Warren Report: Chapter III - Discovery of Cartridge Cases and Rifle

Shortly after the assassination, police officers arrived at the Depository
Building and began a search for the assassin and evidence. Around 1 p.m. Deputy
Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in front of the window in the
southeast corner of the sixth floor. (See Commission Exhibit No. 723, p. 80.)
Searching that area he found at approximately 1:12 p.m. three empty cartridge
cases on the floor near the window. When he was notified of Mooney's discovery,
Capt. J. W. Fritz, chief of the homicide bureau of the Dallas Police Department,
issued instructions that nothing be moved or touched until technicians from the
police crime laboratory could take photographs and check for fingerprints.
Mooney stood guard to see that nothing was disturbed. A few minutes later, Lt.
J. C. Day of the Dallas Police Department arrived and took photographs of the
cartridge cases before anything had been moved.

At 1:22 p.m. Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman
found a bolt-action rifle with a telescopic sight between two rows of boxes in
the northwest corner near the staircase on the sixth floor. No one touched the
weapon or otherwise disturbed the scene until Captain Fritz and Lieutenant Day
arrived and the weapon was photographed as it lay on the floor. After Lieutenant
Day determined that there were no fingerprints on the knob of the bolt and that
the wooden stock was too rough to take fingerprints, he picked the rifle up by
the stock and held it that way while Captain Fritz opened the bolt and ejected a
live round. Lieutenant Day retained possession of the weapon and took it back to
the police department for examination. Neither Boone nor Weitzman handled the
rifle.