It was a Friday. 12:30 p.m. in Dallas. The sun was out, the crowds were thick, and the air felt like that crisp, hopeful Texas autumn. Then, three shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. Just like that, the 1960s changed forever. Honestly, if you've ever spent a late night down a YouTube rabbit hole, you know that how JFK was assassinated is a topic that never really stays buried. It’s a mix of cold ballistic science and a deep, nagging feeling that we haven't been told the whole truth.
Let’s get into the weeds of what actually happened on November 22, 1963. We’re looking at the official record, the medical anomalies, and why, even in 2026, people are still arguing about "the grassy knoll."
The Motorcade and the Triple Underpass
The route was a 10-mile loop through Dallas designed for maximum exposure. Kennedy wanted to be seen. He was in the back of a 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible. Beside him was Jackie. In front of them sat Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie.
As the car turned from Houston Street onto Elm Street, it passed the Texas School Book Depository. That’s when the firing started.
Most experts, including the original Warren Commission, agree that three shots were fired from a sixth-floor window. The weapon was a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, a bolt-action surplus gun that Lee Harvey Oswald bought through a mail-order ad. Basically, it wasn't exactly a high-end sniper's tool.
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The Shots in Detail
- The First Shot: Most researchers believe this one missed entirely. It might have hit a curb or a traffic sign, causing a fragment to graze a bystander named James Tague.
- The Second Shot (The "Magic Bullet"): This is where things get messy. According to the official version, one bullet entered JFK’s upper back, exited his throat, then hit Governor Connally in the back, exited his chest, went through his right wrist, and finally lodged in his left thigh.
- The Fatal Shot: The third shot hit Kennedy in the rear of the head. It was the "kill shot" that effectively ended any chance of survival.
The motorcade didn't stop. It sped toward Parkland Memorial Hospital. Doctors there, like Dr. Robert McClelland, saw things that would haunt them for decades. They worked frantically in Trauma Room 1, but by 1:00 p.m., the 35th President was gone.
Why People Still Doubt the Official Story
If the Warren Commission said Oswald did it alone, why do 65% of Americans still think there was a conspiracy? Well, it's because the evidence is, frankly, a bit of a disaster.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) actually reopened the case in the late '70s. Their conclusion? They flipped the script and said Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. They based this largely on "acoustic evidence" from a police motorcycle’s microphone that suggested four shots were fired, not three. If there were four shots, there had to be a second gunman.
Later, the Department of Justice tried to debunk that acoustic study, but the seed of doubt was firmly planted.
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The Medical Contradictions
This is the part that gets most people. Doctors at Parkland in Dallas initially described an entrance wound in Kennedy's throat. However, the official autopsy at Bethesda (conducted later that night) labeled it an exit wound.
- The Head Movement: In the famous Zapruder film, Kennedy’s head clearly snaps "back and to the left" after the fatal shot. To the naked eye, that looks like a shot from the front—from the grassy knoll.
- The "Jet Effect" Theory: Ballistics experts often argue that a rear entry could cause a "jet effect" where brain matter and skull fragments exploding out the front push the head backward. It’s a counterintuitive bit of physics that remains a major point of contention.
Lee Harvey Oswald: The Man in the Middle
Oswald was a 24-year-old former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union and then came back. He was a self-proclaimed Marxist. He was a guy who didn't fit in anywhere.
Just 70 minutes after the shooting, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater. But it wasn't for killing JFK initially—it was for the murder of a Dallas police officer named J.D. Tippit, whom he’d allegedly shot while fleeing.
Oswald never stood trial. Two days later, while being moved by police, a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby walked up and shot him on live television. You really can't make this stuff up. With Oswald dead, the "why" and the "how" became a permanent mystery.
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Modern Insights and Declassified Files
Over the last few years, thousands of pages of documents have been released. What have we learned? Not a "smoking gun" in the sense of a confession, but we’ve learned a lot about how much the CIA and FBI knew about Oswald before the assassination.
They were tracking him. They knew he had visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City just weeks before Dallas. There’s a strong argument to be made that the "cover-up" wasn't necessarily about a conspiracy to kill the President, but rather a conspiracy to cover up the massive intelligence failure that allowed it to happen.
Navigating the Truth of How JFK Was Assassinated
So, where does that leave us? To understand how JFK was assassinated, you have to look at the intersection of hard ballistics and human error.
If you want to dive deeper into this, don't just stick to the flashy documentaries. Here are some actionable steps to get a clearer picture:
- Watch the Zapruder Film Frame-by-Frame: Look at frames 312 and 313. It’s the most documented murder in history, yet it’s still the most debated.
- Read the HSCA Report vs. the Warren Commission: Don't just take one side. The HSCA report from 1979 provides a much more nuanced view of the potential for a second shooter.
- Explore the National Archives: The JFK Assassination Records Collection is mostly online now. You can read the raw FBI field reports yourself.
- Visit Dealey Plaza (if you can): Standing on the "X" on Elm Street gives you a perspective that photos never can. The distances are much shorter than they look on TV, which makes the "lone gunman" theory feel more plausible to some and less to others.
The reality of how JFK was assassinated is that it remains an open wound in the American psyche because the evidence is just contradictory enough to keep the mystery alive. Whether it was a lone man with a cheap rifle or a complex web of cold-war players, the events of that day in Dallas changed the trajectory of the 20th century.