JFK: Inside the Target Car

I recently saw a Discovery Channel program “JFK: Inside the Target Car,” first broadcast in November 2008. It contains some very interesting material.

The program set up a simulation in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza, where the assassination took place, using actors, a replica of Kennedy’s presidential limousine, and a video of the Zapruder film to recreate the exact positions of the presidential limousine, its occupants, and a gunman firing from the “grassy knoll,” a spot from where many conspiracy theorists believe a second gunman fired. The grassy knoll is to the front and the right of where the limousine was when the shots that hit President Kennedy were fired.

Looking from the grassy knoll, at the point when the fatal shot was fired, President Kennedy was slumped over, cradled in his wife’s arms, after having been wounded by the first shot. It is perfectly clear, seeing the positions of the actors, that if the shot that killed Kennedy had been fired from the grassy knoll, it would have killed or severely wounded Mrs. Kennedy because she was positioned directly behind her husband.

As we all know, none of the bullets struck Mrs. Kennedy, so the fatal shot could not have come from the grassy knoll. Nor did the first shot that struck President Kennedy come from that direction. It struck him in the upper back and exited the front of his throat. Given the location of the entrance and exit wounds, it could have only come from the back and above – the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald was.