The Day Kennedy Died: 50 Years Later LIFE Remembers the Man and the Moment

LIFE Is on the Story

Fifty years ago, LIFE had people in place throughout the country and a big office in Los Angeles. Our West Coast people headed for Dallas—where we also had correspondents—as quickly as they could. RICHARD B. STOLLEY was in charge of the L.A. bureau then and still remembers the day, and the days following. Here is his report, all these years later, of the magazine’s all-hands-on-deck effort and of how he tracked down the Zapruder film.

THE WEEKEND THAT CHANGED THE world began with a shout.

“Dick, Kennedy’s been shot in Dallas!”

I was in my office as Los Angeles bureau chief for LIFE magazine. The shouter was LIFE correspondent Tommy Thompson, who had wandered over to the Associated Press Teletype to find out (pre-Internet) what was happening in the world.

The AP machine was spitting out bulletins and flashes, with accompanying alarm bells, that gave the first news of the tragedy in Dealey Plaza. I ran to see for myself, then back to my desk to call my editor in New York and ask what we could do. “How fast can you get to Dallas?” was the answer.

An hour later four of us were on a (now defunct) National Airlines plane—two photographers who were in the office, fortunately with their camera equipment, Allan Grant and Don Cravens, and Tommy and I. Back then, before all the 9/11 security, you could dash on to an airliner at the last moment, which is what we did, with no baggage, of course.

The plane was crowded with other journalists, some of them carrying bulky TV cameras in their laps. I suspect we broke every federal regulation concerning in-flight safety that day, but the airline officials were understanding. Just before reaching the airport, we heard on the car radio that the President was dead, and Tommy’s groan was heartbreaking. On the flight to Dallas, the pilot kept us informed, including an announcement that someone named Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested.

Tommy, a former newspaper city editor in Houston, turned to me and said, “I know Texas cops. Let me go after him,” which is what he did, along with photographer Grant, as soon as we landed. Cravens and I checked into the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas; he went out to cover a city plummeting into shock, and I moved into a suite and set up an office for the other reporters and photographers that LIFE was sending in.

At about six p.m., I got a call from Patsy Swank, the LIFE stringer (part-time correspondent) in Dallas who had spent the afternoon at police headquarters. Her news was astounding. She said another reporter, knowing she worked for LIFE, had told her that a cop had told him that a local businessman had been at Dealey Plaza with a movie camera and had photographed the assassination.

Anticipating my next question, she said, “My friend couldn’t spell the name, only pronounce it. Za-proo-dur.”

I had never been in Dallas before, so I picked up the phone book, once an invaluable asset to journalists, and ran my finger down the Zs, and there it was, just as Patsy had pronounced it, “Zapruder, Abraham.” I began calling; I kept on calling every 15 minutes. No one answered. Zapruder was out trying to get his film developed, as I later learned.

The fact that the film existed at all was something of a miracle, the result of several fortunate circumstances.

The first was that the presidential motorcade would pass close to Jennifer Juniors, the garment company that Zapruder co-owned. An 8mm enthusiast who had collected reel after reel of family footage, he had decided to film the Kennedy visit. But that morning, the weather was rainy and overcast. He left his Bell & Howell camera at home.

His assistant, Lillian Rogers, was upset. The rain had stopped, she pointed out, and added, “Mr. Z., it isn’t every day the President comes through the neighborhood.” Grumbling amiably, he drove seven miles out and seven back with the camera, the second circumstance.

Zapruder had thought about filming the motorcade from a fourth floor window in his factory, which overlooked Dealey Plaza. But at the window he realized the view was limited, and as some of his office workers strolled the half block to the plaza to see the President (with their boss’s permission), he joined them, the third circumstance. It was filling up with spectators. Zapruder, then 58, wasn’t tall, and he wanted to film the President, not the back of somebody’s head.

He looked around and saw a four-foot concrete abutment that would put him above the crowd, but because he had vertigo, he could not stand up there without someone nearby. He found one of his employees, Marilyn Sitzman, and asked if she would help. The two of them scrambled onto the abutment, the only place on that side of Elm Street where he could film the motorcade from beginning to end. Circumstance number four. In her essay a few pages on, Alexandra Zapruder, Abraham’s granddaughter, recalls this family lore just the same.

