Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Newman said some sheriff’s deputies were waiting for them after the TV interview and took them to the sheriff’s office, where they joined other Dealey Plaza witnesses who were held for about six hours.

  He said that on Sunday, November 24, some FBI agents came to their home and “took down what we said.” That was the last contact the Newmans had with federal authorities. He said:

  I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get called to testify to the Warren Commission. Someone told me that the reason I wasn’t asked to testify was that I was talking about shots from someplace other than the Depository building. . . . I’ve already been corrected several times that I was wrong about several things and that there are experts who know more about it than I do. But it’s real hard for me to believe that it was the act of one lone individual. I’ve gotten the feeling over the years that people in Washington know what really happened but it’s never been divulged. But then I have no evidence to that.

  Near the Newmans was Cheryl McKinnon, who later became a reporter for the San Diego Star News. In 1983, she wrote of her experience:

  On Nov. 22, 1963, I stood, along with hundreds of others, on the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza, waiting for just one thing—a chance to see, even just for a moment, that magical person, the President, John F. Kennedy. . . . As a journalism major in school, my plans were to write about my experiences as a class project. . . . As we stood watching the motorcade turn onto Elm Street, I tried to grasp every tiny detail of both President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy. “How happy they look,” I thought. Suddenly three shots in rapid succession rang out. Myself and dozens of others standing nearby turned in horror toward the back of the Grassy Knoll where it seemed the sounds had originated. Puffs of white smoke still hung in the air in small patches. But no one was visible. . . . I tried to maintain the faith with my government. I have read the Warren Commission Report in its entirety and dozens of other books as well. I am sorry to say that the only thing I am absolutely sure of today is that at least two of the shots fired that day in Dealey Plaza came from behind where I stood on the Knoll, not from the book Depository. . . . I have never quite had the same faith and trust in those that lead us as I did before.

  Sitting on the steps leading to the top of the Grassy Knoll at the time of the assassination was Emmett J. Hudson, one of the groundskeepers of Dealey Plaza. With Hudson were two other men; neither apparently was ever identified by the federal investigations. In his Warren Commission testimony, Hudson recalled:

  Well, there was a young fellow, oh, I would judge his age about in his late twenties. He said he had been looking for a place to park . . . he finally [had] just taken a place over there in one of them parking lots, and he came on down there and said he worked over there on Industrial and me and him both just sat down there on those steps. When the motorcade turned off of Houston onto Elm, we got up and stood up, me and him both . . . and so the first shot rung out and, of course, I didn’t realize it was a shot . . . the motorcade had done got further on down Elm. . . . I happened to be looking right at him when that bullet hit him—the second shot. . . . It looked like it hit him somewhere along about a little bit behind the ear and a little above the ear [on the right-hand side of his head]. . . . This young fellow that was . . . standing there with me . . . he says, “Lay down, mister, somebody is shooting the President.” . . . He kept on repeating, “Lay down,” so he was already laying down one way on the sidewalk, so I just laid down over on the ground and resting my arm on the ground . . . when that third shot rung out. . . . You could tell the shot was coming from above and kind of behind.

  In his testimony, Hudson plainly tried to tell Commission attorney Liebeler that the shots came “from above and kind of behind” him, the location of the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll. Liebeler led Hudson, saying, “And that would fit in with the Texas School Book Depository, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” replied an agreeable Hudson. Liebeler then asked Hudson if he saw anyone standing in the area with a rifle “on a grassy spot up there near where you were standing or on the overpass or any place else?”

  Hudson replied, “I never seen anyone with a gun up there except the patrols.”

  Asked Liebeler, “The policemen?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Hudson.

  In an affidavit signed the day of the assassination, Hudson was even more specific as to where shots came from. He stated, “The shots that I heard definitely came from behind and above me.”

  Sitting near the midway point of the steps leading to the top of the Grassy Knoll, a location “behind and above” would be the exact position of the easternmost leg of the wooden picket fence.

  Hudson said he did not know the young man who sat with him and, apparently, the federal authorities were never able to locate him.

  The third man appears behind Hudson in photographs taken in the seconds during which the head shot occurs. He, too, has been unidentified but, perhaps, is the explanation for one of the enduring assassination mysteries.

  The Black Dog Man

  In at least two photographs taken during the assassination by separate photographers, a human figure is visible behind a low retaining wall to the south of the Grassy Knoll pergola just behind Zapruder’s position. In photos made seconds later, this figure has disappeared, leading many assassination researchers to suspect that this figure may have been an assassin. This suspicion was heightened when the House Select Committee on Assassinations had photographs of the figure computer enhanced and concluded that it indeed was that of a person, who appeared to be holding a long object.

