Twenty-Six Seconds

by Alexandra Zapruder

  It was not his first foray into the assassination debates. Alvarez had read the LIFE magazine issue A MATTER OF REASONABLE DOUBT in November 1966 and found himself fascinated by the color images of the Zapruder film reproduced in its pages. Among his many areas of knowledge, he was an expert in photo analysis and had invented a camera stabilizer and several other optical devices. As he scrutinized the frames, he observed that points of glare on the moving limousine caused streaks whose lengths differed from frame to frame. By plotting these streaks, he could detect minute “jerks” that had gone unnoticed by the FBI in their examination. He developed what came to be called the “jiggle theory,” positing that the sounds of the rifle firing caused Abe to flinch, which in turn caused minute tremors in the camera’s steadiness. It seems like a plausible idea, though when my uncle Myron heard about it for the first time, he shook his head sadly and said, “What that guy doesn’t know is that all Abe’s movies look like that.”

  Alvarez had presented these ideas to CBS in 1967 and visited the National Archives with executives from the network and the photo analysts they had hired. Using exhaustive and comprehensive analysis, Alvarez correlated the jiggles on the film to possible gunshots, suggesting a possible missed first shot at frame 177 (when the president and Mrs. Kennedy were still smiling and waving before going behind the freeway sign) and a second shot that hit the president at frame 215, while he was behind the sign. CBS briefly mentioned his theories in their 1967 Warren Commission series, but they had not given them nearly the time and in-depth coverage that Alvarez felt they warranted.

  Then, in 1969, Alvarez asked one of his physics students, Paul Hoch, what he thought was the best evidence of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Hoch responded, “The head snap,” and gave Alvarez a copy of Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson. In a 1976 article about his various studies and findings about the JFK assassination, titled “A Physicist Examines the Kennedy Assassination Film,” Alvarez wrote that he studied Thompson’s book carefully and came to the conclusion that the explanation for the movement of the president’s head was that it was “driven backward by some real force.” In other words, as Hoch put it in an e-mail to me, Alvarez’s belief was that “one cannot argue from basic physical principles (as Thompson had done) that the bulk of any target has to move in the same direction as the bullet.” Anticipating the limits of my understanding of physics, Hoch added: “Beyond that, it gets complicated.”

  Hoch is among the lowest-profile first-generation critics of the Warren Commission, credited with decades of serious and methodical work on the case, in particular finding important records at the National Archives and through Freedom of Information Act requests. He was intrigued but not convinced by his professor’s initial calculations. They needed to test the theory. So, armed with a rifle, a ruler, and a bunch of melons taped with Scotch glass filament tape “to mock up the tensile strength of a cranium,” they set to work testing what would come to be called the jet-effect hypothesis. As Alvarez explained it in his 1976 paper, “The simplest way to see where I differ from most of the critics is to note that they treat the problem as though it involved only two interacting masses: the bullet and the head. My analysis involves three interacting masses: the bullet, the jet of brain matter observable in frame 313, and the remaining part of the head. It will turn out that the jet can carry forward more momentum than was brought in by the bullet, and the head recoils backward, as a rocket recoils when its jet fuel is ejected.”

  The experiments they conducted bore out the plausibility of Alvarez’s theory. Paul Hoch wrote up their findings for the assassination research community, showing the results of the study and, in his words, “got a lot of flak for it.” Although it would be several years before Alvarez’s theories received wider readership, it was an important example of how scientific analysis, and not political bluster, could be applied to the question of what happened to the president on Dealey Plaza.

  The trial of Clay Shaw opened on January 29, 1969, with Judge Edward A. Haggerty presiding. The State was represented by Jim Garrison (famously in attendance only a handful of times during the trial) and Assistant District Attorneys Andrew Sciambra, James Alcock, William Alford, and Alvin Oser. Clay Shaw was represented by Irvin Dymond, brothers Edward and William Wegmann, and Salvatore Panzeca.

