and please subscribe if you haven’t already. Back to November 22nd, 1963. Gan Hill was a school teacher, 32 years old, sharp, observant, and on November 22nd, 1963, she had the best view of anyone in De Plaza. Hill and her friend Mary Mormon stood on the south side of Elm Street directly across from the grassy null.

At Zaprder frame 313 when Kennedy was shot in the head. Hill was only 21 ft away leftward and slightly behind him. The Zaprruder film, the famous home movie of the assassination, shows Hill clearly red raincoat standing next to Mormon watching and then immediately after the shots running, but not toward the Texas School Book Depository, toward the grassy null.

Hill told the Warren Commission that she thought the shots were coming from the direction of the grassy null. She was even more specific in later interviews. The shots came from behind the wooden fence on the null, not from the building behind her. Hill was also one of several witnesses who stated that at the end of the assassination, they saw smoke lingering near the grassy null picket fence corner. Think about that.

Smoke from a rifle near the fence exactly where Hill thought the shots came from. She further said that after the assassination, she watched a man running from near the Texas school book depository toward the picket fence area. Hill believed this man might have been connected to the shooting. Years later, after seeing photos of Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Hill claimed Ruby was the man she saw running.

Hill’s testimony should have been treated as critical evidence. She was the closest civilian witness. She had an unobstructed view. She was looking directly at the president when he was shot. Instead, the FBI and Warren Commission treated her as a problem. Hill later reported that within minutes of the assassination, two men claiming to be Secret Service agents took her and Mormon’s photographs.

Mormon can be seen in the Zeppruder film taking pictures, which Hill stated were later taken and bleached out by unknown parties. The photographs disappeared. Critical evidence gone. But Hill’s problems with the official investigation were just beginning. When Hill gave her initial statement to Dallas police, she reported hearing four down six shots.

The Warren Commission concluded there were only three. Hill’s statement didn’t fit the narrative. So the FBI changed it. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at DIY Plaza, said changes in Hill’s story over time led some researchers of the Kennedy assassination to consider Hill a controversial witness. But the changes weren’t Hill changing her story.

The changes were in the official reports. Hill consistently maintained what she saw and heard. The FBI reports kept correcting her testimony to match the three-shot lone gunman theory. Hill was reported to have avoided publicity for nearly 25 years after testifying to the Warren Commission.

Why? Because, as Hill later explained, she watched what happened to other witnesses who spoke out. Pogan wrote that Hill kept silent for 15 years due to accidents that befell other witnesses. [snorts] Several witnesses to the assassination died under suspicious circumstances. Hill decided silence was safer.

In 1992, Hill finally published her account, JFK, the last dissenting witness. She detailed how the FBI had pressured her to change her testimony, how investigators had dismissed her observations, how the official narrative required her silence. Publishers Weekly said the last dissenting witness was often engaging, sometimes infuriating, and that Hill’s story is salutary for those overly respectful of official authority.

Gene Hill died on November 7th, 2000. She died of complications due to a blood disease in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. The same hospital to which Kennedy was rushed after being fatally shot. The same hospital where Lee Harvey Oswald died. The same hospital where Jack Ruby died.

Hill took her truth to the grave. But her testimony remains. Shots from the grassy null, smoke near the fence, a man running toward the parking lot. All dismissed by the FBI. Gordon Arnold was 22 years old on November 22nd, 1963. He had just finished basic training at Fort Wayne, Alaska. He was home in Dallas on leave visiting his parents before shipping out to Vietnam.

Arnold wanted to film the president’s motorcade. He brought his home movie camera and headed to Dy Plaza. According to Arnold’s later testimony, he walked behind the wooden fence on the grassy null, looking for a good vantage point to film from. As he approached the fence, a man in a police uniform or security uniform confronted him.

“You can’t be here,” the man said. “This is a restricted area.” Arnold apologized and moved away from the fence. He walked to the front of the grassy null and stood on what he described as a mound of fresh dirt to get a better view. Then the motorcade arrived. Arnold started filming. The first shot rang out and Arnold’s world exploded.

In 1978, Gordon Arnold told the Dallas Morning News that he had filmed the assassination from the Grassy Null and that he gave the film to a policeman who was waving a shotgun. But Arnold’s story was more detailed than that. He claimed that as the shots were fired, a bullet passed so close to his left ear that he could hear it whistle past.

