JFK Assassination Forum

The vast majority of those who posit a conspiracy in JFK's death originally believed in the lone-gunman theory.

Until I began to read about the JFK case after seeing Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK, I assumed Oswald was the gunman and that there was nothing more to it.

Bethesda lab technologist James Jenkins told the HSCA that, “he saw a head wound in the ‘…middle temporal region back to the occipital.’”

In an affidavit prepared for the HSCA, FBI agent James Sibert wrote that, "The head wound was in the upper back of the head … a large head wound in the upper back of the head…”

The HSCA’s Andy Purdy interviewed Tom Robinson, the mortician who prepared John Kennedy's remains for burial: "Approximately where was (the skull) wound located?" Purdy asked. "Directly behind the back of his head," Robinson answered. Purdy: "Approximately between the ears or higher up?" Robinson, "No, I would say pretty much between them.”

Jan Gail Rudnicki, Dr. Boswell's lab assistant on the night of the autopsy, told the HSCA’s Mark Flanagan, the “back-right quadrant of the head was missing.”'

When first asked, John Ebersole, MD, the attending radiologist who took JFK's autopsy X-rays, told the HSCA, “The back of the head was missing,” He then waffled after being shown the autopsy photographs.

Regarding the Commanding officer of the military District of Washington, D. C., Philip C. Wehle, the HSCA reported that, “(Wehle) noted that the wound was in the back of the head so he would not see it because the President was lying face up.”

Steve Galbraith said: Here is McClelland telling Bugliosi that the sketch he said he made for Thompson placed the wound in the wrong place. It "may have been a bit more forward" he said. So he's again confused as to what he thought he saw. And just to note, Thompson had that sketch made by a police artist friend. McClelland didn't draw it even though he told people he did.

In the still from the Martin film above it looks like the gates are closed but they're not.
When the gates are wide open they rest against the interior wall. The shadows of the diamond pattern on the gates can be seen being cast against the wall.

There is a much simpler, more logical conspiracy scenario, one that has plenty of precedents in other plots and in numerous military operations. It is simply this: The plan was to kill JFK with one, two, or three shots being fired, ideally just one or two shots, so that the shooting could be attributed to a single gunman. However, the shooting did not go according to plan, just as many carefully planned and rehearsed military operations have not gone according to plan.

The goal of the shooting, to kill JFK, was achieved, but several of the shots missed, and one of the missed shots hit Connally. Almost immediately, the news media, being spoon-fed by official sources, assumed only three shots were fired and that there was only one gunman. The throat entry wound was initially explained by the claim that JFK had turned around to look behind the limo, but then came the autopsy report several days later. The WC was forced to ignore all the accounts of extra missed shots and of shots from the grassy knoll, to dismiss Gov. Connally's compelling testimony, and to concoct the ridiculous single-bullet theory. The military personnel at the autopsy were placed under gag orders and threatened with court martial if they failed to obey. The Parkland doctors' troubling accounts were dismissed as the sincere errors of men who were working too hurriedly to accurately identify and diagnose the wounds, and some of the Parkland doctors were pressured or felt obliged to change their accounts to conform with the autopsy report (but others did not).

For the first two years or so, this cover-up story worked and was widely accepted. However, by 1967, with the publication of Mark Lane's book Rush to Judgment in August 1966 and Sylvia Meagher's book Accessories After the Fact in 1967, this began to change. Polls began to show a sizable majority of Americans rejecting the lone-gunman explanation.