Fifteen months went by. In February 1975 I received a report marked “PRELIMINARY FOR INFORMATION ONLY.” The report concluded:
In this analysis the Nix film fails to support strongly “the grassy knoll assassin” theory. No errors were found in the ITEK report and its conclusions remain the most likely. A study of the area between the stairs and the [pergola] found no new evidence of assassins there. However, in the light of the poor image quality and the availability of suitable hiding places, a grassy knoll assassin cannot positively be ruled out.
The report also states that it is “remotely possible” that certain features are “due to an assassin immediately behind the wall who moved to his right, as Nix moved….” After receiving this report, which I believed to be the nearest thing to a conclusive answer about the film, I learned that assassination buffs have detected three assassins—two of who supposedly bear a resemblance to Watergate figures E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis—in the Nix film, this time on the steps leading down from the knoll. Now Castleman and Gillespie have those frames and this whole this may start up again. God forbid.”283
The Caltech findings would have been enough for an interested person to have the Nix film examined further, but Schonfeld didn’t. Schonfeld then placed the Nix film back into the safety deposit box at Chase Manhattan Bank never to see it again and never to care. Why, after ITEK offered to analyze the film for free did he not have them look at the trajectory of the head shot like ITEK had with the Zapruder film? Did Schonfeld and Reinhardt know so little about the assassination that they were only interested in a front page news story? Wouldn’t an analysis of where the bullet came from be just as profitable and newsworthy for UPI?
Apparently not.
Schonfeld and Reinhardt had produced the documentary, Four Days in November that showcased their ‘runt films’ the Nix and Muchmore films. Though it won an Academy Award for Best Documentary for the director, David Wolper, it was never something Schonfeld bragged about.284 He was meant for bigger things than purchasing the Nix film and breaching the contract, as well as misplacing the film. He later became the founder of the Food Network after founding, along with Burt Reinhardt and Ted Turner, CNN.285 What Schonfeld failed to reveal to the public was that ITEK was only given 35mm enlarged black and white copies of selected frames from the Nix film. As Richard Sprague states in his book, “The great amount of detail is lost in going from 8mm to 35mm black and white. UPI only gave ITEK carefully chosen frames from the Nix film that did not show the gunman on the knoll.”286
Jones Harris wasn’t convinced of the ITEK findings. He was sure that the Nix film showed a shooter leaning on or in front of an Edsel with the Honest Joe’s writing plainly in view in front of the pergola. He has the enlarged photo to prove it, even today. He believed that the ITEK Corporation, under CIA orders, had removed or smudged the writing on the Edsel so as to make it look like shadows.287 But if the Honest Joe’s signage had been removed, why not remove the image of the shooter?
Coincidentally, several years later, in 1975, an article written about UPI, the Nix film, ITEK, and Jones Harris mentioned that although the men viewing the film all saw ‘a shooter leaning against a car’ nothing more was mentioned of it as “Frank Lindsay insisted that UPI must prioritize to delay publication of the results, if the shadow proved to be a man, until he had a chance to inform his friends Ted and Bob Kennedy. The stipulation reflected the shared feeling that shape was more than a shadow.”288
Why did Schonfeld stop there? Was it insistence by CIA and now ITEK president Frank Lindsay? Was proclaiming the figure on the knoll nothing more than shadows another form of propaganda to keep the public in the dark about a second gunman?
Was there evidence of another shooter in that area that day? Could they have been “fake authorities?” According to FBI and Warren Commission testimony, there were plenty. For instance, Dallas Police Department officer J. M. Smith encountered what he described as a “Secret Service Agent” behind the picket fence atop the grassy knoll.289 He explains to Mr. Leibeler of the Warren Commission that:
SMITH: I got to make this statement too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot, and this woman (who had told him they were shooting from the bushes), 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.
LIEBELER: Did you accost this man?
