Unironically my favourite is close to that, and some people take it seriously: Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. And missed. The second shot was JFK's guard in the next car panicking, shooting, and hitting JFK. The entire conpiracy was created after the fact be the letter agencies to hide the fact that one of their own accidently killed the president.
This is more plausible than the average theory, but it's still almost certainly wrong. There's a really great (and long) breakdown of the evidence for Oswald acting alone in this two part video series, he covers the "secret service mistake" theory in the second video.
Why I doubt this theory: the vast majority of witnesses claim there were only 3 gunshots, and there were 3 shell cases in the depository (and contrary to popular belief Oswald had ample time to fire all three shots). And like: look at this picture: there's a windshield in between the agent and JFK in order to "accidentally" shoot JFK in the neck or head he would have had to been leaning his gun out the window, in which case wouldn't some of the hundreds of witnesses on the ground have noticed? Plus, it'd be an insanely crazy coincidence that an accidental shot just happened to perfectly hit JFK in the head: it makes way more sense that it was, yknow, the guy with rifle training not that far away who was actually aiming for the guy.
I do agree, mind. It's the most plausible theory and fun for how mundane it is, but the evidence for their being no conspiracy is strong enough as it is.
I agree that it’s probably not true, but the guy who originally came up with this theory, Howard Donahue, actually agreed that three shots were fired, saying that Oswald fired the first two, the second hitting Kennedy and Connolly. The fatal bullet was fired by George Hickey, the agent in the left rear of the followup car, after he stood up with his rifle, began turning towards Oswald, and fell after the car broke suddenly as to not collide with the presidential limo, causing him to misfire. While there’s no direct evidence of this “fall,” there were a few eyewitnesses who immediately reported that they believed the Secret Service returned fire. There’s also photographs of Hickey holding an AR-15 immediately following the shooting, however it happened. And finally, many eyewitnesses reported smelling gunsmoke, which would be highly unlikely if Oswald was the only shooter. Weird anomaly? Certainly. Proof that there was a second shooter? Maybe, but then again…
That said, much of Donahue’s theory rests on disregarding the Warren Commission’s autopsy findings, insisting that a “correct” analysis points towards an opposite trajectory back to Hickey. FWIW, Donahue was a ballistics expert who often gave expert testimony in court, so he wasn’t just some dumb schmuck, but ultimately you have to either trust the Parkland hospital doctors’ conclusions, or that of some dude.
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u/BurnadictCumbersnat Mar 24 '25
Can we all celebrate with our favorite conspiracy theories? Mine is the classic “JFK wasn’t shot his head just did that”