‘Great Lawyering’

THE STORY OF PASSMAN & JONES AND THE ZAPRUDER FILM.

Written by Jerry Alexander

What I am about to tell you is a story. Certainly not as historically accurate and astute as any of those written by real historians about those terrible days, but a good story, nonetheless. The story is about some lawyers who rendered extraordinarily good legal services under very trying circumstances. If it varies in some detail from some other account of these incidents, I apologize, but I must tell and remain true to this story because it is now a firm legend. It is the story of the two founders of my firm, Sam Passman and Shannon Jones Jr., and their work from November 22 through November 25, 1963—four short days—in representing Abraham Zapruder, who took the Zapruder home movie of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This is their story as recounted by them to me, starting 10 years after the events and revealed in snippets over lunch or cocktails, and then toward the end of Sam’s life—as best as he could remember events 40 years after they occurred. It was never told at the time because good lawyers in that day did not want publicity, especially when their client did not want it. It was a different time...

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