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Info for Presentation
Info for Presentation
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Library Blurbs
Depression Era Glassware (date/time TBD)
Vineland resident Denise Hazelwood has been collecting Depression Glass since she was about 10 years old (she’s now in her late 60’s), after falling in love with a gorgeous bowl that was for sale at her Girl Scout troop’s garage sale. She shares some of her more interesting pieces, including reproductions and hard-to-find pieces, along with some of the history and interesting facts about this highly collectible glassware.
JFK Assassination Presentation (Monday, November 23, 5:30-7:00 pm)
In 2015, the CIA admitted that the CIA Director at the time of the Kennedy assassination and afterward, John McCone, had participated in a “benign cover-up” that was intended to keep the Warren Commission focused on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” Local Vineland assassination researcher Denise Hazelwood offers a unique and evidence-supported “Benign Conspiracy” explanation for that cover-up and the conflicting evidence surrounding the case: the deliberate hiding of Secret Service accidents and mistakes, all in the name of “National Security.” Oswald may have been the only (intentional) assassin, but he was not the only shooter.
Library Presentation
JFK Assassination: A Story in 4 Parts:
Part One: Oswald and the CIA
Part Two: The Secret Service
Part Three: The Assassination
Part Four: Parkland and Bethesda
Part Five: The Cover-Up
Part One: Oswald and the CIA
A young man born in 1939 has had a troubled and difficult past, a very rough life. His father died before he was born. His mother was often seen as neglectful. He was placed in an orphanage for a time. His mother re-married, but the new marriage was not a happy one and ultimately ended in divorce. His mother took him from one city to another, 21 times, ranging from New York City to Texas to Louisiana, never staying very long in any single place. His school career consisted of 12 different schools, a stint in juvenile detention, during which a psychiatrist described him as being “emotionally disturbed” and “immersed in a vivid fantasy life,” having a “schizoid personality” with “passive-aggressive tendencies,” experiencing “emotional isolation,” a “lack of affection,” an “absence of family life” and “rejection by a self-involved and conflicted mother.” A word of caution in interpreting that, however. This was the 1950’s, when a “good” mother was a stay-at-home wife and mother, not a divorced single-parent without much income, who worked multiple jobs just to feed herself and her family. The boy was left to cook his own meals and take care of himself. Wherever the truth lay in the mother’s character, whatever the reason behind her apparent neglect for her child, whether it was self-involvement or just working all the time to make enough to survive, this young man was clearly troubled. He was withdrawn, and constantly truant. He quit school a number of times before finally quitting for good. (For details see https://www.grunge.com/1445263/tragic-details-lee-harvey-oswald-childhood/)
At age 15, he joins the New Orleans chapter of the Civil Air Patrol, where he meets David Ferrie, who was rumored to have deep ties with the CIA. He also begins to read socialist literature, with which he has a fascination.
This young man is prone to fits of temper. He has reportedly hit his mother, threatened the wife of his half-brother with a pocket knife, but he remains, for the most part, passive aggressive. He suffers from a sort of dyslexia that makes him a terrible speller. He is, nonetheless, a voracious reader.
I’m talking, of course, about Lee Harvey Oswald.
At age 17, just one week after his 17th birthday, he quits school for the final time and joins the Marines, with help from his older brother, a former Marine himself, who signs the under age permission papers as his “guardian.” This was apparently his way of getting away from his neglectful mother.
As a Marine, he is taught how to shoot. There are 3 levels of passing shooting certification: Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert. He just barely qualifies with a score of 212 at the middle passing level, Sharpshooter.
He is trained as a radar operator, which requires a security clearance—his previous childhood problems apparently not following him in his clearance process—and is ultimately stationed in Japan from September, 1957 to November, 1958. This job requires a “Confidential” level security clearance, which he obtains. He is court-martialed twice—first for shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 caliber hand gun, and again later for fighting with the sergeant he thought was responsible for his punishment for the first offense. There’s that temper again.
He is briefly assigned to the Phillipines, and then he is punished a third time for inexplicably shooting his rifle into the jungle while on sentry duty. His rank is reduced from Private First-Class to just plain Private.
During his time in the Marines that he teaches himself Russian, which is an unusual endeavor, to say the least, and continues to read a lot of Marxist literature. This interest in the Russian language is something that perhaps sparks the CIA’s interest in recruiting him as a spy. James Wilcott, a CIA employee from 1957-1966, testified to the HSCA that starting the day after the assassination, he heard from fellow employees that Oswald was an employee and agent of the CIA, who was sent to Russia on a phony defection. (https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32263407.pdf). There is also a memo from head of the CIA John McCone to head of the Secret Service James Rowley that Oswald had been trained by the CIA and was a low-level agent, although the authenticity of that memo has been questioned. (It looks real enough to me.)
It’s now 1958. Oswald has just turned 19 years old. According to some sources, the CIA takes him to their Camp Peary site for training as a spy, with cover provided by the Office of Naval Intelligence, for a month and half of training. At some point, either now or later, he (along with a few others) is given a rifle, a 7.35 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (per CIA contractor Robert Morrow) that has been specially modified to be broken down and reassembled easily. He is transferred to the Marine’s Airbase in El Toro, California, a place where enlisted men and officers are trained for aviation assignments overseas, and where he had previously gone before being transferred to the station in Japan. This time, however, his destination is someplace else.
It’s now 1959. The young man’s shooting score is tested again. It drops down to the lowest passing level, barely qualifying as a “Marksman,” with a score of 191 when the passing range is 190-250. He is frequently known to shoot “Maggie’s Drawers” on the range, meaning that he would miss the target entirely. In February, 1959, again having taught himself Russian, he is invited to take a Marine proficiency test in written and spoken Russian. His grade for understanding the spoken language was rated as “poor” (-5) but much better in reading (+4) and writing (+3). The CIA starts to become interested in him. They decide to recruit him.
The CIA gives the young man an assignment to go to Russia, perhaps for the sole purpose of improving his spoken Russian language skills. He is given a hardship discharge from the Marines, ostensibly to take care of his “sick mother.” But he only spends 2 days with his mother before he heads to Moscow via France, England, and Switzerland, where he is given a one-week Soviet visa. He is just about to turn 20.
As soon as he arrives in Moscow, he tells his intourist guide that he wants to defect. He’s told no. The day before his visa runs out, he gives himself a minor but bloody wound on his left wrist, ostensibly a suicide attempt just before his intourist guide was due to escort him back out of the country. The Russians kept him in a hospital under psychiatric observation for a week. He meets with four more Soviet officials and insists that he wants to defect.
Meanwhile, the CIA possibly loses contact with the young man.
It’s now 1960. The Russians give him a minor job in an electronics factory in Minsk, Belarus, which comes with an apartment and amenities that would be considered luxuries for ordinary citizens. He meets a pretty Soviet girl named Ella. They date. He proposes. She says no.
Meanwhile, the Navy/Marines, having ostensibly received a July 26 request from Oswald for a full discharge (I thought the Hardship discharge was permanent?). However, the Navy issues him an “undesirable discharge” in September, 1960, probably due to his intended defection—or false defection to Russia. According to Oswald, he was given a bad rap by sensationalist newspaper reporting speculating about his reasons for defecting, not any request on his part to renounce his U.S. citizenship. At any rate, the dishonorable or undesirable discharge means that Oswald no longer is entitled to any military benefits, and now has a black smear against his record.
There is some confusion about the reason for the dishonorable discharge, however. Some sources say that he was dishonorably discharged after an altercation in a bar in Japan, when he pulled a pistol on a superior officer, and was subsequently court-martialed and given a dishonorable discharge from Japan. (https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Lee-Harvey-Oswald-receive-a-dishonorable-discharge-from-the-Marines). He was certainly punished for the bar altercation, but I don’t think he was discharged for it. That might have been someone’s guess, or a story concocted later. I personally think he returned to El Toro, else how would he be re-tested with the lower shooting score of 191? The change to an “undesirable” discharge was probably due to his supposed defection to Russia, not for the altercation with a superior officer.
It’s now the beginning of January, 1961, and he’s 21 years old. Oswald, having failed in his romance, apparently becomes disillusioned about life in the USSR and starts to think about returning to the U.S. He has never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship. Apparently the Embassy held back his request to renounce his citizenship, if he ever in fact made it. He writes to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and asks for his passport to be returned, saying that he would like to return to the U.S. if any and all charges against him would be dropped.
Oswald also writes to the Secretary of the Navy to get his undersirable discharge changed. The Secretary of the Navy for most of 1961 was John B. Connally, Jr. Connally resigned as Secretary of the Navy at the end of 1961 in order to pursue a gubernatorial race, which he won. Oswald writes to Connally from Minsk, asking to have his undesirable discharge changed back, saying that he would “employ all means to right this gross mistake or injustice to a boni-fiedUS. citizen and ex-serviceman.” He waits for a response.
It’s now 1962. Oswald meets another pretty Russian girl, a 19-year-old pharmaceutical student named Marina. Six weeks later, they’re married. Remember, he’s on the rebound, and they’re both young.
Oswald gets a response to his request to have his dishonorable discharge changed back. The request is denied. The undesirable discharge is upheld.
There is some ambiguity in whether Connally himself denied the request, or whether it had been forwarded to a navy discharge review board for review. Whatever the case, Oswald may well have blamed Connally for the “undesirable” discharge.
The couple’s first daughter is born in mid-February, 1962. In March, 1962, Oswald sends another letter (https://ncisahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/OSWALD-LEE-H-Letter-to-USMC-requesting-review-of-his-dishonorable-discharge-Mar-71962.pdf) asking for that decision to uphold. His undesirable discharge to be reviewed, saying that he never revoked his U.S. citizenship, and the “reliable source” for the bad information against him was most likely “newspaper speculation,” not any factual information, and states his willingness to appear in person to plead his case. Meanwhile, things start to be set in motion for Oswald and his family to be repatriated to the U.S.
In May, the Oswalds apply at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for the documents so that Marina can emigrate to the U.S. In June, 1962, the Embassy gives them a $435 repatriation loan, and they head to the U.S., to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where Oswald receives rather less fanfare and attention than he expected.
He acquires and loses several jobs, apparently fired for poor performance, frequent absences, and controversial political behavior, including one in New Orleans. During this time, he apparently purchases a Smith and Wesson revolver through mail-order in January, 1963, and either purchase a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle via mail order (and the trail of evidence for this purchase is very questionable) or he has been given an easily broken down 7.35mm rifle by the CIA either before or after his stint in Russia.
Marina left New Orleans in September, 1963, to reside with her friend Ruth Paine, in Irving, shortly before the birth of their second child, Audrey, in October. Oswald follows her later, apparently making a trip to Mexico City in the meantime. When he returns to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, Ruth Paine helps him obtain a job at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.
During this entire time, the Oswald’s try to integrate into the Russian Émegré community, which is accepting of Marina, pity her, even, but find her husband to be rude and arrogant. “None of us cared for Oswald because of his political philosophy, his criticism of the United States, his apparent lack of interest in anyone but himself, and because of his treatment of Marina," one of the community said.
The exception was George de Mohrenschildt, a 51 year old CIA informant or operative, who befriends the young man, probably at the behest of the CIA, possibly in order to learn exactly what happened when he was in Russia.
Upon his return to the U.S., the CIA now finds Oswald to be “unreliable and emotionally unstable.” He is given a few unimportant infiltration assignments, but is found to be of little or no value. Basically, he’s a loose cannon. He allegedly attempted to assassinate right-wing former General Edwin A. Walker in Dallas, for whatever reason, but that information doesn’t come out until well after the Kennedy assassination.
But think about this. Oswald goes to Russia probably at the behest of the CIA, only to find he’s now dishonorably discharged, and his request to get that changed is denied. Resentment is probably building.
And the focal point of his resentment could very well be the Secretary of Navy who initially denied his request to have his undesirable or dishonorable discharge rescinded. That man, John B. Connally, Jr., is now the Governor of Texas.
And James Jesus Angleton (Chief of the CIA’s counterintelligence unit) has a 180 page dossier on Lee Harvey Oswald sitting on his desk. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sIt3HWrww4)
This is all before the November 22, 1963 assassination.
Part Two: The Secret Service
Now, I’d like to talk a bit about the Secret Service, whose job it is to protect the President.
They have been described as a “Band of Brothers”—a group of close-knit, overworked men whose job, to a large extent, is based on the perception of their effectiveness rather than the fact of their effectiveness. Budget cuts means that the Agency is understaffed. The agents are overworked, putting in long hours of overtime, especially when on travel status. Many of the agents are reportedly heavy drinkers (per Abraham Bolden). Training is less than optimal. Sure, they put on the occasional show, staged events supposedly showing their readiness, but more than one agent (Abraham Bolden, Larry D. Newman in Ronald Kessler’s In The President’s Secret Service) complained that he had been handed a weapon—an AR-15 or a Thompson sub machinegun, respectively—to use in a protective situation, without any training whatsoever. (And the AR-15 was such a new weapon at the time that many people mistook it for a “submachine gun,” so I do wonder if Newman might have meant the AR-15 instead of a Thompson.)
