Chapter 19d:  Stuck in the Middle With You

Why we just can't trust the "experts"...on either side of the divide

Doctor! Doctor!         

Now, the conspiracy theorist in me would prefer that I found those sharing my belief Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy to be forthright presenters of the evidence, and not (far too much of the time) blinded by their own beliefs. 

But that's not what I found. Instead, I found that--at least when it comes to evaluating, and accurately discussing, the mystery photo--the top doctors of the JFK research community have been nearly as blind as the Killer B's: Baden and Bugliosi.

Let's begin with Dr. Randy Robertson, a diagnostic radiologist. In his article The Late Arriving Fragment, published in the July 1995 issue of The Fourth Decade, Dr. Robertson asserted: "The arrival of (the) large late arriving fragment was a significant development during the autopsy. When testifying before the WC, Drs. Humes and Finck stated that, prior to the arrival of this bone fragment, an examination of the margins of the large defect in the skull failed to reveal a specific point where a bullet might have exited the skull." He then claimed that this was incorrect: "Autopsy photograph #44 clearly shows half of an exit defect exhibiting external beveling in the right frontal bone, which must have been even more obvious to the autopsy team upon direct inspection the night of the autopsy."

And from this he conflated:

"It has been the consensus of experts and other observers, including myself, that autopsy photo #44 clearly demonstrates external beveling and represents a portion of a frontal exit wound. In the 1966 Inventory the autopsy doctors realized that this photo documented what they said under oath had been nonexistent the night of the autopsy. In an effort to hide their previous perjury, they intentionally misidentified this photo, which depicts external beveling, as depicting a portion of an entrance wound in the rear of the skull. This has caused considerable confusion among critics, who would like to believe that this particular misidentified photo represents a portion of an externally beveled exit wound in the rear of the skull. In fact, the photo's correct orientation and interpretation provides much more damning evidence as we will see. The DOJ, in drafting the 1967 review for the autopsy doctors to sign, included in the statement the apparently logical conclusion that the late arriving fragment, having one half of a single exit hole, would fit in the front of the skull where the other half of an exit hole was depicted in the autopsy photographs. The autopsy doctors could not object to this logic, for to do so would indicate two separate exit wounds and evidence for conspiracy. We can now understand the original reasons for their perjury. The night of the autopsy they knew that the correct orientation of the large late arriving fragment's exit portion was towards the rear of the head. Boswell's candid revelation to Thompson. completely supported by the radiographs and films of the assassination proves this. In order not to reveal the presence of an exit wound in the rear of the skull, they denied the existence of a portion of another exit defect in the front of the skull which should have led them to its correct position. This allowed them to be intentionally vague as to where exactly this late arriving fragment fit. By signing the 1967 review, which included an accurate description of this frontal exit wound in the autopsy photos, the autopsy doctors confirmed their own perjury."

Ouch. Robertson had most everything backwards. He'd convinced himself that Humes had lied when he'd testified to having noticed no beveling on the intact skull. Well, this let Dr. Baden off the hook for lying about it later. And double ouch. Robertson had similarly convinced himself that Humes had lied when claiming photo #44 (the mystery photo) showed an entrance wound on the posterior skull in an inventory created for the National Archives. Well, this let the Justice Department--which had forced Humes to perform a second review of these materials months later, and had written up the report of this review, in which this entrance wound was no longer mentioned--off the hook, as well as the Clark and HSCA panels, which rubber-stamped the myth no such wound is apparent on the photos, even when the so-called mystery photo is interpreted as depicting the posterior skull. 

And that's just the beginning. Central to Robertson's claims is that the 1967 review for the Justice Department "included an accurate description of this frontal exit." Only it did no such thing. He missed that the report on this review was not actually at odds with the inventory list previously compiled. Although it claimed the photos of the skull with the missing brain (i.e., the mystery photo) showed the other half of the exit wound apparent on the large bone fragment received from Dallas,  it claimed the autopsy photos verified the accuracy of CE 386 and 388, drawings created for the doctors which showed the bullet exiting from the top of the head, and not the front of the head. 

I mean, from my perspective, this is Through the Looking Glass kind of stuff. Robertson pushed that the doctors were trying to conceal that the mystery photo showed a frontal exit--even though such an exit would help them sell that the shots came from behind. He pushed that they did this because they "knew that the correct orientation for the large late arriving fragment's exit portion was towards the rear of the head" and that they were trying to conceal that there were two separate wounds, one at the crown of the back of the head, and one on the frontal bone. 

Now, where did he get this? 

From his own imagination, as it turns out. In Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), Josiah Thompson relates that he interviewed Dr. Boswell earlier that year, and that Dr. Boswell told him that the doctors were able to match up one of the edges of the large triangular fragment with an edge of skull during the autopsy, and that this placed the fragment at "the crown of the President's head at the midline."  Thompson then explained: "Since the characteristic beveling of an exiting projectile was apparent in one corner of this fragment, they assumed that a large bullet fragment had exited from this hole." Boswell had said nothing about the beveled exit on this fragment being below the crown, and that the explosion of this fragment from the head had left a giant gaping hole high on the back of the head, mind you. And Boswell most certainly never said such a thing elsewhere. But Robertson is not to be dissuaded.  He had found a way to make out that Boswell had claimed the top of the back of the head had been blasted from the skull, when Boswell had said no such thing. 

After announcing that his interpretation of the x-rays has led him to believe that this fragment does indeed fill a gap near the rear of the head (a conclusion he fails to admit is at odds with the only forensic anthropologist to study the fragment), Robertson next offers that when placed in this position, the corner (of the fragment) "which contains a portion of an exit wound, would be oriented to the rear of the skull at the crown of the head, just as Thompson had been told by Dr. Boswell." 

Except no. Boswell claimed this fragment fit at the crown of the head. He did not specify that the MIDDLE of the fragment was at the crown of the head, and that the exit on the fragment was beneath that on the back of the head. And yet that is what Robertson presented to his audience at subsequent presentations.  As the face sheet drawing Boswell had created had shown no missing skull on the back of the head, and as the drawings Boswell had helped create for the Warren Commision had depicted an explosion from just forwards of the crown of the head, there was no reason, beyond perhaps wishful thinking, for Robertson to take from Boswell's statements that the large hole on the top of the head depicted in the photos stretched well below the crown of the head. So, yeah, Robertson had clearly taken his incorrect interpretation of an x-ray and used this to color Boswell's statements to Thompson, and then claimed Boswell had actually told this to Thompson. And no, not just that, but that this was a "candid revelation." 

Well, jeez, did it really never occur to Robertson that the autopsy doctors placed the large fragment in a different orientation than he had, and that, in their orientation, the beveled exit on the fragment was on the top of the head--where they later placed it in the drawings they'd created for the Warren Commission? I mean, Robertson is pretty much alone in placing the beveled exit on the large triangular fragment at the back of the head--why would he assume both that the doctors would place the exit at this location and that they would be so confident in their placement of it at this location that they would lie about the orientation of the mystery photo when creating an inventory for the archives? 

And that's not even to mention that neither Humes nor Boswell nor Finck has ever claimed or agreed that photo #44 (the mystery photo) shows a frontal exit, and that the review written under the guidance of the Justice Department in 1967, and signed by the doctors, did not, as Robertson claims, assert that the large triangular fragment "would fit in the front of the skull where the other half of an exit hole was depicted in the autopsy photographs." As discussed, this review actually claimed the photo verifies the accuracy of a drawing showing the back of the head, and only the back of the head. It claims, furthermore, that the photos portray the wound discussed in the autopsy report, a "large irregular defect involving chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions." It says nothing about the frontal bone, or an exit wound on the front of the head.

Now, upon re-reading the preceding paragraphs in 2024, I realized that I was probably unfair to Robertson, and the reader, in that I complained about his coming to incorrect assumptions and then citing them as facts while my explanations as to why this was so were as clear as mud. So I prepared an illustration to better demonstrate my argument. Robertson argues that Boswell's placement of the triangular fragment--along the midline at the crown--places it as at left on the image below, with the exit defect on the back of the head, while Boswell almost certainly meant to suggest that it was as at right on the image below, with the exit defect forward of the crown, as described in their reports and testimony.  I hope this clarifies things. 

Well, enough about Robertson. I suspect you get the picture. He, like most everyone else at one time or another, got caught up in a web of assumptions (such as the mystery photo's being taken from the front) and theories built upon these assumptions (such as the doctors' obviously lying when they suggested it was taken from behind), and started confusing these assumptions and theories with facts. This only makes him human. The point I'm trying to make, then, is not that people make mistakes, but that articles like Robertson's convinced me that most researchers were in the theory-pushing business, and that few if any were in the deliberate deception business. 

While at the November, 2005, JFK LANCER conference, however, I noticed something which forced me to reconsider the ‘innocence” of some of those failing to notice the bullet entrance on the mystery photo. And yes, by "some of those", I mean even those whose findings place them firmly in the conspiracy theorist camp. 

But first a little background... In 1992, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, by then the most vocal of the Parkland witnesses, co-wrote a book, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, which related his memories of November 22-24, 1963, and his current theories on the assassination. After its publication, and the subsequent media firestorm, he was widely criticized. Articles were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting he was a liar—that he’d never even seen Kennedy at Parkland—and so on. Crenshaw then sued the publishers of JAMA. Several years later, after winning this lawsuit, Crenshaw corrected some errors in his book, updated his story to include a section on the lawsuit, and added a section on the current state of the medical evidence, which was written by two leading members of the research community, Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Gary Aguilar. This new and improved version of Crenshaw’s book, entitled Trauma Room One, was released in 2001. 

Now, in Trauma Room One, on page 281 to be precise, there is a reproduction of the mystery photo, the photo of the President’s brainless cranium. What is astounding about this presentation of the photo, however, is that it is not printed in a way one can make sense of it. It is not printed so that the bone in the photo appears to be forehead, and it is not printed so that the bone in the photo appears to be the back of the head. If one is to believe this photo is of the back of the head, it is, in fact, printed upside down. Even worse, the lock of hair and drainage hole at one end of the photo, and the presumed bullet hole and specimen jar at the other end of the photo, have been cropped off the photo. This makes it even harder to orient. 

Now, was this just a coincidence? It seems mighty convenient that the presentation of the photo in this manner supports the book's claims that the photo does not show "where the bullet struck the skull" and that when inspecting the photo it "is virtually impossible to know which side is up, to know which bones are in the image, what part of the skull is being photographed, etc." The presentation of the photo in this manner also makes it hard to second-guess the writers when they ask "Is frontal bone or occipital bone visible in this image. Not even Kennedy's pathologists know for sure."

Since both doctors had inspected the photo at the Archives—Wecht was, in fact, not only the second non-government-affiliated doctor, after Lattimer, to inspect the photos, but had testified before both the Rockefeller Commission and HSCA—one has to question why they would not only make the argument that the photo is indecipherable, but crop it to make it far less decipherable. I mean, single-assassin theorists such as Chad Zimmerman and Larry Sturdivan present the photo un-cropped in their work. Single-assassin theorist extraordinaire John McAdams, for that matter, presents the photo in the back of the head orientation on his website, so that readers can judge for themselves. 

Why would two leading lights of the research community misrepresent something so important? 

Well, one possibility is that they were protecting their own reputations. Wecht’s disagreement with the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel was chiefly over its support for the single-bullet theory; to be clear, he accepted the Panel's endorsement of the Clark Panel's "cowlick" entrance on the skull, and accepted that there was no clear-cut evidence for the EOP (or Humes) entrance on the autopsy photos. Dr. Aguilar, for that matter, has long-trumpeted that the eyewitnesses describing a large exit on the rear of Kennedy's head were correct, and the autopsy report was a sham. It is in neither of the doctors’ personal interest, therefore, to reveal that Dr. Humes was correct in stating there was an entrance wound low on the back of Kennedy's skull.

But are Wecht and Aguilar capable of such “skullduggery”? Would they deliberately mislead the American public just to further their own agenda? 

I suspect not. I find it hard to believe these two men, whose work and statements have been hugely influential in the research community, and who have always pushed for the government to open up the Archives and let the truth be known, would go to such lengths to conceal something of such importance. (I would subsequently come to meet both men and develop a great respect for their sincerity and integrity.) As a result, I suspect they had a blind spot.

Let this section then serve not as an indictment of two great men, but as a case study in how even the smartest and most honest of men can have a blind spot. 

In re-reading the works of both men, it should be stated, neither seems to attach much significance to the photo. In Aguilar’s excellent 144 page on-line article, How Five Investigations into JFK’s Medical/Autopsy Evidence Got it Wrong, co-written with Kathy Cunningham in 2003, he devotes 16 pages to the Justice Department’s inspections of the autopsy photos in November 1966 and January 1967 (the so-called Military Review) and fails to mention that the description of the mystery photo changed between the two inspections. This is probably the single-most important change. And yet it goes unmentioned. Are we to assume from this that Aguilar deliberately left this out? 

Similarly, in his 42 page chapter in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), entitled The Converging Medical Case for Conspiracy, Aguilar declared, when discussing the possibility of a missing photo, “no images survive in which JFK’s scalp is shown reflected from the skull so as to demonstrate the skull wound.” This blanket dismissal of the significance of the mystery photo so alarmed Dr. James Fetzer, the editor of the book, moreover, that he felt it necessary to insert an editor’s note, reminding the reader “Apart from F8.” (F8, or Fox 8, is a widely-used term for the mystery photo.) While the probability exists that Dr. Aguilar, who is in everyday practice an ophthalmologist, was simply being short-sighted (sorry about the pun, Gary), and was referring specifically to the small entrance wound described by Dr. Finck, the fact is that a small entrance wound is readily apparently on the skull in the mystery photo...EXACTLY where Dr. Finck said it was. Why can’t Aguilar see this? 

Dr. Wecht, for his part, never mentions the mystery photo in his 1993 book Cause of Death. There is a passage in his 63 page chapter on the assassination that reveals his blind spot, however. When discussing his first inspection of the autopsy photos, Wecht states “As I reviewed the x-rays and autopsy photographs, I noticed a little flap of loose tissue visible just above the hairline on the back of the President’s head…the loose flap very easily could be an exit wound, which would prove there was a second gunman shooting from the front. But even if it is an entrance wound from a bullet, it would destroy the Warren Commission’s conclusion that only three bullets were fired.” 

It's undoubtedly revealing that Wecht’s immediate suspicion upon seeing something which could be a wound in the location where the autopsy doctors placed the entrance wound was that it could be an exit wound. This shows that Wecht had little doubt there was an entrance in the Clark Panel’s location. Apparently, it failed to register with him that the autopsy doctors could be right and Russell Fisher, the Clark Panel's ringleader, wrong. 

Wecht’s claim a lower entrance wound destroys the Warren Commission’s theory is further evidence of this short-sightedness. It is the existence of a higher/cowlick entrance, a wound observed by ZERO witnesses, that would immediately destroy the Warren Commission’s conclusions. And yet Wecht fails to argue for the existence of such an entrance. As so many others, he readily accepts that the Clark Panel's red oval-shaped mark in the cowlick is an entrance wound. As with George Lundberg of JAMA, who blindly trusted Humes, it would appear that Wecht blindly trusted Fisher. 

I suspect otherwise, however. I suspect that instead Wecht blindly trusted himself. In preparing for the writing of this study, I read dozens of papers and books on wound ballistics, most of which included photos of typical head wounds. The red mark in the cowlick noted by the Clark Panel does look a bit like an entrance wound created by a low-velocity, small-caliber, bullet. As a result, it may have looked like a typical entrance wound to Wecht. By no means, of course, is it a typical entrance wound for a high-velocity, military-jacketed bullet, which has broken up on a skull.

So it seems quite possible the mysterious cropping of the mystery photo was just a misunderstanding. On August 1, 2006, Dr. Aguilar responded to my questions about the cropping of the photo in Trauma Room One. He said: “Somewhere along the line, after the images left our control, someone unknown to us shoehorned the image for reasons I don’t understand. At that time I had too many balls in the air and was at risk of dropping a more important one if I paused to catch this one.” 

Upon my acceptance that Wecht and Aguilar did not deliberately mislead us by publishing a cropped version of the mystery photo, of course, I have to accept the related possibility that many of the misleading "mistakes" committed by the likes of Lattimer, Baden, Canning, Guinn, and Sturdivan were equally innocent. 

There is a flip side to this, of course...and that is that some of the "mistakes" made by those on my side of the fence could be equally as guilty as the worst "mistakes" made by those who ardently defend the Warren Commission. 

And Left is Right?

Yes, while many conspiracy theorists would like us to believe those on Team A--the conspiracy theorists--are innately more intelligent and reasonable than those on Team B---the single-assassin theorists--this sadly isn't true.

Let this sink in. Some conspiracy theorists are so desperate to believe there was a conspiracy they will present the wackiest statements made by witnesses decades after the shooting as some sort of "proof." These people will claim Jean Hill's latter-day recollections (which are in conflict with both her earliest statements, and those of her companion on 11-22-63, Mary Moorman) and the 20-years-after statements of Gordon Arnold, who claimed he was on the grassy knoll at the time of the shooting--but whose presence can not be detected in any of the photographs--are credible, and all the proof we need. One such theorist, in fact, has written me numerous times arguing that Robert Knudsen's 1978 testimony, in which he stated he first became aware of the autopsy photos on the morning after the autopsy, did not suggest he was not in attendance at the autopsy, as seems obvious, but suggested instead that he only took photos of the autopsy after midnight.

Cloudy thinking of this type is commonplace. On both sides of the fence... As we've seen, conspiracy theorists clinging to the notion the mystery photo was taken from the front are as likely as single-assassin theorists to dispute the obvious fact the original description of the mystery photo (that of a photo depicting a "missile wound over entrance in posterior skull, following reflection of the scalp") indicates it was taken from behind.

But is this a false equivalence? I mean, are the mistakes of single-assassin theorists dishonest mistakes--(mistakes made with a corrupt intent, and with a reckless disregard for historical accuracy)? And are they innately different from the mistakes of conspiracy theorists, which are, some would say, honest mistakes (mistakes made through a lack of understanding of the facts)?

I no longer believe so. It seems to me that there's plenty of rotten apples on both sides of the fence, or plenty of rotten apple on both sides of the apple, whatever...

Let me explain why. 

In late 2009 and early 2010, I had a number of heated exchanges on the Education Forum, an online discussion group, with Dr. James Fetzer. He kept attacking me for being closed-minded and not subscribing to his and Jack White's claims that the autopsy photos, x-rays and assassination films have all been altered by the government. He also accused me of never having read any of his books. On January 4, 2010, after I posted the Eye of the Beholder section from chapter 13 of this webpage to demonstrate that 1) I had read at least one of his books, and 2) he had never read my webpage or else he'd have known that, he responded in a changed manner. He suddenly acknowledged: 

"Pat,

You have made an extraordinary discovery here, by which I am referring to the apparent second entry wound at the back of the head in the HSCA photographs, which simply stuns me. To the best of my knowledge, you are the first and only person to have made this observation...At the very least, this means that a photograph that the HSCA used to justify its shift in the entry location by four inches was actually contradicted by the lower entry location shown on the same photograph. I am fairly astonished that no one has noticed this before. I would compare it to the photo showing Arlen Specter illustrating the path of the 'magic bullet' had to have taken, while the circular patch showing the actual entry is visible well-below his hand, which means that a photo intended to illustrate the 'magic bullet' theory actually refutes it." 

Well, this is it, I thought, finally an acknowledgment from Fetzer and his colleagues that I am not just a nay-sayer to their wild theories, but am actually pushing the investigation forward in new and revealing directions.

But no such luck. Three hours later, he added:

"I don't know what to say, Pat, because Jack has taken a look and says that the hole you have 'discovered' isn't there. This will take some sorting out. I will invite David Mantik, David Lifton, and John Costella to take a look, too. Something is not right."

Well, we can agree on that. Something is not right when a supposedly independent thinker such as Fetzer, who taught critical thinking at the university level, has to check with his colleagues--all of whom have embraced theories which I have publicly rejected--before allowing himself to acknowledge what he has already admitted he sees. Something is especially not right, moreover, when his admitted reason for doing so is that Jack White, a long-time researcher who believed not only that the Kennedy autopsy photos, x-rays and assassination films were all fake, but that O.J. Simpson was innocent, no astronauts landed on the moon, no jet hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and the theory of evolution is a fraud, had told him that we were mistaken.

Or does that sound too harsh? Well, judge for yourself. Here is a February 11, 2010 post by White on the Education Forum in which he acknowledged that he perceived the election of America's first black President, Barack Obama, and America's humanitarian response to the then-recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, as all part of some master plot:

"There are not as many paid provocateurs in the JFK affair as in other more monstrous charades such as 911, Apollo, OKC, TWA800, etc. JFK was "just" the killing of a single man. Much more serious are the callous murders of thousands in other events in deceptions on an enormous scale (to say nothing of the ensuing wars).

These nitpickers have no concept of the gigantic struggle between GOOD and EVIL we are involved in. The sinister forces of the New World Order do not consider it wrong to "eliminate" the masses if it serves their corrupt agendas. The Skull and Bones elite death cult promotes death as a means toward progress. The evil international bankers, led by David Rockefeller, decide who our "leaders" will be (ala Obama). S&B and other evil groups promote EUGENICS as a means of wiping out entire populations, especially in third world nations, especially those places with abundant natural resources that can be taken over. Weaponry has been developed for weather control and creation of simulated natural disasters which can provide excuses for occupying countries in the guise of "humanitarian relief".

"Democracy" that the revolutionists brought to America will soon be gone in a world ruled by propaganda and mind control. Truth is the only lantern to shine light into the dark places and only truth can rip away the Oz curtain and expose the fraudulent wizards."

And, here is Jack's response to a January 20, 2010 post on the Education Forum in which I pointed out that his harshest critics are not the single-assassin theorists who write him off as a hopeless crackpot, but his fellow conspiracy theorists, who think that many of his claims are just too far out to ever gain widespread acceptance:

"Your prism on things is too narrow. There ARE conspiracies. Vast conspiracies. Not "far out," as you have been led to believe. Politicians faked going to the moon. Exotic weaponry tested in Oklahoma City was then used to bring down the twin towers. The war on "terrorism" is a fake. "Presidents" past and present have been elected unconstitutionally and illegally. Agencies of the government fake evidence to suit their purposes...as far back as the JFK assassination.

It is YOU who need to learn how FAR OUT conspiracies have become. WAKE UP and smell the fakery...from Z-films to fake presidents!"

Fetzer's deference to White is particularly ironic in that his presence on the Education Forum in January 2010 was in large part fueled by his desire to push the then-recent release of Doug Horne's 5 volume set Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. The irony is that Horne had sought to distance himself from the non-JFK related statements of both Fetzer and White, and would almost certainly have questioned Fetzer's rejection of what he sees in the autopsy photo based upon what Jack White claims not to see.

From the very book Fetzer was on the Forum to promote...

