“The Final Witness,” written by a former Secret Service agent, could destroy the “magic bullet” theory, which says the president and the governor of Texas were hit by the same shot.
“I think it’s been too long and I need to tell my story.” Since 1963, Paul Landis, former agent of the United States Secret Service, has tried to forget the sound of the gunshots that killed President John F. Kennedy. But not only does that sound never leave your head, but the appearance of the “magic bullet” never leaves your memory.
The American was barely 28 years old when he was assigned to accompany the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, on her political visit to the city of Dallas, in the state of Texas, which took place on November 22.
Paul Landis, who wrote the memoir. The final witnesswhich will be published on October 10, was one step away from John F. Kennedy when two bullets hit him, one in the head and another in the neck.
The then Secret Service agent closely followed the Warren Commission, created to investigate the assassination of the President, after the arrest of Lee Harvy Oswald, suspected of firing the bullets that killed the President and who ended up being assassinated two days later.
Besides, Investigators formulated several theories about what might have happened, including the “magic bullet.”, which arose when they found the 6.5 mm copper bullet on the stretcher of John Connally Jr., governor of Texas, who was also injured on the open-top ride. After analyzing the President’s wounds, they realized that it had been the same one that had hit him.
From then on they assumed that the bullet had entered through his neck and exited through his throat, ending up hitting the governor, injuring his back, chest, wrist and thigh. But Paul Landis, who retired a year after the accident, has a different version of events. And this one doesn’t involve magic.
New revelations in his memoirs raise the possibility that there was more than one shooter. And it all starts with this bullet, which was not found on John Connally’s stretcher, but placed there.
In an interview with The New York Times, Paul Landis revealed that he was the one who found the bullet in the back seat of the presidential limousine, where the President was sitting. When he saw it he decided to keep it to prevent others from doing so.
“There was no one to protect the place, which bothered me a lot. All the agents focused on the President,” he confessed. “Everything was happening very quickly and I was afraid that the evidence would disappear or be lost. So I said, ‘Paul, you have to make a decision,’ and I made it.”he added.
He then went to Parkland Memorial Hospital and, upon arriving there, “for reasons that still seem unclear to him,” he placed the bullet on the president’s stretcher. Now, he assumes that the stretchers could have collided with each other and that the object ended up landing on John Connaly’s.
Paul Landis was never questioned by the Warren Commission and always avoided speculating about what happened that day, especially because he always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald had been the sole perpetrator of the crime.
“Now I’m starting to doubt myself. “I’m starting to wonder”, He confessed. And the former agent is not the only one who has doubts about the 60-year-old’s murder.
“If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is very likely that he will return to the theory that there was a second shooter. If not more than one,” James Robenalt, former director of the Secret Service, told the same newspaper.
The last witness: a Kennedy secret service agent breaks his silence after sixty years hits bookstores October 10 and covers the life of Paul Landis, from his peaceful childhood in Ohio, to the first time he was sent to protect President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s children, and finally to the event that led to its remodeling.
Source: Observadora