Let me talk about one agent in particular, George W. Hickey, Jr., who was four-months new to the SS and already on the President’s protective detail, mostly assigned to the limousine. There was some sort of relationship between Kennedy and Hickey. Hicky was reported to have given Kennedy the PT-109 coconut as an inauguration gift. Kennedy acquired a papal dispensation for Hickey. Kennedy also “cleared the way” for Hickey, who was 40 years old and just past the age when one could become an agent, to join the SS. I think the two men were related, second cousins or something like that. Hickey’s paternal grandmother’s name was Mary Augusta Hickey, before she became a Kennedy. I can’t confirm that, but given the relationship that seemed to exist between them, it makes sense. Hickey reportedly “loved Kennedy too well” and was apparently devastated by his death.
Hickey was not among the agents who were out drinking into the early morning hours the day of the assassination. He wasn’t even in Fort Worth, where the other agents were located. He was already in Dallas, getting the limousine ready for the Dallas motorcade, and went to his hotel room for a good night’s sleep. So he was probably more alert than most of the other agents.
On the day of the assassination, Hickey was assigned to the left rear of the follow-up car. Along with his fellow agent Glen Bennett, his job is to watch for trouble and if there is danger, to pick up the brand new state of the art AR-15 rifle kept in the floor of the back of the follow-up car, and use that weapon to eliminate the threat. It’s the most powerful weapon in the Secret Service’s motorcade arsenal. It might be loaded with a tracer round, so that the other agents can see where the threat is located if the gun is used.
But little do the SS agents know, there is a major problem with the AR-15. The free-floating firing pin is too heavy. This means that a sudden movement can cause that firing pin to smack against the sensitive ammunition primer and cause the gun to go off—without the trigger ever being pulled. This is called slam-fire, and although the size of the firing pin was later reduced, the problem had not yet been corrected at the time of the assassination. It is doubtful whether the Secret Service agents even knew that the problem existed.
Oh, and the weapon was also known to produce a “puff of smoke” when fired.
Part Three: The Assassination
Let’s assume, for the time being, that Oswald had a grudge against Connally, but not necessarily against JFK. Let’s assume that he was a low-level CIA agent who was sent to Russia by the Agency for some unknown purpose, perhaps just to pick up the language. But he’s an emotionally troubled individual, and volatile--the type of person who loses his temper easily. Meanwhile, he loses his military benefits due to an undesirable or dishonorable discharge that he feels he doesn’t deserve. He’s not a great marksman, but he owns a rifle and a revolver. He’s working at a menial job in a warehouse.
Then he learns that the focal point for his resentment, Governor John Connally, is about to pass right in front of his place of employment in a motorcade that is also carrying the President.
Oswald makes a special trip, hitching a ride with a co-worker, to where his wife and two young children—one of whom is only about a month old—to retrieve his special CIA-issued rifle that can be broken down and reassembled easily. He goes to work the next morning, hitching a ride with the same co-worker, hides the rifle, and waits for his chance to get even.
Meanwhile, the weary, hungry, heavy drinking Secret Service agents go out the night before the assassination, supposedly in search of food, but I have a hard time believing that the hotel hosting the President of the United States as its guest would completely close down its kitchen while the President was staying there. These agents go to the nearby bar called the Press Club, but the place is getting ready to close for the night. They move to a coffee house called The Cellar, where girls dance around in their underwear. The Cellar supposedly does not serve alcohol, but the owner keeps some on-hand, and the place has a reputation for providing free drinks to cops and law-enforcement types. According to the manager of the place, the agents were “bombed.”
But not among the agents who were drinking, remember, was George Hickey, who was handling the defective AR-15.
So here’s the beginning of the motorcade. There’s some lead motorcycle cops, and then the lead car holding the Chief of Police and the Sheriff. The President’s car with its Presidential and U.S. flags is the second car. The Secret Service follow-up car was directly behind the presidential limousine, with unusually tight spacing maintained through the motorcade of only about 5 feet between the two vehicles. The President’s car is flanked by motorcycle cops with two riders, riding behind the limousine on the right, and two on the left.
Behind the Secret Service follow-up car was the Vice-President’s car, which also held Senator ralph Yarborough. And behind that car was the Vice-President’s follow-up car, holding his Secret Service detail. And then the rest of the vehicles.
So the motorcade makes its way through Dallas, and down Main Street, and makes the right hand turn onto the short block of Houston Street. Oswald looks for his target. Where is Connally? There’s Kennedy, in the second car! And right in front of him—there’s Connally! Oswald readies his weapon. The limousine is just at the turn onto Elm Street, a very hard 130º turn. The limousine’s driver, William Greer has to slow the large car way down and swing wide to navigate the turn.
On the street below, being farther back from the building, the Vice-President’s detail has a better view of the window, and sees the rifle as Oswald prepares to shoot. These agents are on the ball. The agents in the back seat open their doors, preparing to exit. The opening door on the left can be seen in the Muchmore film. One agent, probably Lem Johns, fires a warning shot into the air to alert the agents two cars ahead that there’s danger.
But two cars ahead, the hungover Secret Service agents are surrounded by noisy motorcycles—motorcycles that are prone to backfire, especially on slow turns. They don’t hear the warning shot.
The limousine is going only 3-5 miles per hour through the turn. Just as it starts to accelerate out of the turn. Oswald takes his shot. But the guy who shot Maggie’s drawers, that is, who missed completely a stationary target, who missed General Walker, is now dealing with a moving target, and completely misses his nemesis Connally. That bullet hits President Kennedy. It enters the forehead/temple area about here, and fragments on impact. The broken pieces of bullet travel to the back of Kennedy’s head. There are three large pieces that exit the skull, one of them knocking off a chunk of skull, which causes Kennedy’s hair to fly up as the chunk of skull ejects. All three bullet fragments ricochet off the seat back behind the President. The nose and tail fragments head towards the front of the limousine. One hits the chrome strip at the top of the windshield, and ricochets again to end up in the seat cushion. The other just ends up on the floor. But the largest fragment, the king-size middle section, ricochets off the seat back and buries itself into the top of Kennedy’s back. A small fragment doesn’t exit the back of the head, but makes an internal ricochet, bouncing off the inside surface of the skull and deflecting downward to exit at the throat, creating the throat wound.
Does Oswald even see this? He’s looking through a scope, and his attention is probably on Connally. The bystanders see something flying around inside the car, but no one is expecting an assassination. Bystander Ruby Henderson, standing at the corner in front of the Dal-Tex building, thought she saw “paper” flying out of the car. Jack Franzen, farther down Elm Street, whose family was the last of the bystanders on Elm Street, thought a “firecracker” went off inside the car. VP Secret Service agent Warren Taylor, sitting on the opposite side of the car from Lem Johns, thought he saw a “streamer.” Karen Westbrook saw Kennedy’s “hair lift.”
That skull fragment that exited—where did it go? Bystander Charles Brehm saw something, which his interviewer Mark Lane described as a “skull fragment” land on the road surface near his feet. Except that Brehm described it as landing with the second of three shots he heard. I don’t think he heard the warning shot, because he was running to get to his place with his young son. But I do think there was a delay from when the skull fragment ejected from Kennedy’s head with the first Oswald shot, and when it landed on the street. If you look closely at the cheek of motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis in the famous Altgens 6 photograph, you can see something on his right cheek. I think that the something is the skull fragment that ejected from Kennedy’s head with the first shot. It lands on the street. Sheriff’s Deputy Seymour Weitzman later hears about “something red rolling down Elm Street” and goes to pick it up, thinking it’s a piece of firecracker, only later finding out that it’s a piece of skull, with a piece of attached brain.
A lot of Dealey Plaza witnesses actually missed registering the actual first assassination shot. If they heard it at all, they mistook it for a backfire echo or a firecracker or something. And some witnesses actually told reporters and news media about the shot. Dan Rather reported on the limousine’s location at the time of the assassination, where “it” happened, on the same day. Pierce Allman has repeatedly described his first “boom,” but even his video interviews basically ignore where he puts the shot, because the Zapruder film doesn’t seem to show anything happening here—and we’ll talk about the Zapruder film shortly. We can also talk about “inattention blindness,” which is an actual thing, and I can demonstrate it for you, but let me tell the rest of my story first. Then we can get into whatever parts you want to know more about.
In the follow-up car, George Hickey sees the skull fragment fly out of Kennedy’s head and land on Hargis’s cheek. He leans over to try to get a look, and realizes that they are under attack. He knows his duty. He reaches down to the floor of the car to pick up the AR-15.
Meanwhile, Oswald realizes that he has missed Connally. He operates the bolt action of his rifle. But now there’s a tree in his way.
Meanwhile, Lem Johns in the VP follow-up car realizes that his first warning has gone unheeded. He prepares to fire another warning shot, something that will wake up the agents two cars ahead. He quickly looks a target to shoot at that will get their attention. He sees the Stemmons sign to the side of the road ahead of the President’s limousine. It’s a safe target. He thinks.
Maybe that will get their attention. He fires a second warning shot and exits his car as Warren Taylor, on Altgens’ side of the street, also prepares to exit.
Lem Johns’ second warning shot ricochets off the Stemmons sign. Where does it go from there? Well…back towards the limousine. It penetrates the windshield from front to back, low in the glass, but otherwise doesn’t do much, except, perhaps to send a few shards of glass flying towards the back of the car. The bloodless slug will be found in the car later and brought into the autopsy, where a couple of witnesses see it, including Captain David P. Osborne, the Chief of Surgery at Bethesda, Captain James Stover who was the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Naval Medical School at Bethesda, and Dr. James Young, a Navy physician who was one of Kennedy’s personal physicians when he was alive.
Immediately after this warning shot is fired, AP photographer James “Ike” Altgens snaps his famous picture, Altgens 6. In Altgens 6, we can see that Kennedy’s hands are already up at his chest like this, and Jackie’s hands are around his left arm. And we see that George Hickey is already turned completely to the rear in the car, while the other agents are turned only partway around. I believe Hickey already has the AR-15 in hand and is looking to find the exact location of the threat.
This chest-grab position is called decorticate posture. He’s not grabbing at his throat. He’s not trying to “cough up a bullet.” It’s a neuro-muscular reflex indicative of severe neurological trauma. Decorticate posture has been called a “Lazarus sign” because it can occur when the victim is already brain dead but makes it seem like there’s still life left in them. And it’s not instantaneous with the trauma. In this instance, it’s triggered when JFK loses consciousness and gravity takes over and his head drops. Witnesses like Mary Woodsworth Pillsworth misinterpret his head dropping and Jackie turning to him and putting her hands on his arm and Connally turning to try to see what happened as the limousine occupants “talking among themselves.” She misinterprets JFK’s movement into decorticate posture as JFK “waving” to her and her friends.
Many witnesses think that this shot that occurs almost simultaneous with the Altgens 6 picture is the “first” shot. Altgens himself did. But he is told later that his picture was made about 2 seconds after the first assassination shot, which matches the acoustical evidence of the timing between the first non-rejected “suspect” impulse, which was matched to the Texas School Book Depository based on echo pattern, and the second. Again, we can talk about the acoustical evidence after I’m done with the rest of the story, if that’s what you want to spend the rest of the time on.
Back to the story. Motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis hears this shot, just barely, sees the Secret Service men turning to look to the rear, and turns to look also. The skull fragment that had landed on his cheek a couple of seconds or so earlier gets blown off and lands in the street, where it is seen landing by Charles Brehm and will later be picked up by Sheriff’s Deputy Seymour Weitzman.
Clint Hill has seen Kennedy go into the decorticate posture chest grab and realizes there’s a problem. He tells the follow-up car driver “I’m off!” and jumps off the running board to start running towards the presidential limousine. The driver of the follow-up car slows down to give him room and not run him over.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s agents, Lem Johns and Warren Taylor exit their car and start running toward the VP car. I believe that there’s a third agent in the back of Johnson’s follow-up car, a blond man, probably new to the Secret Service, who also exits. I think it’s this mysterious “blond agent” who is later photographed near the Elm Street manhole cover, with patrolman J.W. Foster and Sheriff’s Deputy Buddy Wathers, where there’s a chip in the cement. Foster will later testify to the Warren Commission that he believed a bullet “ricocheted on out” of that area, while Walthers will later tell an interviewer that the divet in the dirt that apparently attracted the blond agent’s attention was probably created by a woman’s high-heel shoe. At any rate, Walthers didn’t mention anything about the Elm Street manhole cover or surrounding area in his same-day Sheriff’s Deputy report, where he describes the minor wounding of a bystander, James Tague. But again I digress. If indeed the mark in the concrete is related to the assassination, it occurs with Oswald’s last shot, which I haven’t yet gotten to. Let’s get back to Oswald’s second shot.
Up in the School Book Depository window, Oswald is watching the car, tracking it as it goes past the tree that blocks his shot. It comes out from under the tree. He takes his second shot. This time, his aim is a little better. He hits his intended target, Connally, but he doesn’t kill him. Oswald operates the bolt action and prepares to take his third and final shot. Connally manages to gasp out, “My God, they’re going to kill us all!” His wife Nellie pulls him down into her lap and covers him.
Meanwhile, George Hickey now has a better idea of where the threat is located. He sees the rifle sticking out of the window. He’s now got his target. He raises his AR-15 and prepares to return fire.
And follow-up car driver Sam Kinney now has a problem. The gap between the two vehicles has increased to more than what it is supposed to be. He starts to accelerate to close that gap.
While all this is happening, the driver of the presidential limousine, William Greer, has heard Oswald’s second shot over the noise of the motorcycles and all, mentally processes it, and thinks he might have a tire blow-out. Greer, quote, “taps the brake to test the tires.” Which helps Clint Hill to catch up, but also does not get the limousine out of the danger zone. Paul Landis, who might have been reacting to the acoustic shockwave from Oswald’s shot and interpreting it, per the acoustic perception diagrams provided to the HSCA, as having come from a direction perpendicular to the actual path of the bullet, sees a suspicious-looking Black guy running back up the stairs and points, thinking, Hey, is that guy the threat? After all, this is 1963. A Black guy, running away? Automatic cause for suspicion.