When police motorcycles came into view, Zapruder started his camera, but stopped until the presidential limousine appeared, thus saving several crucial seconds of film. Kennedy and Jackie shared the backseat, and Texas governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie, were perched on jump seats. All were smiling broadly and waving. This is when Oswald fired his first shot from a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository across the street from Zapruder’s factory. That bullet missed, apparently striking a tree branch or a traffic light and disintegrating.

The noise of the shot over Zapruder’s left shoulder, less than 100 yards away, caused him to jerk the camera almost imperceptibly (as did the second shot and the third)—at least that’s what I see in the film (though others have read more into it). At that moment, the limousine drove behind a large highway sign and vanished for a second or two in Zapruder’s viewfinder. (“If I’d had any sense, I would have dropped to the ground,” as many frightened spectators in Dealey Plaza were doing, he later admitted.)

When the limousine reappeared, Kennedy had both fists jammed into his throat, and Connally was slipping off his jump seat, his mouth opening in a howl of pain. This was the shot that the Warren report says passed through the President’s upper back and into the governor’s right shoulder, then tumbled around inside his body, inflicting serious wounds. That bullet was found later on Connally’s stretcher, less damaged than might have been expected after passing through two human bodies.

The limousine’s Secret Service driver and the agent beside him were disoriented, though agents in the follow-up Secret Service car—a modified 1956 Cadillac with broad running boards, nicknamed the “Queen Mary”—had turned to look in the direction of the building where Oswald was aiming for his final shot.

Suddenly the right half of Kennedy’s head exploded; blood and brain matter spurted up and forward. He tipped left toward Jackie’s pink-suited lap. She stared blankly, then whirled to her right and began climbing onto the limousine’s huge trunk. One theory is that she was trying to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull. A more plausible explanation is that the young woman was terrified beyond imagining and wanted to escape the targeted rear seat. She later said she remembered nothing of that moment.

The Secret Service agent assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy, Clint Hill, was standing on the running board of the Queen Mary. When he heard shots fired, he leaped onto the street and sprinted toward the back of the limousine. Reaching the vehicle, he clambered aboard as Mrs. Kennedy was on her hands and knees on the trunk, and pushed her back into the seat. At that moment, the driver realized what was happening and hit the gas pedal, heading for the safety of an underpass only a few yards ahead.

Also at that moment, Zapruder stopped filming. But he had caught the entire sequence from beginning to horrific end. “They killed him,” he began shouting. “They killed him.” He climbed down from his concrete perch and stumbled back to his office, a block away, where his staff rallied around their stricken boss. In his office, Zapruder was “incoherent,” Lillian Rogers realized. She got him seated, then took the camera and locked it in the office safe. Zapruder conferred with his business partner, Erwin Schwartz, and Schwartz later recalled his exclaiming, “I saw it! I saw his head come off!”

I, of course, knew none of this as I called his home repeatedly that Friday evening. Finally at 11 p.m., a weary voice answered. I asked if this was Mr. Zapruder, and then identified myself and LIFE. What followed was a brief, dramatic and, as it turned out, history-making conversation.

I asked if it was true that he had photographed the assassination that morning. “Yes.” Did he photograph the whole sequence? “Yes.” Had he actually seen the film himself? “Yes.” Could I please come to his home now and see the film? “No.”

He politely explained that he was exhausted and overcome by what he had witnessed. The decision I made next turned out to be quite possibly the most important of my career. In the news business, sometimes you push people hard, unsympathetically, without obvious remorse (even while you may be squirming inside). Sometimes, you don’t. This, I felt intuitively, was one of those times. I reminded myself: This man had watched a murder (of a man he revered, I discovered later). I said I understood.

Clearly relieved, Zapruder asked me to come to his office at nine the next morning. Back in at least a semi-push-hard mood, and being reasonably sure that Zapruder would have talked to other reporters after me on the previous night, I got there at eight.

He looked a little surprised, but said he was about to show the film to two Secret Service agents and agreed to let me join them. The projector was set up in a small windowless room facing a white wall that would serve as the screen. The first few frames show some of his employees who had turned out to see the President in Dealey Plaza.

Then the motorcade appeared. There was no sound except for the whirring of the projector. We watched transfixed, knowing what was going to happen, yet not having a clue as to what it would look like. The limousine was briefly obscured by the road sign, then for a couple of seconds, Kennedy clutched his throat, Connally tipped over, their wives looked puzzled.

The film advanced to infamous Frame 313, and Oswald’s bullet struck the President’s head. The two agents and I responded precisely the same, with an explosive “ugh,” as if we had been simultaneously gut-punched. It was the single most dramatic moment of my 70 years in journalism. The fact that we were watching the assassination only hours after it had occurred was nothing short of remarkable. I decided instantly: There is no way I am going to leave this office without that film.

