JFK Part 6
Disclaimer: This article deals with the physical shooting of John F. Kennedy. It includes a link to the full Zapruder film, which is disturbing. There are also photos from frames of the film that show injuries. The article also goes into graphic descriptions of the assassination. If you are sensitive to that kind of thing, maybe play with a puppy or walk in a dewy meadow, because if you read this, you’ll have nightmares. —Virgil
There was more than one shooter
Welcome to Part 6 of my series on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As many of my readers know, JFK assassination history is a hobby of mine. I encourage you to read the first 5 parts of my series on the subject linked below.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
On November 22, 1963 the President of the United States was killed in Dallas Texas by rifle fire. John Connally, the Governor of Texas was also wounded in the attack. In the aftermath and in the decades since, the US Government and private citizens alike have attempted to piece together exactly what happened in Dealey Plaza that day. That is that subject of today’s article.
In the weeks following the assassination, the newly sworn in President Lyndon Baines Johnson ordered an investigation headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren, and six other highly esteemed intelligence and political statesmen. The investigation produced an 888 page report with exhibits and depositions attached totaling over 16,000 pages of primary source material.
The investigation concluded that a lone nut gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald fired 3 rounds from the 6th floor window of the book depository building overlooking Elm Street as the President’s motorcade drove by. According to the report, the first shot wounded the President in his back, exiting the throat, then slammed into the back of Gov. Connally. The round then exited below his right nipple, and crashed into his wrist shattering it, then exited again and burrowed shallowly into his right thigh. According to the report, the bullet fell out of the Governor’s leg onto his gurney and was recovered by investigators at Parkland Hospital. A photograph of the actual bullet is below.
The second shot missed and impacted a concrete curb, fractured, and turned into ricochet shrapnel which grazed onlooker James Tague in the cheek. The shrapnel also impacted the triple overpass on the border of the plaza.
The third shot hit the President in the head, causing massive damage and ultimately killing him.
The Warren Commission’s conclusion is based on a relatively simple premise. Through testing, it was determined that a capable marksman using the Italian bolt action rifle used by Oswald in the book depository could fire a maximum of three aimed shots in the approximate 8.6 seconds that the gunfire took place. Therefore, if there were three shots or fewer, it could have been a single shooter. If there were four shots or more, there must have been a second gunman.
Answering the question of how many shots were fired was one of the highest priorities of the Warren Commission. In the end, they determined there were three shots, therefore one shooter… Oswald.
The Warren Commission delivered its report in November of 1964, about one year after the assassination. The story that a lone nut communist sympathizing loser named Lee Harvey Oswald brought a rifle to work and shot the President and Gov. Connally because he was crazy and angry about Cuba then became canon.
As I have described in great detail in earlier parts of my JFK series, this theory was under scrutiny from the start. First of all, witness statements varied widely regarding both the number of shots and the location and direction of the gunfire.
Many witnesses insisted that they heard up to eight shots fired. They also believed the shots came from both the book depository and the area on top of the grassy knoll that borders Elm Street. Many of the witnesses included combat veterans from both World War II and Korea who had experienced gunfire both over their heads and in front of them. This has all been documented extensively in the hundreds of interviews, documentaries, podcasts, and books written on the assassination.
Bullets do goofy things
Ask anyone who knows about firearms. Many of my readers are veterans and shooters. Many have seen how a rifle round can do something nobody could have predicted first hand. It’s almost cliché among guys out shooting that inevitably someone will tell a story about a crazy ricochet or a strange deflection that defied the known laws of physics. (Ask me about the time a 12 gauge shotgun slug was deflected off the brim of a baseball cap on my dummy target)
Whether it was the three .22 rounds that mobster John Veasey took to the head, none of which penetrated but instead followed the curvature of his skull leaving him dazed and angry, running to the FBI to snitch… or the crazy round from a Japanese airplane at Pearl Harbor that only bounced off of Admiral Kimmel’s uniform, leaving him to remark “It would have been merciful had it killed me”… bullets do goofy things.
That simple idea, that rifle rounds can do things nobody would predict, is the basis for the Warren Commission’s findings about the gunfire in Dealey Plaza. Either intentionally or not, the findings play on the idea that most Americans aren’t experts in ballistics, and the ones who do know something about the subject agree that ricochets and through and through shots can act in surprising ways.
The fact is that while true, bullets can act unpredictably after an impact, the Warren Commission takes this idea a bridge too far, and goes from a reasonable conclusion to pure fantasy.
