Chapter 18: X-Ray Specs

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

Skull X-rays

When one looks at the autopsy x-rays of President Kennedy, it is important to remember that they were made using portable equipment.  This was due to the doctors’ reluctance to move the President. This portable equipment was not first-rate, however, and some poor images were the result. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand how the autopsy doctors missed out on some of the details we now find so compelling. It is less easy to understand how the Clark Panel saw so much.

For starters, the Clark Panel, presumably under the influence of Dr. Russell Morgan, their one radiologist, claimed: “a hole measuring approximately 8 mm in diameter on the outer surface of the skull and as much as 20 mm on the internal surface can be seen in profile 100 mm above the extreme occipital protuberance. The bone of the lower edge of the hole is depressed.”  Well, why was the skull at the lower edge of the hole depressed?  Since the Clark Panel proceeded to describe a large fragment at the back of Kennedy’s skull, claiming it was “embedded in the outer table of the skull close to the lower edge of the hole” and the HSCA radiologists explained that this fragment, measured at exactly 6.5 mm, (the width of a bullet from Oswald’s gun), was 1 cm below the depressed fracture, it follows that the fragment was officially on a depressed section of bone as much as a centimeter below the alleged in-shoot on a non-depressed section of bone. How did this happen?  Dr. Baden's testimony before the HSCA that this fragment was a piece of metal that "rubbed off from the bullet on entering the skull and was deposited at the entrance site " is thoroughly inadequate. 

And why wasn’t this fragment, presumably on the back of Kennedy's head, even mentioned in the autopsy report? The autopsy report mentioned two fragments removed from Kennedy's cerebral cortex but nothing about a a large fragment embedded on the back of the skull. Dr. Humes testified, moreover, that they sought out a bullet fragment near the eye socket but had difficulty finding it. It seems possible then that they believed the bullet fragment on the back of the skull was near Kennedy’s forehead, and stopped looking for it when they found a smaller fragment. This is supported by the fact that the club-shaped fragment readily visible on the HSCA’s enhanced x-rays, which is believed to represent the fragment recovered at the autopsy, is basically invisible to the naked eye on the original, un-enhanced x-rays viewed by the doctors at the autopsy. The Clark Panel, tellingly, mentioned a large fragment on the back of the head but none near the forehead.

It seems likely, then, that the failure of the doctors to mention this fragment in the autopsy report was some kind of mistake. While some have claimed the FBI’s report of the autopsy proves the doctors lied about this fragment, a closer study of this report reveals this isn’t true. The 11/26/63 Report of Agents Sibert and O’Neil states that “X-rays of the brain…disclosed a path of a missile…the path of the disintegrated fragments could be observed along the right side of the skull…The largest section of this missile as portrayed by x-ray appeared to be behind the right frontal sinus…The next largest fragment appeared to be at the rear of the skull at the juncture of the skull bone.” Those who believe the doctors lied make the claim that the second fragment mentioned is a reference to the large fragment or slice found on the x-rays. I beg to differ. To me, it's more than clear that the first fragment mentioned is a reference to the “slice,” and that the second fragment is a reference to a smaller fragment visible near the crown of the skull.  I believe this for four reasons:  1) the small fragment near the crown is the second largest fragment visible on the x-rays; 2) it is at the rear of the skull, and not the back of the skull, where the large fragment or “slice” is believed to reside; 3) it is near a “juncture” in the skull, the sagittal suture along the midline, as revealed by the A-P x-ray; and 4) it is in the so called “path of disintegrated fragments” mentioned by the agents, while the large fragment is not. 

Still, as the autopsy report failed to mention a fragment at the back of the head, and the Clark panel discussed it, the appearance was created that this fragment had been suddenly “discovered.”  As a result, an air of mystery developed around this fragment.

The nature of the fragment grew more mysterious with time.  One of the Rockefeller Commission’s consultants, Dr. Richard Lindenberg, amazingly, tried to dismiss the fragment as nothing unusual, reporting that “the bullet became deformed when it entered the skull and lead was squeezed out of its base. One larger fragment lies outside and next to the lower margin of the entrance wound” and then concluding “The presence of a distinct exit wound also suggests that the bullet did not disintegrate within the cranial cavity but was only somewhat deformed. Disintegration must have taken place as it exited the skull.” (Lindenberg thereby asserted that there was a large bullet fragment on the outside of the back of the head, but that the bullet didn’t in fact break up until it exited from the frontal bone! Huh? As we've seen, this line of bull-oney was later repeated by Dr. Baden.)  Some, including ballistician Howard Donahue, developed their own novel explanations of this fragment.  Donahue believed, and convinced many others, that this fragment was the result of a ricochet.

When one reads about ricochets in such books as Vincent J. M. DiMaio’s Practical Aspects of Firearms: Ballistics and Forensic Techniques, however, one finds that the bullets are flattened length-wise and that there is no record of them breaking into narrow cross-sections, or slices.  As non-jacketed, lead bullets have been found to on occasion “pancake” on the back of men’s skulls, however, some have said that the possibility remains that this “slice” on the back of Kennedy’s skull was not a slice but a lead fragment of a bullet that ricocheted. (It’s probably too small to be a “pancake” of a full-sized bullet.) Even this contention, however, is seriously undercut by DiMaio’s research. On page 90 of Practical Aspects he has a chart indicating the expected level of deflection of bullets fired from various angles. According to this chart, a 6.5 mm full metal jacket bullet like those fired in Oswald’s gun would have no appreciable deflection upon hitting smooth stone from 20-30 degrees above. If one is still convinced the fragment on the back of Kennedy’s skull came from a ricochet then one should reflect that any shot fired from the sniper’s nest towards President Kennedy and somehow ricocheting off the street to strike him would have to have magically avoided striking motorcycle officer James Chaney, riding slightly behind and to the right of the President.

Although he did not discuss this fragment in his 1978 HSCA testimony, HSCA ballistics expert Larry Sturdivan has in recent years developed his own theory about the fragment. He has concluded that, since it makes little sense for there to be a round fragment on the back of Kennedy's head, well, then there isn't one, and that what appears to be one is most probably an artifact, an error on the x-ray. (Sound familiar?)  The one thing he says he’s sure it isn’t is a cross-section of a bullet, as he claims to have never seen a perfectly rounded piece of bullet jacket in a wound.  He also shares the opinion of Dr. David Mantik (who, unlike Sturdivan, believes the fragment was deliberately added to the x-ray to make people think the shot came from behind) that the fragment seems to have greater optical density (whiteness, demonstrating thickness) when the x-rays penetrate its thin round face on the a-p x-ray, than when the x-rays penetrate it edge-wise on the lateral x-ray.

In 1979, however, the forensic pathology panel of the HSCA concluded that this fragment was just what their ballistics expert now swears it is not:  a slice of a bullet sheared off upon impact by the oval entrance in the cowlick, 1 cm above.  They theorized that this slice somehow became lodged between the walls of the President’s skull. Since the fragment is believed to measure 6.5 mm, the same width of a cross-section of a bullet, this almost makes sense.  When one reflects that skull is made of three layers, an outer hard shell, a spongy middle, and a brittle inner lining, however, it makes little sense that the middle of a bullet (as the nose and tail had ended up in the front seat), while traveling at 1800 feet per second, would somehow become sliced and end up in the spongy middle part of the skull by the entrance.  This is especially true since the nose of the bullet had purportedly created beveling, where through the outward dispersion of energy the hole in the brittle inner table was two and a half times (as per the Clark Panel’s measurements-- the HSCA also mentions beveling but gives no measurements) the size of the entrance hole on the outside of the skull in the cowlick.  This makes one wonder how this bullet slice found its way into the inner table; did it Frisbee through space before lodging in the depressed segment of bone below? That no doctor has ever uncovered a comparable case, whereby a slice of a metal-jacketed bullet lodged between the walls of a skull near the point of impact, is not surprising.  As with so many of the forensic pathology panel’s theories, something is just wrong here. More on this later.

 

Radiology Review

To properly understand the x-rays, there are a number of concepts one must keep in mind.  The first and foremost concept is that an x-ray is a negative image reflecting the density of an object, and not its surface appearance. The areas of the x-ray film most exposed to x-rays are the darkest, and the areas least exposed, the whitest.  Dense matter, such as bone or metal, will, of course, show up as white, while air will show up as black. A dark object or area is referred to as being radiolucent (meaning it is easily penetrable by x-rays), while a white object or area is referred to as being radio-opaque (meaning it is not easily penetrated).  This established, we can begin to discuss the autopsy x-rays of President Kennedy, probably the least understood and most controversial element of the medical evidence.

We should start by killing some myths about the x-rays. After only a few days of research I found that the assertions of many conspiracy theorists, including Harrison Livingstone, that Kennedy’s x-rays were inconsistent with the wounds described in the autopsy report, or even that they depicted a different person, were completely groundless. While Livingstone and others insisted that the dark shadows on Kennedy’s right forehead area demonstrated that his right face was missing, I found that air in the tissues is to be expected in the x-rays of gun shot victims. In fact, I found a quite similar x-ray in the March, 1990 American Journal of Roentgenology. The caption of this x-ray reads:  “Note the pneumocephalus, calvarial fractures, and loss of brain parenchyma.” Pneumocephalus means air in the brain cavity, calvarial fractures means fractures of the dome of the skull, and loss of brain parenchyma means a loss of the brain’s distinctive shape.  Basically, this victim, as Kennedy, had had the right half of his brain turned to mush by gunfire, and had a quite similar x-ray as a result.  

Should one think I'm exaggerating the obviousness of Livingstone's mistake, then one should consider that Dr.s Cyril Wecht and David Mantik offered a similar rebuttal to the "missing face argument" of Livingstone and others in the book The Assassinations, published 2003. They wrote: "most of the x-rays in the beam are absorbed not by the bone, but rather by the brain itself. The dark area should instead have suggested to them that brain, rather than skull, was missing in this area." While Wecht and Mantik, in turn, observed that Kennedy was laying on his back when x-rayed, and that the brain in such case would have settled to the back of his head, they also expressed doubt that the damage observed at autopsy was sufficient enough to explain why the brain had settled to such an extent. On this point, I suspect they are mistaken. The autopsy face sheet did make note that the falx cerebri, a covering of the brain at the top of the head, which helps keep it in place, was loose. An article in the August 2006 Radiology written by doctors from Dr. Finck's employer, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, moreover, made note that "In eight of 10 subjects with gunshot wounds through the brain, the brain was settled in the dependent portion, and pneumocephalus was present in the nondependent portion of the calvarium...The brain in the remaining two subjects was extruded from the calvarium."  In other words, the doctors found that air was apparent in the frontal area of all ten of the high-velocity gunshot victims they'd studied. As a result, I suspect the air observed on the frontal area of Kennedy's x-rays is far from suspicious.

The March 1990 American Journal of Roentgenology offers another x-ray of interest. This lateral x-ray (taken from the side) depicts the remnants of a bullet in a victim’s forehead after traversing the skull.  As predicted in Spitz and Fisher’s Medico-legal Investigation of Death, the copper jacket failed to exit.  Of even more interest, however, is that there are a number of small fragments on the outside of the skull surrounding the bullet’s entrance. As the bullet killing Kennedy is purported  to have entered in this same region of the skull and  to have broken up to a much greater degree, it makes absolutely no sense that the bullet supposedly making its entrance in the cowlick left no fragments around the outside of the entrance. None.  Of course, there are those who’ve convinced themselves that a full metal jacket bullet can fracture upon impact and only begin to break up as it traverses the skull.  That’s like saying you can explode an egg through a window without getting any yolk on the window.  No, it’s worse than that.  It’s like saying you can explode an egg though a window and leave an egg-shaped hole in the glass, without getting any yolk, egg white, or shell on the window.

A second look at this lateral x-ray reveals that it is strikingly dissimilar to Kennedy’s x-ray in at least one other way.  While Kennedy’s lateral x-ray is black towards the front and whitest towards the back, the x-ray in the periodical is, outside the bullet fragments, whitest where almost all other skull x-rays are whitest, the petrous bone sitting at the base of the skull.

 

Optical Density Comparison

When one compares Kennedy’s lateral autopsy x-ray to other x-rays of its time period, including x-rays taken of his own skull before his death, one can see that something is indeed wrong.  His x-ray is whitest at the back of the skull, while the others are whitest across the dense petrous bone. The incredible range of density on Kennedy’s x-ray is also remarkable.  The strange appearance of this x-ray, in fact, led Dr.  David Mantik to conclude the whiteness on the back of the head is evidence of deliberate alteration.  Most other radiologists who’ve commented on the x-rays, including those who believe the x-rays demonstrate the likelihood of a conspiracy, disagree with this conclusion.  In Anthony Summers’ December 2001 Vanity Fair article The Ghosts of November, he cited Radiologist Dr. Randy Robertson, his colleague Patrick Burnett and Neuroanatomist Dr. Joseph Riley, among those who contend that the x-rays have NOT been tampered with.  Still, Mantik’s point is valid and deserves an explanation.  

