When JFK was killed in Dealey Plaza in 1963 the crowd erupted in chaos as one woman stood calmly while she appeared to be filming the assassination — but her identity is a mystery

The Babushka Lady has fascinated JFK assassination conspiracy theorists for decades  

It’s been 60 years since the world was left shaken by the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy but polls still convinced carried out gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone during the killing.

To this day JFK’s murder remains the subject of many conspiracy theories and at the heart of dozens of them is one mysterious woman who was present that day. When JFK was shot and killed while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, the crowds erupted in chaos.

People fled the scene and ducked for cover as the horrifying sound of three gunshots rang out. But there was one figure who stood out from the crowd.

Amidst all the mayhem a lone woman was captured in several pictures and films standing calmly as she appeared to hold a camera up to her face while she continued to film the scenes around her. Dubbed the “Babushka Lady” due to the headscarf she was wearing, which was similar to the kind stereotypically worn by Russian grandmothers, the woman can be seen standing on the grass between Elm and Main Streets in footage filmed by other onlookers including Abraham Zapruder, Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore, and Mark Bell.

The Babushka Lady appeared to stand calmly while others ducked for cover (Image: Youtube)

After the shooting, she crossed Elm Street and followed a crowd that headed up the grassy knoll inside Dealey Plaza and was last seen in photographs walking east on Elm Street. The Babushka Lady’s close proximity to the president’s car at the time of his shooting suggests she could have possibly captured some of the closest footage of the assassination ever recorded.

But over the past six decades, the FBI has failed to ever find the Babushka Lady and both her identity and the important footage she may have recorded remain a mystery. In 1970 the search for the Babushka Lady took a turn when a woman named Beverly Oliver told conspiracy researcher Gary Shaw it was her — and she had a bizarre tale to go with her confession.

She was spotted in several films and pictures from the day of the assassination (Image: Youtube)

Beverly claimed she’d captured footage of the entire assassination and the chaos that followed on a Yashica Super 8 camera but that the camera and it’s footage were later confiscated by two men who told her they were with the FBI. She said the men had told her she’d get the camera back within 10 days but that they never followed up on their promise to return it.

She reportedly explained she never ended up asking for the camera back through fear of being arrested for possession of marijuana. Beverly also claimed her connection to the JFK assassination didn’t end there, as she said she knew Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who shot and killed JFK’s assassin on live television two days after the murder.

Many Americans are still waiting for answers about JFK’s assassination (Image: Bettmann Archive)

She’d been working as a dancer at a club next to Jack’s Carousel Club and claims he knew Oswald personally and introduced her to him. But Beverley’s story didn’t quite add up.

For a start, she would have been just 17 years old at the time of JFK’s assassination and the Babushka Lady appeared to be in her 30s or 40s. Secondly, the camera Beverley claimed to have used wasn’t even on the market until 1969, six years after the assassination.

When confronted with this fact, Beverly brushed it off by claiming that the camera had been an “experimental” model and she wasn’t even sure whether it had the manufacturer’s name on it. But ultimately, there is no conclusive evidence she was even in Dealey Plaza that day.