle).
Busy Hands, Happy Hands
Raymond
The Magic Bullet: Even More Magical Than We Knew?
Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson
The early history of the bullet, Commission Exhibit #399, is laid out
in Warren Commission Exhibit #2011. This exhibit consists of a 3-page,
July 7, 1964 FBI letterhead memorandum that was written to the Warren
Commission in response to a Commission request that the Bureau trace
“various items of physical evidence,” among them #399 [Fig. 2]. #2011
relates that, in chasing down the bullet’s chain of possession, FBI
agent Bardwell ODUM took #399 to Darrell Tomlinson and O.P. Wright on
June 12, 1964. The memo asserts that both men told Agent Odum that the
bullet “appears to be the same one” they found on the day of the
assassination, but that neither could “positively identify” it. [Figs.
2, 3]
What does Odum have to say about it?”
Mr. Odum said that he had never had any bullet related to the Kennedy
assassination in his possession, whether during the FBI’s
investigation in 1964 or at any other time. Asked whether he might
have forgotten the episode, Mr. Odum remarked that he doubted he would
have ever forgotten investigating so important a piece of evidence.
But even if he had done the work, and later forgotten about it, he
said he would certainly have turned in a “302” report covering
something that important. Odum’s sensible comment had the ring of
truth. For not only was Odum’s name absent from the FBI’s once secret
files, it was also it difficult to imagine a motive for him to
besmirch the reputation of the agency he had worked for and admired.
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Introduction
Among the myriad JFK assassination controversies, none more cleanly
divides Warren Commission supporter from skeptic than the “Single
Bullet Theory.” The brainchild of a former Warren Commission lawyer,
Mr. Arlen Specter, now the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, the
theory is the sine qua non of the Warren Commission’s case that with
but three shots, including one that missed, Lee Harvey Oswald had
single handedly altered the course of history. [Fig. 1]
Mr. Specter’s hypothesis was not one that immediately leapt to mind
from the original evidence and the circumstances of the shooting. It
was, rather, born of necessity, if one sees as a necessity the keeping
of Oswald standing alone in the dock. The theory had to contend with
the considerable evidence there was suggesting that more than one
shooter was involved.
For example, because the two victims in Dealey Plaza, President
Kennedy and Governor John Connally, had suffered so many wounds –
eight in all, it had originally seemed as if more than two slugs from
the supposed “sniper’s nest” would have been necessary to explain all
the damage. In addition, a home movie taken by a bystander, Abraham
Zapruder, showed that too little time had elapsed between the apparent
shots that hit both men in the back for Oswald to have fired,
reacquired his target, and fired again. The Single Bullet Theory
neatly solved both problems. It posited that a single, nearly whole
bullet that was later recovered had caused all seven of the non-fatal
wounds sustained by both men.[1]
Figure 1. CE #399. Warren Commission Exhibit #399, said to have caused
both of JFK’s non-fatal wounds and all five of the Governor Connally’s
wounds, is shown in two views, above left. Arlen Specter theorized the
bullet had followed a path much like the one shown at right. (National
Archives photo)
But the bullet that was recovered had one strikingly peculiar feature:
it had survived all the damage it had apparently caused virtually
unscathed itself. The shell’s near-pristine appearance, which prompted
some to call it the “magic bullet,” left many skeptics wondering
whether the bullet in evidence had really done what the Commission had
said it had done. Additional skepticism was generated by the fact the
bullet was not found in or around either victim. It was found instead
on a stretcher at the hospital where the victims were treated.
Mr. Specter’s idea was that, after passing completely through JFK and
Governor Connally, the bullet had fallen out of the Governor’s clothes
and onto a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. But it was never
unequivocally established that either victim had ever lain on the
stretcher where the bullet was discovered.[2] Nevertheless, studies
done at the FBI Laboratory seemed to unquestionably link the missile
to Oswald’s rifle, and the FBI sent the Warren Commission a memo on
July 7, 1964 detailing how it had run down the bullet’s chain of
possession, which looked pretty solid. According to the FBI, the two
hospital employees who discovered the bullet originally identified it
as the same bullet six months later in an FBI interview
That a bullet, fired from Oswald’s weapon and later identified by
hospital witnesses, had immediately turned up on a stretcher in the
hospital where the victims were treated struck some as perhaps a
little too convenient. Suspicions it had been planted ensued. But
apart from its peculiar provenance, there was little reason in 1964 to
doubt the bullet’s bona fides. But then in 1967, one of the authors
reported that one of the two hospital employees who had found the
bullet, Parkland personnel director O.P. Wright, had told him that the
bullet he saw and held on the day of the assassination did not look
like the bullet that later turned up in FBI evidence. That claim was
in direct conflict with an FBI memo of July 7, 1964, which said that
Wright had told an FBI agent that the bullet did look like the shell
he’d held on the day of the murder.
