by Jim Marrs
With this question now public, the federal government went to work. On June 2, 1964, with the Warren Commission’s investigation winding down, Altgens was finally interviewed by FBI agents. The agents reported, “He recalled that at about the instant he snapped the picture, he heard a burst of noise which he thought was firecrackers . . . he then turned the film in his camera . . . when he heard another report which he recognized as a gunshot.”
Altgens elaborated:
I made one picture at the time I heard a noise that sounded like a firecracker. . . . I figured it was nothing more than a firecracker because from my position down here the sound was not of such volume that it would indicate to me it was a high-velocity rifle. . . . It sounded like it was coming up from behind the car . . . who counts fireworks explosions? I wasn’t keeping track of the number of pops that took place, but I could vouch for No. 1 and I can vouch for the last shot, but I cannot tell you how many shots were in between. There was not another shot fired after the President was struck in the head. That was the last shot—that much I will say with a great degree of certainty.
Despite his vantage point and his photographic background, Altgens was never called to testify to the Warren Commission, which was satisfied to merely cite from his FBI interrogation. Even then, they argued with his statement that he snapped his camera’s shutter at the sound of the first shot, stating in their report that he took the picture “later than the point at which the President was shot in the neck.”
Another of Altgens’s photos was taken just seconds after the first shots were fired and showed a slender man standing in the doorway of the Depository. Many people, including his mother, have claimed the man was Lee Harvey Oswald. More on that later.
Near Altgens on the grassy triangle in the lower part of Dealey Plaza were a handful of people, all the closest witnesses to the actual assassination.
Charles Brehm, along with his five-year-old son, had watched the presidential motorcade turn onto Houston from near the front of the Depository building. Holding his son, Brehm ran across Elm and stationed himself halfway between Houston and the Triple Underpass on the grassy triangle south of Elm. In a 1966 film documentary, Brehm stated:
I very definitely saw the effect of the second bullet that struck the President. That which appeared to be a portion of the President’s skull went flying slightly to the rear of the President’s car and directly to its left. It did fly over toward the curb to the left and to the rear.
Brehm said the piece of skull landed in the grass not far from his location. He told the FBI some days later that “it seemed quite apparent to him that the shots came from one of two buildings back at the corner of Elm and Houston Streets.” He added he was not certain but “it seemed to him that the automobile almost came to a halt after the first shot.”
Brehm, an ex-serviceman with experience in bolt-action rifles, was probably the closest witness to the fatal head shot. He was not called to testify to the Warren Commission. But he continued to tell his story over the years, even appearing at Dallas events concerning the assassination.
Two significant home movies were made of the assassination, one by Maria Muchmore, who had moved from a position near Main and Houston to the center of the grassy triangle behind Brehm. She caught on film the final and fatal head shot to Kennedy and the disappearance of the limousine into the Triple Underpass.
Further behind Muchmore, across Main Street, Orville Nix captured the entire assassination sequence. It is the Nix film that most clearly shows the presidential limousine coming to a brief halt with its brake lights on prior to the fatal head shot. Also in the Nix film are suspicious flashes of light on the Grassy Knoll, which is in the background. Are these muzzle flashes from rifles? To date, no sophisticated analysis has been conducted.
Nix was interviewed by an assassination researcher some years later and asked about the direction of the shots. He stated, “I thought it [shots] came from a fence between the Book Depository and the railroad tracks.”
Nix also said that he later talked about the assassination with a friend, Forrest V. Sorrels, then head of the Dallas Secret Service office. He said at the time of the assassination, Sorrels, too, believed shots had come from the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.
The Warren Commission never called Nix to testify, although he indicated he was willing to do so to the FBI, nor did the Commission have his film adequately analyzed. Only after some researchers claimed that photographs of a gunman on the Grassy Knoll were visible in the Nix film was it closely studied. In late 1966, Itek Corporation, which handles government contracts and is closely tied to the CIA, studied the film on the request of United Press International. Itek scientists concluded that the gunman figure was actually shadows from a tree branch.
It might be noted that even this conclusion is not totally accepted by suspicious researchers since, moments later, Nix panned back over the same area and the “shadow” figure is no longer visible. If the figure was merely shadows, it would seem that they should still be there in the later frames. When asked if the film the government returned to him was his original, Nix later responded, “I would say no . . . some of the frames were missing . . . some were ruined.”
Only a couple of the witnesses from the center grassy area testified to the Warren Commission, and one of the best witnesses was never identified until years later when she was interviewed by an assassination researcher.
Also taking films on the south side of Elm Street was a woman who stood filming right behind Brehm and his son. From this vantage point, her movie would show not only the Grassy Knoll in the background, but also the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting.
Despite the most intensive FBI investigation in history, federal authorities officially were unable to locate the woman and, for years, she was known to researchers only as the “babushka lady” because of a triangular kerchief she wore on her head that day.
The Babushka Lady
Perhaps the reason the federal authorities were unable to identify or locate the “babushka lady” is the explosive story she had to tell.
