Eight reasons why the first shot was not fired at or near Z160

1) If Gov. Connally and Rosemary Willis responded to a rifle blast, why did no one else in these frames as much as bat an eye?  The faster Connally’s “head snap,” the more certain some of the 63 others in that frame would have also shown reactions.  Yet there were none.  Several frames after Connally’s turn, 10-year-old Rosemary Willis slowed and stopped running because her father Phil called her.

2) Career-trained witnesses testified that the first shot occurred as the limousine was turning from Houston onto Elm or in the process of completing its turn, about six seconds earlier than Z160: Secret Service agents Paul Landis and Clint Hill, Chief Criminal Deputy Allan Sweatt and journalists Robert H. Jackson and Tom C. Dillard among many others.

3) A tough-to-ignore plurality of witnesses testified to a significantly greater time interval between the first two shots and the last two.  We know from the Zapruder film that 4.9 seconds elapsed between the second shot at Z224 and the third at Z313.  Yet only 3.5 seconds elapsed between Z160 and Z224. 

4) The primary rule in firing for accuracy is that you must first zero (sight-in) your firearm.  You don’t just pick up a rifle and start shooting!  Oswald knew from experience that his Carcano would never hold its zero (remain sighted-in) after being disassembled and reassembled.  He had learned that lesson by his failure to hit Gen. Walker.  A minimum of eight or nine seconds is required to re-zero with the first shot, placing it much earlier than Z160.

5) Is there any better explanation for the first shot completely missing the limousine than that it wasn’t aimed at the car to begin with?  Oswald used the first shot for the indispensable task of zeroing and it ‘missed’ because it was aimed a different target.  It created the fresh bullet mark in the south curb of Main Street.

6) Seven frames were removed from the Tina Towner film to hide her first-shot camera jiggle, just when the limousine was making the turn onto Elm Street (after frame T084).  And four frames from one and possibly two different copies of the Zapruder film were spliced out, just before the President disappeared behind the Stemmons Freeway sign (Z208‒Z211).  The FBI had to hide an early first shot.  For the good of the country.  You might have done the same thing.  I would have.

7) As shown in the Secret Service re-enactment film, Oswald was back from the window to rest the rifle muzzle on the box he placed there for stability.  If he were firing at the limousine with his first shot, he could not have acquired the target as early as Z160 without drastically repositioning himself.  He could only have fired downrange from that position.

8) There is no logical reason to assume that Abe Zapruder’s film captured all three shots.  It makes a neat package but it’s just not factual.  Once we learn what Oswald already knew, the need to zero his re-assembled Carcano to achieve the required accuracy, it becomes clear why the first shot was fired and therefore when it was fired.

The Final Truth: Solving the Mystery of the JFK Assassination

-- Edward Bauer

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