Hickey might have fired his AR15 -- members survey.

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

On 8/1/2022 at 9:49 AM, Pat Speer said:

So do it. Create a lateral view of the shooting showing how Hickey could have shot Kennedy without standing up. And then an overhead view of the shooting showing the location of the rifle in relation to the passengers of the Queen Mary. 

I am not sure where that question came from. I have never heard of any problem re Hickey standing up. He could stand up if he wanted -- & he did want, & he did stand. I think we can all agree that the headshot was not possible if Hickey was seated, unless he lifted the AR15 up to say the top of his head.

[edit 15aug2022][see my drawing in my posting 7aug2022, which shows that the impact point on jfk's head was much higher, & the AR15 needed to be only about 1" above the windshield, & if the braking nose-dive of Queen Mary was severe enuff (mass is over 4 ton including the 9 guys) then the AR 15 might have needed to be only level with the windshield (all of my heights & levels are based on Elm St being level ie horizontal for simplicity]

So, if i did a drawing, it would show Hickey standing, & the AR15 would be at say chest height (he was a tall dude).  But there is no need for a new drawing. U already show an agent standing on the runningboard. Just imagine such an agent back near the backseat. Now, imagine that agent standing a couple of inches higher, koz the floor of Queen Mary was higher. Now, imagine that agent a couple of inches taller, koz Hickey was a tall dude. Now, nearly forgot, add a couple of inches, koz that drawn agent on the running board has been drawn shorter than the average bear. Now, where does a line from jfk's head to the top of the windshield & then extending back to Hickey's location intersect our ghost Hickey -- it intersects near chest level. It is not worthwhile arguing about an inch here or an inch there -- its doable, very doable. Then add 2" for the lurch down/up due to braking.

He was just doing his job.

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Marjan Rynkiewicz

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

16 minutes ago, Vince Palamara said:

I am inundated weekly with inquiries from strangers about Greer shooting JFK and Hickey shooting JFK. These theories are very popular with non-researchers. I suppose the "LBJ did it" theory would be third.

Vince, i love your stuff. There are lots of very smart experts around here, & i enjoy learning from all. But i was surprised that i could in a few months work out what happened, when experts have been looking for years. More than that, i was surprised that experts cant see what happened even when it is pointed out.  A case of i will see it when i believe it. 

I include Hickeyists in my above comment. They are all stuck on Hickey firing one lone unlucky shot. No, he fired 4 or 5 or 6. The facts fit perfectly. If it duznt fit then its not a fact. I enjoy looking back at what witnesses say, koz i can see the accurate ones & the wrong ones (but i digress).

[Ken Davies]

The Hickey theory had no basis in fact.  Neither the films, nor photos, nor witness testimony nor evidence support it.

 If I propose  a theory that LBJ fired the fatal shot from his seat, then the onus is upon me to prove it, not on respected intelligent researchers to disprove it.

 These  so called theories are at best fantasies.

 

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

Ok i did a drawing. Not accurate, but inches dont matter here, koz it is a no-brainer that the needed elevation of the AR15 is very doable.

[edit 15aug2022][see my drawing in my posting 7aug2022, which shows that the impact point on jfk's head was much higher, & the AR15 needed to be only about 1" above the windshield, & if the braking nose-dive of Queen Mary was severe enuff (mass is over 4 ton including the 9 guys) then the AR 15 might have needed to be only level with the windshield (all of my heights & levels are based on Elm St being level ie horizontal for simplicity]

I drew Hickey's head for when standing, & a green head for when half sitting half standing on 2 leather cases on the seat. 

As can be seen my problem is not whether the AR15 can see jfk's head, it is whether it can see the chrome trim above the jfklimo mirror, ie whether the slug can get over the divider (red line shows needed traject).

 

Edited March 15 by Marjan Rynkiewicz

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

1 hour ago, Ken Davies said:

The Hickey theory had no basis in fact.  Neither the films, nor photos, nor witness testimony nor evidence support it.

 If I propose  a theory that LBJ fired the fatal shot from his seat, then the onus is upon me to prove it, not on respected intelligent researchers to disprove it.

 These  so called theories are at best fantasies.

 

There is an alternative Ken. It goes like this. Respected intelligent researches & members of this forum put forward good reasons why Hickey could not have shot jfk at Z313, & then i hit their knuckle balls out of the park, every time. And then when they have run out of balls the truth remains.

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

So do it. Create a lateral view of the shooting showing how Hickey could have shot Kennedy without standing up. And then an overhead view of the shooting showing the location of the rifle in relation to the passengers of the Queen Mary. 