  On February 10, Abe received a letter from Assistant District Attorney Alvin Oser with an enclosed subpoena to appear in the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans on February 12 to “testify the truth according to your knowledge in the case of the State of Louisiana vs. Clay L. Shaw.” Alvin Oser’s letter and the original summons, signed by Jay Carlo, deputy clerk of the court, were among the family papers that I came upon in the course of researching this book. I can only imagine the sinking feeling my grandfather must have had upon receiving the summons. He may not have realized it, but his appearance would mark the beginning of the second phase of the trial, the part where Garrison planned to show that the president had been killed by a conspiracy, and where he planned to openly challenge the findings of the Warren Commission and accuse the federal government of colluding in a cover-up.

  Although Abe was called to testify, it was really the film itself that was the prosecution’s star witness for this phase of the trial. As Garrison put it in his opening statement, “The State will offer an 8mm color motion picture film taken by Abraham Zapruder, commonly known as the Zapruder film. This film, which has not been shown to the public, will clearly show you the effect of the shots striking the president… Thus, you will be able to see—in color motion picture—the president as he is being struck by the various bullets and you will be able to see him fall backwards as the fatal shot strikes him from the front—not the back but the front.” With such unequivocal visual evidence, the DA reasoned, the jury would be convinced that there had been multiple shooters, which meant conspiracy.

  You might be wondering where Clay Shaw fits into all this. So did a lot of people. Even though there was no hard evidence linking Clay Shaw to any of the material from Dallas, the DA intended first to prove through witness testimony that Shaw had conspired to murder the president, and then to use the Zapruder film and other evidence to prove that the president had been killed by a conspiracy. Then, the DA promised, it would somehow all come together and the two parts of this narrative would merge and make sense. It was a specious legal strategy at best, and it only got off the ground because of Judge Haggerty’s permissiveness and inconsistent legal rulings.

  On the afternoon of February 12, Abe and Lil Zapruder arrived at the courthouse, and Abe was called to the witness stand. Also present was novelist and reporter James Kirkwood, who had met Clay Shaw in November 1967 and become interested in the trial and the man himself. He wrote a profile for Esquire magazine, which appeared in December 1968, and went on to cover the trial in great depth, writing an excellent book titled American Grotesque. His account of this day in the trial, together with a few press reports and the transcripts, captures not only this trying experience for Abe but a pivotal moment in the history of the film. “The first witness called was Abraham Zapruder,” Kirkwood writes, “a gentle, bespectacled, balding dress manufacturer who went to Dealey Plaza… hoping to get a few shots of Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy as they passed by. He ended up with as gruesome and heartbreaking a piece of film as the world has ever seen. The shock of being witness and recorder to this event has not left Zapruder and doubtless never will. It has left the man humbled, as if he’d been witness to a holy—and terrible—vision.” Abe was asked to review a photograph, identify himself on it, and answer a few questions about where he was standing and the type of camera he was using. At this point, the prosecution requested to enter into evidence a number of additional exhibits—photos, a mock-up of Dealey Plaza, and the like—which were draped so that the jury could not see them.

  It was a seemingly routine moment but it was, in fact, a crucial one. What was actually at stake was whether the judge was going to allow the prosecution
to “go into Dallas”—that is, to bring evidence into the courtroom to make the case that President Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy, though nothing in this part of the trial had any direct evidentiary link to Clay Shaw. Beyond the question of relevance, the defense feared that the jury, after seeing the violent murder of the president on the Zapruder film and potentially being convinced that it showed evidence of a conspiracy, would direct their rage and helplessness at the only person available to pay for the crime: Clay Shaw.

  The defense objected, whereupon the jury was sent out of the room and the two sides fought it out one last time while Abe sat on the witness stand. Irvin Dymond tried his best to dissuade the judge from this disastrous decision, reminding him that in the past he had ruled that he would not allow evidence from the assassination to be brought into the court. “If the Court please, at this time we object to all this testimony concerning Dealey Plaza on the ground of relevancy. Your Honor has ruled many, many times that there is no connection between the happenings at Dealey Plaza and this case.”

