Oswald was also picked from a police line-up by Howard Brenan as the man he saw with a rifle at the sixth floor window. Fibres found on the rifle butt appeared to match those of a shirt Oswald was wearing when arrested.
It remains a mystery why Lee Harvey Oswald shot dead police officer Tippet to avoid arrest if he was innocent; the warren commission obviously took this into account during their examination of the case. What they failed to take into account is a quote from Oswald where he stated “I am a patsy” which means in American slang that he felt he had been set up, if he thought this immediately after the assassination he might have assumed that it would be pointless him giving himself up to the authorities.
Although the warren commissions findings have been questioned over the last thirty or so years, no conflicting evidence has been forthcoming to prove that these gentlemen made the wrong decision, so the warren commission and history until proved otherwise will state that Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated J.F.Kennedy, president of the United States Of America.
SECTION B
The evidence presented to the Warren commission may well have been enough to find Oswald guilty, however a number of eyewitness reports seem to contradict the excepted evidence.
Jean Hill, a women who was fairly close to the presidents car at the time of the shooting seemed to suggest four to six shots were fired from different guns and from different places, although a women might not be considered a firearms expert, Jean Hill by her own admission said “I am very used to guns”. The warren commission however took the view that only three shots had been discharged. Governor Connolly, travelling in the presidential car seemed to think there were two or three people involved or the shots were discharged from an automatic weapon, other evidence backs up this claim as tests after the assassination found that even a top marksmen could not fire three shots from Oswald’s weapon in the given time with any accuracy.
There are eyewitness reports that seem to have the shots coming from a number of different directions for instance, Lee Bowers, stationed in a position overlooking the Grassy Knoll claimed he saw two men behind a fence and a flash of light from that area during the shooting again, this type of evidence was disregarded by the Warren commission who maintained three shots coming from the sixth floor of the schoolbook depository.
The warren commission stated that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, yet two witnesses, one of whom was Arnold Rowland; claimed they saw two men on the sixth floor of the schoolbook depository at the time of the assassination. The movements of Oswald directly after the shooting also seem to be in dispute. Deputy sheriff Roger Craig stated that he saw Oswald leave the schoolbook depository and join a heavy set man sitting in a station wagon, which then drove off towards the freeway. The warren commission however accepted the evidence that Oswald left the schoolbook depository, boarded a bus, then from a bus into a taxi and from the taxi to his lodgings.
It seems quite astonishing, giving the conflicting evidence in this case that these witnesses were so easily dismissed, although in moments of such high drama, people sometimes tend to imagine certain things, a lot of what these witnesses stated was backed up to a certain degree by the 8mm film.
Section C:
The Zapruder film was a good source of evidence to use when trying to come to a conclusion about the assassination. This film is an important piece of evidence as it provides a precise ‘time frame’ for the assassination.
This piece of evidence seems most likely to dispel the notion of a gunmen acting alone. This film shows over a 22 second period the presidents car immediately before the shots, what happens to Kennedy whilst being shot and the second immediately afterwards.
As the first shot hits the vehicle there seems to be little reaction, the second shot hits the president, as it hits Kennedy’s head jerks backwards and to the left suggesting a shot coming from in front of and to the right of the car, not from behind as it would have had to do were it fired from the book depository. Had the shot come from the rear of the car Kennedy would have been pushed forward with a bullet exiting through his face, but the film shows the bullet entering from the front and exiting through the back of his head leaving a large wound and part of the presidents brain clearly shown outside of his skull. People travelling in Kennedy’s car also suffered bullet wounds and although this would suggest a considerable number of shots, the Warren commission preferred to believe the somewhat surprising suggestion that one bullet not only entered the president, it then went on to leave his body, hit his knee, continue on it’s travels into the governor smashing through his bones and exiting his body, only to be found later in almost pristine condition. This bullet later became known as “the magic bullet” and it is quite easy to see why.
Experiments after the assassination showed that not even FBI marksmen could carry out the number of shots in the speed and time that Oswald was supposed to have according to the warren commission. The trained marksmen took three seconds between their shots whereas Oswald was supposed to have done this in half the time that they could. This strikes me as being a bit far fetched to say the least, when you look at the background of Lee Harvey Oswald, which states ‘marine’s corps records reveal that Oswald’s marksmanship ranged from “rather poor” to “fairly good” shot. Oswald’s last recorded score only just qualified him for the marines lowest grade in marksmanship’. Also a former marine colleague or Oswald’s, Nelson Delgado recalled ‘I remember seeing him shooting. It was a pretty big joke because he missed a lot of “Maggie’s drawers”, you know, a lot of misses, but he didn’t give a darn’. How is a man with this description supposed to carry out three shots that precise in that amount of time he did (1.5 seconds between shots) when three top rifle experts could not manage this on a stationary target that was situated 15 yards in front of them?
