The assassination of 35th US president John F Kennedy – commonly referred to as JFK – has remained one of the most widespread conspiracies in history.
The 1963 assassination in Dallas, Texas, is also one of the most prolifically re-enacted moments in time, with dozens of reconstructions being made for movies, television series and even by experts looking to reconstruct the scene to help pinpoint just where those fatal shots came from.
This has led to munch confusion surrounding which photos actually show these re-enactments and which photos or videos actually depict the actual assassination. Given that the event occurred in the 1960s, long before the days where almost everyone has a camera on their person (i.e. smartphones) actual photos of the event are comparatively scarce. And as for videos, only a single video caught the entire assassination in full, the infamous Zapruder film.
The below photo is often misinterpreted as a genuine photo of the JFK assassination, but it is actually still from a 1977 2-part TV movie called The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald that proposed an alternative reality where Oswald – the man arrested for killing President Kennedy – went to trial instead of being assassinated himself.
The photo is demonstrably not of the actual assassination since the Zapruder video shows that Secret Service agent Clint Hill – the agent that ran onto the limousine directly after the shots were fired – began climbing the rear of the limousine at the same time Jackie Kennedy began to reach towards the back of the car. In this above still it is clear that the Secret Service agent is still running towards the car. Additionally the interior of the car is completely different (the actual limousine had a light grey interior without separate headrests.)
The actress playing Jackie Kennedy in this photo is actually Cristine Rose in her first televised role. Rose is better known as playing Ted Mosby’s mother in How I Met Your Mother or Angela Petrelli in Heroes.
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Similar techniques can be used to dismiss the above photo also, though we’re not sure where it comes from. In this photo, “Jackie Kennedy” can be seen beginning to climb from her seat to reach to the rear of the car, and the Zapruder film reveals that at this stage agent Clint Hill would have already begun climbing the car. The below photo is a real still from the Zapruder film at the same time this photo would have been taken. In the below (real) photo you can see Hill’s arms climbing the limousine when in the above (fake) photo he is still running to the car.
A still from the genuine Zapruder film showing the assassination
Perhaps the most accurate photo is this one which upon a cursory glance could be mistaken for a still from the Zapruder film. However the quality is far superior and reveals that “JFK” doesn’t have the head wound he suffered at the time this photo would have been taken if it were real. In reality it is a still from a re-enactment for the 1991 Oliver Stone movie JFK.
