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Zapruder Film

When there is a film of a crime, it’s a prime piece of evidence known as photographic testimony. In fact, in the case of the JFK assassination, the photographic testimony is what’s known as prima facie evidence, vividly testifying about what actually happened without ever uttering a word.

A film was taken of the assassination of President Kennedy as the shots were fired. It was a home movie made by a man named Abraham Zapruder and has since become known simply as the Zapruder Film. The footage graphically confirms the fatal head shot and the fact that this came from the front of the limousine.

In this video, you can see that President Kennedy’s entire body is driven sharply backward and to his left, as the result of taking a high-velocity round directly through his head. It appears to enter his head in direct conformity with the medical testimony in Dallas which recorded a small entry wound in the President’s upper right side of his forehead, near the hairline.

The footage is very graphic, but if you think you can handle it, it can and should be viewed. It’s currently available online at youtube.com/ watch?v=jWHdEeHNbXY. (Remember that you can also go to my website at facebook.com/OfficialJesseVentura to view all the videos from the book.) The clips seem to get taken down from the Internet every once in a while but then are put back up by other assassination researchers. So if that link is invalid when you go to check, just Google “Zapruder film enhanced” and you’ll find it. You’ll see President Kennedy first reacting with shock to the bullet that hits him in the throat, and then—just as his wife and First Lady Jackie Kennedy is looking directly at him to see what is wrong—the kill-shot hits him high in the right side of his forehead and rips off a large portion of his head, rapidly driving his entire body backward and to his left. But be forewarned, this is something you’ll never forget after you’ve seen it.

That footage by Abraham Zapruder so clearly depicted what happened that it was “shielded” from the public’s view for many years. Media mogul C. D. Jackson, the power behind Time-Life, Inc., purchased the rights to that film for a large sum of money and basically kept it under wraps. It was finally shown to an American television audience by author Robert Groden in 1975; and the audience literally gasps at the dramatic evidence of a head shot from the front. You can watch that one online, too, and you will undoubtedly share the shock of that audience: youtube.com/watch?v=4DwKK4rkeEM.

So the government had some explaining to do and they knew it. They came up with an elaborate medical explanation about a bullet having severed the neck vertebrae of the President and because he was held upright by a brace he wore to support his back, it created a “jet force” that blew the matter from his head backwards, even though he was shot from the rear. Nice try. But that dog can’t hunt, people. Military veteran and former combat sniper, Craig Roberts, exhaustively researched the issue and determined that the government version was just what it sounds like—a bunch of bunk.

With his extensive combat experience, Roberts is scathing about the mysterious ‘jet force’ that supposedly blows Kennedy’s head backwards, towards Oswald, in the famous Zapruder home movie of the assassination. ‘In that film,’ says Roberts, ‘we see Kennedy take a shot from the front.’⁴⁴

Roberts further determined that the shot also had to be from an exploding bullet—what’s known as a “frangible” round—due to the technical behavior of the impact. So now, instead of the crap from the Warren Commission, listen to somebody who actually knows what he’s talking about:

Some of the supporters of the Warren Commission . . . stated that the bullet came from the rear because the eruption of brain matter and blood came out of the front of the president’s skull.

I saw something else. In a head shot, the exit wound, due to the buildup of hydrostatic pressure, explodes in a conical formation in the down-range direction of the bullet. Yet in the Zapruder film, I could plainly see that the eruption was not a conical shape to the front of the limo, but instead was an explosion that cast fragments both up and down in a vertical plane, and side to side in a horizontal plane. There was only one explanation for this: an exploding or ‘frangible’ bullet. Such a round explodes on impact—in exactly the manner depicted in the film.⁴⁵

⁴⁴ Badrich, Steve “Postcards from the Labyrinth: Thirty Years After, J.F.K. Researchers Gather in Dallas,” (NameBase Newsline, No. 4, Jan.—Mar. 1994), the-puzzle-palace.com/files/NEWSLINE.194

⁴⁵ Roberts, Craig, Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza (Consolidated Press, 1994), 89–90.