Medical Evidence

Pat Speer’s site: www.PatSpeer.com Chapters 10-12c Back Wound, Chapters 13-15 Head Wound, Chapters 16-17 Wound Ballistics, Chapters 18-18b Skull X-rays

Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB 5 volume set

Essays Suggesting a Medical Coverup

JFK's Head X-Rays

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External Occipital Protruberance

Occipital Bone

Parietal Bone

Temporal Bone

Introduction

The medical evidence in the JFK case is endlessly debated for a variety of reasons. The autopsy was not well done. The lead autopsy doctors were neither trained nor certified in forensic pathology and had little experience in gunshot autopsies. The pictures taken were terrible and many pictures and x-rays that were taken have disappeared. The measurements recorded during the autopsy changed when incorporated into the final report. Neither the autopsists nor the later medical panels had the time to very closely examine all the data. And there was very likely institutional pressure to conform to a predetermined conclusion. There remain a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions.

Hovever, our task is not to analyze all the medical evidence; we just need to continue the hinge point from last week. Was JFK hit with three bullets or two? Were the shots from the front or the back? Does this tell us whether there were multiple shooters? With that limited mandate in mind, let's dive in!

The Autopsy

The job of a forensic autopsy is not just to determine the cause of death, which in the JFK case was straightforward, but to gather as much evidence as possible to thoroughly investigate the crime, including bullet paths and directions. To this purpose JFK’s autopsists failed spectacularly. The principal investigator, Navy Dr. James Humes, and his assistant, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell were not forensic pathologists. They had performed many autopsies but rarely on gunshot victims. Boswell himself purportedly called the decision to conduct the autopsy at Bethesda "stupid" and had argued that it should instead have been held at the specialized Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, just five miles away. To remedy this lack they brought in an Army forensic pathologist, Dr. Pierre Finck, but he played a minor role in the autopsy. Admiral George Burkley, JFK’s personal physician seemed to act in a supervisory role and wanted the autopsy done as quickly as possible, ostensibly because Jackie was waiting upstairs. Boswell reported that Admiral Burkley said that they had caught Oswald and they needed the bullet to complete the case, however the X-rays of the head and torso showed no bullets, only tiny bullet fragments.

FBI Agents Siebert and O'Neill witnessed the autopsy and took notes. See their report. They note that tiny bullet fragments were seen along the right side of the skull, ending behind the right frontal sinus, suggesting a bullet path through the skull. Later in the autopsy a bullet hole was found in the back, below the shoulders and two inches to the right of midline. The hole entered with a downward trajectory of 45 to 60 degrees, but only went a short distance, as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger. The autopsists were at a loss to explain how there were no bullets, even discussing possible bullets made from ice, which prompted Siebert to call FBI HQ, whereupon they discovered that a bullet had been found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. When Humes heard this he purportedly said “So that’s it!” and concluded the back bullet must have worked its way out during cardiac massage.

The autopsy was expanded to a full autopsy, i.e. including examination of the internal organs, with the exception of the adrenal glands because JFK’s Addison’s disease was to be kept a secret. No examination of the clothing was performed. The location of JFK’s back and head wounds were not precisely determined. Photographs and measurements were not made of JFK’s large head wound. The entrance wound(s) in the head were not adequately photographed. There were a very limited number of photographs made and those that were made were frequently off target or out of focus. The autopsists did not even know of a wound in JFK’s front neck despite the fact that Admiral Burkley had been in the Parkland Hospital emergency room where it had been observed. Finck testified at the Garrison trial that an unknown Army General instructed the team not to touch the tracheotomy incision which hid the throat wound. Medical technician Paul O’Connor remembered it was Admiral Galloway who told them, “Leave it alone. Don’t touch it. It’s just a tracheotomy“.

Finck also testified that at one point during the autopsy, Humes asked “Who’s in charge here?” and an Army General replied “I am.”

The autopsy room was mobbed with approximately 30 people including many very high ranking military men; Humes described the effort as comparable to performing neurosurgery in the middle of a three ring circus. The command culture of the military undoubtedly contributed to many of the problems with the autopsy. During his ARRB deposition, Jeremy Gunn asked autopsy photographer John Stringer why he didn’t object to the hurried pace. Stringer replied, “You don’t object to things.” When Gunn said, “Some people do.” Stringer retorted “Yeah, they do. But they don’t last long.”

