The assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been a case that to this day has not been solved. This book presents the Eyewitness testimony of many witnesses that were never called by the Warren Commission. It goes into detail about the shot from the Grassy Knoll, and what the witnesses heard and saw. Over fifty witnesses to the crime claimed beyond a reasonable doubt that the fatal head shot to JFK came from a Picket Fence on a Grassy Knoll. It includes many interviews that have never been printed in book form before. Featured witnesses include; Jean Hill, S.M. Holland, Lee E. Bowers, Jr., Ed Hoffman, Beverly Oliver, L. Fletcher Prouty, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, and many others...

The Grassy Knoll Witnesses

AuthorHouse

Contents

Preface.................................................................................................vIntroduction............................................................................................viiStudy Backs Theory of "Grassy Knoll" New Report Says Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy.....................1Julia Ann Mercer........................................................................................4Jean Hill...............................................................................................6S.M. Holland............................................................................................30Lee E. Bowers, Jr.......................................................................................40Bill and Gayle Newman...................................................................................45Malcolm Summers.........................................................................................48Beverly Oliver..........................................................................................51Richard Randolph Carr...................................................................................58Gordon Arnold...........................................................................................61Frank E. Reilly.........................................................................................64Austin Miller...........................................................................................65James Leon Simmons......................................................................................66R.C. Dodd...............................................................................................67A. J. Millican..........................................................................................68Emmett J. Hudson........................................................................................69J. C. Price.............................................................................................85Ed Hoffman..............................................................................................86Joe Marshall Smith......................................................................................88Ken O'Donnell...........................................................................................90Cheryl McKinnon.........................................................................................91Mary Woodward...........................................................................................92Phillip Willis..........................................................................................93Orville Nix.............................................................................................94Abraham Zapruder........................................................................................95James Tague.............................................................................................97Roger Craig.............................................................................................100Dealey Plaza Conspiracy Witness.........................................................................102JFK ACT of 1992 Executive Summary.......................................................................122Gary Null's - "Hidden Agendas, Conspiracies, Cover Ups and Lies"........................................128Jim Marrs...............................................................................................128Dr. Charles Crenshaw....................................................................................138L. Fletcher Prouty......................................................................................143Notes...................................................................................................148

Chapter One

By George Lardner, Jr. Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 26, 2001

The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll.

That was the key finding of the congressional investigation that concluded 22 years ago that President John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 was "probably ... the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy knoll meant that two gunman must have fired at the president within a split-second sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy from a perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two places at once.

A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences subsequently disputed the evidence of a fourth shot, contained on a police dictabelt of the sounds in Dealey Plaza that day. The panel insisted it was simply random noise, perhaps static, recorded about a minute after the shooting while Kennedy's motorcade was en route to Parkland Hospital.

A new, peer-reviewed article in the Science and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, says the NAS panel's study was seriously flawed. It says the panel failed to take into account the words of a Dallas patrolman that show the gunshot-like noises occurred "at the exact instant that John F. Kennedy was assassinated."

In fact, the author of the article, D.B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said it was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's limousine, in addition to the three shots from a book depository window above and behind the president's limousine.

G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel to the House Assassinations Committee, said the NAS panel's study always bothered him because it dismissed all four putative shots as random noise - even though the three soundbursts from the book depository matched up precisely with the film of the assassination and other evidence such as the echo patterns in Dealey Plaza and the speed of Kennedy's motorcade.

"This is an honest, careful, scientific examination of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks," Blakey said of Thomas's work.

"It shows that we made mistakes, too, but minor mistakes. The main thing is when push comes to shove, he increased the degree of confidence that the shot from the grassy knoll was real, not static. We thought there was a 95 percent chance it was a shot. He puts it at 96.3 percent. Either way, that's "beyond a reasonable doubt." The sounds of the assassination were recorded at Dallas police headquarters when a motorcycle patrolman inadvertently left his microphone switch in the "on" position, deluging his transmitting channel with what seemed to be motorcycle noise. Using sophisticated techniques, a team of scientists enlisted by the House committee filtered out the noise and came up with "audible events" within a 10-second time frame that it believed might be gunfire.

The Warren Commission had concluded in 1964 that only three shots, all from behind, all from Oswald's rifle, were fired in Dealey Plaza as the motorcade passed through. But the House experts, after extensive tests, found 10 echo patterns that matched sounds emanating from the grassy knoll, traveling carefully measured distances to nearby buildings and then bouncing off them to hit the open motorcycle transmitter.

They also placed the unknown gunman behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll, in front of and to the right of the presidential limousine. The House committee concluded that this shot missed, and that Kennedy was killed by the final bullet from Oswald's rifle. Thomas, by contrast, believes it was the shot from the knoll, seven-tenths of a second earlier, that killed the president.

The Nas panel, assigned to conduct further studies after the committee closed down, said in 1982 that the noises on the tape previously identified as gunshots "were recorded about one minute after the president was shot."

