Greetings. The following description of the tragic and horrific assassination of President John F. Kennedy comes from the writings of the late historian and attorney, Vincent Bugliosi. In his masterful and very lengthy tome, reclaiming history about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which is over 1,600 pages long, and it'd be even longer, except that they put all the footnotes in a CD. Anyway, it is a very compelling read, and it's from what I lecture in my classes at UC Santa Cruz, about that terrible day in Dealey Plaza. It is with that story that we begin this narrative. At 12:25 in the afternoon on November 22nd, 1963, five motorcycle-equipped members of the Dallas, Texas Police Department rushed around the corner from Main Street onto Houston Street and into Dealey Plaza, a commercial office building hub smack in the middle of Dallas. This was followed by a white Ford Sedan carrying the Chief of Police, and shortly after his car drove into Dealey, a presidential limousine burst into view some blocks back, approaching the plaza. Two flags mounted on its front fenders, fluttering in the autumn breeze. By-passers looked at the limo and there he was, President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy. She wearing a bright, pink hat that needed to be steadied against the strong winds that whip across the streets of Dallas. They sat in the back of the vehicle. In the front sat Texas Governor, John Connally and his wife Nellie Connally. Both Kennedy and Connally rode in the right side of the car. Connally was scooted over a bit two candies left. The wives sat on the left side of the limo. Two motorcycle escorts flanked each rear fender, followed by a Secret Service backup car full of agents. Crowds lined both sides of Houston Street and they cheered wildly as they saw Kennedy smiling, looking like he was enjoying himself. Mrs. Connally, Nellie, had worried about the reception to Kennedy in Dallas. The president after all was a Catholic for Massachusetts, with the civil rights bill pending in Congress, and this was Texas. But here were hundreds of welcoming faces on both sides of the street. Nellie turned around and looked at Kennedy who saw that she wanted to say something and then she did. She said, "Mr. President, they can't make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love you and appreciate you, can they?" It was a bit of a contorted question, but Kennedy got the drift and he grinned in agreement. "Yes," he concurred, "I see love in these people." It was the last conversation John F. Kennedy had in his life. The limousine moved slowly towards the plaza, slowly up Houston Street towards a large brick building known as the Texas School Book Depository. Mrs. Kennedy looked towards the front of the procession and noticed an underpass ahead. She thought with gratitude that for a moment she and Kennedy will be shaded from the warm Texas sun. As the first three of the five lead motorcycles rounded the corner of the Element Houston, a man named Abraham Zapruder took out a home movie camera and began filming the event. Abraham Zapruder was born in Russia in 1905. He came to the USA in 1920. He took a job in New York City in a dress factory. He and his wife raised some kids and moved to Dallas in 1954. He started his own dress factory, which occupied the fourth and fifth floors of the Dallas textiles building, situated right across the street from that School Book Depository. Zapruder was a big fan of President Kennedy and was thrilled that Kennedy would be driving past his business. He grabbed one of his most precious possessions, his Bell and Howell zygomatic Directors Series eight millimeter movie camera and he went down to the plaza and parked himself someplace where he would have a commanding view of the procession. A 2.5 foot by 4.5 foot rectangular concrete pedestal on the North side of Elm Street, in front of a little archway structure with some decorative plants. Zapruder started filming, and then he realized the procession was taking its time so he stopped. As onlookers anticipated Kennedy's arrival in the middle of the plaza, they position themselves to see him and hopefully be seen by him. Charles Brehm ran down to the lawn of Dealey Plaza from Houston and Elm streets and got there well before the limo showed up. He came with his five-year-old son, Joe, and told the child to get ready to wave to the president. As the limousine approached the Texas School Book Depository building, three stock workers for the company that ran the depository sat at the fifth floor and enjoyed a perfect view of the president. Their names were Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman, and James Jarman. As they looked down, they could see the limo enter Dealey Plaza and there was President Kennedy brushing his chestnut hair from his face. Zapruder realized it was now or never. He pressed the record button on his camera and he kept his finger on it. The clock on the Hertz rent-a-car sign high on top of the Texas Depository building rolled over to 12:30. Below the clock, Williams, Norman, and Jarman were enjoying the view and the procession. Suddenly, at that exact minute, everyone heard a loud bang. The three stock workers looked around very startled. "What was that?" they wondered. Was it a firearm solute, a motorcycle backfire? A bookkeeper for the depository named [inaudible] who watched from the curb not only heard the sound, but to her dismay, saw sparks fly off the pavement in the far left lane of the procession. She thought it was a firecracker or something else thrown by a bunch of kids