Oswald took 10.2 seconds to fire all three shots.

[Brian Roselle]

Very interesting Brian, thanks for posting this. I am wondering if you ever saw some animated GIFs of spectator reactions in the Zapruder film that Jerry Organ posted here back in about June of 2024. Here is a frame from one of his GIFs with a circle around a lady who snaps her head around and appears to look in the direction of the TSBD. I thought I saved the animated version but cannot find it at the moment. So, I will try to find the posts that have the animated version.




After Jerry Organ posted that animation I noticed a lady with a gold jacket who appears to jump out of her skin and then raise her hand to cover her mouth at about the same time as the first woman snaps her head around. And Jerry noticed some others who appear to stand on their toes to get a look at the limo. Here are a couple of animated GIFs of those folks circled by Jerry.






I believe all of these reactions happen very close to each other. So, I am wondering if they might be something you would be interested in testing and/or commenting on. There are a few others that are documented in Jerry’s post. I will post a link to it when I locate it. Thanks for all you do.


Edit: After further review, the lady who snaps her head around towards the TSBD can be seen at the extreme left of the frame of the animated GIFs. I remembered incorrectly and was thinking she was out of the frame.

Note: As I was typing this up I saw that Tom Mahon made the same observation about a lady in the gif. He beat me to posting it. Tom you have a faster reaction time than I do, but I don’t want to discuss my current reaction times 

Charles this is a great question and I had not seen this before but am interested in it.

I can make some comments on it related to PRT study and in fact some of these reactions may be something expected and I have been looking for!

First off, the study uses the very first indication of a start of motion for the person’s reaction, which indicates the end of a perception time and the beginning of a cognitive voluntary reaction. The method cannot use mid part or latter parts of reactions.

On a side note, it also looks like a lady in the foreground with a blue dress, that comes into view about z180 and is moving forward (going in front of the lady in gold),  has recently had her head turned sharp to the right, looking back away from where she is walking direction and is in the process of swinging her head back to a more normal forward direction. If she had an earlier head turn back to the right it would have been before the start of the gif at z161 here.

Although these are blurry, I would like to start with the assumption they are voluntary reactions to a z124 shot, with start of reactions around say z161. The blue lady would be a little earlier and the gold lady might be a little later but this could represent their reactions. This is also near when Connally started his head turn left-to-right reaction (after just doing an initial right-to-left head turn starting at z150).

Here is what I would expect, although not all people have to have a voluntary reaction to a stimulus, for the ones that do, the Perception time model would expect the following distribution of reactions to be seen. The time that surprise voluntary reactions start are not a fixed number they are from a distribution.  I’ll scale it with z-frame numbers below. If the muzzle blast hit that general area on Elm around z125.7, this is roughly the % of folks who reacted that would react in each time increment below and comes from a rough histogram I used on page 8 in a presentation linked below.

Frame range      ~% of Population start reacting                     
z125.7 -> z144.0                 43.6 %
z144.0 -> z162.3                  47.7 %
z162.3 -> z180.6                   7.8 %
z180.6 -> z188.0                   0.9 %

The model would say we should see reactions to a TSBD z124 triggered shot, with the muzzle blast reaching Elm around z125.7, to start occurring over the time frame from z131 to z188 with the start of reactions frequency log normally distributed between those numbers.

Net, we should see some reactions start happening at the time of your gif and it looks like about 10% of the population would start reacting between z160 and z181.

If you want to get more into the weeds on all this, I will give you a link to the slide presentation I did.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_sgOpgeT3A3-D7oLwYBE71vsTi_Wrew/view

Only look at time 17:05 – 20:39 in this presentation for discussion related to estimating when you would expect to see reactions from the first shot in the Plaza.
This presentation covers in more detail how, using human voluntary and involuntary reactions, I got my current trigger time estimates for 3 shots from the TSBD. I wanted to refine my estimates for the total assassination shooting timeline and add some new thoughts on shots 2 and 3.

[Charles Collins]

Note: As I was typing this up I saw that Tom Mahon made the same observation about a lady in the gif. He beat me to posting it. Tom you have a faster reaction time than I do, but I don’t want to discuss my current reaction times 

Charles this is a great question and I had not seen this before but am interested in it.

I can make some comments on it related to PRT study and in fact some of these reactions may be something expected and I have been looking for!

First off, the study uses the very first indication of a start of motion for the person’s reaction, which indicates the end of a perception time and the beginning of a cognitive voluntary reaction. The method cannot use mid part or latter parts of reactions.

