JFK Second Shooter from the Grassy Knoll

Overview

Of all the individual threads in the vast tapestry of JFK assassination theories, none has proved more durable or more visceral than the grassy knoll. The phrase itself has become a cultural shorthand — drop “grassy knoll” into any conversation and people know exactly what you mean, even if they couldn’t locate Dealey Plaza on a map. It refers to a simple, devastating proposition: that on November 22, 1963, someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald fired at President John F. Kennedy from behind a wooden stockade fence atop a grassy slope to the right-front of the presidential motorcade.

The theory has never been definitively proved or disproved, and that ambiguity is precisely what keeps it alive. It was given an astonishing institutional stamp in 1979 when the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, based on acoustic evidence, that a second gunman likely fired from the grassy knoll — making the assassination a probable conspiracy. Two years later, a National Academy of Sciences review essentially shredded that acoustic evidence. The result is a perfect epistemological stalemate: a congressional committee said conspiracy, a scientific panel said no, and the American public has been arguing about it ever since.

At the heart of the debate sit three pieces of evidence that refuse to be explained away to everyone’s satisfaction: the Zapruder film, which appears to show Kennedy’s head snapping backward toward the shot’s supposed origin; the acoustic analysis that briefly turned conspiracy from fringe belief into government finding; and the so-called Badge Man photograph, a ghostly image that some researchers claim shows a uniformed figure firing from behind the fence. Together, they form the evidentiary backbone of perhaps the most consequential “what if” in American history.

Origins & History

The Moment on Elm Street

At 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on November 22, 1963, the presidential motorcade turned from Houston Street onto Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, passing directly beneath the windows of the Texas School Book Depository. Within approximately six seconds, three shots were fired. President Kennedy was struck at least twice — once in the upper back/neck and once in the head. Governor John Connally, seated in front of Kennedy, was also wounded. Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1:00 p.m.

Even before the motorcade cleared Dealey Plaza, witnesses were pointing at the grassy knoll. Railroad supervisor S.M. Holland, watching from the Triple Underpass overpass directly ahead of the motorcade, later testified that he saw a puff of smoke rise from behind the wooden fence at the top of the knoll. He ran toward the fence immediately after the shooting and found fresh footprints in the mud behind it.

Holland was not alone. Of the witnesses who indicated a direction for the shots, a significant number pointed toward the grassy knoll rather than the Book Depository. The Warren Commission would later interview or take depositions from 552 witnesses. According to researcher Stewart Galanor’s analysis, of the witnesses who offered directional opinions, roughly two-thirds believed at least some shots came from the area of the grassy knoll.

The Warren Commission and Its Discontents

The Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon Johnson just seven days after the assassination, spent ten months investigating and concluded in September 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, firing three shots from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository with a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The Commission found no evidence of a conspiracy and attributed the witness reports of shots from the knoll to confusing acoustic echoes in the enclosed geography of Dealey Plaza.

The single-bullet theory — later derided as the “magic bullet theory” by critics — proposed that one bullet struck Kennedy in the upper back, exited his throat, then hit Governor Connally in the back, chest, wrist, and thigh. This was necessary to explain all the wounds within three shots, since one shot missed the car entirely. The bullet, Commission Exhibit 399, was found in nearly pristine condition on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital.

Skeptics found the single-bullet theory implausible from the start. But the grassy knoll theory didn’t truly catch fire in the public imagination until Abraham Zapruder’s film became widely available.

The Zapruder Film

Abraham Zapruder was a Dallas dressmaker who positioned himself on a concrete pedestal on the north side of Elm Street, opposite the grassy knoll, to film the motorcade with his Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera. His 26.6-second film — 486 frames running at 18.3 frames per second — captured the assassination in horrific detail and became the single most important piece of evidence in the case.

