JFK killing: How close was Jackie to being shot?

A gif by member 7forever (Caution, gore alert - the gif is of JFK's fatal head shot), posted in a stupid 2011 thread brings up some questions for me. Just how close was Jackie Kennedy to being shot in the JFK assassination? If the shot was from the front or the back, it looks like it was a matter of inches if not an inch. She leans her head and face right into his at the moment of the fatal shot. See the post - 7forever has since deleted the gif, so I couldn't carry it here.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

From this repeating sequence it's also obvious that the often-told story that "Jackie Kennedy was jumping on the trunk to retrieve a piece of JFK's skull" is wrong, and is an urban myth - she had her face right in his when the shot came, kept her eyes on his during the time that the "skull piece" would have been skidding along the trunk, and was just trying to get the duck out of there.

Another observation I've never made is that JFK looks at his wife, maybe for help for his wound or just a questioning "What happened?" look, just before the head shot.

It's also interesting again seeing the Connally's reaction to the final shot. Governor Connolly was leaning back onto his wife, and quickly springs up again when the shot came. His wife hid behind a bush which she pulled over herself (a bouquet of roses, but it looks like a whole bush!).

Interesting to note that if JFK wasn't wearing his back brace, the fatal shot might have not been fatal.

Originally posted by superman2012
Interesting to note that if JFK wasn't wearing his back brace, the fatal shot might have not been fatal.

Right, but either he or Jackie still had time to get him down below the seat, like John Connelly did (although Connelly "leaped" up back into a sitting position when the head shot came - if the shot was from the back Connelly leaning back into his wife may have saved his life).

you guys almost got it right there, in the first three posts.
the right ?'s are asked ... you just gotta have the right perspective.

Originally posted by tinhattribunal
you guys almost got it right there, in the first three posts.
the right ?'s are asked ... you just gotta have the right perspective.

The right perspective comes with the eye of the beholder. There have been theories that almost everyone in the car shot JFK (I haven't seen the "Mrs. Connally killed him" theory yet), that shots came from any one of a dozen locations, or that (here's one I just made up) the head shot came from beneath the car, from someone who was hiding just under the asphalt in a steel box with an acute sense of timing.

Anyway, the original question of "how close was Jackie to being shot" interests me. Has anyone ever done an actual measurement of where her head is and the path of the bullet exiting or entering JFK's skull?

the man in the sewer one has already been done.
and i'm sorry if i sound too 'smug', i know you've 'been around' and have likely heard more on jfk than me.

but it still is the right question ... with 'shooters everywhere', if you were to look at all the theories, why wasn't anyone else in the car shot?
(connoly was hit with a fragment, as i recall)

oh! i didn't look at the thread you linked to (and said was dumb).
there's another one here along those same lines (jackie being the shooter).link

if you have already made up your mind that it could not have happened that way, maybe i should not paticipate in this thread, i would come off as a troll.

reply to post by tinhattribunal

I've been around....hmmmmm....are you accusing me of shooting him? /whistles, runs away/ . I thought of why nobody else in the car was hit with the last shot. If from the front or near side, obvious (although I don't think a bullet fragment was ever found along the path that it would have taken if shot from the front). But if from the back, wasn't there a bullet crack in the windshield glass? Where that bullet may have gone is a mystery. It would have missed Jackie, if by only an inch or three (I don't think it even clipped her extensive hair), and John Connelly was laying on his wife's lap, so coming from an angle it would have imbedded in Jackie's hair, in the seat in front of the Connelly's (or in that rose bush), or passed near one of the two guys in the front seat. I don't know enough about the fragments found to say myself /again, whistles, runs away with bullet fragments in pocket/

Originally posted by tinhattribunal
oh! i didn't look at the thread you linked to (and said was dumb).
there's another one here along those same lines (jackie being the shooter).

if you have already made up your mind that it could not have happened that way, maybe i should not paticipate in this thread, i would come off as a troll.

