The Girl in the Red Skirt: A Micro-Study of the Zapruder Film

 

 

By Kenneth Scearce

 

 

 

    In the Zapruder film, the earliest obvious reaction we can see to the commencement of the assassination is that of Rosemary Willis. Rosemary Willis was 10 years old when she witnessed President Kennedy’s murder. She can be seen in the Zapruder film after it resumes at frame 133, running along the south side of Elm Street, in a red skirt and a white, hooded jacket. During the first 5 seconds of the restarted film, Ms. Willis turns her gaze away from Kennedy towards the Book Depository, slows from a run, and stops abruptly. Her body language clearly strikes a pose of thunderstruck bewilderment while almost everyone else visible in the Zapruder film appears nonplussed.

    The two animations below were created by Gerda Dunckel from the Zapruder film (the copyright of which is owned by The Sixth Floor Museum). The animations run from the Zapruder film’s first frame, Z133 to Z221, ending just before the second shot was fired at Z222.

The first animation is a close-up focused on Ms. Willis:

The second animation is an extreme close-up of Ms. Willis:

    Initially, during frames 133—160 of the Zapruder film, Ms. Willis keeps time with the president’s Lincoln Continental. Soon, however, certainly by no later than Z161, Ms. Willis begins to slow down noticeably (her swinging arms have dropped by Z161 as she slows, compared to the height of her arms in previous frames). By Z197 (and probably earlier), Ms. Willis has come to a complete stop.  During this sequence, Ms. Willis is facing in the direction not of President Kennedy to her right front, but of the Book Depository to her right rear. This is very odd—unless something more significant than watching President Kennedy had caught her attention.

    Ms. Willis has explained, several times since the assassination, that she looked back at the Book Depository and stopped running because she was following the sound of the first shot. Although Ms. Willis’s unusual movements have been remarked on for more than 40 years as suggestive of the first shot’s timing, until now it has not been clear exactly when Ms. Willis’s reaction to the first shot began.

    Look closely. In frames Z133—Z143 Rosemary Willis turns her head quickly to her right, looking away from JFK and towards the direction of the Book Depository. This head movement is subtle (these images are close-ups of grainy film) but unmistakable. The animations above show that Ms. Willis turned her head quickly towards the Book Depository in the first ½ second of the restarted Zapruder film. This is strong evidence that the sound of the first shot occurred at some point prior to Z133.

    The pre-Zapruder film first shot hypothesis, first set forth in Washington Decoded  in March 2007 and then expanded upon in November 2008, dredges up old concerns about the Secret Service’s performance in Dallas. The consensus of many “Oswald did it alone” advocates (e.g., Gerald Posner, Dale Myers, Larry Sturdivan, and Vincent Bugliosi) is that the shooting took from 8.4 to 8.7 seconds. The pre-Z133 shot analysis criticizes that old consensus as inconsistent with the Zapruder film, which shows that the first shot must have fired before the film begins and, therefore, that the shooting must have taken more than 10 seconds (it took more than 11 seconds, if the first shot ricocheted off a horizontal traffic light mast between Oswald and Kennedy). The more time the agents in Dallas had to act, the more troubling seems their failure to act quickly.

    In the weeks after the assassination, the mainstream view of both the government and media was that the shooting happened very quickly. Reflecting this rapid-timing consensus, LIFE magazine’s 6 December 1963 issue included an essay analyzing the shooting sequence titled “End to Nagging Rumors: The Six Critical Seconds.” The initial consensus that the shooting was very rapid had the happy coincidence of exonerating the government from guilt for what it could not have prevented.

    But the early rapid timing hypothesis eventually became an albatross around officialdom’s neck. Although the Warren Commission established that the shooting could have been accomplished in six seconds or less, it failed to perceive just how strong the evidence was for both a first shot miss and the single bullet theory—which combined,  pointed to a timing considerably longer than six seconds.  While the Warren Commission allowed for the possibility of a longer timing, in popular understanding it was perceived to have adopted the early rapid-timing scenario. This scenario eventually became a meme of rejection of the official explanation, best captured by the caustic title of Josiah Thompson’s 1967 book, Six Seconds In Dallas.

    For 50 years, the idea that the shooting took only six seconds has struck most people as implausible.  The widespread belief (incorrect, but hard to dislodge from popular perception) that the government adopted an implausibly rapid shot timing has done much of the damage to the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone.

