Copyright © 2014 by Gayle Nix Jackson
First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Rain Saukas
JFK image is public domain, camera image courtesy of istock.
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0661-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0663-7
Printed in the United States
But they that will be rich fall into… a snare… which drown men in destruction and perdition.
I Timothy 6:9 KJV
It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
German poet, novelist and dramatist.
When truth is our history, truth buried, even slain, can rise again.
Harold Weisberg
The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.
Hugo Black
There is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
President Woodrow Wilson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
Fifty Years of Questions
CHAPTER TWO
Cursed Luck
CHAPTER THREE
Timing is Everything
CHAPTER FOUR
Of Parades and Parody and Parallels
CHAPTER FIVE
12:30 pm CST -11/22/1963
CHAPTER SIX
Of Secrets, Negotiations and Firsts
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Time to Fabricate and Destroy
CHAPTER EIGHT
Of Capitalism and Secrecy: The American Way
CHAPTER NINE
Forty-Seven Hours and White Resistol Hats
CHAPTER TEN
Of Funerals, Films and Football
CHAPTER ELEVEN
New York, New York
CHAPTER TWELVE
Of Conspiracies and Madness
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Of Character and Cabalists
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
UPI, Rumors and the CIA
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Of Commissions and Complicity
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Through a Glass Darkly
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Forrest of Rubies
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Of Shadows: In the Nix Film, in the Mind and the Government
CHAPTER NINETEEN
First Generation JFK Research and the Search for Truth
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Media and the Lies
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Present Day Nix Film Research: The JFK Assassination Forum
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Fifty Questions of Conspiracy
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
THE ORVILLE NIX FILM: A CHRONOLOGY by Chris Scally
NOTES
AFTERWORD
A Few Last Words
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INDEX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CITATION NOTES
DEDICATION
To my children, Taylor and Chance; you are the lights of my life and my greatest joy! My wish for you is that you walk in truth, make a difference and be happy with the special people you are.
To Darryl, my husband, my friend, my conscience and my love. Thank you for your patience and for your humble support.
To Dad, Orville Nix Jr., thank you for the lessons you have taught me the memories we have shared and your belief in me.
To my nephew Adam, I couldn’t have done this without you. You are a man of generosity, honor and understanding.
The world is a better place with you in it.
To my Mother, who I miss terribly but who I know is looking down on me and comforts me with the knowledge that I am her daughter.
To my Paw-Paw, Orville Nix and my Granny, Ella Nix. Without you, this book would have never been written.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager, but it took forty years and a stranger on Twitter asking me if I were Orville Nix’s granddaughter to do it. I want to thank that unknown person for giving me the impetus to complete a non-fiction work when I had always fancied myself a fiction writer. My dreams of writing were supplanted by the bigger dream of becoming a mother; who I am privileged to be, to my daughter Taylor and my son Chance. They are my best-sellers!
I would like to thank the inimitable Jones Harris for his weekly phone calls and his sharing of memories with me regarding the research and time he spent in trying to prove the Nix film is much more important than the media and the government wanted people to know. In a metaphysical way, it was like talking to a friend of my grandfather, though they never met. I hope this book gives credit to his tireless efforts to find the truth of what truly happened November 22, 1963. I adore you, Jones!
Chris Calderhead, my book cover designer and friend of many years who I’ve never met. Thank you for the book cover I saw in my dreams. You made it a reality. Your talent, wit and baseball discussions will never be forgotten.
The countless hours I spent on the JFK Assassination Forum were the grandest hours of discovery I’ve had since becoming a mother. I am honored to call Duncan MacRae, Rick Needham, Martin Hinrichs, and Robin Unger dear friends, advisors and oftentimes tutors. Their patience, support and hard work are groundbreaking and they deserve exaltation in the JFK Research Community.
Tink Thompson, David Lifton, Jim Marrs, Jefferson Morley, and Mary Ferrell are the Jupiters to my Callisto. I orbited around their knowledge and writings hoping I could shine some gratitude upon them. Thank you kind experts for your patience and sharing. Especially you, Jim!
Thank you, Dr. Larry Sabato, for wanting to know more about my grandfather and his story, and for inviting me to be a part of your book launch. Educators like you set the bar for others.
Thank you Chris Scally, for your tireless Nix film research in trying to help me find the missing camera original film as well as for your kind emails and dear friendship. Thank you, Clint Bradford, for trying to help me locate my grandfather’s original film
Thank you to every person who has said, “I can’t wait to read your book!” to me. You have no idea how much that means to this writer.
