by Jim Marrs
Danny G. Arce, who worked in the Depository, also was standing near Truly and Campbell. He told the Warren Commission shots “came from the railroad tracks to the west of the Texas School Book Depository.” Truly said after the initial explosion, everything seemed frozen. Then there were two more explosions, and he realized that shots were being fired. He saw the president’s car come to a stop.
Another Depository employee saw a bullet hit the street at the time of the first shot. Virgie Rachley (by the time of her Warren Commission testimony she had married and was Mrs. Donald Baker) was a bookkeeper at the Depository. She and other workers were standing near Truly and Campbell in front of the Depository facing Elm Street. She told the Warren Commission:
After he passed us, then we heard a noise and I thought it was firecrackers because I saw a shot or something hit the pavement. . . . It looked just like you could see the sparks from it and I just thought it was a firecracker and I was thinking that . . . somebody was fixing to get in a lot of trouble and we thought the kids or whoever threw it were down below or standing near the underpass or back up here by the sign.
Mrs. Baker told Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler that the stray bullet struck the middle of the southernmost lane on Elm Street just behind the presidential limousine.
Truly said the crowd around him began to surge backward in panic. He became separated from Campbell and quickly found himself back on the steps of the Depository. Moments later a motorcycle policeman pushed past him and ran into the Depository. Truly caught up with him in the lobby and they moved toward their encounter with a Depository employee—Lee Harvey Oswald.
Campbell ran with many others to where he believed the shots had come from, “near the railroad tracks located over the viaduct on Elm Street.”
Mary E. Woodward, a staff writer for the Dallas Morning News, had gone to Dealey Plaza with four coworkers to get a look at the president while they ate lunch. As the limousine passed, she and another writer who had seen Kennedy during the final weeks of the 1960 campaign commented on how relaxed and robust he appeared. Standing near the Stemmons Freeway sign located down the slope to the west of the Depository, Woodward heard a “horrible, ear-shattering noise” coming from behind them and to their right [the Grassy Knoll]. She thought it was some sort of joke, a car backfiring perhaps.
She saw both the president and Mrs. Kennedy look around as if they, too, had heard the sound. The presidential limousine came to a halt. Then Woodward heard two more shots, coming close together, and the president slumped down in the car. A woman nearby began weeping and cried, “They’ve shot him!” Woodward was never questioned by the Warren Commission.
Gloria Calvery and Karen Westbrook, both employees of a publishing firm with offices in the Depository building, had gone out during lunch to see the president. They were standing with others almost halfway between the corner of Elm and Houston and the Triple Underpass. Both heard the first blast and saw Kennedy struck by a bullet just as the presidential limousine got directly in front of their position. Yet, in their March 1964 statements to the FBI, neither was simply asked about the origin of the shots nor were they asked to testify to the Warren Commission.
A. J. Millican, a coworker of Howard Brennan’s, had no difficulty in determining where the shots came from. Millican told authorities that day he was standing on the north side of Elm Street about halfway between Houston and the Triple Underpass, which was between the Depository and the Grassy Knoll. He said he noticed “a truck from Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop” park near the Depository, then drive off about five or ten minutes before the president arrived. He told sheriff’s deputies:
Just after the President’s car passed, I heard three shots from up toward Elm right by the Book Depository Building, and then immediately I heard two more shots come from the arcade between the Book Store and the Underpass, then three more shots came from the same direction only sounded further back. It sounded approximately like a .45 automatic, or a high-powered rifle.
Millican, who provided perhaps one of the clearest descriptions of the firing sequence and the location of the shots, was never interviewed by or called to testify to the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He died in 1986, apparently having never been questioned by anyone. His only testament was a sheriff’s deposition made that day.
However, his supervisor, Sandy Speaker, said his entire work crew was there and they all corroborated Millican’s story. In an interview with this author, Speaker said:
I was the superintendent of construction for the Republic Bank project at the time. Millican and also Howard Brennan were working for me. We were fabricating plumbing piping for the Republic Bank Building under construction at the west end of Pacific Street [north of the Texas School Book Depository]. Millican and the whole crew had knocked off for lunch and were by the Depository building to watch the parade. I hadn’t gotten there when [the motorcade] passed. I was less than a half-block away and heard the shots. I heard at least five shots and they came from different locations. I was a combat Marine with the First Marine Division in World War II, hand-to-hand combat, missions behind enemy lines, and I know what I am talking about. I’ve said for years there were more than three shots fired.
John A. Chism, along with his wife and three-year-old son, were near Millican, standing directly in front of the Stemmons Freeway sign. They said the first shots were fired just as the president got in front of them. They saw Kennedy slump to the left and into his wife’s arms. Mrs. Chism told Dallas authorities that day, “And then there was a second shot that I heard, after the President’s wife had pulled him down in the seat. It came from what I thought was behind us [the Grassy Knoll] and I looked but I couldn’t see anything.”
