Relics linked to America’s most famous political assassinations are heading to auction next weekend, including “previously unknown and unseen” film footage of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy draped over her husband’s body as it sped away from his slaying at Dallas’s Dealey Plaza.
The 8 mm film offered at Boston’s RR Auction on Saturday, Sept. 28, provides the only known images of John F. Kennedy’s motorcade taken after the November 22, 1963 assassination captured by the famous Zapruder film.
It is expected to fetch at least $100,000, and online bids are already over $17,000.
RR Auction is also offering relics from the April 15, 1865, slaying of former President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, as well as Booth family items.
The most notable artifact is an original wanted poster for conspirators Booth, John Surratt, and David Herold. The poster advertises: “$100,000 Reward! The Murderer of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln, is still at large.”
It could bring $80,000, and early bidding has already neared $50,000.
A playbill for “Our American Cousin” from the night Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater is also being offered.
Booth family jewelry and sterling silver chalices, engraved with the letter “B” are included in the auction.
The sale was planned before the second assassination attempt this week on former President Donald Trump in Florida.
The Kennedy film is remarkable and shows both Secret Service agent Clint Hill and the first lady protecting JFK, who was likely dead from a shot to the head before the motorcade reached Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Hill wrote about the scene in his book, Five Days In November. RR Auction’s description said that in the book, the agent recalled the grisly scene: “The president, without a doubt, has suffered a fatal wound. ‘My God! They have shot his head off!’ Mrs. Kennedy shrieks. ‘Get us to a hospital!’ I scream at the driver. ‘Get us to a hospital!’ As the car accelerates, I wedge myself on top of the rear seat, trying to get my body above and behind Mrs. Kennedy and the president, to shield them from whatever shots might still be coming … In the car, Mrs. Kennedy is in shock. Staring at her husband, his head bleeding into her lap, she moans, ‘Jack, oh, Jack. What have they done?’ And then, ‘I have his brains in my hands.’ Quietly, she adds, ‘I love you, Jack.’ Nothing else is said as we speed down Stemmons Freeway at about eighty miles an hour. I turn my head and my sunglasses blow off … Time has stopped. It feels like an eternity before we arrive at the hospital. In reality, it has been just four minutes since the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.’”
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The film was taken by a truck driver who chased after the motorcade after he realized that he missed the shooting.
Said RR Auction, “Virtually every still photograph and motion picture of the events in Dallas was confiscated for examination by authorities in the aftermath of the assassination; every frame of all known footage has been exhaustively studied by government investigators, historians, researchers, conspiracy theorists, and the public at large. As this reel has remained unknown and unseen for decades, it represents a unique opportunity to reopen the study of the tragedy of November 22, 1963.”
