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44 years and a day ago, they shot John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas and altered American history irrevocably. I say “they” because we still don’t know who did it, and it was almost certainly more than one individual.

Sitting here in hiding, waiting to be transported to a secret bunker via an underground railroad, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Now I’ve got Kennedy on the brain.

There have been a few books claiming to close the assassination case for good, and all of them are bunk. They stretch physical laws, bet on unlikely scenarios, or otherwise twist and dare logic in order to “prove” that Oswald and his curtain rods acted alone. Skeptical bias is not scientific, and it’s not useful, either. As I’ve said before, no biased skeptic has ever helped find the truth. Skeptics are the fun-sponges of the thinking world.

Want a JFK conspiracy theorist with some clout? Look no further than Bobby Kennedy (JFK’s brother and his administration’s Attorney General). According to Time magazine, “He traveled to Mexico City, where he gathered information about Oswald’s mysterious trip there before Dallas. He met with conspiracy researcher Penn Jones Jr. … [Bobby] Kennedy told confidants that he himself would reopen the investigation into the assassination if he won the presidency, believing it would take the full powers of the office to do so.” Skeptics would probably say that this proves nothing and that RFK was mistaken. But Bobby knew more about the “the underground streams through which so much of the actuality of American power darkly coursed” far better than any anti-conspiracy zealot ever will.

Despite what you may have heard, there are a few facts that are indisputable. And they’re trouble for those who doubt a conspiracy:

• The sight on the bolt-action rifle that Oswald allegedly used was broken. Even an expert marksman using the rifle probably wouldn’t have been able to hit a target moving away from him using a rifle with a broken sight.
• Oswald was a lousy shot. Oswald was ex-military and records show that his marksmanship was below average. The man simply couldn’t have done the shooting.
• The famous/infamous Zapruder film shows three shots fired in 5.6 seconds. While it’s technically possible for an expert gunman to shoot that fast, it is not likely that Oswald could have — muchless hit his target accurately. Skeptics somehow work out eight seconds instead of the film’s 5.6, but even with eight seconds, only an expert sharpshooter could have accomplished the work Oswald is supposed to have done.
• Even if it’s physically possible for the magic bullet to have taken its fantastic course (see JFK), it’s not likely. For that bullet to have made that journey, an improbable set of circumstances had to have been in place. The wind had to be blowing just so, Kennedy had to have moved his head down, the moon had to be in the seventh house, yadda yadda. You have to work hard if you want the magic bullet theory to be feasible.
• Multiple, independent eyewitnesses saw and heard a gunman on the grassy knoll. They saw puffs of smoke immediately after hearing a rifle’s report. Some reported finding the shells, only to have them taken away by men claiming to be government agents (who were never heard from again). Even if you chalk up the gunshot noise to mere echoes, you cannot dismiss the sighting of a gunman without calling multiple witnesses liars.

Occam’s Razor should rule the day for JFK: the simplest explanation is probably the truth. One scenario: Oswald, a bad shot, took a used rifle with a broken sight and hit a target moving away from him, getting off three shots and managing to strike the president twice in 5.6 seconds. One of the bullets took a technically possible but quite unlikely course in order to accomplish its terrible task.

Or: Oswald and another gunman conspire to kill Kennedy. Perhaps they arrange for a third man to signal them to start shooting by raising an umbrella. (The Zapruder film shows a man raising an umbrella just before the shots begin. November 22 was a clear, warm, sunny day in Texas.) Each gunman manages to fire a couple of shots.

Is it really more likely that Oswald acted alone? You have to really want it to be true; it’s not the simplest scenario. And for the sake of the man who was president for the first two months of my life, I demand more than biased dismissal. I believe the world would have been a better place today if Kennedy had lived. We owe his memory something better than blasé, pig-headed skepticism.