Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (7 page)

There is no question that there is movement. And, I'm sure, given time
and money, a computer could probably clarify the images a bit more
... You can actually see one figure walking back and forth hurriedly. I
think what was happening there is the sniper's nest was actually being
completed just prior to the shots being fired.

The House Assassinations Committee studied the Bronson film further
and, while acknowledging movement in the second window, stated it was
"more likely ... a random photographic artifact than human movement."
However, the committee did recommend that the film be analyzed further.
There is no evidence such further study has been done.

Another witness to the pair of men in the Depository was an inmate of
the Dallas County Jail, located just across the street to the east of the
Depository. Several prisoners were in a sixth-floor cell on a level with the
sixth-floor Depository window.

Oddly, none of the jail inmates were ever identified or sought by federal
investigators despite their excellent vantage point. However, one of the
inmates told the Dallas Morning News in 1978 that the prisoners saw two
men, one with a rifle, in the Depository at the time of the assassination.

Confirmation of the presence of two men on the sixth floor might have
come from Canadian journalist Norman Similas, who was in Dallas for a
convention of carbonated-beverage bottlers. It was a trip he would not
soon forget. On November 21, Similas photographed and spoke with Vice
President Lyndon Johnson, who had addressed the convention. Later that
evening, Similas visited the Carousel Club and spent more than an hour
talking with its owner, Jack Ruby. The next day, Similas strolled over to
Dealey Plaza to photograph President Kennedy's motorcade. He stood on
the south side of Elm not ten feet from Kennedy's car at the time of the
first shots. In a report published in the Canadian magazine Liberty, Similas
said:

The Presidential limousine had passed me and slowed down slightly. My
camera was directly angled toward the Texas School Book Depository
in the background. The picture I took on the curb of Elm Street was
trained momentarily on an open, sixth-floor window. The camera lens
recorded what I could not possibly have seen at that moment-a rifle barrel extended over the windowsill. When the film was developed
later, it showed two figures hovering over it.

Were there two people in Similas's photo? No one will ever know for
sure. In that same article, he added:

Upon my return to Toronto, I submitted my developed negatives to a
daily newspaper. When they were not used on Monday, November 25, I
phoned and asked that they be returned. Later I received a fat cheque in
the mail, but the one negative which clearly showed what I believe to be
two figures in the window of the assassin's nest was missing. When I
pressed for it, I was told that this negative had somehow become lost. It
has never been returned to me.

An advertising salesman for the Dallas Morning News, Jim Willmon,
was standing with the crowd along Houston Street. He recalled:

The car turned down Elm Street. A car backfired, or so I thought. I said
to my buddy, "The Secret Service is going to have a heart attack!" But
it wasn't a backfire. It was shots. People ran toward the Grassy Knoll.
No one seemed to look up at the Book Depository.

Ronald B. Fischer, an auditor for Dallas County, and another county
worker, Robert E. Edwards, were standing on the southwest corner of Elm
and Houston, directly across the street from the Depository. Less than ten
minutes before the motorcade arrived, Edwards commented: "Look at that
guy there in the window." Looking up, Fischer saw the head and shoulders of a man wearing a white T-shirt or possibly a light sportshirt. The
man was surrounded by boxes and was staring "transfixed," not toward
the approaching motorcade, but in the direction of the Triple Underpass.
Less than a minute later the motorcade passed their position and both
Fischer and Edwards forgot the man in the window. Then Fischer heard
what he thought was a firecracker followed by sounds he knew to be shots.
They seemed to be coming from "... just west of the School Book
Depository building [the location of the Grassy Knoll]."

Hugh W. Betzner, Jr., was twenty-two years old on November 22,
1963, and was taking pictures with an old camera near the intersection of
Houston and Elm. After taking Kennedy's picture as he turned in front of
the Depository, Betzner ran west into Dealey Plaza following the presidential limousine. In a sheriff's report that day, Betzner stated:

I started to wind my film again and I heard a loud noise. I thought this
noise was either a firecracker or a car had backfired. I looked up and it
seemed like there was another loud noise in a matter of a few seconds. I
looked down the street and I could see the President's car and another
one and they looked like the cars were stopped.