Lem Johns, Warren Taylor, and the Blond Agent see him pointing. They alter their trajectory to head up the knoll, chasing after their phantom shooter. Bill and Gayle Newman will later describe Secret Service agents with drawn guns running up the knoll.
And meanwhile, Jackie is trying to process what’s going on and figure out what’s wrong with her husband. She realizes part of the back of her husband’s head is missing. She sees a blob of brain that has landed on the back of the limousine. She says, “Oh, my God! He’s been shot!” which is overheard by Jean Hill and Mary Moorman and Roy Kellerman. But Kellerman confuses her Boston accent with JFK’s Boston accent, and thinks it’s the President who has spoken. But it was Jackie. Jackie sees the blob of brain on the back of the limousine, and she’s in a state of shock. She thinks, maybe if it goes back into her husband’s head, he’ll be all right. You’ll see why I think she thinks that shortly. But she’s not thinking clearly. She gets up out of her seat to retrieve the blob of brain. Which, remember, was actually a consequence of Oswald’s first head shot, the forehead/temple entry.
Oswald is just about to take his third shot. The limousine brakes as Greer tests his tires. Follow-up car driver Sam Kinney now has to slam on his brake in order to keep from running over Clint Hill and rear-ending the limousine. The sudden stopping of the follow-up car causes George Hickey to lose his balance and fall towards the front of the car, even though he’s facing to the rear. The sudden movement causes the AR-15’s too-heavy firing pin to engage in a slam fire. The gun goes off. And just at that instant, it happens to be pointed right at JFK’s head. The bullet hits him just above the EOP at the back of the head. The energy from this high-powered bullet dissipates out of the weakest part of the skull, the back of the skull, which was already fractured and partially blown out by the first Oswald shot, and causes the Harper Fragment to be carried away. The Harper Fragment’s tables—that is, the skull layers on the edge of the fragment—show that it was adjacent to a fragment that had previously ejected, although the tabling at the semi-circular notch shows that it was also adjacent to a bullet entrance wound. The bullet has entered the EOP site described by the autopsy doctors, and exited tangentially, above the right ear. Someone—probably Jackie—will later see the bullet, pick it up, and put it on the top of the seat back, where it will be found at Parkland Hospital by Secret Service agent Paul Landis, when he goes to pick up Jackie’s cigarette lighter after she accompanies the President’s body into Trauma Room One.
Up in the Texas School Book Depository window, Oswald sees something happening through his scope, but it’s not from any shot that he fired. He reflexively pulls the trigger. By now, limousine driver William Greer has realized that they are under attack and starts to accelerate, causing Clint Hill to slip off the back step and desperately run to get back up. The acceleration also contributes to Oswald’s third shot missing the limousine completely. This shot ultimately becomes the Main Street curb strike that causes bystander James Tague’s minor wounds.
All this has happened in a matter of seconds. By the acoustical evidence, there is only 8.3 seconds between the first “suspect impulse,” the first assassination shot from Oswald, and the last “suspect impulse,” the Tague miss.
There is only about a half-second between the AR-15 shot and the Oswald missed shot, much too fast for a bolt-action rifle to be operated, but matching the witness accounts of a “double-bang” for the last two shots and the acoustical timing of the last two suspect impulses.
And recall that acoustic perception phenomenon involving supersonic bullets. Motorcycle officer Douglas Jackson is in a perfect position to perceive the AR-15 shot as originating perpendicular to the path of the bullet, which is to say from the Grassy Knoll. He bravely drives his bike up the curb to go after his perceived shooter, his phantom shooter. But there’s no one there. Up in the railroad tower, Lee Bowers has a good view of his side of the fence. Bowers will later tell Mark Lane that there were “no conspirators” on his side of the fence, but that part of the interview, while in the transcript that you can find on my website, was edited out of the final Rush to Judgement film.
By the time of the AR-15 shot, Clint Hill has reached the back of the limousine, and Jackie has started to climb onto the back of the limousine to retrieve the blob of brain she has seen. There’s another blob that has slid to the very back of the car and over the back edge and landed on the spare tire well, where it can be seen next to Clint Hill’s right leg in the Altgens 7 photograph. But just as Jackie gets the one blob of brain, Clint Hill starts to push her back into her seat. Driver William Greer is now getting the car the Hell out of Dodge. Clint Hill continues to climb into the back of the car and push Jackie down into the seat, give the agents behind him a “thumbs down” to show how bad the situation is, and cover the Kennedy’s with his body.
Meanwhile, a kid, probably Jeff Franzen, has picked up the Harper Fragment from the street and handed it to someone from the follow-up car, probably Tim McIntyre on the running board, who tosses it inside the Queen Mary Follow-up car.
Meanwhile, up on the sixth floor of the TSBD, Oswald surveys the chaos on the street below for a second or two, stows his special CIA-issued rifle, and makes his way down the stairs--behind Victoria Adams and Sandra Stiles, who have headed down the stairs from the fourth floor immediately after the shots were fired.
On the street, the motorcade slowly starts up again. Motorcycle officer Marion Baker drives past the School Book Depository, sees and hears from witnesses who say that the shots came from somewhere near the top floor, leaves his bike, and runs into the building, where he encounters building supervisor Roy Truly. Victoria Adams will later say that she heard from others that it was “minutes,” not “seconds” before Baker ran into the building. Truly and Baker wait for the elevator, but it’s not coming—being stuck at another floor with its doors open. They make their way diagonally across the building toward the lunch room. Oswald, meanwhile, has had plenty of time to make his way down the stairs and buy himself a coke from the machine. He doesn’t know exactly what has happened, but he saw Kennedy’s head explode from a shot that he knows he didn’t fire. He needs time to think.
Meanwhile, Lem Johns, Warren Taylor, and the mysterious “blond agent” from Johnson’s follow-up car are running up the knoll, following where Paul Landis has pointed. Taylor will run right back down and return to his car, but Johns and the Blond Agent are slower to go back and will remain in Dealey Plaza for a time. Seymour Weitzman will later give his skull fragment to one of these men, probably the “blond agent,” who identifies himself to Weitzman as a Secret Service agent. The presence of these two men in Dealey Plaza after the shooting later give rise to the false narrative of the “fake” Secret Service men in the area after the shooting. For now, note that it was against protocol for Secret Service men to go after the shooters unless it would immediately protect their protectees. The protocol was to “cover and evacuate.”
Dealey Plaza bystanders, having seen armed Secret Servicemen rushing up the knoll and motorcycle cops rushing up the knoll, due in part, to acoustic misperception involving acoustical shockwaves—note the diagrams provided to the HSCA by acoustical experts showing how witnesses actually perceive a supersonic bullet as originating from a direction perpendicular to the path of the bullet relative to their location, and many of them not in a position to perceive the acoustic shockwave but hearing the sound of a shot coming from that general direction, and some of them having seen a puff of smoke over the roadway, rush towards the top of the Grassy Knoll. Sam Holland, on top of the Triple Underpass, sees the smoke and mistakenly believes it has originated from behind the wooden fence, not realizing that the wind is actually blowing the smoke back towards the knoll, not out from the knoll to the road. That smoke has only lingered for a second before disappearing, but it was seen, and witnesses came up with various beliefs for how it originated—smoke from a motorcycle, a missed shot, and of course, a Grassy Knoll shot, as Sam Holland thought. But the car carrying the man holding the gun that produced the smoke moved out almost immediately from the spot, and the agent with the gun has disappeared below the other agents, so the connection doesn’t form. But Hickey pops up again, still holding the gun, which is so new that witnesses don’t recognize it for what it is, and some think it’s a machine gun. At least one witness worries that the agent might start spraying everyone with bullets.
Part Four: Parkland and Bethesda
The motorcade races to Parkland Hospital. Once there, Johnson is taken inside the hospital, where he’s so gray and in such shock that Parkland staff think he’s having a heart attack. Because Johnson’s protective agents are short a couple of men, and because Kennedy is in such bad shape that the agents doubt he’ll live, Kellerman assigns a couple of his men to help protect Johnson.
Meanwhile, Connally, who has been drifting in and out of consciousness, tries to rouse himself to get out of the car. A nurse, an English girl barely out of nursing school and who took her first assignment at Parkland Hospital, helps get him on his stretcher. A large piece of the bullet that has struck Connally falls onto the ground in the process, and the young nurse, Diana Bowron, picks it up and puts it into her pocket. This occurs in the parking area under the roof of the emergency entrance, falling to the pavement, not to the “floor” as Connally mistakenly writes in his autobiography.
Jackie is reluctant to get out of the car and release her hold on her husband’s body. She sees all the people rushing up to the car trying to get a look, and doesn’t want them to see her husband like this. In her world, appearances are everything. Clint Hill takes off his coat and covers Kennedy with it, and Jackie finally relents. Somewhere in this, I believe, she sets the bullet on the top back of the seat. She is still holding onto the blob of brain.
Once inside Trauma Room One, the only doctor available, a young resident named James Carrico, starts to work on JFK. The most qualified doctor who’s being paged to come to Trauma Room One, Tom Shires, is at a conference. But the operator doesn’t know that and keeps repetedly paging him. Then, out of desperation, the operator starts paging other doctors, anyone she can get. With the President lying face up on the stretcher, he doesn’t immediately see the hole in the back of the head. He starts to work on the ABC’s of emergency medicine: Airway, Breathing, Circulation, in that order. The President is having trouble breathing, taking what’s called “agonal breaths.” Carrico inserts an esophogeal airway, still not seeing the blow-out hole at the back of the head. Malcolm Perry, along with a number of other doctors, is in the cafeteria eating his lunch. The repeated pages for Dr. Shires attracts their attention, and one of them answers the page for the missing Dr. Shires. They learn that POTUS is in their hospital. They head for the emergency area en masse. One of them, Crenshaw, heads to his mentor, Bob McClelland, who is giving a lecture to some medical students. It’s the POTUS! In their hospital! And the only doctor treating him is an ER resident!
The esophogeal airway is not enough to establish good breathing. Perry is the first non-resident to arrive. He performs a tracheostomy. McClelland arrives and assists. Other doctors perform cut-downs for IV’s. Blood is sent for.
Connally, meanwhile, is forgotten in Trauma Room 2.
Word gets out that POTUS is in their Emergency Other doctors begin to arrive, mostly just out of a desire to see the President of the United States. No ordinary citizen would attract that much attention. At some point, one of these arriving doctors peeks into Trauma Room 2, sees Connally, and calls for help.
Somewhere in all this, Paul Landis goes out to the limousine to get Jackie’s cigarette lighter. He sees the bullet that Jackie has set on the back of the seat, the AR-15 bullet, picks it up, takes it back to Trauma Room One, and sets it on the stretcher, where it happens to be seen by nurse Phyllis Hall. The head nurse, Doris Nelson, sees the bullet and picks it up, and takes it to the agent in charge out in the hallway, Roy Kellerman. “Your guy put this on the stretcher,” she tells him. “You ought not to be moving evidence around.” Kellerman has been busy, directing his men to keep unauthorized people away from Trauma Room One. He has by now ordered Clint Hill to call Washington to let them know what’s going on, especially Attorney General Robert Kennedy, JFK’s brother. A reporter overhears Clint Hill telling RFK, “There’s been an accident,” but that will later be denied, saying that what he really said is, “There’s been an incident.”
Not only are Parkland people trying to get a look at the President, but Kellerman and the others have their hands full trying to keep reporters and curious patients, etc. away from Trauma Room One. It’s confusion and chaos. Kellerman hands the bullet he has just been given to someone and says “Put this back where it came from.” Where did it come from? The limousine.
George Hickey, meanwhile, is overwrought. An FBI man arrives at the ER and starts heading in to see JFK. He’s been ordered by Hoover to stay with the President or the President’s body. Hickey stops him by clobbering him with his AR-15 rifle, breaking the FBI agent’s jaw. Kellerman sees that Hickey is basically out of control, he’s not thinking straight. After all, the guy has just unintentionally shot the guy he’s supposed to protect, the guy who got him the papal dispensation, the guy who got him his job, the guy who loved the rotten coconut he gave him as an inauguration gift. Kellerman orders Hickey to put the rifle back in the follow-up car, and tells Sam Kinney, a friend of Hickey’s, to get Hickey under control. Babysit him. Keep him occupied. By now, Kellerman and the other agents realize that Hickey has unintentionally fired the shot that killed Kennedy, although they might not have been aware that the first head shot came from the TSBD.
Kinney tells Hickey to “see to the limousine, do what you would normally do,” to get Hickey out of the way. Hickey sees the limousine, sees how bloody it is. Normally, if the car was dirty, he would wash it. He asks for a bucket of soapy water, which someone at the hospital gets for him, and starts washing the car.
Kinney’s going back and forth inside the hospital and back outside to check on Hickey. He sees Hickey washing the car, and stops him. He distracts Hickey by having him put on the bubbletop instead. Hickey sees the AR-15 bullet that has been replaced into the car, and becomes more distressed. Kinney also sees AR-15 bullet, which now causing his friend incredible agony, and pockets it to get it out of Hickey’s sight.
