Last Second in Dallas: A Granular Account of the Final Second of the Assassination

foreign [Music] good evening everyone thank you so much for being here with us tonight my name is Steven Fagan and on behalf of the sixth floor museum at Daly Plaza and our CEO Nicola Longford I'd like to welcome you here tonight for a very special program with a long time friend of our institution Dr Josiah Tink Thompson a one-time philosophy Professor right a private investigator and most significant for us here tonight a first generation Kennedy assassination researcher whose 1967 book six seconds in Dallas is a classic in the history of assassination literature so Tink we're so thrilled you could be here tonight you have prepared a a wonderful presentation that you're going to be giving in a few minutes based on your new book last second in Dallas but we wanted to start things off tonight with a little bit of historical context as I understand it you really got started in this case because you got arrested in 1966. can you start there and tell us a little bit about that yeah it's not embarrassing at all to get arrested for what I got arrested for to begin with uh I was living in Haverford Pennsylvania it's a suburb of Philadelphia and uh the sheriff of Delaware County announced on TV and various things yeah these peace leaks come into my district I'm going to bust them right so of course Bill davenon and Bill David on professor of physics and I went to Delaware County the next morning and began Distributing Quaker leaflets on the conflict in Vietnam we were busted almost immediately and taken off to jail and four hours later an ACLU lawyer appeared to get us out and we were taken out of the our cell and put it in Squad room where all the all the officers gathered her out and the ACLU lawyer put on a brilliant show just a brilliant show he kept looking at his watch and he said to the assembled officers around us he said now um we've been in touch with attorney general katzenbach I believe I believe and the FBI agents will be here soon he looks at his watch and they all look at their watches and uh when the Asians get here I want you to tell them that not only have your civil rights been violated but you're suing for false arrests Captain so-and-so Lieutenant so and so Sergeant patrolman we were out of there in 40 seconds 40 seconds and that that ACLU lawyer was Vince landria who was one of the originals in in this whole battle and uh after that Vince and I became friends and he we would drive to Washington together where we go to the National Archives and Marion Johnson an archivist would bring us back down the latest releases from the Warren Commission because they were in process of releasing documents but each time we go there there'd be a new set so Vince and I persevered in this way from let's see the arrest I think was in January or February 1966 and we were doing this up through July you got to see the Zapruder film for the first time at the National Archives give us a sense of what it was like to see that for the first time blew my mind blew my mind the archives at that point had a second-rate copy of these brutal film and he was either in 16 millimeter or eight Miller after forget it this time but a poor copy would say ran screamed for us and they also had 35 millimeter slides which weren't that good either but Vince had told me of the work of a guy named Ray Marcus who claimed that he had been able to see in some bootleg Zapruder film that the president's had moved forward considerably significantly between 312 when his head is perfect right and 313 when it blows up and so we went down to confirm or disconfirm what what Marcus was saying and I ended up carrying a second Carousel projector and I can remember to this day this is July how hot it was and how heavy that damn projector was as we made our way from a parking lot through the to the archives so we go in we watch we watch the superior film and and then we put set up the projectors and did it and we confirmed it it was there it was clear clear as anything that there was a forward head movement at that point oh no somehow or other we failed to understand that there was also in the same frame a blurring movement which meant that that the Pruder had moved his camera right had moved his camera and never thought that the forward movement of the head since it was we measured on a very bright part of the thing was caused by the camera moving not his head moving gee one of the great mistakes I ever made in this case so it all it all started there now you got to be a life consultant for a little while which gave you access to high qualities of brooder transparencies and that helped you along the way as you began to develop what became six seconds in Dallas yeah you know many things in human life are absolutely accidental and that's that's how this happened Ben salandry and I were going to write something for Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly or something like that you know but Vince hated the right I I like to write and I was on summer vacation right as a professor so I I started writing this up and pretty soon of course Vince and I began disagreeing on on evidence Vince was persuaded that the hole in the front of Kennedy's throat was caused by an incoming shot from the front all right made no sense to me because the spinal column is about that far from the entry from the so-called entry hole uh so we we broke up over that but I I pursued it and I had an introduction to Willie Morris who was the editor of Harper's magazine so I traced up to New York one morning and got there by 10 o'clock in the morning I guess and Morris couldn't see me until five so what the hell do I do now well there was a Don Preston was the um the managing editor for Bernard Geist Associates now you've probably never heard of Bernard Geist Associates but but he they published this this wonderful book wonderful book it was an awful book um uh about about the high life of of a bunch of women and it's sold like crazy and so they had a lot of money and it was a small small publishing outfit but they distributed through through Random House so I went to so I went up to see Don Preston their their lead editor who was a friend of another professor at Haverford who had told him about what I was doing on the Kennedy assassination and and was interested in it so we talked for a while and then he absented himself and came back and said Bernie guys and you and I are going out to lunch now ran out to lunch and Bernie said look uh you're writing a book for us the advance was 500 bucks right 500 bucks but they would pay expenses which was important so that's how it all started by accident by complete accident the first 100 Pages or so of last second in Dallas is really an autobiographical look of how six seconds in Dallas came about I do feel considering Where We Are Tonight I feel compelled to mention that of the the three gunmen that you place in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination in six seconds one of them is right here this is the roof of the Records building or what was the roof of the records Village yeah now we don't have time of course to go into the full history of six seconds but I do want to touch on something kind of interesting it is considered a classic today somewhat of a rare book because it wasn't very successful