Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

Immediate Aftermath of the Assassination 12:30-12:44PM

12:30-31 PM

Mark Bell, who had turned his camera off just before the shooting, turned it back on and caught the limo leaving the Plaza. The Bell film shows the SS followup car, as the presidential limo is in the shadow of the Overpass.

Right after the shooting, Dallas Times Herald photographer Bob Jackson (in the motorcade) sees a rifle protruding from the northeast sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. His camera empty, he alerts Thomas Dillard, chief photographer of the Dallas Morning News, who took two shots of the building seconds after the last shot is fired. The 6[SUP]th[/SUP] floor window is empty. Bonnie Ray Williams and Harold Norman can be seen on the 5th floor.

DILLARD 11 and 12 photos

Weisberg: "The exact window of the building from which the shots were supposed to have been fired was im*mediately pointed out. Yet this building was never sealed off -- not ever -- despite the obfuscation in the Report. Belatedly, it and the entire two or three block area were ordered isolated by an official, but there was not even a gesture in this direction. Even more inexplicably, there was no organized search of the building either immediately or as an afterthought. No one was ordered to inspect and search the area from which witnesses immediately reported the shots were fired. Not one of the police, from private to inspector, undertook this obvious search on his own. The empty cases of the bullets that both the police and the Commission concluded were fired were found in plain view at precisely the spot reported by witnesses -- 42 minutes after the assassination (R-79). The rifle was not found until ten minutes later than that, and it was on the same floor. An alleged eyewitness description of the man later accused of being the assassin was immediately reported to radio‑equipped police who did nothing about it. With the supposed killer still in the building, its exits were not secured. His description was not even broadcast on the police radio for almost 15 minutes. These blunders, if that is what they were, did not stop once the immediate shock of the crime had passed. They were the persistent pattern of the entire police operation, and they have been dignified and perpetuated by the Commission in both its hearings and its Report. Nowhere in the Report will you find any criticism of the police, except for its "public relations." Nowhere will you find any suggestion that the police could or should have done otherwise, or that their "errors" were in any way suspicious." (Whitewash)

As JFK's limo speeds under the Overpass, Mel McIntire takes a photo on the curb of the freeway onramp. The TSBD looms in the background; its clock sign says 12:30.

McIntire photo #2

Jack Daniel is also standing near the freeway onramp and films the limo approaching:

NBC cameraman David Wiegman in camera car #1: "…on the third [shot] I was [on the ground] running. The car had slowed down enough for me to jump out." He ran along with his camera going, and headed toward the grassy knoll, where he saw a policeman running. A frame from his film is shown below, taken just before he jumped out of the car, perhaps showing smoke on the knoll. However, this may actually be the leaves of a tree that had turned orange-brown (and can be seen in color photos).

In the next few moments, while almost everyone in Dealey Plaza will be reacting to the shots by either falling to the ground or rushing towards the area of the Grassy Knoll, the man identified as the "Umbrella Man" will sit down next to a dark complected man on the sidewalk of Elm Street. Several photographs taken at this time indicate that the dark-complected man talks into a radio. Jim Towner snaps a photograph in which an antenna - or an antenna-like device - can be seen jutting out from behind the man's head while his hands hold an object to his face. A few moments later, both men will stand up and walk away - each in different directions: the dark-complected man heads toward the Triple Underpass while the "Umbrella Man" is seen walking towards the Texas School Book Depository.

Mr. NORMAN. Well, it seems as though everyone else was running towards the railroad tracks, and we ran over there [to look out the window to the west]. Curious to see why everybody was running that way for. I thought maybe--
Mr. BALL. Did anybody say anything about going up to the sixth floor?
Mr. NORMAN. I don't remember anyone saying about going up to the sixth floor.
Mr. BALL. What did you look at when you looked out that window?
Mr. NORMAN. We saw the policeman, and I guess they were detectives, they were searching the empty cars over there. I remember seeing some guy on top of them.
Mr. BALL. On top of the cars?
Mr. NORMAN. Yes. They were going through there.
Mr. BALL. You saw police officers searching cars over on the railroad tracks?
Mr. NORMAN. Yes.
Mr. BALL. And how long did you stay at that window?
Mr. NORMAN. I don't remember, but it wasn't very long.
Mr. BALL. When you were brought to the first floor or when you came to the first floor how did you go down there?
Mr. NORMAN. We came down the stairway. I remember we came down the stairway.
Mr. BALL. When you got to the first floor did someone talk to you, police officers?
Mr. NORMAN. I don't remember a police officer talking to me as soon as we got down there. I don't.
Mr. BALL. The document that I have here shows the date 4th of December 1963. Do you remember having made a statement to Mr. Carter, Special Agent of the Secret Service, on that day?
Mr. NORMAN. I can't remember the exact date but I believe I remember Mr. Carter.
Mr. BALL. I want to call your attention to one part of the statement and I will ask you if you told him that:
"Just after the President passed by, I heard a shot and several seconds later I heard two more shots. I knew that the shots had come from directly above me, and I could hear the expended cartridges fall to the floor. I could also hear the bolt action of the rifle. I also saw some dust fall from the ceiling of the fifth floor and I felt sure that whoever had fired the shots was directly above me."
Did you make that statement to the Secret Service man?
Mr. NORMAN. I don't remember making a statement that I knew the shots came from directly above us. I didn't make that statement. And I don't remember saying I heard several seconds later. I merely told him that I heard three shots because I didn't have any idea what time it was.
Mr. BALL. I see. Did you tell them that you heard the bolt action of the rifle?
Mr. NORMAN. Yes.
Mr. BALL. And that you heard the expended cartridges fall to the floor?
Mr. NORMAN. Yes; I heard them making a sound.

