Was There a Cannon on the Grassy Knoll?

[Fred Litwin]

Was there a Cannon on the Grassy Knoll?



Walter Winborn witnessed the JFK assassination from the railroad overpass in Dealey Plaza. He is one of the witnesses that Mark Lane quotes in his book Rush to Judgment (page 40) to help prove a shot from the grassy knoll.

Walter L. Winborn and Thomas J. Murphy told an independent investigator that they also had seen smoke in the trees on the knoll.

Here is his statement to the FBI from 1964:


Winborn said all the shots came from the same location, but he could not tell where they were fired from.

Stewart Galanor interviewed him in 1966 and his story changed:

GALANOR. Did you see anything else that might be of interest?

WINBORN. I just saw some smoke coming out in a--a motorcycle patrolman leaped off his machine and go up towards that smoke that come out from under the trees on the right hand side of the motorcade. Now that was--

GALANOR. That's up that grassy hill.


WINBORN. Yes.

GALANOR. Grassy knoll. There's a wooden fence there.

WINBORN. Yes.

GALANOR. And you saw smoke.

WINBORN. Yes.

GALANOR. How many? Was it puffs of smoke?


WINBORN. It looked like a little haze, Like somebody had shot firecrackers or something like that. Or somebody had taken a puff off of a cigarette and maybe probably nervous and blowing out smoke, you know. Oh, it looked like it was more than one person that might possibly have exhaled smoke. But it was a haze there. From my general impression it looked like it was at least ten feet long and about, oh, two or three feet wide.

GALANOR. And this was where now exactly?

WINBORN. That was back over the side walk underneath those trees, that--of that fence that you were talking about. . . .

GALANOR. The FBI spoke with you March 17th, 1964, I believe.

WINBORN. That's right.

GALANOR. And they make no mention about the smoke that you saw. Did you tell them about that, that you saw smoke on the grassy knoll?

WINBORN. Oh yes. Oh yes.

GALANOR. They didn't include it in their report.

WINBORN. Well.

GALANOR. Do you have any idea why they didn't

WINBORN. I don't have any idea. They are specialists in their field, and I'm just an amateur.

Winborn says it "looked like a little haze," and that perhaps "somebody had taken a puff off a cigarette and maybe probably nervous and blowing out smoke, you know."

Does this sound like rifle fire? Winborn says the smoke "looked like it was at least ten feet long and about, oh, two or three feet wide.."

Were cannons firing at Kennedy?



Update:
Lane footnotes Winborn's statement to the FBI and the Galanor interview. He does not tell his readers what was in Winborn's initial statement and that his views had changed.

[Royell Storing]

  The important part of the Winborn story is his detailing seeing a police officer dumping his motorcycle on the knoll and then running back inside the railroad yard. Skinny Holland and others standing atop the Triple Underpass also reported seeing this same thing. So did Lee Bowers from inside the 2 story railroad tower. The common denominator among these eyewitnesses was their benefiting from a high ground viewing position. Unlike the other JFK Assassination eyewitnesses, they were not viewing the assassination from the very bottom of the cereal bowl. 

[John Corbett]

The common denominator among these witnesses is that none of them saw a gunman.

[Mark Ulrik]

There might have been