On November 22, 1963, Nix walked from his office in the Terminal Annex building on the south side of
Dealey Plaza to the northwest corner of the intersection of Main Street and Houston Street with his
Keystone Auto-Zoom Model K-810 8 mm movie camera. Nix filmed the
presidential limousine and motorcade as it entered the Plaza, then quickly moved west of Houston Street to the south curb of Main Street. There, he ended up capturing the last part of the assassination with the
grassy knoll in the background. The Nix film was obtained as a result of a notice that the
FBI gave to film processing plants in the Dallas area, that the FBI would be interested in obtaining or knowing about any film they processed relating to the assassination. When Nix heard about this from his processor, he delivered the film to the FBI office in Dallas on December 1, 1963. It was returned to him three days later.
United Press International (UPI) purchased the copyright for $5,000 and took possession of the original copy of Nix’s film on December 6, 1963.
Reese Schonfeld, a UPI executive and later the founding president of
CNN, stewarded the film for UPI. UPI distributed frame enlargements to its news subscribers the following day. The film’s original rendition was examined by the
House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. When UPI returned the copyright and all its copies to the Nix family in 1992, the film’s original version was missing. In 2002, the Nix family assigned the film’s copyright to the Dallas County Historical Foundation, which operates the
Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Portions of the film were utilised by the 1991 film
JFK. Nix was interviewed in 1966 by investigator
Mark Lane for his documentary
Rush to Judgment. In a filmed interview undertaken by Lane, he also stated that the film he received may not have been identical to the one that he shot. He told Lane that at the time of the assassination, he believed that the shots had come from behind the stockade fence on the grassy knoll, but was later told that conclusive proof existed that shots only came from the Texas School Book Depository and that he was convinced by this. In 2017, Nix-Jackson's lawsuit was dismissed
without prejudice. ==Death==