For thirty years, the conflict lay undisturbed and unresolved.
Finally, in the mid 1990s, the authors brought this conflict to the
attention of the Assassinations Records Review Board, a federal body
charged with opening the abundant, still-secret files concerning the
Kennedy assassination. A search through newly declassified files led
to the discovery of new information on this question. It turns out
that the FBI’s own, once-secret files tend to undermine the position
the FBI took publicly in its July, 1964 memo to the Warren Commission,
and they tend to support co-author Josiah Thompson. Thompson got a
further boost when a retired FBI agent, in a recorded telephone
interview and in a face-to-face meeting, flatly denied what the FBI
had written about him to the Warren Commission in 1964.
A Bullet is Found at Parkland Hospital
The story begins in a ground floor elevator lobby at the Dallas
hospital where JFK and John Connelly were taken immediately after
being shot. According to the Warren Commission, Parkland Hospital
senior engineer, Mr. Darrell C. Tomlinson, was moving some wheeled
stretchers when he bumped a stretcher “against the wall and a bullet
rolled out.”[3] He called for help and was joined by Mr. O.P. Wright,
Parkland’s personnel director. After examining the bullet together,
Mr. Wright passed it along to one of the U.S. Secret Service agents
who were prowling the hospital, Special Agent Richard Johnsen.[4]
Johnsen then carried the bullet back to Washington, D. C. and handed
it to James Rowley, the chief of the Secret Service. Rowley, in turn,
gave the bullet to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd,[5] who carried it to
agent Robert Frazier in the FBI’s Crime Lab.[6] Without exploring the
fact that the HSCA discovered that there may have been another witness
who was apparently with Tomlinson when the bullet was found, what
concerns us here is whether the bullet currently in evidence,
Commission Exhibit #399, is the same bullet Tomlinson found
originally.
The early history of the bullet, Commission Exhibit #399, is laid out
in Warren Commission Exhibit #2011. This exhibit consists of a 3-page,
July 7, 1964 FBI letterhead memorandum that was written to the Warren
Commission in response to a Commission request that the Bureau trace
“various items of physical evidence,” among them #399 [Fig. 2]. #2011
relates that, in chasing down the bullet’s chain of possession, FBI
agent Bardwell Odum took #399 to Darrell Tomlinson and O.P. Wright on
June 12, 1964. The memo asserts that both men told Agent Odum that the
bullet “appears to be the same one” they found on the day of the
assassination, but that neither could “positively identify” it. [Figs.
2, 3]
Figure 2. C.E. 2011. Chain of possession of #399 (FBI Letterhead Memo
Dallas 7/7/64)
Positive identification” of a piece of evidence by a witness means
that the witness is certain that an object later presented in evidence
is the same one that was originally found. The most common way to
establish positive identification is for a witness to place his
initials on a piece of evidence upon first finding it. The presence of
such initials is of great help later when investigators try to prove a
link through an unbroken chain of possession between the object in
evidence and a crime.
Understandably, neither Tomlinson nor Wright inscribed his initials on
the stretcher bullet. But that both witnesses told FBI Agent Odum, so
soon after the murder, that CE 399 looked like the bullet they had
found on a stretcher was compelling reason to suppose that it was
indeed the same one.
However, CE #2011 included other information that raised questions
about the bullet. As first noted by author Ray Marcus,[7] it also
states that on June 24, 1964, FBI agent Todd, who received the bullet
from Rowley, the head of the Secret Service, returned with presumably
the same bullet to get Secret Service agents Johnsen and Rowley to
identify it. #2011 reports that both Johnsen and Rowley advised Todd
that they “could not identify this bullet as the one” they saw on the
day of the assassination. # 2011 contains no comment about the failure
being merely one of not “positively identifying” the shell that,
otherwise, “appeared to be the same” bullet they had originally
handled. [Figs. 2, 3]
Thus, in #2011 the FBI reported that both Tomlinson and Wright said
#399 resembled the Parkland bullet, but that neither of the Secret
Service Agents could identify it. FBI Agent Todd originally received
the bullet from Rowley on 11/22/63 and it was he who then returned on
6/24/64 with supposedly the same bullet for Rowley and Johnsen to
identify. Given the importance of this case, one imagines that by the
time Todd returned, they would have had at least a passing
acquaintance. Had it truly been the same bullet, one might have
expected one or both agents to tell Todd it looked like the same
bullet, even if neither could “positively identify” it by an inscribed
initial. After all, neither Tomlinson nor Wright had inscribed their
initials on the bullet, and yet #2011 says that they said they saw a
resemblance.