Early in the morning following the autopsy, Humes claimed he learned that the Parkland doctors had observed a wound in the front of the throat underneath the Adam’s apple. On Saturday, Humes, without the benefit of any of the autopsy photos or X-rays wrote and submitted a draft of the autopsy report. He then burned that draft and the autopsy notes taken by himself and Boswell and on Sunday he wrote a new autopsy report which he delivered, as instructed by Admiral Burkley, at 4PM on Sunday November 24. The report concluded that two bullets hit JFK, both from above and behind. One hit him in the upper back and came out the front of his neck. The other hit him in the rear of the head, by the External Occipital Protuberance (or EOP), 2 centimeters to the right of midline and came out the top right side of this head. The bullet which allegedly traversed JFK’s back was later elevated to the status of Magic bullet by Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission, who claimed that this bullet proceeded to inflict all the wounds on Governor Connolly and emerge in pristine condition.

JFK's brain was fixed in formaldehyde and a Supplementary Brain Exam was conducted on December 6. The pictures of the brain never made it into the public domain but HSCA published a drawing of the brain showing extensive damage to the right half of the brain.

The autopsy photos and X-rays were locked away by the Secret Service and later donated to the Kennedy family, but in 1981 a bootleg copy of the photos was sold by Secret Service photographer James Fox, and now versions of the Fox photos can be found on the internet. A contrast enhanced version of the X-rays was published in the HSCA exhibits. Researchers who studied the photos and X-rays not surprisingly feel that Humes got it all wrong and they have proceeded to argue vociferously over the correct interpretation of the medical evidence for 30 years. We’ll examine a few of the major arguments below.

The Critics' Response

Did the Back Wound Connect to the Throat Wound?

Humes claimed that during the autopsy he determined that the back wound was a shallow wound that went nowhere. He only deduced the following morning that the back wound had to have been an entrance wound and the exit was in the front of the throat, but he never physically established that. Critics have questioned how a bullet travelling downward at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees could change direction and move horizontally across JFK's body. Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford's solution to the issue was to change the position of the wound from "his back" to "the base of the back of his neck". Warren Commission Exhibit 385 is a drawing showing a bullet entry in the lower neck. But an autopsy photo shows a bullet hole lower in JFK's back and a picture of JFK's suit jacket shows a bullet hole 5.3" down from his collar. The HSCA medical panel felt that the bullet entrance in the back was almost two inches lower than depicted in CE 385.

CE 385

CE393, JFK's Jacket. Bottom hole is bullet hole

Humes testified that there was no bullet track through the lungs or the pleura lining the chest cavity. For the bullet to have travelled above the lungs, it must have entered at the level of the first thoracic vertebra (T1) or higher which is above the shoulders. The death certificate, signed by Admiral Burkley and suspiciously absent from the Warren Commission volumes, gives the position of the back wound at the level of the third thoracic vertebra (T3), well down in the back and far too low to connect to the neck wound without puncturing the lungs and pleura. The HSCA medical panel noticed an apparent fracture of the right transverse process (a small bony protrusion) of the first thoracic vertebra with interstitial air around the C7 cervical vertebra just above it, so something was happening around there. There was also bruising of the pleura and the top of the lung. This could suggest that the bullet might have passed just above the T1 transverse process, breaking it and causing it to deflect downward, causing bruising of the apex of the right lung, and deflecting the bullet’s trajectory toward the throat where it exited between the third and fourth tracheal rings as described in the autopsy report. Unfortunately, a photograph of the inside of the chest showing a bruise on the interior surface of the dome of the right pleural cavity above the lung is one of several photos and X-rays which disappeared after being taken.

If a high speed rifle bullet did enter the back as high as C7-T1 and passed through the neck, it is difficult to see how it could have not damaged the right carotid artery. Pat Speer quotes Dr. Gary Ordog in his 1988 book Management of Gunshot Wounds, who states that the mortality rate for high-velocity gunshot wounds to the neck is over 50%. He explains that vascular injury from bullets moving faster than 1,000 feet/second involves the neat shearing of vessels, followed by cavitation that damages an extensive area, possibly 20 mm on each side of the bullet's path. The circle below shows the approximate position where the bullet grazed the trachea before exiting from the midline of the neck.

