Reclaiming History (17 page)

The crowds lining both sides of Houston Street cheer wildly. Nellie Connally is overwhelmed by the unexpected response of the people of Dallas. She turns and beams brightly at the president.

“Mr. President,” she says, as the president leans toward her, “they can’t make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love you and appreciate you, can they?”

The president leans back, waves, and flashes the famous Kennedy smile at the passing faces.

“No, they sure can’t,” he grins.
¹⁸¹

The limousine moves slowly up Houston toward the large brick Texas School Book Depository Building looming over them just ahead, and to the left. Mrs. Kennedy, looking to her left across the reflecting pools onto Elm Street, can see that the pilot car of the motorcade is heading toward an underpass and thinks how cool the shade will feel after basking in the warm rays of the Texas sun.
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As the first three of the five lead motorcycles round the corner at Elm and Houston, Abraham Zapruder begins filming. After a few seconds, he stops his home movie camera and waits until the president comes into view.
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Chief Curry, right behind the three motorcycle escorts, swings the lead car left off Houston, through the hairpin turn, and onto the gently curving downslope of Elm Street.

“Approaching the Triple Underpass,” Curry tells the dispatcher.

“Ten-four, [Unit] One [Curry],” the dispatcher responds.
¹⁸⁴

Secret Service agent Winston Lawson, in Chief Curry’s car, contacts the agents waiting at the Trade Mart.

“Five minutes away,” he says into his radio.
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Charles Brehm, with little Joe in his arms, runs down the lawn of Dealey Plaza from Houston to Elm, and arrives well before the presidential limousine. He puts Joe down and tells him to get ready to wave to the president. There’s hardly anyone that far down Elm, and he and his five-year-old boy have a completely unobstructed view as Chief Curry’s lead car sweeps past them—the presidential limousine just beginning the turn onto Elm.
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It is sunny and the temperature is sixty-five degrees.
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While the NBC television affiliate covered the president’s appearance in Fort Worth that morning and the CBS and ABC affiliates covered the president’s landing at Love Field, no live TV cameras are even remotely close to Dealey Plaza, and there is also no live radio coverage of the motorcade in the plaza.

As noted earlier, President Kennedy had requested that Secret Service agents not ride on the two steps built into the rear bumper of the presidential limousine, but Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent riding on the left running board of the follow-up vehicle just five feet behind had disregarded this request for four separate but brief moments since the motorcade left Love Field when he felt the situation created an increased danger, all of which happened on Main Street, where the crowds were the greatest. (Since Mrs. Kennedy was Hill’s primary responsibility this day, he got on the left rear step.) On at least one of the four occasions, when the limousine stopped for the president to shake hands with people alongside the road, Secret Service agent John Ready, Hill’s counterpart riding on the right running board of the follow-up car, had left the running board and gotten on the rear step on the president’s side of his limousine.
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But the crowds are lighter now and neither Hill nor Ready see any need to stand on the two rear steps of the presidential limousine.

12:29:45 p.m.

The glistening, dark blue limousine carrying the president of the United States—license plate number GG300 under District of Columbia registry—approaches the Texas School Book Depository Building. Cheers from the crowd ripple across the plaza as the president’s limousine commences its turn onto Elm Street.

Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman, and James Jarman, the three black stock boys seen by people on the street below, have a perfect view of the president from their fifth-floor Depository perch. Sunlight glints run down the length of the chrome trim as the presidential limousine completes its turn onto Elm Street, straightens out, and passes directly below their window. Bonnie Ray and Harold can see the president brushing his chestnut hair back from his face.
¹⁸⁹

Zapruder points his camera at the approaching limousine and again presses the camera’s release button, which sends film shuttling through the camera with a soft, whirling sound. The clock on the Hertz sign high atop the Texas School Book Depository rolls over to twelve-thirty.
¹⁹⁰

12:30 p.m.

