JFK Film May Reveal Two Gunmen by Earl Golz, Dallas Morning News

              VOLUME III NOVEMBER 22, 1978
JFK film may
reveal two gunmen
(Cl|t Sallao iflorninc; .IVrlup
November 26,1978
ByEARLGOLZ
®The Dalits Morning News, 1978
A film of the John F. Kennedy assassination site, brought to
light only last week, may show two persons, not one. in the 6th-floor
window of the Texas School Book Depository building min­utes
before the fatal shots were fired.
Robert J. Groden, a film technician
who has worked for the House Assassi­nations
Committee, "enhanced" a short
strip of movie film taken by an ama­teur
photographer that fatal noontime
on Nov. 22,1963.
"You can actually see one figure
walking back and forth hurriedly,"
Groden said. "I think what was happen­ing
there is the sniper's nest was actu­ally
being completed just prior to the
shots being fired."
If his interpretation is correct, it
would disprove the Warren Commis­sion
conclusion that Kennedy was shot
by a single assassin — Lee Harvey
Oswald — working alone.
Groden, of Hope Lawn, N J., is a staff
consultant on photographic evidence
for the House Assassinations Commit­tee.
It was his enhancement of the
Abraham Zapruder color film of the
fatal shot being fired into Kennedy's
bead that led to the reopening of the
assassination investigation.
The latest film, the third known
motion picture of the scene, was taken
by amateur photographer Charles L.
Bronson, chief metallurgist for an Ada,
Okla., oil tool company. It was shot
from about a block away from the
school book depository building and
Includes a scene where an ambulance
made a sick call at the depository build­ing
about 12:24 p.m., six minutes before
Kennedy was killed.
That scene, shot with a wide-angle
lens, shows the school book depository
and the 6th-floor window from where,
the Warren Commission concluded,
the fatal shots were fired.
Bronson's film was viewed in 1963
by an FBI agent who reported that it
"failed to show the building from
which the shots were fired." Agent Mil­ton
L. Newsom reported that the film
"did depict the president's car at the
precise time shots were fired; hov/ever,
the pictures were not sufficiently clear
for identification purposes."
Because of this, the film was never
lused in any investigation of the assassi­nation.
Its existence was discovered
when it was listed among 90,000 pages
of FBI assassination documents declas­sified
last December and Januarj'.
The Dallas Morning News recently
located Bronson and the original color
movie film and commissioned Groden
to analyze that portion of it showing
the 6th-floor double window of the
school book depository.
Groden is continuing to analyze the
film, but issued a preliminary opinion
that "simultaneous movement" can be
seen in the window. At the time the
film was taken, there supposedly was
no one on the sixth floor of the school
book depository building. Not even
Oswald admitted to authorities he was
then on the sixth floor, and one wit­ness
said she saw him in the 2nd-floor
lunchroom only minutes earlier.
Before Oswald was shot to death
Nov. 24, 1963, by Dallas nightclub
owner Jack Ruby in the basement of
Dallas police headquarters, he repeat­edly
denied he shot the president and
insisted someone had made him a
"patsy" in the assassination.
School book depository employee
Bonnie Ray Williams acknowledged he
was the last person known to have
been on the sixth floor before the
assassination. He told the Warren Com­mission
be could see no one when he
left the sixth floor et about lZ-20 p.m.
after eating his lunch there. This was
about four minutes before Bronson's
film was taken.
Two witnesses standing along Hous­ton
Street less than one block from the
school book depository building told
the Warren Commission they saw two
men with a gun in different but nearby
windows of the building at about the
time Bronson was filming. The Warren
Commission, however, discounted
their stories.
"There is no question that there is
movement (in Bronson's vnndow
film)," Groden said. "And I'm sure,
given time and money, a computer
could probably clarify the images a bit
more."
One of the persons in the window is
wearing a magenta, or purplish red,
shirt, Groden said, and "you can actu­ally
see one figure walking back and
forth hurriedly."
"I think what was happening there
is the sniper's nest was actually being
completed just prior to the shots being
fired."
FBI agent Newsom viewed the
movie with Bronson as soon as it was
processed at the Eastman Kodak Co.
in Dallas in 1963.
"He told me the film was of no value
because it didn't show the book deposi­tory
building," Bronson said. "I didn't
realize myself that the building was on
there until a couple of weeks ago."
Told last week that the film showed
the building and two moving images
framed in the alleged assassin's
window, Newsom asked whether Bron­son
was "certain that's the film that we
looked at" in 1963.