HANOVER – Kennedy conspiracy theorists appear to have one less bullet in their arsenal. Hany Farid, a computer science professor and expert in digital forensics at Dartmouth College, spent two months evaluating a photograph of John F. Kennedy shooter Lee Harvey Oswald.

"You can't really authenticate a photo in all honesty," Farid said of the image, which shows Oswald holding a Marxist newspaper and a rifle. "But I can say pretty definitively that the things that people thought made the photo a fake, well, those people are wrong. And it doesn't make them stupid. I was wrong too. But that photo is not the proof they think it is."

Claims this famous photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald have been a staple of conspiracy theorists. Click on the photo to view it at a larger size in another window.

It's long been the contention of conspiracy theorists that photos of Oswald were doctored as part of an elaborate cover-up after the President's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.

Farid said over the years, he's received dozens and dozens of requests to analyze the photo. What helped him decide to take on the project was a recent study he worked on looking at how the human brain processes images.

He used a computer program Facegen, to build a virtual 3D model of Oswald's head. Once that was completed, he added in the background features of the photo. Through a series of computations, he figured out where the camera had to be, the trajectory of the sun and where Oswald was in relation to the camera.

After that, it was many a sleepless night Farid said, trying to match exactly the shadows to those pictured in the photo.

"I was obsessed with it for two months," he said. "I would wake up in the middle of the night to work on it. . . For a good two weeks I couldn't get the shadows to match (the original photo)."

But then there was a Eureka moment.

"I had modeled his neck wrong, I had made it much too thin," he said. "After that it all started to come together."

FARID

Farid said given the technology available 46 years ago, there is no way someone would have been able to get the internal and external elements of the photo just right in order to fabricate not only the one photo, but two others in the series.

Debra Conway, president of JFK Lancer Productions & Publications, a pro-conspiracy Web site, said though she still believes it's likely there was a conspiracy, she's satisfied that the photos weren't doctored.

"I've actually met Marina Oswald and she said she remembers taking the photos," Conway said. "There are people though, who will still continue to believe the photos were faked."