Meanwhile, neurologist Kemp Clark arrives in Trauma Room One, one of the few doctors who was actually called for, by Perry. Jackie nudges him and hands him the blob of brain. “Will this help?” she asks. Dr. Clark looks at what he’s just been given, realizes what it is, goes to the head of the table, and takes a good look at the President’s head. He realizes that the wound is not compatible with life. He shows the back of the head wound to the others. Attempts to resuscitate Kennedy are halted.
A couple of priests at a nearby parish had heard earlier on the radio that something had happened in the motorcade and the President was involved and was being taken to Parkland Hospital. They make their way to Parkland on the off-chance that they will get to meet Kennedy, who is a Catholic. The head priest, Father Huber, finds himself in the position of, instead of meeting President Kennedy, performing the Last Rights. Jackie exchanges wedding rings, and kisses JFK’s big toe. A casket is called for, the most expensive casket in the nearby funeral home’s inventory. A plain military casket or two is also called for, either now or later, to be used in a shell game of caskets that will be delivered to the Bethesda morgue. When the fancy, expensive casket arrives, Kennedy’s body is cleaned up a bit and transferred to the casket. At this point, the Secret Service men are anxious to get the body out of the hospital and under their control. But just as they are leaving, the hospital’s chief pathologist, Dr. Earl Rose, shows up. The body is supposed to be his, to perform the autopsy as required by Texas law. Which of course the Secret Service agents can’t allow to happen. It’s one un-armed physician against a bunch of armed Secret Service men. Guess who wins.
And at some point during all this, Kinney puts the bullet he has pocketed onto the hallway stretcher, which did not come from either Kennedy or Connally but was used by a young boy who was bleeding profusely from a cut. Perhaps Kinney shows the bullet to his boss, Emory Roberts, telling Roberts that it was in the car and causing Hickey a great deal of distress. Roberts tells Kinney to put it back where it came from. Where was that? Kinney asks around and learns that it came from a stretcher. He puts it back on a hallway stretcher, albeit the wrong one.
Kinney, by the way, has a reputation for covering for his fellow law-enforcement officers. At his funeral, his daughter will tell the story of how he gave his gun to a cop who left his gun in the bathroom while on duty.
Also during this time, Dallas Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrells is ordered to take charge of the gun that Hickey has returned to the follow-up car.
The Secret Service is still short-handed, and Hickey has to drive the presidential limousine back to Love Field. Kinney is right behind him in the follow-up car.
By the time Hickey and Kinney arrive at Love Field, Hickey’s face is as white as a ghost, and he has to be helped onto the cargo plane that will transport the two cars.
Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels, in charge of the Dallas field office, has meanwhile returned to Dealey Plaza, to learn what the situation on the ground is, and do a damage assessment. Most of the witnesses who saw an agent in the follow-up car fall over at the time of one of the last shots have just automatically and erroneously assumed that the agent was killed during the shooting. After all, Hickey wasn’t aiming towards the President—he was aiming back towards the School Book Depository building. He goes to the Kodak lab to try to collect whatever photographic evidence might show up there to be processed. He manages to get the Willis slides immediately after they are developed, although Phil Willis does get a look at his pictures before giving them to Sorrels. Years later, Linda Willis will assert that when her father finally got his pictures back, at least one of them had been “physically altered,” because, she believed, “something showed that the Secret Service did not want known.” Father Robert Croft gave his undeveloped film to the Secret Service. He believed he had taken a picture at the exact moment of the assassination. When he gets his film back, that picture negative was blank. He will be told that his “camera must have malfunctioned.”
However, immediately after the assassination, Senator Ralph Yarborough, back at Parkland Hospital, tells reporters that “the third shot might have been a Secret Service man returning the fire.” Pierce Allman does a radio interview and is asked if police or anyone tried to return the fire. Allman says, “This is possible,” but he’s not altogether sure because the events were confusing, what with everyone hitting the ground and all.
When the Kennedy entourage returns to Love Field, there is a delay until a judge can be found to swear in the new President Lyndon Johnson. While the swearing in occurs, or in the ambulance on the way to the airport, or in flight, or after they land, the body is transferred to a shipping casket for a shell game to get it to wherever the autopsy is going to occur. Whether or not Jackie knew about the casket transfer is debatable. It could have been done during the swearing in.
Meanwhile, the stretcher bullet is discovered by Parkland employee Darrell Tomlinson, witnessed by elevator repairman Nathan Burgess Poole, who initially describes the bullet as “pointed,” but will later change his story to say it was “rounded.” Tomlinson alerts head of Parkland security O.P. Wright to the bullet’s existence. Wright collects the bullet and later turns it over to the FBI. Wright will later tell researcher Josiah Thompson that the bullet was “pointed” and show him a bullet that looks similar to the one that came from the stretcher.
CE-399, the purported stretcher bullet, is neither fragmented nor pointed. It is a substitute for the AR-15 bullet. But too many people know that a bullet had been found on the Parkland stretcher. It couldn’t be disappeared entirely. So the pointed AR-15 bullet will later be replaced with the rounded Carcano bullet.
The episode with Dallas coroner Earl Rose hammers home the realization that an autopsy will have to be done. But if it is done at a military facility, the information can be better controlled. Soldiers will follow orders. Jackie is given the choice of having it done at Bethesda, or at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Since her husband was a Navy man, she chooses Bethesda.
Dr. James Humes will be the lead autopsist. He is briefed on what happened and told to find the AR-15 bullet. He is told that all the shots came from behind, perhaps interpreting that as an order to find that all the shots came from behind. Boswell is in on the orders. So is radiologist Dr. Ebersole. Humes might not like this. He doesn’t want the responsibility for the entire autopsy, which he knows is going to be at least partially covered up, to fall solely on the Navy, so he calls over to Walter Reed Hospital for a pathologist. They send one who is familiar with gunshot wounds, Dr. Pierre Finck. He will later turn out to be something of a problem.
When the body arrives in the DC area, the casket shell game ensues. Watch Doug Horne’s YouTube video “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited” for details. Before anyone realizes what has gone on, Humes has looked for bullets, removed the brain and switched it out with a nearly intact brain that has been shot once from the rear, thus performing a “surgery to the head” that will be described later by FBI agents.
During the autopsy, someone remembers the skull fragment that was tossed into the Queen Mary Secret Service follow-up car, the Harper Fragment, and tells Humes about it. Humes sends a couple of Navy Corpsmen to search the Queen Mary as well as the Presidential limousine. They bring back the skull fragment from the Queen Mary as well as the bullet that bounced off the Stemmons sign and caused the windshield hole, the one fired by Lem Johns. Dr. James Young and Captain David Osborne both see the bullet. Dr. Young overhears “Queen Mary” and “Presidential limousine” in the same breath and thinks that “Queen Mary” was the name of the Presidential limousine and that both pieces of evidence came from the same place. Dr. Humes fits the Harper fragment into the head, and the semi-circular notch completes the circumference of the entry wound. It measures at 6mm—too small to have come from a bullet from Oswald’s gun, purportedly a 6.5mm Carcano, although the Oswald gun migh actually have been the 7.63mm CIA-issued weapon.
To keep the Secret Service hands as clean as possible—after all, we don’t want the public thinking that the agents had done anything wrong by mis-handling evidence—the Harper Fragment is quietly returned to Dealey Plaza, where it will be found by medical student Billy Harper, who takes it to his uncle at Methodist Hospital. At Methodist Hospital, the Harper Fragment is examined by pathologists who determine it to be “occipital,” meaning at the back of the head, and who photograph and X-ray the skull fragment before turning it over to the FBI. The observations of the doctors at Methodist Hospital will become something of a problem later when the Harper Fragment will be asserted to have come from the front of the skull rather than the rear.
Back at Parkland Hospital, after the Kennedy entourage has left, the young English nurse who has pocketed the large Connally bullet fragment, being unfamiliar with American procedures for handling evidence, is told that she should put the large bullet fragment in an evidence envelope and give it to someone in law enforcement. She finds a constable standing in the hallway Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, later of Roe v. Wade fame. Wade actually sees the large fragment, but hands it back to her and tells her to find another uniformed officer She does that, except she doesn’t write on the envelope how she came into possession of the fragment or anything else, thus breaking the chain of evidence and eventually gives the envelope to state trooper Bobby Nolan, who contacts his supervisor, who tells him to take it to the DPD and give it to Chief Curry. When Nolan eventually arrives at DPD headquarters, after a long shift of guarding the hospital corridors for Connally, he is intercepted by Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels and FBI agent Gordon Shanklin, who both want him to give them the fragment. But Nolan knows his orders are to give it to Chief Curry. Chief Curry, however, is busy interrogating Oswald, and it’s been a long day and Nolan just wants to go home, so Nolan just initials the envelope and leaves the envelope on Curry’s desk, without ever looking at the contents. There was no other writing on the envelope at the time. Other writing will later appear on this envelope to make it seem that these were the Connally wrist fragments from his surgery, given to Nolan by nurse Audrey Bell, who has been holding the wrist fragments to turn over to the DPD crime lab. She is much more familiar with proper law enforcement procedures than the young, naïve English nurse. But before she can turn them over to the crime lab, Bell is ordered by the hospital’s administrator to turn the fragments over to Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrells and an FBI agent—probably Shanklin—and will later testify that she handed those wrist fragments over to them—not to any State Trooper. She will also testify that she had the agents sign a receipt for those wrist fragments. Later, a receipt will appear bearing her name and Nolan’s name—and Nolan never recounted signing any such receipt—but it was not shown to her during her testimony to verify. I contend that that receipt is a forgery. The original receipt may have disappeared altogether. Another problem is that the Connally wrist fragments plus the small fragments that were left in his body, really do not account for enough metal to have come from CE-399. CE-399 has a bit of metal missing from base from where a tiny amount was removed for metallurgic tests, but otherwise not enough metal is missing to account for those fragments.
Meanwhile, the Zapruder film, or a copy of it, is taken to the National Photographic Interpretation Center, where renowned expert Dino Brugioni uses it to prepare briefing boards from certain key frames. Brugioni will later recall that the head explosion he saw, the AR-15 head shot, sent spray a lot higher into the air than the extant film and specifically frame 313 seems to show.
Part Five: Cover-Up
So fast forward to Sunday, two days after the assassination. Oswald is killed by Jack Ruby. There will be no trial. The chief high mucky-mucks decide that the whole incident of the AR-15 accident and the ricochet-caused windshield hole is just too embarrassing to become public knowledge. Since there will be no trial, there’s no reason to preserve actual evidence, and the cover-up begins in earnest. Now it’s not just a matter of keeping quiet, it’s an active cover-up. The Zapruder film is sent to the CIA’s Hawkeye Works laboratory in Rochester, New York, for alteration. The limousine stop is removed. Moreover, that first shot—the one from Oswald—is covered up, to hide the Secret Service agents’ slow response to it. This is all done in the name of “national security,” which is the catch-phrase for anything having to do with hiding information related to the JFK assassination. I mean, Oswald being a CIA agent—albeit a low-level one? The freaking assassination rifle potentially being a CIA weapon that was issued to Oswald? The CIA had a vested interest in covering up the aspects of the assassination having to do with them, so they made a cooperative agreement with the Secret Service to actively cover-up the Secret Service problems while covering up their own culpability.
To be clear, I don’t think the assassination was a planned coup d’état. I think Oswald was a low-level agent who was a loose cannon.
So the Zapruder film was altered. It was a 24-hour job, and certain mistakes were made. Some of those mistakes will be corrected later—problems with shadows that David Lifton described. Some of those problems were only more recently uncovered—the mistakes found by researcher Dr. John Costella, the too-dark back-of-the-head black-patch described by Hollywood film experts Wilkinson and Whitehead. The “disappearing Clint Hill,” the “jumping lamp post,” the too-long left arm, the too-fast body position changes, the limousine flag between the hand of the Dark Complected Man and the camera’s POV. Little “tells” like that. The film was never meant to be closely examined by the public. When Life magazine, which had close ties with the CIA, bought all the rights from Abraham Zapruder, they published still frames from the altered film. They spent a lot of money on the motion picture rights, but never monetized it. In fact, they guarded their copyright closely, but never made any money from it.
So all this film alteration started immediately after Oswald was killed. Other manipulation of evidence had longer to be accomplished, but Life magazine had a deadline to meet. While this was happening, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach wrote a memo urgin for the establishment of a Commission, not to actually investigate the facts of the JFK assassination, but to “convince the public” that Oswald acted alone and there were no accomplices still at large. According to Chief Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, who headed the Commission bearing his name but only attended a small number of actual sessions, all of the facts surrounding the case would be hidden for about 75 years. With the publication of a number of books critical of the Warren Commission’s work and especially with the popularity of the Oliver Stone JFK movie, public pressure forced the passage of the JFK Records Act, which uncovered a lot of evidence, much of it pointing to a cover-up. But evidence is still being withheld. The Trump administration didn’t release what they promised. Big surprise, right? Nor did the Biden administration, or the second Trump administration. The Mary Ferrell Foundation’s lawsuit was only partially successful in getting material released in unredacted form and in getting it catalogued appropriately for researchers to sort through and access. So whether any of the original disappeared actual evidence still exists is a matter of speculation. Maybe it’s buried in the Archives somewhere, who knows?
So that’s my research and my conclusions in a nut-shell. Admittedly, some of this is speculation, like the identity of the nurse who pocketed the large Connally bullet fragment, but this is how I’ve pieced together all the conflicting evidence into a cohesive narrative.
