Dallas, Texas.

The day is November 22, 1963.

 

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It had rained all morning, and the forecast for the rest of the day wasn’t very favorable for a Presidential visit, but just as Air Force One landed on the runway of Love Field after a 6 minute flight from Fort Worth, the clouds drifted off and the sun made an appearence.

The entire motorcade and entourage consisted of 25 vehicles of various models and sizes, and 11 police motorcycle escorts.

It became apparent that many people wanted a glimpse of President and Mrs. Kennedy, because the sidewalks and buildings along most of the route were packed with spectators.

Especially along Main Street the crowd is ten rows thick on either side of the street.

This was the best place for an ambush, and the Secret Service knew it.

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The motorcade turns on to Houston Street, and immediately it’s obvious that the crowd has thinned out incredibly.

To the left only a hand full of people seem to be gathered along the John Neely Bryan monuments, and maybe a hundred people are gathered in front of the Texas School Book Depository on the corner of Houston Street and Elm Street.

One by one the cars turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street.

It’s a difficult turn to make with a car of that size, and Secret Service driver William Greer doesn’t have an easy task maneuvering this limousine through that 110 degree turn.

In order to do so safely, he has to slow the limousine down to approximately 7 miles per hour.

Many people wave at the young Presidential couple as they slowly pass the book depository building.

 

Then, at 12:30, there is a sound.

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Many react by looking around to see if they could explain the origin of the sound, others quickly assess that it had to be a backfire from one of the motorcycle exhausts, as this happens often with motorcycles, and there is even laughter because of it.

At the same time President Kennedy stops waving and seems to look for the cause of that sound at his right side, as if he was certain the sound had come from there. Then he continues to wave, assured it was nothing special.

Governor Connally was also startled by that sound, and looks for the origin as well.

Suddenly there is another sound, but this is clearly the sound of a gunshot.

President John Kennedy is obviously struck, grabbing his throat. He’s choking.

Then, within seconds, two more loud reports are heard in Dealey Plaza.

Pop! Pop!

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All in all four loud bursts are heart disrupting the pleasant visit of the Kennedys.

This is what most hear. And then there is the reverberation during it all, causing mass confusion.

Some think they heard as many as thirteen shots.

Witnesses react differently.

Some throw themselves down to the grass, left and right of Elm Street, others seek cover behind the concrete walls, the cupolas, behind trees, or whatever else they feel might shelter them from harm. What they all have in common is a feeling of shock. Disbelief.

 

The limousine speeds away, disappearing into the darkness of the triple underpass before heading onto the Stemmons Freeway.

Just as the limousine disappears out of sight, motorcycle police officer Clyde Haygood drops his bike on Elm Street and runs up the steps that lead to the parking lot behind a stockade fence atop the grassy embankment, followed by a couple of dozen excited bystanders.

This police officer later stated that he saw some movement up there.

He climbs the fence to be able to look over it, and is then halted by a Secret Service agent already in place.

He sends him back down to Elm Street. They claim to have everything under control.

Other officers and bystanders follow the embankment towards the triple underpass and go up there.

They seem certain a shot was fired from there.

In the meantime Greer races the limo the down the exit that leads to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where it arrives at approximately 12:37.

Here President Kennedy and Governor John Connally, who has also been shot, undergo emergency surgery.

 

At this time two other Dallas Police officers rush into the book depository after several witnesses claim shots came from the fifth or sixth floor. The manager of the building, Roy S. Truly, accompanies one of them.

Truly uses his knowledge of the facility and his familiarity of the employees to guide the officer around.

Employees are seen and disregarded.

The crowd outside the book depository has grown considerably.

They want answers, but are stopped by police officers guarding the entrance, and one of the side exits.

The Houston Street exit, and the loading platform in the back of the building, remain unguarded for several more minutes.

 

At 12:40 pm CBS interrupts “As The World Turns”, and reports that three shots have been fired at the Presidential motorcade in Dallas, and that the President is seriously injured. Now the rest of the city, and the entire country, are informed of the event that has taken place.

They wait, patiently, some in shock, for more information. For answers.

 

In the meantime Parkland Hospital physicians work very hard to save the lives of the two men that had been brought in from Dealey Plaza. Governor Connally survives. President Kennedy does not. He is pronounced dead at 1:00 pm CST.

What started as a glorious day, with a well-humored President praising the attention his beautiful wife gets wherever they travel to, ended in a bloody nightmare, with the First Lady’s pink overcoat tainted with the blood and brain matter of her now late-husband.

Grief strikes the hospital as the word quickly spreads. Lyndon Johnson waits with his Secret Service details in a closed room.

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At 1:06 pm, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney, finds a rifle. It's old. They read 7.65 Mauser on the barrel.

At 1:12 pm, Mooney, finds three expended shells near the open window of the South East corner of the sixth floor of the book depository.

At 1:22 pm Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Counstable Seymour Weitzman find a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano in the North West corner of the sixth floor, the opposite corner of the “sniper's nest”. This is pretty much right next to the staircase.

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At 1:34 pm, a full hour after the shooting at Dealey Plaza, the Dallas Police Department receives a telephone call from a shoe store clerk on West Jefferson Avenue, that a man fitting the description given over the radio has been seen acting suspiciously in front of his store.

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CBS, on full alert, gives the green light to Walter Cronkite who makes the official announcement at 1:38 pm CST / 2:38 pm EST.

“From Dallas, Texas. The flash. Apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 pm CST, 2 o’clock EST, some 38 minutes ago.”

 

Briefly the country is silenced.

But the hunt continues, as the Dallas Police now storm the Texas Movie theater at 1:49 pm and, after a brief scuffle, apprehend a young white male. He is quickly taken to the Dallas Police station on Main and Harwood where he is searched for identification.

