How Did Lee Harvey Oswald Kill President Kennedy?

Although the bullet shells and the rifle implicated Lee Oswald in the assassination, a substantial proportion of the general public either remained unconvinced that he had acted alone, or doubted that he had been involved at all.

In order to help the media to “convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,”1 the Warren Commission was obliged to describe in detail how Oswald, without assistance, was able to kill one man and injure two others.

The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald

The essential part of the Commission’s case involved three claims:

that all of the shooting came from the easternmost south–facing window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository;

that Lee Harvey Oswald had brought the rifle to work, and was at the sixth floor window with the rifle at the time of the shooting;

and that it was physically possible for a lone gunman to have caused all the known injuries with only three shots.

All the Shots Came from the Sixth Floor

As well as the presence of the rifle and the empty bullet shells, there was other strong evidence that at least some of the shooting came from the TSBD :

many eye–witnesses heard one or more shots from the building;

and a gunman was seen on one of the upper floors.

The idea that every gunshot originated from the building’s south–easternmost sixth–floor window was, however, merely the Warren Commission’s working assumption. The idea had no explicit evidence in its favour, and was contradicted by, among other things, the location and nature of President Kennedy’s head injuries.

The Location of President Kennedy’s Head Injuries

The autopsy pathologists consistently claimed that there was an entry wound low down on the back of President Kennedy’s skull. There was also a large wound, the location of which was variously described as toward the top, right and rear of the skull. All of these locations of the supposed exit wound are higher than the entry wound, and are incompatible with a shot coming from above and behind at an angle of about 10°–15° to the horizontal, given the inclination of Kennedy’s head at the moment of the fatal shot or shots, which is shown on frame 312 and frame 313 of the Zapruder film.2

The Nature of President Kennedy’s Head Injuries

The majority of the damage to the head appears to have been caused by a soft–nosed bullet, a type designed to break apart on impact, while all the non–fatal wounds were caused by metal–jacketed bullets, which were designed to remain intact. The shells found on the sixth floor of the TSBD were all from the same batch, and must have contained the same type of bullet. The implication is that either the soft–nosed bullet was fired from elsewhere, or it was fired from the sixth floor by a second gunman, a conclusion equally unhelpful to the notion of Oswald as the lone assassin.3

The Motion of President Kennedy’s Head

Perhaps the best–known evidence of shooting from somewhere other than the TSBD is the motion of President Kennedy’s head in reaction to the fatal shot. The sharp back–and–to–the–left movement was revealed when bootleg copies of the Zapruder film began to circulate a few years after the assassination. It corroborates the statements of the many witnesses who claimed to have heard one or more shots coming from the direction of the grassy knoll at the north–west corner of Dealey Plaza.4

No Gunman in the Window

A home movie by a spectator, Robert Hughes, showed the easternmost sixth–floor window as the president’s car passed directly underneath, no more than five seconds before the shooting started. The three TSBD employees in the fifth–floor window are clearly visible, but there appears to be no–one in the sixth–floor window. Another spectator, Charles Bronson, filmed the window six minutes earlier, at about the time when the motorcade had been due to pass by. Again, the window appears to be empty.5

Oswald at the Scene of the Crime with a Rifle

Other objections were made to the Commission’s claim that Oswald:

had brought a rifle to work on the day of the assassination,

was on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting,

and fired that rifle from the sixth floor.

Oswald Carried the Rifle to Work

Only three witnesses had seen Oswald prior to and during his arrival at work on 22 November 1963. All three testified that he had not carried a rifle. Buell Wesley Frazier, who had driven Oswald to work, and his sister, Linnie Mae Randle, at whose house Oswald had met Frazier that morning, both claimed that Oswald had been carrying a paper bag, but that the bag was much too short to have held the Mannlicher Carcano rifle that was discovered on the sixth floor of the TSBD. Jack Dougherty, a colleague of Oswald’s who saw him enter the TSBD, was adamant that he did not see anything in Oswald’s hands.6

Dallas police officers claimed to have discovered on the sixth floor a paper bag that was long enough to have contained the rifle, but the bag turned out to have had no association with either Oswald or the rifle:

Frazier and Randle were shown this bag. Both claimed that it was several inches longer than the one they had seen.

