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who figured out which was true. I categorized everything into possible, impossible, necessary, and theory (I was a history grad student, so that's what I always did. Still do.). I lived in Dallas, so I walked around Dealy Plaza, trying to prove he couldn't have made the shot, trying to find the exact angle where the shots on the Knoll had to have come from. "Back and to the left," and all that.
I proved it couldn't have come from anywhere but the SBD. I proved that every witness first reported shots coming from that direction. I proved that not one bit of evidence proved that Oswald couldn't have done it, despite the claims about magic bullets (it traveled in a straight line) or pristine bullets (it wasn't) or lead fragments in Connally being too much for the pristine bullet to account for (again, proven wrong). I looked at where the shot would have had to come from to make Kennedy's head snap back if it was just the force of the bullet that caused the snap (answer--it would have had to pass through the windshield without breaking it).
I saw nothing any of the conspiracies came up with that was necessary evidence--in other words, none of it proved that someone else had to have done it, and most if didn't even prove what the supporters claimed it did.
I then got a job with someone who was in the motorcade that day--Ralph Yarborough. He wouldn't talk about it, but I read his statements and talked to people who knew him. He had no doubt where the shots came from, how many there were, or who fired them.
I still read nonsense "proving" it couldn't have been Oswald. One recent example--Richard Belzer wrote an article saying it was impossible because a cop had seen him in a break room drinking a Coke mere seconds after the shots, and he couldn't have made it down that fast. So I looked up the cop's testimony (again). It was quite detailed. He heard the first shot and slowed down, trying to see where it came from. He could tell it was one of the buildings in front of him--he was on Main facing the SBD. He saw birds flying between the two buildings, but couldn't tell which building they had been disturbed from. After the third shot, he was slowed or stopped, and then he sprang into action. He drove the block or so to the building, rode up on the sidewalk. He climbed the stairs and scanned the area, noticing another cop driving up on the Grassy Knoll and talking to people. All the people were pointing up at the SBD. He went inside and met the building supervisor, and they identified themselves to each other. They crossed to the elevators on the other side of the building. They pressed the buttons, and waited, but the elevators were on the top floor (which itself is interesting, since at least one of them should have parked on the ground floor). They then crossed back to the stairs and started climbing. At the second floor, the cop looked through the doorway window and stopped. He saw a man walking rapidly away from the door. He called to the supervisor, who had not stopped, then went through the door and ordered the man (Oswald) to stop. Oswald stopped, and slowly turned around. Notice, he was in the hallway according to the cop Belzer cited as evidence, not in the break room. The cop said he hands were empty, not holding a Coke. The cop had his gun drawn, and pointed it at the man--cops don't point guns at people unless they are about to use them or are afraid of genuine danger, so that alone should tell you the cop sensed something; maybe Oswald's "Psycho" smirk scared him. The supervisor caught up, identified Oswald as safe, and the cop went on up the stairs. Oswald was next seen by the back door security gate--think about that, a political junkie and activist not interested in the fact that the president he hated had been blown away outside his front door--leaving the building with a Coke in his hand (that's where Stone got the Coke from--the cop didn't see Oswald in the break room, he saw him just inside the second floor stairway door, walking away).
The cop estimated it took about 90 seconds from the last shot until he saw Oswald. That seems short to me, but okay, go with that. When I read Belzer's essay, I was living on the fourth floor, so I grabbed a watch and walked--not ran--down to the ground. These were taller floors than the SBD, too. Took me less than fifteen seconds. Oswald was younger and in better shape than me.
That Belzer article was typical. The facts were wrong, the assumptions weren't logically necessary, and the actual facts proved that the assumptions were wrong. That's what i saw in every conspiracy theory. When a claim was wrong, it was one made by the CTers. When an argument was illogical, it was made by the CTers. They sound more like Fundamentalists trying to prove to me that the Bible is true by citing the Bible, than like historians or scientist. You show them scientific facts, like the true computer-calculated route of the "Magic Bullet" or the end picture of the badly-damaged "Pristine Bullet" or the ballistics tests showing how much lead the bullet lost, or anything, and they either laugh significantly at your naivete for trusting science, or they just repeat the point you've refuted as though it gains in factual accuracy with each retelling (as it seems to in their minds).
So I went from a believer, to agnostic, to an atheist. Oswald shot Kennedy. The verifiable evidence is 100% conclusive, and none of the evidence showing something else is factually based. The deeply-flawed Warren Commission, the HSCOA report, and every serious study that analysis the actual evidence instead of making up shit (like claiming Oswald's gun couldn't be fired that fast--I saw one guy on video claiming it was impossible to even cycle the gun through three rounds in six seconds, and as he was saying this he demonstrated with the same model gun and did it in less time than that) concludes that Oswald fired all three shots, that no one else fired any shots that hit the president or left any other evidence, and that if there was a conspiracy, it didn't involve the government, the Mafia, Cuba, or Russia (the caveats there are because the HSCOA was a bit odd, in that it claimed there was audio evidence of a fourth shot, but still said it didn't hit anything and that Oswald fired the shots the killed the president and wounded Connally, and that there was no grand conspiracy--and of course the audio evidence of the fourth shot was later debunked, anyway).
So, Oswald shot Kennedy. If there was anyone else involved with Oswald (and I doubt it, because he was too much of an ass to work with anyone else), they were minor players and they have escaped because everyone was so busy trying to make sure Kennedy's murderer was cleared of his crime that no one really considered the possibility that someone hired Oswald to do it. In fact, if I ever assassinate someone (and I never will) I will hire someone to do it, then start a thousand conspiracy theories arguing that that person couldn't have done it, and that way anyone who didn't buy the official story would be so busy looking in the wrong direction they'd never look at me.
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