Abraham Zapruder was born on May 15, 1905, in the city of Kovel, which at the time was part of the Russian Empire and is today part of Ukraine.
Zapruder belonged to a Jewish family that emigrated to the United States in 1920, fleeing political unrest and waves of anti-Jewish violence that followed the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War.
The family settled in New York City, where Zapruder completed his education and began working in the fashion industry. In 1941, he moved to Dallas, Texas, where he founded his own business in designing and producing ready-to-wear women’s clothing. He was known for his friendly personality and organized mind, and was well-regarded among friends and colleagues for his seriousness at work.
On the morning of November 22, 1963, Zapruder’s life would change forever when he decided to bring along his amateur movie camera—a Bell and Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD.
It was manufactured by the American company Bell & Howell, before Japanese and later Chinese companies came to dominate the electronics industry, to film the motorcade of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, as it passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
That day was overcast, so Zapruder had not planned to take his camera to work. While at his office in the clothing factory, his assistant Lillian Rogers chatted with him about the presidential motorcade that would pass through Dealey Plaza in a few hours. She noticed the clouds starting to clear and sunlight streaming inside, and encouraged him with a smile: “Why don’t you bring the camera? You might get a great shot of the President from a perfect spot.”
Zapruder hesitated briefly but felt a hidden excitement in her words. He quickly drove home to retrieve his 8mm camera, and when he returned, the motorcade was about to arrive.
Lillian helped him secure the ideal spot on a concrete pedestal less than a meter and a half high next to a grassy slope. She stood behind him, holding him steady by the waist so he wouldn’t lose his balance while filming. This position gave him a direct panoramic view of the motorcade’s path as it made a sharp turn, forcing it to slow down from Houston Street onto Elm Street. The motorcade passed just a few meters from his camera lens, an angle that made the footage especially clear, particularly around Kennedy’s head and shoulders.
The footage he filmed is now known as the Zapruder Film. It lasted only about 26 seconds, but clearly captured three gunshots, including the famous frame 313 that documents the fatal headshot to Kennedy. These images became the most important visual evidence in the official investigations.
After the assassination, Zapruder sold the rights to the film to Life magazine for $150,000—a very large sum at the time—while retaining limited usage rights. The full film was not publicly shown until March 6, 1975, when it aired on ABC’s late-night program Good Night America hosted by Geraldo Rivera. This broadcast brought the film to a wide audience for the first time and played a major role in renewing public interest and raising doubts about the official accounts of Kennedy’s assassination.
In 1999, the U.S. government purchased the rights to the film from Zapruder’s heirs—he had died in 1970 after battling cancer—for $16 million, and preserved it in the U.S. National Archives.
Richard Stolley, who at the time of Kennedy’s assassination was the Los Angeles bureau chief for Life magazine, recounts in an article titled How the Zapruder Film Came to Life Magazine the circumstances of the magazine’s purchase of the Zapruder film that captured the crucial moments of the assassination. He says someone shouted to him, “Man, Kennedy’s been shot in Dallas!”
Stolley continues, “I was in my office as Life’s Los Angeles bureau chief, and the person shouting was a magazine reporter who had come to check the Associated Press teletype machine to see what was happening in the world before the Internet era, when the machine would print urgent bulletins accompanied by alarm bells, carrying the first news of the tragedy in Dealey Plaza.”
He adds, “At around 6 p.m., I got a call from Patsy Swank, a part-time Life correspondent in Dallas, who had spent the afternoon at police headquarters. Her news was astonishing: she said another reporter had told her that a policeman had told him that a local businessman in Dealey Plaza had a movie camera and had filmed the assassination.”
Stolley goes on, “Before I could ask her the name, she said: my friend couldn’t write it down, but he pronounced it like this: Za-proo-der. I opened the phone book and looked under ‘Z,’ and there it was exactly as pronounced: Abraham Zapruder.”
“I started calling, and kept calling every 15 minutes, but no one answered.”
Stolley continues, “Finally, at 11 p.m., a tired voice answered. I asked if he was Mr. Zapruder, then introduced myself and the magazine, and asked if it was true that he had filmed the assassination that morning. He said: yes. And had he filmed the entire scene? He said: yes.”
“I asked to come see the film immediately, but he said: no, politely explaining that he was exhausted and shocked by what he had seen. I decided not to press him—my instinct was that this was a time for respect, not pressure—and he asked me to come to his office at 9 a.m. the next morning.”
“I went at 8 a.m. and found him preparing to show the film to two Secret Service agents. He allowed me to join. The film began with shots of some of his employees going out to see the President, and then the motorcade appeared.”
“There was no sound but the whir of the projector. We came to the famous frame 313, where a bullet struck the President’s head, and we all gasped as if we’d been punched in the stomach. I knew instantly I wasn’t leaving that office without the film.”
