It is well-known that George de Mohrenschildt, was born in Russia and that he fled the country during the Russian Civil War in the early 1920s. It is interesting that Abraham Zapruder was also born in Russia (Kovel). His family fled to the United States in 1920.

After living in various countries, George de Mohrenschildt arrived in the US in 1938. He settled in New York City, the same place where Zapruder was living. Jeanne LeGon also arrived in New York in 1938 (she had just arrived from China, the country of her birth).

By the early 1950s all three were living in Dallas. De Mohrenschildt was a member of the Texas Crusade for Freedom. Other members included Earle Cabell, Everette DeGolyer, Harold Byrd, Ted Dealey, Paul Raigorodsky, George Bouhe, Neil Mallon and Lewis MacNaughton. He was also active in what has been called the Russian-émigré community in Dallas (this is how he explains why he met Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald). It is almost certain that De Mohrenschildt and Zapruder met during these gatherings.

Is it a coincidence that Zapruder filmed the events in Dealey Plaza? Is it possible that De Mohrenschildt suggested to Zapruder that he filmed the events that day? De Mohrenschildt was a shrewd businessman and maybe he had agreed with Zapruder to split the profits of the deal.

I believe the original idea was to blame Castro for the assassination of JFK. The two chosen men to be set-up with the killing both had links with Cuba. At this time it actually helped for evidence to be produced that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy. The plan was to kill Oswald soon after the assassination and to allow the other patsy (possibly a Cuban-agent in Dallas at the time) to flee to Havana. However, LBJ refused to invade Cuba and so this left the authorities to change the story to Oswald as the lone-killer. The Zapruder Film now became a problem for those involved in the cover-up.

John

Do you have any evidence Zapruder participated in the Russian-émigré community gatherings?

1)He was born in the Ukraine but left as a teenager.I couldn't say about back then but I have some Orthodox Ukrainian (descendant) friends and they definitely don't consider themselves Russian.

2) A Jew he would be even less likely to identify with Russian emigres many of whom were anti-Semitic

Good call John

I also think that De Morenschildt told Zappy where to stand in Dealey Plaza, by standing on the pedastool almost everyone in the plaza would see him, that way another film taken close to Zappy's position would not questioned by anybody.

In other words Zappy was a distraction to the person taking the real film (as seen in Betzner)

From Jack White's study

My contact who worked at Life Magazine at the time has this to say about Zapruder:

I saw your entry today concerning Zapruder and possible connections and pre-planning for the film. I was involved in locating an framing the bids and purchase terms for the film and handling the syndication of the original still-sequence to the European Press. Stern, Epoca, Paris-Match and as I remember, the London Times. And I saw the original film when it returned to New York from Chicago. Zapruder's story was that the women in his dress factory wanted time off to watch the procession (discussed the afternoon of the 21st.) Zapruder said no and instead offered to take a movie of the parade. He had an inexpensive 8mm camera and 100 feet of kodak film. Prior to going to Dealey Plaza he filmed inside the company and the original contains these pictures of the women who worked for him, laughing and waving into the camera. The film piece is actually 50 feet long ...shoot fifty (down a vertical half of the film) and then flip the film and shoot down the other half of the film, (50 feet). The JFK footage is the second 50 feet. I think its doubtful that if he were "assigned" to record a tragic event he would fill the first half of is film cartridge with office shots. And in a world that really is quilte small, my then wife and his daughter had been college friends just a few years earlier. There was certainly no pre-planning that LIFE would end up with the exclusive rights to the material.

The Dec. 23, 1966 issue of Life Magazine tells a version of how Zapruder came to make his film that bears no resemblance
(IMO), to the version John passes along in his post, from his contact who says he worked at Life magazine in late 1963:

http://books.google.com/books?id=FFMEAAAAM...%22&f=false

If the 1966 Life version of a "friendly argument" happening between Zapruder and his assistant taking place at 11:30 am, as
to if and whether Zapruder would travel the seven miles from his business back to his home to retrieve his movie camera which Life says Zapruder forgot to bring to work that morning, when would there have been tiime to shoot the first 50 feet of film and still be in place to film the motorcade at !2:30?