First Shot—:00.0 seconds
BANG!—The loud crack is quickly swallowed up by the sound of sputtering motorcycles. The three stock boys in the Depository think it’s a firearm salute for the president, or maybe, Bonnie Ray Williams thinks, it’s a motorcycle backfire. The thought that it could be anything more serious is beyond their imagination.
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Virgie Rachley, a young bookkeeper for the Texas School Book Depository, watching from the curb in front of the Depository, is startled to see sparks fly off the pavement in the far left lane, right behind the presidential limousine. She thinks it’s a firecracker thrown by some boys who are fixing to get in a lot of trouble.
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Secret Service agent Paul Landis, riding on the right running board of the Secret Service follow-up car, knows immediately what the sound is—the report of a high-powered rifle coming from over his right shoulder. Landis snaps his head back toward the Depository. Nothing. He begins scanning the crowd but doesn’t see anything unusual.

“What was it?” Agent John Ready says. “A firecracker?”

“I don’t know,” Landis answers, beginning to doubt his own senses. “I don’t see any smoke.” Landis now starts to wonder whether it was a blowout and glances at the tires on the right side of the presidential limousine. The one he can see, the right front, seems all right. The doubts unnerve him and he draws his gun.
¹⁹³

Secret Service agent Rufus W. Youngblood, riding in the front seat of the vice president’s car, isn’t sure what the sound is either—some kind of explosive noise. Vice President Johnson is equally puzzled. Youngblood quickly surveys the crowd, then the Secret Service follow-up car ahead of him, and notices the agents aboard making “unnatural movements.” Fear suddenly consumes him. In a flash, Youngblood turns and hits the vice president on the right shoulder, shoving him down into the backseat. “Get down!” he shouts.
¹⁹⁴
*

Governor Connally knows
exactly
what the sound is—the report of a high-powered rifle. An avid hunter all his life, Connally knows it isn’t a firecracker or a blowout or anything else. It’s a rifle shot. He turns and looks over his right shoulder, in the direction of the sound. Faces in the crowd blur past, but he sees nothing out of the ordinary. There is only one horrific thought that crosses his mind—this is an assassination attempt. In despair, thinking that such a beautiful day and warm reception are about to end in tragedy, Connally blurts out, “Oh no, no, no!”
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Mrs. Kennedy, who is looking to her left, mistakes the sound for a motorcycle backfire. Suddenly, however, she hears the governor’s exclamation of “Oh no, no, no” and turns to her right, toward him.
¹⁹⁶
Nellie Connally is turning too, startled by the loud frightening noise that emanates from somewhere to her right.
¹⁹⁷

Motorcycle escort Marrion L. Baker is seven cars back behind the presidential limousine, having just turned north onto Houston, and knows exactly what the sound is too. He just came back from deer hunting, where he heard the firing of a lot of high-powered rifles. He sees a great number of pigeons flying around the top of the Texas Book Depository Building and suspects a sniper is firing from the roof. Baker instinctively revs his Harley-Davidson, rumbles past the faltering motorcade press cars, and races toward the building two hundred feet in front of him.
¹⁹⁸

