Unregistered 'tommy Gun' Triggers Queries At Agenc

[ACARLG]

Unregistered 'Tommy Gun' triggers queries at agency

 

Dallas: Weapon locked in official's office 5 years, out of chain of custody

 

06:05 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 21, 2006

By KEVIN KRAUSE / The Dallas Morning News

http://www.wfaa.com/cgi-bin/bi/gold_print.cgi

 

A high-ranking Dallas County sheriff's official kept an unregistered Thompson submachine gun in his office without any official record of its location for the last five years.

 

Sheriff's officials are still looking for records on the M1A1 "Tommy Gun," which they believe might be a classic 1930s model. http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif

 

Assistant Chief Deputy Larry Locke said he kept the gun in his personal locker in his office for safekeeping after two officers turned it over to him.

 

Sheriff's Department policy states that weapons turned into the department must be signed into the property room so there is evidence of a chain of custody, officials said. From there, the gun can be signed out.

 

But that was never done.

 

Chief Locke said his boss at the time, Larry Forsyth, then executive chief deputy, told him to "lock it up and keep it safe." He said he had the only key to his locker.

 

"I followed my directions to keep it safe and make it available if it was asked for," he said. "My end of things was not the paperwork. My end was keeping up with the gun, which I did. I wish I had never seen that gun."

 

Sheriff Lupe Valdez said that when she learned about the machine gun, she ordered her staff to handle the situation properly.

 

The gun has since been signed into the property room, which is heavily secured, Chief Deputy Gary Lindsey said. And a registration form signed by Sheriff Valdez has been sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he said.

 

Sheriff Valdez said she is waiting to hear back from ATF before deciding whether to launch an internal investigation.

 

"ATF will let us know which way to go," she said, adding that she may eventually display the gun for the public.

 

Assistant Chief Deputy Joe Costa said Chief Locke turned the automatic machine gun over to him on Friday. He said he is trying to find the paperwork from five years ago.

 

The machine gun was found in a gun case next to a garbage bin behind Ray's Sporting Goods in Dallas, said store owner Donnie Durbin. Mr. Durbin said there was no paperwork with it. He said he called the Sheriff's Department to come get it.

 

"If I had to guess, I'd think it was a war trophy," Mr. Durbin said. "Stuff like that everybody would love to have. But you have to be careful. I didn't even want to touch it."

 

Mr. Durbin said he handed the gun over to two men who at the time were serving on a federal drug task force: Gary Lachman, a sheriff's deputy, and Joe Gardsbane, an INS agent who now works for the Denton County Sheriff's Department.

 

Mr. Lachman, who recently left the Sheriff's Department, said he and Mr. Gardsbane gave the gun to Chief Locke, who was then a captain and Mr. Lachman's supervisor. Mr. Lachman said Chief Locke told him he would take care of the gun. Mr. Lachman said he thought that meant Chief Locke would sign it into the property room.

 

The gun had no history of being registered, Mr. Lachman said.

 

Former Sheriff Jim Bowles, who is Chief Locke's uncle, said the handling of the gun is a clear violation of department policy. He said he didn't know anything about the gun at the time.

 

"He [Chief Locke] wouldn't have had it in his office if I had known about it," Mr. Bowles said. "We have a duty under the law to be accountable for property that is not our own but comes into our care, custody and control."

[full auto 45]

QUOTE (ACARLG @ Jun 25 2006, 10:09 PM)

The machine gun was found in a gun case next to a garbage bin behind Ray's Sporting Goods in Dallas, said store owner Donnie Durbin. Mr. Durbin said there was no paperwork with it. He said he called the Sheriff's Department to come get it.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

[jpw43]

"Sheriff's officials are still looking for records on the M1A1 "Tommy Gun," which they believe might be a classic 1930s model".

 

 

Typo??

 

[ACARLG]

QUOTE (jpw43 @ Jun 26 2006, 10:57 AM)

"Sheriff's officials are still looking for records on the M1A1 "Tommy Gun," which they believe might be a classic 1930s model". Typo??

