Dozens of Dealey Plaza witnesses — police officers, Secret Service agents, railroad workers, journalists, and bystanders — gave sworn testimony that contradicts the lone-gunman narrative. Their accounts are in the official record. The museum leaves them out.
When the Warren Commission interviewed witnesses to the Kennedy assassination in 1964, it collected testimony from over 550 people. Those transcripts — 26 volumes, publicly available since 1964 — contain a significant problem for the lone-gunman conclusion: a large portion of witnesses who expressed an opinion on shot direction said they heard shots from the grassy knoll, the area north and west of the motorcade's position at the time of the fatal shot.
The HSCA's Dealey Plaza Witness Study, conducted in 1978–79, systematically analyzed those accounts and documented that more than 70 witnesses reported hearing shots from multiple directions or specifically from the grassy knoll area. These were not fringe observers. They included the Dallas Police Chief, the head of the Secret Service presidential detail, network news correspondents, and workers positioned on the railroad bridge directly above the grassy knoll who saw and smelled gunpowder smoke.
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza presents the Warren Commission's lone-gunman conclusion as its primary narrative. Witness accounts that contradict it are categorized as "conspiracy theories" or presented without the evidentiary weight their sources warrant. Visitors leave without knowing what those witnesses actually said — or how many of them said it.
This page presents their testimony directly, in their own words, sourced from Warren Commission volumes, HSCA hearings, and documented interviews. These are not interpretations. They are the official record.
The HSCA's 1979 Dealey Plaza Witness Study and the Mary Ferrell Foundation's Witness Database provide the most systematic accounting of witness testimony on shot direction. The results do not support the Sixth Floor Museum's framing.
Each account below is drawn from sworn testimony, documented interviews, or contemporaneous statements. Sources are cited. These witnesses are not anonymous or uncredentialed — they are identified by name, occupation, and position at the time of the assassination.
Holland was stationed on the railroad bridge (triple overpass) directly above the grassy knoll when the motorcade passed below. He had an unobstructed view of the grassy knoll area and the wooden fence that lines its perimeter. His testimony is among the most detailed and consistent of any Dealey Plaza witness.
"I heard a third report which I thought was a firecracker. And I looked over toward the arcade and trees and saw a puff of smoke come from the trees. There was no question about it."
— S.M. Holland, Warren Commission Testimony, Vol. VI (1964)Holland described hearing four shots — one of which he placed at the grassy knoll based on both sound direction and the visible smoke he observed rising from the trees behind the wooden fence. He repeated this account consistently in HSCA testimony and in documented interviews over subsequent decades without material alteration.
Holland's testimony is not featured in any primary exhibit. The smoke he witnessed — and three other railroad workers corroborated — is absent from the museum's treatment of shot sequence and trajectory evidence.
Bowers was operating the Union Terminal railroad switching tower, positioned roughly 14 feet above ground level, directly behind the grassy knoll's wooden fence. His elevated vantage gave him a view of both the knoll area and the motorcade approach that no ground-level witness possessed. He testified to the Warren Commission about two suspicious vehicles that entered the restricted area behind the fence before the motorcade, and about unusual activity he observed at the fence line at the moment of the shots.
"At the time of the shooting, in the area directly behind the fence there were three men... at the moment of the shots there was some commotion or movement I wouldn't be able to describe exactly what it was."
— Lee Bowers, Warren Commission Testimony, Vol. VI (1964)Bowers described two automobiles — a 1959 Oldsmobile with out-of-state plates and a 1957 black Ford — that circulated through the restricted rail yard area before the motorcade arrived. The last vehicle remained in the area at the time of the shooting. This testimony was corroborated in part by other rail yard workers. Bowers died in a single-vehicle accident in August 1966, at age 41.
Bowers's testimony about the vehicles, the men, and the activity behind the fence is not presented in any museum exhibit. His unique elevated vantage point — the most direct view of the knoll fence during the assassination — is not acknowledged.
Hill was among the closest civilian witnesses to the presidential limousine during the assassination. Standing on the south curb of Elm Street alongside her friend Mary Moorman — who took the famous Polaroid photograph at the moment of the fatal shot — Hill reported hearing four to six shots and seeing a shooter on the grassy knoll.
