I came across a website that claims that the limo driver actually turned around and put the fatal bullet into JFK’s head with a pistol. It was a typical whacko website, poorly designed with huge mispellings (“The LEMO driver killed him! The LEMO driver!”) Plus, I heard this before as part a joke from the late comedian Bill Hicks, so I was less than impressed.
But, it had a link to a video file of that portion of the film. I dloaded it, and damned if it didn’t kinda look like the limo driver had a pistol pointed at JFK at the time of the head-splatter shot.
Thinking that the video file could have been doctored, I searched for more versions of the Zapruder film on the web, but just came up with two more copies of the same file, with the same byte length and same voice over. It is interesting to note that I did find this file from sites that seemed to have nothing to do with the “LEMO driver” site.
If anybody has a copy of the Zapruder film, and some time, please look at the limo driver during the head shot, and tell me if there is anything at all that looks like the limo driver aiming a pistol at JFK’s head.
My guess is it’s just an artifact of the conversion to AVI, since beyond the Bill Hicks joke, I never heard of this theory before.
Interesting–I ran across a transcript of a lecture on the net a few years back. The person delivering the lecture was was some kind of brand-name wacko who had plenty of amusing conspiracies to talk about. At one point, he claimed that the limo driver was the one who shot JFK, that’s it’s visible on the Zapruder film, and that the weapon used was actually a pellet gun loaded with shellfish poison (I had tears in my eyes from laughter after that detail). The transcript indicated that the audience members were not buying it, and after a chorus of comments from the peanut gallery, the head peanut got very defensive and started (apparently) shouting: “You may think it’s nuts but I’VE SEEN THE FILM and I’ve seen the FRAMES they CUT and I KNOW!” For my part, I’ve seen the film a billion times, and looking at the driver, I can’t see anything to indicate he has a gun.
I do believe that there was a conspiracy involved in the death of JFK. Some theories are more credible than others. This one is the least credible of all.
There have been blow-ups of the frames of the Z film which show that is certainly was not a gun in the limo driver’s hand. I used to wonder if the driver was involved somehow, in the sense that he hit the brakes when he hit the gas. But it’s hard to believe that even if the conspiracy reached as high as the Secret Service (which is very doubtul), you could find a guy willing to sit less than a couple of meters from the target right in the line of fire, with a strong possibility of taking a round or two himself.
I watched it some more times, and I see now that it’s the top of the guys’s head sitting next to the driver. It’s reflecting sunlight or something, so it looks light colored as if it were a gun.
What really made it look like a gun is that it’s aimed exactly at JFK’s head when the splatter shot hits.
I’ll bet it’s more clear on a non-AVI film shot.
Damn, I thought I had the whole JFK thing sewn up…
Ah, but Revtim, the nut at the lecture Sequent attended said he saw the frames that were CUT! Ah hah! Every copy of the Zapruder film out there is incomplete, including the one you saw! Only the wacko giving that lecture has seen the WHOLE story! Now, if we can only get him to cough up his copies of these missing frames he claims to have seen…
Oh, and you realize of course that it really WAS a pellet gun pointed at JFK’s head, and it only looks like the top of some guy’s head because that frame was doctored after the fact. And we know the pellet gun was loaded with shellfish poison because the coroners INEXPLICABLY failed to check JFK’s body for shellfish poison during the autopsy!
Okay, assume for the moment that the limo driver DID pull out a gun of some sort and shoot JFK.
How did he maintain control of the vehicle as he turned, fired a precise shot and kill the President? Was he cousin to Rosemary Woods prehaps?
And how did this go entirely un-noticed by Gov. and Mrs. Connelly and Jackie?
Then you how the hundreds (if not thousands) of people who were watching the vehicle go by. The odds are simply too great that at least ONE person would see the shooting or at least the actions of the limo driver.
One question about the assasination I’ve always had; if it was something concocted by the CIA or such, won’t they have made it look more like an accident or something more innocuous rather than a spectacular event in front of hundreds of potential witnesses?
Well, I didn’t exactly have the pleasure of attending the lecture, though I can assure you I mark that as one of my deepest regrets; I read a transcript on the internet (what more proof do you need? it’s on the net!) The transcript USED A LOT OF TYPE IN ALL CAPS to (presumably) denote the lecturer’s raised voice.
Yes, clearly it was a pellet of shellfish poison. Nevermind that it would take a pretty fierce pellet gun to take off half of someone’s head–this is the government we’re talking about. They probably have a pellet gun that could take out the whole city of Dallas. And people scoff at the Magic Shellfish-Poison Pellet Theory.