Mr. BALL. You ran down to the west side of the building?
Mr. BONNIE RAY WILLIAMS. Yes, sir… We saw the policemen and people running, scared, running--there are some tracks on the west side of the building, railroad tracks. They were running. towards that way. And we thought maybe--well, to ourself, we know the shots practically came from over our head. But since everybody was running, you know, to the west side of the building, towards the railroad tracks, we assumed maybe somebody was down there. And so we all ran that way, the way that the people was running, and we was looking out the window.
Mr. BALL. When the cement fell on your head, did either one of the men notice it and say anything about it?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir. I believe Harold was the first one.
Mr. BALL. That is Hank Norman?
Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe he was the first one. He said "Man, I know it came from there. It even shook the building." He said, "You got something on your head." And then James Jarman said, "Yes, man, don't you brush it out." By that time I just forgot about it. But after I got downstairs I think I brushed it out anyway.
Representative FORD.Why didn't you go up to the sixth floor?
Mr. WILLIAMS. I really don't know. We just never did think about it. And after we had made this last stop, James Jarman said, "Maybe we better get the hell out of here." And so we just ran down to the fourth floor, and came on down. We never did think about it, going up to the sixth floor. Maybe it was just because we were frightened.
Mr. BALL. Now, when you were questioned by the FBI agents, talking to Mr. Odum and Mr. Griffin, they reported in writing here that while you were standing at the west end of the building on the fifth floor, a police officer came up on the elevator and looked all around the fifth floor and left the floor. Did you see anything like that?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, at the time I was up there I saw a motorcycle policeman. He came up. And the only thing I saw of him was his white helmet.
Mr. BALL. What did he
Mr. WILLIAMS. He just came around, and around to the elevator.
Mr. BALL. Which elevator?
Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe it was the east elevator.
Mr. BALL. Did you see anybody with him?
Mr. WILLIAMS. I did not.
Mr. BALL. You were only able to see the top of his helmet?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. You could only see the top of his helmet
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir; that is the only thing I saw about it…When we arrived to the first floor, the first thing I noticed was that the policemen had rushed in. I think some firemen came in with a water hose. And then the next thing that happened, these detectives, or maybe FBI--anyway, they stopped us all and they said, "Do you work here?" And we told them yes. And they took our name, address, and they searched everybody. And then the other fellow--I think one fellow asked whether we had been working upstairs. I think we told him yes. They got out all the fellows I think that was working on the sixth floor at the time, and they took us all down to the courthouse, I think, and we had to fill out some affidavits and things.
Mr. McCLOY. I have some questions. When you came downstairs, do you remember seeing a man named Brennan, and did a man named Brennan identify you downstairs?
Mr. WILLIAMS. No, sir; I don't remember that.
Mr. McCLOY. No one that you know-no one said, "This is the man I have seen on the fifth floor window?"
Mr. WILLIAMS. No, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Were you physically kept from leaving the building when you got downstairs? Did you try to go out of the building?
Mr. WILLIAMS. No, sir; I wasn't trying to go out of the building because there wasn't any use of trying to, because at the time we arrived on the first floor, I heard an officer shout out and say, "No one leave the building."
Mr. McCLOY. Have you got any appreciation of the time that elapsed between your hearing the first shot and the time that you got finally down to the first floor, after you had been on the fifth floor and the fourth floor?
Mr. WILLIAMS. No, sir; I could not give you any time.
Mr. McCLOY. Well, you did not give us any time. Do you have any recollection now of about how long that was? Was it 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes? How long did it take from the time that you were looking out that window and you heard that shot until you did get down to the first floor?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, I could say approximately 15 minutes, maybe a little before then, maybe after. I could not say exactly.
Mr. McCLOY. Do you know whether or not anybody got out of the building before the police could get there? Did any of your friends or the people you were working with, did you hear whether any of them had left the building before the building was closed?
Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir; I heard Mr. Truly-he said that-he mentioned that-he said, "Where is Lee?" That is what everybody called him. "Where is Lee?", he said, and therefore I assume he did not know where Lee was, that he was out of the building, because everybody else was there. And there was another colored fellow by the name of Charles Givens. He wasn't in the building at the time. He was downtown somewhere.
Mr. McCLOY. Had he been at the building at the time of the shooting--Givens?
Mr. WILLIAMS. I don't believe he had.
Mr. DULLES. What did Mr. Truly say about Lee not being there?
Mr. WILLIAMS. The only thing I heard him say is--I think an officer asked him, "Is everyone here?" And he said, "Where is Lee?"--like that, you know.

Howard Brennan testified that he tried to get police to search the Depository rather than the Grassy Knoll, where most of them ran (H 3 144-45). An unidentified policeman took him to Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels, who was at his car in front of the Depository (H 13 56; H 3 145); he was asked how long it took him to get to the Depository steps after the last shot and he said that it took less than ten minutes. Once there, he said he talked to Sorrels, but Sorrels didn't return from Parkland until about 12:55. "Well, we talked at the car, and then when these two colored guys came down the stairway onto the street, I pointed to them, and identified them as being the two that was in the floor below that floor [the fifth floor]." (H 3 158). Sorrels denied that Brennan told him this (H 7 349). Brennan was sure he could identify the two black men again, but when shown a picture of them he said, "No, I do not recognize them." Counsel then asked him whether he got "as good a look at the Negroes as you got at the man with the rifle." He replied that he had. When Junior Jarman, Harold Norman and Bonnie Ray Williams were brought before him in the hearing room, he could not identify which two he had seen: "I can't tell which of those two it was...I saw two but I can't identify which one it was." (H 3 156, 152, 184-85). Yet the WC stated that: "When the three employees appeared before the Commission, Brennan identified the two whom he saw leave the building." (WR 145, 825). Then he had trouble identifying which window he had seen them in (H 3 186).

Abraham Zapruder and Marilyn Sitzman get down from the wall and walk under the pergola where the Hesters are sitting.

Motorcycle cop Marrion Baker leaves his motorcycle in front of the TSBD and runs toward it right after the last shot. He can be seen in a film taken by Malcolm Couch. Couch was in Camera Car 3, the last camera car; it was almost at the corner of Elm when the last shot went off. He immediately picked up his movie camera and began filming; it begins just before the car came to a near-stop while making the turn onto Elm. It pans west to the Grassy Knoll and Elm Street.

Mr. WILLIAM SHELLEY - Well, officers started running down to the railroad yards and Billy and I walked down that way.
Mr. BALL - How did you get down that way; what course did you take?
Mr. SHELLEY - We walked down the middle of the little street.
Mr. BALL - The dead-end street?
Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.
Mr. BALL - Did you see Truly, Mr. Truly and an officer go into the building?
Mr. SHELLEY - Yeah, we saw them right at the front of the building while we were on the island.
Mr. BALL - While you were out there before you walked to the railroad yards?
Mr. SHELLEY - Yes.
Mr. BALL - Do you have any idea how long it was from the time you heard those three sounds or three noises until you saw Truly and Baker going into the building?
Mr. SHELLEY - It would have to be 3 or 4 minutes I would say because this girl that ran back up there was down near where the car was when the President was hit… We walked on down to the first railroad track there on the dead-end street and stood there and watched them searching cars down there in the parking lots for a little while and then we came in through our parking lot at the west end.

About 30 seconds after the shooting: the Newman family is lying on the grass on the north side of Elm taking cover. Thomas Atkins and Tom Craven jump out of the motorcade and start taking pictures. A photo was taken by Cecil Stoughton from Camera Car 2 as it passed.

Robert MacNeil, White House correspondent for NBC News is on the press bus. He jumps up and yells "They were shots! Stop the bus! Stop the bus!" The driver opens the door and MacNeil jumps out. "I saw several people running up the grassy hill beside the road. I thought they were chasing whoever had done the shooting and I ran after them."

Frank Cancellare was in camera car #2 in Dallas, and as it got to Elm Street, he jumped out of the car. "I did not know what had happened...Police ran their bikes up the bank towards the railroad overpass. I thought they were chasing the culprit, and I think they thought so also." (Letter to Trask, 1985) Cancellare took a photo showing the South Knoll.

