For reasons beyond my grasp, the first image in each chapter sometimes fails to appear.  If there's nothing up above, don't despair; you can still see the image here

Dental Dilemma

Having satisfied myself that the bullet striking Kennedy at Z-312 struck tangentially, I began trying to figure out what happened to the bullet that created the small entrance wound visible in the “no longer a mystery photo”.  At this point, I remembered the strange circumstance of the jaws being blacked out on Kennedy’s x-rays and wondered if a bullet hadn’t lodged in his jaw, perhaps obscured for the most part by his teeth.  I thought of an early report written from the notes of the Parkland doctors in which it was claimed that “Considerable quantities of blood were present in the President’s oral pharynx” (mouth) before it was suctioned.  Since Kennedy’s throat wound was described as slowly oozing blood, I wondered if the blood in the mouth couldn’t best be explained by a bullet’s presence.

When I read the HSCA testimony of Dr Lowell Levine, a dentist hired to confirm that the teeth in the x-rays confirmed the authenticity of the x-rays, while being barred from showing the teeth within the x-rays, my jaw hit the floor:  He said: “There is a radio opaque rectangular object with three small and one large radiolucent circular areas in it extending from the second lower premolar considerably beyond the third molar area.  It obliterates the roots of the molars and extends at an angle beyond the inferior border of the mandible.”  “It obliterates the roots of the molars?”   Could this be the missing bullet?  I grew even more suspicious after re-reading the testimony of Michael Baden and finding a note which read: “In deciding to release the autopsy x-rays the committee wished to permit public examination of the most important details of evidentiary significance while still maintaining a sense of propriety.  In accordance with this desire, the committee decided to display the autopsy x-rays to the public in a cropped fashion.”  I double-checked this against Baden’s 1989 book Unnatural Death, and here he told a different story: “The family balked at having x-rays of the head published in our final report.  That distinctive Kennedy jaw was the source of some anguish—it looked too much like him, they said.  We compromised.  In the published report, the lower part of the jaw, showing the teeth, is blocked out.”  This made me even more suspicious—who asked for the jaws to be blacked out,  the committee or the family?  And if showing the teeth was verboten, why was Dr. Lowell Levine allowed to show them in his testimony moments before Baden took the stand with his blacked-out jaws?  I looked at these x-rays and couldn’t figure out what the metal was, but was suspicious that whatever it was it was used to cover up a bullet lodged in Kennedy’s jaw. I re-read the HSCA interview of the autopsy radiologist Dr John Ebersole and found the following exchange:  “Baden: what is this long rectangular object at the lower portion of the x-rays of the head?  Ebersole: “It is a rectangular object.  It looks as if it could be used as a measuring device, yes.”

A measuring device!  In my attempt to solve the murder of the century, I almost claimed there was a mass cover-up of a measuring device!  I found further testimony explaining the presence of this device.  Ebersole’s radiology assistant Edward Reed told the ARRB on 10-21-97 that “I suggested at that time that we take a small metallic fragment for magnification purposes and put it—attach it to the side of the head closest to the film….I did that.  Put the—taped it to the back part of the mastoid on the left.”  He continued: “This marker is a piece of aluminum with a small hole in the middle, in the distal third.  As soon as I saw that, I recognized that is the piece of metal that I put on the left side of the President’s skull…For magnification purposes…we made them out of lead markers.  They’re not straight.  We use a scissors to cut them out of lead sheets.”  A week later Ebersole’s other assistant Jerrol Custer talked to the ARRB and claimed all the credit for himself:  “I had my—my own little measuring device on it…They had like little holes in it; and you could see the—it would either elongate, or you’d see a little dot.”  When shown the x-rays he identified “My marker in the lower mandibular joint…Actually, all it is, is a metal—piece of metal, about half a centimeter thickness.  Less than that.  And about two inches long with numerous dots going left to right.” When asked if it was a standard device, he said “That was my device,” and that Ebersole “saw it that night, and he knew it belonged to me.” He said that Ebersole told him “I better not see it on those films,” and that, when he tried to put it on the abdomen x-ray, Ebersole “saw it, and made me take it off.”  So there you have it.  No conspiracy.  Merely an over-eager underling interfering with the search for a bullet.

 

The EOP Entry Revisited

So where did the bullet entering the occipital bone go?  When one looks closely at the entrance near the EOP (the external occipital protuberance—the bony prominence low on the back of men’s skulls at the approximate height of the middle of the ear), one finds a possible answer. For a close look at the tunneling from right to left will show that the bullet went down.  

This is a bit perplexing. While Dr. Boswell marked the entrance on the head on the autopsy face sheet with an arrow pointing upwards and to the left, which would seem to rule out such a trajectory, further analysis reveals that we can't trust this arrow. Outside of the fact that the doctors believed the large defect to have been an exit, and that it was above the entrance on the skull, they offered us no other reason to believe the bullet was traveling upwards upon entrance. While Dr. Boswell described the entrance as "ragged, slanting," moreover, his drawing indicates the entrance was ragged and slanting to the left, which makes no sense seeing as the bullet's exit was on the right side of the skull, and no damage was noted on the left side of the brain. There's just no getting around that Boswell's arrow was in error. While it was officially in error by pointing to the left, our interpretation of this photo suggests that it was actually in error by pointing up. 

When one considers that the entrance seen in the autopsy photos, and reported by Dr. Finck as a "transversal" wound, was supposedly created by the impact of a bullet at frame 313, when Kennedy was leaning sharply to his left, it becomes even more apparent that Boswell's arrow just can not to be trusted. A transversal wound on the back of a head that is tilted to its left, if caused by a weapon firing from the right of the victim, would be an indication that the bullet headed downwards upon impact. It just defies belief that a high-speed bullet heading right to left and downwards on the back of the skull would  reverse course to such a degree that it would travel left to right and upwards within the brain.

This forces us to examine other scenarios. If the bullet headed downwards upon impact at the back of the skull, and continued downwards within the skull, it would most logically have entered the neck. But do bullets impacting on the skull ever descend down the neck, or is this just something that sounds good in cyberspace to a layman such as myself?  According to Gunshot Injuries, one of the first books on the subject, written by Louis Anatole La Garde at the height of World War I, a projectile creating a penetrating skull wound, where there is an entrance but no apparent exit, is "generally lodged within the skull unless it has, as sometimes happens, passed down the neck."

That little obstacle taken care of, let's see where this conjecture takes us.

1. Well, first of all, since we've already concluded the bullet striking Kennedy at frame 313 most likely struck him on a tangent, we can venture that the bullet creating the small entrance wound on the back of his head struck him at some other time. 

2. Since we’ve already decided that a bullet entering Kennedy’s back at the location of his back wound could not have continued on to bruise his lung and exit his throat without hitting his spine, the throat wound is unaccounted for. We can only wonder then, if the bullet heading down into the neck at a time other than 313 made its exit from Kennedy’s throat. 

3. Since Kennedy reaches for his throat just after Connally appears to get injured, around frame Z-224, then we should consider the possibility that a bullet traversed down Kennedy's neck at this time.

