Nov. 22, 1963: A Magic Bullet, a Grassy Knoll, an Enduring Mystery By Tony Long 11.22.07 | 12:00 AM
President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally ride in a motorcade in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, moments before a sniper' would shoot the two men, fatally wounding Kennedy. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis 1963: President Kennedy is assassinated as his motorcade passes through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Texas Gov. John Connally, riding in the same car as Kennedy, is seriously wounded.
The Warren Commission, set up by order of President Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Although the report was widely accepted at first, skepticism grew as more information concerning possible conspiracies leaked out.
Oswald denied having anything to do with the shooting at all, let alone being part of any conspiracy, but he was killed -- and silenced -- two days after the assassination while in the custody of Dallas police.
That, coupled with the FBI's miserable handling of the initial investigation, did nothing to quell the suspicions of those who believed Kennedy's assassination was the work of (pick one, or more than one): the CIA, Johnson, the mob, Fidel Castro, the anti-Castro Cubans, J. Edgar Hoover.
Whether the shooter was acting alone or as part of a bigger conspiracy may never be known. Most of the available evidence, such as the Warren Commission Report, is inconclusive.
But the other big assertion -- that Oswald (or whoever the Book Depository gunman was) had help from shooters on the ground -- has never been adequately supported by hard evidence, either.
The so-called "grassy knoll" theory maintains that there was one, and possibly two, gunmen at ground level in Dealey Plaza. A number of eyewitnesses claimed to have heard gunfire coming from the grassy knoll, but nobody actually saw a gunman and no shells were ever recovered.
The Warren Report, basing its findings on the autopsy and forensics reports, concluded that two bullets struck Kennedy. They came from the same weapon, a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano military rifle of Italian manufacture that was later recovered at the Book Depository. Three shots were fired, all from above and behind the target. The first missed. The second, the so-called "magic bullet," passed through Kennedy and tore into Gov. Connally, causing all his wounds. The third shot, the killing one, exploded into the right side of Kennedy’s head.
Conspiracy theorists point to the impossible trajectory of the magic bullet, and to the Zapruder film, which shows Kennedy’s head snapping backwards as the fatal third shot takes off the right side of his head, as evidence that shots came from more than one direction.
Forensics experts disagree, however, arguing that the described path of the second bullet, while improbable, was not impossible and that Kennedy's head snap at the moment of impact suggests a reaction to the first bullet striking him and not the second.
Forty-four years on and we're still not entirely sure what happened in Dallas that day. All we do know is that something changed in an instant and America has never been the same country since. It’s a dark line that grows only more pronounced as the day recedes into history.
(Source: Various)