Dealey Plaza

Resources

In this chapter, we'll look closely at the Zapruder film. Here is a Youtube of the Zapruder film, including the inter-sprocket area on the left: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBJFT-OyDEc

And here is the same film with a panoramic view, both normal speed and slow motion. This version shows the Zapruder frame numbers; these numbers refer to each frame, from 1 to 486 in the film sequence and are used as time markers in the analysis of the shooting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk3sdfXFkc&rco=1

Individual frames of the Zapruder film can be viewed and downloaded from here: https://sites.google.com/site/lightboxzframes/lightbox-frame-sets?authuser=0

Below is a photograph of Dealey Plaza with the route of the motorcade labeled: west on Main Street, north on Houston Street, and west on Elm Street past the Texas School Book Depository. Abraham Zapruder's location is shown west of the TSBD and just west of that is the Grassy Knoll.

Here is an animation of the motorcade through Dealey Plaza, put together by Mark Tyler. The recording of the police radio can be heard along with the location of each of the vehicles in the motorcade and the location and direction of each of the photographers. https://www.marktyler.org/mc63.html

Here is a 3-dimensional model of Dealey Plaza where you can look at the views from various points with the Presidential limo at Z-225 and Z-313. This is very helpful to determine where a shot may have come from at Z-313. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/jfk-22-nov-1963-6d7e22cb0968419482cfddc092c80e54

Many of the animated gifs below and analysis are borrowed with gratitude from Pat Speer's magisterial web site: www.PatSpeer.com, chapters 5-8. Speer gives a good summary of his conclusions in his Chapter 9.

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Introduction

This week we’ll examine the evidence in Dealey Plaza around the time of the shooting. This is a key hinge point in our understanding of the assassination. Based on the evidence you can decide if there was probably only one shooter, or more than one. And if more than one, was it some loner like Oswald with a deranged cousin or was it a sophisticated operation? Since this is a circumstantial case, there’s no right or wrong answer; your conclusions will be based on what evidence you believe and what evidence you discount.

I've split the class into four groups, one to cover this week and three to cover the next two weeks. Each group will be asked to digest the material on their web page, but will also have an expert system that they can ask questions of, have write reports, and even prepare podcasts to listen to. I'm hoping that will help you digest the mountain of evidence in a fun way.

Zapruder Film

Let’s start with the Zapruder film. If Abraham Zapruder hadn’t brought his new 8mm Bell and Howell Zoomatic movie camera to Dealey Plaza and filmed the entire assassination sequence, it is likely that the Warren Report would be the historical record on the assassination. The film was suppressed by Life Magazine until bootleg copies leaked to the public in 1975, and ever since there has been endless debate about how to understand what the film shows.

Take a close look at this version of the Zapruder film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk3sdfXFkc&rco=1

In the photo above, we can see that Zapruder was standing on a concrete pedestal in front of a pergola just to the west of the TSBD.

In the film, we see motorcycles leading the procession turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street. At Z133, the film suddenly jumps from the motorcycles on Elm to the Presidential motorcade. Zapruder didn't recall turning his camera off and on, so some speculate that the film was edited to cut out the turn onto Elm. We'll look at this hypothesis in a separate essay: Film Alteration.

JFK goes behind a Stemmons Freeway sign starting around Z200. When he emerges at Z225 he is exhibiting a rapid reaction as his hands quickly rise to his throat. Governor Connally shows evidence of distress within a few frames of JFK's reaction. The limousine slows a little, from around 12 to 8 mph as the driver, William Greer puts his foot on the brake and turns around to stare at JFK. The head shot can be seen at Z313, JFK is thrown back and to the left with a huge head wound. Jackie climbs onto the back of the limo to retrieve a piece of JFK's head, and her Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, climbs aboard the limo, helps her back into her seat and the limo roars off, under the triple overpass to Parkland Hospital.

FBI Shot Analysis

The FBI Report on the Assassination, published on December 9, 1963 made no comments on shot timing, it simply concluded that three shots were fired: one hit JFK in the back and did not penetrate far, subsequently falling out in pristine form as CE399. A second shot hit Governor Connally, and a third fatal shot hit JFK in the head. The FBI explained the wound in the front of JFK's throat as a bullet fragment from the head shot which descended down and out his neck. The FBI had a copy of the Zapruder film and apparently studied it, but did not bother to reconcile the inconsistencies between what the Zapruder film showed versus their conclusions. For example, to believe the FBI's conclusions, JFK's extreme reactions that can be seen starting from Z225 could only have arisen from a shallow back wound in which the bullet travelled less than a few inches.

