The JFK Assassination ===================== The famous Abraham Zapruder cine film 1963 Frame 313 of the only footage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination shows the president’s head exploding. The Zapruder Film ----------------- Millions have seen Abraham Zapruder's graphic 26-second strip of silent, 8-mm Kodachrome II Safety Film. It helps to be prepared for what is shown. Zapruder's own first impressions of the assassination touched on the comic. He thought the President was "pretending" to be hit when the car emerged from behind a sign between Zapruder and Kennedy. He told the Warren Commission: "I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area) ... for a moment I thought it was, you know, like you say, 'Oh, he got me,' when you hear a shot. You've heard these expressions. And then I saw — I don't believe the President is going to make jokes like this, but before I could organize my mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head open up and the blood and everything else came out." Zapruder could only recall two shots, with the fatal head shot causing him to realize the loud reports were actually shots being fired at the President. He told the Warren Commission of a recurring nightmare, in which the film plays out until the fatal head shot snaps him awake: "The thing would come every night — I wake up and see this." Since 1949, Abraham Zapruder had operated his "Jennifer Juniors, Inc. of Dallas," manufacturing women's and young ladies' clothing. In 1963, the company ran out of the fourth and fifth-floors of the Dal-Tex Building at 501 Elm, across Houston Street from the Depository. With his two children, Henry and Myrna, now grown and with young children of their own, Zapruder purchased a Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series 8-mm camera, Model 414 PD in 1962 in order to record his grandchildren's activities. Fortunately for history, it was one of the best-quality home cameras then available. Aware that the President would be passing by his building, Zapruder decided to leave his camera home when November 22, 1963 dawned overcast with showers. As the morning turned sunny, "Mr. Z," as he was called by his employees, was coached into returning home for the camera by his secretary Lillian Rodgers. Towards mid-noon, Zapruder choose a foot-foot-high concrete abutment at the west end of the Bryan Colonnade's steps, next to the Grassy Knoll. The elevated perch would turn out to be one of the best vantage points in Dealey Plaza, but it meant a challenge to Zapruder's vertigo. He asked his receptionist, Marilyn Sitzman, to climb up behind him and steady him as he filmed. His camera fully-wound, Zapruder's camera captured events at a steady 18.3 frames-per-second. The first 132 frames (7-seconds) show the lead motorcycle escort headed down Elm. Realizing the Presidential party was not immediately behind, Zapruder stopped filming to conserve film. His next sequence would begin with the Presidential Lincoln already on Elm and run uninterrupted for 354 frames. Its 19-seconds would capture the most dramatic and horrific single event of the century. Source: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/organ2.htm ================================== The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding with his wife Jacqueline in a Presidential motorcade. The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976–1979, and other government investigations concluded that the President was assassinated by Oswald. This conclusion was initially met with support among the American public, but polls conducted from 1966 show as many as 80% of the American public hold beliefs contrary to these findings. The assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed. Later studies, including one by the National Academy of Sciences, have called into question the accuracy of the evidence used by the HSCA to support its finding of four shots. Just before 12:30 p.m. CST, Kennedy’s limousine entered Dealey Plaza and slowly approached the Texas School Book Depository. Nellie Connally, then the First Lady of Texas, turned around to Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you," which President Kennedy acknowledged. When the Presidential limousine turned and passed the Depository and continued down Elm Street, shots were fired at Kennedy; a clear majority of witnesses recalled hearing three shots. There was hardly any reaction in the crowd to the first shot, many later saying they thought they had heard a firecracker or the exhaust backfire of a vehicle. President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, sitting beside his wife in front of the Kennedys in the limousine, both turned abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right. Connally immediately recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle. "Oh, no, no, no," he said as he turned further right, and then started to turn left, attempting to see President Kennedy behind him. According to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as President Kennedy waved to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo, a shot entered his upper back, penetrated his neck, and exited his throat. He raised his clenched fists up to his neck and leaned forward and to his left, as Mrs. Kennedy put her arms around him in concern. Governor Connally also reacted, as the same bullet penetrated his back, chest, right wrist, and left thigh. He said, "My God, they are going to kill us all." The final shot took place when the Presidential limousine was passing in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure. As the shot was heard, a fist-size hole exploded out from the right side of President Kennedy's head, covering the interior of the car and a nearby motorcycle officer with blood and brain tissue. Then Mrs. Kennedy said, "I have his brains in my hand." United States Secret Service agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of the car immediately behind the Presidential limousine. Sometime after the shot that hit the president in the back, Hill jumped off and ran to overtake the limousine. After the president had been shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy began to climb out on the back of the limousine, though she later had no recollection of doing so. Hill believed she was reaching for something, perhaps a piece of the president's skull. He jumped onto the back of the limousine, pushed Mrs. Kennedy back into her seat, and clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Others wounded Governor Connally, riding in the same limousine in a seat in front of the President, was also critically injured but survived. Doctors later stated that after the governor was shot, his wife pulled him onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung). James Tague, a spectator and witness to the assassination, also received a minor wound to his right cheek while standing 270 feet (82 m) in front of where Kennedy was shot. The injury occurred when a bullet or bullet fragment struck a nearby curb. Aftermath in Dealey Plaza The Presidential limousine was passing a grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street at the moment of the fatal head shot. As the motorcade left the plaza, police officers and spectators ran up the knoll and from a railroad bridge over Elm Street (the Triple Underpass), to the area behind a five-foot (1.5 m) high stockade fence atop the knoll, separating it from a parking lot. No sniper was found. S. M. Holland, who had been watching the motorcade on the Triple Underpass, testified that "immediately" after the shots were fired, he went around the corner where the overpass joined the fence but did not see anyone running from the area. Dealey Plaza and Texas School Book Depository in 1969, looking much as they did in November, 1963 Lee Bowers, a railroad switchman sitting in a two-story tower, had an unobstructed view of the rear of the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll during the shooting. He saw a total of four men in the area between his tower and Elm Street: a middle-aged man and a younger man, standing 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) apart near the Triple Underpass, who did not seem to know each other, and one or two uniformed parking lot attendants. At the time of the shooting, he saw "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around," which he could not identify. Bowers testified that one or both of the men were still there when motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood ran up the grassy knoll to the back of the fence. In a 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired. Meanwhile, Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, notified police that as he watched the motorcade go by, he heard a shot come from above, and looked up to see a man with a rifle make another shot from a corner window on the sixth floor. He had seen the same man minutes earlier looking out the window. Brennan gave a description of the shooter, which was broadcast to all Dallas police at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m. As Brennan spoke to the police in front of the building, they were joined by Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr., two employees of the Texas School Book Depository who had watched the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the fifth floor. Norman reported that he heard three gunshots come from directly over their heads. Norman also heard the sounds of a bolt action rifle and those of cartridges dropping on the floor above them. Estimates of when Dallas police sealed off the entrances to the Texas School Book Depository range from 12:33 to after 12:50 p.m. Of the 104 earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza who are on record with an opinion as to the direction from which the shots came, 54 (51.9%) thought that all shots came from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, 33 (31.7%) thought that all shots came from the area of the grassy knoll or the Triple Underpass, 9 (8.7%) thought all shots came from a location entirely distinct from the knoll or the Depository, 5 (4.8%) thought they heard shots from two locations, and 3 (2.9%) thought the shots came from a direction consistent with both the knoll and the Depository.