Tag: Warren Commission

Beyond the Grassy Knoll

What lies beyond the grassy knoll? If any part of that sentence resonates with you then you are aware of the controversies surrounding the Kennedy assassination. So, I will skip the obligatory, remedial recitation of the facts and suspicions in, or not, in evidence. 

In my research for a 1993 screenplay, and more recently for my new blockbuster thriller, “Ask Not,” I refreshed my files on the “alternate theories” of what happened that day, November 22nd 1963, in Dealey Plaza.  

As always, a good way to start is a deep dive into the 1600 pages that comprise the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission Report. A painstakingly assembled collection of documents, photos, and testimony that was ordered by LBJ shortly after the assassination. The “shorthand” report was itself, a hefty 888 pages. 

If you can’t sleep at night because you don’t believe the Warren Commission, then you are like a huge percentage of Americans who express doubt to this day about who killed Kennedy. Which is why it is the “setting” for my latest novel.  But parts of the very report that claims there was only one lone gunman, three shots, and no conspiracy, can lead you to suspect that there was possibly another shooter.

Here’s one example of what can be extrapolated from the Warren Report. The Police radio logs reprinted within the 1600 pages that contain quirky little nagging facts like this: At the time of the shooting of the president at 12:30 in the afternoon, the police dispatchers were sending cops to the railroad track area. That order was logged in at 12:30 p.m. and 40 seconds. 

The railroad track area? But…but the president was just shot! Why are you sending every cop you have to the the railroad track area?

What lies beyond the grassy knoll? The railroad track area. 

Right behind the wooden fence. The fence just to the front and right of the spot where Kennedy’s limo was when he was fatally shot. The exact spot the “Grassy Knoll Types” maintain the fatal bullet came from.

Interestingly enough, the transcripts show us that it wasn’t until 12:49 or so, almost 20 minutes from the moments the shots rang out, that the first mention of the Texas School Book Depository was broadcast over police radios.

What followed immediately was a description of a man, said to still be in the building, was dispatched. (Later we learned that at that moment, Oswald was on a city bus and then took a cab back to his rooming house.) But they gave a description! If Oswald wasn’t there, then who were they describing? 

Of course, none of this is proof of anything, first reports of traumatic events are often inaccurate, and chaos and confusion reign supreme over witnesses and even some police.  But if you are looking for a way out of the morass of randomness and senselessness that the lone nut theory has created in people for the last 60 years, then there is some great fertilizer here in which to plant your conspiracy theory. 

Coming in at slightly less than the 1600 hundred pages of the Warren Commission Report, is my new thriller, Ask Not! Which lands on the desk at a very digestible 275 pages.

Most novels are set in a place, a location. The setting for my murder mystery is the entire universe of conspiracy theories and public doubt over JFK’s murder. The Kennedy assassination still engages, enthralls, and endures 60 years later, in most part because of these conspiracy theories that keep it alive. I call that, America’s Assassination Fascination.

My main character, airline pilot Hank Larson, could care less about who killed Kennedy and was perfectly happy with the Warren Commission’s conclusions, and then never thought of it again. Until his brother is murdered, and he is set on a path. One which brings him right in front of the Grassy Knoll. With a target on his head. Right in the crosshairs of nefarious, powerful, and ruthless men who wish to keep secret whatever the hell did happen that day. 

JFK and the Secret Service Agent’s Secret!

With the upcoming release of my new, JFK thriller, Ask Not! and the new revelations all over the media that retired Secret Service Agent, Paul Landis found the “magic bullet” in the back seat of the limo and placed it on a hospital stretcher, I am constantly asked to comment. 

