JFK Assassination Conspiracy Explained to Braintree Students

Friday marked 50 years to the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed at Dealey Plaza in Dallas while riding in a limousine with his wife Jackie, Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife Nellie.

Those are about the only facts everyone can agree on.

Thousands of books have been written about JFK and his death, and theories abound on who really killed him. Was it communists, U.S. government agents, the Mafia, right-wing groups, renegade Cubans, or Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository, all by himself?

To help them sort through the morass and see how an historian analyzes evidence, a group of Braintree High School social studies students Friday were given a second-by-second, fact-based account of the assassination by former BHS teacher Connie Driscoll.

Driscoll has been researching the assassination for decades – he bought a copy of the Zapruder film in 1975 – and though he disagrees with the official Warren Commission version of events that pegs Oswald as the lone shooter, Driscoll sticks to what can be determined by photos, video, and expert and eyewitness accounts.

He dismisses, for instance, that the red roses given to Jackie Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 were a harbinger of death, because the state's rose is yellow. Also nonsense are larger conspiracy theories that involve toppling the government, considering that Vice President Lyndon Johnson was an available target that day.

And despite the vitriol displayed toward UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson when he visited Texas the month before, and the ads calling Kennedy a communist in local papers, the crowds in Dallas, Driscoll notes, were very receptive "up until the very end."

The things that do not add up, however, are numerous.

The Warren Commission report, delivered to President Johnson in 1964, concluded that Oswald was the only shooter, and that he fired three bullets, one of which was the head shot that killed Kennedy and another that passed through the president and wounded Gov. Connally.

The single-bullet theory, criticized even by members of the commission and later ridiculed in a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry's neighbor Newman is spit on by a Mets player, simply makes no sense, Driscoll said.

One bullet entering JFK's throat from behind, passing through Connally's back, his chest bones and ribs, then exiting and passing through the governor's wrist before lodging itself in his thigh – "It's hard to believe," Driscoll said.

Among other aspects that don't add up:

Why did the president move back and to the left when shot in the head if the bullet came from behind? 

Why did a 1978 U.S. House assassination committee investigation find evidence that concluded four shots were heard that day?

What were the two Secret Service agents doing behind the grassy knoll afterward, unaccounted for in official records?

Why was the sign in-between the grassy knoll and the motorcade cut down and removed two days later?

What evidence did government officials cover-up or destroy during what Driscoll described as a "butchered" autopsy?

The questions, 50 years on, are no less fascinating to millions around the world, who feel unsatisfied with the official version of events and maintain an emotional connection to Kennedy and his family.

Here in Massachusetts, Kennedy was a "walking saint" when he was killed, Driscoll said. He grew up in Boston, was a hero of World War II, and, perhaps most importantly, he was the first Catholic president. 

"In my Irish Catholic household, there was a picture of Jesus Christ on one wall and John Kennedy on the other," Driscoll said.