"Another pet peeve I have is the false association by many in academia and the media of all JFK assassination researchers with persons who don't believe we landed on the moon six times (from 1969-1972); or with persons who believe that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were really 'controlled demolitions' set off by the government, and were not caused by fanatics flying airplanes into buildings.

I think the principal lesson of the JFK assassination is that we should not defer to arguments about major historical events (such as assassinations, and how wars begin) based on authority—we should study the primary evidence ourselves and reach our own conclusions. If people don't learn to do a better job of this in the United States, our democracy will remain in peril, and our society will continue to just 'muddle through,' rather than excel in tackling its many challenges."

FWIW, Dr. Fetzer never got back to me...

This was not true of Jack White, however...

As part of an apparently hopeless attempt to get Fetzer to see beyond White's nay-saying, I pointed out to him that the bullet wound he had admitted seeing on the back of the head photo appeared to overlay a wound on the skull that White had previously acknowledged. This, in turn, led White to go on the attack and falsely claim he'd never agreed with me about any such wound on the skull in the mystery photo. He then posted an image purportedly presenting his interpretation of the mystery photo.

As shown on the slide above, this image was obviously in error, with the bullet hole on the back of the head enveloped in darkness, and supposedly on the left side of the head, but with a caption acknowledging it was in fact to the right of the EOP (which is at the middle of the head). I can think of no logical reason for him to use this obviously inaccurate image to refute me other than that in his rush to refute my assertion that the autopsy photos are far from fake and are in fact the key to understanding the assassination, he had lost track of what was left, and what was right.

(Above: Dr. James Fetzer. a one-time professor of critical thinking. I kid you not. )

Charlatans' Web

In a strange twist, moreover, White soon turned his attention to Fetzer. By then, Fetzer had stopped pushing Horne's book and had instead begun pushing an upcoming book by Judyth Vary Baker, a woman claiming to have been Oswald's mistress. This upset White, who saw Baker's descriptions of Oswald as a challenge to the "two Oswald" theory he found so compelling. White thereby began attacking Baker, and presenting evidence she was a fraud. This caused Baker, through Fetzer, to challenge White's photo studies of Oswald. (These studies, published in John Armstrong's massive book "Harvey and Lee," suggested there'd been two different men using Oswald's name.) Baker then demonstrated that some of the images used by White to suggest there'd been two different Oswalds had in fact been altered to make Oswald's face look wider. White then challenged Fetzer and his ability to recognize photo alteration by presenting six photos of Fetzer, one of which he claimed was unaltered. Fetzer picked one. White then pounced and admitted that they'd all been altered. He then asked how could Fetzer not know this, etc... To which Fetzer responded that he'd mistakenly assumed White was not a liar, and had not been lying when he'd written that one of the images had been unaltered.

From there, things only got worse for Team Fetzer. In April 2010, John Costella, who Fetzer had long-hailed as the pre-eminent expert on the Zapruder film, published an extremely critical review of Inside the Assassination Record Review Board. Angry to the core, Costella repeatedly attacked Doug Horne (whom he repeatedly called "government man D.P. Horne") for theorizing that frames from the Zapruder film had been removed and painted over, when Costella had (to his mind) already proved this impossible, and had shown that the film was either "completely genuine" or "completely fabricated." Costella then concluded that "regardless of his disclaimer at the end of his last page of his five massive volumes—page 1807—that his words do not represent the views or opinions of the U.S. government, one cannot fail to feel that Horne's work is, indeed, the final chapter of the government's cover-up of the brutal assassination of the thirty-fifth President of the United States." This, of course, was wacky. Horne had self-published a work claiming that Kennedy's body had been altered, autopsy photos had been faked, and the Zapruder film had been altered. And yet he had failed to pass Costella's smell test simply because he had failed to embrace Costella's own research!

Emboldened by Costella, Jack White then acknowledged he had his own problems with Horne, and considered Horne's book to be a "Limited hangout," a widely-over-used term for a CIA operation in which a minor crime is admitted in order to conceal a much greater crime. By embracing Horne, Fetzer had, in effect, alienated two of his closest colleagues, Costella and White.

On April 19, 2010, on the Education Forum, this all came to a head. As a response to White's insistence Judyth Baker's story of a romance with Oswald was the by-product of a fertile imagination mixed with sexual frustration and a life of disappointment, Fetzer cut ties with him altogether. He posted, for all to see:

"NOTICE OF TERMINATION OF FRIENDSHIP WITH JACK WHITE, WHO HAS FINALLY DISGUSTED ME

I cannot believe that someone I have admired in the past would stoop to such a sophomoric level by lodging such a blatant ad hominem. Those who resort to arguments of this caliber have discredited themselves massively. I denounce each and every one of them...Cease and desist, Jack White. You have forefeitted being taken seriously. Please know that I want nothing more to do with you in any context at all. We are no longer friends."

In short order, Fetzer would similarly denounce David Lifton, whose work he had previously championed. Lifton had, after all, done his damnedest to expose Ms. Baker as a fraud. This falling-out climaxed, sadly, when Lifton presented excerpts of Fetzer's work on 9/11, and called him to task for blaming the attacks, at least in part, on an international Jewish conspiracy. Now, this would be bad enough, but the ludicrous became surreal when Fetzer responded to Lifton's claims not by disassociating himself from the claims Israel was behind the attack, but by claiming Lifton's criticism of this position was motivated not by his Jewish pride, but by his desire to evade repayment of "loans" received from Fetzer years before. (After much back and forth, it turned out that these loans--more like small advances--were held by Lifton against the royalties Fetzer had failed to pay him for his significant contribution to Fetzer's book The Great Zapruder Film Hoax. Fetzer, of course, claimed the book had failed to break even, and that, as a result, he owed Lifton nothing. He'd failed to provide Lifton with a royalty statement proving as much, of course.)

This slow-motion train wreck was embarrassing to all those involved. It exposed yet again the contradiction-in-terms that lies at the heart of the conspiracy research community. Conspiracy research demands one be suspicious, and independent-minded. People wishing to enter this world, myself included, have a deeply rooted desire to find and expose some higher truth. This leads them to feel passionate and defensive of the "truths" they uncover, a bit suspicious of those who won't accept their "truths," and a bit jealous and envious of those whose "truths" are more readily accepted by others. This leads to a lot of in-fighting, with researchers beating up on a researcher one week, and then forming an alliance with that researcher the next week or month or year to beat up on someone else.

In this particular instance--that of the scuffle between myself and Team Fetzer--things came full circle on May 4, 2010. After Fetzer, in a discussion thread on Judyth Vary Baker's claim she and Oswald were lovers, once again insulted me and claimed I had no credibility due to my daring to disagree with Doug Horne and David Mantik, I responded by creating a new thread, in which I presented a section on my website on the fragment behind the eye, in which I expose Horne's and Mantik's errors regarding said fragment. While Fetzer, to no one's surprise, failed to respond, you'll never guess who did. Actually, I suspect you will guess. That's right. Jack White. White wrote:

"Pat...a very interesting study. I am not qualified to interpret all of it.

However, I have never been satisfied with any explanation of the round 6.5 dense spot on the xray.

I particularly wondered how it could be on the back of the head, when that portion was missing, and that it did not show in the lateral views. You may be onto something that it was to the FRONT of the skull, and LOOKED DIFFERENT FROM THE SIDE.

But my observations are not from an expert.

Thanks for the thoughtful study.

Jack"

So there you go. Fetzer had rejected my research out of loyalty to White, Costella, Lifton, Horne and Mantik. Horne had made it clear he felt no such loyalty to Fetzer and White when it came to 9/11. Costella and White later made it clear they distrusted Horne. Fetzer and White then fell out over Judyth Baker. Fetzer and Lifton then fell out over both Fetzer's attachment to Baker and Fetzer's theories regarding 9/11. White then made it clear he suspected I could be right about something on which Horne and Mantik had been wrong. Team Fetzer had thus been an illusion, and had dissolved in a puff of smoke...

a puff of smoke, that is, that was swallowed up by the swirling cloud of smoke and dust that follows around James Fetzer.  (If you can imagine a Tasmanian Devil/human hybrid, well, you won't be far off.)

In any event, in 2011, Dr. Fetzer and I had a number of arguments in which he revealed himself to be even less rational than I'd previously suspected. At one point, in order to refute my questioning of his friend Dr. Robert Livingston's credibility, he claimed the transcript of Dr. Robert Livingston's testimony in Dr. Charles Crenshaw's civil case had been falsified... 

This was truly wacky. Livingston had testified...at Fetzer's urging. Bradley Kizza, Crenshaw's attorney--and the one presumably responsible for the accuracy of the transcript--was a friend of Fetzer's. The transcript, even worse, was made a public document by the ARRB, almost certainly at the urging of another of Fetzer's buddies, Doug Horne.

So what was Fetzer talking about? Apparently, when faced with evidence his friend, Robert Livingston, was a weird egg, and not entirely credible, he opted to claim the evidence was fake. EVEN THOUGH the evidence was evidence he--Jim Fetzer--had brought before the public. (Dr. Livingston had testified that he'd come forward--with his highly dubious story he'd spoken to Dr. Humes on 11-22-63--in order to "save the world.")

Now, I didn't know how to respond to this. I had contacted a man Livingston claimed as a confidant regarding his connection to the Kennedy assassination, the veteran reporter Richard Dudman, and had asked him if Livingston had told him about his (supposed) call to Dr. Humes in 1963, shortly after it had (supposedly) happened. His response was most surprising. Dudman told me he didn't recall Livingston, an old school chum of his who he occasionally ran into at reunions, EVER having told him about such a call.

And yet, I decided not to tell this to Fetzer. His behavior had been such that I feared he would launch an all-out assault on the 93 years-old-but-still-working Dudman, or on me for trusting such an old man, etc. Fetzer's behavior was just too ugly. I decided to put him on ignore.

And it's a good thing, too. I subsequently discovered a video-taped presentation of Fetzer's from 1994 on YouTube...in which he discussed Livingston's claim he'd contacted Dr. Humes before the commencement of the autopsy. Well, in this presentation, a younger, more level-headed Fetzer admitted that, seeing as Livingston had claimed his wife would back up his story--i.e. that he shared with her his thoughts before calling Dr. Humes, and shared with her his distress over the fact his call to Dr. Humes had been cut-off by the FBI--that he (Dr. James Fetzer) had actually followed up on this by asking Livingston's former wife if she remembered her husband calling Dr. Humes on 11-22-63! Fetzer then related: "She told me she didn't recall that specific conversation but she did recall a telephone call he had received from Bethesda asking him to describe the difference between an entrance wound to the throat and an exit wound to the throat." That's it. She didn't recall this phone call coming on November 22nd, or, at least, Fetzer didn't state that she did, and she made no mention of Humes, or at least, Fetzer made no mention of her mentioning Humes. Well, heck, this is fairly toxic to Livingston's story. IF your husband stood in front of you and called up the man performing the autopsy of the century and told him what to look for, you'd remember it, wouldn't you? In any event, I was glad I discovered this after I'd stopped discussing such things with Fetzer, because if he'd claimed his own video-taped presentation had been faked to undermine Livingston's credibility, well, he may very well have collapsed my brain. And without the use of energy beams... And yes, that's a snide reference to Fetzer's highly dubious claims about 9/11.

But wait, it gets worse...for Fetzer. The video in which Fetzer discussed Livingston's wife was not the last video posted on YouTube to prove problematic for Livingston's story. In 2015, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons posted a 1993 videotaped interview of Livingston on YouTube, which I stumbled across in 2017. This interview was conducted, apparently, a few months after Dr. Livingston started writing JFK researchers and claiming he'd talked to Dr. Humes on 11-22-63. In any event, this interview goes on for almost 2 hours, and encompasses all aspects of Livingston's life, and not just his career as a scientist. His interviewer, Dr. Earl Walker, asks Livingston over and over again about his various "adventures," and Livingston responds, over and over again, with stories about hiking and sailing, along with his encounters and friendship with men like Kennedy Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Dalai Lama. He also talks about the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons. While he discusses studying drug addiction, mapping the human brain, and serving as the scientific director for the Mental Health and Neurological Institutes at the National Institute of Health, however, Livingston makes no mention of his being involved in any research involving gunshot wounds or brain trauma, nor of his talking to Dr. Humes on 11-22-63, and informing Dr. Humes about Kennedy's throat wound. The absence of this story from what is essentially an audiobook of Livingston's life story...speaks volumes.

So, yeah, I gave up on James Fetzer after our tussle over Livingston. I simply refused to engage.

Because, well, arguing  with the man kills brain cells. He's just not worth the effort. 

Consider... shortly after Fetzer parted ways with White and Lifton over his support for Judyth Baker, he denounced yet another of his longtime colleagues, Greg Burnham. This time the falling out was over Fetzer's fervent support of Ralph Cinque, a man obsessed with the idea Oswald was outside at the time of the shooting and was photographed in the doorway of the depository building by news photographer James Altgens, who then turned his film over to the CIA so they could make Oswald look like his co-worker Billy Lovelady. Burnham refused to support Cinque, so Fetzer denounced him in public. Of course, Fetzer's infatuation with Cinque didn't last either. He eventually wandered off, muttering to himself, claiming that the Newtown, Connecticut massacre of 27 adults and school children was a government conspiracy designed to make us surrender our guns. So, y'know, "they" can put us in camps or something... He then started pushing a new book on conspiracies in which he tried to revive the "Paul is dead" hoax from the sixties. And no, I'm not kidding. And, no, this wasn't rock bottom. The parents of one of the children murdered at Newtown sued Fetzer for publishing a book in which he claimed the murder of their child was a hoax, as their son had never actually existed, and won BIGTIME, essentially bankrupting Fetzer. Of course, he saw this as all part of the conspiracy...

AND TO THINK I ONCE TOOK THIS MAN SERIOUSLY!

Yes, the man has been totally discredited, both as a writer and a human. 

And yet... the essence of "Team Fetzer" survives, in the ongoing (and still widely regarded) work of Dr. David Mantik.

Now, we've already seen how Mantik's incorrect placement for the Harper fragment has hampered the research commmunity's understanding of its true significance. (It has both entrance and exit beveling and is thus evidence for a tangential wound... See Chapter 16b).  And we've already seen how Mantik's incorrect claims regarding the contrast on the x-rays has hampered the research community's understanding of their true signifcance. (The purported exit defect and fractures emanating from this defect are much larger than one would expect for a through and through wound from a full-metal jacketed bullet fired at the proposed range, and suggest instead that this is an entrance defect for a bullet striking on a tangent and breaking into pieces on the skull...See Chapters 18 and 18b). 

So one might think there's not much more for me to complain about.

And I wish that were true. But, oh Lord, there is... Lots and lots and lots... 

Coincidence or Conspiracy?

In September, 2010, while looking through Professor Fetzer's Assassination Science website, I stumbled upon Dr. Mantik's power point presentation on the forgery of President Kennedy's x-rays. Dr. Mantik had delivered this presentation on 11-21-09 at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas. Now, I was in Dallas at that time, and had intended to attend Mantik's presentation, but had arrived at the tail-end of the Q and A session afterward, just in time to hear him dismissing "Speer's Theory" regarding the "white patch" on the x-rays. At the time, I thought little of it. I mean, I can't expect everyone to agree with me.

Well, upon viewing Mantik's presentation, I came to understand why Mantik was so nervous when I talked to him afterward. You see, not only had he dismissed my theories regarding the x-rays, as one might expect, but he'd spent much of his presentation concealing evidence supporting my theories.

Sounds kinda crazy, right? Well, if we're willing to consider that the bulk of the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel would misrepresent the medical evidence--if only on a subconscious level--in order to defend the credibility of their friend Russell Fisher, we should also consider the possibility that Dr. Mantik would misrepresent the evidence to defend his own credibility, and that Team Fetzer would align itself against anyone challenging their theories on the medical evidence, including yours truly.

There is evidence supporting this throughout Mantik's presentation.

First off, it must be stressed that Mantik quoted my website on one of his slides, put my name in the title of three of his slides, and actually showed several of my slides to his audience. So he is clearly familiar with my work. His being familiar with my work, then, makes it near certain he is familiar with my studies of the mystery photo, and my conclusion the photo can be oriented through an acknowledgment of the presumed bullet hole, the specimen jar, the triangle of scalp, the presumed jugular foremen apparent in the base of the skull, and the drainage hole.  So why did Mantik, when showing his audience the mystery photo, opt to bury the first four of these features beneath boxes of text, that could just as easily have been placed to the side of the photo? 

Was he concerned that those in attendance might notice these features, and argue against his orientation for the photo? Was he concerned that their doing so would force them to reject his orientation, and thereby reject his conclusion the mystery photo shows a hole in the middle of the back of Kennedy's skull, into which the Harper fragment fits like a puzzle piece?

Or was it just sloppy sloppy work? I mean, it's clear he's not in full command of the facts. On his slide, after all, he points out what he calls the "Tentative EOP entry site--selected by Humes for the ARRB," Only, no... That's nonsense. Humes claimed from the beginning through all his days that the EOP entry site was to the right of the EOP. Well, see for yourself. Mantik has it on the left. 

Now, okay, he claims that is a "Tentative EOP entry site" and then points out another site below, which he labels "Pathologist's entry site." That's better, but still wrong. He places this site at the midline of the skull, which would be on or directly above the EOP, when the entry site described by the doctors was ONE INCH to the right and slightly above the EOP.  He is clearly blowing smoke. His orientation for the mystery photo is nonsense, or worse. 

And this is plain to see...

As Mantik has never claimed the mystery photo was taken with Kennedy laying on his side or some such thing, and as he claims one can see Kennedy's abdominal fat and nipple in the un-cropped photos at location A on the slide above, moreover, it seems apparent he believes the photo was taken with Kennedy laying flat on his back. 

This orientation is presented below.

First, note that the angle of the image is at odds with the angle of the table. This would only make sense if the photos were cropped at such an angle from a much much larger image. The camera was on a tripod, after all, and was not tilted this way or that by a fashion photographer. Now note the added arrows. I have added these to point out features on the image normally cropped off by Mantik and his supporters--that prove his orientation is bonkers.  I mean, (as shown by the red arrow) he has what was almost certainly the bullet hole to the right of the EOP dangling in the hair at the left of the skull. And (as shown by the blue arrow) he has a specimen jar by Kennedy's left shoulder tilted at a drastic angle, and basically tipping over. And, finally, (as shown by the green arrows) he has a drainage hole apparent on the autopsy table...up in the air above Kennedy's face. 

Now it could be that Mantik believes Kennedy's head was turned halfway to its right in the photo. This would be better, as it would straighten out the specimen jar and drainage hole. But this hardly seems likely seeing as neither Mantik nor his devoted follower, Michael Chesser, have made such a claim, or even acknowledged the existence of the specimen jar and drainage hole in their presentations. 

So I don't know. It could be that Mantik's just just not very good at this--y'know, this whole looking at stuff and figuring out what it is thang. We all have our weaknesses and this could be one of his weaknesses. But, regardless the reason, it's clear Mantik's orientation for the mystery photo is incorrect AND central to his current theory--the theory he is actively selling in books and videos--on the assassination.

And it seems apparent as well that his theory--that the Harper fragment was occipital bone and proof the back of Kennedy's was blown out by a shot from the front--has led him to make numerous other mistakes...

Such as...that skull fragments removed from the skull and measured during the autopsy (what Mantik calls "bone islands") were at the top of the head, and not the back of the head. 

Islands Adrift

Here they are in Figure 13 from Mantik's 2015 book John F. Kennedy's Head Wounds. (Note that this is a drawing of Kennedy's skull wounds created by the doctors during the autopsy. The view is from above the skull, with the forehead at the top and the back of the head at the bottom. Now note further that Mantik has added onto this drawing some arrows and letters., with two bone fragments marked as C and D.

Now realize that most researchers , including myself, assumed these fragments originated from a location low on the back of the head, and were fragments created by fractures... radiating from the entrance of a bullet low on the back of the head. 

This marked them as a problem for Mantik's near-religious belief the Harper fragment is occipital bone, moreover, as these fragments were long-believed to have resided above and to the right of the entrance defect, including an area Mantik claims had once been home to the Harper fragment. 

So now look where Mantik places fragments C and D on an anatomy drawing published in his book as Figure 7a.

He'd moved them up and out of the way. 

Now we all know that the skull bulges out at the back and that bone fragments in this location would not be depicted as being at the very back of the skull on an overhead view. And we should know as well that Dr. Humes, when shown the drawing by Jeremy Gunn in 1996 and asked about the measurements on the drawing, confirmed that in the autopsy drawing "You're looking at it from above, and the wound, the entrance wound, you wouldn't see on a view from the top. But there were fractures on the posterior cranial fossa radiating from the wound."

Wait, what? The posterior cranial fossa is the base of the skull. Not the top. Humes had thereby suggested that these fractures and fragments were on the base of the skull, below the entrance wound Mantik agrees was by the EOP, and not high up on the skull, inches above it. 

Well, what about Boswell, then? He actually created the drawing. Well, unfortunately, he didn't have much to say about this. When asked the signifcance of the notations at the bottom of his drawing by Gunn, he said he thought the numbers represented centimeters and that they were not measurements for the fragments that came back from Dallas.  He then said "I'm sorry. I hesitate to speculate on that. I don't know." 

And that was that... 

But that's enough. Should Mantik have actually studied the drawing he would have realized that the area Boswell identified as missing on the drawing is forward of the markings and measurements provided by Boswell--that Mantik has identified as bone islands C and D. Well, this debunks Mantik's claim bone islands C and D were forward of an area missing bone on an overhead view of the skull--the area Mantik claims once housed the Harper fragment, on the very back of the skull. 

So, yeah, Mantik's dubious depiction of these "islands," along with a whole slew of similar "mistakes," has helped fool people into accepting his whack-a-doodle interpretation of the mystery photo, and his whack-a-doodle-do orientation for the Harper fragment.   

He has misled an awful lot of people, including his top supporters...

The Blind Belief in Things Unseen

Example Number 1: Douglas Horne. 

In Volume 3 of his 5 Volume epic, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, published 2009, Douglas Horne kept stride with his "associate" David Mantik and asserted that the "mystery photo" is indeed a photo taken of the back of the head. As Horne claimed the autopsy photos, x-rays, and Zapruder film had all been altered to suggest the shots came from behind, however, he held that the beveling apparent on the back of the head was also faked, and added in by some government employee under the belief the photo was taken from the front. 

This made little sense, IMO. Such beveling was not described in the autopsy report. If Dr. Humes was instrumental in the cover-up, and had personally supervised the alteration of Kennedy's wounds, as Horne posits, why would Humes not be told that, oh yeah, we've added an exit onto what we're guessing is forehead of one of the autopsy photos, and you're to write about this in your autopsy report and testify about this should you be called to testify before a government commission? 

If Horne believed this was done without Humes' knowledge, after the completion of his report, furthermore, it makes even less sense. To be clear, we know the photos in the archives are identical to those copied by James Fox but a few days after the assassination, and subsequently made available to the research community. So...are we to believe someone added an exit wound to what they thought was forehead in an autopsy photo within days of the shooting--but failed to tell the doctor whose testimony would be required to place such a wound into evidence? Of course not..

