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

The Timing of the Back Shot and the Throat Shot 

Three shots struck the President. The third one is the one that killed him. That was the fatal head shot, which struck him as he was passing Zapruder at 313. But, don't assume the red cloud was real.

The first two shots were fairly minor. The back shot was little more than a scratch.  It was an ice bullet whose purpose was to deliver the nerve agent. The purpose of the throat shot was to create a hole in his neck. It was a flechette, but not a  frozen one, and I don't know that it contained any drug. However, the throat shot was more serious because of its location. He would have needed surgery for it, which he would not have needed for the back shot. But, he would have been back to work full-time in a few weeks, at the most, and he would have been working part-time much sooner than that.  

The back shot, which had the poison, came first, and that occurred at frame 189 in the Zapruder film. 

So, he was fine and waving in 189, and then in 190, it's more blurry and his hand is covering his face. So, the ice bullet hit him between the two. And that face-covering continued until he disappeared behind the freeway sign. 

Of course, JFK did NOT do that. He did not cover his face. His face must have looked stricken and alarmed, since he was shot, and since, officially, he wasn't shot yet, they had to cover that up. So, they put his hand over his face. It's art.

No witness reported that JFK covered his face with his hand. And Jackie turned and started looking at him shortly after that, and she never said he covered his face. On the contrary, she said he had a "quizzical" look on his face.  

So, Z-189 is when JFK was shot in the back with the ice bullet that was laced with a nerve toxin. The shot was taken from the Dal-Tex building. Then, he rode down the steepest part of the hill that way, as the poison seeped into him. 

Z-225 is when JFK emerges from behind the freeway sign reacting to having been shot in the throat. He was in a panic due to his airway being blocked. 

So, raised his right hand to his mouth and coughed, and with his left hand he yanked on his tie. But, he performed this motion in a very uncoordinated way. He lifted his elbows up, which was unnecessary. He also severely hunched his shoulders. This was dyskinesia, the result of the nerve agent, where he was losing control of his muscles and going into a spastic state. 

Kennedy was not "paralyzed," although many have used that term. Paralysis refers to the complete denervation of a muscle, where it can't get any signals from its nerve to contract. That was not going on with Kennedy. The fact is that muscles also depend on nerves to tell them to STOP contracting, and that's what the nerve agent interfered with: the cessation of contraction. In Z-232 (above) JFK was reacting to the obstruction in his breathing that was caused by the throat shot. And he was contracting his own muscles. He did lift his hands to his mouth and throat. If his muscles were paralyzed, he would not have been able to do that. It was not a Thorburn reaction; it was a voluntary reaction. But, it was executed in a dysfunctional and uncoordinated way. Normally, when you want to lift your hands to your mouth and throat, you do a rotary motion with your elbows, so that just your hands go up. He didn't need to lift his elbows up like that. You can also see the extreme contraction of his posterior muscles, where he is hunching his shoulders severely. That wasn't necessary or helpful either. It's all very excessive. It is dyskinesia. He wasn't paralyzed. He was the opposite of paralyzed; he was spastic. But, what he was trying to do was clear his airway, either of the projectile or a bolus of blood. And he apparently succeeded because after that, his breathing was no longer a problem. 

So, Kennedy was shot in the back high on the hill at Z-189. It was right before the Croft photo was taken. Kennedy had barely passed the Obelisk when he was shot in the back. 

Then, he rode down the hill that way, affected only by the back shot, but being overwhelmed by it, which is why he didn't wave in Croft, nor in Betzner, nor in Willis. And then, after that, he was shot in the throat. What was the Z frame that corresponded to the throat shot? We can only guess, but his reaction was underway in 225, so it could not have been more than a few frames before that. So, I'll say 222. 

Subtracting 189 from 222 would suggest around 2 seconds between the back shot, which came first, and the throat shot. However, a huge swath of the Z-film was cut out. If you ask yourself what frames of the Z-film correspond to Croft, Betzner, and Willis, don't bother. They were cut out. The red swath represents the part that was removed.

The story of the Z-film became that Kennedy rode down the hill untouched until he reached the freeway sign, and then one shot hit him which traversed him from back to front. They installed the phony freeway sign in the Zapruder film to tell that story. But, that is not what happened. He was hit in the back first and then he rode down the hill, disassociating from what was going on, and drawing attention from Jackie, who stopped working her side of the street, instead puzzling over him and his "quizzical" look. And then he was shot in the throat behind the sign at Z-222.

So, what was the real span of time between Shot 1 and Shot 2? I can only guess, but it could have been 10 seconds. You just can't go by what you see in the Zapruder film. It was severely altered and compressed, and more so than researchers have ever imagined. And they eliminated the slowing down and near-stopping of the limo, which also reduced the time between shots, profoundly. And that's why you can't go by the timing of anything in the Zapruder film.