“He ran it for us three times, and then other reporters began arriving—about twenty or more—from various agencies, newspapers, and magazines, but no one from television.”
“After he finished the screenings, he said he felt obligated to speak to me first, since I was the first to call him. We went into his office and began negotiating the price. I started by offering $5,000, then went up to $50,000 for print publication rights, but it was clear he knew the value of what he had.”
Stolley adds that during negotiations, Zapruder “described a nightmare he’d had a few hours earlier about the film being shown in a pornographic theater, and he stressed that he did not want the film to be exploited inappropriately,” a promise Stolley gave him.
Stolley continues his account: “Outside, other reporters were shouting and pounding on the door. In a tense moment, he looked at me calmly and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I then wrote up the contract, got the film, and left through the back door.”
He adds, “On Monday, Life also purchased the television broadcast rights for an additional $100,000.”
Stolley explains that after Zapruder’s death in 1970, his business partner Erwin Schwartz told him the reason he got the film, even though others would have paid the same or more, was that he had been polite, hadn’t pressured Zapruder that first night, treated him with respect during negotiations, and had been kind to his assistant, Lillian Rogers, while others had treated her poorly.
Stolley says, “Later, Zapruder received bags of letters, many addressed simply to ‘Zapruder, Dallas, Texas.’ Even when he traveled in Europe, his name was known, and he could never escape his unique and tragic role in the Kennedy assassination story… and neither could I.”
Today, this film is considered one of the most analyzed pieces of footage in history. The mention of its creator’s name instantly brings to mind the moment of Kennedy’s assassination. This moment made Zapruder the first embodiment of the ‘citizen journalist’ concept, which has become more common with advances in technology and communications in the digital age.
Hours after the assassination, Harvey Oswald was arrested for killing a police officer named Jefferson Davis Tippit. The circumstances of Tippit’s murder led police to suspect he might also have been Kennedy’s killer, despite his claims of innocence and his description of himself as a scapegoat.
The investigation into the killer’s identity never ran its course. Before Oswald could be tried, and while he was being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail, a man named Jack Ruby shot him in front of live television cameras. Oswald died instantly, just two days after the President’s assassination, ending the chance of learning more precise details about his motives or whether he acted alone.
At the end of November 1963, the Warren Report was commissioned by President Lyndon Johnson—who had been Vice President under Kennedy—with the aim of calming public opinion and presenting an official account of the assassination. The commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and included prominent political figures.
The report concluded that Oswald acted alone and found no evidence of involvement by any domestic or foreign entity. It stated that he fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository: the first missed after hitting a tree branch, the second struck both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally—who was seated in front of him in the car’s front seat—in what became known as the “single bullet” with its unusual, zigzag ballistic path, and the third struck Kennedy in the head, killing him.
Just as Kennedy’s assassination was politically earth-shattering, the article It’s an Honor by Jimmy Breslin, published in the New York Herald Tribune in November 1963, was a shockwave in the media world. It marked the birth of literary journalism—something that first caught my attention five years ago through a Facebook post by journalist Rashad Abdel Qader titled Find the Gravedigger Within You. He later referenced it, along with other examples of narrative journalism, in his 2024 book Tools for Writing Stories: A Practical Guide to Editing Texts. Story Writing Tools: A Practical Guide to Editing Texts (2024).
Rashad Abdel Qader explains that Breslin, guided by his journalistic instinct, “stepped away from the epicenter of the event, leaving behind the scene where thousands of cameras were battling for space, and headed to the cemetery, where he wrote an article titled It’s an Honor about the gravedigger, Clifton Pollard, who said it was a great honor for him to be the one to dig Kennedy’s grave.”
Abdel Qader adds, “The article would go on to become a journalistic icon, discussed in dozens of books from then until today, giving rise to an entire school of journalism known as literary journalism—storytelling about the lives of real people whose fates intersect in real events, where larger meanings about life are revealed. As a journalist, you must search for the gravedigger within yourself—you may find him someday.”
For me, the most powerful part of the article is its ending, where Breslin writes that gravedigger Pollard did not attend Kennedy’s funeral. “He was behind the hill digging other graves for people he did not know, earning about three dollars an hour, then covering them with wooden boards, saying: ‘These graves will be used someday, but we don’t know when.’ He added, ‘I tried to go see the grave, but the place was too crowded. A soldier told me I couldn’t get through, so I stayed here, continuing my work. But I’ll go later, just to take a look and see how it turned out. As I told you, sir, it’s an honor.’”
Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theory
There are doubts surrounding the accusation that Oswald killed Kennedy. Among these doubts is a suspicious photograph of him, published on the FBI’s website, in which he is holding the murder weapon before the President’s assassination. When examining the lighting in the photo, it becomes clear that the shadow of his body falls behind him, meaning the light source was in front of him, while the shadow of his chin extends onto his neck—which should have been shadow-free since his face was toward the light source—suggesting the photo is doctored.
