Mark Tyler

What an amazing coincidence, well spotted! Now I know how those parts of the table were calculated.

I don't think the speed of the car can be derived from this calculation as JFK and JBC aren't moving along the same vector in space (JBC is too far inboard). Because the car is moving in a straight line we can get an approximation of its speed by comparing the frame when each corner of the same side of the car passes a fixed point. The left side of the Stemmons freeway sign seems a good fixed benchmark as the car passes behind it cleanly. The front right of the limo passes behind circa Z184: The rear right corner passes behind the sign circa Z206: This is a total of 22 frames. At 18.3 FPS for the Z-film this is 1.2 seconds, and with the car being 21.5 feet long that means the limo speed is approximately 17.9 ft/sec, or 12.2 MPH on average during that time. That's very close to the speeds I quoted earlier, and with a margin of error on the Z-film FPS rate and frame measurements I would say the actual speed in 1963 real time should be +/- 5% or 11.6 MPH to 12.8 MPH. I think the limo went down to about 8 MPH (or maybe just under at its slowest). Due to margins of error I can't be too specific, but it would be in that area.

I think you are right, there is a slight deceleration at that point. Checking back to my animation notes I remember that Hargis accelerated out of the curve slightly faster than BJ Martin beside him (as proven in the Martin film up to circa Z145), so he probably compensated by easing back on the throttle immediately after. The horrors of CE884 return to haunt us all once again! As I recall, when I realised how awful the Warren Commission measurements were I relied on the photos taken at Z161, Z186, and Z202 to get the limo location about right. As with all photogrammetry it's not perfect, and there will be a margin for error, but I think there is a smooth-ish acceleration of the limo from about 10 MPH at Z145; 11 MPH at Z170; then 12 MPH at Z210; with a peak of just under 13 MPH around Z230-Z250, after which the limo rapidly decelerates to just below 8 MPH by Z310. As I recall William Greer the driver said he turned around after he heard the second shot, and we can see him looking back by Z281 of the Z-film: I suspect he instinctively took his foot off the gas and maybe gently tapped the brake pedal which slowed the vehicle down. This Muchmore frame suggests that the rear brake lights were lit around Z313:

If the films and photos are rejected as invalid then it will be impossible to properly understand the events from 1963. Although the witnesses are occasionally muddled or contradictory, they do mostly seem to corroborate what we see in the photos and films. Some of the photos are tricky to judge due to the angles and optical illusions, but otherwise I've not come across any suspicious contradictions in the photographic record. Rather like Josiah Thompson I feel that the films and photos of the crime scene coupled the witness statements tend to corroborate each other.

Good question Dan! There can't have been much of a target available as the Z375 frame shows: Also, during Z360-Z380 the presidential limo was accelerating away at about 14-20 MPH and started to turn towards the right hand lane in Elm Street. By frame Z400 the Altgens 7 photo shows the limo starting the cross the white line between lanes: The limo zig-zagging was mentioned by Charles Brehm as he identified when the final shot was fired (at about 1:40 in this 1986 mock trial video): I assume this last missed shot came from the TSBD as I accept that three shots originated from the sixth floor window, so one shot in each burst must have come from that source (regardless of how many shots, if any, came from other locations). With this shot missing the target due to the limo taking evasive action (or maybe it was a deliberate miss?), the bullet probably ended up hitting the road or the grass nearby. Royce Skelton and Bill Decker (who is just visible in the rear left seat of the lead car in the Altgens 7 photo above) both said they saw something hit the road at the end of the shooting. I've not been able to independently verify this claim with a photo of a pothole in the road, but it is a reasonable possibility. Although no other witnesses reported seeing a pothole in the road, the Harper bone fragment from JFK's head wound wasn't found in Dealey Plaza until the day after the assassination. If the hundreds of people traipsing around the crime scene missed a piece of skull, then they could also have missed a pothole in the road. After the immediate fuss of the crime scene faded, nobody would have had a reason to associate a pothole with the shooting, which is possibly why it never came to light (if it did ever exist).