No, ignorance on the part of either A) the department, http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/cool.gif the writer or C) both. Fact checkers were one of the first things the newspapers cut, when the internet started to take a bite out of their revenues.

[ACARLG]

QUOTE (full auto 45 @ Jun 26 2006, 06:58 AM)

QUOTE (ACARLG @ Jun 25 2006, 10:09 PM) The machine gun was found in a gun case next to a garbage bin behind Ray's Sporting Goods in Dallas, said store owner Donnie Durbin. Mr. Durbin said there was no paperwork with it. He said he called the Sheriff's Department to come get it. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Now now, look at it as OPPORTUNITY! http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/wink.gif   http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155950088...glance&n=283155

[ghostsoldier]

Good Lord...those Texas idiots act like it's the end of the world finding an 'unregistered' gun...that sporting goods shop fella says "I didn't even want to touch it", as if it was alive or might bite him...I can understand his fear of being caught with it by the authorities, but I think it also shows a little of the wide-spread "guns are our enemies" mentality running rampant in our uninformed society...

Rob

[DougStump]

What more could you expect from Dallas? Hey they couldn’t even find JFK’s real assassin.

 

(Boy have I started an argument now)

 

Doug

 

[froster]

For JFK's real killer, read the book "Mortal Error". It seems the best to me.

[Mike Hammer]

Lets not replay the Kennedy assassination here, it's been done a zillion times. I will say though that the Warren Commission report is a joke. It totally disregarded any evidence that failed to advance it's single assassin theory. Credible witnesses were ignored or not followed up on, evevidence was ignored, lost or appropriated. The commissions conclusion of a single assassin is based wholly on one key theory which is "The Single -Bullet Theory", later renamed "Magic- Bullet" theory, and I have to agree with that name. The theory postulates that 1 bullet caused 7 wounds in Kennedy and Connally...and let me run that down for you. The comission concluded and I quote" The bullet entered Kennedy's back at the first thoracic vertebra and exited beneath his adam's apple; then it entered Connally, breaking 4 inches of his 5th rib (collapsing his lung), passing through and shattering his radius bone (the large bone in the wrist), then exiting and lodging itself into his thigh; " the bullet they base the theory on was found on an unidentified strecher at Parkland hospital one hour later in pristine condition. Oh yes, there was more lead left in Connally's leg than could have possibly come from that "magic" bullet. Draw your own conclusions, but anyone who has been around firearms for a while knows what they ask us to believe is quite impossible. http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/nono.gif

 

Mike Hammer

[DougStump]

Being close to Dallas has its advantages, on one trip over there I measured the ranges with a laser rangefinder and my figures compare favorably to a survey map of Dealy Plaza that I found. Most, if not all, of the analysis of the shots fail to take into account the height of the building. Lacking a surveyor’s transit, I came up a height of 65 feet from ground level to the window sill (bounce the laser off the building at ground level and record distance, bounce the laser off the sixth floor window and record the distance, then work out the triangle). Please note that Elm Street drops off slightly downhill from the School Book Depository to the triple underpass. I don’t have the equipment to accurately measure this, but it looks like it’s only a couple of feet lower at the location where the first shot hit JFK.

 

If you look at the wounds that JFK received (before they were moved by the Warren Commission), the bullet impacted a couple of inches below his collar and exited through the knot in his tie. This is basically a flat horizontal shot. If LHO had fired the first shot, the bullet would have impacted JFK at a 58 degree angle from the horizontal (slant range 281 feet). With an entrance wound up on his back, the bullet could not have deflected enough to exit his neck without being seriously damaged. It is also not possible for the bullet to ricochet off the trunk lid of the car without being flattened. There were some witnesses that claim a shot was fired from the second floor corner window of the Dal-Tex building. This would have been directly behind JFK, and would have impacted at an angle of 2 degrees (slant range 367 feet). Hmm……

 

I have had several Carcano’s over the years, and a couple of years ago I found the cousin to LHO’s rifle. It’s a 1938TS, 6.5mm, with the fixed rear sight, and had a cheap japanese scope mounted with a stamped sheet metal mount. It was bought from Klien’s a couple of months before “A Hidel†bought his, and had not been fired. It has the same scope & mount, it was even made by the same arsenal and year (the stock is a lighter color). I handloaded up some ammo as carefully as I could and we took it out to the range. Our best group, fired by an Army trained sniper, was six inches at 100 yards. Not exactly what you’d call sniper quality.