when it came out in 1967 you ran into some legal trouble and that affected how how much or how little you were able to make on that book oh absolutely we were sued by timing incorporating down that's a hell of a problem and I as author was stuck with all the costs of course and actually the costs exceeded what what my royalties would have been we sold about 75 000 copies of six seconds um but uh oh boy we won we won summary judgment Against Time life and they did not appeal the Judgment which was amazing because they appeal every judgment against yeah we want it in the southern district of New York the judge was inser B Wyatt who gave a stinging uh comment on on the whole thing and decided that our use of the zipruder film we didn't use photographs we use artist renderings and that that was covered under fair use so there was there was no case here and uh Hey so won the case and lost all the money and and those charcoal sketches uh from those right you have them we we do we're honored to have them in the Museum's collection and we consider them works of art oh no that for you it was a a necessary evil because you weren't allowed to publish the original phrase that's right I don't want to take any more of your time tonight because you have a very thorough presentation to give us so uh you're gonna go to the podium now I will be back for a q a at the end you should have some note cards in front of you if you have questions for Dr Thompson at the end of his presentation we'll be back here we'll try to take as many of those questions as we can so thank you folks foreign now that's a strange title isn't it the granular account of the last second granular you know what a strange word to use well that has a special meaning here and I want to get into that when you speak of a granular account you often hear TV commentators use that term and all that means is they're getting down to a level of detail it's a general idea of getting down to it and that's that's probably true but the Oxford English Dictionary defines granular as is strangely enough consisting of grains or granules sure the Random House dictionary defines it as of the nature of granules grainy or composed of or bearing granules okay for 35 years after I'd quit the academic profession I made my living as a defense investigator in criminal cases where granular might or might not describe what you knew of the field of evidence being a good investigator was not something you could learn going to school you can't go to school to become a private investigator in California to be licensed you have to have three years of investigative experience that are certified um so I was lucky because uh I found somebody to Apprentice my shot myself too and that's how you do it it's a feudal system you Apprentice yourself to somebody who you can work under that their watchful eye as you learn how to do it and I was again lucky just lucky accident I Apprentice myself to a guy who became legendary in the trade he died a few years ago and his name is David fetchheimer and we managed to work on various cases around the world uh after after I learned my way around in the business he used the word granular and that's why I'm using it now so it has a special meaning for me um he used it when he explained to me that most Mistakes by an investigator have to do with the fact that they haven't gained a sufficiently granular or detailed understanding of the field of evidence only when your knowledge reaches drill down to that level are you in a position to take advantage of the fact that any given event happens in one way rather than another only when you grasp grasp the fact that every event is singular can you also grasp its correlate that only one scenario one scenario accommodates all the evidence and is therefore correct as long as your understanding of the evidence remains generalized or hazy you can't pursue one of the most important questions any intelligent fact finder asks if a and b happened then what else follows necessarily from that that question opens the way to a wider and deeper understanding of the case where whole new regions or families of evidence may be discovered now fatzheimer's principle might be summarized in one in one short sentence the tiny facts are the important ones the tiny facts but given the extraordinary volume of evidence in this Kennedy case what part of it lends itself to the application of such heimer's principle the answer is obvious had the shooting stopped short of the last second say was the Pruder frame 312 Kennedy would not have been killed and his attempted assassination would have ended up as a speed bump on the way to Kennedy's second term in office since Abraham's approoter's camera was running at 18.3 frames per second frame 312 through 330 to find the last second of the shooting it is during this last second that an important change to the field of evidence has come about which increases our chances of success in applying that timer's principle so what's that change that change quite obvious is that during the last second of the shooting the Zapruder zapruder's camera makes its closest approach to the limousine the limousine is coming down it gets closer and closer and closer and right about 312 or so that's when it makes its closest approach well that means the details that are now available which were not available earlier on when the car was two or three times farther away now these details are available so by applying the lesson learned from fetchheimer the tiny facts are the important ones to this last second of the shooting I aim to produce a factual scenario that changes understanding of the whole event this scenario will not just show that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill the president it will rather show that he could not have killed the president okay our task requires that we put the last second of John Kennedy's life under a microscope murder is a grisly business I've done a lot of them and Kennedy's murder especially so but we are doing this out of respect for Kennedy's life in the conviction is the truth of his death will illuminate that life in this we should never forget that the granular level is always arduous for working in it is always much easier to discuss an event in the generalities of political debate but granular details of what happened that day are crucial not only because they tell us what happened but also because they point they point in the direction where new facts may be discovered now that was the introduction folks let's go on this so my uh talk with you tonight is going to have five parts or the first is dealing with frame three thirds famous Fame frame 313. and time facts where the various parts of Flesh and brain matter and blood went now surely that that subscribes to fetcheheimer's principle of going for the tiny facts right then I got some civilian Witnesses who we can see in various photographs are standing erect as spectators and after 313 throw themselves on the ground which by itself makes some interesting Witnesses and I want to tell you what they said the most interesting witness in the case of course is Sam Holland SM skinny Holland right and I interviewed him in on November 30th 1966 had a wonderful time with him now finally we get to the second shot which is this is all new frame 328 where again we have a whole lot of impact debris