who were going to get into a lot of trouble, she anticipated. But Secret Service agent Paul Landis, sitting in the Secret Service agent runner-up car, instantly knew what the sound was. It wasn't firecrackers, it was not a muffler blast, it was the sound of a rifle. Frantically, he began looking around everywhere for the source. Behind the Secret Service's car was Vice President Lyndon Johnson's vehicle, and sitting in the car with Johnson was Secret Service agent Rufus W. Youngblood. Youngblood noticed that the Secret Service agents behind Kennedy's car were suddenly moving around, looking around, and so he grabbed Vice President Johnson and he shouted at him, "Get down." The reason for the commotion was because someone in Kennedy's car also recognized the sound. Governor John Connally, an avid hunter all his life. He turned and looked over his shoulder at what he knew was a rifle shot. He shouted, "Oh no, no, no." Seven cars back behind the presidential limousine, police officer Marion Baker recognize the sound too. He saw a flock of pigeons fly out of the Texas Book Depository building and concluded that a sniper was firing from the roof or somewhere around the top of the structure. He revved up his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and raced towards the building. Meanwhile, a young man named James R. Worrell Junior was standing right in front of the book depository. Upon hearing the shot, he threw his head back and looked straight up and to his horror, saw six inches of gun barrel with the forefront of the stock sticking out of a window high overhead on the Southeastern most side of the building. Across the street, a 9th grader named Amos Euins looked up and saw what he later described as a long pipe object sticking out of the building. A steamfitter named Howard Brennan also craned his neck up at the same perch and saw even more than Worrell and Euins. He'd spent some minutes earlier looking for a nice place to watch the President come by, and he had identified the steps on the Book Depository as a good spot. He looked up and he saw those three stock workers, who were black, on the 5fth floor sitting and waiting for the president. Then it looked higher, and he noticed a white man just sitting up there on the sixth floor all alone. Brennan had very good vision and thought it was strange that the man was just standing there by himself, looking like he was in his own little world, sitting for a moment sideways on a low window seal. Now Brennan looked up after the shot and there was that man with a rifle, aiming his rifle straight down Elm Street, he's gun braced against his right shoulder as he leaned on the left window jam. The gun man's motion seemed deliberate and without panic, and suddenly he fired again. The second shot was so loud inside the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, that the windows rattled and loose dirt fell from the ceiling onto Bonnie Ray Williams's is hair. The car now came very close to Charles Brehm, his son, maybe 20 feet away. They could see the president's face when the shot rang out and then they could see him stiffen and his hands rush to his throat. "My God," Brennan thought, "He's been shot." Immediately, Secret Service agents began rushing to the president and grabbing their rifles. But while attending to the president, they noticed that Governor Connally was in clear distress too almost instantly after Kennedy's reaction. Connally felt something akin to a hard blow to the right of his own back, then he saw that his shirt was drenched in blood. His wife, Nellie, grabbed him and pulled him down out of the line of fire. Connally cried out, "My God, they're going to kill us all." One Secret Service agent behind the President's car shouted at another," Let's get out of here, we're hit." Abraham's a brooder, heard the shot as well but he was confused. He was so focused on filming the event, he could not explain to himself why the president was jerking backwards and slumping in his chair. Was he joking and fooling around with his wife? Something told is a brooder that presidents don't joke around about things like this, but it just kept operating as camera as the drama unfolded. Now, onlookers were scurried for cover. James Wolo kept watching that gun barrel and now smoke was coming out of it. Meanwhile, ninth grader Amos Euins also kept watching the rifle man up on the sixth floor, saw that he was once again taking aim and about 8.4 seconds after the first shot, a third rang out. Howard Brennan focused his eyes directly on the gunman as he fired, then turned quickly to his left to see if it hit candidate. But his view of the President's car was blocked by a role of concrete columns. But that third bullet hit the President, alright. Horrified, well-wishers watched as it literally blew his brains out. "It exploded his head," a witness later exclaimed. Mrs. Kennedy, six inches from her husband's face when the third bullet struck, saw pieces of his skull fly into the air. John F. Kennedy's limp body bounced off the back seat and toppled onto her shoulder in one horrifying violent motion and she cried out, "Oh no, no, no, my God, they've shot my husband. I love you, Jack." Then she lunch to the back of the car to grab a piece of his skull. Abraham Zapruder was now filming in a state of suspended panic. "They've killed him." He cried out, his finger frozen on the movie cameras button. He came to his right, following the presidential Limousine as it launched away. Only after it disappear did he released the switch, producing the most famous armature movie in his history.
