Who  really  killed  President  Kennedy?  (Part 1)   

                          

 

Everyone over six years of age can generally remember where they were when a major event in history unfolded. At 10:35 in the morning on Friday, November 22, 1963, I was sitting at my desk in an office building in downtown Toronto when a woman rushed into our office and shouted, “President Kennedy has been shot!” All of us in the office were stunned. Actually Kennedy was shot five minutes earlier at 12:30 in Dallas, Texas. It was one of the major events in history in which anyone who was over six years of age on that date will never forget.

Kennedy and his wife along with Texas Governor, John Connally and his wife were riding in a limousine on Elm Street in the Dealey Plaza when the shots were fired. Kennedy’s heart stopped thirty minutes later although he never would have survived in any case as the injuries to his brain were far too severe for him to survive.

The Warren Commission concluded that the assassination was carried out solely by Lee Harvey Oswald and no one else. That conclusion is no longer accepted anymore. But the question that comes to the fore is; who else was involved with the killing of the president?

In order to appreciate why I believe that Oswald was not the only shooter,  it is vital to know that the theory that Oswald was the only shooter rests on the so called ‘single bullet theory’. Without the ‘single bullet theory’, you cannot have Oswald as the lone assassin of Kennedy. In other words, if it can be proved that the ‘single bullet theory’ is impossible, then it means that Oswald was not the sole shooter. If that is so, then there had to more than one gunman, thus proving that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy.

The Single Bullet Theory or the Magic Bullet Theory, as it is commonly called by its critics was introduced by the Warren Commission in its investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to explain what happened to the bullet which struck Kennedy in his back and exited through the lower part of his throat.

The Warren Commission found what it called “persuasive evidence from the experts” that a single bullet caused the President’s back and neck wounds and all the wounds in Governor Connalley who was sitting immediately in front of the president. They said that the third bullet struck Kennedy in the head. The Commission acknowledged that there was a difference of opinion among a few of the members of the Commission as to this probability, but the Commission’s report stated that the theory was not essential to its conclusions and that all members had no doubt that only three shots were fired from the sixth floor window of the School Text Depository building by Oswald. Well they were wrong on that point also. The Commission was faced with the dilemma of having to explain six shots being fired when all the wounds of the president and the governor were caused by only three bullets.

Here is what I believe happened during the assassination.

The first bullet that was fired by Oswald from the sixth floor bounced off of the pavement behind the limousine and struck the underside of the vehicle. A witness who was standing on the grassy knoll saw a spark on the road just behind the president's car. That would have been that bullet fired by Oswald.
 

The second bullet came from the second floor of the building. It struck Kennedy below his collarbone and then exited out of his throat. My conclusion is based on the fact that the limousine was on the lower incline of Elm Street at the moment that shot was fired. For this reason the trajectory that the bullet had moved was more perpendicular and on the same downward plane that the entry and exit wound were at. If Oswald who was on the sixth floor had fired that shot, the angle of the trajectory the bullet would have taken  would have been much steeper.

That third bullet was fired by Oswald. My conclusion is based on the fact that after the bullet struck Governor Connally’s right wrist, it struck a bone in his wrist and was deflected into his chest where is struck a rib and was then deflected from that rib and exited his chest and proceeded downward and entered his left thigh where it remained just below the skin. The angle of the trajectory was much steeper than it would have been if the bullet had been fired from the second floor.

The fourth bullet was then fired by the second floor shooter but it didn’t hit anyone but it did hit the grassy knoll instead.  My conclusion  is based on the fact that that bullet created a furrow along the grass and finally struck the curb; sending pieces of cement into the air where one of them struck a bystander standing nearby.  If Oswald had fired that bullet, the angle of the trajectory would have been much steeper and for this reason, it would have  burrowed itself below the grass.

The fifth bullet was fired by an assassin who was standing behind the fence that was at the northern edge of the grassy knoll and close to the railroad overpass.  His bullet then struck the president in the right side of his head. I will explain in the following article how I was able to determine the exact location of this third shooter.

Immediately after that, the sixth bullet was fired by Oswald from the sixth floor when it then struck the president in the back of his head.

Oswald fired three bullets in which the first one didn’t hit anyone and instead hit the pavement behind the president’s vehicle. His second bullet hit Governor Connalley. His third bullet struck the back of the president's head. The assassin on the second floor fired two bullets in which one struck the president in his back and the other one hit the grassy knoll and the assassin behind the fence fired one bullet which struck the president on the right side of his head. This totals six bullets having been fired. 