4. As Connally was sure a shot was fired before he was hit, and as he appears to be hit at Z-224, we can assume that Kennedy most probably received his back wound shortly before this time, most likely around frame 190, when the HSCA concluded a shot striking Kennedy was fired.

5. As the time span between Z-190 and Z-224 was less than two seconds, too short an interval for Oswald to have accurately fired his bolt-action rifle, we can conclude that the bullet impacting in the occipital region of his skull around frame 224 need not have been created by Oswald’s rifle, and need not have been fired from the sniper’s nest.  As discussed in the chapters on the eyewitnesses, moreover, there was only one shot heard between Z-190 and A-224. This suggests as well that one of the shots was noise-suppressed through the use of subsonic ammunition.   

6. There are still other indications that the projectile exiting Kennedy's throat was moving at a subsonic speed. Beyond the discussions of wound ballistics included in the Single Bullet "Fact" chapter, which show that a high-speed bullet traversing Kennedy's neck as proposed in the single-bullet theory would be expected to cause far more damage than reported, there is the 5-13-64 Warren Commission testimony of the FBI's ballistics expert, Robert Frazier, in which he described the presumed exit points of the bullet on Kennedy's shirt and tie. Frazier told the Commission: "The hole in the front of the shirt does not have the round characteristic shape caused by a round bullet entering cloth. It is an irregular slit. It could have been caused by a round bullet, however, since the cloth could have torn in a long slitlike way as the bullet passed through it. But that is not specifically characteristic of a bullethole to the extent that you could say it was to the exclusion of being a piece of bone or some other type of projectile." When asked by Commissioner Dulles if this slit could have been caused by the bullet's tumbling, moreover, Frazier once again responded in a less-than-supportive manner: "I think the effect in the front of the shirt is due more to the strength of the material being more in the horizontal rather than the vertical direction which caused the cloth to tear vertically rather than due to a change in the shape or size of the bullet or projectile." When then asked if the slowing of the bullet's velocity within Kennedy's neck could have been a factor in the bullet's creating slits and not holes, he responded, finally, in a way that revealed his true thoughts: "I think the hole would not have been affected unless it was a very large change in velocity." (Forensic science texts in general and 2005's Forensic Pathology: Principles and Practice in particular confirm that a slit-like exit wound is indicative that the exiting bullet had been traveling at a low velocity. While this is specific to the exit on the skin, it would appear that, based on Frazier's testimony, it is also applicable to an exit on clothing.)

7. The use of a subsonic bullet helps explain the bullet's trajectory, as well as the relatively light damage observed in the neck, and the slit-like exits on the shirt. In Management of Gunshot Wounds, Dr. Gary Ordog writes: “Low-velocity missiles are relatively unstable compared with high-velocity missiles…The instability is noted in the fact that low-velocity bullets tend to follow tissue planes, and often do not follow a straight line from entrance…”  If the second rifle proposed was, as suggested by the statements of the eyewitnesses, fired from the Dal-Tex Building, its bullet would impact on Kennedy at frame 224 on a 25 degree descent, slightly steeper than a bullet from the sniper's nest. It might then dive under Kennedy’s cerebellum on its way to his neck. This correlates the bullet entrance apparent in the mystery photo, and described by the autopsy doctors, with the reported lack of damage to the brain, better than any other theory yet offered. 

8. Let us remember as well that Connally’s first instinct was that an automatic weapon had been fired.  A second low-speed bullet’s striking Connally, intriguingly, could help explain the route of the bullet in his chest, which supposedly followed the curvature of the chest wall.

Let us move forward, then, under the acceptance that such a possibility is not unreasonable on its face, and that it answers the questions of the medical evidence better than any other theory. (Should one be wondering what happened to this bullet or bullets, let us also remember that some sort of clean-up occurred in the limousine, and that no real investigation was done of the limousine beyond what the Secret Service sworn to protect President Johnson told us and what the FBI saw on the night of the assassination, hours after the limousine was illegally removed from Dallas.) 

But does the Zapruder film support that the shot or shots at Z-224 came from the Dal-Tex Building?  When one studies Z-225, the first frame in which Kennedy’s fully visible after his disappearance behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, one can’t help but notice that Kennedy’s looking almost straight at Zapruder, approximately 50 degrees to his right. If one were to use this position to rear project the position of a likely shooter, a la Canning, one would be forced to conclude the shooter was on Houston Street, on the top of the County Records Building, or the jail.

But there’s another factor to be considered.  And that factor is the curve bullets make when they enter a curved part of the skull. According to Spitz and Fisher’s Medicolegal Investigation of Death, “if the bullet strikes the head at a shallow angle or in an area of significant curvature, at least some deflection of the bullet’s trajectory may be expected.” According to Aarabi and Levy’s Missile Wounds to the Head and Neck, “if a bullet is fired at an angle or hits a curved portion of the skull, deflection will usually result.”  According to Larry Sturdivan: “Though all the Biophysics lab test shots were aimed so that the WC’s specified entry and exit locations would lie on a straight trajectory, none of the bullets penetrated the front of the skull at the “intended” exit location.  One even punched out through the right orbit (eye socket) near the nose.”   These statements indicate that the trajectory of a bullet hitting Kennedy from behind while his head was turned would be likely to curve upon entry.  This is in keeping with the curve required for a bullet entering the skull by the EOP and heading down the neck to avoid the spine.  When you ponder this it makes sense—when you push the corner of a shopping cart into a pole its wheels turn towards the pole.  The side that meets the most resistance slows down and spins the side meeting less resistance to face the resistance, like a tank.  This characteristic of bullets is noted on many of the websites of gun enthusiasts. On the Single Action Shooting Society website, for instance, one such enthusiast discussed an experiment he and some friends from a SWAT team had conducted on some windshields in a junkyard. They found that:  “All rounds deflected up if shot from inside and down from outside the car. If shot from outside at a 45 degree angle the rounds all turned back toward the shooter and down…The .22 LR when fired from inside straight on to the 45 degree windshield deflected so much we could not get a hit on a target at hood distance.” 

So then we have to ask ourselves if there’s any evidence for such a deflection.  It’s one thing to say it could have happened but another thing entirely to say it probably happened.  When one considers that the skull at the side of the EOP is slanted downwards, and that a bullet hitting this slant from the right and from above might be deflected downwards, and that the rightmost section of the wound in the hairline in the mystery photo appears to represent only the upper right corner of the entrance, one should conclude that such a deflection is likely. 

Once one considers that Kennedy was both turned to his right around 50 degrees at Z-224, and that the bullet entering his occipital bone must have come in from his right in order to leave such a mark on his skull, one can approximate the most likely location of the rifle. If we take the extreme case we can say that the bullet angled in from the school book depository.  But the most likely origin of a bullet coming in from the right and entering Kennedy’s skull at frame 224 would appear to be the Dal-Tex Building. 

Still, this kind of thinking--taking an entrance without an exit and a possible exit without an entrance and matching them up, and then building a case upon it--is exactly what got Dr. Humes into trouble. For fear of pulling a Humes then and incorrectly connecting the leftover wounds, let’s take a step back and see if we can find any real evidence a bullet descended in Kennedy’s neck.

