Lee Bowers
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Lee Edward Bowers, Jr. (January 12, 1925, Dallas, Texas – August 9, 1966, Dallas, Texas) was a witness to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. At the moment of the assassination he was operating the Union Terminal Company's interlocking tower, overlooking the parking lot just north of the grassy knoll and west of the Texas School Book Depository.
When asked by the Warren Commission, "Now, were there any people standing on the high side — high ground between your tower and where Elm Street goes down under the underpass toward the mouth of the underpass?" Bowers testified that at the time the motorcade went by on Elm Street, two men were in the area, standing 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 m) apart near the Triple Underpass, and did not appear to know each other. One was "middle-aged, or slightly older, fairly heavy-set, in a white shirt, fairly dark trousers" and the other was "younger man, about midtwenties, in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket." One or both were still there when the first police officer arrived "immediately" after the shooting. Many assumed that Bowers meant that these men were standing behind the stockade fence at the top of the grassy knoll.
However, two years later when Bowers was interviewed by assassination researchers Mark Lane and Emile de Antonio for their documentary film Rush to Judgment, he clarified that these two men were on the opposite side of the fence, and that no one was behind the fence when the shots were fired.[1] Photographs of the grassy knoll during the assassination show heavy-set, middle-aged Dealey Plaza groundskeeper Emmett Hudson and a younger man, whom Hudson estimated was in his late twenties,[2] standing on the stairway leading from Elm Street up to the stockade fence (a third man stands a few steps below them).[3] Bowers was not sure if he could see the older man after the shootings, and a photograph show Hudson sitting down on the steps at that time.[4]
Bowers was killed in 1966 when his car left the empty road and struck a concrete abutment. It has often been claimed that his death was a murder, but investigator David Perry concludes that there is no basis for this belief.
Bowers was played by Pruitt Taylor Vince in the 1991 film JFK.
[edit] References
- ^ Dale K. Myers, Secrets of a Homicide: Badge Man — The Testimony of Lee Bowers, Jr.
- ^ Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Emmett J. Hudson.
- ^ Moorman photograph of the grassy knoll during the assassination. Emmett Hudson is the middle of the three men on the stairs.
- ^ Towner photograph of Emmett Hudson sitting on the stairway on the grassy knoll after the shootings.
