On
22nd November, 1963, Jean
Hill,
a Dallas schoolteacher, watched the motorcade of President John
F. Kennedy from the grassy knoll facing the Texas School Depository
Building. Hill and her friend, Mary Moorman
were only a few feet away from President John
F. Kennedy when
he was shot. Hill thought the shots had come from behind her on the
grassy knoll and as soon as the firing stopped she ran towards the
wooden fence in an attempt to find the gunman. However, Hill was arrested
by two policemen and taken into custody.
The vast majority of witnesses
in the Dealey Plaza on that day claimed that shots came from two directions:
the Texas Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll. The behaviour of the
police to the shooting is also very interesting. Film of the Dealey
Plaza shows that within seconds of the shots being fired several police
charged up the grassy knoll. A few minutes later there were over 50
policemen searching the grassy knoll area and the railroad parking
lot that was situated just behind it. This was a far larger number
than went into the Texas Book Depository.
In their book The
Man on the Grassy Knoll, John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers
claimed that Charles Harrelson and
Charles Rogers were the two gunman behind
the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.
It was also claimed that Harrelson and Rogers were two of the tramps
arrested in Dealey Plaza on 22nd November, 1963.
Photograph of the tramps
arrested at the Dealey Plaza. It has been argued that
Charles Rogers is on the left and Charles
Harrelson is in the middle of the photograph.
In 1978 the House
Select Committee on Assassinations ordered a fresh investigation
of Dallas Police records. In March of that year they discovered a
trunk that had been in the possession of the former intelligence director
of the department. This included a dictabelt recording of transmissions
by police on the day of the assassination. The House Select Committee
on Assassinations commissioned two prominent acoustical experts (Dr.
James Barger and Dr. Mark Weiss) to study the tape. They concluded
that four shots were fired at President John
F. Kennedy.
The gap between the first and second shots was 1.66 seconds. The third
shot took place 7.49 seconds later. The gap between this and the final
shot was only 0.44 seconds. It was clear that the third and fourth
shots could not have been fired gun.
After establishing where
the police motorcycle that made the recording was at the time of the
shooting, Barger and Weiss concluded that "with a probability
of 95% or better" the third shot was fired from the grassy knoll.
They were even able to state that the firing position was behind the
picket fence, eight feet west of the corner. This was the very spot
where S.
M. Holland
had claimed he has seen
a puff of smoke after he had heard shots on the day Kennedy was killed.
It was also the same spot where Phillip Willis' photograph appeared
to show, according to computer analysis, "an adult person"
standing behind a fence.
Grassy Knoll in Dallas
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Harold Feldman, Fifty-one Witnesses: The Grassy Knoll (1965)
The human ear does not provide the best evidence in a
murder case. But its perceptions are evidence not to be despised or
dismissed, especially when the case is the murder of a President and
more than half of all recorded witnesses agree. What
follows is the result of a survey of the 121 witnesses to the assassination
of President Kennedy whose statements are registered in the twenty-six
volumes appended to the Warren Report.[1] On the question of where
the shots that killed the President came from, 38 could give no clear
opinion and 32 thought they came from the Texas School Book Depository
Building (TSBDB). Fifty-one held the shots sounded as if the came
from west of the Depository, the area of the grassy knoll on Elm Street,
the area directly on the right of the President's car when the bullets
struck...
The Commission, failing
to change the memories of witnesses, dismisses them with a wave of
the hand. "No credible evidence," says its Report, "suggests
that the shots were fired from the railroad bridge over the Triple
Underpass, the nearby railroad yards or any place other than the Texas
School Book Depository".
No credible evidence! It
is clear how the Commission reached this absurd conclusion. Once it
was committed to the thesis that there could be only one assassin
and no accomplices, it readily accepted the clues pointing to Lee
Oswald in the TSBDB. Now that the assassin and his place were identified,
it became "incredible" that any other assassin or any other
source of shots could exist. Ergo, any evidence that there was another
assassin and another shot source is not "credible."
In what other murder case
would the testimony of 51 sworn and many other unheard witnesses be
dismissed so cavalierly as "no credible evidence"?
We submit, on the contrary,
that the earwitness evidence is quite credible. Taken together with
the ballistic and medical evidence analyzed by Mr. Salandria, it is
not only credible; it is convincing. There was at least one other
assassin firing at President Kennedy from the vicinity of the grassy
knoll.
