gunpoint on the second floor but then lets him go when it becomes clear that Lee Harvey is a TBSD employee.
Sixty seconds later, Lee Harvey Oswald steps out of the depository building and into the sunshine of a sixty- five-degree Dallas afternoon.
Against all odds, the assassin is getting away.
Earwitness testimony in Dealey Plaza will later confirm that three shots were fired from the depository. One of the shots misses the president’s car completely, and decades later there is still speculation whether it was the first or third round. But the fact remains that two of the shots did not miss.
The first impact strikes the president in the back of his lower neck. Traveling at 1,904 feet per second, the 6.5-millimeter round tears through the president’s trachea and then exits his body through the tight knot of his dark blue tie. No bones are struck, and though his right lung is bruised, JFK’s heart and lungs still function perfectly.
The president is badly hurt, but very much alive. He has trouble breathing and talking as blood floods into his windpipe. Otherwise, the rifle shot will most likely not kill him.
The same cannot be said for Texas governor John Connally. His jump seat, immediately in front of the president, is three inches lower than where the president is currently sitting. Therefore, ballistics after the fact show that the bullet that passed through Kennedy then entered Connally’s back.
The governor had turned his body just before Oswald fired the shot. He was twisting around, trying to speak face-to-face with the president. Thus, the so-called “magic bullet” (which was traveling at slightly more than 1,700 feet per second) manages to pierce Connally’s skin and travel through his body, exiting below the right side of his chest. But the magic bullet isn’t finished. It then pierces the governor’s wrist and deflects off the bones and into his left thigh, where it finally comes to rest.
The blow knocks Governor Connally forward, bending him double. His chest is immediately drenched in blood. “No, no, no, no,” he cries, “they’re going to kill us both.”
Roy Kellerman thinks he hears the president yell, “My God, I’m hit,” and turns to look over his left shoulder at the man whose Boston accent he knows so well.
Kellerman sees for sure that JFK has been shot.
President Kennedy and Governor Connally are just four miles from Parkland Hospital. There, a team of emergency surgeons can save their lives. It’s up to Secret Service driver Bill Greer to get them there. But the driver of SS-100-X has also looked back to check on the president’s status. This distraction means that the limousine veers slightly from side to side rather than speeding to the emergency room. When Greer turns back to the wheel there’s still time to save the president. All he has to do is accelerate.
But the impact of what has happened has not sunk in. Not for Greer. Not for Kellerman. Not even for Jackie, who is now turning toward JFK.
And the presidential limo still travels far too slowly down Elm Street.
Secret Service special agent Clint Hill, in charge of the First Lady’s detail, hears the shot and leaps into action. Shoving himself away from the running board on Halfback, the vehicle directly behind the president’s limousine, Hill sprints forward in an effort to jump on the small step that sticks out from the back of the president’s car.
Meanwhile, JFK is leaning to his left, but still upright. Jackie wraps her hands lovingly around her husband’s face. The First Lady looks into the president’s eyes to see what’s wrong with him. The distance between her beautiful, unlined face and that of the tanned and very stunned John Kennedy is approximately six inches.
The torso of a normal man would have been shoved farther forward by the force of a bullet striking his body at nearly twice the speed of sound. This is precisely what happened to Governor Connally. If John F. Kennedy had been knocked forward, he might have lived a long life.
But now the president’s long and painful struggle with back problems returns to torture him one last time.
The back brace that he is wearing holds his body erect. The president fortified its rigidity this morning by wrapping the brace and his thighs in a thick layer of Ace bandages.
If not for the brace, the next bullet, less than five seconds later, would have traveled harmlessly over his head.
But it does not. The next bullet explodes his skull.
The diameter of the entry wound from the second impact is just slightly wider than that of a number two pencil. The high rate of speed ensures that the shell will travel all the way through the brain and out the front of the skull, rather than lodging inside like the slower bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln was shot, physicians inserted something called a Nelaton probe into his brain. This slender porcelain stick followed the path of the wound until the tip struck the solid metal ball fired from John Wilkes Booth’s pistol. The path of the bullet was all very linear and neat.
But the 6.5-millimeter round fired by Lee Harvey Oswald is a far more vicious chunk of lead. Such a slender bullet might seem insignificant, but it is capable of bringing down a deer from two hundred yards.
This copper-jacketed missile effectively ends John F. Kennedy’s life in an instant. It barely slows as it slices through the tender gray brain matter before exploding the thin wall of bone as it exits the front of his skull.
Jackie’s arms are still wrapped around her husband when the front of his head explodes. Brains, blood, and bone fragments shower the First Lady’s face and that pink Chanel suit; the matter sprays as far forward as the limousine’s windshield visors.
As is so often his habit when something messes up his hair, John Kennedy’s hand reflexively tries to pat the top of his head.
But now the top of his head is gone.
There is no chance for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, as was attempted when Lincoln lay dying on the floor of his Ford’s Theatre box. There will be no overnight vigil, as with Lincoln, so that friends and loved ones can stand over JFK in his final moments, slowly absorbing the pain of impending loss, and perhaps speaking a few honest words about how much they love John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The man who swam miles to save the men of PT-109, who has shaken the hands of kings and queens and prime ministers, who inspired the entire world with his bold speeches and deeply held belief in the power of democracy and freedom, who caressed the cheeks of his children, endured the loss of so many family loved ones, and who stood toe-to-toe with men who might otherwise destroy the world, is brain dead.
Little do the horrified onlookers know, but historians and conspiracy theorists, as well as average citizens born years after this day, will long argue whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or perhaps had the help of others. Federal authorities will scrutinize ballistics and use a stopwatch to time how quickly a man can aim and reload a 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano. A variety of people will become self-described experts on grainy home videos of the assassination, grassy knolls, and the many evildoers who longed to see John F. Kennedy physically removed from power.
Those conspiratorial arguments will become so powerful and so involved that they will one day threaten to overwhelm the human tragedy of November 22, 1963.
So let the record state, once and for all, that at 12:30 P.M. on a sunny Friday afternoon in Dallas, Texas, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is shot dead in less time than it takes to blink an eye.
He leaves behind a beautiful widow.
He leaves behind two adoring young children.
He leaves behind a nation that loves him.
26
NOVEMBER 22, 1963
DALLAS, TEXAS