This young man has none on him, since his wallet seems to have gone missing, but it was later found next to the police car of officer Tippit, the patrolman who was shot earlier by a white male on the corner of 10th and Patton.

In this wallet are two pieces of identification, each with a different name; Oswald, Lee H. and Alek James Hidell.

He is booked for murdering officer J.D. Tippit under the name Lee Harvey Oswald.

The next morning, November 23, Lee Oswald is booked for murdering the President of the United States.

Walter Cronkite reports that Oswald was involved with a pro-Castro group in New Orleans, and that his military personell records had been sent to Dallas and Washington for examination, and in it was a letter from Oswald to then secretary of Navy, John Connally.

The contents of that letter were unknown at the time of that report.

 

After yet another day of questioning, again without a lawyer present to record the questioning and protect the 24-year old former Marine, Oswald is brought out through the parking garage of the Dallas Police Department where he would be driven to the county jail, which is, ironically, on Houston Street, one building to the right of the corner of Houston and Elm.

He never made it.

As local and national news cameras and reporters film Oswald being escorted towards the patrol car, a man, later identified as nightclub owner Jack Ruby, steps out of the crowd, a revolver drawn, and shoots Oswald point blank in the chest, mob-style, just missing his heart. November 24, 1963, marks the death of a young, unhappy, man seeking attention.

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The investigation into the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was over.

 

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Or was it?

 

The more days pass, the more information seems to come forth regarding the Oswald persona.

Within the first two days after Kennedy and Connally were shot, information on his entire history comes in from so many different sources. 

As if this information was already laying around, waiting for the right moment to be shared with the media.

After the impressive funeral of President Kennedy, followed by the simple funeral of Oswald, who didn’t even have pole bearers to carry his casket, the nation went back to business, most Americans still in disbelief over the events that took place in Dallas.

The Texas School Book Depository remains closed during further investigation, a re-enactment of the assassination takes place on the very spots on which things unfolded on the 22nd, and on the 29th a formal commission, reluctantly spearheaded by Chief Justice Earl Warren, is appointed by the new President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It all becomes very official.

Until the commission appoints 33 year old assistant counsel Arlen Specter, ordering him to come up with an explanation into the many wounds that both Kennedy and Connally suffered from just three bullets.

And so the 'single bullet theory', later dubbed 'magic bullet theory' was born, and realism was thrown right out the window.

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Specter explained it roughly like this: the bullet enters Kennedy’s neck, comes out his throat, enters the right side of Connally’s back, comes out his chest, makes a slight u-turn, then moves through Connally’s wrist, comes out the other side, and buries itself deep into his left thigh, from which it falls out on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital in almost perfect condition.

As if it wasn’t even fired that day.

This one bullet was later found laying on a stretcher, the stretcher investigators say Governor Connally was brought in on.​

The explanation: it must have fallen out of his leg.

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But we jump too far forward at this point, as something important was mentioned above.

A letter from Lee Oswald to John Connally.

What did that letter say, and how did Walter Cronkite know that this letter was inside Oswald’s military records?

Did someone secretly slip CBS some information? Was this how the media was controlled?

And is that why there were no tv news cameras on Dealey Plaza while the Presidential motorcade made its way through the downtown area of Dallas? Did someone plan a media blackout? If anything, it made for a nice setting to shoot some pictures.

This could lead a person to think that those responsible wouldn’t want everyone to see what was about to happen.

And this, of course, would be automatic proof that this assassination was much bigger than one mediocre young Marine.

And then there were Abraham Zapruder, Mark Bell, Orville Nix, Tina Towner, Mary Moorman, and Charles Bronson (not the actor).

Zapruder single-handedly saved the nation from a barrage of hopeless questions, and my-word-against-your-word politics.

Though in later years his film raised more questions than it helped solve, but I'll get to that later on.

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Well first of all, the contents of the letter didn’t turn out to be very spectacular, but it did tie a possibly bitter Oswald to John Connally. 

Oswald had written Connally, who was secretary of the Navy around that time, about upgrading his military status so he could move back to the United States, which would mean that Oswald was in Russia at the time the letter was written.

It’s assumed that Connally didn’t answer the request, which links Oswald more to Connally than it does to Kennedy, a man Oswald admired, according to those who knew him.

This of course gave Oswald motive to assassinate John Connally. Had that been on his mind, he could have easily killed him coming up Houston Street, and even during the turn onto Elm. Even if the latter would have had Oswald too visible for too long.

Kennedy, on the other hand, was not very visible coming up Houston Street, as the bubbletop bar partially obscured his face and chest.

 

When it comes to the media that day, and the first few days after the assassination, it would seem that someone had a tight grip on them. 

One can understand that the FBI would have control of what information they shared with the public and when, this to ensure a peaceful transition to the new President, and to stop the wrong stories from spreading.

Unfortunately, that already happened that day.

In the panic, WBAP newsman James Curr reported that a police officer had been shot by a man in a car just minutes after the events on Elm Street, just two miles from Dealey Plaza. The described car was stopped somewhere in Fort Worth, the driver arrested and immediately linked to the Kennedy shooting, according to Charles Murphy of WBATV.

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Donald House

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The driver, Donald House, was later cleared of all charges, and released.

Later in the day it was thought that Curr had heard Tippit’s name over the police radio at 12:43, but this was never confirmed.

At the very moment of that announcement over the police radio, officer Tippit, still alive and well, was inside the Top Ten Record Shop on West Jefferson Avenue, ironically so very close to the Texas Movie Theater where “his murderer” would be apprehended an hour later.

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But stop!

Where was Lee Harvey Oswald during all this?

Where did he go after the shooting took place? Was he close enough to Tippit to kill him? And why did he go to the theater?

Alright. I guess we’ll slow things down, stop jumping around and take things from the top.

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