 

Mirage Analysis

When I first realized that a bullet entering near the EOP could have gone down the neck, I was at a loss as how to prove this to myself.  It then occurred to me that if I studied the Zapruder film I might be able to spot evidence for the EOP entry before the head shot at Z-312.  I looked and looked for signs of blood on Kennedy’s collar, to no avail.  In retrospect, this makes sense, because if this wound had led to a large loss of blood, surely someone in Dallas would have seen it.

I then switched tactics and focused on watching the exact spot where the wound is visible on the autopsy photos.  I noticed basically nothing until frame Z-308, when there was suddenly a dark oval in the area. I looked for a corroborating frame, and found a similar dark shape in the location at Z-312.  Excited, I decided to show these frames to a friend, but when we looked at the frames on his wide-screen TV, we just saw dark shadows.  I decided I was guilty of seeing a mirage.  I wanted to see something so bad, that I saw it.  Later on, while watching the Zapruder film on my ancient TV, I noticed the dark shapes again, and realized I couldn’t see them on the other TV because it had a different level of contrast than my old antique.

In November, 2005, I uploaded the digitized versions of these frames to my computer, and attempted to increase the contrast to bring out the dark shapes.  I found that by using Adobe Photoshop and lightening the shadows, the shapes I first saw on my ancient TV became readily apparent.

In Match, 2006, I went back and inspected every frame of the Zapruder film between 280 and 312, and lightened the shadows on the clearest frames.  I found numerous dark blobs on the back of Kennedy’s head in every frame.  This undercut any relevance I could attach to any one frame.  When I continued my inspection, however, I realized that these dark blobs jumped around from frame to frame.  As the dark blob by the hairline re-appeared multiple times, and in a constant relation to Kennedy’s ear, I continue to suspect there is indeed a dark shape apparent in Kennedy’s hairline, and that it is quite likely a bullet wound.

Hopefully, someone with a better understanding of movie cameras and film will run a series of “blob” tests and determine if the camera was capable of picking up a small wound surrounded by hair at the distance Zapruder was from Kennedy, and whether one can attribute any meaning whatsoever to a recurrent blob on a dark area of a film.  It could very well be that the blob I saw on TV was just a mirage.

 

Base Fracture?

But all blobs aside, if a bullet striking Kennedy's skull exited from his neck at a time prior to the head shot at frame 313, there should be some signs that this occurred. To begin with, the bullet would have to have made an exit on the base of his skull. But there's no evidence for this exit. Or is there?

Although Dr. Humes told the ARRB that “We looked with care at the whole interior surface of the skull to see if there were any other defects what have you. There were no others,” a thorough reading of his testimony and a close look at the skull base visible on the open cranium photograph give one reason to doubt he thoroughly inspected the base of the skull.

One online article on a proper dissection of the skull and brain notes that, after the brain is removed: “if any intracranial hemorrhage is present the blood is collected and measured. The dura is pulled out from the floor of the skull by holding it with a piece of cotton or gauze…The base of the skull and rest of the cranial cavity is examined for fractures and tested for any abnormal mobility. The fracture of anterior cranial fossa manifests itself by escape of blood and cerebrospinal fluid from the nose, and middle cranial fossa by escape of blood and cerebrospinal fluid from the ear.  Since fracture of the posterior cranial fossa and ring fracture are followed by escape of blood and cerebrospinal fluid in the tissues of the neck, they may not be suspected in certain cases and would be missed unless dura is pulled out from the floor of the skull and the posterior cranial fossa carefully examined.”  The open cranium photograph, on the other hand, displays evidence that these procedures were not followed. There is what appears to be dura around the foramen, and what appears to be coagulated blood surrounding the Foramen Magnum. In any event, whether this is blood or brain or dura, it would certainly inhibit a close inspection of the skull base.  It is perhaps not an oversight, then, that when Dr. Humes told the ARRB that the doctors inspected the skull and found nothing unusual, he failed to reveal whether the dura was pulled out or the blood was drained. The blood was most certainly not measured.  Humes, when describing a missing photo the doctors believe was taken of the inside of the skull, did tell the ARRB, however, that the photo “should have been sharp and clear because there was no blood by that time, you see. The brain had been removed, and it was a through and through hole…” While this could be taken as an indication the dura was removed and the blood cleaned up, Humes’ next statement to the ARRB might be even more revelatory. When asked by Jeremy Gunn “were there any fractures in that portion of the skull,” Humes replied “Well yeah, I guess… there were fractures in the posterior cranial fossa radiating from the wound.”  When one looks at the posterior cranial fossa (the floor of the skull just behind the ears) in the open cranium photograph, there is what just might be a fracture line.  Perhaps this fracture line traced back to an area so close to the entrance in the occipital bone that the doctors assumed the small entrance hole was the source.  Perhaps at the center of these fractures was a small exit into the neck.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

The Clark Panel’s interpretation of the x-rays specifically ruled this out. Their report declared: “Also, although the fractures of the calvarium extend to the left of the midline and into the anterior and middle fossa of the skull, no bony defect, such as one created by a projectile either entering or leaving the head, is seen in the calvarium to the left of the midline or in the base of the skull.” As there were no x-rays taken from what is known as the Towne’s view, which specifically targets the occipital bone, however, they were most certainly over-stating their case. According to Outline of Roentgen Analysis, a 1943 text contemporary with the x-ray equipment used at Bethesda, "Almost all fractures of the vault of the skull are demonstrable on careful x-ray examination. Fractures of the base, however, may frequently be invisible owing to the complicated structure, the inability to put the patient in the proper position for visualization of the base, and to the superimposition of bones." According to a more current text, Radiology of the Skull and Brain “Many fractures of the calvarium extend into the base but frequently they are not identified on roentgenograms” (x-rays). Thus, the x-rays taken of Kennedy's skull would be of little help in establishing that there'd been no exit on the base.

On the other hand, the x-rays of the neck could suggest the possibility there'd been such an exit. According to Power et al in the March 2004 American Journal of Roentgenology, “Air has been shown on both radiography and CT within the cervical spinal canal after skull base trauma.”  This same article states “The presence of air within the subarachnoid space should alert the clinician to the likely presence of a dural tear.” This suggests that, if a bullet were to have exited from the base of Kennedy' skull, air would most likely have been apparent in the subarachnoid space. So was air apparent in Kennedy's subarachnoid space?

Yes, it was. HSCA Radiologist Dr.David Davis reported: “There is some air in the subarachnoid space of the spinal canal, and also apparently in the…middle fossa… but since the fracture is open to the subarachnoid space, this is not at all surprising."    

So, the possibility the bullet exited the base can't be ruled out.  But are there any other signs?

