Could one projectile account for seven distinct wounds in two separate men?
In short: The Warren Commission's single-bullet theory remains a lightning rod for debate regarding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It suggests that a lone copper-jacketed bullet caused multiple injuries to both the President and Governor John Connally, a conclusion essential to the official narrative that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The theory, often mockingly called the magic-bullet theory, emerged as a solution to a timing dilemma. Investigators noted that the Zapruder film showed President Kennedy and Governor Connally reacting to gunfire within a window too narrow for a bolt-action rifle to be fired twice. By proposing that a single projectile—designated CE 399—traversed both men, the Commission reconciled the physical evidence with the limited rate of fire of the weapon found in the Texas School Book Depository.
According to this model, the bullet entered the President's back, exited his throat, and then struck Governor Connally, passing through his chest, shattering his rib and radius bone, and finally embedding in his thigh. This path required the bullet to penetrate layers of clothing, skin, and significant muscle tissue. The projectile was later discovered on a hospital gurney at Parkland Memorial Hospital. While the Commission found the evidence persuasive, internal disagreement persisted, with several members questioning the theory's probability.
Critics and even some Commission members argued that the relatively pristine condition of the recovered bullet made it unlikely to have caused such extensive skeletal damage. Despite these doubts, the House Select Committee on Assassinations later supported the forensic consistency of the theory in 1979. The debate continues to hinge on the precise geometry of the shooting, the timing of the Zapruder frames, and whether the bullet's trajectory could realistically account for the injuries sustained by both victims.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Single-bullet theory
- Also: What Is the Single-Bullet Theory?
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