One of the strangest enigmas of the
1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas was the
presence of “umbrella man.” This blurry figure is seen in photographs
raising a black umbrella along the presidential route, even though it
wasn’t raining and the sky was clear. Some saw him as proof of a
conspiracy, an advance man who was signaling the sniper. Others
suspected he might be the actual assassin himself, firing a poison dart
gun concealed in his parasol. 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 “umbrella man.” Granted, his explanation was a bit bizarre:
Witt disliked JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to
the United Kingdom, whom he faulted for supporting British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies toward Adolf 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 House Select Committee
on Assassinations — 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 did not contain a weapon. 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."
