JFK assassination witness breaks his silence and raises new questions

He still remembers the first gunshot. For an instant, standing on the running board of the motorcade car, he entertained the vain hope that maybe it was just a firecracker or a blown tire. But he knew guns, and he knew better. Then came another shot. And another. And the president slumped down.

For so many nights afterward, he relived that grisly moment in his dreams. Now, 60 years later, Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents just feet away from President John F. Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas, is telling his story in full for the first time. And in at least one key respect, his account differs from the official version in a way that may change the understanding of what happened in Dealey Plaza.

His memory challenges the theory advanced by the Warren Commission that has been the subject of so much speculation and debate over the years — that one of the bullets fired at the president’s limousine hit not only Kennedy but Texas Gov. John Connally, who was riding with him, in multiple places.

Landis’ account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also encourage those who have suspected there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

As with all things related to the assassination, his account raises questions of its own. Landis remained silent for 60 years, and memories are tricky even for those sincerely certain of their recollections. Elements of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities immediately after the shooting, and some of the implications of his version cannot be easily reconciled to the existing record.

But he was there, a firsthand witness. At age 88, he said, all he wants is to tell what he saw and what he did.

“There’s no goal at this point,” he said in an interview last month, in advance of his book, “The Final Witness,” which will be published on Oct. 10. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”

What it comes down to is a copper-jacketed 6.5 mm projectile. The Warren Commission decided one of the bullets fired that day struck the president from behind, exited from the front of his throat and continued on to hit Connally, somehow managing to injure his back, chest, wrist and thigh. It seemed incredible that a single bullet could do all that, so skeptics called it the “magic bullet” theory.

Investigators came to that conclusion partly because the bullet was found on a stretcher believed to have held Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital, so they assumed it had exited his body during efforts to save his life. But Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, said that is not what happened.

In fact, he said, he was the one who found the bullet — and he found it not in the hospital near Connally but in the presidential limousine lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting.

When he spotted the bullet after the motorcade arrived at the hospital, he said he grabbed it to thwart souvenir hunters. Then, he said he entered the hospital and placed it next to Kennedy on the president’s stretcher, assuming it could somehow help doctors figure out what happened. At some point, he now guesses, the stretchers must have been pushed together, and the bullet was shaken from one to another.

“There was nobody there to secure the scene,” Landis said. “I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence, that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost.”

Landis theorizes the bullet struck Kennedy in the back, popping back out before the president’s body was removed from the limousine.

Landis has been reluctant to speculate on the larger implications. He always believed Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. But now? “Now I begin to wonder,” he said.

In recent years, he confided his story with several key figures, including Lewis Merletti, a former director of the Secret Service. James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer and author of several books of history, has helped Landis process his memories.

“If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more,” Robenalt said. “If the bullet we know as the magic or pristine bullet stopped in President Kennedy’s back, it means the central thesis of the Warren Report, the single-bullet theory, is wrong.”

© 2023 The New York Times Company