Warren Commission Shot Analysis

The Warren Commission was much more thorough and set out the evidence, including medical evidence, and their conclusions in their Chapter 3: The Shots from the Texas School Book Depository.

The Commission dismissed all evidence of a shot from the Grassy Knoll as "not credible".
The Commission discounted the witness testimonies on the number of shots heard, as they ranged from 2 to 4 or more, with a preponderance of witnesses hearing three shots. The Commission concluded that at least two and perhaps three shots were fired, as three shell casings were found in the sniper's nest and a complete bullet (CE399) was found at Parkland and fragments of another bullet were found in the front cabin of the limousine.
The Commission relied on the autopsy report that linked JFK's back wound to his throat wound. Because no other bullets were found in the limousine, the Commission endorsed Arlen Specter's Magic Bullet theory that the pristine CE399 must have passed through JFK and caused all of Governor Connally's wounds.
The Commission relied on Phil Willis' testimony that he snapped a picture as a reflex when he heard the first shot. That picture, Willis 5 is shown below. The Warren Commission timed Willis 5 to Z210; the HSCA later decided Willis 5 was taken at Z202. The Warren Commission decided the first audible shot was taken between Willis 5 and Z225, when JFK emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign.
The Commission found that the branches of an oak tree obscured the view from the sixth floor sniper's nest between Z166 and Z210.
The location of the limousine at the moment of the head shot at Z313 was precisely determined by comparison of three films: Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore. At that point, JFK was 265 feet from the sniper's nest and the angle of decline was 15 degrees, 21 minutes.

Willis 5, timed to Z202. Abraham Zapruder can be seen just above and to the right of the Stemmons Freeway sign.

Missed Bullet

Since the Warren Commission accounted for all of JFK's and Governor Connally's wounds with two shots, they concluded a third shot likely missed, but they could not tell which shot it was. A man named James Tague, standing on the south side of Main Street by the Triple Underpass was wounded when a bullet fragment hit the curb and a fragment of concrete flew up and scratched his cheek. Analysis of the curb strike showed just lead, not copper, so it wasn't a copper jacketed bullet, suggesting it was either not from the Mannlicher Carcano, or it was a richochet from somewhere.

Time Span of Shooting

The Warren Commission determined that Abraham Zapruder's camera captured 18.3 frames per second. Thus there were 5.6 seconds between a first shot at Z210 and the head shot at Z313. If the second shot had missed, a shooter would have to have fired three shots in 5.6 seconds. Testing showed it took a minimum of 2.3 seconds to fire the Mannlicher Carcano, recycle the bolt, acquire the target, take aim and fire again. If the third shot missed, the shooting sequence may have taken 7.9 seconds.

Warren Commission Conclusions

Four of the seven commissioners took issue with Arlen Specter's Magic Bullet Theory, primarily because Governor Connally was adamant that he was hit within a second or two after he heard the first shot. In order to get all the Commissioners to sign the report, weasel wording was added to the conclusions:

Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President's throat also caused Governor Connally's wounds. However, Governor Connally's testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President's and Governor Connally's wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

This conclusion lies somewhere between disingenuous and false. If the first shot was as early as Z200 and Connally was hit as late as Z331, the two shots would have been 1.7 seconds apart, too short an interval to have been fired by one shooter, thus there would have had to have been two shooters.

House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Shot Timing and Analysis

The HSCA wrote 49 pages on the Number, Timing and Source of the Shots. They largely agreed with the Warren Commission regarding the Magic Bullet that went through JFK and Connally and emerged unscathed, but they made a few changes. They decided the first shot hit both JFK and Connally around Z200 (compatible with Willis, above). As JFK can be seen going behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, he suddenly turned his head from 90 degrees right to straight ahead from Z203 to Z206 and raised his right hand in front of his face. The HSCA concluded that Governor Connally was simply mistaken when he concluded that he was shot around Z331 and he suffered a delayed reaction for 1.7 seconds.