Figure 3. Last two pages of 7/7/64 FBI memo to Warren Commission, as
published in C.E. #2011. Note that FBI states that both Dallas
witnesses said #399 looked like the bullet they found on 11/22/63.
And there the conflicted story sat, until one of the current authors
published a book in 1967.
Two Different Accounts from One Witness
Six Seconds in Dallas reported on an interview with O.P. Wright in
November 1966. Before any photos were shown or he was asked for any
description of #399, Wright said: “That bullet had a pointed tip.”
“Pointed tip?” Thompson asked.
“Yeah, I’ll show you. It was like this one here,” he said, reaching
into his desk and pulling out the .30 caliber bullet pictured in Six
Seconds.”[8]
As Thompson described it in 1967, “I then showed him photographs of
CE’s 399, 572 (the two ballistics comparison rounds from Oswald’s
rifle) (sic), and 606 (revolver bullets) (sic), and he rejected all of
these as resembling the bullet Tomlinson found on the stretcher. Half
an hour later in the presence of two witnesses, he once again rejected
the picture of 399 as resembling the bullet found on the
stretcher.”[9]
[Fig. 4]
Figure 4. In an interview in 1966, Parkland Hospital witness O.P.
Wright told author Thompson that the bullet he handled on 11/22/63 did
not look like C.E. # 399.
Thus in 1964 the Warren Commission, or rather the FBI, claimed that
Wright believed the original bullet resembled #399. In 1967, Wright
denied there was a resemblance. Recent FBI releases prompted by the
JFK Review Board support author Thompson’s 1967 report.
A declassified 6/20/64 FBI AIRTEL memorandum from the FBI office in
Dallas (“SAC, Dallas” – i.e., Special Agent in Charge, Gordon
Shanklin) to J. Edgar Hoover contains the statement, “For information
WFO (FBI Washington Field Office), neither DARRELL C. TOMLINSON [sic],
who found bullet at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, nor O. P. WRIGHT,
Personnel Officer, Parkland Hospital, who obtained bullet from
TOMLINSON and gave to Special Service, at Dallas 11/22/63, can
identify bullet … .” [Fig. 5 - Page 1, Page 2]
Whereas the FBI had claimed in CE #2011 that Tomlinson and Wright had
told Agent Odum on June 12, 1964 that CE #399 “appears to be the same”
bullet they found on the day of the assassination, nowhere in this
previously classified memo, which was written before CE #2011, is
there any corroboration that either of the Parkland employees saw a
resemblance. Nor is FBI agent Odum’s name mentioned anywhere in the
once-secret file, whether in connection with #399, or with Tomlinson
or with Wright.
Figure 5. Declassified FBI memo reporting neither Tomlinson nor Wright
could identify “C1” [#399] as the bullet they handled on 11/22/63.
[Page 1, Page 2]
A declassified record, however, offers some corroboration for what CE
2011 reported about Secret Service Agents Johnsen and Rowley. A memo
from the FBI’s Dallas field office dated 6/24/64 reported that, “ON
JUNE TWENTYFOUR INSTANT RICHARD E. JOHNSEN, AND JAMES ROWLEY, CHIEF …
ADVISED SA ELMER LEE TODD, WFO, THAT THEY WERE UNABLE TO INDENTIFY
RIFLE BULLET C ONE (# 399, which, before the Warren Commission had
logged in as #399, was called “C ONE”), BY INSPECTION (capitals in
original). [Fig. 6]
Convinced that we had overlooked some relevant files, we cast about
for additional corroboration of what was in CE # 2011. There should,
for example, have been some original “302s ” – the raw FBI field
reports from the Agent Odum’s interviews with Tomlinson and Wright on
June 12, 1964. There should also have been one from Agent Todd’s
interviews with Secret Service Agents Johnsen and Rowley on June 24,
1964. Perhaps somewhere in those, we thought, we would find Agent Odum
reporting that Wright had detected a resemblance between the bullets.
And perhaps we’d also find out whether Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen or
Rowley had supplied the Bureau with any additional descriptive details
about the bullet.
Figure 6. Suppressed 1964 FBI report detailing that neither of the
Secret Service agents who handled “#399” on 11/22/63 could later
identify it.