In conclusion, I think the idea in LSID of two bursts of gunfire Z175-Z224 and Z310-Z330 is close to what probably happened in 1963. Other witnesses also mentioned that they heard shots fired well after the head shot, such as Charles Brehm, Emmett Hudson, Mary Moorman, and Jean Hill. Sadly the Z-film was in such a chaotic state after Z318 there is no objective proof of this shot (or shots), but there are so many witnesses who support a shot well after Z313 I think it should be included in any shot sequence. Crucially this final shot well after Z313 would give us a total of three bursts of gunfire, which tallies perfectly with a lot of witness reports. Most notably Merriman Smith said this in the minutes after the shooting: "There were three loud bursts." Confirming the three bursts, with the two required pauses in between, was Pierce Allman who was standing directly in front of the TSBD and was in a great position to hear what the sixth floor sniper was doing: "Right after Mr. Kennedy passed in front of me I heard one big explosion and my immediate thought like most of the people standing around me was "this is firecrackers, but it's in pretty poor taste". I looked and saw the president, I thought, duck. Evidently, he was slumping at the time. The car immediately sped on. No one seemed galvanized into immediate action. The shots didn't seem rapid at all. They were three well spaced, reverberating shots." Although some witnesses only heard two bursts of gunfire such as: BANG, pause, BANG-BANG; no witness heard a fourth burst. Even AJ Millican who said he heard eight shots in total, chose to bunch them into three groups: "Just after the President's car passed, I heard three shots come from up toward Houston and Elm right by the Book Depository Building, and then immediately I heard two more shots come from the Arcade between the Book Store and the Underpass, and then three more shots came from the same direction only sounded further back." Overall, LSID and SSID taken together represent one of the most complete independent studies of the very complex crime scene in Dealey Plaza, so I am hugely grateful for the work that Josiah Thompson has done over the years. Lastly, I would reiterate that there are still gaps in our knowledge of the Dealey Plaza crime scene. Even though we have over 400 witnesses on the public record, multiple films and photos, we still don't have 100% certainty regarding exactly what happened. The lack of information in specific areas is frustrating and intractable, such as JFK's autopsy which was so badly botched it can neither prove nor disprove the single bullet theory, or the shallow back wound theory. I suspect those types of issues will forever remain moot. Anyway, that's my current view of LSID, and the shooting sequence during the JFK assassination based on the photos, films, and eyewitnesses. I'm happy to be corrected if anyone thinks I am wrong in my analysis, so feel free to let me know.

I think Milicent Cranor is 100% correct about a late shot fired after Z313. Crucially Emmett Hudson and Charles Brehm not only mention a shot after the head shot, they spoke about the shots they heard being spaced out enough for a bolt action gun to be used. This suggests to me that they were talking about 3 or more seconds after the head shot. Some witnesses like Mary Moorman even refer to two shots after the head shot. This late shot or shots should not be confused with the witnesses who described a BANG-BANG at the time of the head shot. Witnesses like Linda Willis, George Hickey, and Sam Holland said that both of those shots were fired at the time of the head shot and were almost simultaneous. In a nutshell, my reading of the Dealey Plaza witnesses is that there were three audible bursts of gunfire around these approximate times: Z190-Z230 Z290-Z330 Z360-Z380 It's probably a moot point whether each burst had one or two shots in it, but I am suspicious about the Z190-Z230 burst because of the massive jiggle we see during Z190-Z210 of the Zapruder film (which implies a shot fired just before which startled Zapruder). The victims start reacting to their injuries at Z225, but a 2 second delayed reaction seems unlikely, so I conclude there were two shots fired in two seconds, which requires two gunmen. John Connally said he wasn't hit by the first shot, and was hit 2 seconds later which fits this Z-film pattern perfectly. Indeed, David Wimp has exposed a very nasty optical illusion that has tricked people for decades. @Josiah Thompson deserves a lot of credit for revising his view of frames Z313-Z314 in his recent book.