(2)
Jean
Hill,
statement made to the Dallas Police Department (22nd November, 1963)
Mary Moorman started to take a picture. We were looking
at the president and Jackie in the back seat... Just as the president
looked up two shots rang out and I saw the president grab his chest
and fell forward across Jackie's lap... There was an instant pause
between two shots and the motorcade seemingly halted for an instant.
Three or four more shots rang out and the motorcade sped away. I saw
some men in plain clothes shooting back but everything was a blur
and Mary was pulling on my leg saying "Get down their shooting".
(3)
Jim Featherston worked for the Dallas Times Herald in November,
1963. He later wrote about the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy in the book, Secrets
from the Sixth Floor Window (1994)
I ran to Dealey Plaza, a few yards away, and this is where I first
learned the president had been shot. I found two young women, Mary
Moorman and Jean Lollis Hill, near the curb on Dealey Plaza. Both
had been within a few feet of the spot where Kennedy was shot, and
Mary Moorman had taken a Polaroid picture of Jackie Kennedy cradling
the president's head in her arms. It was a poorly focused and snowy
picture, but, as far as I knew then, it was the only such picture
in existence. I wanted the picture and I also wanted the two women's
eyewitness accounts of the shooting.
I told Mrs. Moorman I wanted the picture for the Times Herald and
she agreed. I then told both of them I would like for them to come
with me to the courthouse pressroom so I could get their stories and
both agreed. . . . I called the city desk and told Tom LePere, an
assistant city editor, that the president had been shot. "Really?
Let me switch you to rewrite," LePere said, unruffled as if it
were a routine story. I briefly told the rewrite man what had happened
and then put Mary Moorman and Jean Lollis Hill on the phone so they
could tell what they had seen in their own words. Mrs. Moorman, in
effect, said was so busy taking the picture that she really didn't
see anything. Mrs. Hill, however, gave a graphic account of seeing
Kennedy shot a few feet in front of her eyes.
Before
long, the pressroom became filled with other newsmen. Mrs. Hill told
her story over and over again for television and radio. Each time,
she would embellish it a bit until her version began to sound like
Dodge City at high noon. She told of a man running up toward the now-famed
grassy knoll pursued by other men she believed to be policemen. In
the meantime, I had talked to other witnesses and at one point I told
Mrs. Hill she shouldn't be saying some of the things she was telling
television and radio reporters. I was merely trying to save her later
embarrassment but she apparently attached intrigue to my warning.
As
the afternoon wore on, a deputy sheriff found out that I had two eyewitnesses
in the pressroom, and he told me to ask them not to leave the courthouse
until they could be questioned by law enforcement people. I relayed
the information to Mrs. Moorman and Mrs. Hill.
All
this time, I was wearing a lapel card identifying myself as a member
of the press. It was also evident we were in the pressroom and the
room was so designated by a sign on the door.
I am mentioning all this because a few months later Mrs. Hill told
the Warren Commission bad things about me. She told the commission
that I had grabbed Mrs. Moorman and her camera down on Dealey Plaza
and that I wouldn't let her go even though she was crying. She added
that I "stole" the picture from Mrs. Moorman. Mrs. Hill
then said I had forced them to come with me to a strange room and
then wouldn't let them leave. She also said I had told her what she
could and couldn't say. Her testimony defaming me is all in Vol. VI
of the Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination
of President Kennedy, the Warren Report.
Why
Mrs. Hill said all this has never been clear to me -- I later theorized
she got swept up in the excitement of having the cameras and lights
on her and microphones shoved into her face. She was suffering from
a sort of star-is-born syndrome, I later figured
(4)
Jean
Hill
interviewed by Arlen
Specter from the Warren
Commission (24th March, 1964)
Arlen Specter: Did you have any conscious impression of where the
second shot came from?
Jean
Hill: No.
Arlen
Specter: Any conscious impression of where this third shot came from?
Jean
Hill: Not any different from any of them. I thought it was just people
shooting from the knoll - I did think there was more than one person
shooting.
Arlen
Specter: You did think there was more than one person shooting?
Jean
Hill: Yes, sir.
Arlen
Specter: What made you think that?