Twenty-year-old high school dropout James R. Worrell Jr. is standing right in front of the Book Depository, his back to the building from watching the motorcade come up Houston. When he hears the first shot, Worrell throws his head back, looks straight up, and sees six inches of gun barrel with the forepart of the stock sticking out a window high overhead on the southeasternmost side of the building.
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Across the street, ninth-grader Amos Euins thinks it’s a car backfire and begins looking around, then up. He spots a pipelike object sticking out of the southeasternmost window of the sixth floor.
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A few feet away, Howard Brennan sits on the low stone wall of the reflecting pool. He thinks it’s the backfire of a motorcycle, or a firecracker thrown from the Depository. Those around him must be thinking the same thing, because there’s no immediate reaction by the crowd. He looks up. The man he saw earlier in the sixth-floor window is aiming a rifle straight down Elm Street toward the presidential limousine. Brennan sees him from the waist up with awful clarity, the rifle braced against his right shoulder as he leans against the left window jamb. The gunman’s motions are deliberate and without panic. After a few seconds, he fires again.
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Second Shot—:03.5 seconds
BANG!—The report is so loud inside the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building that the windows rattle, and loose plaster and dirt fall from the ceiling onto Bonnie Ray Williams’s hair.
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The car is very close to Charles Brehm and his son, maybe twenty feet away, so they can see the president’s face very well when the shot rings out. The president stiffens perceptibly, and his hands swoop toward his throat. “My God,” Brehm thinks, “he’s been shot.”
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Secret Service agent Glen Bennett, sitting in the right rear seat of the follow-up car, is looking right at the president when the second shot hits him, he estimates, “about four inches down from the right shoulder.”
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“He’s hit!” Bennett shouts, and reaches for the Colt AR-15 assault rifle on the seat, but Agent George Hickey has already got it. Hickey cocks the rifle and spins toward the right rear, from where the shots appear to have come. Bennett draws his own side arm but there is nothing to shoot at.
²⁰⁵
Special Agent Clint Hill leaps off the running board of the follow-up car and dashes toward the president’s limousine.
²⁰⁶
Special Agent Roy Kellerman, riding in the front passenger seat of the president’s limousine, turns back to his right, the direction from which he hears the firecracker-like pop. He believes he hears the president say, “My God, I am hit!”
²⁰⁷
*
Kellerman sees the president’s elbows have flown up higher than his shoulders, hands lower, fists clenched. He immediately turns his body back to the front and turns to his left to look into the backseats, where he sees Connally in clear distress.
²⁰⁸

Unable to see the president over his right shoulder, and deeply concerned for his safety, Governor Connally is in the middle of a turn to look back over his left shoulder into the backseat, to see if Kennedy has been hit, when he feels a hard blow to the right side of his own back, like a doubled-up fist. Driven down into the seat by the shot, Connally spins back to his right, a gaping, sucking wound in his chest drenching his shirt with blood.

“My God,” he cries out, “they’re going to kill us all!”
²⁰⁹

His wife, Nellie, reaches out and pulls her wounded husband down into her arms and out of what she believes is the line of fire. She puts her head down over his head and doesn’t look up.
²¹⁰

Mrs. Kennedy turns toward her husband, who has a strange, quizzical look on his face—almost like he has a slight headache.
²¹¹

Greer had thought the sound of the first shot was a backfire from one of the police motorcycles accompanying the motorcade, but when he heard the second loud sound, he glances over his right shoulder, momentarily slowing the car down, and sees Governor Connally in the process of slumping down. He turns back facing the front again, but knows something is very wrong now. At the same time, his partner, Kellerman, yells at him, “Let’s get out of here. We’re hit.”
²¹²
*

In the vice president’s car, Agent Youngblood vaults over the front seat and sits on top of the crouched-down figure of the six-foot four-inch Lyndon Johnson as Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough collapse toward the vice president. There is no doubt in Youngblood’s mind what the sound is now—gunshots!
²¹³

Abraham Zapruder hears the shot. The thought flashes in his mind, as he sees the president jerk and slump to his left against Jackie, that it’s a joke, the president clowning around like people sometimes do when they hear a shot, “Oh, he got me.” But even his confused mind is already telling him that the president of the United States does not make jokes like this.
²¹⁴

Across the street, Mary Moorman and her friend, schoolteacher Jean Hill, watch as the president’s limousine glides toward them, curiously unaware that shots have already been fired. Mary knows she will have only one chance to get a picture of the president with her Polaroid camera, which takes about ten seconds to recycle, and fears he will be looking away from her, to his right, at people on the north side of Elm street. As the limousine draws closer, Jean thinks that President and Mrs. Kennedy are looking down at something in the seat. She calls out to the president so Mary can get a good snapshot, “Hey, we want to take your picture!”
²¹⁵

From the moment he looked up after the first shot, James Worrell hasn’t taken his eyes off the barrel of the rifle sticking out the window, and when he sees it fire again he sees a little flame and smoke coming out of the barrel. There is a lot of commotion, people screaming and saying, “Duck.” Frightened, he turns and starts to run toward Houston, just feet away, intending to run to the back of the building, which he feels is the safest place.
²¹⁶