Secret Service agent Paul Landis waited nearly 60 years before speaking publicly about what he saw after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. In 2023, Landis revealed that he picked up a nearly intact bullet from the presidential limousine moments after the shooting, moved it, and placed it on the president’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital. The disclosure raised new questions about the official Warren Commission account, which had concluded that a single bullet caused multiple wounds and was later found on a different stretcher.
Landis was assigned to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and he was one of the agents closest to her in the chaos of November 22nd, 1963. His account of that day, along with what he said he witnessed of her private grief, remained largely unshared for decades. He described her as visibly devastated, and according to his account, she made no effort to change her blood-stained pink suit, saying she wanted people to see what had been done to her husband. Jackie Kennedy was born on July 28th, 1929, at Southampton Hospital in the Hamptons after a last-minute change of plans from a Manhattan delivery.
Her father, John “Black Jack” Bouvier III, was a Wall Street figure known for his charm and his growing financial troubles, while her mother, Janet Norton Lee, came from a banking family. The marriage was already fragile, and the strain only became more public as her father’s gambling debts and affairs made the papers. She began riding horses at age three, encouraged by her mother, who believed it taught discipline and poise. By age five, Jackie won a blue ribbon at the Devon horse show in the under-nine category.
Horses became more than a sport for her; they offered an escape from the tension of her parents’ troubled marriage. When her parents finally divorced in 1940, she was 11 years old, and the emotional weight of that rupture stayed with her through adulthood. Her intelligence and independence showed early. As a young woman, she worked as a photographer and writer, covering events that often exceeded the expectations for women in journalism at the time.
She traveled to Europe, interviewed figures in the fashion world, and wrote with a sharpness that caught the attention of her editors. She also took photographs during a trip to Korea and captured images of civil rights demonstrations, some of which she kept private, knowing her employer would not publish them. In 1951, she met a young senator, John F. Kennedy, at a dinner party at the home of journalist Charles Bartlett.
Their courtship led to marriage in 1953. As a political wife, she continued to write, often without credit, helping with speeches and contributing to publications. She wrote about fashion for Vogue and authored articles even while on her honeymoon. By the time she became First Lady in 1961, she had already developed the skills she would use to shape the White House’s public image.
As First Lady, Jackie Kennedy took on a major restoration project at the White House. She assembled a committee led by Henry Francis du Pont, sought out historic furniture, and acquired pieces including a desk that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson. She turned the executive mansion into a working museum and, in February 1962, led a televised tour that drew an estimated 56 million viewers. The broadcast led to roughly one million dollars in donations and an honorary Emmy, the only one ever awarded to a First Lady.
Her cultural influence extended beyond interior decoration. In 1961, she arranged for Spanish cellist Pablo Casals to perform at the White House, despite the fact that he had long been excluded from performing in the United States due to the Franco regime’s politics. She also invited Leonard Bernstein to compose music for the National Cultural Center. Her aim, according to reports from the time, was to use art and culture as a bridge for political tensions, even if it angered powerful figures.
But her private life carried heavy burdens. In August 1963, she gave birth to Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who arrived at 34 weeks and weighed just over four and a half pounds. The baby had breathing problems that were difficult to treat at the time, and he died after only three days. President Kennedy reportedly had the television removed from her hospital room so she would not see the news coverage of the loss.
Around the same period, she was managing Addison’s disease, which drained her energy but did not stop her public duties. The Kennedy marriage was followed by the birth of Caroline in 1957 and John Jr. in November 1960, just days after the presidential election. Jackie continued to guard their privacy carefully.
She hired Pamela Turnure as her press secretary, controlling access to the family and managing media coverage with deliberate strategy. Her careful handling of images made her a major cultural force, and her 1962 Life magazine cover reportedly became the best-selling issue of that year. Then came November 22nd, 1963. In Dallas, Jackie wore a pink Chanel-style suit with navy trim and gold buttons.
After the shots rang out, blood covered her clothes, but she did not change. She boarded Air Force One still wearing the suit and stood beside Lyndon B. Johnson as he was sworn in as president. When pressed about why she had not removed it, her reported answer was that she wanted the country to see what had been done to her husband.
The suit was later placed in a sealed storage facility, scheduled to remain locked until 2103. At Parkland Hospital, she held her husband’s hand after doctors declared him dead. She whispered that she loved him, repeatedly, according to those nearby. Agents Clint Hill and Roy Kellerman stayed close, shielding her from cameras and reporters.
She remained at the bedside long after his death and asked to see her children. In private recordings made later, she said she could still hear the shot in her dreams. On November 25th, 1963, she organized the funeral with deliberate precision. She requested a riderless horse, now a well-known image from that day, and chose an eternal flame to mark the grave.
Millions of Americans lined the Washington streets, and far more watched on television. She lit the flame herself. In 1964, she moved to New York and declined the offer of widow’s benefits. She sought a new path and, in 1975, began working as an editor at Viking Press.
Over the following years, she helped produce dozens of books, including works on history and art, and played a role in the campaign to save Grand Central Station from demolition. She later moved to Doubleday, where her notable projects included a book by Michael Jackson that became a major commercial success. Her second marriage, to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, took place in 1968 on his private island. The couple faced heavy media scrutiny, and photographs of her, later published without consent, caused her considerable distress.
After his death and in the years that followed, she continued to work, raised her two children, and avoided public attention as much as possible. The story of that day in Dallas did not fully resurface until 2023, when Landis published his account. His description of finding a whole bullet in the limousine and moving it to the president’s stretcher raised questions about the official investigation’s version of events. The Warren Commission had built its “single bullet theory” around a projectile found on a stretcher at Parkland, but if Landis moved the bullet before it was discovered, questions about how it got there and what it meant for the official account remain unresolved.
He waited decades to tell the story, keeping his silence until long after many of the central figures had died.
