New Evidence in Kennedy Killing (Dallas not Mass)

History Channel ^ | Image of an Assassination

[keving]

Did anyone see the show on the History Channel about the archiving of the Zapruder film?

"Image of an Assassination"

Saturday, November 22 @ 8am ET/PT

On November 22, 1963, Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder brought his movie camera to film President John F. Kennedy's motorcade for his grandchildren. As it turned out, Zapruder captured one of the 20th century's most important documents. In 1997, two media companies created a digital replica of the original, which is presented here, along with Zapruder's business associates, photography experts, and National Archives employees, who piece together the history of the crucial 26-second film. TV PG-V

It was very interesting. The most revealing part was that the frames that claim to be the Zapruder film are cropped copies of the original (1/3 to 1/2 screen).

The best part of the film is that the "fatal" blow when Kennedy's head explodes is cleary shown traveling from the side of the limo - grassy knoll area.

The "expanded" version or original version of the film included the trajectory of the bullet which could not be indicated on the cropped photo version.

Please view programs - it is very clear.

[RedMonqey]

rightofrush

RE:
And the bullet exiting the front caused those behind JFK to be showered with his brains?


Well,Duuuh...

That's easy to explaain. The people in the motorcade that followed the lead car DROVE THROUGH the pink cloud created by JFK's brains.

[lodwick]

At least two shooters that murderous day.

[ALASKA]

There was no pristine bullet found on the stretcher; that was purely fictionalized in the "JFK" Oliver Stone movie.

The only aspect of the pristine bullet that was fabricated by Stone was the film showing Jack Ruby placing the bullet on a stretcher at Parkland. It could have happened that way, Ruby was seen by some at the hospital, but that is a possiblity, not a fact. A bullet being found on a stretcher that day at Parkland Hospital is a fact.

[farmfriend]

Nothing you site here is consistent with what I have seen, heard or read about.

[Iscool]

The last deer I shot was about 70 yards away...The shot entered just behind the front shoulder and exited about the same place on the other side...

I was shooting a Remington 6mm with a 120 grain bullet...

At impact, the deer appeared to raise up in the air and seemingly slammed to the ground on it's side...The deer did not buckle to the ground or fall towards me...It slammed down in the opposite direction...

Over the many years, I have shot at many targets, and yes, the elusive watermelons included...The only time a watermelon moved toward me was after it initially moved away from me in a rocking motion...Watermelons don't move much when you shoot them...
Bottles, cans, rocks, and yes, bowling balls always move away from me when I shoot them...Same hold true for turkeys, pheasants, coyotes, etc., etc...

I am not a physicist however, so I don't know how this works out on paper...

[ALASKA]

Nothing you site here is consistent with what I have seen, heard or read about

Read some more. I have seen, read and heard just about everything there is to see, hear and read on the subject. Everything I site can be backed up.

[texasbluebell]

A close review of the Zapruder film on a number of occasions over the years (on the television) has caused me to believe that what I was observing was a blowing away of Kennedy's facial tissue. Look rather closely and I believe that you will notice the same thing.

His facial tissue? What part of his face was blown away? In autopsy photos, his face is perfect.

But if some reports are true, then the work done on him after death with the mortician's wax may be credible after all.

[texasbluebell]

An 88 year-old man (can't remember his name) showed how he could pull off the same shots, using an identical rifle, in 7.2 seconds.

This must be the one you're thinking of, but he couldn't pull off the shots.

link

"The final assessment on Oswald's shooting ability, or lack of it, is left to Carlos Hathcock, a retired gunnery sergeant, who has been described as the most famous sniper in American history. He was credited, while on duty in Vietnam, with 93 confirmed kills. He said he attempted to reconstruct the shooting, incorporating all the elements, height, distance, moving target and time frame, but no matter how many times he or his team attempted it, they could never duplicate Oswald's alleged performance."