The sound was so loud, so close that Arnold dropped to the ground in terror. Arnold was a trained soldier. He knew what gunfire sounded like. He knew what a bullet passing close sounded like, and he knew it came from directly behind him, from the fence. After the shooting stopped, Arnold got to his feet.

A man in a Dallas police uniform approached him. But this wasn’t a friendly check-in. The man was aggressive, threatening. “Give me that film,” the man demanded, waving what Arnold described as a shotgun or rifle. Arnold was terrified. He handed over his camera. The man took the film and walked away. Gordon Arnold had just filmed the assassination of the president of the United States from the grassy null and within minutes someone confiscated the footage. Arnold left Dy Plaza.

Arnold said that he had been afraid to report the incident due to claims of peculiar deaths of witnesses to the assassination. For 15 years, Arnold stayed silent. Then in 1978, he contacted the Dallas Morning News and told his story. The Warren Commission had never heard of Gordon Arnold. No FBI report mentioned him.

No investigation sought his testimony. How could the closest witness to a shot from the Grassy Null, a man who filmed the assassination, be completely ignored by the official investigation? The answer is simple. Arnold wasn’t ignored. He was never found because no one was looking. The FBI had concluded within hours that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone from the Texas School Book Depository, had killed Kennedy.

Any evidence contradicting that conclusion wasn’t investigated. It was dismissed. Critics of Arnold’s story point out inconsistencies. There was no mound of dirt there, however. Rather, there was a park bench, and there were two people sitting on that bench eating their lunches. Photographs from the day show the bench, but no visible dirt mound.

Furthermore, Gordon Arnold stated consistently that he dropped to the ground just after the first shot was fired, but the first shot was fired no later than the time frame 224 of the home movie taken by Dallas garment manufacturer Abraham Zaprooter was exposed. If Arnold dropped immediately, he shouldn’t be visible standing in later frames.

These inconsistencies have led skeptics to question Arnold’s credibility, but they miss the larger point. Whether Arnold’s specific details are accurate or not, he represents dozens of witnesses who reported shots from the grassy null and were never properly investigated. And his film, whatever it showed, was confiscated and never seen again.

Sam Holland was not an excitable civilian. He was 44 years old, a signal supervisor for the Union Terminal Railroad, an experienced hunter, a man who knew the difference between gunfire and echoes. On November 22nd, 1963, Holland stood on the railroad overpass that spanned Elm Street, giving him a perfect elevated view of Di Plaza and the grassy null below.

At his Warren Commission deposition, Holland testified that he viewed the motorcade from the railroad bridge overlooking Elm Street and that during the assassination, he heard four reports, three of which sounded like they came from the upper part of the street towards the Texas School Book Depository. But the critical part of Holland’s testimony was about the fourth shot.

Holland specified to Thompson that the first, second, and fourth shots had a similar sound to them, while the third shot was not so loud it was like it came from a 38 pistol compared with a high-powered rifle. The third and fourth shots, he said, were nearly simultaneous. Holland was describing two nearly simultaneous shots from different locations, one from the depository, one from somewhere else.

And Holland saw something else. Something the Warren Commission would spend years trying to explain away. Holland believed that the third shot was fired from behind the stockade fence on the null. From the point where he the puff of smoke originated. Smoke from the fence on the grassy null. While male clerk Austin L.

Miller, hustler helper Nolan H. Potter, Switchman Walter Luke Windborn, and others agreed with Holland about the smoke. They and most of the other overpass witnesses heard precisely three shots and could not agree on their origin. Multiple witnesses saw smoke, but they didn’t all agree on where the shots came from.

The FBI seized on these inconsistencies to dismiss the entire observation. Did a rifle on the null emit the puff of smoke recalled by some of the witnesses? Ever since the time of the Civil War, rifles have been virtually smokeless, and Lee Harvey Oswald’s Manlicker Carano is typical in that respect. The Warren Commission used this technical fact to dismiss the smoke testimony entirely.