evidence that I think establishes at least the direction from which the shot came and then finally a few final remarks next slide please so section one is going to be tracing where the blood brain skull and all that went at the Pruder frame 313. now here we have alkins five which was taken by uh alkins at the brooder frame 255 which is about three almost exactly three three seconds before the 313 shot now before getting into this and explaining explaining the photograph to you I want to point out that what you see happening almost every time in any Quentin Tarantino film is actually what does happen when somebody is shot and the bullet doesn't stop obviously if you're hit by a bullet and stops in the body that's basically it but if it goes on through you end up with with a big blast of Blood and Bone or with the head shots brain brain matter up against the wall and that's what Tarantino and other filmmakers are showing hey that's true that's that's what I want to tell you that is what what happens the blood and gore in the wall is studied through what's called blood spatter analysis it may be able to tell you for example where the bullet was fired from and even the number of inches above the floor the barrel of the weapon had to be when it was fired for obvious reasons this kind of analysis only works when the crime scene is indoors um and there's a wall to be struck by the bullet and the other impact debris in the County case we had no wall but just the memories of various individuals who were hit by Blood brain matter or skull fragments but that turns out folks to be quite enough like these people no no leave it up uh Gary please there we go now you see where President Kennedy is he's in the right rear seat and you see just to the left in the in the frame is Jim Chaney writing the inboard cycle on the right hand side out of frame is uh Doug Jackson but now we go to the people who were hit with impact debris the two motorcyclists clear out here now notice the distance between between President Kennedy and the Cheney go whoops well thanks a lot um here's President Kennedy and here's Cheney baby what do you suppose that is six feet or so something like that and these two guys I'm going to be dealing with the the blood spatter on these guys first but notice how much more distant they are to give you an idea it's 12 feet from there to there each of these Lanes is 12 feet wide okay let's go to the next these are the people the officer Bobby Hodges is riding the inboard cycle officer B.J Martin is writing the outboard cycle both of them on the left side on the left rear of the vehicle secret servant secret service agent Clint Hill was standing on the running board of the follow-up vehicle right behind and when the shooting started he jumped off to the the vehicle and ran to the presidential limousine so he's coming up the left-hand side right agent Sam Kinney was actually driving the Secret Service follow-up car which is maybe five feet six feet at the most behind the limousine officer Doug Jackson and Officer James Chaney were on the other side on the right side now it's important I'll just mention right away we'll get to it later but Jackson and Cheney were untouched neither one got hit with any any material at all whereas all these other people did the first the first four on that list all all got hit and right now we're gonna go to the first one officer Bobby Hargis now this came from a reporter who talked to Hargis on the next day uh November 23rd and he tells about as the president straightened back up he gets hit and he got hit in the side of his head says Hodges and then I felt something hit me it could have been concrete or something but I thought at first I might have been hit by a bullet right then I saw the limousine stop and I parked my motorcycle at the side of the road and got off and Drew my gun well next slide please this again is now from hodges's sworn testimony he now tells us that um i s I stopped and got off my motorcycle and ran to the right hand side of the street behind the light thing okay now next slide please here's a photograph of Hodges doing exactly that there's Hodges I see now actually he's run when this Photograph was taken by Wilma Bond he had run all the way over here by this light light fixture here and run back there's his Park cycle right there so what's important here is that we have photographic evidence that Hodges did exactly what he said he did and he did that for these reasons let's next slide please oh oh this is the worst um this is from uh the Texas monthly and a reporter talked to another officer named Bud Brewer and Brewer said Bob that is Bobby Hargis you got something on your lip and then he hard just did like that he flicked at something on his lip and it was a piece of Kennedy's brain and a piece of skull bone so let's now look at both of them here that here's Hargis on the left hand side here and here's B.J Martin so let's see what B.J Martin had to say next slide I'm going to read this because this this turns out to be one of these tiny that tells you the whole story and now so so let's pay attention to this this is what he said under oath in his deposition I pulled off my helmet and noticed there were blood stains on the left side of my helmet it was just to the left of what would be the center of my forehead approximately halfway about a quarter of the helmet had spots of blood on it there was other matter that looked like pieces of Flesh there was blood and matter on my left shoulder of my uniform and just below the level of the shoulder now why why the left side why the left side because his right side is closest to Kennedy right here they both are here's Hodges and here's his right side this is Martin here and this is Hodges notice their right sides are closest to Kennedy's head okay well for years decades even uh I wondered about this but I didn't do anything about it right but this last year a good friend of mine Doug Doug the South did something about it he lined up all the photos of the limousine and frame 313 and it became apparent quickly that hardness was writing between Martin and Kennedy in other words Hodges actually produced a rain shadow right here what what what in in weather talk is a rain shadow when when a mountain prevents rain uh the other side of it uh Okay so let's move on this tiny fact take on great importance alongside Hodges report that he was hit so hard with the impact debris that at first thought and first thought he had been shot these two reports establish the high speed and that's the point of all this the high speed of the material blasted to the left rear this was no amorphous cloud of blood and brain material from Kennedy's head floating in the air and that the two motorcycles wandered into this material was blown to the left rear at such high speed that Hodges ended up shielding the right side of Martin's body helmet and cycle from it note that all this happens when Hodges is at least 15 feet from Kennedy so it's the speed the velocity of all the of all this debris that is really important next we have a couple Secret Service agents we have Clint Hill who's right there running between the two cars and we have agent Sam Kinney who's driving the Secret Service follow-up car maybe five to eight feet behind the presidential limousine so let's deal with Clint first but just like an eruption