The Warren Commission tried to say that the first bullet went into Kennedy’s upper back and then traversed left several inches and then exited Kennedy’s throat and then it continued forward and struck Connalley in his right arm, then exited under Connalley's right nipple and then struck his wrist and finally hit his left thigh. That bullet was still in Connally’s leg during his operation.

That particular bullet is called the Magic Bullet because it would be impossible for the bullet to travel to the left after striking the president in his back and then travel forward again and then suddenly travel to the right. The reason for this is that there was no bone in Kennedy’s lower throat that the bullet could have hit that would have deflected the bullet forward and then to his right from his lower throat.

Furthermore, when the first bullet that was fired struck  Kennedy in his back just below his right collarbone, he was sitting right next to the rear right passenger door.  Connalley was also sitting right next to the front left passenger door directly in front of the president. Since the bullet was fired from the second floor of the building which was behind them and some distance to their left, the bullet was travelling downward so it would be impossible for the bullet to travel directly left after it hit him in the back and exited his throat and then travel right and  also upwards to strike Connally's right wrist since Connally's right arm was also next to the front right passenger door. Now if that trajectory was the one the bullet actually took,  that really would be magic.

The single bullet theory is an insult to the intelligence of anyone that has looked at the Warren Commission’s position in this issue with skepticism.

In the first months after the assassination, the prevailing theory was that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all three shots and that those three shots were hits. Oswald couldn`t have fired his three shots that supposedly hit the president. Let me explain why. It takes 2.5 seconds to reload the single bolt rifle attributed to him. That means that it would have taken five seconds for him just to reload the rifle two times but then you have to take into consideration that after reloading the rifle the second and third time, he had to readjust his aim at the moving target.                   
 

In an effort to test the same rifle under conditions that matched the assassination, the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory had expert riflemen fire the assassination weapon from a tower at three silhouette targets at distances of 175, 240, and 265 feet (81 m). These were the distances that the president was at on Elm Street when the bullets reached his car. Using the assassination rifle mounted with the same 4 power telescopic sight, each of the three marksmen, rated as master by the National Rifle Association, fired two series of three shots. In the first series the marksmen required time spans for the three bullets of 4.6, 6.75, and 8.25 seconds respectively.

On the second series they required 5.15, 6.45, and 7 seconds. This means that in the first series of three shots, the marksmen required 19.6 seconds to fire the shots in the first of the series. In the second of the series, it took the marksmen 18.6 seconds to fire all three bullets. The reasons why the time was longer after each shot fired was the distance of the target was further away.         

However, I believe that the first bullet fired was probably already in the chamber when the president’s car entered Elm Street so it strikes me odd that the 4.6 and 5.25 seconds of the first bullets would be considered. If I am right, then it would take Oswald at 15 seconds to load and aim and then fire the last two bullets. In actual fact, he fired all three of his bullets in 5.6 seconds which didn't give him ample time to aim his rifle properly which explains why he missed the president two out of three attempts to shoot the president. Further, his sights weren't aligned properly.  

CBS conducted a firing test in 1967 at the H. P. White Ballistics Laboratory located in Street, Maryland. For the test 11 marksmen from diverse backgrounds were invited to participate: 3 Maryland State Troopers, 1 weapons engineer, 1 sporting goods dealer, 1 sportsman, 1 ballistics technician, 1 ex-paratrooper, and 3 H. P. White employees. CBS provided several Carcano rifles for the test. Oswald's Carcano rifle was not used in this test.

One volunteer was unable to operate his rifle effectively so the following statistics are based on the 10 remaining shooters. The average time of all 10 marksmen to fire three shots was 5.64 seconds. The mode was 5.55 seconds and the mean was 5.70 seconds. The average for the top five shooters was 5.12 seconds, and for the bottom five shooters 6.16 seconds.                              

If the test conducted by CBS is more accurate than the test conducted by the Weapons Evaluation Branch of the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory, then it means that Oswald still could have fired all three bullets.

Bystanders in the area of the shooting said that it sounded like there were more than three shots fired at the president. But only two of them struck the president from behind him, the third one struck Governor Connally and the fourth one struck the president from a location in front of him and to his right and two of them (one by the second floor shooter and one by Oswald)  didn`t hit anyone.   However, it sounded like there were actually eight shots fired in the Dealey Plaza that day but only six bullets were fired. Three were fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building by Oswald, two were fired from the second floor of that building by an unknown person and one was fired from behind the fence of the Grassy Knoll by another unknown person.  

Obviously the other sounds of gunfire were caused by echoes of the guns being fired but if there only six bullets fired, then what about the other two sounds of gunfire? Where then did they come from?