Jean
Hill: The way the 'gun report sounded and the difference in the way
they were fired-the timing.
Arlen
Specter: What was your impression as to the source of the second group
of shots which you have described as the fourth, perhaps the fifth,
and perhaps the sixth shot?
Jean
Hill: Well, nothing, except that I thought that they were fired by
someone else.
Arlen
Specter: And did you have any idea where they were coming from?
Jean
Hill: No; as I said, I thought they were coming from the general direction
of that knoll.
(5)
Mark
Lane,
Rush to Judgment (1966)
Mary Ann Moorman, an eyewitness to the assassination equipped
with a Polaroid camera, was positioned in a strategic location
in Dealey Plaza. She was standing with her friend, Jean Hill, across
the street from and southwest of the Depository. Consequently, as
she took a picture of the approaching motorcade the Book Depository
formed the backdrop. Her camera was aimed, providentially, a trifle
higher than the occasion demanded, and her photograph therefore contained
a view of the sixth-floor of the building, including the alleged assassination
window.
Mrs Moorman thus became
a most important witness and her photograph an essential part of the
evidence. Her presence at the scene and the fact that she did take
the picture were vouched for by Mrs Hill when she testified before
a Commission attorney. An FBI report filed by two agents discloses
that they both interviewed Mrs Moorman on November 22.15 On that same
day she signed an affidavit for the Dallas Sheriff's office. Deputy
Sheriff John Wiseman submitted a report in which he said that he talked
with Mrs Moorman that afternoon and that he took the picture from
her. Wiseman stated that in examining the picture he could see the
sixth-floor window from which the shots purportedly were fired."I
took this picture to Chief Criminal Deputy Sheriff, Allan Sweatt,
who later turned it over to Secret Service Officer Patterson,"
Wiseman said. A report submitted by Sweatt reveals that he also questioned
Mrs Moorman and Mrs Hill on November 22 and that he received and examined
the photograph. Sweatt said that "this picture was turned over
to Secret Service Agent Patterson".
Since Mrs Moorman had
used a Polaroid camera, the consequences were twofold: she was able
to see the picture before it was taken from her by the police; she
was not able to retain a negative. She told the FBI that the picture
showed the Book Depository in the background, a fact confirmed by
the two deputy sheriffs who also saw it.
Mrs Moorman was a witness
with inordinately pertinent evidence to offer. Pictures of her in
the act of photographing the motorcade appear in the volumes of evidence
published by the Commission and in the Warren Commission Report itself.
Yet the Report makes no mention of her or of her photograph; her name
does not appear in the index to the Report. Although the Commission
published many photographs, some of doubtful petinency it refused
to publish the picture that possibility constituted the single most
important item of evidence in establishing Oswald's innocence or guilt.
(6)
Jean
Hill,
speech (November, 1991)
That area (of the Dealey Plaza) is sloping so when Mary reached
up to take the picture, we did get a picture of the School Book Depository.
We knew that, because we had
a Polaroid camera, we were going to have to be quick if we wanted
to take more than one picture. So what we planned was, Mary would
take the picture, I would pull it out of the camera, coat it with
fixative and put it in my pocket. That way we could keep shooting.
When the head shot came, Mary fell down and the film (i.e., the famous
photograph) was still in the camera. When the motorcade came around,
there were so many voters on the other side (of Elm Street) that I
knew the President was never going to look at me, so I yelled, "Hey
Mr. President, I want to take your picture!" Just then his hands
came up and the shots started ringing out. Then, in half the time
it takes for me to tell it, I looked across the street and I saw them
shooting from the knoll. I did get the impression that day that there
was more than one shooter, but I had the idea that the good guys and
the bad guys were shooting at each other. I guess I was a victim of
too much television, because I assumed that the good guys always shot
at the bad guys. Mary was on the grass shouting, "Get down! Get
down! They're shooting! They're shooting!" Nobody was moving
and I looked up and saw this man, moving rather quickly in front of
the School Book Depository toward the railroad tracks, heading west,
toward the area where I had seen the man shooting on the knoll. So,
I thought to myself, "This man is getting away. I've got to do
something. I've got to catch him." I jumped out into the street.
