Collection of 31 original glossy 10 x 8 Dallas Police Department crime scene photos of the interior of the Texas School Book Depository, taken shortly after the assassination took place. All but one bear red ink stamps on the reverse that read, “This photograph made and developed by Bureau of Identification, Police Department, Dallas Texas,” and many are briefly described on the reverse in an unknown hand. Photos primarily depict the sixth floor of the building from different angles, including close-ups of the window area from which the shot was fired, as well as the view from the ‘sniper’s perch’ looking down onto Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. Also includes numerous photos of evidence gathered at the scene, such as shell casings, a box with a handprint on it, the rifle, and the location where the gun wrapper was found. Other photos depict different floors, hallways, and rooms, including the lunchroom. In overall fine condition.
Within fifteen minutes of the shooting, Dallas Police broadcast a description of their suspect—a man seen with a rifle in a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository—to all units. When two employees of the Depository, who had been watching the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the fifth floor, confirmed that they heard three gunshots above their heads, along with sounds of a bolt-action rifle and cartridges dropping on the floor above them, police sealed the building and began their investigation of what was deemed the crime scene. ‘Primarily, Studebaker and I were taking photos and checking for prints on the sixth floor,’ writes Carl Day, a lieutenant in the newly formed Crime Lab within the Identification Bureau of the Dallas Police Department, in his account of that afternoon. Checking for prints on boxes, collecting evidence to bring to the lab for testing, analyzing views and checking angles from the window that Oswald allegedly shot through. This remarkable collection of original photos offers an inside look at the Depository that afternoon, with key pieces of the story—including the rifle, shell casings, and palm-printed box—as seen by the Dallas Police. RR Auction COA.