As mentioned in the last chapter, the HSCA also moved the entrance hole in JFK's skull upwards four inches, because the Warren Commission trajectory had implied a shot from below, not above.

Finally, the HSCA performed a "jiggle analysis", looking at the blurred frames in the Zapruder film and suggesting they were caused by startle reactions from the gunshots. The jiggle analysis correlated well with presumed shots at Z200 and Z313. The missed shot could have been at Z160 or soon after Z313.

Evidence for Multiple Shooters

After three investigations by the august institutions of the FBI, Warren Commission and the HSCA all concluded that there was one shooter and three shots, why should we invite trouble by looking for multiple shooters? Why don't we just quit worrying and do something productive, or at least relaxing? Well, let me remind you that J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald, (or an imposter) had met with a KGB official in Mexico City who was a member of KGB Department 13, which is in charge of assassinations and sabotage. LBJ made it quite clear that if suspicions of conspiracy got out, it could quickly lead us into a nuclear war in which 40 to 60 million Americans could be killed. Likewise, LBJ had told Earl Warren "what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City," whereupon Warren began crying and told Johnson "well I won't turn you down, I'll just do whatever you say." It is not unreasonable to assume that both Hoover and Warren actively suppressed any evidence of conspiracy and steered the investigation towards a lone nut finding.

Besides, there is plenty of evidence of multiple shooters, as we'll see below.

First Audible Shot around Z195

The best evidence for the timing of the first shot are the photographs by Hugh Betzner and Phil Willis which have been timed to Z186 and Z202. Hugh Betzner said that he had just taken his photo and started winding the camera when he heard a loud noise like a firecracker. As noted above, Willis took his picture at Z202 due to a startle reflex from the noise of the first audible shot. The startle reaction to the muscles of the forearms can take as little as 80 milliseconds, or one and a half Zapruder frames. So it's likely that Betzner and Willis bracketed the first shot, between Z186 and Z202, probably closer to Z202 than Z186.

Other evidence for this timing include;

Jackie Kennedy testified "I was looking this way, to the left, and I heard these terrible noises. You know. And my husband never made any sound. So I turned to the right." Pat Speer's analysis of the Zapruder film shows Jackie's pink pillbox hat make a rapid swivel towards JFK between Z188 and Z198. (Graphic courtesy of Pat Speer).

As noted above, the HSCA panel noted that JFK's head made a sudden snap from the right to straight ahead and he raised his right hand in front of his between Z203 and Z206.

Secret Service Agent George Hickey was riding in the followup car behind the Presidential limousine. In his statement made on 11/23 he said "I heard a loud report which sounded like a firecracker. It appeared to come from the right and rear and seemed to me to be at ground level. I stood up and looked to my right and rear in an attempt to identify it." In the Zapruder film, Hickey can be seen turning his head from the left to the right rear between Z196 and Z207.

Phil Willis' daughter, Rosemary, age 10 was running down Elm Street from Houston, chasing the motorcade when she heard a loud noise, stopped and looked up at the TSBD. She later said, "I stopped when I heard the shot." She can be seen in the Martin and Zapruder films, slowing down by Z193 and stopped a half second later at Z202. (Graphic courtesy of Pat Speer).

Those people standing along Elm Street around the Thornton Freeway sign mostly said the limousine had passed them when they heard the first shot, while those close to the Stemmons Freeway sign said the limousine was approaching or even with them when they heard the first shot. (See Pat Speer's analysis, and the Betzner photo below.)

Betzner, timed to Z186

The Oak Tree

As mentioned above, the Warren Commission determined that an Oak Tree obscured the assassin's view from the sniper's nest between Z166 and Z210. So how could there be a shot at Z190? There are two options, one is that the shot came from somewhere else. The other option is that the assassin shot through the tree. On May 24, 1964, FBI photography expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt conducted a re-enactment, filming the view of a sniper through the scope of a rifle. The results can be seen below; a target can be tracked as it moves beneath the tree.

