Another missed shot that the lone-gunman theory cannot explain is the bullet that hit the grass near the manhole cover on the south side of Main Street about 350 feet from the TSBD's sixth-floor window.
This bullet strike was observed by a police officer stationed on top of the triple underpass, J. W. Foster, who then reported the strike to a superior officer, and the superior officer ordered Foster to guard the area where the bullet hit, which he did. Moreover, we have a photo of the hole in the grass, and also photos of Officer Foster, Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers, and an unidentified man in a suit, among others, standing over the spot where the bullet landed. We even have photos that show the man in the suit bending down, reaching his hand toward the hole in the grass, and standing back up with his hand in cupping shape, obviously holding something in his hand, and then putting his hand in his pocket.
Before anyone knew what they were supposed to say, no one denied that a bullet dug a hole into the grass near the manhole cover, and the bullet strike and the finding of the bullet were matter-of-factly reported in newspapers the next day.
Anyone who has seen rifle bullets hit grass knows such strikes are readily observable. During my years in the Army, I saw a few bullets hit grass and saw them kick up dirt when they hit. This is exactly what Officer Foster saw and why he reported that a bullet hit the grass near the manhole cover.
And how, you might wonder, do lone-gunman theorists explain this bullet strike? Answer: They simply deny that it happened. They claim it was all a giant misunderstanding, a remarkable series of "mistakes." Some of them admit that an object hit the grass but that the object was a piece of brain tissue blown from JFK's head.
We can dispense with the silly piece-of-brain theory by noting that a piece of brain tissue blown from JFK's head at Z313 would not have had enough velocity to dig a hole into the grass and to kick up dirt that would be visible to a police officer standing on the triple underpass. In addition, in order to make the hole in the grass, this magic brain tissue would have had to veer sharply leftward after being blown from the right side of JFK's skull, since the hole in the grass was on the south side of Main Street, i.e., markedly to the left of the limo as of Z313, not to mention the fact that the brain tissue would have had to somehow, someway clear the limo's roll bar and windshield.
A few other notable facts about this bullet strike:
-- Journalists and bystanders were kept at a distance from the spot where the bullet landed.
-- The bullet hole was even photographed, and the picture appeared in the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram on 11/23/63.
-- Of course, by the time Officer Foster testified to the WC, he denied that a bullet was recovered from the hole in the grass near the manhole cover, though he did not explain what the man in the suit picked up and put into his pocket. Additionally, Foster did acknowledge that a bullet "had hit the turf there at that location." Again, anyone who has seen rifle bullets hit grass and has seen the dirt they kick up upon impact knows what Foster was talking about.
-- Contemporary press accounts reported that a bullet was retrieved from the dug-out hole in the grass near the manhole cover. For example, the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram not only published a photo of the hole in the grass, it included the following caption:
One of the rifle bullets fired by the murderer of President Kennedy lies in the grass across Elm Street. . . .The next day the
Dallas Times Herald, in referring to the hole in the grass, reported that a bullet was recovered from the hole:
Dallas Police Lt. J. C. Day of the crime lab estimated the distance from the sixth-floor window . . . to the spot where one of the bullets was recovered at 100 yards.Newsman Richard Dudman reported in an article published in the 12/21/63 issue of the
New Republic that when he was on Elm Street shortly after the shooting, a Dallas police inspector told him that a bullet had been found in the grass:
On the day the President was shot I happened to learn of a possible fifth [bullet]. A group of police officers were examining the area at the side of the street where the President was hit, and a police inspector told me they had just found another bullet in the grass.-- WC apologists point out that Jim Murray and Bill Allen, two of the photographers who took pictures of the man in the suit standing near the hole in the grass, later denied that a bullet was found. However, Murray nor Allen did
not say they saw nothing in the suited man's hand, nor did they explain what the suited man was holding in his hand and what he put in his pocket. Rather, they simply did not believe that a bullet had been found.
Richard Trask, in his monumental collection of the photographic evidence in the JFK case,
Pictures of the Pain, concedes that the photos show that the left hand of the unidentified suited man is "cupped" after he stands up from reaching toward the hole and that the man then puts his hand in his pocket.
Murray said he accepted "the later speculation" that the hole and accompanying mound in the grass were made by "brain matter from Kennedy's skull."
Are we to believe that the unidentified man in the suit picked up brain matter and put it in his pocket?
Allen said he did not believe a bullet was found because neither Walthers, Foster, nor the suited man specifically mentioned having just picked up a bullet. This was surely a dubious reason for concluding the man did not pick up a bullet.
Furthermore, as mentioned, when newsman Richard Dudman was walking on Elm Street after the shooting, a police inspector informed him they had "found another bullet in the grass."
-- The unidentified man in the suit was likely a federal agent. Dallas police chief Jesse Curry believed the man was an FBI agent, and some researchers have tentatively identified the man as FBI Agent Robert Barrett.
-- Dr. Donald Thomas points out that soon after the assassination, Walthers was quoted as saying that they found a bullet near the manhole cover, and that the WC was aware of this. He also notes that Walthers widow told a researcher that her husband told her they did in fact find a bullet in the grass:
Prominent in the photographs, wearing a black suit, is Deputy Sheriff Ed "Buddy" Walthers.
Just before testifying to the Warren Commission, the Commission's counsel exchanged an internal memorandum containing a statement concerning Walthers and the incident.
"At one time Walthers was quoted as having found a bullet, but he seems to have backed away from this position."
This memorandum suggests that the Commission was in receipt of a report or document quoting Walthers as having found a bullet and/or subsequently retracting. No such reports or documents are now present in the Archives. In subsequent years Walthers' wife Dorothy told researcher Mark Oakes (who told this writer) that her late husband had told her they had indeed found a bullet in the grass. (Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2010, p. 402)The bullet strike in the grass near the manhole cover was falsely and wrongly dismissed and then ignored by federal investigators because they were already committed to a scenario of only three shots fired by a lone gunman from the sixth floor of the Book Depository building.
I discuss this extra miss in chapter 4 of my book
A Comforting Lie: The Myth That a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy. A condensed version of this chapter is available in the form of my online article
"Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza."
