Witness to history recounts fateful day of JFK’s assassination

[Douglas Caddy]

Witness to history recounts fateful day of JFK’s assassination

Dallas Morning News

Published November 16, 2013

By MARY WOODWARD PILLSWORTH

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/reflect/20131116-witness-to-history-recounts-fateful-day-of-jfks-assassination.ece

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To read other stories in Dallas Morning News of November 17th, go to:

http://www.dallasnews.com/

[Blair Dobson]

that's gotta be a good gig...

every nov someone drags you out and asks you the same thing, you answer the same thing and then go back to sleep with the holiday decorations until next time.

"it was terrible..the car came around there..I was right here..then I heard the shots"

"thank you so much"

[Daniel Meyer]

Witness to history recounts fateful day of JFK’s assassination

Dallas Morning News

Published November 16, 2013

By MARY WOODWARD PILLSWORTH

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/reflect/20131116-witness-to-history-recounts-fateful-day-of-jfks-assassination.ece

Mary Woodward said shots came from the "Grassy Knoll" for 30 years before reversing testimony. "Mary Woodward Turnaround" http://www.manuscriptservice.com/DPQ/woodwo~1.htm

[David G. Healy]

I have a question for Mary Woodward," lest we forget" WHAT, Mary?

Thanks.

[Pat Speer]

Mary Woodward's slowly evolving story.

Mary Woodward (11-23-63 newspaper article Witness From the News Describes Assassination written by Woodward for the Dallas Morning News) "We decided to cross Elm Street and wait there on the grassy slope just east of the Triple Underpass…We had been waiting about half an hour when the first motorcycle escorts came by, followed shortly by the President’s car. The President was looking straight ahead and we were afraid we would not get to see his face. But we started clapping and cheering and both he and Mrs. Kennedy turned, and smiled and waved, directly at us… After acknowledging our cheers, he [JFK] faced forward again and suddenly there was a horrible, ear-splitting noise coming from behind us and a little to the right. My first reaction, and also my friends', was that as a joke someone had backfired their car. Apparently, the driver and occupants of the President's car had the same impression, because instead of speeding up, the car came almost to a halt...I don't believe anyone was hit with the first bullet. The President and Mrs. Kennedy turned and looked around, as if they, too, didn't believe the noise was really coming from a gun...Then after a moment's pause, there was another shot and I saw the President start slumping in the car. This was followed rapidly by another shot. Mrs. Kennedy stood up in the car, turned halfway around, then fell on top of her husband’s body… The cars behind stopped and several men--Secret Service men,--I suppose-- got out and started rushing forward, obstructing our view of the car... About ten feet from where we were standing, a man and a woman had thrown their small child to the ground and covered his body with theirs. Apparently the bullets had whizzed directly over their heads.” (12-7-63 FBI report, 24H520) “She stated she was watching President and Mrs. Kennedy closely, and all of her group cheered loudly as they went by. Just as President and Mrs. Kennedy went by, they turned and waved at them. Just a second or two later, she heard a loud noise. At this point, it appeared to her that President and Mrs. Kennedy probably were about one hundred feet from her. There seemed to be a pause of a few seconds, and then there were two more loud noises which she suddenly realized were shots, and she saw President Kennedy fall over and Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and started crawling over the back of the car. She stated that her first reaction was that the shots had been fired from above her head and from possibly behind her.” (12-23-63 FBI report, recounting a 12-5-63 discussion between U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders and an FBi agent, CD205, p39) "a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, name unrecalled, has advised him that four of the women working in the Society Section of the Dallas Morning News were reportedly standing next to Mr. Zapruda when the assassination shots were fired. According to this reporter, these women, names unknown, stated that the shots, according to their opinion, came from a direction other than from the Texas School Book Depository Building." (3-24-64 testimony of Mark Lane before the Warren Commission, 2H32-61) “on November 23, 1963, the Dallas Morning News ran a story by Miss Woodward, and I have since that time spoken with Miss Woodward by telephone, and she has confirmed portions--the entire portion which I will quote from now--in her conversation with me. That is, that as she and her three coworkers waited for the President to pass, on the grassy slope just east of the triple overpass, she explained that the President approached and acknowledged their cheers and the cheers of others, 'he faced forward again, and suddenly there was an ear-shattering noise coming from behind us and a little to the right.' Here we have a statement, then, by an employee of the Dallas Morning News, evidently speaking--she indicated to me that she was speaking on behalf of all four employees, all of whom stated that the shots came from the direction of the overpass, which was to their fight, and not at all from the Book Depository Building, which was to their left." (Mark Lane's comments regarding Woodward at the Associated Press Managing Editors Convention in San Diego, California, 11-17-66, as published in an AP story found in the 11-27-66 Eugene Register-Guard.) "The press found Mary Woodward over there. In fact, she works for the press--the Dallas Morning News--and she wrote her own article, published in the Dallas Morning News on Nov. 23, and she said: 'I heard the shots. It was a horrible ear-shattering sound coming from directly behind me, from behind the wooden fence on the top of the grassy hill.'" (Lane had, apparently, presented his interpretation of Woodward's words as if it was a direct quote.)