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Z224

As JFK emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, his hands, which had been at mid chest level, suddenly rose up to his throat. The movement is so sudden, it cannot be a continuation of his movement between Z204-Z206. Governor Connally also suddenly shows signs of distress. Connally was always adamant that he was not hit by the first audible shot. He described hearing the shot and turning in his seat to look behind him when he was hit. When Connally examined the Zapruder film he estimated that he was hit around Z234. At a press conference in 1966 he said "I think there was probably almost close to two seconds between the time President Kennedy was hit by the first shot and the time I was hit." He also said that he never heard the shot that hit him. The HSCA panel decided that Connally showed signs of being struck at Z224: his right arm jumped up and the front of his coat, through which a bullet passed when he was shot, flapped forward:

Governor Connally's lapel flaps at Z222-Z227

So what are we to make of what's happening at Z224? If the first shot hit around Z195, what is going on at Z224? Well, maybe Connally was telling the truth: JFK could have been hit around Z195 and perhaps both JFK and Connally were struck again at Z224, 1.6 seconds later. Next week we'll look at the medical evidence and see if it supports JFK being hit by three shots or two. Most people did not hear a second shot shortly after the first, but some did. Kenneth O’Donnell was in the Secret Service follow up car and he said: “the first two came almost simultaneously, came one right after the other, there was a slight hesitation, then the third one.” If two shots hit JFK 1.6 seconds apart, they couldn't have both come from Oswald's rifle, because it took a minimum of 2.3 seconds to fire two shots.

The Witness Evidence

Pat Speer collected the testimony of 294 witnesses in and around Dealey Plaza. Of the 294, 89 failed to identify the number of shots. Of the remaining 205, 102 made statements saying that there were three shots fired, with the first shot coming around Z190 to Z224 and the last two shots being heard in rapid succession after a short pause. This witness testimony is more easily read in a compillation by John Costella, titled What Happened on Elm Street? (see pp 48-57). Some of the statements are below:

Seymour Weitzman (Dallas police officer, on the corner of Main and Houston Streets), April 1, 1964: “... we heard what we thought at that time was either a rifle shot or a firecracker, I mean at that second.” (Mr. Ball: “How many shots did you hear?”) Mr. Weitzman: “Three distinct shots.” (Mr. Ball: “How were they spaced?”) Mr. Weitzman: “First one, then the second two seemed to be simultaneously.”

George Hickey (Secret Service agent, in the follow-up car), "I heard two reports which I thought were shots and that appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them.”

Roy Kellerman (Secret Service agent, in the front passenger seat of the Presidential limousine), March 9, 1964: “Now, in the seconds that I talked just now, a flurry of shells come into the car.” [Later:] (Mr. Specter: “Now, in your prior testimony you described a flurry of shells into the car. How many shots did you hear after the first noise which you described as sounding like a firecracker?”) Mr. Kellerman: “Mr. Specter, these shells came in all together.” (Mr. Specter: “Are you able to say how many you heard?”) Mr. Kellerman: “I am going to say two, and it was like a double bang—bang, bang. ... Let me give you an illustration, sir, before I can give you an answer. You have heard the sound barrier, of a plane breaking the sound barrier, bang, bang? That is it.”

Kellerman's description of the "double bang" as a plane breaking the sound barrier can be heard in the twin sonic booms of the space shuttle Atlantis:

Bill Greer (the Secret Service driver of the Presidential limousine), March 9, 1964: (Mr. Specter: “How much time elapsed, to the best of your ability to estimate and recollect, between the time of the second noise and the time of the third noise?”) Mr. Greer: “The last two seemed to be just simultaneously, one behind the other, but I don’t recollect just how much, how many seconds were between the two. I couldn’t really say.”

Sam Kinney (Secret Service agent, driving the follow-up car), November 30, 1963: “There was a second of pause and then two more shots were heard.” Kinney described the sounds in this video which can be seen from 0:50 to 1:33:

As it took a minimum of 2.3 seconds for the Mannlicher Carcano rifle to be fired twice, these statements are suggestive, but not proof, of two shooters.

Back and to the Left

A major source of skepticism toward the official findings is that after Z313, the Head Shot, JFK's body is seen to move backwards and to the left. Many people see this as suggesting a shot from the front of the car, implying two shooters, since the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the TSBD was behind the presidential limo. If you look from behind the presidential limo at Z313 (position 4) with this 3-D model, you can see the possible trajectories. A shot from the Triple Overpass would have to pass through the windshield. That would be a difficult shot and a photo of the windshield shows a crack, not a through hole, although that is disputed. A shot from the right, at the top of the grassy knoll behind the fence is possible.

