THE LITTLE THINGS: Governor Connally's Lapel Flap

After the release of the film "JFK" back in 1991, which was followed by a renewed interest in the case by the American public it is interesting that there was a sudden backlash from lone assassin theorists. Their rebuttal to the Oliver Stone film was Gerald Posner's absurdly misguiding and misguided publication "Case Closed", which practically said the Warren Commission got it right because..... and then he just presented everything they argued. It was practically a contemporary recreation of the Warren Report, accompanied by an excess of unsubstantiated claims and misrepresentations of events in an effort to keep the official story alive and kicking.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that came about in the early 1990s in defense of the Single Bullet Theory proposed by the Warren Commission was a moment in the famous Abraham Zapruder film, at frame 224 to be exact. I included the .GIF directly above for you to see for yourself. You can clearly see that at frame 224 the right lapel on Governor Connally's jacket flaps upward. It was quickly argued that this was definitive proof of the Single Bullet theory as this was the bullet coming out of Governor Connally's chest and this occurred at the same time President Kennedy was struck. And it looks fairly convincing. It's obvious the Governor's lapel flops out suggesting something may have possibly been coming out directly behind it. And even if you look at Connally it almost looks as if he is shifting in being struck by a bullet. If you across to his left side his shoulder there seems to be jerking back slightly as though being forcefully turned. But even this comes with an explanation. Governor Connally himself, who maintained endlessly that he and Kennedy were never struck by the same shot, said that when he heard the first shot he turned to his right to look over his shoulder to see if anything happened. Then he turned back to his left and as he was turning to look over his left shoulder he felt the bullet tear through his torso. So this bodily adjustment clearly represents Connally in the process of turning from his right to his left.

There are other problems with this claim as well, named the location of the lapel flap. Looking at the .GIF above, the lapel pops out at about the middle of it, at the location where his shoulder meets with his chest. The flap occurs about even with the top of his right breast. And because there is a definite end point to the flap, that end point has to be where the bullet came out if it was from a bullet at all. But this end point, again, is at the top of his breast. But his torso wound was lower than that. Even the wound to his back hear his armpit was at least two inches lower than that and it is known that the bullet exited from the base of Connally's right breast, some four inches, at least, lower than where this lapel flap occurs. So, whatever this flap represents, unless the bullet magically (again there's that magic word) ripped out of his chest and caused all of its damage at a place inches lower, then this lapel flap could not be representative of a bullet leaving Connally's body.

Many have claimed that this lapel flap could have easily been the result of something as simple as a wind gust. This may sound like an excuse to dismiss the problem, but if one looks at the flap its endpoint occurs at the furthest out point of the lapel flap, which, if catching some wind would be the exact place where the focus of a gust of wind would pull it back. Furthermore, and it's evident in the .GIF shown below, whenever lone assassin theorists argue this case of the lapel flap they never show or focus in on the film for frames more than one or two past frame 224. Why would this be? Well, interestingly enough, Connally's lapel remains flapped open like this for several frames after frame 224, again evident of something like a lengthy gust of wind holding it open. If this flap at frame 224 were exclusively the result of a bullet going through Connally's body then we see how quickly it went in and left his body. It took only one frame for the lapel to go from down do a popped outward position. If this were from a bullet then the lapel should have begun to fall back into place only a frame or two or maybe three later. But it remains popped out; not characteristic of a bullet quickly going through his body and leaving.

But let's play the devil's advocate. Let's say this lapel flap was definitely the result of a bullet. This means that at frame 224 the bullet ripped through Connally's body. Let us apply this then to the Single Bullet Theory. It cannot be seen in the .GIF above, but at the time of frame 224 Kennedy is already in the first stages of reaching up to his throat. When the Zapruder film was examined it shot at 18 frames per second (thus each frame accounted for almost 6/100 of a second). It was determined, with the speed of a bullet fired from a Mannlicher-Carcano that the bullet would have made it from Kennedy's throat into Connally's torso in 2/100 of a second. With this speed it means for certain that Kennedy would have had to been also hit at frame 224 and, if we really stretch things, during frame 223. However, when experts were brought on to examine both the President's and the Governor's reactions to their shots, they took into account a delayed reaction to being shot. Obviously we don't react at the same moment a bullet hits us, but a moment later when we have managed to feel it and then react in pain. These experts determined, with the frame rate of Zapruder's camera, the earliest either of these men could have begun reacting to being shot would have been two frames. This means likely that Kennedy was hit around frame 220 or 221 since by 224 he was already starting to react to being shot. Even if we really stack the deck and say Kennedy was struck at frame 222, this still means that there were at least around 10/100 (or 1/10) of a second between when President Kennedy was struck and then when Connally was struck. This is still five times longer than it could have taken for the bullet to go from one man to the next (and that's with giving the official story as big of a break as humanly possible). Even if this lapel flap was evidence of a shot, it only goes to disprove the Single Bullet Theory because it means then that Kennedy and Connally were shot not by one bullet but by two bullets in relatively close succession. Since Oswald's supposedly owned Mannlicher-Carcano was not capable of rapid firing such as this there is no way he could have accounted for these two shots. And either way, if there are two shots in this case then that means there were at least four shots all together, which also disproves Oswald as a lone assassin since only three rifle shells were recovered from the "crime scene".

So in the end the lapel flap story doesn't do much to help the case of a lone assassin. Based on its location and the actions of Connally's lapel after the flap at 224 show it could have been a bullet that caused it, and even if it was it couldn't have been the same bullet that hit Kennedy. It's just another piece of potential evidence that goes nowhere.