  With no known identity, this person was dubbed the “black dog man” by researchers and committee staffers because in a photo taken by Phil Willis the figure resembles a black dog sitting on its haunches atop the wall. Closer examination of the photos, however, indicates the figure is most likely farther back from the retaining wall. And this may provide a partial answer to the figure’s identity.

  In photos of the assassination, a third man can be seen joining Hudson and his companion on the steps of the Grassy Knoll just as the presidential limousine arrives opposite them on Elm Street. Within scant seconds of the fatal head shot, the third man lifts his left foot and within seconds has disappeared back up the steps.

  Life magazine, in its November 24, 1967, issue, displays the photographs of Hugh Betzner and Phil Willis and comments:

  A dark shape is seen in both pictures on the slope—which has become famous as the “Grassy Knoll”—to the left of the Stemmons Freeway sign and half hidden by a concrete wall. By photogrammetry Itek has verified it as the figure of a man. Previously published photographs, taken at the moment of the fatal head shot, show that by then he had joined two men seen in Willis’ picture standing behind a lamppost at left. There is no evidence to indicate he was anything more than an onlooker.

  So the riddle of the “black dog man” appeared solved. It was the figure of a man seen from waist up as he stood or walked on the sidewalk behind the retaining wall approaching the top of the steps. Yet today many assassination researchers still deny it was the man who joined Hudson.

  Seconds later—as determined in photographs—the unidentified man joined Hudson and companion, who were apparently unaware of the man behind them, then turned and ran back up the steps immediately after the head shot.

  However, this explanation does not exonerate the third man as simply an “onlooker.” Who was he? Where did he come from? What did he see both before and after he joined the two men on the steps? And why did he turn and race back up the steps (he was gone within seconds) at a time when everyone else in Dealey Plaza was stationary with shock?

  The federal investigations could provide no answers to these questions, so in the minds of some researchers, the “black dog man” joins the ranks of suspicious persons in Dealey Plaza.

  Almost immediately after the final shot was fired, many people—including policemen, sheriff’s deputies, and spectators—began rushing toward the Grassy Kno
ll.

  Dallas motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis thought the shots had come from the Triple Underpass because “I had got splattered, with blood [and] I was just a little back and left of Mrs. Kennedy, but I didn’t know.”

  Hargis stopped his motorcycle on the south side of Elm and ran up the Grassy Knoll to where the concrete wall of the Triple Underpass connected with the wooden picket fence on the knoll. Peering over the wall, Hargis looked at the crowd standing on the Underpass. Asked if he saw anything out of the ordinary, Hargis told the Warren Commission, “No, I didn’t. That is what got me.”

  Hargis returned to his still-running motorcycle and rode through the Triple Underpass. He told the commission, “I couldn’t see anything that was of a suspicious nature, so I came back to the Texas School Book Depository. At that time it seemed like the activity was centered around the . . . Depository.”

  Seymour Weitzman was a college graduate serving as a deputy constable of Dallas County. He had been standing with deputy constable Bill Hutton at the corner of Main and Houston when the motorcade passed. The pair had turned to walk to a nearby courthouse when Weitzman heard three shots, “first one, then . . . a little period in between . . . [then] the second two seemed to be simultaneously.” He told the Warren Commission:

  I immediately ran toward the President’s car. Of course, it was speeding away and somebody said the shots or firecrackers . . . we still didn’t know the President was shot . . . came from the wall. I immediately scaled the wall. . . . Apparently, my hands grabbed steam pipes. I burned them. [In the railroad yards behind the picket fence.] We noticed numerous kinds of footprints that did not make sense because they were going different directions . . . [with Weitzman at the time were] other officers, Secret Service as well.

  Behind Weitzman came Dallas policeman Joe M. Smith, who had been handling traffic at the intersection of Elm and Houston in front of the Depository. Smith had helped at the scene of the strange seizure incident minutes before the motorcade arrived and had returned to his position in the middle of Elm where barricades had been placed to halt traffic.

  Moments after the president’s car passed him, Smith heard shots, but he couldn’t tell from which direction they came. He told the Warren Commission a hysterical woman ran up to him, crying, “They are shooting the president from the bushes!”

  Smith said he immediately went up the short street that branches off of Elm in front of the Depository and entered the parking lot behind the wooden picket fence. He told the Commission:

  I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn’t alone. There was some deputy sheriff [Weitzman] with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there. I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, [I] pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don’t know who I am looking for, and put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent. . . . He saw me coming with my pistol and right away he showed me who he was.

  In 1978, Smith told author Anthony Summers that “around the hedges [lining the parking lot], there was the smell, the lingering smell of gunpowder.”

  Smith then moved toward the Triple Underpass because “it sounded to me like they [shots] may have come from this vicinity here.” In his testimony, Smith said he saw “two other officers there,” but it is unclear if he was speaking about behind the fence or the Triple Underpass. After fifteen or twenty minutes, Smith said he returned to the front of the Depository, where he helped other officers seal the building.

