I asked Max Holland if he wanted to respond to the critique of his recent 6th Floor Museum presentation made by Dale K Myers and Todd W. Vaughan. Holland replied:
“I have no doubt whatsoever that the lamppost is correctly identified in my presentation. I confirmed as much with Mr. Allman before my presentation, and he was also in the audience during the presentation.”
The dispute concerns the timing of the gunfire in Dealey Plaza. Holland argues the first gunshot was fired from the 6th floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building by Lee Oswald before Abraham Zapruder started filming the presidential motorcade. Holland suggests that the shot was deflected by a lamppost and hit a sidewalk curb, sending a chunk of concrete into the face of bystander James Tague, wounding him slightly.
Holland’s “11 seconds In Dallas” thesis is a significant revision of the Warren Commission’s account of the crime. It is also an effort to deal with two of the weaker points of the Warren Commission’s account: the sequence of the shots (which the Commission said it could not establish) and how Tague came to be wounded.
This is a certainly preposterous. This theory belongs in the scrap heap with the others like the driver shot JFK. There simply is no possibly way that it could have happened like this. No film supports it and not witness supports it.
Mr. Holland’s (and Rush) have, literally, shot themselves in the foot. Mr. Tague’s view of when he was injured is pretty demonstrative of the opposite of what H&R are trying to support. Mr. Tague is pretty clear that he felt he was injured by the second shot. Now personally….I certainly would go for an injury to Tague at the first…or even the third as a result of deflection off of JFK’s head. I suppose it is just Mr. Holland’s ego at stake here. He wants to find that a shot deflected off of the signal post/hanger. Ok.
But that is not what happened.
Jeff, this is insane. “Before Zapruder started filming the motorcade” means basically before they turned off Houston onto Elm, a frontal shot at JFK. Tague and the chipped curb were around 100 yards away to the right (from the “snipers nest”). These are facts. But this shot deflected by a lamp post somewhere near Elm and Houston flew about 300 feet right to chip the curb and wound Tague?
I’ve never heard this theory. It seems preposterous.