Never-before-seen footage showing President John F. Kennedy's motorcade racing to the hospital after he was fatally wounded in Dallas will be auctioned later this month.
A former FBI analyst said 8mm home footage recorded by Dale Carpenter Sr. offers the most complete picture yet of the chaotic moments immediately after Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, while sitting next to first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
Online bidding for the film's footage has already begun. As of Wednesday evening, the highest bid was Standing $12,100.
“It's amazing in color, and it really puts you in the mindset of going 80 miles per hour,” said Bobby Livingston, vice president of RR Auctions in Boston, which will sell the film in a live auction on Sept. 28.
Faris Lukestuhl III, a historian, documentary filmmaker and former FBI analyst who has seen the film, said it offers a more complete picture of the rush to Parkland Hospital than the fragmented film footage he has seen so far.
He said the video offers a “fresh perspective” on the moments immediately after the president was shot and that he hopes it will be used by a filmmaker once the auction ends.
Carpenter's I-35 footage is just 10 seconds long and begins with footage of the presidential motorcade's auxiliary vehicles traveling down Lemmon Street toward downtown Dallas.
The footage then shows Carpenter rolling as the motorcade speeds down Interstate 35, moments after Kennedy is fatally wounded.
The footage also shows Secret Service Agent Clint Hill standing over Jackie Kennedy in his iconic pink suit.
Famously, as the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, Hill jumped into the back of the Kennedy family limousine when a gunfight broke out, captured in Abraham Zapruder's famous film of the shooting.
“I didn't know there wouldn't be any more shots fired,” said Hill, 92. “When I got there, I had a hunch that there would probably be more shots fired.”
Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took up position on the sixth floor of the warehouse with a sniper rifle and fired a single fatal shot at the president.
After Kennedy was shot in the head, the motorcade turned onto Interstate 35 and was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.
It was the same route the motorcade took to transport President Kennedy to his next destination, a speaking venue at the Trade Mart.
Carpenter's grandson, James Gates, said the family had known for years that his grandfather, who died in 1991, had in his possession footage of the JFK assassination, but that little was ever said about it.
Gates first projected the video onto his bedroom wall in 2010 after finding it stored in a milk crate amongst other family films.
He was initially less than impressed with the Lemon Street footage, but found the 1-35 footage “shocking”, particularly Hill's precarious position in the back of the limousine.
Prior to releasing the footage, Gates had contacted Hill around the time of the publication of her 2012 book, “Mrs. Kennedy and Me.”
Lisa McCaveen Hill, Mr. Hill's co-author and future wife, said that while she was familiar with Hill's description of sitting in a limousine speeding down an interstate, “to actually see that happening is just heart-stopping.”
The auction house has only released a few still images from the film, none of which show the motorcade hurtling down the highway.
More than 60 years after President Kennedy was assassinated, experts say the new footage isn't particularly surprising.
“These images, these films, these photographs, in many cases, are still out there,” said Stephen Feigin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the JFK assassination.
“They're still being discovered and rediscovered in attics and garages.”
He said people recognise the assassination as a historical event and many people keep materials relating to it, so new artifacts are being discovered all the time.
Feigin said historians have wondered for years about the man pictured in one of the photos from that day.
“For years we had no idea who the photographer was, where the camera was, where these images were,” Feigin said.
With post wire