SMITH: Well, he saw me coming with my pistol and right away he showed me who he was.290
Officer Smith wasn’t the only official witness that saw ‘men in authority’ in the area after the shooting, DPD Officer D.V. Harkness saw men who identified themselves as Secret Service agents as well.
BELIN: Then you went around to the back of the building? (the TSBD)
HARKNESS: Yes, sir.
BELIN: Was anyone around in the back when you got there?
HARKNESS: There were some Secret Service Agents there. I didn’t get them identified. They told me they were the Secret Service.291
Of course Officer Harkness would believe there were Secret Service men there. People were running all over the area. The 35th President of the world’s greatest nation had just been shot. Why wouldn’t he think that all law-enforcement personnel in Dallas that day were trying to find who killed the president? He himself had just radioed to his fellow law officers to seal the Texas School Book Depository off.
In later years, another motorcycle officer, Bobby Hargis, can be heard in a taped conversation admitting to seeing a policeman on the knoll that day. This tape was made many years after the assassination after Hargis had retired from the Dallas Police Department. Jones Harris has a copy of this recording.
Another witness also reported encountering a man who displayed a badge and identified himself as a Secret Service agent. But according to Secret Service Chief James Rowley and agents at the scene, all Secret Service personnel stayed with the motorcade, as required by regulations, and none was stationed in the railroad parking lot [behind the grassy knoll]. It thus appeared that someone was carrying fraudulent Secret Service credentials - of no perceptible use to anyone but an escaping assassin.292
The Warren Commission’s findings though, were that all the Secret Service, FBI and DPD personnel were accounted for during the motorcade and no officers were on the knoll area or at the Texas School Book Depository. Malcolm Summers disputes this point.
Summers, an eye-witness who can be seen in the Nix and Zapruder films also encountered a man on the knoll immediately after the assassination. Summers states in Jack Anderson’s interview:
I ran across the--Elm Street to right there toward the knoll. It was there [pointing to a spot on the knoll]--and we were stopped by a man in a suit and he had an overcoat--over his arm and he, he, I saw a gun under that overcoat. And he--his comment was, “Don’t y’all come up here any further, you could get shot, or killed,” one of those words. A few months later, they told me they didn’t have an FBI man in that area. If they didn’t have anybody, it’s a good question who it was.293
Many years later, Summers was interviewed by Houston Police sketch artist, Lois Gibson. After working with her many hours, he was able to describe enough detail that she sketched a picture of the man Summers said he saw on the knoll. 294
The questions about gunmen on the knoll and the images in the Nix film didn’t stop with ITEK‘s findings or the Warren Commission Report, in fact, they became more pronounced. Orville was receiving phone calls daily and, because UPI was still using his name when the contract he had signed stated it wouldn’t, not all the phone calls to his home were reporters or investigators. Seeing how alarmed Orville would become after answering several phone calls a night before he went to work, Ella decided to start answering the phone to shield her husband and allow him to rest.
Orville had become more and more anxious as the months passed, and by 1966 he was smoking even more than he had in the past. Before the threatening phone calls, strange hang-ups and
even stranger questions he was asked, he had thought of offering his camera as a commercial idea to the Keystone Camera Company. He had his daughter-in-law Elaine write a letter to the company offering his services and his camera.295 Keystone politely declined claiming, “The Assassination was too delicate and they didn’t want their camera forever associated with the event.” It seemed no one was interested in his film, though he felt deeply that it was more important than people thought. He became convinced of the fact when his son also began receiving threatening phone calls. Why would he be threatened if there wasn’t something more to the film? Were people just that crazy? And why would his film be a threat? If Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone, like the Warren Commission said, then his film shouldn’t be a problem to anyone. It would be a “nuisance” as Life magazine had told him. His film only showed the Texas School Book Depository the next morning; not the day of the assassination. Why was he getting these phone calls?
Though he was convinced of the importance of his film, he also became worried. He didn’t want anything happening to his family. One of the latest phone calls was from a man with a foreign accent who told him “to move, your family isn’t safe,” and immediately hung up before Orville could question him. But the next phone call was from some promoter wanting to put his interview on a vinyl record. There were calls from people writing books, people who were psychics, and people who were just plain mean.