To that end, we need to increase our understanding of how x-rays are created, and how Kennedy’s x-rays could be so inferior. Dr. John Ebersole, the autopsy radiologist, gave a partial explanation to the HSCA when he told them “I would like to explain one thing.  These films, these x-rays were taken solely for the purpose of finding what at that time was thought to be a bullet that had entered the body and had not exited.  If we were looking for fine bone detail, the type of diagnostic exquisite detail we want in life, we could have taken the x-rays in the x-ray department, made the films there, but we felt that the portable x ray equipment was adequate for the purpose; i.e., locating a metallic fragment.” The portable x-ray equipment used at Bethesda was reportedly an old General Electric 250. The 1943 guidebook Medical Radiographic Technique by General Electric’s Technical Services Division explains what should have happened next:  “Technics should not be used to produce maximum contrast, but rather technics which will give satisfactory contrast for maximum visibility of structure.” The book then has three x-rays of a human skull: one created with a short exposure that has too little contrast; one created with a longer exposure that has an appropriate amount of contrast; and one created with an even longer exposure that has too much contrast.  It’s clear from looking at these x-rays and comparing them to Kennedy’s that his had WAY too much contrast. The intensity of the whiteness towards the back of his head is so great, in fact, that it appears to have become distorted; to have become, in the words of an old laundry detergent commercial, “whiter than white.”  This distorted whiteness allowed the solid bone around it to look merely white, while forcing the areas without solid bone, the areas with air in the tissues, to look black. 

Since the x-ray equipment had a chart which told the x-ray techs, Custer and Reed, how long to expose an image, based on the measurements of the object being x-rayed, one wonders how they could screw it up so badly.  A partial excuse could be related to Reed’s admission that, in order to prevent his having to re-do his work should there have been a mix-up developing the x-rays, he exposed two x-ray films at the same time, and boosted the energy level to compensate. A boost in energy would, naturally, increase the contrast, but this x-ray has so much contrast it’s off the scale.* There’s gotta be a better explanation.

*One radiologist e-mailed me after reading this slide. He objected to my use of the word “contrast.” He said “To me “contrast” means the ability to distinguish things close together in physical density and this happens in the sweet spot of the film where there are lots of shades of gray.  The sweet spot is not very wide and has to be placed on the area of interest.  For example the area of the lateral view of the skull where the brain has been blown or sucked out is overexposed in my terminology (while the exposure toward the rear looks OK) and all the shades of gray have been wiped out up front and I would never say that view had too much contrast…”  Point taken.  I used the word “contrast” in order to be consistent with the General Electric guidebook. I apologize for any confusion.

 

Computer-Enhanced X-rays

When one looks at the computer-enhanced x-rays released by the HSCA (or at least the photos published of these x-rays), one comes to a quick realization. There is a bullet fragment visible on both the AP x-ray and lateral x-ray, in the President's forehead, above his right frontal sinus. There were two fragments removed at autopsy, one large one from behind the right frontal sinus, and a smaller one nearby. Well, if this is the larger fragment, where's the smaller one? And, if this is that fragment, what of the even larger fragment seen on the A-P x-ray? In the sections above, I've surmised that the doctors went looking for that fragment, later determined to be on the back of Kennedy's head, and stopped when they found this club-shaped fragment in his forehead. Well, the enhanced x-rays show the two fragments to have been e of radically different proportions. Could they really have been that mistaken? Or is there a better explanation?

When one reads the reports of the HSCA's radiology consultants, Dr.s McDonnell and Davis, included in Vol. 7 of the HSCA's report, one finds even more to ponder. Much of what they said fails to support the conclusions of the forensic pathology panel. In fact, if one reads closely, one can find substantive support for our operating premise that a bullet broke up on the outside of Kennedy’s skull above his ear. 

First of all, neither of the two doctors mentioned the large entrance hole at the back of the head described by the Clark Panel.  Second of all, Dr. David Davis said he believed the fractures at the back of Kennedy’s skull emanated not from the HSCA’s in-shoot but from the bullet slice itself.  Since it simply makes no sense for a bullet to enter half-way into a skull, break-up, and have a slice from its middle lodge within its in-shoot, (particularly as the tail of the bullet struck the windshield only a few feet from its nose), a better  explanation is needed. Third, Dr. Davis reported a trail of fragments inside the skull beginning some 6 centimeters above and in front of the supposed wound in the cowlick and stretching along the mid-line of the brain towards the President’s forehead, noting that the largest of the supposed trail of fragments (the one high up near the crown of his head) appeared to be “outside the intracranial space.”  This makes absolutely no sense if the large defect was solely an exit!  I mean, how could bullet fragments speeding through a skull at hundreds of feet per second reverse themselves and attach themselves to the outside of the skull at a location inches back towards the entrance?  Dr. Davis himself admitted:  “It is impossible to work this out entirely.” That this fragment didn’t come as a result of the impact at the in-shoot is refuted by the small size of the entrance wound, which would have been truly impossible if the bullet had exploded in half on the outside of the skull at that location. Furthermore, since the reported trajectory of these fragments within the brain doesn’t follow the HSCA’s trajectory of the dissolving bullet, which they believed headed 18 degrees left to right within the skull and exited en masse (in order to create the large skull fractures apparent near the temple), it’s clear a better explanation is needed here as well.  Four, the lateral x-rays reveal a fracture line running from the area of the supposed in-shoot in the cowlick, confirming activity in that area; this fracture line, however, comes to a complete stop after intersecting a fracture line coming from the large defect near the temple.  This proves that the large defect preceded whatever occurred near the cowlick.  This use of fracture lines to determine wound sequence is widely accepted by radiologists and forensic pathologists and is known as Puppe’s Rule.  It is in forensics journals and textbooks. There is nothing controversial about this.  And yet, not one of the HSCA’s radiologists even mentioned this! Clearly, a better explanation is needed!!

So here it comes. Dr. Donald W. Marrion, in 1999's Traumatic Brain Injury, describes: "In some instances, a bullet disintegrates when it hits the skull at an angle, sending multiple fragments into the scalp and thereby having the appearance of a shotgun wound on plain skull radiographs." If we assume Kennedy was struck in such a manner at frame 313 of the Zapruder film, of course, it correlates Dr. Davis' observation that the fragments appeared to be in the scalp with Dr. William Kemp Clark's observation and testimony that Kennedy's large head wound appeared to be a tangential wound. It appeared to be because it was.

That Dr. Davis was agreeable to this conclusion is confirmed by a 12-22-78 letter he wrote to the HSCA. In response to their question of whether the x-rays were consistent with a shot being fired from the grassy knoll, he wrote: "the only possible occurrence would have required President Kennedy's head to have been tilted to the left side, that is, with the right ear elevated and the left depressed...in order to justify our potential explanation that a tangential blow might have been struck to the right top of Mr. Kennedy's skull at about the same time the posterior missile entered." Dr. Davis then haggled about the exact trajectory needed for this to work, and concluded "If the films of Mr. Kennedy's head at the time of the impact do not show such a tilt, I think that it is completely reasonable to assume that there was no possible head wound from the right side." Dr. Davis had thereby confirmed that his problem with such a shot did not come from his study of the x-rays, but from the assassination films, and that the x-rays were completely consistent with the large defect's having been created by a tangential blow.

Those studying the x-rays at autopsy, in fact, suspected such a blow. The radiologist at the autopsy, Dr. John Ebersole, in testimony originally slated to be sealed for fifty years, told the HSCA medical panel, in regards the direction of the fatal shot: "In my opinion it would have come from the side...I would say on the basis of those x rays and x rays only one might say one would have to estimate there that the wound of entrance was somewhere to the side or to the posterior quadrant." Such a wound is most assuredly not  the small wound on the back of the head by the EOP. 

There were others at the autopsy who shared in his assessment. When discussing the back of the head in the lateral x-ray, Jerrol Custer testified before the ARRB "you see the fragmentation, how it starts to get larger and larger and larger...The brain has been pushed back, and it pops the skull out." When asked then if this meant the trauma began at the front and moved towards the back of the head, Custer clarified "Yes, absolutely." An HSCA report on an interview with Dr. Humes' and Dr. Boswell's assistant at the autopsy, James Curtis Jenkins, reflects a similar opinion: "He said the wound to the head entered the top rear quadrant from the front side." 

Jenkins would later clarify his thoughts. As recounted in High Treason 2, in 1990, he told Harrison Livingstone 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." When then asked by Livingstone if this might have been an entrance, he replied: "Yes, and the opening and the way the bone was damaged behind the head (it) would have definitely been a type of exit wound." In an interview with William Law, published in Law's book In the Eye of History (2005), moreover, Jenkins stood by this assessment. About Humes and Boswell, he related "They were speculating about a lot of things." When asked about what, he continued "Well, about a hole actually above the right ear. The speculation was that it had some gray substance on it and of course the speculation at that point in time that it was from a bullet." When asked if they came to a conclusion regarding this hole, he responded "No, I think--from my assumption--that it was an entry wound." He then acknowledged that "Later on I was told there was a wound below the nuchal line on the back of Kennedy's head" and that even so "I came out of the autopsy that night and I was sure that the bullet entered the right side of the head and exited in this area" (at which point he pointed above his right ear).

As none of these men noted a separate entrance and exit for the large head wound they observed, it seems clear they were describing a tangential wound impacting on the side of Kennedy's head at the supposed exit defect. It follows then from this that they were of the impression the small entrance near the EOP discovered at the autopsy did not correlate with the large defect more readily observed at the top of the head, and that there was more than one head wound.

While undoubtedly problematic for the single-assassin conclusion, the assumption that the shot striking Kennedy at frame 313 was a tangential blow nevertheless makes sense out of all sorts of nonsense. It explains why the President’s skull fragments shot upward from above and forward of Kennedy’s ear, but not from the purported entrance in the hairline, and why the four major scalp lacerations described in the autopsy report all began at the large defect, and none at the supposed entrance. It removes the messy proposition that the bullet traversing Kennedy's skull changed directions upon exit before striking the windshield, and replaces it with the far more likely assumption that the bullet was deflected after breaking up on Kennedy's skull, and then struck the windshield. It explains, moreover, why the crumpled nose of this bullet was found to have been covered with human skin, a recently-discovered fact that is completely at odds with the official theory that this bullet entered through a small hole in the back of Kennedy’s head and tumbled through 4 inches of brain matter.

 

       The “Trail of Fragments”

Should one still not be convinced, then perhaps one should look at the scalp fragments more closely. Such an inspection will reveal that the bullet fragments purportedly leading across the brain project into the upper right quadrant of the brain, an area of the brain the doctors claimed was missing.  Dr. Humes, we should recall, had testified before the Warren Commission that "The greatest loss of brain substance was particularly in the parietal lobe, which is the major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere" and that "The base of the laceration was situated approximately 4.5 cm. below the vertex." More to the point, Dr. Boswell had testified: "the top of his head was blown off. A 14-centimeter segment of it was blown off. And it was on the right side of his brain that the brain was missing."  

When one looks real close, in fact, it appears that some of the fragments appear to be where even skull is missing. Since the ballistics expert at the autopsy, Dr. Finck, reported to his superiors in the Army that “many metallic fragments were seen on x-ray films, but only two were recovered,” and that his post-autopsy examination of the removed brain revealed no metallic fragments, only bone fragments, it seems likely that the bulk of these bullet fragments were in fact in the President’s scalp or in his hair.  As the doctors, under the reasonable impression the President was slated for an open-casket funeral, were understandably reluctant to shave his head, and as Dr. Finck, the one member of the autopsy team with experience with bullet wounds, arrived after the removal of the brain, it seems likely that Humes and Boswell simply peeled back Kennedy’s scalp without inspecting it, and then rushed through the unappetizing business of searching the President’s skull for bullet fragments. When Humes’ testified about this inspection before the Warren Commission, he admitted that:  “in this area of the large defect we did not encounter any of these minute particles. I might say at this time that the x-ray pictures which were made would have a tendency to magnify these minute fragments somewhat in size and we were not too surprised in not being able to find the tiny fragments depicted in the x-ray.”  So, NO particles from the supposed “trail of fragments” were found on the interior of the skull near the supposed exit.

Unfortunately, Dr. Humes’ inability to find these fragments failed to prevent him from citing them as support for his theories. In the autopsy report Humes claimed that a bullet entering near the hairline deposited “minute particles along its path” from the entrance near the EOP to the right forehead.  The Clark Panel and HSCA both claimed this same trail of fragments, when projected backwards, led to the in-shoot in the cowlick. In fact, virtually all of the fragments are well above both Humes’ proposed path and the path first proposed by the Clark Panel.  (When asked about this by the Rockefeller Commission, Clark Panel leader Russell Fisher’s co-author and pal Dr. Werner Spitz explained that the right side of the skull was displaced on the x-rays and that “if this were all placed back in its original location…then that dispersion of metal fragments which indicates the wound track comes into perfect alignment…”  Yeah, okay.  Funny how the rest of the x-ray seemed in perfect alignment, and how only the top inch or two of the right side of the skull was lifted an inch or two compared to the left side…) Anyhow, the supposed “trail” of fragments makes little sense when one notes that the energy and particles of a disintegrating bullet are believed to fan out in a cone. Since the HSCA radiology consultant Dr. David Davis acknowledged in his report that “the metallic fragment pattern that is present from some of the metallic fragments located superiorly in the region of the parietal bone, or at least projecting on the parietal bone, are actually in the scalp,” we have good reason to believe a bullet broke up on the outside of the skull at a point further forward than the cowlick.  In support, it should be noted that one of the men who did inspect Kennedy’s scalp, mortician Tom Robinson, when asked about the fatal bullet by the HSCA staff, stated his assumption that “It exited in many pieces,” and then explained, “They were literally picked out, little pieces of this bullet from all over his head.”   In further support, moreover, we can go back to the statements of autopsy assistant James Curtis Jenkins, and recall that in the exact spot where he claimed the doctors discovered a gray discoloration of the skull, Dr. Davis saw metallic fragments, which he assumed were in the scalp.  A gray discoloration of the skull of course suggests the presence of lead. Lead is of course a metal. Two plus two equals four.

