President Kennedy's Assassination: Overview
CoverUps.com
Our country's most glamorous and charismatic President — the closest thing we've ever had to royalty — lost his life at the very pinnacle of his fame and power, in the most sensational and horrific manner imaginable.
Introduction
The death of President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963, shocked, disturbed and changed the world in a deep and significant way, the reverberations of which are still being felt all these many years later.
Explanations
As to the explanation behind JFK's assassination, there are two schools of thought concerning his death:
- That Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot and killed JFK.
- That a conspiracy, involving multiple shooters, perhaps including Oswald, carried out the killing.
Sources:
"JFK Remembered" by Jacques Lowe
"A Question Of Character" by Thomas C. Reeve.
Castro's Confession? |
Dallas Chronology
Far Out Theories |
JFK's Assassination in Movies
Lincoln Connections |
Strange Deaths |
Summary
Who Killed Kennedy & Why |
Snapshots |
Still In The News
PHOTOGRAPHS
Hover your mouse over the pictures below for captions.
President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Connally, and Texas Governor John Connally, minutes before the assassination.
President Kennedy's advisors believed he should travel to Dallas to shore up his political support in Texas ahead of the 1964 election.
Although Texas was a hotbed of anti-Kennedy sentiment, the crowds that turned out to greet the President in Dallas were large and enthusiastic.
Dressmaker Abraham Zapruder
— an admirer of the President — and his Bell & Howell camera.
Trained snipers prize the sight of red mist over their human targets, which signifies a successful kill shot. Looking on helplessly, America was horrified and traumatized.
One of the most famous, poignant, and pitiable images in all of American history: the First Lady climbs onto the trunk of the Presidential motorcar — attempting, many believe, to retrieve a piece of her husband's flesh and bone which was ejected from his skull by the fatal shot.
News of JFK's assassination flashed around the world.
Thoughts of conspiracy were immediate. Before the Presidential limousine had made it to Parkland Hospital, suspicions were in the air. Witnesses Bill and Gayle Newman (left side of photograph), who had dropped to the grass to shield their children, said that they thought the fatal shot came from behind them, on the grassy knoll.
The wooden fence
on the grassy knoll.
Following the assassination, suspicions about the so-called "umbrella man" — seen sitting on the sidewalk next to the "dark complected man" on the right side of this photograph — were raised.
The infamous "Three Tramps" – favorites of conspiracy theorists and later identified as Chauncey Holt, Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers.
An aerial overview of the Presidential motorcade route through Dealey Plaza, with annotations marking the streets taken, significant landmarks (i.e. the Texas Schoolbook Depository and the Grassy Knoll) and the relative placement of Lee Harvey Oswald, Abraham Zapruder, and the President's limousine.
The President's bloody shirt — entered into evidence in the Warren Commission investigation.
People pleaded with Mrs. Kennedy to change out of her blood-spattered pink Chanel dress (a favorite of her husband's) in public appearances immediately after the shooting. She refused. "I want them to see what they have done to Jack," she said.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, famously ambitious and covetous of the Presidency, receives it in the worst possible way. Here he is sworn in on Air Force One.
A funeral procession, the likes of which had not been seen since that of President Lincoln, proceeds majestically through Washington D.C. to honor the memory of President Kennedy.
President Kennedy's casket at the head of the funeral procession.
The slain President's son, John Jr., salutes his father in this memorable photograph.