I've not disregarded any witness statements, although there are some statements that are so vague I don't think it's possible to derive any forensic value from them (e.g. "the limo had just turned the corner and the shooting started"). By contrast when a witness is standing beside a lamppost and says that the limo had just passed them when the shooting started I think we can safely deduce the time the witness is referring to thanks to the Z-film and the photos. Technically I think the shooting did start when the limo was in front of the TSBD, but only just. At Z190 the limo was directly in line with the west side of the building.

I don't see anything unusual with Hargis or his bike. Have I missed something important? JFK seems to be looking to his left at the beginning of the Z-film and then turns to the crowd to his right (who are clapping feverishly, no doubt making a lot of noise as they called out to JFK).

Apart from the acoustics analysis, what about the rest of the evidence that the HSCA and Josiah Thompson referred to regarding the shot sequence? The first burst of shots was stated as being between Z175 and Z224. With the Z-film showing the victims reacting to being shot at Z225 (after they came out from behind the sign), it is very clear that a shot was fired just before that point. The timing of the first shot seems harder to judge, but there are some clues to be found in the Z-film and the witness statements. The HSCA did some work that became known as "jiggle analysis", as it measured the points in the Z-film where Zapruder jiggled the camera and created noticeable blurs. The idea was that whenever a shot was fired in Dealey Plaza it would startle Zapruder and cause a blur. The five largest blurs are located in these places in the Z-film (from the largest to the smallest): Z318 onwards Z190-Z210 Z227-Z235 Z155-Z160 Z290-Z295 The HSCA went into much more detail about these issues here: https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/pdf/HSCA_Vol6_2_Shots.pdf As we know, the victims reacted to their wounds at Z313 and Z225 in the Z-film so we know for certain that two shots were fired just before these points, which is what the jiggles at Z318 onwards and Z227 must relate to. Of the remaining three jiggles we must decide which relate to shots, and which are false alarms (such as where Zapruder simply wobbled the camera as he panned). A fair number of witnesses gave useful information regarding when the shooting started, so we should be able to use this to decide which of the jiggles is indicative of the first shot (Z155, Z190, or Z227). Firstly, there was Hugh Betzner who took a photo at exactly Z186 who said: "I took another picture as the President's car was going down the hill on Elm Street. I started to wind my film again and I heard a loud noise." Then we have Phil Willis who took a photo at exactly Z202 who said "Then my next shot was taken at the very–in fact, the shot caused me to squeeze the camera shutter, and I got a picture of the President as he was hit with the first shot. So instantaneous, in fact, that the crowd hadn't had time to react." Taken together these two witnesses are saying the noise of the first shot was not heard before Z186, but was heard just before Z202. This is a narrow frame of just under a second, and I think this is when the witnesses heard the first shot, including Zapruder who was startled Z190-Z210. Finally, we have a whole group of witnesses who were standing at the lamppost by the Thornton freeway sign (or just west of it) who all said that the limo had just passed them or was directly in front of them when the first shot was fired: AJ Millican, Karen Westbrook, Gloria Calvery, Karan Hicks, Jane Berry, and Betty Thornton. Here is the Betzner photo for reference: This photo shows that at Z186 the Presidential limo has just passed the lamppost by the Thornton freeway sign, so the first shot was heard just after this. I would therefore deduce that the Z190-Z210 jiggle is a function of the first shot, and the Z155 jiggle is a false alarm (Zapruder had only switched it on a second before at Z133 so he was probably still getting comfortable and framing the limo). With LSID saying the first shots were fired in a bunch Z175-Z224, the photos, films, and witnesses seem to support this. Most importantly if a shot was fired at Z180-Z185, and also Z215-Z220, then we have two shots being fired within two seconds which is impossible for Oswald to have achieved on his own with his clunky old rifle. This supports the LSID assertion that two gunmen were firing shots in Dealey Plaza. I can't see how the lone nut theory survives this, unless I have made a mistake somewhere?

