Another hit from the *magic bullet*? Or another shot? Let's see, the first JFK hit that brought JFKs hands up to his throat, a following one that supposedly hits JFK and Connolly, the one [or fragment thereof] that hits the inside of the windshield, the one that hits the inside frame of the windshield, [yes, THAT one is from inside/behind, no doubt] the Tague Bullet that struck the south Main Street curb in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, hitting about 25 feet from James Tague, who was standing next to the triple underpass. It made a visible scar in the curb, with the mark was immediately recognized by those who saw it as a fresh bullet mark. [The mark might have been made by a sizeable fragment from a bullet that struck nearby, but it was probably caused by a bullet] More:
Dallas policeman J. W. Foster, who was positioned on top of the triple underpass, saw a bullet strike the grass on the south side of Elm Street near a manhole cover, about 350 feet from the TSBD. He reported this to a superior officer and was instructed to guard the area (Shaw and Harris 72-75; Marrs 315).Officer Foster also reported that a bullet struck the concrete part of the abovementioned manhole cover. It is not known if this was the same missile that made the dug-out hole in the grass a few feet from the manhole cover. The bullet might have skipped off the manhole cover and then imbedded itself in the grass. Or, the mark on the concrete could have been made by a separate bullet, and thus would represent another miss fired from the same approximate location. The sewer cover and the hole in the turf were about 3-5 feet apart, and the latter was farther down the side of Elm Street (that is, it was slightly farther away from the TSBD than was the sewer cover).
Journalists and bystanders were kept at a distance from the spot where the bullet landed. An unidentified blond-haired man in a suit was photographed bending down, reaching out his left hand toward the dug-out point on the ground as if to pick up something, standing back up, apparently holding a small object in his hand, and then putting his hand in his pocket (Shaw and Harris 73-74). The hole made by the bullet was even photographed, and the picture appeared in the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM on 11/23/63
In his Warren Commission testimony, Officer Foster denied a bullet was recovered from near the manhole cover, though he did not explain what the man in the suit picked up and put into his pocket. Foster did, however, say that a bullet "had hit the turf there at that location [near the manhole cover]."
Contemporary press accounts reported that a bullet was retrieved from the dug-out hole in the grass near the manhole cover. For example, when the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM published a photo of the hole in the grass, it included the following caption:
One of the rifle bullets fired by the murderer of President Kennedy lies in the grass across Elm Street. . . .
The next day the DALLAS TIMES HERALD, in referring to the hole in the grass, reported:
Dallas Police Lt. J. C. Day of the crime lab estimated the distance from the sixth-floor window . . . to the spot where one of the bullets was recovered at 100 yards.
Newsman Richard Dudman said the following about this miss and the recovered bullet in the 12/21/63 issue of the NEW REPUBLIC:
On the day the President was shot I happened to learn of a possible fifth [bullet]. A group of police officers were examining the area at the side of the street where the President was hit, and a police inspector told me they had just found another bullet in the grass.
About two and a half hours after the shooting, Dealey Plaza witness John Martin came across the mark on the manhole cover. He immediately identified it as a bullet mark. He then told a policeman, "you better get your boss down here to check this thing out, because that will show where the bullet came from" (Trask 573).
Researchers have noted that the photo of the mark indicates it did NOT come from the TSBD. The mark can be seen on the twelfth photo page in the second set of photographs in Harrison Livingstone and Robert Groden's book HIGH TREASON. One can readily see that the angle of the mark does not line up with the Book Depository, but that it does line up with the County Records Building. It might be worth recalling that a 30.06 rifle shell casing was later found on the roof of the County Records Building.
* Just after President Kennedy's limousine passed the front steps of the TSBD, five witnesses saw a bullet strike the pavement on Elm Street near the right rear of the limousine. Witnesses saw this bullet kick up concrete toward the car (Weisberg 187-189; cf. Posner 324; Moore 198) (Posner attempts to explain this miss with his bullet-limb-collision theory.) [My bet: bullet fragments from this hit were the cause of the hit to the limo's windshield, and *maybe* also to the inside strike that dented the windshield frame.]
Clearly, the best witnesses to judge whether it was the first or second shot that struck the President would be those who were closest to him and looking at him when the shots were fired. If these witnesses happened to be trained law enforcement officers, with superior powers of observation, so much the better.* Within a day or two of the assassination, Dallas resident Eugene Aldredge saw a dug-out, four-inch-long bullet mark in the middle of the sidewalk on the north side of Elm Street, which is the side nearest the TSBD. Aldredge did not tell the FBI about the mark until shortly after the release of the WARREN COMMISSION REPORT because he assumed, logically enough, that the mark had surely been noticed by law enforcement officials and would be discussed in full in the Commission's report. When he realized that the mark apparently had been "overlooked," he immediately contacted the FBI and told them about it (Weisberg 383-390). Aldredge related to the FBI that Carl Freund, a reporter for the DALLAS MORNING NEWS, had also identified the mark as a bullet mark.