Circle shows proposed bullet path next to third/fourth tracheal rings and right carotid artery.

Entrance Wound in the Neck?

Dr. Perry described the wound in the anterior neck as an entrance wound, due in part to its small size. With high speed rifle wounds in flesh, entrance wounds are typically much smaller than exit wounds, as the bullet tumbles and creates a blast wave as it passes through tissue. Dr. Charles Baxter, for instance, estimated the throat wound to be 4-5 mm in diameter, smaller than the bullet diameter of 6.5 mm. He explained that a high-velocity bullet would typically create a larger, more jagged exit wound due to shock waves and tumbling, making the small observed wound "unlikely" for an exit. He even suggested it looked as though "it might have come from a hand gun." Dr. Ronald Jones similarly indicated that if the throat wound were an exit, it would suggest the bullet was traveling at a "very low velocity". The doctors noted minor damage to the surrounding tissues, which was inconsistent with a typical high-velocity rifle bullet exit. Dr. Carrico observed "some modest amount of hematoma". Dr. Perry noted a "small ragged laceration of the trachea" that was "incomplete". He further indicated that while there was "evidence of some blast injury," it was "not like, say, one sees with a high velocity rifle like a 30.06 or a .223 or something. This is quite different". Post-autopsy, Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell claimed there was "no massive hemorrhage or other massive injury" and that "no major blood vessel [was] damaged by the path of the missile" in Kennedy's neck.

Based on these observations, the anterior neck wound would appear to be inconsistent with a high speed rifle bullet penetrating from either the front or the back.

Back and to the Left at Z313

In Week 2 we explored whether a potential shot from the front might explain JFK's back and to the left motion seen after Z314. What medical evidence is there for a shot from the front at Z313? It would have to be a head shot, not an anterior throat shot. Many people came to believe that there was a large area of missing skull in the back of JFK's head, which they took to be a large exit wound. We'll discuss this more below in a section on David Lifton's Best Evidence. These people assume that to have a large rear exit wound you need a smaller bullet wound of entrance in the front. There is much less evidence of that, but we have three people who claimed to see what looked like a bullet hole near the front of JFK's head:

Dr. Marion Thomas Jenkins was a physician attending JFK in Emergency Room #1 at Parkland hospital. In his Warren Commission testimony he said, "I don't know if this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal (temple) area, right above the hairline. "
Father Oscar Huber administered last rites at Parkland Hospital, noticing as he did a "terrible wound" over JFK's left eye. JFK did in fact have a terrible wound over his right eye, so maybe he mistook left from right. But Shirley Martin spoke with Father Huber and he clarified that he thought he had seen an entry bullet wound but perhaps it was just a blood clot.
Dr. Boswell's assistant at the autopsy, James Curtis Jenkins, told Harrison Livingstone in the early 1990's that "just above the right ear there was some discoloration of the skull cavity with the bone area being gray and there was some speculation that it might be lead." Jenkins was surprised to find out later that the doctors had concluded that this wound--the one "in front and a little bit above the right ear"--was actually an exit.

Another way to determine if there was a head shot from the front is to look at the metallic trail of tiny bullet fragments which appear in JFK's head X-rays. Below are diagrams of this metallic debris trail which Dr. Cyril Wecht made while examining the original X-rays at the National Archives. He published them in an article titled The Medical Evidence in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. As you can see from the side view, the metal particles run in a line connecting the top rear of head to just behind the right eye. This is consistent with a bullet from back to front; if the bullet were travelling from front to back, how would fragments end up above the right eye?