One of the motorcyclists was turning his motor, looking up and all
around for the shooter, and he almost ran me over. It scared me so
bad, I went back to get Mary to go with me. She was still down on
the ground. I couldn't get her to go, so I left her. I ran across
and went up the hill. When I got there a hand came down on my shoulder,
and it was a firm grip. This man said, "You're coming with me."
And I said, "No, I can't come with you, I have to get this man."
I'm not very good at doing what I'm told. He showed me I.D. It said
Secret Service. It looked official to me. I tried to turn away from
him and he said a second time, "You're going with me." At
this point, a second man came and grabbed me from the other side,
and they ran their hands through my pockets. They didn't say, "Do
you have the picture? Which pocket?" They just ran their hands
through my pockets and took it. They both held me up here (at the
shoulder near the neck) someplace, where you could hurt somebody badly
- and they told me, "Smile. Act like you're with your boyfriends."
But I couldn't smile because it hurt too badly. And they said, "Here
we go," each one holding me by a shoulder. They took me to the
Records Building and we went up to a room on the fourth floor. There
were two guys sitting there on the other side of a table looking out
a window that overlooked "the killing zone," where you could
see all of the goings on. You got the impression that they had been
sitting there for a long time. They asked me what I had seen, and
it became clear that they knew what I had seen. They asked me how
many shots I had heard and I told them four to six. And they said,
"No, you didn't. There were three shots. We have three bullets
and that's all we're going to commit to now." I said, "Well,
I know what I heard," and they told me, "What you heard
were echoes. You would be very wise to keep your mouth shut."
Well, I guess I've never been that wise. I know the difference between
firecrackers, echoes, and gunshots. I'm the daughter of a game ranger,
and my father took me shooting all my life.
(7)
Washington Post (11th
November, 2000)
"She loved the fact that she was a witness to history,"
Mrs. Hill's daughter Jeanne Poorman told the Reuters news service.
"With
the inordinate number of people connected with witnessing the assassination
who died in suspicious circumstances, she was proud that she was a
survivor," Poorman said of her mother.
Poorman
said her mother thought the shots came from the grassy knoll nearby,
not the book depository across the street, and ran to the area thinking
she would be able to spot the gunman.
Instead
of catching up with the gunman, Mrs. Hill said, she was seized by
two men in police uniforms and briefly taken into custody despite
telling them she thought the assassin was running from the knoll.
(8)
Eddie Barker
interviewed Abraham
Zapruder
for the documentary The Warren Report:
Part 2, CBS Television (26th June, 1967)
Eddie Barker: Abraham Zapruder, whose film of the assassination was
studied at length on last night's program, was standing up on this
little wall right at the edge of the grassy knoll. Now, shots from
behind that picket fence over there would have almost had to
whistle by his ear. Mr. Zapruder, when we interviewed him here, tended
to agree that the knoll was not involved.
Abraham
Zapruder: I'm not a ballistics expert, but I believe that if
there were shots that come from my right ear, I would hear a different
sound. I heard shots coming from - I wouldn't know which direction
to say - but they was driven from the Texas Book Depository and they
all sounded alike. There was no difference in sound at all.
(9)
S.
M. Holland,
The Warren Report:
Part 2, CBS Television (26th June, 1967)
Just about the time that the parade turned on Elm
Street, about where that truck is - that bus is now, there was a shot
came from up-the upper end of the street. I couldn't say then, at
that time, that it came from the Book Depository book
store. But I knew that it came from the other end of the street, and
the President slumped over forward like that and tried to raise his
hand up. And Governor Connally, sitting in front of him on the right
side of the car, tried to turn to his right and he was sitting so
close to the door that he couldn't make it that-a-way, and he turned
back like that with his arm out to the left. And about that time,
the second shot was fired and it knocked him over forward and he slumped
to the right, and I guess his wife pulled him over in her lap because
he fell over in her lap.
And about that time, there
was a third report that wasn't nearly as loud as the two previous
reports. It came from that picket
fence, and then there was a fourth report. The third and the fourth
reports was almost simultaneously. But, the third report wasn't nearly
as loud as the two previous reports or the fourth report. And I glanced
over underneath that green tree and you see a - a little puff of smoke.
It looked like a puff of steam or cigarette smoke. And the smoke was
about - oh, eight or ten feet off the ground, and about fifteen feet
this side of that tree.
