“We were in the northwest corner of the sixth floor when Deputy Boone and myself spotted the rifle about the same time. This rifle was a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it. The file was between some boxes near the stairway. The time the rifle was found was 1:22 pm.”
- Affidavit of Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman, Dallas Police; November 23, 1963
No, you see, it wasn’t a Mauser after all, the Air Force veteran and WWII POW later decided. Seymour Weitzman recanted his sworn statement. It was, instead, a Mannlicher-Carcano. The one ordered by that young man now in custody, the brooding Lee H. Oswald. Yes, that one.
So was there a Mauser found by authorities in the Texas School Book Depository less than an hour after shots rang out in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963? Or was it a simple error on the part of Weitzman et al?
When Weitzman testified before the Warren Commission, he detailed how the rifle was hidden. “It was covered with boxes. It was well protected as far as the naked eye because I would venture to say eight or nine of us stumbled over that gun a couple of times before we thoroughly searched the building.” Weitzman told the FBI that day the weapon was a Mauser. Deputy Sheriff Boone thought it was a Mauser, and said as much in his own affidavit:
Boone said chief of homicide Captain Fritz thought it was a Mauser. Dallas authorities told the press the weapon was a Mauser. Walter Cronkite told the world it was a “German-built Mauser with a sniper scope that was used to kill President Kennedy.” District Attorney Henry Wade said the weapon was a Mauser in the formal press conference in the early hours of November 23.
When it was discovered Lee Oswald used an alias to order a Mannlicher Carcano rifle from a catalog, the Mauser quickly morphed into that particular weapon. Boone and Weitzman backed down from insisting it was a Mauser. Only Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who was on Boone’s heels when the rifle was discovered on the sixth floor, continued to assert it was a Mauser, even stating that stamped on the barrel was “7.65 Mauser.”
And from November 23 onward, the Mannlicher Carcano — and only the Mannlicher Carcano — was the weapon used to assassinate the president…at the hands of Texas School Book Depository clerk Lee Oswald. And nothing was said of the Mauser again.
But during those same hours throughout November 22 and into November 23 while the Mauser was being transmitted around the world as the killer’s weapon, the FBI was constantly fielding calls from shocked citizens sharing anything they might have heard or said with some possible link to the assassination. Among these was an FBI report that actually became part of Warren Commission Document 25:
The report was made in Cleveland by SA Grover C. Twiner on November 22. Nothing more was followed up on the matter; it certainly became moot once the weapon changed to the Mannlicher Carcano. And at first glance the report seems like one of many possible “tips.” But drilling down further eventually brought forth a question:
Did David Ferrie have something to do with the Mauser rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository?
This author’s research revealed Clay Schumann was likely a plumber or some other kind of handyman. At the time of his encounter at the Caputo residence, Caputo, a firefighter with the Cleveland Fire Department (CFD), was 36 years old. Based on correspondence with surviving family, he was most likely stationed at Station №1. This station, located in downtown Cleveland on Superior Ave., served as the headquarters for CFD. In 1963, Caputo was one of 1,250 members. According to the 1967 obituary of David Ferrie in the Cleveland Press, Ferrie’s uncle was a 50-year veteran of CFD, Battalion Chief William R. Ferrie, who had retired in 1961. Did Caputo know Battalion Chief Ferrie? In response to the author’s records request, Cleveland’s Division of Fire could not locate records for Ferrie or Caputo.
Biographical details of Caputo, who died in 1987, are also scant. A lifelong Clevelander on the city’s near west side, he dropped out of high school just before graduating to enlist in the Army. However, Caputo’s address in 1963, where he showed Schumann the Mauser, was in a neighborhood in the shadow of Cleveland’s Hopkins Airport — the same neighborhood of David Ferrie’s family home. Indeed, it’s 1.2 miles or a 27-minute walk from Caputo’s house to the Ferrie family home at 17302 LaVerne.
While this is simple propinquity — the kind of thing Jim Garrison might eat up — it is nevertheless mind boggling to consider the proximity. While it is likely out of reach at this point to determine the identity of the individual who was to receive the Mauser in Dallas, the encounter at the Caputo house occurred the same day Joseph A. Milteer was babbling to informant Willie Somersett of a plot to kill JFK from a high-powered rifle from an office building and quickly pick up a patsy to take the fall.
According to John Armstrong, “Following the assassination Lieutenant Francis Fruge learned from DPD Captain Will Fritz that maps of the Dallas sewer system were found in [Ferrie associate Sergio] Arcacha’s apartment. These maps may have been in the package that was delivered to Arcacha by Thomas Beckham on behalf of David Ferrie approximately two weeks before the assassination.” Was the Mauser part of this package?
Whatever the case, we know Ferrie remained in contact with his family back in Cleveland; he was a pallbearer for his uncle’s funeral in 1964. Remarkably, the funeral in Cleveland took place the same day as the Winnipeg Incident, February 13, in which Canadian Richard Giesbrecht believed he overheard someone resembling David Ferrie talking in the Horizon Room at the Winnipeg Airport about the Kennedy Assassination, the Warren Commission, and Marina Oswald. Because of his presence at the funeral — barring bilocation — Ferrie in Winnipeg is unlikely — unless, however, Ferrie had flown himself from Hopkins in Cleveland to Winnipeg’s airport, a flight time of less than 2 ½ hours. Ferrie was also known to hold meetings in airport lounges, not unlike the kind his doppelganger took in the Horizon Room.
The men Giesbrecht overheard referenced an upcoming “textile” meeting at a Kansas motel, the Town House Motor Hotel (Wichita) or the Town House Motor Inn (Kansas City). Ferrie’s phone records from 1962 show calls to Wichita. Ferrie also apparently was in Wichita in early 1963 where he placed calls to New Orleans. If the person in Winnipeg was indeed Ferrie, it is not too difficult to speculate the textile charade was a front for the movement and planning of white Christian nationalist and supremacists — the same people who took out JFK — perhaps under the patronage of Carlos Marcello, who had extensive contacts with the Kansas crime syndicate. After all, the Kansas inn name resembles Marcello’s own Town and Country Motel, in which the reputed tomato salesman carried out most of his business.
More mere propinquity? Perhaps.
Perhaps not.