Using stabilized footage and extracted still frames from the Zapruder film, we are going to point out a couple of issues with the single shooter theory that prove that there were more than three shots fired at President Kennedy’s car that day.
If there were more than three shots, there must have been more than one shooter. If there was more than one shooter, by definition there was a conspiracy and the Warren Report is wrong.
And just so we are clear… none of the issues highlighted here will include the term “back and to the left”. Sorry Oliver Stone, the headshot could have easily come from the book depository.
Zapruder
While there were approximately 30 photographs and videos taken from various vantage points in the plaza around the moment of the assassination, the most infamous was the 8mm silent, color, motion picture shot by Abraham Zapruder. The 486 frames of the film have been analyzed to death. The conclusions range from some believing it confirms the Warren Report to others thinking they can see alien spaceships in the distance. That said, it is the only footage available of the actual shooting, so it’s the best evidence we have.
Below is a labeled photograph of Dealey Plaza as it looked at the time of the assassination for your reference.
As you can see in the above photo, Abraham Zapruder was standing almost directly to the President’s right side when the fatal headshot hit its mark. Zapruder was positioned between the book depository to his front left and the grassy knoll to his rear right. He was a photography enthusiast, a fan of the President, and was enjoying getting some motion picture shots of the motorcade that day.
When the film was first developed, Zapruder made three copies. One copy was given to the Secret Service, one was sold to Life Magazine, and the original plus one copy was retained by Zapruder.
While the Warren Commission obviously had access to the film, it wasn’t seen by the American public until March 1975 when it was aired on ABC’s Good Night America hosted by Geraldo Rivera. By 1975 many Americans were openly questioning the conclusions of the Warren Report. The release of the film helped push for the House Select Committee on Assassinations to convene in 1976 to look into the assassinations of both JFK and Martin Luther King.
It is worth noting that the House Select Committee on Assassinations did ultimately find that it was “probable” that there were more than three shots and therefore more than one shooter, contradicting the Warren Report.
(Fun fact… the President of the United States when the committee formed was Gerald Ford, one of seven members of the Warren Commission. At the time he was one of only three still alive. Ford was the longest living member of the Warren Commission by over a decade. He died in 2006, preceded by super spies John Cooper in 1991, and John McCloy in 1989. The other four, including Alan Dulles and Earl Warren were dead before 1976. I’ll let you guess whether or not that select committee would have existed if Alan Dulles or Earl Warren were still alive. Ford, as the only President never elected to either Vice President or President, and having pardoned Richard Nixon… didn’t have the political power or desire to wade into those waters in the middle of a losing election campaign against Jimmy Carter.)
What The Film Shows
The original film was quite shaky and a little hard to follow. It has been remastered over the years and the film has been stabilized. The Warren Commission didn’t have this stabilized footage, and therefore mostly used stills from the film to form its conclusions. That said, the stabilized footage is shocking, horrifying, and revealing.
WARNING: DON’T WATCH IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO AWFUL THINGS
The remastered and stabilized video above shows detail that may have been either overlooked or perhaps was just not possible to see in the original footage viewed by the Warren Commission. In the 486 frames above, there is evidence that the magic bullet theory (the theory that the first shot entered the President’s back, exited his neck, and caused all the injuries to Gov. Connally before being found in excellent condition on a gurney in the hospital) is fantasy.
How can we know?
In the previous parts of this series, we have discussed a lot of theories about Kennedy’s murder. If you are particularly skeptical of conspiracy theories, there are plausible explanations to most of what I presented. I mean, maybe Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t connected to intelligence… maybe he just liked to seem like he was. Maybe everything is just one giant coincidence.
Crazier things have happened. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, right?
Fair enough. But explain the following:
There were 8.6 seconds between when Kennedy was first hit and the fatal headshot. In those 8.6 seconds the Warren Commission had to account for the following results of the gunfire.
A wound in the President’s back
A wound to the President’s throat
A missed shot that chipped a concrete curb in the plaza
A shot that grazed bystander, James Tague
A shot that hit the triple overpass
A wound in Gov. Connally’s back which collapsed a lung, shattered a rib, and exited below his nipple
A wound that shattered Gov. Connally’s right wrist
A wound to Gov. Connally’s thigh
The fatal headshot
The rifle that Oswald had in the book depository was only capable of firing three aimed shots in the 8.6 seconds available. Therefore, if we start on the assumption that there was only one shooter, we must come up with a scenario where all nine of those ballistic actions are explained with three shots. If, however, we allow for a second shooter, perhaps from a vantage point to the front of the motorcade, all nine are much more easily explained.