When one realizes that the largest fragments of an exploding bullet travel the furthest, and that the two largest fragments discussed at the autopsy were on the opposite ends of  Kennedy’s skull and equidistant from our proposed entrance, and adds this to the fact that, defying expectation, there were no small fragments surrounding the supposed in-shoot in the cowlick, then one should rightly conclude that the lateral x-ray demonstrates convincingly that a bullet broke up near the site of the supposed out-shoot, above the right ear. I’d bet everything I have on it. And have. 

But there are always those who disagree. Larry Sturdivan offers an explanation as to how all the fragments from the bullet he now proposes entered low on the skull ended up at the top of Kennedy’s head.  He writes: “Many of the fragments deposited in the President’s brain were flushed out, along with the brain tissue, as the large amount of blood flowed out of the explosive wound in the side of his head, in the car and in Parkland.  It is evidently some of these that were deposited in the bone flaps by clotting blood that show as a “trail” of fragments near the top of the lateral view.”  Sounds good.  But does this really make sense?  I mean, if these fragments were all on bone flaps, which is doubtful, and were held in place by “clotting blood,” wouldn’t these fragments slide to the back of Kennedy’s head once he lay firmly on his back?  The x-rays, after all, were taken more than 8 hours after Kennedy’s head exploded.  Certainly, Sturdivan doesn't believe Kennedy’s casket was shipped on end.

 

Lateral X-ray/HSCA Trajectory Comparison

When one compares the lateral x-ray to the trajectory drawings of the skull prepared for the HSCA trajectory analysis, one finds that not only is the supposed trajectory far below the purported “trail of fragments” but that the supposed outshoot, as discussed earlier, appears to be below the cluster of fragments, on bone.  If this is true, of course, this means that the trajectory analysis plotted an in-shoot where there was no in-shoot, to an outshoot where there was no outshoot.  I’m not kidding.

When one looks at the purported in-shoot near the cowlick on the trajectory drawing one can see that although the in-shoot was only 1.8 cm from the middle of the back of Kennedy’s head, this would still project slightly inwards from the back of Kennedy’s head when viewed laterally, due to the rounded nature of the skull.  When one looks at the x-ray, however, one sees that there is no clear-cut entrance at this location. That this entrance was hard for even trained experts to locate can be revealed by reading the various reports written for the Clark Panel, Rockefeller Commission, HSCA, and ARRB. To put it mildly, they lack consensus. Here is a brief summary (all men are radiologists unless otherwise noted):

Dr. Russell Morgan of the Clark Panel (February, 1968, using the un-enhanced x-rays): claims 8 mm hole on outer table, 20 mm on inner table. 10 cm above the EOP, directly above the depressed fracture (which means it’s in a section of parietal bone that presumably fell to the table when the doctors peeled back the scalp and NOT in the occipital bone near the hairline where the doctors saw a beveled entrance). Large fragment is embedded in outer table of skull close to the lower edge of the hole (implying it’s in the depressed bone).  Small fragments of bone lie within the hole.

Dr. Fred Hodges of the Rockefeller Commission's Panel (April, 1975, un-enhanced): says that, although the bullet hole itself is not readily detected, many linear fracture lines converge on the site of the small round hole in the right occipital bone described in the autopsy report. Notes one large metallic fragment flattened against the outer table of the occiput. (By supporting the autopsy report, his interpretation is in conflict with the interpretation of the Clark Panel.)

Dr, Lawrence Angel, a forensic anthropology consultant to the HSCA Pathology Panel (October, 1977, un-enhanced): sees entrance 1.8 cm to right of midline, just below obelion, the mid-point of the Lambda suture. This means it’s on the occipital bone where Humes originally placed it, and not the parietal, where the Clark Panel moved it.  Since Dr. Davis measured the Lambda as 6 cm above the EOP, this is indicative that Angel placed the entrance 4 cm (more than 1 ½ inches) below the Clark Panel’s entrance. Angel also says radiopaque lump (the large fragment) is behind obelion and appears to mark entry.

Dr. Norman Chase, a consultant to the HSCA Pathology Panel (February, 1978, un-enhanced): sees an entry point on upper rear head.  Sees metal fragment at back of head.

Dr. William Seaman, a consultant to the HSCA Pathology Panel (February, 1978, un-enhanced): sees possible defect in upper rear skull.  Sees no beveling denoting an entrance.

Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the original autopsy (as quoted in a March 10, 1978 article in the L.A. Times): "I would say unequivocally the bullet came from the side or the back." (March 11, 1978 testimony before the HSCA Pathology Panel) (when asked at two different points about the entrance location, after being shown the un-enhanced x-rays): "In my opinion it would have come from the side on the basis of the films. I guess that is all that can be said about the films at this time... I would say on the basis of those x rays and x rays only one might say one would have to estimate there that the wound of entrance was somewhere to the side or to the posterior quadrant." (By saying that the x-rays only showed that the bullet came from the side or behind, Ebersole was acknowledging that he was unable to note a bullet entrance on the back of the head in the x-rays.)

Dr.  G.M. McDonnel, a consultant to the HSCA Pathology Panel (August, 1978, enhanced): doesn’t mention a hole, sees depressed fracture with radiating fractures 10.6 cm above the EOP, and a large metallic fragment 1 cm below it on the outer table of the skull, above the mid-portion of the EOP.

Dr. David O. Davis, a consultant to the HSCA Pathology Panel (August 1978, enhanced): doesn’t mention a hole, says the large fragment is 9-10 cm above the EOP on the outer table of the skull and is 2.5 cm to right of midline.  Says radiating fractures "seem to more or less emanate from" the fragment, but later says the central point of the fractures is 3 cm from midline, which means the bullet fragment ended up to the left of the entrance.

Report of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, (1979): does not note an entrance location, but notes a depressed fracture as “sharp disruption of the normal smooth contour of the skull 10 cm above the EOP” (which places it higher than in the Clark Panel Report, whose measurement of 10 cm was the distance to the 8 mm hole above the depressed fracture).  Mentions “suggested beveling” of the inner table and radiating fracture lines. Says large fragment is 2.5 cm to the right of the midline at the lower margin of the defect, which means the bullet fragment ended up to the right and below the entrance (assuming they shared the trajectory analysis’s belief the entrance was 1.8 cm from mid-line.)

Report of the HSCA Trajectory Panel, (1979): determined entrance was 1.8 cm to the right of midline and 9 cm above the EOP. This places the entrance 1 cm below the depressed fracture observed by the medical panel, and on intact bone. This contradicts the Clark Panel's conclusion. 

Dr. Douglas Udelaker, a forensic anthropology consultant hired by the AARB (1/26/96, presumably shown both the un-enhanced and enhanced x-rays): "No entry wound could be located anywhere on the A-P x-ray"..."could not locate any entry wound to the head on the lateral x-rays"...noted a large fragment visible on the A-P x-ray, but "could not find this object anywhere on the lateral x-rays of the head." 

Dr. John J. Fitzpatrick, a forensic radiology consultant hired by the ARRB (2/6 and 2/7 1996, presumably shown both the un-enhanced and enhanced x-rays): "No entry wound was seen on the A-P x-ray"..."No entry wound can be found on the lateral head x-rays"..."puzzled by the fact that the large radio-opaque object in the A-P skull x-ray could not be located on the lateral skull x-rays."

Dr. Robert Kirschner, a forensic pathology consultant hire by the ARRB (4/11/96, presumably shown both the un-enhanced and enhanced x-rays): "No entrance wound could be located on either the two lateral x-rays, or the single-A-P x-rays..." speculated that the supposed large fragment was in fact "a plug of bone forced forward into the skull by an entering bullet" (which thereby confirms he saw no sign of this fragment or plug on the back of the head).

The interpretations detailed above raise a lot of questions.

First of all, how could the Clark Panel, using un-enhanced x-rays, “see” so much more than everybody else? Particularly when the panel's radiologist, Dr. Morgan, later complained that these x-rays were of "poor quality" and "severely over-exposed"?

The likely answer, of course, is that they didn't actually see these things, and only said they did because it helped them shut down the "junk" in Josiah Thompson's book, and build support for their argument that the actual entrance on the back of the skull was four inches higher than determined at autopsy.

But what about the other radiologists? Shouldn’t an oval-shaped bullet entrance high on the back of someone’s head be readily identifiable to experienced radiologists and doctors using computer-enhanced x-rays?   

Why is there no consensus on what is shown in the x-rays?

It should be noted that this lack of a clearly identifiable hole on the back of Kennedy's head in the x-rays has led to some mighty strange speculation. While it was not my intent on writing these pages to go through every wrong or misguided statement made by a conspiracy theorist, David Mantik and Doug Horne's status within the so-called research community has by 2010 grown to such proportions that my pointing out what I believe to be numerous mistakes on their part has become essential. And so I must reluctantly point out a gigantic error on their part, in re the supposed hole in the cowlick... 

On page 554 of his monster work, Inside the ARRB, Horne writes: 

"Dr. Mantik believes that the apparent fragment trail seen in both lateral skull x-rays, high in the skull near the vertex, that appears to connect a point high in the forehead with the large displaced skull fragments high in the back of the head is real, and is evidence of a bullet's passage through the skull, as it disintegrated. If his definitive finding that there is no entry wound 1 centimeter above the so-called 6.5 mm object on the A-P x-ray is correct, and if the 3 pathologists are correct that the entry wound in the skull was really 4 inches lower than where the Clark Panel and HSCA tried to place it, then, as Mantik points out, the fragment trail near the vertex of the skull constitutes evidence of a second shot to the head, almost certainly entering high in the right front and exiting rather high in the rear of the skull, where the large displaced bone fragments are located on the right lateral x-ray. There is much evidence to support this placement of the entry for the missile which caused this fragment trail in the right front, and its exit in the rear..."

I'll give you a second to digest that. Yep, you got it... Horne is asserting that since Dr. Mantik believes there is no entrance high on the back of the head where the HSCA claimed it to be, that this is then evidence there was an exit high on the back of the head... Uhhh, silly question...But IF there is a hole on the back of the head--which Mantik doesn't even claim to see--who's to say that it's not the entrance described by the HSCA, only not where they said it was?

 

Baden's Bluff      

Still, to be fair, Mantik and Horne weren't the first to speculate on large holes in the head unseen by others. I mean, at least they didn't claim to see such a hole on the x-rays. Not so, Dr. Michael Baden.

In his 1978 HSCA testimony, Dr. Baden pulled one of the all-time boners. (Excuse the pun).

If you look at the slide above, you'll see that the bone above the supposed cowlick entrance, at the crown of Kennedy's skull, is visible on the lateral x-ray. No one honestly disputes this. And yet, after entering this x-ray, Exhibit F-53, into evidence, Dr. Baden, the spokesman for the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, entered Exhibit F-66 into evidence. Exhibit F-66, a drawing which depicted both the location of the large defect and the skull fragments recovered from outside the skull, showed the crown to be missing.

While one might assume the artist creating this drawing had made a simple mistake, and had inaccurately placed the location of the large defect too far back on the skull, the testimony of the illustrator, Ida Dox, indicates she made these drawings under the close scrutiny of Dr. Baden. So was Baden the one at fault?

Undeniably, yes. During his testimony, when pointing to Exhibit F-55 and the bullet fragment supposedly on the back of Kennedy's head, Baden testified "there are fracture lines radiating from the point of entrance marked by the relatively large fragment and the x-ray lines extending from it." He then used his pointer to encircle the large dark area on the right side of the skull in the x-ray, and continued "This corresponds precisely to the point of entrance beneath the cowlick area and shows the extensive loss of bone in that area."  Baden had thereby supported the wound location in Exhibit F-66 and, in the process, revealed his inability to properly interpret x-rays. Although he spoke as a representative of a panel, furthermore, there is nothing to indicate his baffling conclusions were shared by anyone else. There is nothing in the Panel's report, nor in the report of any of the Panel's consulting radiologists, to indicate the dark area of the x-ray represents a loss of bone "beneath the cowlick area" on the back of Kennedy's skull. The autopsy photos, moreover, show that the head "beneath the cowlick area" remained intact. Conspiracy or no conspiracy, Baden was clearly pushing nonsense in this part of his testimony.

But it was revealing nonsense, nonetheless. Since the lateral x-ray was darkest towards the front of the skull, and reveals a large defect in that area, it would only have made sense, should someone believe the dark area of the A-P x-ray represented an "extensive loss of bone", that the missing bone be on the forehead. Although refuted by the radiology literature, which asserts that a large dark area on a skull x-ray may only signify that there's air in the underlying tissues, this has indeed been the conclusion of many conspiracy theorists. So why did Baden take the opposite route, and testify that the dark area on the A-P x-ray was evidence of missing bone on the back of the skull by the entrance? Was he trying to cut-off speculation about a frontal entrance? Or was he just confused?

Baden's bluff, or blunder, along with his previously-discussed inability to properly orient the "mystery photo," demonstrates beyond any doubt that his credibility is questionable, and not just questionable by conspiracy theorists scratching for something, anything, to question.