I think it's been shown that Jackie wasn't the shooter (sigh), but that her hands were on the arm and wrist of JFK when the shot was taken (that was the poster's intent with his post which includes his gif). But you are not a troll, that is a specific type of animal and you aren't one of those. If you think Jackie killed him by spitting a bullet out of her high-velocity mouth, by all means, stick around.

Originally posted by Aleister

Originally posted by tinhattribunal
you guys almost got it right there, in the first three posts.
the right ?'s are asked ... you just gotta have the right perspective.

The right perspective comes with the eye of the beholder. There have been theories that almost everyone in the car shot JFK (I haven't seen the "Mrs. Connally killed him" theory yet), that shots came from any one of a dozen locations, or that (here's one I just made up) the head shot came from beneath the car, from someone who was hiding just under the asphalt in a steel box with an acute sense of timing.

Anyway, the original question of "how close was Jackie to being shot" interests me. Has anyone ever done an actual measurement of where her head is and the path of the bullet exiting or entering JFK's skull?

edit on 16-3-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Wouldn't that depend on where exactly the bullet came from and who actually fired it? Either way, pretty close is a good approximation.

reply to post by superman2012


Let's say Oswald was the shooter, there must be a way of determining how close Jackie was to being hit from the entrance wound and the approximate exit wound. If it was a front shot from the knoll or from the bushes by the knoll, or behind the fence, all of those could be calculated by angle to how near Jackie's head was. If from the agent riding in the car behind JFK's car, the one accused of accidently shooting the shot, that can be calculated. And if the (shall I go on, well, OK) driver of JFK's car did it, the same, or from the three tramps which included E. Howard Hunt, this may actually rule them out as Jackie's own skull and face were right up in there. Who else? Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, angry over Marilyn's death, he could have easily put a bullet in between two strands of Jackie's hair (why do you think they called him "Joltin' Joe", not for his hitting ability, but for his mastery of the JFK head shot).

reply to post by Aleister


I guess you could calculate how close she was to the actual hit on JFK, but, you would still need more data then is out there to accurately calculate how close she was to the bullets path on the way to JFK, plus you would still need to know from where the bullet came from.

reply to post by superman2012


Looking at the gif again

www.abovetopsecret.com...

and it maybe rules out JFK's driver (although he has been ruled out, but there is never enough ruling in- or-out in this case), as he would have had to have shot through Jackie's hair. I'll u2u Rising Against about this thread, he should have some answers if a study has been done about how close Jackie was to getting shot in the head too.

Originally posted by Aleister
A gif by member 7forever (Caution, gore alert - the gif is of JFK's fatal head shot), posted in a stupid 2011 thread brings up some questions for me. Just how close was Jackie Kennedy to being shot in the JFK assassination? If the shot was from the front or the back, it looks like it was a matter of inches if not an inch. She leans her head and face right into his at the moment of the fatal shot. See the post - 7forever has since deleted the gif, so I couldn't carry it here.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

From this repeating sequence it's also obvious that the often-told story that "Jackie Kennedy was jumping on the trunk to retrieve a piece of JFK's skull" is wrong, and is an urban myth - she had her face right in his when the shot came, kept her eyes on his during the time that the "skull piece" would have been skidding along the trunk, and was just trying to get the duck out of there.

Another observation I've never made is that JFK looks at his wife, maybe for help for his wound or just a questioning "What happened?" look, just before the head shot.