blood brain matter bone fragments everything you can imagine you know upcoming all the head he says it was like an eruption and as he was running up on the left-hand side he got hit with all this brain brain debris and everything else well I was able to find a couple's the Pruder frames that actually showed this so let's go to the Super frames now I don't know if you can see it right there and right there these are superior frames uh 334 and 337. so I can show you that but uh his testimony is very Vivid and uh very real let's go on now this was taken on Main Street a couple minutes before the shooting when the when the motorcade is still up there notice where Kennedy is on the right side here's Hodges and here's Martin here's Clint Hill Ed here's Sam Kinney right okay we've dealt with hill now let's go to Sam Kinney yeah Kenny said in this that Kennedy's head was blown out Clint Hill Clint Hill and I are unloaded him from the car there was nothing left it was the whole back of the head as far as I'm concerned I saw it hit and I saw his hair come out I had brain matter this is the import I had brain matter all over my windshield and left arm it would be his left arm that extended out over the door as he as we often do ride with our arm out the window okay next slide please now this has to do with fragments this is 313 and this is fragment 1 and fragment 2. now you can't recognize fragments in the air but uh unfortunately this the position of zapruder's camera doesn't adequately explain much about these fragments for example any any movement to the left is very difficult to discern because you have this straight on shot from the right so here's where the here's where the cars were going right and one fragment was found here in the gutter that's uh and the other was found clear down here this this is very likely the Weitzman fragment which was number one and this is the Harper fragment the Harper fragment was about like that it was a good good Hunker a good hunk of skull and so you really need to know where these track where fragments landed and you know you can't be sure you can't be certain of this but it's but we do know for certain that here with the Harper fragment you had you had a fragment from the not the exhibit but but from the top of the head that was that the FBI agent who who took custody of it said that he was told that it it was picked up in the grass and picked up in the grass 25 feet from where Kennedy's head was at that point so you have a fragment flying 25 feet that's a lot of energy went into that head right let's go to this I guess it's about time now to show you the supporters film because that's what I'm talking about and if I didn't show you this is a Pruder film you would absolutely know that I was hiding something right well I'm not hiding anything let's let's go Gary okay that's the first film we have a second one too of the same same period running close-up on the second shot yeah yeah give it a second shot showing okay do you want a third yeah do it a third time okay okay once again it's clear that Kennedy's head and body are thrown to the left rear by the bullet's impact just as earlier we saw the impact debris blown in the same direction at very high speed Don delillo viewed the supporter film many times in preparing his novel Libra and noted how it's very existence denies official opinion and here here it is I found this in an interview in Paris review where delillo says are you seeing in that frame 313 are you seeing some Distortion inherent in the film medium or in your own perception of things delillo ass or are you the Willing victim of some enormous lie of the state a lie a wish a dream or did the shot simply come from the front as every cell in your body tells you it did well that's what I want to say too I look at that support or film and there's not a doubt in my mind where that bullet came from it came from the right front and next slide um now neither of these two officers got hit with anything obviously if that 313 shot had come directly from the rear from the depository window These Are the officers who were close to it if it had blown out the the right front of his head these officers would have had some they weren't okay now here's what Doug Doug Jackson said he said that and it's interesting to see I mean some of the officers were looking for reporters right away and they dealt with reporters right away not not Doug Jackson he wrote his memory of the whole event in his child's I think he were an eight-year-old child's notebook that she got at school and finally the this was obtained by various people and and published here's here's what he said but he's not looking for for publicity or anything he wanted to make a record of what he'd seen and he said I look back toward Mr Kennedy and saw me hit in the head he appeared to have been hit just above the right ear the top of his head flew away from me that is in that direction towards the left which matches what we expect right the fragments went off towards the left everything went to the left okay next slide please yeah I didn't get anything on me until we got to put Parkland Hospital when I got there of course I got some blood on on me from helping him being the president out of the out of the car so he's he very explicitly says that now Cheney I got to tell you that uh various reports had had surfaced in the early 70s that Cheney had observed that so I I got in touch with the son of the author of the book who was very kind and sent to me a digital copy of the interview that where Kenny Cheney is alleged to have said this he didn't say anything like this in the in the interview there is no credible evidence there's no evidence anywhere Gary Mack of of this institution checked all the outtakes of interviews The Cheney gave on the night of the 22nd at headquarters there's nothing there either in the outtakes or in the broadcast things so you just have to take my word that Shady wasn't it and he's so close he's when we saw him in that uh alkins photo he was he was right up in here so next one now these are civilian Witnesses and uh first the Newmans I saw Bill Bill Newman here on on daily plaza where filming a documentary not not long ago and so these are the last two well three Witnesses on the north side of Dealey Plaza that's the side of the Zapruder pedestal etc etc these are the last two by the time uh Elm Street got to this point there are very few few Spectators these are the last two so let's see see this map and you'll see what I mean there there are the Newmans and there's Hudson notice there's nothing here from here on down okay these they both remain Direct until after these 313 shot was fired then they both threw themselves on the ground the Newman couple protecting protecting their children um now here's what here's what Bill Newman foreign this is an interview I did with Newman again in November and then in December 1966 . yeah this is Warren Commission testimony from from him and you see how clear wait a minute yeah here here is Newman here is Kennedy and this is almost at the instant when Kennedy is hit at 3 13. very very close Newman is maybe six eight feet at the most from from Kennedy when this happens and look at what he says the president well of course the president's being shot on the right side of the head by the third shot by Third shot he means the next to last