The Distortion Problem 

The erratic interpretations of Kennedy’s x-rays can be partially explained by the fact that Kennedy’s A-P x-ray was unusually distorted. While many think of x-rays as see-through pictures, they are actually quite different.  While in a photograph one is aware of perspective, that things in the background appear smaller than they really are, in a well done x-ray there is a fairly straight shot of the x-rays through the body, and each side of the body is accurately represented in proportion to the other.

This is not always true for x-rays created on portable x-ray machines, however.  Researcher Joe Durnavich discovered that The General Electric machine used to make Kennedy’s x-rays needed to be at least 72 inches away from the film to minimize magnification.  In Kennedy’s case it was only 44.  This meant that the x-rays hitting the film were not heading straight through Kennedy, but were spreading outwards.  This meant that the x-rays hitting Kennedy’s face, by spreading outwards before they hit the film, magnified his face in comparison to the back of his head. Durnavich estimates that Kennedy’s forehead was magnified 22% when compared to the back of his head.  I’ve seen similar calculations in radiology textbooks and Durnavich’s calculations appear to be accurate.

Adding to the confusion over Kennedy’s x-rays, however, is that the x-ray techs couldn’t figure out how best to prop up Kennedy’s badly damaged skull. So they just sat it on the film cassette.  As a result, his skull is tilted back approximately 14 degrees in the x-ray.  While Jerrol Custer has said it was tilted back as much as 30 degrees, this seems much too large. Joe Durnavich’s slightly smaller estimate of 23 degrees fails to take into account that the x-rays were not framed with the skull in the anatomically upright position (The skull was tilted 10 degrees forward.)  Larry Sturdivan, using measurements of Kennedy’s teeth taken from the original x-rays, concluded the “net upward tilt of the head in the A-P view would be 11.5 degrees.” When one lays flat on the floor, moreover, one’s head tilts back 20 degrees or so even under normal conditions. Since this 20 degree backwards tilt comes with the occipital bone as the pivot, and Kennedy had a depressed fracture on the back of his head, it only make sense his head would tilt back less than normal,, when laying flat on the table. (Dr. Joseph Riley is another who disputes that Kennedy’s head was tilted back 30 degrees in this x-ray.)

On this slide, I have attempted to match up the relative positions of Kennedy’s face and back of his head in order to figure out the exact locations of the skull fragments in the x-rays. On one side, I aligned the temporal region of his skull, once adjusted for magnification, with the A-P x-ray.  This confirmed that the “trail of fragments” on the x-ray matched up perfectly with the large defect of the skull, and is apparently on the scalp.  On the other side, I placed an adjusted-for-magnification photo of Kennedy’s face (an inverted image of the left lateral photo), and placed it directly behind an adjusted-for-magnification back of his head.  As I’d previously determined that the head in this photo was tilted back approximately 5 degrees, I tilted it back an addition 9, to reproduce the 14 degree backward tilt of Kennedy’s skull in the x-ray, and then matched up the top of the A-P x-ray against this larger face.  It seems to be fairly accurate.  The forehead fragment projects right onto the forehead.  The large fragment or slice projects right up near the crown of the head by the mysterious red spot…

 

Believing is Seeing

Satisfied with the results of my distortion analysis, I decided to try to do a comparison between the A-P x-ray and the lateral x-ray.  While I had initially planned on copying the proportions and angles used by Joe Durnavich in his article, I quickly realized that you could not accurately project the distorted image of the A-P x-ray onto the lateral x-ray. I thought about cutting up the lateral x-ray into 10 slices, and then make each one progressively shorter than the first one, and then try to line them up to get a concept of how they would appear in the A-P x-ray.  I started with the forehead.  I decided to line up the exact heights of the forehead fragment.  And then I had another breakthrough…

For when I lined up the forehead fragment in the A-P x-ray with the identical-sized forehead fragment on the lateral x-ray, I found the location of the “slice” on the back of the head.  And it wasn’t on the back of the head. And it wasn’t even a “slice.”

I noticed that just above the right eye socket there were a number of fragments, and that the largest of these fragments had the identical height of the supposed slice.  I noticed also that it was at a slight angle, whereby it would appear to be thicker in the A-P and more radio-opaque than when viewed upright. I then spotted a small fragment just below it. And found that just below the “slice” supposedly on the back of the head there was a similar fragment.  In short, I realized that the Clark Panel’s statement that “there is, embedded in the outer table of the skull close to the lower edge of the hole, a large metallic fragment… Immediately adjacent to the hole on the internal surface of the skull, there is localized elevation of the soft tissues. Small fragments of bone lie within portions of these tissues,” was, in fact a description of an area just above Kennedy’s right eye socket.  I looked back at the un-enhanced x-rays used by the Clark Panel, and realized that this fragment was not visible on the lateral view, only on the A-P view, and that the small fragment in the forehead, believed by many to be the fragment recovered at the autopsy, was barely visible on the lateral view, and invisible on the A-P. This led me to believe that Clark Panel radiologist Dr. Russell Morgan had made an honest mistake. He saw a fragment on the A-P view, couldn’t find it on the lateral, convinced himself it was at the back of the head by the bullet hole “discovered” by Dr. Russell Fisher, and moved the fragment much as Fisher had moved the bullet entrance. The autopsy protocol used by The Clark Panel to help with their report stated only that “From the surface of the disrupted right cerebral cortex two small irregularly shaped fragments are recovered.” There is no evidence that Morgan or anyone else on the panel was aware that Humes had testified the largest fragment was behind the right eye. There is no evidence that the Clark Panel even considered the possibility that the fragment on the x-rays was behind the right eye. The mistake of one expert became official government doctrine.

I was dazed by this revelation, and a bit saddened.  I thought back to all the things I’d read about this fragment, how it was faked, how it was proof of forgery, how it was proof the head shot struck Kennedy in the cowlick. I thought of the HSCA’s forensic pathology report and how it over-ruled the autopsy doctors on the head wounds.  I thought about some of the statements in the report, such as how when discussing the A-P x-ray they claimed the “missile fragment to be slightly to the right of the midline and in approximately the same vertical plane as in the above mentioned lateral view.”  Approximately?  They were given two years to solve the mysteries of Kennedy’s head wounds, and that’s the best they could do?”

I thought about this some more.  And then I got mad.

 

The “Missing” Missile

I got mad on behalf of Dr. James J. Humes. Not only did he accurately depict the position of the large fragment in Warren Commission Exhibit CE 388, but he was right about its angle within the skull. And yet, even so, everyone believed the Clark Panel when they said the largest fragment on the x-rays was on the back of Kennedy’s skull. Why did they believe them? (Heck, for that matter, why did I for the longest time believe them?) Were we pre-disposed to disbelieve Humes because of his military background? Or was it his Warren Commission experience in particular that destroyed his credibility?  Were the autopsy doctors the boy who cried wolf and the Clark Panel a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

I re-read every reference to the large fragment I could find. The autopsy report written by Dr. Humes states: “There is edema and ecchymosis (bruising) diffusely over the right supra-orbital ridge (the eye socket) with abnormal mobility of the underlying bone”  and that “roentgenograms (x-rays) of the skull reveal multiple minute fragments along a line corresponding with a line joining the above described small occipital wound and the right supra-orbital ridge… From the surface of the disrupted cerebral cortex two small irregularly shaped fragments of metal are recovered.  These measure 7 x 2 mm and 3 x 1 mm.”  While these statements supported that the fragments were behind the eye, one might stretch them to support they were just behind the forehead as well. Perhaps then Humes' testimony was more specific.

Indeed, it was. Before the Warren Commission, Humes testified: “We attempted to examine the brain, and seek specifically this fragment which was the one we felt to be of a size which would permit us to recover it.” Arlen Specter then asked: When you refer to this fragment, and you are pointing there, are you referring to the fragment depicted right above the President’s eye?””  To which Humes replied: “yes, sir.  Above and somewhat behind the President’s eye.” Humes tried to get through to the HSCA as well.  Dr Petty: “the least distorted and least fuzzy portion of the radiopaque materials would be closest to the film, and we would assume then that this peculiar semilunar object with the sharp edges would be close to the film and therefore represent the piece that was seen in the lateral view”  Dr. Humes:  “Up by the eyebrow.” Dr. Petty: “no up by the—in the back of the skull.”   Petty returned to the topic later: “we’re trying to establish whether this particular sharp-edged radiopaque defect is close to the back of the skull or close to the front of the skull. Dr. Humes: “I can’t be sure I see it in the lateral at all, do you?  Do you see it?”  Dr. Petty evaded Humes’ question and turned to Dr. Boswell:  “Were these fragments that were recovered at all?” To which Boswell, obviously trusting Petty that the fragments were where he said they were, replied: “No. They were not.”  

When asked about the large fragment by the ARRB, Humes similarly relented:  “I don’t remember retrieving anything of that size.”  Later, however, when asked if he could spot any fragments on the lateral x-ray, however, he said: “Well, you see, there’s nothing in this projection that appears to be of the size of the one that appeared to be above and behind the right eye on the other one.” Wait. He claimed not to recognize the fragment, and yet he still knew exactly where it was—and it just so happened to be in the exact location where he’d found a fragment during the autopsy??? From this strange slip-up, I believe Humes suspected all along that the Clark Panel’s fragment on the back of the head was in reality the fragment he’d found near the forehead. By the end of his ARRB interview, in fact, he admitted as much, telling Jeremy Gunn that the large fragment “that you saw in the first AP view of the skull could be the 7 by 2 millimeter one that we handed over to the FBI.”

Well, at least Humes tried to tell the truth. Unfortunately, no one believed him… that is, except Dr. Boswell, who confirmed his identification of the fragment. When looking at the lateral x-ray, Dr. Boswell told Gunn “I think we dug this piece out right here,” and then explained “right here” as near the “right eye...right supraorbital area.”  He later told Gunn that the large semicircular fragment he’d initially had trouble identifying on the A-P x-ray might very well be “the same as the one that appears to be in the frontal bone in the lateral.” Well, which part of the frontal bone? In any event, he was on the right track.

And he wasn't alone. While the radiologist at the autopsy, Dr. Ebersole, died years before he could be called to testify before the ARRB, his two assistants at the autopsy, x-ray technicians Jerrol Custer and Edward Reed, who actually took the x-rays, were called to testify, and both confirmed that the large fragment on the x-rays was found behind the right eye. When asked in a series of questions if he could see the large fragment visible on the A-P x-ray on the lateral x-ray, Reed told Gunn, "Yes, I can...In the frontal lobe...Right above the supraorbital ridge...Supraorbital rim. It is right impregnated in there." Even more telling, when asked the same question a week later, Reed's boss on the night of the autopsy, Custer, testified that the large bullet fragment was located in the "Right orbital ridge, superior." 

So here we have the four men most intimately involved with the skull x-rays to be questioned on the subject ALL stating that the large fragment on the A-P x-ray was in the supraorbital ridge. But were there any other witnesses to confirm the location of this fragment? Perhaps someone who, unlike Custer and Reed, actually saw this fragment removed?

Amazingly, yes. The FBI agents at the autopsy, James Sibert and Frank O'Neil, both confirmed this location. Their report on the autopsy asserts “The largest section of this missile as portrayed by x-ray appeared to be behind the right frontal sinus.” The right frontal sinus is just above the eyebrow and is an inch or so lower than the club-shaped fragment found on the x-rays. On the night of the autopsy, moreover, agents Sibert and O’Neill took custody of this fragment. The receipt said: “I hereby acknowledge receipt of a missile removed by Commander James J Humes.” These agents were therefore intimately involved in the recovery of this fragment. One might think then that they'd be sure to remember from where it had been recovered. Although a 10-24-78 affidavit signed by Agent Sibert for the HSCA said merely that the fragments were recovered from the head, a report on an 8-25-77 interview with James Sibert notes "Sibert believes that both fragments came from the head, probably from the frontal sinus region."  An HSCA Report on a 1-10-78 interview with his partner Frank O'Neill, moreover, confirmed that this fragment was recovered from just  behind the eye, stating: "O'Neill believes the doctors recovered a piece of the missile from just behind an eye and another one from further back." On 11-8-78, O'Neill even put this in writing; his signed affidavit declares "I saw the doctors remove a piece of the missile from just behind an eye and another one from further back in the head." (P.S. It seems likely O'Neill thought the second fragment recovered was the second largest one noted on the x-rays. This is an understandable mistake. He noted two fragments in his report and the doctors recovered two fragments. Problem is they weren't the same two. The second fragment recovered by the doctors was found right next to the frontal fragment while the second largest fragment observed on the x-rays was, according to O'Neill's own report on the autopsy, observed "at the rear of the skull at the juncture of the skull bone.")

And Sibert and O'Neil weren't the only witnesses to this fragment.  Roy Kellerman, the Secret Service agent in charge of Kennedy's detail in Dallas, also attended the autopsy, and was tasked with collecting the autopsy materials after its completion. In 1977, when discussing his role in the autopsy, he told HSCA investigators that the x-rays showed "...a whole mass of stars, the only large piece being behind the eye, which was given to the FBI agents when it was removed." 