[usafsk]

Let's try again. A watermelon is not attached to a body, nor sitting in a car, so the very fact that it doesn't fly off or move much would suggest that Kennedy's head, more weighing at least as much as a watermelon, also would not move. Siting the bone impact is not an out, because the shell of the watermelon is of equal mass, although thinker. The brain cavity would be of less mass than the inner melon. Moreover, looking at frame 313 of the Zapruder film - the impact shot - blood and other matter are ejected straight up and to the front, not to the rear.

If you look at Kennedy's position in frame 312, you will see that he is leaning down and to the left slightly, having already been shot in the throat. The grassy knoll and picket fence were ahead and to the right. Using the head-in-the-direction-of-the-the-bullet method, the head should go back and to the left, not back and to the right. Moreover, what is the explanation for the shot from the front right not blowing out the left rear of Kennedy's skull?

[mathluv]

There was a story at some point about Oswald not really being Oswald - the body sizes did not match between records.

[texasbluebell]

The melons and gelaton used it tests sited on subsequent replies in this post were not attached to the bulk of a human body,

This is what I keep saying too. How can a skull/melon/whatever, unattached to a spinal cord, compare in any way to a human body?

[graycamel]

I Know I'll get kicked off for being a kook, but I think Kennedy was in so much pain, he was on pills you know, that he had himself eliminated. He couldn't have killed himself or everyone would have called him a coward. But let some others do the job, and he's called one of the greatest presidents.

[mathluv]

There was also a book about 10 years ago from the 'lady in red'. She was one of the witnesses - in a red coat that day. Her camera was confiscated. She swears a shot was fired from the grassy knoll.

[Ophiucus]

You describe a physical immpossibility. Think of two cars hitting - car A hits car B. If car A is travelling east, would car B suddenly jump west?

There is no "force" from a bullet exiting the body - it's not like a self-propelled rocket. It is a mass with simple inertia and anything it hits moves in the same direction - not opposite.

[texasbluebell]

Thanks for posting that link!

[Mr. Wright]

Will someone please download the photo showing the
motorcade passing the Stemmons Freeway Keep Right Sign
(backs of agents on President's car are seen).
Look to the right of the Zapruder party (inside the concret
memorial)you will see the image of a man standing inside the
memorial. Why is he in there - I believe he is the "phoney"
SS agent who people later said was on the Grassy Knoll.

Invert the picture so light objects are dark and dark objects are light - you will see the inside of the memorial has a
light object through the rectangle -all the rest of the rectangles are dark!!

[Ophiucus]

Apparently the penetrating bullet exerts little force on the melon

Having treated a large number of gunshot wounds - this statement is absolutely wrong. The bullet begins to transfer a massive amount of kinetic energy the millisecond it strikes the body. The body also immediately begins to move or spin in the direction of the bullet's path.

Those bullets did the most remarkable dances you have ever seen. The only thing they didn't do is travel in a straight line

This is known as cavitation. The bullet creates a pressure wave inside the body. This wave of immense pressure results in an irregular path, massive damage to tissues away from the bullet's path, and upon exiting, a much larger exit wound. Exiting, however, does not cause a recoil.

I remember seeing the Nova episode you mention. I also remember laughing at the way the melons were positioned and shot - a lot of tricks with angular momentum. The melon spun like a top but still went backwards. Try it yourself - put a melon on a fencepost.

However, the dynamics of shooting a melon are nothing like that of the human cranium. Nothing - not in density, strength, etc.

[Ichneumon]

[There was no pristine bullet found on the stretcher; that was purely fictionalized in the "JFK" Oliver Stone movie.]

Oh, have they changed history where the magic bullet is concerned? Have the facts been successfully rearranged to fit the foredrawn conclusion?

No, that's what the conspiracy theorists do when they try to claim that the bullet found on the stretcher was "pristine", when it very certainly was *not*.

There was no "pristine" bullet. There was, however a significantly deformed bullet, consistent with passage through JFK's neck and Connally's chest/wrist.

Bullet on left is the so-called "pristine" bullet, bullet on right is an unfired round.

