When dressmaker Abraham Zapruder brought his camera to see President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade pass through Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963, he could never have suspected that he’d witness anassassination—or that his home movie would become one of the most watched and examined movies of all time. Even today, the Zapruder film is seen as evidence in countless conspiracy theories about who shot the president.
Now, Zapruder’s film has undergone yet another examination, this time by a scientist who says that the official record is true.
Former Governor of Texas John Connally (1917 – 1993) examines frames from Abraham Zapruder’s film footage of the assassination of President Kennedy, San Antonio, Texas, 1966. (Credit: Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)
The film was used as evidence in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot Kennedy from a sixth-floor window at the Texas School Book Depository. When theWarren Commission issued its report on the assassination in 1964, it concluded that Oswald had shot the president from behind.
A newstudy published in the journal Helios corroborates that conclusion. Nicholas Nalli, senior research scientist at IMSG, Inc., created a model of the mechanics of the gunshot wound itself to explain where the bullet may have come from.
When Nalli studied the Zapruder film, he noticed that the president’s head snapped forward at the moment the bullet hit his skull. This, he hypothesized, meant the president had been shot from behind.
The Kennedy assassination crime scene in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Shown is the location of cameraman Abraham Zapruder along with the trajectory of the third and fatal shot that killed President Kennedy (blue line) from the Texas School Book Depository. (Credit: Google, SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NSA, GEBCO/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Plenty of information about the crime has been public for years, and Nalli drew from that well of data to create a model of the physical processes of the gunshot wound. Nalli’s model took things like the mass and speed of the bullet and measurements into account. He combined that information with the shutter speed of the film that documented the shooting. The model then calculated how the bullet would have acted when it entered President Kennedy’s skull if it came from behind.
It confirmed Nalli’s theory—and shows that it’s unlikely that the president was shot from the “grassy knoll” in front of him.
“The President’s reactions just after the projectile impact were physically consistent with a gunshot wound caused by a high-energy Carcano military rifle bullet fired from the vicinity of the Texas School Book Depository,” Nalli writes.
Aerial view of Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. Kennedy was in an open-top convertible limousine during a campaign visit. As the president’s car passed the Texas School Book Depository, shots rang out.
President Kennedy was struck by bullets in the neck and head at 12:30 p.m. By 1 p.m. he was pronounced dead. Shown is the interior of the Presidential limousine after Kennedy assassination. John F. Kennedy became the fourth U.S. President to be assassinated, following Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.
A diagram of the president’s head wound from the autopsy is shown, stained with blood. After being struck, Kennedy slumped over onto his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. He was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. Texas Governor John B. Connally Jr., who was also in the limo with his wife, was shot once in the chest but recovered from his injuries.
This was the bullet found on the stretcher in Parkland Memorial Hospital. According to the Warren Commission, the bullet was the second shot taken by the gunman that fatally struck Kennedy. Investigators said the bullet then exited Kennedy to hit Connally breaking a rib, shattering his wrist and ending up in his thigh. Critics have sarcastically referred to this as the “magic-bullet theory” and claim that a bullet responsible for this much damage couldn’t possibly be as intact as it was.
The front of the shirt worn by President Kennedy on day of his assassination. The initials “JFK” were embroidered on the left sleeve.
Authorities reported that the shots were fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas along Kennedy’s motorcade route. The Warren Commission claimed three shots were fired in the span of 8.6 seconds. However, skeptics have disputed that assessment and presented their own theories. Among the widely circulated theories is that there had been a second shooter on a grassy knoll ahead of the president, on an elevated area to his right.
At the Texas School Book Depository, authorities found this cartridge case after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Authorities also identified finger and palm prints on boxes inside the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination. They were in a secluded area where boxes had been stacked by a window.
Former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department just over an hour after the shooting for possible involvement in the John F. Kennedy assassination and the murder of a police officer. Oswald had recently started working at the Texas School Book Depository Building.
Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald killed Officer J.D. Tippit who questioned him on the street near his Dallas rooming house. Some 30 minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police responding to reports of a suspect. This is the gun and bullets used by Oswald to kill the officer while resisting arrest.
A bus transfer was found on Oswald upon his arrest. Oswald allegedly used the transfer ticket to leave the scene of crime after the assassination.
This photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and newspapers in a backyard was collected during the assassination investigation in 1963. On October 26, 2017 the National Archives made more than 2,800 files relating to the investigation public.
Here is a detailed view of the Italian-made rifle, with telescopic mount, allegedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
This photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald distributing “Hands Off Cuba” flyers on the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana was also used in the Kennedy assassination investigation. Oswald traveled to Mexico City in September 1963, just two months before he shot Kennedy. During his visit, Oswald went to the Cuban embassy and met with officials in an attempt to get a visa to travel to Cuba, and then on to the Soviet Union. There has been speculation that this was connected to a larger conspiracy involving Fidel Castro to assassinate Kennedy as revenge for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
These images were submitted as evidence in the Kennedy assassination case. The men were suspected of being possible conspirators after being seen visiting the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, the same time Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico.
When the president was shot, he says, Kennedy’s head exploded, as the film so graphically shows. Nalli’s model shows that the wound wasn’t where the bullet exited, but where it entered. It demonstrates that a temporary cavity formed inside the president’s soft tissue as the momentum and kinetic energy of the bullet smashed into his skull, causing his head to snap forward.
Based on his model, Nalli also thinks that the theory of a second shooter and that of the president being shot by hollow-point or soft-point bullets are also unlikely. Not only were such bullets never recovered, he writes, but the movements of Kennedy’s head are only consistent with a shot from the back.
Nalli’s not the first person to use physics to model the bullet’s trajectory—the head wound and ballistics are covered in-depth in theWarren Report. But, writes Nalli, his model is unique in that it focuses on the forward motion of the president’s head after he was shot.
“The Zapruder film shows President Kennedy being shot from behind and not from the infamous grassy knoll, in corroboration of the official autopsy findings,” says Nalli in arelease. “That’s the only ‘smoking gun’ in the film.”
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