A Fourth Shot?

New mystery in the JFK case

For two years, the House Assassinations Committee has been poring over all the evidence on the shooting of President John F. Kennedy, trying to disprove once and for all the various conspiracy theories. Until now its conclusion was the same one that the Warren Commission had reached 14 years ago: Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots from his sniper's nest above and behind the presidential limousine.

Last week, however, the committee received a disturbing new analysis suggesting that Oswald might have had an accomplice. A pair of acoustics experts testified in closed session that they had found a high probability that there was a fourth shot fired at Kennedy, and that it came from the grassy knoll in front of the presidential car.

"It looks like pretty strong evidence," said Richardson Preyer, Democrat of North Carolina and chairman of the subcommittee dealing with the Kennedy assassination. "It doesn't point to who might have been involved. I think it's pretty clear that Oswald just fired three times. So if there was a fourth shot, then somebody else had to be there shooting."

The new information came from Mark Weiss of Queens College in New York City and his associate, Ernest Aschkenasy. Both are highly regarded experts. They helped find the erasure marks in the 18 1/2-minute gap on one of Richard Nixon's White House tapes. Using a computer to assist them, Weiss and Aschkenasy examined a tape recording of the sounds transmitted from a motorcycle policeman's radio that happened to have been left on during the shooting. The tape had been available to the Warren Commission, but the science of acoustic analysis was not then sufficiently sophisticated to make much out of it.

The experts began with a survey map of the scene and then charted the major echo points such as buildings, trees and even the press bus in the presidential motorcade. After eliminating irrelevant noises like the motorcycle engine, they identified four separate "high spike" sounds that they say were gunfire (to the ear, no gunshots are discernible when the tape is played normally). Their technique, they say, enables them to locate the origin of a sound to within two feet, and they claim that the fourth shot (actually the third in the sequence) was definitely from the grassy knoll.

"It's a new science," Preyer says, "and like any new science you wonder if it's done with magic. But I must say they make a pretty impressive case. They discuss it conservatively, and come up with a 95% possibility."

For years, conspiracy theorists have claimed that a second gunman was located on the knoll. Their view was supported by some witnesses who said they saw a puff of smoke rise from that site during the shooting. In addition, a photograph made at the time showed a policeman running toward the knoll rather than toward the wounded President. Some critics of the Warren Commission even contend that photos may show the shadowy image of a man partially concealed behind a tree on the knoll.

Despite the two experts' testimony, there is no evidence that any gunman on the knoll hit Kennedy and no evidence of who such a gunman might be. The baffled committee members, under a deadline to complete their probe by the end of the year, decided to hold public hearings on the new disclosures this week and will probably turn over their findings to the Justice Department. -

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