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Woman believes film may offer new angle on Kennedy assassination.

DALLAS (AP) 10:25 AM 10/31/1995 - It was fear that caused Patsy Paschall to hold back the film for almost 32 years, she says.

Mrs. Paschall shot the film out of a window of the old Dallas County Courthouse on Nov. 22, 1963 as President John F. Kennedy's motorcade rolled into Dealey Plaza. It resumes seconds after shots were fired and shows the chaotic scene in front of the old Texas Schoolbook Depository Building.

The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots from the old schoolbook depository building that killed Kennedy and seriously wounded then Texas Gov. John Connally.

She kept mostly quiet about the film until recently, when she says she felt safe enough to really go public with it.

"I used to think that someone would blow my head off," the 58-year-old city employee cheerfully offers. On a work break, she glances around the ground floor of City Hall. "I feel safe now."

She hopes to sell the four-minute film, she said. But some say the film may raise more questions than it answers.

Some say it might show a compelling puff of smoke coming from the grassy knoll and movement behind the picket fence at the rear of the knoll -- something that might hint at a conspiracy. Others say the film has no new, stunning revelations.

Although versions and pieces of the film have floated in certain circles, the former court clerk from suburban Mesquite has kept it locked away in a safety deposit box.

Her attorney saw it, the FBI and the House Select Committee on Assassinations apparently viewed it, and Life magazine once borrowed a frame from it.

The general public has never seen the entire film, she says. Except for a dozen or so of her friends and associates, she says, no one has seen the complete version of what she sporadically captured with her little Bell & Howell camera.

The Dallas Morning News reported today that the jumpy, occasionally blurry film shows The motorcade passing down Main Street. The motorcade racing under the triple underpass. The frantic crowd scene in front of the Texas School Book Depository after the president had been shot.

"I had a view with a camera that no one else had," she said.

But unlike the famous film taken by Abraham Zapruder, the film does not show the actual shooting of the president. But she suggests that her film displays interesting views of the infamous grassy knoll as well as footage of Zapruder doing his filming.

Local amateur historian Mark Oakes finally tracked down Mrs. Paschall and her forgotten film last year.

He included a question-and-answer interview with her in a videotaped documentary, "Eyewitness Video-Real J.F.K. Facts," that is available at the Texas/Dallas Archives in the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas.

Oakes maintains that the film might show some sort of smoke near the knoll, as well as movement behind the picket fence.

He says he believes the film is worth $250,000 or perhaps "an unlimited price" if someone thought it offered evidence pointing to an assassination conspiracy.

Gary Mack, an archivist with the Sixth Floor Museum, says he doubts that it's worth as much as Oakes and Mrs. Paschall envision.

But he'd like to have it for the museum.

"It's interesting but not a crucial film," he says. "The film does not show the crucial shooting sequence, and that is far and away the most important consideration of any monetary values of film taken at Dealey Plaza.' He says.

Mrs. Paschall says she was so scared about the film that she decided not to stay at her house the night of the assassination.

She slept at her mother-in-law's home, called her attorney in the morning and had the film developed a few days later.

The film was turned over to the FBI a few days later and was returned to her a few weeks later.

Mrs. Paschall says she wonders why more people haven't sought her out over the years. In its Nov. 24, 1967, issue titled "Last Seconds of the Motorcade," Life magazine featured a photograph of her -- and a frame from her film.


Permission to post obtained from Associated Press.