Badge Man
The Badge Man is a figure that is purportedly present within the Mary Moorman photograph of the assassination of United States president John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
Former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi criticized the Badge Man interpretation, and analyst Dale K. Myers has argued that it is not an actual person due to proportional discrepancies.
She captured images of the presidential limousine, several other close witnesses, including Abraham Zapruder filming, two Dallas police motorcycle escorts, and the "grassy knoll" beside the motorcade route.
[3] In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, police officers and spectators ran to the grassy knoll, from where some witnesses believed the shots had originated, but no sniper was found.
[4] The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole shooter, and that he had shot Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository building.
The RIT report found no evidence of human forms anywhere in the background, and the specific area behind the stockade fence was deemed to be so underexposed that it was impossible to glean any information from it.
[3] The curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (the former Texas School Book Depository),[11][3][12][note 1] Mack was described by skeptic Vincent Bugliosi as one of the few respected Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.
[13][14] Upon enhancement, they identified an individual wearing a uniform—possibly that of a Dallas police officer—standing behind the stockade fence, with his face obscured by a muzzle flash, but with a small bright object visible on his chest.
[15] When analyzing the photo, Mack initially considered whether the figure may in fact be Arnold, a soldier who claimed to be on the grassy knoll with a movie camera.
[19] The 1988 British documentary series The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which features White's work, proposes that the Badge Man was Lucien Sarti, a French national and alleged contract killer.
[20] Other conspiracy theorists have suggested that the Badge Man is J. D. Tippit,[21] a Dallas police officer who was killed by Oswald shortly after Kennedy's assassination.
[25] Researcher and computer animator Dale Myers has argued that the measurements of the grassy knoll area require the alleged figure to have been in an impossible position to fire a weapon at the motorcade, saying "if [the Badge Man were] truly a human being of average height and build, was located 32 feet [9.8 m] behind the fence line and elevated 4.5 feet [1.4 m] above the ground – an unreasonable and untenable firing position.
