Baton Rouge man recalls place at historic event

Over the last three decades, Richard A. Lipsey has watched as his eyewitness-to-history observations have been turned, twisted and tortured in support of conspiracy tales surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 46 years ago this month. The Baton Rouge businessman is not amused. Such storylines—some from the left, some from the right, and some from the ozone—upset Lipsey “greatly,” he says. So much so that it has soured one of the nation’s biggest gun distributors on interviews about those momentous events in November 1963. To him, the matter is settled: “The Warren Commission had it right.” To Lipsey, it is as obvious as the monstrous trophy polar bear that stands encased in the former big-game hunter’s Baton Rouge office: one gun, fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. Forget grassy knolls, multiple gunmen, muddled wound analyses and switched bodies, Lipsey intones. “It’s ridiculous.” He has pretty good bona fides for saying that: Lipsey was within feet of the Kennedy’s corpse when forensic pathologists, eight hours after the fatal shots were fired, sifted through the president’s ravaged brain and body to determine what happened. Read Lipsey’s incredible account in this month’s 225 by clicking here.