AP photographer James Altgens took a photograph that destroys the lone-gunman theory: Altgens 6. Everyone agrees that Altgens 6 was taken at right around Z255.
Here's the unsolvable problem that Altgens 6 poses for the lone-gunman theory: It shows damage to the windshield of JFK's limousine. Nobody disputes this fact. The Warren Commission (WC) admitted that the alleged magic bullet of the single-bullet theory (SBT) could not have caused the windshield damage.
The WC assumed the damage was caused by a fragment from the head shot. However, the head shot did not occur until Z313. As an important side note, I should mention that there is strong, mutually corroborating evidence that there was a hole in the windshield. At least eight witnesses in three different locations independently reported that they saw a hole in the windshield. One of the witnesses, a Dallas police officer, actually put a pencil through the hole to confirm it was a hole. Several of the witnesses said the hole appeared to have been made by a bullet that hit from the front. For more information on this evidence, see Doug Weldon's chapter in
Murder in Dealey Plaza:
"The Kennedy Limousine: Dallas 1963"See also Dr. David Mantik's chapter titled "The Frontal Shot Through the Limousine Windshield" in his 2024 book
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis (chapter 5).
I am not here to argue over the evidence of a windshield hole. My main point is that regardless of whether the windshield damage was just cracks or was a hole and some cracks, the lone-gunman theory has no plausible explanation for the damage.
WC apologists and mortal-error theorists who acknowledge that a bullet hit the pavement behind the limousine early in the shooting may suggest that a fragment from this bullet hit the windshield. However, this is problematic for a number of reasons.
The windshield damage was 4-6 inches to the left of the rearview mirror (viewing from the back of the limo to the front). In order to hit the windshield at this location, a fragment from the pavement bullet would have had to first miss the riding handles on the back of the limo, then miss JFK and Jackie Kennedy, then miss John and Nellie Connally, and then miss the driver, William Greer.
Furthermore, in the MPI large-format transparencies of the Zapruder film, the windshield damage first appears in Z193 and is plainly visible again from Z215 to Z232 (David Mantik,
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis, 2024, pp. 289-291).
But the pavement strike occurred well before Z193 -- in fact, it occurred before Z166 (even according to Gerald Posner).If a fragment had hit the windshield hard enough to crack it so early in the shooting, surely the driver would have noticed it and would have visibly reacted, since no other shots had been fired yet.
But, if the windshield was hit at around Z190, after at least one shot had already been fired, the driver, now nervous and distracted by having heard a rifle shot, may not have noticed the windshield hit, especially if a high-velocity bullet penetrated the windshield from the front.
Clearly, a windshield hit at Z190 could not have been done by a bullet fired from the sixth-floor window, even if we assume the windshield was hit from behind. Clearly, no fragment from the head shot could have caused the windshield damage, since the head shot occurred at Z313. And clearly, no fragment from the Z133-166 pavement bullet could have caused the windshield damage (indeed, WC apologists already have that bullet magically sending a large fragment streaking toward the curb near James Tague over 400 feet away).