Another possibility is that the head shot came from above and behind at a slight angle, consistent with what Dr. Kemp Clark at Parkland Hospital called a "tangential wound". In tangential wounds to the skull, the bullet plows into the top layer of bone and then ricochets off. Consistent with this scenario is a large dent in a chrome strip above the limo's rear view mirror, and the crack in the windshield which was described as having a small residue of lead on the inside surface. Also found in the front cabin of the limo were two fragments of a bullet, similar to a Mannlicher Carcano bullet. CE567 is the nose portion of a bullet, weighing 41.5 grains. CE569 is the tail portion of a bullet, weighing 21 grains. In 2000, organic debris attached to CE567 was analyzed and found to consist of paper fibers and human skin and tissue. This is consistent with a tangential bullet strike to the head.

The Carcano bullets weighed 162 grains. It is possible that the middle section of the bullet, weighing 99.5 grains flew over the windshield and struck the curb by which James Tague was standing.

Another observation which supports a shot from behind at Z313 is that JFK's head moved violently forward between Z312 and Z313 before it moved backwards. This can be seen in a slowed down gif of the head shot, or a comparison of frames Z312 and Z313 (courtesy of John Costella). This might be explained by a large force from a bullet striking JFK in the top of his head, driving his head down to his chest, where it bounces off and then recoils backwards and to the left.

A Shot from the Grassy Knoll

Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry was riding in the lead car ahead of the presidential limousine. The car was approaching the triple underpass when the shots rang out and Curry radioed "Get a man on top of that triple underpass and see what happened up there." Curry was one of many people who saw or heard curious things behind the picket fence in the parking lot next to the railroad yards. Sheriff Bill Decker who was also in the lead car similarly radioed to “move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there.” Motorcycle patrolman Bobby Hargis who was riding to the left rear of the Presidential limo was splattered with JFK’s blood. He immediately parked his motorcycle and ran up the Grassy Knoll. Dozens of spectators followed, thinking the shot had come from there.

A database of Dealey Plaza witnesses shows that around an equal number of witnesses thought the shots had come from the Grassy Knoll as thought shots had come from the TSBD. It may have been difficult to determine the source of gunshots due to the echoes among the buildings.

Lee Bowers was a signalman for the railroad and worked in a tower in the railroad yards overlooking Dealey Plaza. He described three cars which came into the parking lot and left in the half hour before the assassination. In one of the cars the driver appeared to be talking into a handheld microphone. At the time of the assassination he saw two men behind the picket fence and a flash of light or smoke caused him to think something out of the ordinary had occurred there.

S.M. (Skinny) Holland was a supervisor for the railroad and watched the motorcade with several co-workers from the top of the Triple Underpass. At the time of the shots he saw a puff of smoke move out from under the branches of a tree on the grassy knoll. Thinking that's where the shooters had been he searched the parking lot immediately after the shooting and found a muddy area between a car and the fence where a person had been pacing and muddy spots on the bumper of a station wagon. The spot he described was about twenty feet from the east end of the fence.

Many others saw smoke coming from the trees on the Grassy Knoll (page 31):

Patrolman Joe Marshall Smith said he "caught the smell of gunpowder" as he was searching behind the fence.
Mary Hall said she "thought I saw smoke coming from the railroad." She noted that many people ran to the railroad tracks, including herself.
Nolan Potter was standing on the Triple Underpass. His FBI report "recalls seeing smoke in front of the Texas School Book Depository rising above the trees"
Walter Winborn said "I just saw some smoke coming out in a—a motorcycle patrolman leaped off his machine and go up towards that smoke that come out from under the trees on the right hand side of the motorcade…There was a wooden fence there"
Richard Dodd said "We all, three or four of us, seen about the same thing, the shot, the smoke came from behind the hedge on the north side of the Plaza. And a motorcycle policeman dropped his motorcycle in the street with a gun in his hand and run up the embankment to the hedge".
James Simmons said, ""there was a puff of smoke that came underneath the trees on the embankment. It was right directly in front of the wooden fence". He also stated that "it seemed like it came from the fence to the left and in front of us"
Patsy Paschall "I thought somebody was popping firecrackers from the knoll. Because I heard a like pow, and a pause, and pow pow. I'll never forget the sound. There was smoke coming from the knoll, like you had popped some firecrackers"
Wilfred Baetz. A December 7, 1966, letter from Dallas Police Chief Charles Batchelor reported that Baetz claimed he "saw a puff of smoke come from behind the fence near the railroad tracks"
Dave Wiegman was an NBC News camera man in camera car #1. As his car turned the corner from Houston to Elm street, he turned his camera on, jumped out and started running toward the Grassy Knoll. Below is one frame from his film which appears to show smoke coming out from the trees on the grassy knoll. I believe that this frame is timed to around Z480, as the presidential limo was speeding toward the Triple Underpass.