On a side note, it also looks like a lady in the foreground with a blue dress, that comes into view about z180 and is moving forward (going in front of the lady in gold),  has recently had her head turned sharp to the right, looking back away from where she is walking direction and is in the process of swinging her head back to a more normal forward direction. If she had an earlier head turn back to the right it would have been before the start of the gif at z161 here.

Although these are blurry, I would like to start with the assumption they are voluntary reactions to a z124 shot, with start of reactions around say z161. The blue lady would be a little earlier and the gold lady might be a little later but this could represent their reactions. This is also near when Connally started his head turn left-to-right reaction (after just doing an initial right-to-left head turn starting at z150).

Here is what I would expect, although not all people have to have a voluntary reaction to a stimulus, for the ones that do, the Perception time model would expect the following distribution of reactions to be seen. The time that surprise voluntary reactions start are not a fixed number they are from a distribution.  I’ll scale it with z-frame numbers below. If the muzzle blast hit that general area on Elm around z125.7, this is roughly the % of folks who reacted that would react in each time increment below and comes from a rough histogram I used on page 8 in a presentation linked below.

Frame range      ~% of Population start reacting                     
z125.7 -> z144.0                 43.6 %
z144.0 -> z162.3                  47.7 %
z162.3 -> z180.6                   7.8 %
z180.6 -> z188.0                   0.9 %

The model would say we should see reactions to a TSBD z124 triggered shot, with the muzzle blast reaching Elm around z125.7, to start occurring over the time frame from z131 to z188 with the start of reactions frequency log normally distributed between those numbers.

Net, we should see some reactions start happening at the time of your gif and it looks like about 10% of the population would start reacting between z160 and z181.

If you want to get more into the weeds on all this, I will give you a link to the slide presentation I did.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_sgOpgeT3A3-D7oLwYBE71vsTi_Wrew/view

Only look at time 17:05 – 20:39 in this presentation for discussion related to estimating when you would expect to see reactions from the first shot in the Plaza.
This presentation covers in more detail how, using human voluntary and involuntary reactions, I got my current trigger time estimates for 3 shots from the TSBD. I wanted to refine my estimates for the total assassination shooting timeline and add some new thoughts on shots 2 and 3.

Thanks Brian, I just included a link to the ~June 2024 thread titled “A Closer Look” that you might find interesting. There are other reactions indicated in that thread that you might find interesting.

[Royell Storing]

 I agree with the general observation that the Lady In Blue is talking to someone over her (R) shoulder. The Gold Jacket Lady is trying to get hair away from her face as she is running forward. I do Not see any "head snaps" directed toward the TSBD.

[Brian Roselle]

I don't know what you are referring to but his WC testimony is pretty clear that there was a shot after the one that hit him and he was not hit on the first shot.
I have compiled them all here.  I have added one more: NBC reporter Robert MacNeil so there are 63 witnesses, 48 of whom specifically recalled the 1.......2...3 pattern.
I don't know of anyone other than Emmett Hudson who changed his recollection of the spacing of the shots.  It would be helpful if you could actually give us references to their statements.  It is not really persuasive to suggest that witnesses were vague and not sure by giving us your vague and unsure impressions about what they may have said.

The distribution looks like this:


Listen to reporters Robert Jackson and Robert MacNeil speaking 50 years later. They still comment on the spacing:
Jackson at 1:30 and MacNeil at 00:22

If your graph is accepted by the research community as being complete and correct, then I don’t know how to explain it. It is basically opposite of the non-testimony forensic evidence I’ve seen that shows that there was an early shot and equal spacing.
It reminds me of the HSCA acoustics conclusion of 95% confidence of 4 or more shots, while at the same time the HSCA had data in hand that showed testimony on the number of shots which showed ~95% less than 4 shots. Just nuts.
 
For equal spacing videos, I have to go back and find more of the ones I recalled, but I already had on my computer references on equal shot spacing on these clips:

Dave Wiegman appeared to have the shot spacing engrained in his memory.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WuZnGGsRlPViCK5mnxjM3d6Acsvag8H7/view?usp=sharing

On this clip there were 3 that recalled equal spacing, Harold Norman, the man after him, and the last man.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/139KZKSTu7bW9GRo18ed8kq3X9rWd3NUT/view?usp=sharing

I’m curious as to why you added McNeil to your list of witness with reliable shot spacing testimony. Didn’t we just determine he was not even in the Plaza during the shooting and his estimate on the first shot timing was nearly 10 seconds in error?

