Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett, who was sitting on the passenger-side rear seat of the follow-up car and who can be seen in Z-145 starting to lean to his right to see around Dave Powers, came the closest to correctly describing Oswald's three shots.

Unfortunately, Bennett's favorite words seem to have been words like "immediately" and "exact." This is part of what he wrote by hand on 11/22/63 in CE 2112, WC 24 H 542. My comments are in brackets.

“At this point I heard a noise that immediately reminded me of a firecracker. I immediately, upon hearing the supposed firecracker, [started leaning to my right to see around Dave Powers and] looked at the Boss's car. At this exact [actually, about five seconds later] time I saw a shot that hit the Boss about 4 inches down from the right shoulder; a second shoot [sic] followed immediately [actually, about five seconds later] and hit the right rear high of [?] the boss's head.”

The important thing is that Bennett confirms that the "firecracker sound" was before he started "looking at the Boss' car," and that while doing so he saw a bullet (CE-399) hit JFK in the lower neck/upper back around Z-222.

I contend that the "firecracker" sound was Oswald's first, missing-everything, shot at "Z-124," half-a-second before Zapruder resumed filming at Z-133.


Secret Service Agent Glen Bennet starts leaning to his right to see around Dave Powers in Z-145:

https://assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z145.jpg

Oh, boy, another version of the whacky theory that the sixth-floor gunman fired before Z133 and somehow, someway missed the entire gigantic limousine.

Of course, you cite Bennett's testimony but then reject what he says about the timing of the shots. According to you, when he said "followed immediately" he really meant "about five seconds later." Right. . . . Makes perfect sense. . . . 

The most crucial, valuable info from Bennett's testimony is his statement that he saw a "shot" that hit JFK "about 4 inches down from the right shoulder." This is very close to the location of the hole in the back of JFK's shirt and the hole in the back of his coat. It is also very close to the location for the back wound given in JFK's death certificate (signed by Dr. Burkley), drawn in Boswell's autopsy face sheet (marked "verified," BTW), described by Clint Hill in his WC testimony, described by autopsy radiologist Dr. John Ebersole in his HSCA testimony, and described by Sibert and O'Neill in their 12/9/63 report on the autopsy.

BTW, HSCA FPP chairman Dr. Michael Baden acknowledged that the FPP placed the back wound "a few inches lower" than the location depicted in CE 386, the diagram drawn by Harold Rydberg at Humes and Boswell's direction for the WC:

The panel also places the entrance perforation on the lower, in the back area, a few inches lower than illustrated in this drawing. (1 HSCA 256)

CE 386 shows the back wound as being a neck wound and located at the base of the neck, right around C7.

Anyone who understands basic geometry knows that moving the wound downward by even 1 inch, not to mention "a few inches," substantially changes the trajectory of the projectile that made the wound. This is undoubtedly why SBT defenders from Lattimer to Myers have refused to acknowledge the HSCA FPP's location for the back wound but have instead used the WC's location for the wound, i.e., placing it above the throat wound, in their SBT trajectory illustrations.

Finally, it should be noted that the released transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session reveals that chief counsel J. Lee Rankin referred to an autopsy picture that he said showed that "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade." This agrees with Bennett's account, with the death certificate, with Hill's account, with Ebersole's account, with the rear JFK clothing holes, with Sibert and O'Neill's 12/9/63 report on the autopsy, and with Boswell's autopsy face sheet (which, again, was marked "verified").

For more information on the back wound's location, see "Where Was President Kennedy's Back Wound?"

Dallas Morning News reporter Mary Woodward wrote in her 11/23 article that there were three shots, and that the first shot sounded like a backfire and that it missed everything.

She also said, but mistakenly, that the limo slowed almost to a halt after the first shot, that the third shot "rapidly followed" the second one, and that the shots came from "behind us and a little to the right," i.e., the Grassy Knoll or the Triple Underpass.

Unless, of course, by "rapidly followed" she meant five seconds, and only if she was referring to the directionality of the echoes.

The fact that she says that the limo slowed almost to a halt after the first shot tells us she has conflated what happened after the first shot with what happened after the second shot, which in turn explains why "JFK's waving directly back to Woodward and Co." had to have happened not just before the "backfire-like" first shot, but just before the second, "Magic Bullet," shot that wounded both JFK and Governor Connally.

Which we can see is the case in Z-180, in which JFK is waving to Woodard and Co. (The woman who's standing at the very left edge of the frame is one of her colleagues, Maggie Brown. To the left of Brown and out of the frame are another colleague, Ann Donaldson, blond-haired Woodward, and Woodward's third colleague, Aurelia Alonzo.)

https://assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z180.jpg

Enlarge to photo in the bottom-left corner to see in Z-153 where blond-haired Woodward and her three colleagues were standing when JFK waved to them one-and-a-half seconds later in Z-180.

https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/Gallery/Zapruder%20Gallery



Here's her article:

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.

. . . . . .


My comment:

JFK and Jackie did turn their heads after the first shot, and they both started doing so in Z-143, one second after Oswald's first, missing-everything, "backfire-like" shot at "Z-124."

The Current Zapruder Film is not the same Zapruder Film that Dan Rather described to the World days after the assassination.

Dear Stormtrooper Storing,

How much time do you think there was between the shot that hit JFK in the lower neck/upper back and the one that blew his head off?

Just one or two seconds, as a literal interpretation of what Bennett meant by the words "immediately" and "exact" forces us to conclude?

If so, do you think the Zapruder film was altered to make it looks as though it was about five seconds, instead?

Yes, or no?

-- Tom

Dear Stormtrooper Storing,

Do you think the first sound Bennett heard was something other than a shot, e.g., a firecracker?

If so, do you think it was almost instantaneously followed by the shot he saw hit JFK "about 4 inches below his shoulder"?

If so, do you think IT was followed almost instantaneously by the shot that blew JFK's head off?

In other words, a total elapsed time of only a second or two for those two shots?

Gasp . . . do you think the Zapruder film was altered to make it look as though there were about five seconds between those two shots, i.e., the ones that seem to have been at Z-222 (approximately) and Z-313???

Or . . . do you think the "firecracker sound" was actually the first shot, and the total elapsed time for all three shots was still only a second or two?

LOL!

-- Tom

 The Current Zapruder Film is not the same Zapruder Film that Dan Rather described to the World days after the assassination.

Nice comeback. Now, there's a cleanup needing your attention on Aisle 9.

Well, you are stinking the place up, Stormtrooper Storing.