General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believed President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. [View all]Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)All of the physical evidence says Oswald's rifle was the weapon used. All of the witness evidence, and all of the circumstantial evidence, says Oswald was the shooter. Let's recap the actual evidence (not theories, not suppositions, but actual evidence).
First: Oswald went to visit Marina the night before the assassination. He never went to Irving on a Thursday; this was the first time he had. He begged her to move back in with him. She refused. He left almost all the money he had in the world, $170 in cash, and his wedding ring, on the nightstand. He got a ride in to work; he was seen with a parcel wrapped in brown paper. When asked what it was, he said "curtain rods". (His rented room had curtains; he had no need of curtain rods.)
Second: Three shots were fired. The majority of witnesses are agreed on this point. Several witnesses saw the barrel of a rifle protruding from the sixth-floor window of the TSBD; one witness, Howard Brennan, saw the shooter and gave police a description: a slender white man, around 30, about five-ten and 165 pounds, with light-brown hair. (This description went out over police radio.) Employees on the fifth floor of the TSBD heard shots from directly overhead; they hard the action of the rifle bolt being cycled, they heard the spent cartridge casings hitting the floor above their heads, one of them got plaster dust and debris in his hair, knocked loose from the ceiling by the report of the shots. (These witnesses also told police what they'd heard.) Of those three shots, one missed, one struck first Kennedy and then Connally, and one struck Kennedy in the head. The bullet that struck Kennedy and Connally, recovered from Connally's stretcher at Parkland, was found after later forensic testing to have been fired by Oswald's Carcano rifle, to the exclusion of all other weapons. Fragments from the bullet that struck Kennedy in the head were matched to Oswald's Carcano rifle, to the exclusion of all other weapons. Fragments recovered from Connally's wrist were matched to the stretcher bullet by neutron activation analysis. Oswald's rifle was found on the sixth floor. With three spent cartidge casings. And conclusively traced to Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, sold to one "A. Hidell" (an Oswald alias) and shipped to a PO box rented by Oswald.
Oswald was stopped by a policeman running to investigate the building; his supervisor, Roy Truly, when asked "do you know this man?" responded with "he works here" and he was let go. Oswald proceeded to leave the building and catch a bus. The bus got stuck in traffic. He got OFF the bus and flagged a cab and had it drop him off four blocks away from his rooming house; he changed and got his revolver and left. He was stopped by Patrolman JD Tippit. (Remember, he answered the description of a suspect that the police had thanks to Howard Brennan.) He proceeded to shoot Tippit, killing him. He ejected the cylinder of his revolver and reloaded. He was seen either shooting Tippit, or fleeing the scene with a pistol in his hand, by TEN people. Cartridge casings recovered from the scene of the shooting were matched to Oswald's Smith & Wesson revolver, to the exclusion of all other weapons. Bullets recovered from Tippit's body were matched to the ammunition loaded in Oswald's revolver at the time of his arrest (a mix of Western Cartridge and Remington-Peters .38 Special).
Leaving the scene, Oswald was seen acting suspiciously by the manager of a shoe store, who saw him duck into the Texas Theater without buying a ticket. The police were called. The house lights were brought up and he was apprehended; his words on being confronted by police? "Well, I guess it's all over now"...and he went for his gun. So you have: witness confirmation of shots from the TSBD. Oswald's rifle, found on the sixth floor, responsible, to the exclusion of any other weapon, for the wounds to Kennedy and Connally. Oswald as the only TSBD employee unaccounted for after the shooting. Oswald shooting and killing a police officer and then attempting to shoot another when arrested. (And Oswald leaving his wedding ring the night before? A man who expects to see his wife again wouldn't do that.)
The mass of physical and circumstantial evidence leads inescapably to a single conclusion.
The idea that the Zapruder film was altered to show something that wasn't there originally is absurd and ludicrous (there are other films of the assassination, from the other side of the street, that show the head shot: on both, the back of the head is obviously intact).
You have to ignore ALL of the physical and circumstantial evidence that says "it was Oswald" (and NO actual evidence says anything else) to believe in the idea of conspiracy.
And yes, ignoring or dismissing physical evidence which contradicts what you want to believe is a hallmark of religious thinking.