The JFK 100

MAN (Bill Newman, with wife and kids) I grabbed my kids and wife and hit the ground. The bullets were coming over our heads -- from that fence back on the knoll . . .⁽¹⁾

 

This scene is based upon a filmed interview with Dallas television station WFAA, but what Bill Newman actually said in that interview is a bit different. He said that "a gunshot, apparently from behind us hit the President in the side of the temple." Refering to the gardens and pergola behind him, in between the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository, he said he thought the shots "apparently [came from] there back up on the mall, what you call . . ."⁽²⁾

In a statement to the Dallas County Sheriff's Office later that interview, Newman said, "I thought the shot had come from the garden directly behind me, that it was on an elevation from where I was as I was right on the curb."⁽³⁾

To this day, Newman affirms he doesn't know whether the shots came from behind him to his right (the grassy knoll area) or behind him to his left (the Texas School Book Depository). Newman was directly between both locations, as was the area -- the "mall" or "gardens" -- he singled out as the apparent origin of the shots.⁽⁴⁾

NOTES:

1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 12. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

2. Bill Newman, interview by Jay Watson, WFAA, November 22, 1963. The word "mall" is sometimes mistranscribed as "knoll." Researcher Gary Mack observes, "Careful study of the tape shows him forming his lips to make the 'mmm' sound, not 'nnn.'"

3. William Eugene Newman, statement to Dallas County Sheriff's Office, November 22, 1963.

4. Joe Nick Patoski, "The Witnesses: What They Saw Then. Who They Are Now," Texas Monthly, November, 1998.