Reclaiming History (18 page)

Amos Euins scuttles for cover behind a bench near the reflecting pool. From there he can see that the pipelike object sticking out of the southeasternmost window of the sixth floor of the Depository is a rifle. He can see a good portion of it, from the trigger housing to the front sight. The fifteen-year-old can’t take his eyes off the rifleman as he again takes aim.
²¹⁷

Third Shot—:08.4 seconds
BANG!—A final shot rings out. Howard Brennan, who is also looking directly at the gunman as he fires, turns quickly to his left to see if it hit, but his view of the president’s car is blocked by part of the concrete peristyle.
²¹⁸

Zapruder’s view, on the other hand, is clear and unobstructed. He pans his camera with the limousine as it rolls inexorably on down the long slope, the angle changing from three-quarter frontal to near broadside. As it draws abreast of him and only a few yards away, he hears a shot and sees, through the viewfinder, to his horror, the right side of the president’s head explode.
²¹⁹
His receptionist, Ms. Sitzman, sees the president’s “brains come out, you know, his head opening…between the eye and the ear.” It must have been a “terrible shot,” she says, “because it exploded his head, more or less.”
²²⁰

Mrs. Kennedy is six inches from her husband’s face when the bullet strikes, driving pieces of his skull into the air. His limp body bounces off the back of the seat and topples onto her shoulder in one horrifying, violent motion. She cries out, “Oh, no, no no. Oh my God, they have shot my husband. I love you, Jack.”
²²¹

Just as Agent Clint Hill’s hand reaches for the handhold on the trunk of the limousine, he hears the sound of a fired bullet smacking into a hard object.
²²²
In the front seat, Special Agent Roy Kellerman feels a sickening shower of brain matter blow into the air above his head and hears Mrs. Kennedy shout, “What are they doing to you?”
²²³

From the follow-up car, Agent Paul Landis hears a muffled exploding sound—like shooting a bullet into a five-gallon can of water or a melon. He sees pieces of flesh and blood flying through the air and thinks, “My God, the president could not possibly be alive after being hit like that.” He is not certain from which direction this shot came, but senses it came from the president’s right front.
²²⁴

Governor Connally, grievously wounded, is nonetheless still conscious at the moment of the head shot and knows all too well that the president has been hit. He and his wife are even more horrified to hear Jackie, somewhere behind them, saying, “They’ve killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand.”
²²⁵

At the same time that Kellerman yelled to Greer they were hit and to take off, Kellerman had grabbed the microphone used to access the Secret Service radio network linking the cars of the motorcade.

“Lawson, this is Kellerman,” he shouts into the mike. “We’re hit. Get us to the hospital immediately!”
²²⁶
But as he’s starting to talk to Lawson and before Greer accelerates, a third shot rings out. Greer stomps on the gas pedal and the massive limousine lunges forward.
²²⁷

Agent John Ready, who had jumped off the running board of the Secret Service follow-up car when the limousine had slowed and had started to run across the asphalt for the president’s car, doesn’t make it in time as the limousine speeds up, and Special Agent Emory Roberts orders Agent Ready back to the follow-up car.
²²⁸
As soon as he’s aboard, Halfback’s driver, Agent Sam Kinney, hits the accelerator and releases the car’s siren as they shoot after the presidential limousine.
²²⁹

Clint Hill, his hand grasping the trunk handhold, loses his footing, but jumps onto the back of the car just as it lurches forward.
²³⁰
Mrs. Kennedy has already climbed out of the backseat and is crawling toward him.
*
Hill senses that she is probably reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car. He thinks he sees something come off the back of the car too, but he cannot be sure.
²³¹
Hill pushes the First Lady back into the seat. “My God, they have shot his head off,” she cries. Hill climbs toward her, clinging to the trunk as the limousine picks up more speed.

