Oswald took 10.2 seconds to fire all three shots.

[Brian Roselle]

Some three shot witnesses were more insistent on what they recalled regarding the first shot, and its timing relative to the second shot.

One of those was James Tague who was standing about 20 feet out from the underpass as the limo turned onto Elm.

What do researchers on this forum think about his recollections as reported on Black Op Radio? I'm not sure if an audio file will play so I'll just include the link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W170KQsU229-rzyNMPW39vFJ2sxCFYlk/view?usp=sharing

[Charles Collins]

But it is not just him.  It is Betzner, Linda Willis, Occupants of the VP (just completed the turn) and VP Security car (completing the turn - along side TSBD), witnesses along Elm St. (e.g. Billie Clay said she was standing 150 feet west of TSBD entrance:"Just a few seconds after the car in which President John F. Kennedy was riding passed the position where I was standing, I heard a shot." Sue Dickerson "I was standing at the curb on the north side of Elm Street about equal distance between the point where the President was shot and the west end of the Texas School Book Depository building.") Croft (enough time after his z161 photo for him to wind the film and press the shutter again) and Phil Willis (just before his z202 photo).
Definitely after, not before.  I suggest z193 as the time of the first shot.  Ready said he turned to his right upon hearing the first shot - he releases his right hand from the front hand-hold between z198 and z199).
?? - It is well past the intersection when the last Hughes sequence on Houston ends and it happened after that.  Here is the last Hughes frame. 


Again, we don't see camera car 3 in the first Hughes frame after the 1/3 second break.

Again, we don't see camera car 3 in the first Hughes frame after the 1/3 second break.

You are looking at the wrong frame (H614). That frame occurs after a 37-frame, ~2-second stoppage. Look at H631 to see where camera car actually was after the 1/3-second stoppage.

[Charles Collins]

Some three shot witnesses were more insistent on what they recalled regarding the first shot, and its timing relative to the second shot.

One of those was James Tague who was standing about 20 feet out from the underpass as the limo turned onto Elm.

What do researchers on this forum think about his recollections as reported on Black Op Radio? I'm not sure if an audio file will play so I'll just include the link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W170KQsU229-rzyNMPW39vFJ2sxCFYlk/view?usp=sharing

Tague’s recollections in that audio certainly suggest an early shot a bit before Z133.

[Andrew Mason]

Some three shot witnesses were more insistent on what they recalled regarding the first shot, and its timing relative to the second shot.

One of those was James Tague who was standing about 20 feet out from the underpass as the limo turned onto Elm.

What do researchers on this forum think about his recollections as reported on Black Op Radio? I'm not sure if an audio file will play so I'll just include the link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W170KQsU229-rzyNMPW39vFJ2sxCFYlk/view?usp=sharing

Interesting in a couple of respects:
1. He says “almost five seconds” “maybe four seconds” elapsed between the first and second shots.

2. He describes his reaction to the first shot as thinking someone had set off a firecracker and was scanning the crowd looking for such a person.  He does not say he felt anything strike him.  (He testified to the WC that he felt something strike his cheek on the second shot.)

4 - 5 seconds fits with a first shot at z180 to z198 and second at z271 leaving 2.3 seconds to aim and fire the last shot at z312-313.

[Andrew Mason]

Unusual for whom? His film is full of breaks.  Film was  not to be wasted in those days.

Extremely unusual for anyone period. No one would intentionally stop filming for 1/3 of a second only to resume filming the same stinking thing. If you believe otherwise, please show us an example.

There are 18 different sequences in the short film, 8 prior to the assassination and 4 during the sequences showing the motorcade on Houston.  So it seems that Hughes had a habit of arbitrarily stopping and starting the film.  Pretty difficult to arbitrarily assign one of them to hearing the first shot (which Hughes also said was not the case).

[Tom Mahon]

[Tague] describes his reaction to the first shot as thinking someone had set off a firecracker and was scanning the crowd looking for such a person.  He does not say he felt anything strike him. 