Wilma Bond takes photos of the aftermath from the concrete wall by the reflecting pool on Houston. This is her 4[SUP]th[/SUP] photo (the first 3 were taken on Houston St before the shooting). In the middle of the street, Bobby Hargis is just returning to his bike (according to Trask). Jean Hill and Mary Moorman are sitting on the grass, as are Charles Brehm and his son.

Richard Bothun took a photo which showed the "umbrella man" and his dark-skinned companion sitting on the curb by the Stemmons Freeway sign; this photo was taken about 30 seconds after the shooting and Bobby Hargis can be seen having just jumped back on his bike after having stopped to look for a culprit on the north side of Elm. He would soon drive back to the TSBD. Behind a low wall, can be seen a silhouette of a man walking toward the TSBD

Mr. BALL - Did Norman say anything about hearing cartridges or ejection or anything like that, do you remember?
Mr. JARMAN - That was after we got down to the west side of the building.
Mr. BALL - After you got down where?
Mr. JARMAN - To the west side of the building.
Mr. BALL - Down the west side?
Mr. JARMAN - Right.
Mr. BALL - Now you ran down to the west side of the building, did you?
Mr. JARMAN - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - And what did you do after you opened the window?
Mr. JARMAN - I leaned out and the officers and various people was running across the tracks, toward the tracks over there where they had the passenger trains, and all, boxcars and things… When I looked out that window, I saw the policemen and the secret agents, the FBI men, searching the boxcar yard and the passenger train and things like that…[Norman] said it was something sounded like cartridges hitting the floor, and he could hear the action of the rifle, I mean the bolt, as it were pulled back, or something like that.
Mr. BALL - Had you heard anything like that?
Mr. JARMAN - No, sir; I hadn't
Mr. BALL - Had you heard any person running upstairs?
Mr. JARMAN - No, sir.
Mr. BALL - Or any steps upstairs?
Mr. BALL - Any noise at all up there?
Mr. JARMAN - None.
Mr. JARMAN - Well, after Norman had made his statement that he had heard the cartridges hit the floor and this bolt action, I told him we'd better get the hell from up here.
Mr. BALL - Did anybody suggest you go up to the sixth floor?
Mr. JARMAN - No, Sir.
Mr. BALL - And where did you go then?
Mr. JARMAN - Down. We ran to the elevator first, but the elevator had gone down.
Mr. BALL - Where did you go?
Mr. JARMAN - Then we ran to the stairway and ran downstairs, and we paused a few minutes on four.
Mr. BALL - Which elevator did you run
Mr. JARMAN - To the elevator on the west side.
Mr. BALL - On the west. That wasn't there?
Mr. JARMAN - No sir.
Mr. BALL - When you went downstairs, what did you see on the first floor?
Mr. JARMAN - When we got downstairs on the first floor, I think the first one I seen was Eddie Piper.

DPD Chief Jesse Curry, in the lead car, radios in: "Go to the hospital - Parkland Hospital. Have them stand by. Get a man on top of that triple underpass and see what happened up there." (H 17 461) Sheriff Bill Decker, also in the lead car, radioed, "Have my office move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there and hold everything secure until Homicide and other investigators should get there."

James Towner snapped a picture as Camera Car 1 dropped off some of its occupants on Elm. Camera Car 2 is behind it. Officer Haygood is on his bike driving towards the Overpass. Officer Edgar Leon Smith is seen with his gun drawn.

Al Volkland, on the Stemmons Freeway, takes a photo of the motorcade as it rushed past him to Parkland. This photo shows SS agent Hickey with his automatic rifle in hand. The buildings of Dealey Plaza are visible in the background.

LIFE photographer Arthur Rickerby takes three photos (apparently one in color, two in B&W) from the motorcade's Camera Car 2 as it races down Elm St. Haygood is on the motorcycle. Mrs. John Chism is running at the right of the frame with her son in her arms.

Rickerby #3 photo

Officer Haygood getting off his motorcycle is seen in the Couch film.

Clint Grant, in camera car #2, takes a photo. Craven is running down the sidewalk, and Atkins is running after him as they try to get back in the camera cars. Grant's brother-in-law, James Altgens, is standing at the curb. Cancellare is the only one still photographing the Newmans.

The Newman family photographed by Cancellare. James Altgens is standing in the background.

DILLARD 13 photo shows cars heading toward the Underpass.

Building engineer J. C. Price is on the roof of the Terminal Annex Building on the south side of Dealey Plaza. He sees a man run from the area behind the wooden fence. Price states that the man has something in his right hand and "was running very fast, which gave me the suspicion that he was doing the shooting." "I saw one man run towards the passenger cars on the railroad siding after the volley of shots. This man had a white dress shirt, no tie, and khaki colored trousers. His hair appeared to be long and dark and his agility running could be about 25 years of age. He had something in his hand. I couldn't be sure but it may have been a headpiece." - CE 2003 (Dallas Sheriff's Department Affidavit, 12-22-63)

About 30 seconds after the shooting, Army Intelligence agent James Powell took a photo of the TSBD

Phil Willis photo#6, about 30 seconds after the head shot. The Newman family is still on the ground; Umbrella Man and dark-complected man are sitting on the curb. Officer Haygood is seen near the Fort Worth sign running toward the Knoll. Dignitary cars 2 and 3 (convertibles), dignitary car 4 (a sedan), a station wagon, and the first press bus are visible, apparently stopped momentarily. The man in the apron was also visible in the Zapruder film on the north side of Elm.

Wilma Bond photo#5. The first press bus rolling down Elm Street. On that bus Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographer Harry Cabluck snapped three pictures through a window. Haygood can be seen in the distance running up to the where the fence meets the Overpass. On the South side of Elm, Jimmy Darnell of WBAP-TV is seen just ahead of the bus taking a movie film. Mary Moorman in her dark coat is back on her feet.

Harry Cabluck photo #1

Cabluck photo#2. James Altgens is standing on the curb. The man running by the Newman family may be Kent Biffle of the DMN. William Newman is pounding his fist on the ground.

The Wiegman film shows Cheryl McKinnon on the north side of Elm. The Wiegman film was shown repeatedly on NBC on Nov. 22 and 23.

Willis photo #6. The first press bus leaves as James Altgens crosses Elm St behind it. Jean Hill is visible in red coat.

Cabluck photo #3 shows Haygood climbing the picket fence.

Wilma Bond photo #6. Newman family is standing, dark-complected man in blue shirt is walking west on Elm just in front of them. Jean Hill can be seen standing in red coat. The sedan is carrying Morning News reporters. People are now running in the direction of Officer Haygood.

Jay Skaggs photo, taken at almost the same moment as Bond #7. The Babushka Lady is at center, with Jean Hill behind her, and Mary Moorman to the right.

Wilma Bond photo #7 shows dark-complected man in light blue shirt walking west on Elm.

