Before there was January 6, the Steele dossier, Vaccine deniers, flat earthers, fake news, Whitewater, Watergate, the 18 minute gap, and the fake moon landing, there was the belief that more than one person killed President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
We admit to going down that rabbit hole ourselves.
Curious about the assassination, and the findings of the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations that President Kennedy was "probably" killed as a result of a conspiracy, we began our own deep dive into the assassination, culminating in our reading of the very entertaining book Crossfire, the Plot to Kill Kennedy, by author Jim Marrs. That led us to believe that there was most likely a second gunman in Dealey Plaza in November 1963.
BUT, then we went to Dealey Plaza. We stood in the window next to the one Oswald was at when he killed the President, and we were struck by a few things. First, and foremost, it is not a difficult shot. The President's limousine goes right underneath the window. The distance is much closer than we were led to believe. There are markings of where the president's car was when the shots were fired. Based on the speed, it was easy for us to determine that Oswald's cheap Italian rifle (Mannlicher Carcano) could have fired the shots within the time frame necessary to kill the president. A more detailed and complete understanding of the physics and ballistics of the so called "magic bullet" (Warren Commission Exhibit 399) led us to conclude one bullet did in fact cause the wounds on Kennedy's neck, and Governor Connally's chest, rib, wrist and thigh.
Kennedy assassination buffs will recall that Kennedy was first shot between Zapruder frames 210 and 225 and Governor Connally was wounded no later than frame 240. And yet, army gun experts could not cycle Oswald's rifle to fire two shots quicker than in 2.25 seconds or 40 frames of the Zapruder film. Therefore, only one bullet had to cause all these injuries.
Both a 2003 computer generated animation of the shooting (begun by a researcher in 1993) and shown in an ABC documentary, and a 2004 reenactment on the Discovery Channel using computer generated data and animations, showed that the wounds on both men lined up exactly AND tracing the path of the projectile backwards, it could have originated only from a cone that covered the window Oswald was in.
Kennedy was killed solely by Oswald. Case Closed, written by Miami Author Gerald Posner makes the very compelling case that Oswald acted alone.
The final piece of reading on the subject, not for research purposes, but with some research and a very very entertaining book is Stephen King's 11/22/1963. It is in our opinion one of the very best books King has ever written.
It's hard to imagine that a country could be so altered by the acts of one man. That a great man could be killed by an insignificant slug of a man. That history could be altered by the acts of one lone gunman. This is why conspiracy theories form.
There was a lot of weird stuff going on in Dealey Plaza before the shooting (like Umbrella Man). And yet, if you took a camera and recorded any public event for 30 minutes, you would see weird events and unexpected people showing up.
There's still a lot of intrigue around Oswald. The supposed double in Mexico, his defection to Russia and then return, a CIA file opened on him years before the shooting. But we remain confident that Oswald, and Oswald alone, killed the 35th President of the United States.
So what say you? Look at the Zapruder film and tell us: conspiracy or not?