From a female pilot to the vanished film, all the theories that mean the JFK assassination remains a mystery 60 years on
TOMORROW marks 60 years since President John F Kennedy was shot as his motorcade snaked through Dallas, Texas – but even after six decades his assassination remains steeped in mystery and intrigue.
From the moment his horrifying last moments were caught on film, conspiracy theories have been rife, from mob hits to CIA plots and even aliens.
But one question has remained above all: Did killer Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?
Experts claim newly-discovered testimony could finally provide the answer.
A Gallup poll this week showed 65 per cent of Americans believe Oswald was involved in a conspiracy with others to kill the President.
On the anniversary, we look at the emerging evidence and most believed theories surrounding JFK’s death.
THE WITHHELD RECORDS
PRESIDENT Joe Biden’s release last year of 13,000 records linked to the Kennedy case means 70,000 can now be viewed by the public.
But 3,684 documents are still partly or completely redacted, further fuelling speculation that US Government agencies are involved in a cover-up.
Officials say they are being kept back because they contain details of people who are still alive or have information and locations of intelligence offices, but many claim they hold the key to the “real” facts.
THE MEDICS
DOCTORS at Parkland Memorial Hospital who tried to save JFK’s life said they believed there was more than one shooter involved.
Documentary maker Jacque Lueth interviewed them in 2013 but the footage, shown on Channel 5 on Sunday, was withheld until now.
The official Warren Commission investigation into JFK’s death concluded he was shot by Oswald from behind as his car passed the book depository on Dealey Plaza, but the doctors claim his injuries were caused by a bullet that appeared to have entered the front of his head.
Dr Robert McClelland said: “In all probability there was a conspiracy.
“There was more than one shooter.”
Dr Ronald Jones said: “If Oswald was in the sixth-floor depository, how could he (JFK) have been shot from the front then? And so was there more than one assailant?”
Dr Joe Goldstrich, a fourth-year medical student at the time, asked how a gunshot wound from the rear managed to peel the scalp from the front to the back.
Some of the medics said they had seen what they thought was a bullet hole in the front of Kennedy’s neck.
They also examined photos from the autopsy, which they said looked different from what they had seen in the Parkland trauma room, suggesting the body had been tampered with.
THE ‘MAGIC’ BULLET
OSWALD is believed to have fired three bullets.
The first missed, while the third delivered the fatal blow to the President’s head.
The second bullet has been at the centre of theories of another shooter — possibly hiding on the grassy knoll that the motorcade passed.
Witnesses also claimed to have heard shots from that direction.
The Warren Commission concluded the second bullet hit Kennedy at the back of his neck, passed through his throat and went on to hit Texas governor John Connally, who was sitting in the front of the car.
It then passed through Connally’s chest, then hit his wrist and thigh.
But sceptics refuse to believe one “magic bullet” could do so much damage, and one of JFK’s bodyguards, Paul Landis, appears to have backed the “second shooter” theory.
He revealed he found a fully intact bullet “sitting on the back ledge” of the presidential limo and placed it next to Kennedy on his stretcher.
He thinks it was in Kennedy’s back before “popping out” as his body was taken from the car.
It means it could not have gone on to hit Connally — raising questions over who fired the shot that did.
THE VANISHED FILM
FAMOUS home-movie footage of the JFK shooting filmed by tailor Abraham Zapruder shows the moment of impact before wife Jackie leans over the car to retrieve part of her husband’s skull.
But a second home movie, taken by maintenance worker Orville Nix, was subpoenaed by the Government as part of its investigations.
His granddaughter Gail has now filed a lawsuit to get the original back.
Experts believe modern digital tech could see the original film cleaned up to see if it reveals anything new.
It is viewed as important because it also contains footage of the grassy knoll from where shots were heard.
THE RUSSIAN LINK
RECORDS released two years ago revealed that self-styled Marxist Oswald went to Mexico two months before the assassination and met Consul Valery Kostikov — identified by the CIA as a KGB agent in a branch responsible for “sabotage and assassination”, according to papers.
US intelligence also recorded an odd follow-up phone call between them in which Oswald said the embassy promised to send a telegram to Washington.
It is thought he was trying to get a visa to defect to Cuba through the Russian embassy.
Questions have also been asked about how Oswald was able to leave America aged 20 to live in the Soviet Union for four years, during the Cold War era, without being detained or seemingly questioned on his return with a Russian wife and baby.
Many conspiracy theorists believe he was spying for the CIA.
THE FEMALE PILOT
AUTHOR and documentary maker Mary Haverstick has investigated a pilot named Jerrie Cobb, who had passed medical tests for the 1960s Mercury space missions, only to be ruled out because she was a woman.
She discovered that Cobb flew a light aircraft in and out of a private airport in Dallas on the day JFK was killed, and suspects she played a role in the killing, possibly as a would-be getaway pilot for Oswald.
Her research also led her to a woman called June Cobb, who appears in declassified CIA files as a US agent who worked as a secretary to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and alerted the CIA to Oswald’s suspicious behaviour in Mexico.
Mary is convinced Jerrie and June are the same person, and believes she is also the mysterious “Babushka Lady” — a woman in a scarf who was the closest person filming Kennedy. She has never been found.
Interestingly, June Cobb is mentioned in at least one 20-page file in documents that President Biden refuses to release in full.
THE SPY THEORY
AMERICAN intelligence admitted they were watching Oswald before JFK was murdered — but took years to come clean on just how keenly.
Papers released in 2017 revealed that Oswald’s CIA screener was Reuben Efron, a US Army lieutenant colonel and a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant.
He even intercepted letters sent from Oswald to his mother.
Bizarrely, Efron was involved in a UFO sighting in 1955 when he was travelling by train in the Soviet Union with US Senator Richard Russell and a senior army officer.
The three reported seeing two “circular and unconventional aircraft resembling flying discs or flying saucers . . . taking off almost vertically, one minute apart.”
The men said Soviet railway staff lowered the train’s blinds and refused permission to look out of the windows, according to a report which was declassified in 2004.
WHAT IF HE HAD LIVED?
WARMONGERING Vice President Lyndon B Johnson does not become the next President, and American lives are saved as Kennedy withdraws 16,000 US personnel from Vietnam before the conflict escalates into a full-blown war.
Spooked by the Cuban missile crisis, JFK works with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to limit nuclear weapons and the Cold War ends early.
With no Vietnam or nukes as a touchstone, hippy culture doesn’t take root, and The Beatles fail to crack America.
Relations with the Soviet Union improve due to the bridge Kennedy has built with Khrushchev.
But racial unrest engulfs America as Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act faces fierce opposition in Congress.
The unrest sees pro-segregation Alabama Governor George Wallace become President after JFK’s second term.
Now a fading politician, JFK’s alleged romances with Marilyn Monroe and actress Marlene Dietrich are splashed across newspapers.
Humiliated, Jackie Kennedy dumps him.
Broken and in ill health, he is a shadow of his former self but still lives to old age.