Life relates that Zapruder cited the crowds and clogged streets caused by people arriving to view the motorcade, that would impede any timely effort to travel to his home and back as a reason for neither of them to attempt to drive to his home to get the camera. If the 1966 Life version of events is truthful, it seems it would have taken more time to retrieve the camera, and return in time to film the assassination, than would be needed if the filming of workers inside Zapruder's business also took place on that day. It also impresses me that if Zapruder had pledged to his employees to make a film of the motorcade on their behalf, he did not take his pledge very seriously.

Both Life sourced versions have the common theme of attempting to persuade that the Zapruder film was a random creation.

You really think you can make out anything in that area of the image? Or are you just taking Jack's word for it? There isn’t nearly enough detail to make such a determination. The man seems to be holding up something to his face but it could Just as well could be something he is eating or drinking or him scratching his nose or it could be an artifact. In any case the perspective from his vantage point doesn’t match that of the Z-film.

What exactly would be the point of taking two films and claiming one was the other?

Why does the second cameraman (TSCM) appear in any other images?

How could the plotters count on TSCM not being noticed or clearly filmed/photographed by someone?

John wrote:


This doesn't make much sense to me for2 reasons:

1) I doubt they would have carried out such an elaborate and dangerous plot and not have sorted such crucial details out.

2) I could well wrong on this but it was always my impression that the LHO as lone gunman theory was pushed pretty much from day one.

Doyou have any evidence they had a 2nd patsy lined up?

Len good questions

I am not taking Jacks word for it, but I give Jack credit for the find, I first saw it in TGZFH, then I got out my copy of Life (I think it was in a 1966 edition) with the Betzner photo in it, I looked very closly at TSCM and also the Tri-Pod film location inside the Pergola (I will post a blow up of that, I just need to find it on my computer)

I also talked to Jack about it on another JFK forum, and you even say it seems like a man, I would say it is because when you look at Zappy and Sitz they have the same clarity as TSCM.

IMO the point of two films is that it makes it easier to fake the film that Life bought, if Zappy takes a film of the background and bystanders and TSCM takes the real film of the assassination then all that has to be done is add the two together and take out whatever is needed (the wide limo turn/the car stop/the head shot/the blood spray/Cheany riding ahead/Moorman in the street/DCM walking into the street) put the two films together as one

I know the "other" film has been viewed by someone who I trust and know would not make up a story about viewing it, this is where I think that "Other" film came from, TSCM's complete film showing all the things that were taken away from the Z-film we all know about and have seen millions of times.

I think Betzner is genuine and that is the reason we see TSCM in his picture, the picture taken by Phil Willis very close to the spot that Betzner was standing was altered to take out TSCM IMO

Tri-pod camera inside of the pergola

Hi, John. De Mohrenschildt was a shrewd businessman. What does that have to do with Zapruder's home movie of the President passing by? They wanted to split the profits? What profits? It was just a brief home movie. No one knew the President was going to die supposedly.

Also there seems to be 2 factions regarding Kennedy's murder. Those (Cuban Exiles, the Mob) who hated Castro and were angry with Kennedy for not liberating Cuba. And those who wanted Oswald to take the blame for killing Kennedy, a single lone gunman -- LBJ, CIA, Military, Big Business/oil barons. LBJ won the day it seems to me.

Kathy C

Zapruder Film Set for August Video Release
Footage of JFK Assassination Likely to Restart Debate
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 26, 1998; Page B01

For Abraham Zapruder, who made the movie, Frame 313 became a recurring nightmare. The film would play out in his dreams until the horrific head shot that killed the president snapped him awake.

"I have seen it so many times," Zapruder, the Dallas dress manufacturer and accidental chronicler of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, said in a tearful deposition for the Warren Commission in 1964. "The thing would come every night -- I wake up and see this."