An instant after the head shot, Mary Moorman, on the grass fifteen feet away near the south curb of Elm Street, snaps a picture of the presidential limousine passing by. She quickly falls to the ground and tugs on Jean Hill’s slacks, shouting, “Get down, they’re shooting.” Despite her pleas, Jean Hill is too stunned to move and just stands there for a moment, transfixed, before she slumps to the grass.
²³²

A few feet away, Charles Brehm instinctively throws himself on his young son, covering him with his body. Brehm, a former army staff sergeant, knows about gunfire. Nineteen years before, at Brest in Normandy, not long after D-day, a German bullet went through his chest and blew his elbow joint apart. Now, despite his desperate hopes, he is positive that the president was also hit.
²³³

“They’ve killed him, they’ve killed him!” Abraham Zapruder cries, his finger frozen on the movie camera’s button. He pans to his right, following the presidential limousine as it lunges toward the Triple Underpass. Only after it disappears into the shadows of the underpass does Zapruder release the switch.
²³⁴

Before James Worrell makes the left turn to start running north on Houston, he pivots and looks back over his shoulder before the window with the rifle in it is out of sight and sees the rifle fire a third time. Crossing Houston he runs north nearly a block along the east side of the Depository, stopping finally at the corner of Pacific to catch his breath. All he can think of is the sight of that gun barrel firing over his head.
²³⁵

Across from the Depository, Howard Brennan dives off the stone wall. Caught up in the confusion and hysteria around him, he half expects bullets to start flying from every direction. His eyes swing back to the sixth-floor window. He watches as the gunman pulls the rifle back from the window as though drawing it back to his side. The gunman pauses another second as though to assure himself that he hit his mark, and then he disappears.
²³⁶

Press photographer Bob Jackson, twenty-nine, saw the gun being withdrawn from the window too. All the press guys in Jackson’s car (James R. Underwood, Thomas Dillard, Jimmy Darnell, and Malcolm O. Couch) were still laughing at a reporter chasing a canister of film across the street when the gunfire had broken out. Jackson had tossed it to him, as scheduled, at Main and Houston but it got caught in a strong gust of wind and started bouncing away from its pursuer. The press car was halfway up the block toward Elm when its occupants heard the first shot. Dillard told his companions that it sounded like a firecracker, but the words were barely out of his mouth when they heard the other two shots and realized it was gunfire. Jackson looked straight ahead at the Book Depository. He noticed two black men in the southeast corner window of the fifth floor leaning out to look up to the floor above. Jackson followed their gaze and saw the better part of a rifle barrel and stock being withdrawn, rather slowly, back out of sight behind the right edge of the window.

“There’s the gun!” Jackson shouts.

“Where?” the others ask.

“It came from that window!” he says, pointing at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor.
²³⁷

WFAA-TV cameraman Malcolm Couch, hearing Jackson, catches a one-second glimpse of “about a foot of a rifle” barrel being brought back “into the window” on the “far right” of “the sixth or seventh floor.” He snatches his camera up from his lap and starts shooting the window, but there’s nothing more to be seen there, just stacks of cartons.

The press car rounds the corner onto Elm, and Couch finds his camera’s viewfinder filled with people running in all directions. Dillard, Underwood, and Darnell jump out at the corner, leaving Couch and Jackson to wonder whether they should follow them or stay with the motorcade.
²³⁸

James Crawford had thought the first loud sound he heard to be a backfire of a car, but he quickly realized that the quality of the cars in the motorcade would not be the type to have backfires. Then he heard the second sound and began to look around, thinking someone was firing firecrackers. As the report from the third shot sounded, he looked up and saw a very quick, indistinct movement in the southeasternmost window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building. It was a profile, somewhat from the waist up, of something light colored, perhaps caused by the reflection of the sun, and what came to his mind automatically was that it was a person having moved out of the window. He also saw boxes stacked up behind the window. Crawford turned to his friend Mary Ann Mitchell, and pointing to the window, tells her, “If those were shots, they came from that window,” but she is unable to see anything. Neither Crawford nor Mitchell saw or was aware of the president being hit and they soon returned to their office to listen to the radio to learn what had taken place.
²³⁹

Aftermath
Agent Bill Greer pulls the president’s car to the right as he charges the lead car, overtaking it in the cool darkness of the underpass. Chief Curry accelerates the lead car to catch them. As the two cars emerge into the sunlight on the west side of the underpass, Agent Clint Hill, spread over the trunk of the president’s car, looks into the backseat. The sight sickens him. The president’s head is covered in blood, a portion blasted away. Hill can see a chunk with hair on it lying on the seat next to him. There is blood everywhere. Hill looks forward to the jump seats and notices Governor Connally’s chest covered in blood. Only then does he realize that the governor, too, has been shot. But for Hill, the heart-wrenching scene is in the backseat, where Mrs. Kennedy is cradling the president’s head, whimpering over and over, “Jack, Jack, what have they done to you?”
²⁴⁰