Let’s look closely at a few frames from the Zapruder film.
Frame 225
At about 12 seconds into the video (frame 201 of the original film), the limousine is obscured by a highway sign. As it reenters view at around frame 224, you can see JFK begin to raise his hands to his throat. According to the Warren Report, this is in reaction to shot number one. The round supposedly hit Kennedy’s back and exited his throat, which is why the President is raising his hands to his neck. At the same time Jackie is turning toward the President to see what is happening. The gunshots are clearly heard by the people in the car and they all begin to react.
While horrific to watch, the most important parts of frames 224 and 225 are neither Jackie nor the President, but Gov. Connally. Just as the car emerges from behind the street sign, around frame 224, the President is obviously hit. According to the official account, this shot continued traveling from the President’s back, out of his throat, into the back of Governor Connally, collapsing his lung, shattering his rib, exiting below his nipple, shattering his right wrist, and imbedding itself under the skin of his right thigh.
This event would have taken place inside of one or two frames, so by the time the President and Jackie emerged from behind the sign, the Governor should have already been very badly wounded. As we can see from the video, this is not the case.
Below is frame 225. The President has been wounded and begins to bring his hands up to his throat.
It wasn’t until after frame 233 that Gov. Connally could possibly be shot, and watching the video in real time, it could be as late as frame 278 before the Governor is hit. Either way, by my eye, Gov. Connally was not shot until after the President had received his initial wound. If the single bullet caused all the wounds on the President and Governor Connally, they should have been wounded at the same time… obviously.
Keep in mind, the Governor’s wounds were grievous. They were as serious and likely more painful than the President’s initial wounds. Why do we see the President react, but not the Governor?
Beyond that, both Governor and Mrs. Connally claimed to the Warren Commission that the Governor was shot after the President was first hit. By watching the film this adds up.
Frame 231
Above is a still frame from just after the President’s limousine emerged from behind the highway sign on Elm Street. At that time, the President had just been wounded from the first verifiable shot (the magic bullet), yet Gov. Connally seems not to react.
A few fractions of a second after the limo emerges from behind the sign (frame 231, above), the President’s hands and arms are obviously raised to his throat wound. Jackie is looking at the President trying to figure out what is the matter. However, Gov. Connally is still facing forward and holding something in his right hand. Watching the video in real time, it’s obvious that he is holding his trademark cowboy hat.
According to the Warren Commission the same round that passed through the President went into the Governor’s back, shattered a rib, exited under his right nipple, and passed completely through his right wrist… shattering the bones on the way to imbedding in his thigh.
At the risk of saying something just a little too obvious… you can’t hold a cowboy hat in your hand if a giant bullet has just shattered your wrist. Also, this would have been an incredibly painful wound that would have been immediately noticed.
For your reference, below is the x-ray of Gov. Connally’s wrist taken at Parkland Hospital that day. It is an exhibit in the Warren Report. Obviously his hand would have been immobilized following that injury. Yet here we are, with a picture of a wounded John Kennedy and John Connally still holding his Stetson.
That cannot be explained. If the Governor’s wrist wasn’t wounded by the round that supposedly went through the President’s back and throat, there must have been a forth shot. If it was wounded by the first shot, holding his hat would have been impossible. Something has to give.
We are told that the graze of the bystander, the nick on the curb, and the round that hit the triple overpass was one single missed shot… therefore it couldn’t possibly have hit the Governor’s wrist. The other shot was the headshot which would have been in the completely wrong position to pass through and create the Governor’s wounds. Therefore, it had to be a different shot. There had to have been at least four shots.
If there was a forth shot, that means there must have been a second shooter. If anyone can come up with another explanation, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I think we might have just proved something. There is simply no other option.
Bullets absolutely sometimes do crazy things, but one thing they don’t do is pause.
Gov. Connally takes cover
So when does Gov. Connally get shot and how many times?
In the approximately 8.6 seconds between the President’s first wound and the head wound, it is my opinion that Gov. Connally was hit twice. The first shot came shortly after the President was initially hit and struck the Governor in the back exiting under his nipple and injuring his thigh. Then the Governor turned to look at the President, shifted and looked to the right of the motorcade, and was looking almost directly forward and to the right at the time of the headshot. Just as the President was hit in the head, Governor Connally seemed to collapse to the left onto his wife. I believe this is when his wrist was hit.
