On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was publicly assassinated in Dallas, Texas. To this day it has been a topic of controversy. Check it out:
Kennedy was struck by 2 bullets, with the second being a fatal headshot.
Former Governor, John B. Connally Jr. was in the car with JFK and was also hit in the shooting but survived.
Officially, three bullets were fired by the gunman and the horrifying act was caught on camera by Abraham Zapruder.
The shooting occurred from the 6th-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository, a building along the motorcade route.
The official ruling was that the gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald. Two days after the assassination, Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby at the Dallas Police Department. That shooting was broadcast on live television.
There are many who have criticized the motorcade route, believing it to have an unusual amount of turns which would have caused the motorcade to slow down.
The route was chosen by Secret Service agents, Winston G. Lawson and Forrest V. Sorrels.
Secret Service was sent in advance to check out the route. It was noted that there were over 20,000 windows overlooking the route. But since they didn't have enough agents to station at every window, they opted to inspect none of the windows.
One week after the assassination, newly sworn-in President (and former Vice President), Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to investigate the circumstances of the JFK assassination and subsequent killing of Lee Oswald.
The commission was headed by Supreme Court Justice, Earl Warren and staffed with other esteemed officials.
The official ruling was that Oswald acted alone with no conspiracy invovled.
A Dallas resident, Oswald had a history of violence. When he was younger he chased his half-brother with a knife. He was also in the Marine Corps for three years where he became qualified as a sharpshooter with the M-1 rifle.
Oswald was under active surveillance by the FBI in Dallas; however, the local FBI strangely did not inform secret service about this. This was especially shocking considering the fact that Oswald was employed at the Texas School Book Depository.
The evidence with the gun being connected to Oswald was determined due to the fact that there were nearly a whole bullet and two bullet fragments recovered from the stretcher that matched the rifle.
The rifle was found hidden near the 6th-floor window as well as three bullet cartridges, matching the three shots heard.
Approximately 45 minutes after the JFK assassination, Oswald shot and killed Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit. This is backed up by eyewitness testimony and cartridge cases found at the scene belonging to Oswald.
With all that in mind, its pretty clear that Oswald was the shooter. However, many have wondered if he had acted alone. Unfortunately, because he was killed by Jack Ruby, we may never know for sure.
The Warren Commission stated:
The Warren Commission believed that there were three bullets fired. The first bullet missed, the second bullet hit JFK and Governor Connally, and the third bullet was the fatal headshot.
The second bullet was the most controversial, in that the Warren Commission suggested it hit both JFK and Connally. This idea was referred to as the Magic Bullet Theory.
The commission theorized that from the sixth floor window the second bullet entered through the back of JFK's neck, exiting downward, then entered through Connally's right side of his back, exited below his right nipple, and then entered and exited through Connally's left thigh.
Contrary to the Magic Bullet Theory, when you examine the frames of the Zapruder film it showed that there was not enough time for Oswald to fire two shots.
Here's a quote from Governor Connally.
Furthermore, in the 1970s, a new acoustic research technique was used to analyze the audio of the shooting, which found fix points in the audio, that could contain echo patterns similar to those of gunfire.
There's even supposedly footage of the JFK assassination from an angle different from the Zapruder film. This alternate footage, reportedly showed puffs of gun smoke from quite possibly a second shooter.
This file has not been seen since the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. This committee was formed in 1976 to conduct an investigation into the assassinations of JFK and MLK JR.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1978, that scientific acoustical evidence, established a high probability that two gun men shot at JFK. Here's a direct quote from the committee's findings.
The first theory was that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had JFK assassinated for political gain and power. Before Kennedy was elected LBJ had attempted to take the Democratic nomination from JFK at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles.
LBJ and JFK also apparently had words the day before the assassination. LBJ also played a big part in Kennedy going to Dallas in the first place.
LBJ's right-hand man had actually been warned by a high-profile Texas lawyer named Byron Skelton, that the political climate in Dallas was not safe.
