Footage of JFK motorcade racing to hospital sells for $137,500 at auction
DALLAS– Newly surfaced footage of President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade speeding down a Dallas highway toward a hospital after he was fatally wounded sold at auction Saturday for $137,500.
The 8mm color home film was offered by RR Auction in Boston. The auction house says that the buyer wishes to remain anonymous.
The film has been with the family of the man who took it, Dale Carpenter Sr., since he shot it on November 22, 1963. It begins as Carpenter narrowly misses the limousine carrying the president and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, but captures other vehicles in the motorcade as it drove along Lemmon Avenue toward downtown. The film then continues Kennedy was shot while Carpenter is rolling as the motorcade speeds down Interstate 35.
The shots were fired as the motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza Texas textbook warehouse, where the murderer was later found Lee Harvey Oswald had positioned himself from a sniper’s vantage point on the sixth floor. The murder itself was famously captured on film by Abraham Zapruder.
Carpenter’s footage of I-35, which lasts about ten seconds, shows Secret Service Agent Clint Hill — who famously jumped onto the back of the limousine as the shots rang out — standing above the president and Jacqueline Kennedy, whose pink suit can be seen. The president was pronounced dead after arriving at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of the auction house, said in a press release that the film “provides a gripping sense of urgency and heartbreak.”
Carpenter’s grandson, James Gates, said that while it was known in his family that his grandfather had films of that day, it was not often talked about. So Gates said that when the film, stored in a milk crate with other family films, was eventually passed on to him, he didn’t know exactly what his grandfather, who died in 1991 at age 77, had captured.
Gates projected it on his bedroom wall around 2010 and was initially unimpressed by the Lemmon Avenue images. But then the images of I-35 played out before his eyes. “That was shocking,” he said.
The auction house released photos of the portion of the film showing the race on I-35, but is not making video of that portion public.