JFK Assassination Footage Released

ByABC News
November 22, 2000, 10:55 AM

D A L L A S, Nov. 22 -- The second most important footage of theassassination of John F. Kennedy has been made available to thepublic exactly 37 years after his presidency abruptly ended in ahail of bullets.

About 200 people crowded into the Texas Book Depository Buildingon Tuesday to watch the 24½-second film recorded Nov. 22, 1963, byOrville Nix Sr.

The footage is the only known motion picture of theassassination that also shows part of the grassy knoll, the areawhere speculation about a second gunmen persists.

Filmed from the south curb of Houston Street and the northwestcorner of Main Street, the footage contains three scenes: themotorcade entering Dealey Plaza, the last shot of the assassinationin front of the grassy knoll, and the panic and confusionafterward.

The most well-known frames of the film show Jackie Kennedyclimbing over the trunk of the presidential limousine, scramblingto pick up pieces of the presidents shattered skull, and SecretService agent Clint Hill climbing onto the trunk.

Vital Evidence

The Nix film is considered by historians and other experts to bethe second most important piece of footage because it was filmedfrom the opposite angle of the Abraham Zapruder film and shows whatwas going on behind Zapruder in the grassy knoll. In Nixs film,Zapruder can be seen in a few frames.

Nix donated a first-generation copy and the copyright to thecolor home movie to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. The 8mm camera is also on display at the museum.

One of the things we hope for the Nix film is that astechnology advances ... hopefully we can find something, saidJeff West, executive director of the museum.

Nixs son, Orville Nix Jr., told viewers his fathers film waslargely happenstance and took so long to reach the public partlybecause the family wanted to keep their privacy.

He loved that camera, he was always taking pictures of thingsand this was something that just happened, Nix said of hisfather, who died in 1972. It was a sad thing to see.