But first, as we say in publishing, a little backstory, President John F. Kennedy was shot at 12:30 p.m. CST as his motorcade weaved its way through Dallas, Texas. At 12:36 the limo with the mortally wounded 35thpresident screeched to a stop at Parkland Hospital’s Emergency entrance. At first, Mrs. Kennedy would not let go of her husband. Her personal Secret Service Agents, Clint Hill, and Paul Landis tried to coax her to release him. They soon realized she was holding his head together and her own sense of propriety had her hiding his ghastly wound from the public. Clint caught on and removed his jacket and covered the president’s head with it and she relented to letting her husband go. Landis’ eye was caught by something shiny in the back seat. He now testifies that “two bright brass bullet fragments” glistened back at him. He collected Mrs. Kennedy’s hat, bag, and lighter. Then noticed an intact bullet resting on the rear deck of the limo. He pocketed the bullet and proceeded into the trauma room where he says he placed the bullet on the president’s stretcher.

Maybe not so MAGICAL after all

Well, that bullet would go on to launch the greatest unsolved mystery in history. It would be renamed the “Magic Bullet” and be identified (Commission Exhibit #399) in the Warren Commission’s Official Report on the Assassination as having made 7 of the 8 wounds Kennedy and Texas Governor Connelly, who was riding in the jump seat right in front of the president, suffered. Ostensibly from the three shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the 6th-floor window of the Texas Scholl book depository.  

The big news hullabaloo about all this is that if Landis is telling the truth, then that bullet found at the back of the limo didn’t “magically” create the 7 entrance and exit wounds of Kennedy and Connelly only then to fall out of Connelly’s thigh onto the hospital stretcher.  Through the tortured math of forensics, it points to a second shooter to account for the total of 8 wounds, the third and last shot making only wound number 8, clearly hitting the president in his head. A second shooter is a most tantalizing prospect since for the past 60 years the official cause of the president’s death was maintained as a lone gunman, 3 shots and no conspiracy. 

Ah, but wait!  Lost in this hoopla of “blockbuster revelations” is a small fact that I have never heard in my 30 years of investigating this subject. My deep dive into Dallas began as I was researching and writing a screenplay in 1993, and now for my soon-to-be-released novel, Ask Not! in November. And if history is any predictor, it should become the hub of a whole new branch of conspiracy theories. In his testimony, Landis offhandedly mentions seeing “two bright brass bullet fragments” on the back seat. He goes into great detail about one of them, he described it as the size of the end of his pinky and mushroomed. He never described the other fragment. BINGO. New conspiracy fodder for the next 60 years! 

Nowhere in any official accounts, including the extensive Warren Commission Report, is there any mention of bullet fragments being found in the backseat of the limo. In fact, the Warren Report specifically states that 5 bullet fragments were found in the car, 4 in and around the front seat, and one under the jump seat that Nellie Connelly, the governor’s wife, was sitting in. To the best of my knowledge and amongst the many researchers and conspiracy theorists I have spoken with in the intervening 3 decades has any mention, documentation, or photos of bullet fragments in the back seat ever come up!*

*(However, there are thousands of alternate theories about the Kennedy assassination that range from plausible to science fiction, so I am sure someone will probably refute that, i.e. “The emperor of the moon, who was opposed to Kennedy’s moon-shot program, admitted to placing those fragments. That was before America’s collective consciousness of moon people was erased during the Ed Sullivan Show with the same device that Tommy Lee Jones and Wil Smith used in the movie Men in Black.” Believe it!)

Back to physical reality and the possible sanity of Landis’ claim. A bullet mushrooms when it slams into something hard, like bone, metal, or stone. It would also ricochet, winding up somewhere other than where it was aimed.   Is this the fragment that made the hole in the limo’s windshield or the dent in the chrome trim above the window, then miraculously shot into the back seat without hitting the president or his wife? Or is this the bullet that ricocheted off the chrome and into the president’s throat coming out his back and falling onto the seat? Without the bullet fragment in evidence, we will never know! And hence, buckle your seat belts for the next 60 years of conspiracy theories!  

In the meantime, you might enjoy my latest work, Ask Not!, which pits all the conspiracy theories against a valiant effort to right a wrong that ensnares Hank Larson, my main character into a dark and deadly world of conspirators, nuts, and operatives. Unbeknownst to him, he comes into possession of the proof of what really happened in Dealey Plaza that day, and they will kill him and anyone else who touches it.