In a research paper by George Michael at the Weiss School, University of Virginia, about Michael Collins Piper—one of the most prominent promoters of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory—titled Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions: Michael Collins Piper: An American Emissary from the Far Right to the Islamic World, he writes: “Michael Collins Piper is best known for his book Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination (1993), which runs over 700 pages and accuses Israel’s Mossad of being the main perpetrator in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
Michael adds that this controversial claim made the book a bestseller in unofficial circles, giving Piper wide notoriety inside the United States and abroad, especially in the Middle East. Piper maintains that then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was determined to develop a military nuclear program, and that Kennedy’s firm opposition to this project was the direct reason for his assassination.
Piper also claims that other parties played secondary roles in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, including Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky, CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton, and the French Secret Army Organization. He points out that the CIA also had its own motives, such as the dismissal of its first director, Allen Dulles, the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Angleton’s deep loyalty to Israel.
In his book, Piper notes a sharp shift in U.S. policy toward Israel after Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency, when Washington stopped opposing Israel’s nuclear ambitions, despite the then-widespread belief that Israel was developing a nuclear program at the Dimona reactor. According to Piper, this argument is supported by the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower who revealed details of Israel’s nuclear program, and who said Kennedy’s opposition to Ben-Gurion was the reason for his assassination, noting that he had been influenced by Piper’s book.
Piper died in 2015 at the age of 55, which raised Gordon Duff’s suspicions about the cause of his death in an article titled Did Israel Assassinate Michael Collins Piper? He wrote, “Two days ago, Michael Collins Piper, aged 55, died in a hotel room. Piper had been waging a war against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of many pro-Israel lobbying organizations in the United States, as well as against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).”
He then added, “I believe Piper may have been killed, and I also believe his heart problems were induced. I believe this for reasons similar to what happened with Michael Hastings,” the journalist who criticized the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
But the chapters of the Kennedy assassination story did not end there. More than 60 years after his death, in January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14176, mandating the full release of all remaining documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., giving a deadline of fifteen days for implementation.
Indeed, on the evening of Tuesday, March 18 of the same year, tens of thousands of unredacted pages were released and made available to the public through the U.S. National Archives website. These included more than 20,000 files that had previously been published with redacted sections now revealed, as well as others never before released—amounting to more than 63,000 pages in total.
At the same time, members of Congress introduced a new bill titled Justice for Kennedy – 2025, calling for the immediate and complete disclosure of all remaining records, including those under judicial holds, and requiring the Department of Justice to petition the courts to lift their classified status.
An article by Kaitlin McCormack on the New York Post website, titled Trump Speaks on Kennedy Assassination Theories in Extended Interview After Declassification of a Massive Batch of Assassination Files, noted that U.S. President Donald Trump said he had always believed Oswald was Kennedy’s killer, but added that he wondered whether Oswald had acted alone.
The documents include material referencing claims by a CIA informant, John Garrett Underhill Jr., who alleged the existence of a small clique within the CIA responsible for the assassination. They also discuss Oswald’s visit to the Soviet Union, where he appeared to be a very poor marksman.
Trump’s move carries a mix of political calculation, exploitation of historical legacy, and a bid to stir media and public attention. The released documents did not provide conclusive proof of any conspiracy, but, according to McCormack, the way Trump framed his statements—and the accounts of certain informants in the files—left ample room for interpretation and public intrigue. Politically, it allowed Trump to present himself as someone revealing the truth, even if the documents themselves did not significantly alter the official narrative.
It is worth noting that in the late 1970s, the U.S. House of Representatives formed a special committee to investigate assassinations, known as the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In 1979, the committee announced that Kennedy was likely killed as the result of a conspiracy, based on an acoustic analysis of gunfire. However, this evidence was later discredited by the National Academy of Sciences, leaving the legal conclusion unresolved.
Debate over the crime continued until the early 1990s, when the U.S. Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. This law required all federal agencies to disclose records related to the case unless there was a legitimate security or privacy reason for postponement.
The law created the Assassination Records Review Board, which operated until 1998 and released millions of pages of documents, although a small portion remained withheld.
Over the next two decades, the gradual release of documents continued, but in 2017 and 2018, President Donald Trump’s administration decided to delay the release of some files for security reasons, sparking widespread criticism and calls for greater transparency.
In December 2022, more than 13,000 additional documents were released, bringing the total number of disclosed records to about 99% of the entire archive, although some remained withheld or redacted.
In addition to legislative measures, new congressional hearings were held, summoning key figures such as filmmaker Oliver Stone—who called for a full reinvestigation—and investigative journalist Jefferson Morley, who presented documents showing that some CIA officials had misled the Warren Commission about Oswald’s activities. Also called to testify was Abraham Bolden, the first Black Secret Service agent, who spoke about attempts to prevent him from giving testimony regarding prior threats to the President.