 

An Inconvenient Truth

So, why haven't researchers proposed that these men--perhaps the seven men most intimately involved with the taking of the skull x-rays and the collection of the bullet fragments from within the skull to comment on this issue--were correct? Well, unfortunately it appears that in this instance we're at a rare cognitive confluence of single-assassin theorists and conspiracy theorists, where they both want the same thing, and claim the same thing is true, for entirely different reasons. Single-assassin theorists want to believe Dr. Morgan and the HSCA radiologists' claim the fragment was on the back of the head because it feeds their hope that the medical evidence is a closed book, with no more surprises. Conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, believe the claim because Dr. Mantik, among others, has long noted that the large fragment visible on the A-P x-ray is not visible on the back of the head in the lateral x-ray, and this suggests to them that the fragment was added later...which to them proves a conspiracy... (Ironically, this amounts to them wanting to believe it is there because they can then claim it's not there. Hmmm...) 

By way of example, Doug Horne, in his 2009 opus Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, presents the ARRB testimony of Humes, Boswell, Reed, and Custer on this fragment, and interjects after each one that they were wrong about the location, without noting that they were unanimous in their opinion. At one point, he explains: "Everyone I know of who is qualified to interpret the A-P x-ray--the Clark Panel, the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, and Dr. David Mantik--agrees that the large, bright, 6.5 mm wide semi-circular fragment corresponds in location (if not in density and corresponding brightness) with a very small metallic fragment on the exterior surface of the rear of the skull about 100 mm above the external occipital protuberance." 

This is bizarre, to say the least. Horne can't claim Mantik, who insists the large fragment is not visible on the back of the head, as support for his supposition the Clark Panel and its colleagues on the HSCA Panel, which both claimed it was visible on the back of the head, were indisputably correct in their conclusions, and that therefore Humes, Boswell, Reed, and Custer are wrong. Or, rather, he can, but not without coming across as someone with a blind spot as wide as Manhattan is tall.

This blind spot is brought further into focus by studying the appendices to Horne's book. Appendix 43, 44, and 45 are reports written by Horne on behalf of the ARRB, summarizing the findings of three outside consultants hired by the board to help them understand the medical evidence. Intriguingly, the substance of these reports was largely unknown to the public before Horne's book was published, some 13 years after the fact. While Forensic Anthropologist Douglas Ubelaker, after being shown the autopsy evidence, noted that the large fragment he saw in the "vicinity of the orbit of the right eye" on the A-P x-ray could not be located "anywhere on the lateral x-rays of the head," and Forensic Pathologist Robert Kirschner speculated that the fragment "near the right eye" on the A-P x-ray "might possibly be a plug of bone forced forward into the skull", thereby acknowledging that it could be somewhere other than on the back of the head in the x-ray, these men, in Horne's eyes, might not be qualified to interpret x-rays.

The third consultant, Dr. John J. Fitzpatrick, a Forensic Radiologist, however, most certainly was so qualified. According to Horne's own notes on his meeting with Fitzpatrick:

No object directly or clearly corresponding to the bright 6.5 mm wide radio-opaque object in the A-P x-ray could be identified by the consultant on the lateral skull x-rays. Although there is a mere trace of some additional density near the fragment location at the vertex of the skull, the consultant did not feel this object was anywhere near the density/brightness required for it to correspond to the bright, radio-opaque density on the A-P x-ray. After briefly speculating that the small metallic density behind the right eye in the lateral x-rays might correspond to the bright radio-opaque density in the A-P x-ray, this idea was abandoned because neither the locations nor the density/brightness of the 2 objects are consistent.

Thus, contrary to Horne's assertion that "Everyone I know of who is qualified to interpret the A-P x-ray...agrees that the large, bright, 6.5 mm wide semi-circular fragment corresponds in location (if not in density and corresponding brightness) with a very small metallic fragment on the exterior surface of the rear of the skull", the fact is that not one of the three consultants hired by the ARRB said as much, and that Dr. Fitzpatrick, a Forensic Radiologist, instead looked for this fragment behind the right eye--where he found a fragment previously not discussed in the medical literature--before deciding it didn't match up.

(I hope to contact Dr. Fitzpatrick in the near future to see if the fragment he pointed out and rejected as the large fragment was the very fragment discussed on this slide.)

And that's not even the worst of it. Horne's blindness on this issue becomes crystal clear when one realizes that, within Volume 2 of his book, Horne uses these same three consultants to help debunk that there was a bullet hole visible high on the back of the head on the x-rays, and quotes them extensively. Well, one should ask, if these three consultants were "expert" enough for Horne to quote them when discussing if there was indeed a bullet hole high on the back of the head visible in the x-rays (and thereby use them to contradict the conclusions of the Clark Panel and HSCA Pathology Panel), why does Horne disregard their opinions completely when they fail to support that there is a fragment on the back of the head in this very same x-ray, and instead defer to the supposed expertise of the Clark Panel and HSCA Pathology Panel? The answer, most certainly, is that Horne couldn't care less what the Clark Panel and HSCA Pathology Panel had to say about anything, and was using their presumed expertise as a smokescreen to disguise that his belief there was a bullet fragment on the back of the head in the lateral x-ray stems solely from his trust in Dr. Mantik, and Mantik's near religious belief the fragment in the A-P x-ray has been added atop a much-smaller pre-existing fragment...

As stated, Horne needs it to be there, so he can say it isn't there...

As does the man he blindly trusts, Mantik... Despite Humes' repeated claims the bullet he removed was in the supra-orbital ridge behind the right eye, Mantik, in his articles discussing the fragment removed at autopsy, misrepresents the statements of those present at the autopsy, so that he can claim the fragment removed at autopsy was the fragment in the forehead. In Assassination Science, published 1998, he actually claims that the forehead fragment "can also be seen on the lateral view where it does indeed lie just above the right frontal sinus--exactly where the pathologists described it." Well, this simply isn't true. Having taken that route, however, Mantik follows it to the end. After misrepresenting what the doctors said, he correctly quotes the FBI report claiming the fragment was behind the right frontal sinus, but then interjects "It should have said above." He then uses his re-interpretation of the location of the fragment removed at autopsy as a broad description of this fragment, even reporting that when shown the A-P x-ray, Humes immediately "referred to the fragment above the right frontal sinus." This completely disguises that Humes' actual testimony was that it was "up by the eyebrow." 

To be fair, it certainly seems possible Mantik's deception was not a deliberate ploy to mislead his readers, but was instead a byproduct of his unwarranted acceptance that the 7 x 2 mm fragment removed at the autopsy is the club-shaped fragment visible on the forehead in the x-rays. Apparently, it never occurred to him that a three dimensional disc-like object might be described by the length across the disc, 7mm--a rounding up from 6.5mm--by the width of the disc, 2mm. In this, he was far from alone. In fact, I may have been the first to make this observation...

But apparently it also never occurred to him to look for this fragment where the autopsists actually said it was: behind Kennedy's right eye...

This mistake is less forgivable.

The Fragment Fragment

When one looks at CE 843, the fragments removed from Kennedy’s brain, in an attempt to prove that the largest fragment recovered by Humes from behind and above the eye is the one shown on the x-rays, however, one is in for a disappointment. It doesn’t look anything like it! Still, the fragment looks even less like the club-shaped fragment on the forehead mistakenly believed to be the one recovered by Humes.

According to Dr. David Mantik, who has inspected the evidence at the National Archives not once, not twice, but nine times, this second discrepancy is “One of the most shocking contradictions in the entire case.The shape of the larger piece of metal is nothing like the supposedly identical piece seen on the x-rays. No measurements taken on this piece can explain its bizarre transformation in shape. Most likely, it is not the piece taken from the skull…I saw only two, not three, at NARA. The largest, however, bears no resemblance to the corresponding image on the x-rays. The larger piece shown here is pancake shaped and was 107 mg.  On the other hand the x-rays show a club shaped object—on both x-ray views.  The studies done by the FBI on this object—spectrographic analysis and neutron activation analysis, required only a tiny amount at most, about 1 mg, according to one of the FBI experts…No one has offered an explanation for this flagrant discrepancy in shape of the largest piece. Sampling of the material is not an explanation. The possibility of substitution of fragments, an issue actually raised by the neutron activation expert (Dr. Vincent Guinn), remains wide open.”

While it might seem strange my quoting Mantik on this issue, seeing as I've just finished demonstrating that he's not completely reliable, it's not half as strange as Mantik's insisting the 7 by 2 fragment removed at autopsy is the fragment on the forehead on the x-rays, and then turning around and admitting that the fragment in the archives is not the fragment one sees on the forehead. Hmmm... I mean, shouldn't it have occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, the fragment removed at autopsy was not the fragment on the forehead, but was a fragment removed from somewhere else?  Hmmm... Perhaps even from where the doctors claimed it had been removed, from behind the right eye? I don't know. Just a thought...

In any event, Mantik is correct to mention Guinn. Guinn testified that the fragment he tested was much smaller than the original fragment.  While the fragment entered into evidence by the FBI was 107 mg, the one tested by Guinn 15 years later was only 41.9 mg.  Robert Frazier, the FBI ballistics expert, described the fragments to the Warren Commission as follows: “These fragments consisted of two pieces of lead, one weighed 1.65 grains. (107 mg)  The other weighed .15 grains. They were examined spectrographically so their present weight would be somewhat less since a very small amount would be needed for spectrographic analysis.”

HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, however, followed up on Guinn’s comments and was able to find out that the size of the fragment used in the spectrographic tests was 32.045 mg, not as large as the original fragment, and not as large as the remaining fragment.  This means the FBI broke up the fragment and destroyed or lost more than 60% of its mass!  The reasons for this are not clear. Since these spectrographic tests were done before Frazier’s testimony, moreover, this means the photographs of CE 843 entered into evidence during his testimony showed only the remaining fragment.  The rounded edge had been removed. Even so, when one reflects back on Mantik’s description of the fragment as “pancake-shaped”, and the size and shape of the fragment apparent in the lateral x-ray, it should be clear that the original-full-sized CE 843 is the one seen on the x-rays.  Most probably Humes’ original measurement of this fragment as 7 mm by 2mm represented an irregular 7 mm pancake that was 2mm thick. Since the bullet “slice” is on Kennedy’s forehead, and not on the back of his head, it means that it was in reality 20% or so smaller than the 6.5 mm previously measured, or roughly 5.4 mm.  This measurement approximates the width of the lead inside a 6.5 mm copper bullet. Perhaps the rounded edge of this fragment, then, represents the rounded edge of the lead missing from CE 569, the hollow base of a bullet found beside the front seat of the limousine. 

At the 2003 assassination conference put on by Dr.Cyril Wecht, researcher John Hunt displayed photos he’d recently uncovered at the National Archives, including photos taken by the FBI of the bullet fragments prior to testing. These photos revealed a much larger fragment than the one entered into evidence by Frazier, with a rounded edge on the far side of the fragment, and a bite out of the near side. Intriguingly, the shadow of this bite approximates the shape of the bite visible on the x-ray fragment.  When one looks at this original photo, and compares it to the shape of the forehead fragment apparent on the A-P x-ray, it’s clear that the fragment on the photo is too thick and cylindrical to be the club-shaped fragment on the x-ray.  As a result it seems quite likely that this fragment is indeed the large fragment on the x-rays, behind the right eye, only seen from a radically different angle.

 

In Search of the Great Red Spot

For the longest time, I suspected that the “slice” on the x-ray was embedded at the back of Kennedy’s head in the location of the red spot.  With my discovery of the “slice” on the lateral x-ray, however, I avoided making such a sorry claim in this presentation. (Only time will tell how many other sorry claims remain.) Anyhow, when you align the A-P x-ray with the back of the head and mystery photos, it becomes clear that the bullet “slice” was in fact, considerably to the right of the red spot.  This is in keeping with the HSCA radiologists who said the fragment was to the right of the purported cowlick entrance.

So what was the red spot? For a brief period, I was tempted to conclude the red spot was merely the dried blood Dr. Humes suggested it was.  But then I remembered that, when I matched up the neck lines in the back of the head photo with those in the mystery photo, the hairline wounds were suddenly in the same position as the one measured at the autopsy, and the red spot suddenly aligned with the beveled exit on the mystery photo. This seemed way too much a coincidence.  This led me to conclude the red spot represented an impact location on the inside of Kennedy’s skull created by an exploding bullet fragment. Close-ups of the scalp reflected from the beveled bone in the mystery photo reveal a small dimple on the underside of the scalp, far too small to represent the exit of a full-sized bullet.

Ironically, the possibility exists that the fragment causing all this damage was the one found by Humes in Kennedy’s frontal lobe.  Perhaps it landed in the lobe only after ricocheting off the inside of the back of Kennedy’s skull, leaving a line of macerated brain stretching from the far back of Kennedy’s head to his eyebrow, perhaps shedding small fragments along its way. This would certainly help explain the purported “channel” of brain damage observed on the brain photos. 

Should one think that this fragment would have been likely to break through the skin at the point of the red oval, one should be reminded that books on the human skull acknowledge that it takes 30% more energy to pierce a skull when it’s covered with skin, and that skin is therefore much stronger than most believe. The bullet that killed Oswald, by curious example, cut through his entire body, including a number of organs, only to come to a sudden stop beneath the skin of his back. 

