The Magic Bullets

The JFK Assassination Hits 60

As the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination approaches, we see a fair amount of anniversary-oriented media coverage. Retired Secret Service agent Paul Landis (pictured above hanging onto the limo following JFK – and now publishing a memoir) generated some recent headlines with a story about finding a bullet in JFK’s limo the day of the shooting. Landis’ tale is the latest twist on the bizarre trail of the magic bullet that killed the president in Dallas that fateful day.

First off, Kennedy was shot twice but only one bullet was found. Revisit the fabled Zapruder film: investigators claimed they found the bullet that made Kennedy reach for his throat but not the one that tore off the side of his head. A third bullet was presumed to have missed completely – never found.

The Warren Commission’s 1964 report concluded that Lee Oswald fired those three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Eyewitnesses (and earwitnesses) reported anywhere from two to five shots. Because three empty cartridges were found with the abandoned rifle in the “sniper’s nest,” the Commission speculated that one shot missed Kennedy. The first hit him in the back of his neck, exited through his throat, struck Texas Gov. John Connally on the right side of his back, traveled downward through his chest to exit below the right nipple, then passed through his right wrist and hit his left thigh, the Commission concluded. A second bullet hit JFK in the right-rear portion of his head and finished him off.

Paul Landis was in perfect position to see everything, riding the driver’s side running board of the Secret Service limo directly behind Kennedy’s car. According to the Secret Service report filed about a month after the assassination, Landis heard two or three bangs. The first sounded like a “rifle shot” over his right shoulder. He looked toward the Depository but saw nothing and didn’t notice anything out of place in the presidential car ahead. Maybe it had been a “firecracker.” The second bang sounded different – “maybe … a blow-out.” Landis looked ahead at the driver-side front tire of the president's car and saw that it was all right. Suddenly Kennedy was leaning over towards his wife and fellow First Lady detail agent Clint Hill was clambering onto the back of JFK’s limo.

Landis then stated that he saw the “second shot” hit the president's head about four or five seconds after the first and thought the last shot had come from the front right-hand side of the road. Noticing a man in green slacks and a beige shirt running for cover up the grassy knoll, Landis held on for dear life as the Secret Service car sped on to Parkland Hospital.

Shell game

Investigators needed to find the bullets – mostly to test whether or not they were fired from the rifle Oswald apparently left at the crime scene. There was also that nagging interest in determining from where the bullets were fired and if there had been more than one shooter. Landis’ new story brings the number of magic bullet candidates to four. Three could possibly be the same bullet, while one is clearly outside the official narrative.