Towner took his third photo farther down Elm, showing Haygood's bike parked on the curb. The second press bus is disappearing beneath the underpass. The dark-complected man who had been with the umbrella man can be seen walking casually down the street, with his hands in his back pockets. (Trask) Towner's fourth shot shows traffic reopened on Elm shortly after the shooting. He walked to the area behind the picket fence, having heard that that was where the shooting came from; but all he saw was a crowd of people milling about.

Frank Cancellare went up to the grassy knoll and took a photo that showed Officer Haygood on the wall and Robert MacNeil. (Pictures of the Pain p391-412) CD 206, an unpublished FBI report in the National Archives, describes an interview with MacNeil: "We climbed the fence and I followed the police who appeared to be chasing someone, or under the impression they were chasing someone, across the railroad tracks. Wanting to phone news of the shooting, I left there and went to the nearest place that looked like an office. It was the Texas School Book Depository."

Wilma Bond's photo #8, showing Jean Hill and Mary Moorman at far right. The dark-complected man, wearing a light-blue shirt, is walking west on Elm. The Newman family is standing. The umbrella man remains by the Stemmons sign.

Wilma Bond's photo #9 shows a bus carrying White House, Vice Presidential and governor's staff. The umbrella man is standing, looking west.

12:31 PM Over a minute after Curry orders the motorcade to the hospital, at 12:31:22, Sheriff Decker says, "Hold everything secure until the homicide and other investigators can get there." There will eventually be much discussion regarding the dictabelt recordings of police conversations on their respective radio channels. The solution regarding much confusion may be reached by the fact that Dallas police Sgt. S. Q. Bellah can be heard on both channels, asking: "You want me to hold this traffic on Stemmons until we find out something, or let it go?" These remarks come 179 seconds after the last gunshot on Channel One and 180 seconds after Curry's order to "go to the hospital" on Channel Two. When Bellah's words are used to line up the two channels, the gunshot sounds also recorded on the dictabelt "occur at the exact instant that John F. Kennedy was assassinated." The problem has historically been that Decker's remarks on Channel One come a full minute after Curry's on Channel Two and yet a half-second after the last gunshot on Channel One. It therefore suggests that this is most probably due to an accidental overdub. The recording needle for Channel One has most probably jumped. It is possible, for instance, to hear Decker giving a whole set of instructions on Channel Two, but on Channel One, there is only a fragment, ... hold everything secure. ... "

12:31 PM Approx a minute and a half after the shooting: Truly and officer Marrion Baker encounter Oswald in the second floor lunchroom. "Within about 1 minute after his encouter with Baker and Truly, Oswald was seen passing through the second-floor offices. In his hand was a full 'Coke' bottle which he had purchased from a vending machine in the lunchroom." (WR 6) The narrow staircase contained eight flights (72 steps) from the sixth to the second floor. At each floor, the steps emptied out into a landing, and then the steps continued down on the other side of the landing. Posner says that Oswald bought the Coke after encountering Baker: "He went to the soda machine and purchased a Coke as he decided how to leave the Depository." (Case Closed 265) The WR (151) said that Oswald had nothing in his hands when he encountered Baker. Epstein: "A Secret Service agent, simulating Oswald's movements, reached the second floor from the sixth in one minute and eighteen seconds. In any case, it is impossible to ascertain exactly what time Oswald was seen on the second floor; it could have been as long as five minutes after the assassination." (Counterplot 130)

James Jarman told the HSCA: "...as we was running out of the building the police stopped us, he told us to come back inside the building, so we proceeded back inside the building. And, after we was inside the building after that, I heard that Oswald had come down through the office and came down the front stairs and he was stopped by the officer that had stopped us and sent us back in the building and Mr. Truly told them that that was alright, that he worked there, so then, he proceeded own (sic) out the building and we wondered why he stopped us."
"Well, there was a Billy Lovelady standing out there, he was on the steps, see... And, Oswald was coming out the door and he (Lovelady) said the police had stopped Oswald and sent him back in the building, Billy Lovelady said that Mr. Trudy (sic) told the policeman that Oswald was alright, that he worked there, so Oswald walked on down the stairs."

Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles rush out of the back door of the TSBD. [Adams estimates that she and her friend left the building about a minute after the shooting.] They are stopped by a policeman.
"Get back into the building," he says.
"But I work here," Adams pleads.
"That is tough, get back."
"Well, was the President shot?"
"I don't know. Go back."
The two women obey, yet they do not return the way they came, but rather by going all the way around the west side to reenter the TSBD through the front entrance--talking to people along the way.

Lumpkin, now on Stemmons Freeway in the motorcade's pilot car, using motorcycle policemen to divert traffic, speaks into the microphone to Chief Curry: "What do you want with these men out here with me?" Curry: "Just go on to Parkland Hospital with me." Patrolman R.L. Gross: "Dispatcher on Channel One seems to have his mike stuck." Curry: "Get those trucks out of the way. Hold everything. Get out of the way!"

Agent-in-Charge Emory Roberts, in the follow-up car, picks up the phone: "Escort us to the nearest hospital - fast but at a safe speed."

On Capitol Hill, a closed session of the Senate Rules Committee presided over by B. Everett Jordan of North Carolina sparked by the unappeasable John Williams of Deleware is evoking well-documented testimony from an acutely panicked Don Reynolds. It implicates Lyndon B. Johnson. Billie sol Estes is leaking news from prison that he has paid off LBJ in a very substantial way, and references to all this are starting to break out in the newspapers. B&JE

After Jean Hill left to go behind the picket fence, Mary Moorman was approached by Jim Featherstone, who wanted her to take her camera and show the Polaroid to authorities. Frank Cancellare took a photo showing them.

Newsman James Underwood films people running up to the steps on the grassy knoll, after getting a camera from a fellow newsman on Main St.

12:32 PM

About 2.5 minutes after the shooting, Oswald is seen passing through second-floor offices in the Depository by Mrs Reid.

Don Cook and Roy Cooper of KTVT-TV began filming in the car lot behind the fence approximately 2-3 minutes after the shooting stopped according to Richard Trask.

Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, viewing the assassination through binoculars from the window of the Terminal Annex Building overlooking Dealey Plaza from the south, observes a man in the grassy knoll area "trying to take a gun away " from a woman. (Holmes will later explain that "it later developed that he was trying to protect her from the shots." How the postal inspector came to "know" this later is unknown. He was never asked to describe her or her male companion.)