(Interview in The Men Who Killed Kennedy, broadcast 1988) “One thing I am totally positive about in my own mind is how many shots there were. And there were three shots. The second two shots were immediate. It was almost as if one were an echo of the other. They came so quickly the sound of one did not cease until the second shot. With the second and third shot I did see the president being hit. I literally saw his head explode. So, I felt that the shots had come, as I wrote in my article, from behind me and to my right, which would have been the direction of the grassy knoll, and the railroad overpass." (11-21-93 Reporters Remember conference, as quoted in Reporting the Kennedy Assassination). "(We) stationed ourselves just down from the School Book Depository building and waited for the parade to come by.) And we were chatting, and as we were talking, I looked up at the grassy knoll. And I said to my friends, 'That's a very dangerous-looking spot to me, it must be, there must be a lot of security up there, because it looks a perfect spot, if somebody wanted to do something.' And then the motorcade came along and I couldn't believe it: finally, I'm gonna see Jacqueline Kennedy, and she's looking in the other direction. So I yelled and I said 'Please look this way!' And they looked right at us, waved, and at that moment, I heard a very loud noise. And I wasn't sure what it was at that point, and I turned to my friends and asked 'what was that; is some jerk shooting off firecrackers?' And, uh, then I heard the second one, and this time I knew what had happened, because I saw the president's motion, and then the third shot came very, very quickly, on top of the second one. And that time, I saw his head blow open, and I very well knew what had happened by that point…we waited for just a few minutes… and walked back to the Dallas Morning News…I started writing my story, and I wrote it exactly as I knew it…And to this day, I think I wrote it correctly…The only thing that I guess I got myself in a little bit of controversy about, I said that the shots appeared to have come from behind me and to my right…I didn’t say they did come from that direction…I had spoken to my friends just prior to the event, suggesting that the grassy knoll would be the perfect spot for an assassin… when it happened, I naturally expected it to have come from where I had predicted it would come from. So in reality, I do believe they did come from the School Book Depository Building. So I get a little bit upset when I get put into the other column... I never spoke to Mark Lane in my life, except to say I couldn’t speak to him.” (11-16-13 article in the Dallas Morning News) "That particular Friday was Nov. 22, 1963, and on my 'extended' lunch break, while standing with three friends in front of the Texas School Book Depository, I witnessed (as the fifth-closest witness, according to an official source) the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy... Arriving back at The News, the four of us were the first to report to editors in the building what had happened in Dealey Plaza. Still lacking official confirmation — and without input from any other source — I began to compose, at age 24 years and two months, the story of my lifetime. Fifty years later, I am proud of that piece of reporting. Intensive investigations have shown that I was a pretty accurate witness. I reported then and still believe without the slightest equivocation that: The first shot missed completely. There was a noticeable time lapse between the first and second shot. The car slowed almost to a stop after the first shot. The second shot hit the target but was possibly not fatal. The third shot pierced the brain and was almost certainly fatal. I wasn’t perfect, however, and I did make one misstatement that haunts me to this day. I wrote that the shots sounded as if they had “come from behind me and to my right,” the direction of the grassy knoll. What I failed to take into account was a hearing disability that makes it impossible for me to accurately determine the direction of sound. (Just ask anyone who has been a passenger in my car when a siren goes off.) I have also been told by experts, including hearing specialists and marksmen, that the lay of the land in that area might have distorted the sound. I tried to correct the misimpression, but it was too late. Conspiracy theorists used my words as 'evidence.' I was labeled 'the first dissenting witness.' Others claimed that my clarification was made under pressure by everyone from my bosses at the newspaper to Dallas city fathers to the FBI. I was sickened to read that my words had been used as evidence in a book claiming that Kennedy had been killed by the Secret Service agent who was driving his car. I have been called a xxxx who sold out (to whom or for how much was never revealed) and a disgrace to my profession. The twisting of my words, the questioning of my motives and the assault on my integrity were unexpected, bewildering and hurtful. I learned that the best defense was a low profile. Since then, I have given three presentations: to my child’s junior high history class, to my local historical society and at a seminar that was hosted by Southern Methodist University on the 30th anniversary. I have written three or four articles on the subject for newspapers at which I later worked, and I appeared briefly in two documentaries. I have never received compensation."

Analysis: while the recollections of many if not most witnesses get wilder and wilder as they get older, Ms. Woodward has in recent years been trying to bring hers in line with the official story. In the 1993 conference quoted above, she bent over backwards to let the good old boys in the journalism profession know she was not a “conspiracist.” She goes even further in this regard in her more recent article. To no avail. Her assertion that the last two shots were bunched together locks her forever in the conspiracy camp. Her words are completely at odds with the LPM scenario--she says the President was past her when the first shot rang out, she says the limousine slowed down after the first shot, she said the President slumped down in his seat after the first of two closely grouped together shots. It was only in recent years that she started adding on that the last shot was the head shot. While some LPM defenders might choose to focus on Woodward’s repeated assertion that the first shot missed, they will have to overlook that she says the President looked around after this shot—and that it came after the wave of his hand (which can be seen at frame 188 of the Zapruder film).