shot I thought the shot was fired from directly above and behind where we were standing and that's what scared us because I thought we were right in the in the direct path of gunfire I interrupted him to ask about this whole description of his head etc etc right right he interrupts me and says my thoughts were that the shot entered there and apparently the thoughts of the Warren Commission was that the shot came out there for decades yeah I believed that the shot came out there right these are the mistakes that we've made for decades and that people who were right there eight feet away said exactly the opposite next slide please and this is again Newman when the Pres and this is this is his affidavit which he filled out on the afternoon of the 22nd when the president was directly in front of us and I was looking directly at him when he was hitting the side of the head the shot had come from the garden directly behind me I do not recall looking towards the Texas School Book Depository ever I look back in the vicinity of the garden okay next slide please it's not true okay now we deal with Emmett Hudson here's Emmett Hudson Emmett Hudson was sort of the groundskeeper for Dealey Plaza his job was maintaining the fountain at Union Station and maintaining the grounds at Daly Plaza these two people we don't know they just happen to be standing alongside of him now this is just after Kennedy was hit at 3 13. they're all erect right and this that afternoon Hudson went into the Sheriff's Office and executed an affidavit um he said he didn't know the names of these people who were standing with him that they just but there he said the shots that I heard definitely came from behind and above me okay next the FBI showed up at uh at Hudson's Place uh on the 26th that is well five six days later and they brought along the Dallas Times Herald with this Photograph this is the Mormon the famous Mormon photograph and um this is what the FBI said he said the shots this is now he's reporting what what Hudson said the shots sounded as if they were fired by someone at a position behind him which was above him and which was to his left well let's look there's there's Hudson behind him would be up in here let's see above him would be up in here and to his left would be very close to the corner of the fence okay we'll see how important that is later on when we get to it but but basically these two people are not able to tell us exactly where this shot came from they would say it came from within that ovoid shape Huds and as you noticed uh the Newmans were on the ground at that point this is some sometime after this is the same same shot we had before yeah he's sitting now he's he's just getting up right the new ones are flat on the ground still okay let's go to the next oh Sam Holland oh boy great um next please now this is where Sam Holland was right right here and he was well I'll get to him in a later next slide please that's Sam on the overpass and here is the Lee Bowers tunnel now probably some of you know who Lee virus is I just didn't have time to deal with this but Lee Bowers in this tunnel was looking at the backside of The Stockade Fence right and he said that um he found two people who were strangers to him now Lee Bowers had been in this tower for eight years or so and he knew all all the railroad Personnel so when he says they're strangers it means something Lee Bowers I think felt he owned all of this railroad property and he would keep track of people right so he said at the time of the shooting there was some sort of commotion up near the corner of the fence and and there's Holland showing us uh where he heard well we'll get to this in a minute next slide please Sam Holland at home in Irving his picture in 1966. now Holland's told us that it was the sound of the next to last shot which immediately drew his attention to this this area here and almost simultaneous with this strange shot which was he described it as the difference between a 38 and a high-powered rifle and this this from the from the about the corner of the you know the corner of the fence was quite different than all the other shots which seemed to come from up Elm Street up near the corner of Elm and Houston at the same time that he Ard that and his attention was drawn there he noticed a puff of smoke which has been very controversial but folks before we throw out the the puff of smoke at somebody's imagination you ought to know that eight different people besides besides Holland saw smoke in this general area and and later reported it so this is and and he said the smoke was just about the size of a footstool maybe 12 to 18 inches and it's sort of wafted out for at fence height and because the bank broke off and broke down by the time that that photograph was made let's go back to it that area was about eight or nine feet off the ground because the slope broke that downward so right under these trees right right under the exact spot that's where it was just like somebody had Clump I don't know what he meant by this but what's there in the text head clump of firecracker out and leave a little puff of smoke there now the house committee Kern the associate editor of life with with me during this interview and we had agreed on the way out that we were going to give Holland a hard time if we found if he said anything that we didn't seem was true so Kern started going going after Holland on this and Holland Holland handled the whole thing brilliantly and told him the hate this the exact same thing that the house hsca the house select committee on assassinations learned uh how many years later in 1978 they employed experts to tell them whether this was plausible or not and the experts said yeah I mean smokeless powder isn't smokeless you do get under certain conditions a little white smoke and under these conditions with filtered light coming through those trees it was perfect to be able to see that sort of thing okay next one Gary now so we spent five hours four or five hours with Holland at his home but then we made arrangements to meet to meet Holland down at Dealey Plaza on the Saturday so he's now showing us I think the most important thing he did look Holland didn't just observe this he didn't just remember this he acted on it he came running off as he's doing here in reenacting this running off the overpass to to his left and then and he's got uh three other railroad people with him so this this bunch of guys come running off the overpass they have to climb over a a a heat pipe of some sort one guy falls down on the ground they have to climb over all this jumble of cars because this wasn't really a parking lot it was railroad property right and and that's that's what he reenacted for it's wonderful he's wearing his hat and he's wearing his Overcoat uh I'll tell you about Holland now because you deserve to know who he was I mean and something about him he was 60 years old this guy was 60 years old in 1966 and it worked for the Union Terminal railroad for over 10 years and other railroads for an additional 30 years he was a longtime citizen of nearby Irving Texas where he coached Little League baseball for years he was a personal friend of sheriff Bill Decker who authorized Holland to carry a concealed handgun for 16 years as a special Deputy he and his wife didn't have any children of their own and they raised three