  The prosecution countered, saying that the judge should allow the State to “overprove” its case. In the words of James Alcock, “The State admits, and this Court has acknowledged on numerous occasions, the State does not have to prove, as a matter of law, the president was killed as a result of this alleged conspiratorial meeting. However, the State may call evidence which tends to confirm or corroborate that it was discussed.” In other words, the State did not have to show that the alleged meeting between Clay Shaw, Oswald, and David Ferrie had led directly to the assassination of JFK, but it could show what it believed was evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate the president in order to corroborate the possibility that such a meeting had taken place. In the end, as expected, the judge permitted the evidence. As Kirkwood put it, “The door to Texas was flung wide open.” In the words of the defense team, it was “their darkest hour.”

  As the exhibits were unveiled, Abe was momentarily dismissed from the stand so that Robert West, the county surveyor for Dallas, could come and answer questions about the mock-up of Dealey Plaza and the accuracy of the exhibits. When Abe returned to the stand, he was asked to identify his location on the mock-up. Here he seemed slightly confused and shaken up, having some difficulty situating himself, and he was scolded by the judge for not speaking loudly enough—“Unless the jury can hear you, it is no good your giving evidence.” At one point, when looking at a photograph, Abe asked if he was looking at an image of the Dal-Tex Building—his own office. The judge snapped, “If you don’t know, who would know it?” “Give me some time,” Abe answered. He clearly did not want to be there, and he seemed intimidated and uncomfortable about answering a rapid-fire set of questions in the crowded courtroom, thronged with reporters and spectators and under the unsympathetic eye of the judge.

  When asked by the prosecution to recount his story, he once again described how he came to film the assassination, and the gruesome details of the shooting and its aftermath. While describing what he saw through the camera lens, Abe referred to Mrs. Kennedy as “Jackie.” Kirkwood noted that his “use of [her] first name was not irreverent but gentle and tinged with a sorrowful affection.” Meanwhile, a New York Post reporter was watching Lil. “His wife nervously sat on the opposite side of the courtroom toward the rear. Her mink coat kept falling from her shoulders, revealing the strand of pearls around her neck. As she reached for the coat, her bracelets and rings glistened in the faint courtroom light. Her silver hair blended with her gray tinseled eyeglass frames.”

  When I first read this description, I cringed a little. The mink coat, the pearls, the bracelets and rings—she always did have great style, but was she perhaps dressed a little too richly for the circumstances? Was it perhaps a little insensitive? Maybe leave the mink coat in Dallas? Maybe don’t wear all the bracelets? For a minute, I try to imagine having this conversation with her, explaining to her how it might look or what people might think. I am not halfway into the thought before I realize how badly the conversation would go. I can see her straightening herself up and giving me a very stern lecture in her definitive manner about how she would never dress a certain way just because of what people might think. She was nothing if not authentic; she made no apologies for herself and she would not adjust her image for the benefit of others. This wasn’t always easy to take, but I deeply admire it.

  I read on. The reporter continued describing my grandmother as she listened to the most difficult part of her husband’s testimony. “Mrs. Zapruder suddenly leaned back,” he wrote, “staring at the floor in front of her. She reached for a lavender handkerchief and pushed it under the glasses to wipe her eyes. The tears kept coming.” She wept through his entire testimony. It’s true that she had style and self-possession. But she was also bighearted, emotional, and compassionate. This was the grandmother that I always knew.

  After he finished his account, Abe was cross-examined by Irvin Dymond. Here it became clear that Abe had not brought a copy of the film with him from Dallas—of course, because he no longer had one—but that he had been given a duplicate by the DA’s office when he arrived. It was, presumably, the copy that LIFE had turned over to the DA’s office almost a year before. Dymond objected to the use of the film under these circumstances because it could not be assured that the version the prosecution was preparing to show was, in fact, identical to the original. Once again, the jury was made to leave the room, this time so that Abe could authenticate the film. The courtroom prepared itself for the first-ever public showing of the Zapruder film.

