The JFK Assassination - 47 Years On.

silkworm53

47 years ago this month the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, 46, was murdered in Dallas, Texas by loner and malcontent 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald as he rode in his limousine motorcade on 22 November 1963.

The President and First Lady emerge from Air Force One at Love Field.



Jack and Jackie are greeted at Love Field.





JFK and Mrs. Kennedy are greeted by well-wishers.



Boarding the limousine. The man in the hat is Texas Governor John B. Connally.



President Kennedy sits on the right side of the back, his wife Jacqueline sits on the left side. Governor Connally and his wife Nellie sit in the jumpseats. Agent William Greer is behind the wheel and Agent Roy Kellerman is manning the radio.



The motorcade leaves Love Field.



The limousine rides through Dallas.













The route of the Dallas motorcade published in local newspapers.



The scene on Main Street in downtown Dallas.

medici

Once read a book about the assasination called "Mortal Error" that posited that it was an agent called Hickey that accidentally discharged his weapon in the car behind Kennedy's limousine and which hit the President in the head.

Very grounded and well-researched book by my standards in any case...anyone else read this?

silkworm53

The Texas School Book Despository is in the left top corner.
The motorcade turned at the corner of Main and Houston toward the Book Depository before turning sharply onto Elm along the north side of the triangular toward the mouth of the railroad over pass.



The limousine takes the turn from Main onto Houston.



The motorcade passes along Houston toward the turn. The men standing the follow up car are Secret Service agents - the man with the sunglasses is Agent Clint Hill.



A compilations of stills taken from a film by an employee of the Texas School Book Depository as the motorcade passed along Houston toward the corner with Elm.



The car turns at the corner of Houston and Elm in front of the Book Depository and passes through Dealey Plaza.

silkworm53

Kennedy waves for the last time.
The little girl in white and red stops running.
Connally turns sharply as he hears a rifle shot over his right shoulder.



Abraham Zapruder standing on the grassy knoll finds himself filming the back of a roadsign.







Governor Connally emerges from behind the sign and his suit jacket bulges as a bullet strikes him in the back and exits his chest.



Kennedy grabs his throat.
The same bullet has struck him in the neck and exited the base of his windpipe.





Connally cries out 'Oh no no no! My God they are going to kill us all!"
Kennedy sags over as his wife turns in horror and reaches out to him.



Mrs. Kennedy embraces her husband as he struggles to breath.
The Governor falls into his wife's lap blood pouring into his lap from large ragged wound in his chest.



A bullet strikes Kennedy in back of the head and blows open the right side of his skull mortally wounding him.





As Abraham Zapruder continues to film he screams 'They killed him! They killed him! They killed him!'



Screaming in terror Mrs. Kennedy climbs out of the back seat reaching for a piece of her husband's head on the roof of the trunk. She is in danger of falling under the wheels of the motorcade.



Agent Clint Hill is too late to save the President but rescues the First Lady, pushing her down into her seat.

silkworm53

The motorcade races toward Parkland Hospital.







This is a painting of Jacqueline Kennedy cradling her dying husband.
Weeping with grief, she refused to leave him telling Clint Hill to leave her alone and that he was dead.
Clint Hill believing she did not want anyone to see the horrific head wound removed his jacket and wrapped the President's head before he was taken into the Trauma Room.



The blood stains on the backseat of the limousine.



It was in this room where doctors battled to save the President's life.



The doctors who worked in Parkland and who operated on JFK, Connally and Lee Harvey Oswald.



Outside members of the President's entourage, police and crowds waited.





Meanwhile back on Dealey Plaza there was pandemonium







Bob Jackson took this photo of the 6th floor window just moments after the shooting.

silkworm53

Dallas cops moved in to surround the Texas School Book Despository.



Detectives search the 6th floor and find boxes piled around the 6th floor corner window forming a sniper nest.



A firing rest with a view over looking the plaza below.







Three spent 6.5mm cartridge shells on the floor.



A 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano 91/38 bolt action rifle.







...and a paper bag used to transport the rifle.





The cops are convinced they found the location of the fatal shots and the murder weapon.
The hunt is on for the assassin.

silkworm53

Howard L. Brennan seated on a wall below the 6th floor window saw the shooter fire the fatal shots.





Brennan wearing his steam fitter hardhat talks to cops.



Brennan quickly reported his observations to police officers, and a description of the suspect was broadcast to all Dallas police at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m.

At 12:45 p.m., 15 minutes after the assassination, Officer J.D. Tippit received a radio order to move to the central Oak Cliff area as part of a concentration of police around the center of the city.



At 12:54 Tippit radioed that he had moved as directed. By then several messages had been broadcast describing a suspect in the Kennedy assassinationas a slender white male, about 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall, and weighing about 165 pounds (75 kg).

