Paul Landis is one of the surviving eyewitnesses of the horrific assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963. He has been grieving in silence for years, but Secret Service Agent Landis has recently been casting doubts on the “magic bullet theory.” He was merely a few feet away from the 35th president when he was shot dead.
Sixty years later, Landis, who was one of the agents with Kennedy on the parade in Dallas, accounts the details of the gunshots, which, at first, sound like firecrackers. He recalled the fateful historic moment haunting him in his dreams for years and addressed the mystery around the much-discussed “magic bullet.”
Debunking the bullet theory, Landis recounted, “There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” in an interview with The New York Times. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.” He also claimed to have put the “only piece of evidence in his pocket.”
“This was all going on so quickly. And I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence that I realized right away,” revealed Landis. “Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, ‘Paul, you’ve got to make a decision,’ and I grabbed it.” According to his theory, the bullet hit Kennedy at the back but not too deep.
That’s why the bullet came out and fell inside the limousine, which made Landis question if there was another shooter in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald. However, experts and historians say Landis’ account of Kennedy’s assassination is not in alignment with other facts from the day it happened.
Author Gerald Posner told the outlet, “Even assuming that he is accurately describing what happened with the bullet, it might mean nothing more than we now know that the bullet that came out of Governor Connally did so in the limousine, not on a stretcher in Parkland where it was found.”
The Warren Commission dubbed it the “magic bullet,” which was found on the stretcher of Texas Gov.John Connally. The commission’s investigation of the event concluded that the shot fired by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald passed through the president’s throat from the rear.
From there, it hit Connally’s right shoulder, wounding his back, chest, wrist and thigh. Out of the three bullets that were shot, one missed the motorcade, another was the “magic bullet,” and finally, the last shot hit Kennedy’s head, and he died, per New York Post . The former Secret agent made more revelations in his book The Final Witness .
James Robenalt, an Ohio-based lawyer, assisted Landis in researching America’s most enduring mystery and believes his book will raise more questions. “If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more.” “Others will have to analyze the evidence in full to see where it now leads,” Robenhalt concluded.