 

I wrote a paper on this for one of my English classes (yes, I went back to College at my age). If anybody would like to read it, I'll be happy to email it.

 

BTW, while waiting for the rifle to arrive, I was watching the UPS web site tracking it on it’s way down here. It spent a whole day at a UPS hub waiting to be loaded on a truck to come here to Shreveport. Of course the hub was in Dallas!

 

BTW#2, I fired the Carcano into water and recovered the bullet. Durn of it don't match the "Magic Bullet" almost exactly!

 

Doug

[Arthur Fliegenheimer]

Mark Furhman's book, "A Simple Act of Murder" does make a good case for one gunman, Oswald, firing all three shots from the book depository. Furhman lays a lot of the multiple gunmen problems at the feet of Arlen Specter, the man who invented the scenario of one bullet creating multiple wounds. Apparently, this stems from the mistake that Oswald's first shot missed Kennedy.

 

The Gerald Posner book is a mess. His thesis rests on the idea that a conspiracy was created in the minds of Americans because they couldn't believe that one maladjusted ex-Marine could end Camelot. Except there was never any reference to JFK's Administration as Camelot until Jackie invented the myth post mortem. Apparently Posner never heard of the dozen people involved in the Lincoln assassination either at the outset or accessories after the fact.

 

Stone's film went off the deep end with the notion LBJ was behind the assassination. I mean a guy who would commit such an act to be president doesn't throw the towel in and decide not to run for a second term.

 

Even if Oswald were the only shooter on November 22, it doesn't mean that his actions, while maybe not directed by the Mafia, Castro, CIA, or double crossed Cubans, were not consistent with their individual motivations to see JFK dead.

 

Although how Oswald knew there would not be a bubble top on the Lincoln, or secret service guys on the bumpers obscuring his view, is still a mystery.

[DougStump]

philohio,

 

Quote: Doug, I don't mean to be nasty

 

Well you sure succeed at it anyway. You seem to be an expert in this field.

 

First, Kennedy had a bad back and was wearing a back brace. There is plenty of photographic evidence that he was sitting upright in the car when the first bullet hit. He was not leaning forward until after the first bullet hit. The rest of your “facts†are just as faulty.

 

Second, the rifle was a 6.5mm not a 7.35mm. Anybody that has done any research at all would surely know that.

 

Third, the angle could have been 57 or 59 degrees. I already stated that I lacked more accurate instruments to measure the down slope of the road.

 

Fourth, Oswald was in fact a “Marksman†in the Marines. Please note that this is the lowest passing score. The first time on the range, he didn’t qualify. When he did finally pass, and he was two points away from failing again. I could add: if you can't hit the target with an M1 rifle, how can you hit it with a junky Carcano, but them that will probably be over your head too.

 

Fifth, well never mind. From most of your posts, you seem to go around life (as we used to say in the military) with your head in the up and locked position. Go ahead, live in your little fairy tale and ignore the evidence.

 

Doug Stump

 

[DougStump]

Let's see if I can make pictures work.

 

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g182/dou...mp/100_0151.jpg

 

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g182/dou...mp/100_0152.jpg

 

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g182/dou...mp/100_0153.jpg

 

Doug

[DougStump]

Philohio,

 

Please show me one (1) single photo taken BEFORE the first shot was fired that shows President Kennedy leaning forward in the car. When you realize that you can’t find one, then maybe you will finally start to question the Warren Omission Report. It’s like a house of cards, once one of their “facts†is proven wrong it all falls apart for you. JFK does lean forward, but AFTER being hit by the first shot.

 

The Nix film shows him sitting up straight

The Hughes film shows him sitting up straight

The Zapruder film shows him sitting up straight

The Muchmore film shows him sitting up straight

The Altgens photos show him sitting up straight

The Willis photos show him sitting up straight

 

And unless you can find a photo to prove me wrong, we’ll just have to drop this. The evidence is stacked against you.