See frame 327 below:
In this frame, right at the time of the fatal head wound to the President, we see the Governor has turned and is collapsed to his left side. Perhaps he is attempting to shield his wife. Perhaps he is crumpled over in pain. Perhaps it’s some combination of both. In my opinion, Governor Connally suffered another gunshot about the time the President was hit in the head. Watching the video in real time, one can see that he collapsed on her more than “took cover”.
That would make sense considering he wasn’t looking at the President when the fatal shot occurred. He was looking forward and to the right while the President was directly behind him. Gunshots had already been happening for several seconds and he was already wounded at least once… it doesn’t make sense that he would collapse on his wife in frame 327 unless he was hit again.
The Magic Bullet and New Evidence!
Finally, the new evidence that’s been all over the news in the last week or so. On September 9th, Vanity Fair published an article by James Robenalt interviewing retired Secret Service Special Agent Paul Landis about his new book.
Agent Landis was on Jackie Kennedy’s detail and was riding in “Halfback”, the car trailing the Presidential limousine that day. Clint Hill, the famous agent who jumped on the back of the car as it was speeding off was riding next to Landis when the shots rang out. I haven’t read Agent Landis’ book yet, but I’m looking forward to his perspective. He’s been mostly silent on the assassination for over 60 years and rarely gives interviews.
The bombshell that everyone is talking about from Landis is that for the first time, we have someone who can shed some light on the “magic bullet”.
As we all know, one of the hardest parts to swallow in the official story is that the so called “magic bullet”, fired from Oswald’s rifle, was found in incredibly good condition on Gov. Connally’s gurney at Parkland Hospital, apparently having fallen from his leg.
One quick myth to bust before I show you the pictures… the magic bullet that was found on the gurney at Parkland was not “pristine”. It was deformed. It had a defect on the tip. It also had lands and grooves showing that it had been fired by a rifle. Subsequent testing proved that it had been fired by Oswald’s rifle. I have no reason to question that it was actually found at the hospital and was fired by Oswald.
That said, the condition is still excellent. It is far too good to have gone through two people and broken bones. Below are two photos from the Warren Report. The bullet on the left is the same caliber as the “magic bullet”, pictured on the right. The round on the left was fired into a cadaver, did not go all the way through, and did not hit any bone. The “magic bullet” as we have described ad nauseam, supposedly had a much more eventful flight.
Obviously, we have a discrepancy which has haunted the Warren Report for decades. Thanks to Special Agent Landis, we may now have an answer as to where this bullet came from.
According to Agent Landis, upon arriving at Parkland Hospital following the Presidential limousine in “Halfback” and catching up to Agent Hill who was climbing off the trunk of the car, the two agents attempted to coax Mrs. Kennedy into releasing the President so he could be taken into the hospital. Agent Hill took off his suit coat and draped it over the President’s head, and Mrs. Kennedy allowed him to be placed on a gurney and quickly followed everyone inside.
Landis briefly remained outside with the limo and was looking at the grotesque scene in front of him. According to him, he noticed a spent bullet on the ledge of the back seat between the leather interior of the convertible and the steel exterior of the trunk.
Special Agent Landis says that seeing the bullet, he knew it was evidence, and he took it inside the hospital and placed it on the President’s gurney.
Obviously this raises a number of questions and if true, we can draw some conclusions. Frankly the entire story is a little unbelievable, but there are some verifiable aspects of it which add some level of credulity.
Let’s start with some obvious questions and how the article addresses them:
Why did Special Agent Landis pick up this important piece of evidence instead of leaving it in the limo where it would be analyzed by police and FBI?
According to Landis, in the chaos that was Parkland Hospital after the President was shot, the limo was left outside unguarded. He was concerned that someone might take it as a souvenir or that it could otherwise disappear.
My initial reaction to that is a bit of an eye roll. That said, Secret Service agents, at that time, were not trained in forensics or crime scene procedures. He was in his 20’s and it was a wild event. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Did he tell anyone at the time about the bullet?
Landis says he did not. He was standing next to Jackie in the crowded operating room and believing the Dallas Police Department would be investigating the shooting, he left it where it would be found.
As we all know, after the President was declared dead, LBJ insisted that the President’s body be immediately taken to Air Force One to be returned to Washington for the autopsy. At the time, Johnson was concerned the assassination could have been a decapitation attack by the Russians and wanted to get in the air and back to DC as soon as possible.
There was a bit of a melee between the Secret Service and the Dallas Police and the President’s body was ultimately taken back to Air Force One. According to Landis, he didn’t give the bullet a second thought.
