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Jim Bedwell
Here's an updated version of my take on the JFK assassination. Enjoy!
There's no doubt Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby both acted alone. Who knew that a non-military part of the national government (i.e. the Warren Commission) could get something right?
I've seen 2 excellent documentaries (can't remember if one was the PBS Nova show Sherri McCormack's brother worked on but it probably was) that both recreated the "magic bullet" 2nd shot with the correct measurements on distances and positioning of participants, etc. The first of these 2 documentaries I saw had simulated body parts, including torsos. The bullet did all the things the real one did except that it bounced off the fake Connally's left leg rather than imbedding just underneath the skin, the surmised reason being that the bullet hit 2 of the ribs in the imitation torso rather than the one rib in 1963. By the way, nobody should bother watching Oliver Stone's JFK; what a piece of misleading garbage that movie is.
I've been very interested in this over the years. Over 85% of the witnesses heard 3 shots, at least one heard 5 or 6. The first shot missed everything it was intended to hit (i.e., Kennedy), caused sparks on the pavement that at least one witness observed, and ricocheted down Dealey Plaza where it hit the southern curb of Main Street a few yards east of the triple underpass. The bullet caused a piece of curb concrete to fly up and nick the right cheek of 27-year-old James Tague (1936-2014) - he was interviewed at Dallas Police Headquarters later that day.
Concerning that first bullet, I've seen 2 documentaries where they examined the traffic light pole (at Elm & Houston where the last turn was made in front of the School Book Depository) and found no bullet damage whatever. BUT there was a documentary that aired a few years ago that revealed that 5 days after the assassination they filmed the crime scene from 2 vantage points - 1) from the sniper's perch looking down at another Lincoln limousine convertible as it made the same turn, and 2) from the turning Lincoln looking up at the sniper's nest. Both panning shots briefly showed a small hole in the bottom of the traffic light, which has since been replaced, unlike the supporting pole which is the same one that was there in '63.
Also critically revealed in this recent show was that 13-year-old Tina Towner, standing & taking fotos across from the Depository on the southwest corner of Elm & Houston, said that the limo was actually closer to the curb and perhaps partially into the left lane, rather than turning perfectly into the middle lane on that day. And from those 2 panning shots from November 27, 1963, you can see how the seated Kennedy substitute, rather than being to the right of the traffic light and exposed, would have passed right under the traffic light and ruined (in LHO's mind anyway) the first bullet's path.
The second shot, as I've said, has been duplicated in at least 2 documentaries I've seen so go watch those shows. Also from my knowledge there are only a very few (under 10, likely under 6) books worth reading about the event: 1) former LA prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's (convicted the Manson family) 1500-page TOME titled "Reclaiming History; The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy", that's the Bible to start with if you have the time 2) "Case Closed" by Gerald Posner (which is criticized by Bugliosi somewhat in his later book), 3) "A Conspiracy of One" by Jim Moore (although I haven't read that one so I can't vouch for its value unlike the first 2 which I've read), 4) urologist Dr. John K. Lattimer's book “Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical & Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations" (I also haven't read this one), 5) no books but many articles by Max Holland (born 12/9/1950), the commentator who figured out what happened to the first shot on that documentary.
Concerning the second bullet, the “magic bullet”, what the con artists, including "JFK" director Oliver Stone, keep repeating is how could the bullet make that mid-air turn, etc, etc.? BUT what they fail to mention is that Connally was seated several inches further away from the side of the car than Kennedy was AND Connally also was sitting several inches LOWER than JFK in a totally different kind of seat. Plus Connally knew what a gunshot sounded like and was turned somewhat to the right since that's where he heard the first shot was coming from. In that one recreation of the second shot on a documentary, they showed that the bullet went in a straight line, starting with hitting Kennedy in the back of the neck and on through, and though the bullet didn't hit the spine, it broke a vertebra partially due to the concussive effect, then after exiting Kennedy, it started tumbling (called yawing) and hit Connally sideways in the upper back, and they showed there was no mid-air turning, but rather it was a straight line. In fact I remember seeing, on the same documentary, multiple tests of a bullet hitting a fake Kennedy torso and EVERY time the bullet YAWED before hitting the fake Connally torso. In conclusion the bullet didn't behave "magically" at all, but absolutely normally according to the laws of physics.