It was not much of a surprise, then, when Horne subsequently changed his mind about the beveling. In 2014, he unveiled a five part video series, Altered History, on the Future of Freedom Foundation website. In part 2 of this series, he discussed the "mystery photo" in some detail. He now revealed that, after some thought, he'd come to conclude that the beveled bone on the mystery photo was indeed the beveling of an exit wound on the back of Kennedy's head.

Now, here 's more of a surprise. In keeping with Dr. Mantik's orientation for the photo, Horne failed to point out the bullet hole on the photo which to me had seemed so obvious... It was like it didn't exist. Now, he may have thought I'd been mistaken, but after getting men like Lifton, Groden and White to agree with me, one would think he'd point it out, if only to say he disagreed with us. But instead he chose "Ignore". 

In 2021, Horne gave a presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation, in which he similarly discussed this photo, and similarly chose 'Ignore." Now, this time he did mention Dr. Humes' initial claim this photo shows a bullet hole by the EOP. And, yes, this was a bullet hole accepted as a legitimate wound by both Dr. Mantik and himself. And yet Horne mentioned Humes' claim about the bullet hole only to denounce it as "Bullshit!"? The wound was right there on the photo Horne showed his viewers, but he claimed it didn't exist. 

So why would he do this?

Well, to me, it seems clear. Horne was reluctant to agree there was an entrance wound in the photo, because to do so would be to acknowledge Dr. Mantik's failure to properly orient the photo, and to challenge Dr. Mantik's claims about the Harper fragment. In essence, then, he chose Bros over Hos. 

Now here's even more of a surprise. In opposition to Mantik's impression of the mystery photo, which places the presumed beveled exit on the mystery photo at the midline of the skull, Horne proposed that the beveled exit apparent on the photo was on the left rear side of Kennedy's head.  (This is demonstrated on the slide above.)

Wait...No one saw such a wound... Well, then how did he explain this?  It's really quite simple. He said the wound was underneath Kennedy's hair and had therefore went unnoticed by all the credible witnesses at both Parkland and Bethesda Hospitals. 

Now, that would be bad enough. But when Horne said this, he had just finished describing what he took to be the entrance wound leading to this exit. This, amazingly, was a presumed entrance on Kennedy's forehead that was similarly hidden beneath his bangs and was similarly unnoticed by all the credible witnesses at Parkland and Bethesda Hospitals. This presumed entrance was, in fact, only mentioned by two people, neither of whom saw the body, and both of whom popped up decades after the shooting to claim they were shown a photo of  this wound by a photographer--two different photographers, to be clear--neither of whom was actually at the autopsy...according to everyone who was actually at the autopsy. 

And no, I'm not misrepresenting all this--that Horne had connected an entrance wound observed by no one to an exit wound observed by no one. Here he is a moment later in his 2014 presentation, pointing out this unseen entrance and unseen exit at the same time. 

Now, to be clear, I think Horne was flying solo here. Mantik had previously claimed a  bullet entering at the forehead could not have created the large exit on the back of the head. He said the fragment trail was too high, and thought a bullet entering at the temple was the more likely culprit. So it seems unlikely he would suddenly change his mind about this. 

And yet, even so, with or without Mantik's blessing, here was Horne connecting a bullet entrance noticed by no one who'd studied Kennedy's body to a bullet exit noticed by no one who'd studied Kennedy's body, and presenting this to his audience as if this was rock solid stuff. 

Well, he may as well have claimed he'd heard about this from an invisible six foot rabbit... 

Harvey and Mantik

Now let me explain that last comment. (I don't want to be like former funnyman Dennis Miller and make snarky comments and then leave the audience hanging.) The reference to a six foot rabbit is a reference to an old play which was later made into a  movie named Harvey, in which a seemingly ordinary man named Elwood Dowd has an imaginary six foot rabbit as a friend. Well, ever since the release of the movie, roughly 70 years ago,  snarky people like  myself have mocked people seeing things that don't exist or believing things for which there is no evidence...as people with an invisible friend named Harvey. 

Horne is such a person. As discussed, he proposes an entrance on the front of Kennedy's head that no one saw and connects it to an exit on the back of Kennedy's head that no one saw, and then says "Wow, I proved Kennedy was shot from the front! I proved there was a conspiracy!" 

And David Mantik is largely to blame for this. 

We have seen how Horne's notion of an exit on the back of the head that was actually seen by no one comes from Mantik's misrepresentaion of the Mystery Photo.

Well, let us now explore how Horne came to similarly claim there was a small entrance wound on JFK's forehead...where no one saw a small entrance wound. 

A bit of background is in order... Horne rose to prominence as a result of his seeking and getting a job for the Assassination Records Review Board. At the time he had no background in forensic pathology or criminal investigation and no knowledge of the JFK medical evidence beyond what he'd learned from authors like David Lifton and what he'd absorbed from attending the 1994 COPA Conference in Washington, D.C. (where he and Mantik first met). Even so, he approached Judge John Tunheim, the  chairman of the ARRB, at the conference and used his military background to wrangle a job with the review board. He then befriended Jeremy Gunn, who had been tasked with clarifying the medical evidence by the board, and offered his assistance in finding and preparing questions for the medical witnesses. So, yeah, just like that, in a matter of months, a Lifton acolyte with no backgound in forensic pathology or criminal investigation was spear-heading a governmental investigation into the JFK assassination medical evidence. Well, it should come as no surprise then that he steered Gunn and the board towards questioning witnesses he knew might prove supportive of the theories held by Lifton--witnesses who'd already said things supporting Lifton's theories that he wanted on the record, or witnesses whose words might prove helpful to his cause. And it should come as no surprise then that Horne similarly steered Gunn towards questioning witnesses who could prove helpful to Dr. Mantik's theories. And no, I'm not making this up--as Horne has admitted that a number of the questions asked these witnesses were actually written by Mantik. 

In any event, the answers they received were far from consistent, and frequently unsupportive of Lifton's and Mantik's claims.

Now, Gunn, to his credit, came to conclude that the recollections of many if not most of the witnesses were unreliable after so many years. But not Horne. He gathered up all the inconsistencies in the witness statements, and presented them to Mantik and other researchers so they could spin all this shit into conspiracy gold. 

Essentially, every time someone remembered something which did not support the official story, well, they were said to be revealing a long hidden truth. And every time someone remembered something that fit the offical story, or, even worse, corrected something they'd said in the past which did not fit the official story, well, this was presented as proof the cover-up  was ongoing, and that only men like David Mantik and Doug Horne were to be trusted. 

Let us now track how one such spin of shit into gold...spun out of control. 

Truth Decay

One of the first books to report on the ARRB interviews orchestrated by Horne was Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000). This anthology presented competing and overlapping takes on the medical evidence by Dr. Gary Aguilar and Dr. Mantik. Now, to focus on but one deception of many included in this book, we shall note that in his chapter Dr. Mantik claimed "Tom Robinson, the funeral home employee who restored JFK's head (nope, that was Ed Stroble)...described a wound...above the right eye, near the hairline, where he had to place wax to disguise it. He added that this wound was so close to the hairline that the hair could easily cover it." And that Mantik then cited U.S. Information Agency photographer Joe O'Donnell's recollection he saw a photo showing a wound above the eye as support for what he, Mantik, was now claiming Robinson had claimed. 

But this conspiracy gold was shit. The reality was that Robinson described a small wound which he insisted was not a bullet wound. And that he specified, on different occasions, that this tiny wound was by the temple, or even on the right cheek, but never above the right eye. And the reality is that O'Donnell's claim he saw a wound above the right eye in a photo was also suspect. Basically, O'Donnell told Horne, in the same interview in which he described being shown an autopsy photo, that he and Jackie Kennedy had spent a day together editing the Zapruder film. Well this is absolute rubbish, invisible rabbit kind of stuff. And that's not the only red flag suggesting O'Donnell was less than credible. O'Donnell similarly claimed he'd been shown this photo (for which there is no record) by White House photographer Robert Knudsen, whose family claimed he'd told them he'd been the only photographer at the autopsy--an assertion which Mantik would have to have known was false after studying Gunn's and Horne's interviews where witness after witness failed to  recall Knudsen's even being  present at the autopsy.  Now, the since-deceased Knudsen had been interviewed for the HSCA, and had told them he'd developed  photos taken at the autopsy, and the offiical photo log of photos he'd taken on 11-22 and 11-23 does show that he worked that weekend, and took photos of LBJ upon his arrival at the White House, and then the arrival of Kennedy's casket at the White House the next morning. But the log does not show that Knudsen left the White House in between those photos to take photos at the autopsy and Knudsen himself never said he did so in his HSCA testimony. 

But it's worse than that. When Knudsen was interviewed by the HSCA on 8-11-78 he gave no signs of holding back. He said a lot of stuff which many would find incredible, including that after looking through the autopsy photos supplied him by his interviewer he thought photos were missing in which probes had been placed in the body.  But he said nothing about a missing photo showing a hole in the forehead, and his family, when subsequently interviewed by the ARRB, said nothing about his ever discussing such a photo. In fact, when discussing the photos with the HSCA Knudsen recalled but one photo of the head wounds (and that was one showing a wound in the right rear) and snapped "Here, this is it." when shown photo 37h, a photo showing the  top of the head from above which failed to show the supposed entrance hole on the forehead and the supposed exit hole in the middle of the back of the head.  Now, there was one curious exchange, where Knudsen was asked if the photos just shown him were "not inconsistent" with the ones he saw in 1963, and responded "No. Not at all." But that was just confusing human speak. I mean, if someone were to ask you if their recollection is not inconsistent with your recollection of an event, it is as likely that you would answer "no" to mean they are not consistent as it is for you to answer "no" to mean they are consistent. I mean, I get confused just writing about this. As Knudsen was asked this question after being shown a series of photos with which he expressed no disagreement, moreover, and as Purdy failed to follow up by asking how they were inconsistent, we can and should assume Knudsen meant that the photos were not inconsistent with his recollections...and that his only real complaint was that some photos (the ones he recalled with the probes) appeared to be missing. 

So... to sum up, the only one to claim Knudsen saw a small wound on the forehead, or even shared a photo showing such a wound,  was O'Donnell, who Knudsen's family had never even heard of, and whose connection to Knudsen was nebulous, if not non-existent. O'Donnell was a dubious source with a dubious claim. 

Now observe how Mantik's, well, stuff...rubs off on Horne. In Volume 2 of his magnum opus Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (2009) Horne discusses Tom Robinson's description of a small wound by the temple, and takes Mantik's lead and pretends Robinson was actually describing a bullet wound above the right eye.  When summarising the HSCA's 1977 interview of Robinson, Horne writes: "Robinson also spoke of a small hole in the temple near the hairlline, which was so small it could be hidden by the hair." Horne then reads the mind of Andy Purdy, the man interviewing Robinson, and claims: "Purdy asked Robinson to clarify which side of the forehead it was on, which tells me that Robinson said 'temple' but had actually pointed to his own forehead rather than to his temple. Robinson responded to the question by saying 'the right side,' thus confirming that it was indeed in the right forehead near the hairline."

What the??? Horne makes a ridiculous assumption and then claims his assumption (Robinson meant forehead and not temple) is confirmed by Robinson's saying it was on the right side. Well, hello, there is a temple on the right side of the head! One can not simply declare that someone saying there was a mark on the right side of the head by the temple actually said it was a bullet hole high on the forehead. That's insulting to, well, everyone...

But it gets worse... Horne conceals from his readers that Purdy didn't stop this line of questioning with Robinson's saying "the right side." Look what happened next...

Purdy: You say it was in the forehead region up near the hairline?

Robinson: Yes.

Purdy: Would you say it was closer to the top of the hair?

Robinson: SOMEWHERE AROUND THE TEMPLES. 

So, far from Robinson telling Purdy the wound was high on the forehead, as proposed by Horne, Robinson had actually corrected Purdy's impression it was by the forehead and had insisted it was by the temples. 

But it gets worse. On page 599 of Inside the ARRB, Horne claims Robinson's 1-12-77 recollection of a wound by the temple "is consistent with Dennis David's account of seeing Pitzer's photos of a small round wound high in the right forehead, and of Joe O'Donnell's account of Robert Knudsen showing him a photo depicting an entry wound high in the right forehead." Now, we'll get to David and Pitzer in a minute, but what's important here is that we realize that Harrison Livingstone interviewed Robinson on 10-6-91, and reported in High Treason 2 that Robinson had told him "there was one very small hole in the temple area, in the hairline" and that "in another interview he told me that the skull was penetrated in two or three more places by shrapnel, which he filled with wax. These places were near the eyes."

Now, it's important to note that it was Livingstone's speculation that these two or three places near the eyes were in addition to the hole by the temple, and not just an updated recollection of the wound by the temple.

And that his speculation was probably incorrect... 

To wit, according to his widely-disseminated notes, researcher Joe West asked Robinson about Kennedy's wounds on 5-26-92 and was told nothing about a wound by the temple but was told instead of "(approx 2) small wounds in face packed with wax." 

To wit, when Horne himself spoke to Robinson on 6-18-96, Robinson once again failed to mention a wound by the temple, and instead claimed he saw "two or three small perforations or holes in the right cheek." 

And yet,  all this led Horne to assert, on page 612 of Inside the ARRB, that Robinson's 1996 recollection of two or three small wounds on the cheek is consistent with his 1977 recollection of a small wound by the temple...which Horne, of course, claims is consistent with O'Donnell's recollection of a bullet hole high  on the forehead.

So, you can follow the bouncing ball, right? In Fetzer/Mantik/Horne Bizarro world, Robinson's description of two or three small wounds on the cheek is consistent with Joe O'Donnell's claim there was a bullet hole high on the forehead.

They would have to have known this was loopy, right? And we can suspect they did. Mantik, in his 2000 contribution to Murder in Dealey Plaza, just flat-out lied and claimed Robinson had described a wound above the right eye. But Horne was much more cautious, first making the case that Robinson's 1977 descripton of a small wound by the temple is consistent with a bullet hole above the right eye, and then, 13 pages later, admitting that Robinson had told Horne himself there were two or three small wounds on the cheek, and had said nothing about a wound by the temple or above the right eye.  

But it gets worse. In 2010, Mantik reviewed Horne's book for the Kennedys and King website, and sunk to a new low. While discussing Horne's claim there was a bullet entrance on Kennedy's forehead, Mantik claimed "Robinson (the mortician) recalls seeing, during restoration, a wound about 1/4 inch across at this very location." Well, this was a double lie. First, as we've seen, Robinson said no such thing, and actually denied there was a wound in this location. And second, well, Mantik provided a footnote to his bogus claim about Robinson--no, not to Robinson's HSCA interview, where he said he saw a small wound by the temple, and no, not to the ARRB report where Horne admitted Robinson now claimed he saw multiple tiny wounds on the cheek, but to Mantik's own article in Murder in Dealey Plaza, in which he had first misrepresented Robinson's recollections. 

So yeah, Mantik lied about what someone said. And then, ten years later, wrote an article discussing what this person said, and linked back to his lie about what this person said, when (thanks to the Mary Ferrell Foundation website) he could have just as easily linked to what this person had actually said. 

And this was by no means the last of Mantik's and Horne's lies about Robinson. In 2014, in Horne's 5-part video series, Altered History, for example, Horne discussed Purdy's questioning of Robinson, and, gulp, altered history in the process. (Oh the irony! Oh the irony!!!) While Purdy had asked Robinson if the tiny shrapnel wound he recalled was "In the forehead region up near the hairline?" and while Robinson had replied "Yes" and then clarified  "Somewhere around the temples," Horne told his viewers "Purdy had asked if the wound was way above the right eye, correct?" and that Robinson had answered "Yes."  Well, yikes I think we can take from this that Horne knew damn well that Purdy's saying "forehead region" and Robinsons's correcting this with "somewhere around the temples" would fail to convince his viewers there was a wound "way above the right eye," and had chosen to "correct" the record in pursuit of his objective.

Now, should one think it unfair for me to accuse Mantik and Horne of such mischief, well, one should be this is nothing compared to the accusations Horne has made against Robinson. Yes, from the unveiling of his body alteration theory in Inside the Assassination Records Review Board until today,  Horne has claimed that his star-witness Tom Robinson was actually complicit in the cover-up of Kennedy's wounds, as Robinson had actually delivered Kennedy's body to the autopsy an hour and a half before the beginning of the official autopsy, and had failed to admit his role in all this to his HSCA and ARRB interviewers, including Horne. 

So, yeah, it seems apparent that Horne is angry at Robinson for not telling Horne what he wanted to hear, and has taken to claiming Robinson said the exact opposite of what he actually said...over and over and over again.... 

Consider... 

1. Robinson told the HSCA he saw a small wound that was not a bullet hole by the temple. Horne asked him about this for the ARRB and was told it was two or three small wounds on the cheek. In Horne's book he claims Robinson said he saw a bullet hole high on the forehead.

2. Robinson told the HSCA and the ARRB he delivered an empty casket to the autopsy and arrived as the autopsy was beginning. In Horne's book he claims Robinson arrived an hour and a half before the  beginning of the autopsy and had actually delivered the body.. 

3. In 2010, after the release of his book. Horne presented an updated version of his proposed timeline on his website. Realizing  he had no real support for his claim the body was brought in, altered, taken out, and then brought back in in front of an audience, he included in his timeline: "Tom Robinson witnesses the President's body removed from the morgue and is told that the autopsy is 'being moved' to another location temporarily. His agitation about this was recalled to the HSCA staff 14 years later, in 1977, when he told them that "the body was taken," and that "the body never came."

But a quick look at Robinson's HSCA interview reveals the following. 

So yeah, Robinson had provided a list of things he knew didn't happen, and Horne later took that list and presented it as Robinson's recollections of what happened.

It's called lying, and Horne did plenty of it when discussing Robinson's recollections... 

And not just Horne. Mantik took Horne's lead and misrepresented this very passage in his 2024 book The Final Analysis, and in an identical manner. Now, one may want to believe Mantik made the mistake of trusting Horne. But Mantik didn't link his gross misrepresentation of Robinson's testimony to Horne. No, he linked his deception directly to Robinson's HSCA testimony, thereby proving he either had no understanding of the word "incorrect," or had conspired with Horne to misrepresent Robinson's statements to support Horne's fantastical theory. 

Now, let's back up a little. We've discussed Robinson, O'Donnell and Knudsen. But who were David and Pitzer?  Well, William Pitzer ran Bethesda Naval Hospital's closed-circuit TV system--a system put in place so students could watch medical procedures, including autopsies, without actually being in the room. He committed suicide at the hospital in 1966. And there it sat. But then someone (Dennis David) started suggesting he did not commit suicide but was killed because he'd taken a movie of the autopsy, and had photos in his possession that showed, y'know, a bullet hole on th front of Kennedy's head, and had planned on retiring from the hospital and releasing these materials. And then a far less-credible witness (I mean, at least David had actually worked with Pitzer) named Daniel Marvin came forward and told an international television audience the CIA had asked him to assassinate Pitzer, but that he'd refused. Now, none of this stuff was credible at the time--Pitzer's background was in closed-circuit TV, and not film, and no one with a movie camera was present at the autopsy. And, as I write this, in 2024, almost nobody believes the stories told by David and Marvin, in large part because researcher Allen Eaglesham performed a deep dive into Pitzer's death and concluded it was, yessirree, a suicide. But here Horne was in 2009 pushing this nonsense--which he would have to have known was nonsense after interviewing numerous attendeees of the autopsy who failed to note anyone with a movie camera or recall Pitzer even being there. 

And it's worse than that, as Horne wasn't just pushing nonsense, but selling manure. Let's look again at Horne's claim on page 599 of Inside the ARRB.  Without any reservations, he wrote that Tom Robinson's account (of seeing a wound by the temple) "is consistent with Dennis David's account of seeing Pitzer's photos of a small round wound high in the right forehead, and of Joe O'Donnell's account of Robert Knudsen showing him a photo depicting an entry wound high in the right forehead." Now let's compare this to Horne's notes on his 2-14-97 telephonic interview of David, which were published as ARRB Medical Document 177.  According to Horne, David claimed that "in both the B & W prints and color slides" (supposedly shown him by Pitzer), "he could see a round or oval wound about one-quarter to three-eighths inch in diameter, in the right front temporal area of the President's head, just below the hairlne, which he immediately interpreted as a bullet wound."  

Now here is the temporal area or region of the skull. 

Oh, my! As Horne undoubtedly knew, the temporal area or region is the side of the head, and not the forehead, and a wound on the side of the head below the hairline would be near the ear, and not at the top of the forehead, above the right eye, where David would later place the wound.

Making things even stranger, Horne's report goes on to claim "When asked to specify to the best of his ability, on the telephone, where this entry wound was located, he estimated it was about three inches forward of the right ear, and just below the hairline near the top of the forehead."

Wait? What? Assuming David actually said this, Horne should have seen some red lights flashing "Beware! Beware!" I mean, first David tells him it's a temporal wound--the side of the head. He then tells him it's three inches in front of the ear--which would put it on the face. He then tells him it's near the top of the forehead. These are mutually exclusive descriptions. And yet Horne took from this that the wound was up where he wanted to believe it was, when he should have put two and two together and dismissed David's recollections altogether.

Because if he had, he would have realized that David was first interviewed about the autopsy and Pitzer's death in 1975, for The News-Sun of Waukegan,Illinois, and had failed to mention Pitzer's showing him any autopsy photos. And that he had subsequently been interviewed--extensively--by David Lifton in 1980, and had similarly failed to mention Pitzer's showing him any autopsy photos. And that David had in fact said NOTHING--at least according to Lifton--about Pizter's showing him any autopsy photos  prior to his being interviewed for KRON in 1988, thirteen years after first coming forward with his story. 

But that's not the worst of it. Should Horne have actually given a rat's ass about David's credibility, or his own, for that matter, he would have re-watched David's TV appearance in The Men Who Killed Kennedy. This program was broadcast in 1995, and viewed by millions worldwide.  Well, here is David, in episode 6 of the program, pointing out the location of the entrance wound he'd taken to claiming was apparent in a photo shown him by Pitzer.

This"little hole about here in the temple" (as David claimed in The Men Who Killed Kennedy in 1995) was a wound in the "right front temporal area," (as David initially told Horne in 1997), and not a wound "near the top of the forehead" (as David subsequently told Horne in 1997), or a wound "at the hairline, above the pupil of the right eye," (where David would point when describing the wound to Willam Law in 1998).

I mean, really, the image below is from a second interview with William Law, from 2002. It's clear from this that David has moved the entrance wound  2 1/2 inches or so from where he first claimed it to have been, and that this movement of the wound just so happened to bring it to the location where O'Donnell had claimed there was a bullet hole. 

Well, Horne should have noticed this. 

And should have told this to his readers, instead of citing David's new story in support of O'Donnell's story, and allowing David to repeat and accessorize his dubious story for the next 20 years or so. 

(Here, below, is David at the 2016 Lancer Conference, pointing to his new and improved location for the bullet hole.)

