NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – 
Charles Ray Peterson, 81, made a shocking confession to family members yesterday as they had gathered to be by his side during his last hours at River Oaks Hospital in New Orleans. Peterson, a native of New Orleans, told his son, Harold Peterson, that he wanted him to gather the family before he was gone. What he told them has left the entire family in absolute disbelief.
“First he told us that he was in Dallas the day that JFK was assassinated, and that he was there when it happened. It was really odd because he had never ever mentioned that he was there that day to anyone after talking about it all these years,” Harold Peterson said. “He looked up and said, ‘It was me! I was the second gunman on the grassy knoll!”
Ever since President John F. Kennedy was shot to death on November 22, 1963, conspiracy theories have circulated about his death and the circumstances of the assassination. Many believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was set up for the killing, and that based on the trajectory in which President Kennedy was hit, the kill shot could not have come from the seventh floor of the Book Depository located in Dealey Plaza.
Curiously, several witnesses died within just a few short years of the assassination from various ‘untimely accidents,’ such as Lee Bower, who was working directly across from the grassy knoll when the shots were fired. Bower had said in a 1966 television interview that he had seen a flash and a puff of smoke behind a wooden fence just behind the grassy knoll. Just months later, Bowers died in a single car accident.
Harold Peterson said his father confessed to being the man behind the picket fence, and it was he who landed the kill shot, not Oswald.
“He wanted to clear the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. He told us that Oswald was innocent and had been set up because he had owed a lot of money to someone with power. Dad did not mention who else was behind it,” Peterson said. “To be honest, at first we thought he was just talking crazy from the meds he was on, or maybe playing one last joke, because that’s how my dad was, but then when he wept, I knew it was true. My dad killed JFK!”
Charles Ray Peterson passed away peacefully just after sharing the news with his family. He had been hospitalized during his final weeks while suffering from adrenal cancer.