Douglas Weldon was educated
at Western Michigan University and Thomas M. Cooley Law School. He
is currently an attorney for the County of Kalamazoo Circuit Court
and Adjunct Professor for Western Michigan University's Department
of Criminal Justice.
Weldon has researched the
assassination of John
F. Kennedy
for several years and contributed The Kennedy
Limousine: Dallas 1963
that appeared in Murder
in Dealey Plaza (2000).
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Douglas
Weldon, The Kennedy Limousine: Dallas 1963, included in Murder
in Dealey Plaza (2000)
There are
many people who witnessed a hole in the limousine windshield on 22
November 1963 at Parkland Hospital. I consider some of these people
heroic because considerable pressure was placed upon them to retract
their observations.
Several of these people, with whom I have talked directly, remain
hesitant to this
day to discuss their observations and continue to fear for their personal
safety.
Richard Dudman, a reporter
for The St. Louis Post Dispatch, for example, wrote
in an article entitled "Commentary of an Eyewitness" that
appeared in The New
Republic (21
December 1963): "A few of us noticed the hole in the windshield
when the limousine was standing at the emergency entrance after the
President had been
carried inside. I could not approach close enough to see which side
was the cup-shaped spot that indicates a bullet had pierced the glass
from the opposite
side."
Dudman told interviewers
that a Secret Service agent shoved him and the other reporters away
when he tried to examine the hole to determine the direction from
which it had been fired. It is interesting to note that Dudman became
aware of no less than five bullets that were fired in Dealey Plaza
that day. Dudman was also critical of the lack of security on the
top of the triple overpass, noting that the standing Secret Service
orders were to keep the overpass clear. That order was violated that
day. He also wrote that: "The south end of the viaduct is four
short blocks from the office of The Dallas Morning News, where Jack
Ruby was seen before and after the shooting... No one remembered for
sure seeing Ruby between 12:15 and 12:45. The shooting was at 12:30."
Mr. Dudman has declined to discuss the assassination with anyone for
many years, while his earlier commentary bears mute witness to his
present silence.
Former Dallas Police Officer
H.R. Freeman, who rode in the motorcade, noted in a 1971 interview
by Gil Toff of his observation of the limousine at Parkland Hospital
immediately after the shooting, "I was right beside it. I could
have touched it. It was a bullet hole. You could tell what it was."
And he was not the only police officer - a type of witness usually
prized for his accurate and reliable observations - who saw similar
damage to the glass. Dallas Police Officer Stavis Ellis, who was in
charge of the motorcade escort through Dallas, remarked, in later
interviews to reporters and on radio programs, "You could put
a pencil through it." Over extensive interviews with this author,
Mr. Ellis was unequivocal about observing the hole. His recollection
was that the hole was lower in the windshield, but he is absolutely
certain of its existence. He did describe the hole as being on the
driver's side of the rearview mirror, which is consistent with other
observations and the photographic evidence. He recalls actually
placing a pencil in the hole. He recounted that there were numerous
people and police officers at Parkland Hospital who viewed the hole.
He vividly remembers that while he was observing the hole a Secret
Service agent came up to him and tried to persuade him that he was
seeing a "fragment" and not a hole.
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