And now I will entertain any questions.
Depression Era Glassware (date/time TBD)
Vineland resident Denise Hazelwood has been collecting Depression Glass since she was about 10 years old (she’s now in her late 60’s), after falling in love with a gorgeous bowl that was for sale at her Girl Scout troop’s garage sale. She shares some of her more interesting pieces, including reproductions and hard-to-find pieces, along with some of the history and interesting facts about this highly collectible glassware.
JFK Assassination Presentation (Monday, November 23, 5:30-7:00 pm)
In 2015, the CIA admitted that the CIA Director at the time of the Kennedy assassination and afterward, John McCone, had participated in a “benign cover-up” that was intended to keep the Warren Commission focused on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” Local Vineland assassination researcher Denise Hazelwood offers a unique and evidence-supported “Benign Conspiracy” explanation for that cover-up and the conflicting evidence surrounding the case: the deliberate hiding of Secret Service accidents and mistakes, all in the name of “National Security.” Oswald may have been the only (intentional) assassin, but he was not the only shooter.
Library Presentation
JFK Assassination: A Story in 4 Parts:
Part One: Oswald and the CIA
Part Two: The Secret Service
Part Three: The Assassination
Part Four: Parkland and Bethesda
Part Five: The Cover-Up
Part One: Oswald and the CIA
A young man born in 1939 has had a troubled and difficult past, a very rough life. His father died before he was born. His mother was often seen as neglectful. He was placed in an orphanage for a time. His mother re-married, but the new marriage was not a happy one and ultimately ended in divorce. His mother took him from one city to another, 21 times, ranging from New York City to Texas to Louisiana, never staying very long in any single place. His school career consisted of 12 different schools, a stint in juvenile detention, during which a psychiatrist described him as being “emotionally disturbed” and “immersed in a vivid fantasy life,” having a “schizoid personality” with “passive-aggressive tendencies,” experiencing “emotional isolation,” a “lack of affection,” an “absence of family life” and “rejection by a self-involved and conflicted mother.” A word of caution in interpreting that, however. This was the 1950’s, when a “good” mother was a stay-at-home wife and mother, not a divorced single-parent without much income, who worked multiple jobs just to feed herself and her family. The boy was left to cook his own meals and take care of himself. Wherever the truth lay in the mother’s character, whatever the reason behind her apparent neglect for her child, whether it was self-involvement or just working all the time to make enough to survive, this young man was clearly troubled. He was withdrawn, and constantly truant. He quit school a number of times before finally quitting for good. (For details see https://www.grunge.com/1445263/tragic-details-lee-harvey-oswald-childhood/)
At age 15, he joins the New Orleans chapter of the Civil Air Patrol, where he meets David Ferrie, who was rumored to have deep ties with the CIA. He also begins to read socialist literature, with which he has a fascination.
This young man is prone to fits of temper. He has reportedly hit his mother, threatened the wife of his half-brother with a pocket knife, but he remains, for the most part, passive aggressive. He suffers from a sort of dyslexia that makes him a terrible speller. He is, nonetheless, a voracious reader.
I’m talking, of course, about Lee Harvey Oswald.
At age 17, just one week after his 17th birthday, he quits school for the final time and joins the Marines, with help from his older brother, a former Marine himself, who signs the under age permission papers as his “guardian.” This was apparently his way of getting away from his neglectful mother.
As a Marine, he is taught how to shoot. There are 3 levels of passing shooting certification: Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert. He just barely qualifies with a score of 212 at the middle passing level, Sharpshooter.
He is trained as a radar operator, which requires a security clearance—his previous childhood problems apparently not following him in his clearance process—and is ultimately stationed in Japan from September, 1957 to November, 1958. This job requires a “Confidential” level security clearance, which he obtains. He is court-martialed twice—first for shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 caliber hand gun, and again later for fighting with the sergeant he thought was responsible for his punishment for the first offense. There’s that temper again.
He is briefly assigned to the Phillipines, and then he is punished a third time for inexplicably shooting his rifle into the jungle while on sentry duty. His rank is reduced from Private First-Class to just plain Private.
During his time in the Marines that he teaches himself Russian, which is an unusual endeavor, to say the least, and continues to read a lot of Marxist literature. This interest in the Russian language is something that perhaps sparks the CIA’s interest in recruiting him as a spy. James Wilcott, a CIA employee from 1957-1966, testified to the HSCA that starting the day after the assassination, he heard from fellow employees that Oswald was an employee and agent of the CIA, who was sent to Russia on a phony defection. (https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32263407.pdf). There is also a memo from head of the CIA John McCone to head of the Secret Service James Rowley that Oswald had been trained by the CIA and was a low-level agent, although the authenticity of that memo has been questioned. (It looks real enough to me.)
It’s now 1958. Oswald has just turned 19 years old. According to some sources, the CIA takes him to their Camp Peary site for training as a spy, with cover provided by the Office of Naval Intelligence, for a month and half of training. At some point, either now or later, he (along with a few others) is given a rifle, a 7.35 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (per CIA contractor Robert Morrow) that has been specially modified to be broken down and reassembled easily. He is transferred to the Marine’s Airbase in El Toro, California, a place where enlisted men and officers are trained for aviation assignments overseas, and where he had previously gone before being transferred to the station in Japan. This time, however, his destination is someplace else.
It’s now 1959. The young man’s shooting score is tested again. It drops down to the lowest passing level, barely qualifying as a “Marksman,” with a score of 191 when the passing range is 190-250. He is frequently known to shoot “Maggie’s Drawers” on the range, meaning that he would miss the target entirely. In February, 1959, again having taught himself Russian, he is invited to take a Marine proficiency test in written and spoken Russian. His grade for understanding the spoken language was rated as “poor” (-5) but much better in reading (+4) and writing (+3). The CIA starts to become interested in him. They decide to recruit him.
The CIA gives the young man an assignment to go to Russia, perhaps for the sole purpose of improving his spoken Russian language skills. He is given a hardship discharge from the Marines, ostensibly to take care of his “sick mother.” But he only spends 2 days with his mother before he heads to Moscow via France, England, and Switzerland, where he is given a one-week Soviet visa. He is just about to turn 20.
As soon as he arrives in Moscow, he tells his intourist guide that he wants to defect. He’s told no. The day before his visa runs out, he gives himself a minor but bloody wound on his left wrist, ostensibly a suicide attempt just before his intourist guide was due to escort him back out of the country. The Russians kept him in a hospital under psychiatric observation for a week. He meets with four more Soviet officials and insists that he wants to defect.
Meanwhile, the CIA possibly loses contact with the young man.
It’s now 1960. The Russians give him a minor job in an electronics factory in Minsk, Belarus, which comes with an apartment and amenities that would be considered luxuries for ordinary citizens. He meets a pretty Soviet girl named Ella. They date. He proposes. She says no.
Meanwhile, the Navy/Marines, having ostensibly received a July 26 request from Oswald for a full discharge (I thought the Hardship discharge was permanent?). However, the Navy issues him an “undesirable discharge” in September, 1960, probably due to his intended defection—or false defection to Russia. According to Oswald, he was given a bad rap by sensationalist newspaper reporting speculating about his reasons for defecting, not any request on his part to renounce his U.S. citizenship. At any rate, the dishonorable or undesirable discharge means that Oswald no longer is entitled to any military benefits, and now has a black smear against his record.
There is some confusion about the reason for the dishonorable discharge, however. Some sources say that he was dishonorably discharged after an altercation in a bar in Japan, when he pulled a pistol on a superior officer, and was subsequently court-martialed and given a dishonorable discharge from Japan. (https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Lee-Harvey-Oswald-receive-a-dishonorable-discharge-from-the-Marines). He was certainly punished for the bar altercation, but I don’t think he was discharged for it. That might have been someone’s guess, or a story concocted later. I personally think he returned to El Toro, else how would he be re-tested with the lower shooting score of 191? The change to an “undesirable” discharge was probably due to his supposed defection to Russia, not for the altercation with a superior officer.
It’s now the beginning of January, 1961, and he’s 21 years old. Oswald, having failed in his romance, apparently becomes disillusioned about life in the USSR and starts to think about returning to the U.S. He has never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship. Apparently the Embassy held back his request to renounce his citizenship, if he ever in fact made it. He writes to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and asks for his passport to be returned, saying that he would like to return to the U.S. if any and all charges against him would be dropped.
Oswald also writes to the Secretary of the Navy to get his undersirable discharge changed. The Secretary of the Navy for most of 1961 was John B. Connally, Jr. Connally resigned as Secretary of the Navy at the end of 1961 in order to pursue a gubernatorial race, which he won. Oswald writes to Connally from Minsk, asking to have his undesirable discharge changed back, saying that he would “employ all means to right this gross mistake or injustice to a boni-fiedUS. citizen and ex-serviceman.” He waits for a response.
It’s now 1962. Oswald meets another pretty Russian girl, a 19-year-old pharmaceutical student named Marina. Six weeks later, they’re married. Remember, he’s on the rebound, and they’re both young.
Oswald gets a response to his request to have his dishonorable discharge changed back. The request is denied. The undesirable discharge is upheld.
There is some ambiguity in whether Connally himself denied the request, or whether it had been forwarded to a navy discharge review board for review. Whatever the case, Oswald may well have blamed Connally for the “undesirable” discharge.
The couple’s first daughter is born in mid-February, 1962. In March, 1962, Oswald sends another letter (https://ncisahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/OSWALD-LEE-H-Letter-to-USMC-requesting-review-of-his-dishonorable-discharge-Mar-71962.pdf) asking for that decision to uphold. His undesirable discharge to be reviewed, saying that he never revoked his U.S. citizenship, and the “reliable source” for the bad information against him was most likely “newspaper speculation,” not any factual information, and states his willingness to appear in person to plead his case. Meanwhile, things start to be set in motion for Oswald and his family to be repatriated to the U.S.
In May, the Oswalds apply at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for the documents so that Marina can emigrate to the U.S. In June, 1962, the Embassy gives them a $435 repatriation loan, and they head to the U.S., to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where Oswald receives rather less fanfare and attention than he expected.
He acquires and loses several jobs, apparently fired for poor performance, frequent absences, and controversial political behavior, including one in New Orleans. During this time, he apparently purchases a Smith and Wesson revolver through mail-order in January, 1963, and either purchase a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle via mail order (and the trail of evidence for this purchase is very questionable) or he has been given an easily broken down 7.35mm rifle by the CIA either before or after his stint in Russia.
Marina left New Orleans in September, 1963, to reside with her friend Ruth Paine, in Irving, shortly before the birth of their second child, Audrey, in October. Oswald follows her later, apparently making a trip to Mexico City in the meantime. When he returns to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, Ruth Paine helps him obtain a job at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.
During this entire time, the Oswald’s try to integrate into the Russian Émegré community, which is accepting of Marina, pity her, even, but find her husband to be rude and arrogant. “None of us cared for Oswald because of his political philosophy, his criticism of the United States, his apparent lack of interest in anyone but himself, and because of his treatment of Marina," one of the community said.
The exception was George de Mohrenschildt, a 51 year old CIA informant or operative, who befriends the young man, probably at the behest of the CIA, possibly in order to learn exactly what happened when he was in Russia.
Upon his return to the U.S., the CIA now finds Oswald to be “unreliable and emotionally unstable.” He is given a few unimportant infiltration assignments, but is found to be of little or no value. Basically, he’s a loose cannon. He allegedly attempted to assassinate right-wing former General Edwin A. Walker in Dallas, for whatever reason, but that information doesn’t come out until well after the Kennedy assassination.
But think about this. Oswald goes to Russia probably at the behest of the CIA, only to find he’s now dishonorably discharged, and his request to get that changed is denied. Resentment is probably building.
And the focal point of his resentment could very well be the Secretary of Navy who initially denied his request to have his undesirable or dishonorable discharge rescinded. That man, John B. Connally, Jr., is now the Governor of Texas.
And James Jesus Angleton (Chief of the CIA’s counterintelligence unit) has a 180 page dossier on Lee Harvey Oswald sitting on his desk. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sIt3HWrww4)
This is all before the November 22, 1963 assassination.
Part Two: The Secret Service
Now, I’d like to talk a bit about the Secret Service, whose job it is to protect the President.
They have been described as a “Band of Brothers”—a group of close-knit, overworked men whose job, to a large extent, is based on the perception of their effectiveness rather than the fact of their effectiveness. Budget cuts means that the Agency is understaffed. The agents are overworked, putting in long hours of overtime, especially when on travel status. Many of the agents are reportedly heavy drinkers (per Abraham Bolden). Training is less than optimal. Sure, they put on the occasional show, staged events supposedly showing their readiness, but more than one agent (Abraham Bolden, Larry D. Newman in Ronald Kessler’s In The President’s Secret Service) complained that he had been handed a weapon—an AR-15 or a Thompson sub machinegun, respectively—to use in a protective situation, without any training whatsoever. (And the AR-15 was such a new weapon at the time that many people mistook it for a “submachine gun,” so I do wonder if Newman might have meant the AR-15 instead of a Thompson.)
Let me talk about one agent in particular, George W. Hickey, Jr., who was four-months new to the SS and already on the President’s protective detail, mostly assigned to the limousine. There was some sort of relationship between Kennedy and Hickey. Hicky was reported to have given Kennedy the PT-109 coconut as an inauguration gift. Kennedy acquired a papal dispensation for Hickey. Kennedy also “cleared the way” for Hickey, who was 40 years old and just past the age when one could become an agent, to join the SS. I think the two men were related, second cousins or something like that. Hickey’s paternal grandmother’s name was Mary Augusta Hickey, before she became a Kennedy. I can’t confirm that, but given the relationship that seemed to exist between them, it makes sense. Hickey reportedly “loved Kennedy too well” and was apparently devastated by his death.
