Why the distinction? Because echoes, from hard, reflective surfaces, can repeat impulsive sounds like shots very well. Due to the speed of sound, a hard fence can make a single shot from one direction sound like two close-together (in time) shots from two directions.
And, IIRC, there was a hard, wooden fence at the top of the grassy knoll. If you stand in just the right place, I have no doubt that a shot from the Book Depository will echo from it. There was also cement in the freeway overpass the motorcade was approaching. Both are excellent sound reflectors and in exactly the right position to provide an echo to some bystanders.
I used to have a drummer practice in the house behind me where I lived once. if I was in one room of my house with the window open, I often heard his rim shots (very sharp percussive sounds) echoed off the frame house next door slightly later than the direct sound coming thru another window. It sounded like two perfectly synchronized drummers, one of which was a fractional beat behind the other.
Human ears can tell where a sound is coming from with considerable accuracy, but a good acoustic reflection sounds exactly like an original source and there’s no way to tell the difference by sound alone.
Well, explain to me then why GHWB can’t remember where he was when he heard JFK was shot. And why there is a grainy photo of a tall white guy with the right look in front of the depository? It’s not as if he forgot he was suing the other guy who got shot? You would think that if the guy you were suing (GHWB was suing John Connolly at the time) got shot while seated next to the President of the United States that you might remember where the hell you were when you got that bizarre news. Don’t you? Sure, it might all be an awful, awful coincidence that makes him look terrible but isn’t really. But honestly, he is fully retired now and W ruined the family name.
I’ve got a good excuse about why I can’t remember how the news of JFK’s shooting came to me, I was only 14 months old. But I distinctly remember where I was and how I found out RFK was shot, and I wasn’t six years old yet.
It’s suspicious that somebody who is on trial for his life for murder would claim that he didn’t remember doing the thing he’s on trial for? And the fact is, he didn’t start claiming he didn’t remember any of it until after the trial. During the trial, he confessed to it, and when his lawyers tried to bring up a diminished capacity defense, he kept on trying to plead guilty.
And there’s no question whether the shots came from where he was standing. The people around them saw Sirhan run up to Kennedy and shoot him.
It is extraordinarily difficult to determine where rifle shots come from. The witnesses might be mistaken, but that isn’t for the investigators to suggest to the witnesses, which was what happened, but rather for the fact finder to weigh. By suggesting it to the witnesses, the investigators weren’t fact finding, they were deciding. The investigation was flawed because it set out to show no conspiracy when it should have just followed the facts.
I think we’re agreeing, but I’m not sure. My point is there is a big, perhaps significant difference between these two statements:
The rifle shots came from over there.
The sound of a rifle shot came from over there.
#1 is a statement requiring more judgement than humans can make if echoes are a possibility. #2 is a fair statement of observation without jumping to conclusions.
#1 strongly suggests a second rifleman. #2 doesn’t eliminate it, but is consistent with the single rifle theory and everything we know for sure.
What facts do you think they missed? I should point out that I am solely interested in the mechanics of the assassination itself, not any theories on who stood to profit from Kennedy’s death.
Maybe he’s being honest; people have a strong tendency to misremember where they were when momentous things happened. For all those memories seem very strong, they’re often completely wrong.
Because there was a tall white guy there. I hate to break this to you but George H. W. Bush was and is not the only tall white guy in the United States of America.
I imagine having some personal connection to the people involved makes a difference as well. The shock of “holy shit, I just talked to him yesterday!” might tend to blur the trivialities of where you were & what you were doing right at that moment.
There are two facts that I think point very strongly to Ruby simply being an impulsive hothead who acted on his own. For one, he left his best friend, his dog, in his car when he did the shooting. That one’s not a slam-dunk, but I think it does point to Ruby not having a plan when he set out.
The second I think is a slam-dunk. At the time Oswald was scheduled to be transferred, Ruby was down the street at the Western Union office, wiring some money to an employee. We know this because Western Union keeps accurate records. After finishing that business, he headed over to the police station, and the only reason he happened to get to see Oswald was that the police were running behind schedule in the transfer.
Are you serious? Maybe he actually can’t remember, maybe he says that because he was sitting on the toilet, or at his mistress’s apartment, or any of a thousand other good explanations.
And the bit about the picture - you can’t tell who it is, but do you think that George Bush would be there? Really? Really?
To me, it seems more likely that witnesses say the shots came from that direction, because of the strong visual cues they got. That side of his head exploded, and the nearest place to there was the grassy area in front of the fence.
Does anyone have a citation for GHWB actually claiming that he did not remember where he was when JFK was shot?
(Third hand references to a memory of an interview, (on which date?), without the exact text of the question and answer will necessarily be scorned as woo.)
Oh, and while I have been sucked into this morass, I am curious as to why the issue of the “sounds” of other shots is actually of any interest. We have already established that the shots fired from the Book Depository account for all the bullet strikes and wounds in the presidential limo, so where were all the purported shots from the “grassy knoll” going?
You are probably doing a whoosh, but just in case you aren’t, I dinna thin’ he’s using the word ‘actor’ in the same way you are thinking it’s being used there…
Ummm. No. Case Closed has a long and effective narrative, and points out the massive errors in the buffs claims (among them Mark Lane). He is far, far ahead of being ‘just a rehash’.
Sorry, but Mark Lane fails on every level. Posner wasn’t perfect (and was taken to task a couple of time by Bugliosi) but he was a thousand times better than the buffs.
An aside to this observation… My father-in-law (who just passed away) was on the Sheriff’s dept and was assigned to the “suicide watch” detail guarding Sirhan Sirhan; probably guarding against suicide and the possible Jack Ruby type showing up.
Father-in-law was no friend to RFK or any other Democrat for that matter but he did make this comment about Sirhan, “If you spent any time at all with this man, in the cell or just outside or at the entry of the cellblock, you would know without any doubt in your mind that he was completely and totally batshit crazy.” He never went into any more detail, but he was convinced that Sirhan was as out of touch with reality as any man could be.