The Kennedy Assassination: 50 Years Ago

The 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine flanked by four Dallas Police motorcycle cops in their dress uniforms astride four Harley Davidsons slowed and made a right turn from Main Street onto Houston as it entered the triangular landscaped area of Dealey Plaza on the edge of downtown Dallas. Here the crowds which had lined the entire length of Main Street were thinned out but men women and children were still cheering and clapping hard. Special Agent William Greer drove the long blue car mounted on the front with two pedant flags of the United States and the President, north along Houston at parade speed past the Criminal Courts and County Records building to the right and the reflecting pool on the left. Special Agent Roy Kellerman seated on the right manned the two way radio.



John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, aged forty six, brushed his shock of chestnut hair with his right hand and then waved, a toothy smile on his handsome tanned face, dressed in a blue suit, blue tie and striped shirt. A bunch of roses rested on the back seat between the President and the First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, thirty four, a smile on her beautiful face, her auburn hair topped by a pink pillbox hat which matched her pink jacket and dress as she wave to the crowd on her left with a white gloved left hand. In the jumpseats were Texas Governor John B. Connally, also aged forty six, a tall square jawed ruggedly handsome man with iron hair, dressed in a black mohair suit and clutching his white stetson hat in his lap next to his elegant wife Idanell Brill "Nellie" Connally, also dressed in pink.

A 1955 Cadillac eight passenger convertible rode immediately behind the limousine with four Secret Service agents standing on the running boards, two on either side. Behind them was another Lincoln convertible carrying Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Senator Ralph Yarborough and the Vice President's wife Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor Johnson. The rest of the cars and buses carrying dignitaries and press were strung out along Main. Ahead at the corner of the intersection of Houston and Elm loomed a seven story brick building called the Texas School Book Depository with a Hertz sign on the roof with a digital display reading 12.30.

Delighted by the exuberant crowds, Mrs. Connally turned around to the President.

"You can't say Dallas doesn't love you Mr. President!"

"No! You can't!" replied Kennedy in his distinctive Boston accent.



A group of police motorcycles followed by a white Ford sedan driven by Police Chief Curry swung around the hairpin from Houston onto Elm.
Greer slowed and swung the heavy automobile through the turn slowing down to 11 miles per hour. Beyond the Book Depository the street curved gentle downhill with an open expanse of grass lawn on the left and to the right a concrete pergola, a row of trees and a wooden fence. Ahead was a triple underpass where Elm, Main and Commerce streets converged under a railroad bridge. Beyond was a curving slip road which would join the Stemmons Freeway and take the motorcade to the Trade Mart where Kennedy was to give his televised luncheon speech.
Mrs. Kennedy saw the tunnel ahead and thought it would nice to be in the shade after the heat of the sun and the crowds.
A little girl ran along the sidewalk on the left.



Standing on a concrete pier near the concrete pergola to the right and above the level of the street, Abraham Zapruder, fifty eight, a portly bald headed Jewish dressmaker dressed in a dark suit, thick framed glasses and a trilby hat started filming with his 8mm Bell & Howell home movie camera. His pretty young receptionist Marilyn Sitzman was behind her boss supporting him because he was prone to vertigo.

Tracking the President in the crosshairs of the four power scope mounted on his Italian made Mannlicher Carcano 6.5mm bolt action rifle, Lee Harvey Oswald, twenty four, an ex-Marine working as an employee of the Texas School Book Despository took careful aim. The butt stock of the weapon was nestled into his right shoulder, his right cheek against the wooden stock, his right hand gripping the stock, index finger on the trigger, the sling looped around his left forearm, his his left hand gripping the stock under the barrel and the barrel rested on a book crate balance on the open window ledge. The limousine completed the turn until Oswald could see Kennedy from behind just like a head and shoulder target on the rifle range.
He gently squeezed the trigger just as the branches of an oak tree obscured the President from view.

Leaving the muzzle of the rifle barrel at 2,300 feet per sec the round nosed copper jacketed bullet struck a tree branch and deflected. It smashed itself to pieces against a kerb on Commerce Street and a fragment cut a young man named James Tague on the cheek. He retreated beneath the cover of the underpass.

Kennedy turned his head in surprise and dropped his right hand. Connally recognized the sound immediately as a rifle shot and turned to look over his right shoulder. Someone is shooting at the President he thought. Don't let this happen. Not today.

"Oh no, no, no!"

