Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (5 page)

Kellerman, sitting directly in front of Connally and Kennedy, noticed
they had just passed a highway sign when he heard a "pop" to his right
and immediately looked in that direction, surveying the easternmost slope
of the Grassy Knoll. Kellerman told the Warren Commission:

... as I turned my head to the right to view whatever it was . . . I
heard a voice from the back seat and I firmly believe it was the
President's [saying] "My God, I am hit," and I turned around and he
has got his hands up here like this [indicating both hands up near the
head] . . . [It] was enough for me to verify that the man was hit. So, in
the same motion I come right back and grabbed the speaker and said to
the driver, "Let's get out of here; we're hit," and grabbed the mike and
I said, "Lawson, this is Kellerman . . . we are hit; get us to the hospital
immediately." Now in the seconds that I talked just now, a flurry of
shells come into the car .. .

Mrs. Connally testified she heard Kellerman say: "Pull out of the
motorcade. Take us to the nearest hospital." The limousine indeed pulled
out of the motorcade and raced to Parkland Hospital.

Driver Greer said he was busy looking ahead to the railroad overpass
when he heard a noise he thought was a motorcycle backfire. Then he
heard the noise again and caught a glimpse of Connally starting to slump
over. He then heard two more noises that seemed to come one on top of the
other. Greer said after the second noise and a glance over his right
shoulder at Connally, he stepped on the accelerator. However, a film taken
that day shows the limousine brake lights remained on until after the fatal
head shot to Kennedy.

Mrs. Connally recalled that after the first sound "very soon there was
the second shot which hit John [Connally]."

Connally, in testimony consistent both with that of Mrs. Connally and
with films made that day, confirmed he was not hit by the first shot. The
governor said just after making the turn onto Elm he heard a noise he took
to be a shot from a high-powered rifle. He turned to his right because the
sound appeared to come from over his right shoulder, but he couldn't see
anything. He began to turn to his left when he felt something strike him in
the back.

Although critically wounded, Connally was conscious of shots being
fired other than the one that struck him. Realizing that he had been hit a
second or so after hearing a shot, Connally told the Warren Commission:
". . . there were either two or three people involved or more in this or
someone was shooting with an automatic rifle." Connally then heard a final boom and heard the bullet hit home. He later recalled: ". . . it never
entered my mind that it ever hit anyone but the President . . . He never
uttered a sound that I heard."

Connally noticed blue brain tissue covering his suit and knew Kennedy
was dead. He also noticed blood on the front of his shirt and realized he
was hurt badly, perhaps fatally. Crumpling into the arms of his wife,
Connally screamed out: "My God, they're going to kill us all!" Connally
heard his wife saying over and over, "Be still, you're going to be all
right," and he felt the car accelerate. He then lost consciousness.

During the initial phase of the shooting, Mrs. Kennedy did not realize
what was happening. She was accustomed to the sounds of motorcycle
escorts backfiring and the motorcade had been a cacophony of sirens,
racing motors, cheering, and shouting. She did hear Connally shout, "Oh,
no, no, no!" She heard "terrible noises" to her right and turned to see
Kennedy with his hand at his throat and a "quizzical look on his face."
Then, the chief executive was struck in the head and fell into her lap. All
she could do was cradle him and say: "Oh, my God, they've shot my
husband _. . I love you, Jack."

Over the years a great deal of misinformation has been presented about
her next actions. Many persons have stated she tried to climb out of the car
in panic or to help Agent Hill. Actually, she crawled onto the trunk of the
limousine and, reaching out, picked up a piece of her husband's head.

Mrs. Kennedy, when talking to the Warren Commission on June 5,
1964, did not even recall this activity. But her action was captured in the
films taken that day and later, sitting in Parkland Hospital, she still had the
piece of skull clutched in her hand, according to a nurse who relieved her
of the gruesome fragment.