"I heard four to six shots. They came from the hill [the grassy knoll]. I did not think they came from the Texas School Book Depository."
— Jean Hill, statement given to Dallas police, November 22, 1963Hill gave this account to investigators on the day of the assassination. In her Warren Commission testimony, she maintained that shots came from her right — the knoll side — not from behind her, where the TSBD was located. Her proximity to the vehicle and her consistent account across multiple interviews makes her testimony significant evidence of a divided witness record.
Hill's testimony is not included in the primary exhibits. As the closest female witness to the motorcade and a consistent reporter of shots from the knoll direction, her account directly challenges the museum's framing of the shot sequence.
Bill Newman and his wife Gayle were standing with their two young children on the north curb of Elm Street — on the grassy knoll side of the road — making them the closest adult bystanders to the presidential limousine at the moment of the fatal shot. Newman's instinctive response was to throw his family to the ground and cover his children, believing the shot came from directly behind him. "Directly behind him" at that location was the grassy knoll.
"I thought the shot came from the garden directly behind me, that was on an elevation from where I was. I immediately hit the ground."
— Bill Newman, interview given immediately after the assassination, November 22, 1963Newman's reaction — throwing himself prone and shielding his children from the direction of the grassy knoll — was filmed by bystander cameras and is consistent with his testimony. His wife gave the same account independently. Newman repeated this account in HSCA testimony and in interviews through the following decades with no material changes.
Newman's account is not featured in exhibits dedicated to witness testimony. His filmed reaction — the closest observable civilian response to the fatal shot — and its directional implication are not presented to museum visitors.
Four additional railroad workers standing with S.M. Holland on the triple overpass independently corroborated his account of smoke rising from the grassy knoll trees. Their testimony is notable because the overpass position gave them both a direct sightline to the knoll and a downwind position that would carry any gunpowder smoke in their direction.
"It looked like a puff of smoke coming from behind the hedge on the north side of Elm Street... there was a shot came from above and behind the hedge on the north side."
— James Simmons, Dallas Police Department affidavit, November 22, 1963"I noticed a puff of smoke or flash from the trees in the area of the wooden fence. I thought the shots came from that area."
— Richard Dodd, interview cited in HSCA Appendix Vol. II (1979)The corroboration of smoke by multiple independent witnesses at the same elevated vantage point is among the most significant body of consistent testimony in the entire witness record. Five railroad workers stationed on the overpass all described smoke from the knoll area. None of them were called to testify before the Warren Commission.
None of the four corroborating railroad workers are cited in primary museum exhibits. The five-witness smoke account — the most consistent single piece of physical evidence placing a shot at the knoll — is not presented to visitors.
The Zapruder film is the museum's central exhibit. Abraham Zapruder himself — who filmed from a concrete pedestal directly adjacent to the wooden fence on the grassy knoll — gave an account of the assassination that the museum does not prominently feature alongside the film footage.
"I was standing right there on the pedestal, and when the first shot rang out, I started shaking... I heard the shot and I thought it was behind me."
— Abraham Zapruder, interview with WFAA-TV, November 22, 1963 (same day)Zapruder was standing on the grassy knoll when he said he thought the shot came from behind him. "Behind him" at that location was the wooden fence area of the grassy knoll. This is the same-day account of the man whose film is the centerpiece of the museum's assassination narrative. The museum features the film extensively. It does not prominently feature Zapruder's own description of where he thought the shot originated.
The Zapruder film receives extensive exhibit space. Zapruder's own same-day description of shot direction — placing the origin behind him at the knoll position — is not presented alongside the film as context for his physical experience of the event.
Jesse Price, a worker at the Dal-Tex Building near Dealey Plaza, observed and reported a man running from behind the wooden fence on the grassy knoll toward the railroad tracks immediately after the shots were fired. His account describes someone moving with urgency in the opposite direction from the crowd — away from the scene rather than toward it.
"There was a man running toward the passenger cars on the railroad track... He had something in his right hand that I took to be a head set or earphones."
