Jean Hill; Witness to JFK Assassination

Jean Hill, an eyewitness to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy who became known as “The Lady in Red” in the Abraham Zapruder film of the killing, has died.

Hill, 69, a retired schoolteacher, died of complications from a blood disease Tuesday at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where Kennedy died.

The grainy, amateur film shot by Zapruder, then a Dallas dressmaker, shows Hill clad in a red raincoat as she stood with friend Mary Moorman on Elm Street on Nov. 22, 1963. The Lincoln Continental carrying Kennedy, first lady Jaqueline Kennedy, Texas Gov. John B. Connally and his wife, Nellie, passed about 15 feet away.

In a police affidavit after the shooting, Hill said she heard “two shots,” and, after a pause “three or four more.” Her son, Billy Hill, said that she was the first witness to refer to the area from which she said she heard the shots as “the grassy knoll.” Jean Hill repeated her account to the Warren Commission, charged with investigating the assassination, in 1964. The commission, however, determined that the shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Connally had been fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository.

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Hill earned a degree from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, her son said. She taught in the Dallas public schools for more than 20 years.

In later years, she hit the talk show circuit and was co-author of a book, “JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness.”