Kennedy saw a young father holding up his little son and thought of his own son who he had left behind in Washington. The little boy's eyes met his. He missed his kids when he was away. Such a cute kid he thought to himself, smiled again and waved his right hand.

The little girl stopped running.

Zapruder suddenly found himself filming the back of a road sign as the car passed from right to left.

A young man named Louie Steven Witt standing on the right side of Elm opened an umbrella as the Presidential limousine came level with him. Witt was angry with Kennedy for allegedly appeasing Communism after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The umbrella was a symbol of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who often carried an umbrella who had appeased Hitler at the Munich Conference in the 1930s.

Zapruder's momentary anxiety evaporated as the limousine appeared back into view.

Oswald swore and he cycled the bolt, lifting the bolt handle, pulling it back, ejecting the spent shell and shoved the bolt forward again shaving a fresh round off the top of the clip in the box magazine and shoving it into the breech before slapping down the bolt again. The spent shell bounced against the wall of book crate around the window and clattered on the floorboards. He peered through the sight again and saw Kennedy's head and shoulders appear from behind the tree branches. He fired again.





The bullet struck Kennedy in the back of the neck to the right of the spine, bruised the top of his right lung an exited the base of his windpipe nicking the knot of his tie. Connally felt like he was struck in the back by a sledgehammer as the bullet entered at the rear of his right armpit and tore a fist sized hole in his chest below the right nipple before smashing the radius bone of his right wrist and lodging in the flesh of his left thigh. Pain shot through Connally's body as he looked down and saw blood pouring into his lap.

"My God they're going to kill us all!" he screamed. Nellie grabbed him and pulled her husband down into her lap.

Why is he screaming thought Jacqueline Kennedy as she turned her head in surprise. Jack was holding his throat with both hands and turning toward her an expression of puzzlement on his face.

"My God! I'm hit!" he gasped.

"Jack! What are they doing to you?" she cried.

Zapruder could see the President hold his neck, both elbows sticking out. Was Kennedy was playing a gag? Look they got me, he thought.





Special Agent Clint Hill leaped from the left running board of the follow up car and ran flat out toward the stricken President. Greer and Kellerman turned around in the front seat of limousine and saw Kennedy holding his throat. Special Agent Rufus Youngblood threw himself on the Vice President. Across Dealey Plaza people were dropping to the ground. One man threw himself on a woman.

The second shell rattled on the floor as Oswald drew a fresh bead and took aim. He could see the man with the chestnut hair was hit. The crosshairs were perfectly positioned on the back of the head. He exhaled as he squeezed the trigger.



The bullet struck Kennedy in the back of the head and exited through the top front right of the skull and shattered into pieces. The President's cranium exploded tearing away the chestnut scalp and spraying shards of bone, pieces of brain tissue and blood over the occupants of the limousine. A pink mist hung in the air. The Connallys felt like they were hit by buckshot until John saw the brain tissue and he screamed and screamed. Officer Bob Hargis riding his motorcycle in the slipstream of the limousine rode through a sheet of blood which hit him in the face.





One bullet fragment dented the chrome windshield frame of the limousine and another cracked the inside of the laminated glass before both mangled pieces of lead and copper landed on the front seat.





Doused in blood and brain tissue Mrs. Kennedy screamed in horror and clambered over the truck of the limousine as her husband's body slumped across the backseat. Clint Hill grabbed one of the handholds on the trunk and tried to pull himself board, his foot slipping on the step beside the spare wheel mount on the rear of the car. He held on ran a few steps and finally hauled himself board just as Greer his face spattered with blood and brains floored the gas. "Get down!" he yelled, pushing Mrs. Kennedy down into her seat and spreadeagled his body over the back of the limousine as it leaped forward with a squeal of tires.



"We are hit. Get us to the hospital immediately" Kellerman said into his radio handset. In seconds Greer was overtaking Chief Curry's white Ford with the motorcycle cops fighting for room. The motorcade broke up as the Presidential and Vice Presidential parties tore away, sirens screaming as they raced to nearby Parkland Hospital.

Zapruder leaped from the concrete pier his camera in his hand at his side.
People were running everywhere in panic. Photographers were leaping out of press cars. A motorcycle was on the kerb with the backwheel spinning and a cop was running up the grass with his revolver drawn.

"They killed him! They killed him! They killed him!" Zapruder screamed again and again tears rolling down his cheeks.

Ejecting the last spent shell onto the floor, Oswald stashed the rifle behind some boxes and ran downstairs.