Well, one can only wonder then what led David to move the wound he first claimed was temporal out onto the forehead, where O'Donnell placed the wound. 

Had Horne told David about O'Donnell's recollections, with whom he'd spoken but two weeks before? Was David trying to make his recollections match O'Donnell's?

And were these even O'Donnell's recollections? Incredibly, O'Donnell's supposed placement of the wound might also be a fib.  Horne's notes on his 1-29 and 2-28-97 calls with O'Donnell (ARRB MD 231) reflect that O'Donnell claimed Knudsen showed him a photo "showing a small round hole above the President's right eye." He did not specify how far above the eye it was, mind you. Heck, for all we know, O'Donnell told Horne it was directly above the eye, which would make it far too low to have been hidden in the hair. 

And we have reason to believe this was so. In 2003, O'Donnell made an appearance of his own on The Men Who Killed Kennedy (Episode 7, The Smoking Guns, to be precise) and much as David, pointed out the hole he claimed was shown him on a photograph--and pointed to a location at odds with where Mantik, Horne and their disciples would come to claim they saw a wound.  Here, O'Donnell points out the location of the wound in the photo he claims was shown him by Knudsen. 

Well, that's not the top of the forehead, just below the hairline, is it? A wound in the location pointed out by O'Donnell would have been easily recognizable at both Parkland and Bethesda. To propose O'Donnell was correct about the existence of such a wound, then, would mean choosing the decades later recollections of a man with questionable bona fides, who claimed he'd been shown a photo, over the statements and testimony of everyone known to have seen the body. Well, is it any wonder then that Mantik and Horne would claim and continue to pretend the wound pointed out by O'Donnell was up by the hairline, where the wound could have been concealed by hair?

In any event, by 2009, the hole on the forehead conjured up by Mantik in 2000 needed some shoring up. Between the date of Mantik's adoption of O'Donnell as a credible witness and the date of Horne's adoption of David as a credible witness, some news had come out about O'Donnell--that he had dementia at the time of his ARRB interview, and had developed an obsession with the Kennedy family, which had led him to both tell wild tales about his interactions with them (such as the story he told Horne about editing the Zapruder film with Jackie) and sign and sell large prints of Kennedy-related photos at galleries, while falsely claiming he'd taken these photos. So something needed to be done: retreat from Mantik's bogus claim or double-down. 

Well, of course, they doubled-down. Horne added Dennis David into the mix, so they could pretend David's dubious account confirmed O'Donnell's dubious account. 

Now, let's stop right there. I know some are saying "Aha!" the (fill in the blank) conspired against O'Donnell and attacked his credibility, and convinced his family to lie about him having dementia" and so on. But this doesn't hold water. Not only did Horne himself in his original memos on his talks with O'Donnell express doubts about O'Donnell's claim he spent a day with Jackie editing the Zapruder film, but O'Donnell's behavior subsequent to that conversation should have driven Horne to completely reject his story. You see, O'Donnell didn't just fade away after Horne talked to him. No, he became a public figure, and, as we've seen,  was ultimately interviewed  for the television series The Men Who Killed Kennedy in 2003. Well, what was wrong with that, you might ask? Well, here's what he said in that program...(keep in mind that this was broadcast around the world). He said: "A few days after the assassination, I was at the White House in the press room, and Knudsen came to me, and he said ‘Joe, I have something I want to show you’. So, I went back to his- sort of a work room- and he pulled out an envelope and showed me about twelve pictures, five by seven, and had all these pictures of the President on his stomach and on his back, and you could see the hole here [points to right forehead], about three-eights of an inch, and the back of his head above the [gestures to shirt collar]- the line- big hole [makes circle shape with hands] about the size of a grapefruit. And then a couple days later, maybe a day later, he said ‘Joe, you have a minute?” and I said ‘Sure’, he said ‘I want to show you something, those pictures I showed you the other day, these are the same ones but a little different’, and I said ‘What do you mean?’, he said ‘Let me show you’. He got the first one out, and I said ‘No hole’ [points to right forehead], he said ‘No, they covered it up’, and I looked in the back, the hole was neatly covered up, and I said ‘Who did that?’, he said ‘Well, I didn’t do it’. I said ‘Well, I’m not saying you did, but I’m surprised’. (Transcript courtesy Micah Milieto). 

Now this was obviously hoo-ha, and no one knew this better than Horne. You see, Horne's 2-28-97 notes on his second talk with O'Donnell reflect: "Mr. O'Donnell was asked whether he ever discussed the photographs with Mr. Knudsen, either during the viewings, or afterwards, and he said no--he felt privileged just to be able to see them, but that they were so disturbing he didn't want to see them or think about them anymore." So, yeah, O'Donnell, once placed before the cameras, changed his story, and spiced it up with some snappy dialogue. Well, this show was all the rage in the research community. Horne undoubtedly watched it. 

But did Horne drop O'Donnell from his and Mantik's ever-growing "proof" there was a bullet entrance on the forehead? Of course not. Because he KNEW O'Donnell was unreliable as heck all along. Yep, incredibly, the tape of Gunn and Horne's 2-28-97 interview of O"Donnell proves that Horne left out and concealed? evidence which would have made Mantik and Horne's subsequent propping up of O'Donnell a total embarrassment. To  be specific, O'Donnell not only told Horne that he'd edited the Zapruder film to remove the explosion of Kennedy's skull (upon orders from Jackie) but that he'd "seen the film maybe 2,4,5 times on the anniversary or something like that, and it was never there." He had claimed, in other words, that the film as subsequently shown on television reflected the edits he had made to the film. Well, this was blithering nonsense. And Horne undoubtedly knew it. And apparently didn't want the readers of his call reports, and the public to subsequently read these call reports, to realize this. Because he inserted into his report not that O'Donnell claimed the current film contains the edit he'd performed for Jackie, and that this removed the explosion of Kennedy's head and caused the limo to "jump" forward ten feet at the time of the head shot, but that O'Donnell had "said he has not seen the Zapruder film since that time." 

So, yeah, I think it's fair to assume Horne was piecing together his theory as the ARRB conducted its business. And that he realized even then that he  needed O'Donnell to shore up his claim Knudsen took a set of photos after the reconstruction of Kennedy's skull, which he needed to have taken place to shore up his claim Saundra Spencer developed these photos, and that these photos subsequently disappeared. These witnesses were integral parts of the scenario Horne was piecing together and would go on to sell in his book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. He needed these witnesses to seem credible so his theory could seem credible. Never mind that Spencer claimed the photos she'd developed (that Horne claims were taken by Knudsen) showed no holes in the forehead, when O'Donnell said the photos shown him by Knudsen showed such a hole. And never mind that Knudsen, while claiming photos were missing from the record in his HSCA interview, failed to describe such a photo as one that was missing... 

The recollections of these witnesses do not align, and Horne's cherry-picking snippets of their stories to create his own story is offensive to serious researchers. I mean, think about it. The photos missing from the record according to Knudsen were photos showing probes. Well, neither Spencer nor O'Donnell recalled any photos showing probes. It follows then that Spencer did not develop, and O'Donnell did not view,  the photos Knudsen recalled viewing (whether or not he took these photos himself). Now, of course, what "follows" isn't always the truth. In this case, we have the recollections of two people tasked with developing the photos of an event witnessed by only a few, and then asked, years later, to review the photos taken of that event. It's not really a surprise, then, that their recollections of the photos are in disagreement. It's actually as expected. But to add 1 and 1 together and claim it equals 3 because the writer really really wants there to be a third 1, and thinks the number 3 is neat, well, that's not helpful if establishing the truth is the goal. I mean, maybe the answer is two. Maybe Knudsen and Spencer developed the photos now in the record, but had divergent recollections of what was shown in these photos.. 

As far as O'Donnell, well, we can suspect he knew Knudsen or at least knew of him, and had read somewhere or heard somewhere that Knudsen had something to do with the autopsy photos, or had even been told about this by Knudsen himself, and had come to claim and possibly even believe Knudsen had shown him photos on two occasions, with the first set showing a hole on the back of the head and the second showing this hole covered over. Now, should that go too far, we can  suspect instead that Knudsen was shown photos by Knudsen, and had incorrectly recalled the mystery photo--which shows a hole on the back of the head--as a photo of the original wound, and the back of the head photo--which shows the back of the head intact--as a fake photo or a photo taken after reconstruction. If one is to grant this, moreover--that Knudsen may have actually showed photos to O'Donnell--well, then, one might also suspect that O'Donnell's recollection of seeing a bullet hole in the forehead was a scrambled recollection of his actually being shown the so-called stare of death photo, which shows torn scalp right where O'Donnell would later claim he saw a bullet hole, after seeing the Zapruder film on TV, and being led to believe a shot came from the front. 

Now, the point is not that I know what happened, but that there are plenty of possible explanations for what happened, that apparently have no appeal to the likes of Mantik, and Horne. 

Let's not forget.  No one at the autopsy recalled Knudsen's being there, or any photographer being there, beyond Stringer and his assistant Riebe, who were both identified in the FBI's report on the autopsy. And no one at the autopsy recalled the taking of a second set of photos after the skull's reconstruction. In fact, they were most insistent that no such photos were taken. Mantik's and Horne's theories regarding a hole on the forehead and a second set of photos were thereby built upon sand--the questionable statements of previously uncalled-upon witnesses thirty years after an event. 

Well, the subsequent discovery within the photographic community that O'Donnell was suffering from dementia, and had made other strange claims about the Kennedys,  and my sharing of newspaper articles on O'Donnell with the JFK research community, put their house of cards in peril.

So Horne doubled down and added a second highly questionable "witness" (Dennis David) to their "proof."  This witness could then be used to shore up O'Donnell's credibility... while Mantik and Horne searched for someone, anyone, to shore up their own credibility. 

Well, it took a few years, but they found one. 

Example Number 2: Dr. Michael Chesser. 

A neurologist, Chesser emerged from the shadows in 2015 to throw his support behind Dr. Mantik. In both articles and appearances, he related how he'd visited the archives after conferring with Mantik, and double-checked the OD measurements Mantik had claimed...proved the x-rays were altered. Now, to no one's surprise, Chesser confirmed Mantik's measurements and concurred with his analysis. But he went further. He also claimed he'd discovered an entrance wound high on Kennedy's forehead above his right eye--just where Mantik and Horne had long been pretending there was such an entrance. And yet--get this--he claimed as well that he could only find proof for this entrance on the lateral x-ray. And that he saw no sign of this entrance--no skull fractures, no hole--on the A-P x-ray (y'know, the x-ray one would use to find a hole on the forehead). 

And yes, he knew this was a problem. By the time of Chesser's appearance in the video "A Meeting of the Minds" (2018), he was willing to admit that an entry hole should have been apparent on the A-P x-ray. He then explained why he couldn't find this hole. He said "I think there's just so much missing bone, brain, tissue, between the x-ray machines and the film, there's not enough to show up on the image." Well, okay. Maybe. But this wasn't what Mantik claimed in 1993, when first reporting on his OD measurements. In that monograph, found in the Weisberg Archives, Mantik dismissed that there was an entrance location by the cowlick, as proposed by the HSCA, by citing his OD measurements for the top of the head on the A-P x-ray. 

Here he is: "The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that a bullet the posterior skull approximately one cm above the 6.5 mm object seen on the AP skull X-ray. This opinion was reached exclusively from observations of the lateral X-ray. The HSCA placed the entry site near the cowlick area at the site of a depressed fracture. Little consideration, if any, was paid to the AP X-ray. In the present study of the AP skull X-ray, the area above the 6.5 mm fragment was carefully scanned for optical density, looking for a suitable bullet hole. No evidence for such an entry site could be found...In fact, the absence of an entry hole anywhere in the vicinity indicated by the HSCA is fairly apparent even to the unaided eye.

So, let's get this straight. Mantik claimed his OD measurements proved what was readily apparent with his own eyes--that there was no bullet entrance high on the back of the head. He then developed a pet theory holding that there was a bullet entrance high on the front of the head-- a pet theory, tellingly, developed from his misunderstanding or misrepresenting eyewitness statements. He then sought scientific support for this theory. And found it when Michael Chesser claimed he'd discovered a bullet entrance high on the front of the head on the x-rays. But, oh Lord, Mantik had already claimed his OD readings proved there was no such entrance on the A-P x-ray (which, after all, would be more likely to show an entrance high on the front of the head than an entrance high on the back of the head). So it's then left to Chesser to claim we shouldn't expect to see such an entrance on the A-P x-ray. 

Funny that that never occurred to Mantik when he dismissed the cowlick entrance, eh? 

In any event. in his 2018 appearance in "A Meeting of the Minds," Chesser decries the fact the "hole" he claims he's discovered on the lateral x-ray is so hard to make out in the images published by the HSCA, and actually makes out that this is due to a conspiracy. He claims "This frontal defect--what I think is an entry wound--is not seen on the copy. It is filled in. It is filled in on the copy. The images that are released are not true. And the official reason is that they don't want to cause further damage or grief to the Kennedy family by releasing these things!" 

My, how convenient! And my...what horseshit!(And yes, I'm suggesting that horseshit can be convenient...as long as you don't step in it...)

Let me show you why I remain uncovinced. Here is the computer-enhanced A-P x-ray created for the HSCA, as presented by Chesser in his 2017 presentation at a mock trial in Houston. 

Now just to the left of the middle of the top of the skull on the image (which would be on the right side of the skull itself) there is a splash of fragments. These are fragments Mantik/Horne/Chesser claim broke off from a bullet passing from their pretend entrance on the forehead to an exit on the left side of the back of the head.... which was, of course, observed by no one. Note the amount of white in the area. There's not much but there's some, presumably enough where one could make out a hole and fractures emanating from this hole. 

Now here's a second image from Chesser's 2017 Houston presentation. This image is of the computer-enhanced lateral x-ray in the Archives, but with a slight addition. Chesser has added some lines to designate where he believes he saw fractures on the original at the Archives . Well, hello, the area where he claims he saw fractures on the lateral x-ray appears to be  a lot darker than the area in which he says he couldn't find fractures on the A-P x-ray. 

But it's worse than that. The x-ray image below comes from Chesser's 2021 presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website. This illustrates what Chesser claims is a fan of fragments emanating from a gap on the frontal bone. Note the location of his proposed entrance on the right. 

Now, if you have trouble figuring out where this location would be on Kennedy's body, don't despair. Fortunately,  Chesser pointed out the location of his proposed entrance on a photo of Kennedy during his 2017 presentation at a mock trial in Houston. Here it is.

So the entrance, according to Chesser, was high up on the forehead, almost at the top...where it could be concealed in the hair. 

Now let me quote Dr. David Mantik's near book-length article in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000): "When I examined the frontal x-ray, I used a bright light to highlight the outside of the skull. I could then easily see the top-edge of the remaining frontal bone (high in the forehead). Furthermore, with the optical densitometer, I measured the transmission of light above and below this edge over a long distance. The area above the (supposed) bone edge was darker (and the optical density values higher),implying less bone, whereas the area below it was lighter (the optical density values were lower), which implied residual frontal bone. These measurements therefore verified what I had seen with my naked eyes with the bright light--I had identified the edge of the frontal bone. I could now trace the remaIning frontal bone with good accuracy. This sketch is shown in FIGURE 12..."

So here then is Figure 12...

Now let me quote an article by David Mantik and Cyril Wecht, published in The Assassinations (2003), in which the purported photographs of Kennedy's brain are compared with the skull x-rays purportedly taken before the removal of his brain. He writes: "The brain photographs...showed a complete intact left brain and only modest tissue loss at most from the right side. This fist-sized dark area in the x-rays (which showed essentially no frontal brain tissue at all) was totally at odds with the photographs. Since the x-rays were certainly those of JFK (a conclusion reached by radiologists employed by the HSCA and with which we concurred), the only logical possibility was that the photographs of the brain could not be authentic."

Chesser had found a bullet hole on bone where Mantik had previously claimed there was no bone, and a fan of fragments through brain where Mantik had previously claimed there was no brain!

And not only that, Chesser had claimed this entrance was a "gap in the bone", a hole, when Mantik had specified that the bullet he presumed entered on the frontal bone had not left a hole in the intact bone, but a notch on the edge of the intact bone.

And not only that...Chesser had claimed the reason you couldn't see this bullet hole and its associated fractures on the A-P x-ray was because it was too dark to make out bone in that region...when Mantik, years before, had made a point of telling everyone he could see bone in that region with his naked eyes and could even map out the precise edge of the bone in that region...through the use an optical densitometer...a measuring device on which Chesser also relied.

So, yeah, Chesser's "find" was dubious, at best, and most certainly at odds with Mantik's previous findings. 

Even so, Mantik and Horne welcomed him onto Team Forehead Entry and for years they spoke as one. In 2015, Mantik published what was presumed to be his final book on the JFK Medical Evidence--"John F. Kennedy's Head Wounds"--in which he repeated his numerous  deceptions, including that "Tom Robinson, the embalmer (while before the HSCA) also recalled a small wound in the right forehead..." 

(Note that for this dance of deception Mantik specified that Robinson had told this to the HSCA. Well, one, this wasn't true, and two, this proves Mantik knew full well that Robinson had said no such thing to the ARRB, and had instead described some tiny wounds on Kennedy's cheek.) 

But our tale of "whoa!" doesn't end there. A video-taped inteview of Dr. Mantik (placed up on the Dealey Plaza UK youtube channel on 6-15-19) reveals a downward spiral. After falsely claiming that "several doctors who were present at Parkland Hospital in Dallas described an entrance gunshot wound to the right temple or forehead of Kennedy," Mantik cites in support of this falsehood the recollections of--you guessed it-- mortician Tom Robinson, who, as we've discussed,  saw JFK's body at Bethesda.  Although Robinson told the HSCA he'd noticed "a little mark at the temples in the hairline" that "was so small it could be hidden by the hair" Mantik continued his long and cherished tradition of deceiving his audience and declared "Robinson saw a small several millimeter hole on the right side of the forehead or temple that was probably right above the lateral orbit." He then pointed out where this bullet "probably" entered, and surprise surprise it was within a few centimeters of where first O'Donnell had said he saw a hole, and then David, and where Chesser claimed there was a hole on the lateral x-ray. (This is shown below.)

Now, in fairness, it should be pointed out that Mantik has tried to have it both ways, as far as the brain is concerned. While he has routinely made out that there is no brain in the frontal area of the lateral x-ray, he has hedged his bets, by presenting conflicting graphics, sometimes even side by side. The image below comes from Mantik's 2021 presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website. The yellow area on the brain at left shows the area Mantik claims can not be made out on the lateral x-rays, while the red circled area in the x-ray at right purports to show where this missing brain should be visible on the x-rays. I have added light blue arrows for comparison purposes and dark blue arrows to show where the yellow area would extend on the x-ray. 

Well, my God, the dark blue arrow extends out to the light blue oval Mantik has added to mark a location he claims might be liquid mercury--a glob of mercury he suspects was brought into the brain by a mercury bullet, which had entered high on JFK's forehead at the Chesser location, which Mantik marks with a red dot on the x-ray. So, yeah, while Mantik claims the frontal area of the brain is missing on the x-rays in his image at left, his image at right depicts a narrow ridge of brain along the top of the frontal section of the brain (to be clear, the area above the red circled area) in which the tiny bullet trail conjured up by Chesser and the Mercury blob conjured up by himself could implant. 

Oh my, how convenient! And, oh my, how incredibly incoherent! To refresh, Mantik has a bullet enter low on the back of the head that (apparently, as he never says) explodes from the top of the head near the coronal suture. This would not explain a huge hole in the front of the frontal lobes. And he has a second bullet enter by the temple and explode out the back of the head in the occipital region. Well, this would not explain a huge hole in the front of the frontal lobes, either. So that leaves the third bullet he proposes--the one he claims entered the forehead--as the possible cause for the huge hole he claims can be detected on the x-rays. But no, he has this bullet traverse a narrow ridge of brain ABOVE the huge hole in the front of the frontal lobes. 

Well, I guess the Warren Commision wasn't alone in conjuring up magic bullets, eh? Mantik has a bullet enter the forehead and blow out the front half of both frontal lobes of the brain...with the exception of one narrow ridge of brain at the top of the head...through which the bullet traveled!!! Yes, that's right, the only intact part of the front part of the brain, in Mantik's view, is the part which came in contact with the bullet!

It's madness, I tell you. I mean, just imagine... The lateral x-rays were taken with JFK on his back. And Mantik claims there was no brain at the front of the skull with the exception of a narrow ridge extending inches forward at the top of the skull like the bill of a baseball cap. 

Well, okay. Enough already. We have reason to believe both Mantik and Horne are unreliable, and unable to acknowledge or even see the silliness of their theories. 

But what about Chesser? 

It's a tricky one. 

Now, I've met Dr. Chesser and can vouch for his niceness. But he's been blinded by Mantik's zealotry, in my opinion, and this has led him to make some serious mistakes. 

In 2021, he gave a presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website, that is still available for viewing.

In this presentation, Dr. Chesser described the mystery photo in similar terms as Mantik, and presented the following slide.

Well, yikes. Much as Mantik, he makes no mention of the presumed bullet hole at the bottom of the photo. He can't mention that, after all, without simultaneously indicating Mantik's interpretation of the photo is wrong, and cast further doubt on Mantik's claim the Harper fragment is occipital bone. Even worse,  Chesser presents a version of the photo in which the drainage hole--the key to properly orienting the photo--has been cropped off. 

This is demonstrated below...

The image In the upper left corner is taken from Chesser's slide and shows where he claims he saw abdominal wall fat. The image to the right of this is this same area in a version of the mystery photo in which this area has not been cropped off. A comparison of these two proves a drainage hole was just below what Chesser describes as wall fat and that this wall fat is more likely a towel, or something similarly white and possessing a straight edge. The image below Chesser's image is the second image repeated so that one can see that the mystery photo in Chesser's slide was cropped just before it revealed the presence of this drainage hole. And the bottom right image is a close-up of this drainage hole. 

This is suspicious as heck because Chesser knows full well--because he's seen my videos--that a drainage hole is in the uncropped version of the mystery photo, and that it is the key to properly orienting the photo. But, huh, Chesser shows his audience neither the presumed bullet entrance at the bottom of the photo nor the drainage hole at the top, and expects them to trust him that what appears to be a towel is actually abdominal wall fat, which not so coincidentally helps him support Mantik's whack-a-doodle interpretation of the mystery photo. 

So, yikes, this couldn't have been a coincidence, could it? 

That it was not a coincidence and that it was instead by design is supported by another slide in this presentaion, in which he similarly shows his followers what he claims is the proper orientation for the photo. Here it is...

Now, first, note that on the top left side he is pointing out what he claims is Kennedy's right eyebrow. In Mantik's orientation this would be on the left side of the head, but, as it turns out, Chesser doesn't really subscribe to Mantik's orientation, and believes the midline of the skull was an inch or two to the left of Mantik's midline. That's fine, and is probably actually a good sign. Now note what Chesser had to say about this photo in his chapter in James Jenkins' book At the Cold Shoulder of History (2018): "In the left upper portion of the photo there is plainly seen a layer of retracted fat from the abdomnal wall. The nipple on the right chest wall is barely visible. The V-incision is seen on the right forehead, and the right eyebrow and lashes are visible. There is a wide fracture pointing to the frontal region, and the curve of the right side of the skull and theposterior fossa is visible." 

