Babushka Lady photos (lost photographs of John. F Kennedy assassination; existence unconfirmed; 1963)

This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its discussion of an assassination.

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The best-known picture of the Babushka Lady, taken just after the assassination, showing her calmly standing and apparently filming amid the chaos.

Status: Existence Unconfirmed

On November 22nd, 1963, then-American president John. F Kennedy was assassinated while in a car driving down downtown Dallas, Texas. However, eyewitnesses claim that a lady wearing a 'babushka'-style headscarf was taking photos during the assassination. There also have been supposed sightings of the lady on the filming of the assassination. However, these photos have never been released.

Sightings

Among the still-mysterious aspects of the assassination are the imagies of a dark-haired, heavyset woman that looked to be in her 30s wearing a voluminous tan trenchcoat, sunglasses and a scarf wrapped around her head and tied closely beneath her chin in the style nicknamed 'babushka'. She became a person of interest shortly after the event, when all film and other images were being carefully examined for evidence of a secondary attacker or accomplice on the 'grassy knoll' to one side of the road along which the Presidential motorcade was tarvelling. The 'babushka lady' was one of those standing in this area, and garnered particular attention not only for her unusual, unseasonal clothing - which could easily have served as a disguise - but since in the pictures taken immediately after the shooting began, while everyone around her has dropped to the ground, she is seen still calmly standing by and facing the roadside, holding her hands up to her face in a manner strongly suggestive of using a video camera.

Identity

The identity of the woman has never been confirmed, even as to whether she was a woman at all - in at least one of her appearances she has adopted a wide stance that seems more masculine than otherwise. A dancer named Beverly Oliver stepped forward in 1970, claiming that she had been recording the motorcade using a Super 8 Yashica camera and had turned over her film to two men claiming to be FBI agents, who gave her no receipts, and subsequently never returned her property despite promising to do so. Oliver claimed she did not follow the matter up further out of fears of being arrested for marijuana posession.

Oliver's story expanded with each retelling and eventually included the claim that she knew Jack Ruby (the man who killed actual assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in custody) who in turn had introduced her to JFK himself at a party. Unfurtunately she had no concrete corroborative evidence for any of it and her claims must be considered doubtful at best. As a tall, slim 17-year-old she would not physically have lined up with the shorter, more substantial woman in the photos; additionally the Yashica Super 8 wasn't yet being sold in the US market in 1963 (which she explained as an 'experimental' model given her by a well-connected friend).

Availability

Not only have none of the 'babushka lady's photos been found, they haven't even been confirmed to exist, as there is no way to prove from the photos if she was in fact holding a camera. This makes her the ideal star of the myriad conspiracies surrounding the event, with many theorizing that her camera was actually a gun (which would explain Oliver being given an 'experimental' model), or that she was there to record something that was part of the plot for later blackmail or other purposes.

Gallery

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  Another view of the Babushka Lady apparently filming the Presidential motorcade from the roadside.

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  A head-on view of what is likely the same woman in the crowd as the motorcade passes by.

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  Moments before JFK's assassination, from an alternative angle.