 

But I hope you’ll agree with me on this: Until time travel is invented (if ever) and we can go back to that day and set up micro-radar to track the bullets or the microphone system they are trying in LA that tells where the shots came from, neither side will be right or wrong.

 

I found a copy of “President Kennedy Has Been Shotâ€, Newseum with Cath Trost & Susan Bennett on the discount table at the book store. It doesn’t address any theory, but it contains what people remember of that day, minute by minute. It starts the day before and covers every detail of JFK’s visit. There are a few details that don’t exactly match, we all see the same traffic accident differently, but overall it’s an excellent work. So far I’m only about 1/3 of the way through (reading between customers). It also comes with an audio CD of the actual news broadcasts. Well worth the price.

 

Oh, the paper I wrote for college was titled “A Nightmare in Elm Streetâ€, the professor loved that! No matter what you believe, it sure was a nightmare!

 

I was just looking at the ad for Klein’s Sporting goods:

M1917 Enfields (Eddystone) $29.78, (Winchester) $34.95

M1 Carbines $78.78

M1 Rifles $78.78

.303 Jungle Carbines $29.78

M1903 Springfields $36.38

 

Let’s start working on that time machine!

 

Doug

 

 

[DougStump]

So you can't even come up with one little photograph to prove your belief? Please at least try to prove me (and LOTS of others) wrong. Because you can't.

 

I've delt with lots of your kind too, you're right and the rest of the world is wrong.

 

I don't supose you ever read the House Select Committee on Assassination? No, of course not. You don't want to confuse the issue with facts.

 

Doug

 

[Whiskey Brother]

QUOTE (froster @ Jun 26 2006, 06:56 PM)

For JFK's real killer, read the book "Mortal Error". It seems the best to me.

I read that book.

 

Interesting theory by a guy who knows a lot about firearms.

 

He makes a pretty convincing argument, especially the diameter of the entrance wound being smaller than 6.5 mm...

 

[DougStump]

Whisky Brother,

 

I have a copy of the book, and as I remember, the secret service agent involved sued the author for libel and won. The author told the judge that he wrote what he "thought" had happened and tarnished the reputation of the secret service agent. He had no hard evidence to back up his claim.

 

Doug Stump

 

[Arthur Fliegenheimer]

Bonar Menninger's book MORTAL ERROR suffers from its own fatal error. Menninger is forced to employ numerous distortions to prop up his theory that an AR-15 wielding secret service agent dealt the coup de grace to JFK. His work of fiction went into the cut out bin the same week it hit book stores.

 

Here are some excepts from Furhman's book:

 

"The damage and bloodsplatter on the presidential limousine's interior windshield and corresponding bullet pieces found in the car's front seat area that clearly show the head shot came from behind. The fact that Kennedy's head was laying on his wife's shoulder and she was holding him up when he was shot the second time, and his backward motion was almost surely caused not by a head shot from in front but her instinctive jerking to his head exploding inches from her face. Finally, that the bullet trajectory and shot timing show the complete implausibility of the 'magic bullet' one shot-- through both Kennedy and the Texas Governor John Connolly."

 

"Fuhrman considers the possibility of a shooter in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald, supposedly placed on the "grassy knoll" alongside the presidential parade route; the forensics, he asserts, do not easily admit the prospect, because the knoll "is a terrible position for a sniper," and if there were a shooter there, he missed everyone in the line of sight."

[DougStump]

Arthur,

 

That is one of the long standing arguments dealing with the assassination, the direction the Presidents head was blown by the fatal bullet. Some try to interpret this as the direction the bullet either entered or exited. My theory is it’s neither. How many 2 litter water bottles have we blasted? Which direction do the bottles fly? Not always in the same direction, it all depends on which side of the bottle failed. And they don’t always fail at the entrance or exit holes. Since the skull is filed (normally) with “grey matterâ€, when the bullet hits it will overpressure, just like a water bottle. Without going into gruesome detail, if there is sufficient energy, it will explode. Any pressure sphere will fail at its weakest point when subjected to sufficient over pressure.