Bruce Marshall holds a special place in the completion of Orville Nix: The
Missing JFK Assassination Film. He is a brilliant man who took time from his busy schedule to not only share his wisdom with me, but he helped with my manuscript, finding me an attorney, and directing me to the right equipment to purchase in doing telephonic interviews. I was the ‘little old lady crossing the JFK research book’ road and he was the Eagle Scout that chivalrously accompanied me to the other side safely.
My editor, Ann Westlake should be granted literary sainthood for her patience. My dear friend and website designer Lin Taylor is the sister I always wanted to have and now do. She is talented, supportive and the best part is, she gets me. For many years I have known that when you find someone that understands your emotional /intellectual/spiritual roadmap you keep them in your life. Lin is one of these people. Johanna Socha, another one of those ‘keep in your life’ people, is the most upbeat, positive, creative graphic designers I have ever met. She puts the ‘ful’ in beautiful.
To one of my best friends, Doug Conn. Meeting you made my life in East Texas bearable and your friendship means the world to me.
I know there are many I am forgetting, so please accept my apologies. Know in your hearts that you were there for me when I floundered. You were there when I doubted. You were there when I needed you.
Thank you
PREFACE
Our country was founded upon conspiracies. Look at our history: The Boston Tea Party, The Continental Congress, even The Federalist Papers. These conspiracies were to make our country a better one in which to live “for the people.” The only ones who questioned those conspiracies at the time were those who were attempting to control our freedom. The JFK conspiracy is the opposite of those colonial conspiracies.
This book will not solve the question that was first asked on November 22, 1963, “Who killed John F. Kennedy?” What I hope this book will do is underscore the fact that there was and is a conspiracy to withhold the truth as to what happened that dreadful day, not just to my grandfather, but to the world.
For years we have been lured into believing that the obvious must be denied. We have been told by our government, the media and several taxpayer funded committees and commissions that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman. What we haven’t been told is the story of Orville Nix. We haven’t been told how many pieces of evidence are missing. We haven’t been told of the many stories of intimidation, misinformation and lies.
Our freedom is waning.
Why?
Are the risks too high? Are our choices limited? Have we become the people our government wants us to be rather than our government becoming the people we want them to be?
If we choose to allow the media to continue to lie and not ask questions, we risk history repeating itself. If we choose to allow our government to mismanage, mishandle and misinform, we risk being governed by the kind of government we detest. If we choose to not demand truthful answers to pertinent questions, we risk losing our collective intelligence and worse, our collective consciousness.
It is up to us to make a difference. We must demand the truth. There may or may not have been a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. What we do know is that for over fifty years there is and definitely has been a conspiracy to withhold the truth from the people. We deserve the truth to be exposed, studied and dealt with, no matter how sinister or problematic. We fight corruption on foreign shores. We must also fight it on our own shores as well.
We must not lose our freedom to a few when freedom is meant for all.
CHAPTER
ONE
FIFTY YEARS OF QUESTIONS
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
John F. Kennedy1
Anyone who has taken a history course since November 22, 1963 is well aware of the heinous primary events that took place on that picture-perfect day in Dallas. The 35th president of our sovereign nation was gunned down in front of thousands of people at half past noon on that Friday, in broad daylight. This horrible crime marked the first time television viewers were introduced to reality television. Those who were fortunate enough to own televisions watched the repercussions of the assassination unfold before their eyes for the next four days. Others listened by radio or read newspapers. His suspected murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was captured later that day at the Texas Theater after allegedly killing Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. The crime wasn’t hidden by darkness—but much of the evidence has been hidden in its aftermath.
One of those pieces of evidence is the home movie my grandfather, Orville Nix, took on that fateful day. Though there are many extant copies of “the Nix Film”, the camera original has been lost since at least 1978.2 While researchers combed the files of the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Rockefeller Committee, and the Assassination Records Review Board, obsessing over overlooked clues as to whether or not Oswald acted alone, the whereabouts of the camera-original Nix film remains a mystery.
The better-known Abraham Zapruder film has been analyzed, written about, called a ‘time clock’ of the assassination, and purchased by the United States taxpayers due to its designation as an official assassination record by the Assassination Records Review Board.3 But why, thirty-seven years after the assassination, was it finally treated as evidence? Why wasn’t it seized by the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963? Orville Nix’s film was seized by the FBI as soon as it was developed. The first time Orville saw it was in the middle of the night with his son Orville Jr., projected onto a textured white wall at its place of development, Dynacolor Film Processing. Orville, unlike Zapruder, was not allowed to keep a copy for himself and give the first generation copies to law enforcement officials. When is evidence ever handled in such a manner? Were the law enforcement authorities in Dallas so ahead of their time that they could adjudicate between ‘evidence’ and ‘conjecture’ during the 1960s?
