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The thinking is that, upon hearing Oswald fire the first two shots, a secret service agent grabbed an AR-15 rifle and stood to return fire. At that moment, the car he was riding in accelerated, causing him to fall backwards and accidentally discharge his weapon. That accidental shot hit President Kennedy in the head.

It sounds crazy, but keep in mind that Howard Donahue was a ballistics expert who went into painstaking detail to recreate the trajectory of the shots that hit Kennedy. His research was deemed sound enough that two major media outlets went to the trouble of covering it. The first was the Baltimore Sun, which covered his findings in a two-part series in 1977.

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The next was St. Martin's Press, one of the largest and most respected publishers in the nation (they also make textbooks). In 1992, they released a book called Mortal Error that laid out in great detail the facts behind Donahue's theory.

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Ha! The guy who wrote it is named Bonar.

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It wasn't some obscure conspiracy wing of St. Martin's Press, either. This was a major book release, complete with appearances on national news show and everything.

The point is that the theory had some support, and not just from tinfoil hat types. Unfortunately, and to the surprise of almost everyone involved, the book generated almost no interest or attention from anyone. There are probably a lot of reasons for that, but I think the most likely is that, in the long run, this theory makes for a really unsatisfying conclusion to the mystery of what happened to JFK. It proves those who think Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't have pulled off the killing alone were correct, but not really in the way they're hoping. There's no mysterious second gunman on the grassy knoll. It's just math and human error. Who wants to believe something so mundane when it takes all of the way more interesting options off the table? Blaming it all on a tragic mistake isn't nearly as fun as insisting George Bush did it.

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