Head Wound Trajectory

As we saw in Week 1, the autopsy doctors discovered a small bullet hole in JFK's skull in the the rear of the head, about an inch to the right and slightly above the external occipital protruberance (EOP), which is a bump at the center back of the skull where it meets the neck muscles:

The autopsy doctors theorized that this was the wound of entrance and the bullet travelled on an upward trajectory and exited in the right top of his skull, as shown below in Warren Commission Exhibit CE388. However, as Pat Speer's figure shows, when CE388 is adjusted to match the actual angle of JFK's head at Z312, this trajectory implies that the bullet was fired from below, not above:

External Occipital Protruberance

The HSCA medical panel was aware of the head trajectory problem and solved it by arbitrarily moving the bullet entrance four inches upwards from the EOP to JFK’s cowlick:

To support this, the HSCA made a drawing of one of the autopsy photos and drew in a bullet hole in the cowlick over a red spot shown in a photo of the back of JFK's head. See Comparison HSCA Drawing with photo of Back of Head

The HSCA medical panel badgered Humes and to a far lesser extent Boswell, for two and a half hours and he refused to budge on his placement of the entrance wound by the EOP.

Later, however, Humes caved in to the pressure and agreed that the real entrance wound was 4 inches higher as represented to the right, demonstrating his susceptibility to coercion.

HSCA representation of path of the fatal bullet, entering 4 inches higher in the skull than the Warren version ( see HSCA Vol 7, p. 125)

The Mystery Photo

We do have an autopsy photograph titled Missile Wound of Entrance in Posterior Skull, and commonly referred to as the Mystery photo because almost no one can figure out what it depicts. Pat Speer however, has studied this photo extensively and has noticed what evidently eluded everyone else who saw this: the bullet hole an inch to the right and slightly above the EOP can be clearly seen at the bottom, right of center. In his ARRB deposition, autopsy photographer Stringer confirmed Speer’s orientation of the photo as having been taken from above the top of the skull and slightly behind, with the scalp folded over to the left side of the skull.

In addition to the EOP entrance, a bevelled half circle in the skull, can be seen near the top, or vertex of the skull. Perhaps this is the exit from the EOP entrance, or perhaps this hole is due to a different bullet (see Tangential Head Wound below). Speer bolsters his justification for an EOP entrance with what looks like a hole in the scalp in the Back of Head photo, above and to the right of some white debris.

So, we can confirm a bullet hole by the EOP and we can confirm a large hole in the top right of JFK's head. Are they connected?

Tangential Head Wound

The Chief Neurosurgeon at Parkland, Dr. Kemp Clark, who pronounced JFK's death, described his head wound hours after the assassination that it "could have been a tangential wound, as it was simply a large, gaping loss of tissue". He repeated this in interviews, and a December 23, 1963, article reported he believed the fatal bullet struck "a tangential blow that avulsed the calvarium and shredded brain tissue as the bullet left the skull on a glancing course". He also reportedly told the New York Times on November 27 that the second bullet hit "the right side of his head" and caused a "tangential" wound of both entrance and exit. In Dr. Clark's testimony before the Warren Commission, he defined the word tangential as "being-striking an object obliquely, not squarely or head on". Describing the effects of a tangential wound, he said "The effects of any missile striking an organ or a function of the energy which is shed by the missile in passing through this organ when a bullet strikes the head, if it is able to pass through rapidly without shedding any energy into the brain, little damage results, other than that part of the brain which is directly penetrated by the missile. However, if it strikes the skull at an angle, it must then penetrate much more bone than normal, therefore, is likely to shed more energy, striking the brain a more powerful blow. Secondly, in striking the bone in this manner, it may cause pieces of the bone to be blown into the brain and thus act as secondary missiles. Finally, the bullet itself may be deformed and deflected so that it would go through or penetrate parts of the brain, not in the usual direct line it was proceeding."

In a tangential bullet strike of the skull, the bullet does not go through the skull, but rather plows into the skull at an angle and then deflects off. This is a different scenario from that described by the autopsy doctors, who described a small bullet hole of entrance, followed by an explosive hole of exit.