Now to the third shot. I've seen shows that disprove any other assassin. He couldn't have been shooting from the storm drain on the north side of Elm Street because the side of the car obscured his hitting Kennedy. A shooter couldn't have hit JFK's head from the top of the triple overpass because it would have had to hit the limo's windshield first. People have done a lot of work trying to prove a grassy knoll shooter but even the phantom "Badgeman" has been pretty much dismissed as a possibility for various reasons. Also frame 312 of the Zapruder film is the last instant before the fatal head shot, which appears in 313. Clearly you can observe mostly forward and upward projection of the brain, bones, blood, etc. in frame 313. Also a lady took a photo from the south side of Elm at the same instant and it showed forward and upward splatter, indicating a rear head shot. The mess in the limo was inexplicably cleaned up outside Parkland Hospital - you wouldn't see crime scene disturbance like that today. But the government men who recalled the back seat before the cleanup remembered the mess was mostly forward there (yes there was a lot of blood on that back seat as well). Also a drawing of Kennedy's now-missing brain was made at the time, I think at Bethesda where the lousy autopsy took place, and clearly showed little damage to the left lobe, but extreme damage to the right one, also precluding the possibility of a grassy knoll shot that would have damaged the left side. First Lady Jackie Kennedy would probably have been injured from a side shot from the grassy knoll. Concerning the way JFK's body snapped back at impact, that documentary also provided light there. When a bullet hits a brain like that one did, this doctor was saying that that shock would send electric impulses automatically down the spine, and since the back muscles are a lot stronger than the abdominal ones, that would cause the back to lurch backwards when those back muscles contracted. Also wasn't Kennedy wearing his back brace that day? I would think that would also contribute to the effect. If he did move to the left also, doesn't that make sense? He was leaning to the left into Jackie when the bullet hit him. So don't fall for the conspiracy theorist's canard of "back and to the left" (the way Kennedy's head moved right after the impact) in their attempts to create another assassin from the side on the grassy knoll. There was a witness, photographer Bob Jackson who also coincidentally shot the famous picture of Ruby's shooting of Oswald 2 days later, from below the Depository who saw the front of the rifle's being withdrawn by some one (Oswald) AFTER the third shot as well. And there was another witness, a guy from the south side of Elm or further down Houston street (I can't remember) who had seen Oswald before the murder and thought he was kinda weird looking or acting and THEN saw him smirking very briefly in the Depository window. AFTER the fatal shot.
Oswald's lie of "my face on the photo in the back yard with the rifle was superimposed on the original" was disproven by his wife, who admitted taking the picture with the assassin & his assassination weapon. Also Oswald had tried to kill right-wing General Edwin Walker earlier in April that year but barely missed (with the same assassination rifle) when the bullet hit a window pane frame piece and deflected into the wall. Oswald's wife knew about that also. Oswald fits the profile of the loner loser killer, just as Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley, Arthur Bremer (he's been released from prison! As have would-be-Gerald-Ford-assassins Squeaky Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore! Yikes!), etc. do. Bugliosi in his book lists umpteen reasons pointing to Oswald's sole guilt. And LHO was a chronic liar, as Bugliosi points out. Remember at the DPD he said, "I didn't shoot anybody" when asked if he had shot the President; there were MANY witnesses to his shooting policeman JD Tippett and his subsequent guilty behavior.
The U.S. Congress committee that reexamined the event in 1979 and came away with the conclusion of 4 shots and 90+% chance of a second shooter was basing its evidence mostly on that tape a motorcycle cop had recorded that day. But that was shortly after disproven by some guy in Ohio who somehow (I can't remember how - I haven't seen that documentary for many years now) determined that the cop's tape was not from Dealey Plaza but rather from the area around Market Hall, where the luncheon was supposed to have taken place after the motorcade.
