SECRETS OF A HOMICIDE: FAQ Acoustics

Frequently Asked Questions

Epipolar Geometric Analysis of Amateur Films Related to
Acoustics Evidence in the John F. Kennedy Assassination

On November 20, 2003, ABC Television News broadcast the prime-time special Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination - Beyond Conspiracy, which featured selected sequences from my computer animation project, Secrets of a Homicide: JFK Assassination. A re-edited version of the ABC special is periodically re-broadcast on the History Channel.

A portion of that program touched on the results of my geometric analysis of amateur films of the assassination which prove that the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations' acoustic evidence of conspiracy is invalid. A 2005 Discovery Channel program, Beyond the Magic Bullet also mentioned the results of that study. While both television specials presented the conclusions of my work, they did not devote any time to the principles and methods that led to those conclusions. Unfortunately, the time constraints of both programs left many viewers with unanswered questions. This website now offers the complete methodology originally presented to ABC News.

The following is an additional effort to provide factual information about my work on the acoustic issue and address some of the allegations raised by uninformed skeptics.

Dale K. Myers

Isn't it true that there is no way to connect the Hughes and Zapruder films directly or indirectly and therefore your conclusions are false and misleading?

No. In an Internet article critical of Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, acoustic supporter Don Thomas writes: "There is no connection, direct or indirect, between the Hughes film and the Zapruder film, or any other film, that would allow an accurate estimate of the time interval between when McLain appears in the Hughes film and the first shot. The estimate depends entirely on the relative positions of the motorcade vehicles in the Hughes film and the later Zapruder film and extrapolation of the vehicle speeds during the time when they are not visible. The different vehicles in the different films are traveling at different speeds. Depending on which speed one chooses to impose for the extrapolation, McLain had as little as 3 sec (too little time) or as much as 7 sec (plenty of time). But this soft evidence metamorphoses into hard evidence under Bugliosi's pen."

The Thomas claim is completely false as demonstratively and conclusively shown in the photographic analysis I conducted and present in great detail on this website.

The nine amateur films, and one professional film, I used in the study capture a single event - the motorcade's journey through Dealey Plaza. The only time period in which no cameras were recording this event occurred as the president's limousine was northbound on Houston Street, approaching the Elm Street intersection. The length of the gap in the photographic record at that point is just 1.86 seconds. The speed of the president's limousine both before and after that gap is known and shows a consistency in the progression of the limousine, as one would expect given the extremely short duration of the gap in the photographic record.

The extrapolation of vehicle speeds is based on camera frame rate, not some subjective and arbitrary choice, as suggested by Thomas' remarks. As the study shows, all camera frame rates are relative to the known and tested average frame rate of Zapruder's camera and verified by the visual content recorded by each camera. The result is a definitive photographic record accurate to within 1/10th of a second over a period of 40 seconds - the time that elapsed between the Kennedy limousine entering Dealey Plaza and the fatal head shot.

Thomas' remarks are nothing short of an uninformed and desperate attempt to salvage the acoustic evidence which he believes supports a conspiracy in the assassination of the President. His claims regarding the photographic record, as it relates to the acoustic issue, are discussed in great detail in Appendix IV of the Epipolar Geometric Analysis of Amateur Films, and are shown to be false and misleading in every way. His remark, as quoted above, also has no basis in fact.

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