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Another Key Witness Conveniently Silenced: Lee Bowers

Lee Bowers was the best witness to multiple shooters in Dallas, as he had a bird’s eye view of Dealey Plaza from a high spot looking down toward the grassy knoll. He was a solid citizen and witness and was sure about what he saw.

One witness was in a better position than anyone else to observe suspicious activity by the fence at the top of the grassy knoll. This was railway worker Lee Bowers, perched in a signal box which commanded a unique view of the area behind the fence. Bowers said that, shortly before the shots were fired, he noticed two men standing near the fence.⁴²⁰

Here’s how Bowers described the men he saw:

One was ‘middle-aged’ and ‘fairly heavyset,’ wearing a white shirt and dark trousers. The other was ‘mid-twenties in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat . . . these men were the only two strangers in the area. The others were workers that I knew.’ Bowers also said that when the shots were fired at the President ‘in the vicinity of where the two men I have described were, there was a flash of light, something I could not identify, but there was something which occurred which caught my eye in this immediate area on the embankment . . . a flash of light or smoke or something which caused me to feel that something out of the ordinary had occurred there.’⁴²¹

So I know you’re probably saying to yourself, Wow, what an incredibly valuable witness, and I’m sure the Warren Commission thought so, too. Well, before you get too excited, here’s what they did:

Lee Bowers was questioned by the Warren Commission but was cut off in mid-sentence when he began describing the ‘something out of the ordinary’ he had seen. The interrogating lawyer changed the subject.⁴²²

Friends of Bowers said he hadn’t told the whole story of everything he had seen that day.

One of them, Walter Rischel, told reporters that his friend had been afraid to talk about everything he had witnessed during the JFK assassination. Rischel said that Bowers feared to ‘go public’ with the additional information, and for some very good reasons. Bowers had also reportedly confided the same thing in his minister.⁴²³

And then he was killed in what was, at first, reported as a one-car accident on a long, open lonely stretch of road near Midlothian, Texas.

But there were eyewitness reports that another car ran Bowers off the road.⁴²⁴ That claim was investigated by a former member of the Texas Highway Patrol, Charles Good, who concluded that another car had indeed forced Bowers’ car off the road.⁴²⁵

Bowers didn’t die right away and apparently told emergency personnel that he thought he was drugged somehow when he had stopped for coffee a

few miles back.⁴²⁶

So it’s one of those cases where we just don’t know. It’s difficult to prove he was murdered. But a lot of things about the case just didn’t add up and something sure didn’t seem right.

⁴²⁰ Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy.

⁴²¹ Ibid.

⁴²² Ibid.

⁴²³ Geraldo Rivera, “The Curse of JFK,” May 6, 1992, Now It Can Be Told: youtube.com/watch?v=mcXJJsZs7LE

⁴²⁴ Robert J. Groden & Harrison Edward Livingstone, High Treason: The Assassination of JFK and the Case for Conspiracy (Carroll & Graf: 1998).

⁴²⁵ John Simkin, “Lee E. Bowers: Biography,” Spartacus Educational, citing Charles Good, 1991, retrieved 11 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbowers.htm

⁴²⁶ Ibid.