I believe that after the six shots were heard first, the sounds of the shots bounced off the Records Building and the County Jail Building on Houston Street that faced west towards Dealey Plaza. That however leaves two other echoes to take into consideration.  I believe that they two of the echoes that bounced a second time off of buildings that were further away. 

At 12:25, the Kennedy motorcade arrived at the Dealey Plaza and as it proceeded westward down Elm Street, the assassins got ready for their pre-arranged cross-fire. As it passed the Dallas School Book Depository Building and drove past the large tree at the north side of the road, the first shot from the building was fired.

 

The second shot having been fired by the man on the second floor of the building his bullet struck the president in his back just below his collarbone. The bullet then exited from the lower part of the president’s throat. Later the autopsy report stated that that bullet had to have been fired from a lower location than the sixth floor.

Because that shooter’s line of fire was closer to being horizontal, it follows that the bullet’s path after entering just below the president’s collar bone, would exit the lower part of his throat which would be almost in a horizontal plane with the entry wound.

At that precise moment that Kennedy was first hit, the positions of him and the governor (who was directly in front of him), were both sitting right next to their passenger doors. Kennedy's head leaned slightly forward, and Connally being much taller than Kennedy, twisted to the right, with his hand in front of him, holding his hat at lower chest level.  

It has been suggested that the bullet that struck Kennedy in his back and exited by his throat is the same bullet that hit Connally’s wrist but that isn’t possible.  There was some distance from Kennedy’s throat to the passenger door and Connally’s right wrist was raised upwards right next resting on the passenger door.  For the bullet to strike Connally’s wrist, it would have had to be deflected to the right while it was still in Kennedy’s throat. However, there were no bones in Kennedy’s throat other than his spinal chord and that part of his spinal chord wasn’t struck at all. As I said previously, it was the shooter on the second floor that fired that shot. His bullet after striking the governor’s wrist then headed downward off of a rib, exited under his right nipple and entered his left thigh coming to rest and being drained of energy, it simply remained below the skin.

Now the two bullets fired by the two men were fired almost instantaneously so it is possible that the two shots sounded like only one shot was fired. Neither of these two men knew exactly when they would each fire their own rifles. It was simply coincidental they the more or less fired at the same time.

The average weight of a 6.5 mm Carcano bullet fired by Oswald’s rifle is 161.2 grains. The six fragments removed from Connally would have weighed not more than 1.5 grains all together which means that was the rifle fired by the shooter on the second floor of the building.

Kennedy was raising his right arm at the same time that Connally became rigid, and changed his expression. The House Select Committee suggested that this was the point at which Connally was hit based on his facial features and body position.

Kennedy's elbow jerked off the left passenger door, clearly reacting to the throat shot. This is a clear case of what is referred to as the Thorburn's Position, as his body reacted to the spinal damage caused by the hydrostatic shock of the bullet passing so close to his spine. This is supported by the fact that his arms were locked into position until a fraction of a second after Connally's hat that was held in his right hand began to move in a reflex response to his radius bone being broken. It was then that Kennedy reached for his throat with both hands.

Kennedy's torso then pitched forward suddenly. Connally's mouth at the same moment opened wide and his body began to react to his collapsed lung, drawing him downwards and to his right.

Then the man on the second floor of the building fired again and he missed his target and that is when his bullet then struck the grassy knoll and end up striking the curb. It is easy to arrive at that conclusion because his bullet after it hit the grassy knoll, created a furrow before it hit the curb causing small pieces of cement flying into the air. If Oswald had fired that bullet, it would have gone under the surface of the grass as soon as it hit the grass because of the angle of the line of fire between Oswald and the grassy knoll.

Kennedy's torso had pitched forward after being shot in his back. And at that precise instant, a 161.2 grain slug that was travelling at 2,100 feet per second and was fired by the man behind the fence, smashed into the right occipital area of Kennedy's head, shattering the occipital bone and generating tremendous force against the flesh of the brain. The upper right side of his head exploded, blowing brains and bit of bone in an expanding pink cloud. The pieces of the parietal and temporal sections of his skull remain attached by skin then fell back into place, creating the appearance of an intact skull. His head lurched back to the left a spit second later from the force of the impact of that slug. His body stiffened suddenly from the massive neurological damage, and possibly aggravated by his back brace which he was wearing at that time. At that precise moment, the back of his head was still intact.

Before Kennedy began slumping to his left, Oswald fired a bullet into the back of Kennedy’s head. The two officers riding to his left behind the president’s car were splattered with the president’s blood and brains while driving up to and passing through the bloody cloud of blood, brains and bone fragments blown out of the president’s head. The fact that the motorcycle cops were behind the president’s vehicle when they got sprayed from his blood etc. is proof that the fatal shot was fired from the fence behind the grassy knoll and not by Oswald.