It’s funny, but there’s more than enough that doesn’t add up about the Kennedy assassination–no need to fabricate more. I did a search on LEMO driver and found the page to which I believe the OP refers. It offers as further proof of the lemo theory the fact that Mrs. Kennedy starts climbing out over the trunk of the limo, clearly attempting to escape the driver. I’ve always heard that she was actually trying to retrieve a fragment of JFK’s skull that landed on the trunk. Ewww…
Now that this thread has been resurrected, let me just say that this form of analysis seems eerily similar to Seethruart’s observations of “anomalies” in the Apollo moon mission photos.
I think someone may be confusing this with the theory that a secret service man travelling behind the vehicle accidentally shot JFK with his AR-15. I don’t think this is credible either, but the idea that the limo driver shot him is simply insane.
I used to be a believer in a conspiracy. Nothing Oliver Stone-ish. More like the mob hitting him because he screwed Sam Giancana or something. The Ruby mob connection, Oswald’s average marksmanship, and the professionalism of the shooting just seemed to me to be not the work of a lone nut.
But unfortunately, facts have gotten in the way of my juicy conspiracy belief. After doing a TON of research (I’ve read the Warren Commission report not in full, but in the published public paperback, plus just about every conspiracy book on the market, plus my own research), I’ve had to conclude that the highest probability scenario is that Oswald shot him.
One thing in particular really pisses me off - much has been made of the ‘magic bullet’, and how it had to do all these turns and climbs to do the damage that it did. And every conspiracy book uses the same drawing showing how ‘impossible’ the shot was.
Then I found a picture of the actual limo, and it became IMMEDIATELY apparent that a single shot could do exactly what it was supposed to. Connolly was sitting in a ‘jump seat’ or a middle row of small seats between the driver and back seat, which is elevated so the rear rider can see the crowd better and they can see him. And there is an ‘aisle’ between the middle seats and the back, so the back seat occupant can get in. The upshot of this is that Connolly was sitting substantially lower and to the left of Kennedy, a fact that is never clear from those profile drawings.
That none of the conspiracy authors who claim to so thorough in their research never bothered to show a photo of the car from an oblique angle where the geometry is clear does not speak well for their objectivity and honesty. It was this fact which had me start taking their other claims with a more reasonable amount of suspicion.
Here’s another photo of the interior, showing the jump seats. It’s not quite as clear in this photo, but they are set in fairly far from the sides of the car.
There was a company that did a computer enactment where they took a model of the car, and placed computer models of Kennedy and Connoly in the proper positions and drew a straight line through both of their wounds and carried it back to see where it would go - it went straight through the 6th floor window of the Texas School Book Repository. The supposed turns and twists the bulet had to make in the air are pure constructs by conspiracy nuts.
No, these are quite distinct theories. The accidental version involving the car behind was pushed in a book called Mortal Error by a journalist called Bonar Menninger, based on the ideas of someone called Donohue. Aside from that shot, it sticks very close to the Warren report. As far as I know, the “driver pulls out a handgun” theory basically originates with Bill Cooper (Behold a Pale Rider etc.). The accidental death theory is perhaps the only insane notion ever invented that Cooper doesn’t find incredibly convincing.
About a year ago, I found an excellent view of the interior of the limo from about a 3/4 view behind and to the right, with the doors open. The exact seating positions were immediately obvious. You could see how the jumpseat was much lower and to the left of Kennedy’s seating position. It didn’t look at ALL like that ubiquitous ‘magic bullet’ drawing you saw in the JFK film and most of the conspiracy books.
Unfortunately, I searched the web for an hour today looking for that picture, and I can no longer find it. Something that shows the situation with such clarity should be part of every ‘serious’ book on the assassination. That none of the conspiracy books do is an indicator that they are presenting a pretty biased case.
Sorry about the picture link. That one worked for me about 10 minutes before I posted it, and no longer works. I don’t know why. The picture is not mine, so I can’t re-post it.
Here’s a photo from the angle I’m talking about of the actual motorcade. You can clearly see how far over Connolly is sitting: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/robinson1.jpg
Here’s a photo taken from the front. You can see Connolly, and the two front-seat occupants. From here you can see just how much lower and closer to the middle of the car Connoly was sitting.
Now look at the home page of this site, where they show the classic ‘single bullet’ diagram that is constantly debunked in the conspiracy books: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm
Does that image look like an accurate representation of how they are really seated, based on the two photo links I’ve posted?
BTW, that site I posted is excellent, and has a lot of documentary evidence against conspiracy theories which never seem to make it into the conspiracy books.