    It was not widely understood until the HSCA’s work 15 years after the assassination that the “six seconds” timing was clearly wrong and that the shooting took longer.  But even in the months just after the assassination, questions about the Secret Service’s alertness in Dallas raised doubt about a rapid timing. While putting up a stoic public front, Mrs. Kennedy complained bitterly to her secretary that Secret Service Agent William Greer (the driver of JFK’s limousine) “might just as well have been Miss Shaw!”, her children’s governess. In December 1963, muckraking columnist Drew Pearson publicized Washington whispers that several agents in the Secret Service follow-up car had been drinking into the early hours of November 22, perhaps sapping their alertness. Senator Ralph Yarborough—who had witnessed the assassination from two cars behind Kennedy—wrote “reluctantly” that “all of the Secret Service men seemed to me to respond very slowly, with no more than a puzzled look” and lamented “the lack of motion, excitement, or apparent visible knowledge by the Secret Service men, that anything so dreadful was happening.” “Knowing something of the training that combat infantrymen and Marines receive,” Yarborough said, “I am amazed at the lack of instantaneous response by the Secret Service, when the rifle fire began.” The perception of many witnesses to the assassination was that the event did not happen so rapidly as to exonerate the Secret Service.

    Nearly all of the hundreds of witnesses to the assassination interpreted the first shot’s sound as non-threatening. Many thought the sound was a firecracker:  disrespectful, but not dangerous. Others thought the sound was a motorcycle backfire; those in the motorcade had become habituated to that frequent, loud “pop.” Still others thought the sound might be a tire blowout—not a worrisome sound given the motorcade’s slow speed. But a handful said they thought the sound was ominous. Among these few were Governor John Connally and Senator Ralph Yarborough, both of whom later said that they had “immediately” recognized the sound as a gunshot.

    Why did so few recognize the first shot as a gunshot?  Why—in particular—did the Secret Service agents not interpret the first shot’s sound as dangerous?

    The best explanation is that because Oswald’s first shot missed, there was nothing visible to the agents to narrow the explanations for the loud noise from the many benign possibilities to the one deadly. Not until the second shot was there a gunshot-corroborating effect: Kennedy and Connally jerked convulsively, having both been struck by the same bullet. From that instant of relative clarity, the Secret Service agents had a mere five seconds before the headshot at Z313 to do something that might protect Kennedy.

    During those five seconds, the photographic record shows that Greer looked into the back seat, twice, while slowing the limousine down; Agents Paul Landis, John Ready, and George Hickey looked to rear, searching for the source of the seeming threat; and Agent Clint Hill literally leapt into action, jumping off the follow-up car and running for the presidential limousine. (Other agents may have made other vigorous movements, but these are the obvious ones we can see in the photographic record).

    Judged from the more appropriate reaction time—five seconds from the unambiguous second loud sound rather than 10 (or more) seconds from the very ambiguous first loud sound—the agents’ performance in Dallas was livelier than Yarborough, who had the benefit of hindsight, would allow. To expect more of the agents than what they did in the mere five seconds available is to engage in the worst kind of “Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

    One witness’s recollections go far in helping us understand why the Secret Service reacted as it did. Landis, standing on the right rear running board of the Secret Service car just behind Kennedy’s limousine, explained his thinking process during the shooting in exhaustive detail. He wrote that he “heard what sounded like the report of a high-powered rifle” and that “there was no question in my mind what it was.” Yet doubts immediately began to sap his initial certitude.  Landis elaborated that he looked around, “observed nothing unusual,” and “began to think to think the sound had been that of a firecracker.” Landis recalled that Agent John Ready, in front of Landis on the running board, asked him “What was it? A firecracker?” Landis answered, “I don’t know; I don’t see any smoke.” Landis then thought that the sound might have been a tire blowout; he looked at the right front tire of the president’s limousine and saw that it was intact. He could not see the right rear tire from his position. Landis then saw Kennedy’s head “split open” and realized that the first loud sound had been a gunshot, just as he initially thought.

    Landis’s summary of his complex thought process is surely one of the most reflective and honest statements by any person about the assassination. Landis got the “right answer” right away, but then began to have second thoughts. He doubted himself when he could not find corroboration for his initial conclusion. In the Muchmore film, spectators to the assassination do not react in apparent alarm to the shooting until after the third shot, which struck JFK in the head. The event was confusing to everyone, just as we should expect for an ambush in the midst of a noisy, happy public celebration, by a sniper who was striving to evade capture.

    But is it not fair to expect the Secret Service agents to have had perceptions as accurate as Connally and Yarborough, who said that they had recognized the first explosive sound as a gunshot “immediately?”

    Before we accept Yarborough’s and Connally’s claims at face value, we should review the photographic record. We can see in the Altgens photograph (taken at the same time  as Z255) that Yarborough (sitting next to Mrs. Johnson and LBJ) has not taken any protective action even two seconds after the second shot.  Connally had a quicker obvious reaction—he jerked his head left, then right within a single second (from Z149 to Z167) under the severe stress of hearing what he thought was a gunshot. But Connally sat in place for four seconds after beginning this noticeable reaction, before the second shot struck him. Neither man ducked out of the way or moved to protect anyone else (e.g., Mrs. Johnson or Mrs. Connally) prior to the second shot. Their own lack of immediate protective action reveals that they, too, were uncertain.