 

Reading the Signs

Let’s return to Radiology of the Skull and Brain.  It states “Basal skull fractures are common…but frequently are not appreciated on routine skull radiography.  They can be suspected clinically because of 1, blood behind the tympanic membrane of the ear in the absence of direct trauma to the ear, 2, subcutaneous hemorrhage over the mastoid process (Battle’s Sign), or 3, extensive ecchymoses about the orbits in the absence of direct trauma to the orbits.”  While the ecchymoses (bruising) about the orbits (eye sockets) of President Kennedy were indeed noted at the autopsy, the other two signs were not mentioned.  When one looks at the photographs taken of the back of Kennedy’s head, however, and compares it to a photograph of someone with Battle’s Sign, one can see that he did indeed display this tell-tale sign of a fracture in the base of his skull.  The black and white photograph, moreover, seems to be an attempt, in part, to depict this sign, as it appears some blood has been wiped from the area behind Kennedy’s ear that was apparent in the nearly identical color photo taken moments before.

A chapter by Dr. Jefferson Browder in Brock’s Injuries of the Brain and Spinal Cord is also revealing: “a bloody discharge from the external auditory canal may result from a traumatic laceration of this canal, a rupture of the tympanic membrane alone, or a compound fracture of the skull into the middle ear…”   There was indeed a lot of blood in Kennedy’s right ear.  When one compares it to Kennedy’s left ear, it seems likely this blood did indeed come from the ear.  Since it was acknowledged even by the Clark Panel that the middle fossa was fractured, however, this provides little proof that the posterior cranial fossa was fractured.

When we look back at the online description of an autopsy, however, we see that “The fracture of anterior cranial fossa manifests itself by escape of blood and cerebrospinal fluid from the nose, and middle cranial fossa by escape of blood and cerebrospinal fluid from the ear.  Since fracture of the posterior cranial fossa and ring fracture are followed by escape of blood and cerebrospinal fluid in the tissues of the neck, they may not be suspected in certain cases and would be missed unless dura is pulled out from the floor of the skull and the posterior cranial fossa carefully examined.” This tells us that excess blood in the neck tissues could be an indication the posterior cranial fossa was fractured, perhaps even that a bullet traveled down the neck.  In the HSCA report by Dr.s Kerley and Snow, who compared the autopsy photographs to one another to show that the photographs were of the same man and that that man was Kennedy, it was noted, when discussing the back of the head photos “There is a 3 by 5 centimeter area of discoloration at the base of the neck in the right area that apparently represents either a slight contusion or some postmortem lividity.”  A close look at the right lateral autopsy photo does indeed show bruising at a point on the neck which would appear to be higher than the purported passage of the bullet between the back and throat. Could this bruising have come as a result of a bullet’s traveling down the neck?

Intriguingly, the doctors in Dallas who first saw Kennedy, and who were only aware of his throat wound and large head wound, discussed the possible trajectory between these two wounds, and had little problem assuming a bullet or fragment traveled up or down the neck.  In his initial report, Dr. Robert McClelland even described the throat wound as a “fragment wound,” implying it was caused by the exit of a fragment from the bullet creating the head wound.  One might assume from this they observed some signs which told them such a passage was likely.  In Josiah Thompson’s Six Seconds in Dallas, he outlined the Dallas doctors’ testimony and accumulated these signs.  Dr. McClelland, for example, noted that the “swelling and bleeding around the site (the exit in the throat) was to such an extent that the trachea was somewhat deviated to the left side.”  Dr. Charles Baxter likewise noted “There was considerable contusion of the muscles of the anterior neck.”  Dr.  Charles Carrico, on the other hand, testified: “there was some discoloration at the lateral edge of the larynx and there appeared to be some swelling and hematoma.” As the bullet is believed to have passed medial to the anterior neck muscles, and some distance below the larynx, perhaps the deviation of the trachea and the aforementioned bruises can be best explained by a bullet’s having passed down, and traumatizing, the entire right side of the neck. 

Dr. Cyril Wecht has also had thoughts that a bullet traveled up or down the neck.  According to Vincent Bugliosi in Reclaiming History, Wecht had briefly come to speculate that a bullet had entered Kennedy's throat and exited  his "lower left occipital protuberance."  While Wecht quickly gave up on this idea, due to the incompatibility of such a bullet's trajectory with a shot from the grassy knoll, it is nevertheless important to note that a man with his experience, after viewing the autopsy materials numerous times, had seen nothing to convince him that a bullet did not travel up or down the neck, and had in fact suspected that one did travel up or down the neck. 

And then there's this... In a June '67 article in Ramparts Magazine discussing the Garrison investigation, former FBI man William Turner wrote: "a nurse at Parkland Hospital said that when doctors attempted a tracheotomy on the President, the damage was so great the tube pushed out the back of his head." Obviously, if the quote attributed to the nurse was accurate, it would support that a bullet track connected the throat wound and the head wound.  When I contacted Turner in October 2007 to see if he could recall this interview, he responded "I remember sticking it in that article but I didn't interview the nurse. I suspect it was David Welch, a Ramparts writer, with whom I made a trip to Dallas on the JFK case. He interviewed a number of witnesses separate from me...I last had contact with David Welch at a Warren Hinckle party some 15 years ago. At the time he was working for a SF union---I can't remember which one." (I subsequently discovered, via John Kelin's book Praise From a Future Generation, that this Ramparts writer was named David Welsh, not Welch. If anyone knows the current whereabouts of David Welsh, and how I can reach him, please let me know.)

But are there any other signs?

 

The Final Moments

Since a bullet shooting down the neck at Z-224 would have brushed past the cerebellum, if not actually striking it, I decided to look back through the literature to see if there was any indication something like this occurred.  I found that when discussing the brain photos with the ARRB in 1996, Dr. Humes acknowledged, “the right cerebellum has been partially disrupted, yes.” I also found that Dr. Peters, one of the President’s doctors in Dallas, was shown the autopsy photos in 1988 and shared Humes’ appraisal. He wrote writer Harry Livingstone that “the cerebellum was indeed depressed on the right side compared to the left.”  I then recalled the HSCA’s declaration that “the posterior-inferior portion of the cerebellum” was “virtually intact…It certainly does not demonstrate the degree of laceration, fragmentation, or contusion (as appears subsequently on the superior aspect of the brain) that would be expected in this location if the bullet wound of entrance were as described in the autopsy report.”  This time, however, I noticed the qualifiers.  They said “virtually intact,” which indicates some damage.  They also said there was certainly not the degree of damage necessary to be consistent with the autopsy report, which makes sense. After all, the bullet trajectory implied in the autopsy report would have the bullet heading straight into the cerebellum. These statements by the HSCA lead me to believe the damage apparent on the cerebellum is consistent with a bullet’s having headed down into the neck. 

Dr. Humes certainly thought so.  Upon re-reading the supplementary autopsy report from 12-6-63, I noticed that there were seven slices of tissue removed from the brain for microscopic examination, including one from the “right cerebellar cortex.”  I then noticed that the other six were all from areas that were reported to be damaged.  When I re-read the report I realized that a line I had read many times meant something completely different than I’d previously believed.  The report states “When viewed from the basilar aspect the disruption of the right cortex is again obvious.” As  “the basilar aspect” means “underneath” and “cortex” means “outer layer,” this is clearly a reference to the cerebellum and not a reference to the badly lacerated cerebral cortex, which could not be viewed from underneath. The results of the microscopic examination of the brain confirm this damage:  “Multiple sections from representative areas as noted above are examined.  All sections are essentially similar and show extensive disruption of brain tissue with associated hemorrhage.”   Later, during his March 16, 1964 testimony before the Warren Commission, Humes confirmed yet again that the cerebellum was damaged, noting that "the flocculus cerebri was extensively lacerated."  The flocculus cerebri is the underside of the cerebellum.  (Thanks to John Hunt and John Canal for bringing this to my attention.)