Well, hell, I think this proves my earlier supposition--that Mantik and Chesser believe the photo was taken looking down into the top of the skull, with the skull facing up on the table. I mean, if this photo was taken looking down into the back of the skull, as so many assume, or even down into the crown of the skull, as I eventually concluded, one would not be able to see Kennedy's eyelashes, eyebrow, nipple and abdominal fat within a corner of the photo, and the far back of his head on the opposite corner of the photo. Right? I hope this makes sense.

Well, if so, it's no wonder Chesser, as Mantik, crops the drainage hole from the photo in his presentations. Because, by golly, that durn drainage hole proves his orientation to be in error.  

Now, note that both in Jenkins' book, and in Chesser's subsequent presentation, Chesser has claimed there is a wide fracture pointing toward the right frontal region in the photo. Well, look, where his arrow is pointing. It is pointing not to a "wide fracture" but to what I proved, years and years before this presentation, is the handle of a medical instrument sticking out of the cavity. Now, Mantik and his entourage have refused to acknowledge this. And that's fine, well, almost fine. But here Chesser is using this "wide fracture" to support the claims of Mantik and Horne, and subsequently Chesser himself--that this fracture points back to where they claim a bullet entered. And this is not only not fine, it's a lie. Not only is this "wide fracture" not a fracture, but it doesn't, in Mantik's orientation, which Chesser has adopted, and then moved over a bit, even point to the right frontal region. 

Here again is Mantik's orientation of the photo, with its line marking the midline of the skull, from Point A, the front of the head, to Point B, the back of the head.  

Chesser was bluffing. The "wide fracture" in his and Mantik's orientation does not point to the right frontal region where he claims there were not one, but two entrances on the skull, but to the posterior parietal region, a couple of inches to the right of where the HSCA wrongly proposed a bullet entered...which is to say...where no one honestly believes a bullet entered...

Now these mistakes on Chesser's part all conveniently help support David Mantik's house of cards. 

Let's look at another such mistake.  

Mantik, as we've seen, claims the Harper fragment was occipital bone. Well, the upper margin of the occipital bone is defined by the lambdoid suture. Now, in line with Mantik, Chesser claims one can see the lambdoid suture come to an end on the A-P x-ray, and that this end signifies where the Harper fragment was exploded from the skull. Here are Chesser's exact words, from a 1-6-16 post on Greg Burnham's Assassination of JFK website: "I was able to see the left lambdoid suture very well on the original AP x-ray, except that it disappeared 2 to 3 cm to the left of the midline, indicating that there was missing bone in this region, including missing bone from the mid portion and left side of the occipital bone. I couldn’t see the right lambdoid suture at all, however Dr. Mantik noted that he could see part of the right lambdoid suture, but he also could not see it near the midline, indicating absence of skull bone in the right occipital region." 

Now, in 2021, as part of his presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website, Dr. Chesser highlighted what he claimed was the location of the occipital bone on the A-P x-ray. That image is shown below. 

Now, first of all, note that the upper margin of the occipital bone as marked by Chesser is a straight line, running at a roughly 45 degree angle. And second, note that the shape of the "occipital bone" highlighted by Chesser bears little resemblance to the shape of an actual occipital bone, which is rounded across the top. While anatomy drawings of occipital bones vary as to the size of the occipital bone and the height of the bone on the back of the head, they invariably depict a more rounded apex to the bone than Chesser has depicted. This is shown below. 

Now the thought occurs that Chesser wasn't trying to be precise, and was just trying to give his viewers an approximation of where the bone would be. But he announced in 2016 that he could see the lambdoid suture "very well" on the left side of the skull and that it came to an end 2 to 3 cm from the midline. So why wouldn't he mark this on his exhibit? Well, the answer seems obvious...because he was BLUFFING. There is no line on the left side at the top margin of Chesser's highlighted occipital bone, or anywhere in its vicinity. And there is no dark shape or increased darkness on the A-P x-ray in a shape corresponding to Mantik's placement of the Harper fragment. 

Now, when reviewing this in 2024 I thought maybe I'd been too hard on Chesser. So I decided to look back through some of his writings to see if he had in fact placed much importance on this suture. 

Well, I received a surprise. Here is a page from Chesser's chapter in James Jenkins' At the Cold Shoulder of Hitory (2018).

Now, the obvious implication of these images is that the suture lines are visible on the x-ray at left, but hard to make out. And that Chesser has helped illuminate them by presenting a negative image of the x-ray, in which the suture lines are more readily observed. 

But think about it. If a negative brings out a detail that is hard to make out, then a negative of that negative should restore it to the original image. 

But look what happens when I made a negative of the images above...

Oh my. The negative image presented by Chesser was of the non-enhanced x-ray, and not the computer-enhanced x-ray. which he'd placed right beside it. For the life of me I can't figure out why this was done. But, even so, look at the squiggly line in the image at right. This line was not made visible by Chesser's presenting Figure 8 as a negative, as one might assume. No, it has clearly been added onto the non-enhanced x-ray, which was then turned into a negative image for Figure 8. .So why show his readers the negative? The thought occurs that this whole page--the presentation of the computer-enhanced x-ray with the drawn-upon negative of the non-enhanced x-ray beside it--was designed to deceive the readers, and lead them to believe the lambdoid suture is readily visible on the x-rays, and that David Mantik was thereby not blowing smoke when he claimed the x-rays show a gap in the lambdoid and prove occipital bone was missing. 

In any event, here's a blow-up of the left eye socket on the non-enhanced x-ray. No white squiggly line is apparent. 

So there it is, Mantik's deceptions and/or sloppy sloppy research have become an infection. 

And Chesser is but his most recent victim...

No, scratch that... The video "A Meeting of the Minds" (2018) includes a segment in which Chesser discusses the so-called Mystery photo with James Jenkins, who'd assisted in Kennedy's autopsy. Well, sadly, and sickeningly, IMO, Chesser shows Jenkins what he claims is the proper orientation for the photo (Mantik's interpretation--with the scalp pulled back at a roughly 45 degree angle on the skull) and then pauses for a sec while Jenkins responds "my personal impression was that this--where the scalp was pulled back--that was the sagittal line" (the line running down the middle of the top of the skull). Unfazed, Chesser proceeds to explain--to Jenkins--an actual witness to the autopsy who was standing right there when the scalp was pulled back and would therefore be in a much better position than David Mantik and Michael Chesser to know at what angle the scalp was pulled back--why he is wrong. David Mantik--who is in the room with them but who to his credit has admitted in the video that his 20-years on recollections of what he saw in the archives is a bit fuzzy--had once upon a time convinced himself of (what I think we can agree is) a wacky orientation for the photo, and this had convinced Chesser, who had then went into the archives to confirm Mantik's impression, and now Chesser was using this wacky orientation to bludgeon an actual witness into submission. 

So, no, Chesser was not the most recent victim of Mantik's deception infection... 

That person was born...NOW...no, NOW....no, NOW....no....now....

Now, all this leads us to the most recent chapter in this torrid saga, and to the possible (fingers crossed) dissolution of Team Forehead Entry. 

What the Doctors Didn't See

In 2023, JFK: What the Doctors Saw, a documentary on the JFK medical evidence,  was released to a mostly receptive audience.  For some who had been anxiously awaiting the release of the Parkland Doctors, which had been filmed around 2013, however, it came as quite a shock. Yes, to the disgust of many, including Dr. Gary Aguilar and myself, the interviews recorded for The Parkland Doctors, in which seven doctors who'd observed President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital had shared their recollections of his wounds, were now inter-cut with fresh commentary by Doug Horne, in which he spun their statements into faux support for his theory the body was altered upon arrival at Bethesda Naval Hospital.  Now, crucially, this re-cut of the film took place after the deaths of these doctors. And this wasn't a coincidence, IMO. Three of the seven doctors presented in the film had attended a JFK Lancer Conference in 2015, and had given no indication of support for Horne's theory. In fact, two of the doctors had at that time specified that the wound they saw was NOT on the far back of the head--which, if true, demolishes Horne's theory. 

Now here's how this relates to our discussion.. . In the film, James Jenkins, a medical assistant at JFK's autopsy, is interviewed, and repeats what he had long claimed--that he saw what he thought to be an entrance wound near JFK's temple. Here are his exact words: "It was on the right side of the head. It was slightly above the ear and forward of the ear, just barely in the hairline." 

He then discusses the fact exit wounds are usually larger than entrance wounds and that this led him to believe the shot came from the front. 

Okay. Makes sense. Now here's the problem. 

While Jenkins was describing the entrance location the following graphic was shown. 

This we can only assume was a deliberate attempt to mislead viewers into thinking this was the wound Jenkins was describing. This wound is NOT on the side of the head slightly above the ear. This wound is where David Mantik and Doug Horne have long claimed a bullet entered, NOT where James Jenkins said he saw a wound. 

And to make matters worse...And make crystal clear the dishonest intent of the film-makers....the following graphic was shown while Jenkins discussed the relative size of entrances and exits. 

Now this was a scam. This was NOT what Jenkins was describing in the interview, nor in previous interviews. 

To reflect, here is Jenkins pointing out the entrance location a moment later in the film. 

And here is Jenkins pointing out the location of tne large hole on the skull when interviewed by William Law decades earlier. 

He had not pointed out an entrance wound location high above the eye up on the forehead (where David Mantik and Doug Horne have long placed a wound).

And he had not pointed out an exit wound location low on the back of the head (where David Mantik and Doug Horne have long placed a wound). 

And he had not said these wounds were connected. 

So WHY did the film-makers go back and add misleading graphics to James Jenkins' interview? And create the illusion he was describing wounds in locations proposed by Mantik and Horne?  

Well, I think I know the answer. Two words. One person. See if you can guess who...

No, no, NOT David Mantik. (Mantik has long claimed the bullet entering the forehead left a trail of fragments across the top of the skull and did not exit.)

Doug...Horne... 

An interview with Horne is inserted into the middle ofJenkins' interview, so he can show the viewers the supposed location of the wound described by Jenkins. 

Now, in a rational world, Horne would have seized upon Jenkins' statements suggesting there was an entrance wound by the temple and cited this as support for a bullet's entering near the temple--where  Horne had previously proposed a bullet entered. But this is Fetzer/Mantik/Horne bizarro world. So, Horne--whose commentary directly follows Jenkins' description of a wound on the side of the head slightly above and forward of the ear--instead points out a  wound location high on JFK's forehead, above his right eye. 

(This is shown below.)

(Now, to be clear, Horne does not use Jenkins' name when pointing at this location. It seems  possible, then, that he was was not speaking about the wound observed by Jenkins when he pointed to his forehead. Well, hell, It could be then that the film-makers mistakenly inserted Horne's discussion of an entrance wound not observed by Jenkins into Jenkins' discussion of the wound he claimed to see. This can not be ruled out. But it is truly hard to believe. First of all, the film-makers were newbies to the JFK assassination, and brought Horne into the project as pretty much a guide to the evidence. It seems unlikely then that they would deliberately misrepresent his views to sell something they'd cooked up on their own.  And it seems equally unlikely they'd simply made a mistake. I first noticed Horne's "mistake"  months after JFK: What the Doctors Saw  had become widely available, which is to say months and months and maybe even a year or more after Horne--and others in his circle--had viewed screenings of the film. Well, none of Horne's circle--not Horne, not Mantik, not Chesser-- had said anything about the film-makers' editing Horne's interview in a misleading manner, which would lead millions of viewers to believe Jenkins saw a wound above the right eye. So, no. I don't buy that Horne was talking of a wound observed by somebody other than Jenkins when he pointed at his forehead. He was pointing out where he wanted the film-makers to believe a bullet entered. And they either assumed or were told this was the wound observed by Jenkins.)

Well, assuming this is so--that Horne had deliberately misrepresented Jenkins' recollections in the movie--what the heck was he up to? Well, this was 2023. Mantik and Horne had been claiming there was an entrance in this location for over 20 years, and Dr. Chesser had joined their team half-way through. So, it follows that with his appearance in JFK: What the Doctors Saw, Horne was propping up their pet theory, and trying to convince the newbies that the entrance wound Jenkins thought he saw by the temple was really high up on the forehead above the right eye, where Mantik and Horne had long claimed there was a wound, and where Chesser had more recently claimed he'd discovered a wound on the x-rays.

And this even though Horne, in a 2013 blog post rushed out after Jenkins' appearance at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, had reported that Jenkins "said he did not recall seeing evidence of a bullet's entry high in the forehead, above the right eye..." and had then explained this by asserting: "By the time Jenkins saw the body, shortly after 8:00 PM, that wound...had been obliterated."

And this even though Mantik had acknowledged, as recently as 2015, in his book John F. Kennedy's Head Wounds, that David Lifton had interviewed Jenkins back in 1979, and that Jenkins had told Lifton that "he did not see an entry wound on the front of the head" and that Jenkins had since that time come to claim there was a "possible entry near the right ear." (Right ear, not forehead.)

And this even though Chesser, who had befriended Jenkins, had long admitted that the presumed entrance location recalled by Jenkins was NOT in the location where he, Chesser, believes he's discovered an entrance high on the forehead!

Here is Chesser, in a 4-16-21 presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website, pointing out with a small circle the location of the wound recalled by Jenkins..

And here is Chesser, in this same presentation, pointing out the location of the entrance wound he believes he's discovered on the x-rays. 

Now, to be clear, Dr. Gary Aguilar, who does not believe the body was altered, and is reluctant to say the photos have been altered, says we can identify this location as a likely entrance because there is a cloud of small fragments on the x-rays in this location. But he has failed to show this cloud in his presentations, and the cloud of fragments noticed during the autopsy and susbequent inspections is further back on the skull than this location, and is pretty much above the ear, by the large defect.

So we can suspect he was thinking of Mantik, Horne, and Chesser when he pointed to this location. 

Now, Gary is a smart man, a passionate man, and one of my favorite people. But, if he believes a bullet entered at this location, when none of those viewing the body at Parkland or Bethesda noted a wound in this location, well, then, he is guilty of DUI--deliberating under the influence (of David Mantik.

And yes, I know, as a long time moderator of an assassination forum, and a long time member of the research community, that one bloke's theory can become another bloke's probability and then another bloke's proven fact, so it worries me that Aguilar seems to have fallen under Mantik's sway on this point--a point which can be used to discredit Aguilar and undermine his credibility by anyone with the desire to do so...with but a few minutes of research.

And so I ask...

Are Mantik and his confederates sloppy? Or slippery? Or both? (Sloppery?)

I think both...

Horne in a Nutshell...

Should one read Horne's book, and watch his subsequent presentations, one will find that his "theories" form a pattern, and rarely hold up under the slightest scrutiny. 

Here is but a sampler of his theories, some of which we have already touched upon (followed by some of their problems).

• He claims there was a large exit wound in the middle of the back of Kennedy's head. (The many problems with this claim will be discussed in excruciating detail in the chapters to follow.) 

• He claims the Zapruder film was forged to depict an explosion from the top of the head--and make it look like the fatal shot came from behind. (Note: not only does he evade the plentiful eyewitness evidence for such a wound, he evades the statements of his star witness for the forgery of the film, Dino Brugioni, who'd studied a copy of the film on the weekend of the assassination. To be precise, when shown a frame from the Zapruder film depicting the explosion of brain and skull by reseacher Peter Janney, in 2011, Brugioni said it failed to match his nearly fifty-year old memories of the film he saw on that first weekend. He explained:  "I remember the scatter was high--say three or four feet above his head." Well, hold it right there. Horne's theory holds that there was no explosion from the top of the head in the film viewed by Brugioni, and here his (supposed) star witness--Brugioni--claims the explosion he remembers was more, well, explosive than the one in the current film. Well, okay. Maybe Horne assumed Brugioni was tallking about a spray of blood, and not an explosion of blood and skull. Uh, NO. A few years later, when speaking to a second interviewer, in a filmed interview available in Shane O'Sullivan's film The Zapruder Film Mystery, Brugioni described the film as he recalled it in similar terms, only adding in that what he saw three or four feet above the President's head included a "chunk of body." So, huh. Not spray from a bullet hole on the forehead. An explosion from the top of the head. Got it. Making matters worse... In 2023, some 10 year-old footage of this same interviewer asking Brugioni questions while he showed him the Zapruder film was released in a French documentary, and posted online in the states. When asked if the film he'd viewed in 1963 had "image bleed over between the sprocket holes," an anomaly that would have marked it as the original film, Brugioni declared "No," thereby suggesting that the film he saw was a copy. When shown a current copy of the film , and asked by his interviewer if it was a different film than the one he studied in 1963, Brugioni said "No, I think it's the same film...I just thought the missing frames--there's something missing out of this." Then, after studying close-up images of the large defect on top of the head and questioning not the size and location of the large defect but the dark area on the back of the head, Brugioni commented further. He said: "I thought the blast to the head lasted longer...I thought I saw a glob in the air higher and there was mist.". So, wow.  While Horne had long nit-picked discrepancies between various descriptions of the film, and had used these to claim 1) Brugioni had viewed the original film, 2) his co-workers had viewed an altered film, and 3) the current film was the altered film, Brugioni's statements to this interviewer made it crystal clear he believed the film he saw--the film Horne holds to be the original film, a film Horne insists showed an explosion from the back of Kennedy's head and no explosion from the top of his head --had shown a massive explosion from the top of the head. And Horne knows this because, because, you guessed it, he was the interviewer.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpwldcYcAv4 NEXT...

• He claims Dr. Humes performed an incision on Kennedy's forehead prior to the beginning of the official autopsy which somehow removed all evidence of a small entrance wound on his forehead. (Note: he offers one eyewitness for this wound, Tom Robinson. His other witnesses said someone--who was no longer alive, and was not even present at the autopsy--had showed them a photo of such a wound. Well, Robinson said that what he saw was not a bullet hole, nor was it on the forehead. When first interviewed he said it was a tiny wound by the temple, and then, years later, when interviewed by Horne himself, he said it was two or three tiny wounds on the cheek. Even worse...the wound Robinson saw, the one he claimed he probably filled with a bit of wax--whether it be by the temple, on the cheek, or even on the forehead, was a wound he saw during the reconstruction of Kennedy's skull...AFTER the completion of the autopsy. So how in hell can Horne cite Robinson's noticing a small wound AFTER the completion of the autopsy as evidence this wound was cut from the skull BEFORE the beginning of the autopsy?) NEXT...

• He claims Dr. Humes removed frontal bone to add a wound to the top of the head before the official start of the autopsy--to make it look like the fatal shot came from behind--and claims the Secret Service then returned this bone in front of an audience to fool them into thinking this wound had been created in Dallas. (Note: his witness to the removal of both the bullet hole on the forehead and this large piece of frontal bone from the top of the skull is Ed Reed, who specified that he saw Humes cutting on the front of the head AFTER he, Reed, had assisted in the taking of the x-rays, which are in the public record, and which Reed insisted were authentic. Well...these x-rays, according to most everyone, including Horne's buddy, David Mantik, show frontal bone to be missing.) NEXT...

• He claims a bullet entered near the EOP, as proposed in the autopsy protocol, but that this bullet did not exit. He claims this bullet was found inside the skull behind the right eye socket, and then made to disappear. (Note: he has no witnesses to support this. And no medical evidence to support this. In short, he has just made this up.) NEXT...

• He claims the throat wound was enlarged so Humes could remove a bullet. (Note: Dr. Robert McClelland, the star witness for body alteration theorists like Lifton, Fetzer, Mantik, and Horne, said many times in many places that the tracheotomy incision he saw at Parkland Hospital was the tracheotomy incision depicted in the autopsy photos, and that no enlargement of this incision had occurred between the body's departure from Dallas and the taking of the photos in Bethesda.) NEXT...

• He claims the back of the head photos conceal a wound on the back of the head. (Note: he doesn't specify who did this or how this was done but sometimes mentions Dr. Mantik's claim the back of the head in the color "back of the head photos" is an identical matte, which had been placed on both photos to conceal a wound. Well, this claim was debunked by myself around 2013, when I morphed the two color "back of the head" photos for a GIF, and proved the back of the heads in the photos are not identical.) NEXT...

No, not NEXT, but a further exploration of the previous point. Horne's slipperiness regarding the back of the head photos becomes apparent when one reads his earliest thoughts on these photos. Yes, incredibly, when interviewed by Dick Russell for On the Trail of the JFK Assassins (2008), Horne claimed: 

"Most witnesses from the autopsy recall a very large area of missing bone at the back of the head – confirmed for us by the skull diagram Dr. Boswell drew in three dimensions on a model skull. Because this damage does not appear in the autopsy photographs on file in the National Archives, most researchers have believed for many years that the discrepancy is explained by photographic forgery, “special effects”... I no longer believe that photographic forgery is an explanation for the perplexing back of the head images. The alternative possibilities – namely, major manipulation of loose and previously reflected scalp from elsewhere on the head, or partial reconstruction of the head by the morticians, at the direction of the pathologists – seem to be a much more likely explanation for these anomalous photos. To be sure, the photos are a lie – for they do create the false impression that the back of the head was intact when the body arrived from Dallas, and they do provide false “evidence” that all eyewitnesses to a blow-out in the right rear of the head were ‘wrong.’ But I am as certain as I can be that they are not photographic forgeries."

He then expanded:   "I am virtually certain they are not photographic forgeries because I’ve looked at them in extremely close detail, and by this I mean I have studied the so-called camera-original color positive transparencies for hours at a time in Rochester, after they were magnified by enhancing software in the Kodak lab where we took them for digital preservation. We didn’t see any matte lines, or any discontinuities in the hair. We could see individual pores in the skin in between the strands of hair, and all of the grain and resolution seemed consistent across the board in the areas were looking at. However, I’m convinced that, while not “special effects” forgeries, they are fraudulent and dishonest. The official Navy photographer, John Stringer, and his assistant Floyd Riebe, left the morgue after the conclusion of the autopsy at about 11:45 PM or midnight. Then a second photographer – Robert Knudsen, who was not a trained medical photographer, but a Navy chief photographer’s mate who was a social photographer at the White House – was employed to take the pictures of the head after its reconstruction. And these photographs were later used to misrepresent the condition of the president’s head when the body arrived at Bethesda. The real photographs of the exit wound in the rear of the president’s skull would have been deep-sixed. It’s that simple." 

