Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

 The Compression of Upper Dealey Plaza in the Zapruder film: A Gargantuan Project 

by Ralph C. Cinque

JFK was shot in the back high on the hill, then later was shot in the throat. But, the story became that both shots were one, and the photographic and film record had to support it. I'll try to explain how they did it. 

But first, let's get our bearings. This diagram shows where each shot took place. 

The number 1 shows where he was hit in the back with the ice bullet containing the nerve agent. The number 2 shows where he was hit in the throat, with a flechette, but it was different;  not made of ice, and shot with an entirely different weapon, which I believe was Umbrella Man's umbrella. 

And yes, I know it sounds farfetched. I've heard all the jokes. And it would be farfetched if we didn't know that the umbrella gun existed. But, we know that it did exist. You can read about it here:

https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf

But, returning to the diagram, the red zone shows the area that had to be effectively removed from the Zapruder film by compressing it. And that is what the phony Stemmons freeway sign in the Zapruder film accomplished; it compressed Dealey Plaza.

We are seeing the very top of Elm Street there. The people at the top are on Houston Street. The Stemmons Freeway sign was at the center of the pergola, but close to the road. I circled it below. 

So, the Stemmons sign was far from the intersection. Now look at the sign in front of it, the Thornton sign. Now look at the space between the "P" and the "R" in the Thornton sign. If you look below it, you'll see Zapruder's pedestal. I put a Z and circled it. So, that is where Zapruder was. So, at the start of the film, he was facing the top of Elm and shooting from there.

But, why would the Stemmons freeway sign block Zapruder's view when he was filming the top of Dealey Plaza? It wouldn't have. The Willis photo plainly shows that the Stemmons sign could not have obstructed Zapruder's view when he was shooting the top of Elm.

If any sign was going to block his view, it would have been the Thornton sign. In the aerial view below, we don't even see the Thornton sign. Supposedly, the tree is blocking it.

So, this shows Zapruder on his pedestal (I put a Z) and it shows the Stemmons sign circled. We can't see the Thornton sign, and presumbly, it is in front of the tree and obscured by the tree. But, if anything was going to obstruct Zapruder's view when he was facing the top of Elm, it was that tree. There is no way the Stemmons sign could have blocked his view. So, the Stemmons sign in the Zapruder film is definitely bogus.

Now, let's try to find that Thornton freeway sign in the aerial view.

Is there a sign there? I'm asking because I don't know. But, let's simplify this: If anything was going to block Zapruder's view of the top of Dealey Plaza it was the tree.

So, let's look for the tree in the Zapruder film. I found it.

That tree on the left is the tree. And you see those little white traffic signs? They were part of the Thornton freeway sign. The oblong one above said South, then the badge-shaped one said 67, then the next oblong one said South, then the bottom one said 77. So, that is the Thornton freeway sign. But, how could it be so close to Houston Street? I put an arrow to Houston Street. That's the intersection. The tree and the Thornton sign were were well below the TSBD. And you know how big that building was. It was huge. So, how could that little line on the left represent the entire expanse of the TSBD? Look at it again in the aerial view.

Do you see how big the TSBD was and how much room it took? So, how could all that be compressed into this tiny space?

Do you see the short African-American woman in the blue dress? It appears that she wasn't far from the intersection, right? She's just down a little ways from the corner, right? Not true. She was one of the Croft ladies.

She was down by the wall. She was a long way from the corner. 

She was not up there near the corner. She was below the Obelisk. So, how did they get her up so close to the corner, and in the process, compress the whole TSBD, that huge building?

I have the LIFE magazine from November 29, 1963. It starts with this frame:

I did a comparison and found the figure on the left in today's Z film.

But, it's weird because to me, the figure on the left looks female, while the figure on the right looks male. What do you think?

But, let's move on. So, LIFE did not include any of the Croft Ladies. But, if we are are going to accept the modern Zapruder film as valid, then all those people to the right of the Croft Ladies in Zapruder had to come after the Croft ladies in all the other images. 

So, this shows how the Zapruder film and the Croft photo correlate, starting with the short woman in blue. And that means that all those people to the right of the Croft people had to be lower on the hill than the Croft people.

So, all those people demarcated by the triangle have to appear below the Croft people, in other images, for this to be legit. So, what photo came after Croft? It was Betzner.

So, there we have the Thornton sign, which we also had in Zapruder, although just seeing it from behind. But, those people were right below the Croft people, so they should match the people who were below the Croft people in Zapruder. 

So, here are the people who followed the Croft people in Zapruder.

And here are the people who followed the Croft people in Betzner.

They are not the same people. You see the 67 there, right? I'll mark it in Zapruder.

Look at all the women in scarfs in Zapruder. We don't see them in Betzner. 

I'll tell you what they did. They needed to compress JFK's ride down the hill.  He was shot in the back, and he rode down the hill that way before he was shot in the throat. They needed to remove that from the story, to make it that he was shot in the back and the throat at the same time. But, they couldn't show that because they didn't have that. So, the put the phony Stemmons freeway sign in and made it that everything happened behind the sign. 

But, they also had to make it that he reached the sign smiling and waving. So, that was the BEFORE, and his emerging from behind the sign was the AFTER. But, they had very little footage of him smiling and waving because once he was shot, he stopped smiling and waving. So, they had to shorten the time and distance it took for him to reach the sign. 

But, they could only shorten it so much. There was still some exposure of him reacting to having been shot in the back before he disappeared behind the sign. 

So, the way they dealt with that was to get the paint out and put his hand over his distressed face. 

So, they did a lot of surgery and a lot of compression. They scrambled the spectators, as needed. But, they had to keep more than they wanted in order for it to flow nicely. So, they said, "The hell with it; we'll leave the stricken Kennedy in, but we'll cover his distressed, spooked face with his hand. The dumb Rubes will never notice." 

Indeed, they would have preferred to have left that out. They would have preferred to show him smiling and waving until he disappeared behind the sign. But, this was the best they could do. And, it may have taken them years to get this done. They had to divide the film into three tracks: the foreground, the mid-ground, and the far-ground. The foreground was the north side of Elm, and the far-ground was the south side of Elm. Then, once they had them divided, they could slide them up or down to get the story to conform to their script. But, there was more to it than that. Frames were removed; then, remaining frames had to be modified to smooth out the progression.  And as they did with all the photographic media, they used blur effectively to help sell it. "When all else fails, blur the hell out of it." That was their motto.

It took them years to do all this. The technology had to be developed to do it. Why did it take 13 years for the Zapruder film to be shown to the public? Because it took most of that time to get it ready. 

But once it was time to release it, LIFE magazine wanted no part of it. They sold it back to the Zapruder family for a dollar. THEY SOLD IT BACK TO THE ZAPRUDERS FOR A BUCK!  

It was a hot potato, and they just wanted to get it off their hands. 

The bottom line is that the Zapruder film was cropped and compressed savagely. And that was done to hide the fact that JFK was shot in the back high on the hill long before he was shot in the throat.