JAMES THOMPSON SAID:
When I first saw the Z-film many years ago, I wondered why Jackie jumped onto the trunk of the limo and then climbed back into the seat. I wondered if it was because she was trying to avoid being killed. I just didn't know and it always was a mystery to me.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In my opinion, Jackie was merely trying to get away from the scene of horror in that back seat.
The bloody head of her husband was about to fall into her lap. She panicked. She was stunned. She was petrified. And those are all reasonable and logical immediate reactions on her part.
Good Lord, I'd have probably done the exact same thing if a bloody body was falling toward me -- I'd have gotten away from it the best I could.
That might seem callous, unfeeling, and uncaring to some. But it's a human reaction that I'm betting 9.9 out of 10 people would have had if they'd been in the back seat of that limousine instead of Jackie -- GET AWAY FROM THE HORROR.
After she regained her composure and had time to think a little clearer, Jackie did indeed hold that same bloody head in her lap. But at the time the shooting occurred, human nature took over (IMO). And if I had been in that back seat in the seconds immediately after Zapruder Frame 313, I think I probably would have made tracks for the trunk too. After all, where else COULD she have "escaped" to in that stretch limousine? She couldn't have used the doors of the car to get out (the Connallys and the jump seats blocked the rear doors):
About the only place she could have gone to get away from the falling, bloody body at the critical moment just after the fatal shot was the trunk of the vehicle.
But to think (as some people do) that Jackie Kennedy had it in her mind, in those frantic, confusing, and horrifying moments just after her husband had his head blown off, to go and get a piece of his head on the trunk lid is, in my opinion, just simply crazy.
Try to put yourself in the same situation and mindset -- Do you actually think that you'd want to get a grisly hunk of brain tissue on the trunk?
In two words -- What for? It's just silly.
There's no proof that Jackie retrieved any brain tissue on the trunk of the car. She very likely obtained the piece of JFK's head that she gave to Dr. Jenkins while she was cradling the President's head in her hands on the drive to Parkland (as she was trying to "hold his hair on and his skull on" [from Jackie's Warren Commission testimony]).
David Von Pein
February 9, 2009