An Alternative Scenario: Milicent Cranor's The Third Wound

In 1998 Milicent Cranor published an alternative interpretation of JFK's wounds. She relied primarily on the testimony of doctors and observers at the autopsy. In contrast to Dr. Hume's sworn testimony that he didn't know of the anterior throat wound until the next day, three people later testified that the autopsy doctors knew of the bullet hole in the anterior throat on the night of the autopsy: autopsy Doctor J. Thornton Boswell, Chief of Radiology John Ebersole, and autopsy photographer John Stringer. Military aide Lieutenant Richard Lipsey was certain that the doctors concluded that JFK was hit by three bullets and the bullet in the top back of the neck came out the front of the neck. Mortician Tom Robinson reported seeing flexible probes inserted between the EOP wound and the throat wound, perhaps later in the autopsy after FBI agents Siebert and O'Neill had left. X-ray technician Jerrol Custer, who took all the x-rays of JFK that night claimed he took a front to back x-ray of the neck alone and it showed many metal fragments in the third-fourth cervical vertebra area. In fact, in Cyril Wecht's diagrams above, you can see a metal fragment drawn around the chin area, which is probably behind, in the neck.

3 Cranor The Third Wound.pdf

Click the Popout icon in the upper right corner to view

Additional Support for JFK-Three Bullet Hypothesis

Tangential Wound

Pat Speer offers additional medical support for Cranor's hypothesis. In Speer's Chapter 16b, he dives deep into the gruesome medical literature on skull wounds from jacketed bullets like those of the Mannlicher-Carcano. Perhaps not surprisingly, if we remember Dr. Kemp Clark, the wounds from bullets which traversed the skull were often far less severe and more survivable than tangential wounds. With jacketed ammunition there were very few cases of a skull exploding unless it was a tangential hit. In Fractures and Dislocations, published 1915, Dr. Miller E. Preston observed: "The completely jacketed high-velocity projectile, such as used in the army, may penetrate the head with a minimum of trauma: the wound of entrance is small and clean-cut; the wound of exit is only a trifle larger." He then warned: "Any projectile either low or high in velocity is likely to produce extensive comminution when the skull is struck a glancing blow." Tangential bullet strikes often produced wounds which very closely resembled JFK's large head wound, such as this example, while through shots very seldom exploded the skull.

Down the Neck

In his Chapter 17, Speer offers more medical evidence that the bullet travelled from the EOP wound down the neck and out the front of the neck. This evidence includes:

A possible bullet hole in the base of the skull seen in the Mystery Photo which would provide an exit for the EOP bullet,
Excess blood in ear and throat tissues
A broken T1 transverse process and perhaps displacement of the first rib. A bullet hitting T1 from above could deflect the rib downward, which would account for the 5 cm pyramidal shaped bruise on the pleura and top of right lung
Dr. Perry told the Warren Commission that the anterior neck wound was below the damage to the trachea, suggesting the bullet came from above
If a high speed bullet went through two layers of skull and hit a vertebrae, it may have been slowed sufficiently to cause a modest sized exit wound, which appeared to the Parkland doctors to be an entrance wound.

No Connection between EOP Wound and Top of Head Wound

The bullet fragment trail shown in Cyril Wecht's diagrams above do not connect the EOP with the top of head; rather, they show a trail across the top of the head, as if from a tangential wound, not a through shot from the EOP. In Pat Speer's Chapter 16c on the Supplementary Brain Exam, the autopsy doctors noted that there was some disruption of the bottom part of the cerebellum, which is directly interior to the EOP hole, but they could discern no through track from that area to the top of the brain. Instead, as Speer points out, the damage to the brain, including shearing of the corpus callosum and bruising of the bottom left side of the brain is more consistent with a tangential shot impacting the brain from the top right, than it is a bullet traversing the brain. A drawing of a picture of the top view of the brain shows extensive damage to the front of the brain, several inches in front of the autopsy doctors' proposed bullet track. This damage could have been caused by skull fragments striking down on top of the brain as Dr. Kemp Clark had described.

Changing Autopsy Stories

Lt. Richard Lipsey said he definitely remembers the autopsy doctors commenting that the bullets came from the same spot and direction and that they were "absolutely, unequivocally" convinced that he had been shot three times." Cranor's hypothesis is that the doctors had found three bullet entrances: a shallow back wound, an EOP entrance and a tangential wound and since only three cartridges were found in the sniper's nest and they knew that Governor Connally had been shot, their three hit scenario was one bullet too many. As Cranor says:

If the doctors were under pressure to find that Kennedy was struck by only two bullets, this is how they might have revised their earlier findings:

Disconnect the EOP wound from the throat and connect it with the head damage
Connect the back wound with the throat wound.

