A former Secret Service agent has dropped a fresh bombshell claim almost 60 years after John F. Kennedy was shot dead in the USA.
Paul Landis was just metres away from the president when he was fatally wounded by a gunshot while riding in a convertible limousine through Dealey Plaza in Dallas in 1963.
Following the death of JFK, the Warren Commission report was published after a government inquiry and Lee Harvey Oswald was identified as the sole assassin responsible.
He was himself shot and killed two days later while in police custody but the report had also concluded that just one single bullet was responsible for both Mr Kennedy’s death and the injuries suffered by Texas governor John Connally Jr who was also in the car.
It has since become known as the ‘magic bullet theory’, sparking multiple conspiracies over how many gunmen were involved in the attack, who was responsible and how many bullets actually hit Mr Kennedy.
The commission had come to the conclusion that the ‘magic bullet theory’ was accurate based partly on the fact a bullet had later been discovered on Mr Connally’s hospital gurney, even though nobody knew where it had come from.
But now after six decades of silence, Mr Landis has made a confession and opened up for the first time about what happened on that fateful day in November 1963 – revealing the story behind the bullet.
Paul Landis: The Secret Service agent’s version of events
Aged 28 at the time, Mr Landis had been detailed to Jackie Kennedy when he says three shots rang out at around 12.30pm on November 22, some 59 years ago.
He told NBC that after the limo had rushed to the nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, he ‘jumped out of the follow up car’ and raced over.
It was while people were attending to the president that Mr Landis said he discovered a bullet inside the car.
‘I happened to look to the right where Mrs Kennedy was sitting and sitting in a pool of blood there, I saw two bright brass bullet fragments,’ he said.
‘I picked one of them up, looked at it and it was kind of like the end of my little pinky. It was mushroomed and I put it back right exactly where I found it.
‘By then, Mrs Kennedy was standing up and I was looking around for other agents. I didn’t see anybody but I saw an intact bullet on the back of the seat where the cushioning meets the trunk of the car.
‘I picked it up and looked at it and the only thing I noticed that was wrong with it was bullet striations. There were no other deformities.
‘I did not want this piece of evidence to disappear and I slipped it into my pocket.’
After pocketing the bullet, Mr Landis said everybody rushed into the emergency room to follow the president’s body as it was wheeled in.
He said: ‘I was pushed right up next to the president’s body and standing right next to his feet. Almost everybody in the room was focused on the head wound. I could not look, I knew I would pass out if I saw it.
‘And all these things are whirling through my mind on what to do and I realised this was the perfect place to leave the bullet with the president’s body and it would be found during the autopsy.
‘So I reached out and I put the bullet on the gurney right by his feet and about that time, the doctors were asking everybody to leave. So we turned and kind of joined the crowd going out of the trauma room.’
Describing the condition of the bullet, Mr Landis said it was ‘perfect’ and was ‘not buried or sunk in the seam of the car seat’.
‘It was just lying where the seam on the back of the seat meets the middle of the trunk,’ he added.
He also told The New York Times: ‘All the agents that were there were focused on the president. This was all going on so quickly.
‘And I was just afraid that – it was a piece of evidence… that I realised right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, “Paul, you’ve got to make a decision,” and I grabbed it.’
The magic bullet theory
Mr Landis said he believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and killed JFK – but thinks the theory that only one bullet hit Mr Kennedy and Mr Connally is ‘wrong’.
He said: ‘They were attributing that bullet to being on governor Connally’s stretcher and I knew I’d picked it up and put it on president Kennedy’s stretcher – and that’s really the only thing that had me concerned.’
Historian and Kennedy expert James Robenalt has worked with Mr Landis to prepare him for the public revelations, which he says are ‘the most significant news in the assassination since 1963’.
He told NBC: ‘Once I started looking at all of this, having been someone who believed in the Warren Commission, I now thought “well wait a minute, if this bullet stuck in his back then it is not the single bullet that went through and then hit Connally and caused all that injury”.
‘The one that caused Connally’s injury broke major bones and it would have been severely deformed if not broken into pieces. Over time, I became convinced that this story was true.’
The pair believe the bullet that Mr Landis found hit Mr Kennedy in the back and fell out – and is separate from the one which hit the president’s head and Mr Connally.
Despite Mr Landis revealing his version of events, his former colleague Clint Hill, who famously jumped on the back of the car to protect those inside, does not believe him.
‘If he checked all the evidence, statements, things that happened, they don’t line up,’ Mr Hill said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me that he’s trying to put it on the president’s gurney.’
In response, Mr Landis said: ‘That’s Clint’s theory, that’s his thought. We never talked to each other after the assassination about the events. We worked together for the next seven months. I really can’t answer what his thinking is or why.’
Mr Landis explained that the trauma of what happened is the reason why he hasn’t come forward with his evidence until now.
When questioned about the delay in telling his story, he said: ‘Well, nobody asked me and I never thought about it. I didn’t read anything about the assassination, I had nightmares, I buried everything,
‘I refused to read anything about it because I figured I’d been there, I’d witnessed it, I didn’t need to read anything. All the assassination theories, things that were out there, I never took a look at.’
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