The three men on the steps look identical in the Moorman photo and the Muchmore film, but there is a logical explanation. If you look at the Muchmore frame above you can see Mary Moorman positioned beneath the guys on the steps, which means Muchmore, Moorman, and the guys on the steps are all aligned in a straight line during Z313-Z315 when those images were exposed to film: The Moorman photo was taken at about Z315 which is why the explosion isn't visible in it (compared to Z313 and the equivalent Moorman frame). It's only a fraction of a second but it's long enough for the debris to mostly disappear. The other thing to remember is that the Moorman Polaroid is a very low quality image so it won't be completely clear.

One of the men on the steps turns and runs away immediately after the head shot which is why in later films there are only two people who remain. If you look closely at the Nix film here you can just about see him as he disappeared into the shadows as he scuttled up the steps: Marilyn Sitzman said that two people ran behind the pergola immediately after the shooting and in the process dropped some glass bottles. Appropriately for this thread, that information came from a Josiah Thompson interview! I suspect the second person Sitzman referred to was the so called black dog man, visible in the Willis and Betzner photos behind the concrete wall. The Willis slide is rather curious, but maybe Emmett Hudson is directly behind the man and his presence is obscured? I think Zapruder frame 413 shows the top of Emmett Hudson's head at the bottom of the frame, slightly obscured by the bushes: If the photos and films are fake then nothing useful can be learned from them regarding the assassination, which is rather disappointing! Wouldn't fabricating so much evidence be a little risky? One mistake and the whole thing would be exposed as a fraud, which would create an uproar.

Another problem that I have with the acoustics analysis is that the dictabelt recording of the alleged shots doesn't contain any ambient noise from Dealey Plaza such as crowd noise or the siren that Sam Kinney started immediately after he saw the head shot explosion. The HSCA said that a siren should be recorded by a bike microphone if it was within 300 feet of the noise, which is the red area on this map (Z388 of the Z-film): As you can see, any microphone in the red area should have recorded the din from the siren, but no such noise exists on the recording. By contrast, about three minutes after this point the dictabelt contains about 40 seconds of sirens seemingly passing the point where the bike microphone was. Judging from the timing this would make perfect sense if the bike was located somewhere near the Trade Mart, and the motorcade was rushing to Parkland Hospital nearby. I don't think we can ever be 100% certain of exactly whose bike and microphone was responsible for the dictabelt recordings, but the theory of it being located in Dealey Plaza has too many problems for it to be correct.

Moving on to the acoustics analysis generally in LSID, I noticed that it relies a lot on the research done since the HSCA closed in 1979, such as the work by Donald Thomas and others. If anyone hasn't read this, it is helpfully presented here at the Mary Ferrell foundation website: https://maryferrell.org/pages/Acoustics_Evidence.html Back in 2019-2020 I took some interest in the dictabelt issues when I created my animated reconstruction of the Dealey Plaza crime scene: https://www.marktyler.org/mc63.html The purpose of this reconstruction is to track the positions of the cars, bikes, and witnesses using the films, photos, and eyewitness testimony. This is relevant to the HSCA acoustics analysis because the HSCA scientists claimed a 95% certainty of a shot from the grassy knoll, which required a microphone to be in exactly the right place at the right time. From Z160 to Z330 the HSCA said that a bike with a microphone was turning from Houston Street onto Elm Street at a speed of just over 11 MPH. I placed a large circle into the animation where this bike must have been, as depicted by these animation frames at Z188, Z255, and Z313 (the circle labelled 10 is where the microphone needs to be): As can be seen there isn't a bike (an orange circle) anywhere near where it needs to be. The bike that the HSCA suspected of being the bike with the stuck open microphone was HB McLain (orange circle 16 on Houston Street), but this can be proven to be wrong as we know that his bike was consistently positioned near the camera and congressman cars. We are able to judge McLain's position fairly accurately thanks to him being visible in the DCA, Hughes, and Dorman films travelling down Main Street and Houston Street (always around Camera Car #3 and the Congressman #1 cars): Here is a photo from earlier in the motorcade showing McLain and Baker just in front of Camera Car #3 (Dillard photo from the Dallas Morning News): Notice the ID numbers are on the back of the bikes so we know exactly who they are thanks to them being listed in various places in the documentary record. For an overview, forum member @Todd W. Vaughan prepared a very nice motorcade guide back in 1993, including citations on page 19: https://archive.org/details/nsia-MotorcadeRoute/nsia-MotorcadeRoute/Motorcade Route 05/page/n22/mode/2up Lastly, McLain was seen in the Bond 4 photo on the left frame edge: Here is the equivalent animation frame showing McLain travelling at about 8 MPH: My animation timings show that if McLain travelled down Houston Street from Z150 to Z410 without stopping, he would have averaged about 10 MPH. He must then have slowed to around 5 MPH as he took the sharp corner, before gently accelerating as he travelled down Elm Street. All of this would have happened smoothly without requiring any stops, or sudden accelerations in speed. Everything fits with no loose ends, which means that the 95% certainty claim has no basis in fact (there was no bike or microphone anywhere near where it should have been if the claim was correct). Back in 2007-2010 Dale Myers found the same results and wrote them up here: http://www.jfkfiles.com/jfk/html/acoustics.htm Pat Speer also made some interesting criticisms of the dictabelt last year: http://www.patspeer.com/debunking-the-dictabelt It's not often you find Dale and Pat on the same side in a JFK assassination debate, but on this issue they are united!