  From the vantage point of the present, with the film so completely embedded in the American consciousness, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine what it was like when virtually no one had seen it. But Kirkwood’s account takes us back in time to that moment, when the film was shrouded in secrecy and most people had no visual image in their minds of what had happened apart from the handful of snapshots that had been published in LIFE. I have often thought about how my grandfather’s home movie of the Kennedy assassination became the iconic Zapruder film over time, gradually making its way into the American imagination. This first public showing—even though it was to a relatively small group of spectators and members of the press who were not allowed to reproduce it—was a turning point in the process. Kirkwood writes:

  As Alvin Oser manned the projector and the courtroom was darkened, those spectators on the right of the room began squeezing and joggling to the left. They were admonished to be quiet and orderly but there was an insistent, almost panicky eagerness not to miss the first public showing of the widely heralded but little seen film. The Ladies of the Court were most distressed; the majority of them were sitting behind the screen. Many crowded to the side of it, spilling over into the aisle and crouching down or kneeling, some on all fours, in their attempts to peer around and up at the white surface… Except for the whir of the machine, the courtroom was deathly quiet.

  There came the motorcade, turning onto Elm Street… the President, on the near side of the car to the camera, with Mrs. Kennedy in that now famous pink suit next to him, both of them smiling and waving, with the breeze blowing their hair and the trees in the background…

  An intake of breath was heard in the courtroom, then a loud communal gasp when the President is hit a second time and his body jolts as the right side of his head literally explodes, sending a crimson halo of blood and matter spraying up into the air above him. Now short words and phrases filled the court: “Oh, God!” “Jesus!”… Then the President is falling toward his wife, to the left, and disappearing out of sight down in the car. Next the total surprise—one had heard of it but had forgotten—of seeing Mrs. Kennedy rise up, twist around and scramble back across the trunk of the car, only to be grabbed by Special Agent Clint Hill and shoved back into the rear seat.

  The first showing was bloodcurdling; one could barely take it in… When the lights were switched on there was complete silence as all of us who had viewed this testament to
the savagery of man pulled ourselves together.

  Abe Zapruder quietly confirmed that this was his film, though he pointed out that since each frame represented one-eighteenth of a second, there was no way he could ensure that every single frame was there just by watching the film run through. The judge accepted the film as authentic and ordered that the jury be brought back into the courtroom. Abe was dismissed from the witness stand and went to sit with his wife. Over the course of the next few hours, in the presence of the jury, the press, the public, the attorneys for both sides, and the defendant himself, the Zapruder film was shown four more times—once in a careful frame-by-frame analysis that made the twenty-six-second reel last more than half an hour.

  In his book, Kirkwood captures the continued frenzy inside the courtroom as the spectators and press shoved, argued, and jockeyed for position to get a better view. Of a moment that would have been comical in its absurdity if it had not been so distressing, he writes, “Three nuns in full habit crouched down in the center aisle, almost stretched out in a prone position on the floor, in an effort to see the film.” Likewise, the jury was utterly gripped by what was happening. “The jurors, to a man, were riveted to the screen; never had they appeared so completely fascinated. A few in the back row stood and all leaned forward as the lights were lowered once again.” Clay Shaw himself stood to the side smoking cigarettes, clutching one up to his chest in between puffs, as he watched the assassination over and over. With each successive showing, the viewers grew more and more annoyed with each other as they tried to get a better view. The judge ordered the courtroom spectators to settle down, but it appears that he had some trouble controlling his domain that afternoon. At one point, he interrupted the proceedings to say, “I have been advised that a reporter had the gall to ask if he could take a picture of this film while it was being shown in court. Don’t they realize all rights are reserved on this picture?… I don’t want anybody surreptitiously trying to take pictures of this film.”