Frame 313 is the key. It captures the moment the fatal bullet struck Kennedy’s head. The president’s skull appears to explode forward and upward, and then — critically — his head and upper body snap sharply backward and to the left. For millions of Americans who first saw the film on Geraldo Rivera’s ABC show Good Night America in March 1975 (the film had been locked away by Life magazine, which purchased it from Zapruder for $150,000), the backward motion seemed to settle the matter. A shot from behind, from the Book Depository, should have driven Kennedy’s head forward. The backward snap appeared to indicate a shot from the front-right — from the grassy knoll.

The physics, as it turns out, are not so simple. The jet effect, first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez in 1976, explains that when a high-velocity bullet exits the skull, the explosive ejection of matter from the exit wound creates a reactive force that pushes the head backward — toward the direction the bullet came from. Subsequent studies by forensic scientists, including wound ballistics tests using skulls filled with gel simulating brain tissue, have replicated this effect. The backward head snap, in other words, is potentially consistent with a shot from behind.

Potentially. The debate has never been conclusively resolved, and the Zapruder film remains the single most analyzed piece of amateur footage in history.

Key Claims

• Multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. The grassy knoll theory posits that at least one additional gunman fired from behind the wooden stockade fence atop the knoll, to the right-front of the presidential limousine, in a coordinated crossfire with Oswald or his replacement in the Depository.

• The backward head snap proves a frontal shot. The movement of Kennedy’s head and body in Zapruder frame 313 and subsequent frames is argued to be inconsistent with a bullet striking from behind and consistent only with a shot from the front-right direction of the grassy knoll.

• Witnesses heard and saw evidence of a knoll shooter. Dozens of Dealey Plaza witnesses reported hearing shots from the direction of the grassy knoll, and several reported seeing a puff of smoke or suspicious individuals behind the fence.

• The Badge Man photograph shows a uniformed shooter. Computer-enhanced analysis of Mary Moorman’s Polaroid, taken at the instant of the fatal head shot, allegedly reveals a figure in police uniform firing a rifle from behind the fence.

• Acoustic evidence confirmed a second shooter. The 1979 HSCA finding, based on dictabelt recordings from a Dallas police motorcycle, identified four shots — one from the grassy knoll — with a 95% confidence level.

• The fence area showed signs of a shooter. Witnesses including S.M. Holland and several Dallas police officers reported fresh footprints, cigarette butts, and muddy spots behind the fence consistent with someone having stood there during the shooting.

Evidence & Analysis

The Acoustic Evidence: Rise and Fall

The most dramatic piece of evidence in favor of the grassy knoll theory arrived in 1978, when acoustics experts James Barger and Mark Weiss of Bolt Beranek and Newman analyzed a recording from a Dallas police motorcycle’s radio microphone that had been stuck in the open position during the assassination. Using sophisticated pattern-matching analysis, they identified four distinct impulse patterns that matched test shots fired in Dealey Plaza. Three matched the Book Depository; one matched the grassy knoll.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations relied heavily on this analysis when it concluded in 1979 that there was a “high probability” of two gunmen and that the assassination was “probably” the result of a conspiracy. It was an extraordinary finding — the United States Congress was formally declaring that the assassination of a president was a conspiracy.

But the finding was short-lived. In 1982, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Ballistic Acoustics, chaired by Norman Ramsey of Harvard, reviewed the evidence and delivered a devastating rebuttal. The panel determined that the sounds identified as gunshots on the dictabelt were actually recorded approximately one minute after the assassination, based on cross-talk from another radio channel that contained identifiable speech occurring after the shooting. The acoustic “gunshots,” in other words, could not have been gunshots at all.

The acoustics debate has continued. Researcher Donald Thomas published a 2001 paper in the journal Science & Justice arguing that the NAS panel made errors in its cross-talk analysis and that the original acoustic findings were valid. Other researchers have disputed Thomas’s conclusions. The FBI conducted its own analysis in 2004-2005 and sided with the NAS finding. As of the latest archival releases, no definitive resolution has emerged.

