That afternoon in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the sun may have been shining, but a cloud hovered over a nation.

United States President John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated, and there was one question on everyone’s mind: how did this happen?

Forty-six years later, we’re still asking that question. Though the Warren Commission and other government agencies concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald delivered the fatal shot, with Jack Ruby gunning him down in retaliation, conspiracy theories to the contrary abound.

Was it really a Mafia job, insidious insiders or international relations gone awry?

It’s all the subject of four new specials airing on Sunday, the anniversary of Kennedy’s death. Discovery Channel will première JFK: Inside the Target Car and Ruby & Oswald, while sister station Discovery Civilization debuts JFK: Altered Statesman and JFK: The Conspiracy Myths.

“We came in with no particular bias,” says Erik Nelson, executive producer of the four programs. “We didn’t do programs that were going to prove there was a conspiracy, and we didn’t do programs that would prove there wasn’t a conspiracy. We decided to approach it completely neutrally, but forensically recreate what we could.”

Think CSI, but with a historical twist – a new approach to a decades-old dilemma. “In the ‘60s, the Warren Commission didn’t even do this. They didn’t have the technology or the resources. We did the equivalent of creating a time machine, going back to use modern-day science and assuming there wasn’t a conclusion,” explains Nelson.

“In the case of Inside the Target Car, we recreated an artificial human [to simulate Kennedy] and ran the tests; in the case of Ruby & Oswald, we went back to the original location with the original eye witnesses and in essence duplicated every moving part of Ruby shooting Oswald to see what happened, what could have happened.”

The conclusions? “What these experiments strongly suggest is that we can say with a fair degree of certainty that the shot that killed Kennedy came from the sixth-floor window of The Texas School Book Depository. And we can say that the events that led up to Ruby shooting Oswald were absolutely a collage of coincidences.

“If it was a conspiracy, it was the worst-run, most inept, crazy conspiracy in history. There are so many things the conspirators would have needed to control. If Oswald hadn’t have asked to put his sweater on, delaying five minutes, he’d have gotten in the car and left before Ruby got there.”

The other two specials tackle similar ground. JFK: The Conspiracy Myths also recounts the events surrounding the assassination, while the political biography JFK: Altered Statesman tackles Kennedy’s secret psychological history.

“Once you watch this, it absolutely redefines how anyone should think about the assassination of Kennedy, and also conspiracy theories in general.”

This isn’t the first time Nelson has tackled the correlation of conspiracies and major world events. He’s also behind the 9/11 Conspiracies special, which centres on the unreported events of Sept. 11, 2001.

And he knows all too well that even with the most painstaking recreations, forensics and experiments, not everyone will be convinced of his findings.

“There’s no possible way that anything we ever do will ever change the minds of people who are already believers in this. Never going to happen,” says Nelson, an American who now lives in Vancouver.

“It’s very comforting to believe in conspiracy theories and organized explanations for random fate. It’s like trying to talk someone out of a religion. Our intention isn’t to convince conspiracy believers; our intention is to get people to think about it and at least put this in the culture.”

Thoughts? melissa@tvguide.ca


All of the specials air Sunday, Nov. 22 – JFK: Inside the Target Car at 8 p.m. ET, and Ruby & Oswald at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery Channel. On Discovery Civilization, JFK: Altered Statesman airs 10 p.m. ET, while JFK: The Conspiracy Myths airs 11 p.m. ET.