And that wasn't the last time Horne floated such nonsense. He gave a long detailed interview to William Law in 2015. This interview was then published in the updated version of Law's book In the Eye of History. In any event, when asked by Law to explain the intact back of the head in the photos found in the autopsy collection, Horne responded: "I believe they were taken after Sibert and O'Neill left the morgue at 11:00 PM...I personally believe that these photos were taken by moving more or less intact scalp from elsewhere on the head, and simpoly holding it in place for a few moments to cover up the enormous amount of missing skull in the right rear of the cranium...I examined these images on high-defintition monitors at the Kodak lab in Rochester in November of 1997, and saw no blatant evidence of photographic forgery: no matte lines, no out of focus areas, and no discontinuities between the hairs around the circumference of the image. Neither did the Kodak technicians. I also seem to be almost alone in my conclusion that these images are not photographic forgeries. )I beleive they are dishonest, but that they are not forgeries, not produced by visual effects.)...I believe that they are authentic photos of relocated scalp, taken after the FBI agents left at 11:00 PM and before the Gawler's funeral home began its work at 11:45 PM. I believe that all of those post-11:00 PM photos were taken by Robert Knudsen, a Navy Chief who normally only took social photographs of the President and his family, but who was employed on this occasion to take additional post-mortem photographs after the formal conclusion of the"public autopsy."...Knudsen may well have been the photographer at the early session (immediately after the clandestine surgery) and at the last session, as well. If that is the case, then none of Stringer's or Riebe's photos ever made it into the offical record."

Now this demonstrates, quite clearly, IMO, that Horne realized he had some problems with his original theory, and had decided to "correct" these problems by spewing more nonsense.

1. He says Knudsen may well have been the photographer at the early session of photos taken"immediately after the clandestine surgery."  Well, this is strange because the first set of photos purportedly shown O'Donnell were photos taken BEFORE the supposed clandestine surgery. Perhaps then he means an early session of photos before the surgery. But no, this doesn't work either, as he says "If that is the case, then none of Stringer's or Riebe's photos ever made it into the offical record." Well, okay, then, perhaps Horne was trying to say there were THREE sessions, with Knudsen taking all of the photos at these sessions. But, if so,  this is really really really dumb. Numerous witnesses ID'ed Stringer as the photographer at the autopsy and none identified Knudsen as even being present at the autopsy. And not only that, Stringer repeatedly ID'ed ALL the photos from the autopsy to make it into the offical record as photos he'd taken. Now, yeah, yeah, some will say "But he was lying." But only sloppy thinkers would say that because, oh yeah, one of the central tenets of the Fetzer/Mantk/Horne religion is that Stringer was telling the truth when he told the ARRB he didn't recall taking the BRAIN photos taken at the supplemental exam, and well, gee, one would have to be pretty dumb not to realize that should Stringer have been lying about taking the autopsy photos, he would also have lied about taking the brain photos. And then, of course, there's this: not only did no one recall Knudsen being present at the autopsy but he discussed his connection to the autopsy photos with the HSCA and was crystal clear that he developed the photos, but did not take them. 

2. He has Knudsen taking a final set of photos after the autopsy but "before the Gawler's funeral home began its work." Well, this was a retreat from his earlier claim the back of the head photo showed a re-constructed skull. Apparently Horne realized that the morticians were consistent in claiming the back of the head was not reconstructed but covered with a rubber dam, and well, this proved his original theory holding that the head was reconstructed by the morticians, and photographed by Knudsen, and that Knudsen's photos were then developed and shown to O'Donnell...was nonsense. Of course, this new theory wasn't much of an improvement. He now had some unidentified person rearranging the head and supervising photos taken by Knudsen while the autopsy doctors, autopsy assistants and morticians--along with numerous members of the audience who stuck around through the reconstruction of the body--patiently sat by...and having exactly ZERO witnesses recalling the taking of such photos, or even Knudsen's presence at the autopsy.  It's still nonsense. 

3.  In fact, his new theory was like putting lipstick on a pig. By Horne's own admission, the back of the head photos showed no signs of alteration and gave no indication there was a hole in the middle of the back of the head. Well, the witnesses on whom he supposedly relied had insisted the large hole was a hole of both scalp and bone, and his pal Mantik had insisted the Harper fragment--a 2 1/2 inch bone triangle covering half the back of the head--had been blasted out this hole. So there was no way someone could pull some scalp over from the side and cover up the hole, and have this go undetected in the photos. It's ludicrous to even pretend as much.

NOW, someone could have lifted a bone flap at the top of the head that had opened up at Parkland back into place at Bethesda, and thereby create the illusion the head wound was inches forward of its location when viewed at Parkland...

And, sure enough, that is exactly what is shown in the photos...

But I digress... We're talking about Horne's theories here, and not mine...

The point then, with this detailed examination of Doug Horne's claims and theories is that he isn't exactly credible, and that his conclusions are not actually in agreement with Mantik's conclusions...and that the claims of "consensus" among their many supporters is balderdash. 

Here is further proof of this. On the left below is Mantik's orientation for F8 (the mystery photo). On the right below is Horne's own orientation (as presented in his 2024 video The JFK Skull X-rays).

Uhh... Notice anything? In Horne's 2024 orientation, he placed the beveled bone he once claimed marked an exit location on the left side of the back of the head...an inch or more to the right of the middle of the head. Yep, somewhere in the late 10's or early 20's he slid this beveled bone two inches or more to the right of where he claimed it was in his previous presentations and either "corrected" Mantik's decades-long claim the proper orientation was at left above, or chose to ignore it, even though he started off his discussion by deferring to Mantik. 

In any event, it's weird scenes inside the gold mine when you watch the presentations of Mr. Douglas P. Horne. 

Now, back to the matter at hand... 

The Floating Debris

Yes, we're back to talking about Mantik. Now, in not-exactly-perfect sync with Horne. Mantik's numerous and repeated mistakes form a pattern--a pattern in which he misrepresents evidence to support a dubious theory and then misrepresents more evidence to defend his theory against heretics like myself. Perhaps the most egregious of these mistakes was his pulling a switcheroo on the Harper fragment. Now, to understand the relevance of this switcheroo, one must understand two things. The first is that Mantik has long claimed the Harper fragment was dislodged from the back of Kennedy's head, and that, in his orientation, "the lead smudge" on one edge of the fragment "ended up precisely where the pathologists said the bullet had entered the rear of the skull." Now, right off the bat, this makes zero effing sense (Note: "effing" is a scientific term for "freakin"). First of all, the Harper fragment is absolutely positively NOT occipital bone!!! (Much, much, more on this later.) And this is only Ginormous Problem #1... 

Yes, even if one accepts he is correct in claiming the Harper fragment is occipital bone and NOT the large fragment seen flying forwards in the Zapruder film, the fact remains that, by all accounts, the fragment was blasted from the head. And yet Mantik actually claims the only beveled defect on the fragment was an ENTRANCE defect created by a bullet fired from behind, and that the fragment was then blasted out of the skull and through the air...by a bullet leaving NO EXIT BEVELLING WHATSOEVER ON THE FRAGMENT... Or even on the intact bone around the hole from which the fragment was dislodged.... And yes, that's right, while Horne claimed for years and years that a bevelled exit defect is apparent on intact skull in the mystery photo, Horne claimed this defect was on the left side of the back of the head, and was caused by a bullet entering JFK's forehead. Well, this was not the bullet Mantik claims blasted out the back of the head, and sent the Harper fragment flying. That bullet, in Mantik's analysis, entered by the temple and left no beveled defect on the Harper fragment, and none on the intact skull from which the fragment was blasted. And it's worse than that. As Mantik refuses to present a trajectory in which  an exit for this bullet is depicted, it appears he wants us to believe a bullet entering near the temple knocked the Harper fragment out of the back of JFK's head, without leaving as much as a dent on the fragment. And that's Ginormous Problem #2. 

Ginormous Problem #3 with Mantik's claim the defect on the Harper fragment completes an entrance defect by the EOP is that Dr.s Humes and Finck claimed this entrance was a through and through hole, and that even the confused Dr. Boswell, who did ultimately make statements suggesting the hole was missing a piece, claimed this piece was matched up with a late-arriving fragment during the autopsy. Well, geez, as Boswell was never shown a photo of or even told about the Harper fragment until many years after the autopsy, his statements regarding a fragment's completing the entrance defect rules out the Harper fragment as the fragment completing the defect. 

And that's not even to mention that, oh yeah, in Boswell's 9-16-77 chat with the HSCA's Pathology Panel (the chat in which he told them a defect on a bone fragment was matched up with the entrance defect on the skull) he specified as well that the fragment with a defect that was matched up with the entrance defect on the intact skull was one of the "smaller" fragments of the three fragments just shown him on the x-ray of three bone fragments. Now, I know for some this is hard to swallow so let me be precise. On page 260 of HSCA Vol. 7 Boswell shares "one of the smaller of the two fragments in that x-ray, when that arrived, we were able to fit that down there and complete the circumference of that bone wound."  So that would be Ginormous Problem #4. 

Now that should be the end of it. But there's more. Ginormous problem #5 with Mantik's theory is that "the lead smudge" on the Harper fragment was on a beveled exit, and NOT a beveled entrance. Yessirree, all those studying the fragment from the time of the HSCA on down have concluded the sliver of bone upon which this smudge can be observed is beveled outwards, not inwards. 

So let's refresh. Mantik's theory is that a beveled EXIT defect on a bone fragment (that is demonstrably not occipital bone, and was not even available to the doctors on the day of the autopsy) was matched up with a beveled ENTRANCE defect on the occipital bone during the autopsy, even though only one of the three doctors ever claimed they matched up a beveled defect of any kind with this bullet entrance defect, and this doctor specified that the fragment matched up with the entrance was a different fragment entirely. 

And it's worse than that. Not only did Boswell claim the fragment he (probably incorrectly) recalled matching up with beveled bone on the intact skull was 1) matched up during the autopsy (when the Harper fragment was not available), and 2) was one of the three fragments x-rayed during the autopsy (and thus, not the Harper fragment), but 3) he signed and swore by the autopsy report, which claimed of the small entrance wound on the back of the head: "In the underlying bone is a corresponding wound through the skull which exhibits beveling of the margins of the bone when viewed from the inner aspect of the skull." Well, hello. This is a description of entrance beveling, NOT exit beveling, 

Mantik has matched up an entrance defect on the intact skull with the wrong kind of defect on the wrong bone and even the wrong kind of bone. That's three strikes and you're out. 

So how does Mantik get around this? Well, he doesn't, really. He simply presents the recollections of the doctors first viewing the bone in Dallas as support for the fragment's being occipital bone and the defect's being an entrance defect, and blissfully ignores both common sense and what becomes crystal-freaking-clear from studying the photos these doctors themselves had taken. Yes, Dr. Cairns told the HSCA's Andy Purdy--15 years after he'd last looked at the Harper fragment--"that he believed the skull fragment came from close to the entry wound" and that this was "by virtue of the way the tables were broken." But this doesn't mean what Mantik believes it means. While the fragment exihibits both entrance beveling and exit beveling, the broken tables at the site of the lead smear show it to be an exit defect, not entrance defect. While one might claim, as I, that the broken tables thereby suggest  the fragment was on the margin of a tangential wound of entrance and exit, one can not reasonably claim the broken tables on the fragment represents the margin of an entrance defect, and entrance defect only.

And yet, Mantik avoids this by, year after year/article after article, citing a conversation he had with Dr. Cairns' colleague Dr. Noteboom in 1992, in which Noteboom told him it had been the impression of Cairns and himself that the lead smudge or smear was by an entrance. . 

Now, to be fair, Mantik also cites a second reason for believing what appears to be an exit defect is actually an entrance defect...that is a bit more science-y. And that is that the "lead smudge" at the supposed exit defect is on the outside of the fragment. Now he's right about this. It is. (And you can see this for yourself in the image below, which has been cropped from the FBI's photo of the fragment. Note the direction of beveling in the middle section at the bottom of the image. Now note the grayish discoloration along its bottom edge. This, then, is the "lead smudge" or "lead smear" of our discussion.) 

And, yes, Mantik is also correct in asserting that bullets normally break-up as they enter the skull, and not as they exit the skull. They do. But he fails to connect the dots. As you can see the lead smudge is not on the outer table of the skull, but on an inner table, that is beveled outwards. Such beveling is symptomatic of exit defects, not entrance defects. Mantik should have studied the autopsy report and realized that the entrance wound was determined by beveling, and not by a smudge. And Mantik should have consulted the forensic literature to see if skull defects can exhibit signs of both entrance and exit. (Because if he had, well, he would have realized that tangential wounds can have the characteristic lead smear of an entrance, and the characteristic beveling of an exit.  And this would have led him in a more productive direction.)

In any event, the second thing one needs to know about Mantik and the Harper fragment (at least for now) is that no one from the conspiracy theorist community had actively challenged Mantik on his orientation of the mystery photo (F8), and his belief the Harper fragment derived from the center of the back of Kennedy's head. (Dr. Joseph Riley had disputed his claims, but had not pushed this beyond an article or two.). Now, some single-assassin theorists, such as Paul Seaton, had also written articles challenging Mantik, but they were largely ignored by those in the CT community. Perhaps, then, Mantik had come to believe he'd really scored a bulls-eye, and that his findings had become those of the community as a whole.

And so it rested...until I came along...and challenged Mantik on both points... I pointed out that, when one accepted the impression of Dr. Lawrence Angel that the Harper fragment derived from the top of Kennedy's head--which Mantik admitted was a possibility--the discolored edge suggesting a bullet entrance lay not on the back of Kennedy's head, but at his temple, where most conspiracy theorists assume there was an entrance. (My analysis of the fragment can be found here: http://www.patspeer.com/harperfrag.jpg).

My "theory" if you will, was thus something equally, if not more, attractive to the conspiracy theorist community than Mantik's theory. It follows then that Mantik should have countered my theory with evidence and argument during his 2009 JFK Lancer presentation.

But, instead, in September 2010, while viewing Mantik's presentation at the 2009 JFK Lancer conference, I received an unexpected slap in the face.

In what may have been an innocent mistake (others, including John Hunt, have made similar mistakes)--Mantik changed the location of the "metallic debris" on the Harper fragment when showing his audience Angel's orientation for the fragment. Yes, as shown on the slide above, Mantik presented the metallic debris on the discolored edge of the fragment at a point counter-clockwise from the arm-like point when showing his own orientation, and clockwise from this point when showing Angel's orientation. (Even worse, he cited this new and not improved location for the debris as a reason to disbelieve Angel, claiming that by placing the Harper fragment as he had, Angel "ends up with metal over here..." Mantik then pointed to the the top of the head on the image above.) He then pounced: "How could you have metal over here in the HSCA scenario, when the bullet enters in the rear at this x-mark and exits over here." (He then pointed to the other x-mark by the temple.)

Yes, unbelievably, in his 2009 JFK Lancer presentation, Dr. Mantik moved the location of the "metallic debris" or lead smudge on the Harper fragment for the slide showing Dr. Angel's orientation for the fragment, from where he'd placed it on the slide showing his own orientation. 

Now, I'd like to believe this was just a mistake, and not part of some stupid plot to avoid admitting that the Harper fragment most probably derived from somewhere other than the middle of the back of the head.

When I pointed out Mantik's switcheroo in a 10-12-10 post on the Education Forum, however, I received this response from Dr. James Fetzer, Mantik's biggest supporter:

"Pat Speer may be among the least competent students of JFK I have ever encountered. We all know that the Harper fragment was occipital bone, so it is not difficult to locate on the skull...I think he owes David Mantik an apology."

This really pissed me off.

And yet...I felt terrible about this. I had great respect for Mantik's intelligence, and had found many of his writings on the Kennedy assassination both interesting, and informative. His review of Reclaiming History, for example, was most insightful. And yet, here, while making a presentation on his specialty, the Kennedy assassination medical evidence, a topic on which some, including Dr. Fetzer, considered him the top expert in the world, he had either made a really dumb mistake, or a deliberate obfuscation.

Other aspects of Mantik's presentation swayed me toward this second possibility.

Let's see if you agree...

Mantik started out his presentation with a quote from Jerrol Custer, the radiology technician who took Kennedy's skull x-rays. He has Custer saying the x-rays shown him are fake. Mantik failed to tell his audience that Custer made this statement after viewing the cropped and computer-enhanced x-rays published by the HSCA, and that, in 1997, subsequent to making this claim, Custer was shown the un-cropped and un-enhanced original x-rays by the ARRB, and acknowledged them as the x-rays he'd taken.

Mantik then discussed the optical density of the x-rays. He'd measured this himself. He claimed that these measurements were clear proof of alteration, as some areas on the x-rays were far too white, and others far too black, and there was far more contrast on Kennedy's x-rays than on the other x-rays he'd measured. While doing so, he pointed out the problematic white and black areas to his audience... He did this, however, on photos of the computer-enhanced x-rays published by the HSCA. He failed to tell his audience that these were not the original x-rays, and that these images were computer-enhanced to increase the contrast, and that this contrast was made even greater through the reproduction of these images on paper.

I mean, how is this not deceptive?

And this was but one slice of Mantik's pie of deception. (Sorry. That phrase made me chuckle so I decided to keep it in. The pie of deception... Harry Potter and The Pie of Deception, James Bond will return in The Pie of Deception. Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Devour the Pie of Deception...) In any event, Mantik was also quite deceptive about the largest bullet fragment recovered at the autopsy. Several of his slides pointed out a fragment on the right lateral x-ray. This fragment is near the middle of Kennedy's forehead. Mantik claimed, however, that this was the 7 x 2 fragment recovered during the autopsy. He failed to tell his audience that Dr. Humes, along with just about every key player in the autopsy, had always claimed the fragment he'd recovered had come from behind Kennedy's right eye, and not from the middle of his forehead. Perhaps even worse, Mantik failed to tell his audience that he -- Dr. David Mantik -- had personally inspected what remains of the fragment recovered by Humes...and had concluded it was not the fragment on the middle of the forehead on the x-ray.

Now this deception rubbed up against another. Mantik subsequently discussed my conclusion the supposed 6.5 mm fragment supposedly on the back of the head was actually behind Kennedy's right eye. He told his audience that, as no expert had ever identified the fragment I'd identified as metal, this was a "non-starter", and not even worth considering. He failed to consider that no true expert had signed off on his conclusions, either. Even worse, he presented my findings as those of a layman who'd thought he'd seen something on an x-ray; he failed to tell his audience that the location of the fragment I'd identified--behind Kennedy's right eye--was exactly where those present at the autopsy claimed they'd found the large fragment they recovered.

Now this was information which I firmly believe they should have been told...particularly in that the radiology technicians who'd actually taken Kennedy's x-rays--Custer and Reed--both said they saw a fragment in this location when shown the x-rays by the ARRB. That's right. They said they saw a fragment...just above or in the orbital ridge...where I've proposed there is a fragment...only years before I'd ever noticed such a fragment.

In any event, Mantik failed to share this with his audience. And let them think instead that little old under-qualified me was simply seeing things...

Well, if I wasn't then, I was almost a year later when I finally saw Mantik's presentation. I was seeing red. I'd respected Mantik. Although I'd disagreed with many of his findings, I'd hoped he and I could work together on something that would reach beyond the research community. I'd believed he was sincere. I'd never considered that he would go to Dallas to counter some of my arguments and conceal so much from his audience. I'd never considered that, in order to convince his audience they should ignore my ramblings, that he would lie. That's right, I wrote "lie." Mantik's errors of interpretation and misrepresentation of my findings were so egregious, in my view, that I found myself believing he'd lied.

And the more I viewed Mantik's presentation the more obvious these lies became. To counter my claim the "white patch" he'd identified on the x-rays was nothing more than the wing of bone seen on the autopsy photos overlapping intact bone at the back of Kennedy's skull, Mantik claimed (on a slide entitled "The White Patch--Impossible to Explain via Overlapping Bone") that "a single layer of bone contributes only a modest amount to the OD" (optical density measurements) -- "an amount far too small to explain the white patch." Well, okay, he was sticking to his original story here. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, he'd never tested x-rays created on the equipment used to make Kennedy's x-rays, at various settings, let alone those involving over-lapping bone. And he'd never explained why, if the loss of a layer of bone would have so little effect on the appearance of the skull on the x-ray, that the fractures in Kennedy's skull, which Mantik accepts as legitimate fractures, and which would have involved only one layer of bone, were so easily recognizable. But the man's entitled to his beliefs.

But he didn't stop there. No, in the notes accompanying his presentation on Dr. Fetzer's website, Mantik offers: "note that the dark area contains two layers of skull bone, one from each side, yet this area is astonishingly dark. One more layer of bone will not turn the Dark Area into a white patch."

Well, this was more nonsense. My "overlapping bone" theory, if you will, does not hold that the white patch has three layers of bone, and the dark area two, and that the white patch therefore represents 50% more bone, it holds that the white patch has three layers of bone, and the dark area one, and that the white patch therefore represents 300% more bone. This is a huge difference. One that Mantik could not have missed. I mean, where does he think this overlapping bone came from? Could he really have read my writings on the "white patch" and "dark area" and missed that I was claiming that the bone missing from the dark area was the bone overlapping the skull on the white patch? I just can't see how...

And that's not even the worst of it. In the latter part of Mantik's presentation he discussed the conclusions of the three consultants hired by the ARRB. (He sped through some of these slides in Dallas, presumably because he was short on time, but they appear to be the same slides as those on Fetzer's website.) Now, it's important to note that, prior to Mantik's presentation in Dallas, no one in the audience had ever read the memoranda in which the conclusions of these consultants were reported, as the reports of their conclusions were not made public until a month later, with the release of Doug Horne's book Inside the ARRB. And so, Mantik had pretty much a blank slate--he could have told his audience that these guys said he was right about everything.

It is to Mantik's credit, then, that, on his slide discussing the findings of Dr. John Fitzpatrick, a Forensic Radiologist, he noted, among eight other points of interest, that Dr. Fitzpatrick claimed he did not find the work of Dr. Mantik "persuasive." Now, on Fetzer's website, Mantik admits this is troublesome, and that he is annoyed that Fitzpatrick wouldn't respond to his letters and explain his failure to be persuaded.

But what Mantik should have known, and should have told his audience, was that Fitzpatrick's reasons for rejecting his conclusions regarding the "white patch" and "dark area" were readily apparent, once one read the entirety of Horne's report on Fitzpatrick.

You see, Fitzpatrick shared MY interpretation of the "white patch" and "dark area." While Mantik had spent the first part of his presentation dismissing my findings as those of a layman, and had spent the last part of his presentation discussing the findings of the ARRB's experts, and even claiming "The Buck Stops with Fitzpatrick" when he found something upon which he and Fitzpatrick had agreed, he failed to tell his audience that, when discussing the lateral skull x-rays with Horne, Fitzpatrick had claimed "some of the dark appearance in the anterior portion of the skull is due to missing bone..." This is PRECISELY as I've claimed, and is in opposition to Mantik's claim "the dark area contains two layers of skull bone, one from each side."

And that's just the half of it. Mantik also failed to reveal that Fitzpatrick claimed "Overlapping bone is clearly present in the lateral skull x-rays," and that, drum roll please, "the red flap above the ear" in the autopsy photos "equates with the overlapping bone in the lateral skull x-rays."