It's also interesting again seeing the Connally's reaction to the final shot. Governor Connolly was leaning back onto his wife, and quickly springs up again when the shot came. His wife hid behind a bush which she pulled over herself (a bouquet of roses, but it looks like a whole bush!).

edit on 16-3-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

edit on 16-3-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

edit on 16-3-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

Because the assassins were so skilled in hitting their target, only JFK was shot. Connelly was just collateral damage as a bullet passed through JFK, as Jackie could very well haved been. Whoever did it were great shots.

www.assassinationresearch.com...
this may be a good resource for you.


you can view the Z film frame by frame.

also jfk was 6'1'' i believe, jackie 5'7'' some have tried to use that for determinig measurements in their theories.


hmm..
jfk looks kinda short here. maybe i should check my sources on their hieghts.

or maybe it's somethin' else.

reply to post by tinhattribunal


Thanks. It was at frame 312 that Jackie is leaning in right in front of JFK's face, then the next frame that the shot hits. It's harder to see on the Zapruder film itself, even the frames, because of the size, which is why the gif that I link to in this thread is so interesting - the poster zoomed way in and caught the moment, and then it loops again and again. So it's easy to see the exact movements, where Jackie's arms are placed (which "shoots down" the theory that she shot him, it's even weird to type that), how he looks at her and she at him, and then comes right into his face to see what he was indicating, and then the final shot.

Most height differences occur in the legs, lots of people are closer in height once you sit them down. And in this case JFK was a bit slumped over while Jackie was at full attention and probably sitting up at full height, with her adrenaline pumping into her at maximum rate (hence the flight response she had when she saw and felt JFK's head explode right in front of her eyes - just look how close she was on the linked gif, it happened directly in front of her).

The gif again, at this post. And once again, a violence warning for those who wouldn't like to see JFK's head shot up in semi-close up.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Just watched the gif quite a few times, a very good close-up view of the killing. I never noticed before that just after JFK is shot and Jackie is pulling back, she shoves JFK's neck with her right hand, grabs his neck and pushes it, and the body starts falling to the center left and that's when she's "outta there" at full speed.

I was looking at the gif again to see if Jackie's head would have blocked a shot from the grassy knoll (from the tramps location for sure - I think), and I don't know enough about the exact measurements to be sure either way. Wouldn't a shot from the knoll, from above, have entered her elbow or somewhere else on her right arm, which was held pretty high at the moment of impact? And how much pressure does it look like she's putting on JFK's body at that moment, pushing it to the back when his nervous system was destroyed and he wasn't holding his body upright anymore?

Looks to me like she was inches away from blowing her own head off.....if you study the Giff closely you will see Jackie looking at Connolly. as soon as he turns away she clearly puts her hand inside JFK's Jacket grabs his concealed weapon twists it so it's pointing upwards and shoots him under the chin.
then she lets the gun go, removes her hand and pats his lapel down to hide weapon...

If anyone had one reason to Kill JFK, Jackie had a thousand....

Originally posted by Soloprotocol
Looks to me like she was inches away from blowing her own head off.....if you study the Giff closely you will see Jackie looking at Connolly. as soon as he turns away she clearly puts her hand inside JFK's Jacket grabs his concealed weapon twists it so it's pointing upwards and shoots him under the chin.
then she lets the gun go, removes her hand and pats his lapel down to hide weapon...

If anyone had one reason to Kill JFK, Jackie had a thousand....

Facepalm. No, Jackie didn't kill JFK, there was no gun found, her white gloves would have had black powder all over them, and the thread the gif came from is about that topic. But an interesting point of view anyway. She looks at Connelly because she was surprised at what was happening to her husband, he was turning towards her in distress and shock, and Connelly was looking backwards and that caught her eye too. This happened in seconds of real time, and a lot was occurring in that car, but Jackie shooting her husband wasn't, I'd be willing to bet the house, one of them. Talking of the house, why would she want to give up the White House by offing her husband, that's just silly. She was 33 years old and on top of the world, and even if she knew her husband was cheating on her on an almost daily basis she'd take him for the glitz and the money before she'd kill him.

reply to post by Aleister


It was close to Jackie's head but far enough right to miss her. The bullet impacted jfk over the right eye. In the last gif you can see the bullet path just right of Nellie. Notice the circular white area by his hair where the bullet entered, in addition to his rear skull coming open and off.