Modern rifles don’t produce visible smoke. Therefore, the witnesses didn’t see smoke from a rifle. Therefore, there was no shot from the grassy null. But this logic ignores a critical question. If the smoke didn’t come from a rifle, what did it come from? Some researchers later theorized the smoke was actually broken glass from Coke bottles dropped by a young black couple who were eating lunch behind the fence.

Sitsman recalled hearing a crush of glass and I looked over there and the kids had thrown down their coke bottles just threw them down. Her description of the bottle breaking being much louder than the shots were and the possibility that sunlight reflected from the flying shards would account for Holland’s claim of gunfire and a puff of smoke. Maybe.

Or maybe multiple witnesses saw exactly what they said they saw. Smoke from a weapon fired behind the fence. Holland was so certain of what he saw that he took both Mark Lane and Josiah Thompson to the precise location he recalled behind the stockade fence. He physically showed investigators exactly where he believed the shot originated.

The Warren Commission noted his testimony, then dismissed it because Sam Holland’s observations contradicted the conclusion they had already reached. Gan Hill, Gordon Arnold, SM Holland. Three witnesses, three different vantage points, three testimonies pointing to shots from the grassy null. And they weren’t the only ones.

In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and concluded that 33 of them thought that the shots emanated from the grassy null. >> [snorts] >> 33 witnesses, more than half. All reporting shots from the front or side of the motorcade, not just from behind. Over 50 witnesses to the crime claimed beyond a reasonable doubt that the fatal headshot to JFK came from a picket fence on a grassy null.

50 witnesses, police officers, railroad workers, spectators, people with military training, people who knew what gunfire sounded like, all dismissed. How did the Warren Commission handle this overwhelming testimony? No credible evidence, he says its report, suggests that the shots were fired from the railroad bridge over the triple underpass, the nearby railroad yards, or any place other than the Texas School Book Depository.

No credible evidence. Once it was committed to the thesis that there could be only one assassin and no accompllices, it readily accepted the clues pointing to Lee Oswald in the TSBDB. Now that the assassin and his place were identified, it became incredible that any other assassin or any other source of shots could exist.

Ergo, any evidence that there was another assassin and another shot source is not credible. This is circular logic at its most brazen. The commission decided Oswald acted alone. Therefore, any evidence suggesting accompllices or additional shooters must be wrong. Therefore, witness testimony about additional shooters is not credible.

Josiah Thompson stated that the commission ignored the testimony of seven eyewitnesses who said they saw smoke in the vicinity of the grassy null at the time of the assassination, as well as an eighth witness who said he smelled gunpowder. Smoke. Gunpowder. Multiple shots. All reported by trained, reliable witnesses, all ignored.

The FBI’s handling of witness testimony was even more problematic. According to multiple researchers, FBI agents one, altered written statements to match the three-shot conclusion, omitted critical details from witness reports, three, pressured witnesses to change their testimony, never interviewed key witnesses who contradicted the official narrative.

Five, lost or destroyed physical evidence like photographs and films. The pattern wasn’t incompetence, it was systematic. Jim Mars wrote that the commission did not seek the testimony of eyewitnesses on the triple underpass whose statements pointed to a shooter on the grassy null. They didn’t seek testimony that contradicted their conclusion.

They sought testimony that supported it. This is the opposite of investigation. This is confirmation bias. This is predetermined outcome masquerading as factf finding. For 15 years, the Warren Commission’s Lone Gunman conclusion stood as official history. Three shots. Lee Harvey Oswald, Texas School Book Depository, case closed.

Then in 1979, everything changed. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, HSCA, reopened the investigation. They had new technology, new experts, and new evidence. Based on the consensus among the witnesses at the scene, and in particular the three spent cartridges found near an open window on the sixth floor of the book depository, the Warren Commission determined that the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired.

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there were four shots, one coming from the Grassy Null. Four shots, not three, and one from the Grassy Null. The HSCA’s conclusion was based on acoustic analysis of a police dictabel recording from a motorcycle officer whose microphone had accidentally stayed on during the assassination.

The sounds of the assassination were recorded at Dallas police headquarters when a motorcycle patrolman inadvertently left his microphone switch in the on position. Using sophisticated audio analysis, scientists filtered out motorcycle noise and isolated what they believed were gunshots. the acoustic signatures of four separate shots, three from the depository, one from the grassy null.