 

To test this theory, and lacking any volunteers, we used grapefruit and .22 short HP’s. I put a clamp on a razor blade to control the depth of the cut, then cut an “X†in the rind on the fruit with each leg of the “X†one inch long. This would create a weak spot of a constant size and depth. The next step, before we can shoot in the back yard, was to corral the cats in Dad’s trailer (it’s so nice living out in the country with a 100 yard range right off the garage). We shot the grapefruit one at a time with the weakened “X†in different orientation to the path of the bullet, and filmed everything. But things didn’t go quite as well as planned.

 

The ratio of impact energy to target mass was too far off. About all we succeeded in doing was splatter two dozen fresh grapefruit all over the back yard. So my theory is still just that, a theory. One day I’ll figure a way to either prove or disprove it.

 

We don’t eat grapefruit, we had a tree in the back yard when I grew up in South Florida and I can’t stand them anymore. Maybe that’s why I chose them for the targets. When we released the cats, you should have seen them looking around with their noses wrinkling up at 90 MPH trying to figure out what that smell was. I wish I had that on film.

 

Doug

 

[Mike Hammer]

See Phil, I knew this would happen when you bring up 11/22/63, it always does. Just to set the record straight on your comments regarding my previous post. I have never followed or cared about any political or historical ideas or concepts that filmaker Oliver Stone has espoused, he's a bit too looney for me. "The Single Bullet" theory was in fact perpertrated by members of The Warren Commission in the form of Arlen Spector and Gerald Ford, and in it's final report, the Warren Commission argued that ONLY THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED: a shot (the alleged magic bullet) which wounded Kennedy and Connally, another shot missed, and a third shot was the fatal head shot hitting Kennedy. The Commission never specifically outlined the sequence or order of the three shots, the reason the commission never determined the order of the shots in it's final report was because, it claimed, it didn't matter.

But I think it's importiant to remember that the Warren Commission report IS ONLY A THEORY. It's investigations and final report were put forth so that an official explanation of President Kennedy's assassination existed for the historical record. It was and is...not the last word.

My personal take on whole assassination, and I was only a young schoolboy when this tragic incident occured, after viewing the Zapruder film many, many times over the past 30 years is that the killing head shot definitely came from the frontal direction, no question in my mind. Jackie Kennedy, interview after the killing stated when she was crawling toward the back of the limo after the fatal head shot, (that she was trying to retreive part of her husbands skull) and not trying to escape more possible gunfire. The motorcyle officers riding BEHIND the limo testified that they were splattered with skull fragments and brain matter. Everything went BEHIND Kennedy, this would indicate a very strong frontal force and not a rear hit.

The autopsy photos of Kennedy (which I have copies of) do indicate that the rear of Kennedy's head did in fact have a huge hole in it as an exit would have. The reason it appeared in some photos as a smaller wound was that although the skull was blown apart in the rear, the scalp was still attached to the large bone fragments, and by placing the scalp back in place (as was done in most of the autopsy photos) the rear head wound looks deceivingly small.

In the kill shot Kennedy's head flies back when hit.. this is a symptom of a frontal blow, no question here and I remain amazed how people who have seen animals and humans hit by gunfire cannot understand this basic principal of physics. The rest of the surrounding players possibly involved in the history of this event is all too much to speculate on. Think me crazy but I'm convinced that at least one of the shots came from the front. No doubt Oswald was a shooter, but there must have been at least one more...and why not? http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/nono.gif

[DougStump]

Mike,

 

I've studied the events of that day since it happened. Well, I actually started later, I was in second grade at the time. IMHO, the only good thing about Oliver Stone's movie is it was actually filmed in Dealey Plaza. I saw it at the theater, then a friend gave me the video tape. Don't think I ever opened it.

 

Doug

 

BTW, when I tried to post the pictures, I uploaded them to photobucket and pasted the url into the message. The pictures didn't show up, just the links. Any guesses what I did wrong?