Note the crease on the nose, and the warping of the side (the lower portion as oriented in the picture) and the flattened surface directly facing the camera.

Here's a close-up of the tail end of the bullet:

Note how much the lead is deformed and cracked by the bullet's deformation.

Of course, I'm being facetious. But it's better to be facetious than misinformed.

So you won't misinform anyone by calling the bullet "pristine", I hope.

Don't blame Oliver Stone for this story. He was merely depicting history.

*snort*. Shall I list all the ways he distorted the known facts about the wounds, the positions of the people in the car, and the condition of the bullet?

The 'magic bullet' WAS (conveniently) found on a gurney at Parkland (at just the moment the conspirators needed it to be found because they could not otherwise account for all those extra gunshot wounds).

LOL! My favorite thing about conspiracy theorists is how they postulate all sorts of absurd things that seem "obvious" to them but make no sense otherwise.

Perhaps you could explain for us exactly how a bullet on a stretcher would suddenly "account" for the alleged "extra gunshot wounds"?

The really funny thing about this suggestion is that simultaeously you're suggesting a) more bullets were fired at the scene than currently believed, and b) *ADDING* another bullet to the evidence (on top of the bullets and fragments already on the scene due to the shooting(s) themselves) was somehow going to cause investigators to *reduce* their estimate of how many bullets were involved.

Go ahead, pull the other leg now.

Another problem with most of the JFK conspiracy tales is the exact same problem with the OJ Simpson conspiracy tales: It suggests that a large team of "evidence planters" was running all over the various crime scenes planting evidence BEFORE THEY HAD ANY WAY OF KNOWING what physical evidence or possible witnesses were going to turn up when the investigators did their jobs. In the OJ case, the allegations that officers were frantically planting OJ's blood evidence at the murder scene in the first hour or so to frame him are ludicrous given that as far as they knew, subsequent analysis of the "real" evidence might well turn up clear evidence of the real killer(s) -- in which case the evidence-forging officers would have one hell of a hard time explaining how OJ's blood got there, wouldn't they?

Likewise for the various JFK "evidence planting" screwball theories -- for example, for all they knew the bullet that struck Connally might have been in his body (he was still in surgery at the time the not-so-pristine bullet was discovered). How stupid would the conspirators have to be to plant an *extra* bullet in order to "sidetrack" the investigation when the *actual* bullet might turn up at any moment (and if it did, the "planted" bullet would *prove* conspiracy, not turn people away from that theory). For that matter, where *did* the "real" bullet go if the bullet at the hospital was "planeted"? Conspiracy theorists never seem to want to answer that one.

And more outrageous than (but just as true as) that, that miraculous bullet was not discovered at Parkland until AFTER Kennedy's body was already in Washington.

Is it too much to ask that conspiracy theorists get even their basic facts straight? Yes, I suppose it is.

1. JFK was shot at 12:30.

2. The not-so-pristine bullet was found within 90 minutes of the assassination itself (i.e., at or before 2:00 pm.

3. Jacqueiline Kennedy, four Secret Service agents, and Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh left the hospital in an ambulance with JFK's body, heading for the airport at 2:04.

4. JFK's body was loaded onto the plane at 2:18.

5. The plane lifted off at 2:47.

6. The plane carrying JFK's body touched down at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 5:58pm Eastern time (4:48 pm Dallas time).

I guess I don't have the sort of piercing intelligence it takes to be a conspiracy theorist, because I don't see how "on or before 2pm" is somehow "AFTER" 4:48pm.

Or even 2:04pm -- not only was the bullet not found "AFTER Kennedy's body was already in Washington", it was found while JFK's body was still in the freaking Dallas hospital.

But while you're giving your explanations for your amazing claims, perhaps you can also explain how it makes any bloody difference, conspiracy-wise, whether the bullet was found before or after JFK's body was in any particular place.

Read up on the circumstances that FOLLOWED the assassination and you will see why so many of us continue to scream conspiracy.

