Altgens photo (detail) with The Man in the Doorway, inset
Police say James W. "Ike" Altgens was found dead in his Dallas-area home on December 12. The body of his wife, Clara, was also found. The couple reportedly died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty furnace.
Altgens took a series of photographs of the presidential motorcade as it drove through Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. His fifth photograph was taken at the moment the first shot was fired. Years later, Altgens told author Richard Trask, "My first instinct was 'Well, they're shooting firecrackers up there,' or some kind of celebration on behalf of the President. And then I hear it again as the car comes on down. No one had the foggiest idea that something was taking place."
The fifth photograph became important when it was noticed that a man in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository bore a striking resemblance of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin. Obviously he could not simultaneously be in the doorway and firing from the sixth floor. The FBI concluded the man in the doorway was Billy Nolan Lovelady, another TSBD employee. Oswald himself told police he was in the building's lunchroom at the time of the assassination.
When the shooting stopped, Altgens raced to a telephone and provided the first word to the AP that Kennedy had been shot and seriously wounded. In a bylined story later that day, he wrote, "There was a burst of noise---the second one I heard---and pieces of flesh appeared to fly from President Kennedy's car.
"Blood covered the whole left side of his head.
"Mrs. Kennedy saw what had happened to her husband. She grabbed him exclaiming, 'Oh, no!'"
Altgens also took a famous photo of Mrs. Kennedy on her hands and knees on the trunk of the car, and an agent climbing onto its rear bumper.
He later testified before the Warren Commission, although he was not called until eight months after the assassination.
According to Richard Trask in Pictures of the Pain, Altgens was subpoenaed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to testify at the Clay Shaw trial in the late 1960s. The reluctant Altgens received a $300.00 check for air fare, but at the suggestion of former Texas Governor John Connally, cashed the check and spent the money. He ended up not testifying.
Trask also quotes Altgens as saying, in regard to conspiracy theories in the JFK case, "Until [researchers] come up with solid evidence to support their claims, I see no value in wasting my time with them."
Altgens, a lifelong Dallas-area resident, worked for the AP for more than 40 years. He retired in 1979.
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