The bag did not show creases or oil stains consistent with it having held the disassembled rifle.7

The bag that was produced in evidence was almost certainly not found at the scene of the crime: the police officers who first came across the alleged sniper’s nest gave confused testimony about whether there was a paper bag nearby,8 and none of the crime scene photographs showed the bag in situ .9

.9 Oswald could not have assembled the bag: although it had been constructed from wrapping paper and tape used at the depository, the bag could only have been assembled at the building’s wrapping table, to which Oswald did not have access.10

Oswald Was on the Sixth Floor During the Shooting

The first sighting of Oswald after the shooting was by two witnesses, a policeman and the building supervisor, who claimed that they encountered him on the second floor of the TSBD very shortly after they heard gunshots. The timing of the incident suggests that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during the assassination.

Two problems were pointed out with the Commission’s treatment of the encounter:

The Commission re–enacted the movements of the two witnesses, who had come up from the first floor, and of Oswald, who in theory had come down from the sixth floor after laboriously hiding the rifle. The re–enactments were only able to get Oswald to the second floor in time to meet the witnesses by artificially quickening his descent and slowing their ascent.11

The Commission brushed aside evidence from other people within the TSBD who would have seen or heard anyone dashing down the stairs, but who failed to do so.12

Oswald Was Seen Firing a Rifle

Several people had seen at least one person with a rifle on the sixth floor of the TSBD, but only one witness, Howard Brennan, provided an identification that came close to matching Oswald’s appearance. Brennan, however, turned out to be unreliable and unhelpful:

He claimed that the gunman had been standing up when firing, although the half–open window required any gunman to have crouched or kneeled.

He claimed to have seen the gunman’s trousers, which would not have been visible from Brennan’s viewpoint on the street sixty feet below.

When asked whether he had actually seen the firing of the rifle, he replied, “No.”

He claimed that on hearing the first shot, “I looked up at the building. I then saw this man I have described in the window and he was taking aim with a high powered rifle. I could see all of the barrel of the gun.” Brennan’s reaction to the first shot is visible on the Zapruder film: standing directly opposite the sixth–floor window, he watches Kennedy’s car go past him to his left, then from about frame 204 he in fact turns his head sharply to his right, away from the TSBD, rather than up toward the sixth floor.

He failed to pick out Oswald at an identification parade, despite already having seen Oswald’s picture on television.13

Two witnesses, Arnold Rowland and Amos Euins, saw a man on the sixth floor, holding a rifle, who did not resemble Oswald.14 Rowland saw the gunman a few minutes before the shooting, when Oswald’s alibi almost certainly places him on the first floor, a location which is consistent with his encounter with the policeman and the building supervisor.

The Bullet Shells Matched the Wounds

The final, and perhaps the most important, element of the case against Oswald required the three bullet shells to be matched to the wounds.

Several facts soon emerged which greatly constrained any explanation of how a lone gunman, in the time available, could fire one particular rifle from one particular location and cause one particular set of wounds.

Constraint 1: At Least 2.3 Seconds per Shot

The rifle found on the sixth floor was examined and tested by the US Army and the FBI, who found that it was in poor condition. It could not be aimed accurately, and so it was tested mainly for the speed with which it could fire a sequence of shots. In a series of tests by skilled marksmen, the fastest time taken to operate the bolt, aim the rifle, and operate the trigger pull, was 2.3 seconds.15

The first constraint is that if Oswald’s rifle fired all the shots, there must have been a minimum of 2.3 seconds between each shot.

Constraint 2: Only Three Bullets Were Fired

Three empty rifle bullet shells were found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, all of them close to the window in the south–eastern corner. One unfired bullet was found in the rifle. No other rifle bullets or bullet shells were discovered either in the building, or on Oswald’s person, or in his belongings.

The second constraint is that if Oswald’s rifle was the only weapon used, all the injuries had to have been caused by no more than three bullets.

Constraint 3: Three Shots in Six Seconds

Abraham Zapruder’s famous home movie of the shooting allowed the timing of Kennedy’s progress along the road to be accurately determined. As Kennedy’s car passed the Texas School Book Depository, it was hidden at first from the sixth–floor window by a large oak tree. There was a period of just under six seconds between the car becoming visible to anyone in the easternmost sixth–floor window and the moment of the fatal head shot.16

The fact that Oswald encountered reliable witnesses on the second floor shortly after the shooting meant that he would have had to leave the sixth floor immediately after the head shot.

The third constraint is that if every shot was fired by Oswald from the easternmost sixth–floor window, all the shooting must have taken place within six seconds.

Was Lee Harvey Oswald the Lone Gunman?

For Oswald to have been the lone gunman, all of the following constraints had to apply:

There were at least 2.3 seconds between each shot. No more than three bullets caused all of the wounds. The whole shooting took no longer than six seconds.

If any of these statements were contradicted by the balance of the evidence, Oswald could not have committed the crime alone. The Warren Commission attempted to deal with these constraints by devising what became known as the single–bullet theory.