How did the bullet get on the back ledge of the car?
Damned if I know.
Where in the world has this guy been for the last 60 years?
Agent Landis was traumatized by the assassination. He had nightmares about losing his President and went into a deep depression. He left the Secret Service shortly after the assassination and claims that he went decades without speaking about it to anyone, reading any books about it, or really trying to think about it at all.
Some of this is verifiable. Shockingly, Agent Landis was never interviewed by the FBI or the Warren Commission. Apparently after he left the Secret Service, nobody reached out to talk to him or ask him any questions.
This is hard to swallow, but I tend to believe stories of extreme incompetence, especially when they reference government employees. It’s not difficult to believe that the FBI and Warren Commission investigators assumed he didn’t have anything to add, and considering he was no longer an employee and actively didn’t want to speak to them… perhaps they just moved on.
Wait a minute… I thought the bullet was found on Gov. Connally’s gurney, not the President's.
According to the author of the Vanity Fair article, this could have simply been a mistake by the building engineer who found the bullet. It wasn’t found until both gurneys were empty and he claimed while people thought it was Connolly’s (who was in surgery by that point) it could have easily been the President’s (who had also been moved off the gurney).
Fair enough.
What does this mean?
Okay, let’s be realistic. I don’t know how much of Landis’ story is true. He seems like a credible guy. He is 88 years old and has never once tried to cash in on his connection to the assassination. His bona fides are unimpeachable. He was there. He was a Secret Service Agent. He has never been accused of being a kook or a liar. He did have a breakdown after the assassination and was not interviewed by the FBI or Warren Commission… So it’s not like his story has changed. He has simply never told his story before now.
So, for the sake of this argument, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his story is accurate. If what Agent Landis says is accurate, how does this new evidence change the narrative? What does finding this bullet in the back of the limousine mean and what conclusions can be drawn?
First, if true, this obviously means that the “magic bullet” didn’t pass through the President and end up in Gov. Connelly. The round was analyzed and was determined to have been fired from Oswald’s rifle. That means that we have another shot to account for.
It is possible that it was an underpowered round (semi-common in foreign made WWII surplus ammunition) that hit the car somewhere and didn’t penetrate. If that’s the case, Oswald could have fired that round first and it wouldn’t necessarily have to be accounted for in the 8.6 seconds and three shots.
That said, only three spent shell casings were found by the window of the book depository. It wouldn’t make sense for Oswald to only dispose of one. Either take them all or leave them all, right? He left his rifle at the scene with his spent casings and unspent ammo.
No, this was very likely one of the three rounds he fired.
Therefore, if that bullet was one of the three fired by Oswald, and it was found in the rear of the Presidential limo, that would slam the door shut on the idea that there was only one shooter. We know we have the miss. That has been established. We also know we have the headshot. If this bullet is found in the back of the limo, how can we account for the wounds on Gov. Connally? We can’t… unless there was another shooter somewhere.
I believe that’s the biggest conclusion we will be able to draw. Furthermore it fits with all the other evidence we have presented in this article. There had to be a second gunman. Oswald did not act alone. The Warren Report’s central conclusion is factually wrong.
Obvious question: Who is the other shooter?
He was likely another Oswald… someone expendable. Ask yourself this question, if Lee Oswald never and implicated himself in the shooting of the President by using his work as a sniper’s nest, leaving his rifle and all his rounds at his perch, suspiciously leaving the building, and killing a police officer in broad daylight in front of eyeball witnesses… Would anyone have noticed if he disappeared or was killed in a robbery gone wrong?
Obviously the answer is no. If Lee Harvey Oswald was never implicated in the murders of JFK and Officer Tippit… and if he was killed in a swamp outside of New Orleans or in an alleyway in a bad part of Dallas, nobody would have ever noticed. Certainly nobody would have connected him to the President.
The same is likely true of the second shooter. He was probably someone used by the same people who used Oswald. It is possible that one never met the other. It is possible that neither new the other one was there.
If that’s the case, the man was certainly dead in the hours after the assassination and buried in a place where he’ll never be found. His rifle and any other evidence would have been destroyed separately.
Someone, somewhere might have noticed him missing, but the only people who would ever be able to connect him to the assassination are the ones who orchestrated it. Some of their names may one day be known, but the identity of the second shooter, if he ever existed, is likely lost to history.
I hope you enjoyed this installment of my series on the JFK assassination. I’m looking forward to continuing to write on the subject! Let me know what you think.
God Bless! —Virgil