A new analysis of remaining bullet fragments from the 1963 assassination of US president John F. Kennedy suggests a second shooter may have been involved in the plot.
The findings suggest the prevailing theory that a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, killed Kennedy is wrong, according to a research team that published its findings Thursday.
The researchers "show that evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," wrote William Tobin, the main author of the report, published in the latest issue of the Annals of Applied Statistics.
Tobin, a former FBI agent and forensic scientist, teamed with bullet lead analysis expert Cliff Spiegelman of Texas A M University to re-examine the five bullet fragments recovered after Kennedy's assassination, using new scientific advances.
The findings countered testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations hearing in 1978 in which Dr. Vincent Guinn said the bullet fragments recovered signaled that two bullets of an unusual kind of ammunition were used.
"The new analyses show that the bullet fragments involved in the assassination are not nearly as rare as previously reported," Tobin said, pointing to results that showed one in 10 test bullets matched the fragments.
The findings "mean that the bullet fragments from the assassination that match could have come from three or more separate bullets."
If that is the case, "then a second assassin is likely, as an additional bullet would not be attributable to the main suspect, Mr. Oswald," the report said.
"We believe there is no scientific basis from the fragment matching performed by Dr. Guinn to conclude that only two bullets were the sources of the assassination fragments."
The official theory, much challenged but never disproved, is the one established by the government sanctioned Warren Commission, formed immediately after the killing.
The Commission, headed by Chief Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, said that Kennedy was assassinated by a sole gunman, Oswald, who fired his rifle from a window on the sixth floor of a book warehouse as the Kennedy's motorcade passed by during a visit to Dallas, Texas.
The commission determined that two bullets caused Kennedy's fatal wounds and found no evidence that anyone else was involved in the killing.