The AR15 had to be near center of Queen Mary for the Z313 slug to go throo the gap between the vizors, as per the white line.

Then the remnant slug had to veer say 6 deg to make a spider crack on the windshield just left of the mirror, as per the white line. The remnant slug must then have bounced out onto Elm St. 

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

Ok i did a drawing. Not accurate, but inches dont matter here, koz it is a no-brainer that the needed elevation of the AR15 is very doable.

Yew also reckoned in your first post.  I'd bet you have an illiterate reply for this already teed up.

Hickey filed four different suits in four different jurisdictions.  Menninger and St. Martins settled out of court "because lawyers cost money" per their attorney.  As Hickey's lawyer said, ridiculous. 

Lawsuit is settled in favor of former Secret Service agent Book claimed man accidentally fired bullet that killed Kennedy – Baltimore Sun

 HICKEY v. ST. MARTIN'S PR | 978 F.Supp. 230 (1997) | upp23011189 | Leagle.com

Edited August 1, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

7 minutes ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

The AR15 had to be near center of Queen Mary for the Z313 slug to go throo the gap between the vizors, as per the white line.

Then the remnant slug had to veer say 6 deg to make a spider crack on the windshield just left of the mirror, as per the white line. The remnant slug must then have bounced out onto Elm St. 

Look!  Clint Hill on the bumper at the time of the head shot!  I never knew!

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

43 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Yew also reckoned in your first post.  I'd bet you have an illiterate reply for this already teed up.

Hickey filed four different suits in four different jurisdictions.  Menninger and St. Martins settled out of court "because lawyers cost money" per their attorney.  As Hickey's lawyer said, ridiculous. 

Lawsuit is settled in favor of former Secret Service agent Book claimed man accidentally fired bullet that killed Kennedy – Baltimore Sun

 HICKEY v. ST. MARTIN'S PR | 978 F.Supp. 230 (1997) | upp23011189 | Leagle.com

It would have been interesting if it had gone to court. I guess that they would have argued whether the AR15 kill shot was possible. Lots of witnesses under oath. Kinney would have been a good witness.

Mr Kinney, u were the driver of Queen Mary, & u kept the QM 5' to 6' directly behind the jfklimo at all times? -- YES.

This must have demanded a lot of concentration, especially when SSA Hill jumped off & ran into that 5'-6' gap? -- YES.

Then why did u at that time take your eyes off SSA Hill & the limo for a second, & look away at 90deg to the right? -- I, er, uh, oh -- gulp!

Was it because SSA Ready had jumped off & had been ordered back on? -- err, ohh -- gulp!! -- NO.

Was it because u had a fright-reaction when SSA Hickey's AR15 fired an auto burst just 20" from your right earhole? -- errr, ohhh -- gulp!!!

 

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Marjan Rynkiewicz

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

On 8/1/2022 at 2:08 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Look!  Clint Hill on the bumper at the time of the head shot!  I never knew!

I dont remember exactly where Hill was at Z313, it was a long time ago. He attempted to climb onto the jfklimo say 2 times. Anyhow, each time he got his shoe onto the footboard he was holding the handrail, hence i doubt that in this pix he is anywhere near the footboard.

[edit][At Z313 Hill was next to Queen Mary, he was a small distance back from the front wheel]

Edited March 15 by Marjan Rynkiewicz

[Ron Bulman]

A couple of coherent sentences.  Yes, a trial would have been interesting but neither side really wanted that.  

Inches don't matter?   I guess you won't get this either.

 

[Pat Speer]

4 hours ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

Vince, i love your stuff. There are lots of very smart experts around here, & i enjoy learning from all. But i was surprised that i could in a few months work out what happened, when experts have been looking for years. More than that, i was surprised that experts cant see what happened even when it is pointed out.  A case of i will see it when i believe it. 

I include Hickeyists in my above comment. They are all stuck on Hickey firing one lone unlucky shot. No, he fired 4 or 5 or 6. The facts fit perfectly. If it duznt fit then its not a fact. I enjoy looking back at what witnesses say, koz i can see the accurate ones & the wrong ones (but i digress).

You didn't find anything. You took a long discredited theory and made it even more ridiculous. I suppose you think the 4, 5, or 6 shots were all high-velocity rounds, and that these shots were fired in Dave Powers' ear without him or anyone else noticing. This is about as bad as it gets. 

From my review of JFK: The Smoking Gun. 

This brings us, finally, to the third shot presented in the program. Here, in order to sell what is incredibly far-fetched, McLaren makes quite a stretch.

