You know there were 3 shots. Roberts and Bennett eventually said they recalled 3 shots. Ready never said how many. Hill and Landis recalled only two. So 7 out of 10 were right and are reliable.

It is a matter of probability. In this case, 7 of the ten saw JFk react to the first shot: Hickey, Hill, Landis, Kinney,  Roberts, Powers, and O'Donnell all said JFK reacted to the first shot. Ready didn't look at JFK. McIntyre did not look at JFK until the head shot. Bennett was not clear as his notes refer to only two shots but his later statement refers to three. He is the only one whose statement could be construed as a first shot miss if it weren't for that in his second statement he did not see the first one hit. He said he saw the hole in JFK's jacket immediately after the first shot when he said the second shot sounded. So that requires two immediate initial shots.

If the witnesses are independent, the chance that 7 out of 8 independently reporting the same thing that none of them saw is highly improbable in itself   For another dozen to independently report the same thing that none saw is orders of magnitude more improbable.  Then to have another 20 witnesses place the first shot after z186 which necessarily means it did not miss, makes it so highly improbable that the first shot missed as to be effectively zero.

Why would a Secret Service agent who was in the motorcade and who wanted to keep his job admit that there was an early loud "bang" that might have been a missing-everything shot?

The point is that the witnesses are reliable in establishing facts without trying to assess their ability or honesty. You seem to think witnesses are inherently unreliable.  They aren’t.

When multiple witnesses independently recall the same things, the likelihood that they were all independently wrong rapidly diminishes.

How can 10 different witnesses giving 10 different versions of what happened establish anything as fact? It demonstrates that witnesses get somethings right und somethings wrong. Multiple people giving the same wrong account doesn't establish anything as fact. If one person can make a mistake, multiple people can make the same mistake. Even a large group of people can make the same mistake. A large group of people said all he shots cume from the GK und another large group said the shots cume from the TSBD. One of those large groups of people made the same mistake. 

WOW. That really narrows it down. We can conclude there were two or more shots fired sometime after the limo turned onto Elm st. Mystery solved. 

We already knew that. That was never in doubt.
You've really cracked the case.
You can't be serious. They all agreed JFK got shot dead in Dallas. How could  i ever doubt a witness again?

The point is that the witnesses are reliable in establishing facts without trying to assess their ability or honesty. You seem to think witnesses are inherently unreliable.  They aren’t.

When multiple witnesses independently recall the same things, the likelihood that they were all independently wrong rapidly diminishes.

Andrew Mason and the equally lame HSCA mistakenly believe JFK was hit by a bullet around Z-190.

LOL!


ME: Just speaking of JFK, on what grounds other than so-called "acoustical analysis" and so-called "camera blur" did the HSCA conclude that he was hit by a bullet around Z-190?

Perplexity AI: Beyond acoustics and the claimed camera-blur response, the HSCA relied chiefly on Kennedy’s apparent bodily reaction near Z-200 and on a trajectory reconstruction that assumed the impact was near Z-190.

The remaining grounds

Kennedy’s apparent reaction: The photographic panel thought Kennedy’s right hand stopped waving and his head began moving left at roughly Z-193–200, before the Stemmons sign obscured him. The HSCA treated this as compatible with an impact some frames earlier, around Z-190. But this was interpretive visual evidence of reaction—not direct evidence of the instant of impact.

Single-bullet trajectory reconstruction:

Thomas Canning’s trajectory work used the limousine occupants’ positions at frame 190 and showed that the line from the sixth-floor southeast window could pass through Kennedy’s back/neck wound course and toward Connally. In his testimony, Canning explicitly said he “related the back neck trajectory to the positions at Zapruder frame 190.” That makes it a consistency demonstration for Z-190, not an independent derivation of Z-190.

Medical, ballistics, and bullet-lead evidence:

These were used to establish the broader proposition that Kennedy’s nonfatal back/neck wound and Connally’s wounds were caused by one bullet, and that the fatal head hit was another bullet. They could support the proposition that a nonfatal Kennedy hit occurred before Z-312; they did not date it to frame 190.

Connally’s later visible reaction: The committee read Connally’s behavior after he emerged from behind the sign as consistent with a wound earlier in the interval. But it acknowledged no scientific measure of the latency between impact and a visible reaction. This therefore offered, at most, compatibility with the proposed timing.

