One of the strangest enigmas of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas was the presence of “umbrella man.” The blurry figure is seen in photographs raising a black umbrella as he stands along the presidential route, even though the sky was clear. Some saw him as a proof of conspiracy, a sort of advance man who was signaling the sniper. Others suspected he might actually be the actual assassin, firing a poison dart gun concealed in his umbrella. However, when the House of Representatives reopened the JFK investigation in the late 1970s, a 53-year-old Dallas warehouse manager named Louie Steven Witt came forward and testified that he was the “umbrella man.” Granted, his explanation was a bit bizarre. Witt disliked JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, whom he faulted for supporting British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies toward Hitler. Chamberlain’s trademark was his ever-present umbrella, and Witt chose that day to brandish a big, conspicuous one in an effort to needle the president. He brought along a visual aid to the congressional hearing — a battered black umbrella that he claimed was the one he had used that day. A committee staffer popped it open to reveal that it contained no weapons. Witt added, “If the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place, I would be No. 1."