In early 1998, we asked a research associate, Ms. Cathy Cunningham, to
scour the National Archives for any additional files that might shed
light on this story. She looked but found none. We contacted the JFK
Review Board’s T. Jeremy Gunn for help. [Fig. 7] On May 18, 1998, the
Review Board’s Eileen Sullivan, writing on Gunn’s behalf, answered,
saying: “[W]e have attempted, unsuccessfully, to find any additional
records that would account for the problem you suggest.”[10] [Fig. 8]
Undaunted, one of us wrote the FBI directly, and was referred to the
National Archives, and so then wrote Mr. Steve Tilley at the National
Archives. [Fig. 9]
On Mr. Tilley’s behalf, Mr. Stuart Culy, an archivist at the National
Archives, made a search. On July 16, 1999, Mr. Culy wrote that he
searched for the FBI records within the HSCA files as well as in the
FBI records, all without success. He was able to determine, however,
that the serial numbers on the FBI documents ran “concurrently, with
no gaps, which indicated that no material is missing from these
files.”[11] [Fig. 10] In other words, the earliest and apparently the
only FBI report said nothing about either Tomlinson or Wright seeing a
similarity between the bullet found at the hospital and the bullet
later in evidence, CE #399. Nor did agent Bardwell Odum’s name show up
in any of the files.
Figure 7. Letter to Assassinations Records Review Board requesting a
search for records that might support FBI’s claim that hospital
witnesses identified #399.
Figure 8. ARRB reports that it is unable to find records supporting
FBI claim Parkland Hospital witnesses identified #399.
Figure 9. Letter to National Archives requesting search for additional
files on C.E. #399.
Figure 10. Letter from National Archives disclosing no additional
files exist on C.E. #399.
[editor's note: Dr. Aguilar followed up in 2005 with the National
Archives, asking them in letters dated March 2 and March 7 to search
for any FBI "302" reports that would have been generated from CE399
being shown to those who handled it. On March 17, 2005 David Mengel of
NARA wrote back reporting that additional searches had not uncovered
any such reports.]
Stymied, author Aguilar turned to his co-author. “What does Odum have
to say about it?” Thompson asked.
“Odum? How the hell do I know? Is he still alive?”
“I’ll find out,” he promised.
Less than an hour later, Thompson had located Mr. Bardwell Odum’s home
address and phone number. Aguilar phoned him on September 12, 2002. He
was still alive and well and living in a suburb of Dallas. The 82-year
old was alert and quick-witted on the phone and he regaled Aguilar
with fond memories of his service in the Bureau. Finally, the Kennedy
case came up and Odum agreed to help interpret some of the conflicts
in the records. Two weeks after mailing Odum the relevant files – CE
# 2011, the three-page FBI memo dated July 7, 1964, and the “FBI
AIRTEL” memo dated June 12, 1964, Aguilar called him back.
Mr. Odum told Aguilar, “I didn’t show it [#399] to anybody at
Parkland. I didn’t have any bullet … I don’t think I ever saw it
even.” [Fig. 11] Unwilling to leave it at that, both authors paid Mr.
Odum a visit in his Dallas home on November 21, 2002. The same alert,
friendly man on the phone greeted us warmly and led us to a
comfortable family room. To ensure no misunderstanding, we laid out
before Mr. Odum all the relevant documents and read aloud from them.
Again, Mr. Odum said that he had never had any bullet related to the
Kennedy assassination in his possession, whether during the FBI’s
investigation in 1964 or at any other time. Asked whether he might
have forgotten the episode, Mr. Odum remarked that he doubted he would
have ever forgotten investigating so important a piece of evidence.
But even if he had done the work, and later forgotten about it, he
said he would certainly have turned in a “302” report covering
something that important. Odum’s sensible comment had the ring of
truth. For not only was Odum’s name absent from the FBI’s once secret
files, it was also it difficult to imagine a motive for him to
besmirch the reputation of the agency he had worked for and admired.
Figure 11. Recorded interview with FBI Agent Bardwell Odum, in which
he denies he ever had C.E. #399 in his possession.
Thus, the July 1964 FBI memo that became Commission Exhibit #2011
claims that Tomlinson and Wright said they saw a resemblance between
#399 and the bullet they picked up on the day JFK died. However, the
FBI agent who is supposed to have gotten that admission, Bardwell
Odum, and the Bureau’s own once-secret records, don’t back up #2011.
Those records say only that neither Tomlinson nor Wright was able to
identify the bullet in question, a comment that leaves the impression
they saw no resemblance. That impression is strengthened by the fact
that Wright told one of the authors in 1966 the bullets were
dissimilar. Thus, Thompson’s surprising discovery about Wright, which
might have been dismissed in favor of the earlier FBI evidence in
#2011, now finds at least some support in an even earlier, suppressed
FBI memo, and the living memory of a key, former FBI agent provides
further, indirect corroboration.
CONT"D
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