Richard Randolph Carr notices a man wearing a brown suit coat walking very fast, proceeding south on Houston Street and then turning left on Commerce. In addition to his brown suit coat, Carr also says he is now wearing a hat and has on horn-rimmed glasses. [Some researchers speculate the man wearing the brown jacket and horn-rimmed glasses may have been Lyndon Johnson's associate Mac Wallace, whose fingerprint may have been found on one of the boxes near the window on the 6th floor from where shots were fired. H&L] He steps into a 1961 or 1962 gray Nash Rambler station wagon parked along the street. The driver is a young Negro. The brown suit coat man is last seen as a passenger of this car going north on Record Street. (Carr is never called upon to testify. Still, police and other officials repeatedly come to his house outside Dallas to intimidate him into silence. He suffers death threats and coercion at the hands of the FBI who tell him, "If you didn't see Lee Harvey Oswald in the School book Depository with a rifle, then you didn't see anything." Jim Garrison secures Carr to testify at the Clay Shaw trial. The day before his testimony, Carr finds dynamite wired to the ignition of his car; however, he does testify. Carr will receive numerous threats and will suffer attacks on his life. He will even shoot and kill one of his attackers. He will eventually be stabbed to death in Atlanta in the 1970's.)
Richard Carr, on the seventh floor of the new courthouse watches as two men run from behind the Texas School Book Depository. The men enter a waiting station wagon and speed off north on Houston Street. Richard Carr described the man he saw as "heavy set, wearing a hat, tan sport coat and horn rim glasses." Minutes after the shooting, James Worrell saw a person described as "5' 10" and wearing some sort of coat" leave the rear of the Depository heading south on Houston Street. Carr saw the same man and recognized him as the man he had seen on the 6th floor of the Book Depository. The man walked south on Houston, turned east on Commerce, and got into a Rambler station wagon parked on the corner of Commerce and Record. The Rambler was next seen in front of the Book Depository by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig. Craig saw a person wearing a light-colored, short-sleeved shirt, who he later identified as Oswald, get into the station wagon and then travel under the triple overpass towards Oak Cliff.

Police Ban (Channel 2) "There is a motorcycle officer up on Stemmons with his mike stuck open on Channel 1. Could you send someone up there to tell him to shut it off?"

Panic and confusion erupt in Dealey Plaza, yet the "Umbrella Man" calmly lowers his umbrella and gazes around. He then has a brief conference with another man who approaches him with what appears to be a two-way radio. After talking briefly together, the two men calmly leave the Plaza.

Abraham Zapruder, according to his secretary, shakily puts down his camera and starts screaming "They killed him! They killed him! They killed him!" He is reportedly so stricken by the experience that he never quite gets over it. His own is the last film or news report about Kennedy he will ever watch. He appears later, however, quite calm when he is interviewed by a local Dallas TV station. Some researchers will later claim that what we know as "the Zapruder film" was not actually shot by Abraham Zapruder. This subject is covered in more than a few books, most notably in Jim Fetzer's The Great Zapruder Film Hoax.

Jim Hicks, an eyewitness in Dealey Plaza, walks toward the knoll as the motorcade's press bus speeds by on its way to Parkland hospital. Photographs of Hicks, taken from the rear, show something in his back pocket resembling a radio with an antenna. (Hicks will later tell New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that he was the radio coordinator for the assassination team. Shortly after admitting this to Garrison, Hicks is beaten up, kidnapped, and taken to an Air Force mental institution in Oklahoma, where he will be incarcerated until 1988. A few days after his release, Hicks will be murdered in Oklahoma.) It will later be suggested that Jim Hicks is possibly the man photographed in the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico by the CIA. If so, he is identified incorrectly as Oswald in those photographs.

Jerry Coley (a thirty-year old employee of the Dallas Morning News) and his friend, Charlie Mulkey, cross Houston St. from their vantage point near the old county jail. They circle behind the TSBD and cross a dirt field to reach the knoll. Heading to the TSBD from the knoll they notice a pool of red liquid on the steps leading down to Elm St. Mulkey touches the liquid with his finger, tastes it and says: "My God, Jerry, that's blood." Both men return to the Morning News building and get photographer Jim Hood. Returning to the scene Hood takes several pictures of the red liquid from different angles. Both men then hurry back to the newspaper offices to develop the photographs.

Mr. BELIN - Where was he at the time you made this statement?
Mr. MALCOLM COUCH - Uh - he was standing on that little sidewalk that runs between the - I met him on the little sidewalk between the Book Depository property and the beginning of the parkway.
Mr. BELIN - That would be the west side of the Depository Building?
Mr. COUCH - That's right; that's right. It's there that I saw blood on the sidewalk.
Mr. BELIN - All right. Now, you say you saw blood on the sidewalk, Mr. Couch?
Mr. COUCH - That's right.
Mr. BELIN - Where was that?
Mr. COUCH - This was the little walkway - steps and walkway that leads up to the corner, the west corner, the southwest corner of the book Depository Building. Another little sidewalk, as I recall, turns west and forms that little parkway and archway right next to the Book Depository Building.
Mr. BELIN - Did this appear to be freshly created blood?
Mr. COUCH - Yes; right.
Mr. BELIN - About how large was this spot of blood that you saw?
Mr. COUCH - Uh - from 8 to 10 inches in diameter.
Mr. BELIN - Did people around there say how it happened to get there, or not?
Mr. COUCH - No; no one knew. People were watching it - that is watching it carefully and walking and pointing to it. Uh - just as I ran up, policemen ran around the west corner and ran - uh - northward on the side of the building. And my first impression was that - uh - that they had chased someone out of the building around that corner, or possibly they had wounded someone. All of those policemen had their pistols pulled. And people were pointing back around those shrubs and that west corner and - uh - you would think that there was a chase going on in that direction.
Again, the reason that I didn't follow was because A.J. had come up, and my first concern was to get back with the President.
Mr. BELIN - This pool of blood - about how far would it have been north of the curbline of Elm Street as Elm Street goes under the expressway?
Mr. COUCH - I'd say - uh - well, from Elm Street, you mean, itself?
Mr. BELIN - Yes. This is from that part of Elm Street that goes into the expressway?
Mr. COUCH - I'd say - uh - 50 to 60 feet, and about 10 to 15 feet from the corner of the Texas Depository Building.
Mr. BELIN - It would be somewhere along that park area there?
Mr. COUCH - Right.
Mr. BELIN - Was there anything else you noticed by this pool of blood?
Mr. COUCH - No. There were no objects on the ground. We looked for something. We thought there would be something else, but -