He takes two pieces of evidence: that some witnesses saw Hickey with an AR-15 rifle, and that some witnesses thought they smelled gunpowder at ground level, and pretends this is evidence Hickey fired the shot that killed Kennedy.

He avoids (or hides, let's be honest) much to pull off this trick.

First, there's the eyewitnesses. McLaren cites witness after witness as support for Donahue's theory, when an honest presentation of the witness statements would have, at the very least, called Donahue's theory into question.

• • He cites S.M. Holland's initial statement that "After the first shot the secret service man raised up in the seat with a machine gun and then dropped back down in the seat" as evidence Hickey shot Kennedy. He fails to tell his viewers that Holland also claimed to see "a puff of smoke come from the trees" after this first shot, and no other puff of smoke. That's right. The smoke observed by Holland and others while standing atop the railroad bridge came from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll. So how can McLaren cite them as support a rifle was fired in the middle of the plaza? He can't. So he doesn't. He claims ten witnesses "at ground level" smelled gunpowder, but never lists them.

  • He cites Jean Hill's statements as evidence a member of the Secret Service fired a weapon. He fails to tell his viewers that Hill thought the first shot hit Kennedy in the head, and that she thought some or all of the shots she heard after he was hit in the head may have been fired by the Secret Service in retaliation.

  • He wonders whether Hugh Betzner's recollection he saw "a flash of pink" wasn't a reference to the muzzle blast from Hickey's rifle. He fails to read the whole sentence in Betzner's statement. It reads like this: "Then I saw a flash of pink like someone standing up and then sitting back down in the car." McLaren's cherry-picking of Betzner's words avoids the obvious: that the flash of pink which Betzner observed, while standing 200 feet or so back behind the limousine at the moment of the head shot, was the pink-suited Mrs. Kennedy climbing out onto the back of the limousine, and then crawling back to her seat.

  • He also wonders about the statement of Mrs. John Chism, in which she said "the two men in the front of the car stood up, and then when the second shot was fired, they all fell down and the car took off just like that." Strangely, he wonders whether she meant to say that it was two men in the back of the follow-up car that fell down. He even complains that the Warren Commission never questioned her to find out if she was really talking about the follow-up car. He says "We'll never know." Uhh, yes we will know. And do. There's no basis whatsoever to "wonder" if someone describing activity in the front of one car was really describing activity in the back of another car, particularly when no one else noticed this activity in the back of this second car. Mrs. Chism is alive, by the way, and would almost certainly have talked to McLaren should he have tracked her down. But he didn't even try.

  • There's no evidence, in fact, that McLaren tried to talk to even one witness in his supposed four year investigation of the shooting. He could have talked to Bill and Gayle Newman, who witnessed the shooting from 20 feet or so behind and to the right of Kennedy, and were about the same distance to the right of Hickey. The sound of a shot from Hickey's position would have come straight to their left ears. And yet they thought this shot came from behind.

  • He could also have talked to Dave Powers, or at least to people who knew Powers, who passed away between the time McLaren first took an interest in the case and the advent of his four year investigation. Powers was a good friend of Kennedy's. He was sitting less than two feet from the muzzle of the AR-15 at the time Donahue claimed it was fired. Powers was consulted for the book Mortal Error, the book on Donahue's research McLaren found so inspiring. In the book, Powers is quoted as follows: “Someone a foot away from me or two feet away from me couldn’t fire a gun without me hearing it.” This, no surprise, is never mentioned by Colin McLaren in JFK: The Smoking Gun.

And then, of course, there's the ultimate witness: the Bronson film. This film shows Hickey and the members of the back-up car at the time of the fatal head shot. The film was taken from across the plaza, and lacks clear detail. And yet, no sudden movement on Hickey's part is noted in the film. More clearly, he appears to be sitting down. An honest presentation of Donahue's theory would have shown the film, and studied the film. But no, this is a program not just examining Donahue's belief Hickey shot Kennedy, but pushing it. The film is never mentioned.

 

 

So, yes, it's true. Colin McLaren, the man who criticized the Warren Commission for its "unsummoned witnesses, unheard testimonies, unanswered questions, and unpresented evidence" made them look good when given the chance. The program on his "investigation" out-"un"ed the Warren Commission by a mile, and actually presented him dismissing that a shot came from the overpass by noting that there were twelve witnesses on the overpass and none of them thought a shot came from there, while pushing a theory in which George Hickey shot Kennedy from the follow-up car, without noting that there were DOZENS of witnesses in the area, and NONE of them thought the fatal shot came from the car behind Kennedy.

