(1) The Warren Commission Report (September, 1964)
Governor Connally testified that he recognized the first noise as a rifle shot and the thought immediately crossed his mind that it was an assassination attempt. From his position in the right jump seat immediately in front of the President, he instinctively turned to his right because the shot appeared to come from over his right shoulder. Unable to see the President as he turned to the right, the Governor started to look back over his left shoulder, but he never completed the turn because he felt something strike him in the back. In his testimony before the Commission, Governor Connally was certain that he was hit by the second shot, which he stated he did not hear.
Mrs. Connally, too, heard a frightening noise from her right. Looking over her right shoulder, she saw that the President had both hands at his neck but she observed no blood and heard nothing. She watched as he slumped down with an empty expression on his face. Roy Kellerman, in the right front seat of the limousine, heard a report like a firecracker pop. Turning to his right in the direction of the noise, Kellerman heard the President say "My God, I am hit," and saw both of the President's hands move up toward his neck. As he told the driver, "Let's get out of here; we are hit," Kellerman grabbed his microphone and radioed ahead to the lead car, "We are hit. Get us to the hospital immediately."
The driver, William Greer, heard a noise which he took to be a backfire from one of the motorcycles flanking the Presidential car. When he heard the same noise again, Greer glanced over his shoulder and saw Governor Connally fall. At the-sound of the second shot he realized that something was wrong, and he pressed down on the accelerator as Kellerman said, "Get out of here fast." As he issued his instructions to Greer and to the lead car, Kellerman heard a "flurry of shots" Within 5 seconds of the first noise. According to Kellerman, Mrs. Kennedy then cried out: "What are they doing to you!" Looking back from the front seat, Kellerman saw Governor Connally in his wife's lap and Special Agent Clinton J. Hill lying across the trunk of the car.
Mrs. Connally heard a second shot fired and pulled her husband down into her lap. Observing his blood-covered chest as he was pulled into his wife's lap, Governor Connally believed himself mortally wounded. He cried out, "Oh, no, no, no. My God, they are going to kill us all." At first Mrs. Connally thought that her husband had been killed, but then she noticed an almost imperceptible movement and knew that he was still alive. She said, "It's all right. Be still." The Governor was lying with his head on his wife's lap when he heard a shot hit the President.At that point, both Governor and Mrs. Connally observed brain tissue splattered over the interior of the car. According to Governor and Mrs. Connally, it was after this shot that Kellerman issued his emergency instructions and the car accelerated.
(2) The Houston Chronicle (15th November, 1998)
Nellie Connally, the last surviving passenger of the car in which President Kennedy was assassinated, is reasserting her belief that the Warren Commission was wrong about one bullet striking both JFK and her husband, former Governor John Connally.
"I will fight anybody that argues with me about those three shots," she told Newsweek magazine in its Nov. 23 issue. "I do know what happened in that car. Fight me if you want to."
The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that one bullet passed through Kennedy's body and wounded Connally, and that a second bullet struck Kennedy's head, killing him. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
The Connallys maintained that two bullets struck the president in Dealey Plaza 35 years ago and a third hit the governor. John Connally died in 1993 at age 75.
The Warren Commission concluded there also was a bullet that missed the car entirely. Some conspiracy theorists argue that if three bullets struck the men, as the Connallys insisted, and a fourth missed, then there must have been a second gunman because no one person could have fired four rounds from Oswald's bolt-action rifle so quickly.
Mrs. Connally says in Newsweek that personal notes she wrote a few weeks after the assassination reaffirm her belief of the number of shots.
Mrs. Connally wrote that after hearing the first shot, John Connally turned to his right to look back at Kennedy "and then wheeled to the left to get another look at the President. He could not, so he realized the President had been shot."
Then, she wrote, John Connally "was hit himself by the second shot and said, `My God, they are going to kill us all!'"
According to her notes, that was followed by the third shot that passed through Kennedy's head.
She wrote: "With John in my arms and still trying to stay down ... I felt something falling all over me. ... My eyes saw bloody matter in tiny bits all over the car. Mrs. Kennedy was saying, 'Jack! Jack! They have killed my husband! I have his brains in my hand.' "
(3) Michael Granberry interviewed Nellie Connally for the Dallas Morning News (22nd November, 2003)
"It kept going through my mind like a phonograph record playing over and over and over. But for John, it was even worse. His first night home, he cried out in his sleep. I would just pat him on the shoulder, and he'd go back to sleep. Ten days after, I asked him, 'What is it you dream, dear?' And he said, 'Nellie, somebody's always after me. With a gun.' So I just let him cry out. He did that for a month or six weeks and they were always after him."
