- DALLAS (AP) -- Nellie Connally, the last surviving passenger of the
car in which former president Kennedy's 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.
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- "I will fight anybody that argues
with me about those three shots," Connally told Newsweek magazine
in its Nov. 23 issue. "I do know what happened in that car. Fight
me if you want to."
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- The Warren Commission concluded in 1964
that one bullet passed through John F. 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Connally says in Newsweek that personal
notes she wrote a few weeks after the assassination reaffirm her belief
of the number of shots.
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- She said the notes were meant to be a
chapter of family history for her three children and grandchildren. After
coming across them a few years ago, she began reading excerpts to small
groups in Houston and Dallas.
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- Connally wrote that after hearing the
first shot, her husband 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."
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- Then, she wrote, John Connally "was
hit himself by the second shot and said, 'My God, they are going to kill
us all!"'
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- According to her notes, that was followed
by the third shot that passed through Kennedy's head.
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- 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.'"
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