Footage of motorcade racing JFK to hospital after he was shot sells for $137,500 at auction

Newly emerged movie footage of President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade speeding down a Dallas freeway toward a infirmary aft helium was fatally wounded sold astatine auction Saturday for US$137,500.

The 8 mm colour location movie was offered up by RR Auction successful Boston. The auction location said the purchaser wishes to stay anonymous.

The movie has been with the household of the antheral who took it, Dale Carpenter Sr., since helium recorded it connected Nov. 22, 1963. It begins arsenic Carpenter conscionable misses the limousine carrying the president and archetypal woman Jacqueline Kennedy but capturing different vehicles successful the motorcade arsenic it travelled down Lemmon Avenue toward downtown. The movie past picks up aft Kennedy has been shot, with Carpenter rolling arsenic the motorcade roars down Interstate 35.

The shots had fired arsenic the motorcade passed done Dealey Plaza successful beforehand of the Texas School Book Depository, where it was aboriginal recovered that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch connected the sixth floor. The assassination itself was famously captured connected movie by Abraham Zapruder.

Carpenter’s footage from I-35, which lasts astir 10 seconds, shows Secret Service Agent Clint Hill — who famously jumped onto the backmost of the limousine arsenic the shots rang retired — hovering successful a lasting presumption implicit the president and Jacqueline Kennedy, whose pinkish suit tin beryllium seen. The president was pronounced dormant aft arriving astatine Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Bobby Livingston, enforcement vice president of the auction house, said successful a quality merchandise that the movie “provides a gripping consciousness of urgency and heartbreak.”

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Carpenter’s grandson, James Gates, said that portion it was known successful his household that his gramps had movie from that day, it wasn’t talked astir often. So Gates said that erstwhile the film, stored on with different household films successful a beverage crate, was yet passed connected to him, helium wasn’t definite precisely what his grandfather, who died successful 1991 astatine property 77, had captured.

Projecting it onto his chamber partition astir 2010, gates was astatine archetypal underwhelmed by the footage from Lemmon Avenue. But then, the footage from I-35 played retired earlier his eyes. “That was shocking,” helium said.

The auction location has released inactive photos from the information of the movie showing the contention down I-35, but it is not publically releasing video of that part.