That's right. While Mantik told his audience the "buck stops with Fitzpatrick" when Fitzpatrick agreed with him, he concealed from his audience that Fitzpatrick had subscribed to the "overlapping bone" theory to which I subscribe, which explains both the "dark area" and "white patch." What Mantik had snidely dismissed as "Speer's theory" before his audience, had been in fact "Fitzpatrick's theory" years before. And Mantik had chosen not to tell this to his audience.

And Fitzpatrick wasn't the only expert whose findings he concealed. While Mantik noted, on his slide describing the findings of Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, a forensic anthropology consultant to the ARRB, that Ubelaker found the "dark area" on the lateral x-rays "very puzzling," he left out that this led Dr. Ubelaker to wonder, not if the x-rays had been altered, as Mantik was suggesting, but "whether there had been some processing defect when the x-rays were developed." He also failed to reveal that Ubelaker had noted "overlapping bone fragments" in "the temporal-parietal region of the lateral x-rays," which we can only assume was yet another reference to the "white patch."

Now, it's possible Mantik simply failed to appreciate the significance of these statements by Fitzpatrick and Ubelaker.

But I just couldn't convince myself of this. Not after Mantik had committed so many other suspicious "mistakes."

And so I decided to fight back. From my perspective, Mantik had singled me out for attack in a public forum, knowing full well that my theories were supported by those with better credentials than himself--men whose expertise he'd trumpeted elsewhere in his presentation. I mean, if Dale Myers or John McAdams, in the middle of a presentation on the single-bullet theory, had made a similar series of mistakes and/or evasions in order to dismiss my research and defend the otherwise indefensible, I'd assume their misrepresentations and evasions were by design, and call them out on it.

And so, while I'd learned some time ago to accept the possibility single-assassin theorists can be just as honest as conspiracy theorists, my dealings with Mantik forced me to accept the related possibility conspiracy theorists can be just as dishonest as single-assassin theorists.

I'm still struggling with this information..

Of A, B, C's and X-Rays

But I'm trying. 

This brings us back to Mantik... Shortly after my (hopefully) final battle with Fetzer, (a battle in which David Lifton came down on my side, by the way), Dr. Mantik responded to my criticisms of his 2009 Lancer presentation...and once again confused me as to whether he was merely out to lunch, or lying.

Yes, in a June 2011 response to my website published on the CTKA website (which, sadly, refused to allow a rebuttal), Mantik not only spread some new manure (such as inaccurately reporting my placement of the wing of bone on the x-rays), and defended his many mistakes, he actually doubled down. While he admitted that I was correct on one key point--that in his 2009 Lancer presentation he'd presented the metal debris "at the opposite pole on the Harper fragment" from where he'd originally placed it, he maintained that he had done so not to refute Dr. Angel's interpretation of the Harper fragment, but because "new evidence on the Harper x-ray discovered by John Hunt" convinced him the debris was really in this new location. As Mantik admitted merely that he'd left his audience with a "confused picture" of the site of the lead debris, and not that he'd thoroughly misled them, I at first thought this was mere obfuscation. That the "new site for metal" discovered by Hunt was in fact unveiled in Mantik's presence at a conference six years before the Lancer conference, and that he'd failed to admit that he'd continued to cite the old location of the debris as strong support for his own interpretation of the Harper fragment in the intervening years--and had even done so in the first part of his Lancer presentation--only confirmed this suspicion.

While subsequently reading his April 2011 review of Don Thomas' book Hear No Evil (also found on the CTKA website), however, I came to realize that Mantik really HAD changed his interpretation of the debris' location. Yes, in his review of Hear No Evil, Mantik not only admitted he'd been incorrect in placing the debris at its former location, he actually put a red arrow on an image of the Harper fragment purporting to point out the real location for the debris, and put this in the WRONG location. No, scratch that..the obviously wrong location. No, scratch that...the blatantly obvious 100% clear to anyone using their brain WRONG location. (This is demonstrated on the slide above.)

Yes, in the caption to Figure 5 of his review of Thomas's book, Mantik admitted "I had earlier placed the lead smudge at the site indicated here by L." (Note: site L is by the EOP.) He then continued: "I would still do so now, just based on that photo. However, the X-ray places it instead at the site indicated by the horizontal red arrow." (Note: this site was on the parietal bone, inches away from site L.) "The photo also shows an apparent smudge consistent with the X-ray site, but it is not as marked as at site L (on the photo). If one site must be chosen, then the X-ray should serve as the final arbiter."

Hmmm... This almost made sense. It still failed to explain, however, why, if Mantik had truly re-interpreted the smudge location after viewing the x-rays, which he'd first viewed in 2003, he'd told his 2009 JFK Lancer audience "Here is where there's metal debris" while pointing out the old location near the EOP, and then explained that the smudge or metal debris on the Harper fragment was "right near the External Occipital Protuberance, where the pathologists said the bullet had entered."

Perhaps he'd meant to add "Or so I used to think..." but then forgot...

In any event, this raised some troubling questions. Just as I'd once felt McAdams could not honestly believe some of the bizarre stuff he'd claimed, it was hard for me to believe someone with a background in radiology, as Mantik, could possibly believe the metallic debris on the x-ray was where he claimed it to have been on the photograph. Pure fantasy. Alice-in-Wonderland kind of stuff.

And yet, it seems he actually believed this nonsense. While many of the claims in Mantik's response to my criticisms smelled to high heaven--he claimed, for example, that he always presented the HSCA's contrast-enhanced x-rays in his articles while discussing what he claimed was an inordinate amount of contrast in the originals not because he was trying to deceive his readers, but because the available photographs of the contrast-enhanced x-rays looked more like the originals than the available photos of the originals--he made a number of surprising claims in his review of Don Thomas' book that led me to suspect he was not playing to any audience but himself. I mean, as a conspiracy theorist, I know full well there is NO upside in questioning if a bullet fired at Kennedy from the grassy knoll would leave a trail of fragments near the top of his skull and exit the occipital region. And yet, from answering these questions, Mantik not only concluded more than one shot struck JFK's skull but that "The GK shot, if any, missed." I mean, that's pretty much suicide in some circles. I wonder how his buddy Fetzer felt about that one.

If Mantik ever told him... In 2015, Dr. Mantik was Dr. Fetzer's guest on a 2-hour episode of Fetzer's interview show The Real Deal. This was uploaded to youtube on 5-12-15. At one point, while looking at the so-called "back-of-the-head" witnesses featured in Robert Groden's book The Killing of a President, Mantik pointed out that Dallas Justice of the Peace Theron Ward was pointing to the side of his head, and not the back of his head. This was a point I'd made many times online. Mantik tried to spin this his way, however, by claiming Ward was "probably showing us where a bullet entered obliquely from the right side--which would actually be consistent with the grassy knoll." (He never explained why such an entrance would only be noticed by a Justice of the Peace only briefly viewing Kennedy, and would go unnoticed by all the emergency physicians and personnel whose recollections Mantik supposedly holds sacred.)

In any event, Mantik's unpredictability and willingness to go against the grain--if only briefly--makes me consider the possibility he is NOT a conscious liar, just someone who is really really wrong an awful lot of the time...who makes false claim after false claim in support of his incorrect conclusions.

Inch by Inch

Now notice that, at the beginning of the third to last paragraph, I wrote that it seems Mantik actually "believed" the debris was on the Harper fragment in a location other than where the x-ray shows it to have been. I wrote "believed," as in "used to believe." Well, that's because Mantik has changed his mind...back...and now believes the debris on the Harper fragment is where he initially claimed it to have been--by the temple when one views the Harper fragment in the Angel orientation. 

Yes, to my surprise, Mantik's 2013 review of Sherry Fiester's book Enemy of the Truth reflected that he'd finally become convinced of his error on this issue. While proposing that Kennedy was hit by three head shots (he'd long been claiming he'd been hit by two) he pronounced: "A shot from the rear (e.g., from a lower story of the Dal-Tex building) may have entered at the pathologists' beveled site just right of the external occipital protuberance (EOP). My reconstruction of the Harper fragment, with the lead deposit precisely at the pathologists' site, may be considered objective proof of their honesty and accuracy on this issue." He then cited an article he'd written in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000) in support of this claim.

He then described a second shot that entered "high on the right forehead, near the hairline (where the incision is seen in the autopsy photographs)," which left the trail of fragments readily observed on the x-rays; and a third shot that "may have struck tangentially" and "entered anterior to the right ear, and then exited to yield the orange-sized hole at the right rear."

So, yeah, it appears to have played out like this.

• In 2009, Mantik's inaccurate reading of an x-ray led him to place the debris on the Harper fragment at the top of the head on an exhibit he'd created for the JFK Lancer Conference, a conference he'd been urged to attend so he could combat my appearance at the nearby COPA Conference. 

• In 2010, I caught his mistake, and exposed his mistake.

• In 2011, he wrote reviews of Don Thomas' book, and my website, in which he insisted he'd made no mistake, and that his newly-found location for the debris was in fact the correct location. 

• By 2013, he'd reversed himself, and quietly went back to claiming the debris was in the location he'd formerly claimed it to have been--by the EOP in his orientation for the fragment, and by Kennedy's temple in Dr. Angel's orientation for the fragment. 

• In a strange twist, moreover, Mantik not only came to accept that the lead smudge on the Harper fragment was by the temple in Dr. Angel's orientation of the fragment, but that a bullet entered within an inch or so of this location. 

And yet, he still insisted that Dr. Angel's orientation was incorrect! 

Well, this reads more like the behavior of a man blinded by ego than a man with a plan to deceive. 

That Mantik was embarrassingly and badly mistaken was subsequently confirmed, moreover...by Mantik.

From 2011-2013, my disagreement with Mantik about the Harper fragment, and my claim he was 100% wrong about the location of the lead smudge on the fragment, served as a bone of contention in the research community, so much so that we were invited to debate each other on the fragment at the 2013 Wecht conference in Pittsburgh. I agreed to do so, but on the condition I be allowed to talk about other aspects of my research as well.

Well, that turned out to be a good thing. Dr. Mantik spoke first, and, as expected, claimed the Harper fragment was occipital bone. But he also did the unexpected. He 1) made it clear to those in the audience that the white patch on the x-rays had nothing to do with the Harper fragment; 2) conceded that the Harper fragment was found forward of the limousine's location at the time of the head shot; 3) conceded that it's being found in this location suggested it was not in fact occipital bone (to no one's surprise, he then proposed someone had moved it from its original location behind the limousine); and 4) admitted he'd been wrong about the location of the lead smudge on the Harper fragment.

Now, some might think I enjoyed this moment, and did a quick victory dance, but I didn't. Far from feeling the thrill of victory, I mostly felt relief. I'd jam-packed so much material into my presentation I was worried sick I wouldn't have time to get to it all. And Mantik, by admitting so much, had let me cut 10 minutes or so of finger-pointing, which, in turn, allowed me to cover everything I set out to cover.

So, thank you, Dr. Mantik. For admitting a mistake.

By the following March, even better, Mantik had added a "correction" to his previous claims on the little-visited AssassinationofJFK.net website. (It was in fact almost five years before I spotted this correction.) Here it goes: "In my talk the metallic smear had been incorrectly placed. It should have been located at the opposite side of the fragment. Kudos to Pat Speer for spotting this mistake. In fact, Speer and I agree on this site of metallic smear. So far as I know, so does everyone else. What should be corrected is slide 20 in my 2009 JFK Lancer lecture. (That mistake was perpetuated in my subsequent critique of Speer.) Unfortunately, in that talk, I had argued that my (incorrect) site would have made a parietal origin for the fragment ridiculous. That argument cannot now be made."

So, bravo for Mantik!

And thank you, Doug Horne. On 8-6-14, Mantik's long-time brother-in-arms Doug Horne posted the following on the JFK Facts website:

"Dr. David Mantik and I believe there were three (3) head shots that hit President Kennedy: one low in the back of the head, from behind; one high above the right eye (high in the forehead, at the hairline, which was hidden by his bangs at Parkland Hosp.), from the right front; and one in the right temple just forward of and slightly above the right ear, also from the right front (a different location), which caused the big blowout in the back of the head seen by Clint Hill and everyone at Parkland."

Horne's post, for that matter, built upon what Mantik had said in his 2013 review of Sherry Fiester's book Enemy of the Truth. There, Mantik had offered that the x-rays suggested there had been three shots to Kennedy's head: one that entered "at the pathologists' beveled site just right of the external occipital protuberance (EOP)" which left a trail of fragments to the forehead; one that entered "high on the right forehead, near the hairline (where the incision is seen in the autopsy photographs)," which left the trail of fragments readily observed on the x-rays; and a third shot that "may have struck tangentially" and "entered anterior to the right ear, and then exited to yield the orange-sized hole at the right rear."

Well, did you catch it? This third shot proposed by Horne and Mantik just so happened to hit by the location of the lead smudge in Angel's orientation of the Harper fragment (as depicted in the middle on the above slide), the orientation once rejected by Mantik because it would imply "a parietal entry (because the lead smudge is on the outside), an option that virtually no one would support.” Dr. Mantik had not only come to accept that the lead smudge in Angel's orientation was near the temple, but that this was the likely location for the entrance of a bullet, THE bullet, the one he and Horne (and millions of others) believe blew out the back of Kennedy's head.

Dr. Mantik, who had previously dismissed my study of the medical evidence which suggested a bullet impacted at this location, and created a tangential wound of both entrance and exit, now claims his study of the medical evidence suggests a bullet impacted at this location and left a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. 

So...it appears that sometimes a leopard can change its spots...

...and yet still remain a leopard.

Yep, in 2024, I was mortified to find that on 4-27-21, when I was on death's door battling leukemia, Dr, Mantik gave a presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website, in which he acted as though he'd never conceded my point--about the lead smear on the Harper fragment.  Yes, as shown below, he had resumed claiming the location of this smear on the fragment would mean there was an entrance site near the top of the head when the Harper fragment was presented in the parietal orientation. Heck, he even told his faithful that "parietal supporters"--and by that he meant Dr. Randy Robertson, Dr. Joseph Riley, and myself--had no explanation for the lead smear near the top of the head (that is actually by the temple and that can only be presented as being at the top of the head when one grossly misrepresents the evidence).

Well, this was kind of shocking to me, and it left me in a quandary. I didn't know whether to assume Mantik's age was catching up with him, and had led him to forget he'd ever condeded his mistake on this point, or to assume he was an old dog back to his old tricks, and was deliberately deceiving his audience.

I still don't. 

But I do know that his claims are not to be trusted. 

We have seen how both Mantik and Horne pretended, from their very first writings, that Tom Robinson's descriptions of a tiny wound by the temple and then two or three tiny wounds on the cheek had been a description of a bullet hole high on the forehead. 

Well, on 4-27-21, in the aforementioned presentation on the Future of Freedom of Foundation website, Mantik did the incredible and morphed this wound into a different wound entirely. 

Yes, when asked, towards the end of his presentation, the nature of Kennedy's throat wound, Mantik claimed he believed this wound had been caused by a "shard of glass" sent flying when a bullet struck the windshield of Kennedy's limo. Now, that would be bad enough, but he then offered his support for such a thing, and claimed "an autopsy technician" had observed "two or three tiny holes" in Kennedy's cheek.

Now, when I first saw Mantik make this claim, I couldn't believe it. This was not the claim of "an autopsy technician," as he'd claimed, it was the claim of a mortician--one of his star witnesses, Tom Robinson, who'd told Doug Horne on 6-21-96 that he'd observed "two or three small perforations or holes in the right cheek" of Kennedy." (ARRB Medical Exhibit 180)

And yet here was Mantik using the recollections of his star witness Robinson--yes, Robinson, the very witness he'd used when first proposing a bullet entered JFK's forehead--as support for his new claim a glass shard had entered JFK's throat. And no, he wasn't using a description of a second wound. This was the only wound on the face noted by Robinson. It was the very same wound. And Mantik would have to have known this, as his pal Horne had said as much in his book. 

And yet here was Mantik citing the cheek wounds as evidence for a "shard of glass" striking Kennedy in the throat. For the purposes of this presentation, the wound described by Robinson was no longer a bullet hole high on the forehead. Incredibly, Robinson's description of a wound had split into a description of two different wounds entirely, but only when viewed by Mantik. It was kinda like Quantum Mechanics. Let's call it "Mantik Mechanics."

So, by 2021, it seems clear, Mantik was slipping. And I'd be inclined to give him a break. 

Except I decided to look back through his writings to find out when he first started claiming the cheek wounds observed by Robinson as evidence for both a bullet striking Kennedy high on the forehead AND a bullet entering JFK's throat after smashing through the windshield. And received a surprise...

He'd been doing this since the beginning.... Yep, in Mantik's first widely disseminated article on the medical evidence, his chapter in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), he claimed both that Robinson had described "a wound, about 1/4 inch across, above the right eye,"which Mantik took to be a bullet hole, (p.250), AND "three tiny holes on the right cheek" which fueled Mantik's belief a bullet had come through the windshield (p.258). Well, it's the same freakin' wound, people. You can't have it both ways.

Only Mantik has...and has largely gotten away with it. 

But it gets worse... Yes, worse...

For when I look back at 2013, and to what Mantik claimed in our "debate," I have to accept the possibility that the man is not just prone to mistakes, but prone to making fantastical claims of a highly questionable nature. (To be polite.)

Hole-y Smoke!

Now, it took me awhile to realize it, but Mantik had chosen the date of our "debate" as the date he'd announce what I hope will remain his wackiest "discovery." 

I suppose I was too nervous about my own presentation, which was to follow, and I suppose I was too pleased that Mantik had finally admitted I was right about the location of the lead smear on the Harper fragment. In any event, towards the end of his presentation, Mantik unleashed a series of statements which I should have jumped all over during my own presentation. But didn't.

Here 's what he said: "The optical density data taken from the lateral x-ray shows just where the Harper fragment begins to be about right back here—where I’m pointing on my head there’s an abrupt shift in optical density that is maintained across that whole area where the Harper fragment came from." (Note: the video of the conference fails to show where Mantik is pointing.) He continued. "If the Harper fragment is missing you have to look for it right here between my four fingers (Note: this location is shown above.), not here... (He then pointed to the middle of the skull where the white patch resides on Kennedy's x-rays.) He continued: "The Harper fragment is back here. You can not see that absent Harper fragment at that point on the x-ray. Forget it. But what you can do is do optical density measurements. So when I did that—coming straight down here just below—it’s inferior to where the 6.5 mm fragment is--the optical density suddenly jumped and it stayed at that level through this whole area. (Note: the locations he pointed to are shown above.) It jumps consistent with missing bone just where I say the Harper fragment should be. That’s extremely quantitative evidence of missing bone at the back of the skull."

Now, seeing as this was "extremely quantitative" evidence and all, I'm embarrassed to say I didn't pick up on what Mantik was saying for several years...after viewing him make a similar statement in a subsequent presentation.

In other words, I blew it... Or rather he blew it---smoke--and I just sat there and watched it waft by.

It's time I correct that mistake.

Mantik vs. Mantik

For reasons that are not at all clear, a 9-27-14 scheduled debate/dual presentation on the acoustic evidence between Dr. Mantik and Don Thomas at the AARC conference in Washington ended up as a debate/dual presentation on the Harper Fragment between Dr. Mantik and Dr. Randy Robertson. (Presumably, Dr. Robertson wanted to talk about his own impressions of the fragment.) In any event, although I attended the conference, and saw every presentation on the medical evidence I could, I not only failed to attend this debate/discussion, I was unaware this debate/discussion even took place, until the next summer.

When I finally watched it, moreover, I was glad I did.

You see, watching Mantik counter Robertson proved to me that it wasn't personal...that Mantik will clutch at most any straw to counter anyone when that person has him in a corner, no matter how desperate he appears in doing so. And what's more, he'll convince himself he's right in doing so.

When Robertson pointed out that the lateral skull x-rays proved there was no hole in the middle of the back of Kennedy's head (in the location Mantik places the Harper fragment), Mantik countered not by saying the x-rays are fake, as some might expect, but by asserting that his optical density measurements for the lateral x-ray revealed "a distinct discontinuity which suggested that bone was missing exactly in this area, from the occiput." (As he said this he pointed to a location on the right side of his head.)

He then explained: "If you place the Harper fragment in this occipital area, you'll find that it overlays the very back of the lateral skull x-ray." He then continued: "It's not possible for a human eye to see absent bone in that location. You shouldn't expect to... You should not expect to see absent occipital bone on these x-rays, due to the Harper fragment, that is. Where I've placed it, you simply cannot determine that. But you can with optical density data, which I took." (He then pointed to his head again, and at the very same location. This is shown on the slide above.)

He then stressed: "And there you have that sudden transition in optical density. Bing. Just in that area. Where we placed it in the occiput, we have missing bone."

Now, at first glance, this would appear to be consistent with Mantik's former claims. He had, after all, said much the same thing in our "debate" the year before. But, significantly, that was the first time he'd made such a claim. In 2002, Mantik met with three men present at Kennedy's autopsy--autopsy assistants James Jenkins and Paul O'Connor, and FBI agent James Sibert. This meeting was filmed, and released as The Gathering in 2015. Well, in this meeting, Mantik showed these men the A-P x-ray and pointed out a triangular area on the A-P x-ray where he claimed the back of the head was missing. He said this was supported by his OD data, of course, of course. He then showed them the lateral x-ray, and admitted that the back of the head appeared to be intact in this x-ray. He then claimed: "The human eye is not sensitive enough to pick up that difference in bone density from a place where it's partly missing here, and a place where it's entirely present. The human eye just can't do that job...And that has misled a lot of people...Your eye just can't make that decision. It's not that discriminating."

Now, let's note the difference. In "The Gathering", Mantik claimed it was the data from the A-P x-ray that proved the back of the head was missing. He said nothing about the OD data from the lateral x-ray confirming this conclusion. During his 2013 debate with myself and his 2014 debate with Robertson, however, he insisted there was an "abrupt shift" and a "distinct discontinuity" near the back of the head on the lateral x-ray, which suggested the back of the head was missing.

Now does this pass a simple smell test?

My nose says "no." Mantik himself has long insisted that when viewing the lateral x-rays one can make out a "tiny" fragment embedded within the rear wall of the back of the skull. Well, HELLO, if one can spot a "tiny" fragment on the back of the skull on an x-ray, it follows like night from day or anything else that actually follows, that one can spot a discontinuity where a 2 1/2 inch triangular piece of bone is MISSING from the back of the skull. (Note: the location of this small fragment is pointed out by Mantik on the White Patch exhibit included in the slide above.)

And Mantik has also claimed, in his 2010 CTKA-based attack on this website, that "I was not able to locate a hole at the rear of the skull anywhere near the HSCA entry site."

Now let's stop right there. The location where Mantik now claims to see a "distinct discontinuity" is just below the "tiny" fragment he claims as the "6.5 mm fragment" on the lateral x-ray. And this "tiny" fragment was itself just below the HSCA's presumed entry site. (The HSCA entry site is located on this HSCA drawing, here.) So that means Mantik's "distinct discontinuity" is somewhere near the HSCA's presumed entrance site. And that's yet another Mantik conclusion one can throw in the trash!