Doug Horne, who was a staff member of the Assassination Records Review Board, wrote a five volume book titled Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK. Horne expands on Milicent Cranor's hypothesis with a theory of how the official explanation of JFK's wounds evolved:

By 11 pm on 11/22/1963, around when FBI agents Siebert and O'Neill left the autopsy, the conclusion was that there were 2 hits: a shallow back wound and a head shot between the EOP and the top of head
Later that evening at the autopsy, after Humes had spoken with Parkland doctors and learned about the throat wound, he evolved the three hit scenario of Milicent Cranor: one shallow back wound, one shot connecting the EOP wound to the front throat, and one tangential wound. Humes wrote the first draft of the autopsy report and reviewed it on Saturday 11/23 with Dr. Boswell and Captain R.O. Canada, the Commanding Officer of the Bethesda Naval Center. This draft did not pass muster: three shots were too many, given Governor Connally's wounds and also the wounding of James Tague which had been reported by Saturday. So Humes burned the first draft of the autopsy report. Although he disclosed burning his first draft to the Warren Commission, he first denied it to the ARRB, perhaps because he wanted to avoid telling them why he burned it. When confronted by the ARRB with his Warren Commission testimony he admitted he burned the first draft but gave no good reason.

Horne suggests the official autopsy report which was signed on Sunday 11/24 by the three autopsists concluded that the throat wound was caused by a fragment of bullet or bone which came down from the head wound and exited the throat. So they had kept a shallow back wound together with one head shot which exited both out the top of his head and down his neck. Why wouldn't the autopsy team embrace the transiting back wound theory? Perhaps because the angles were wrong and the minimal damage to the neck was inconsistent with a transiting back wound. Horne thinks that this official version of the autopsy report, with two hits but a non-transiting back wound, was the official story for a few weeks, as evidenced by:

the FBI report on 12/9/1963 which stated there was no exit of back wound,
a 12/18/1963 story in the Washington Post, referencing the autopsy report which said "a fragment passed out the front of the throat",
a 12/18/1963 story in the New York Times which said, "The pathologists at Bethesda, the source said, concluded that the throat wound was caused by the emergence of a metal fragment, or piece of bone resulting from the fatal shot in the head."
the FBI Supplementary Report of 1/13/1964 which suggested that a slit in the front of JFK’s shirt was caused by a projectile from the head wound,
a comment by J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel of the Warren Commission on January 27, 1964 referencing a fragment coming out of the front of the neck

Horne thinks that this story eventually needed to be abandoned because the Zapruder film shows a much more severe reaction by JFK after Z224 than could have been caused by a shallow back wound.

The final autopsy report, published in the Warren Report as Commission Exhibit CE387, has two hits: one EOP to top of head, and one back wound to throat exit. Horne presents evidence that there were two "final" versions of the autopsy report (#'s 3 above and #4). #3 was transferred from the Secret Service to the Kennedy family on April 26, 1965, and #4 was transferred from the Secret Service to the National Archives on October 2, 1967. The Kennedy family did not pass on their original copies of the autopsy report, which prompted some concern within the Secret Service that researchers might ultimately conclude (or realize) that there had been two different final autopsy reports.

Governor Connally's Wounds

Governor's Connally's wounds are described as follows:

Chest and Back Wounds
- The bullet entered Connally’s back near his right shoulder, just below and behind the right armpit3 4.
- It followed a downward path, shattering the fifth rib and exiting through his chest just below the right nipple1 2 3 4.
- The bullet, or bone fragments punctured his right lung, causing it to collapse1 2 3.
- Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally's surgeon, described the entrance wound as a small, elliptical wound approximately 1.5 centimeters in its longest diameter3 4.
- The force of the impact was significant; had Connally not turned at the moment he was struck, the bullet might have hit his heart, likely resulting in instant death1 2.
Wrist Injury
- After exiting his chest, the bullet struck Connally’s right wrist, entering from the dorsal (back) side and shattering the radius bone1 2 3 4.
- The wound extended from about five centimeters above the wrist joint on the upper surface to about 1.5 centimeters from the joint on the underside1.
- The wrist injury was severe enough to require a heavy cast and caused Connally considerable discomfort during recovery2.
Thigh Wound
- The bullet or a fragment then lodged in Connally’s left thigh, just above the knee1 2 3 4.
- Metal fragments from the bullet remained in his leg, and there was some debate among medical experts about whether all fragments were accounted for3.