Dallas Police Officer Joe Marshall Smith has drawn his pistol and is checking out the parking lot directly behind the fence on the grassy knoll. He smells gunpowder and encounters a man behind the stockade fence on the grassy knoll who produces Secret Service credentials. He is allowed to continue on his way. Deputy Sheriff Seymour Weitzman is with Smith. Years later, Weitzman will be interviewed by the author Michael Canfield and shown a photograph of Bernard Barker (a future Watergate burglar along with Hunt and Sturgis). Weitzman will say, "Yes, that's him," and identify Barker as the man who showed him Secret Service credentials on the grassy knoll. Weitzman subsequently picks up a piece of JFK's skull, which he finds near the curb on the south side of Elm Street, and turns it over to authorities. (Later, when Weitzman tells the Warren Commission about this piece of skull, he is suddenly taken "off the record.")
Explained Officer Smith: "He looked like an auto mechanic. He had on a sports shirt and sports pants. But he had dirty fingernails, it looked like, and hands that looked like an auto mechanic's hands. And afterwards it didn't ring true for the Secret Service. At the time we were so pressed for time, and we were searching. And he had produced correct identification, and we just overlooked the thing. I should have checked that man closer, but at the time I didn't snap on it. (Summers 50)
"After the shooting, Dallas Police officer Joe M. Smith encountered another suspicious man in the lot behind the picket fence [on the grassy knoll]. Smith told the Warren Commission that when he drew his pistol and approached the man, the man "showed [Smith] that he was a Secret Service agent." (WC Vol. VII, pg. 535; see interview of Joseph M. Smith, Feb. 8, 1978, House Select Committee on Assassinations (JFK Document 005886).)
"I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn't alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there. I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent." (Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VII, pg.. 531)
7H 535 Sylvia Meagher, in her book Accessories After The Fact states: "I suggest that he [the "Secret Service" agent] was one of the assassins, armed with false credentials... Few mysteries are as important as this one, and it is appalling that the [Warren] Commission ignored or failed to recognize the grounds here for serious suspicion of a well-planned conspiracy at work."
"[The Secret Service agents assigned to the motorcade] remained at their posts during the race to the hospital. None stayed at the scene of the shooting, and none entered the Texas School Book Depository at or immediately after the shooting ... Forrest V. Sorrels, special agent in charge of the Dallas office, was the first Secret Service agent to return to the scene of the assassination, approximately 20 or 25 minutes after the shots were fired." WR 52

During this time period, the Secret Service relies heavily on the CIA for technical support. The CIA even manufactures the lapel pins worn by Secret Service agents. It is also important to understand that there is an agreement in force from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, exempting the CIA from a statutory requirement to report any criminal activity by any of its employees or assets. This agreement, drawn up under Eisenhower and eventually to be rescinded under Gerald Ford, is so secret that the Attorneys General under JFK and LBJ (including Robert Kennedy) are never informed of it.

"Outside the Depository, some witnesses later claimed they ran into Secret Service agents. Since there were no Secret Service agents at Dealey until 1:00 P.M., when Forrest Sorrels returned from Parkland Hospital, could that mean that somebody was impersonating Secret Service agents, indicating a conspiracy? Most of the witnesses later admitted they were mistaken. And immediately after the assassination, different groups of law enforcement officials (most of them having been there to watch the motorcade from nearby government buildings) spread out in Dealey Plaza--they included Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents, postal inspectors, officers from the Special Service Bureau of the Dallas Police, county sheriffs, IRS agents, and even an Army intelligence agent. . . . The author has reviewed the 1963 badges for the above organizations, and found that several look alike. Any of those law enforcement officials could have been confused with Secret Service agents. " (Posner 269)

"I rushed towards the park and saw people running towards the railroad yards beyond Elm Street and I ran over and jumped a fence and a railroad worker stated to me that he believed the smoke from the bullets came from the vicinity of a stockade fence which surrounds the park area." - Deputy Sheriff A. D. McCurley Decker Exhibit No. 5323

Crossing Elm Street to the area of the wooden fence, Malcolm Summers ran to the knoll moments after the shooting. He related the following in the 1988 documentary Who Murdered JFK?:
"I ran across the--Elm Street to right there toward the knoll. It was there [pointing to a spot on the knoll]--and we were stopped by a man in a suit and he had an overcoat--over his arm and he, he, I saw a gun under that overcoat. And he--his comment was, "Don't you all come up here any further, you could get shot, or killed," one of those words. A few months later, they told me they didn't have an FBI man in that area. If they didn't have anybody, it's a good question who it was." (Anderson 14)

Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who has run into the parking lot behind the knoll, remembers: "I began to question people when I noticed a woman in her early thirties attempting to drive out of the parking lot. She was in a brown 1962 or 1963 Chevrolet. I stopped her, identified myself and placed her under arrest. She told me that she HAD to leave and I said, "Lady, you're not going anywhere." I turned her over to Deputy Sheriff C. I. (Lummy) Lewis and told him the circumstances of the arrest. Officer Lewis told me that he would take her to Sheriff [Bill] Decker and take care of her car." Roger Craig describes the parking lot: "It was leased by Deputy Sheriff B. D. Gossett. He in turn rented parking space by the month to the deputies who worked in the court house, except for official vehicles. I rented one of these spaces from Gossett when I was a dispatcher working days or evenings. I paid Gossett $3.00 per month and was given a key to the lot. The lot had an iron bar across the only entrance and exit (which were the same). The bar had a chain and lock on it. The only people having access to it were deputies with keys."

AP photographer, James W. Altgens, sprints back to the Dallas News Building. Arriving at the third floor AP wire photo office, he picks up the interoffice phone which rings automatically in the news office. Dallas AP Bureau Chief Robert H. Johnson, Jr., comes on the line to hear Altgens blurt out, "Bob, the President has been shot!" Johnson confirms that Altgens actually saw it happen, then he yells, "Bulletin!" as he frantically types out the message. Night editor Ron Thompson pulls the bulletin from the typewriter and quickly hands it to wire operator Julia Saunders. At 12: 39 PM CST the bulletin is on the wire. POTP

Several people in Dealey Plaza (including Phillip Willis and his family) witness the arrest of a young man wearing a black leather jacket and black gloves. He is ushered out of the Dal-Tex building by two uniformed policemen, who put him in a police car and drive away from the crime scene as the crowd curses and jeers him. There is no official record of this arrest.

12:32 PM WFAA's John Allen reports that shots have been fired at the motorcade based on information from the police radio. Dallas Times Herald reporter Ben Stevens hears word of the shooting, stands up, and announces to the city newsroom: "This is it. … It looks like Kennedy's been hit." (source: Sixth Floor Museum website)

12:32 PM The telephone system in Washington DC went dead either completely or intermittently 2.5 minutes after the assassination; it was not restored for an hour. The explanation was that the breakdown was caused by overloaded phone wires. (Cover Up 199; Death of a President 198-99). "Telephone service in the nation's capital collapsed temporarily. The sudden load of telephone calls swamped central stations and it was impossible to get dial tone to make calls." (Los Angeles Times 11/23/1963)

