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The Assassination: An Overview

Zapruder frame 335: The fatal head shot

Just when the limousine passed the Stemmons Freeway sign, Mrs. Connally heard a kind of gunshots. When she turned looking at the President, she saw him taking his hand to his throat covering a shooting wound. The next second Governor Connally felt an ache in his back which he recognized as a shot. He later said:

...there were either two or three people involved or more in this or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle.

The reaction of the Secret Service Agents was quite slow. The most of them spent the evening before in "The Cellar" bar that was owned by an acquaintance of Jack Ruby.

45 minutes later, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in charge of murder to police officer J.D. Tippit. After hours of interrogation where no lawyer was present and no protocol was made, Oswald was accused of murder to John F. Kennedy. On November 24, 1963, a Sunday morning, he was supposed to be handed over to the State Prison. In the garage of the police building, he was shot by Jack Ruby in front of hundreds of journalists and millions of TV watchers.

The Warren Commission - constituted one week later - declared after months of investigation:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald was the only assassin and acted on his own.
2. He shot from the 6th floor of the Schoolbook Depository Building which was behind the President's limousine at the time of the assassination.
3. He used the found Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
4. Oswald shot police officer Tippit.

1. Many witnesses reported that shots were fired from the Grassy Knoll, not the Texas School Book Depository
2. Witnesses stated that a cloud of smoke was visible in the area of the Grassy Knoll
3. Even before the motorcade arrived, men with rifles were seen by people in downtown Dallas
4. There were unexplained reports of witnesses encountering mysterious Secret Service men in Dealey Plaza.

The moment when the first bullet struck

We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did. Nobody's yet been able to put him in that building with a gun in his hand.

The third wounded man doesn't fit into the version of the Warren Commission, too: James Tague. He stood near the Triple Underpass ahead of the motorcade and was wounded by a passing bullet. Because the first shot wounded Kennedy's throat, the second Connally's back, and the third was the headshot, there must had been a fourth shot. This made the Warren Commission changing their version and creating the "Magic Bullet" theory. This bullet was supposed to cause the seven wounds of Kennedy and Conally. This Commission Exhibit #399 was found later in an almost pristine condition(!) at Parkland Memorial.

One of the most known evidences is the film which Abraham Zapruder took directly next from the Grassy Knoll that day. It shows the assassination in full length. There, one can also see the opened umbrella of the Umbrella Man despite the shining sun and cloudless sky.

More photos show two suspicious men behind the fence at the Grassy Knoll - one with a rifle - who have been called "Black Dog Man" and "Badge Man" because of the unknown identity. The Warren Commission never mentioned these men and never made any effort to find them.

In the three-year period which followed the murders of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died - six by gunfire, three in motor accidents, two by suicide, one from a cut throat, one from a karate chop to the neck, three from heart attacks and two from natural causes. In the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations felt compelled to look into the matter. The Committee was unable to come to any conclusion regarding the growing number of deaths. However, an objective look at both the number and the causes of death balanced against the importance of the person's connection to the case, raises concern.

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