Fortunately, Governor Connally made a complete recovery. He was always convinced that he was hit by a separate bullet than the first gunshot he heard, although he could have heard a shot at Z195 and then he and JFK could then have been hit together at Z224. There are arguments that CE 399 could not have been the bullet that hit both JFK and Connally, not only due to the lack of damage to CE399, but also the many fragments of the bullet that were taken from and remained in Connally's body. But for the analysis of the shooting scenario, we can assume that CE399 was an FBI plant and the actual bullet that hit Connally was recovered by a nurse and given to Patrolman Bobby Nolan. If you believe the Milicent Cranor/Pat Speer scenario, the more important issue to decide whether or not JFK and Connally were hit by the same bullet is: could one bullet pass through two layers of JFK's skull, hit his C7 vertebrae and still have enough energy to cause all of Governor Connally's wounds?

For more on Governor Connally's injuries, see HERE.

Conclusions?

So far we've presented two hypotheses regarding the wounding of JFK: the two hit scenario proposed by the the autopsy report together with the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the three hit hypothesis proposed by Milicent Cranor and Pat Speer. Let’s look at the implications of the three hit hypothesis. Let’s assume JFK was hit with three shots, the first as early as Z190, the second at Z224 and the last at Z313. Let’s also assume that the Z224 shot hit both JFK and Connally, and a fragment from Z313 hit Tague. Could that have been accomplished by one shooter? The time between Z224 and Z190 was 1.84 seconds, less than the 2.3 seconds needed to recycle the rifle, but let’s again say that the shooter was super-fast. That is a possible shooting scenario, but it fails on the acoustic evidence that most people heard: a first shot, a long pause, then two shots in rapid succession.

In order to preserve a single shooter scenario, we need to accept the Warren Commission two shot scenario: discount all the evidence for a Z195 shot, and accept that Connally was wrong about a previous shot: the first shot hit both JFK and Connally at Z225 and there was no previous shot. We also need to accept that the trajectory of the head shot was from low in the head to high in the head, even though that’s not supported by the shot from above, the metallic trail in the x-rays or the brain exam. What do you think? Which of the scenarios is best supported by the evidence? Does your shooting scenario require one or more than one shooter?

David Lifton's Best Evidence

As long and difficult as this chapter has been, it is incomplete without a detour into the bizarre alternate universe of David Lifton's Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 1964 Lifton was working as a computer engineer while studying for an advanced degree when he became obsessed with the Kennedy assassination. He purchased a copy of the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission reports and began to study. According to Pat Speer, Lifton's eureka moment was when he studied the report of the autopsy doctors' Supplementary Brain Exam and realized it did not conform with the conclusions of the autopsy report. Lifton quit his job and his studies and began researching full time. Lifton initially focussed on discrepancies in JFK's wound description between the Parkland doctors and the Bethesda autopsy doctors. Doctor Kemp Clark at Parkland described "a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound." The cerebellum is in the lower back of the head; the Back of Head photo shows no such gaping wound, although the Mystery photo of the same area of the skull does show an absence of skull just above the EOP entrance wound; if that part of the skull was missing at Parkland and the back of head scalp was loose, perhaps the cerebellum could have been seen.

The fact that many of the Parkland doctors described a defect in the back of the head, behind the ear, while the Bethesda doctors described a defect above and in front of the ear caused Lifton to jump to the conclusion that JFK's body was altered to hide the evidence for a shot from the front. Lifton was convinced that the original plan was to get JFK into a surgical operating room where the body could be altered, but JFK died before that could happen. So the Secret Service had to improvise. Lifton hypothesized that JFK's body was removed from its coffin when it was on Air Force One on the tarmac at Love Field, while everyone was in the front of the plane watching LBJ take the oath of office. He believed that the Secret Service conspirators, including Agent Roy Kellerman, took the body out, and dropped it through a hatch in the floor into the front luggage compartment. There, the head wound was greatly expanded and bullets were removed from the brain and from the throat wound, above the right lung.