adopted children one of whom became a policeman when when Ed Curran and I visited Holland's really modest home out there Holland told us of the efforts made by the um FBI agents who came to see him he he he by that time had had endless visits from Secret Service agents and and FBI agents trying to get him to say well I might have made a mistake maybe there were just three shots and he would never do that he maintained doggardly that he heard four and possibly five shots he Tangled with commission counsel Stern when at his deposition where he said I've also told those two four six Federal men that had been out there to see me that I definitely saw the puff of smoke and heard the report from under those trees I mean he's a tough guy he um but and he's an odd choice to be a government dad fly but Kern and I we we wanted we wanted to see him we wanted to interview him because we had to know for ourselves the importance of what he was saying was really great and we needed to talk with him directly he could have been some cranky old codger who wanted to get his name in the paper and stick it to the authorities at the same time so we had to know and unlike earlier people who came to interview and Kern and I were prepared Kern had read his affidavit and I'd read both of the affidavit and Warren Commission testimony we were we decide on the way out that we were going to give him a hard time if there was anything to give him a hard time about and then drill into the story we came away from our multi interview convinced of the accuracy of his of his memory and his credibility as a witness the transcript of our interview which I'm going to give to the museum is 71 pages Harlem story of what happened is simple he had some welders doing work up near the overpass and one of the two Dallas policemen up there asterisk felt help asked Holland to be the guy who would determine if anyone was going to have a chance to stand on the overpass the overpass was right over the car right so he didn't want any Bad actors there and only such people who who Holland approved because he knew him could could come come up on the overpass he heard two or three shots that sounded like they came from the upper part of Elm Street he was pretty sure there were two but there might have been three then there was a pause of several seconds and two more shots the first of these two hit Kennedy in the head and threw him backwards into the left towards his wife this shot was different not as loud as the others as I told you it sounded like a 38 column said as compared to a high-powered Rider then right away came the final shot again like the first two but from the other end of Elm Street he said of this next to last shot it came from behind the picket fence up on top of the grassy knoll and about the same time there was a louder report that came from up the street and they were so close together you could say they were just and he snaps his fingers once twice but about a second about a second between them and of course the house select committee's Acoustics evidence is that they were exactly three quarters of a second apart so he got that look what I want to tell you is I was amazed to reread this 71-page transcript now I hadn't read it for decades Holland got it almost exactly how I in any case believe it happened right now got it almost perfectly correct okay let's go through some some more photographs now this is what the Stockade Fence the far the railroad side of the Stockade Fence looked like in 1966 okay looked like that okay and now Holland and I made this diagram now you see between those two arrows there's a horizontal line and then a vertical line that's the corner of the fence and how yeah right there that's the court that's the corner of defense that that's how it looked in 1966 and notice but car number two there are all these Footprints well it had rained the night before so the ground was all wet and they found these these footprints in the mud a whole lot of them by car number two now that's what maybe eight to ten feet from the corner of the fence something like that and then one set went down between and the other etc etc we decided to meet Holland down at this in Greeley Plaza and you can see we made the appointment still on that piece of paper coffee at Union at Union Station I can't read the rest of it can you Saturday morning right so we met him down there on Saturday morning and uh I got Holland to stand behind the fence because I had something I wanted to do and look I was no trained in [ __ ] stupid little assistant professor of philosophy at Haverford College at that time I was no train trained investigator at all but I had something that I wanted to do I wanted to show him uh I I wanted to find out where these Footprints were now he's testified about them but that's vague I I want it so I asked Holland to go and stand by the fence at the exact point where he found the footprints and the fresh cigarette butts and all of that right and so he did he went from his position behind the fence and I took his picture that's the picture I took right and in the circle you can see Holland and his hat you see there he was okay well that's remember exactly where that is is can you see see him in the Hat there okay now let's go to the Mormon this is a Mormon okay here's there's there's there's Holland right you guy that we're on standing this is this is Holland standing on here in the in this photograph and what is this right okay let's go to an enlargement see that see that now see that okay so we looked into this a bit and we learned this you see this this vertical shape along the fence line and along the top of the fence that's that power in the background a fixed feature of the site right there is the tower still there as it is in the Mormon photograph but when you look where this shape is here right there's nothing there it's not a fixed feature of the site so whatever that is I call it the anomalous shape modestly I call it that because I think it's the top half of the gunman's head foreign there you go there's the shape there's Holland so what we knew this is what I wanted to test I wanted to to test whether Holland's footprints were in the same position that this guy was and they are tested it next please okay the last shot now it's all downhill from here it really is all downhill next slide Terry there is an enormous amount of evidence about this these two bullet fragments were Firearms id'd to the rifle found in the tsbd right here is an impact point on the windshield on the interior side the back side of the windshield here is another here it is right here another impact point of a bullet fragment again on the rear side um Bob Frazier of the FBI lab started his forensic examination of the limousine about a little after one o'clock on the morning of the 23rd and these are his notes which which basically count this is this massive amount of evidence of a bullet hitting Kennedy's head and throwing stuff forward start throwing stuff forward played next slide here here we go now let's follow this between 321 and 322 Kennedy has been thrown violently backwards into the left at this point between these two frames his shoulders hit the the vertical seat and he bounces forward so he bounces forward here and here and here Etc and here right and here these are all bows forward and at this point something has