Mary Woodward has corrected her 11/23/63 Dallas Morning News article from the grave. (She died in 2017.)

Here it is:


The four of us, myself, Maggie Brown, Ann Donaldson, and Aurelia Alonzo, had been waiting about half an hour on the north side of Elm Street when the first motorcycle escorts came by, followed shortly by the President’s car.

The President was waving to spectators on his right.

Very soon there was a horrible, ear-shattering noise that appeared to have come from behind us and a little to the right. My first reaction, and also my friends’, was that as a joke, someone had backfired their car.

I don’t believe anyone was hit by the first bullet.

The President and Mrs. Kennedy looked around [at Z-143], as if they, too, didn’t believe the noise was really coming from a gun.

As the limousine approached us, the President was looking straight ahead, and we were afraid we would not get to see his face. But we started clapping and cheering and both he and Mrs. Kennedy turned and smiled and waved directly at us.

Then after a moment’s pause, there was another shot and I saw the President start slumping in the car.

Instead of speeding up, the President’s car came almost to a halt.

This was followed by another shot. Mrs. Kennedy stood up in the car, turned half-way around, then fell on top of her husband’s body. Not until this minute did it sink in what actually was happening. We had witnessed the assassination of the President.

A Secret Service man got out of the follow-up car and started rushing forward, obstructing our view of the President’s car.

Then I started looking around at the stunned crowd. About ten feet from where we were standing, a man and woman had thrown their small child to the ground and covered his body with theirs. Apparently, the bullets had whizzed directly over their heads. There were three shots altogether.

It still seems like a horrible nightmare.

It will be a real-life nightmare to haunt us all for a long time to come.

As it turned out, we were almost certainly the last faces the President noticed in the crowd.


PS What I wrote in my 11/23/63 article was confused and mixed up (what I got right was that there were three shots, that the first shot was early, that  that the first shot missed everything, and that JFK waved to me and my colleagues right before the shot that caused him to "slump"), but Tom Graves at Duncan MacRae's wonderful JFK Assassination Forum website helped me make sense out of what I hazily remembered, and to him I am eternally indebted. (LOL)

. . . . . .


Here's the original:

Four of us from Women’s News, Maggie Brown, Aurelia Alonzo, my roommate Ann Donaldson, and myself had decided to spend our lunch hour by going to see the President.

We took our lunch along—some crackers and apples—and started walking down Houston Street. We decided to cross Elm and wait there on the grassy slope just east of the Triple Underpass, since there weren’t very many people there and we could get a better view.

We had been waiting about half an hour when the first motorcycle escorts came by, followed shortly by the President’s car. The President was looking straight ahead and we were afraid we would not get to see his face. But we started clapping and cheering and both he and Mrs. Kennedy turned, and smiled and waved, directly at us, it seemed. Jackie was wearing a beautiful pink suit with beret to match. Two of us, who had seen the President last during the final weeks of the 1960 campaign, remarked almost simultaneously how relaxed and robust he looked.

As it turned out, we were almost certainly the last faces he noticed in the crowd.

After acknowledging our cheers, he faced forward again and suddenly there was a horrible, ear-shattering noise coming from behind us and a little to the right. My first reaction, and also my friends’, was that as a joke, someone had backfired their car. Apparently the driver and occupants of the President’s car had the same impression, because instead of speeding up, the car came almost to a halt.

Things are a little hazy from this point, but I don’t believe anyone was hit with the first bullet. The President and Mrs. Kennedy turned and looked around, as if they, too, didn’t believe the noise was really coming from a gun.

Then after a moment’s pause there was another shot and I saw the President start slumping in the car.

This was followed rapidly by another shot. Mrs. Kennedy stood up in the car, turned half-way around, then fell on top of her husband’s body. Not until this minute did it sink in what actually was happening. We had witnessed the assassination of the President.

The cars behind stopped and several men—Secret Service men, I suppose—got out and started rushing forward, obstructing our view of the President’s car.

Then I started looking around at the stunned crowd. About 10 feet from where we were standing, a man and woman had thrown their small child to the ground and covered his body with theirs. Apparently, the bullets had whizzed directly over their heads.

Next to us were two Negro women. One collapsed in the other’s arms, weeping and uttering what everyone was thinking: “They’ve shot him.”

It still seems like a horrible nightmare.

It will be a real-life nightmare to haunt us all for a long time to come.

If you don't want to explain how the affidavit is fake, that's fine.

I have no need to lie.  Also, I have pics.  Not that you'll ever see them.

As for your "ego" comment, you're being foolish.  I didn't speak of having dinner with Buell Frazier until it was necessary.  I posted the two affidavits where Frazier acknowledges that the rifle was in the car.  You called them fakes.  That prompted me to inform you that I've already made an attempt to verify.

Like you, I simply wanted to verify for myself (in this case, the authenticity of the two affidavits).  If I had plans to speak of what was discussed during this pizza dinner with Buell, then I would have asked him (and Dave Perry) right then and there if I could discuss (on various internet forums and Facebook groups) what we talked about.