Chism also looked behind him at the sound of the shots, then saw “the motorcade beginning to speed up.”
Jean Newman was a twenty-one-year-old manufacturing company employee who came to view the motorcade in Dealey Plaza. She told sheriff’s deputies she was standing between the Stemmons Freeway sign and the Book Depository when the shots were fired. She stated, “The first impression I had was that the shots came from my right.” To her right was the Grassy Knoll.
Also near the Stemmons Freeway sign were two of the most suspicious characters in Dealey Plaza that day. Despite their activities and the fact that both were captured in several photographs made at the time, this pair was never mentioned publicly until the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation in the late 1970s.
Two Suspicious Men
About the time that Kennedy was first hit by a bullet, two men standing near each other on the north sidewalk of Elm Street acted most strangely—one began pumping a black umbrella while the other waved his right arm high in the air. These and subsequent actions by this pair aroused the suspicions of researchers over the years, yet the initial federal investigation ignored both men. Their activities are known only through analysis of assassination photographs.
As Kennedy’s limousine began the gentle descent into Dealey Plaza, a man can be seen standing near the street-side edge of the Stemmons Freeway sign holding an open umbrella. He holds the umbrella in a normal fashion and the top of the umbrella almost reaches the bottom of the sign.
In photos taken minutes before Kennedy’s arrival, the umbrella is closed and, immediately after the shooting, pictures show the umbrella was closed again. The man’s umbrella was open only during the shooting sequence. Furthermore, as seen in the Zapruder film, once Kennedy is exactly opposite the man with the umbrella, it was pumped almost two feet into the air, twirled, and then lowered.
At the same time, the second man—in photos he appears to be dark complected, perhaps black or Hispanic—raised his right hand into the air, possibly making a fist. This man was located on the outer edge of the Elm Street sidewalk opposite the umbrella man, who was on the inner edge.
The man with the open umbrella was the only person in Dealey Plaza with an open umbrella. Under the warm Texas sun, there was no reas
on to carry an open umbrella at that time.
Two prominent theories have emerged concerning the “umbrella man” and his activities that day. Assassination researcher Robert Cutler long maintained that the umbrella may have been a sophisticated weapon that fired a dart or “flechette” filled with a paralyzing agent. Cutler’s theory is supported by the 1975 testimony of a CIA weapons developer who told the Senate Intelligence Committee that just such an umbrella weapon was in the hands of the spy agency in 1963.
Charles Senseney, who developed weaponry for the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland, described a dart-firing weapon he developed as looking like an umbrella. He said the dart gun was silent in operation and fired through the webbing when the umbrella was open. Senseney said the CIA had ordered about fifty such dart weapons and that they were operational in 1963.
In his 1970 book, Cutler theorized that the umbrella was used to fire a paralyzing dart into Kennedy immobilizing him for marksmen with rifles. He claims this theory accounts for the small puncture wound in Kennedy’s throat described by Dallas doctors, but which was altered by the time of the Bethesda autopsy. According to Cutler, this dart explains Kennedy’s lack of motion during the shooting sequence. Since such a weapon existed and since the actions of both Kennedy and the “umbrella man” were consistent with the operation of such a weapon, Cutler’s theory cannot be summarily dismissed. However, the use of such an exotic and questionably effective weapon in such a momentous event stretches credulity.
Most assassination researchers prefer the alternative theory that both of these suspicious men may have been providing visual signals to hidden gunmen. This theory suggests that Kennedy was killed by a crossfire coordinated by radiomen. The two men, who were among the closest bystanders to the president when he was first struck, gave signals indicating that he was not fatally hit and therefore more shots were required.
A fascinating twist on this latter theory came from researcher Gary Shaw, who said the two men may have been providing Kennedy with a last-second sight of who was responsible for his death. Shaw recalled that throughout the planning of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, CIA officers had promised an “umbrella” of air protection of the Cuban invaders. This “umbrella” failed to materialize because Kennedy refused to authorize further US military support for the invasion. According to Shaw’s theory, the man with the open umbrella symbolized the promise of an air-support “umbrella” while the dark-complected man may have been one of the anti-Castro Cuban leaders known to Kennedy. Thus, in the last seconds of his life, Kennedy may have seen the open umbrella and the face of a Cuban he knew was involved in the Bay of Pigs and realized who was participating in his death.
But this is all speculation. The existence of the “umbrella man” and the dark-complected man is fact. Even their activities after the assassination bear study. While virtually everyone in Dealey Plaza was moved to action by the assassination—either falling to the ground for cover or moving toward the Grassy Knoll—these two men sat down beside each other on the north sidewalk of Elm Street.
Here the dark-complected man appears to put a walkie-talkie to his mouth. In a photograph taken by Jim Towner, what seems to be an antenna can be seen jutting out from behind the man’s head while his right hand holds some object to his face.