12:33 PM

Oswald is outside the Depository according to the WC. "While it is difficult to determine exactly when the police sealed off the building, the earliest estimates would still have permitted Oswald to leave the building by 12:33" (R155). (Weisberg says this "is speculation based on the contrived testimony of two dubious witnesses.") Weisberg: That was really the Commission's only interest, getting Oswald out. The front door was not sealed until Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer arrived. With the most dubious kind of computations, the Report says this was "no earlier than 12:37 p.m." The Report refers to only one "rear door." It quotes Sorrels as saying he walked through it about 20 minutes after the assassination and found no one there (R156). What the Report avoids mentioning is that there are, besides the rear walk-through door, also four warehouse-type doors leading to loading docks. There is no reference to even a gesture toward securing them. Even though the Report says the police sealed off the building but it could not know when, there is no evidence the police ever did seal the building. No one saw Oswald leave the building and the Commission was extremely careful to avoid the photographic evidence that might have shown him leaving after 12:33, as certainly he did from the Commission's own evidence. (Whitewash)
Oswald claimed foreman Shelley said there would be no more work that day, so he went out the front door. He encountered a young man with a crew cut who flashed an identity card - Oswald thought he was a Secret Service man. (CD 354). He directed him to a phone; this man was probably Robert MacNeil of NBC, who had left the motorcade after the shots. Why Oswald did not simply walk down to the first floor and leave by the back door, which was near the stairs, is unclear. The WC apparently did not try to determine where Oswald left his coke bottle, if he was seen or stopped by officers as he left the building, or verify his story about encountering a SS agent. He "probably walked east on Elm Street for seven blocks." But not a single witness saw Oswald leave the building after the shooting (WR 154-56). He then supposedly boarded a westbound bus at the corner of Elm and Murphy Streets, asked for a transfer and left the bus two blocks or so after getting on. (WR 157- 159). Oswald will later tell police that a Secret Service agent stops him in front of the Book Depository to ask where the nearest telephone is located. The man Oswald meets leaving the Texas School Book Depository is also claimed to be Pierce Allman, a crew cut reporter who enters the TSBD to telephone a report to WFAA radio. (After Oswald's arrest, Captain Will Fritz and the other interrogators of Oswald will never ask him which exit he used or whether a policeman had been stationed at the door, and if so, whether he had tried to prevent him from leaving or had checked his credentials.) AATF
When interviewed by Captain Fritz on 11/22/63, Oswald said "as he was leaving the TSBD building, two men (one with a crew cut) had intercepted him at the front door; identified themselves as Secret Service Agents and asked for the location of a telephone" (CD 354). Mr. Pierce Allman, who had brown crew cut hair, and Terrence Ford, of WFAA TV, ran into the TSBD a few minutes after the shooting. They entered the front door of the building, emerged into a hallway and there met a white male who they could not further identify. Allman asked this person for the location of a telephone. Oswald watched as Allman used the phone and Oswald then left the TSBD and walked east on Elm.

Pierce Allman, after reaching a phone inside the TSBD, phoned in a report saying that "three loud reverberating explosions" had been heard in DP, and 2 witnesses said shots were fired from an unknown upper floor of the TSBD.

12:33 Freelance photographer James Murray reaches his car on Houston to retrieve his cameras, and begins photographing the aftermath of events in Dealey Plaza. He takes more photographs in Dealey Plaza that day than anyone else. He moves up to the intersection of Elm and Houston and takes his first photo, of two sobbing black women. At this point he thinks only that two teenage boys he has seen running had thrown firecrackers at the president. In the background, wearing a hardhat, is Howard Brennan looking up. The Dal-Tex building is in the background. (Trask)

Mr. BALL - Did you ever see a fellow named Brennan?
Mr. JARMAN - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - Where did you see him first?
Mr. JARMAN - He was talking to a police officer.
Mr. BALL - How was he dressed?
Mr. JARMAN - He was dressed in construction clothes.
Mr. BALL - Anything else, any other way to describe him?
Mr. JARMAN - Well, he had on a silverlike helmet.
Mr. BALL - Hard-hat?
Mr. JARMAN - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - Did you stay out there very long?
Mr. JARMAN - Just a few minutes.
Mr. BALL - Then where did you go?
Mr. JARMAN - We heard him talking to this officer about that he had heard these shots and he had seen the barrel of the gun sticking out the window, and he said that the shots came from inside the building, and I told the officer that I believed that they came from inside the building also, and then he rushed us back inside.
Mr. BALL - The officer did?
Mr. JARMAN - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - How did you know this fellow was Brennan?
Mr. JARMAN - Well, at that time I didn't know him at all --
Mr. BALL - Have you learned that since?
Mr. JARMAN - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - Who told you that the man in the hard-hat was Brennan?
Mr. JARMAN - Well, they have had him down there at the building a couple of times.

A KBOX news car arrives on the scene- coming up behind the TSBD. James Romack, a truck driver for Coordinated Transportation, removes a portion of a barrier, allowing the vehicle to pass. Meanwhile, a man in the dark sportcoat dashes out the back door of the TSBD. A sawhorse barrier has been erected that crossed Houston St., located approximately 25 yards from the TSBD to block northbound traffic into a road construction zone.

On November 30, FBI Agent Alan Manning interviews Mrs. Evelyn Harris. In his summary of that interview, he writes: "The daughter of Mrs. Lucy Lopez, a white woman married to a Mexican, worked at a sewing room across the street from the TSBD. Her daughter and some of the other girls knew Lee Harvey Oswald and also were acquainted with Jack Ruby. They observed Jack Ruby give Oswald a pistol when Oswald came out of the building."

Mr. Roy Cooper is driving his car and following his boss who is driving a Cadillac. They are coming south on Houston and have had to wait for the motorcade. Cooper sees a white male somewhere between 20 and 30 years of age wave at a Nash Rambler station wagon, light colored, as it pulls out and seems ready to leave from Elm and Houston. The station wagon pulls out very fast in front of the Cadillac driven by Cooper's boss and his employer has to stop abruptly and nearly hits the Nash Rambler. Cooper cannot see who was driving the Nash Rambler and is not able furnish any further description of the man who jumps into the car. The Nash Rambler station wagon pulls off at a rather fast rate of speed and heads to the overpass toward Oak Cliff.

Law clerk, Lillian Mooneyham, sees a man in "the sniper's window" a few minutes after the shots are fired. Oswald could not have been the person moving around in the window (since the Warren Commission assumes Oswald exited the sniper's nest in a matter of seconds in order to have any hope of getting him to the second-floor lunchroom where he is seen by a police officer about 90 seconds after the shooting).

The interference on police Channel 1 stops. (The microphone has been "stuck" open for at least four minutes total). But first there is an electronic beeping in precisely the Morse code signal for "Victory." (A WC supporter, James Bowles, explained this: "Unidentified officers, in checking their mike buttons, unwittingly generated the sound of the Morse Code "V" or ". . . _____" and this was recorded. Some assassination buffs have construed this to be an officer signaling success to his cohorts by transmitting the World War II victory signal. This is absurd because the ". . ." is at a higher pitch than the "_____" just as it is in the musical form from Beethoven's Symphony #5. A single officer keying his mike cannot make it play music. In fact, he would have no way of knowing that his keying would even produce heterodyne.")

Aboard Air Force One, Col. James B. Swindal overhears Roy Kellerman on the Secret Service radio channel speaking from JFK's limo: "Lancer is hurt. It looks bad. We have to get to a hospital." Moments later, the Secret Service communications gear on Air Force One goes dead. Swindal receives the news that JFK is dead by tuning into network television aboard the aircraft.