A new peer-reviewed article in the Science and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain’s Forensic Science Society, says the NS panel study was seriously flawed. It says the panel failed to take into account the words of a Dallas patrolman that show the gunshotlike noises occurred at the exact instant that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

DB Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said it was more than 96% certain that there was a shot from the grassy null to the right of the president’s limousine in addition to the three shots from a book depository window. 96% certain. That’s beyond a reasonable doubt in legal terms.

The National Academy of Sciences later disputed the HSCA’s findings, claiming the acoustic evidence was recorded after the assassination. But in a 2001 article in Science and Justice, DB Thomas wrote that the NS investigation was itself flawed. The debate over the acoustic evidence continues to this day. [snorts] But here’s what’s undeniable.

The HSCA, using modern scientific analysis, concluded there was a shot from the grassy null. And that conclusion validated what 50 plus witnesses had been saying since November 22nd, 1963. Let’s be clear about what the evidence does and doesn’t prove. The evidence doesn’t prove who killed Kennedy. It doesn’t prove there was a conspiracy.

It doesn’t identify a second shooter or explain their motive. What the evidence does prove is that the official investigation was fundamentally flawed. Dozens of credible witnesses reported shots from the grassy null. The FBI and Warren Commission dismissed them without proper investigation.

Multiple witnesses saw smoke near the fence, dismissed as not credible. Witnesses smelled gunpowder in the null area, ignored. Police officers ran immediately toward the grassy null. After the shots, film of the Dy Plaza shows that within seconds of the shots being fired, several police charged up the Grassy Null.

A few minutes later, there were over 50 policemen searching the Grassy Null area and the railroad parking lot that was situated just behind it. This was a far larger number than went into the Texas Book Depository. The immediate instinct of law enforcement on the scene was that shots came from the null. Yet, the official investigation concluded the opposite.

According to a 2021 article in Frontiers in Psychology, discrepancies in earwitness testimony regarding the origin of the gunshots have contributed to the breadth and persistence of the conspiracy theories that had emerged since the assassination. Dennis McFadden with Center of Perceptual Systems at the University of Texas at Austin summarized, “Localizing the origin of a supersonic gunshot is not easy under optimal conditions.

On the day of the JFK assassination, the earwitnesses present were startled, surprised, confused, disbelieving, excited, and likely scared. So, there is little wonder that their perceptions were inconsistent. This is true. Acoustic conditions in Di Plaza created echoes. Witnesses were shocked and frightened. Memories are unreliable.

But that doesn’t explain why the FBI actively suppressed witness testimony, why they altered statements, why they pressured witnesses to change their accounts, why they never properly investigated reports of shots from the grassy null. A thorough investigation would have acknowledged the acoustic challenges, interviewed all witnesses, conducted tests to determine how shots from different locations would sound, and then reached conclusions based on evidence.

Instead, the FBI reached a conclusion first, then dismissed evidence that contradicted it. The three witnesses we’ve discussed, Hill, Arnold, Holland, eventually told their stories, but they represent only a fraction of what the public knows. How many other witnesses stayed silent? How many were intimidated? How many saw the fate of those who spoke out and decided keeping quiet was safer? Kenneth O’Donnell and David Powers nominated the TSBD in their testimony, but believed in private that shots had come from the null.

These were Kennedy’s closest aids. They were in the motorcade. They heard the shots. They believed some came from the null, but they testified to the Warren Commission that shots came from the depository. Why? Because telling the truth would have complicated the official narrative. And by 1964, Kennedy was dead, Oswald was dead, Ruby was in jail, and nothing would bring the president back.

So they lied. Under oath to protect what? The truth or the appearance of truth. Lee Bowers, positioned in a 14 ft railroad tower at the back of a parking lot behind the grassy null fence. Bowers observed three cars enter the parking lot, one being driven by a man who appeared to be talking on a microphone. Bowowers also saw two men in the vicinity of the grassy null fence and saw a commotion there at the time the shots rang out.

Lee Bowers saw something. He testified to the Warren Commission, but his testimony was vague, cautious. He described a commotion, but wouldn’t say it was a shooter. He saw two men, but couldn’t identify them. Was Bowowers telling everything he knew, or was he being careful, protecting himself? Bowers died in 1966 in a single car accident.