Badge Man: Ghost in the Photo

In 1982, researcher Gary Mack and computer imaging specialist Jack White examined a Polaroid photograph taken by bystander Mary Moorman at approximately the moment of the fatal head shot. The photo captures the grassy knoll area behind and to the right of Kennedy’s position. Through computer enhancement — pushing the limits of what the Polaroid’s resolution could support — Mack identified what he claimed was a human figure standing behind the wooden fence, wearing what appeared to be a police badge (hence “Badge Man”), and holding what appeared to be a rifle.

The Badge Man identification has always been controversial, even among assassination researchers sympathetic to the conspiracy hypothesis. The original Moorman Polaroid is a small, grainy image, and the “figure” is a tiny cluster of light and dark areas deep in the background. At the level of enhancement required to identify a human form, photographic noise, compression artifacts, and interpreter bias (pareidolia) become significant concerns. Different enhancement techniques applied to the same image have produced different results.

In 1988, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory applied more sophisticated image analysis to the Moorman photo and concluded that the area identified as Badge Man contained insufficient detail to confirm or deny the presence of a human figure. The image remains a Rorschach test: those who see a gunman find the identification compelling; those who do not see it find the claim far-fetched.

Witness Testimony: The Smoke and the Fence

The eyewitness evidence remains the grassy knoll theory’s most enduring strength. S.M. Holland’s account of seeing smoke rise from behind the fence has been corroborated, in its general outlines, by several other witnesses. Lee Bowers, a railroad tower operator who had an elevated view of the area behind the fence, told the Warren Commission he saw two unfamiliar men standing near the fence before the shooting and observed “some commotion” at the moment of the shots — though he never specified seeing a gunman or weapon. Bowers died in a single-car accident in 1966, and his death has itself become the subject of conspiracy theories.

Dallas police officer Joe Marshall Smith ran to the area behind the fence immediately after the shooting. He later testified that he encountered a man who identified himself as a Secret Service agent and showed credentials. The Secret Service has stated that none of its agents were stationed behind the fence. Whether this encounter occurred as Smith remembered, and who the man was, has never been resolved.

However, witness testimony from traumatic events is notoriously unreliable. The acoustics of Dealey Plaza — a bowl-shaped area surrounded by buildings — would have created significant echo effects. Multiple studies have demonstrated that gunshot echoes in enclosed urban spaces can make witnesses perceive shots as coming from different directions than their actual origin. The Warren Commission specifically cited this phenomenon in dismissing the grassy knoll reports.

The James Files Confession

In 1994, a federal prisoner named James Files gave a videotaped interview claiming he was the grassy knoll shooter. Files said he was a contract operative working for Chicago mob boss Charles Nicoletti, and that he fired the fatal head shot using a Remington XP-100 Fireball pistol. He claimed to have bitten a spent .222-caliber shell casing and left it on the fence post — and a dented shell casing was indeed found at the site in 1987.

The Files confession has been rejected by most assassination researchers, including many who believe in a second shooter. His account contains factual errors about the sequence of events in Dealey Plaza, and the shell casing found in 1987 showed no forensic link to the assassination. Files had ample reason to seek attention — he was serving a 30-year sentence for the attempted murder of a police officer and had nothing to lose from a dramatic claim. The FBI investigated his story and found it not credible.

Cultural Impact

The grassy knoll has transcended its literal meaning to become one of the most powerful metaphors in American political culture. To say something happened “on the grassy knoll” is to invoke hidden forces, official deception, and the gap between what the government tells the public and what actually occurred.

Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK brought the grassy knoll theory to its largest audience. The film’s recreation of the assassination, intercut with the actual Zapruder footage, made the argument for multiple shooters with cinematic power that no research paper could match. Stone put the single-bullet theory on trial through Kevin Costner’s courtroom monologue — “Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left” — a phrase that entered the cultural lexicon. The film was so influential that Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, establishing the Assassination Records Review Board to declassify millions of pages of related documents.