12:34 PM

Dallas Police radio mentioned the Depository as the possible source of the shots. (WC) There is a call from officer, it says No. 136, that states, "A passer-by states the shots came from Texas School Book Depository Building."

Police Ban (Channel 2) -- Orders to keep everything out of the emergency entrance to Parkland Hospital. Get all of the traffic out of the way. An officer in Dealey Plaza radios that he has a witness who saw a man with a gun in the TSBD. Curry tells officer get name, address, phone # and all information. Cut traffic on Hines & Industrial Blvd.

12:34 PM UPI's Merriman Smith dictates a wire transmission from the AT&T radio-car. This is the first account of the shooting on a national and international level. KBOXSam Pate calls in a report from the motorcade and goes on the air live just as Smith's wire clears. (Sixth Floor Museum website) The radio telephone in a press car carrying representatives of the wire services is rendered inoperative immediately after Merriman Smith gets out the first utterance of the shooting. It is reported that Smith yanks the phone wires out after he gets off his UPI news flash. (The press pool car contains Merriman Smith, Jack Bell, Marty Underwood, Bob Clark of ABC, and Bob Bascomb of the Dallas Morning News, plus the driver who is an employee of Southwest Bell Telephone.)

12:34 Photographer Jim Murray takes his second photo after moving down the dirt Elm St extension road into the parking area. Lee Bower's railroad tower is in the background. The next photo shows Amos Euins and Hugh Betzner.

12:34 PM UPI flashes the news that three shots have been fired at the motorcade.

12:34-12:36 PM Robert MacNeil reaches NBC from a Depository phone.

12:35 PM

Officer Haygood radios in: "I just talked to a guy here who was standing close to it and the best he could tell it came from the Texas School Book Depository building..."

Jim Murray takes his next photo looking up the Elm St Extension toward the TSBD. Only now did Murray begin to learn what had happened to the motorcade. He then spent the next 20 minutes wandering around in a daze, taking pictures almost randomly. He went south to the area around Elm Street. (Trask)

Amos Euins is filmed being driven on Harkness' DPD three-wheel motorcycle.

12:35 PM Evelyn Ashmore is on the west side of the Stemmons Freeway on the service road across from the Trade Mart, where she knew he was scheduled to arrive. She snapped a photo of the limo rushing to Parkland Hospital.

Justin Newman takes a photo of the presidential limo near the Trade Mart. David Miller also takes a famous photo from Stemmons Freeway showing a foot (Hill's) sticking out of the back seat.

The Trade Mart was well-prepared for JFK's visit. There were 200 Texas law enforcement officers there. Sgt Robert E. Dugger of the DPD had watched plain-clothes men carry away three men with anti-Kennedy placards. Chief Curry had concentrated most of his force around this luncheon, which was made up of Dallas' elite civic leaders (including the editor of the Dallas Times Herald, who was a member of the John Birch Society). (Manchester)

12:35 PM (1:35pm EST) J. Edgar Hoover heard about the shooting a few minutes after it happened, from Gordon Shanklin; wrongly assuming that there was a federal law involved (Hoover had lobbied through a law making the killing of an FBI agent a federal crime), he told Shanklin that he would be in charge of the investigation in Texas, since he was the senior agent on the scene. (The Man and the Secrets p541) Hoover then called Robert Kennedy to give him the news; Kennedy later described his conversations with Hoover that day as "so unpleasant" because Hoover acted so cold and businesslike: He was "not quite as excited as if he was reporting the fact that he found a Communist on the faculty of Howard University [D.C.'s mostly black college.]" He never offered any words of condolences, and in the months RFK remained as Atty General, the two men would rarely speak. (Official and Confidential p364-5) According to Schlesinger's RFK and His Times, Hoover called at 12:35 PM after receiving word from the UPI ticker in his building. He tells RFK "The President's been shot, I think it is serious, I'll call you back…when I found out more." Hoover then called the Dallas office and ordered Agent Shanklin to begin a complete investigation. (Dallas Morning News 11/23/1963) Robert Morganthau watches as RFK turns away, a look of horror on his face, clapping his hand to his mouth. He turns to his aides and screams "Jack's been shot! It might be fatal." RFK then goes back to the main house, walking around in a state of shock. Later, followed by Ethel, he goes up to their bedroom to try calling Dallas. He is also simultaneously preparing to pack for an emergency flight to Texas. Eventually, RFK's call to Parkland is put through. He isn't sure to whom, though he believes it is to Secret Service agent Clint Hill. Later, RFK recalls: "They said that it was very serious. And I asked if he was conscious, and they said he wasn't, and I asked if they'd gotten a priest, and they said they had ... Then, I said, will you call me back, and he said yes, and then he - Clint Hill called me back, and I think it was about thirty minutes after I talked to Hoover ... and he said, "The President's dead." (LBTS)
Nicholas Katzenbach in a later interview recalled that RFK told him that when Hoover called to inform him that JFK was shot, Bobby said, "I think Hoover enjoyed telling me."
David Talbot in Brothers' explains RFK's receipt of Hoover's call by stating that at Hickory Hill in McLean, Virginia, the phone extension at Kennedy's swimming pool rings. RFK, still dressed in a wet bathing suit, is eating lunch near the pool. Ethel answers the phone and tells RFK that J. Edgar Hoover is calling. RFK knows something must be wrong because Hoover never calls him at home. When he answers the phone, Hoover says: "I have news for you. The president's been shot." Hoover's voice is blunt and matter of fact.
The phone log for J. Edgar Hoover on this day shows that, aside from calls to RFK and the head of the Secret Service, Hoover called only one man on the afternoon the President is shot: Billy Byars. Within four days, the FBI will receive a tip-off that Clint Murchison and Tom Webb - the FBI veteran the millionaire has hired at Hoover's suggestion - are both acquainted with Jack Ruby. While they deny it, Ruby has met one of Murchison's best friends, Humble Oil millionaire Billy Byars. Hoover and Byars are close. They use adjacent bungalows at Murchison's California hotel each summer. O&C

12:35 Jim Murray photos.

12:36 PM

The first national news bulletin of the shooting came over the ABC Radio Network at 12:36 PM CST/1:36 PM EST. At the time, Doris Day's recording of "Hooray for Hollywood" was playing over the airwaves when newscaster Don Gardiner broke in with this: "We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin from ABC Radio. Here is a special bulletin from Dallas, Texas. Three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade today in downtown Dallas, Texas. This is ABC Radio. To repeat: In Dallas Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade today, the President now making a two-day speaking tour of Texas. We're going to stand by for more details on the incident in Dallas, stay tuned to your ABC station for further details. Now we return you to your regular program."

12:36 Jim Murray photo showing a young couple with the TSBD in the background.

CD 206, an unpublished FBI report in the Nationa