From Robert Groden, The Killing of a President, page 204

Suspicious People

Julia Ann Mercer was driving west on Elm Street around 11 am on the morning of the assassination when she was stopped in traffic due to a stalled pickup truck by the Stemmons Freeway ramp. She noticed the driver was a heavy-set man in his 40's. A younger man in his 20's or 30's, wearing a plaid shirt took what appeared to be a rifle case out of the back of the pickup and carried it up the Grassy Knoll. There are similarities with the description of the two men that Lee Bowers saw behind the fence: Bowers described one as "middle-aged" and "fairly heavyset," wearing a white shirt and dark trousers. The other was "mid-twenties in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat".
Ralph Leon Yates: On the day before the assassination, November 21, 1963, a refrigeration repairman, Ralph Leon Yates, picked up a hitchhiker on Beckley Street, about a mile from Oswald’s rooming house and drove him to Dealey Plaza. The man had a 4 foot long package wrapped in brown paper with him and talked about shooting JFK from a building and talked about JFK’s parade route. The story seems fanciful, but a coworker of Yates verified that Yates had told him the same story prior to the assassination. At the time of the alleged incident, Oswald was working at the TSBD.
Jesse C. Price watched the motorcade from the roof of a building across the street to the south. Immediately after the shots he saw a man run from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll to behind the TSBD.
Mary Hall worked on the fifth floor of the Dal-Tex building, across Houston Street from the TSBD. Around 10 am on the morning of the assassination she saw man get out of a station wagon and bring a rifle shaped package into a Houston Street entrance of the TSBD. The car had lettering of the Honest Joe pawn shop.
James Worrell was standing on the corner of Elm and Houston Streets. He heard a shot, saw a man with a rifle on the fifth or sixth floor of the TSBD. He got scared and ran north on Houston St. When he was about 100 yards north of the back of the TSBD, he saw a white man come out of the back of the TSBD and run in the opposite direction. The FBI countered James Worrell's testimony about seeing a man running from the building with a report by James Romack who claimed that he was watching the rear of the TSBD for about five minutes after the assassination and saw no one come out or go in.
Dallas Patrolman Joe Marshall Smith was managing traffic at Elm and Houston when the shots rang out. A woman came up to him and said "They are shooting the President from the bushes.", so he ran behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll and started inspecting cars. "I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn’t alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there. I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don’t know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent. Mr. LIEBELER. Did you accost this man? Mr. SMITH. Well, he saw me coming with my pistol and right away he showed me who he was." However, this Secret Service agent may have been an imposter, as the Secret Service claimed that there were no Secret Service Agents in Dealey Plaza immediately after the shooting. See the Secret Service Report on the Assassination, page 44.
Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman also encountered a (fake?) Secret Service agent while searching the parking lot.
Sergeant D.V. Harkness was at Main and Houston when the shots rang out. He ran to the TSBD, encountered witness Amos Euins, turned him over to Detective Sawyer at the front of the TSBD and then went around to the back of the TSBD around 12:40 pm to help seal off the building. When he got there there were two men who identified themselves as Secret Service agents. Again, there were no Secret Service agents in the area at that time.
Deputy Sherrif Bo Mabra similarly ran to the grassy knoll and found a Dallas Police Department officer behind the wooden fence who told him, “I don’t know what’s going on, but there hasn’t been a thing move back here in a hour or more because I’ve been here all that time.” This DPD officer has never been identified. According to William Manchester, the Dallas Police ended their crowd control at the intersection of Houston and Main. The DPD assignments show that no officer was assigned to the Grassy Knoll, railroad yard or parking lot area.