Still, if the red spot overlay a hole in the skull caused by the large fragment removed at autopsy, it might appear that Humes lied to the HSCA. After all, when asked about the red spot in the cowlick, he answered: “I don’t know what that is. Number one, I can assure you that as we reflected the scalp to get to this point, there was no defect corresponding to this in the skull…” It remains possible, though, that he wasn’t lying. When he said “there was no defect corresponding” he may have been thinking in terms of the entrance he described to the Warren Commission, that is, a round hole completely surrounded by bone.  Since so much of the skull collapsed as he reflected the scalp, and since he had such limited experience with gunshot wounds, it seems entirely reasonable that Humes would overlook what we now interpret as beveling, especially as it was some distance from what he’d determined to be the entrance and exit on the scalp.

 

X-ray/Ida Dox Drawing Comparison

When testifying before the HSCA, medical illustrator Ida Dox declared that the depiction of the skull fractures in the HSCA's medical exhibits was determined after “studying very carefully the x-rays…in close consultation with the medical panel, particularly Michael Baden.”  As noted elsewhere, Baden had pressured her to change her drawing of the back of the head to make the red smudge in the cowlick look more like a bullet entrance, and thus sell that the bullet entered near the top of Kennedy's head, at not near the bottom, as noted at autopsy. This alone should give us pause and make us double-check the accuracy of the fractures in these drawings.

Sure enough, when one compares the Dox illustration that details the skull fractures on Kennedy’s head, Exhibit F-66, to Kennedy's x-rays, one can't help but notice another one of Baden’s “improvements.”  While there is a diagonal fracture heading towards the right at the back of the head on the Dox drawing, this fracture doesn’t appear on the x-ray.  Although lateral x-rays are not expected to give clear images of fractures along the very back of the head, due to the density of the skull when looked at on edge, this fracture winds its way far enough to the side where it should be visible. So where is it? And, just as importantly, if it's not on the x-ray, why is it on the drawing?

And why are there fractures on the x-rays not depicted on the drawing? The large fractures originating near the President’s temple and running towards the back of his head were apparently overlooked by Dox and Baden. The intersection between the fracture originating near the purported in-shoot in the cowlick and the fracture coming from the wound near the temple, where it is made obvious that the temple wound pre-dates the cowlick wound, was also overlooked, apparently.  But isn’t it a bit ridiculous to think that they also overlooked the two fractures running horizontally across the lower back portion of the skull?  (The occipital region).    

That these last fractures are troublesome is made clear when one reads the Clark Panel and HSCA reports and realizes that these fractures are never explained and are barely even acknowledged.  While the Clark Panel, for instance, made the dubious claim that there was a hole 100 mm above the EOP and that “Immediately adjacent to the hole on the internal surface of the skull, there is localized elevation of the soft tissues”,  they didn’t once mention the obvious and easy-to-distinguish fractures running horizontally across the back of the skull. 

These fractures were ignored by most everyone, in fact, until radiologist Randy Robertson attempted to write about them in Radiology Magazine. Editor Stanley Siegelman submitted Robertson’s article for peer review to at least two doctors who’d staked their reputation on their belief that there was only one headshot. He then violated standard protocol and publicly rejected Robertsons’s submission, stating that these fractures were concentric fractures from the in-shoot in the cowlick, as per an article by Smith et al in the September, 1987 Journal of Forensic Sciences.  When one reads the referenced article, however, one finds that concentric fractures are created slightly after a bullet’s impact as a result of increased intracranial pressure in the skull. This couldn’t have happened in Kennedy’s skull, however, because there were purportedly multiple exits created by its fragmenting bullet, which would immediately release the pressure.  Similarly, the article demonstrates that concentric fractures have long spokes which are linked together by smaller fractures, as internal pressure builds and radiates outwards from the in-shoot.  Accordingly, the smaller fractures connecting the spokes are not found at the end of the spokes, like a bicycle tire, but are lower in the spokes like a spider web.  This is simply not the case with Kennedy’s fractures, where the spokes coming from the bullet fragment appear to end at the transverse fracture in the occipital region.  This indicates that the occipital fractures pre-date the fractures purportedly coming from the bullet slice.

Adding to the likelihood that the troublesome features on the x-rays were deliberately excluded from the Dox drawing is the fact that, on exhibit F-66, the bullet is depicted traveling straight through Kennedy’s head, down towards the seat in front of him. This would be Connally’s seat, where NO bullet fragments were found. This drawing also fails to depict how the nose of this bullet raced across the car at the level of Kennedy’s head and struck the windshield, and how the tail of this bullet struck the windshield frame nearby.  That this last deception was deliberate is borne out by the pathology panel’s report, which states   “in the experience of the members, the estimated size of the principal exit defect is consistent with the size of a single exiting missile representing the mass of the two major fragments recovered outside the body”. Since the "two major fragments” were the nose and the tail of the bullet, and were missing large sections of the middle and were thus not able to comprise a “single exiting missile,” the HSCA medical panel was as much as admitting that the large skull fractures by the supposed exit made no sense! Not surprisingly, F-66, created under Dr. Baden's supervision, fails to depict these fractures.

That the panel tried to hide the lack of logical support for their conclusions is further evidenced by their description of the bullet's path through the head. The report notes "The x-ray evidence indicates that the missile fragmented on impact, produced a number of outwardly radiating fractures, and proceeded in an essentially straight and forward path and to the right, paralleling the upper surface of the head. This type of missile fragmentation is consistent with a jacketed missile. The main core mass probably existed in a single fragment that remained intact until striking the automobile, causing it to fragment into several pieces."  This is one of the most preposterous passages in the whole report. First, how does a bullet fragmenting upon impact with a skull remain intact until after exiting the skull, and then break up on a windshield or metal strut? It doesn't. Second, how does a "main core mass" entailing the nose and base of a bullet leave the contents of its middle in a skull, but exit intact? It doesn't. And third, since the largest recovered fragment was deformed and folded over on itself to a greater degree than one would expect from its merely striking a windshield, how does one conclude that this fragment "probably" exited the skull as part of a much larger fragment?  One doesn't. Thus, the panel's conclusion regarding the fragments is absolute garbage, indicative of either the panel's own confusion, or its desire to confuse or mislead others. 

As Dr. Baden himself, in his book Unnatural Death, repeats this nonsense about the bullet exiting intact and breaking up on the windshield frame, it seems likely he either actually believed or actively pushed this silliness. It seems mighty convenient for Dr. Baden and his contention of a cowlick entry that the exhibits created under his supervision not only failed to depict the occipital fractures on Kennedy's skull and the large fractures by the supposed exit, but the bullet's presumed exit trajectory to the windshield, which made little sense for the supposedly intact bullet needed to create the large exit fractures.  It kinda makes one wonder whether Dr. Baden is a scientist or a salesman.

On the other hand, the errors and omissions might just be an honest mistake.  For the life of me I can’t figure out any reason the Dox drawing would show the bullet descending at 20 degrees when the reported degree of declination from the sniper’s nest is 16 degrees.  Maybe Baden and Dox were in way over their heads.

 

“Wing” Analysis

Another aspect of the medical evidence which has convinced many of fakery or deception is the “wing” of bone visible in the autopsy photos. It seemed to move from photo to photo and change shape. After much thought, however, I believe I have an explanation for these changes.

When one looks at the Zapruder film, one can’t help but notice the large opening on Kennedy’s skull apparent in the frames after 313. This opening appears to begin just in front of his ear. When one looks at the right lateral autopsy photo one sees exposed bone behind his ear, however, and in a location where there was reportedly no missing bone or scalp. This is a clear indication that this bone was dislodged from someplace else. And yet it’s still attached to scalp... Hmm...

After some consideration I realized that when the scalp exploded downwards, the skull bones that were attached to it began to peel away. One large fragment peeled all the way and crashed to the floor. (It can be seen flying down in the frames after 313.)  A section of bone lower down on Kennedy’s skull, however, possibly including his sphenoid bone, didn’t finish peeling away from his scalp. It was, instead, left dangling by a thread of scalp by Kennedy's ear. (The shape of this bone can be seen in shadow in frame 323.) When Jackie Kennedy tried to close her husband’s head wound, moreover, she failed to flip this “wing” of bone back around to match up with the scalp, and left this “wing” dangling inside out back behind Kennedy’s ear. This is apparent in the right almost-lateral autopsy photo. Not surprisingly, the shape of this wing matches the shape of the shadow in frame 323.

When one looks at the back of the head photo, obviously taken a few minutes later, as Kennedy is now lying on his side, however, one can see that the “wing” of bone has suddenly changed.  It is now far forward of the ear and of different proportions. I believe this is because it’s no longer a “wing” of bone, but a “wing” of scalp, the stubborn scalp that held the wing in place for so long. The dimensions of this scalp flap can be seen in frame 337.  Possibly the wing fell off when the doctors moved Kennedy onto his side or possibly they removed it deliberately to better observe the large defect.

This so-called wing of bone becomes important when one interprets the x-rays.  Since the x-rays were taken before the photographs, the wing should be readily visible on the x-rays.  But where is it?

 

Where is the "Wing"?

Before I began this project I knew virtually nothing about x-rays.  After reading about some of the controversies involving the Kennedy assassination, I eventually decided it was time to get my feet wet and learn a thing or two.  The first thing I read was an online article by Joe Durnavich entitled “Making Sense of the Head X-rays,” available on Professor John McAdams’ JFK site.  I was extremely impressed with this article, particularly its identification of the "wing" of bone on the lateral x-ray. When I tried to use Durnavich’s location on a comparison between the x-ray and right lateral autopsy photo for this presentation, however, I learned something unexpected.  Durnavich, and just about everybody else who’s written on the x-rays, was wrong.

When one matches the wing of bone in size and angle in Durnavich’s analysis with the wing of bone on the right lateral autopsy photo one is at first amazed.  Holy smokes, that’s the bone alright.  When one aligns the wings in the x-ray and photo vertically, however, it becomes apparent that the x-ray extends way behind the skull in the photo.  Even though the photo is at a slight angle, when one turns the face in the photo to be in perfect profile in one’s mind one can see the back of the head does not align with the x-ray.  A closer look and one realizes, moreover, that the wing on Durnavich’s analysis is in front and above the spongy-looking bone on the x-ray; this is the mastoid process and it signifies the location of the ear.  The photo, on the other hand, demonstrates that the wing is above and behind the ear.

When one uses an inverted view of the left lateral photo and matches it with the un-enhanced x-ray this becomes even more apparent.  When one finds the right tilt for the skull, and lines up the skull dimensions, and depicts the position of the wing on Durnavich’s analysis on Kennedy’s profile, one can see that Durnavich’s “wing” begins almost on Kennedy’s face, when the actual wing is at last an inch and a half back in his hair. When one looks at the un-enhanced x-ray, moreover, one finds that Durnavich’s wing is located over a considerable amount of black space.  When one considers that the wing of bone overlay intact skull, and that this means the x-rays penetrating it would have to penetrate three skull walls instead of two, then it’s really hard to understand how the wing could show up as black. 

When one looks on the x-ray where the wing is on the photo, however, it all becomes clear.  For the location of the wing on the autopsy photo--draping down behind the ear almost to the table—is the very location of the mysterious white area we discussed on the optical density slide. The “wing” is the white area!!  This makes perfect sense as it represents three walls as opposed to two.  As Custer and Reed did not allow for this extra level of density in the skull—it’s doubtful they even discussed it since the doctors had not yet examined the body—they would have set the levels as if they were x-raying a skull with only two walls. This unexpected overlay of bone distorted the relative density of the entire x-ray, especially when compared to the A-P x-ray (which is why the “slice” is so much whiter in the A-P.)

When one ponders this situation further, moreover, one realizes that the wing of bone in the A-P x-ray, since it was dangling by a mere thread from a skull tilted back 24 degrees when compared to the lateral x-ray, would rotate upwards on the skull. This explains why the wing on this x-ray appears higher on the skull.

Ironically, Dr. David Mantik, who was to conclude that the white area “was almost certainly added in the dark room. Its purpose was to emphasize the resulting dark area in front, which suggested that a bullet had exited from the front,” was on the verge of figuring out this mystery before his suspicious nature got the best of him.  In Assassination Science, he discussed the white area in less paranoid terms. He said:  “On close inspection, this remarkable white area is distinctly wider on one lateral view than the other. This implies that it was located closer to the right side of the skull.”  He was so close and yet so far. Apparently, he never realized that the range of optical density measurements he'd derived from normal skull x-rays bore little relation to the range one would expect on an x-ray of a badly damaged skull with over-lapping skull fragments.

Until it was too late, and he was wed to his mistake... In 2009, I attended a presentation by Mantik at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas. As I sneaked into the back of the room, during a question and answer session, I was stunned to see half the audience turn to look at me. As I sat down and looked up, moreover, I saw that Mantik, too, was looking at me. As the questioner in the front row resumed his question, however, I realized why. Someone had confronted Mantik with the fact that having overlapping bone and missing bone right next to each other on an x-ray could significantly alter the density range. He called it "Speer's theory." Mantik, however, refused to acknowledge that this would have much of an effect, and summarily dismissed "Speer's theory" with the claim I was a layman and didn't know what I was talking about, and that my theory was so unscientific that he felt testing the density range of a skull damaged as badly as Kennedy's to be a total waste of time.

But it wasn't the theory of a layman. Oh no, far from it. On 10-21-97, Edward Reed, one of the two x-ray techs to assist in the autopsy of President Kennedy, testified before the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). When examining the lateral x-rays, Reed noted "The dark spot that I am pointing to right now is a less dense area. There's hardly any bone there. And there's only one side intact. Whereas here, posteriorly, where I'm pointing to now is--the white area--is where the bones overlap."