Bottom line

If the question is whether the HSCA had evidence independently fixing JFK’s first hit at approximately Z-190, the answer is essentially no. Its location at Z-190 rested principally on its acoustical synchronization, supplemented by perceived Kennedy reaction and blur; medical, CE 399/fragment, and trajectory evidence were used to validate a single-bullet scenario at that selected time, rather than to establish the time itself.

ME: What "apparent bodily reaction near Z-200"?

Perplexity AI: The HSCA photographic panel meant this: at about Z-200, Kennedy’s movements appeared to “freeze”; his right hand abruptly stopped in the middle of its wave, and his head moved rapidly from his right toward his left, in Jackie Kennedy’s direction. The panel concluded that, by the time he disappeared behind the Stemmons sign at Z-207, he was displaying a reaction to what it called a “severe external stimulus.”

Crucially, the panel did not say these movements proved a bullet impact at Z-190. It reasoned that an apparent reaction around Z-200 was compatible with a hit some fraction of a second earlier, and—when coupled with the asserted acoustic timing—“appeared” to place the first hit at approximately Z-190.

ME: The reason JFK's head was turned so far to his right from Z-180 to Z-200 was because he was looking at (and waving to) Mary Woodward and her three journalism colleagues. (Woodward and JFK had met several times before he became president.)

Perplexity AI: Woodward’s own account is that she and her three colleagues called out, “Please look this way,” and that both JFK and Jackie looked toward them and waved. She was on the north side of Elm, visible in the Zapruder film, and located in front of/just west of the Depository.

At about Z-180–200, JFK’s strongly rightward head turn and continuing right-hand wave are therefore naturally explained as his attention to the Woodward group. Relative to the limousine’s forward longitudinal axis, Woodward was roughly side-on—about 70–80 degrees, perhaps approaching 90 degrees depending on the exact frame and her precise place in the four-woman group.

That matters for the HSCA photographic-panel claim. A cessation or alteration of the rightward wave/head orientation around Z-200 has a non-ballistic explanation: JFK may simply have been ending an interaction with identifiable acquaintances as the car moved past them. The visual change can be real without, by itself, identifying a gunshot impact or supporting a Z-190 timing. The “freeze” interpretation is consequently not an independent forensic indicator of impact. (emphasis added)


ME: How important was the Z-190 "camera blur" deemed before the so called "acoustical evidence" arrived?

Perplexity AI It was not an important pre-acoustics reason to prefer Z-190. The formal HSCA blur analysis was itself undertaken in relation to the acoustic results—essentially as a check whether Zapruder’s panning errors could be associated with the alleged shot times identified on the Dictabelt.

The committee said it studied the blurs “in an effort to determine whether” they resulted from Zapruder’s possible startle reaction to gunshots. Its finding was only that the blur cluster at Z-189–197 “may reasonably be attributed” to a startle reaction; it did not identify a bullet impact, or even a gunshot, at a particular frame. (Emphasis added)

The trajectory material is more revealing about the sequence: it states that the photographic/trajectory work at Z-190 proceeded “based on the acoustics results” and the camera-blur study, along with the panel’s visual observations.

So, before the acoustical analysis arrived, the Z-190 blur was not an established, independent piece of timing evidence against the Z-207–222 alternative. At most it was a visible irregularity in Zapruder’s camera movement. After the acoustics purportedly put a shot at Z-188–191, the blur at Z-189–197 could be interpreted as Zapruder reacting to that putative shot and became corroborative.

The ordering is therefore:

Alleged acoustic shot near Z-190 → look for a corresponding startle/panning blur → blur judged compatible with that shot.

Not:

Preexisting blur → independent proof that JFK was hit at Z-190.


The HSCA’s cautious wording — “may reasonably be attributed”— is significant. Even in the final report, it treated the blur as compatible corroboration, not as a stand-alone basis for an early impact. (Emphasis added)

. . . . . . .


"Case Closed"

But it does make sense that JFK's transverse process was traumatized / damaged by CE-399 around Z-222, and that his spaying his elbows outward and "clutching" his throat was therefore a neuromuscular reaction, not an "attempt to breathe."

Maybe. Maybe not. We can be certain that the hole through JFK’ s airway was a major impediment to his ability to breathe properly.

We are less certain that he sustained a fracture of the T1 transverse process but if he did, there was no displacement of the bone. So how sure can we be that this was immediately felt? Since the T1 transverse process extends outside the spinal column and does not protect any nerves, it is even less certain that a non-displaced fracture of the end of that small bone would have resulted in any neurological reaction, let alone an immediate one.