The Zapruder film itself has had an extraordinary afterlife. After being shown publicly for the first time in 1975, it became arguably the first piece of visual evidence that taught Americans to distrust official narratives. It paved the way for the forensic frame-by-frame analysis culture that would later be applied to the Rodney King video, the Pentagon 9/11 footage, and countless pieces of cell phone video in the social media age.

In 1999, the Zapruder family was awarded $16 million by a federal arbitration panel for the original film, which was donated to the National Archives. The amount — reflecting the film’s extraordinary historical significance — was itself controversial, with critics arguing that a document of such importance should have been public property from the beginning.

The grassy knoll theory has appeared in hundreds of films, television shows, novels, and songs. Seinfeld parodied the Zapruder film analysis with the “second spitter” episode. The X-Files made Dealey Plaza a recurring touchstone. Stephen King’s 11/22/63 built an entire novel around the question of what would happen if you could prevent the assassination. The theory’s persistence in popular culture both reflects and reinforces the roughly 60-65% of Americans who, in polls taken over six decades, have consistently said they believe Kennedy’s assassination involved a conspiracy.

Timeline

• November 22, 1963 — President Kennedy assassinated in Dealey Plaza, Dallas. Witnesses report shots from the grassy knoll area.
• November 22, 1963 — Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm film is developed and purchased by Life magazine.
• November 24, 1963 — Lee Harvey Oswald murdered by Jack Ruby in the Dallas Police headquarters basement.
• September 24, 1964 — Warren Commission Report released, concluding Oswald acted alone. Grassy knoll reports attributed to acoustic echoes.
• 1966 — Witness Lee Bowers dies in a single-car accident in Midlothian, Texas.
• March 6, 1975 — Zapruder film shown publicly for the first time on ABC’s Good Night America with Geraldo Rivera.
• 1976 — Physicist Luis Alvarez proposes the jet-effect theory to explain the backward head snap.
• 1978 — Acoustics firm Bolt Beranek and Newman analyzes Dallas police dictabelt, identifies four shots including one from the grassy knoll.
• 1979 — House Select Committee on Assassinations concludes “probable conspiracy” with two gunmen based on acoustic evidence.
• 1982 — National Academy of Sciences panel concludes the acoustic evidence is invalid; sounds occurred after the assassination.
• 1982 — Gary Mack identifies “Badge Man” in enhanced Mary Moorman Polaroid.
• 1988 — MIT Lincoln Laboratory analysis inconclusive on Badge Man image.
• 1991 — Oliver Stone’s JFK brings the grassy knoll theory to mass audiences.
• 1992 — Congress passes JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, establishing the Assassination Records Review Board.
• 1994 — James Files claims he was the grassy knoll shooter; FBI finds claim not credible.
• 2001 — Donald Thomas publishes peer-reviewed paper defending the acoustic evidence.
• 2017-2018 — National Archives releases remaining classified JFK assassination files, with some still withheld.
• 2023 — Additional JFK documents declassified under executive order; no definitive grassy knoll evidence emerges.

Sources & Further Reading

• Warren Commission. Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964
• House Select Committee on Assassinations. Final Report. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979
• National Academy of Sciences. Report of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics. National Academy Press, 1982
• Bugliosi, Vincent. Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. W.W. Norton, 2007
• Posner, Gerald. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. Random House, 1993
• Thomas, Donald B. “Echo Correlation Analysis and the Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited.” Science & Justice, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2001
• Alvarez, Luis. “A Physicist Examines the Kennedy Assassination Film.” American Journal of Physics, Vol. 44, No. 9, 1976
• Galanor, Stewart. Cover-Up. Kestrel Books, 1998
• Stone, Oliver (dir.). JFK. Warner Bros., 1991

Related Theories

• JFK Assassination — the broader umbrella of theories surrounding Kennedy’s death
• Oswald Was a Patsy — the theory that Oswald was framed or manipulated by intelligence agencies
• Mafia Killed JFK — organized crime involvement in the assassination
• CIA Kennedy Plot — CIA involvement in the assassination as retaliation for the Bay of Pigs