Authors: Bill O'Reilly
Killing Kennedy
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This book is dedicated to my ancestors, the Kennedys of Yonkers, New York.
Hardworking, generous, and honest folks.
Contents
A Note to Readers
N
OVEMBER 22, 1963
M
INEOLA,
N
EW
Y
ORK
A
PPROXIMATELY 2:00 P.M.
The students in Brother Carmine Diodati’s freshman Religion class were startled. Over the loudspeaker, a radio report crackled into the Chaminade High School classroom. President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas, and taken to the hospital. A short time later we would all learn he was dead. No one knew what to say.
Most Americans born before 1953 remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that JFK had been assassinated. The days following that terrible Friday were filled with sadness and confusion. Why did it happen? Who really killed the president? What kind of country did we live in anyway?
The assassination of JFK was somewhat personal for me. My maternal grandmother was born Winifred Kennedy, and my Irish-Catholic family had deep emotional ties to the young president and his family. It felt as if someone in my own home had died violently. Like most kids on Long Island, I didn’t care much about national politics. But I vividly remember pictures of JFK displayed in the homes of my relatives. To them, he was a saint. To me, he was a distant figure who died in a terrible way, his brain splattered all over the trunk of a car. The vision of his wife, Jacqueline, crawling onto the back of the limo in order to retrieve the president’s shattered skull has stayed with me always.
* * *
Martin Dugard and I were well pleased that millions of people read and enjoyed
Killing Lincoln
. We want to make history accessible to everyone. We want to tell readers exactly what happened and why, using a style that is entertaining as well as informative. After chronicling the last days of Abraham Lincoln, the progression to John Kennedy was a natural.
It has been widely pointed out that the two men had much in common. In fact, the parallels are amazing:
Lincoln was first elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.