It seems many people were readers of Penn Jones‘s articles, and his most popular one at that time was of the mysterious deaths. Penn Jones had begun to make a record of witnesses who were mysteriously killed after the assassination and had even called Orville to tell him to “watch himself.” Before the assassination, Orville would have laughed Penn’s warning off, but now he wasn’t so sure. Because of the many strange phone calls, sometimes he chose not to answer the phone at all: a huge change of routine for a man who loved new technology and had never gotten over his amazement at having a phone in his home at all. Growing up poor, Orville’s family had never had a phone much less a television; so his movie camera, his television, and his phone were sources of huge delight.
Until the day of the assassination.
Several weeks later, Ella answered a call that she would never forget; and spoke of it until she died. When she answered the phone, the person, a young man with what she thought was a Spanish accent, said in a stern yet authoritative voice, “Ma’am, we know who you are. We know your husband took a film. Do not show it to anyone. Do not talk to the newspapers. Do not talk to the police. Just be quiet and you and your grandchildren will be safe.” Ella had hardly ever spoken of her husband’s film at all, not even to her co-workers at Wyatt’s Cafeteria. But after that phone call, she became cautious of strangers and reporters who asked for interviews from that moment on. Orville had tried to convince her that the calls were nothing more than ‘crank calls from touched people’ but Ella wasn’t convinced.
“Orville, I don’t think you should talk to anyone of these news people anymore, it’s just not safe. The only way they know you is from the TV or the government.”
*****
MA’AM, WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE. WE KNOW YOUR HUSBAND TOOK A FILM. DO NOT SHOW IT TO ANYONE. DO NOT TALK TO THE NEWSPAPERS. DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE. JUST BE QUIET AND YOU AND YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE SAFE.
“Well, Ella, I told you, I think my film is important. People ask me about it every day. Besides, I told that Yankee lawyer, Mark Lane, I would do an interview with him. My boss, Mr. Price, is doing one too. He’s not scared, so why should I be? We wouldn’t do anything to hurt the government, we work for it!”
“Dear Lord, Orville, that’s the point! What if someone in the government is trying to scare you? What if one of those FBI guys told someone something? What if you end up on that Jones man’s strange death list? I don’t like reporters. I can’t think of it happening to you. I can’t worry about my grandchildren. They killed the president, Orville, they can certainly kill you!” Ella broke into tears.
Orville gathered her in his arms and patted her back. “Ella, Ella, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you or them young’uns. You have to know that. If I’m not worried, you shouldn’t be. There, there, stop crying. I promise I won’t do any more interviews. Just this one I promised to that lawyer. Okay?”
If you say so, Orville,” she said worriedly, “But if you’re going to go ahead and do it, then make him come to our house. I don’t want you out in the open where someone could do to you what they did to President Kennedy. Promise me?”
Orville winked at his concerned wife and smiled, “I promise, Ella.” But in his heart, he knew she might be right.
The next week Mark Lane and his camera crew came to their home. The interview Lane had with Nix would be on vinyl, in his book, and in his movie, all entitled Rush to Judgment.296 In later years, many of the witnesses he interviewed would proclaim that Lane changed their words and edited out key phrases and manipulated answers. Orville Nix never made that claim, though he did claim Lane was unthoughtful and brash. At the end of the interview, as the cameraman moved the cumbersome equipment through the kitchen to the living room, he accidentally marred Ella’s kitchen wall, leaving a large dark mark. Ella quietly grabbed her weapon of choice, a broom and angrily chased the cameraman and Mark Lane out of her house. That was the last time Mark Lane spoke with Orville Nix. It would be the next to last interview Orville would ever give on camera.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
FIRST GENERATION JFK RESEARCH AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
“Keep up your courage.”