Several photos taken in the seconds following the assassination show both of these men sitting together on the Elm Street sidewalk. Moments later, the man with the umbrella gets up, takes one last look toward the motorcade still passing under the Triple Underpass, and begins walking east in the direction of the Depository. The dark-complected man saunters toward the Triple Underpass passing people rushing up the Grassy Knoll. He can be seen stuffing some object—the walkie-talkie?—into the back of his pants.
Despite the suspicious actions of these two men, there is no evidence that the FBI or the Warren Commission made any effort to identify or locate them. Officially they did not exist. Yet over the years, this pair became the focal point of criticism by private researchers. Researchers claimed the lack of investigation of these men indicated the shallowness of the government probes into the assassination.
Once the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed in the mid-1970s, researchers urged an investigation of both men. The committee finally released a photograph of the “umbrella man” to the news media and urged anyone with knowledge of the man to come forward.
Coincidentally—if it was a coincidence—the “umbrella man” suddenly was identified a few weeks after this national appeal. In August 1978, an anonymous telephone caller told researcher Penn Jones Jr. that the man with the umbrella was a former Dallas insurance salesman named Louis Steven Witt. Jones contacted some local newsmen, including this author, and together they confronted Witt, who then was working as a warehouse manager. Witt refused to talk with newsmen but acknowledged that he was in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was killed.
Jones later wrote, “I felt the man had been coached. He would answer no questions and pointedly invited us to leave. His only positive statement, which seemed to come very quickly, was that if subpoenaed, he was willing to appear before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in Washington.”
Witt indeed appeared before the committee during its public testimony. His story was comic relief compared to the intense scrutiny of witnesses like Marina Oswald and Warren Commission critics. His story was facile and improbable and when the umbrella that Witt claimed was the same one he had had in Dealey Plaza in 1963 was displayed, it suddenly turned wrong-side out, prompting one committee member to quip, “I hope that’s not a weapon.”
Witt told the committee that on the spur of the moment, he grabbed a large black umbrella and went to Dealey Plaza to heckle Kennedy. He claimed that someone had told him that an open umbrella would rile Kennedy. While Witt offered no further explanation of how his umbrella could heckle the president, committee members speculated that the umbrella in some way referred to the pro-German sympathies of Kennedy’s father while serving as US ambassador to Britain just prior to World War II. They said the umbrella may have symbolized the appeasement policies of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who always carried an umbrella.
According to Witt:
I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat down . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me. . . . My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the umbrella’s being open.
Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt’s statements were an accurate account of the actions of the “umbrella man” who stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-the-head position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed, affording him a full view of the limousine.
Witt’s bizarre story—unsubstantiated and totally at odds with the actions of the man in the photographs—resulted in few researchers accepting Louis Steven Witt as the true “umbrella man.”
And there continues to be no official accounting for the dark-complected man who appears to have been talking on a radio moments after the assassination. The House committee failed to identify or locate this man and Witt claimed he had no recollection of such a person, despite photographs that seem to show the “umbrella man” talking with the dark man. Witt claimed only to recall that a “Negro man” sat down near him and kept repeating, “They done shot them folks.”
Interestingly, one of the committee attorneys asked Witt specifically if he recalled seeing the man with a walkie-talkie, although officially no one has ever admitted the possibility of radios in use in Dealey Plaza.
These two men remain among the mystery people of Dealey Plaza.
Meanwhile, others in the crowd continued to give accounts that differed with the later government pronouncements. Dolores Kounas was a clerk-typist with McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, which had offices on the third floor of the Depository building. She, along with two other McGraw-Hill employees, was standing just west of the Depository across Elm Street from Millican and the Chisms. She, too, thought the first shot was a firecracker, but after hearing a second shot and seeing people fall to the ground, she realized they were shots. She later told the FBI:
Although I was across the street from the Depository building and was looking in the direction of the building as the motorcade passed and following the shots, I did not look up at the building as I had thought the shots came from a westerly direction in the vicinity of the viaduct.
Forty-four-year-old James Altgens, a photographer for the Associated Press in Dallas, arrived in Dealey Plaza early. He had been assigned to get a picture of Kennedy as he passed through downtown Dallas and decided the west end of Dealey Plaza would provide an excellent opportunity to catch the president with the downtown buildings in the background. However, when Altgens tried to station himself on the Triple Underpass, he was shooed away by a Dallas policeman, who told him it was railroad property and only railroad employees were allowed there.
So Altgens walked around by the Depository, then on to the intersection of Main and Houston, where he took a photo as the president passed. He then ran farther into the plaza, where he made several photographs from the south curb of Elm as the motorcade approached from Houston.
In the May 24, 1964, issue of the New York Herald Tribune magazine section, there was an article regarding Altgens’s photograph. This article raised a pertinent question:
Isn’t it odd that J. W. Altgens, a veteran Associated Press photographer in Dallas, who took a picture of the Kennedy assassination—one of the witnesses close enough to see the President shot and able to describe second-by-second what happened—has been questioned neither by the FBI nor the Warren Commission?