Zapruder had been through a lot, and I was realizing just how much. His Friday afternoon had been unlike any other’s, although everyone’s afternoon that Friday had been strange. Later, I was able to piece it together.

When he had seen the head shot through his viewfinder, Zapruder had begun shouting. Within moments his experience as a media figure had begun when, on his foggy way back to his office, he was approached by reporter Harry McCormick of The Dallas Morning News. Zapruder told McCormick who he was but deferred any interview. Then he got back to his office, and the swarm started in earnest. Darwin Payne, a reporter from the Dallas Times Herald, showed up and tried to get publication rights to the film for his paper. The situation in the office grew hectic. McCormick had told Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels about Zapruder, and at 1:15 p.m. the two of them arrived. The pair of newspaper reporters began complaining about each other’s presence, and both were asked to leave. In the office, everybody agreed that the essential next step was to have the film processed, to see what Zapruder had actually captured.

Zapruder, the business partner Schwartz and Sorrels decided to try The Dallas Morning News and were driven there, along with reporter McCormick, in a Dallas police car with lights on and siren screaming. When they discovered the newspaper had no motion picture film–processing capability, they went next door to the ABC-TV affiliate, WFAA-TV, only to be told it could handle 16 mm black-and-white film only. A station executive suggested the local Kodak plant and called them, and Sorrels got on the phone to insist on immediate processing. (While at WFAA-TV, Zapruder gave a brief but remarkably composed live interview on camera about what he had just witnessed.)

They arrived at the Kodak plant out by Love Field at about the same time that Air Force One took off for Washington with Kennedy’s body. An hour and a half later, Kodak employees showed the original film once as a quality check, but not a second time for fear of damage. Zapruder was both relieved and sickened when he saw what he had.

Since the lab had no facilities for making copies, they drove to another company and ordered three prints of the original to be made. Zapruder and Schwartz were driven to Jennifer Juniors, had a drink and closed the office. They then took the prints back to Kodak to be made ready for projection. Their dinner was chili and beans from a vending machine at the lab.

At about 10 p.m., Zapruder and Schwartz (now in their own, not a police, vehicle) drove to Dallas police headquarters to give two prints to Agent Sorrels, who had been called away from the Kodak plant midafternoon by the news that a suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been arrested.

While at headquarters, Zapruder and Schwartz were astonished to see Oswald as he was being moved in a hallway (an indication of the lax security that would have such devastating consequences two days later). Sorrels told the two men he was busy and asked them to take the prints to the local Secret Service office. One was flown to Washington, and the other was given to the Dallas FBI office.

An exhausted Zapruder finally went home to his family at about 11 p.m., and shortly thereafter, I called. Abraham Zapruder’s day was not yet ended.

ON THE AFTERNOON OF THAT same Friday, meantime, Dallas was in understandable chaos. While Zapruder was returning to his office shouting “They killed him,” the White House press corps, riding in a bus far back in the motorcade, was trying to figure out what had happened. Time correspondent Hugh Sidey later told me he’d been “bored, leaning against the window” when he’d heard a noise, then a second and a third. CBS correspondent Bob Pierpoint, who had covered the Korean War, jumped up and shouted, “Those sounded like gunshots!” The bus sped up.

But instead of going to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy and Connally had been taken, the bus went to the Trade Mart, where the President had been scheduled to make a speech. Some reporters jumped off to find phone booths and call their offices. The driver was then told to go to the hospital.

The first thing Sidey saw when he disembarked there was a young Secret Service agent in the presidential limousine, clutching a reddening pail of water, and wiping the blood and brain matter off the backseat. This tampering with evidence of the crime—the position of the brain parts could of course help determine the source and direction of the shots—was characteristic of the profound shock and paralysis that was spreading throughout the city.

When two priests came out of the hospital, Sidey approached. They confirmed Kennedy was dead, and they had given him last rites. It was still midafternoon—Kennedy was shot at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, pronounced dead at one p.m. and Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President at 2:38, although he was technically already in charge. At this point the new President and the remains of his predecessor were headed for Washington.

All of this had happened before our flight from L.A. landed on that dark day.