Betzner said he then heard at least two more shots fired and saw the
impact in the limousine. The motorcade then sped up and Betzner joined
spectators running up the Grassy Knoll toward the wooden picket fence
where he assumed the shots came from. Minutes later, he looked across
Elm Street and saw ". . . police officers and some men in plain clothes
.. . digging around in the dirt as if they were looking for a bullet."

Near Betzner was another photographer, Phillip Willis, who took a series
of pictures considered by many as the most important photos taken of the
assassination other than the Zapruder film.

Willis, along with his wife and two young daughters, was in Dealey
Plaza to get pictures of the President and Lyndon Johnson, whom Willis
said was a personal friend. As the presidential limousine turned onto Elm
in front of the Depository, Willis snapped a photo, then ran farther west on
Elm. He told the Warren Commission: "... Then my next shot .. . in
fact, the shot caused me to squeeze the camera shutter, and I got a picture
of the President as he was hit with the first shot. So instantaneous, in fact,
that the crowd hadn't had time to react." Willis said he did not see the
effects of the next shots because his two daughters, Linda and Rosemary,
were running along Elm and he became concerned for their safety.

As a retired Air Force major and World War II veteran, Willis said he
had absolutely no doubt that the shots were from a high-powered rifle and
were coming from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository.
(An interesting note: Willis was in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl
Harbor and captured the sole surviving member of a Japanese midget
submarine, thus becoming the first American to take a Japanese prisoner
during World War II.)

Willis's youngest daughter, Rosemary, ran back to her father, saying:
"Oh, Daddy, they have shot our President. His whole head blew up and it
looked like a red halo."

Willis said he took more photographs "knowing that the party had come
to a temporary halt before proceeding on to the underpass ... "

In later years, this author interviewed Willis, who refuted two of the
theories to come from federal investigations of the assassination. One, the
single-bullet theory of the Warren Commission, states that one shot (identified by the commission as the first shot) struck both Kennedy and
Connally. Willis said: "There is no damn way that one bullet hit both
men. That is the most stupid thing they ever stuck to-that one-bullet
theory."

The House Select Committee on Assassinations, also attempting to deal
with the wounds in Kennedy's back and throat which do not support a
conclusion of one shot from the high rear, theorized that Kennedy may
have bent over momentarily while out of the Zapruder camera view and
thus received a back wound lower than the throat wound. Willis retorted:
"That is not right. I got the nearest, best shot while JFK was behind the [Stemmons Freeway] sign. He was upright and waving to the crowd. A
split second later, he was grabbing at his throat."

Willis also had a comment after telling of Kennedy falling to the left
rear after the fatal head shot: "As many deer as I have shot, I've never
known one to fall towards me."

Although the Warren Commission quoted Willis as saying that he heard
three shots, all from the Depository, Willis said:

I always thought there had to be another shot from somewhere. I have
always gone against the one-gunman theory. I always thought there had
to have been some help. I saw blood going to the rear and left [of
Kennedy]. That doesn't happen if that bullet came from the Depository.

Willis further claimed:

I also got a photo, taken immediately after [the shooting stopped] that
shows Ruby standing in front of the Depository building. He was the
only person there wearing dark glasses. He was identified by people
who knew him and no one else has been able to say it was someone
else. Ruby made a big effort to show he was in the Dallas Morning
News at the time, but it wouldn't take five minutes to walk from the
News [to Dealey Plaza].

Interestingly, the Warren Commission cropped Willis's photograph right
through the face of the man Willis claimed was Jack Ruby.

Linda Willis, who was running along Elm Street with Rosemary, told
this author in 1978: "I very much agree that shots came from somewhere
other than the Depository. And where we were standing, we had a good
view. So many of the people who have decided they know what happened
there weren't even there. I was, and that's what makes the difference."

