The JFK Assassination - 47 Years On.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.



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.







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.



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.





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.



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.



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