JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theory Takes Another “Hit”

Sorry to break the news, but only one assassin shot and killed President John F. Kennedy, and that man was Lee Harvey Oswald.

 As if more evidence were needed than two multi-year investigations using hundreds of investigators and the most sophisticated forensic tools possible, making the JFK case the most thoroughly investigated homicide in human history, a key allegation in the conspiracy buff playbook took another body blow last week. 

Okay, okay – put down the torches and pitchforks, and let’s burn the witch another day. Better yet, if you want to roast a messenger who dares defy JFK Assassination Conspiracy Dogma, toss your torch on the woodpile surrounding Dartmouth professor Hany Farid.  He is the director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth University, and his recent analysis of the infamous “Oswald Backyard Photos” concluded that those incriminating pictures are genuine.

 According to Farid, pre-assassination photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald standing in his backyard holding what appears to be the Mannlicher-Carcano mail order rifle used to kill JFK was not altered or faked, something that should make any conspiracy theorist see red (or more conspirators). 

After two months of painstaking examination using the most sophisticated photographic equipment available, Farid says that controversial shadowing in the photos is just what would be expected.  In other words, the lighting and shadows are consistent with a genuine Imperial Reflex (Oswald’s camera) photo taken at that time and place. 

Conspiracy theorists have long claimed that the photo of Oswald, one of three taken in late March or early April 1963, is real, but altered by the government to cinch the case against Oswald.  Well, some conspiracy theorists admit the photo is real.  Others claim that the man in the picture was actually someone other than Oswald, and that Oswald’s head was “superimposed” by conspirators, notwithstanding that Oswald’s wife admitted taking the pictures during her testimony before the 1964 Warren Commission and 1978-79 House Assassinations Committee, and again in a 2000 interview. 

In the picture, Oswald is also seen holding two Marxist newspapers and sporting a pistol and holster.  The pistol appears to be the same revolver taken from Oswald when he was arrested for murdering Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippit some 45 minutes after leaving the scene of the JFK assassination. 

Well, conspiracy world, it may be time to put the “Oswald Backyard Photo” allegations to rest. 

The Associated Press reported that “Farid, whose work using digital forensic tools to analyze images often has been used by law enforcement, said he has been getting requests from conspiracy theorists to analyze the photo for years…he said he…was able to show that a single light source could create both a shadow falling behind Oswald and to his right and one directly under his nose.”

In 1964, the Warren Commission found, based on FBI analysis, that the photos were of Oswald, and that the rifle was to a near certainty the weapon used to kill Kennedy.  In 1978, the House Assassinations panel conducted its own extensive investigation using the most current photographic analysis techniques, summoning a panel of the nation’s top photo analysis experts.  Result?  You guessed it – the photos were the real McCoy. 

Now, another 30 years have passed, and photo analysis has advanced light years beyond late 1970’s technology.  Three dimensional computer analyses using digital imagery makes it possible to confirm, once again, that Oswald did indeed cajole his wife into taking the infamous backyard pictures linking him irrefutably to the Kennedy assassination. The head, torso, and weapons appearing in the photographs are, as best modern science can determine, Oswald’s.

No doubt Robert Groden and other “assassination photographic experts” will pronounce the Dartmouth professor’s work “erroneous.”  There is no one more immovable than a conspiracy theorist confronted with hard contradictory facts.  Nevertheless, to those who seriously study the Dallas tragedy, Farid’s study comes as no surprise.

 Neither will the next study launched in another 30 years.

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