DALLAS (AP) -- Nellie Connally, the last surviving passenger
of the car in which President Kennedy was assassinated, is reasserting
her belief that the Warren Commission was wrong about one bullet
striking both JFK and her husband, former Gov. John Connally.
"I will fight anybody that argues with me about those
three shots," she told Newsweek magazine in its Nov. 23
issue. "I do know what happened in that car. Fight me if
you want to."
The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that one bullet passed
through Kennedy's body and wounded Connally, and that a second
bullet struck Kennedy's head, killing him. It concluded that
Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
The Connallys maintained that two bullets struck the president
in Dealey Plaza 35 years ago and a third hit the governor. John
Connally died in 1993 at age 75.
The Warren Commission concluded there also was a bullet that
missed the car entirely. Some conspiracy theorists argue that
if three bullets struck the men, as the Connallys insisted, and
a fourth missed, then there must have been a second gunman because
no one person could have fired four rounds from Oswald's bolt-action
rifle so quickly.
Mrs. Connally says in Newsweek that personal notes she wrote
a few weeks after the assassination reaffirm her belief of the
number of shots.
After coming across them a few years ago, she began reading
excerpts to small groups in Houston and Dallas.
Mrs. Connally wrote that after hearing the first shot, John
Connally turned to his right to look back at Kennedy "and
then wheeled to the left to get another look at the President.
He could not, so he realized the President had been shot."
Then, she wrote, John Connally "was hit himself by the
second shot and said, `My God, they are going to kill us all!'
"
According to her notes, that was followed by the third shot
that passed through Kennedy's head.
She wrote: "With John in my arms and still trying to
stay down ... I felt something falling all over me. ... My eyes
saw bloody matter in tiny bits all over the car. Mrs. Kennedy
was saying, `Jack! Jack! They have killed my husband! I have
his brains in my hand.' "