Extra Bullets and Missed Shots

Two bullets were recovered and three shots were heard. If there were evidence of more bullets recovered, or more than one missed shot, then that would suggest more than one shooter. Such evidence is below:

Missed Shots in the Street

A number of Elm Street witnesses saw bullets which missed the limousine and hit the street:

Mrs. Virgie Baker (nee Rackley) was standing in front of the TSBD. Just after she heard the first shot, she saw something hit the road in front of the limousine which she assumed had been a bullet bouncing off the pavement.

Royce Skelton was standing on the triple overpass. After the limousine had travelled about a hundred feet on Elm Street, he saw smoke spray up from the pavement in front of the drivers side, which he took to be a bullet strike.

Pat Speer references an 11-22-63 article in the Dallas Times-Herald: "Sheriff Decker said he and Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry were riding in the lead car in the parade about one and a half lengths in front of the President's car. The Sheriff said he heard two shots and 'may have seen one of the bullets hit the concrete and bounce.' He said he did not see the other bullet. 'It all happened so fast, I'm just not sure what happened,' Sheriff Decker said."

Dallas Policeman Starvis Ellis was riding a motorcycle next to the lead car, about 125 feet ahead of the presidential limousine. He turned around at the time of the first shot and saw what he thought was a firecracker or fragmentation grenade: "I could see where the shot came down into the south side of the curb. It looked like it hit the concrete or grass there in just a flash, and a bunch of junk flew up like a white or gray color dust or smoke coming out of the concrete". Ellis maintained that this was on Elm Street, not the shot that hit the curb on Main Street which injured James Tague.

Shot that hit South Side of Elm?

Right after the assassination, Patrolman J.W. Foster found what appeared to be a bullet strike on the concrete next to a manhole cover on the south side of Elm Street and a furrow in the adjacent grass:

The strike and furrow were seen and described by Edna and Wayne Hartman. Foster reported this to a superior officer and Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers and an unidentified FBI man came over to investigate. In a series of photos taken by Jim Murray and Bill Allen, the FBI man can be seen reaching into the grass, and then perhaps putting something in his pocket.

No record of what was recovered made it into the evidentiary record, although several newspapers reported that a bullet was recovered. From Michael Griffith's Missed Shots:

When the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM published a photo of the hole in the grass, it included the following caption: One of the rifle bullets fired by the murderer of President Kennedy lies in the grass across Elm Street. . . .

The next day the DALLAS TIMES HERALD, in referring to the hole in the grass, reported: Dallas Police Lt. J. C. Day of the crime lab estimated the distance from the sixth-floor window . . . to the spot where one of the bullets was recovered at 100 yards.

Newsman Richard Dudman said the following about this miss and the recovered bullet in the 12/21/63 issue of the NEW REPUBLIC: On the day the President was shot I happened to learn of a possible fifth [bullet]. A group of police officers were examining the area at the side of the street where the President was hit, and a police inspector told me they had just found another bullet in the grass.

CE399 and The Connally Bullet

Commission Exhibit CE399, the pristine Magic Bullet that the Warren Commission claimed passed through JFK and Governor Connally has long inspired doubts among Kennedy assassination researchers. There are three arguments to doubt CE399:

Could JFK and Connally have been perfectly aligned so that the bullet passed through both men? The Warren Commission argued it had to have been thus, because no other bullets were found in the car (although see next section).
How could CE399 appear almost pristine, with almost no loss of lead? Bullets fired through cadaver wrists were mangled: compare CE399 to CE856, below. CD399 weighed 158.6 grains, while a unfired bullets weighed an average of 160.84 grains. This is surprisingly complete for a bullet which left a trail of fragments in Connally's wrist. JFK's autopsy doctors, Humes and Finck felt it was "most unlikely" that CE399 could be the bullet that passed through JFK and Connally. The Army's head of wound ballistics said the same thing.

3. The chain of evidence of CE399 has been disputed. It was allegedly found on a hospital stretcher next to an elevator by a hospital worker, Darrel Tomlinson, who passed it to Parkland Hospital personnel director O.P. Wright. Wright gave it to Secret Service agent Richard Johnson who flew to Washington D.C. and passed it to the head of the Secret Service, James Rowley, at 7:30pm. From there it was passed through four FBI agents, each of whom initialed the bullet to confirm chain of evidence. But when the FBI went back to Tomlinson, Wright and Johnson in 1964, none of the three would corroborate CE399 as the bullet they had seen. In fact, O.P. Wright was certain that CE399 was not the bullet that had been found; he remembered that the bullet that was found had a pointed, not rounded tip. Here is an article examining whether or not CE399 was planted.