There's a memorabilia nut who was a doctor and who also coincidentally was at Nuremberg for the Nazi trials. He had possession of Oswald's rifle tests in the Marines. He showed in those 2 little booklets how LHO, from a distance of 200 yards (the fatal shot 11-22-63 was 88 yards, well within Oswald's range), had scored almost all hits within the target area. So don't believe anybody when they say Oswald wasn't that good a shot, On one show I heard him described as above average for a Marine shooter but excellent compared to the general populace.
Here's an article about this VERY-INTERESTING-LIFE now-deceased doctor, Dr. John K. Lattimer, who also on a documentary I saw, shot a similar rifle to Oswald's and got off the 3 shots with the bolt action (he was over 80 at the time, maybe over 85) within the 8.5 seconds. No it was not 5 or 6 seconds like the conspiracy hustlers would have you believe (for those charlatans, follow the money), but 8.5 and perhaps a little more, I heard recently. I've also heard the rifle described as adequate for the job that day, unlike the conspiracy hustler's assertions (remember, more books have been sold about this murder than any other).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_K._Lattimer
Dr. Lattimer also has written the mentioned-above book (and the Lincoln assassination as well) so I bet that's a good one, especially since it agrees with the Warren Commission.
And while Oswald was no genius, Jack Ruby was even more so in the other direction. His IQ tested out supposedly at 82-85 somewhere. And his rabbi at Tifaret Israel in Dallas confirmed his love of JFK. There were many witnesses who said that Ruby had expressed his anticipation of a trial that would conjure up all the horror in Jackie Kennedy's mind and he didn't want her to go through that. Bugliosi goes into detail about Ruby and how nobody would have been involved with him in doing what he did any more than anybody rational would have been with nutjob LHO in his efforts.
Also one of the documentaries recreated the 3 shots by Oswald from the same kind of rifle and.with a similar setup with a wall and boxes (I can't remember if this recreation was actually done from the actual 6th floor sniper nest). There were basically TWO firing positions Oswald used – the first shot, deflected by the traffic light, was much more a downward shot, whereas the latter 2 were more from the tradition horizontal position. The 3 empty shells found on the 6th floor reflect this with 2 on one side of the narrow space between wall and stacked boxes and the third shell in a different position much closer to the wall and I think closer to the sniper Oswald. Anyway they had a guy shoot the rifle in the same firing positions, and sure enough, the final positions of the ejected, empty shells closely approximated the final positions of the actual shells found that day by the police. And on another documentary some expert mentioned that, with the gentle slope of the road, the final fatal shot, even with a moving target (which was moving very slowly), would have been almost like a straight shot so certainly well within Oswald's expert ability as a shooter.
And on and on........go read those books. And also Bugliosi's book about OJ. I like what he said about that circus trial at the time, "Anybody who thinks OJ Simpson didn't commit these murders doesn't understand the evidence."
Here's one of my favorite Jay Leno jokes (about Mike Tyson's attempt, after release from prison for the rape, to get a boxer's license in California):"Hey have you heard that Mike Tyson is trying to get a boxing license out here in California? Let's think about that for a minute. Let's see, this state has issued OJ Simpson a marriage license, Rodney King a driver's license, and Robert Blake a gun license. Yeah, I think it's OK to go ahead and give Mike Tyson a boxing license!!!!!"Also from Leno (1996):"You know people have been writing in and complaining that I never say anything good about OJ. I started thinking about it and they were right. So, OK, I'm going to say something nice about OJ Simpson right now. He hasn't killed anybody in over 2 years!"
Also eyewitness testimony can be very unreliable. I remember seeing one documentary where a guy said he was pulled over at an exit ramp on Stemmons southbound right at the time of the JFK assassination and he looked over to the east across Stemmons and saw a guy running away (I can't remember if this guy said the runner had a rifle but I think he did say that) behind the grassy knoll fence. Gerald Posner in his book "Case Closed" did some research and found that at that infamous moment in time there was a train sitting on the tracks east of Stemmons so he couldn't have seen that.
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