There were of course three rifles found that day: a British .303 Enfield on the roof of the Depository, and a 7.65 Mauser (Mauser stamped on the rifle) witnessed by Deputy Roger Craig. Craig was repeatedly attacked and finally killed. He is the subject of a videotape "Two Men In Dallas" wherein he is interviewed by Mark Lane.
The Mannlicher-Carcano was carefully placed in an intricate niche:
There is no indication the area was checked for fingerprints at all, even though the rifle was completely surrounded by boxes and carefully hidden in a space "just wide enough to accommodate that rifle and hold it in an upright position" [4H253-5]. By "upright", Day meant horizontal. He and Studebaker clambered all over the unfingerprinted barriers behind which the rifle was hidden to take pictures, but they took only similar pictures from exactly the same spot. Studebaker's even show his own knee as he photographed downward [21H645].
After the rifle was photographed, Day held it by the stock. He assumed the stock would show no prints. Then Captain Fritz, perhaps because of the presence of newsmen, grasped the bolt and ejected a live cartridge.
Weitzman's testimony about the care and success with which the rifle was hidden and about the searchers stumbling over it without finding it is important in any time reconstruction. With the almost total absence of fingerprints on a rifle that took and held prints and the absence of prints on the clip and shells that would take prints, this shows the care and time taken by the alleged user of the weapon. That this version is not in the Report can be understood best by comparison with the version that is.
Harold Weisberg, Whitewash, Harold Weisberg, 1965, pages 35-36.
Oswald, having committed the Crime of the Century, certainly went to a great deal of trouble to avoid his hard-earned fifteen minutes of fame, even claiming he was "a patsy" who "didn't shoot anybody".
With a negative test of his cheek cast, he was probably telling the truth.