Hickey was not among the agents who were out drinking into the early morning hours the day of the assassination. He wasn’t even in Fort Worth, where the other agents were located. He was already in Dallas, getting the limousine ready for the Dallas motorcade, and went to his hotel room for a good night’s sleep. So he was probably more alert than most of the other agents.
On the day of the assassination, Hickey was assigned to the left rear of the follow-up car. Along with his fellow agent Glen Bennett, his job is to watch for trouble and if there is danger, to pick up the brand new state of the art AR-15 rifle kept in the floor of the back of the follow-up car, and use that weapon to eliminate the threat. It’s the most powerful weapon in the Secret Service’s motorcade arsenal. It might be loaded with a tracer round, so that the other agents can see where the threat is located if the gun is used.
But little do the SS agents know, there is a major problem with the AR-15. The free-floating firing pin is too heavy. This means that a sudden movement can cause that firing pin to smack against the sensitive ammunition primer and cause the gun to go off—without the trigger ever being pulled. This is called slam-fire, and although the size of the firing pin was later reduced, the problem had not yet been corrected at the time of the assassination. It is doubtful whether the Secret Service agents even knew that the problem existed.
Oh, and the weapon was also known to produce a “puff of smoke” when fired.
Part Three: The Assassination
Let’s assume, for the time being, that Oswald had a grudge against Connally, but not necessarily against JFK. Let’s assume that he was a low-level CIA agent who was sent to Russia by the Agency for some unknown purpose, perhaps just to pick up the language. But he’s an emotionally troubled individual, and volatile--the type of person who loses his temper easily. Meanwhile, he loses his military benefits due to an undesirable or dishonorable discharge that he feels he doesn’t deserve. He’s not a great marksman, but he owns a rifle and a revolver. He’s working at a menial job in a warehouse.
Then he learns that the focal point for his resentment, Governor John Connally, is about to pass right in front of his place of employment in a motorcade that is also carrying the President.
Oswald makes a special trip, hitching a ride with a co-worker, to where his wife and two young children—one of whom is only about a month old—to retrieve his special CIA-issued rifle that can be broken down and reassembled easily. He goes to work the next morning, hitching a ride with the same co-worker, hides the rifle, and waits for his chance to get even.
Meanwhile, the weary, hungry, heavy drinking Secret Service agents go out the night before the assassination, supposedly in search of food, but I have a hard time believing that the hotel hosting the President of the United States as its guest would completely close down its kitchen while the President was staying there. These agents go to the nearby bar called the Press Club, but the place is getting ready to close for the night. They move to a coffee house called The Cellar, where girls dance around in their underwear. The Cellar supposedly does not serve alcohol, but the owner keeps some on-hand, and the place has a reputation for providing free drinks to cops and law-enforcement types. According to the manager of the place, the agents were “bombed.”
But not among the agents who were drinking, remember, was George Hickey, who was handling the defective AR-15.
So here’s the beginning of the motorcade. There’s some lead motorcycle cops, and then the lead car holding the Chief of Police and the Sheriff. The President’s car with its Presidential and U.S. flags is the second car. The Secret Service follow-up car was directly behind the presidential limousine, with unusually tight spacing maintained through the motorcade of only about 5 feet between the two vehicles. The President’s car is flanked by motorcycle cops with two riders, riding behind the limousine on the right, and two on the left.
Behind the Secret Service follow-up car was the Vice-President’s car, which also held Senator ralph Yarborough. And behind that car was the Vice-President’s follow-up car, holding his Secret Service detail. And then the rest of the vehicles.
So the motorcade makes its way through Dallas, and down Main Street, and makes the right hand turn onto the short block of Houston Street. Oswald looks for his target. Where is Connally? There’s Kennedy, in the second car! And right in front of him—there’s Connally! Oswald readies his weapon. The limousine is just at the turn onto Elm Street, a very hard 130º turn. The limousine’s driver, William Greer has to slow the large car way down and swing wide to navigate the turn.
On the street below, being farther back from the building, the Vice-President’s detail has a better view of the window, and sees the rifle as Oswald prepares to shoot. These agents are on the ball. The agents in the back seat open their doors, preparing to exit. The opening door on the left can be seen in the Muchmore film. One agent, probably Lem Johns, fires a warning shot into the air to alert the agents two cars ahead that there’s danger.
But two cars ahead, the hungover Secret Service agents are surrounded by noisy motorcycles—motorcycles that are prone to backfire, especially on slow turns. They don’t hear the warning shot.
The limousine is going only 3-5 miles per hour through the turn. Just as it starts to accelerate out of the turn. Oswald takes his shot. But the guy who shot Maggie’s drawers, that is, who missed completely a stationary target, who missed General Walker, is now dealing with a moving target, and completely misses his nemesis Connally. That bullet hits President Kennedy. It enters the forehead/temple area about here, and fragments on impact. The broken pieces of bullet travel to the back of Kennedy’s head. There are three large pieces that exit the skull, one of them knocking off a chunk of skull, which causes Kennedy’s hair to fly up as the chunk of skull ejects. All three bullet fragments ricochet off the seat back behind the President. The nose and tail fragments head towards the front of the limousine. One hits the chrome strip at the top of the windshield, and ricochets again to end up in the seat cushion. The other just ends up on the floor. But the largest fragment, the king-size middle section, ricochets off the seat back and buries itself into the top of Kennedy’s back. A small fragment doesn’t exit the back of the head, but makes an internal ricochet, bouncing off the inside surface of the skull and deflecting downward to exit at the throat, creating the throat wound.
Does Oswald even see this? He’s looking through a scope, and his attention is probably on Connally. The bystanders see something flying around inside the car, but no one is expecting an assassination. Bystander Ruby Henderson, standing at the corner in front of the Dal-Tex building, thought she saw “paper” flying out of the car. Jack Franzen, farther down Elm Street, whose family was the last of the bystanders on Elm Street, thought a “firecracker” went off inside the car. VP Secret Service agent Warren Taylor, sitting on the opposite side of the car from Lem Johns, thought he saw a “streamer.” Karen Westbrook saw Kennedy’s “hair lift.”
That skull fragment that exited—where did it go? Bystander Charles Brehm saw something, which his interviewer Mark Lane described as a “skull fragment” land on the road surface near his feet. Except that Brehm described it as landing with the second of three shots he heard. I don’t think he heard the warning shot, because he was running to get to his place with his young son. But I do think there was a delay from when the skull fragment ejected from Kennedy’s head with the first Oswald shot, and when it landed on the street. If you look closely at the cheek of motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis in the famous Altgens 6 photograph, you can see something on his right cheek. I think that the something is the skull fragment that ejected from Kennedy’s head with the first shot. It lands on the street. Sheriff’s Deputy Seymour Weitzman later hears about “something red rolling down Elm Street” and goes to pick it up, thinking it’s a piece of firecracker, only later finding out that it’s a piece of skull, with a piece of attached brain.
A lot of Dealey Plaza witnesses actually missed registering the actual first assassination shot. If they heard it at all, they mistook it for a backfire echo or a firecracker or something. And some witnesses actually told reporters and news media about the shot. Dan Rather reported on the limousine’s location at the time of the assassination, where “it” happened, on the same day. Pierce Allman has repeatedly described his first “boom,” but even his video interviews basically ignore where he puts the shot, because the Zapruder film doesn’t seem to show anything happening here—and we’ll talk about the Zapruder film shortly. We can also talk about “inattention blindness,” which is an actual thing, and I can demonstrate it for you, but let me tell the rest of my story first. Then we can get into whatever parts you want to know more about.
In the follow-up car, George Hickey sees the skull fragment fly out of Kennedy’s head and land on Hargis’s cheek. He leans over to try to get a look, and realizes that they are under attack. He knows his duty. He reaches down to the floor of the car to pick up the AR-15.
Meanwhile, Oswald realizes that he has missed Connally. He operates the bolt action of his rifle. But now there’s a tree in his way.
Meanwhile, Lem Johns in the VP follow-up car realizes that his first warning has gone unheeded. He prepares to fire another warning shot, something that will wake up the agents two cars ahead. He quickly looks a target to shoot at that will get their attention. He sees the Stemmons sign to the side of the road ahead of the President’s limousine. It’s a safe target. He thinks.
Maybe that will get their attention. He fires a second warning shot and exits his car as Warren Taylor, on Altgens’ side of the street, also prepares to exit.
Lem Johns’ second warning shot ricochets off the Stemmons sign. Where does it go from there? Well…back towards the limousine. It penetrates the windshield from front to back, low in the glass, but otherwise doesn’t do much, except, perhaps to send a few shards of glass flying towards the back of the car. The bloodless slug will be found in the car later and brought into the autopsy, where a couple of witnesses see it, including Captain David P. Osborne, the Chief of Surgery at Bethesda, Captain James Stover who was the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Naval Medical School at Bethesda, and Dr. James Young, a Navy physician who was one of Kennedy’s personal physicians when he was alive.
Immediately after this warning shot is fired, AP photographer James “Ike” Altgens snaps his famous picture, Altgens 6. In Altgens 6, we can see that Kennedy’s hands are already up at his chest like this, and Jackie’s hands are around his left arm. And we see that George Hickey is already turned completely to the rear in the car, while the other agents are turned only partway around. I believe Hickey already has the AR-15 in hand and is looking to find the exact location of the threat.
This chest-grab position is called decorticate posture. He’s not grabbing at his throat. He’s not trying to “cough up a bullet.” It’s a neuro-muscular reflex indicative of severe neurological trauma. Decorticate posture has been called a “Lazarus sign” because it can occur when the victim is already brain dead but makes it seem like there’s still life left in them. And it’s not instantaneous with the trauma. In this instance, it’s triggered when JFK loses consciousness and gravity takes over and his head drops. Witnesses like Mary Woodsworth Pillsworth misinterpret his head dropping and Jackie turning to him and putting her hands on his arm and Connally turning to try to see what happened as the limousine occupants “talking among themselves.” She misinterprets JFK’s movement into decorticate posture as JFK “waving” to her and her friends.
Many witnesses think that this shot that occurs almost simultaneous with the Altgens 6 picture is the “first” shot. Altgens himself did. But he is told later that his picture was made about 2 seconds after the first assassination shot, which matches the acoustical evidence of the timing between the first non-rejected “suspect” impulse, which was matched to the Texas School Book Depository based on echo pattern, and the second. Again, we can talk about the acoustical evidence after I’m done with the rest of the story, if that’s what you want to spend the rest of the time on.
Back to the story. Motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis hears this shot, just barely, sees the Secret Service men turning to look to the rear, and turns to look also. The skull fragment that had landed on his cheek a couple of seconds or so earlier gets blown off and lands in the street, where it is seen landing by Charles Brehm and will later be picked up by Sheriff’s Deputy Seymour Weitzman.
Clint Hill has seen Kennedy go into the decorticate posture chest grab and realizes there’s a problem. He tells the follow-up car driver “I’m off!” and jumps off the running board to start running towards the presidential limousine. The driver of the follow-up car slows down to give him room and not run him over.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s agents, Lem Johns and Warren Taylor exit their car and start running toward the VP car. I believe that there’s a third agent in the back of Johnson’s follow-up car, a blond man, probably new to the Secret Service, who also exits. I think it’s this mysterious “blond agent” who is later photographed near the Elm Street manhole cover, with patrolman J.W. Foster and Sheriff’s Deputy Buddy Wathers, where there’s a chip in the cement. Foster will later testify to the Warren Commission that he believed a bullet “ricocheted on out” of that area, while Walthers will later tell an interviewer that the divet in the dirt that apparently attracted the blond agent’s attention was probably created by a woman’s high-heel shoe. At any rate, Walthers didn’t mention anything about the Elm Street manhole cover or surrounding area in his same-day Sheriff’s Deputy report, where he describes the minor wounding of a bystander, James Tague. But again I digress. If indeed the mark in the concrete is related to the assassination, it occurs with Oswald’s last shot, which I haven’t yet gotten to. Let’s get back to Oswald’s second shot.
Up in the School Book Depository window, Oswald is watching the car, tracking it as it goes past the tree that blocks his shot. It comes out from under the tree. He takes his second shot. This time, his aim is a little better. He hits his intended target, Connally, but he doesn’t kill him. Oswald operates the bolt action and prepares to take his third and final shot. Connally manages to gasp out, “My God, they’re going to kill us all!” His wife Nellie pulls him down into her lap and covers him.
Meanwhile, George Hickey now has a better idea of where the threat is located. He sees the rifle sticking out of the window. He’s now got his target. He raises his AR-15 and prepares to return fire.
And follow-up car driver Sam Kinney now has a problem. The gap between the two vehicles has increased to more than what it is supposed to be. He starts to accelerate to close that gap.
While all this is happening, the driver of the presidential limousine, William Greer, has heard Oswald’s second shot over the noise of the motorcycles and all, mentally processes it, and thinks he might have a tire blow-out. Greer, quote, “taps the brake to test the tires.” Which helps Clint Hill to catch up, but also does not get the limousine out of the danger zone. Paul Landis, who might have been reacting to the acoustic shockwave from Oswald’s shot and interpreting it, per the acoustic perception diagrams provided to the HSCA, as having come from a direction perpendicular to the actual path of the bullet, sees a suspicious-looking Black guy running back up the stairs and points, thinking, Hey, is that guy the threat? After all, this is 1963. A Black guy, running away? Automatic cause for suspicion.