happened and I'll show you in detail these three three frames and I'll wait until I have larger frames to to show you to show you um next slide please here we go 327 nothing there 328 there it is and there it is in 329. a bunch of Gore has been blown out the front of Kennedy's head and is now dripping down in front of his face there are just for record purposes 331 no 332 33 35 which is very grisly and 30 36 and also 337. very Grizzly next slide please I'm rushing because I'm almost out of time okay so the argument here is that after after the 313 shot there are parts of Kennedy's head that are visible in the subroter film and after 327 that is 328 29 30 and and on and on they disappear so the obvious presumption is they were blown out by something that happened between 327 and 328 and that's what this is meant to show next slide please Gary so I measured the speed of Kennedy's head between 322 322 and and 326. that's before this change occurs and it turns out to be just under an inch per second I measured the velocity after 320 from 327 through 3 30 and the velocity had doubled now why would if somebody bounces off off the seed right why wouldn't he maintain the same speed or even go slower as as he got farther from the scene no this is the opposite which says something happened here between 326 and 327. yeah something happened he got hit dad okay next slide this is the change in half a second this is 327. this is 337 and the changes are enormous really now next slide please so this we believe to be the the last shot came from the depository window and struck Kennedy in the back of the head and through all this stuff forward next shot next slide please okay next slide okay this is the next to last shot at 3 13. 3 13. thanks Gary next slide now this is an expansion of that shot and we'll give you a close-up of this here's where here's where all the impact debris went right and here's where here's where we think is the angle of the incoming shot now notice I I want to caution you on this you can't just draw a line down the middle of where the impact debris was and take it back up out the other side and continue that line because where the impact debris goes is a function of two causes one is the incoming bullet and where it came from and secondly various weaknesses in the skull the sutures in the skull where they held or didn't help and and the actual skull address so you can't do that but look how close it is where I mean we where this I mean we didn't cook this this is what I'm trying to tell you because it doesn't mean that much only but this is where we think the shop is fired from next slide okay this is the last shot next slide we think it came from the depository up here and the witnesses over here tell a very different Tale the witnesses over here who are down here like um um alkins himself who is down here to take another picture and the friends and family think that things came out of Kennedy's head forward towards them so the witnesses down here are talking about about Kennedy being blown forward and seeing stuff come out of his head towards them who are in front of him whether where the witnesses over here are ducking down because they thought they almost got hit by a shot next slide please last shot here it is here's the depository up here and here's its impact next slide now we switched the HSA hearings this is an official document of the house select committee on assassinations that was published in 1979 after the committee went out of existence in the early days of January I want to call your attention to this what this says is location of unknown gunmen next slide please okay note where this is and note where this is and what I want to tell you this location was reached by why sad Ashkenazi after they reenacted the shooting in Daley Plaza and thus tightened up tightened up where the where the shot was was fired from instead of it coming to play in for a shot to count instead of it having to count within six milliseconds plus or minus they brought it down to one which is really a tiny window for for your shot to do yeah this this came off the work the Acoustics experts were doing and they located the 313 shot is being fired from that location and look at our location yeah in 19 yeah 12 12 years later this work using science of Acoustics for God's sakes something I never thought of right uh confirm what what I thought back back then next slide please that's it in other words at the beginning the Warren Commission and I guess most of us all thought that that Kennedy was hit with I didn't I thought he was hit in the head by two shots but but most everybody thought he was sitting ahead because of this impact debris which is clear and obvious you can't miss it you have bullet fragments in the car and you have them hitting the the interior back surfaces and only now do we understand that this fits 3 13 and this fits 327 328 okay that's that's all I got and I'd love to answer your questions [Applause] hey let me say first I haven't been teaching a class since 1976. man it's great to be back at a classroom again it really is all right Tink let's go approximately how far down The Stockade Fence do you feel was the shooter's position eight to ten feet from the corner eight to ten feet west of the corner all right oh here's an easy one how is the Kennedy research Community changed since the 1960s with the internet and self-publishing oh man I I don't know look I gave up on this at one point it was 19. 1979. and uh I had just managed to get my detective license which meant I could go off on my own I didn't go off a mountain but but I didn't have any clients and Peter Dale Scott had a book contract with random house to do a book on the house select committee so he assembled three of us to join him in writing this book right we would get some money right and I would get a free set of their volumes which was nice so I looked into the evidence at that point and I came away absolutely shocked because it was clear to me now that the field of evidence which sort of made sense back in 1967 didn't anymore it was heterogeneous it was in Conflict there were and what that meant obviously was some of this evidence was only so-called evidence it wasn't authentic evidence but how do you judge between them I I couldn't judge between them so I looked at that and decided well I better get to work with my detective business do you still believe the throat wound was a fragment wound and that ce399 was the bullet that lodged in the back um let me take the throat throat we're fortunate to have Gary Aguilar of the doing doing this look Kennedy assassination research is a it's a team sport it really is from the very beginning I mean back in the old days there was a very small community of people who trusted each other who worked together and we we did pretty good work back then pretty good work wasn't perfect we made a lot of mistakes too I personally made lots of mistakes but it's good to work together on this because you won't be able to think of all the reasons you're wrong that's the first thing about research like like this you got to have criticism right from the beginning or you waste your time on silly things and did you want to address uh Gary and I have written together an article on ce3 why don't you tell them about well the one thing to say about you know is that most of you know it