John F. Kennedy
On a note written to the mother of a badly burned child in the hospital the night his infant son Patrick died.297
Once the conspiracy theories began, they never stopped. Respected researchers from all walks of life like Mary Ferrell, Josiah Thompson, Jones Harris, R.B. Cutler, Penn Jones, Jay Epstein, Jim Marrs, David Lifton, Sylvia Meagher, Harold Weisberg, and Robert Groden became professors of the JFK Conspiracy University that quickly garnered students from all over the world. The Nix film was always key evidence in their theories.
Jack White, a former Navy officer and journalism graduate from Texas Christian University, was one of the first JFK assassination researchers and reporters to follow the findings of Jones Harris.298 White was a vested conspiracy expert who served as a photographic consultant for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In his later years, he was vilified by former friends who once believed in the same theories he did, and he was often criticized for embracing any theory he found conceivable. The media had their turn at him as well, branding his theories ‘fiction.’ White is best known for his belief that the backyard photos of Lee Harvey Oswald were doctored; an argument that is still carried on many JFK discussion forums and conferences. Ironically, a signed copy of this same backyard photo was found in George de Mohrenschildt’s belongings in later years.
In regards to the Nix film, White had seen Harris’s work and had done much work on another theory he and Sixth Floor Museum curator Gary Mack called, “The Badgeman Image”; an image which they could see in the Moorman photograph.299 They both believed it showed a man wearing a police uniform and brandishing a weapon that looked to be firing at the moment of the fatal head shot. White and Mack had wondered if the Nix film would verify their findings. Ultimately it did not, but ever the believer in a shooter from the knoll theory, and never thoroughly convinced of ITEK‘s findings, he wrote the following on a JFK Conspiracy forum several months before he died regarding a gunman on the knoll and Honest Joe’s vehicle:
Suspend your disbelief for a moment. Suppose there was a car in that location. It is plainly seen in the Nix film. Suppose that the car was connected to the assassination. Suppose the car was the HONEST JOE PAWN SHOP vehicle as some researchers believe, and it was there to supply/hide guns. Suppose retouchers replaced the car with tree foliage, when there is no tree there but railroad tracks. There was testimony that the Honest
Joe vehicle drove into the parking lot. OK. Now go back to believing whatever you want.300
Jack White never pushed his views on anyone though he was stalwart in his beliefs and unlike other researchers, apologized when his theories were found to be unfounded.
Other photographs suggested there was a knoll shooter. Mary Moorman took her famous Polaroid at the moment of the fatal head shot. Many of the Dealey Plaza witnesses believed at least one shot came from the Grassy Knoll, which can be seen in her photo.
Closer inspection of the photo shows what appears to be a man’s head looking over the area Orville Nix called the ‘stockade fence’ on the Grassy Knoll. This figure is at the spot where Sam Holland and six fellow railroad workers observed a puff of smoke where Ed Hoffman saw a man fire a shot at the President, where Lee Bowers noted “some commotion”, and where the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined a second gunman fired a high-powered rifle.
Or could it have been a long-barreled revolver?
Films taken in Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination show police and spectators collectively running towards that same corner of the stockade fence mentioned by the HSCA and Orville Nix. Dallas Police Officer Joe Smith ran to that area after a woman told him “they were shooting the president from the bushes.”301 As he drew his gun, he met a man showing Secret Service credentials as he raised his arms. Officer Smith also claims that he could smell the “…lingering smell of gunpowder….” around the stockade fence.
Two railroad employees who witnessed the assassination from their position atop the Triple Overpass, Sam Holland and James Simmons, raced to the corner of the stockade fence. They found hundreds of footprints in the mud at the exact location of the figure in Mary Moorman‘s photo. They were interviewed by author Josiah Thompson and even drew a sketch of what they saw.302 There was mud on the bumper of a station wagon, as if someone had either used it wipe his feet clean, or stood on it to look over the fence. Testimonies of these eye-witnesses was dismissed by the Warren Commission or never studied further. Why?
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 18