FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Date 11/24/63

FRANCES GAYLE NEWMAN, 718 Clarendon Street, advised that at the time President KENNEDY was assassinated and Governor CONNALLY was wounded she was standing on the north curb of Elm Street between the triple underpass and Houston Street. Also standing there were her two children, ages 2 and 4, and her husband, WILLIAM EUGENE NEWMAN Jr. She estimates that when the limousine bearing the Presidential party was about 50 feet from them she heard rifle reports and the president seemed to rise up in his seat. A few seconds later she heard another shot and saw that the President had been hit in the head because she saw blood flowing from his body. She said a man had been standing back on the pedestal near an arcade taking photographs and there were a couple of people east of them on the north side of Elm Street.

She stated that after the President was shot officers and probably Secret Service men started running toward the arcade near the point where the photographer was taking his pictures. She believed there were first two shots in succesion, a pause, then another shot was fired which struck the president. She said the limousine was a three seated one carrying Governor CONNALLY and his wife in the middle seat and the President and Mrs. KENNEDY in the back seat. She did not notice the occupants of the front seat as she had her eyes on the President, whom she had come to see. After the shots were fired, she and her husband each grabbed a child and lay down on the grass fearing that they might be hit by gunfire. She noticed that Governor Connally seemed to be lying down in the front seet holding his stomach when he passed directly in front of them. She was taken with her husband to the WFAA Studio where the waited a short time and after the announcement came that the president was deceased, she and her husband were interviewed. They later made statements to Deputy Sheriffs concerning their eye-witness account of the assassination of the president and the wounding of Governor CONNALLY.

The shots were fired at the President and Governor CONNALLY about 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963. She said she did no see LEE HARVEY OSWALD during that time.


on 11/23/63 at Dallas, Texas File # DL 89-43

By Special Agent HARLAN BROWN and ALVIN J. ZIMMERMAN Date Dictated 11/24/63