How many times are you going to comment on something which you know nothing about?

I have no need for hypocrisy here.  I have indeed shown a statement (signed, in fact) by Frazier where he acknowledges that the rifle was in the bag, i.e. the bag was large enough for the rifle, i.e. the bag couldn't have been carried the way Frazier described.

Hilarious.

I'm not going to get into a "prove it's fake" conversation. If you want people to believe that Frazier actually would admit in a real affidavit that he lied to the police and the WC, have at it!
The next time you see him (if you ever saw him to begin with) tell him about your "find" at Ripley's believe it or not and see how he responds.

Munroe was an officer in the same educational outfit at Bethesda as David and Pitzer. According to David, he, she, and Pitzer made up an impromptu office lunchtime bridge club (of.....three). According to the story, David ran into Munroe after the suicide when he was stationed at the Navy's Great Lakes station. He said that she told him that she also believed that Pitzer was murdered, presumably for the same reasons. As such, she would be valuable corroboration.

Thanks for the Barbara Monroe clarification. Apart from that, I knew the rest. I still can't find anything at all about Monroe - nada. Do we know why Eaglesham/Palmer thought she could corroborate David's story, and what part they thought she could corroborate? Seemingly it couldn't have been the encounter in Pitzer's office? I would have to know much more before concluding that David's lack of help in locating her was consciousness of guilt.

As you probably know, there was all sorts of misinformation swirling around the death of Pitzer, including a wound to the left temple that supposedly "disproved" a suicide until Eaglesham nailed down that there wasn't. So God knows where David got the misinformation he relayed to the reporter in 1975. He may have just been repeating rumors he had heard, as opposed to inventing falsehoods (the left-handed claim was a plausible mistake on his part). I don't see the mistakes in the 1975 article as impacting his credibility too damagingly.

As to the network job offer, the woman with whom he was having the "affair" (see below) said that he described post-retirement job offers (plural), as did David. It was well-known, at least to his family, that he was retiring to teach educational television at Montgomery Junior College, the main campus of which was located very near his home until 1965 and for which he had done work. Mrs. Pitzer said he was "quite enthused" about the new job. In fact, on the Saturday of his suicide he went into his office to work on a speech he would be delivering to Montgomery students in a few days. So "pre-retirement stress" as an explanation for his suicide just doesn't add up to me.

The "affair" scarcely qualifies for that description. The woman had met him while he was on a business-related trip to Florida exactly a year before his suicide. They went on a few "dates" during a week but were not sexually intimate. A few months later, he flew her to Atlanta to join him for two days, and they were intimate. They corresponded casually, but he next saw her in Florida the month of his suicide, the last day being exactly one week prior. He wrote her a letter 90 minutes before his suicide in which he talked about seeing her in Florida in January. Possible red flags were that he said he was "in deep trouble at home" (his wife didn't seem to think so) and that the woman should not write again "until you hear from or of me." The woman could see no reason for his suicide. From the Navy's investigative report: "He seemed to like his work and always put his duty ahead of personal affairs. He spoke of employment opportunities awaiting him upon retirement. In discussing his family problems, he never seemed morbid or unduly upset; on the contrary he was a cheerful, mature individual." She also said that their relationship "was one of mutual understanding and did not involve matrimonial, or serious romantic implications. Each mutually respected the other, and sought to protect the other’s reputation and prevent friends and families from discovering the association."

Many suicides are, of course, puzzling and even inexplicable. I find Pitzer's really puzzling and David's story at least credible enough to have some suspicion there may have been a connection. It's one of the very few potential factoids I've explored that left me thinking there might actually be something to it.

In the Waukeegan Sun article that started this all, David says this about Pitzer's death:

1.) Pitzer was determined to have shot himself in his office at Bethesda with a ".45" (presumably a Colt model 1911)
2.) The gun was found in his right hand
3.) But Pitzer was left-handed
4.) Pitzer had accepted a lucrative $60,000-a-year job with a TV network in NYC, and thus had no reason to kill himself. $60,000 today would be something like $500,000 in today-dollars.

In the 1990s, Eaglesham and Palmer were able to talk to Pitzer's friends and family. They also obtained access to the crime scene report (including photos) and autopsy report. They found that:

1.) Pitzer shot himself with a .38 revolver.
2.) The gun wasn't found in either hand; it was found on the floor near Pitzer's right knee.
3.) Pitzer was right-handed
4.) There was no lucrative TV network job. Pitzer had accepted a teaching position at a nearby community college.
5.) Pitzer had  been caught having an extramarital affair. He was also about to transition out of the military after 20 years, which can be a highly stressful transition.

So Dennis David was batting 0 for 4 here. Eaglesham and Palmer thought they found a corroborating witness for David's stories, a naval officer named Barbara Monroe. They contacted David for assistance in reaching her, but he suddenly stopped responding to their several requests. When they discovered she had died, and informed him of this, his relationship with them returned to normal.

That last act is what lawyers like to call "consciousness of guilt" though you probably know this already.