Located many years later by researcher Gary Shaw, Beverly Oliver, by then married to an evangelist and a “reborn” Christian, said she was nineteen years old at the time of the assassination and worked as a singer for the Colony Club, a strip-show club located next door to Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club.
On November 22, she took a prototype Super-8 Yashica movie camera to Dealey Plaza and ended up just behind Charles Brehm on the grassy triangle just south of Elm Street. The camera was a gift from a friend who had access to new camera technology.
Photos taken that day show that Oliver filmed the entire assassination as the motorcade moved down Elm. Undoubtedly her film would have included the windows of the Texas School Book Depository as shots were fired, clear pictures of the “umbrella man” and the “dark-complected man” on the north side of Elm, and the Grassy Knoll area at the time of the fatal head shot.
Oliver said that on Monday following the assassination, she was approached by two men as she neared the Colony Club. She believed they were either FBI or Secret Service agents. They said they knew she had taken film in Dealey Plaza and wanted to develop it for use as evidence. Oliver was told her film would be returned to her within ten days. She complied.
She never saw her film again. There was no mention of either her or her film in the Warren Report.
Years later, when shown photographs of FBI agents involved in the assassination, Oliver identified Regis Kennedy as one of the men who took her film. Kennedy played a key role in the New Orleans aspect of the assassination investigation and came under suspicion in later years because of his insistence that New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was merely a “tomato salesman.”
Not long after the assassination, Oliver married George McGann, a Dallas underworld character whose best man was Russell D. Matthews. Matthews, a close friend of Jack Ruby, was described by the House Select Committee on Assassina
tions as “actively engaged in criminal activity since the 1940s.”
The committee also developed evidence connecting Matthews with associates of Florida Mafia chieftain Santos Trafficante. Further, Matthews was a father figure to another Dallas thug, convicted murderer-for-hire Charles V. Harrelson, the father of film star Woody Harrelson.
Oliver revealed that during the presidential campaign of 1968, she and McGann had a two-hour conversation with candidate Richard Nixon in a Miami hotel. Why former president Nixon would meet with a well-known criminal is unclear, but in light of information that has been made public since the Watergate affair linking Nixon to organized-crime figures, this story no longer seems so far-fetched.
In 1970, McGann was killed in a gangland-style slaying in west Texas.
Oliver also said that two weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination, she was visiting in Ruby’s club. There she met a man Ruby introduced as “Lee Oswald of the CIA.” She later recognized Oswald when his picture was broadcast following the assassination. She also met David Ferrie in Ruby’s club in late 1963. “In fact, he was there so often, I mistook him as the assistant manager of the Carousel Club,” she told this author.
A friend of Oliver’s also knew of Oswald’s being in Ruby’s club and spoke openly about it. According to Oliver, her friend disappeared and she “decided it would be in her best interests not to say anything.” She remained quiet until the mid-1970s, when she was located and interviewed by Shaw and, later, by Texas newsmen.
Although Beverly Oliver was the object of a secret briefing by Commission attorney Robert Tannenbaum on March 17, 1977, and a transcript of this briefing was accidentally leaked to the news media, there is no mention of her or her film in the committee’s report.
Obviously it is highly suspicious to researchers that one of the closest witnesses to the assassination and a witness who claimed to have been with both Ruby and Oswald prior to November 22, 1963, was never located or identified by federal authorities. Not to mention that when a report was prepared, it was not released to the public.
Oliver continued to share her story through 2013. The details were published in her 1994 book, Nightmare in Dallas. Largely due to her hesitation in going public for so many years, a concerted effort appeared to have been mounted to discredit her. Other than simply voicing disbelief, most accusations were based on flimsy arguments, such as one that claimed the shoes depicted on the person in the Dealey Plaza photographs appeared too small to fit the older and larger Oliver. However, until someone with better credentials and a convincing story comes forth, most researchers accept Beverly Oliver as the “babushka lady.”
A few feet to the west of Oliver on the center grassy slope were two important witnesses: Mary Moorman, who took a photograph at the moment of the fatal head shot that may have pictured the gunman on the Grassy Knoll, and her friend Jean Hill, who, like Willis, claimed to have seen Jack Ruby in front of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting.
Ironically, neither Moorman nor Hill, probably the closest witnesses to the fatal head shot other than Brehm, were there simply to see Kennedy. Both women had come to Dealey Plaza to take pictures of Dallas police motorcycle officers they fancied. Hill had just moved to Dallas from Oklahoma and Moorman was showing her the city, as well as trying to get her a date with one of the policemen escorting the motorcade.
The women were stopped by a policeman at the corner of Elm and Houston and initially prevented from entering the grassy triangle in the center of the plaza. However, after some flirting, the officer allowed them through and they took up a position on the south side of Elm midway between Houston and the Triple Underpass.