You may recall seeing the president’s wife crawling back onto the trunk of the car. I believe that the section of Kennedy’s right occipital bone had landed on the trunk and she was trying to retrieve it but when the driver of the limousine pressed hard on the gas pedal to get out of that area, that part of the bone of his skull fell to the pavement. A section of Kennedy's right occipital bone was found on the road by Billy Harper, some 35 feet to the left and rear of the impact point.

The right parietal area of his skull was completely exposed when Kennedy slid onto Mrs. Kennedy's lap with much of the flesh and bone of his skull still hanging hinged by the skin.

Now the bullet that actually killed the president when the bullet struck him in his head; was definitely fired from behind the fence at the rear of the grassy knoll. It was probably fired by the man who was originally seen behind the bushes on the grassy knoll carrying the rifle case. It is highly unlikely that he would have fired his rifle from behind the bushes since there would have been no escape available for him. He probably climbed over the fence unseen prior to the shootings.

If you watched the Zapruder film, you would have seen the president move forward clutching his throat. That was from the bullet fired by the second story shooter. However the next moment you would have seen blood shooting everywhere from the president’s skull and then you would have seen his head and body moving backwards and to his left. That bullet had to have been fired from the direction of the grassy knoll since the shooter had to be just slightly ahead of the limousine when he fired the bullet into the president’s head.

When Oswald shot his third bullet into the president’s head, the bullet would have caused the president’s head to move forward as a result of the impact of that bullet slamming into him from the rear.

In 2008, The Discovery Channel produced a documentary that played out several different versions of the Kennedy Assassination on a dummy that had been specifically designed for ballistics tests, recreating the elevation, wind speed and distance at a California shooting range. Their forensic analysis, backed by computer models, showed that it was most likely that the third shot that killed President Kennedy came from the Texas School Book Depository. They also concluded that a shot from the grassy knoll would have completely obliterated Kennedy's skull, contrary to what is seen in the Zapruder Film. However, in this conclusion they assumed that an assassin on the grassy knoll would have used hollow point ammunition, which expands on impact to maximize damage. Thereafter, they attempted a second shot from the grassy knoll position, using a solid round. Analysis revealed that this bullet would have passed through Kennedy's skull from right-to-left, causing an exit wound on the left-hand side of the skull that did not match any post mortem reports. They also suggested that the bullet trajectory from this shot would have struck and likely killed Mrs. Kennedy.      

I am not convinced that if the bullet was fired from the direction of the grassy knoll, it would have hit the president’s wife. For the bullet to hit the president’s wife, it would have had to be fired exactly when the president and the shooter were perpendicular to each other. And if that was so, the president’s head would have only moved to his left and not backwards from the impact of the bullet.

On the Zapruder film, you can see that the Kennedy’s head moved forward just before he was shot in his head. President Kennedy then had a massive gunshot wound to the side of his head. Blood, bone and brain tissue exploded in all directions and that is when Kennedy’s body fell backwards and to his left.  

Witnesses reported that another gunshot was heard immediately after the shot to Kennedy’s head. There was a furrow in the grass near the manhole on the south curb of Elm Street just west of the north pergola (concrete framework that supports climbing plants). That bullet was fired from the shooter on the second floor.  

It has been suggested that the bullet that struck Kennedy in the back of his head was accidentally fired by George Hickey who was in a car with other secret service men that was fairly close to the rear of the president's car. I saw pictures of Hickey sitting in the car with his rifle aimed upwards and not forwards in the direction of the president.        

Witnesses said that they smelled gunpowder in the air as the president's car passed them.  If Hickey accidentally fired his rifle because of a bump on the road, how come no one actually saw his rifle pointed at the back of the president's head when his rifle was fired? There were many people on the side of theroad and police officers along side his vehicle while riding  their motor cycles. Eleven of them said that they saw the secret service man with his rifle but no one saw his rifled lowered and pointed in the direction of President Kennedy. Further, if his AR-15 assault rifle had been fired, how come no one heard the sound of the rifle shot that would have come about after that particular rifle was fired? The belief of many of the witnesses in that immediate area was bolstered by the fact that they could smell gunpowder in the air. Either they were imagining that they smelled gunpowder because of the many shots heard or the scent of gunpowder was shifting into the area from the shots fired from grassy  knoll. Quite frankly,  I seriously doubt that he fired his gun accidentally or on purpose.  There was certainly no mention of him doing that in the Warren Commission's Report. If the secret service man accidentally shot the president of the United States, it would have been one of the biggest "OOPS" in history.

The next article published in my blog on October 25^th will be about the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.