Year: 2024

Many of you stopped life this weekend to watch THE OCTPUS MURDERS on Netflix..

It was decent–if you like history or conspiracy theory you may really enjoy. It is a mixture of lots of history that really was conspiracy and really happened–and conjecture that leaves you a bit dismayed or confused and the things you may not know about history. Gen X shock at certain parts for sure…

But if you did watch the doc, you may be like us and scratching your head about one particular part that included information about the Zapruder film and the JFK assassination.

In American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, investigative journalist Cheri Seymour recalls being shown what she was told was the “real” Zapruder film, the footage of the 1963 assassination of John F. Kenney. In this version, the driver appears to be the shooter. However, Seymour suggests this was doctored in order to generate confusion and jeopardize her credibility. 

The incident unfolded when she went to visit Robert Booth Nichols, a man who claimed to have worked for the CIA. Michael Riconosciuto, one of Hansen and Casolaro’s main sources, said Nichols was “key to The Octopus,” but had warned not to speak to him, describing him as “absolutely scary.”

According to the account in the documentary, she went to visit Nichols at what she believes was a “safe house,” he started playing the Zapruder tape in slow motion. In this version, the driver took out a gun, turned around, and shot Kennedy. When she asked Nichols if it was a doctored tape, he reportedly replied, “This is the original one.”

The public supposedly saw the normal old regular one–you know, the one where the head goes back and to the left but the limo driver didn’t do it.

But here was the thing.. In this moment of the documentary, they use a snippet of the Zapruder film in which the bottom of the trunk is missing, making the tree appear as if it’s floating. “He says, ‘This is the one that you’re seeing in the media and it’s been doctored.’ He looked very, very intently at me and he said, ‘Nothing is as it appears to be.’ That tape was the last thing he did before I left,” states Seymour. 

Here is the problem for many who watched: They did not see a scene of Zapruder in which there was a floating tree…

So what gives?

We can collectively travel to REDDIT to see what the masses are saying about their experiences watching this..

There have been countless conspiracies about the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, even the limo driver did it theory. But the floating tree, to our knowledge, has not come up as a potential conspiracy theory at all since 1963..

This is a first–but again, is there even a floating tree. You can search up videos of the Zapruder film on Youtube, or just watch the movie JFK Where Oliver Stone has Kevin Costner say ‘back and to the left’ on repeat like a broken record. But either way, the challenge is there: Find the floating tree. We can’t.

It also seems unfair to let the ‘limo driver did it’ theory out there without addressing it cohesively. The idea that William Greer did it seems more than far fetched.

Now, there was plenty of concern and anger over Greer on that day, and he eventually apologized to Jackie Kennedy.

There was a public record of Greer being interviewed in 1983 about the assassination. “I was in the front seat, I was driving him when he was shot,” former Secret Service Agent Bill Greer told WBTV in 1983.

“I looked over my shoulder and saw the blood coming down Governor Connaly’s white shirt and I knew it was trouble,” said Greer. “Kellerman yelled out we’ve been hit.” Roy Kellerman was the other secret service agent who was in the front seat of the Kennedy car that day.

“I watched them massage his heart and I thought I saw movement, but there was no doubt he was dead,” he recalled. “It didn’t take long for the significance of what happened to sink in. It shook me up quite a bit.”

Greer retired from the Secret Service just a few years after the assassination and moved to Waynesville, North Carolina. He had nightmares for a while and always thought about why it all happened.

“I think that’s what gave me ulcers,” he said in 1983.

But did he ‘do it.’ Probably not, folks.

You can find tons of websites about the JFK topic, but here is one where they try to track all of the potential whodunits.

But they point out that Greer’s hands are on the steering wheel securely seconds before shots rang out.

So .. anything is surely possible. In this world, it seems like the impossible is possible more often than not. However discernment is also necessary when contemplating things of this nature.

So floating trees and limo drivers doing it just seem difficult to conjure up.

However, what so many fail to mention or remember, number 5 from the Umbrella Academy was certainly behind the fence that same day fighting with his adult self over the briefcase to bring time back, or forward, in time with Luther. …Ah ha, maybe THAT is why the tree temporarily floated. That’t it!