Hill, who said she was getting in a “cops and robbers frame of mind” hoping to date the policeman, noticed that a van with writing on it saying UNCLE JOE’S PAWN SHOP was allowed through the police lines and drove in front of the Depository and behind the concrete pergola on top of the Grassy Knoll. She thought this was suspicious since no one else had been allowed into that short street in front of the Depository. She jokingly said to Moorman, “Do you suppose there are murderers in that van?”
As the presidential motorcade turned onto Elm, Moorman began taking snapshots with a Polaroid camera and handing the photos to Hill, who applied fixative and put them in the pocket of her red-cloth raincoat.
Hill said Kennedy was smiling and waving to a crowd of people on the north side of Elm. She told this author:
I knew he’d never look our way because all the people were on the other side of the street, so I jumped out into the street and yelled, “Hey, Mr. President, look this way. We want to take your picture.” As he began turning toward us, he was hit. Then a bullet hit his head and took the top off. Mary fell to the ground and shouted, “Get down, they’re shooting!” But being young and dumb, I kept standing for a minute trying to see where the shots came from. It was eerie. Everything seemed frozen. I saw a man fire from behind the wooden fence. I saw a puff of smoke and some sort of movement on the Grassy Knoll where he was. [She later pinpointed this location as about fifteen feet north of the eastern corner of the wooden picket fence—the exact location of a figure discovered in Moorman’s photograph.] Then I saw a man walking briskly in front of the Texas School Book Depository. He was the only person moving. Everybody else seemed to be frozen with shock. Because of my earlier thoughts, I became suspicious of this man and thought he might be connected with that truck I saw.
Hill said she heard between four and six shots altogether and then ran across the street in an effort to locate the men she had seen. She didn’t find them, but she claimed that on the following Sunday morning she recognized TV photos of Jack Ruby as the man she had seen in front of the Depository. Minutes after the shooting, Hill said she was standing just west of the Depository when she was taken into custody by two men who identified themselves as Secret Service agents.
Meanwhile, a Dallas reporter had talked with Moorman and taken her to the sheriff’s office. Here she was later joined by Hill, who said their photographs had been taken by federal authorities.
Directly across Elm from Hill and Moorman was the Newman family. Bill Newman, his wife, Gayle, and their two small children were standing west of the Stemmons Freeway sign directly below the Grassy Knoll. Newman told sheriff’s officers:
We were standing at the edge of the curb looking at the [president’s] car as it was coming toward us and all of a sudden there was a noise, apparently a gunshot. . . . By [the] time he was directly in front of us . . . he was hit in the side of the head. . . . Then we fell down on the grass as it seemed that we were in direct path of fire. . . . I thought the shot had come from the garden directly behind me, that was an elevation from where I was as I was right on the curb. I do not recall looking toward the Texas School Book Depository. I looked back in the vicinity of the garden.
Later that day during a local television interview, Newman was apparently the first person to publicly speak of the Grassy Knoll. When asked where the shots had come from, Newman responded, “Back up on the, uh, knoll . . . what you call it.” UPI reporter Merriman Smith, in a dispatch sent only twenty-five minutes following the shooting, noted, “Some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president’s car, probably from a grassy knoll to which police rushed.”
Another witness, far above the crowd in Dealey Plaza, had a bird’s-eye view of the assassination. Jesse C. Price was the building engineer for the Union Terminal Annex, which is the southern counterpart of the Texas School Book Depository. The building stands at the corner of Houston and Commerce. Price said he went up on the roof to get “a better view of the caravan.” While sitting on the edge of the building’s roof overlooking the plaza, Price heard shots “from by the . . . Triple Underpass.”
In an affidavit signed that day, Price stated, “There was a volley of shots, I think five and then much later . . . another one.” He said the shots seemed to come from “just
behind the picket fence where it joins the underpass.”
Price also said he saw a man, described as young, wearing a white dress shirt, no tie, and khaki-colored pants, running behind the wooden picket fence “towards the passenger cars on the railroad siding” with something in his hand that “could have been a gun.”
Price was never called to testify to the Warren Commission. In fact, it should be noted that many of the closest and most critical witnesses were never queried by the Warren Commission. And those who were can be forgiven for not providing any useful information. For example, on April 3, 1964, statements given to the FBI by seventy-three Depository employees were given to the Warren Commission by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. These statements were all given in late March 1964, a time in which every citizen had been conditioned for nearly four months to the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and that only three shots came from the sixth floor of the Depository. Adding to this predetermination by both government and mass media were rumors already circulating in Dallas that it might be unhealthy to contradict the official government position on the assassination. Incredibly, virtually none of the witnesses were questioned as to their opinion of the origin of the shots or even how many shots were fired. In fact, for the most part, they read like pre-prepared statements simply signed by the participants, none of whom were willing to challenge federal authorities.
Even in the face of contradictions in evidence and testimony by those in Dealey Plaza, one fact seems inescapable—most of the witnesses in the crowd believed shots came from the Grassy Knoll area.
However, it is also certain that at least one or more shots were fired from the direction of the redbrick building at the northwest corner of Elm and Houston—the Texas School Book Depository.
The Texas School Book Depository
