Bob Ellis, who was 21 when JFK was assassinated, is not convinced by last night's Four Corners documentary about the tragedy.
LIKE THE WARREN COMMISSION, last night’s Four Corners asks not who did it but how Lee did it.
How did he fire three shots in the time? Not why did Lee want Lyndon Johnson as President. Not why he went home to get a pistol and did not bring one with him, and not skip town. Just how he had time to squeeze off three shots in, what, eleven seconds, from that angle. And where the first bullet went.
Inadvertently, the expert showed a leafy tree in the way of the fatal third shot. But he didn’t go into that.
I was twenty-one at the time. And I remember the first argument was with Jackie, who heard three shots – one from the front, and had chased a bit of his brain across the boot – not the bonnet.
And there was only supposed to be two shots then. Now it’s three and how long it took for – yes – Lee to do it.
It has to be only three. And it has to be Lee, from that direction.
The refurbished film shows ‘no-one’ on the grassy knoll, though that’s where dozens heard the shot come from, including Jackie. The first news reports were of shots from that direction — the overpass, perhaps?
Maybe there were four shots, two simultaneous; or five.
This would account for one bullet that ‘exploded’ and another that passed through two bodies unimpaired.
And the missing brain. And the missing Oswald interrogation notes. And the missing Kennedy autopsy film. And the carwashed crime scene. And Oswald’s lack of motive. And Johnson’s big, bad, motive. And his long-time acquaintance, of fifteen years, with Ruby. And his wording of the Warren question — how Oswald did it, not who did it.
Always, always, always, this crime of the century, without a motive, makes no sense, unless the obvious – Johnson’s motive, and why he wanted Jackie at the swearing in, and why she wore her husband’s blood and brains to the photo-op – arise as the more significant questions. Not how Lee might have done it. Anyone could have been in that building. Anyone. Any Texan. Any white American.
And it turns out Jackie thought Lyndon Johnson (pictured right) did it, and so did Bobby, and so do I.
Bobby was killed before he could, as President, look into it afresh — killed when he, too, was re-routed.
Who had the motive for that re-routing?
Lyndon, again. Lyndon the U.S. President, with power to order the Secret Service to do things. Or Lyndon’s friend, Hoover, who Bobby wanted to sack.
Motive, always motive.
Once again, as with Lindy Chamberlain, we’re asked not to think of motive, but forensics. Not why Lindy would have wanted to kill her newborn, healthy baby, but how she might have done it.
Lee was the father of little girls, and would never, for that reason, have done it. He is, I think, the only American assassin with children. He is also the only one with no handgun to help out afterwards. The only one whose interrogation has disappeared. The only one, apart from Booth killed before he was brought to trial. Booth, who was part of a conspiracy.
Give me a break.
Lee being killed by a Mafioso friend of Lyndon just about sorts it, as does the vanishing of the Lee notes, the President’s brain, and his blood and brains from the wash car.
Give me a break.
If Lee had another to do with it, I’d be surprised. He looked shocked when asked if he did it. If he planned to use his trial as a platform for Soviet Communism, he would have said "yes, let me tell you why".
But no, he didn’t. He was that well-known combination a Soviet-defecting-lone-madman-FBI-informant-non-conspirator-brilliant-sniper. They twist themselves in knots with that mouthful; that absurdity.
And he had two daughters, no motive, no pistol, no exit strategy. He didn’t try to skip town. He went to the pictures.
Give me a break.