At approximately 1:11–1:14 p.m.,Tippit was driving slowly eastward on East 10th Street in Oak Cliff when, about 100 feet (30 m) past the intersection of 10th Street and Patton Avenue, he pulled alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, who was walking in the same direction.Oswald, who resembled the broadcast description, walked over to the car and apparently exchanged words with Tippit through the open vent window.
Tippit opened the door on the left side and started to walk around the front of his car. As Tippit reached the front wheel on the driver's side, Oswald drew a revolver and fired several shots in rapid succession, hitting Tippit three times in the chest. He then walked up to Tippit's fallen body and shot him directly in the head, killing him instantly.



Oswald fled the scene leaving his jacket behind in a car lot before taking refuge in the Texas Theatre where he is apprehended.









He is arrested after trying to draw the same .38 revolver he used to kill Tippit.



At the police station is booked for the murder of President John F. Kennedy and the murder of J.D. Tippit.

silkworm53

At the hospital the doctors fail to save the President's life due to his massive fatal head wound.



The doctors found a hole in the base of the throat which they enlarged to insert to insert to breathing tube.





..but to no avail.

Walter Cronkite of CBS news his voice breaking with emotion announces the sad news to the shocked and grief stricken American public.





Connally meanwhile is saved despite suffering numerous 5 wounds - in his back, chest, right wrist and a superficial wound in his left thigh.



A nearly whole bullet is found on his stretcher by a Parkland hospital orderly who passes it to a Secret Service agent who in turn passes it to the FBI.





It is soon established that the bullet was fired by the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository.



Cops who visit Ruth Paine's house where Oswald spent the night with his estranged wife Marina, a Russian girl he when he brief defect to the Soviet Union, search the garage where they find photographic negatives.
These are developed in the crime lab.

They Oswald brandishing the assassination rifle and his .38 handgun used to kill Officer Tippit.



Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz...



...and Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade...



...are convinced they have the right man.

silkworm53

Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days at Dallas Police Headquarters. He denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, denied owning a rifle, said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes, denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment, and denied carrying a long heavy package to work the morning of the assassination.

During his last interrogation on November 24, Oswald was asked again where he was at the time of the shooting; he said he was working on an upper floor when it occurred, then went downstairs where he encountered Patrolman Marion Baker.



Baker was a motorcycle police officer who had been riding in the motorcade when he heard the shots from Book Depository rode up dismounted and ran into the building with his gun drawn where he met Roy Truly, Oswald's boss.
Together with Truly he ran upstairs where he confronted Oswald in the lunchroom on the 2nd floor when he saw him through the window of a vestibule door.





Truly told Baker that Oswald was an employee before Baker rushed out with Truly and headed upstairs.
Oswald slipped out of the building before the police surrounded it and was the only employee missing after the shooting.

It was later proven that Oswald could have fired the shots, stashed the rifle behind boxes on the 6th floor and arrived in the second floor lunchroom where he was confronted by Baker.

silkworm53

At Dallas Police HQ was repeatedly moved between his holding cell and the interrogation room for questioning while running a gauntlet of newsmen, photographers and cameramen who crowded the corridor.
Oswald made the most of his celebrity claiming he was 'just a patsy' and arrogantly denying he killed the President while no-nonsense detectives cast each other knowing glances.





Among the melee of journalists, newsmen, TV crews and photographers was a man named Jack Ruby, a shady strip club operator who was well known to cops in Dallas was hanging around offering to get sandwiches, helping newsmen with gossip he picked up from his police friends and just nosing around.





It was decided to move Oswald to the Dallas County Jail on the morning of 24 November. It was decided to use the basement of the Police HQ because of death threats made against Oswald.
An armored car was brought at and parked at the entrance to the ramp.



Newsmen gathered in the basement as Oswald was led out to a waiting sedan. Jack Ruby had managed to gain entrance into the basement from the Main Street ramp. He blended himself into the swirling wall of newsmen where he waited in ambush for Oswald to pass.

Oswald was only a few feet away when Ruby lunged toward him with a .38-caliber snub nosed revolver in his hand.

He shoved his gun into Oswald’s stomach and squeezed the trigger. Officer Jim Leavelle tried to wrestle Oswald out of the way, but failed. A muffled report followed and Oswald moaned in pain as Leavelle eased him to the basement floor.

Someone shouted, “Jack, you son-of-a-bitch!” Then another person shouted, “Oswald has been shot!” Detective Graves grabbed Ruby and wrestled him to the ground.