NEXT MORNING, SATURDAY, IN HIS office, Zapruder ran the 26-second film for us three times. By then we could hear a commotion in the hall outside. As I had suspected, other reporters were showing up, told (like me) to be there at nine a.m. In all, two dozen or so arrived, representing the Associated Press, The Saturday Evening Post magazine, a newsreel and two or three major out-of-town newspapers. It seems astonishing now, but network television never appeared. TV news had only recently gone from 15 minutes in the evening to half an hour, and the three major networks were concentrating their forces on the funeral in Washington, not the crime in Dallas.

Zapruder explained to us that he was going to show his film to these newcomers. The Secret Service agents left, and I asked Zapruder if I could sit in his office, and thus be spared mingling with these potential competitors.

During the next hour or so, I introduced myself to and chatted with members of his staff, particularly Lillian Rogers. She turned out to be from southern Illinois, I was from central Illinois, and a surefire subject of interest to anyone from that state was high school basketball. I had been sports editor of my hometown newspaper, the Pekin Daily Times, and knew that her favorite team, Taylorville High School, was consistently one of the best in Illinois—and said so. We hit it off like old friends, something Zapruder noticed when he came into the office between showings of the film.

My brief relationship with Lillian Rogers was cited years later, long after Zapruder’s death in 1970, as one of the reasons he decided to sell his film to LIFE. I had called Erwin Schwartz, to clear up some questions about that day. Schwartz suddenly asked, “Do you know why you, and not one of the other reporters, got that film?”

Surprised, I answered: “The money.” Schwartz said someone would have matched or exceeded that. Our promise not to exploit the film? He agreed that was very important. Then he asked the question again, and went on to answer it himself: “Because you were a gentleman.”

He cited my not badgering Zapruder to come to his house on Friday night, my treating him with respect during our negotiations and, finally, my friendly dealings with fellow Midwesterner Lillian Rogers. Some of the other reporters had treated her harshly, he said, accusing her of preventing them access to her boss. Schwartz’s explanation astonished me then, and still does today.

That Saturday morning, after Zapruder had shown the film to the last reporter, he asked me to join the others in the hall. He said he realized that we all wanted to talk to him about print or broadcast rights, but “because Mr. Stolley of LIFE was the first to contact me, I feel obliged to speak to him first.” In my mind, I pumped a fist. The others erupted, shouting “No, no.” “Don’t sign anything.” “Promise you will speak to us before you make up your mind.” “Promise, promise,” et cetera.

Zapruder agreed, and we walked into his office and closed the door. He looked very tired, but I quickly had to determine whether he realized the value of his film. I said it was “very interesting,” and that when LIFE encountered “unusual” pictures like these, we were inclined to pay higher than normal space rates, e.g., we would be willing to offer “as much as $5,000” for the film.

He smiled. Yes, he knew what he had. From then on, I would raise the bid, and we would talk, mostly about the tragic weekend. He said he was embarrassed that a middle-aged garment manufacturer, and not one of the world-famous photographers who normally travel with the President, had taken these astonishing pictures.

He also described a nightmare he had had only a few hours earlier. In it, a man wearing “a sharp double-breasted suit” stood in front of a sleazy Times Square movie theater—midtown Manhattan’s Times Square was a porn mecca back then—shouting for people to come in and see the President assassinated on the big screen. Zapruder said he woke up shuddering. He told this story to his family, obviously, and it has trickled down; Alexandra Zapruder recalls it in her essay.

His message was clear. I promised LIFE would not “exploit” the film, a verb he used repeatedly during our session. Meanwhile, the other journalists in the hall were behaving badly. They pounded on the door, shouting, “Remember, you promised,” and slipped pleading notes under it. A few went out to the street to a phone booth and called the office, demanding to speak to Zapruder.

He was visibly becoming more and more upset. I had reached $50,000 for the print rights, an amount authorized by my editors in New York when we had talked at midnight. I told him, truthfully, that I could go no higher without making a phone call. At that moment, as I recall, there was a particularly violent bang on the door. Zapruder looked stricken, then said to me quietly, “Let’s do it.”

I asked if I could use his typewriter and wrote a nine-line contract, using language given to me by a Time Inc. lawyer. Four of us signed the single page, Zapruder and I as principals, and Lillian Rogers and Erwin Schwartz as witnesses.

Zapruder handed me the precious original film. I asked him if there was a back door to the building, and I left him to face the angry and disappointed crowd in the hall. (One of the reporters never spoke to me again.)

