A Secret Service Agent Found a Bullet in Kennedy's Limo and Left It by His Foot
Decades later, he recognized the pristine bullet in evidence photos and said it was the one he had moved, not one found on Governor Connally's stretcher.
Who Killed JFK? · The Secret Service Agent Who Witnessed it All [BONUS]Paul Landis got to the president's limousine as the motorcade raced for the hospital. Mrs. Kennedy, the first lady, was in the back seat beside her husband. Landis, then 28 and a Secret Service agent riding just behind them, leaned over the side, placed his hands on her shoulders, and offered to help. She declined because she wanted to remain with her husband.
Then Clint Hill, a fellow Secret Service agent who had rushed to the car, draped his jacket over the president's head. Mrs. Kennedy released her husband and began to rise. The moment she stood, Landis noticed something on the upholstery in the spot she had just vacated. It was a bullet.
That small object is at the center of a 60-year mystery about what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Landis kept what he did with it to himself for six decades. Now, sharing his memories at age 88, he says what he later read about a key bullet being supposedly found on Governor John Connally's stretcher was not true.
The bullet looked almost untouched. Landis said it was not deformed, except for the fine grooves that showed it had been fired, and it was just resting on top of the seat. "It did not look like it had hit anything," Landis said. With no other agents behind the car, and people converging on the limousine, he worried that an important piece of evidence would get lost. So he slipped it into his pocket and ran alongside the stretcher bearing the president into the hospital.
Inside Parkland Hospital, the crowd pushed Landis into Trauma Room 1 and squeezed him against the exam table beside the president's feet. He recalled thinking the spot "was a perfect place to leave a bullet," where doctors would find it during the examination. He pulled the bullet from his pocket and set it down near the president's left foot. No one saw the bullet in the shoving, pushing, and shouting.
Later, Landis said he read that the bullet supposedly had been found on Connally's stretcher. He said that was not true. When he later saw an evidence photo of the bullet, he recognized it at once as his bullet, the one he had left next to the president.
Questions people ask
What is the single bullet theory?
The Warren Commission concluded that one bullet hit President Kennedy in the back, exited his neck, then hit Governor Connally in the back, wrist, and thigh. Critics have long questioned how a single bullet could cause so many wounds and remain nearly intact. Of the bullet he found, Landis said, "It did not look like it had hit anything."
Why did Landis wait 60 years to tell this story?
Landis says he came to understand that he had post-traumatic stress, and that he had to leave the Secret Service because he was suffering too much. He says people asked him about Dallas and, "I just never talked about it." He says the Warren Commission never interviewed him; he had assumed it would, dreaded it because he knew he would break down, and was glad it never happened. He also says the Commission never interviewed any of the other agents in the follow-up car.