by In the mid-1980s, at a canal house party in Amsterdam, a man who claimed to have been a session musician on a couple of Beatles albums handed me a sheaf of dirty, typewritten pages and said, ” This will change your view of the world.” world.”
The document, heavily photocopied, had the title “The key to the gemstone archive” and sought to explain who shot, who In fact shot: President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Sixty years later, the question continues to be asked and answered. At Dealey Plaza, the municipal park in downtown Dallas where the fatal bullets were fired, a white-haired peddler of murder-related literature assures me that the shooter was “Black Dog Man.”
He throws me a magazine – “JFK: The Conspiracy Case” – and within a minute he’s transforming the assassination into confusing fairy tales about “the New World Order,” wind turbines and microchips embedded in our brains.
“Big Brother, they call him,” he concludes affably, offering me a discount on the magazine.
The assassination of the president almost a lifetime ago is being reimagined in the post-truth world of Trump-era America. The countless conspiracies generated by the event were the original fake news (my “Gemstone Archive” pointed the finger at mafia hitmen hired by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis) and in 2023 they are finding new currents to swim in.
Many people still believe that there was so much smoke that a conspiracy is likely. But the Warren Commission’s official finding in 1964 concluded that misfit Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy (from the Texas School Book Depository building on the northeast corner of Dealey Plaza) and that his subsequent assassination by Jack Ruby, owner of a nightclub with mafia ties, was an equally random act.
This narrative arc, in which it takes a few seconds for the American dream to turn into a nightmare in the autumn sun, is quite dramatic. And for the visitor to Dallas, the extraordinary thing is that the setting in which it took place is intact. If you compare “then” and “now” photographs of Dealey Plaza, the only obvious difference is that in 1963 a giant sign advertising Hertz Rent A Car was on the roof of the book depository.
It’s long gone. But in the Plaza itself, the sloping gardens, reflecting pools, and curved colonnades (completed in 1940 as an elegant “front porch” to the city) have not changed. However, they have gained gruesome fame through specific associations with the ballistic mayhem that unfolded.
Because here is the “grassy knoll,” where a second or third shooter may or may not have been stationed, the “fence” (too), and the concrete pedestal on which couturier Abraham Zapruder balanced precariously to film the presidential motorcade. with his 8 mm camera. camera, creating in the process the 26 most viewed seconds of motion picture film in American history.
Swarming all these almost mythical places on the warm October day I visit are conspirators promoting their magazines and self-published books and the infinitely refreshing audience they serve: foreign tourists hooked on the evil glamor of it all and out of touch. State Americans searching for their own history.
“It’s surreal to see it with my own eyes,” says Scott Eckert of Philadelphia. For his wife Debbie, the Plaza is smaller than she imagined in the television images. They both seem momentarily overwhelmed to finally be here.
We all slide our eyes between two points: the corner window on the sixth floor of the old book depository from which Oswald supposedly shot, and the yellow cross painted in the center lane of the highway that marks the place where at 12:30 p.m. Kennedy received the fatal bullet to the head while sitting in the back of the open-top limousine.
The depot houses an excellent museum, the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza, dedicated to the assassination. But, like the building itself, it stands apart from the conspiracy circus unfolding beneath. The museum’s executive director, British-born Nicola Longford, admits they have to tread “a very, very fine line,” and by presenting the narrative with meticulous objectivity, the museum takes issue with some of the conspirators, who dismiss it as an aseptic version of the murder.
It covers the toxic political atmosphere the young Democratic president was entering (his support for civil rights and perceived softness toward “communists” made Kennedy a hated figure to many in conservative-leaning Dallas) and acknowledges that “ the questions ‘Why?’ or ‘For or with whom?’ “They remain unanswered.” But in the end, Longford says, “the power of place is really what people get to see and feel.”
Exhibits aside, the building’s sixth floor remains the wood-and-brick warehouse space it was in 1963. Museum visitors (including this one) fall silent as they reach the corner window, glassed in to thwart souvenir hunters who were cutting off pieces of window. frame. The barricade that Oswald made from boxes of books has been accurately recreated based on photographic evidence.
The line of sight (from the next window) to the yellow cross painted on the road below is unobstructed and the unimaginable outcome is suddenly plausible. The report that broke the news to the world at 12:36 pm, by ABC Radio host Don Gardiner, repeats endlessly: “Here is a special bulletin from Dallas, Texas. Today three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas, Texas.”
Other key locations remain in the city, opening more hatches to tangible history. After hanging out at Dealey Plaza, local guide Scott Beeman takes me to a cream-colored clapboard house (currently vacant) at 214 W Neely St in the Oak Cliff neighborhood, where Oswald and his Russian wife Marina lived in the duplex. from the upper floor in the spring of 1963.
It was at this address that Oswald purchased by mail order (for $21.45) the Italian bolt-action rifle found in the warehouse. Beeman leads me to the backyard and points out the picket fence and outside staircase, which form the background of a familiar picture of Oswald that she slides into his phone.
“When he gets the rifle, he gets so excited that he dresses up and asks Marina to take this famous photograph,” Beeman says.
A few blocks away, at 1026 N Beckley Ave, is the former boarding house where Oswald rented a small room under the name OH Lee at the time of the murder. The current owner is the granddaughter of the woman who ran it at the time and, using original furniture (including Oswald’s cot-like bed), has recreated the atmosphere of stale air and unasked questions in which Oswald wandered toward his destiny.
Half an hour after the fatal shooting at Dealey Plaza, Oswald entered the boarding house to pick up the .38 pistol with which a few minutes later he would murder police patrolman JD Tippit. He was later arrested at the Texas Theater on Jefferson Blvd and less than 48 hours later, Jack Ruby fatally shot him in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters on Main Street. (Irony of ironies: the current notice posted at the basement entrance says that “weapons are prohibited under the Texas penal code.”)
That is the history. But as I follow it, I find myself wanting to go back to 12:29 on that Friday in 1963, when presidents were incredibly young and hope was still on the table. Back at Dealey Plaza, a woman from Boston tells me how sad it all is “when these terrible things are still happening.” And what we are all doing here comes to mind. We are waiting for the redemption of a different ending.
On the trail of JFK in Dallas
The Sixth Floor Museum
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., $18. It features a special exhibit, “Two Days in Texas,” to commemorate the 60th anniversary.
Best DFW Tours offers 3-hour guided vehicle tours of JFK sites with access to the guesthouse on N Beckley Avenue: starting at $400 (self-guided tours via phone link: $24.99).
Ruth Paine’s House
The Ruth Paine House in the suburb of Irving is where Oswald’s wife lived, where she kept the rifle, and where she spent the night before the assassination. Now a museum, it has been painstakingly recreated as it was in 1963. Tuesday-Saturday, $12, by appointment only (email info@irvingarchivesandmuseum.com).
Juanita Artisan House
For a broader view, visit the excellent Juanita Craft House dedicated to a luminary of the civil rights movement in Dallas. Miss Craft had been invited to the luncheon at the Trade Mart that the president was scheduled to attend after the motorcade. The effect of her murder on the black community was devastating. Open by appointment. Also find time to visit the vibrant Deep Ellum neighborhood for great nightlife and murals.
Get there
America as you like it; 020 8742 8299) offers a 13-night Texas Lone Star air trip from £1,890 per person, including return flights on American Airlines, car hire and accommodation in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Houston and Fort Worth . Visit visitdallas.com for more information about the city.
Nigel Richardson is the author of ‘The Accidental Detectorist: Uncovering an Underground Obsession’, available in paperback at Telegraph books.