At the risk of pulling a Lattimer, who incorrectly tried to link Kennedy’s movements after this shot to something described as a Thorburn’s response, I decided to see if the President’s behavior after frame 224 was consistent with someone suffering damage to his cerebellum.  According to the available literature, the symptoms of cerebellar damage include a weakness to the side of the body suffering the damage (ipsilateral hypotonia), a tendency to not stop a movement at its proper point (dysmetria), an inability to grasp objects (ataxia), an abnormal head attitude, and disturbances in speech, eye movement, and equilibrium.  Between Zapruder frame 224, when the President seems to suffer a wound on his throat, and 313, when he is obviously hit in the head, the President reached in the direction of his throat without grabbing anything, lifted his arms past his throat, slumped to his left (perhaps as over-compensation for the sudden weakness on his right), and stared down without letting out so much as a scream.  Ironically, a November 24, 1963 article in the New York Times by Dr. Howard Rusk described this very phenomenon.  Mistakenly believing the theory proposed by the Dallas doctors on the afternoon of the 22nd, that one shot hit Kennedy in the throat and exploded out the top of his head, Dr. Rusk explained brain injuries as follows:  “If the injury is in the posterior portion of the brain, where the bullet that killed the President made its exit, the cerebellum is damaged.  Then the individual is left with ataxia, evidenced by severe intention type of tremors that occur when one tries to perform a basic act or grasp an object.  Damage to the cerebellum is also usually accompanied by a loss of equilibrium."

Should one be unsatisfied with that explanation, there is another possible explanation for Kennedy’s behavior. Since Brock’s Injuries of the Brain and Spinal Cord made note that “Posterior basilar fractures tend to gravitate towards the large foramina”, I decided to see if there were any behavioral symptoms for a fracture in this area.  And I found something which dropped my jaw.  Jugular Foramen Syndrome is described by Blakiston’s Pocket Medical Dictionary as “Paralysis of the ipsilateral glossopharyngeal, vagus, and spinal accessory nerves, caused by a lesion involving the jugular foramen, usually a basilar skull fracture.”  According to the online article Craniofacial and Skull Base Trauma by Dr. Harry Shahinian and the Skull Base Institute the paralysis of the vagus nerve would manifest itself through a paralysis of the vocal cords, and a paralysis of the spinal accessory nerves would manifest itself through a paralysis of the neck muscle that flexes the head (the strernocleidomastoid) as well as a weakness of the trapezius muscle, which rotates it. The result is a “weakness in contralateral head rotation and shoulder elevation.”  Contralateral, of course, means affecting the opposite side of the body. As we know all too well, Kennedy turned toward his left and his left shoulder dipped in his final, silent, moments.

 

Two and a Half Witnesses

Having established, I believe, a strong case for a new perspective on the President’s wounds, the statements of three autopsy witnesses become relevant. While their memories and/or impressions could very well be wrong, if they are correct, then the conspiracy to suppress the medical evidence began much earlier than one might otherwise believe. The first witness whose statements are relevant to our analysis is Dr. George Burkley, the President’s physician.  Burkley was the only doctor to view Kennedy’s remains in both Dallas and Bethesda. While he died some time ago, he nevertheless left behind a trail which tells an altogether different story than the one provided by the government.

1. The day after the assassination, Dr.  Burkley prepared Kennedy’s death certificate. He listed the cause of death as simply “Gunshot wound, skull” (no specific entrance and exit).  In the summary of facts he explained that Kennedy was “struck in the head” and that the wound was “shattering in type causing a fragmentation of the skull.” He said the “second wound occurred in the posterior back at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra.” This location was slightly lower than the location eventually decided on by the autopsy surgeons and was far too low to be compatible with the single-bullet theory. Just as intriguing, however, Burkley’s mentioning the small entrance wound on the back discovered at the autopsy but failing to mention the small entrance wound on the back of the skull discovered  at the autopsy suggests the possibility that he had doubts this small entrance wound on the skull connected to the large defect.

2.  On November 27, 1963, the FBI delivered the Harper fragment to Dr. Burkley. Despite the fact that this fragment showed both internal and external beveling, which indicated that it came from a tangential wound, Dr. Burkley failed to tell Dr. Humes about the fragment. While the report of the initial autopsy had been completed, Dr. Humes had not yet inspected the brain and completed his work. Dr. Burkley never explained why he failed to tell Humes about this fragment. Did Burkley understand its importance?

3.  On October 17, 1967, Dr. Burkley was interviewed by William McHugh on behalf of the Kennedy Library. When asked about the autopsy of President Kennedy, he told McHugh “My conclusion in regard to the cause of death was the bullet wound which involved the skull.  The discussion as to whether a previous bullet also enters into it, but as far as the cause of death the immediate cause was unquestionably the bullet which shattered the brain and the calvarium.”   While, on the surface, this seems to agree with the autopsy report, the “previous bullet” mentioned by Burkley could very well mean “the previous bullet to strike Kennedy in the skull but not shatter his calvarium.”  Supporting this speculation, when McHugh asked Burkley if he agreed with the Warren Report’s conclusions “on the number of bullets that entered the President’s body,” Dr. Burkley replied “I would not care to be quoted on that.”

4. A memo created by the original chief counsel of the HSCA, Richard Sprague, and found years later in his files, indicates that on March 18, 1977, he spoke to William Illig, Burkley’s attorney.  Illig told Sprague that Burkley had information indicating that Oswald did not act alone. 

5.  When HSCA staff member Andy Purdy finally spoke to Burkley on August 17, 1977, however, the most Burkley said about the possibility of a conspiracy was that “the doctors didn’t section the brain and that if it had been done, it might be possible to prove whether or not there were two bullets.”

6.  On November 28, 1978, towards the end of the HSCA, Burkley signed a sworn statement stating that he was interviewed by Mark Flanagan and Andy Purdy of the HSCA in January 1978. In this statement, he acknowledges “I supervised the autopsy and directed the fixation and retention of the brain for future study of the course of the bullet or bullets.”  (I hope to find Flanagan and Purdy’s account of this interview in the future.)

7.  In his book Reasonable Doubt, writer Henry Hurt claimed to have spoken to Burkley in 1982, and to have been told by Burkley that he believed Kennnedy was killed by a conspiracy.

8. A January, 1997 memo by Doug Horne of the ARRB reflects that he contacted Burkley’s daughter and asked her to grant access to the files on her father kept by his former attorney, William Illig. It was hoped that these files would contain the information Mr. Illig had called Richard Sprague about almost twenty years earlier. She initially agreed, but by July, 1998, had changed her mind.