BACK AT THE HOTEL, I gave the original to a courier who flew it to Chicago, where an emergency editorial staff was closing the magazine in a temporary office set up at the Donnelley printing plant. The presses had been stopped and the regular issue all but scrapped, including the cover story on football star Roger Staubach—who is still alive, still in Dallas and whom you will hear from in later pages. In place of the Staubach cover was a somber portrait of Kennedy and, for the first time in history, the familiar red of the LIFE logo had been changed to black.

Once the editors in Chicago saw the Zapruder film, they decided to publish 31 frames from it, but not grisly Frame 313, the head shot, out of deference to the grieving Kennedy family.

The pictures were also in black and white because color printing back then took time that we didn’t have. (While those 31 prints were being hastily made from the original film, the film was slightly damaged, and six frames had to be removed. The damaged frames—in two places—both occurred during the time the limo was on Elm Street. All the copy prints were of course intact.)

Though the issue was going to press, the story was hardly over in Dallas. Our attention turned to suspect Oswald, who was denying any involvement in the assassination or in the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, just 45 minutes after Kennedy’s death. Oswald was calling himself “a patsy,” suggesting that he’d been set up or duped.

On Saturday, Tommy Thompson called me in the hotel with exciting news. He and photographer Allan Grant had found the Oswalds—Lee’s wife, Marina, and their two infant daughters, his brother, Robert, and their mother, Marguerite—and had photographed the family. Because Marina spoke almost no English, they had hired a Russian interpreter and were now planning an interview.

For several weeks, Marina and her girls had been staying in the Irving, Texas, home of Ruth and Michael Paine. Ruth was a gentle Quaker who was interested in learning Russian—and was teaching Marina English at the same time. The Oswalds had a troubled marriage and fought constantly, so Lee lived in a rooming house during the week and visited his wife and daughters on weekends. After Lee was arrested, his brother and mother went to the Paine house to comfort Marina. The pictures Allan took, only two of which appeared in LIFE at the time (for reasons Allan will explain), will also be seen, accompanied by Allan’s remembrance, just a few pages on.

Tommy had other news from the house in Irving, too. He had noticed a wooden chest on the floor and asked what it was. Lee’s personal papers, diary, artifacts, stuff, he was told. Could I have a look? Tommy asked. The answer was yes, but only for $10,000. The family was desperate to hire a lawyer for the accused assassin, but they had no money, and somebody, presumably either Robert or Marguerite, came up with the idea of charging to investigate the chest.

Tommy and I talked it over. God knows what’s in there, we agreed, but we surely wanted to find out. I telephoned New York and told the top editor of LIFE of the offer. The editor was George Hunt, a burly ex-Marine who had survived the Battle of Iwo Jima, had visited Jack Kennedy in the White House and was a great admirer of his fellow World War II combat veteran.

Hunt was outraged at my proposal. “I won’t give a goddamn dime to that assassin,” he shouted over the phone. “Alleged assassin,” I reminded. Hunt was unmoved. I continued to appeal to him until he abruptly hung up on me. The matter was closed, and I told Tommy to forget it. (I did give Robert Oswald $40 to buy diapers and food for the little girls, but did not ask anybody’s permission about that.)

A while later, Tommy called again to say the interview was over, and he had written an exclusive portrait of Oswald for the issue. No other reporters had yet showed up. But they certainly would, Tommy assured me, and he suggested we move the family to a hotel where they could remain anonymous. I agreed immediately.

Shortly thereafter—this was all still on Saturday—the Oswalds walked into our suite in the Adolphus, clearly stunned and despondent. We quickly stashed them away in another suite under Allan Grant’s name, with instructions to order anything they wanted from room service, but not to leave the suite or to open the door unless we alerted them in advance.

After getting them settled, I returned to the LIFE suite. The phone rang; I answered, “Stolley, LIFE.” A harsh voice demanded, “Okay, you son of a bitch, where are they?” Startled, I asked who this was and what he was talking about. He identified himself as a Secret Service agent and angrily wanted to know what we had done with the Oswald family. I tried bluffing: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

More profanity followed, but he finally calmed down enough to explain that the Secret Service was responsible for the family’s safety, which clearly could be in jeopardy with Lee accused of killing the President.

We fenced for a while, until I asked if he would promise not to tell other reporters—our worry, of course—if I revealed their whereabouts. He agreed, I told him, and to the best of my knowledge, he kept his word.

Saturday had been a tumultuous day for LIFE, and that evening we wanted to relax. Most restaurants, like most stores, had closed for the day; downtown Dallas was deserted, a ghost city. Some benefactor arranged for us to have dinner at a private club.

