Landis' behaviour strikes me as being very peculiar. Shouldn't he have attempted to preserve evidence on the bullet rather than simply putting it into his pocket?
> he said he grabbed it to thwart souvenir hunters. Then, for reasons that still seem fuzzy even to him, he said he entered the hospital and placed it next to Kennedy on the president’s stretcher, assuming it could somehow help doctors figure out what happened.
From the NYT article. It also mentions that crime scene integrity wasn't as much of a thing at the time, which seems questionable at best. But still, if you believe the choice is between keeping or losing the bullet, you definitely take it.
Shock is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. However, remaining "largely silent" for 60 years about it implies that there's other factors at play.
Depends. If you realize after they’ve gone through a whole investigation and produced a report, do you want to go up to them and tell them all their conclusions are pointless because of something you did?
I am also skeptical of Landis, but what do you mean about preserving evidence?
It's a bullet. It just was next to an explosion that cleared it most most evidence. Then the barrel rifling altered the metal. That would not be harmed by picking it up. Then it went through jfk. Okay, we already know his DNA is on it.
The real question is why are you picking up random things from a crime scene and then putting them down in a hospital stretcher.
> The real question is why are you picking up random things
Probably seemed like a good idea at the time. My wife was in car accident once where the airbag deployed. For some reason her immediate reaction was to roll down the window. People in stressful and perilous situations sometimes do things that make no sense.
> I am also skeptical of Landis, but what do you mean about preserving evidence?
I don't really know, but it hardly seems like good practise to pick up a bullet. Don't crime scene investigators usually take calibrated pictures of important items such as bullets and often try to determine the trajectory?
There's also the chain of custody to think about - the bullet could easily have been swapped with a different bullet after he left it on the stretcher.
"I don't really know, but it hardly seems like good practise to pick up a bullet"
Of course it's not but that was no ordinary crime scene. There were thousands of people about, what would happen to the vehicle etc., etc? There's no way the crime scene could be secured in such a short time. And JFK had to be rushed to hospital. Nothing was certain.
He saw the bullet as evidence and on the spur of the moment secured it. After that he was likely in shock and thus his actions were more that of an automaton.
Are you from some other timeline where there was explosion at Kennedy assassination?
The bullet they are talking about is the "magic bullet" that hit Kennedy and Connally. The bullet that hit Kennedy's head distinegrated and they found fragments.
> Are you from some other timeline where there was explosion at Kennedy assassination?
> The bullet they are talking about is the "magic bullet" that hit Kennedy and Connally. The bullet that hit Kennedy's head distinegrated and they found fragments.
The explosion they are referring to is the one inside the firearm when the firing pin strikes the cartridge.
Note that he was pretty young and his only "law enforcement" experience was from working in the Secret Service. Presumably all of his training and experience was for things involving VIP protection activities. It shouldn't be surprising that he didn't know much at all about crime scene investigation.
