Skip to main content

Fact check

Is it true: JFK Assassination: Second Shooter from the Grassy Knoll?

Unsubstantiated60% confidence

There's no solid evidence for it.

The grassy knoll second-shooter claim rests primarily on acoustic analysis of a Dictabelt police-radio recording (basis for the HSCA 1979 "probable conspiracy" conclusion). The NRC (1982) and FBI independently rejected the acoustic evidence, finding the identified impulses were recorded after the assassination. No physical evidence of a second shooter (no bullet, no shell casings, no firing-position evidence) has been recovered. Witness testimony is genuinely mixed but insufficient to establish a second shooter. Unsubstantiated but not fully resolvable.

The claim

The grassy knoll second-shooter claim is the most prominent sub-theory of the JFK assassination conspiracy. It holds that a second gunman fired from the wooden fence atop the grassy knoll north of Elm

Key evidence

HSCA 1979 concluded probable conspiracy based on acoustic evidence

NRC (1982) rejected the acoustic evidence entirely

Read the full evidence file

Conspirafy steelmans each claim, then follows the evidence. How we reach a verdict · Check another claim