Badge man
Encyclopedia
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
researchers claim is a grassy knoll assassin seen within a Polaroid
Instant film
Instant film is a type of photographic film first introduced by Polaroid that is designed to be used in an instant camera...
photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
that close witness Mary Moorman
Mary Moorman
Mary Ann Moorman was a witness to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. She is best known for her photograph capturing the presidential limousine a fraction of a second after the fatal shot.-Biography:...
captured on November 22, 1963 within Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza , in the historic West End district of downtown Dallas, Texas , is the location of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
in Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. The photo sparked the conspiracy theory that three Dallas police officer
Police officer
A police officer is a warranted employee of a police force...
s killed Kennedy instead of Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
.
The Photo
In the Moorman PolaroidPolaroid Corporation
Polaroid Corporation is an American-based international consumer electronics and eyewear company, originally founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line until the February...
photo (her fifth that day) is seen all of the Presidential limousine occupants, several other close witnesses (including Abraham Zapruder
Abraham Zapruder
Abraham Zapruder was an American manufacturer of women's clothing. He was filming with a home-movie camera as U.S. President John F...
filming), two Dallas police motorcycle Presidential escorts, and much of the area comprising the grassy knoll. The photo has been calculated to have been captured between the Zapruder film
Zapruder film
The Zapruder film is a silent, color motion picture sequence shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder with a home-movie camera, asU.S. President John F...
equivalent concurrent frames of Z-315 and 316 (less than one-sixth of a second after President Kennedy's head first exploded at Z-313). On the actual Polaroid photo, the area that the Badge Man appears within is about one-quarter inch square.
In 1982 Gary Mack, the longtime curator and archivist for The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (the former Texas School Book Depository
Texas School Book Depository
The Texas School Book Depository is the former name of a seven-floor building facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas . Located on the northwest corner of Elm and North Houston Streets, at the western end of downtown Dallas, its address is 411 Elm Street. The building is notable for its connection to...
) first claimed to discover the "Badge Man" image. He labeled this image Badge Man because the image shows what may appear to be a uniformed police officer wearing dark clothing and his police patrolman’s metal badge on his chest and his left shoulder crest curved police patrolman patch, his hatless short hair, and the majority of his Caucasian face. A whitish spot slightly obscuring the Badge Man face is claimed to be the visual remnant of an already fired weapon muzzle blast, the bullet from which if fired at President Kennedy from his right front would have had to pass over the 3.3 feet (1 m) high cement retaining wall.
Other researchers have claimed that the "Badge Man" image is the sun-reflected outline of a soda pop bottle sitting atop the cement retaining wall. Marilyn Sitzman
Marilyn Sitzman
Marilyn Sitzman was a witness to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963...
, who was standing a few yards from the retaining wall, saw a young black couple eating lunch on a bench behind that wall, and heard a soda bottle crash just after the motorcade passed by. Photos and films immediately afterwards do show a bottle sitting atop the retaining wall.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations sent a high-quality negative of the photo to the Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester Institute of Technology
The Rochester Institute of Technology is a private university, located within the town of Henrietta in metropolitan Rochester, New York, United States...
; after enlarging the photo, no evidence of a person on the retaining wall was found. The area around the stockade fence was so underexposed, that it was deemed impossible to examine.
In the mid-1980s, assassination researcher Jack White (who testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations) enhanced the immediate photograph area of the "Badge Man" in contrast and brightness, then he enhanced further with what White has described as “clear photographic colored oils” to illustrate the "Badge Man". White's enhancement first appeared publicly in the 1988 documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy
The Men Who Killed Kennedy
The Men Who Killed Kennedy is a 9-part video documentary series by Nigel Turner about the John F. Kennedy assassination. The series, which related various conspiracy theories, was extensively challenged on factual grounds....
.
To the anatomical right (photo left) of the supposed "Badge Man" some researchers claim there is also seen a second person, self-proclaimed witness Gordon Arnold
Gordon Arnold
Gordon L Arnold is a man who claimed to have witnessed the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.Arnold served twelve years in the United States Army, after enlisting in 1963...
, who claimed in 1978 that he was filming the motorcade while wearing his US Army
Army
An army An army An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
uniform when a shot passed close to his left ear. A third person claimed by researchers to be seen is a construction hard hatted accomplice to "Badge Man's" anatomical left (photo right) facing the general direction of the book depository.
Also claimed seen in the Moorman Polaroid photo by many researchers is the hatted head of a person located about 13 feet (3.9 m) west of the grassy knoll stockade fence corner (a different location from the "Badge Man"). This image area is exactly the same area where several overpass witnesses stated they observed gunsmoke, where several of those gunsmoke witnesses (and other witnesses) immediately ran to, seeing no one but finding hundreds of footprints in the mud directly behind a station wagon backed up to the stockade fence that also had shoe-bottom mud scraped off onto the station wagon’s rear bumper, cigarette butts, and muddy footprints 2.5 feet (0.75 m) up on a picket fence cross-beam support. This is also exactly the same location from which the second major Kennedy assassination government investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, determined through scientific testing that one shot was fired.