When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 5:58 pm, Lifton hypothesized that the ceremonial bronze coffin was unloaded on the left side of the plane, under bright lights, while JFK's body was unloaded in a body bag on the dark right side of the plane and put on an awaiting helicopter which flew directly to a rear parking lot at Bethesda Naval Hospital. While Jackie rode in a grey Navy ambulance with the empty coffin, JFK's body was transferred from the helicopter into a plain grey shipping coffin carried in a black Cadillac ambulance provided by Gawler's Funeral Home and the coffin was brought into the Bethesda hospital morgue at 6:35pm. Doctors Humes and Boswell then took x-rays and performed post-mortem surgery on JFK's skull, removing large bullet fragments. At 6:55pm the funeral procession arrived at the front of Bethesda Hospital and at 7:17pm the grey Navy ambulance was driven around back to the morgue and the empty large bronze ceremonial coffin was brought into the morgue by SS agents Roy Kellerman and Bill Greer, and FBI agents Siebert and O'Neill. When Humes and Boswell were done with their nefarious work, JFK's body was placed back into the bronze ceremonial coffin which was put into a grey navy ambulance and driven around the grounds, ending up in front of the hospital. Shortly before 8:00 pm, a Joint Service Casket Bearer Team, a ceremonial contingent of soldiers, found the ambulance, drove it around back, and officially brought the bronze casket with JFK in it into the morgue. The autopsy officially began at 8pm with Dr. Humes announcing that it appeared that there had been "surgery of the head area, namely in the top of the skull." (Dr. Boswell testified for the ARRB that there was an incised wound (cut with a sharp instrument) in the top of JFK’s head that extended into his right eye socket and then back across his temporal and frontal bone. Perhaps that incised wound can be seen in this autopsy photo as a V shaped notch in JFK’s hairline above his right eye. A less conspiratorial explanation is that it is merely a scalp tear, similar to other stellate tears that can be seen in JFK's scalp.)

The problem with this preposterous story is that it is well documented and many people believe it. Lifton tracked down an Air Force One maintenance man who described gore in the front luggage compartment. The different ambulances and casket arrivals at the morgue seem well documented. Lieutenant Lipsey, in his ARRB deposition mentioned that a decoy hearse was used. Many hospital employees corroborate events which support the story.

But problems remain. To the right is a drawing by a Parkland doctor, Dr. Robert McClelland, showing his interpretation of the head wound at Parkland. If that was the way the wound actually looked at Parkland, there was no technology available to patch the scalp and replace missing bone. Doug Horne of the ARRB, a big believer in Lifton's theory, closely examined the Back of Head photos stereoscopically and concluded the photos had not been faked. Many people think the photos were faked, the x-rays were faked but to what end? If to hide the evidence of a frontal shot, that might be ruled out on other grounds, using the evidence above and in Week 2.

The back of the head blowout stories moved from Parkland to Bethesda, with many Bethesda witnesses also claiming there was a blowout in the back of the head. FBI agent O’Neill, when showed the Back of Head photo by the ARRB said, “This looks like it’s been doctored in some way. Let me rephrase that, when I say “doctored”. Like the stuff has been pushed back in, and it looks like more towards the end than at the beginning. All you have to do was put the flap back over here, and the rest of the stuff is all covered on up.” There were many large bone fragments missing from the skull. Perhaps some were in the occipital area and the scalp flap back there was loose.

Part of the motivation to believe Lifton's story may stem from a belief that a gunshot wound always has a small entrance hole and large exit hole. That's not always true with gunshots to the skull, and many people don't understand that large skull defects in tangential shots can represent both the entrance and the exit of the bullet.

Another factor which may contaminate all kinds of witness testimony is that many people enjoy trolling conspiracy theorists. When the ARRB deposed autopsy photographer Richard Stringer they played him audio recordings of a conversation he had had with David Lifton where Stringer enthusiastically described a blowout in the back of the head. Stringer denied recalling the conversation and said that what his voice could be heard saying on the tape was untrue. One wonders how many other JFK assassination stories are concocted just to lead people on wild goose chases.

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