If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission.
60 years after the death of John F. Kennedy, a former Secret Service agent who worked with the first family during his term is opening up about the tragic aftermath of his 1963 assassination.
Paul Landis was assigned to Kennedy’s two children, Caroline and John Jr., and later to the first lady, Jackie Kennedy. He was on the scene in Dallas, Texas when the president was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald while Jackie was sitting beside him in the presidential limousine.
Landis is set to release his memoir, The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years, on October 10. In it, he details his recollections of the president’s murder — including new claims that could give weight to the long-held theory that Oswald did not act alone on November 22, 1963. But he also gives a heartbreaking account of how those closest to JFK processed his death, namely Jackie.
In an advanced copy of the book obtained by SheKnows, Landis recalls demanding Jackie leave the limo after it reached Parkland Memorial Hospital with the president’s body shortly after the shooting. “She was holding what was left of the president’s head in her lap,” Landis writes. Landis remembers gathering Jackie’s belongings, now stained in blood, from the back of the car as she rushed to follow her husband into the hospital.
He reflects on a painfully long wait in the hospital until doctors confirmed what agents already knew, the president was dead, and goes into detail about the events that followed — Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as president on Air Force One, the return to Washington and Kennedy’s funeral. But he rather interestingly omits personal details about Jackie’s reactions — perhaps out of respect or due to patchy memories of the decades-old trauma.
However, while speaking with The New York Times, Landis did reveal that, despite Jackie’s strong exterior and hectic itinerary in the months after her husband’s death, she had fleeting moments of irrepressible emotions in the presence of her agents.
In those tragic months of fresh grief, as she prepped to move out of the White House and end her time as first lady, Landis would catch her break down alone. “She’d be in the back seat sobbing and you’d want to say something but it wasn’t really our place to say anything,” Landis recalled.
Jackie was Landis’ final assignment during his time as a Secret Service agent as he left the service six months after JFK’s death, haunted by the memories of that day. His memoir will be the first time he tells the story in his own words.
Before you go, click here to see photos of JFK and Jackie O.’s grown-up grandkids.
Leave a Comment