Lem Johns, Warren Taylor, and the Blond Agent see him pointing. They alter their trajectory to head up the knoll, chasing after their phantom shooter. Bill and Gayle Newman will later describe Secret Service agents with drawn guns running up the knoll.
And meanwhile, Jackie is trying to process what’s going on and figure out what’s wrong with her husband. She realizes part of the back of her husband’s head is missing. She sees a blob of brain that has landed on the back of the limousine. She says, “Oh, my God! He’s been shot!” which is overheard by Jean Hill and Mary Moorman and Roy Kellerman. But Kellerman confuses her Boston accent with JFK’s Boston accent, and thinks it’s the President who has spoken. But it was Jackie. Jackie sees the blob of brain on the back of the limousine, and she’s in a state of shock. She thinks, maybe if it goes back into her husband’s head, he’ll be all right. You’ll see why I think she thinks that shortly. But she’s not thinking clearly. She gets up out of her seat to retrieve the blob of brain. Which, remember, was actually a consequence of Oswald’s first head shot, the forehead/temple entry.
Oswald is just about to take his third shot. The limousine brakes as Greer tests his tires. Follow-up car driver Sam Kinney now has to slam on his brake in order to keep from running over Clint Hill and rear-ending the limousine. The sudden stopping of the follow-up car causes George Hickey to lose his balance and fall towards the front of the car, even though he’s facing to the rear. The sudden movement causes the AR-15’s too-heavy firing pin to engage in a slam fire. The gun goes off. And just at that instant, it happens to be pointed right at JFK’s head. The bullet hits him just above the EOP at the back of the head. The energy from this high-powered bullet dissipates out of the weakest part of the skull, the back of the skull, which was already fractured and partially blown out by the first Oswald shot, and causes the Harper Fragment to be carried away. The Harper Fragment’s tables—that is, the skull layers on the edge of the fragment—show that it was adjacent to a fragment that had previously ejected, although the tabling at the semi-circular notch shows that it was also adjacent to a bullet entrance wound. The bullet has entered the EOP site described by the autopsy doctors, and exited tangentially, above the right ear. Someone—probably Jackie—will later see the bullet, pick it up, and put it on the top of the seat back, where it will be found at Parkland Hospital by Secret Service agent Paul Landis, when he goes to pick up Jackie’s cigarette lighter after she accompanies the President’s body into Trauma Room One.
Up in the Texas School Book Depository window, Oswald sees something happening through his scope, but it’s not from any shot that he fired. He reflexively pulls the trigger. By now, limousine driver William Greer has realized that they are under attack and starts to accelerate, causing Clint Hill to slip off the back step and desperately run to get back up. The acceleration also contributes to Oswald’s third shot missing the limousine completely. This shot ultimately becomes the Main Street curb strike that causes bystander James Tague’s minor wounds.
All this has happened in a matter of seconds. By the acoustical evidence, there is only 8.3 seconds between the first “suspect impulse,” the first assassination shot from Oswald, and the last “suspect impulse,” the Tague miss.
There is only about a half-second between the AR-15 shot and the Oswald missed shot, much too fast for a bolt-action rifle to be operated, but matching the witness accounts of a “double-bang” for the last two shots and the acoustical timing of the last two suspect impulses.
And recall that acoustic perception phenomenon involving supersonic bullets. Motorcycle officer Douglas Jackson is in a perfect position to perceive the AR-15 shot as originating perpendicular to the path of the bullet, which is to say from the Grassy Knoll. He bravely drives his bike up the curb to go after his perceived shooter, his phantom shooter. But there’s no one there. Up in the railroad tower, Lee Bowers has a good view of his side of the fence. Bowers will later tell Mark Lane that there were “no conspirators” on his side of the fence, but that part of the interview, while in the transcript that you can find on my website, was edited out of the final Rush to Judgement film.
By the time of the AR-15 shot, Clint Hill has reached the back of the limousine, and Jackie has started to climb onto the back of the limousine to retrieve the blob of brain she has seen. There’s another blob that has slid to the very back of the car and over the back edge and landed on the spare tire well, where it can be seen next to Clint Hill’s right leg in the Altgens 7 photograph. But just as Jackie gets the one blob of brain, Clint Hill starts to push her back into her seat. Driver William Greer is now getting the car the Hell out of Dodge. Clint Hill continues to climb into the back of the car and push Jackie down into the seat, give the agents behind him a “thumbs down” to show how bad the situation is, and cover the Kennedy’s with his body.
Meanwhile, a kid, probably Jeff Franzen, has picked up the Harper Fragment from the street and handed it to someone from the follow-up car, probably Tim McIntyre on the running board, who tosses it inside the Queen Mary Follow-up car.
Meanwhile, up on the sixth floor of the TSBD, Oswald surveys the chaos on the street below for a second or two, stows his special CIA-issued rifle, and makes his way down the stairs--behind Victoria Adams and Sandra Stiles, who have headed down the stairs from the fourth floor immediately after the shots were fired.
On the street, the motorcade slowly starts up again. Motorcycle officer Marion Baker drives past the School Book Depository, sees and hears from witnesses who say that the shots came from somewhere near the top floor, leaves his bike, and runs into the building, where he encounters building supervisor Roy Truly. Victoria Adams will later say that she heard from others that it was “minutes,” not “seconds” before Baker ran into the building. Truly and Baker wait for the elevator, but it’s not coming—being stuck at another floor with its doors open. They make their way diagonally across the building toward the lunch room. Oswald, meanwhile, has had plenty of time to make his way down the stairs and buy himself a coke from the machine. He doesn’t know exactly what has happened, but he saw Kennedy’s head explode from a shot that he knows he didn’t fire. He needs time to think.
Meanwhile, Lem Johns, Warren Taylor, and the mysterious “blond agent” from Johnson’s follow-up car are running up the knoll, following where Paul Landis has pointed. Taylor will run right back down and return to his car, but Johns and the Blond Agent are slower to go back and will remain in Dealey Plaza for a time. Seymour Weitzman will later give his skull fragment to one of these men, probably the “blond agent,” who identifies himself to Weitzman as a Secret Service agent. The presence of these two men in Dealey Plaza after the shooting later give rise to the false narrative of the “fake” Secret Service men in the area after the shooting. For now, note that it was against protocol for Secret Service men to go after the shooters unless it would immediately protect their protectees. The protocol was to “cover and evacuate.”
Dealey Plaza bystanders, having seen armed Secret Servicemen rushing up the knoll and motorcycle cops rushing up the knoll, due in part, to acoustic misperception involving acoustical shockwaves—note the diagrams provided to the HSCA by acoustical experts showing how witnesses actually perceive a supersonic bullet as originating from a direction perpendicular to the path of the bullet relative to their location, and many of them not in a position to perceive the acoustic shockwave but hearing the sound of a shot coming from that general direction, and some of them having seen a puff of smoke over the roadway, rush towards the top of the Grassy Knoll. Sam Holland, on top of the Triple Underpass, sees the smoke and mistakenly believes it has originated from behind the wooden fence, not realizing that the wind is actually blowing the smoke back towards the knoll, not out from the knoll to the road. That smoke has only lingered for a second before disappearing, but it was seen, and witnesses came up with various beliefs for how it originated—smoke from a motorcycle, a missed shot, and of course, a Grassy Knoll shot, as Sam Holland thought. But the car carrying the man holding the gun that produced the smoke moved out almost immediately from the spot, and the agent with the gun has disappeared below the other agents, so the connection doesn’t form. But Hickey pops up again, still holding the gun, which is so new that witnesses don’t recognize it for what it is, and some think it’s a machine gun. At least one witness worries that the agent might start spraying everyone with bullets.
Part Four: Parkland and Bethesda
The motorcade races to Parkland Hospital. Once there, Johnson is taken inside the hospital, where he’s so gray and in such shock that Parkland staff think he’s having a heart attack. Because Johnson’s protective agents are short a couple of men, and because Kennedy is in such bad shape that the agents doubt he’ll live, Kellerman assigns a couple of his men to help protect Johnson.
Meanwhile, Connally, who has been drifting in and out of consciousness, tries to rouse himself to get out of the car. A nurse, an English girl barely out of nursing school and who took her first assignment at Parkland Hospital, helps get him on his stretcher. A large piece of the bullet that has struck Connally falls onto the ground in the process, and the young nurse, Diana Bowron, picks it up and puts it into her pocket. This occurs in the parking area under the roof of the emergency entrance, falling to the pavement, not to the “floor” as Connally mistakenly writes in his autobiography.
Jackie is reluctant to get out of the car and release her hold on her husband’s body. She sees all the people rushing up to the car trying to get a look, and doesn’t want them to see her husband like this. In her world, appearances are everything. Clint Hill takes off his coat and covers Kennedy with it, and Jackie finally relents. Somewhere in this, I believe, she sets the bullet on the top back of the seat. She is still holding onto the blob of brain.
Once inside Trauma Room One, the only doctor available, a young resident named James Carrico, starts to work on JFK. The most qualified doctor who’s being paged to come to Trauma Room One, Tom Shires, is at a conference. But the operator doesn’t know that and keeps repetedly paging him. Then, out of desperation, the operator starts paging other doctors, anyone she can get. With the President lying face up on the stretcher, he doesn’t immediately see the hole in the back of the head. He starts to work on the ABC’s of emergency medicine: Airway, Breathing, Circulation, in that order. The President is having trouble breathing, taking what’s called “agonal breaths.” Carrico inserts an esophogeal airway, still not seeing the blow-out hole at the back of the head. Malcolm Perry, along with a number of other doctors, is in the cafeteria eating his lunch. The repeated pages for Dr. Shires attracts their attention, and one of them answers the page for the missing Dr. Shires. They learn that POTUS is in their hospital. They head for the emergency area en masse. One of them, Crenshaw, heads to his mentor, Bob McClelland, who is giving a lecture to some medical students. It’s the POTUS! In their hospital! And the only doctor treating him is an ER resident!
The esophogeal airway is not enough to establish good breathing. Perry is the first non-resident to arrive. He performs a tracheostomy. McClelland arrives and assists. Other doctors perform cut-downs for IV’s. Blood is sent for.
Connally, meanwhile, is forgotten in Trauma Room 2.
Word gets out that POTUS is in their Emergency Other doctors begin to arrive, mostly just out of a desire to see the President of the United States. No ordinary citizen would attract that much attention. At some point, one of these arriving doctors peeks into Trauma Room 2, sees Connally, and calls for help.
Somewhere in all this, Paul Landis goes out to the limousine to get Jackie’s cigarette lighter. He sees the bullet that Jackie has set on the back of the seat, the AR-15 bullet, picks it up, takes it back to Trauma Room One, and sets it on the stretcher, where it happens to be seen by nurse Phyllis Hall. The head nurse, Doris Nelson, sees the bullet and picks it up, and takes it to the agent in charge out in the hallway, Roy Kellerman. “Your guy put this on the stretcher,” she tells him. “You ought not to be moving evidence around.” Kellerman has been busy, directing his men to keep unauthorized people away from Trauma Room One. He has by now ordered Clint Hill to call Washington to let them know what’s going on, especially Attorney General Robert Kennedy, JFK’s brother. A reporter overhears Clint Hill telling RFK, “There’s been an accident,” but that will later be denied, saying that what he really said is, “There’s been an incident.”
Not only are Parkland people trying to get a look at the President, but Kellerman and the others have their hands full trying to keep reporters and curious patients, etc. away from Trauma Room One. It’s confusion and chaos. Kellerman hands the bullet he has just been given to someone and says “Put this back where it came from.” Where did it come from? The limousine.
George Hickey, meanwhile, is overwrought. An FBI man arrives at the ER and starts heading in to see JFK. He’s been ordered by Hoover to stay with the President or the President’s body. Hickey stops him by clobbering him with his AR-15 rifle, breaking the FBI agent’s jaw. Kellerman sees that Hickey is basically out of control, he’s not thinking straight. After all, the guy has just unintentionally shot the guy he’s supposed to protect, the guy who got him the papal dispensation, the guy who got him his job, the guy who loved the rotten coconut he gave him as an inauguration gift. Kellerman orders Hickey to put the rifle back in the follow-up car, and tells Sam Kinney, a friend of Hickey’s, to get Hickey under control. Babysit him. Keep him occupied. By now, Kellerman and the other agents realize that Hickey has unintentionally fired the shot that killed Kennedy, although they might not have been aware that the first head shot came from the TSBD.
Kinney tells Hickey to “see to the limousine, do what you would normally do,” to get Hickey out of the way. Hickey sees the limousine, sees how bloody it is. Normally, if the car was dirty, he would wash it. He asks for a bucket of soapy water, which someone at the hospital gets for him, and starts washing the car.
Kinney’s going back and forth inside the hospital and back outside to check on Hickey. He sees Hickey washing the car, and stops him. He distracts Hickey by having him put on the bubbletop instead. Hickey sees the AR-15 bullet that has been replaced into the car, and becomes more distressed. Kinney also sees AR-15 bullet, which now causing his friend incredible agony, and pockets it to get it out of Hickey’s sight.
