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A new documentary about the JFK assassination features an Altoona native who has researched the subject almost since it happened.
Barry Ernest now lives in Harrisburg, but he grew up in Altoona. He's one of several experts included in the documentary "A Coup in Camelot,'' which is now available in DVD and Blu-Ray through Amazon and the website www.acoupincamelot .com.
The film won the jury prize for best documentary at last year's Cinema at the Edge Independent Film Festival in Santa Monica, California.
Although the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963 has led to numerous books, films and other resources about that tragic day, the writer and producer of "A Coup in Camelot'' said this documentary breaks new ground.
Art Van Kampen, who has worked on shows for the History Channel, Animal Planet, the Science Channel, MTV, the Travel Channel and TLC, said initially he looked at the JFK project as just another job. When he began, he didn't know much about the assassination history beyond what most people know about it, he said.
"Being someone who didn't have much prior knowledge to the topic I was amazed at what I found to be very astute and well-thought-out research by people who had the credentials, experience and facts to back up what they were saying, who could rationally and step by step present the case for a conspiracy,'' he said.
"I had no idea that such work and experts existed," he added. "These are the people that we filled this movie with. In researching the film before and during my writing of it I watched just about every movie (and) video and looked at every theory that had ever been out there. While a lot of them have merits and some great work has been done, none of them have the application of science, forensics, documentation and utilization of modern technology the way that we do in this film.''
Van Kampen said he decided to include Ernest's research in the documentary because his material impressed Van Kampen as well-sourced and reliable.
That's probably because Ernest, whose interest in the JFK assassination began in 1966, spent many years working in state government and also as an investigative journalist.
As Van Kampen combed through all sorts of documents, interviews and eyewitness accounts trying to decide what to use for his project, material like Ernest's research rose to the surface because of its accuracy and detail, Van Kampen said.
"Barry's work stood out not only because of his credentials but the dogged determination by which he presented his findings,'' he said. "He literally spent decades trying to solve a mystery before he was ultimately able to present and verify his research beyond a shadow of a doubt. And that is (the) type of credibility and research that...we were looking for in making this documentary.''
Ernest is a former features reporter for the York (Pa). Sunday News and covered the federal beat for the Syracuse (NY). Herald-Journal and the Syracuse Herald-American. He also worked for the Pennsylvania state government as director of communications and press secretary for the Department of Community Affairs.
In that capacity, he wrote speeches for the secretaries of both the commerce and community affairs departments and also contributed to speeches given by former Gov. Dick Thornburgh, he said.
Three years after the JFK assassination, Ernest said he and a fellow college classmate had a discussion about the Warren Commission report in class.
The classmate suggested that Ernest take a second, closer look at the report, which is the U.S. government's official version of the assassination.
"This became a challenge,'' Ernest said.
His re-examination of the report led him to the discovery of a little-known witness, Victoria Adams, who had been interviewed by the commission but later ignored, Ernest said. Adams' testimony was crucial because if she was to be believed, her statement conflicted with the timeline of the movements of the man most people believe killed Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, he said.
Adams claimed she was also in the Texas School Book Depository Building, which is the location Oswald allegedly used to fire the fatal shots. After the shots rang out from a sixth-floor window, according to the commission report, Oswald allegedly hid his weapon and ran down the stairs to the second-floor lunchroom in the depository building.
There he met the depository manager, who identified Oswald as an employee of the book depository to a police officer who had run into the building. The manager and police officer, at that time not thinking Oswald was a suspect, then continued up to the roof, the report stated.
But Adams testified that she entered the stairwell at the time Oswald would have had to have been on the stairs if he did run down from the sixth floor and she said she never saw anyone on the stairs when she was in the stairwell.
"She was on the fourth floor of the Depository, watching the motorcade from an office window,'' he said. "Seconds after the last shot, she ran to the back stairway and went down to the first floor. Now the commission's question became, was she on the stairs at the same time as Oswald?''
She told the same story every time, to the Dallas police, the FBI, the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, the Secret Service and to the Warren Commission, Ernest said.
"(She testified) that she entered the stairway moments after the shooting and had seen or heard no one on the stairs,'' Ernest said. "The commission admitted if her timing was accurate, and due to the nature and condition of those stairs, she should have seen or at least heard the escaping assassin. But because she hadn't, the commission concluded she was either wrong or was lying about the timing of her trip. The commission concluded she had come down much later.''
The discrepancies in the report started Ernest on his quest to uncover the truth about Adams' testimony.
"The more I studied her story, the more it became clear that even though the commission considered Adams a crucial witness, it never fully resolved this timing issue,'' he said. "In fact, it completely ignored it. Why? My focus thus centered on determining whether Victoria Adams was accurate.''
His years-long search for Adams ended in 2002 when he finally did get to interview her. Although reluctant at first to talk, she eventually agreed to a series of email and phone interviews. From her words and his research, he wrote his book, "The Girl on the Stairs: The Search for a Missing Witness to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy.''
"There is no statute of limitations to the truth,'' Ernest said. "Our past, and one might convincingly argue, our future depends on honest and accurate reporting. Victoria Adams, for instance, told the truth. She did what we are all taught to do. Yet she was discredited, humiliated, basically branded a liar, and if it wasn't for my persistence, would have been consigned to obscurity. She once said to me all she ever wanted was for people to know she had told the truth.''
Ernest, who appeared in a segment of "America Declassified'' on the History Channel for the 50th anniversary of the assassination, has also done several interviews and discussions on national radio programs about the topic. He got his start writing about the subject in letters to the editor of the Mirror and talking about it on radio station WVAM in Altoona.
He said he's seen parts of the documentary that he finds "insightful and educational."
"It's my hope that, like me so many years ago, 'A Coup in Camelot' may spark a new generation into seeking answers and not taking everything for granted,'' he said.