Nothing predicted the dramatic developments for a visit prepared a year ago. When the first shot was fired at the motorcade passing through Dallas on that rainy afternoon in 1963, the American president clutched his neck under the fearful eyes of his wife. Seconds later he tilted his head back when he was shot the second time.

The public assassination of John F. Kennedy was captured on 8mm color film without sound by an amateur cinematographer, Russian Jew Abraham Zapruder. It had the perfect location for filming the motorcade route. His images became the starting point for many books to be written, films and documentaries made about the murder.

Conspiracy theories

Zapruder’s footage leaves open the possibility that the alleged shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, did not act alone. The Warren Commission, set up to investigate the circumstances of Kennedy’s assassination, nevertheless concluded that Oswald fired the two bullets from the nearby warehouse, a seven-story textbook building, as a lone gunman.

60 years after the dramatic event that shocked the world, many are still wondering where the shots came from. It is also the subject of the Hollywood production entitled “Assassination” starring Al Pacino, John Travolta, Courtney Love, Viggo Mortensen and others. David Mummer’s film is based on the theory that the Chicago mob ordered the hit on “JFK” when he had tried to break it up. The truth is that Kennedy had close ties to the Mafia before he became president.

And it appears that after taking office he tried to crack down on her, launching nationwide investigations and prosecutions that threatened the power and profits of organized crime. But that’s just one of dozens of theories that have emerged since that fateful day. Perhaps the best-known work on the background of the Kennedy assassination is Oliver Stone’s 1994 epic JFK, in which Kevin Costner plays New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who believes the assassination was more than the Warren Commission had discovered. Garrison and his team suspected that Oswald was a CIA agent recruited for the assassination.

The “legend” Lee Harvey Oswald

Oswald spent some time in the then Soviet Union, fueling speculation about Moscow’s influence. Other writers suspect Cuban influence, as Kennedy was interested in overthrowing communist revolutionary Fidel Castro. The FBI and Kennedy’s successor in the presidency, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) were also suspects.

The book “The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ” was written by Roger Stone, an associate of Donald Trump, who claims that the Kennedy successor worked with gangsters and the US Secret Service to assassinate the president. Many of these speculative books and films have been published around the anniversaries of Kennedy’s death, including Stone’s book, which was published 50 years after Kennedy’s assassination in 2013.

Last September the New York Times took a close look at the report of Paul Landis, a Secret Service agent who was just feet away from Kennedy when he was shot. The Landis report calls into question the so-called “one-bullet theory” of the Warren Commission. She says one of the three bullets went through Kennedy’s neck before hitting Texas Gov. John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat, injuring him in the back, chest, wrist and thigh.

The “last witness” is silent

It is surprising that Landis was never called by the Warren Commission to testify, despite his proximity to the dramatic event. For 60 years, the now 88-year-old remained silent on the matter. Until today. In his memoir, “The Last Witness,” published in Germany on October 10, Landis writes that he does not want to spread conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s death. However, since it refutes the claim that a bullet could cause so much damage, it implies that Oswald was not the sole shooter.

On the other hand, Gerald Posner’s book Case Closed from 1993 concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Oswald was shot by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police headquarters just two days after the Kennedy assassination. The Warren Commission found no evidence that Ruby was involved in the Kennedy assassination, nor that Oswald’s assassination was part of a cover-up.

In December 2022, the US National Archives released 13,173 documents related to the Kennedy assassination. It was preceded by the Trump administration which had taken the same step in 2017. This means that 97% of the documents related to the assassination are now public.

The fate of the Kennedys

Since then the Kennedy family has been haunted by misfortune. The political ambitions of his younger brother, Bob Kennedy, were also stopped in 1968 by the hand of his assassin. The dreams of their younger brother, Edward Kennedy, were shattered when he left the scene of the crash that killed his co-driver and campaign aide, Mary Jo Kopecny. John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former US president and Jacqueline Bouvier, died when his small plane crashed on July 16, 1999, off the Atlantic coast. His wife and her sister were on the plane.

Kennedy Jr. was three years old at his father’s funeral. It was the largest gathering of dignitaries at a funeral since the time of King Edward VII in London. The young Kennedy greeted the casket with an innocent and unintentionally grand gesture that is now considered iconic.

From his heroic actions during World War II and his near-mythical relationship with Marilyn Monroe, among others, to his civil rights campaign and future plans for space travel, Kennedy has always fascinated people. . And it continued even more after his death.

60 years after he was murdered in his open limousine, speculation about her motive will likely continue for decades to come. Or as “JFK” director Oliver Stone once put it in relation to the lone assassin theory. The American public “never accepted her. They can smell a rat.”