was flattened slightly at the base of the bullet um otherwise it's essentially pristine um people who do forensics work zero electric than 45 or 50 000 autopsy says whenever employees like that you know you uh jackets will just go through fabric fabric compressions are left on the surface of the project so I know uh the first four people in the closed chain of possession were later shown 3.99 and said if you see this falling on the create assassination we're talking about the tp-1 department Hospital uh open rice who had a lot of experience as a police officer guy Tomlinson who founded the church don't be right Daniel Johnson discovered Ian Johnson's first super civilization who got upon him and then Raleigh to Chief Secret Service they're all shown 3.99 and they all could not identify the board as the board goes down this is a multi much longer discussion that I think from the moment that got into the FBI office that was transferred through all these people is not what is currently 1899 because there was some switch occurred I think one sentence jobs because 3.99 and it was not lodged into that there's only 399 is supposed to come through uh first officer Kennedy from back to the front and then he had gone through Connolly's breaking you know you know going through fast for you know uh 10 solid receptors were then exiting his chest moisture his wrist breaking his radius knowledge it's a very big problem uh there's been a lot of falsification written about that not least being a memo written to the water convention by the FBI's field office on July 7 1964 in which they said that you know that both the two guys who found the bullet Tom Woodson is right they said well you know we you know it resembled them all we found that thing okay but there's no 302 from any kind of an FBI interview of those two dots but then an uh a report from the Dallas field office showed up later on saying that four information neither Thomas in your life could identify before but the letter that you know I wrote the water condition said oh yeah they said resemble it so there's a lot of falsification of the record and I think there's good reasons suppose that that now exists in evidence never passed through commonly it never pass through economy and and again I can only expand upon this for about another hour an hour and a half now hey hey let me add to this the fact that at least I I Gary see the examination now of the medical evidence in the case to be stage two we we have seen all sorts of signs that the medical evidence backs the scenario that I just gave you tonight of these two two shots one from the front at 313 right run and the other from the rear at three 327 328. so that's stage two next year one free PS to support that and that is this and it's lame in the evidence that we've not recognized the meaning of it since 1967 and that is a Clark panel wet and looked at the autopsy of as I said reconfirmed the fighters the warrant condition but the chairman of the Department of radiology a guy named Russell Morgan wrote you know the Radiology part of a heart conditions lineage and it said that there was essentially a cloud of timing fragments in a right front quadrons ahead well Tony Franklin still come from Jackie bullets Johnny deppress um sort of soft shell boards that break on impact and before then releases a bunch of time fragments and they have a bird is what we call High Dragon tissue remember it's a Time fragment has a very small mass and relative to the surface area stopped very quickly by tissue so those tiny fragments tend to advocate in the area where the collection packs started going before it breaks if it's non-jacketed immediately tiny fragments are left out of position and those bullets requirements because they don't pasteurize your tissue they're stopped because it's objected and so what you see lunging back to the left is very characteristic with non-japan political event and it leaves an x-ray at the 12 where's the X-ray elements in the right foot and 510 which was originally described by the German radiology and then conferred by me I've seen The Originals confirmed Bosco electric receiver original concerned by Michael Justin who's in the original dead romantic and uh and John Fitzpatrick who was a French radiologist who did the review for the session Erica's review board we've all seen an episode except here you don't see that you see that with the non-jack which supports uh things thesis it was a different kind of bullet that was shot from there that it struck in the right front quad they started going back there are several questions here asking for your thoughts on the Acoustics evidence I'm gonna I'm gonna read this one because I think it kind of sums it up pretty well after the hsca determined that there was a conspiracy due to the dictabout scientists debunked the dictabel finding now that you have proven the dictabel does prove that shots were fired or four shots were fired what are those scientists saying now how have they responded who are the sign I believe these are the critical scientists so yeah I think National Academy of Sciences they haven't said a word they haven't replied at all they haven't said anything the look decided what's crazy here is uh James Barger [Music] if you get into physics and and Acoustics you'll find that James Barger is a legendary figure he was he first was employed in showing that the first shot at Kent State was actually fired by a national guardsman and he used the same the same principles that that the Acoustics experts used in this case were the same principles he used there and and anyone would use look the 12-member panel put together to do this Ambush against Barger and and these people none of them were acoustic scientists not one with an acoustic scientist the chairmanship of this cabal I would say not a committee was offered to a Alvarez Louis Alvarez who had already taken a pro-waran commission position and published an article in the Journal of physics about it I mean this you've had quite a history with Dr Alvarez yeah I've had quite a history with Dr Alvarez someone wants to know what Tink stands for do you want to it stands for nothing oh my sister look I'm 87. my sister's 97 right and as kids in a small town in Ohio she was called Todd and I was called Tink and somehow it stuck with me we're gonna we're gonna finish it up here with this question which I think is really interesting because as long as I've known you and going all the way back to 1960s the logistics of the assassination I mean what happened yes yeah this person wants to know simply who did it looking at the bigger picture I mean you you certainly believe there was a conspiracy multiple gunmen in the plaza do you have a theory as to who was ultimately responsible absolutely not I you know we know what we can know and what we can't know we can't know and you need evidence that's this is all about evidence and uh we ignored all this evidence about the debris field from the 313. we ignored that for a long long time and now it turns out Joe fetcheheimer was right it's a tiny facts that tell you what happened hey it's been a real privilege to to be with you with you here tonight please join me thank you so much [Applause] [Music]

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Length: 86min 8sec (5168 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2023