A question for Brian Roselle

[Tom Graves]

Brian,

Dale K. Myers posted the following in 2010:

(Edited a bit by me)

"Compare all of the films and photographs taken before, during, and after the Z140–Z149 time range and it is clear that the actions of JFK, Jackie, Secret Service Agent George Hickey, and  John Connally are not in fact exhibiting a reaction to a severe external stimulus but merely following through with actions begun previously in response to the crowd on both sides of the street."

Do you agree with Myers?

FWIW, I don't. For example, the only time I remember seeing Hickey "reacting to the crowd" by bending over as though he's gonna barf is between Z140 and Z150.

-- Tom

[Brian Roselle]

Brian,

Dale K. Myers posted the following in 2010:

(Edited a bit by me)

"Compare all of the films and photographs taken before, during, and after the Z140–Z149 time range and it is clear that the actions of JFK, Jackie, Secret Service Agent George Hickey, and  John Connally are not in fact exhibiting a reaction to a severe external stimulus but merely following through with actions begun previously in response to the crowd on both sides of the street."

Do you agree with Myers?

FWIW, I don't. For example, the only time I remember seeing Hickey "reacting to the crowd" by bending over as though he's gonna barf is between Z140 and Z150.

-- Tom

Good question Tom, when I started looking at reactions, I had to consider things like that as well.

I would say there are many reasons I disagree:

The reactions and their quickness (like Connally's left/right head turns) and Jackie's at the same time, do not seem to be related to some completion of a previous motion or view. In the Croft photo at z161 you can catch both of them half way through doing their L/R head turns and they were effectively one continuous motion at the same time, but these were not continuous to something that started before they started their right to left, back to right head turns. Their viewing did not stop to look at something at the z161 time in the Croft photo, like they were looking at some object or some individual, their heads kept moving around. They appeared not to be looking at anything in particular, but rather looking for something.

That something they could be looking for would be consistent with looking for a location of a surprise loud bang that lasted 5ms., and their responses show characteristics of human voluntary head turning commonly used in sound localization and associated with a “Cone of Confusion” with respect to determining where a sound source was. Look up Cone of Confusion and you can see how people can be confused wrt sound localization and can “look around” to change head position to help localize. The most difficult sounds to localize are very short duration sounds, even if loud, coming from behind and elevated overhead behind you.

I don’t think others in the limo appeared to be doing a follow through of a motion either. I don’t believe Hickey was doing some motion to his right before he began looking over left towards the ground. I don’t believe Kellerman was doing some motion to his left when he began bending over to his right and briefly twisting looking down and behind him. I don’t think Nelly was doing a head motion to her left before she started her head sweeping motion to her right. I think the same could be said for Rosemary Willis. JFK’s motion was less definitive, but I think it was still a brief reaction to a sound. I did consider throwing JFK’s  data point out, but it did not meaningfully change mean and median reaction values for the group, and Ken Scearce believed it was valid, so we used it. 

I just read some of the testimony of Euins and Glover and they said that after the first shot in front of the depository that folks started looking around up there, a lot of head turning. Glover also said that at the sound of the second shot a stone column blocked her view to JFK. This would be an anchored testimony on the second shot where she heard the second shot and associated it with a fixed landmark specifically at that time. Using Mark Tylers motorcade plot that pillar or stone column blocked her view to JFK at the second shot around z224.

Next, all the reactions that were summarized here, when comparing to the perception time model, happened within 0.55 seconds of each other, in the 10 frames from z140 to z150. When the perception time distribution model was finished, it shows that the majority of voluntary reactions to a surprise stimulus for the population will happen within a timeframe of about + 0.3 seconds around the population median. Some will be quicker and some will be slower to react, distributed in a log-normal way, but we would expect based on reaction time science to see most voluntary reactions happening in the time frame that we see with the reactions in the Zapruder film.

There are other reasons, but specifically related to reactions, these are some key reasons why I don’t think the reactions were just independent innocuous reactions all happening within  ~½ second of each other.

[Brian Roselle]

I don't know if you have seen the article on Toni Glover that I mentioned, but I try to include it here. This mentions head turning after the first shot up by her.

Here is Toni Glover’s description of the three shots she discusses as she stood up on a 4 ft pedestal watching JFK in the limo the whole time go down Elm. She identified the last two sounds as gunshots; at the first surprising bang she was not certain what caused it.

This is in the Patriot Ledger at:
https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/2013/11/21/girl-in-blue-recalls/37935151007/


(First Shot)
After Kennedy's limo passed her perch and turned left onto Elm in front of the book depository, Glover said there was a noise people in the crowd acknowledged by turning their heads. It was a bang, she said, but it could have been a motorcycle or car backfiring.
(Second Shot)
 She heard what she knows was a gunshot a moment later. At that point, her view of Kennedy's car was blocked by a stone column. When it came back into view, Jacqueline Kennedy had leaned toward her husband, and it was apparent something odd was taking place.
(Third Shot)
"Then there was a gunshot," Glover said, adding there was no mistaking it.
Although she tried to convince herself she had not seen what she had seen, she watched Mrs. Kennedy clamber onto the trunk of the limo and she knew.

This discusses head turns and some uncertainty regarding the first shot. It would also be an example of an anchored testimony, but would be only for the second shot. Her view to JFK on her perch was blocked by the large stone column west of her there at around ~z224.