Oswald's first shot sounded different from the other two because he was standing (as can be inferred from a digitally enhanced clip from the Robert Hughes' film which is viewable in "The Lost Bullet") and awkwardly leaning forward when he fired it, but kneeling for his second and third shots. The muzzle of his short-rifle was, therefore, inside the building for the first shot, and outside the building for the other two.

Tague was probably nicked by a bullet fragment from the Z-313 fatal head shot and spaced out on the timing, later.

Heck, he didn't even remember being nicked until Buddy Walthers ran up to him and told him he had blood on his cheek.

[Charles Collins]

There are 18 different sequences in the short film, 8 prior to the assassination and 4 during the sequences showing the motorcade on Houston.  So it seems that Hughes had a habit of arbitrarily stopping and starting the film.  Pretty difficult to arbitrarily assign one of them to hearing the first shot (which Hughes also said was not the case).

There is nothing arbitrary about pointing out that particular stoppage. It is unique, and stands out like a sore thumb due to the following: It was for only 1/3 of one-second. It stops then starts back up so quickly that he probably wasn’t even aware that it happened. The camera shows the exact same scene before and after the stoppage, therefore it appears to be unintentional. With all these attributes, I believe that it is almost certainly the finger on the start/stop button lifting ever so slightly and extremely quickly as a startle reaction to the unexpected sound of the first shot. He was most likely unaware that it even happened. I believe that this anomaly can be considered similar to the camera jiggles caused by the shots that have been documented for the Zapruder film. The main difference being that only the button finger twitched instead of the entire camera being jiggled. And it apparently took someone like Dale Myers looking at the timeline with a fine tooth comb to figure out exactly what happened.

[Brian Roselle]

Interesting in a couple of respects:
1. He says “almost five seconds” “maybe four seconds” elapsed between the first and second shots.

2. He describes his reaction to the first shot as thinking someone had set off a firecracker and was scanning the crowd looking for such a person.  He does not say he felt anything strike him.  (He testified to the WC that he felt something strike his cheek on the second shot.)

4 - 5 seconds fits with a first shot at z180 to z198 and second at z271 leaving 2.3 seconds to aim and fire the last shot at z312-313.

You and I interpret Tague’s testimony differently wrt the first shot’s z-frame. This is a good example where not only can witness testimonies differ, but researchers can exacerbate the situation by interpreting any given testimony in a different way.

My effort to mitigate this: I understand that witness testimony can be quite variable. Witness variability was a problem I ran into early on when looking into the shooting timeline using ear witness testimony regarding how they all recalled hearing the first shot. To avoid this issue the PRT analysis was done without using any testimony, but rather based on human reactions, and the results came back saying a shot was triggered about z124. Someone I know challenged me by saying that even if witnesses have large variability in what was recalled, there still should be a subset of witness testimony that agreed with a first shot around z124.

The only way around this conundrum that I could think of was to put a tighter constraint on the witness testimony used, but not in a way that would bias any particular answer. This was done by using three shot witness testimonies that included both audible (hearing the first shot) and visual (positioned the presidential limo at the time of hearing that first shot with a fixed background landmark or photo view/camera reaction). This significantly reduces the sampling population but the thought was that testimonies “anchored” using 2 separate senses (sight and sound) would be more reliable with reduced variability.

So for that challenge, the technique tried consisted of (1) Using the “anchored” visual testimonies to estimate the limo’s position at the time of the first shot, and then augment that by (2) Using the power of averaging on those testimonies to help converge on a final estimate for the limo’s position on Elm at the time of a the first shot.

The results of this approach was very interesting. At the time of the first shot, the average limo location appeared to be around a z133 timing position (if using Phil Willis and his slide #5) or alternately slightly before a z133 timing position, right around z124, (if using Phil Willis and his #4 slide).
 
The approach was summarized at this link. I would recommend skipping over the background and just click on the link that appears at the bottom of that page to see how the results converged. This approach used only a stricter testimony pool without any reaction time science.

https://sites.google.com/view/anchored-first-shot-testimony/home