Happy New Year! It’s been awhile since I posted. I took off for the holidays. Hope all yours were great. Over Christmas, I read another book on the John F Kennedy assassination. I am fascinated by what happened in America during the turbulent 1960’s. Since I was too young to know anything different, I trusted my teachers to explain the deaths of JFK and others as they taught from textbooks based on official reports from the media and the government. But now that I have read some of the many books that give details on the murders that contradict these official versions, I believe that the truth surrounding these deaths has been covered up or at least withheld from official history.

For instance, according to the book “Dead Wrong” by Richard Belzer and David Wayne, there is much evidence that suggests that Kennedy was not assassinated,as the Warren Report says, by a shot from lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald from the sniper’s nest on the 6th floor of the school book depository that fateful day in Dealey Plaza, Dallas in 1963. Witnesses at the time testified that shots came from different locations in the plaza, so there would have been multiple shooters. After studying the assassination, Ballistics expert Orlando Martin reports that at least five shots were fired, from three shooters in three different locations, with bullets that were different loads and weights, meaning from different type of guns (page 107, footnotes 232 and 233).At Parkland Hospital where the President was rushed into ER after being shot, doctors reports showed an entry wound on the right side of Kennedy’s forehead with a massive exit wound in the back as well as another entry wound in the front of his throat ( pages 96-97, n. 188,193).

Before the shots

The Abraham Zapruter film of the assassination clearly shows a shot to his right forehead from the front (page 91,frame 313). His head went back and to the left towards First Lady Jackie Kennedy. Officer Bobby Hargis, a Dallas Police Motorcycle officer, rode behind President Kennedy’s limo at the left rear side at the time of the shooting. He says he was splattered with the President’s blood and brains (sorry to be gross) after Kennedy received the last shot to his head. This would indicate the kill shot came from the right and front of the resident’s limo (pg 95, n. 185). A secret service agent standing on the right side running board of the car directly behind the president says the last shot to the head came from the front right (pg 96, n. 187). At least 25 eyewitness at street level smelled gun powder. If shots only came from the 6th floor, people would not have smelled anything (pg 101, n. 215). Over 100 witnesses, including police, say there was a shot from the grassy know which was at street level at the right and front of the President. Ballistic tests show that there was at least 5 shots fired. The President was also hit in his back and Governor Connelly was hit twice. Another shot reportedly ricocheted off the pavement and nicked a bystander in the cheek (pg 106-107). All these shots, and probably more, could not have been shot from the same gun within the timeframe of the shooting.

Professor James Fetzer, a marksmanship instructor, concluded thatthe gun found in the sniper’s nest did not deliver the kill shot to Kennedy’s forehead. It was a low velocity weapon. The death certificate, autopsy, and Warren commission stated that Kennedy was killed by a high-velocity bullet requiring a high velocity weapon. He also determined by photos of Kennedy’s skull that the bullet used for the kill shot to the forehead was an exploding or frangible bullet which is not the type of ammunition that Oswald’s gun used (pg 109, n.243).

According to other witnesses, Oswald could not have been in the sniper’s nest on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting as the Warren Commission concluded. From the book “The Lee Harvey Oswald Files”, by Flip De Ray, Bonnie Ray Williams was up on the 6th floor right next to the snipers nest around noon on the day of the shooting. He was waiting to meet his friends to eat lunch and watch the presidential motorcade pass by. His friends never came because they were supposed to meet on the 5th floor. Before he realized this, Williams started eating his lunch. He finally left to go downstairs to the 5th floor around 12:20 but left his partially eaten lunch on top of boxes that formed one of the walls of the sniper’s nest. While on the 6th floor, he says that it was very quiet and that he was alone. He didn’t hear a noise or anyone next to him where Oswald should have been putting together his gun to shoot the President. Neither did he see Oswald near by when looking over the boxes as he placed his lunch on them before leaving. He didn’t see Oswald coming out of the elevator or coming up the stairs as he was down. One of Williams friends says he came down to meet them just before the President passed in the motorcade. This would make the time 12:25 at the earliest because the President passed by at 12:30.

Could Oswald have gotten up to the sniper’s nest and ready in time for the President to pass by? Wait until part two next week.