Hill looks back to his left rear toward the lead car they are passing and yells as loud as he can, “To the hospital, to the hospital!”
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The Secret Service follow-up car rockets out of the shadow of the underpass. From the right running board, Agent Paul Landis looks toward the president’s limousine just ahead. He can see Clint Hill lying across the back of the trunk. Hill looks back toward Landis, shakes his head back and forth, and gives a thumbs-down sign with his hand.
²⁴²
In the follow-up car’s front seat, Agent Emory Roberts picks up the car radio.

“Halfback to Lawson,” Roberts hollers, “the president has been hit. Get us to the nearest hospital!”

The Secret Service men in the follow-up car turn back to the vice president’s car trailing a half block behind them and begin waving frantically, motioning the driver to close the gap. Roberts looks over at Agent William McIntyre, who’s clinging to the follow-up car’s left running board, the wind whistling through his hair.

“They got him! They got him!” Roberts shouts. “You and Bennett take over Johnson as soon as we stop!”

Roberts eyes Agent Hickey as he waves the AR-15 assault rifle aimlessly.

“Be careful with that!” he warns.
²⁴³

Dallas police officers James M. Chaney and Douglas L. Jackson, the two motorcycle officers who had been flanking the right rear of the president’s limousine, catch up with Chief Curry’s lead car as they accelerate up the entrance ramp leading to Stemmons Freeway.
²⁴⁴

“What happened?” Curry calls out.

“Shots have been fired,” Chaney shouts.

“Has the president’s party been hit?” Curry asks.

“I’m sure they have,” Chaney confirms, as Curry grabs the radio microphone.
²⁴⁵

“We’re going to the hospital!” Chief Curry shouts frantically into his radio transmitter. “Parkland Hospital.
*
Have them standby. Get men on top of that there over—underpass. See what happened up there. Go up to the overpass. Have Parkland stand by.”
²⁴⁶
But Officer J. W. Foster, who was
on
the overpass at the time of the shooting, is convinced the shots came from the Book Depository Building, and indeed, he sees some officers running toward the building. He immediately gets off the overpass and runs toward the building, where he will assist in blocking it off.
²⁴⁷

Officer Marrion L. Baker, who had been pretty sure the shots came from the roof of the Book Depository, wheels his motorcycle to a stop at the curb in front of the building. Quickly dismounting, Baker looks to his left and notices people lying on the grass in Dealey Plaza, others rushing to grab their children. A woman near him is screaming, “Oh they shot that man, they shot that man!”
²⁴⁸
He turns and runs toward the front steps of the Depository, pushing his way through the spectators crowding the entranceway.
²⁴⁹

Roy Truly, the building superintendent, sees Baker coming and immediately understands that the young motorcycle officer is looking for a way to the roof. Truly follows him up the front steps, through the glass front doors, and into the vestibule, where he finds Baker asking people in the lobby where the stairs are.

“I’m the building manager,” Truly tells him.

“Where is the stairway?” Baker asks.

“This way,” Truly says, pushing his way through another set of double-doors.

Officer Baker is right on his heels and bumps into Truly’s back when they start to cut through a little swinging door at the call counter. A bolt has slid out of place and keeps the door from opening. Truly frantically fumbles with the latch, pushes the door wide, and plunges diagonally toward the freight elevators at the back of the building, Officer Baker in hot pursuit.
²⁵⁰

The chaos and confusion in the plaza is indescribable. The remainder of cars, motorcycles, and buses that make up the motorcade bunch up at the corner of Elm and Houston, then speed away toward the underpass. People are running every which way. Some who aren’t running lie on the ground in fear. A motorcycle policeman, seeing some people on the ground pointing to the railroad yards, lets his bike fall at the north curb of Elm just east of the Fort Worth road sign and dashes up the grassy slope toward the yards.
²⁵¹
Several police officers and a number of civilians run toward the area of the grassy knoll and retaining wall.
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