Chapter 02
Chain of Custody
From a Kodak processing sink in Dallas to a climate-controlled vault in College Park, Maryland — the documented movement of the camera-original and its earliest copies.
Why the chain matters
The camera-original is a unique physical object: a single strip of exposed reversal film with no negative. Every argument about alteration, missing frames, or "second-day" editing turns on whether the object held today by the National Archives is the same strip that ran through Zapruder's camera. The record below is drawn from the ARRB's 1998 chain-of-custody report, sworn testimony, and contemporaneous invoices from Kodak and Jamieson.
Timeline
Nov 22, 1963 · ~6:30 p.m.
Kodak Processing Lab, Dallas
Camera-original developed under Zapruder's supervision. Kodak techs Phil Chamberlain and Tom Nulty processed the film; Zapruder retained the original.
Nov 22, 1963 · ~8:00 p.m.
Jamieson Film Company, Dallas
Three first-generation contact copies made from the original. Numbered #0185, #0186, #0187 by Kodak.
Nov 22, 1963 · night
Zapruder's office
Two copies given to Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels. Sorrels forwarded them to Chief James Rowley in Washington and to the FBI's Dallas field office.
Nov 23, 1963
Zapruder's office
Richard Stolley of Life magazine negotiates print rights for $50,000. Zapruder donates the first $25,000 to the widow of Officer J. D. Tippit.
Nov 25, 1963
New York
Life acquires all rights (motion-picture and print) for a total of $150,000 in six installments. Time Inc. takes physical custody of the camera-original.
Nov 29, 1963
Life offices, Chicago
Life publishes 31 frames as still photographs. Frame Z-313 is not published in this issue.
1969
New Orleans
Life licenses a bootleg-suppressed copy to DA Jim Garrison for the Clay Shaw trial; the film is shown publicly for the first time.
1975 · March 6
ABC's Good Night America
Robert Groden and Dick Gregory air the film in motion on U.S. network television for the first time. Public reaction leads directly to formation of the HSCA.
1975 · April 9
New York
Time Inc. returns all rights and the camera-original to the Zapruder family for a symbolic $1.
1978
National Archives, College Park, MD
The Zapruder family places the camera-original on deposit with NARA for preservation. Legal ownership remains with the family.
1998 · Aug 1
National Archives
Under the JFK Records Act, the Assassination Records Review Board declares the camera-original an 'assassination record' and takes it by eminent domain. Compensation is deferred to arbitration.
1999 · Aug 3
Federal arbitration panel
Panel awards the Zapruder heirs $16,000,000 plus interest for the camera-original. Copyright to the images is retained by the family and later donated to the Sixth Floor Museum in 2000.
2000 · Dec 30
Dallas
The Zapruder family donates the film's copyright and all first-generation copies to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. The camera-original remains at NARA in cold storage.
What is genuinely disputed
Two gaps in the chain are noted by serious researchers. First, the movement of the film between the Kodak lab and the Jamieson copy house on the evening of November 22 is documented only by later testimony from Zapruder and Kodak employee Richard Blair. Second, the ARRB's 1997 interviews with NPIC (National Photographic Interpretation Center) analysts Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter describe a briefing on the night of November 23 involving a Secret Service courier and a film they were told came from a lab in Rochester, not Dallas (ARRB interview memoranda, 1997). These accounts are contested, decades-old, and unsupported by contemporaneous documents; researchers Doug Horne and David Lifton treat them as significant, while the ARRB itself declined to draw any conclusion.