odditiesWikipedia1963 · Dealey Plaza, Dallas, USA
A blurry figure in the Kennedy assassination photo became a famous second-gunman theory
The Badge Man is a shadowy shape in the Mary Moorman photograph taken in Dealey Plaza as President John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963. Some conspiracy theorists claim it is a gunman on the grassy knoll, because a bright spot on its chest looks like a police badge. The picture was taken a fraction of a second after the fatal shot, and the image is too low in resolution to show whether the shape is a person at all. Experts point to other explanations, including an optical distortion from a Coca-Cola bottle or ordinary background objects, and the figure appears in no other photograph or witness account.
A grainy, heavily compressed copy can blur edges, so a dark muzzle flash or smoke makes shapes look more defined than they are. Enhancing contrast in a low-resolution image amplifies noise and random patterns, which the brain readily interprets as figures or faces, a tendency called pareidolia. That is why photo experts say the detail is not there to settle the question.
The Badge Man shows how a single ambiguous frame can be read as proof, and it has stayed in assassination debates for decades. The House Select Committee on Assassinations examined the photograph and found no evidence of hidden figures.
The enhanced copy that revived the theory came from Gary Mack, then curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.
Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
Image: Wikimedia Commons
