What if the Zapruder film is authentic?

[Peter Dawson]

Good try Peter but it's common knowledge, easily found in many books and many websites, that the limo slowed dramatically, and probably stopped, before the kill shots.

Here's a quote from James Fetzer:

"Yes, it slowed dramatically as it came to a complete stop. The evidence is abundant and compelling. Farting around with a fabricated film and treating it solemnly as though finding some minor slowing would vindicate its authenticity is entering the theatre of the absurd. Just get ahold of THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX AND STUDY IT! This pretentious ignorance of the alteration of the film is beyond silly. This is a huge distraction and massively misleading. Do you really know no better?"
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index....6330&st=15

I can understand the apparent frustration in his answer because certain facts have been long established in this case, and spinning our wheels reproving these facts is not a good use of time, energy and bandwidth.

I read on that education forum thread that someone (Alvarez) calculated that the car slowed from 12mph to 8mph. These are very low numbers/slow speeds - any competent marksman shooting from somewhere either in front or behind surely would not require any slower speeds than that to ensure a successful hit - yet 12mph is still 18 feet per second; 8mph is 12 feet per second. In a sixth of a second at 8mph the car has travelled 2 feet. That would seem to be enough movement to make the mist of blood disappear from one frame to the next, I would have thought, especially given the poor overall quality of the film. At the very least, the "disappearing" mist of blood doesn't seem to be a convincing piece of evidence that the footage has been tampered with.

This thread is about considering the possibility that the Z film is authentic, and while I may well follow people's advice to go away and read this or that book about how the Z film is a hoax, I'd prefer it if on this thread each specific hoax claim were outlined one by one, with supporting evidence, so it can become a useful part of the discussion, rather than a conversation stopper.