    When we compare the objective evidence with Connally’s and Yarborough’s subjective assertions about their “immediate” certitude that the first sound was a gunshot, we begin to appreciate that even the most accurate earwitnesses doubted themselves.  It is one thing to perceive something, and quite another to act on that perception.

    Because of emotionally-deadening repeated viewings, the Zapruder film’s gory fatal shot at Z313 is no longer the film’s most distressing moment. Now, the most dreadful image in the Zapruder film is that of President Kennedy breaking into a smile between Z160—Z180, which he does after Oswald has shot at him. Kennedy must have heard the loud cracking sound of the first shot—everyone else did.  He must have pondered its meaning. But from the spectrum of possible scenarios running from harmless to deadly, Kennedy chose a benign explanation.

    In that choice, Kennedy accidentally contributed to his death because he did not react to the first shot in a manner that would have alarmed his guards. If one thinks that a shooting might be under way, one then expects to see evidence of a bullet impact—or some other effect indicating danger—contemporaneous with the putative gunshot sound. When one does not, benign explanations become more and more likely with each successive moment of apparent safety. When we realize from the relatively long shot timing proven by Ms. Willis’s reaction (and other evidence) that many seconds went by after the missed first shot with nothing visibly corroborating that sound as threatening,  it makes sense that the agents did not leap instantly into action.

    Ms. Willis’s sudden head turn towards the Book Depository in the first ½ second of the Zapruder film is the film’s earliest unambiguous evidence that the first shot happened before Z133. With this new evidence of when the first shot was fired, we have extracted the last of the Zapruder film’s often elusive secrets. The film’s images imply that Oswald missed with his first shot and therefore took his time with second shot, in order to salvage his murderous plan. The film also refutes the unduly rapid “six seconds” timing that, to so many, has made multiple gunmen seem necessary. The Zapruder film shows that Oswald had more than enough time to accomplish his purpose without help.

    Over the past 50 years, ever more accurate examinations of the Zapruder film have sometimes haltingly, but nonetheless steadily pushed the first shot back, and then back yet further, in time. This silent movie has been calling out to us for five decades with a consistent message: earlier . . . no, still earlier. What the Zapruder film mutely cries out to us is the simple truth it has always told:  that Oswald acted alone.

©2013 by Kenneth Scearce

Comments

[R Kirkpatrick]

Mr Scearce's analysis is arguably supported by the Robert Croft photo of the president's limousine and passengers. It was taken across the street from Zapruder, at the time of frame Z160, according to Stephan Barber in "A New Look at the Zapruder Film." In the photograph Mrs Kennedy looks directly into Croft's camera. When I first saw this striking photo, I thought her face to be blank or frowning, a "microexpression" of her unhappiness at the ordeal of public political parading, which she was known to dislike. The Texas trip was the first of its kind she had attended in years. She had a smile riveted to her face most of the time in Dallas, no doubt to comply with her husband's wish that she be seen and admired by spectators. That required a lot of polite smiling to make it seem she was happy to be there, the unhappy lot of politicians' spouses. (In the limousine he had repeatedly told her not to wear dark glasses despite the harsh sunlight, that her face not be masked.)

The phony smile vanishes at Z160 in Croft's photo. Scearce's analysis prompts a look to the left side of the photo, showing Governor Connally's expression unmistakably as a frown. Unlike Mrs Kennedy, he was a political animal with every reason to be beaming in the company of the president of the United States.

In this "reading" of the photo, under the circumstances explained by Searce, the expressions on both Connally's and Mrs Kennedy's faces may express their unhappiness, not at parading, but that they are being shot at. Occulted by Mrs Kennedy is the president's profile; the visible part of his left cheek is clearly contracted. That may indicate the smile that Scearce suggests, but the Zapruder film is not clear enough to justify the observation. If the president is not smiling with relief that he has not been shot, the logical alternative is that, sharing the reaction of his wife and Connally at the rifle report, he was grimacing.

