Huge section of the picket fence from the infamous 'grassy knoll' at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, which separated the plaza from the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad yards, overlooked the route of Kennedy's motorcade, and figures prominently in many assassination conspiracy theories. The large section of fence measures approximately 42″ by 58″, and consists of 17 wooden pickets mounted on cross-members. Includes two photographs taken during the city's removal of the fence, as well as an issue of Texas Monthly from December 1990, showing three JFK assassination researchers (including Larry Howard, the original owner of this section) posing behind a section of "the infamous stockade fence." In very good to fine condition, with expected overall wear.
This section of picket fence is indisputably from the grassy knoll. Over the years many of the original fence’s individual wooden pickets were removed by souvenir hunters and later replaced. This example of the fence boasts rusted nails of the correct vintage and traces of white paint with appropriate surface wear, leading us to believe that few, if any of these pickets have been replaced.
Originates from the collection of Kennedy assassination researcher Larry Howard, president of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas, where this was once exhibited. Accompanied by a letter of provenance from his daughter, in part: "My Dad, Larry Howard, was a Kennedy Assassination researcher in Dallas, Texas and he eventually acquired enough materials from his relationships with various people involved in some way to the assassination of President Kennedy that he was able to open the John F. Kennedy Assassination Information Center inside the West End Marketplace in downtown Dallas. It was established in 1988 and was in business until my Dad’s death in 1994. Upon its closing all of the materials that were a part of the museum exhibit were boxed and stored at my Mother’s home. My Dad was well known in the circle of researchers of the time and was hired by Oliver Stone during the making of JFK as a consultant."
In the aftermath of the assassination on November 22, 1963, many witnesses reported hearing at least one gun shot from the direction of the 'grassy knoll,' and Parkland Hospital surgeon Dr. Robert N. McClelland maintained that Kennedy had been shot from the front. Further, Mary Moorman's photograph taken moments after the shooting captured the purported 'Badge Man' behind the stockade fence, obscured by a reputed muzzle flash. An analysis of acoustical evidence and witness reports cited in the final report of the the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1979 concluded that there was at least a 95% probability that a ‘gunshot was fired from a point along the east-west line of the wooden stockade fence on the grassy knoll, about 8 feet (+-5 feet) west of the corner of the fence.’ Though the HSCA's scientific evidence has since been discredited, the 'grassy knoll' theory lives on as an intriguing aspect of the JFK assassination conspiracy.