Also, there is the testimony of Clint Hill, who told the Warren
Commission:

Between the time I originally grabbed the handhold and until I was up
on the car, Mrs. Kennedy-the second noise that I heard had removed a
portion of the President's head, and he slumped noticeably to his left.
Mrs. Kennedy had jumped up from the seat and was, it appeared to me,
reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car, the
right rear tail, when she noticed that I was trying to climb on the car.

In the lead car, which was just about to enter the Triple Underpass when
the firing began, Agent Lawson was trying to signal a policeman standing
with a group of people on top of the underpass. He didn't like the idea of
the President's car passing directly below these people, so he was trying to
get the officer to move them to one side. The policeman never noticed
him.

Just then, Lawson heard a loud report to his rear. It sounded more like a
bang instead of a crack and Lawson didn't think it was a rifle shot. His first impression was that it was a firecracker. This description was to be
repeated by nearly everyone in Dealey Plaza, with some notable exceptions.

Forrest V. Sorrels, head of the Dallas office of the Secret Service, like
Connally was certain the first sound was a gunshot. After a brief pause,
Sorrels heard two more shots coming close together. He shouted to Curry:
"Let's-get-out of here!"

On hearing the first burst of firing, Sheriff Decker glanced back and
thought he saw a bullet bouncing off the street pavement.

Another Dallas motorcycle officer, Starvis Ellis, in 1978 told the House
Select Committee on Assassinations that as he rode alongside the car in
which Decker was riding he, too, saw a bullet hit the pavement. Neither
Decker nor Ellis were ever questioned about this by the Warren Commission.

Motorcycle officer James Chaney told newsmen the next day that the
first shot missed.

Curry saw a "commotion" in the presidential limousine. Then a motorcycle officer drew up alongside. "Anybody hurt?" asked Curry. "Yes,"
replied the officer. Stepping on the accelerator, Curry shouted: "Lead us
to the hospital." Both Decker and Curry took the car's radio and ordered
their men to rush to the top of the underpass and the railroad yards where
they thought the shots had come from.

Like the crowd of witnesses in the Dealey Plaza, those persons deep into
the plaza believed shots were fired from the Grassy Knoll, while those
farther back in the motorcade-still on Houston and Main streets-believed
shots came from the direction of the Depository.

Motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker was riding near one of the
press cars. He had just turned on to Houston and his cycle was about to tip
over because of a gust of wind and the slow speed. He had just returned
from a deer-hunting trip and recognized the first sound as a high-powered
rifle shot. He thought the sound came from either the Depository or the
Dal-Tex building. Seeing pigeons fluttering off the Depository's roof, he
gunned his motor and roared up to the entrance of the building. Within
seconds, he and Depository superintendent Roy Truly would encounter Lee
Harvey Oswald calmly standing in the second-floor lunchroom of the
Depository.

Secret Service agent Paul Landis was riding in the right rear of the
Secret Service follow-up car when he heard the report of a high-powered
rifle. He saw Kennedy turn to look in the direction of the shot, which
Landis believed came from "... somewhere towards the front, right-hand
side of the road."

With Landis was Secret Service agent Glen Bennett, who thought the
sound was a firecracker. But then he looked at the President. In notes he
said were made later that day, Bennett wrote: "[I] saw a shot that hit the
Boss about four inches down from the right shoulder; a second shoot [sic]
followed immediately and hit the right rear high [side?] of the Boss's
head."

The Secret Service agents assigned to Kennedy all acted with remarkable sluggishness when the firing began. Perhaps it was due to the visit
they had paid to a "beatnik" nightspot in Fort Worth, where they stayed
until early that morning. (The club, The Cellar, was owned by an acquaintance of Jack Ruby who had connections with both big-time gamblers
and police officials.)

The only agent to react with speed was Clint Hill. Hill had not been
scheduled to make the Dallas trip, but came only after Mrs. Kennedy made
a personal request. Hill also thought the initial sound was a firecracker and
began looking to his right for the source of the sound when he saw
Kennedy grab at himself and lurch forward slightly. He then realized
something was wrong and jumped off the follow-up car. He was racing the
few feet to the limousine when he heard more shots. Hill had just secured
a grip on a handhold when the car began accelerating. Looking into the
back seat of the limousine, Hill saw that the right rear portion of the
President's head was missing.