Now I've read the book completely, and considered the details, I thought I would share my initial thoughts in a few posts. Firstly, this is a book that focuses entirely on the forensic details of the Dealey Plaza crime scene, so if that part of the case interests you then it's a worthwhile read. If you would rather explore the myriad of different theories, or you want to know what Lee Harvey Oswald was doing on some rainy Tuesday afternoon in 1961, then you will need to look elsewhere! Secondly, the book is written in an autobiographical style, which I quite like as it gives a human angle and allows us to follow the narrative through the eyes of Josiah Thompson the investigator. As my posts will reveal I don't agree with him on everything about the crime scene, but his thoughtful approach of weighing up the contradictory evidence and his willingness to challenge his own preconceptions does allow him to make progress from the book he published in 1967. If anyone hasn't read Six Seconds In Dallas (SSID), it can be read online here: https://archive.org/details/SixSecondsInDallas Last Second In Dallas (LSID) supersedes much of SSID, but the 1967 book is still worth a read to appreciate some of the details of the crime scene evidence and eyewitness interviews that do not appear in LSID. Thompson is someone who has spent a lot of time investigating, researching, and pondering the complex nature of the evidence in Dealey Plaza so I found it rather interesting to read his current thoughts on the case (which I would now assume to be his final settled view). To cut a long story short, Thompson settles on the idea that more than one sniper was firing shots in Dealey Plaza. Various pieces of evidence are presented to support this idea, most notably the dictabelt evidence studied by the HSCA and its scientists back in the 1970's. Thompson slightly deviates from the conclusions of the HSCA thanks to work done since 2000, and on page 173 he says that five shots were fired in two bursts at these points in the Zapruder film (Z-film): Z175 Z204 Z224 - Z313 Z328 By contrast the HSCA said that it was the final shot that hit JFK in the head, which shifts the time sequence back by 15 frames for each shot: Z160 Z189 Z209 - Z298 Z313 In this scenario the Z298 shot was fired from the knoll, and the Z313 shot from the TSBD. The HSCA agreed with the Warren Commission Report (WCR) that there was a single bullet theory shot fired around Z190 (not Z210 as the WCR said) which hit JFK and Connally, and they discarded the Z210 shot from the acoustics analysis (accepting it would have forced them to require a third gunman). Both of these dictabelt driven scenarios seem to match both the head shot and the victims reacting at Z225-Z230 to their wounds, so superficially they seem credible as there is a loose match between the audio on the dictabelt and the events that unfolded in the Z-film. However, there are several problems with the HSCA version of events here, most notably that JFK and John Connally start to react to their wounds during Z225-Z230, which is a strange two second delay after the Z190 shot which doesn't seem right for such grievous wounds that both victims sustained. The other problem with the knoll shot being fired at Z298 is that the three people on the knoll as seen in the Muchmore film don't react at all until after the head shot: I would have thought that a bullet whistling past those people on the steps would have stimulated some kind of reaction, but apparently not, which is one of the many problems with a knoll shot at Z298. In short, the HSCA shot scenario doesn't really match the film evidence, so I think Thompson and others are right to reject it.

