Mortal Error (1992)

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK is a 1992 nonfiction book by Bonar Menninger outlining a theory by sharpshooter, gunsmith, and ballistics expert Howard Donahue that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the shot that actually killed President John F. Kennedy. Mortal Error was published by St Martin's Press in hardback, paperback, and audiobook.

Menninger is also the author of And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado, which won a Kansas Notable Book Award in 2011.

Background and overview

Donahue first became interested in the story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy after participating in a re-creation of the shooting as one of eleven invited marksmen and sharpshooters. He demonstrated that it would have been possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have fired three shots in the time specified by the Warren Commission and was the only one of the eleven to better the minimum 5.6-second time window that is based on the first shot hitting Kennedy and the second shot missing. Most investigators now believe the first shot missed which allows for more time. The experience highlighted to Donahue other concerns regarding the Warren report – in particular, the fact that testimony of ballistics experts seemed to have been completely omitted from the Commission's evidence gathering.

Conducting his own investigation, Donahue eventually decided the bullet that struck Kennedy in the head had in fact been fired by United States Secret Service Special Agent George Warren Hickey Jr. (March 24, 1923 – February 25, 2005) from an AR-15 rifle carried in the car immediately following the President's vehicle. The proposed series of events is as follows: after the first shot (which hit the street) was fired, Hickey turns completely around and looks toward Oswald, who is on the sixth floor of the school book depository building. His turned head is documented in an AP photograph by James Altgens. Hickey reaches for the AR-15 under the seat, releases the safety and begins to lift the gun. The second shot is fired by Oswald, hitting the president and Texas Governor John Connally. The president's car and the follow-up car containing Hickey suddenly speed up. This is attested to by Secret Service agent Clint Hill. Hickey, who is unstable because he is standing on the cushion of the seat rather than the floor of the car begins to fall back due to the acceleration of the vehicle, pulling the trigger of the AR-15. The gun is pointed toward Kennedy at that instant and the bullet strikes him squarely in the back of the head.

In parallel, he believes Oswald's second shot through Kennedy's neck may have already critically wounded the president before the third shot was fired.

Donahue was encouraged in his investigations by Ralph Reppert, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. In 1977, Reppert published Donahue's theory in two articles, which appeared on Sunday, May 1 and the following Sunday with the second article accompanied by an editorial. These two men were keen to collaborate on a book the subject, but this was cut short by Reppert's ill health and subsequent death. Donahue later also approached author John Davis in the hope that a book would still be written. The original copyright notice for Mortal Error read "Copyright 1992 Bonar Menninger and Howard Donahue" but some later editions did not mention Donahue's copyright. The Acknowledgements section (dated January 21, 1992) begins "Special thanks to Nick Beltrante for a great news tip, the late Ralph Reppert for showing the way, Howard and Katie Donahue for casting their lot with me ...".

Donahue's reconstruction of the trajectories of the shots that struck Kennedy and Governor Connally supported the single-bullet theory for the second shot. Donahue decided that the "impossible trajectory" suggested by the Warren Commission was only necessary because there was an error in their positioning of Connally. He also concluded this was Oswald's second shot, the first having missed due to the misalignment of the rifle's telescopic sight but with a ricochet fragment slightly wounding Kennedy and that Oswald had not fired a third shot, the third cartridge case found at the scene having been a slightly bent and empty one usually kept in the rifle's chamber.

Neither Donahue nor Menninger commented on whether the Warren Commission's key finding, that Oswald acted alone, was correct or not. Menninger notes that the theory does not preclude Oswald's involvement with a conspiracy.

Synopsis

The book takes the overall form of a narrative, in which Menninger describes Donahue's enquiries over twenty-five years.

Chapter 1, A Chance Telephone Call, describes the events that led to Donahue's interest in the assassination, and a brief biography up until that point.

Chapters 2 and 3, The Warren Report and The Critics, then give the context and summary of the Warren Report, and a detailed summary of its critics as of 1968.

Chapter 4, The Single Bullet Theory presents Donahue's analysis of the shot which, according to the Warren Commission, struck both Kennedy and Connally, and suggests that the "magic bullet" trajectory is only necessary because the estimated position of the Governor was wrong. One of Oswald's shots could, it claims, therefore have caused both men's injuries as theorized, but there remain other unanswered questions.

Chapter 5, The Head Shot describes Donahue's analysis of the shot that hit Kennedy in the head, using the Warren Commission evidence (particularly the official autopsy report), stills from the Zapruder film and other photos, and holes drilled in a plaster skull. Numerous questions arise surrounding the completeness and even accuracy of the autopsy report.

... the bullet that hit Kennedy's head had not behaved like a full-metal jacketed round at all. (p. 49)

The Commission determined that all three spent shells found at the depository came from the same lot of full metaljacketed 6.5 millimeter ammunition (p. 50)