Nevertheless, by piecing together Burkley’s statements, we can approximate what he was thinking. Nowhere in his statements did he ever say the fatal bullet entered the back of Kennedy’s head. Consequently, when he mentioned a “previous bullet” to McHugh it’s possible he was referring to an earlier, less severe head wound.  Since his placement of the back wound ruled out the single-bullet theory, and since he suspected two bullets struck Kennedy in the head, it’s quite possible he suspected Kennedy was killed in the manner here proposed.

A second witness of interest was Tom Robinson, who worked at Gawler’s Funeral Home.  He helped clean up and reconstruct the President’s skull after the autopsy.  While his recollections of many of the details of that night were foggy—some changed dramatically between his 1977 interview with the HSCA and his 1996 interview with the ARRB—he nevertheless made several relevant statements. He told the HSCA that “The inside of the skull was badly smashed,” that he remembered something about the bullet exiting from the throat, that the bullet “might have been coming from the head and down,” and that he remembers the doctors probing “at the base of the head,’ with an “18 inch piece of metal.”  He told the ARRB, 19 years later that, “there were fractures all over the cranium, including the base of the skull,” and that he had “vivid recollections of a very long, malleable probe being used during the autopsy.  His most vivid recollection of the probe is seeing it inserted near the base of the brain in the back of the head (after removal of the brain), and seeing the tip of the probe come out the tracheotomy incision in the anterior neck.  He was adamant about this recollection.  He also recalls seeing the wound high in the back probed unsuccessfully, meaning that the probe did not exit anywhere.”  While some have sought to discredit Robinson’s statements by pointing out their inconsistencies, they can not be wholly discounted. His memories on some details have proved accurate. For instance, he told the ARRB that “he saw 2 or 3 small perforations or holes in the right cheek during embalming, when formaldehyde seeped through these small wounds and discoloration began to occur.”  These wounds, not mentioned in the autopsy report, and rarely mentioned elsewhere, are indeed visible in the “stare of death” autopsy photo.  While such wounds are in correlation with a bullet exploding near Kennedy’s temple while his head was leaning 25 degrees to its left, its difficult to see how they could be caused by a fragmenting bullet sailing upwards from his cranium, as proposed in Larry Sturdivan’s scenario. 

Finally, there’s Richard Lipsey, who was a military aide to the general responsible for Kennedy’s funeral, General Wehle.  Lipsey was ordered to keep an eye on the President’s body during the autopsy.  Consequently he sat close by and tried to listen to what the doctors were saying.  He prepared a face sheet for the HSCA staff depicting the President’s wounds as he remembered them being discussed.  And they’re exactly as surmised in this presentation! In dismissing Lipsey’s account, the HSCA medical report said “Lipsey apparently formulated his conclusions based on observations and not on the conclusions of the doctors.  In this regard, he believed the massive defect in the head represented an entrance and an exit when it was only an exit.  He also concluded the entrance in the rear of the head corresponded to an exit in the neck.  This conclusion could not have originated with the doctors because during the autopsy they believed the neck defect only represented a tracheostomy incision…Thus, although Lipsey’s recollection of the number of defects to the body and the corresponding locations are correct, his conclusions are wrong and are not supported by any other evidence.”  How strange that the writers of this report represent these as Lipsey’s conclusions, when his testimony is clear that this is simply what he believes he overheard.  If they believed him to be wrong then they should have just said he misunderstood the doctors.  Instead the HSCA forensics panel, which concluded the Bethesda doctors were off by 4 inches on the head wound and at least 2 inches on the back wound, concluded that Lipsey was wrong because his testimony was in disagreement with the statements of these very same doctors, as these doctors are obviously beyond reproach from all sources except, of course, the HSCA forensics panel.  The panel never even inquired with the Bethesda doctors if a shot connecting the wounds in the hairline and neck had ever been considered, and the possibility of such a trajectory is never even discussed in their report!   They simply said Lipsey’s statements were not supported by any other evidence and left it at that. 

 

 45 Degrees of Coincidence?

Sometime after coming to the suspicion the head wound entrance and throat wound were connected, I noticed a strange convergence of 45 degree angles.  Consider:
 
1. The 11/26/63 FBI report of FBI Agents Sibert and O'Neill on the autopsy recounts "During the latter stages of the autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column. This opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60 degrees. (Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger.)"  
 
2. On March 16, 1964, Dr. Humes testified before the Warren Commission and the magic number 45 re-surfaced.
 
Mr. Specter.
Dr. Humes, can you compare the angles of declination on 385, point "C" to "D", with 388 "A" to "B"?
Commander Humes.
You will note, and again I must apologize for the schematic nature of these diagrams drawn to a certain extent from memory and to a certain extent from the written record, it would appear that the angle of declination is somewhat sharper in the head wound, 388, than it is in 385.
The reason for this, we feel, by the pattern of the entrance wound at 388 "A" causes us to feel that the President's head was bent forward, and we feel this accounts for the difference in the angle, plus undoubtedly the wounds were not received absolutely simultaneously, so that the vehicle in which the President was traveling moved during this period of time, which would account for a difference in the line of flight, sir.
Mr. Specter.
Aside from the slight differences which are notable by observing those two exhibits, are they roughly comparable to the angle of decline?
Commander Humes.
I believe them to be roughly comparable, sir.
Mr. Specter.
Could you state for the record an approximation of the angle of decline?
Commander Humes.
Mathematics is not my forte. Approximately 45 degrees from the horizontal.
 
3.  The angle of descent from the entrance near the EOP to the presumed exit on the throat is 45 degrees.

This seems way too great a coincidence.  I mean, think about it.  The angle of descent in the drawing created for Humes was nowhere near 45 degrees. Dr. Humes was an educated man. Could he really be this bad with numbers?  Or was the 45 degrees something he remembered measuring at the autopsy?  Since he also mentioned 45 degrees to the FBI at the autopsy, this sounds reasonable.  In addition, that the FBI report says the back wound was discovered in the "later stages of the autopsy" suggests that the doctors had already discussed the head wound and the tracheotomy incision prior to their discussion of the back wound. Perhaps, then, they'd measured a 45 degree descent between the head wound entrance and throat wound before they discussed the back wound in any detail, and noted that the back wound seemed to match this trajectory, and confused agents Sibert and O'Neill in the process. Since Humes admitted burning his notes and the first draft of his report, we may never know.
 
On the other hand, it's possible that the 45 degrees mentioned in Humes' testimony was not purely a coincidence, and that he was deliberately implying that the 45 degree or greater descent approximated at the autopsy was consistent with the drawing he'd had created for the Warren Commission.  If so, his volunteering that he was bad with math could be his way of deflecting the criticisms he knew would come once people saw the FBI's report, and the actual wound locations.  Humes certainly should have known that his night-of-the-autopsy approximation of a 45 degree descent was totally inconsistent with his day-after conclusion that the bullet exited from Kennedy's throat, on the same level as the entrance.  If he was deliberately clouding the issue, as proposed in this scenario, then it seems possible as well that Arlen Specter, who'd met with FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill while preparing Humes' testimony, was well aware of Humes' deception, and had even coached him on it.
 
