Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence by Bill James

Author:Bill James [James, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sociology, Adult, Mystery, History, Non-Fiction, Psychology
ISBN: 9781416552741
Google: bxyQgM6U5IQC
Amazon: B0043RSK9Y
Goodreads: 12287502
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2011-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

As the Lead Car was passing under this bridge I heard the first loud, sharp report and in more rapid succession two more sounds like gunfire. I could see persons to the left of the motorcade vehicles running away. I noticed Agent Hickey standing up in the follow-up car with the automatic weapon and first thought he had fired at someone. (emphasis mine)

4) Secret Service agent Glen Bennett, seated next to Hickey in the follow-up car, says that when the second shot hit Kennedy he yelled “He’s hit,” and reached for the AR-15 on the floor of the vehicle—only to realize that Agent Hickey already had it. Secret Service agent Emory Roberts, who was in charge of the agents in the follow-up car, reported that just after the shooting he turned and saw Hickey with the rifle, and said “Be careful with that.”

5) While the sound reports from the scene are confusing, many earwitnesses thought that one or more of the shots had originated from near the President. Austin Miller, watching from the overpass, thought that the shots had come “from right there in the car.” Royce Skelton, also watching from the overpass, said that he thought the shots came “from around the President’s car.” Mary Elizabeth Woodward, standing just in front of the grassy knoll, described the third shot as “a horrible ear-shattering noise.”

Agent Lawson, in the 1990s, was outspoken in condemning Donahue’s conclusions. But doing no more than re-wording his contemporary statement, Lawson says that what he actually saw led him to believe that Agent Hickey had fired his weapon—but that later events caused him to abandon or re-interpret this recollection.

6) Several individuals who were part of the President’s motorcade reported smelling gunpowder. Mrs. Earle Cabell, wife of the mayor of Dallas, was riding in an open convertible, four cars behind the death car. She saw the barrel of the rifle projecting through the open window, and immediately after that reported smelling gunpowder. Other people riding in the motorcade also reported the smell of gunpowder, including Tom Dillard, a journalist who was riding in an open car about a block behind the President, and Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was in the car immediately behind Agent Hickey’s.

This, to me, is probably the most persuasive element of Donahue’s argument. If in fact the only shots fired that afternoon were from Oswald’s rifle, six stories in the air and inside a building, I have a very difficult time understanding why numerous witnesses would smell gunpowder at ground level and in the path of the presidential limousine.

Posner’s version of this is in a footnote. “Others near the School Book Depository also thought they smelled gunpowder,” writes Posner, emphasis mine. He starts with Mrs. Cabell and lists two others, both of whom were riding in open convertibles behind the President. His explanation for why these people smelled gunpowder is that “a stiff north-south wind did blow the odor of gunpowder further into the plaza.”

But this doesn’t wash. A stiff north-south wind would disperse the smell of gunpowder, not pass it along intact.

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