The story gets murkier, when Governor Connally writes in his autobiography, "In History's Shadow", "..the most curious discovery of all took place when they rolled me off the stretcher, and onto the examining table. A metal object fell to the floor, with a click no louder than a wedding band. The nurse picked it up and slipped it into her pocket. It was the bullet from my body, the one that passed though my back, chest and wrist and worked itself loose from my thigh.

There was enormous significance to that scrap of metal, but I can't be certain how many years later I understood the importance of it. I have always believed that three bullets found their mark. What happened in the hospital demonstrated how easily a bullet could have been swept aside and lost."

But the bullet that Connally described which was not the stretcher bullet, was apparently not lost, but reported by Dallas District attorney, Henry Wade to have been picked up by a hospital nurse. Dallas Highway Patrolman, Bobby Nolan, received the bullet from her and it was turned over to Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police Department at 7:50pm that evening. After that, the bullet disappeared from the record.

The chain of custody problems with CE399 and the discovery of a different bullet from John Connally are discussed in an essay by Robert Harris, titled The Connally Bullet. Do you think it is possible that the stretcher bullet found by Tomlinson may have had nothing to do with the assassination, but after it was reported that a bullet was found in Parkland, J. Edgar Hoover decided to fire the Mannlicher Carcano to make a bullet that could be linked to the purported assassination rifle?

Other Bullets found in the Limousine

Doctor James Morningstar Young was an assistant to JFK's personal doctor George Burkley and attended him at JFK's autopsy. He wrote a recollection on the following day in which he related that two hospital corpsmen, Thomas Mills and William Martinell were sent from the hospital at Bethesda to inspect the limousine and bring back any remains. They returned around 10pm with an envelope. "The envelope contained three pieces of skull bone, one about three inches in diameter, another two inches in diameter and the third about one to one and a half inches in diameter. It also contained a brass slug about half a centimeter in diameter and distorted. These were found on the floor of the blood-spattered convertible." Young later described it as a "bent brass slug".

Years later, Young looked in the Warren Report but found no mention of the bullet that had been found in the limousine. The two bullet fragments found in the front compartment of the limo were not Young's bullet, they were found in an FBI search of the limo later in the evening. Young even wrote to President Ford, trying to understand why there was no mention of that bullet in the Warren Report, but he never got a satisfactory response. A recovered bullet was not mentioned in the report by FBI agents O'Neill and Siebert.

Another bullet was reported to have been found in the limousine by Paul Landis. In his 2023 book, The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years, Landis claims that when the motorcade arrived at Parkland Hospital, he found an intact bullet on the back of the rear seat of the limo which he picked up and put on JFK's stretcher. This could not be CE399, because JFK's stretcher was never in the area of the hospital where CE399 was allegedly found. His story has been derided by researchers who noted that in 1983 and 1988 he had reported that he had "found a bullet fragment on the seat which I picked up and handed to somebody." So maybe he was now exaggerating in order to help sell his book. Or maybe something was found. On 11/22/63, the head of the FBI office in Dallas reported "information had been received that a Secret Service Agent had searched the car in which the President was riding and had found the bullet which allegedly killed the President." Was this the Young bullet, the Landis bullet, CE399 or just misinformation? We may never know.

Conclusions?

In this chapter we laid out the arguments for what happened in the three major investigations: the FBI, the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The scenarios differ in each of these three, however they all support the conclusion that up to three shots were fired and there was only one shooter. We then laid out the evidence for more than one shooter: two shots around Z195 and two shots around Z313 that were fired too quickly for there to have been one shooter. A shot or shots from the Grassy Knoll, as evidenced by sound and smoke. Suspicious people such as perhaps fake Secret Service agents. Evidence for two missed shots in addition to the Tague shot. Extra bullets found in the limousine. Do you believe any of the evidence that suggested more than one shooter? Were silencers used to mask the sound of the extra shots? If more than one shooter was involved, was it a sophisticated operation, or just two lone nuts? I look forward to our discussion.

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