The NAS experts, headed by physicist Norman F. Ramsey of Harvard, reached that conclusion after studying the sounds on the two radio channels Dallas police were using that day. Routine transmissions were made on Channel One and recorded on a dictabelt at police headquarters. An auxiliary frequency, Channel Two, was dedicated to the president's motorcade and used primarily by Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry; its transmissions were recorded on a separate Gray Autograph disc machine.

The shooting took place within an 18-second interval that began with Curry in the lead car announcing on Channel Two that the motorcade was approaching the triple underpass and ended with the chief stating urgently: "Go to the hospital." What seemed to be the gunshots were picked up on Channel One during that interval.

The NAS panel pointed out that Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker could be heard on both channels saying, "... Hold everything secure ..." seemingly about a half-second after that last gunshot on Channel One. Curry had already told everyone on Channel Two a minute earlier to go to the hospital. As a result, the Ramsey panel concluded that the supposed gunshot noises came "too late to be attributed to assassination shots."

What actually happened was that Curry issued his "Go to the hospital" order right after the first shots were fired, wounding Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally. The final bullet was fired in almost the same instant that Curry uttered his command. A minute later, Decker, riding in the same car as Curry, grabbed the mike and issued his orders to "Hold everything secure."

The NAS experts made several errors, Thomas said, but their biggest mistake was in using Decker's words to line up the two channels. They ignored a much clearer instance of cross talk when Dallas police Sgt. S.Q. Bellah can be heard on both channels, asking: "You want me to hold this traffic on Stemmons until we find out something, or let it go?"

Those remarks came 179 seconds after the last gunshot on Channel One and 180 seconds after Curry's order to "Go to the hospital" on Channel Two. When Bellah's words are used to line up the two channels, Thomas found, the gunshot sound "occurs at the exact instant that John F. Kennedy is assassinated."

How is it, then, that Decker's remarks on Channel One come a full minute after Curry's on Channel Two and yet a half-second after the last gunshot on Channel One?

"It's a misplaced bit of speech," Thomas said in an interview. "An overdub. The recording needle needed for Channel One probably jumped. You can hear Decker giving a whole set of instructions on Channel Two, but on Channel One, you get only a fragment, '... hold everything secure....'"

According to Thomas, the NAS panel made other mistakes: in calculating the position of the grassy knoll shooter, in fixing the time of that shot and in stating the Channel Two recorder had stopped when it hadn't. In all, Thomas said, the chances of the NAS panel having been right were 1 in 100,000.

House committee experts James Barger, Mark Weiss and Eric Aschkenasy, have always held firm to their findings of a shot from the knoll. Similarly, Ramsey, as chairman of the NAS panel, said last weekend that he was "still fairly confident" of his group's work, but he said he wanted to study the Science and Justice article before making further comment. He said he did not recall the Bellah cross talk.

JULIA ANN MERCER

Julia Ann Mercer was traveling in her car going west on Elm Street some hours before the assassination and got stuck in local traffic. She claimed she saw a truck parked on the curb also facing west on Elm Street. A young man emerged from the truck with what appeared to be a gun case. On Saturday, November 23rd, the day after the assassination, she was asked to look at photographs and picked out the picture of Jack Ruby as the man behind the wheel of the truck. When she saw Ruby shoot Oswald on TV that Sunday, she knew it was the same man she saw on the Grassy Knoll in the truck before Kennedy was assassinated. Here is her statement to the Dallas County Sheriff on the day of the assassination:

SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT, COUNTY OF DALLAS, TEXAS

Before me, the undersigned authority on this the 22nd day of November A.D. 1963, personally appeared Julia Ann Mercer, Address 5200 Belmont, No. 208, Dallas, Age 23, Employed: Automat Distributors, 1720 Canton, Dallas.

Deposes and says:

On November 22, 1963, I was driving a rented White Valient automobile west on Elm Street and was proceeding to the overpass in a westerly direction and at a point about 45 or 50 feet east of the overhead signs of the right entrance road to the overpass, there was a truck parked on the right hand side of the road. The truck looked like it had 1 or 2 wheels up on the curb. The hood of the truck was open. On the driver's side of the truck, there were printed letters in black, oval shaped, which said "Air Conditioning". This was a pickup truck and along the back side of the truck were what appeared to be tool boxes. The truck was a green Ford with a Texas license. I remember seeing the word "Ford" at the back of the truck.

A man was sitting under the wheel of the car and slouched over the wheel. This man had on a green jacket, was a white male and about his 40's and was heavy set. I did not see him too clearly. Another man was at the back of the truck and reached over the tailgate and took out from the truck what appeared to be a gun case. This case was about 8" wide at its widest spot and tapered down to a width of about 4" or 5". It was brown in color. It had a handle and was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet long. The man who took this out of the truck then proceeded to walk away from the truck and he reached down to free it. He then proceeded to walk across the grass and up the grassy hill which forms part of the overpass. This is the last I saw of this man.

I had been delayed because the truck which I described was blocking my passage and I had to await until the lane to my left cleared so I could go by the truck.

During the time that I was at this point and observed the above incident there were 3 policeman standing talking near a motorcycle on the bridge just west of me.