Soon, anyone with a VCR will be able to see it and freeze-frame it again and again. Zapruder's silent 26-second film of Kennedy's murder, long tightly held by the Zapruder family, is coming in August to a video store near you in shattering color, with footage and details never shown before. The price: $19.98 for a VHS cassette, $24.98 for a digital video disc.

Effectively upstaging the government, which resolved last year to seize the historic 1963 film on Aug. 1, 1998, and make it "available to the public at the lowest possible cost," Zapruder's heirs have teamed up with a leading video production company to put together a digitally enhanced version of the in-camera original that experts say is far clearer than any of the copies shown over the years.

At the same time, lawyers for the Zapruder family have been asking the government for $18.5 million as the price for making the 8mm original itself a publicly owned "assassination record." Ticking away at 18.3 frames a second, it is the clock to Kennedy's murder and the best evidence of it. Some appraisers say it could bring much more at private auction. Some researchers think the Zapruders have made more than enough money from it already.

"The first time I saw it, I literally gasped -- because it's so shocking," said Waleed Ali, president of MPI Home Video of Orland Park, Ill., which is producing the video. "It makes the one Oliver Stone used [for the movie "JFK"] look like a pale ghost. The clarity is breathtaking. This is literally as crisp and clear as the original in the vault."

At some other crucial moments, though, the video seems just as blurred and puzzling as the original, especially when Zapruder jiggled his Bell & Howell camera in apparent reaction to the gunshots and perhaps other distractions. Zapruder had the best vantage point in Dealey Plaza, standing on a concrete abutment at the crest of a grassy knoll, but he also had vertigo, which made him hesitant to climb up on the ledge.

Luckily for history, one of his assistants, Marilyn Sitzman, climbed up with him and held him steady as the fateful motorcade turned onto Elm Street.

Titled "Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film," the 45-minute production is part of a trend of embellishing box-office successes with historical narrative, insider interviews and insights into the filmmaking process. It offers compelling interviews of Sitzman and others, courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, as well as a documentary showing the Zapruder original being photographed at the National Archives, frame by frame, and turned back into a movie.

Longtime students of the JFK assassination predict there will be charges of doctoring nonetheless, not to mention a new rush of hypothesizers seeing what they want to see.

"This is going to be a can of worms," says Harold Weisberg, a longstanding critic of the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy from behind, firing from a sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

"There are people who think the film was doctored, that it was flown to the Soviet Union," Weisberg says. "The crazy people are going to get crazier, on both sides of the fence. Some people will look at the film and see things that aren't there. Others will look at it and not see what is there."

Even so, he welcomes the public debut: "Let the people see it. Let them reach their own conclusions. I'm just sorry it's taken 35 years."

One reason for that, as historian Richard B. Trask points out, was the revulsion Life magazine Publisher C.D. Jackson expressed on seeing the film after Life had bought the print rights from Zapruder for $50,000. Shocked by the thought of its morbid scenes being shown to the public before emotions had subsided, and determined to keep it from his competitors, he ordered purchase of all rights for another $100,000.

Under the arrangement, made final on Nov. 25, 1963, the day of Kennedy's funeral, Zapruder was also to receive half of all gross receipts after Life had recouped its investment. Time Inc., in turn, agreed to treat the unique slice of history "with good taste and dignity."

The first public showing of the film, as a result, took place in a New Orleans courtroom on Feb. 13, 1969, subpoenaed as part of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's wildly unsuccessful prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw. But it eluded television until March 6, 1975, when Geraldo Rivera showed a bootleg copy on his ABC talk show, "Good Night America."

Apparently unwilling to police its use, Time Inc. announced the next month that it would return the film and all commercial rights to it to the Zapruder family for $1.

