What Lee meant was you won't find the answer to the why - in the eyes of a man with a dead soul.
MORE: Smoke on the Grassy Knoll"Smoke" on the Grassy Knoll
By Jerry OrganSo little has changed in Dealey Plaza that -- if one could ignore the towering monoliths of post-1963 Dallas -- it is easy to imagine the motorcade is about to arrive. The Zapruder film has now become familiar to the public, and it stands as the best-quality film taken from a near-ideal vantage point. But we are also familiar with footage of the aftermath, thanks in good measure to broadcast-quality newsreel film taken by several cameramen back in the motorcade. This was the footage that was shown on the networks as that awful afternoon unfolded. The Rush to the Knoll! In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, numerous witnesses and policemen found themselves in the parking lot atop the infamous Grassy Knoll. Their presence is often cited as evidence of an assassin firing from behind the fence.
The "rush" to the knoll actually occurred over a minute after the shots, and was triggered by a Dallas motorcycle policeman in the parade, Clyde Haygood, who had no firsthand knowledge of the shot direction. Officer Haygood was a block away when he heard the first of three shots. After racing to Elm Street, he stopped just pass the fallen Newman family, parked his cycle, and ran up to confer with a policemen he saw on the railbridge. Only then did people start running up after him, falsely thinking he was after a culprit.
The "rush" up through the walkway by the Bryan Colonnade occurred even later. Prominent witnesses like the Newmans didn't begin for over a minute; Jean Hill didn't cross the street for over two minutes. The initial reaction of most people close to the shooting was to simply drop to the ground or seek cover. Later, media reports and affidavits from witnesses would describe their impression -- perhaps aided by the sight of Haygood and the tricky acoustics of the Plaza -- that shots seemed to come from the area to the front of the car.
Initially, the Grassy Knoll wasn't suspected by researchers as a source of shots. Thomas Buchanan, in his 1964 book Who Killed Kennedy? based a shot from the Triple Underpass on a "bullet hole" that reportedly passed through the limousine's windshield. Only when the Warren Commission demonstrated the windshield could only have been hit from the interior (probably a lead fragment from the fatal shot), and released the testimony of Sam Holland, did attention shift onto the knoll.
The Grassy Knoll has since been a favorite of researchers, who've deduced "assassins" and "puffs of smoke" from numerous photographs that captured the area. In 1967 came the sensational announcement that a "classic gunman" shape was apparent on a frame of the poor-quality 8mm film taken by Orville Nix. Within months, Josiah Thompson had laid that one to rest, noting the same shadow pattern effect in a frame taken long after the assassination.
In 1965, critic David Lifton studied copies of the Moorman Polaroid, which included much of the Grassy Knoll at the near-instance of the fatal shot. Lifton thought one of the bushes on the knoll was an artificial blind for a sniper.
In 1976, yet another shape materialized from the shadows in a Moorman blowup in Robert Groden's book JFK: The Case for Conspiracy. From the same image, Texas researchers Gary Mack and Jack White presented a shape they called "Badgeman" in the 1988 documentary "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." That same year, at NOVA's request, technicians at MIT analyzed the shape, concluding it "took some imagination" to render it into a human figure.
One shape on the knoll has been confirmed as human; the "Black Dog Man" figure at the Bryan Colonnade's retaining wall seen in the Willis and Betzner photographs as the limousine moves down Elm. Critics have made much of this shape, some even suggesting he was holding a "rifle." But a long-forgotten interview of Marilyn Sitzman by Josiah Thompson determined the shape was quite benign.
Now, justshutupandtakeit.