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Forensic journal article on JFK killing supports grassy knoll shots

By Robert Barr, Associated Press, 3/26/2001 16:10

LONDON (AP) Sounds heard on police recordings from the killing of President Kennedy are consistent with a shot being fired from Dallas' famed grassy knoll, according to a new scientific article.

Recordings of police radio traffic at the time of the 1963 assassination include loud noises which some investigators believe were gunfire. There has also been persistent speculation about the possibility that someone fired from the knoll in front of the president, instead of the sixth-floor window behind him used by Lee Harvey Oswald, identified by the Warren Commission as the sole assassin.

''Whatever their origin, the gunshot-like sounds occur exactly synchronous with the shooting,'' says the author, D.B. Thomas, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Weslaco, Texas.

His article was published in the Science & Justice, the journal of Britain's Forensic Science Society.

Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963, as his motorcade wound past Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

The 1964 report by an official commission headed by Earl Warren, then chief justice of the Supreme Court, concluded at least two shots were fired at Kennedy, both by Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository building, located behind the motorcade.

The commission rejected the suggestion that anyone other than Oswald had fired. ''There is no credible evidence that the shots were fired from the Triple Underpass, ahead of the motorcade, or from any other location,'' the Warren Commission said. The underpass is near the grassy knoll.

The police recordings have a number of loud noises which might be identified as gunfire. Thomas says there are five sounds ''that have the acoustic waveform of Dealey Plaza gunfire.''

''One of the sounds matches the echo pattern of a test shot fired from the grassy knoll,'' he wrote.

Thomas' analysis is the latest done on the recorded police radio transmissions. The transmissions were on two channels: One, for routine calls, was preserved on a sound-activated Dictaphone belt. A second frequency, dedicated to the motorcade, was recorded on a sound-activated disc machine, Thomas wrote.

In 1978, the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations hired a Massachusetts agency to analyze the police recordings. Specialists fired test shots in Dealey Plaza, with 36 microphones placed in various locations to examine the possibility of a shot from the knoll.

The committee concluded that sounds heard on an open microphone, apparently on a police motorcycle, could be shots from the grassy knoll.

The Computer Sciences Department of City University, New York, also examined the recordings and concluded the sound could be a shot.

In 1980, the Justice Department asked the National Research Council to analyze the data again. That review concluded there was a 78 percent probability that at least one of the bangs was a gunshot from the knoll. But the review also concluded the suspect noises were a minute later than the time Kennedy was shot.

Thomas argues the National Research Council reached that conclusion because it erred in its attempts to synchronize the two police recordings.

He says the council used a phrase ''hold everything secure'' which is heard on both tapes to synchronize the timing of events. But he said that phrase was a poor marker because problems with one of the tapes make it unclear.

Thomas worked from another, clearer bit of talk from Dallas patrolman S.Q. Bellah, who is heard asking: ''You want me to hold this traffic on Stemmons until we find out something, or let it go?''

That phrase appears 180 seconds after the suspected shots on one recording, and 171 seconds later on the other recording. Allowing for a difference in tape speed of 5 percent, Thomas says the recordings match.

Thomas could not be reached for comment at his office Monday.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Answers

There are two points that need to be considered here.

First is that there's no evidence that Oswald was on the 6th floor during the shooting. He was seen in a lower level employee lunch room, but not on the stairs going up to the 6th floor. My own conclusion is that he was part of the conspiracy, but was not one of the shooters from the School Book Depository. Maybe he was a "lookout" and helped get the man or men into the building. Some evidence indicates there were two people shooting from the 6th floor.

Second, a good documentary recently showed that there could have been a shooter in the storm sewer system right next to where the limo came by. There is an opening in the curb there to allow rain water to be carried off through a pipe system to where it empties in a culvert on the other side of the overpass. The pipe is large enough for a man to crawl through and the area at the curb is roomy enough for a shooter to take a clear shot, then escape back down the pipe system. Computer analysis indicates that one of the head shots came from below the level of the car, angling upwards. That would fit the sewer location.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001