The club was virtually empty, but near our table was a couple we began talking to. Impressed by LIFE magazine, they invited us to their suburban home for more drinks, which we hardly needed. Everybody in Dallas seemed on edge, understandably, and their kindness was appreciated. Little did we know.

We sat in their den, the walls of which were lined with gun racks. The presence of all those weapons was unsettling given the events of the previous day, but we ignored them—everyone but Tommy, whose grief and humiliation that the President had been murdered in his home state was palpable.

He began baiting the homeowner about the guns and Texas’s reputation for violence. Tommy wouldn’t let up. The man was getting more and more upset, more red in the face. We all had had plenty to drink at this point, and each of us was holding a glass with even more. Suddenly the man reached the breaking point. He lurched out of his chair, screaming at Tommy, “Ah’m going to get mah gun and kill you!”

As our colleagues leaped to restrain him, Tommy smiled dangerously and said, “See, that’s what I mean.” I escaped to the kitchen, where the wife, too, had wisely retreated. She was depressed, but not just because of the assassination. That death had revived tragic memories of another. As occasionally happens when you’re a reporter, you begin asking questions, innocently enough perhaps at the beginning, but then, suddenly, the other person bares her soul.

This was her second marriage. From her first, she had a son, a teenager reeling from the turbulence of those difficult years—from the divorce, from the stepfather, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that one evening in the past year, she and her new husband had driven home, opened the garage door by remote, and there was her son hanging from the ceiling, dead. As the mother told this awful story, she began to sob.

Appalled, I struggled for words of sympathy, and when I thought it seemly, left the kitchen and told our group it was time to go back to the hotel. We were sure the next day, Sunday, would be calmer.

Needless to say, it wasn’t.

THAT MORNING, I RECEIVED A phone call from Dick Pollard, LIFE director of photography in New York. He said the editors had watched a copy of the film made from the original in Chicago the afternoon before and flown to Manhattan. Unsurprisingly, they were overwhelmed by its power and impact and had decided LIFE should buy all rights, not just print. Particularly vocal in the decision was LIFE’s publisher, C.D. Jackson, the business head of the magazine (whose wartime experience in military intelligence caught the attention of conspiracy theorists when skepticism about the Warren Commission’s report erupted a few months later).

I called Zapruder. He seemed relieved to be dealing with LIFE again. The battle for film and TV rights had intensified, he said; he was being hounded at home, and he clearly wanted this issue to be settled. He asked me to come, not to his place of business, but to his lawyer’s office at nine a.m. on Monday. (This time I was confident enough to arrive at the requested hour.)

Then I turned to the big event of that Sunday—the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald from the city jail to the more secure county jail, a mile away. Tommy Thompson and I were eager to see this infamous young man whose family Tommy had spent hours with and whose marksmanship I had seen on film. We decided the best place for that was not the city jail, crowded as it was with reporters and photographers who had camped out there for nearly two days, but the county jail, which we hoped would be relatively ignored by the press.

It was. Security was so light that we simply walked in, showed our Los Angeles Police Department press cards and joined a handful of reporters and a couple of TV crews. Oswald’s cell was ready for him, and so were we. We waited. Suddenly a TV sound technician looked startled. He clamped his earphones tighter on his head as if to hear better. Then he ripped them off and shouted, “Oswald’s been shot!” A shocked silence followed. Then we shouted back, “Where?” He replied, “The basement of the city jail.”

Without waiting for further details, Tommy and I raced out to the street, looking for a cab, in vain of course. We ran up and down the traffic, banging on car windows, saying we were from LIFE magazine and asking would he or she drive us to the city jail. It goes without saying that nobody was interested in taking these two maniacs anywhere.

Finally, I spotted an open car window with a young man inside. Throwing a $20 bill into his lap, I repeated our destination. He seemed amused and gestured for us to get in. By the time we even got close to the city jail, however, police had cordoned off the area. We jumped out, thanked the driver and ran back to the Adolphus.

When we telephoned the Oswald family (at a second hotel, to which we had moved them), there was no answer. Federal agents had obviously had them under surveillance and in a matter of minutes after Lee was shot, fearing attempts on their lives too, had whisked them off to yet a third hotel, unknown to us and everyone else, on the edge of the city.

The presses in Chicago, already printing the new issue, were stopped a second time, and Tommy dictated new opening and closing paragraphs on Oswald’s death to his story.