Oh, the irony... Oh, the waste of money, and public attention...

The Whole Program Miss

In sum, then, the program was deceptive and embarrassing--the information in it was often outdated, and just as often biased. Beyond that the Bronson film strongly suggests Hickey didn't fire the fatal shot and that Howard Donahue's theory was wrong, Donahue's theories were built on long-discredited information regarding the back wound, and more recently called into question information about the head wound. His Hickey did it theory is reliant upon the bullet entering Kennedy's cowlick, 4 inches higher than where the entrance wound was measured at autopsy. He relied upon the word of Dr. Russell Fisher to come to this conclusion. Well, that was part of the problem. As Fisher would later admit, he was hired by the Justice Department to re-examine the medical evidence and see if there was a way to refute some of the "junk" in the conspiracy books--including that the trajectory for the head wound made little sense. This led him to find a new location for the bullet entrance--a location where those actually seeing Kennedy's body swore there was no entrance wound.

Now, for several years, Fisher's "find" had some support in the medical community, but that day has long-since passed. Of those viewing the original autopsy materials since late 1993--Dr. David Mantik, Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, Dr. John Fitzpatrick, Dr. Robert Kirschner, Dr. James Humes, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, Dr. Pierre Finck, Dr. Chad Zimmerman, Larry Sturdivan, and Dr. Peter Cummings--only one has supported Fisher's finding the entrance wound was in the cowlick, where Donahue's theory needs it to be.

While trying to impress the government, Fisher made a bad call--that can now be revealed as a politically-influenced bad call. Howard Donahue's reputation was but collateral damage.

And now we can add Colin McLaren to the list of Fisher's victims...

Shall we tell him?

 

[Lawrence Schnapf]

this stupid theory needs to be buried. the publisher settled a defamation suit. And this was after the plaintiff blew the statute of limitations. If a publisher really believed it had discovered the truth of the crime of the century there is no way it would have settled. this case could have been dismissed with minimal legal fees so dont bring that up as well. 

[Pat Speer]

More on Dave Powers: 

From patspeer.com, Chapter 5b:

(4-8-64, 8-10-64, 10-21-64, 3-17-65, and 5-24-65 interviews with William Manchester, as represented in The Death of a President, 1967) (On his response to the first shot) "Powers, in Halfback's right-hand jump seat, shouted at O'Donnell, 'I think the President's been hit!'" (Manchester's narration for the aftermath of the shooting) "In the jumps seats, Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers have heard the sickening impact of the fatal bullet, and Dave has seen it. O'Donnell crosses himself. Powers whispers 'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph...'" (On whether or not Rufus Youngblood actually climbed into the back seat of LBJ's car, or simply turned around, as purported by Senator Ralph Yarborough) "Dave Powers, who glanced back, confirms the Senator." 

(5-18-64 affidavit, 7H472-474): “the first shot went off and it sounded to me as if it were a firecracker. I noticed then that the President moved quite far to his left after the shot from the extreme right hand side where he had been sitting. There was a second shot and Governor Connally disappeared from sight and then there was a third shot which took off the top of the President’s head and had the sickening sound of a grapefruit splattering against a wall…My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass.”

 

So, according to your theory, Dave Powers had a high-powered rifle go off within a few feet of his ears, and then claimed to hear the impact of this shot on the President's skull a split-second later.

Hmmm... What's wrong with this theory? Hmmm...maybe it's bunkum... Or did Powers lied about hearing the impact on Kennedy's skull?

And, if so, why did he lie and say he thought shots had come from the front? Was he anxious to protect the Secret Service? To such an extent even, that he  deliberately misled the public as to the source of the shots, while providing fodder to conspiracy theories? 

Does that make a lick of sense? 

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

6 minutes ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

this stupid theory needs to be buried. the publisher settled a defamation suit. And this was after the plaintiff blew the statute of limitations. If a publisher really believed it had discovered the truth of the crime of the century there is no way it would have settled. this case could have been dismissed with minimal legal fees so dont bring that up as well. 

So, u are saying that Hickey could not have dunn it koz -- lawyers.

Or -- Hickey could not have dunn it koz -- money.

How can it be the truth of the crime of the century, when, if it is true, then the only crime it brings up is an accidental homicide -- or praps shooting a President out of season without a permit. If it is true then there is no crime of the century, the publisher merely discovered a candidate for the accidental homicide of the century -- Hickey, when found guilty, would have faced what, say 12 months jail max.

If u want to bury it, that easy, just ask a question that i cant answer, just one, all it takes is one -- i wont hold my breath.