[David Wimp]

Rosemary Willis has been scrutinized to find evidence of an early shot. For some reason, they always ignore the Warren Commission testimony of her father Phil who said, in essence, that his startle reaction to the first shot made him snap the shutter on his famous slide five taken of the presidential limo. That should place the time of the first shot within a few tenths of a second at worst. The HSCA found the slide to have been taken at Zapruder frame 202. I checked this out and found that, due to fortuitous circumstances, this is an easy call and it is definitely Z202. This is more than three seconds after the author is trying to place the first shot. What I did not realize until not too long ago is that the two Willises together make a compelling argument for a first shot in the late 190's.
The slide is taken at frame Z202. In that frame Rosemary is still looking back about the same as she has been except that she has turned her head very slightly to her left. Z203 is badly blurred but in Z204 she has definitely turned her head back to her right. Her right foot comes down for the last time between frames Z198 and Z200 so in a space of no more than 1/3 of a second, Rosemary stops and looks back and her father takes the photo he said was the result of a startle reaction to the first shot. This is two seconds after Gerald Posner said Rosemary showed the shot occurred and more than three seconds after the current author. I think Rosemary stopped independently of the gunshot and did so because she was not going to run forever. She looked back because of the shot.

http://joliraja.com/PhilAndRosemary/VPAni.html

[Marcel]

Secret Service agent in charge, Forrest Sorrels, who was riding in the car directly in front of the presidential limousine, said he was adamant that he heard two shots come from his direct right just as he passed the grassy knoll. When he heard they found a rifle and three shells in the TSBD, he thought he might have been mistaken about hearing the shots from his right. He let his gut instinct, as well as his training and experience with hearing gunfire, be overruled by the "evidence" that was found on the sixth floor.

[Pat]

This is quite a leap--using this video to state absolutely Oswald was the lone gunman from the TSBD 6th floor. Almost as ridiculous as the conviction just because the police and onlookers rushed up the grassy knoll therefore it is absolute proof there was a shooter behind the fence.
As a parent I tell my ten year old when we are in crowded public areas do not stray far and always stay where I can see you. Perhaps Rosemary did not want to keep running away from her father and mother? All you can really conclude from this video is that at Z200-Z205 she comes to a stop and then turns back sharply at around Z211. Was the rest of what she said on the record intentionally ignored . . . she saw a man behind the wall on the grassy knoll and that she witnessed someone pick up a piece of JFK's skull on the grass area to the left of the president's car? How does that happen if the shot comes from TSBD 6th floor from behind? Jackie reaching to the right rear of the trunk grabbing a piece of husband's skull pretty much clinches it ... blowout was out the back of the skull. You can't edit out that part of the film. Personally I see the shot from the parking lot up above the southern western knoll area; or a potential shot from the County Courts Building roof using a different missile than the 6.5 mm Carcano. Those two scenarios are much easier to swallow than the 6th floor of the TSBD.

[Richard Reiman]

After watching Mr. Holland's presentation in Kansas City I can only endorse his interpretation of the meaning of Rosemary Willis's reaction to the first shot, namely that she was reacting to a shot that happened three or more seconds earlier, so much earlier in fact that it occurred before Zapruder resumed shooting his camera.
Most interpretations of Willis's reaction seem to conclude that she turned to look back at the Depository building almost instantaneously after hearing the shot. If this were true, then Oswald would not have much more than the six seconds posited in the 1960s as the time frame of the three shots. But common sense suggests otherwise. We know that Willis was reacting to a loud noise (probably the shot), because she said so in the 1980s. It seems probable that she began running beside the presidential vehicle either before the first shot was fired or before it registered in people's attention. She might have decided to run beside the car before it even appeared on Elm Street, or she might have decided as the car was moving toward her position. Either way her decision to run predated the first shot.
Now do this thought experiment: If someone was concentrating on doing something, like traveling down a basketball court in order to sink a basket, and seconds before reaching a position to aim the ball, a frighteningly loud loud noise erupts in the stands. The player will hear the sound, wonder about it, but will he really stop completing the task that he is then at work in doing? No. Chances are he will continue as if the noise was nothing serious (a firecracker perhaps), so as not to disrupt his plan or purpose. After the mission has been completed (whether the basketball missed or was sunk), the player will then look to the stands to resolve the interesting question which could now be attended to: what is going on in the stands? I submit that this was probably the explanation for why Willis's reaction is thoroughly consistent with the theory that she was reacting to the first of three shots, but a shot that was much earlier than most writers (but not Holland) suggests. She heard the shot but unlike the Secret Service agents, who appear to be looking for evidence of the shot before Willis reacts, she was not going to stop her run to check it out until the car was no longer paralleling her running. She reacted late to something of interest (a loud report from behind), but not as interesting to the girl as running beside the Kennedy's for as long as she could.

[Jim Bilenda]

I agree that it's quite a reach to say that because of a longer shot sequence it proves Oswald as the lone assassin. The author is twisting the facts to fit a pre-conceived idea.

[Michael Lee]

You have convinced me that the shooting time was more than six seconds. However, in my opinion this does not imply that Oswald was a lone shooter. Regarding all other aspects of this composition, this is an incredibly well-written piece. The arrangement of ideas and the words chosen to represent those ideas are exemplary. Kudos to you, sir. I enjoyed the read very much.

[Keith Geddes]

If Oswald was such a capable shot, why would he hit suspended traffic lights? And if you accept a shot at frame 133, then there were 4 shots?