Peggy Burney's recollections

[Daniel Gallup]

From Bernice Moore on the Bob Jackson thread:

'From the Dallas Times Herald, 11/23/63

""I SAW HIM DIE............ WOMAN CRIES..""

(Editor's Note: Mrs. Burney, head of the shipping department at Jennifer Juniors, was in the crowd at the corner of Main and Houston. She saw the President die. Here is her report.)..

BY PEGGY BURNEY

I saw the President die. I was standing at the curb on Elm about a third the way from Houston Street near the overpass..When the President's car made the curve around the corner, he was smiling and waving..

"" He was not standing, as I heard some reports say later. He was sitting, but he was happy and Jackie was happy and smiling as they passed. The car had passed about 15 feet beyond me when I heard the first shot. I did not realize it was a shot; I thought it was a backfire. The President ducked; instinctively I told myself "something is happening," but nobody knew what. Then I heard a second shot. I noticed that Jackie didn't duck - I could no longer see the President..

The car momentarily stopped, then veered slightly to the right and speeded off.. [EMPHASIS MINE]

People around me were screaming; some were falling to the ground. I could not tell whether they were hit, or not - or just dodging. There was pandemonium. Everybody realized that the shots were coming from up high. People were running around cars and jumping over things..

Soon, all the buildings around here were locked - including ours. Squad cars converged. There must have been a hundred of them right away..

My employer, Mr. (Abe) Zapruder was making a movie at the time it happened. He is still with the Secret Service men. As soon as we were inside the building before any reports on the condition of the President, Mr. Zapruder had already told us ...

"The President of the United States is dead." We saw him die...""

Some issues will not go away. On the Bob Jackson thread Bernice Moore quoted Peggy Burney from the Dallas Times Herald, as you see above. Now the standard explanation for the limo stop by its critics is that all who claimed it stopped where 1. psychologically challenged by the shock and could not be counted on to give a rational account of such; 2. Were referring not to the limo but to the motorcade; 3. were mistaken due to their position vis a vis the limo, so they mistook slowing down for stopping. 4. must be wrong because the Z-film shows no such event.

The shock explanation fails here. Peggy knew something had happened, but did not know what. She could "no longer see the President." The second explanation fails as well. She is quite explicit that it is the presidential limo that "momentarily stopped, then veered to the right and speeded off." The third reason fails as well, if we believe what she says. She does not say it "appeared from where I was standing to stop, though it might have just slowed down." Like the Newmans who were next to the limo and who told Lifton in 1971 that the limo stopped right in front of them, Peggy is quite clear in her choice of words. So also Toni Foster in her interview with Debra Conway in the KAC summer 2000. And many others. Reason 4 is of course egregiously circular reasoning, It is the integrity of the Z-film that is in question, and the limo stop is the event which decides the matter, more than a milliion articles by photographic experts about what was or was not possible in the early 1960s. The limo stop, like Humes' assertion of surgery to Kennedy's head at the top of the skull, defines the Kennedy case as counter-intuitive, that is, the reality defies normal notions of common sense and offends normal sensibilities.

If the 50th anniversary comes and goes without researchers coming to grips with the counter-intuitive nature of the case as exemplified in the limo-stop, we will be witness to yet another tragedy, and lost opportunity, to progress toward the truth in this case.