Indeed, changing minds with facts and evidence is what this debate should be about! Not everyone is a hardcore partisan who thinks they have cracked the case, so an open and polite discussion always has value. Most people reading this forum do not post in the threads, and some readers may not even be members (the forum is publicly visible to non-members). It's always possible to reach the "silent majority" who are probably fence sitters, which is a great public service. I agree, debunking false theories is extremely important as it enables everyone to focus on the genuine areas of uncertainty that researchers may yet be able to resolve. Although I don't think we can ever be 100% certain about what happened in 1963, the truth is woven into the fabric of the evidence so once the red herrings are removed the truth will become much more accessible.

Thanks Vince. It's great to see these old presentations on video, especially in this case when the the slides and documentation can't be found anywhere else on the internet.

Sadly I can't find it anywhere either. However, back in 2004 David Wimp did give a presentation, at about 40 minutes into this video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?183565-1/warren-report-lone-assassin-theory-part-1 I found this presentation to be very persuasive, and LSID chapter 14 "The Blur Illusion" is a very important correction to Thompson's 1967 book. The forward movement of JFK's head during Z313-Z314 is no more than an illusion, and JFK's exact head movements during that time can never be known due to the blurring and the explosion debris in the film (which both make any proper measurement impossible).

Individual witnesses did indeed make mistakes, and if the late shot after the head shot was reported by just Moorman and Hill I would probably have concluded it was a mistake too. However, when so many witnesses agree that there was a late shot (or shots), I am inclined to accept at least one shot was fired after the head shot. In terms of the bang, pause, bang-bang shot sequence it is possible to follow the jiggles in the Z-film and adhere to the bang pattern by having shots at Z190, Z310, and Z370 (gaps of 6.6 and 3.3 seconds). Some witnesses support this timeline such as Arnold Rowland said he heard shots 6-8 seconds apart and then 2-3 seconds, which is fairly close. It also matches the majority of witnesses who only heard one shot at the beginning before JFK raised his arms. However, it does create some issues such as the two second lag in the Z-film from the Z190 jiggles to until the victims start reacting at Z225-Z230 (not forgetting we need to make the single bullet theory work at Z190 somehow!). Then there is John Connally who said he wasn't hit by the first shot (he said the gap between the shot and him being hit was two seconds, which fits shots at Z185 and Z220 which matches the Z-film jiggles and victim reactions 5 frames later in each case). In summary, this is all about which witnesses are right and which are wrong (and most importantly how we decide). As I have found, if a researcher is committed to a theory (e.g. shots at Z150, Z220, Z310) then that is how they judge witnesses (and even dismissing the jiggle in the Z-film Z190-Z210). I personally prefer to do it the other way round and judge the theory on how much witness, film, photo, and physical evidence supports it. I think this is what the Warren Commission got wrong. They insisted that only three shots were fired, and they then struggled to shoehorn all of the evidence into that theory. In the end they gave up and didn't commit to when their missed shot was fired, and only fixed the Z210 and Z310 shots as the Zapruder film identifies the victims reacting in the following frames.

