Kennedy assassination: Bill Kay on that gun, that bullet, that Deeley Plaza

Just when I thought we'd seen the last of them, last night the US Public Broadcasting Service ran a 90-minute analysis of the Kennedy assassination. As one of their talking heads said at the start of the show, on 22 November 1963 a US president was gunned down in broad daylight and in the presence of around 500 witnesses, at least 38 of whom had still or movie cameras. Yet we still do not know for sure what happened.
The first time I saw Deeley Plaza, the crime scene, it was like walking onto a darkened stage or film set that I had been known all my adult life. The features seemed so familiar: at centre stage the green square round which the motorcade had to detour and make a left turn before heading down the street that would put Kennedy in the assassin's sights; the innocuous-looking grassy knoll, surmounted by a fence that bounded a car park; and, looming in the background, the book depository. Incredibly, all is unchanged since the day of the assassination.
It makes an irresistible and compelling tourist destination, and helpfully a very thorough museum has been set up on the floor from which Oswald fired. Many of the 2,000 books on the incident are represented, covering all shades of opinion and theory and speculation.
Yet, although it provides a comforting trip down memory lane to compile yet another TV documentary - reprising the Zapruder film, the futile rush to hospital, Oswald's capture and murder, Johson's swearing in and the Warren Commission - what more is there to say? There is no sign of anyone coming forward with new evidence, let alone a confession. If there was a conspiracy the co-conspirators are either dead or have maintained a remarkably solid silence. But then, in view of the magnitude of the crime, silence was the only escape route.
Having been for many years a believer in the Lone Gunman assessement, I am belatedly coming round to the view that there was a conspiracy. I have always had doubts about Oswald's ability to fire three astonishingly accurate shots in six seconds with the rifle he had, at a moving target more than 100 yards away. I a not convinced that Kennedy's head jerked back in some spasm rather than the impact of a head-on shot from the bridge, or from the grassy knoll 20 yards to the right of the car. And, however much of a nutter Oswald was - I am assuming that he was indeed the gunman in the book depositary - he never seemed to have sufficient motivation to organise what was little more than a prank so successful that it assumed historic proportions. He certainly doesn't act innocent in the newsreel film taken of him in the police station - and what on earth were Dallas police doing letting journalists and any other member of the public mill about within yards of Oswald, yelling questions at him and eventually killing him? All police stations have a front desk for public inquiries, but prisoners must surely be held in secure areas out of reach of the public. Unbelievable.
But whether Oswald was a knowing part of a conspiracy is much harder to judge from what we can see of him. If he was involved with others, how could they trust him to keep quiet - which of course is the reason often offered for Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein) killing him. But then why didn't anyone kill Ruby? He did not die until January 1967, more than three years after he shot Oswald. Or maybe someone poisoned his prison breakfast.
As the above shows, while there are so many unanswered questions JFK's assassination will exert a fascination that has never applied to Bobby Kennedy's killing, although there have been attempts to link the brothers' deaths with that of Martin Luther King a few months before Bobby died. So maybe PBS was right after all to commission its documentary, and maybe we can expect the episode to be revived every few years. The 50th anniversary is just under six years away.