There is no easy answer on this one. It's either a total coincidence that a bullet descending from the head wound entrance to the throat wound would be descending at 45 degrees and Dr. Humes at the autopsy said the angle of descent within the body was 45 degrees OR Dr. Humes was not nearly as bad at math as he claimed but was instead a liar helping to cover up the bullet's actual trajectory. No, hold it. On second thought, there's a third option, where Dr. Humes was helping to cover up the bullet's actual trajectory, but knew this to be wrong, and was pretending to be bad at math in order to get the actual bullet trajectory--a descent within the body at 45 degrees-- on the record.  I kinda like that one. Something to think about.  Not that there's not already more than enough to think about.

 

 

Chest X-ray/HSCA Entrance Comparison

After reading Lipsey’s account of the autopsy, and considering the 45 degree coincidence, I went back and re-read most of the other accounts, and found another reference supporting Lipsey’s contention that the doctors suspected a bullet came down the neck. In the HSCA interview of autopsy photographer John Stringer, he distinctly recalled the autopsists having a “conversation about the pathway through the neck and specifically discussion about air in the throat.” This implies that, far from believing the throat wound was a mere tracheotomy incision, the doctors had other suspicions all along.  The “air in the throat” is, almost certainly, a reference to the chest/neck x-ray.

Upon close examination of the chest/neck x-ray, one notes a black spot (representing air in the tissues) at the approximate level of the exit, at approximately the midline of the throat.  This would appear to be the exit. Surprisingly, however, the black line which one would have to presume represents the bullet path, can be traced backwards up the neck, to a point much higher than the purported entrance in the President’s back. That the HSCA forensic pathology panel attached no importance to this “interstitial emphysema” (air in the tissues), even though one of its consultants, Dr. Seaman, considered it “highly suspicious compared with the other side,” whilst simultaneously embracing a bullet path between the hole in the back and the hole in the neck, which tore no muscles and broke no bones, yet could not be probed by the autopsy doctors, is mysterious, if not disturbing. That their projected path through the neck starting at the back entrance more than an inch and a half to the right of the President’s mid-line and ending at their proposed exit in the throat slightly to the left of the President’s mid-line blasted right through Kennedy’s spine, while they claimed the bullet never touched a bone, makes their actions doubly mysterious, or disturbing. They simply refused to follow the evidence.  Or make sense. 

While I initially had doubts that a wound track could be so obvious, I found a few people who seem to agree with me that this is a wound track.  People who have seen a few wound tracks.  Amazingly, the Clark Panel report, when discussing the back wound and the throat wound, declares: “There is a track between the two cutaneous wounds as indicated by subcutaneous emphysema and small metallic fragments on the x-rays…” Well, I’ll be! Perhaps this is the key to the Clark Panel’s mis-representing the vertical distance between the two wounds—while they could see that the bullet came down the neck, they just couldn’t fathom that it was coming from anywhere but the back wound.  If someone were to coin the expression “assassination research makes strange bedfellows,” this would be a perfect example.

Yet another who believes the shadows are a wound track is Larry Sturdivan, the HSCA ballistics expert.  In his book, The JFK Myths, Strdivan declares “The x-rays show a faint, but perceptible, shadow of a wound track running from the entry location shown in the autopsy photos to the exit point at the suprasternal notch.”  Since Sturdivan adds “The entry was located just above the transverse process of the first thoracic vertebra” however, it’s clear he’s trying to have it both ways, using an entrance slightly higher than the HSCA’s entrance location and insisting that the exit in the throat was not higher than the back wound, as claimed by the HSCA, but lower.  Since the shadows on the x-ray  begin much higher than T-1, however, we should reject Sturdivan’s conclusion.  Moreover, I find it interesting that Sturdivan would call his book The JFK Myths, and claim it debunks the theories of the conspiracy community, and then submit that the HSCA had the entry location of the head wound, the exit location of the head wound, and the entrance location of the back wound incorrect.  Perhaps he meant for his title to cut both ways.   More to the point, since it seems clear that Sturdivan is deliberately disregarding the wound locations of the forensic pathology panel in his work, the question must be asked:  why is it considered unpatriotic, unscientific, or anti-American to question the specific conclusions of the government’s panels when that leads you to conclude Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, when it’s not consider unpatriotic, unscientific or anti-American to question their conclusions if you say Oswald acted alone?  This double-standard, I believe, says a lot about why this case is still relevant.

 

Lattimer Drawing/X-ray/HSCA Drawing Comparison

One of the great surprises one receives with the conviction that a bullet traveled down the neck is that Dr. John Lattimer, who has devoted years of study to try and prove that Oswald acted alone, agrees. (That’s right, on this issue, the Clark Panel, Lattimer, Sturdivan, and I all agree!) In his book, Kennedy and Lincoln, Lattimer shares his interpretation of the line of injuries in Kennedy’s neck.  He declares, proudly, that his drawing is based upon an actual x-ray.  That his drawing distorts the arrangement of Kennedy’s clothes and the shape of his body, so that a bullet could create an entrance on his jacket 5 inches from the top of his collar, enter his back at the level of his “Adam’s Apple,” and  travel inches down his neck, reveals how desperate Lattimer is to make his interpretation of the x-ray fit his beloved lone-nut theory. 

When one compares Lattimer’s drawing of the President’s wounds to a similar drawing created by the HSCA, one can notice many other distortions as well. The HSCA drawing, for starters, has the bullet entering Kennedy’s back heading slightly upwards through the body while Lattimer’s drawing has the bullet headed sharply downwards. The HSCA, in keeping with the autopsy photographs, places the back wound on the back while Lattimer lifts it up onto the neck. While the two present the lungs in the same place in comparison to the bullet track, this is not an agreement between the two but is actually a discrepancy, as Lattimer’s bullet track is much higher within the body.  While the HSCA presents the lungs as just below the level of exit when the body is erect, but higher than the exit due to Kennedy’s severe forward pitch, Lattimer presents the lungs as being higher than the exit even when erect.  Since Lattimer does not dispute that the bullet exited the throat midway between the Adam’s apple and the bony notch at the bottom of the throat, this means he believes Kennedy’s lungs extended above his rib cage, into his neck.  Of course, this is preposterous. It’s clear that Lattimer, as Sturdivan, was trying to have it both ways:  while his interpretation of the x-rays led him to believe the bullet traveled down the neck, he still wanted to be able to say the passage of this bullet bruised Kennedy’s lung, even though this trajectory would pass approximately three inches away from the nearest lung.  While some, including Lattimer, have argued that the confusion around Kennedy’s back wound is related to the fact that Kennedy’s Addison’s disease made him a hunchback, I don’t believe that even one of these men has been foolish enough to suggest Kennedy’s lungs changed position and rose above the level of his ribcage as a result.

