Abraham Zapruder

Abraham Zapruder was born into a Russian-Jewish family in the city of Kovel in Ukraine (then under the Russian Empire). He received only four years of formal education in Russia. In 1920 during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War, he emigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, New York. Zapruder pronounced his last name with the stress on the first syllable, not the second.

In 1941, he moved to Dallas to work in the garment industry and co-founded a company called Nardis. In 1959, he founded his own company that produced two clothing brands, Chalet and Jennifer, Jr.'s. His offices were located in the Dal-Tex Building, just off Dealey Plaza.

Zapruder was a supporter of the Democratic Party and a fan of President John F. Kennedy. When he learned that Kennedy's motorcade would pass through Dealey Plaza, he decided to film the procession with his Bell & Howell movie camera.

His film captured the assassination of the President and has become one of the most studied pieces of film in history.

After the assassination

About an hour and a half after the assassination, and while the undeveloped film was still in the camera and had yet to be processed, Zapruder appeared on Dallas television station WFAA where he gave a now famous interview.

But WFAA had no capability to develop 8 mm film and so it was taken to Eastman Kodak who agreed to process it immediately. Three copies were run off, with two going to the Secret Service and one to Zapruder. He later screened the footage for law enforcement officials and several journalists including Dan Rather, who was a young CBS reporter at the time.

Zapruder, realizing that he may have critical evidence, agreed to turn the footage over to Secret Service agent Forest Sorrels, who was not interested in the original and perfectly happy to have a copy. Zapruder made three copies, retaining the original footage, and began shopping it around to media outlets.

Zapruder eventually sold the original and the publishing rights to his film to Life Magazine for $150,000, divided into six annual payments of $25,000. He donated $25,000 of the proceeds to the widow of slain Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. After his death, his heirs recovered the rights to the film.

Zapruder donated his first $25,000 payment to the widow of murdered Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit. Part of the deal with Life was that Frame 313, showing the fatal shot, would not be shown.

Zapruder later testified before the Warren Commission and at the 1969 trial of Clay Shaw. He died of a malignant brain tumor in 1970, in Dallas.

Zapruder was played by Ray LePere in the 1991 film JFK.

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