Reed's words presented a serious challenge to Mantik's theory. Not only did they pre-date my development of "Speer's" theory by seven years or so, but they show that one of Mantik's biggest supporters, Doug Horne of the ARRB, knew of my argument against Mantik's theory for many years before I'd even stumbled on it.

So how does Horne deal with this in his book? In Volume 2 of his five volume opus Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, Horne devotes 33 pages to a discussion of Reed's testimony. Curiously, however, while he skips right over Reed's common sense explanation for the "dark spot" and "white area" of the x-rays, he finds the space to point out repeatedly that Reed was just an x-ray tech, and not qualified to interpret any x-ray, let alone the x-ray of a gun shot victim. This overlooks that Mantik, to whom Horne frequently defers, is but a radiation oncologist, and has almost certainly never worked with x-rays like the ones made of Kennedy, let alone interpret them.

Horne's blind belief in Mantik becomes even more problematic once one reads his book's appendices. Once again, the reports he wrote on his 1996 meetings with the ARRB's three consultants on the medical evidence undermine his subsequent conclusions, and call into question his ability to interpret evidence without pushing an agenda. Forensic Anthropologist Douglas Ubelaker, upon viewing the lateral x-rays, noted "overlapping bone fragments" in the "temporal-parietal region of the lateral x-rays." This is almost certainly a  reference to the white area noted by Mantik. More specifically, however, Forensic Radiologist John J. Fitzpatrick, a man with far more expertise on these matters than Mantik, confirmed that "overlapping bone is clearly present in the lateral skull x-rays" and that "the red flap above the ear" in the autopsy photos "equates with the overlapping bone in the lateral skull x-rays." 

And from there it only gets worse... Near its conclusion, Horne's report on Fitzpatrick admits: "after reviewing some brief summaries of the independent research efforts of...Dr. Mantik...He did not find the work...to be persuasive, and did not concur with (his) findings..."

So, I'm not the first to make the observation that the wing of bone or red flap on the autopsy photos represents the white area on the x-rays. That only makes sense. But what does not make sense is Doug Horne's knowing in 1996 that there was a common sense explanation for the white area on the lateral x-ray, and then, apparently, never raising this issue with Mantik so that Mantik could perform more tests, this time using skulls with overlapping fragments of bone.

Oh, wait, it does make sense. Perfect sense. Sometimes even the best of us are so stuck on our theories -- or so enamored with our favorite expert or witness -- that  we fail to note the obvious.

 

Lateral X-ray Comparison

Newly armed with this information that the “white area” on the lateral x-ray was in fact the “wing” of bone, we can look at the lateral x-ray with a fresh perspective.  One thing one notices immediately is that the lower occipital fracture leads directly into the white patch, and appears to re-emerge on the far side of the “wing.”  This is a strong indication that these two fracture lines are really one, only with a short distance of its length blocked off by the “wing”. This, of course, means that Dr. Randy Robertson was wrong, and that the occipital fractures did not derive from an occipital entrance. Since much, much earlier we noticed that the lowest of these fractures seems to run right up to the entrance in the hairline, and then veer away, it seems clear that the EOP entrance pre-dated the huge fractures coming from the temple. This is in keeping with our analysis of the angle of entry.

When one compares the lateral x-ray to the pre-mortem x-ray of President Kennedy, moreover, one can find that some of the whiteness in the “white area” pre-dated the wing.  In other words, the wing over-lapped an area already demonstrating dense bone.  This makes it difficult to isolate the exact shape of the wing. One can also find through such a comparison the location of some of the sinuses—air pockets-- in the bones of Kennedy’s skull.  Since one of the pre-existing air pockets has a fracture running out of it on the autopsy x-ray, some might try to convince themselves this signifies the location of the EOP entrance.  But they would be wrong, as this point is well above the EOP.

When one compares the location of the HSCA in-shoot to this same location on the pre-mortem x-ray, however, one can see a previously unseen dark shape on the bone, almost assuredly a result of a fragment’s impact on the interior skull.  This leads one to wonder what can be noticed at the EOP entrance location.  Despite the HSCA’s insistence that there were no signs of this entrance to be found, a dark shape almost certainly signifying this entrance, and one that is far more prominent than the shape in the cowlick, is precisely where Humes said it was! And no, it’s not an artifact…

Should one be skeptical that an entrance wound in the occipital bone could create so few fractures, one should remember that the test skull submitted by Larry Sturdivan to the HSCA demonstrated just that.

 

Lateral X-ray/Back of the Skull Comparison

Since there are so many who believe the open-cranium photograph and the lateral x-ray are in complete disagreement, I decided to put them side by side and size them, to see if this was so. After careful study, I have concluded they represent the same skull at different points of an autopsy.  Apparently, the source of the confusion lies in Dr. Boswell’s measurements of the head wound, which are quite large and stretch from the back of Kennedy’s head to its front, and are in accordance with the photograph, but in disagreement with the x-ray and the other photographs with Kennedy’s scalp intact. What people seem to miss is that Boswell’s measurements were performed on the skull after the scalp was peeled back and the brain removed. This was some time after the lateral x-ray was taken, and before any incisions were performed on the body.  That the wound changed shape when the scalp was peeled back is confirmed by Dr. Humes’ testimony, both before the Warren Commission and afterwards, where he recounts how large chunks of skull fell to the table when he peeled back the scalp, and how he had to break off even more pieces of skull to remove the brain.  When one compares the x-ray and photograph, one can even make out these large chunks of skull.

Should one believe that the measurements were taken before the scalp was peeled back, one should ask oneself how accurate measurements could have been taken with Kennedy’s long blood and brain-matted hair in the way. That the hair was not shaved is confirmed by everyone present.

Especially remarkable when one makes this comparison is that the bullet hole visible on the autopsy photo appears to match up perfectly with the shadow apparent on the x-ray.  This shadow almost certainly represents the small entrance in the occipital bone described by Humes.  But is it apparent on the A-P?

 

A-P X-ray Comparison

According to the report of the HSCA radiology consultant Dr. G.M. McDonnel, he inspected the x-rays on March 7, 1978, and made suggestions to Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, California, as to what portions should be digitized and enhanced for further analysis. 

One of the reasons cited for this procedure was that “enhancement permitted analysis or elimination of artifacts on the images.” (This makes me nervous already. Since so many of the mysteries of the x-rays have been interpreted as “artifacts”, one can’t help but wonder what “artifacts” were “eliminated” in this “enhancement,” and whether any valuable information was lost in  the process.)

His report goes on to say he re-examined and discussed the (now-enhanced) x-rays on April 6 and 7 with the photographic evidence panel and again on his own at the National Archives on June 2.  What is suspicious about this whole sequence of events, however, is that when one compares the un-enhanced and enhanced x-rays it is startlingly obvious that the lower back of the head has disappeared from the enhanced x-ray!  While one might say that McDonnell simply didn’t find that area relevant, this would be akin to calling McDonnel a moron.  The area in question is where the autopsy doctors said there was an entrance.  The area in question was closely studied on the photographs.  While the area on the x-rays may well have revealed nothing, the failure to enhance this area revealed all.  To me it is a clear indication the HSCA’s  panelists and consultants had a pre-disposition to support the conclusions of the Clark Panel and assert the president was killed by a shot entering near his cowlick.  Even if this meant damaging the reputations of the autopsy doctors. Even if this meant ignoring the truth…

 

A-P/Lateral X-ray Comparison Comparison

It was while comparing the un-enhanced and enhanced A-P x-rays that I noticed something mighty peculiar.  The transverse fracture line in the occipital bone was wider on the un-enhanced x-ray than on the enhanced x-ray. Since the fracture itself would have to be the same  in both exhibits, I gathered from this that there was air surrounding the fracture, and that this air became less apparent with the reduced contrast in the enhanced version.  This puzzled me a bit, in part because this fracture seemed like a very sharp line in the lateral x-ray, but even more so because I couldn’t figure out what tissue was holding this air.  I couldn’t imagine the President’s brain, as devastated as it was by the bullet striking him near his temple, to have the consistency necessary to contain the air by the occipital fracture. It was then that I realized the transverse fracture was significantly wider in the A-P view than in the lateral view.  This made no sense, as a fracture at the back of Kennedy’s head should, due to the substantial magnification of Kennedy’s face in the A-P view, appear smaller than the lateral fractures when the skulls were made to match.

This led me to roam the internet for a night or two in search of lateral and A-P x-rays of fractures at the back of the head.  And I found what I should have suspected all along--that fractures of the occipital region do not show up clearly on A-P x-rays.  That is why there are different views of the skull.  According to the chapter Skull Trauma, by Bergeron and Rumbaugh, in Radiology of the Skull and Brain, “Most radiologists obtain, at a minimum, right and left lateral views, anteroposterior and posteroanterior views in the Caldwell projection, and anteroposterior and posteroanterior Towne views.” The view prescribed for identifying fractures on the occipital bone is the Towne view, which was not attempted with President Kennedy.  The Skull Trauma chapter was also educational in that it included a number of A-P and lateral x-rays taken of the same skulls.  As suspected, there wasn’t one instance where a posterior fracture was larger in proportion on the A-P view than on the lateral view. In several instances, large fractures across the back of the skull could not even be seen on the A-P view.  I probed further in order to verify my suspicions.

 

Optical Illusion Analysis

I looked through the old General Electric guidebook on x-rays I’d found to see if it described the use of A-P views to inspect the occipital bone.  I found that yes indeed there was such a projection, but it entailed the patient tucking his chin while x-ray beams were sent through his skull at a 35 degree angle from above. The portable machine used on Kennedy was not capable of such a maneuver. Neither was Kennedy.

Even so, the HSCA radiologists insisted the fractures visible on the A-P view were on the occipital bone.  Dr. G.M. McDonnel stated that from the metal fragment he believed to be on the back of Kennedy’s head “stellate type fractures “radiate” into both occipital bones, the right parietal bone and the right temporal bone.” Since he was wrong about the fragment, perhaps he was wrong about the fractures as well. But he wasn’t alone. Dr. David Davis told the HSCA: “There is a sharply defined linear fracture extending laterally from the metallic fragment into the left side of the calvarium, around the parietal bone to the lateral aspect of the skull.”  He continued: “two linear fractures extend inferolaterally from the metallic fragment, one into the occipital bone, about 3 cm from the midline, and this fracture crosses the lambdoid suture.  The other one is more lateral, and extends down toward the lateral sinus, probably above the lambdoid suture.”

The report of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel agreed with their consultants on this point:  “there is a sharp disruption of the normal  smooth contour of the skull…with fracture lines radiating superiorly and inferiorly….at this point there is an irregular, radiopaque, sharply outlined bullet fragment…The location of the missile fragment and transverse fractures of the occipital region of the skull is also apparent in the anterior-posterior x-ray view of the skull…The defect in the skull and the inward beveling thereof provide definite evidence of an entrance wound of the head at a point corresponding to that noted by the panel in the upper back of the scalp.”   

I decided to match up the back of he head with the A-P view as best I could.  Since I’d already matched up the forehead fragment (on the Believing is Seeing slide) and since Joe Durnavich had convinced me the forehead in the A-P x-ray was 20% larger than the back of Kennedy’s head, due to magnification, I increased the comparative size of the A-P x-ray in that comparison by 1.2 in order to match up the occipital regions on the two x-rays. I then compared this larger skull to the lateral x-ray and I found what I was afraid I’d find.  The transverse fracture in the A-P x-ray is not low enough on Kennedy’s skull to be the transverse fracture in the occipital bone on the lateral x-ray. Even worse, when I projected the relevant angles onto Kennedy’s pre-mortem lateral x-ray, I saw that the dense petrous bone by Kennedy’s ear would be likely to obscure most of his occipital bone in the A-P projection. I concluded that the fractures apparent on the A-P view were almost certainly not in the occipital bone. This would explain why the fractures along the back of Kennedy’s head in the A-P view were either invisible or in the wrong place on the lateral view.

The more I thought about it, the more I accepted this possibility.  While the fracture in the lateral view disappears into a sinus at the back of Kennedy’s head, this sinus is inexplicably invisible in the A-P view.  Upon closer examination, the fracture heading into the left side of the skull also fails to match. Along with the other fractures supposedly radiating from the fragment in the A-P view, where are these fractures in the lateral view?  The transverse fracture nearest the level of the depressed fracture seems to be on the right side, as it ends at a fracture coming from the large defect by the right temple. The angle that this fracture heads forward seems wrong as well. While it curves downwards in the lateral view it soars upwards in the A-P view.  If one is to argue this fracture is not seen on the lateral, because it is on the far side of the skull, then one should explain why the occipital fracture would be so clear on the A-P view.  Finally, as this fracture is reportedly a depressed fracture, shouldn’t there be a white line reflecting the overlap of bone? According to Skull Trauma by Bergeron and Rumbaugh “the roentgenographic characteristic of the depressed fracture is the line or shadow of increased density caused by overlapping of bony margins or fragments.”  Keep in mind that when talking of x-rays, white areas are often called shadows.  Black is white and white is black.

