One of the many lingering questions about John F. Kennedy’s assassination was how a single bullet could travel through the President, then hit at least three different points in Texas Governor John Connally. Known as the “Magic Bullet,” the slug was later found on a hospital stretcher that had carried Connally, with investigators concluding that it had fallen out of Connally while he was being treated.
A new claim by one of the Secret Service agents who was riding on the running boards of the limo carrying Kennedy and Connally at the time of the assassination, however, throws all that into doubt and raises some additional questions. According to the New York Times, Paul Landis said he placed the bullet on Kennedy’s gurney after finding the round lodged in the back seat of the limo, in the back cushion of the seat Kennedy was riding in.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the assassination, Landis said he spotted the bullet in the seat during the chaos as the limo arrived at the hospital. Out of instinct, he grabbed it understanding it was a piece of evidence and wanting to keep it from ghoulish souvenir hunters. He dropped it on Kennedy’s stretcher, Landis admits, while he was in shock thinking that it could somehow help doctors figure out what happened to Kennedy.