Some conspiracy theorists claim he was murdered. More likely, it was just an accident. But the fact that people believe witnesses were killed to silence them reveals something. The climate of fear that surrounded the assassination. Gene Hill spoke openly about why she stayed silent for 25 years. She was afraid.

Other witnesses had died under mysterious circumstances. She didn’t want to be next. That fear, whether justified or paranoid, meant critical testimony was never properly documented. Witnesses who might have provided crucial details stayed quiet. Evidence was lost not through conspiracy, but through intimidation and fear. On November 22nd, 1963, President John F.

Kennedy was shot in De Plaza. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime. Two days later, Jack Ruby killed Oswald before he could stand trial. The Warren Commission concluded Oswald acted alone. Three shots. Texas School Book Depository. No conspiracy. Case closed. But in De Plaza that day, dozens of witnesses saw and heard something different.

Multiple shots, smoke from the grassy null, a second shooter. Gan Hill, 21 ft from the president, heard shots from the null and ran toward them. Gordon Arnold, filming from the null, felt a bullet pass his ear and had his film confiscated by a man in uniform. SM Holland, watching from the railroad bridge, saw smoke rise from behind the fence.

50 more witnesses reported similar observations. Police officers charged the grassy null immediately after shots were fired, and the FBI dismissed them all. Not because the witnesses were wrong, not because the evidence disproved them, but because their testimony contradicted the conclusion the FBI had reached within hours of the assassination.

We’ll never know with certainty what happened in Di Plaza. Too much evidence was lost. Too many witnesses stayed silent. Too many questions were never asked. But we know this. The official investigation was not an honest search for truth. It was an exercise in confirming a predetermined conclusion.

And in the process, the voices of dozens of credible witnesses were silenced, not by bullets, by bureaucracy, by institutions that valued closure over truth. John Hill died in 2000, still insisting she heard shots from the grassy null. Gordon Arnold spent decades trying to get his story heard. SM Holland was ignored by the commission he testified to. their crime.

They saw something different from what the government needed them to see. If this story made you question official narratives and the institutions were told to trust, do something simple but powerful. Hit that like button. Every like helps YouTube share this investigation with people who need to understand how power dismisses truth when truth becomes inconvenient.

Don’t forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss our next investigation into the stories they wanted buried. Every day we uncover testimonies hidden in sealed files and dismissed witness statements. Tales of people who saw the truth and were told they didn’t. Real witnesses, real dismissals, real history.

And now I want to hear from you. Drop a comment and tell us where you’re watching from. Are you in the US? Somewhere else? Our community spans the globe and your voice matters. Do you believe the grassy null witnesses or do you think acoustic confusion explains their testimony? Share your thoughts. Let us know you’re here demanding that witnesses be heard, not silenced.

Thank you for watching and thank you for understanding that sometimes the most important evidence is the evidence they chose to ignore. Because on November 22nd, 1963, dozens of people in Di Plaza saw and heard something that didn’t fit the official story. And for 60 years, their voices have been fighting to be heard over the institutional denial of their truth.

The question isn’t whether they were right. The question is why no one wanted to find

At 12:30 p.m. on November 22nd, 1963, Gan Hill stood 21 feet from President Kennedy’s limousine, watching through the viewfinder of her friend’s camera. She wore a bright red raincoat. Years later, people would call her the lady in red. As the presidential motorcade passed, Hill heard gunfire, multiple shots, and her immediate reaction, captured on film, was to look not at the Texas School Book Depository building behind her, but at the wooden fence on the grassy null in front of her.

The shots were coming from the null, she would later insist. I ran toward the fence because that’s where they came from. Hill wasn’t alone. Over 50 witnesses in Dy Plaza that day reported similar observations. police officers, military veterans, railroad workers, lawyers, reporters. They heard shots from the grassy null.

They saw smoke near the fence. They smelled gunpowder in the air. And the FBI dismissed nearly all of them. If you want to understand how the official investigation into JFK’s assassination ignored dozens of credible eyewitnesses to support a predetermined conclusion, please hit that like button. It helps us share more forgotten stories like this.

The question isn’t whether they were right. The question is why no one wanted to find

How the FBI Silenced JFK’s Closest Witness DD

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