One incident that proponents of this LBJ theory point to: A women named Madeleine Brown claimed to have an affair to LBJ. Brown claimed that she attended a party with LBJ, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover, the night before the assassination.
She claimed that LBJ whispered this in her ear.
The second theory was that the Russians were behind President Kennedy's assassination. There was tension between the two nations with the Cold War.
Oswald was also inexplicably at the Russian embassy in Mexico City, a few weeks before the Kennedy assassination.
The third theory was that the mob assassinated Kennedy. Three different mob groups separately claimed that they were responsible for JFK's assassination.
As attorney general, Robert Kennedy had made moves against organized crime, possibly angering them.
Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, was a Dallas nightclub owner, who some theorized had mafia connections.
In 2015, an imprisoned former mafia hitman, named James Files, claimed to have been the second shooter in the assassination, saying he was part of a plot in collaboration between the mafia and the CIA.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect to the mob and CIA theory comes from JFK's supposed ties to Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Syndicate, at the time.
JFK and Giancana, also reportedly shared a mistress, at different times, named Judith Campbell Exner.
The fourth and final theory, was that the CIA was ultimately
behind the assassination of JFK.
There were plenty of wild theories out there, for possible motives for the CIA assassinating Kennedy.
Forensic historian Patrick Nolan, wrote a book entitled CIA Rogues and the killing of the Kennedys, in which he theorized that four high-level agents, not only planned the shooting, but three of them fired four shots during the assassination.
Another possible CIA motive was that after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba, the CIA underwent personnel changes, at the hand of Kennedy, which may have upset them.
Also during that Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy refused to offer additional US Military support, despite the CIA offering an umbrella of air protection. The explicit use of the word umbrella, unlocked one controversial wrinkle to the CIA theory.
In the Zapruder film and other photos taken at the time of the shooting, you can see one lone man holding an open umbrella above his head.
The first, was that it wasn't raining and despite it raining in Dallas the night before, nobody in the crowd, as far as pictures and media can tell, had an umbrella. The second, more dubious occurrence, was that face that Kennedy was struck by the first bullet at the moment his car in front of this Umbrella Man.
The Department of Defense Weapons Developer, named Charles Senseney, incredibly testified, to the the Senate Intelligence Committee, that a form of this wacky umbrella weapon exists, because he designed it.
One JFK book author, named Jim Marrs, also claimed that these darts were fired through the umbrella's webbing when opened.
Furthermore, there are pictures that show the umbrella closed before and after the assassination, but during the assassination the umbrella was clearly open as Kennedy passed The Umbrella Man.
Also suspicious, was the fact that after the shooting, while other spectators fled the scene, this Umbrella Man, along with another man, sat down next to each other on the curb, seemingly, undisturbed.
This man was man named Louie Steven Witt, who came forward to the Senate Committee, to testify, even bringing the umbrella along with him. He claimed that the umbrella was a symbol of protest to JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy.
As odd as this may seem, throughout history, many people
both in England and America, have used Umbrellas as
a symbol of Protest.
Even the paranoid former president, Nixon, banned his aides form having umbrellas when he was vice president to Eisenhower, for fear of having a visual link to the unpopular policy of appeasement.
The supposed Umbrella Man, Witt, also claimed that the umbrella blocked his view of Kennedy being assassinated, thus explaining his apparent state of calm, or shock, as he described it, as he say on the curb, after the shooting.
Perhaps, Louie Steven Witt was in fact, the Umbrella Man and this was all a misunderstanding, or perhaps Witt, was a puppet for the CIA or perhaps Witt, was a puppet for the CIA to cover its tracks.
In the end, people continued to speculate, on what truly happened in Dallas that day. A 2003 ABC news poll, conducted 40 years after JFK's assassinations, found that approximately 70% of Americans believed there was some sort of plot behind the killings.
As for now the theory behind whether or not there was a conspiracy or multiple gunmen will remain...unsolved. Before you leave, we want to know...