Um, because you make things up as you go along, or rely on the writings of people who do?

If you investigate the subject a little deeper, and if you care about the truth, I think you might come to the same conclusion.

Been there, done that, have very much *NOT* come to have any greater faith in the theories, reliability, or mental faculties of the conspiracy theorists. Quite the contrary, in fact.

After years of following this stuff and researching it, I have in fact come to the conclusion that if a conspiracy theorist says that grass is green, it's quite likely that it was instead blue. They can't even get the easy stuff right (e.g. is 2pm before or after 4:48p?), much less the more complicated aspects of the issue.

You might start with "Best Evidence" by James Lifton. That is, if you are really interested in what really happened.

ROFL! Ooookay....

This is, of course, the same book in which Mr. Lifton puts forth his theory that "the President's body was inside the Dallas casket when it was put aboard Air Force One at 2:18, but it was no longer inside the casket at 2:47, as the plane rolled down the runway."

Yes, that's right, Lifton postulates an elaborate shell game involving rapid exchanges of coffins, a decoy ambulance, and a switched body shroud. He contends that once the body was stolen from under the noses of Jackie Kennedy and Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh (who, as official escort of the dead President, never left the coffin unless Jackie was with it), a covert team of surgeons surgically altered the corpse to "fake" evidence of rearward bullet entry, then managed to swap it back (um, *when*?) for the decoy casket before the autopsy a few hours later at Bethesda, which took place immediately upon arrival. This despite the fact that the casket was never left unattended at any point.

In other words, Lifton is insane.

He doesn't want to face the actual medical evidence, so he comes up with a paranoid and ridiculous massive conspiracy which shows how the medical evidence was "faked". Uh huh...

He bases this ludicrous nutball fantasy on minor nitpicks like statements from bit players at Bethesda (orderlies, etc.) which can be read to indicate that JFK's body arrived in a body bag instead of wrapped in sheets (actually, the coffin was plastic-lined) and in a different coffin (yes, that's right, the conspirators managed to swap/steal the original coffin for an identical decoy in an operation beyond the abilites of the Impossible Mission team, yet they somehow were stupid enough to accidentally put the altered body back into the *wrong* coffin before they swapped it back without any of the hundreds of people at Bethesda noticing...)

At the same time, he ignores clear and compelling evidence that JFK's coffin was attended and watched over every moment during its travels, establishing a clear "chain of evidence" for the body, as well as various statements and evidence clearly invalidating his scenario.

In short, it's par for the course for the conspiracy whackos -- build mountains from molehills, then pretend the actual mountain of contrary evidence doesn't even exist. (Or invent elaborate conspiracies to explain how the real evidence is actually only "faked" evidence.)

"Lifton gets away with crap, and no one challenges him. I could assemble a whole team of the best surgeons in the country and still not be able to accomplish in a day what Lifton says was done in a few hours."
-- Forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, one of the most vocal medical critics of the Warren Commission

"In 1967, Lifton had a theory of fake trees, that a construction company put in fake scenery and so forth in Dealey Plaza, and then after the shooting, it was removed. He thought it helped the assassins get close for the shooting and also confused the people... Lifton is a beast... [does] gross plundering. It's almost as though he is a religious convert, and he is proselytizing for a false religion"
-- Historian and assassination researcher Professor David Wrone

"Lifton is just bizarre... On a scale of one to ten, his theory is a zero."
-- Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee

"[We] rejected it as illogical, even absurd. [...] preposterous notion [...] at best, the book is a monument to one man's ingenuity. At worst, it is an appalling hoax."
-- Richard Billings, editorial director of the House Select Committee

[Ichneumon]

you will see the image of a man standing inside the memorial. Why is he in there

Because people were all over the plaza so they could watch the President go by...

[DoughtyOne]

Well I can't explain autopsy photos or anything else. I can only say what it looks like on that film. In a few frames it appears to me a skin flap is blown open in his facial area. Next time you observe that film, see if you can what I'm talking about.

Thanks for the comments.