The Motorcade and the Shots

The Speed of the Presidential Car

After the assassination, reports that the President's car had stopped after the first shot was fired were interpreted in some quarters as evidence that the driver believed that the shot came from somewhere in front of the car. The Warren Report dismissed the allegation:

The Presidential car did not stop or almost come to a complete halt after the firing of the first shot or any other shots. The driver, Special Agent William R. Greer, has testified that he accelerated the car after what was probably the second shot. Motion pictures of the scene show that the car slowed down momentarily after the shot that struck the President in the head and then speeded up rapidly.

(WR 641)

This passage is found under "Rumors and Speculations," an appendix to the Warren Report which the Commission used as a graveyard for the claims of various early critics of the lone-assassin theory. One such critic, Mark Lane, testified on March 4, 1964 that he believed that the car had come to a halt when the shooting began, on the basis of statements by

... various witnesses, including Mr. Chaney, a motorcycle policeman, Miss Woodward, who was one of the closest witnesses to the President at the time that he was shot, and others. I think that is ... conceded by almost everyone, that the automobile came to — almost came to a complete halt after the first shot....

(2H 45)

According to Lane, reporter Mary Woodward had corroborated, in a telephone conversation, the statement in her story in the Dallas Morning News of November 23, 1963 that "instead of speeding up ... the car came to a halt." (2H 43)

Lane's allegation about Chaney is corroborated in the testimony of another motorcycle officer, M. L. Baker. Baker testified on March 24, 1964 that his fellow officer, James Chaney, had told him:

He was on the right rear of the car or to the side, and then at the time the chief of police, he didn't know anything about this, and he moved up and told him, and then that was during the time that the Secret Service men were trying to get in the car, and at the time, after the shooting, from the time the first shot rang out, the car stopped completely, pulled to the left and stopped. ... Mr. Truly was standing out there, he said it stopped. Several officers said it stopped completely.

(3H 266)

When he testified on March 24, 1964, Roy Truly corroborated Baker's statement.

Truly: I saw the President's car swerve to the left and stop somewheres down in this area....

Belin: When you saw the President's car seem to stop, how long did it appear to stop?

Truly: It would be hard to say over a second or two or something like that. I didn't see — I just saw it stop. I don't know. I didn't see it start up. ... The crowd in front of me kind of congealed ... and I lost sight of it. (3H 221)

Various other witnesses said that the car had come to a complete stop or almost a standstill when the noise of the shot was heard — Senator Ralph Yarborough (7H 440), for example, and Mrs. Earle Cabell (7H 487), among others. Policeman Earle V. Brown, who was stationed on the triple overpass farther down Elm Street, testified on April 7, 1964 that:

Brown: Actually, the first I noticed the car was when it stopped. ... After it made the turn and when the shots were fired, it stopped.

Ball: Did it come to a complete stop?

Brown: That, I couldn't swear to.

Ball: It appeared to be slowed down some?

Brown: Yes; slowed down.

(6H 233)

In sum, at least seven eyewitnesses to the assassination indicated that the President's car had come to a complete stop, or what was tantamount to a stop. Two of those witnesses (James Chaney and Mary Woodward) were not asked to testify before the Commission on this or on other observations of some importance reported to the Commission as hearsay (see, for example, 2H 43-45 and CE 2084). Apparently the witnesses were mistaken in remembering that the car had stopped; motion pictures, according to the Commission, contradicted them. Yet it seems clear from the way in which counsel led witnesses that the Commission had considerable resistance to inferences which might be drawn from evidence that the car had stopped at the first shot. "Stopped" was transformed into "seemed to stop" and then into "slowed down." Such leading of witnesses, which would have been challenged in a courtroom, was facilitated by the Commission's closed hearings, to which there was only one exception, by request of the witness concerned. (2H 33)

The films of the assassination have not been released for public showing, although it is possible to see the most important one, the Zapruder film — taken by amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder — at the National Archives. That film does not seem to support the witnesses who said that the car stopped dead. This being so, it is baffling that counsel conducted the questioning somewhat improperly and why the Report presents this evidence with some lack of impartiality (in a passage failing to indicate that some seven witnesses mistakenly believed that the car had stopped at the first shot). Yet in dismissing an allegation related to the source of the first shot, the same passage seemingly yields ground on the source of the third. The statement that "the car slowed down momentarily after the shot that struck the President in the head" is consistent with other evidence, to be discussed later, that the fatal shot came not from the Texas School Book Depository, as the Report maintains, but from a point in front of the car and to its right.

The Mark on the Curb and the Cut on...