The man who took what appeared to be the gun case out of the truck was a white male, who appeared to be in his late 20's or early 30's and he was wearing a grey jacket, brown pants and plaid shirt as best as I can remember. I remember he had on some kind of a hat that looked like a wool stocking hat with a tassel in the middle of it. I believe that I can identify this man if I see him again. The man who remained in the truck had light brown hair and I believe I could identify him also if I were to see him again.

(signed by) Julia Ann Mercer.

Subscribed and sworn to before me on this the 22nd of November A.D. 1963

(signed by) Rosemary Allen

Notary Public, Dallas, Texas

JEAN HILL

No witness to the assassination of President Kennedy has been more relevant than Jean Hill. Jean was a young woman who happened to be in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was assassinated. She had recently moved to Dallas from Oklahoma because she was in the middle of a separation, had two young children, and decided to start over again. When she arrived in Dallas, she became a school teacher. On November 22nd 1963 Jean was with her friend Mary Moorman, who took the famous photograph of the assassination with the Grassy Knoll in the background. They were standing on the south side of the Plaza to get good pictures of the President. As the Presidential limousine was rounding the curve on Elm Street, Jean stepped out and yelled "Hey Mr. President, look over here we want to take your picture." Just as she was saying those words, the shots started to ring out and Jean saw the fatal head shot. As the President's car was moving down the street, Jean saw the flash of light and the puff of smoke coming from the Grassy Knoll. She was one of the few people who actually saw the shot fired from behind the fence. After the limousine went under the overpass, Jean ran across the street to the Grassy Knoll. Before doing so, she saw a man running fast from the west side of the book depository building over towards the railroad tracks. When she got to the Grassy Knoll she was stopped by two men who claimed they were Secret Service agents. One of them put his arm on her shoulder and put her into a painful lock and the second man came up to Jean and put his hand on her other shoulder applying more pain and they said to her "You are going to come with us now, smile." Jean was trying to break away from the two men and she said "We have to find the shooter. He is going to get away."

They told her not to worry about that, and that was all under control and she was just going to "come with us". These two men who identified themselves as Secret Service took her up to the third floor of the Old Courts building and harshly interrogated her. When she told these two agents that she heard four to six shots, and saw the flash of light and the puff of smoke from behind the fence, their response was she could not have possibly seen that, and that-" there were only three bullets and three shots, and that is all we are willing to say right now". They said if she would say anything different it would cause her a lot of problems.

Jean eventually was called by the Warren Commission to go to Washington but at the time her boyfriend, who was a Dallas police motorcycle officer, whom she had originally gone down to see in Dealey Plaza during the motorcade, advised her not to go to Washington as she could be killed on that trip. Then the Warren Commission came to Dallas to interview Jean at Parkland Hospital. Jean never read her Warren Commission testimony until twenty five years later and claimed where she gave her testimony was misrepresented. The Warren Commission stated she had been interviewed at the U.S. Attorney's office but in reality she gave her testimony at Parkland Hospital. She believed the location was changed to keep her away from the press.

During the time before and after Jean Hill's Warren Commission testimony she was harassed. The F.B.I. was parked down the block from her house twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They followed her. Her phone was tapped. Her life was threatened many times. There was one time when her son was run off the road and almost killed. One day when Jean was driving her car it started to go out of control. Luckily she was not killed during that incident which was very similar to the strange death of Lee Bowers, the man who was in the railroad tower building right behind the Grassy Knoll on the day Kennedy was killed. His car lost control on its own in 1966 and he was killed.

The F.B.I. in Dallas was starting to put pressure on Jean to stay silent. They kept telling her to keep quiet and keep a low profile and not make a problem. To keep herself and her family safe, Jean Hill never came forward again for twenty five years. Jim Marrs, author of the best seller, "Crossfire" had contacted Jean and told her there was a group of people in the Dallas area who were also witnesses and relevant people in the case and if she would join them to go over information. At first Jean refused, she didn't want to get back into the case - but eventually Jim Marrs was able to get Jean to come out and tell her story again. Jean had so removed herself from the John F. Kennedy assassination research community that even in 1969 when she was asked by Jim Garrison to testify at the Clay Shaw trial she had declined. Many years later when Oliver Stone was making the film JFK, Jean was hired as a technical advisor. At that time Jean met Jim Garrison and told him she wished she had testified at the Clay Shaw trial. Jean's involvement with the movie JFK as a technical advisor put her back in the mainstream, and the years of having to keep quiet and not talk were now over. We consider Jean Hill absolutely one of the most important witnesses who saw the shot from somebody firing from behind the fence. This author had the opportunity to meet Jean Hill in 1993 and she began to confirm her story. By the time Jean testified to the Warren Commission she was very fearful for her life and was extremely uncomfortable with her situation to say the least. We now present excerpts of Jean's testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964:

Mr. SPECTER - How many shots were there altogether?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Grassy Knoll Witnessesby Harry A. Yardum Copyright © 2009 by Harry A. Yardum. Excerpted by permission.
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