Kennedy's assassination is an old topic but still generates heat because most of us—especially those of us old enough to remember the murder—have strong opinions about it. We've all heard theories about conspiracies, grassy knoll shooter, Mafia, CIA etc. Many of these opinions were shaped by Oliver Stone's odd movie JFK. I saw the movie and detected at least one significant factual error. One character makes a statement about "rate of fire" at which point a second character dry fires a Carcano rifle. "Go!" The "shooter" works the action once, twice, three times. "Stop!" Both characters observe the time recorded on their stopwatch and determine that the time is too long for the FBI reported timing; hence there must be a conspiracy…probably a sinister CIA conspiracy.

Of course, Stone's scenario is incorrect. The timing was from the moment of the sound of the first shot fired, not from just before the levering in of the first round. Hence, Stone's contention is incorrect, perhaps deliberately. I'm a pathologist, know something about forensics and have fired rifles much of my life. Maybe I could reproduce the shooting—rate of fire, accuracy, bullet penetration, bullet deformation etc. I decided to do it and purchased five Carcano rifles and one hundred rounds of the same kind of ammunition that was purportedly fired through the assassin's rifle. Similar to the assassin's rifle, I mounted a four-power scope on the weapon I planned to use for accuracy studies. I built a shooting platform sixty feet high in an oak tree to simulate Oswald's sniper hideout in the 6th floor of the Book Depository Building. I stacked wet newsprint into a wooden frame to test bullet penetration in a human tissue-like model. I obtained seven fresh beef heads to test for bullet deformation. I also mounted a paper human sized head-shoulder silhouette onto a plywood square, nailed it onto the end of a ten feet long 4" by 4" beam and mounted the beam at a right angle to the bed of my pickup truck in such a way that the silhouette was located approximately six feet to one side of the vehicle. To doubly protect the driver [my son, Mark], I carefully blocked the back of the cab with thick layers of wood.

Methods and Results:
Bullet penetration into wet newsprint: 72"
Bullet penetration into wet newsprint arranged with layered leather and bone to simulate first hit on Kennedy's neck, Governor Connally's chest [broken rib], wrist [broken bone], and thigh: 25"

Penetration Diagram


Explanation: Placing a paper target between the Kennedy "neck" and the Connally "chest," I demonstrated that the bullet always tumbled i.e. it printed as a "keyhole" on the paper rather than a point-on hole. I did this multiple times with identical results. A tumbling bullet, especially one striking bone, doesn't penetrate as deeply as a stable, point-on bullet, hence the penetration—in terms of distance—is markedly decreased. In my examples, the penetration was approximately same penetration as the actual shooting.

Keyholed target

Also, this is the so-called pristine bullet found on the Connally stretcher. The bullet was, in fact, by no means pristine but compressed approximately fifty percent in the base, strongly suggested that the bullet was tumbling when the rear of the bullet struck something hard, like bone. My recovered bullets from the Kennedy-Connally model were all less damaged than the one recovered from the stretcher.

Intact Bullets

Bullet Deformation

The second and fatal hit was probably the third bullet fired and was at a point when Kennedy was farthest from Oswald's sniper hideout. This bullet struck Kennedy's head and blew apart into multiple fragments. How is it possible that the bullet of the first hit—when Kennedy was closer and the bullet was traveling at a greater velocity—remained intact whereas the bullet of the second hit—when the bullet was traveling at a lesser velocity—blow apart? Maybe the second hit was a differently constructed bullet and, if so, might have come from a second shooter. On the other hand, the first bullet struck a lot of soft tissue [Kennedy's neck] before encountering the rib in Connally's chest. The second bullet immediately encountered bone [skull]. Is it possible that this accounts for the discrepancy? The first bullet was traveling more slowly when first encountering something hard than was the second bullet?

Method and Results: I placed seven fresh beef heads in front of a thick layer of soaked newsprint I shot each head between the eyes and collected the bullet—or bullet remnants—in the newsprint. Two of the bullets were massively deformed. Five of the bullets blew apart and only fragments were found in the newsprint. Perfect.

