Ike Altgens - JFK Assassination - Controversial Photograph

Controversial Photograph

Of the three Altgens photos published by the Associated Press, the first snapped along Elm Street would receive the most scrutiny: taken simultaneously with Zapruder film frame 255 from the front and to the left of the Presidential limousine after Altgens had briefly walked out into the southernmost street lane while the shots were still being fired. Kennedy can be seen with his arms akimbo and his hands near his throat, reacting to being hit by a shot. Secret Service agents in the car a short distance behind the limousine reacted differently to the sound; at least three are facing towards the front possibly looking at the President, Kennedy friend and aide David Powers is facing towards the front possibly looking at the President, one agent is facing towards the front possibly looking at the onlookers on the north side of Elm Street, and two agents have turned rearward and are facing behind themselves, to their right-rear.

Several people can be seen standing in the main doorway to the Depository; one man bore a striking resemblance to Oswald. His presence there should have been impossible because, according to official investigations, he was on the building's sixth floor, firing bullets at Kennedy from a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (Oswald claimed he was on the first-floor and went upstairs to the second-floor lunchroom, where he was spotted moments later by a Dallas Police officer). The Warren Commission paid careful attention to the image, as did private researchers: if the man was not Oswald, it did not necessarily prove nor disprove that Oswald was the assassin; if, however, the man was Oswald, this was photographic proof that he did not kill Kennedy.

A second Depository employee, Billy Lovelady, identified himself standing in the picture, and other employees who had been nearby agreed; a supervisor, however, signed an affidavit stating that Lovelady was "seated on the entrance steps". Ultimately, the Commission decided that Oswald was not in the doorway. That conclusion was bolstered several years later when photographs taken by a researcher of Lovelady, wearing what he said was the same shirt, appeared to match the image in the Altgens photograph (Oswald—who also claimed to have been outside having lunch with his supervisor, according to a police Captain's notes written "several days" after the interrogation—had been photographed wearing a similar shirt inside the Dallas Police station). In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations also identified Lovelady after studying an enhanced version of the Altgens photograph and several amateur films. If that didn't clinch it, there is the famous newsreel film of Oswald being escorted down the hallway in Dallas Police headquarters. Asked whether he was in the "building" (the Depository) at the time of the shooting he replied "I work in that building. . . . Naturally if I work in that building, yes sir." Ten years later, Texas journalist Jim Marrs wrote, "ost researchers today are ready to concede that the man may have been Lovelady."

Also of note in Altgen's famous image is the Dal-Tex Building, visible with its white fire escape in the far background of the photo. At least one of the prominent JFK conspiracy theories suggest there was a gunman in this building and/or on its roof, which, as can clearly be seen in this photograph, afforded an unobstructed view of the president's motorcade.