Furthermore, have other pieces of evidence; like the missing autopsy photos or missing audio files of transmissions between the motorcade cars and Secret Service, garnered the same designation as the Nix Film? Or are they already hidden in some dark, government vault labeled Top Secret. Does the American government’s sixteen million dollar purchase of the Zapruder film render it the only important piece of evidence, and put an end to the ongoing conspiracy theories? I suggest it does not. How can it, when the film that shows the area behind Abraham Zapruder is missing, thereby leaving open-ended questions as to the location of a second or third gunman.
That our government should be questioned as to why, in a check and balance system such as ours, we have no checks on this evidence (save a sixteen million dollar one) is abhorrent and reprehensible.4 The original Nix film could be examined, enhanced, and may even prove that the Zapruder film is worthy of every taxpayer’s dime. It could also prove that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, and that shots came from the grassy knoll or picket fence area, as my grandfather always adamantly insisted. Should not a film taken from the opposite side of the infamous Zapruder film receive at least equal consideration?
Have we as Americans become so complacent that we do not demand the truth of our government unless it’s wrapped in Hollywood trappings? When did we stop wanting to know the truth?
The Zapruder film isn’t the only film record of that horrific day in Dallas; there are still photos as well. Including the Nix film, there were at least five hundred films and photos taken of that day with new ones being dropped off at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza as recently as 2009.5 The Sixth Floor Museum, located in the building that was once the Texas School Book Depository, is the City of Dallas’s attempt to explain what happened in November, 1963. It houses films, exhibits and artifacts of a time many in Dallas would like to forget, but more in the world want to understand.
Very few of the films and photographs from that day show the fatal headshot, much less the entire assassination sequence, an
d for many, that seems to be of the most importance. There are some researchers and authors though, who believe the Nix Film is the Holy Grail in writing the final chapter of the fifty-year book of the JFK assassination. Their viewpoints and research are included in this book.
*****
HAVE WE AS AMERICANS
BECOME SO COMPLACENT
THAT WE DO NOT DEMAND
THE TRUTH OF OUR
GOVERNMENT UNLESS IT’S
WRAPPED IN HOLLYWOOD
TRAPPINGS?
WHEN DID WE STOP
WANTING TO KNOW THE
TRUTH?
Orville Nix was not an educated man. He wasn’t a perfect man either. He did his best to provide for his only son, Orville Nix, Jr. and his wife Ella. He believed in America and loved his government; but he did not trust it. He worked for the government as an air conditioning repairman for the General Services Administration but he never spoke badly of anything he witnessed, heard or saw, for fear of losing his job. He was proud to be friends with Forrest Sorrels of the Dallas Secret Service, but he did not take advantage of that friendship by asking too many questions. He was insecure about his education, his financial standing and his social stature, but he was proud of his family, his golf prowess, his love of snooker, and his luck at cards.
Then there were the women. His kind eyes and tall stature seemed to attract them and though he had ample opportunity, he remained faithful to his wife. He was a man of juxtapositions. In retrospect, he was the ‘everyman’ of the 1960s. He was the American the government desperately wanted all its citizens to be: hard-working, unquestioning, and happy with their lot in life.
His film brought him his fifteen minutes of fame, a trip to New York and five thousand dollars. To him, it might just as well have been five million dollars.
He had never had so much money in his lifetime. He was able to take his grandchildren on trips, buy new suits and fedoras, play golf and poker at the country club, and buy all the Kodak film he could use. Through the years though, he often said how he wished he had never been on the corner of Main and Houston on November 22, 1963. After the death threats, strange occurrences, destruction of his Keystone K-810 camera, and humiliation in front of America by the national news media, his life and world view changed drastically. He was no longer the happy man who answered the telephone on the first ring. He no longer spent hours outside his home taking home movies of jet airplanes without worry that he would be accosted. He spent more and more time watching television and midget wrestling late at night because of the recurring nightmares he had of watching the president murdered. One of the last reporters he allowed into his home was the future mayor of Dallas, Wes Wise. He no longer trusted the media or government. He and Ella moved from their rental home on Denley to the Wynnewood Apartments in Oak Cliff and paid extra for an unlisted phone number. He died there, in his favorite Naugahyde armchair in 1972.
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 1