Still intending to put more bullets into Oswald, Ruby attempted to pull the trigger again. Graves wrenched the pistol from Ruby’s hand as he shouted, “Turn it loose, Jack! Turn it loose!” Once restrained, Jack Ruby was immediately hustled to Captain Fritz’s office. His one shot had been remarkably efficient





The gun used to murder Oswald.



A map of the Dallas Police HQ basement.



Ruby, a loser and oddball just like the equally pathetic man he had just killed, had just humiliated the Dallas Police Department and spawned a million conspiracies.

His motive? He sought hero status as a public avenger - the self-appointed executioner of the Kennedy family, to spare Mrs. Kennedy the ordeal of testifying at a trial and to show that he was patriotic Jewish American.

Ruby's mugshot.



Ruby was sentenced to death for Oswald's murder but was to die of cancer in 1967 before he could be executed while he was on appeal.

firefly08

Jack Ruby talks about his motives:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we2eucWXqjg

meglome

now that's a pictorial record.

silkworm53

After JFK's death, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded him and fearing a wider conspiracy he decided to leave Dallas immediately and return to Washington DC.

After a scuffle with overly zealous Dallas officials who insisted the body remained behind, the body was driven to Love Field and loaded on Air Force One.



The coffin was stowed in the aft of the aircraft.



Safely aboard Air Force One, Johnson was sworn in as 36th President of the United States in the presence of a judge, his wife Lady Bryd and Mrs. Kennedy who still wore her blood stained pink jacket and dress.





The plane took off from Love Field for Andrews Air Force Base where the coffin was unloaded and taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital.





A team of pathologists examined the body and concluded that Kennedy had been struck by two bullets from above and behind in the back of the neck and the back of the head.









This would establish the Texas School Book Depository 6th floor as the source of the shots and Oswald as the sole assassin.

silkworm53

This is the first segment of documentary drama about the twenty-four Irish Army Cadets who were chosen to perform a silent drill at Kennedy's funeral.

Kennedy had been so impressed by their drill display performed during his visit to Ireland in 1963 that Jacqueline asked specifically that be his honor guard at his funeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eepw4Obeyc

Kennedy's funeral was a memorable one attended by hundreds of heads of state, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people filed past his coffin and millions watched it on television or listened to the ceremony on radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2h3z3Jqqo0

Sadly Kennedy's brother Bobby was himself assassinated by another crazed lone assassin



Other family members who could have continued the family political dynasty have died in tragic accidents most notably John F. Kennedy Jnr. who was killed in a plane crash in July 1999.



In contrast to the grand pageantry of the President's funeral, Lee Harvey Oswald's funeral was a pathetic spectacle with newsmen covering the event recruited at short notice to carry his coffin.

Oswald's widow Marina and their young daughters, Oswald's mother and her husband and his older brother Robert were the only mourners.

Marina remarried a man named Porter and still lives today in Dallas - she is convinced that Lee was part of a conspiracy. She has made occasional TV appearance over the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCFErvulmAw

Her daughters by Oswald - June and Rachel - have also given television interviews.

Her daughters are now middle aged and mostly keep a low profile.

Robert Oswald was always convinced of his kid brother's guilt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DVQgFeUiuM

Today the assassin's simple headstone bears only his surname 'OSWALD'.



The late Officer J.D. Tippit, also a decorated WW2 combat veteran, was given a dignified funeral and because he died in the line of duty trying to apprehend the Presidential assassin he was declared a hero and given well deserved posthumous decorations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSToEdymIE

He left behind a widow Marie and their three children.



She is now an old woman who remarried in 1967 to another police officer but she recently attended a ceremony where a replica of her husband's patrol car went on permanent display at the Dallas Police Association in 2009.



http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-tippitcar_21met.ART.State.Edition1.4bb2cae.html

johngalway

An amazing pictorial report of a heart wrenching story.

kaiser sauze

The deaths of the two Kennedys are the reason why The US is stuck in this rut it is right now.

It is why civil rights are called unconstitutional by tea partakers.

It is why healthcare is seen as privileged.

It is why The US can't keep their tentacles out of other countries' business.

These debates would have been put to bed many ears ago if JFK had survived at least a term or, if not, a Robert Kennedy presidency in the 70s.

Instead The US ended up with Nixon/Agnew&Ford, Reagan/BushI and BushII/Cheney and silly season came to town.

Wompa1

medici wrote: »

Once read a book about the assasination called "Mortal Error" that posited that it was an agent called Hickey that accidentally discharged his weapon in the car behind Kennedy's limousine and which hit the President in the head.

Very grounded and well-researched book by my standards in any case...anyone else read this?

So his theory was that 2 shots came from Oswald and the one to the back of the head was a discharge from secret service?....

There are so many convincing arguments for both sides. It will be very interesting when the records are released.