Nearly everyone present recalled a pause of several seconds between the
first burst of fire and the final two shots, these coming rapidly one after
another. It was the third and final shot, or volley of shots, that killed
President John F. Kennedy. Until then, he had been immobile and quiet,
only sagging slightly to his left. Then his head pitched forward violently
for a split second only to be pushed hard to the left and rear. A halo of
crimson liquid and tissue surrounded his head momentarily and then fell to
the rear. The head shot lifted him slightly then threw him against the car's
back seat. He bounced forward and over into his wife's lap.

The two Dallas motorcycle officers riding to the left rear of the limousine, Bobby W. Hargis and B. J. Martin, were splattered by blood and
brain matter. Martin, who had looked to his right after the first shots, later
found bloodstains on the left side of his helmet. Hargis, who was riding
nearest the limousine about six to eight feet from the left rear fender, saw
Kennedy's head explode and was hit by bits of flesh and bone with such
impact that he told reporters he thought he had been shot.

Presidential assistant David Powers was riding with Secret Service
agents in the car directly behind the President. From this vantage point, he
described the entire assassination:

I commented to Ken O'Donnell that it was 12:30 and we would
only be about five minutes late when we arrived at the Trade Mart.
Shortly thereafter the first shot went off and it sounded to me as if it
were a firecracker. I noticed then that the President moved quite far to
his left after the shot from the extreme right hand side where he had
been sitting. There was a second shot and Governor Connally disappeared from sight and then there was a third shot which took off the top
of the President's head and had the sickening sound of a grapefruit
splattering against the side of a wall. The total time between the first and third shots was about five or six seconds. My first impression was
that the shots came from the right and overhead but I also had a fleeting
impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of
the Triple Underpass. This may have resulted from my feeling, when I
looked forward toward the overpass, that we might have ridden into an
ambush.

Several persons in the motorcade smelled gunpowder as the cars swept
through the lower end of Dealey Plaza-.

Mrs. Earle Cabell, wife of the Dallas mayor, was riding in an open
convertible six cars back from the motorcade's lead car. At the opening
shots, the car in which she was riding was passing the Depository building. She told the Warren Commission she jerked her head up on hearing
the first shot because "I heard the direction from which the shot came
... Looking up, she saw an object projecting from one of the top
windows of the Depository building. She said:

I jerked my head up and I saw something in that window and I
turned around to say to Earle, "Earle, it is a shot," and before I got the
words out ... the second two shots rang out.. .. I was acutely aware
of the odor of gunpowder. I was aware that the motorcade stopped dead
still. There was no question about that.

Mrs. Cabell was riding beside Congressman Ray Roberts. She said he
acknowledged smelling gunpowder too.

Former senator Ralph Yarborough also smelled gunpowder as the car
carrying him and Lyndon Johnson drove through the plaza. Yarborough, a
former Army infantry officer and an avid hunter, also failed to recognize
the sound of the first shot. He told this author:

I thought, "Was that a bomb thrown?" and then the other shots were
fired. And the motorcade, which had slowed to a stop, took off. A
second or two later, I smelled gunpowder. I always thought that was
strange because, being familiar with firearms, I never could see how I
could smell the powder from a rifle high in that building.

It does seem strange that people would smell powder from a shot fired
more than sixty feet in the air and behind them. However, it's not so
strange, if a shot were fired on top of the Grassy Knoll less than twelve
feet in elevation with a breeze from the north to carry smoke to street
level.

One of the strangest omissions in the subsequent investigation by federal
authorities concerns a Navy commander who was assigned to film major
events involving President Kennedy. In early 1963, Thomas Atkins was
assigned as an official photographer for the Kennedy White House. As such, he traveled to Texas with Kennedy and was photographing the
motorcade with a quality camera, a 16 mm Arriflex S.