In which Sgt. Hill shoots himself in the foot with an automatic

In which Sgt. Hill shoots himself in the foot with an automatic

Witness Domingo Benavides, DPD Patrolman Joe M. Poe, and DPD Sgt. Gerald 
Hill were in perfect agreement at the Warren Commission hearings.

Benavides: "[The suspect] had just got back to the sidewalk when he threw 
he first [shell], and when he threw the second one, he had already cut 
back into the yard." (v6p450)

Poe: "[Benavides] told me [the suspect] was running out across this lawn. 
He was unloading his pistol as he ran." (v7p68)

Hill: "Poe showed me a Winston cigarette package that contained three 
spent jackets from shells that he said a citizen had pointed out to him 
where the suspect had reloaded his gun and dropped these in he grass." 
(v7p48-49) So it would seem that the gunman was carrying a revolver: The 
shells were manually discarded.

And yet, at 1:41, Hill radioed that the "shells at the scene indicate that 
the suspect is armed with an automatic 38, rather than a pistol." (DPD 
radio logs)

First desperate move: Hill denied, at the Commission hearings, that he was 
the one who had sent the transmission: "That probably is R.D. Stringer". 
(v7p57) (Stringer was not called to testify.) Second desperate move: And 
DPD transcriber Sgt. G.D. Henslee attributed the transmission to 
"Westbrook-Batchelor". (v21p397) (Neither officer testified re the 
transmission.) Much later, Hill finally took responsibility for it: "In a 
1986 interview, Hill admitted being the cop behind the strange 
broadcast...." (With Malice, p260)

But as far back as 1964, the groundwork was being laid in case future 
investigators looked at future transcriptions of the DPD radio logs--for 
instance, the August 11, 1964 FBI transcription, which properly appended 
"Sergeant G. Hill" to the transmission. Benavides also testified that "One 
of [the shells] went down inside of a bush, and the other one was by the 
bush"--they were, he says, pretty close together, as shells automatically 
ejected would have been. The fact that there were shells on the ground, in 
the first place, and, in the second, that they were found near each other, 
would indicate, for any future investigation, that they were from an 
automatic, and explained the "automatic" on the radio.

Third desperate move: Supporting this version of the story was also the 
fact that Hill supposedly saw, as he testified, only the cigarette 
package, and not the shells inside it. Thus the only possible explanation 
of that "automatic" seemed to be that the shells were found (a) on the 
ground and (b) close together. The shells themselves, supposedly, then, 
did not figure in the 1:41 transmission. Hill hadn't seen them.

Hill and his transmission were insulated by Benavides' testimony, by 
Henslee's false transcription, and by the ingenious employment of the 
cigarette package. How could he possibly be undone? How? Well, he done 
undid himself.

"Asked how he determined that the shells were 38 caliber, Hill replied, 
'You can tell that from the shell. Thirty-eight's stamped on the bottom of 
it. I looked on the bottom'." (With Malice p261, author's 1986 interview 
of Hill) All that insulation, up in smoke. All three layers of separation 
between Hill and the shells--poof!

But why was such care taken to separate Hill from shells? Dale Myers goes 
on to explain: "Hill's explanation compounds the problem. For if true, 
Hill would have seen additional stamp impressions. Thirty-eight automatic 
cartridges are traditionally marked, '38 AUTO'...." (p261)

Myers then goes on to distract his readers from the "38" issue by 
returning to the relatively simple "automatic" issue: "There is no 
indication that Hill ever studied the shells to the degree that his later 
claims suggest. Hill's explanation that the radio transmission describing 
the shells as "automatics" was based on an incorrect assumption is 
probably very close to the truth." (p261)

In other words, Myers has no explanation, other than Hill's, for the "38". 
He does not even attempt one. His only recourse is to distract, distract. 
So, as of now, Hill's explanation--the only one we have, so far, in some 
57 yea= rs--stands: He saw "38" "on the bottom" of the shells. His three 
layers of separation couldn't keep him from "38 AUTO"....

dcw