The Missing Backyard Negative

 

Although the Warren Commission concluded that DPD had only recovered one of the backyard negatives (133b), a DPD report shows that 2 negatives were recovered by Detective Rose:

These negatives were allegedly taken with Oswald's Imperial Reflex (see photo above), which used 620 film. The negatives produced from that camera would have been 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 inches square.

So what happened to the second negative??? As we had discussed in the More Minox Madness article, several items in the First Day Evidence photo were not listed in the official DPD/FBI transfer of evidence 11/26/63, but had turned up in the possession of the FBI by some undisclosed means. Please examine this photo one more time:

We know that the Minox camera case and the name tags were among the items the FBI had in their possession but were not included on the 11/26/63 transfer sheets. Since they did not have item numbers corresponding to the 11/26/63 transfer sheets, they were identified as B2, B17 and B18. This leads me to conclude that at least 18 items were seized by the FBI.

Please note that there is a 2 1/4" square negative lying beneath the two name tags. My guess is that this is the missing backyard negative, and that it was probably whisked away with the other items in the photograph, and assigned an item number between B1 and B16 (excluding B2).

 

 

Read Jim Hargrove's Article about the FBI handling of the evidence
Return to Home Page