The Zapruder Film

Twenty-six seconds of film. Frame 313 rewrote — or should have — the official story.

The 26.6-second Zapruder film: purchased by LIFE (print rights, $150,000, day after the assassination), frames published non-sequentially, full motion footage effectively unseen by the public until Geraldo aired it in 1975 — twelve years of a nation not seeing its own central evidence, which is documented and did more for conspiracy culture than any theory. Frame 313's backward head snap drives the second-shooter argument; neurophysics rebuttals (jet effect, neuromuscular reaction) are published. The film was federally taken (1998) with an Appraisal panel award of $16 million to the family.