It was while comparing the lungs in these drawings that I had a bit of a breakthrough. While the HSCA and Lattimer were in agreement on the shape of the bruise on Kennedy’s lung, which is consistent in relation to the bullet cavity and is thus supportive that the cavity did indeed create this bruise, I realized that on this issue both drawings were wrong.  While the photograph of this bruise is one of the photographs that the doctors remembered taking, but never saw again, Dr. Humes’ testimony on the bruise is quite clear, and is in disagreement with the drawings.  He told the Warren Commission that the bruise was 5 centimeters at its greatest diameter “and was wedge shaped in configuration, with its base toward the top of the chest and its apex down towards the substance of the lung,” and repeated that it “was a roughly pyramid-shaped bruise with its base toward the surface of the upper portion of the lung, and the apex down into the lung tissue.” Humes was telling them, therefore, that the bruise came to a point.  Such a bruise would not be expected from a temporary cavity, which radiates in an oval, but could very well have come as a result of a bullet deflecting from an overlying bone.  Articles on pulmonary contusions from gunshot wounds reflect that they are far more prominent when a bullet slaps against a rib or chest wall than when a bullet actually traverses the substance of the lung.  One such article by Dr. Rollin Daniel in a 1944 edition of Surgery, in which dogs were shot and immediately studied, connected the level of pulmonary contusion to the amount of energy released into the adjacent non-lung tissue. In the single-bullet scenario, in which the bullet magically slid between the strap muscles and did not damage the arteries, the damage to the surrounding tissue would have to be quite small.  As the first thoracic vertebrae attaches to the spine just above the uppermost margin of the lung, the shape of this bruise could very well indicate that a bullet deflected off this bone from above. 

 

Lattimer Skeleton/ X-ray Comparison

Should one doubt that Lattimer believed the bullet traveled some distance down Kennedy’s neck, one need only look at another photo published in Kennedy and Lincoln.  This photo depicted the purported bullet path alongside a skeleton.  Intriguingly, this skeleton appears to be missing a first rib, which represents the uppermost level of the lung in most humans.  Perhaps Lattimer was seeking to conceal how far this level was from his bullet path, I don’t know. The angle of the photo is also intriguing, in that it makes it impossible to tell how far the back entrance wound would be from the spine. In any case, in this photo, Lattimer made crystal clear his belief that the bullet entered around the level of the third or fourth cervical vertebrae, near the middle of Kennedy’s neck, where no one but no one saw an entrance.  Why he didn’t realize such a bullet path would be more likely to have come from the hole in the hairline than from the hole in the shoulder can perhaps be attributed to his lack of imagination. Since he also claims, this bullet “exited with a wobble” even though the doctors who saw this exit described it as smaller than the width of the bullet, it would seem that Dr. Lattimer just wasn’t particularly concerned with having his theories make a lot of sense.

When one reflects that there was unexplained damage to the transverse process (a bony finger sticking out from the spine) of the President’s sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae, as well as the process to his first thoracic vertebrae, just above his lung, one should realize that the damage to his vertebrae and the bruise upon his lung can be more readily explained by a bullet coming down his neck than by a bullet coming from an entrance on his back, which left no probe-able missile path through his muscles.  That the bullet exited at the level of the lowest damage to his vertebrae, T-1, as opposed to the middle damage of his vertebrae, is yet another indication that that the damage did not come as a result of the temporary cavity surrounding the bullet, especially since in the Forensic Pathology Panel’s interpretation the bullet was heading upwards in the body, and would therefore have been some distance from C-6 as it passed. 

In fact, when one looks closely at the x-ray one can see what appears to be a deflection in the bullet’s path where the first rib connects to the spine. The trajectory down the neck somehow changes course and heads for the throat. Due to the aforementioned bruise, it would appear that bone was struck. This could represent one of the two deflections necessary for the bullet striking Kennedy near the EOP to exit from the middle of his throat.  The other one occurred upon the entrance to his skull.  This would seem to be more than just a coincidence. Perhaps we’re on the right...track.

 

See No Evil

When I re-read the Final Report of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, I was finally able to satisfy myself that a bullet descended in Kennedy’s neck, most logically from the entrance in the hairline.  Not because of what was said in the report as much as what was not said.  What was not said was a convincing explanation for what appears to be a bullet track heading down the neck.

Here’s how the forensic pathology panel dealt with the white spots apparent on x-ray number 8 and identified by the Clark Panel and Dr. Lattimer as possible bullet or bone fragments.  These fragments just so happen to be directly along the bullet path from the occipital bone to the throat wound.  An acknowledgment of these fragments as fragments, whether bone or metal, would call into question the single-bullet theory as proposed by the HSCA.  So the doctors did what all prominent doctors do in a time of crisis. They brought in some specialists to tell them what they want to hear... Dr. McDonnell said the white spots were “artifacts not uncommonly caused by foreign materials on the film or in the developing solution.” He stated further that the dark shadow seen on x-ray number 8 was not seen on x-ray number 9 and that this suggested this shadow too was an artifact. Dr. Chase said “the 1 by 2.5 millimeter object was too small and too dense to be bone; rather, the little trail of dots near the fragment was indicative of artifacts.”  Dr. Seaman said “there was a fragment-like object near the transverse process which was too dense to be bone (“fairly confident”) He said the transverse process appears normal with air present (“possibly byproduct of tracheotomy”), calling it “highly suspicious compared with the other side.”  So here we have the HSCA’s radiology consultants basically saying that they don’t know what to make of the x-rays but that it’s okay by them if the forensic pathology panel decides they want to dismiss as artifacts what might just be bullet fragments in Kennedy’s neck.  They’re also giving them the wink wink nod nod that they can call the apparent wound track coming down the neck, the possibility of which is never mentioned in the report, by the way, as “air” from the tracheotomy.  Naturally, the panel took them up on their offer. 

Here’s the hot air the panel drummed up to dismiss this “air” and the unspoken possibility the bullet came down the neck: “The panel noted a general haziness and poorly defined decrease in radiodensity in the neck tissues just above the right chest cavity in films 8 and 9, and attributed this to interstitial emphysema. This was probably related to the surgical tracheotomy or missile injury to the trachea, followed by positive pressure insufflation, with a slight escape of air into the adjacent tissues.  Continued breathing by the President, possible even after the trachea had been perforated by the missile because the overlyng defect was more or less sealed by the shirt and necktie, could also have caused air to leak into the adjacent tissues.” So the air backed up into Kennedy’s neck when his shirt and necktie somehow sealed off the exit from his throat????  And, by some strange chance, this air backed up into the neck on the right side only, even though the exit on the trachea was, according to the HSCA, slightly to the left of midline?  And this air went up in a line that deflected off the first rib?  When we recall that radiologist Dr. David Davis told the panel that air from a skull base fracture came down the neck, their lame attempts to explain how this air went up the neck seem especially pathetic.  Clearly, as revealed by their dismissal of Lipsey’s statements, they refused to acknowledge the possibility that anything could come down the neck.  One wonders why this is.  I mean, why not just call the air an artifact and get it over with? 

Unlike Dr. McDonnell, by the way, I don’t believe the dark shadows in x-ray number 8 are an artifact.  Although there is clearly more air in the tissues than in the earlier x-ray, I believe they represent the same wound track as in the pre-autopsy x-ray, just from a slightly different angle.  Since the bullet creating this wound was not found, moreover, I believe it’s possible a piece of the bullet is still in there somewhere, hidden amongst the bones.  Maybe I’ll be able to spot this bullet fragment someday if I'm ever allowed to look at the original x-rays.  No use holding our breaths for some doctor to find it…