[Richard Smith]

I think it is helpful to take a step back and just try to apply common sense.  That still may not result in the correct conclusion but it gives some context to consider.  Here we are discussing Oswald hitting his target twice and missing once.  But he just doesn't miss his target.  He misses the entire car.  No one standing alongside the road in that area or in the motorcade is hit.  No one apparently even sees a bullet strike the road.  Someone a good distance away is injured by a fragment. 

So what explains Oswald missing the target so badly on a first early shot, but hitting his target twice on even longer shots?  I don't think a steeper shooting angle completely explains that.  Perhaps it can be argued that Oswald had to rush the first shot.  That's still a wide miss not to even strike the car.  Still the most common sense explanation to me is that Oswald tracked the limo through the scope into the path of the tree (the largest and most obvious obstruction between himself and the target).  He lost sight of the target just as it moved under the tree, he fired the shot at that moment, and perhaps the bullet fragmented off a tree limb at a level several feet above the street and traveled into the distance over the heads of the immediate bystanders.  That squares with a lot of the results.  1) missing the target so badly; 2) no one in the immediate vicinity of the limo being hit; and 3) someone a great distance away being struck by a fragment.  In regard to the latter, if the bullet fragments at ground level or from the head shot, it is much more likely to have struck someone in the limo or standing alongside Elm Street rather than to Tague's location. 

[Tom Graves]

I think it is helpful to take a step back and just try to apply common sense.  That still may not result in the correct conclusion but it gives some context to consider.  Here we are discussing Oswald hitting his target twice and missing once.  But he just doesn't miss his target.  He misses the entire car.  No one standing alongside the road in that area or in the motorcade is hit.  No one apparently even sees a bullet strike the road.  Someone a good distance away is injured by a fragment. 

So what explains Oswald missing the target so badly on a first early shot, but hitting his target twice on even longer shots?  I don't think a steeper shooting angle completely explains that.  Perhaps it can be argued that Oswald had to rush the first shot.  That's still a wide miss not to even strike the car.  Still the most common sense explanation to me is that Oswald tracked the limo through the scope into the path of the tree (the largest and most obvious obstruction between himself and the target).  He lost sight of the target just as it moved under the tree, he fired the shot at that moment, and perhaps the bullet fragmented off a tree limb at a level several feet above the street and traveled into the distance over the heads of the immediate bystanders.  That squares with a lot of the results.  1) missing the target so badly; 2) no one in the immediate vicinity of the limo being hit; and 3) someone a great distance away being struck by a fragment.  In regard to the latter, if the bullet fragments at ground level or from the head shot, it is much more likely to have struck someone in the limo or standing alongside Elm Street rather than to Tague's location.

A woman by the name of Marvin (sic) Faye Chism said she saw a bullet strike the pavement near the limo shortly after it had turned onto Elm Street.

If Oswald was standing and awkwardly leaning forward for that steeply-downward-angled "Z-124" shot at JFK's head as he was riding in the rapidly moving limo (from Oswald's POV) -- standing and leaning forward because it was a steeply-downward-angled shot and the window was only about 1/4 open -- it could explain how he managed to "miss everything."

James Tague was probably nicked by a bullet fragment from the fatal Z-313 head shot.

[Richard Smith]

A woman by the name of Marvin (sic) Faye Chism said she saw a bullet strike the pavement near the limo shortly after it had turned onto Elm Street.

If Oswald was standing and awkwardly leaning forward for that steeply-downward-angled "Z-124" shot at JFK's head as he was riding in the rapidly moving limo (from Oswald's POV) -- standing and leaning forward because it was a steeply-downward-angled shot and the window was only about 1/4 open -- it could explain how he managed to "miss everything."

James Tague was probably nicked by a bullet fragment from the fatal Z-313 head shot.

A US Marine trained shooter doesn't miss the entire car at a shorter distance because he was "leaning forward."   That's a very wide miss at a shorter distance.  If the bullet hits the road, it fragments in the presence of many law enforcement personnel in close proximity or bystanders on Elm St.   The fragments do not take flight above their heads and strike Tague standing in the distance.  I can't prove it and don't rely on junk science to support it, but the most obvious explanation is that Oswald tunnel visionrd the shot through the scope into the treeline and missed for that reason.