Surely Monday would be less chaotic. For us in Dallas, it was. For the nation, it was the day the President was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a devastating event that most of the tearful nation watched on television and that most of us reporters in Texas missed. That morning I went to the office of Zapruder’s lawyer, Sam Passman, and to my surprise found CBS correspondent Dan Rather sitting in the lobby. We knew each other from working side by side on Southern race-relations stories.

As Rather later said, his heart sank when he saw me because he knew LIFE had “deep pockets” and he had been authorized to offer only $10,000 for the TV rights. When he was invited to an inner office to watch the film, I did not accompany him; I already knew what was there. Apparently realizing CBS was unlikely to get broadcast rights, Rather left the office afterward and within minutes was describing the film’s contents by phone to CBS radio, something that Zapruder told me he had asked Rather not to do unless he wound up buying the rights. Dan later delivered the same description on television. (The story was so immense that, in retrospect, it’s hard to fault him.)

My session with Zapruder and his attorney was brief. In a few minutes we had agreed on $100,000 in addition to the original $50,000, the whole sum to be paid in $25,000 annual installments. Then Passman brought up a delicate subject. In effect, he said that when word got out that a garment manufacturer named Abraham Zapruder had sold his film of the President’s murder, the public response in right wing Dallas could be an anti-Semitic firestorm.

Passman suggested a way to blunt the criticism (and the tax consequences of the windfall): publicly donate the first payment of $25,000 to the family of Officer Tippit. Zapruder agreed immediately. (I was astounded that Passman would speak about such a touchy subject in front of me, but gratified at Zapruder’s response. Since I had agreed on Saturday and again on Monday that LIFE would not reveal our purchase price, the donation gave rise to the myth that Zapruder had turned over all proceeds from all rights to the Tippits. It was a misunderstanding that I finally felt I could correct publicly 10 years later.)

THAT MONDAY AFTERNOON, WE NEEDED to learn more about Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, for the next week’s story. So we visited the Carousel Club, his strip joint, where he had long welcomed off-duty cops (which helps explain why nobody in uniform stopped him when he’d walked into the city jail the day before). The club had been shut down since Friday, but we knocked on the door, said the magic words—we were from LIFE—and soon found ourselves talking to two of the dancers.

Still in shock, they told us that Ruby had ordered the closing two hours after the President’s death and then had sat at one of the tables and cried. He told them, “It’s awful. Just don’t talk about it.” They were sure they understood why their boss had shot Oswald: “Oh, that is so like Jack! He didn’t want Mrs. Kennedy to have to come back to Dallas for a trial. It would be so awful for her. He thought he would be a hero.” The words were simple, and as we later learned, probably true as to Ruby’s motivation.

I returned to Los Angeles two days later, and never saw Abraham Zapruder again, although we talked on the phone once or twice. He went on to testify at the Warren Commission hearings, where he broke into tears when his film was referenced. “He was extremely emotional about the whole thing,” his wife, Lillian (now deceased), once told me. His granddaughter Alexandra’s story in this book will tell more about how this all affected him and the family.

Bell & Howell offered Zapruder a new camera in exchange for his old one, and then donated the original to the National Archives. Zapruder rarely used the new camera, however; his enthusiasm for home movies all but vanished on November 22, 1963.

He received bags and bags of mail, as many as 10 a day early on. Most of the letters were simply addressed to him, Dallas, Texas. A few called him a fool for giving $25,000 to Officer Tippit’s family. More praised him. Still others asked for money for themselves. When he and his wife traveled, especially in Europe, the name Zapruder was often recognized on hotel registers.

His contribution to history that weekend has been remembered here, anew, and also captured by Hollywood. It is portrayed in a movie in the fall of 2013 titled Parkland—the name of the Dallas hospital where Kennedy (and Oswald) died. Oscar-winning actor Paul Giamatti plays Zapruder. Others in the cast include Billy Bob Thornton as a Secret Service agent and Jackie Weaver (who was nominated for her own Oscar last year for Silver Linings Playbook) as Oswald’s troubled mother. (Even I made it into the script and am played by an actor named Jeffrey Schmidt.)

As the movie suggests, and his friends and family knew, and as Alexandra will tell you, Abe Zapruder, until his death from cancer in 1970, was never able to escape his unique and haunting role in the Kennedy assassination story.

Nor was I, as it turned out. Four months later, I was transferred to the Washington bureau of LIFE, where for four years I covered the man, Lyndon Johnson, who was President only because of Dallas. I was asked to talk about the Zapruder film from time to time, usually on anniversaries. And now I remember it, and write about it, 50 years on.

