III. ANOTHER COMMON PHRASE

As mentioned earlier, the time interval between the two phrases is not identical on the two channels. The difference is 45 seconds and causes difficulties for the rerecording hypothesis. More such instances would provide very significant evidence for or against the rerecording hypothesis. Therefore, we looked for more instances of a common phrase (tie points) on the two channels. One more such instance was found in the phrase, "I am up on Stemmons. I will check all these motorcycle radios." This is about 3 seconds long and occurs just before the "Stemmons" phrase; therefore, we shall refer to it as the "Pre-Stemmons" phrase. This occurs about 16 seconds earlier than the "Stemmons" phrase on Channel I and about 13 seconds earlier on Channel II. This 3 seconds difference in relative timings is important. It is very unlikely that in a later superposition, relative timings would differ by 3 seconds over such a short interval. This is however consistent with our hypothesis that the Channel-II recorder stopped during the silence between these two phrases, as it was designed to do.

We sought additional ways to test whether the cross-talk was added to an existing recording or whether it could be shown that the cross-talk was already present in Channel I when it was being recorded over the radio. This would eliminate the possibility of its being superimposed later and thereby conclusively show that the impulse pattern on the tape is not due "Shots."