'Lady in Red' JFK assassination witness dies at 69

DALLAS, Texas (Reuters) -- Jean Hill, known as "The Lady in Red" in an eyewitness film of President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, has died at age 69 of a blood disease, her family said Thursday.

Hill died on Tuesday in the same Dallas hospital, Parkland, to which Kennedy was rushed by frantic Secret Service agents after being fatally shot whiled riding in an open convertible on November 22, 1963.

"She loved the fact that she was a witness to history," Hill's daughter Jeanne Poorman told Reuters.

"With the inordinate number of people connected with witnessing the assassination who died in suspicious circumstances, she was proud that she was a survivor," Poorman said of her mother.

Hill, a Dallas school teacher, was wearing a red raincoat when she saw Kennedy assassinated. She maintained later she had heard several more shots than the three bullets the official Warren Commission determined were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.

She appeared briefly in the color film shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder that caught the moment Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally were struck as their motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository.

Poorman said her mother thought the shots came from the grassy knoll, not the book depository across the street, and ran to the grassy knoll thinking she would be able to spot the gunman.

Instead of catching up with the gunman, Hill said she was seized by two men in police uniform with badges and briefly taken into custody despite telling them she thought the assassin was running from the grassy knoll.

Hill repeated her account to the Warren Commission in 1964, then stayed out of the public eye for about 25 years.

In 1991, Hill worked as a consultant for Oliver Stone's film "JFK." Over the last several years, she had been speaking to groups about her 1963 experience.

She also co-wrote "JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness" with Bill Sloan.

Hill taught in the Dallas public schools for more than 20 years, retiring from H.S. Thompson Learning Center.

"Her whole life was spent getting school supplies for kids that didn't have school supplies," her son Billy Hill told the Morning News.

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