Image of Dallas Police detectives carrying evidence out of the Book Depository

Found by investigators on the sixth floor of the Depository, this brown paper bag was a key piece of evidence in the Warren Commission investigation. Thirty-eight inches long, and bearing markings consistent with a rifle, the bag was -- according to the Warren Commission -- used by Lee Harvey Oswald to bring the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle into the building on November 22, 1963. 

For many researchers, questions remain about the paper bag. Two individuals who saw Oswald with a package that morning - Depository employee Buell Wesley Frazier and his sister, Linnie Randle - testified that the package they observed was between 24 and 27 inches in length, though the Carcano rifle, when disassembled, measures 34.8 inches. - Stephen Fagin, Curator 

 

The Sixth Floor Museum’s education department makes ample use of this photograph in its “Conflicting Evidence? The First 24 Hours After the Kennedy Assassination” program, which is offered to schools at the Museum and via videoconference.  The program challenges students to examine how evidence found on November 22, 1963 has been used to make cases both for and against Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt.  This image of the brown paper package found on the sixth floor is connected to the testimony of Buell Wesley Frazier, the co-worker who drove Lee Harvey Oswald to work the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.  Although Frazier testified that Oswald had a brown package with him that morning, Oswald claimed that the package contained curtain rods for his Oak Cliff apartment.  No curtain rods were found by investigators. Interestingly, Frazier’s description of the brown package was smaller than the rifle later found on the sixth floor of the Depository, leading some to question if the brown paper found by investigators was indeed the same brown paper that Oswald brought to work with him that day. – Sharron Wilkins Conrad, Director of Education and Public Programs