It has been kept at the National Archives in "courtesy storage" for the Zapruder family since 1978, following a tour of duty at the House Assassinations Committee. The family has charged fees for commercial use of the film. One researcher, Gerard Selby Jr., said he was quoted a price of $30,000 when he was a graduate student trying to make a documentary. Informed sources say revenues for the Zapruders since 1963 have totaled about $650,000. Zapruder family lawyer James Silverberg says high prices may sometimes have been set to discourage certain uses, such as on book and magazine covers.

"We just wanted the film treated in a dignified manner," says Henry Zapruder, Abraham's son. "The money issue has always been secondary. We were never disappointed when people who expressed an interest in showing the film ended up not showing it."

Congress set the stage for a public "taking" of the film in 1992 when it passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act calling for disclosure of virtually all of the government's files on the assassination and setting up a review board to track them down and make them public. Officials contend the broad terms of the law automatically made the Zapruder original U.S. property since it had been "made available for use" by the Warren Commission in 1964.

In April 1997, the review board formally declared the film "an assassination record" and resolved to "do all in its power to ensure that the best available copy . . . shall become available to the public at the lowest reasonable price." But board members were vague on how that could be done so long as the Zapruder family retained the copyright in the name of its LMH Co.

Executive director T. Jeremy Gunn said the board's action pertained only to "physical possession of the original." Anticipating complicated negotiations, the board postponed the actual takeover date until Aug. 1, 1998.

The Zapruders had already decided to make a video of it. A specially commissioned photographic expert hired by LMH spent five days at the National Archives in mid-March 1997, making magnified 4-by-5-inch transparencies of each frame from the original, including images between the sprocket holes that no copy has ever captured.

"This [inter-sprocket material] constitutes about 20 percent of the information recorded on the film," says historian David R. Wrone, author of a brief history of the Zapruder movie. Because the Warren Commission used a Secret Service copy for its investigation -- the original could not be stopped to inspect individual frames because of possible damage to the film -- "it necessarily eliminated the 20 percent marginal matter."

Now that these images can be viewed, fresh debate is likely. Weisberg points, for instance, to the still photo of Frame 202, where another photographer, Philip L. Willis, can be seen, leg lifted, about to step into the street after Kennedy's open limousine has passed. Weisberg contends Willis is lowering his camera, having just taken a picture at the moment the first shot was fired, hitting Kennedy. That would be too soon for the Warren Commission, which concluded that Oswald couldn't have had a good bead on Kennedy until about Frame 210, when the limousine emerged from the cover of a large live oak tree.

Unfortunately, it isn't easy to tell from the video whether Willis is lifting his camera or lowering it at Frame 202. Frame 203 is blurred. Willis told the Warren Commission he took one picture of the president "smiling and waving" to the crowd. He said he then "started down the street" when a gunshot "caused me to squeeze the camera shutter, and I got a picture of the president as he was hit with the first shot."

A deer hunter and World War II veteran, Willis also said he "felt certain" that the three shots he heard came from the Book Depository.

Those watching the frames starting with 313, when the fatal shot explodes, will be struck by the forceful, backward movement of Kennedy's head -- seemingly indicating a shot from the front and to the right of the motorcade.

"I watched it the other night with 12 other people. Not one of us thought the shot came from behind," said Ali. "Not only does the head recoil. You can see the head open up from the front."

Look again, says G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel for the House Assassinations Committee. "If you look carefully, the first thing you see is the head moving forward, very briefly. That is the bullet hitting the head from the rear. Then there is the snap back, after the head explodes. The X-rays of the skull and the fragments we have all indicate he was not hit from the front right."

Come Aug. 25, the video's projected release date, viewers can judge for themselves. To guard against charges of doctoring, a crew from MPI Home Video went to the Archives to film the filming of the individual frames, before they were digitized and put back into motion picture format.

"We're partners," Ali said of his company's arrangement with LMH. "We both own it together."