In February, 2006, I decided to take my findings on the x-rays to an online radiology forum.  While my online presentation received hundreds of hits as a result, I received very few comments, positive or negative. (I took this as a positive; if my findings had been totally off-base, I think these professional radiologists would have told me about it, or at least recommended a book I should read so I could learn what the heck I’m talking about.)  Anyhow, I did receive a confirmation for one of my claims—that Kennedy’s A-P view would not show his occipital fractures.  This confirmation came from a medical radiation technologist.  He/she agreed with the official interpretation that Kennedy’s head was tilted back considerably in the A-P view but responded to my prodding by stating:  “I don't think that a modified Waters view would help with a view of the occiput.  You would probably throw the jaw and the teeth over the structures in the occipital region.  The cervical spine would also be superimposed on top of the midline of the occiput.  The best view would have been the angled down Towne's view...as shown in your photograph.  That would toss the face below the level of the occiput and showed the entire bone.  In clinical radiography that view is almost always taken.  In forensic or autopsy radiography, usually only two views are done--the AP and lateral.” I received an e-mail response from a radiologist which offered additional insight.  He said “much of the theory about how to shoot AP or PA plain films of the skull and facial bones is designed to get the dense petrous pyramids out of the way…The occipital view for example is designed to throw the petrous pyramids below the foramen magnum.”

So there you have it.  There are good reasons to believe the fracture line low on the A-P view is not on the occipital bone. 

 

Fractured Orbit Analysis

So where were the fractures in Kennedy’s eye socket on the A-P view actually located? Well, since they appear to be in his eye socket, I thought I’d start by checking there.  Once started, I decided to look no further. 

Let’s recall the words of the doctors in the autopsy protocol (I’ll do my best to translate):  “There is edema and ecchymosis of the inner canthus region of the left eyelid measuring approximately 1.5 cm in greatest diameter.  There is edema and ecchymosis diffusely over the right supra-orbital ridge with abnormal mobility of the underlying bone.” (There is swelling and bruising on the inner part of the left eyelid.  There is swelling and bruising and a noticeable bone fracture above the right eye socket.)  Let’s recall that Boswell’s drawing of Kennedy’s skull on the back of the face sheet, entered into evidence as part of HSCA exhibit F-44, depicts a shattered eye socket with the notes “Globe rt. Eye” and “fracture through floor.” (A globe fracture is a structural collapse of the eye.) These are indications that the President’s eye sockets were fractured. When asked by the ARRB to explain his notes on the skull drawing, Boswell stated:  the “fracture through the bone extended from the frontal bone and through the floor of the orbit.” Case closed.  Kennedy had fractured orbits (eye sockets).

So why didn’t the HSCA’s chief radiology consultant, Dr. G. M. McDonnel, mention any fracture lines visible in the orbits on the A-P view? After all, the A-P view portrayed the face 20% larger than the back of the head and the fractures should have been readily apparent. An HSCA contact report with another one of their consultants, Dr. Norman Chase, entered into evidence as Exhibit F-34, says that when shown the x-rays, Dr. Chase “noted fracture of the right orbit.” In his report to the Rockefeller Commission, Dr. Fred Hodges noted that fracture lines reached into the left orbit as well.  Since Dr. Chase didn’t mention a transverse fracture of the occipital bone. I wondered if what McDonnell thought was a transverse fracture on the occipital bone in the A-P view could instead be the fractured right eye socket noted at autopsy, and then subsequently noted by Dr. Chase.

My wondering came to an end with the discovery of an x-ray depicting a blow out fracture of a man’s left orbit. This fracture created the wide air-filled shape apparent in Kennedy’s original A-P x-ray in the exact same place on the skull. The Merck Index defines a blow-out fracture as:  “fracture of the orbital floor caused by a sudden increase of intraorbital pressure due to traumatic force; the orbital contents herniated into the maxillary sinus so that the inferior rectus or inferior oblique muscle may become incarcerated in the fracture site, producing diplopia on looking up.”  The damage to the maxillary sinus (a sinus—air cavity—below the eye socket) would seem to explain the air surrounding the fracture apparent when one compares the un-enhanced x-ray to the enhanced x-ray.  Note that this is a fracture of the floor as in Boswell’s description.

But what of the other fracture lines apparent in the A-P view?  While reading about blow-out fractures, I found a number of drawings depicting what are known as Le Fort fractures. These fractures appeared similar but not identical to Kennedy’s fractures.  An online article by the Skull Base Institute entitled Craniofacial and Skull Base Trauma states:  “forceful impact to the skull can cause a fracture along the weak points of the orbit….Le Fort III fractures…progress laterally along the entire orbital floor and extend to disrupt the zygomaticofrontal suture…Le Fort III fractures result in complete craniofacial dysjunction because the facial bones and structures of the middle third of the face become totally separated from the cranium…Since most facial trauma consists of blows from the side or slightly off center, ideal, symmetric Le Fort I, I, or III patterns are rarely followed.  Most Maxillary fractures are more comminuted on one side than the other.  Thus Le Fort fractures may be seen in any combination.”  I took from this article that a Le Fort fracture would help explain the “abnormal mobility of the underlying bone” discussed in the autopsy report. It also convinced me that Kennedy’s fractures need not look exactly like the drawings of Le Fort fractures, and, in fact, shouldn’t look exactly like these drawings, due to the fact his fractures came from behind and were created in part by an actual impact of a missile on the orbital rim.  But I needed a second opinion.

Another online article, Orbit Fractures, by Antonio Pascotto on the eMedicine website, discussed Le Fort III fractures in a similar manner: “This fracture rarely results in a single segment of bone; more commonly, the break is comminuted, with varying combinations of zygomatic, nasoethmoid, and orbital fractures. (Translation:  fractures involving the cheek bone, nose, and eye sockets.) The fractures may not be symmetric on both sides, and minimal mobility may be present… Orbital emphysema, when detected on plain images, is frequently from a blow fracture of the medial wall…an air-fluid level in the maxillary antrum suggests an orbital floor injury…Unilateral base opacification of the ethmoid air cells would suggest a medial wall fracture.”  While I still haven’t figured out exactly how to detect “unilateral base opacification of the ethmoid air cells” the line about orbital emphysema intrigued me, as both of Kennedy’s eye sockets appear to be darkened in the A-P view.  In Radiology of the Skull and Brain I found an x-ray depicting such emphysema (air) in the eye sockets and found that, as on Kennedy’s x-rays, the air collects at the top of the eye socket.

Another eMedicine article entitled Facial Trauma, Maxillary and Le Fort Fractures by David W Kim confirmed much of what I’d already read: “In reality, the Le Fort classification is an oversimplification of maxillary fractures.  In most instances maxillary fractures are a combination of the various Le Fort types. Fracture lines often diverge from the described pathways and may result in mixed type fractures, unilateral fractures, or other atypical fractures.  In addition, in very high energy blows, maxillary fractures may be associated with fractures to the mandible, cranium, or both.” (Maxillary fractures are, by the way, fractures involving the Maxilla, the bone stretching from the upper jaw to the lower eye socket.)  In Kim’s discussion of Le Fort III fractures I noticed something new, however: “Intanasally, a branch of the fracture extends through the perpendicular plate of the ethmoid, through the vomer, and through the interface of the pterygoid plates to the base of the sphenoid.”  What I noticed was this reference to the Vomer bone, a small bone underlying the nose. Included in Dr. Boswell’s notes on the back of the face sheet are two words that have always intrigued me:  “Vomer crushed.”

 

Crash Go the Consultants

A look at Dr. Boswell's drawing of Kennedy's skull further confirms that the supposedly occipital fractures on the A-P x-ray were actually fractures of the right orbit. In the forehead area of this drawing, created during the autopsy, there is a notation reading "19cm." When asked in his ARRB testimony if this notation referred to the length of a scalp laceration, Boswell replied "there was an incised wound up there that extended into the right eye socket and then back across his temporal and frontal bone" and then explained further "The bone was all fragmented for that distance, 19 centimeters across the frontal bone." When one follows the line from the fractured floor of the eye socket on the drawing, furthermore, one can see that it rises up and curls over to the left side of the skull. This mirrors the fractures on the x-ray supposedly radiating from an entrance wound on the back of the skull. That the fractures purported to be on the back of Kennedy's head were in fact in his eye sockets is further supported by the not surprising fact that, in Boswell's drawing, there are NO fractures starting low on the back of the skull and curling over to the left side. 

Let's recall here the precise words of chief HSCA radiology consultant Dr. G. M. McDonnel. He concluded there was: "A metallic fragment on the outer table of the right occipital bone 9.6 cm above the mid-portion of the External Occipital Protuberfance (EOP). 1 cm above the metallic fragment is a depressed fracture from which stellate type fractures "radiate" into both occipital bones, the right parietal bone and the right temporal bone.These are vividly and convincingly displayed in the enhanced images, specifically the "anteroposterior" (AP) projection of the skull."  From this it seems clear his incorrect belief the fragment was on the back of the head fed into his belief these fractures were on the back of the head. He'd compounded his mistake by looking for evidence to support it. 

Or maybe he was just covering up. In any event, he was not alone. The other HSCA radiology consultant shown the enhanced x-rays, Dr. David O. Davis, also came to the conclusion that there was a bullet fragment on the back of the head and that fractures radiated outwards from this fragment. He also noted that the right orbit was fractured in the roof, right side and inferior rim. One can only wonder then which fractures on the A-P x-ray he'd connected with the occipital fracture and which ones with the orbital fracture. Still, it seems likely he associated the fracture lines around the outside of the orbit with fractures of its roof, right side and rim, and the fractures cutting across the orbit and heading to the left side of the skull with fractures in the occiput. If so, then one can only wonder if he'd ever been shown the drawing made by Boswell at the autopsy, which clearly depicts the fracture just below point 2 on the slide above in the eye socket, and the fracture line connecting point 2 with point 3 on the left front of Kennedy's head, and no fractures radiating from the cowlick area.

And, should one continue to doubt that the HSCA's radiology consultants were pressured or deceived into concluding that the large fragment and transversal fractures on the A-P x-ray were on the back of Kennedy's head, when they were really behind Kennedy's eye, one need only read the ARRB reports on their meetings with their own consultants. Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, their forensic anthropology consultant, could not find an entrance on the back of the skull on either the A-P or lateral x-rays, and noted no fracture lines on the A-P x-ray, but nevertheless related that "the orbit of the right eye appears displaced on the A-P x-ray." Dr. John J. Fitzpatrick, their forensic radiology consultant, also saw no entrance on any of the x-rays, and also failed to note fractures on the back of the head in the A-P x-ray, and similarly noted that "the orbit of the right eye is cracked and displaced." And, finally, Dr. Robert Kirschner, their forensic pathology consultant, completed the trifecta--he noted no entrance wound on any of the x-rays, noted no fractures in the A-P x-ray, and related instead that "The rear of the right orbit was observed to be missing.'

That's three for three. Three consultants, all of whom failed to note occipital fractures in the A-P x-ray, and all of whom offered that the damage visible in the A-P x-ray was in the orbit.

Anyone out there convinced that these fractures were indeed on the back of the head, and not in the orbit, should feel free to chime in... But you're wrong.

Lincoln/Kennedy Comparison

When one compares the deaths of President Lincoln and President Kennedy, there are many striking similarities.  Some of these similarities involve the wounds themselves. In both cases there were controversies about the direction that the bullet passed through the skull. Dr. Joseph Woodward performed Lincoln’s autopsy and reported that the round bullet lodged above Lincoln’s left eye. Surgeon General Joseph Barnes reported that it lodged above the right eye. Lincoln’s family physician Robert King Stone took notes at the autopsy; these notes were published almost a hundred years later; they largely backed up Woodward. 

Another similarity is that, as a result of the bullet’s impact, both men suffered fractures of both of their eye sockets.  This is a frequent occurrence in severe head wounds. The bones at the back of the eye sockets are particularly thin and prone to collapse from increased intra-cranial pressure.  Dr. Vincent J.M. Di Maio writes “The production of secondary fractures of the skull in gunshot wounds of the head is dependent on two factors:  the range at the time of discharge and the kinetic energy possessed by the bullet. The most common sites for secondary skull fractures are the paper-thin orbital plates.  These are extremely sensitive to a sudden increase in intra-cranial pressure such as that produced by a bullet entering the cranial cavity.”   Let’s compare… The bullet striking Lincoln in the back of his head and causing his eye socket fractures weighed approximately 6.7 grams or 103 grains and was traveling at approximately 400 fps. The bullet purportedly striking Kennedy at the back of his head weighed approximately 10.4 grams or 160 grains and was traveling at approximately 1800 fps.  Since the basic formula for estimating energy release in tissue is mass x speed x speed, this means that Kennedy’s skull was subjected to an impact over 30 times as great as Lincoln’s.  (While the actual amount of energy released into Kennedy’s skull would be substantially less than this amount, as pieces of the fatal bullet exited the skull before depositing all their energy, it remains clear that the amount of energy deposited in Kennedy’s skull was substantially larger than the amount of energy deposited in Lincoln’s.)

So where are these orbital fractures on Kennedy’s x-rays?  Until these fractures or lack thereof are adequately explained, there is no reason to believe that the fractures on the A-P x-ray supposedly on the back of Kennedy’s head are anywhere but his eye sockets.

While some might say “case closed”, the fact is that, for me, the case will remain open.  I have created this presentation, in part, to encourage a more open and intelligent discussion of the medical evidence related to the assassination of President Kennedy.  I am far from an expert on any of the topics discussed in this presentation.  And yet it seems I’ve uncovered many issues not addressed by the so-called experts.  I await the response and criticisms of those more familiar with this subject matter than myself, and will update this presentation accordingly.