Diagram of beef head shots

Fragmented Bullets








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Head Deflection

Kennedy's head was struck by the last shot and, photographically, seemed to move backward with the impact, which seems to contradict the theory that the shot came from the rear. Method and Results: I balanced water-filled balls—beach balls, volley balls and basketballs—on the top of a vertical, four feet long, 4" by 4" timber.I placed a ladder approximately thirty feet from the timber, climbed up on the ladder so that I was above my target. I then shot the various balls high-right, just as Kennedy's head appeared to be hit. One target simply fell to the immediate left of the timber. The other ball targets jetted backwards towards my position on the ladder. One ball actually jetted past me.
Explanation: The bullet enters with a small high-right hole, produces a tremendous pressure wave in the water [in Kennedy's case, brain] and rips out a huge, irregular hole/wound frontally. The fluid is therefore massively ejected frontally and the target ball/head is pushed backward by jet forces.

Accuracy and Rate of Fire

I climbed into my sixty feet high sniper's platform. My oldest son, Erich, timed the shooting and my second son, Mark drove the pickup truck. The truck started from under my sniper's nest. Mark was given instructions to rapidly accelerate to 15 mph, which was the approximate speed of the Kennedy vehicle. My target was, in fact, more difficult to hit than was Oswald's target because the Kennedy vehicle was traveling over smooth asphalt and my pickup was traveling over an irregularly surfaced, grassy pasture. The target-holding wooden boom therefore had significant up and down motion. The three shots were timed, by stopwatch, from the moment of the first shot fired. Four strings of three shots were fired. The three shots strings were from 6.8-7.2 seconds, all shorter than the time estimated for the three shot string of the actual assassination.

Accuracy: The shot strings were calculated so the final shot would be at the approximate distance of the final bullet that hit Kennedy if fired from the alleged Oswald position. Of the 12 bullets fired, one completely missed the silhouette. Eleven bullets struck the silhouette and, of these, seven would have been instantly fatal. The other four would have produced serious, potentially fatal, wounds.

Explanation: I'm a better shot than Oswald.

Conclusion: The guy in the sixth floor window, shooting a Carcano rifle, fired the lethal string of shots.

Opinion: The shooter was Oswald, a man who had tried to assassinate General Edwin Walker three months earlier and who, immediately after the Kennedy assassination, murdered Officer Tibbets.

Nevertheless, I believe there was a conspiracy. Two people were seen fleeing from the scene of the Walker attempted assassination and two is a conspiracy. I suspect that the second man may have been Jack Ruby. But, then again, wasn't Ruby just a two-bit hood, a wannabee, who wanted to be an important man? But, then again, what better way to be a "big man" than by murdering powerful men?

Personally, I suspect that Oswald, and perhaps Ruby, were acting under instruction of agents for Castro and/or Khruschev. Oswald was an avowed Communist who "worked" in the Soviet Union, married the niece of a government official—a KGB Colonel by some accounts—and was permitted to leave the country with her. This is important. Why would the closed society that was the Soviet Union permit this special woman to leave their country with the "nobody" [according to released KGB accounts] Oswald? Maybe he wasn't quite a "nobody."

On the other hand, the Kennedy parade route was published only a few days before the actual killing so how is it possible that a sophisticated conspiracy could set up and target Kennedy in such a limited time? I don't know but it is conceivable that there were multiple marksmen scattered throughout the U.S. ordered to kill Kennedy should the opportunity present itself—multiple marksmen who practiced with cheap, but accurate weapons that couldn't be traced back to Soviet sources.

Speaking of cheap weapons—while doing the above experiments, one of my Carcano rifles blew up on me, shooting multiple bullet fragments into my head and destroying my right maxillary sinus. Therefore, Jack Kennedy and I have something in common. We were both shot in the head by cheap Italian rifles.

Also, Mark's "driving under fire," culminated with his 2003 command of four Marine Corps tanks. He fought, almost continuously, in battles near Al Basrah, and in An Nasirah, Al Kut and finally Baghdad. We are all proud of him.