Henry Zapruder said he did not "anticipate a large amount of income" from the video release. But Ali seemed more optimistic. MPI is planning an initial production of 100,000 VHS cassettes and 20,000 DVDs.


the Zapruder's settled with the Gov for 16 million dollars..b


© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company




http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Zapruder/091l-062698-idx.html

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Dean, the Tripod study and analysis is completely bonkers. How do I know?...I am the person who discovered it, way back in the day's before I used common sense and logic in analysing photographs.
Fetzer, the editor of the book in which it appeared, thankfully got the name of the person who discovered it wrong, and it was credited to someone else.
Research is a learning process, and too many researchers are too scared to admit their mistakes for fear of appearing to look stupid in the research community, letting go of their previously held beliefs, and appearing to be traitors to their friends in their cliques, where being patted on the back is more important to them than the truth.

Duncan MacRae

Ps..The cameraman is also bonkers, unless he was using a jet back to get him to that height.

Duncan,

All that other stuff aside I have a couple questions for you

You say that you discovered the Tri-Pod in Betzner, thats fine by me I believe you

Did you first spot the image in the Life Mag issue from I think 1966 (Im sorry I have that issue but its in my basement and I have not dug it out after I moved back home to California so I might be wrong on the year but I know I have the issue that the Betzner photo was first published) and if so was that image you used for your study of Betzner?

Does it seem odd to you that all later generation copies of Betzner do not have the Tri-Pod image in them?

Were you looking for a second camera man or camera location when you spotted the Tri-Pod? Or did you just come across it while looking at the picture?

Do you have a real copy of the Betzner picture?


Sorry for all the questions but Betzner, his pictures, and his locations have been a big part of my studies for the past three years

Thanks Duncan

Duncan,

All that other stuff aside I have a couple questions for you

You say that you discovered the Tri-Pod in Betzner, thats fine by me I believe you.

There's no need for anyone to doubt me Dean, my name is in the book index, they just got it wrong in the article.
After pointing out the mistake, Costella later claimed on this very forum that he couldn't remember who discovered it, despite numerous back and forth correspondances between us at the time that he was doing his signal to noise ratio analysis on it based on my analysis.... huh?

Did you first spot the image in the Life Mag issue from I think 1966 (Im sorry I have that issue but its in my basement and I have not dug it out after I moved back home to California so I might be wrong on the year but I know I have the issue that the Betzner photo was first published) and if so was that image you used for your study of Betzner?

It wasn't the life magazine image that I used, it was a scan which was sent to me by a fellow researcher.

Does it seem odd to you that all later generation copies of Betzner do not have the Tri-Pod image in them?

That's not true, many later generation copies show the same anomoly.

Were you looking for a second camera man or camera location when you spotted the Tri-Pod? Or did you just come across it while looking at the picture?

I was looking for anything unusual, and discovered what are now commonly known as Tripod Man and the infamous pergola tripod.....I was wrong, but many still choose to believe in my mistaken analysis.

Do you have a real copy of the Betzner picture?

No
Sorry for all the questions but Betzner, his pictures, and his locations have been a big part of my studies for the past three years.

Thanks Duncan


No problem Dean, you are very welcome
Thanks Duncan

The original in the vault? Is he referring to the "other film?"

The Secret Service had a copy? I wonder if it's the other film.

How can we examine the X-rays when they've been altered? The Dallas team of doctors said the X-rays they'd seen in later years were not the ones matching what they saw of the President's wounds in Dallas.

Kathy C

You avoided my point about the degree of detail, do really think there is enough to reach the conclusion Jack did. That the blob probably was a person proves nothing.

IMO the point of two films is that it makes it easier to fake the film that Life bought, if Zappy takes a film of the background and bystanders and TSCM takes the real film of the assassination then all that has to be done is add the two together and take out whatever is needed (the wide limo turn/the car stop/the head shot/the blood spray/Cheany riding ahead/Moorman in the street/DCM walking into the street) put the two films together as one

Shall I take it your photo/video/film etc experience is very limited? Films taken from such different positions would not have lined upcorrectly. It would have been easier to alter what happened in the target car and copied it back into the same film.

