Page 110 of The 9th Man

“Kennedy and Jackie seated in their limousine getting ready to leave.

“Next picture, about three minutes later. This is the trail car. Parked, getting ready to go. Kennedy’s limousine is just beyond the left side of the frame. How many men do you see?”

“Eight,” Jillian said.

Eckstein nodded. “Secret Service agents Emory Roberts, Samuel Kinney, John Ready, Clinton Hill, William McIntyre, Paul Landis, Glen Bennett, and George Hickey.” One by one Eckstein tapped the faces in the photo. “Roberts, front seat. Kinney, front seat. Ready, running board. Hill, running board. Landis, seated behind Ready. Bennett on the rear seat. Hickey beside him. What do you see in his hands?”

Luke hesitated and frowned. “Nothing.”

“That’s right. No AR-15.”

A final photograph was displayed showing the trail car as it left Love Field.

“How many men do you see now?” Eckstein asked.

He counted. “Nine.”

“That’s right and he’s sitting beside Bennet and Hickey. Holding the AR-15. A last-minute addition to the detail. He should not have been there.”

Eckstein pointed back at the laptop screen and the frozen image of the same man cradling the AR-15.

Pointed at Kennedy.

“That’s who provided the kill shot.”

Eckstein rapped his knuckle against the face in the photo.

“The ninth man. Thomas Henry Rowland.”

56

LUKE WASN’T SURE IF HE WAS AMAZED OR SKEPTICAL.

He again found the audio that Ray Simmons had left from the Walter Reed autopsy, which he’d downloaded to the laptop, and played it.

“Benji got this,” Eckstein said. “He had people go through the national archives and they located this recording. It’s another example of the Warren Commission either ignoring or failing to appreciate the evidence.”

There’s been an accident, not a murder.

That’s what Agent Kellerman said.

“He could have just been trying to offer an explanation to the medical examiner that would allow them to take the body,” Jillian said. “A lie that would work.”

“That’s entirely possible,” Eckstein said. “You can hear the aggravation in his voice. He wasn’t going to leave there without the body. But, you have to admit, considering what we know now, it’s a strange choice of words.”

Luke agreed. “Are you saying the Secret Service knew what happened and covered it up?”

“That’s impossible to say. But I doubt it. That kind of secret would have been hard to keep, even for that time in history. But the Secret Service did act awfully suspicious. They took the body then, when an autopsy was performed back in DC, it was effectively botched. Some say even tampered with. Little workable information was gleaned. Which is hard to understand, considering the situation. You would think they would have been extra thorough. Most of the documents and photographs from that autopsy remain, to this day, sealed from the public. Why? It’s been over sixty years. There’s no logical reason to keep that information sealed. Some say it’s to protect the family. But all of them are dead, except for the Kennedys’ daughter.”

“Unless they were afraid what might be learned from that information,” Luke said.

“Exactly.”

“I’m skeptical,” Jillian said, “of all this. How could that rifle have fired and no one in the trail car heard it?”

“Look again at my film,” Eckstein said.

And they viewed it one more time.