Photo printing plate of view from sixth floor window

Donor Jack McNairy was a high school student in 1963 and worked part-time at the Dallas Times Herald.  Within days of the Kennedy assassination, McNairy noticed a stack of recently-used photographic printing plates that had been discarded in a bin to be melted down and recycled.  Sensing that these photographic plates had historic value, McNairy saved as many as he could and kept them for four decades before donating them to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.  McNairy also recorded an oral history with the Museum in 2003.  - Stephen Fagin, Curator   

Except for a brief film clip by WFAA-TV's Tom Alyea, no press photographs of the "sniper's nest" show the boxes in the positions police found them in behind the half-open, sixth floor window in the southeast corner of the Book Depository.  After the Dallas crime lab photographed the scene, officers inspected the boxes for fingerprints and, out of necessity, moved them.  Later, officers returned the boxes to the approximate positions they were found and allowed newsmen access to obtain photographs and TV footage.  Despite investigators' testimony to the Warren Commission about why the boxes were moved, the different box positions have added some confusion to understanding the shooting scene. 

This Dallas Times Herald picture shows the boxes in the wrong position, though the newspaper did not know it.  Police crime lab photos, however, do show the boxes in their correct orientation before they were moved. - Gary Mack, Curator