Her own waking nightmare "has us all in the car. Everyone's having a wonderful time. Everyone's being so good, and then all of a sudden the horror starts. There is never anything good after that happening in that car. The car is filled with yellow roses, red roses and blood. And pieces of the president's brain."
Connally regrets that President Kennedy's legacy - and, by extension, the nation's - could have been so much brighter in the years ahead. "We were all in our 40s," she says of the passengers in the top car of VIP's. "We all had so much to give."
But Dealey Plaza would come to dictate an entirely different reality.
"For the first time in my life, I feared for my family," she said. "And I never had before. Mark, our youngest, was 11 at the time. There was this wall at the governor's mansion (in Austin) that he loved to walk around. Well, he could no longer walk around that wall. We were afraid somebody would snatch him off of it. Sharon, 14 at the time, could no longer go anywhere without someone going with her. It became, in some ways, a difficult life for us, and for me. And even to this day, I still take a glance behind me, just to make sure."
Governor Connally, who survived his wounds, went on to serve as Treasury secretary in the Nixon administration and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980. He died in 1993.
Mrs. Connally, who lives in Houston, says Nov. 22 will always be a part of her. "I push it to the back of my head. I can bring it out any time I want, but I know it's not constructive. It was such a sad day. We all wanted to be there to begin with, but if you'd been in that car, believe me, you would never ever want to be there again."
(4) Los Angeles Times (3rd September, 2006)
Nellie B. Connally, the former first lady of Texas who was riding in the limousine carrying President Kennedy when he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, has died. She was 87.
Connally died Friday night at an assisted-living facility in Austin, Texas, said Julian Read, a longtime friend of the Connally family.
Read expressed surprise at Connally's death, noting that she had "been extremely active and vital the last few days and weeks."
Nellie Connally was the last living person from the car on that darkly historic day more than 42 years ago when Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire from the Texas School Book Depository as the presidential motorcade made its way through the streets of Dallas...
She had aspirations to be an actress when she went off to the University of Texas in the late 1930s. She was named "Sweetheart of the University" in 1938, and it was there that she spotted Connally.
"I recognized a tall, good-looking brunet coming. That was it. I just knew," she told reporters years later.
John Connally went to work as a congressional aide to Lyndon Johnson in Washington after graduation. Nellie and John Connally married in 1940 and had four children.
His political career rose over the years. He managed political campaigns for Johnson, including his 1964 presidential run, and held high-ranking posts, including secretary of the Navy as well as Texas governor. There was talk of the presidency for Connally, but missteps along the way cost him support.
A longtime Democrat, Connally alienated the party faithful by serving as Treasury secretary for President Nixon. After leaving the Treasury post, he headed an effort to garner Democratic support for Nixon. He eventually switched parties, but his later efforts to get the GOP presidential nomination failed.
Nellie Connally rode the crest of the waves with him and felt them crashing beneath her when times were bad.
Their first child, Kathleen, killed herself in 1958 at age 17.
In 1988, Nellie Connally had a mastectomy after doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer.
The next year, her husband, who once held the purse strings for the United States and had amassed considerable wealth in the private sector, was forced to declare bankruptcy after a series of business dealings went bad. He had debts of $93 million and assets of $13 million.
(5) Kelly Shannon, The Guardian (4th September, 2006)
Nellie Connally, the former Texas first lady who was riding in John F Kennedy's limousine when he was assassinated, has died. The 87-year-old was the last living person who had been in the car.
Connally, the widow of former Governor John Connally, died late on Friday of natural causes at her home in Austin, said Julian Read, who served as the governor's press secretary in the 1960s.
As the limousine carrying the Connallys and the Kennedys wound its way through the friendly crowd in downtown Dallas, Nellie Connally turned to President Kennedy, who was in a seat behind her, and said, "Mr President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you".
Almost immediately, she heard the first of what she later concluded were three gunshots in quick succession. A wounded John Connally slumped after the second shot, and, "I never looked back again - I was just trying to take care of him", she said.
She later said the most enduring image of that day was the bloodstained roses. "It's the image of yellow roses and red roses and blood all over the car ... all over us," she said in a 2003 interview with the Associated Press. "I'll never forget it ... It was so quick and so short, so potent."
Texas Governor Rick Perry called Connally "the epitome of graciousness".
"Long before she was propelled into the national spotlight from the assassination of President John F Kennedy, she was a Texas icon," he said.
Connally, formerly Nellie Brill, met her husband at the University of Texas in Austin, and they married in 1940. She moved back to Austin about a year ago after decades in Houston.