(10)
Woody Woodland interviewed Ricky White, the son of Roscoe
White, for the Manchester
Magazine (September, 1990)
That (fatal
shot) was fired by the man behind the stockade fence... Then it (the
diary) states that he hands the rifle to a man to the right of him.
And he has to hurl over the fence. He hurled over it, so therefore
he jumped over the fence. There was a man that was evidently standing
just right in front of him that was filming the motorcade because
he talks about a military man that he had to hurl over the fence and
obtain his film.
(11)
Anthony
Summers, The
Kennedy Conspiracy (1980)
One witness was in a better
position than anyone else to observe suspicious activity by the fence
at the top of the grassy knoll. This was railway worker Lee Bowers,
perched in a signal box which commanded a unique view of the area
behind the fence. Bowers said that, shortly before the shots were
fired, he noticed two men standing near the fence.
One was "middle-aged"
and "fairly heavyset," wearing a white shirt and dark trousers.
The other was "mid-twenties in either a plaid shirt or plaid
coat... these men were the only two strangers in the area. The others
were workers that I knew." Bowers also said that when the shots
were fired at the President "in the vicinity of where the two
men I have described were, there was a flash of light, something I
could not identify, but there was something which occurred which caught
my eye in this immediate area on the embankment... a flash of light
or smoke or something which caused me to feel that something out of
the ordinary had occurred there." Lee Bowers was questioned by
the Warren Commission but was cut off in mid-sentence when he began
describing the "something out of the ordinary" he had seen.
The interrogating lawyer changed the subject.
(12)
Lee
Bowers, interviewed
by Mark
Lane for his book Rush
to Judgment (1966)
At the time of the shooting, in the vicinity of where the two men
I have described were, there was a flash of light or, as far as I
am concerned, something
I could not identify, but there was something which occurred
which caught my eye in this immediate area on the embankment.
Now, what this was, I could not state at that time and at this time
I could not identify
it, other than there was some unusual occurrence - a flash
of light or smoke or something which caused me to feel like something
out of the ordinary had occurred there.
(13)
Tosh
Plumlee, interviewed
on 6th April, 1992.
Q: Can you tell me
exactly where you were standing in Dealey Plaza?
A: Yes, I can. We were
standing approximately 150 feet east of the triple underpass on the
south knoll up on the hill about 5 feet in line with the light posts.
Q: Could you tell how many
shots were fired that day?
A: I recall myself, I'd
say 4 or 5. That's what I recall. I've heard that there were more,
I've heard that there were less.
Q: Could you tell the direction
of those shots?
A: I couldn't tell the
direction of the shots, but however, but my memory is that I feel
a shot went over or head to the left of us. I'm familiar with gunfire.
Also, when we left the area, we got a taste of gunpowder when we went
over the railroad tracks which would have been south of the north
grassy knoll.
(14)
Michael
Kurtz, Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination From
a Historians Perspective (1982)
The huge,
gaping hole in the right front of President Kennedy's head was almost
certainly caused by an exploding bullet fired from the knoll. The
rapid backward and leftward movement of Kennedy's head, as well as
the backward and left-ward spray of brain tissue, skull bone, and
blood are very strong indicators of a shot from the right front. Assuming
that it is authentic, the acoustical tape actually recorded the sound
of a knoll shot.
Eye and earwitness testimony
furnishes further evidence of a shot from the knoll. Almost three-quarters
of the witnesses who testified heard shots from the knoll during the
shooting, and three people saw a flash of light there. Five witnesses
smelled gunpowder in the knoll area. A witness saw a man fleeing the
knoll immediately after the shooting, and two law enforcement officials
encountered phony "Secret Service" men in the parking lot
behind the knoll within minutes after the gunfire.
An assassin with even the
slightest concern with making a successful escape would hardly have
selected the sixth floor of the Depository Building for his firing
site. He would have been trapped on an upper floor of the building.
His only means of escape would have been to descend six flights of
stairs and then weave his way through the crowd of spectators and
police to freedom.
The Grassy Knoll, on the
other hand, provided a natural and ideal sniper's position. The six-foot-high
wooden fence and the abundance of shrubbery concealed him from the
crowd, yet gave him an undisturbed line of fire at the president.
The parking lot right behind the knoll gave him quick access to a
getaway vehicle.
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