Meanwhile, neurologist Kemp Clark arrives in Trauma Room One, one of the few doctors who was actually called for, by Perry. Jackie nudges him and hands him the blob of brain. “Will this help?” she asks. Dr. Clark looks at what he’s just been given, realizes what it is, goes to the head of the table, and takes a good look at the President’s head. He realizes that the wound is not compatible with life. He shows the back of the head wound to the others. Attempts to resuscitate Kennedy are halted.
A couple of priests at a nearby parish had heard earlier on the radio that something had happened in the motorcade and the President was involved and was being taken to Parkland Hospital. They make their way to Parkland on the off-chance that they will get to meet Kennedy, who is a Catholic. The head priest, Father Huber, finds himself in the position of, instead of meeting President Kennedy, performing the Last Rights. Jackie exchanges wedding rings, and kisses JFK’s big toe. A casket is called for, the most expensive casket in the nearby funeral home’s inventory. A plain military casket or two is also called for, either now or later, to be used in a shell game of caskets that will be delivered to the Bethesda morgue. When the fancy, expensive casket arrives, Kennedy’s body is cleaned up a bit and transferred to the casket. At this point, the Secret Service men are anxious to get the body out of the hospital and under their control. But just as they are leaving, the hospital’s chief pathologist, Dr. Earl Rose, shows up. The body is supposed to be his, to perform the autopsy as required by Texas law. Which of course the Secret Service agents can’t allow to happen. It’s one un-armed physician against a bunch of armed Secret Service men. Guess who wins.
And at some point during all this, Kinney puts the bullet he has pocketed onto the hallway stretcher, which did not come from either Kennedy or Connally but was used by a young boy who was bleeding profusely from a cut. Perhaps Kinney shows the bullet to his boss, Emory Roberts, telling Roberts that it was in the car and causing Hickey a great deal of distress. Roberts tells Kinney to put it back where it came from. Where was that? Kinney asks around and learns that it came from a stretcher. He puts it back on a hallway stretcher, albeit the wrong one.
Kinney, by the way, has a reputation for covering for his fellow law-enforcement officers. At his funeral, his daughter will tell the story of how he gave his gun to a cop who left his gun in the bathroom while on duty.
Also during this time, Dallas Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrells is ordered to take charge of the gun that Hickey has returned to the follow-up car.
The Secret Service is still short-handed, and Hickey has to drive the presidential limousine back to Love Field. Kinney is right behind him in the follow-up car.
By the time Hickey and Kinney arrive at Love Field, Hickey’s face is as white as a ghost, and he has to be helped onto the cargo plane that will transport the two cars.
Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels, in charge of the Dallas field office, has meanwhile returned to Dealey Plaza, to learn what the situation on the ground is, and do a damage assessment. Most of the witnesses who saw an agent in the follow-up car fall over at the time of one of the last shots have just automatically and erroneously assumed that the agent was killed during the shooting. After all, Hickey wasn’t aiming towards the President—he was aiming back towards the School Book Depository building. He goes to the Kodak lab to try to collect whatever photographic evidence might show up there to be processed. He manages to get the Willis slides immediately after they are developed, although Phil Willis does get a look at his pictures before giving them to Sorrels. Years later, Linda Willis will assert that when her father finally got his pictures back, at least one of them had been “physically altered,” because, she believed, “something showed that the Secret Service did not want known.” Father Robert Croft gave his undeveloped film to the Secret Service. He believed he had taken a picture at the exact moment of the assassination. When he gets his film back, that picture negative was blank. He will be told that his “camera must have malfunctioned.”
However, immediately after the assassination, Senator Ralph Yarborough, back at Parkland Hospital, tells reporters that “the third shot might have been a Secret Service man returning the fire.” Pierce Allman does a radio interview and is asked if police or anyone tried to return the fire. Allman says, “This is possible,” but he’s not altogether sure because the events were confusing, what with everyone hitting the ground and all.
When the Kennedy entourage returns to Love Field, there is a delay until a judge can be found to swear in the new President Lyndon Johnson. While the swearing in occurs, or in the ambulance on the way to the airport, or in flight, or after they land, the body is transferred to a shipping casket for a shell game to get it to wherever the autopsy is going to occur. Whether or not Jackie knew about the casket transfer is debatable. It could have been done during the swearing in.
Meanwhile, the stretcher bullet is discovered by Parkland employee Darrell Tomlinson, witnessed by elevator repairman Nathan Burgess Poole, who initially describes the bullet as “pointed,” but will later change his story to say it was “rounded.” Tomlinson alerts head of Parkland security O.P. Wright to the bullet’s existence. Wright collects the bullet and later turns it over to the FBI. Wright will later tell researcher Josiah Thompson that the bullet was “pointed” and show him a bullet that looks similar to the one that came from the stretcher.
CE-399, the purported stretcher bullet, is neither fragmented nor pointed. It is a substitute for the AR-15 bullet. But too many people know that a bullet had been found on the Parkland stretcher. It couldn’t be disappeared entirely. So the pointed AR-15 bullet will later be replaced with the rounded Carcano bullet.
The episode with Dallas coroner Earl Rose hammers home the realization that an autopsy will have to be done. But if it is done at a military facility, the information can be better controlled. Soldiers will follow orders. Jackie is given the choice of having it done at Bethesda, or at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Since her husband was a Navy man, she chooses Bethesda.
Dr. James Humes will be the lead autopsist. He is briefed on what happened and told to find the AR-15 bullet. He is told that all the shots came from behind, perhaps interpreting that as an order to find that all the shots came from behind. Boswell is in on the orders. So is radiologist Dr. Ebersole. Humes might not like this. He doesn’t want the responsibility for the entire autopsy, which he knows is going to be at least partially covered up, to fall solely on the Navy, so he calls over to Walter Reed Hospital for a pathologist. They send one who is familiar with gunshot wounds, Dr. Pierre Finck. He will later turn out to be something of a problem.
When the body arrives in the DC area, the casket shell game ensues. Watch Doug Horne’s YouTube video “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited” for details. Before anyone realizes what has gone on, Humes has looked for bullets, removed the brain and switched it out with a nearly intact brain that has been shot once from the rear, thus performing a “surgery to the head” that will be described later by FBI agents.
During the autopsy, someone remembers the skull fragment that was tossed into the Queen Mary Secret Service follow-up car, the Harper Fragment, and tells Humes about it. Humes sends a couple of Navy Corpsmen to search the Queen Mary as well as the Presidential limousine. They bring back the skull fragment from the Queen Mary as well as the bullet that bounced off the Stemmons sign and caused the windshield hole, the one fired by Lem Johns. Dr. James Young and Captain David Osborne both see the bullet. Dr. Young overhears “Queen Mary” and “Presidential limousine” in the same breath and thinks that “Queen Mary” was the name of the Presidential limousine and that both pieces of evidence came from the same place. Dr. Humes fits the Harper fragment into the head, and the semi-circular notch completes the circumference of the entry wound. It measures at 6mm—too small to have come from a bullet from Oswald’s gun, purportedly a 6.5mm Carcano, although the Oswald gun migh actually have been the 7.63mm CIA-issued weapon.
To keep the Secret Service hands as clean as possible—after all, we don’t want the public thinking that the agents had done anything wrong by mis-handling evidence—the Harper Fragment is quietly returned to Dealey Plaza, where it will be found by medical student Billy Harper, who takes it to his uncle at Methodist Hospital. At Methodist Hospital, the Harper Fragment is examined by pathologists who determine it to be “occipital,” meaning at the back of the head, and who photograph and X-ray the skull fragment before turning it over to the FBI. The observations of the doctors at Methodist Hospital will become something of a problem later when the Harper Fragment will be asserted to have come from the front of the skull rather than the rear.
Back at Parkland Hospital, after the Kennedy entourage has left, the young English nurse who has pocketed the large Connally bullet fragment, being unfamiliar with American procedures for handling evidence, is told that she should put the large bullet fragment in an evidence envelope and give it to someone in law enforcement. She finds a constable standing in the hallway Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, later of Roe v. Wade fame. Wade actually sees the large fragment, but hands it back to her and tells her to find another uniformed officer She does that, except she doesn’t write on the envelope how she came into possession of the fragment or anything else, thus breaking the chain of evidence and eventually gives the envelope to state trooper Bobby Nolan, who contacts his supervisor, who tells him to take it to the DPD and give it to Chief Curry. When Nolan eventually arrives at DPD headquarters, after a long shift of guarding the hospital corridors for Connally, he is intercepted by Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels and FBI agent Gordon Shanklin, who both want him to give them the fragment. But Nolan knows his orders are to give it to Chief Curry. Chief Curry, however, is busy interrogating Oswald, and it’s been a long day and Nolan just wants to go home, so Nolan just initials the envelope and leaves the envelope on Curry’s desk, without ever looking at the contents. There was no other writing on the envelope at the time. Other writing will later appear on this envelope to make it seem that these were the Connally wrist fragments from his surgery, given to Nolan by nurse Audrey Bell, who has been holding the wrist fragments to turn over to the DPD crime lab. She is much more familiar with proper law enforcement procedures than the young, naïve English nurse. But before she can turn them over to the crime lab, Bell is ordered by the hospital’s administrator to turn the fragments over to Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrells and an FBI agent—probably Shanklin—and will later testify that she handed those wrist fragments over to them—not to any State Trooper. She will also testify that she had the agents sign a receipt for those wrist fragments. Later, a receipt will appear bearing her name and Nolan’s name—and Nolan never recounted signing any such receipt—but it was not shown to her during her testimony to verify. I contend that that receipt is a forgery. The original receipt may have disappeared altogether. Another problem is that the Connally wrist fragments plus the small fragments that were left in his body, really do not account for enough metal to have come from CE-399. CE-399 has a bit of metal missing from base from where a tiny amount was removed for metallurgic tests, but otherwise not enough metal is missing to account for those fragments.
Meanwhile, the Zapruder film, or a copy of it, is taken to the National Photographic Interpretation Center, where renowned expert Dino Brugioni uses it to prepare briefing boards from certain key frames. Brugioni will later recall that the head explosion he saw, the AR-15 head shot, sent spray a lot higher into the air than the extant film and specifically frame 313 seems to show.
Part Five: Cover-Up
So fast forward to Sunday, two days after the assassination. Oswald is killed by Jack Ruby. There will be no trial. The chief high mucky-mucks decide that the whole incident of the AR-15 accident and the ricochet-caused windshield hole is just too embarrassing to become public knowledge. Since there will be no trial, there’s no reason to preserve actual evidence, and the cover-up begins in earnest. Now it’s not just a matter of keeping quiet, it’s an active cover-up. The Zapruder film is sent to the CIA’s Hawkeye Works laboratory in Rochester, New York, for alteration. The limousine stop is removed. Moreover, that first shot—the one from Oswald—is covered up, to hide the Secret Service agents’ slow response to it. This is all done in the name of “national security,” which is the catch-phrase for anything having to do with hiding information related to the JFK assassination. I mean, Oswald being a CIA agent—albeit a low-level one? The freaking assassination rifle potentially being a CIA weapon that was issued to Oswald? The CIA had a vested interest in covering up the aspects of the assassination having to do with them, so they made a cooperative agreement with the Secret Service to actively cover-up the Secret Service problems while covering up their own culpability.
To be clear, I don’t think the assassination was a planned coup d’état. I think Oswald was a low-level agent who was a loose cannon.
So the Zapruder film was altered. It was a 24-hour job, and certain mistakes were made. Some of those mistakes will be corrected later—problems with shadows that David Lifton described. Some of those problems were only more recently uncovered—the mistakes found by researcher Dr. John Costella, the too-dark back-of-the-head black-patch described by Hollywood film experts Wilkinson and Whitehead. The “disappearing Clint Hill,” the “jumping lamp post,” the too-long left arm, the too-fast body position changes, the limousine flag between the hand of the Dark Complected Man and the camera’s POV. Little “tells” like that. The film was never meant to be closely examined by the public. When Life magazine, which had close ties with the CIA, bought all the rights from Abraham Zapruder, they published still frames from the altered film. They spent a lot of money on the motion picture rights, but never monetized it. In fact, they guarded their copyright closely, but never made any money from it.
So all this film alteration started immediately after Oswald was killed. Other manipulation of evidence had longer to be accomplished, but Life magazine had a deadline to meet. While this was happening, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach wrote a memo urgin for the establishment of a Commission, not to actually investigate the facts of the JFK assassination, but to “convince the public” that Oswald acted alone and there were no accomplices still at large. According to Chief Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, who headed the Commission bearing his name but only attended a small number of actual sessions, all of the facts surrounding the case would be hidden for about 75 years. With the publication of a number of books critical of the Warren Commission’s work and especially with the popularity of the Oliver Stone JFK movie, public pressure forced the passage of the JFK Records Act, which uncovered a lot of evidence, much of it pointing to a cover-up. But evidence is still being withheld. The Trump administration didn’t release what they promised. Big surprise, right? Nor did the Biden administration, or the second Trump administration. The Mary Ferrell Foundation’s lawsuit was only partially successful in getting material released in unredacted form and in getting it catalogued appropriately for researchers to sort through and access. So whether any of the original disappeared actual evidence still exists is a matter of speculation. Maybe it’s buried in the Archives somewhere, who knows?
So that’s my research and my conclusions in a nut-shell. Admittedly, some of this is speculation, like the identity of the nurse who pocketed the large Connally bullet fragment, but this is how I’ve pieced together all the conflicting evidence into a cohesive narrative.
And now I will entertain any questions.