And we also had Zapruder's secretary, Marilyn Sitzman, who was holding on to his legs as he was on the pedestal or column or whatever it was. She too said she heard only two shots. Here she is in an interview with Josiah Thompson.
Sitzman: ....There was nothing unusual [happening] until the first sound, which I thought was a firecracker, mainly because of the reaction of President Kennedy. He put his hands up to guard his face and leaned to the left, and the motorcade, you know, proceeded down the hill. And the next thing that I remembered correct ... clearly was the shot that hit him directly in front of us, or almost directly in front of us, that hit him on the side of his fa ... [sic]
And this:
Sitzman: And as far as the sound of the shots go, the first one, as I said, sounded like a firecracker, and the second one that I heard sounded the same, because I recall no difference whatsoever in them. And I'm sure that if the second shot would have come from a different place -- and the supposed theory is they would have been much closer to me and on the right side -- I would have heard the sounding of the gun much closer, and I probably had a ringing in my head because the fence was quite close to where we were standing, very close. Ah, it just sounded the same way.
Two shots. As I said earlier, it'll drive you nuts trying to figure out why some heard two shots and others three. I guess some were focusing so much on seeing JFK and the crowds were so loud that they didn't notice it or distinguish it from the background noise.
When one studies the witness statements in total, it's clear some (such as Zapruder) heard the last two shots bang-bang, and realized this meant more than one shooter, and thereby removed this second sound from their recollections, or said they weren't sure about it.
Abraham Zapruder stood on a pedestal in the arcade on the North side of Elm. (11-22-63 notes of Dallas Times Herald reporter Darwin Payne, from his reporter's notebook on display in Dallas' Old Red Museum, as quoted by Jim Schutze in The Dallas Observer, 4-28-11, and as supplemented by Gus Russo in Where Were You, 2013. These notes were purportedly written shortly after the shooting, after Payne arrived in the Plaza, was told Zapruder had filmed the shooting, and tracked Zapruder down at his office in the Dal-Tex Building.) "'I got film,' he said. 'I saw it hit him in head. They were going so fast. He slumped over with the first shot. With the first shot, he bent over and grabbed.
Second two shots hit him in head. It opened up. Couldn't be alive. She was beside him. After last shot she crawled over back of car." (11-22-63 notes of an unknown reporter, possibly Darwin Payne, or possibly someone at the paper writing down what Payne had reported over the phone after talking to Zapruder. These notes were found in the files of the Dallas Times Herald, and quoted in Pictures of the Pain, p. 149, published 1998) “Abraham Zapruder…
heard 3 shots///after first one Pres slumped over grabed stomac…hit in stomac…
two more shots///looked like head opened up and everything came out…blood spattered everywhere…side of his face…looked like blobs out of his temple… forehead… Jackie first reached over to the Pres. And after second shot…she crawled over to back of car…after that she was lying…” (March-May 1964 memo written for the Dallas Morning News by newsman Harry McCormick, in which McCormick's recollections of 11-22-63 were recorded for posterity, as published in JFK Assassination: The Reporters' Notes, 2013) "One of the first persons I ran into was Abraham Zapruder. He was obviously highly agitated, almost weeping. 'I saw it all through my camera,' he half-sobbed to himself. I stopped him and without identifying myself I asked him a question. 'I got it all on film,' he said.
'There were three shots. Two hit the president and the other Gov. Connally. I know the president is dead for his head seemed to fly to pieces when he was hit the second time.'" (11-22-63 interview on WFAA, at approximately 2:10 PM) “as I was shooting, as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this.
Then I heard another shot or two, I couldn't say it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting.” (Volunteering, moments later) "As I explained before, it was a sickening scene. At first I thought perhaps it was a...it sounded like somebody making a joke, y'know, a shot and somebody grabbing their stomach." (9:55 PM 11-22-63, memo of SS Agent Max Phillips accompanying a copy of the Zapruder film) “According to Mr. Zapruder, the position of the assassin was behind Mr. Zapruder.”