Studying all of the witness statements is a long and laborious job, but is an absolute necessity when trying to piece together the full shot sequence (and exposing the ruthless cherry-picking some people engage in to sell their pet theory!). With so many theories in this case it's very easy to be distracted by ideas rather than dealing with the facts as reported back in 1963 and 1964. I think it was the HSCA who started the Z150-Z160 missed shot idea with the dictabelt analysis, which forced them to have a missed shot at Z160 and then the single bullet theory at Z190. This fails to make sense on many levels: JFK and others are behaving normally Z160-Z195 despite a shot allegedly being fired over their heads; Oswald could not have fired two shots in less than two seconds; the SBT at Z190 is even harder to make work than at Z220 as the angle is steeper. Perhaps Luis Alvarez explained the beginning of the shooting best when he said he thought two shots were fired between Z177 and Z215. This not only fits the Z-film jiggles Z190-Z210 and victim reactions Z225-Z230, but also the roadside witnesses seem to agree that this was the position of the limo when the shooting started. If the next burst of gunfire was just around the head shot, then logically the final burst must have been after the head shot, as those closest to the TSBD heard three well spaced shots (or bursts). Knowing the exact frames that shots were fired, and how many in total were fired is probably impossible to know, but this general pattern of three bursts fits the Z-film and witness statements fairly well.

I agree Karl, knowing the exact number of shots and when they were fired is probably an impossible question to answer with 100% certainty. Without an audio recording it will always remain moot as the witnesses can only be approximate regarding what they heard. Sadly the dictabelt only seems to offer false hope in this regard. The lone nut theory is appealing in terms of its simplicity, but it fails to explain important aspects of the crime scene, such as the witnesses who are convinced shots were fired too quickly for a single gunman (including Mary Moorman who inspired this thread).

Mary Moorman was a very good witness who gave a clear and lucid account on the day of the assassination: At 2:26:10 Indeed Pat, Moorman and other witnesses are very certain that one or two shots were fired after the head shot. When I first started studying the witness statements and interviews in 2019 I was quite shocked by this. For many years I had read books and seen TV presentations about this case and I was always told that the head shot was the final shot. Quite whether this was poor quality research or a deliberate deceit I'm not sure, but I do feel rather foolish for naively accepting what I was told without checking primary sources.

No, I don't think the Zapruder film should be used as a standard because seen in isolation it's very misleading. For example, when I see the Z-film I see the victims reacting twice, which implies only two shots were fired. When I look a little closer I see a very noticeable jiggle from Z190-Z210 which tells me Zapruder was reacting to the first shot which was probably fired during Z180-Z185 (Charles Wyckoff suggested Z186 for the shot in 1967, and Luis Alvarez suggested Z177 for the shot in 1975, so I'm not alone in thinking this is an important aspect of the film). However, the victims first react to their wounds at Z225-Z230 which is about two seconds after the first shot was fired which seems too long for such grievous wounds, so my current view is that two shots were fired between Z180 and Z220. I think that's all the Z-film tells me about the shots because after Z318 the film is too erratic to tell us anything about late shots. Any other blurs I see Z133-Z310 are quite minor and their evidential value is ambiguous: they may indicate a shot, they may not, so I don't think we can know for sure. These are just my judgements, and others may disagree, but it's important to be clear about what the film alone tells us before we tackle the witnesses. I totally accept what Paschall says, as I do for all witnesses. They are telling us what they recall from that very brief period of time. However, as my previous post indicates, witnesses were sometimes distracted and missed one or more of the shots (especially when they were located some distance away from the TSBD). Robert Hughes missed all of the gunshots Z180-Z220 as did Mary Moorman. By contrast other camera operators like Charles Bronson and Orville Nix heard two early shots well before the head shot, which may well be the two shots between Z180 and Z220 that the Z-film implies. Overall, no film tells us everything about the shots and no single witness saw or heard everything regarding the shots. However, by combining all of the information we have, we can create a better understanding of the whole sequence, rather than using any single "gold standard" source which alone will mislead us. So this leads me to the final double bang at the end of the shooting which so many witnesses described. Mary Moorman, like most witnesses heard three shots in total. The first shot she heard was about the time she took her photo at Z315, and she said another two shots were fired after this. So for Mary Moorman the final double bang was after what we see at Z313 in the Z-film. Thanks to her very specific photo and recollection we can nail the timing exactly, as she said the shooting was still continuing even after she fell to the ground. According to the Muchmore film she was still standing around the time Z337 when that filmed finished so she thinks the final shot was fired well after this point: Many other witnesses also support late shots like Moorman, but many researchers glibly dismiss this information as "wrong" or "mistaken" without properly explaining why. You can't treat every word from the witnesses as gospel truth, but when a researcher disagrees with a group of witnesses they should properly explain why rather than just excluding inconvenient information because their favoured theory disallows a fourth shot. In the case of Paschall she sadly doesn't give us enough information to know which part of the sequence she heard. She could be like Moorman who heard shots after the head shot, or she could have heard the double bang at the head shot. I don't think we can ever know, so her evidence is less useful than from the other examples where the camera operator was more specific. Once all of the witness and film evidence is evaluated individually, then we can compare these items and look for corroboration such as I did with the 5 second gaps between shots in the Z-film and the witnesses like Malcolm Couch. Once several things start matching up you can be certain that those things really did happen in Dealey Plaza, and witnesses weren't mistaken regarding double bangs or shot timings. Bearing this is mind, these are the strongest witnesses who support the theory of the first shot being heard Z190-Z200 (as the jiggle in the Z-film suggests Zapruder was startled at this point): Hugh Betzner was standing on the south side of Elm Street and took a photo at exactly Z186. He said he heard the first shot immediately after, when he was winding his film on. Phil Willis was standing on the south side of Elm Street and took a photo at exactly Z202. He said he heard the first shot immediately before he snapped his photo. AJ Millican was standing beside the lamppost on the north side of Elm Street and said the limo had just passed him when the first shot was fired. The Betzner photo shows that the limo had just passed the lamppost at Z186: Gloria Calvery and Karen Westbrook were slightly further down Elm Street from Millican and said that the limo was in front of them when the first shot was fired. All of these witnesses were directly in front of the TSBD and could not have missed the first shot. They are all consistent within a fraction of a second as to when the first shot was fired, and this matches the Z-film jiggle perfectly. The Z150 shot is a myth which distracts us from what really happened in Dealey Plaza.