Neither Willis nor his daughters believed the Warren Commission or the
House committee were serious in finding out the truth of the assassination.

Behind Willis, sitting on a concrete retaining wall across the street from
the Depository was forty-five-year-old Howard Leslie Brennan, who was to
become the star witness for the Warren Commission. Brennan, who had
been working as a pipe fitter on a construction project behind the Depository, had eaten lunch and then taken this position to view the motorcade. It
was determined that Brennan was 120 feet from the sixth-floor window.
He said he saw a man in an upper floor of the Depository shortly before
the motorcade arrived. He described the man as a slender white male in his
early thirties wearing "light-colored clothing." Brennan stated:

.. . I heard what I thought was a backfire. It ran in my mind that it
might be someone throwing firecrackers out of the window of the red
brick building [the Depository] and I looked up at the building. I then saw this man I have described in the window and he was taking aim
with a high-powered rifle. I could see all of the barrel of the gun. I do
not know if it had a scope on it or not. I was looking at the man in this
window at the time of the last explosion. Then this man let the gun
down to his side and stepped out of sight. He did not seem to be in any
hurry . . . I believe I could identify this man if I ever saw him again.

Brennan, who immediately rushed into the Depository to tell a policeman what he saw, apparently was one of the only witnesses to have
actually seen a gunman fire from the Depository. However, later that
evening Brennan was unable to pick Lee Harvey Oswald out of a police
lineup.

Much later, it was determined that Brennan had poor eyesight and, in
fact, a close examination of the Zapruder film shows that Brennan was not
looking up at the time of the shooting.

Furthermore, Brennan's job foreman, Sandy Speaker, told this author:

They took [Brennan] off for about three weeks. I don't know if they
were Secret Service or FBI, but they were federal people. He came back
a nervous wreck and within a year his hair had turned snow white. He
wouldn't talk about [the assassination] after that. He was scared to
death. They made him say what they wanted him to say.

Brennan's story of a man firing from the sixth-floor window was
supported by a statement to sheriff's deputies that day by fifteen-year-old
Amos Lee Euins. Euins, a schoolboy, was standing near Brennan south of
the Depository across Elm when he heard a shot. He stated:

I started looking around and then I looked up in the red brick building. I
saw a man in a window with a gun and I saw him shoot twice. He then
stepped back behind some boxes. I could tell the gun was a rifle and it
sounded like an automatic rifle the way he was shooting.

Another witness who saw a gunman in the Depository was L. R. Terry,
who was standing across Elm Street near Brennan and Euins. Terry told
this author:

I was right across from that book store when Kennedy was shot. I saw a
gun come out of there just after I saw Kennedy and Connally go by. I
could only see a hand, but I couldn't tell if [the man] was right-handed
or left-handed. He did not have on a white shirt. The parade stopped
right in front of the building. There was a man with him. They
[investigators] could find out that the man who killed Kennedy had
somebody with him. But I don't know who it is. . . . I just saw the gun
barrel and the hand.

Across the street from Brennan, Euins, and Terry were Texas School
Book Depository superintendent Roy Truly and Depository vice president
0. V. Campbell.

They had started to go to lunch about 12:15 P.M. when they saw the
crowds and decided to wait and see the presidential motorcade. As the
motorcade approached, they were having difficulty seeing over the heads
of the crowd, so the two men moved closer to Elm Street and a bit farther
west into the plaza. Here they were joined by Mrs. Robert A. Reid, the
Depository's clerical supervisor.

Just after the presidential limousine had turned onto Elm and started into
the plaza, both men heard an "explosion . . . from west of the building
[depository]." Truly thought it was a firecracker or toy cannon.

When Mrs. Reid turned to Campbell and said, "Oh my goodness, I'm
afraid those came from our building," he replied: "Oh, Mrs. Reid, no, it
came from the grassy area down this way."