Therefore, some of the very best witnesses should be motorcycle officers Billy Joe (B. J.) Martin, James M. Chaney, Stavis (Steve) Ellis, and William G. (Bill) Lumpkin, who were all among the closest eyewitnesses to the President's murder. Yet only one of these men was deposed by the Warren Commission.
Let's see what these witnesses tell us.
Billy Joe Martin:
I was looking at the president when the first shot was fired. It missed. The second shot hit the president in the back, and the third hit him in the head.
Stavis Ellis:
That's when the first shot was fired. I was looking directly at the President, and I saw the concrete burst into a cloud of dust when that bullet hit the curb. . . . Then, while looking back at the President, I heard the second shot. The President became rigid and grabbed his neck.
Ellis had given this information to the House Select Committee the previous year. The Committee reports:
On August 5, 1978, the committee received information from former Dallas policeman Stavis Ellis that Ellis had also seen a missile hit the ground in the area of the motorcade at the time of the assassination. Ellis said he rode on a motorcycle alongside the first car in the motorcade, approximately 100 to 125 feet in front of the car carrying President Kennedy. Ellis said that just as he started down the hill of Elm Street, he looked back toward President Kennedy's car and saw debris come up from the ground at a nearby curb.
Compare this to the testimony of Royce Skelton, who "saw the motorcade come around the corner and I heard something which I thought was fireworks. I saw something hit the pavement at the left rear of the car . . . I heard two more shots."
The House Select Committee notes:
In his Warren Commission testimony on April 8, 1964, Skelton said that he saw smoke rise from the pavement when the bullet hit. . . . Skelton also offered that the smoke he saw rising from the cement when the bullet hit "spread" in a direction away from the depository; he said the "spray" of flying cement went toward the west.
Compare it also to another eyewitness report, that of Mrs. Virgie Rackley Baker, who "reported that at the time she heard the first shot, she looked in the direction of the triple underpass and saw what she presumed to be a bullet bouncing off the pavement."
Less than a week after Aldredge informed the FBI of the mark's existence and location, he took a friend to see it. They found the mark, but saw that it had been altered--it had been filled in. Said Aldredge,
. . . we went to the site and found the mark, [which was] formerly about 1/4 inch deep, had been filled in with what appeared to be a mixture of concrete and asbestos. . . .
A crude attempt had been made to make the altered mark appear to be weather-worn to match the surrounding concrete.
In its report on the mark, the FBI admitted to locating it and described it as being approximately 4 inches long, 1/2 inch wide, and "dug out." And why did the FBI dismiss the significance of this mark? Because, explained the Bureau, it could not have been made by a shot from the window from which Oswald allegedly fired. Just how fast could clumsy Lee Harvey Oswald crank the bolt on that Carcano again...?
Other documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board discuss a Johnson semi-automatic 30.06 rifle that was apparently found in Dealey Plaza soon after the shooting. The documents strongly link this rifle to two men who have long been suspected of being involved in the assassination plot, Loran Hall and Jerry Patrick Hemming. The files also reveal that the FBI took a strong interest in the history and ownership of this rifle within hours of the shooting. A man named Richard Hathcock, who lived in California at the time, had kept the rifle in his office for a while. The day after the assassination, an FBI agent questioned him about the weapon. Among other things, the agent wanted to know if Hathcock had an employee named Roy Payne, who apparently knew a great deal about the rifle. In one of the released files, we read that Hathcock said the following:
It's my opinion that the reason he [the FBI agent] wanted to see Mr. Payne was because Payne's fingerprints undoubtedly were all over that rifle from his having handled it many times. It's also my opinion that unless that particular rifle had been found [near the scene of the crime] or in some way involved in this whole thing [the assassination], that the FBI would have no interest in it. (HSCA 180-10107-10443)
This rifle had quite a history. It was used in CIA-connected anti-Castro raids in Cuba. Roy Payne said the weapon could "put a hole in a dime at 500 yards" (HSCA 180-10107-10440). Loran Hall and an unidentified Hispanic man took the weapon from Payne about a week before the assassination. Hall's associate, Jerry Hemming, is known to have been in Dallas on the day of the shooting, and Hall himself told Hathcock five days prior to the assassination that he had to catch a flight to Dallas (HSCA 180-10107-10440).
* In 1975 a maintenance man named Morgan, while working on the roof of the County Records Building in Dealey Plaza, found a 30.06 shell casing lying under a lip of roofing tar at the base of the roof's parapet on the side facing the plaza, according to his son, Dean Morgan. The shell casing is dated 1953 and marks on it indicate it was made at the Twin Cities Arsenal. One side of the casing has been pitted by exposure to the weather, suggesting that it was exposed on the roof for some time. The casing, which is still in Morgan's possession, has an odd crimp around its neck (Marrs 317; Roberts 80-81).
Former Marine Gerry/Jerry Patrick Hemming, early 1960s:
