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The spy camera became a light meter
The vanished camera
Detective Gus Rose found the camera when Dallas police searched the Paine house. A Minox is a German spy camera small enough to hide in the palm of a hand. Intelligence agencies loved them, and warehouse clerks couldn't afford them. The camera was photographed and entered into police inventory, and then it disappeared.
A Minox light meter showed up in the FBI's inventory instead. Three times, the FBI asked Rose to change his paperwork from camera to light meter. Three times he refused, and he testified to all of it under oath. When reporters asked why Dallas police wrote camera and the FBI wrote light meter, there was no good answer.
Michael Paine's camera
J. Edgar Hoover then sent orders to the Dallas office to find the camera. The next day, Michael Paine handed the FBI a Minox microcamera. He claimed it was his and had been in the garage the whole time, in a coffee can, and that police hadn't been interested in a spy camera found in a house occupied by a defector's Russian wife.
The serial number on Michael's camera had five digits, while Minox Corporation cameras carried six. A serial number is how Minox traces a camera's manufacture date and origin, so a five-digit number is untraceable. The Warren Commission kept the Paines under oath for days, and nobody asked them one question about the camera.
Why did spies favor the Minox camera?
Latvian inventor Walter Zapp designed the Minox as a camera that could ride in a pocket and still take sharp pictures. Its film frame was only 8 by 11 millimeters, which let the whole camera be a metal body a few inches long. A small ball chain on the camera doubled as a ruler that set the exact distance for photographing a page, which made it ideal for copying documents. Production began in Riga, Latvia, in 1938.
How does a serial number trace a camera?
Camera makers stamp each body with a serial number and record it in production books, tying the number to a build date and often to the dealer who received it. A number that does not fit the maker's usual format has no entry to look up. Collectors still use published serial ranges to date vintage cameras. Leica serial numbers, for example, are matched to production years in lists that collectors rely on.
Why does a police inventory matter in court?
Courts expect evidence to be tracked from the moment of seizure, so the item shown to a jury can be shown to be the item that was taken. Each person who handles it signs a log, and a gap or a mismatch between lists invites questions about what was actually collected. Defense lawyers often use inventory discrepancies to challenge the reliability of evidence. In US federal courts, Rule 901 of the Federal Rules of Evidence requires that an item be authenticated as what its proponent claims it is.
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