"and take out whatever is needed (the wide limo turn.../the blood spray/Cheany riding ahead/Moorman in the street/DCM walking into the street"


And why would they want to remove any of this? There is a thread about the blood splatter "error" .It was yet another mistake by the TGZFH crowd.Costella couldn't figure out the splatterwould be accelerated by the bullet

Thank you Duncan,

As I said I believed that you did discover the Tri-pod I had just never heard your name as the one who did

One last question, when you found these images you believed in what you discovered back then, what made you change your mind?

Len

From what I see TSCM is just as clear as Zappy and Sitz IMO

If you think that my photo/film/video experience is limited thats fine, its not, but I will have to prove that to you over time

Being logical, and listening to constructive criticism and advice on various issues of photo analysis over many years changed my mind Dean, just like i'm being logical now when i'm telling you that Jack's floating cameraman is at least 20ft above any solid ground, and is outwith the realms of possibility in the real world.

Exactly and none of them are clear enough to make out what they are doing. Due to poor image quality lots of times DP image "analysis" is more like a Rorschach test than anything else.

The retaining wall keeps going back towards TSCMs position, he is standing on the retaining wall just like Zappy was

Let me find a good picture of the wall that extends towards the steps

I think this Bond image will show what im talking about (im sure you looked into this yet you still say its impossible) You can see the retaining wall extending out towards the steps

You also see the Pyracantha tree that TSCM was standing over on the retaining wall

A quick look at Bond and you can see that it would not be hard to film above the Pyracantha tree when standing on the retaining wall

This is the first thing I checked out when seeing this image for the first time, I checked my Cutler plats to make sure the retaining wall went far enough towards the steps, then checked other pictures and found that Bond showed the best view to prove it was possible.

Duncan im sure you checked this out, but it puzzles me that after looking at this Bond picture you still think that TSCM needs a Rocketpack to hover 20 feet above the ground.

I would like to hear what your thoughts are on this

And thank you for being very civil and nice, its so much easier to discuss theories with no name calling and smack talking

Dean

I forgot to add, in the Bond picture take the person standing inside the pergola who is standing farther back then the retaining wall, messure her height and then move that height messure over to the retaining wall, you can see that the person stands well over the Pyracantha tree

I agree that it's good to be civil Dean. Can you show me where this cameraman is in Moorman 5 ?
Moorman5

I dont believe Moorman 5 is genuine, of course the one thing that would be altered would be the image of a second camera man

I know you dont believe in any photos being altered (I think sorry if im wrong) so it will be very hard for me to argue my point and change your mind

Can we agree that it would be possible for a camera man to be standing on the retaining wall over the Pyracantha tree?

Great, why not just tell us what your photo/film video experience is, and cut to the chase?

I'm sorry Dean, I can't have a serious conversation with anyone who believe in alteration, no offence intended, but that stuff is only supported by people who have absolutely zero evidence to back up their alteration claims.

All the best

Duncan

Thats to bad, I was looking forward to talking to you about different films and pictures as I can tell you have a vast knowledge of the photographic evidence in the case

One of the reasons I branched out and joined this forum was to hear other researchers thoughts on my theories

Thanks for your replies, I hope you can look past your past dealings with alterationists and give me a chance to explain my theories

Take care

Dean

Dean,
No time to alter-- Moorman 5 was shown at 3:19PM 11/22/63 on NBC's WBAP.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/lofivers...php/t14092.html

You can check this--
(go to @2:19--shows up around 2:20 on the video)

http://www.earthstation1.com/pgs/kennedys/...31122a.ram.html



Kathy

The extant Moorman photo is provably altered.

Jack

By whom? You can't prove your way out of a paper bag...

Heck, you don't even understand parallax nor the properties of light and shadow.

www.craiglamson.com/costella.htm

www.craiglamson.com/costella2.htm

www.craiglamson.com/apollo

A person would need to be very foolish to believe you have the first clue about photography.

Kathy

Thank you, but I knew about the time and saw that news reel years ago

That does nothing to prove there was not enough time to alter

Thanks anyways

Dean