Those 26 seconds of celluloid had their own history. LIFE gave first-generation copies to all relevant law enforcement agencies, but for various reasons—including a respect for Zapruder’s wishes—would not sell it for broadcast, a refusal that was loudly (and unfairly) criticized.

Bootleg copies of the film began to appear, possibly coming from outside agencies. One likely source was the office of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, which used the film in an unsuccessful (and ludicrous) prosecution of a local businessman, Clay Shaw, for conspiracy to kill the President. (That trial was the subject of the exciting but historically irresponsible 1991 film JFK.) One bootleg copy finally found its illegal way on to national television on the ABC Geraldo Rivera show Good Night America in March 1975.

A month later, LIFE and our parent company, Time Inc., concluded that the Zapruder family itself should properly deal with copyright issues and returned the film to the family for one dollar. In the 1990s, the federal government decided it should own the original copy of the historic film, and I was interviewed at length on the subject of compensation for the Zapruder family. In the end, they received an astonishing $16 million. The film itself is today kept in a temperature and humidity controlled container in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

I also was the occasional target of the deluge of conspiracy theorists who disagreed sharply with the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald alone, without help, killed the President (a judgment that I accepted then and now; Zapruder and particularly his wife felt the same way—she insisted Oswald was “a crackpot, a nut”—and reacted incredulously when Dallas friends recited conspiracy plots to them). My files are full of letters from conspiracy advocates asking me to comment on their beliefs or to explain my own. Most are polite, but one was so profane—in a three-sentence letter, he calls me three obscene names—that it still makes me laugh all this time later.

Two theories identify me by name. The first is that I took the film from Zapruder’s office on November 23 to a secret CIA lab outside Dallas, where I waited while the frames were rearranged to conceal the position and number of real assassins, and then I sent it on to LIFE for bogus publication.

The second theory surfaced only in recent years in a DVD and book by Brian David Andersen titled “My God, I’m Hit,” words which Kennedy is said to have uttered in the limousine when the first bullet struck his upper back. (A Secret Service agent in the front seat was the source of the quote, but a careful examination of Kennedy’s mouth in the film during those few seconds indicates he did not speak.)

My role in this second theory is complicated. On Sunday, November 24, a man “in a trench coat and dress hat was tippy-toeing...in the hallway between the kitchen and living room” in Ruth Paine’s house with a suitcase full of cash intended for Ruth for reasons that are murky—possibly to score an exclusive interview with Marina Oswald, possibly to compensate Ruth for her role in the conspiracy to kill the President. The book continues: “The physical description of the trench coat man...exactly fits LIFE Los Angeles bureau chief Richard Stolley.” The man was challenged by two policemen guarding the house, who tackled him and took him to headquarters, “where he was released in a few hours with no charges made against him.”

Both the CIA photo lab and the Ruth Paine house stories are complete lunacy, of course, but I suspect this 50th anniversary will produce a new crop of conspiracy theories or a replay of ancient ones, or both. I can’t say I’m eager for them, but I’m ready.

For years when I looked back on Dallas, I had the uneasy sense of missing what the rest of the country endured that weekend, especially the Monday after—those hours of televised grief, of Kennedy’s casket and caisson, the unruly black horse, a street full of world leaders, the veiled Jackie, John Jr.’s salute, the lighting of the eternal flame.

Those of us at work in Dallas that weekend did not have time to ponder the emotional impact of the murder nor have a place to watch its climax on Monday. When I returned to Los Angeles just before Thanksgiving, nobody wanted to talk about it. They were grieved out.

I always had the feeling that I was deprived of something crucial in my own and my nation’s history. Then I was asked to help on this book. I watched the Zapruder film yet again; I looked at the still photographs from that weekend; I read the old reporting and the new. I pulled from my shelves six feet of assassination files, collected over 50 years, and went through them, page by page. I recalled my conversations in Washington in 1964 with one of Kennedy’s girlfriends. I spoke to Zapruder’s daughter and granddaughter and even to Marina Oswald. I immersed myself in the details of those four days. Then I sat down to try to put it all together in this narrative.

The result was a stunning revelation to me. It is best described by some favorite lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

Now, at long last, I understood what America suffered that weekend that changed the world.

RICHARD B. STOLLEY, a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors’ inaugural class in its hall of fame, has been a reporter, writer, bureau chief, senior editor, managing editor and close friend of Time Inc. magazines since 1953.