Acoustic Evidence in the Assassination of President Kennedy

Herman Chernoff
Department of Statistics
Harvard University

ABSTRACT

Acoustice evidence obtained during the assassination of President Kennedy was applied to conclude that there was a probability of over 95% that there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll at Dealy Plaza. This conclusion played an important part in the report of the U.S. House of representatives dealing with the possibility that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. The evidence consisted of the tape recordings taken over two police radio channels in use during the assassination. The analysis involved the correlation of sound waves from rifle shots and their echoes with noisy spots on the recordings. This analysis was reviewed by a committee of the National Research Council which decided that the analysis was unreliable, and that the noisy spots, supposedly recording the rifle shots and their echoes, were made after the assassination. A critical role was played by S. Barber, a musician, who detected cross-talk betweens the two channels.

In 2001 Mr. D.B. Thomas has published a paper in Science and Justice pointing out some errors in the NRC report, and concluding that the BBN report using the acoustic evidence was correct. We shall discuss the evidence and conclude that the NRC report is sound.