Indeed Eddy, any witness saying bang-pause-bang-bang is not consistent with the modern lone gunman theory (shots near Z150-Z220-Z310). I also really struggled to find any witness who said they heard the Z150 shot, and I find the Zapruder film absent of any obvious sign of gunfire before Z190. For example I would have assumed the secret service agents would have started to spin around well within 2 seconds of hearing a shot, but they don't start moving noticeably before Z195 (when a few of them start turning to their heads rightwards before they disappear out of frame). Some witnesses refer to equidistant shots, such as Malcolm Couch or Pierce Allman. Couch is especially helpful because he says the whole shooting lasted 10 seconds and the first shot occurred just after turning onto Houston Street (15-20 feet along he said), which was documented by the Hughes film in it's last clear frame before the camera was switched off (Couch was in the silver car on the left): This point is about Z190, and for reference here is Z150 about 2 seconds before: Robert Hughes, who took this film, didn't hear the shot Couch heard as he said the first shot he heard was about 5 seconds after he switched his camera off, which matches Couch's second shot which he said was fired 4-5 seconds after the first (probably somewhere soon after Z280, i.e. Z190 + 5 seconds). This example highlights how some witnesses didn't hear the first shot that others did, but we can still use their testimony for the other shots they do describe hearing, and manage to match things up with what we all see in the Zapruder film.

The statement from Carol Hughes is curiously terse with very few useful details. Here is a floor plan that I found which helps orientate things somewhat: I think the door marked "PRIVATE" leads to the small room we are discussing. I assume there are some wall partitions missing between the offices, and toilet areas? It could well be a ceiling light. The photo below gives us a slightly clearer view as the photo is a higher resolution and the top part of the window looks clear (if you download the image and zoom in you should see what I mean): The comment states that it was taken between 12:30 and 13:00 (which makes sense as the police cars seem to be swarming in): https://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/thumbnails.php?album=37&page=4 Based on this and the changes in the window I would definitely say someone was in the room. It does seem a strange coincidence that rifles were being brought into the building just two days before the assassination. On the other hand, as you say, a generally permissive attitude towards guns might explain the casual nature of this event. Here in the UK if I was to take a couple of rifles to work somebody would probably call the police and have me arrested!