— Jesse Price, affidavit given to Dallas Sheriff's Department, November 22, 1963This account was given to the Dallas County Sheriff's Department on the day of the assassination. Price was not called to testify before the Warren Commission. His affidavit remained in Dallas County records and was later incorporated into the HSCA's review of witness accounts. Lee Bowers, from his tower position, also observed individuals in the railroad yard area at the time of the shots.
The multiple accounts of individuals running from the knoll toward the railroad yard after the shots are not included in any primary museum exhibit. Price's day-of affidavit is not referenced.
Gordon Arnold, a 22-year-old Army soldier on leave, stated that he was standing behind the wooden fence on the grassy knoll with a movie camera when a shot passed close over his left shoulder from behind him. He immediately threw himself to the ground. His account is notable both because of his position — behind the fence, where multiple witnesses reported a shooter — and because he claims a man identifying himself as a Secret Service agent approached him after the shooting and took his film.
"The shot went right past my left ear... I hit the ground immediately after that... I was on the ground when the second shot hit."
— Gordon Arnold, interviewed by author and researcher Gary Shaw (cited in HSCA records)Arnold's account of a man with Secret Service credentials taking his film in the immediate aftermath of the assassination is significant for a separate reason: the Secret Service officially documented that no Secret Service agents were stationed in the grassy knoll area at the time of the assassination. This was confirmed by the agency's own post-assassination report. Anyone with Secret Service credentials in that area at that time was not an authorized agent.
Arnold's account and the broader documented pattern of unauthorized individuals presenting Secret Service credentials in the grassy knoll area after the shooting are not presented in museum exhibits, despite the official Secret Service documentation of this anomaly.
The witness record extends beyond shot direction. Multiple witnesses documented suspicious activity in Dealey Plaza before and after the assassination — activity that the Warren Commission recorded but did not pursue, and that the Sixth Floor Museum has not incorporated into its exhibits despite decades of public availability.
The Sixth Floor Museum was established in 1989 with a stated mission to "collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret" the history of the Kennedy assassination. It has operated for 35 years. The Warren Commission testimony cited on this page has been publicly available since 1964. The HSCA witness database has been accessible for decades. The Mary Ferrell Foundation digitized the full archive years ago.
The exclusion of this testimony is not a matter of ignorance. It is a curatorial choice. The museum's organizing narrative is the Warren Commission's lone-gunman conclusion. Witness accounts that contradict that conclusion are categorized in a way that minimizes their evidentiary weight — presented as "conspiracy theories" rather than as the sworn testimony of identified witnesses whose accounts are contained in official federal records.
"The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."
— HSCA Final Report, 1979 — the only official U.S. government conclusion currently on recordThe HSCA's 1979 finding — based in part on acoustic evidence and the full witness record — is the current official U.S. government conclusion on the assassination. It superseded the Warren Commission as a matter of congressional record. The Sixth Floor Museum frames the Warren Commission as the authoritative account and the HSCA's conspiracy finding as one perspective among many.
The museum is not obligated to reach a conclusion about what happened in Dealey Plaza. It is obligated — as an institution receiving public visitors and substantial funding — to present the evidence honestly. An honest presentation of the witness record does not permit categorizing 70+ witnesses as "conspiracy theory." It permits saying: the evidence is genuinely contested, the witnesses were genuinely divided, and both bodies of evidence deserve equal presentation.
The Sixth Floor Museum's exhibits feature witness accounts that support the lone-gunman narrative in full. Witnesses who reported shots from the knoll direction, observed suspicious activity behind the fence, or documented anomalies in the immediate aftermath are either absent or briefly mentioned without context that conveys their number, their credentials, or the consistency of their accounts. Visitors receive a curated selection of the record — not the record itself.
DealeyTruth is building a physical institution in Dallas — near Dealey Plaza — that will present the complete witness record alongside the forensic, acoustic, and documentary evidence that the Sixth Floor Museum excludes. The pages on this site are the foundation of that exhibit record. See the full evidence overview →
Every witness account cited on this page is drawn from publicly available primary sources. No account requires trust in secondary analysis — the testimony is in the official record.
The witnesses spoke. Their testimony is in the official record. The Sixth Floor Museum has chosen not to feature it. DealeyTruth is building the institution that will — a permanent exhibition space near Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, dedicated to the complete record.