  For some unexplained reason, at the end of his testimony Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler suddenly asked Smith if there was any reason why the presidential motorcade could not have gone straight down Main Street and turned onto Stemmons Freeway on its way to the Trade Mart. “As far as I know, there is no reason,” replied Smith. This was a question that has been asked by several security-conscious researchers over the years. Although not the normal flow of traffic, a straight run down Main would have made the dogleg turns on Houston and Elm Streets unnecessary and might have prevented the assassination.

  One witness who was in a position to observe the area behind the picket fence was Lee Bowers, a railroad supervisor who was stationed in a tower just north of the Grassy Knoll. Bowers told a fascinating story of suspicious cars moving in the sealed-off railroad yards minutes before the motorcade arrived and of seeing strange men behind the picket fence. Incredibly, his testimony takes less than six pages of the Warren Commission volumes.

  Bowers, an ex-Navy man who had studied religion at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was working for the Union Terminal Company, controlling the movement of trains in the railroad yards from a tower about fourteen feet off the ground. The tower is located about fifty yards northwest of the back of the Texas School Book Depository. A block-long street breaks off from Elm and passes in front of the Depository, ending in a parking lot bordered on the south by the wooden picket fence atop the Grassy Knoll. It was the only paved artery in or out of the parking area.

  Bowers told the Warren Commission:

  The area had been covered by police for some two hours. Since approximately 10 o’clock in the morning [of the assassination], traffic had been cut off into the area so that anyone moving around could actually be observed. Since I had worked there for a number of years, I was familiar with most of the people who came in and out of the area. . . . There were three cars that came in during the time from around noon until the time of the shooting. They came into the vicinity of the tower, which was at the extension of Elm Street . . . which there is no way out. It is not a through street to anywhere.

  Bowers said he noticed the first car about 12:10 p.m. It was a blue-and-white 1959 Oldsmobile station wagon with out-of-state license plates and some bumper stickers, “one of which was a Goldwater sticker.” The station wagon circled in front of the railroad tower “as if he was searching for a way out, or was checking the area, and then proceeded back through the only way he could, the same outlet he came into.”

  About 12:20 p.m., a black 1957 Ford with Texas license plates came into the area. Inside was “one male . . . that seemed to have a mike or telephone or something. . . . He was holding something up to his mouth with one hand and he was driving with the other.” Bowers said this car left after three or four minutes, driving back in front of the Depository. “He did probe a little further into the area than the first car,” he added.

  Minutes before the assassination, Bowers said a third car—this one a white 1961 or 1962 Chevrolet four-door Impala—entered the area. Bowers said:

  [It] showed signs of being on the road. . . . It was muddy up to the windows, bore a similar out-of-state license to the first car I observed [and was] also occupied by one white male. He spent a little more time in the area. . . . He circled the area and probed one spot right at the tower . . . and was forced to back out some considerable distance, and slowly cruised down back towards the front of the School Depository Building. . . . The last I saw of him, he was pausing just about in—just above the assassination site. . . . Whether it continued on . . . or whether it pulled up only a short distance, I couldn’t tell. I was busy.

  Bowers said about eight minutes later, he caught sight of the presidential limousine as it turned onto Elm Street. He stated:

  I heard three shots. One, then a slight pause, then two very close together. Also, reverberation from the shots. . . . The sounds came either from up against the School Depository Building or near the mouth of the Triple Underpass.

  Bowers said he saw two men standing directly between his vantage point and the Triple Underpass, but they “gave no appearance of being together” although they were only ten or fifteen feet from each other. He described this pair:

  One man, middle-aged, or slightly older, fairly heavyset, in a white shirt, fairly dark trousers. Another younger man, about mid-twenties, in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket. . . . They were facing and looking u
p toward Main and Houston and following the caravan as it came down.

  Bowers also saw the railroad employees and the two Dallas policemen standing on the Triple Underpass. Toward the eastern end of the parking lot, Bowers saw two other men. He said, “Each had uniforms similar to those custodians at the courthouse.” Bowers then described what he saw following the shots:

  At the time of the shooting there seemed to be some commotion, and immediately following there was a motorcycle policeman who shot nearly all of the way to the top of the incline. . . . He was part of the motorcade and had left it for some reason, which I did not know. . . . He came up into the area where there are some trees and where I had described the two men were in the general vicinity of this . . . one of them was [still there]. The other one, I could not say. The darker-dressed man was too hard to distinguish from the trees. The one in the white shirt, yes, I think he was.

  Asked by Commission attorney Joseph Ball to describe the “commotion” that attracted his attention, Bowers said:

  I just am unable to describe rather than it was something out of the ordinary . . . but something occurred in this particular spot which was out of the ordinary, which attracted my eye for some reason, which I could not identify. . . . Nothing that I could pinpoint as having happened that—