 

 

[Arthur Fliegenheimer]

Mike,

 

Jackie has alternated her story from, "I wasn't trying to escape the gun fire, I was trying to help Clint Hill into the car," to, "I was collecting brain matter and bone for my scrap book." Now had JFK been hit by a Oleg Cassini handbag, then her opinion of where the shots came from might be of value.

 

Fuhrman's book publishes all the grisly autopsy photos. He is making his analysis based on those photos.

 

Whether it was Oswald or not, all tangible available evidence point to all shots fired from behind the motorcade. Imagine two or three professional hit men, who presumably have made their living shooting at live moving, or still, targets from a distance, not being able to deliver multiple head shots if that was their intention.

 

Why even have more than one sniper, unless the second sniper's job was to kill the sniper in the book depository?

 

Taking three shots to finally kill JFK seems perfectly befitting an amateur assassin whose heart was beating rapidly at the prospect of pulling the trigger on the president.

 

JFK, whose Addison disease ridden decrepit physique that required a complex back brace to do anything more strenuous than lying in a supine position, was of course wearing this brace at the moment of impact. The same movement JFK's head followed after the fatal shot from behind has been duplicated ad nauseum by several re-creators.

 

Never substitute incompetence for conspiracy when evaluating the actions of those responsible for protecting the president, accumulating evidence, and rendering a conclusion.

[gijive]

QUOTE (Mike Hammer @ Jun 29 2006, 06:05 PM)

My personal take on whole assassination, and I was only a young schoolboy when this tragic incident occured, after viewing the Zapruder film many, many times over the past 30 years is that the killing head shot definitely came from the frontal direction, no question in my mind.  Everything went BEHIND Kennedy, this would indicate a very strong frontal force and not a rear hit. The autopsy photos of Kennedy (which I have copies of) do indicate that the rear of Kennedy's head did in fact have a huge hole in it as an exit would have.  The reason it appeared in some photos as a smaller wound was that although the skull was blown apart in the rear, the scalp was still attached to the large bone fragments, and by placing the scalp back in place (as was done in most of the autopsy photos) the rear head wound looks deceivingly small. In the kill shot Kennedy's head flies back when hit.. this is a symptom of a frontal blow, no question here and I remain amazed how people who have seen animals and humans hit by gunfire cannot understand this basic principal of physics. The rest of the surrounding players possibly involved in the history of this event is all too much to speculate on. Think me crazy but I'm convinced that at least one of the shots came from the front. No doubt Oswald was a shooter, but there must have been at least one more...and why not?  http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/nono.gif

Mike Hammer,

 

The shot coming from the front is absolute nonsense perpetrated by the conspiracy theorists since the assassination. Taking the emotion out of it, if you look at it strictly from a forensic standpoint, the hole in the rear of Kennedy's skulll was concave on the inside portion, indicating the hole was an entry wound, not an exit wound.

 

It's the same way you tell which side of a pane of glass a bullet entered. The edges of the hole on the side it exited on are concave, just like the hole on the inside of the rear of Kennedy's skull. This is all documented stuff that is always ignored by the conspiracy theorists who want to believe Kennedy was shot from the front, just by the movement of his head, not based on the physical properties of a bullet penetrating a skull.

 

Why don't you guys take this up on a website devoted to the Kennedy assassination?

[Arthur Fliegenheimer]

Back to the TSMG:

 

Dallas police man Biffe Yarne's Colt TSMG #4523 prematurely discharged on November, 22 sending lead flying towards Jackie Kennedy's head. Authorities attributed Jackie's survival to the fact she was wearing a pillbox hat.

 

 

Find the anagram and win a weekend for two at the Dealey Plaza hotel and book depository.

[gijive]

QUOTE (Arthur Fliegenheimer @ Jun 29 2006, 08:06 PM)

Back to the TSMG: Dallas police man Biffe Yarne's  Colt TSMG #4523 prematurely discharged on November, 22 sending lead flying towards Jackie Kennedy's head. Authorities attributed Jackie's survival to the fact she was wearing a pillbox hat.

Very good Arthur,

 

I guess I was a little blunt when I mentioned about taking it up on another website. It really doesn't bother me, except when the same erroneous theories keep getting repeated by people interested in the assassination without checking the real facts and forensic evidence.