And no, that's not the worst of it. Scroll back up and take another look at where Mantik is pointing, and then compare this to Kennedy's x-ray. First, note that one can see a skull fracture on the x-ray directly above where Mantik is pointing. Now, no one disputes this is a skull fracture. Well, what is a skull fracture but a line of missing bone? Mantik's claim one couldn't see missing bone in this region is thereby proved false. Now, look toward the very back of the head, just above the white arrow pointing out the purported location of the "tiny" fragment purportedly embedded on the back of the skull. There is indeed a discontinuity along the back of the head in this location, which is believed to indicate a comminuted fracture. This is similar to what one might expect to see if the very back of the skull was missing, as claimed by Mantik. But this isn't what he's talking about. Not only did he point to a location an inch or so forward of this location when pointing out the location of the "discontinuity" suggesting missing bone, Mantik also specified that this "discontinuity" was not visible to the naked eye.

And that's not even to mention that the location Mantik pointed to was on the parietal bone, and not the occipital bone, where Mantik places the Harper fragment.

So then what's he talking about? Eegads, could it be? Eegads, I think it could. It seems way too much a coincidence that when Mantik pointed out the location of a discontinuity suggesting missing bone to Robertson and the audience, he pointed to a location on his head that lines up perfectly with the top corner of the "white patch" on his earlier exhibits.

So, yikes, it seems possible that during his "debates" with myself and Robertson Mantik retrofitted the white patch from being a white patch "added in a dark room" whose purpose was to "obscure the loss of tissue at the back of the skull" (as claimed in the online version of his 2009 presentation) into being normal skull, beside which the less white area at the back of the skull can be assumed to house a hole.

But let's not go there, if just for a second. Let's give Mantik the benefit of the doubt, if just for a second. Let's assume that within an inch or less of the upper margin of the "white patch" readily visible on the x-ray is a "discontinuity" only observed through the OD readings, which suggests there is a large hole on the back of the head. Hmmm... This would mean that within an inch the x-ray would shift from an area that, according to Mantik, is far too white to be explained by over-lapping bone, to an area at the very back of the head, in which bone is missing from both sides.

And yet Mantik claims this shift is not visible to the human eye, and can only be observed via an optical densitometer, which, as it turns out, is something only he, and his devoted follower Mike.Chesser, have done.

So, why didn't Robertson call him on this nonsense? Was he as nervous as I had been the year before?

While it could very well be that Dr. Robertson was nervous, or just wanted to move on, the possibility exists that he was afraid to push the point about the x-rays not supporting Mantik's theory, because he knew full well they also failed to support his own theory.

Here is Robertson's proposed re-construction of Kennedy's skull, taken from his debate/discussion with Mantik.

The Hole of Disbelief

It should be noted here that Mantik and his supporters have long claimed the photos of the so-called "back of the head" witnesses in Robert Groden's book The Killing of a President (including those of the Parkland physicians shown on the slide above) as evidence supporting his claim the upper middle section of the occipital bone was missing. 

But this isn't exactly true, now, is it? Most of these witnesses were pointing to a location too far to the right, and/or too high on the back of the head, to support Mantik's claim the middle of the back of the head was missing.

So where does Mantik get off suggesting he "believes" these witnesses, and that Robertson does not, when Robertson's proposed location for a posterior wound is far more in line with their recollections than his own?

The man's a warrior, you can give him that. But what's to be said of a man whose fervent desire to "win" compels him to attack Robertson for not going along with Angel (and even Fitzpatrick!) on his placement of the "triangular", "delta", or "late-arriving" fragment (Yes, they're one and the same), when he himself refuses to go along with Angel on his placement of the Harper fragment...even though his (Mantik's) placement of this fragment at the back of the head means there were either TWO large holes on Kennedy's head, or one ginormous hole from front to back that was not observed at Parkland.

And, yes, you read that right. As shown on the slide above, Mantik's much-discussed placement of the Harper fragment on the back of the head runs concurrent with his much less-discussed placement of the triangular fragment at the front of the head, and  suggests that he believes there were TWO large holes on Kennedy's head, including one large one at the top of the head that somehow went unobserved by the Parkland witnesses Mantik pretends to "believe".

Yep. it's sad but true. The witnesses recalled but one large hole. Robertson, whose earliest writings had suggested there were two holes, is of late a one-holer, and Mantik is either a two-holer, or a super-gigantic-one-holer.

Now, the fact just presented--that Mantik beliieves the triangular fragment was frontal bone, and that JFK had either two holes on his head, or one massive hole far larger than the one described by the Parkland witnesses--is not something most of his readers can process. 

So one such reader, Sandy Larsen, decided to confront Mantik on this point, and ask him if my (it turns out mistaken) belief he was a two-holer, was accurate. 

So Mantik set him straight, and responded, "No second hole--just one large one." 

EGADS! THAT'S ONE LARGE HOLE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE FRONTAL BONE TO THE MIDDLE OF THE OCCIPITAL BONE!!!!

Now, in case you were wondering how, in his response to Larsen (which Larsen shared on the Education Forum on 12-15-21) Mantik explained no one's noticing this MASSIVE hole at Parkland Hospital, well, he offered "The scalp covered the majority of this large hole."

Now, to be fair,  Mantik is not the only writer on the medical evidence to propose a hole on the front of the skull went unnoticed at Parkland Hospital.

One of the first to do so was Dr. Robert Artwohl, a prominent single-assassin theorist. In a 1992 letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, ironically, written in response to a letter by Mantik, Artwohl declared: "Mantik also discusses the discrepancy in the size, location, and appearance of the head wound between the Dallas and Bethesda examinations. This is hardly surprising. In Dallas, the physicians were trying desperately to save the President’s life and were confronted with an actively bleeding wound comprising blood, brain, bone fragments, scalp flaps, and clot. Furthermore, the head wound gushed blood with each chest compression. Most likely, the large frontoparietotemporal bone flap, so evident on the Zapruder film, was closed over and was held in place by clot..."

Wait, what? Artwohl had ignored or forgotten that the hole at the top of the skull could not be "closed over" by a bone flap--at least not according to the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, which concluded the largest piece of bone found outside the skull was parietal bone from the top of the skull.

The CT version of the bone flap theory is even more desperate. In Killing Kennedy (1995), Harrison Livingstone acknowledged that the "large 10 cm piece of parietal bone" found in the limo accounted for a large percentage of the missing bone described in the autopsy report, but then sought to make this fit the recollections of the Parkland witnesses by claiming "this area of missing bone was covered with scalp or hair and not seen."

Oh, really? A 10 cm long piece of bone, comprising roughly 65 sq cm, is missing from the top of a man's skull, and NONE of the dozen or so doctors claiming to have gotten a look at the wound on his head--which they recalled as being on the back of his head even though he was lying on his back--noticed it was missing? Seriously? The top of his head just back of his forehead looked normal even though there was no underlying skull, or brain, for that matter, to support it? Livingstone must have been kidding, right?

Sadly, no. He wasn't kidding. Nor was Mantik himself kidding when he told his audience during a 4-27-21 presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website that the wound observed by Dr. Humes when he first viewed Kennedy was an enormous wound stretching from front to back on the right side of Kennedy's head. And showed them such a wound on the image below... 

(Note: this is a photo of a sculpture by Ed Chiarini first published by Robert Groden.) 

Now let's be clear. Livingstone and Mantik were not offering up the possibility/probability the wing of bone by the ear was put back in place by Jacqueline Kennedy as the limo raced to Parkland...and that this misled the Parkland witnesses as to the forward margin of the wound. No, they were offering up that scalp fell back in place at the front of the head and covered up a giant gaping hole for which there was no bone.  

And, for what's worse, they failed to recognize the significance of their words. As missing scalp is suggestive of a bullet's entrance, and torn scalp is suggestive of a bullet's exit, men like Livingstone and Mantik--the very men millions of readers have relied upon in coming to their conclusion the shot came from the front--are actually suggesting, albeit unwittingly, that the fatal shot came from the rear, leaving a hole in the scalp on the back of the head, but only torn scalp on the front of the head. 

An Apology of Sorts

Now, I initialy believed Doug Horne was also of the mindset of Livingstone and Mantik, and that he too believed a giant head wound had gone undetected at Parkland... 

And here's why... In the documentary film A Coup in Camelot (2016, in a section on Horne's findings, narrator Peter Coyote says the following words: "In the Zapruder film, a flap of skull can be seen opening up after the head strike. During the frantic ride to Parkland Hospital, the flap had been folded back into place where the blood acted like glue and sealed the wound. That wound was not spotted at Parkland, as it was obscured within the hairline."

Well, that's that, I thought. Horne's in line with Mantik. But, come 2024, it dawned on me. 

1. Horne didn't say the words, Coyote did. 

2. Horne would never say such a thing. 

Horne had, after all, long-claimed the skull fragments from the top of the head purportedly brought into the autopsy after being flown in from Dallas had actually been removed by Dr. Humes in pre-autopsy surgery, right there in Bethesda. So, yeah, in Horne's theory, there is no need to explain why the Parkland witnesses failed to see a large defect on the top of Kennedy's head, because in Horne's theory there was no such defect to be seen. 

Now, of course, this creates a whole slew of other problems, such as why Clint Hill claimed he saw a large bone fragment on the seat of the limo and why his fellow agent Sam Kinney claimed he'd subsequently recovered a large skull fragment from the floor of the limo, and, oh yeah, why Bill Newman, who was looking at the back of JFK's head as he passed by, claimed he saw the side of Kennedy's head blown off.  But no, Horne, who knows damn well the Harper fragment, which he claims exited from the back of JFK's head, was not found in the limo, fails to address these roadblocks to his theory and instead insists in his online presentations that any description of a large wound on the front of JFK's head before Dr. Humes created such a wound is a "lie." 

IOW, "Screw you, Bill Newman! You inconvenient sack of...shinola!" (To paraphrase.) 

And not just Bill Newman, but Tom Robinson. We have seen how Mantik and Horne have taken Robinson's description of a small wound or wounds by the temple or cheek and have twisted that into his claiming there was an entrance wound high on Kennedy's forehead. Now that's bad enough. But I haven't yet shared that Robinson also described, in his 1996 ARRB interview, with  Horne, "a 'blow-out' which consisted of a flap of skin in the right temple of the President's head which he believed to be an exit wound," and claimed further that he believed the wound on the back of the head to be an entrance wound.  

So yeah, the only "blow-out" wound, or exit wound of any type,  described by Robinson--Mantik and Horne's and fill-in-the-blank's star witness for a supposed entrance wound on the forehead and a supposed blow-out wound on the back of Kennedy's head--was an exit wound by Kennedy's temple--a wound Horne claims was created by the doctors.

So, to refesh, here's what Robinson said and what Horne heard.

WHAT ROBINSON SAID: I saw a few marks on the cheek, what I believed to be a blow-out exit wound by the temple, and what I believed to be an entrance wound on the back of the head.

WHAT HORNE HEARD (AND BROADCAST TO THE HEAVENS): I saw an entrance wound high on the forehead, and a blow-out exit wound on the back of the head. 

So, yeah, Horne essentially flipped off Robinson as well as Newman. And that's the nice version. As Horne also claimed Robinson drove Kennedy's body to the autopsy, and failed to disclose this to anyone, what he did to Robinson was much much more than a gentle flipping of the bird. 

And that brings us back to Mantik, who, despite subjecting himself to what one can only imagine have been hours and hours of discussions with Horne, has refused to accept Horne's central assertion there was no wound at the top of the head prior to Humes' creation of such a wound. While Mantik did insist, in his 2010 review of Horne's book, that Horne had convinced him that Dr.s Humes, Boswell and Finck had "indeed played alterationists with the skull and brain." before JFK's autopsy, it appears this conclusion didn't stick, as Mantik has since made many statements suggesting a large piece of frontal bone was blasted from the head during the shooting. 

In fact...I didn't notice it at the time--because I probably had better things to do--but Mantik stepped away from Horne as early as 2014. To wit, in his online article--The Harper Fragment Reviited--which he then turned into a book--Mantik wrote "In my reconstruction, the occipital hole (that was reported by so many witnesses) was formed by the bone flap labeled McC (when this flap swung outward) and by the immediately adjacent HF defect. Together, these two defects formed a single hole." He then added a footnote, which led to: "Robert McClelland (at Parkland) and James Jenkins (at Bethesda) both recalled such a posterior bone flap. In fact, they compared recollections of JFK's posterior skull with one another and found good agreement. At Bethesda, Dr. Robert Canada also noted a posterior exit wound and saw "avulsed occipital bone" (The Assassination Debates (2006), Michael Kurtz, p. 39). Malcolm Perry, M.D., had also described "...a large avulsive wound on the right posterior cranium..." (WC Hearings, Volume 17, Commission Exhibit 392). This agreement between Parkland and Bethesda is, of course, a powerful indication that no one had altered the skull between those two sites." Now, Mantik's claims were nonsense. And his reliance upon Kurtz--who, as we shall see, often cited interviews with people  who were dead at the time--is an embarrassment. But the point is that in his zeal to reinforce his own pet theory, Mantik was, perhaps unwittingly (as he may not have not realized Horne's pet theory depended on Jenkins' not seeing the head wound until after it had been altered) throwing Horne s pet theory out with the bathwater. 

And this should not come as a surprise... In Mantik's 2021 presentation on the Future of Freedom Foundation website, after all, he spent slide after slide pretending to be Dr. Humes and going through what he claimed were numerous lies told by Humes, but said nothing of Humes' altering JFK's body in pre-mortem surgery, and in fact proposed the opposite--that, as shown above, a large hole on the top of the head was evident when Humes first viewed the body. 

So, yikes, Horne is all alone on this...unable to get the support of even his closest colleagues...

So, yeah, apologies to Doug Horne. I thought he was only a little bit out there...

The Slow Motion Switcheroo

Let us now demonstrate the fatal folly of following false messiahs. (While this is undoubtedly unfair, I couldn't resist the alliteration.)

Here is Harrison Livingstone in a 10-29-93 letter to Dr.s Robert McClelland and Ronald Jones, found in the archives of Malcolm Blunt: "Last night Dr. Mantik reported to me during our meeting in Washington D.C. that he has found conclusive evidence of forgery of the x-rays of John Kennedy's skull. Mantik viewed the original film in the National Archives both last week and this week, with the permission of the Kennedys. He finds that the lateral x-rays are composites made up of the left and right laterals and in vitro x-rays, and that the area of the large defect described by all Dallas witnesses and the autopsy report is covered over in the x-rays. It is the abnormally white area in the published photos of the x-rays."

Here is Harrison Livingstone in the October-November 1993 issue of The Investigator, discussing Mantik's first trip to the archives: "Dr. Mantik found that the large hole on the right side in the back of the head described in the autopsy report and by the Dallas medical witnesses was covered up in the X-rays."

And here is Mantik himself at a Livingstone-put-together press conference days later: "What someone did in taking the x-rays of Kennedy during the autopsy was to put a great white patch on the back of the lateral X-ray to cover up the hole, which is why the area is so extraordinarily white," (Source: Reuters news Article on the 11-18-93 press conference, published in Livingstone's book Killing Kennedy, published 1995.)

And, should one assume the writer of this article, Jeanne King, to have misreported Mantik's words, here is an AP report by Richard Pyle, on this same news conference, which was similarly republished by Livingstone in 1995: "Dr. David Mantik, a radiologist from Rancho Mirage, Calif., said he recently conducted 'optical density' tests on the photos in the National Archives, finding that they were 'composites' that blocked out the large exit wound and positioned a bullet fragment to suggest a shot from the rear."

And here is Dr. Randy Robertson in a 2-4-94 letter to Jim Lesar found in the Weisberg Archives: "David also has said that the "big white patch"was put on the back of the skull x-ray to hide the large area of bone that was missing there because a bullet exited out the back of the head."

And here is Mantik himself in a 4-10-94 letter to researcher Harold Weisberg found in the Weisberg Archives: "The primary question now is -- and always should have been: why is there no obvious missing tissue at the back of the head? What we see instead on the lateral X-ray is a remarkably white area, where it should appear relatively dark, secondary to significant missing tissue."

Mantik's suggestion the x-rays were altered to hide a hole in the back of the head thereby became big news, at least in the eyes of the research community. Here is Livingstone again in Killing Kennedy (1995), which devoted an entire chapter to Mantik and his findings: "Dr. Mantik found beyond any question that the x-rays are altered images intended to hide the position of the large defect as described in the autopsy report itself...We can see the unusual whiteness on this area of the x-rays with the naked eye." And here he is later in the book: "the rear part of the hole described by all witnesses is nowhere to be seen in the lateral x-rays. That is because it is covered over." And then later down the page: "light readings on post-mortem x-rays on other cadavers (provided by Doug DeSalles, M.D.) in the area of what Dr. Mantik calls the 'great white patch' over the large defect area in the back further proves that it cannot be a true feature of the skull."

And it wasn't just Livingstone that was hawking Mantik's wares. The second-to-last page of the Winter 1996 issue of the Kennedy Assassination Chronicles featured a large ad for a 7-part video series by Dr. James Fetzer, priced at 19.95. In this series, Fetzer discussed the recent findings of a number of researchers, including Dr. Mantik. Leading off the list of the most important "new JFK assassination findings" presented in this series is "that autopsy x-rays of JFK's cranium were fabricated to conceal (a) massive blowout to the back of the head." In part 3 of the series, now available on youtube, Dr. Fetzer discussed Dr. Mantik's finding one could add a white patch to an x-ray. He then relates "In that way you'd have a patch that concealed exactly the area that all the witnesses testified had been blown out at the back of the President's head."

Mantik's claim spread far and wide... Here is how Noel Twyman described the computer-enhanced right lateral x-ray in his book Bloody Treason (1997): "This x-ray is considered by Dr. David Mantik to have been altered to conceal evi­dence of a blow-out of brain from the right hemisphere of the head through a hole in the rear of the skull. This was accomplished by either making a composite x-ray in which area P was masked to conceal the absence of brain or bone in that region, or by shielding that portion of the head when the x-ray was taken."

And here is how Stewart Galanor presented Mantik's findings in Cover-up (1998): "Dr. Mantik was forced to conclude that the autopsy X-rays of President Kennedy's head had been altered. They were composites. The original autopsy X-rays had been rephotographed with a radio-dense patch super­ imposed over the rear portion of the head, the region precisely where the Parkland doctors had seen a large gaping wound."

So what was Mantik saying about all this? Well, he most certainly wasn't denying these claims. Here is Mantik in a 2-hour video-taped interview placed online by Bart Kamp, presumably filmed around this time: "The Dallas doctors and most of the witnesses at the autopsy as well described the large hole in the head as being in the right rear of the skull. So on the x-ray that area should have looked dark, as if tissue were missing, rather than white, as we now have it...If this darker area had been overexposed by a second exposure then they could have eliminated this darker area at the back of the skull...then it would no longer look as if a lot of tissue were missing from the back and one would no longer conclude that there had been a bullet from the front. So there was certainly strong incentive for wanting to alter the x-rays. It does look like there's just a large white patch back here with fairly clear outlines, fairly clear borders, that's just been placed over this area on both the left lateral and right lateral x-rays."

(Mantik pointed out where he meant by "back here" when stating this, moreover. This is shown in the image below.)

He was then handed a copy of the right lateral x-ray, and pointed out the location of the "white patch" on the x-ray. As he did this, for that matter, he announced: "It was quite a large area, and it overlies the area that the witnesses said was missing." Now, this couldn't be any clearer. The area on the x-ray pointed out by Mantik was precisely where he had just placed his hand on his head. He was thereby claiming that the white patch overlies where the witnesses placed the wound--on the side of the head, and not the far back of the head--and that the dark area presumably covered up by the white patch was the location of the large defect.

That's what everyone assumed anyhow. Here is how Mantik's number one supporter, Dr. James Fetzer, presented Mantik's findings in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000): "As Mantik has discovered through the employment of optical densitometry studies, the lateral cranial x-ray has been fabricated by imposing a patch over a massive defect to the back of the head, which corresponds to the eyewitness reports..."

And here is Fetzer again in The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003): "Dr. David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D...has discovered that the right lateral cranial x-ray has been altered by imposing a patch to conceal a massive blow-out to the back of the head..."

And here is Fetzer in Reasoning About Assassinations, an article published in the International Journal of the Humanities (2006): "In response to the controversy ignited by the release of Oliver Stone's film "JFK", I organized a research group of physicians, physicists, photo-analysts and attorneys to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy...Our research has...led to the discovery of...deceptions in the death of JFK. The most important are that the autopsy x-rays have been fabricated (a) to conceal the massive blow-out to the back of the head that more than forty eyewitnesses reported and (b) to add a 6.5 mm metallic slice in an apparent effort to implicate an obscure World War II Italian Mannlicher-Carcano as the weapon used."

And here is Fetzer again on a TV program entitled The World's Greatest Mysteries (2008): "The President's autopsy has been a source of controversy in that regard which extends to the autopsy x-rays which were fabricated to conceal a massive blow-out to the back of the head caused by a shot from the front."

And here is how author Jim Douglass presented Mantik's findings in JFK and the Unspeakable (2008): "There was far too much bone density being shown in the rear of of JFK's skull relative to the front. The X-ray had to have been a composite. The optical density data indicated a forgery in which a patch had been placed over an original x-ray to cover the rear part of the skull--corresponding to the gap left in part by the Harper fragment, evidence of an exit wound. The obvious purpose was to cover-up evidence of a shot from the front that, judging from the original Parkland observations, had created an exit hole the size of one's fist in the back of the head..."

And here is how Mantik's closest associate Doug Horne presented Mantik's findings in an interview published in Dick Russell's book On the Trail of the JFK Assassins (2008): "The two lateral skull x-rays, Mantik has demonstrated, had a very dense optical patch superimposed on the copy films over the occipital-parietal area behind the ear to mask the blow-out or exit wound seen in Dallas in the back of the head."

And here is what Horne had to say about Mantik's findings in his own book Inside the ARRB Vol. 1, published the next year: "Mantik posited that the purpose of placing the  alleged forged composite copy films of the skull into the official record was twofold...in the case of the two lateral skull x-rays, the purpose of the suspected artifact (which Mantik calls the 'white patch') was to obliterate, or rather mask, an area of missing bone (and brain) in the right rear of the skull--and therefore to erase evidence of being shot from the front..."

And here is Horne in Inside the ARRB, vol. 2, published at the same time as vol. 1: "If Dr. Mantik is correct that a dense patch is present behind the right ear in x-rays 2 and 3--and that x-rays 2 and 3 are not originals, but instead are forged composite copy films of the real laterals, with a patch or large artifact covering up a blow-out behind the right ear superimposed, then this could account for the differences in perception between the many autopsy witnessed who recall the back of the head missing, or blown out, at autopsy, and who believed that night that President Kennedy had been shot from the front, and the perceptions of the Clark Panel, the HSCA panel, and most people who view x-ray no. 2 and 3 today, who see apparent evidence of an exit wound in the right front of the skull."

And should that not be clear enough, here is Horne in vol. 2 a bit later: "Mantik believes that the 'great white area' in the posterior skull (the occipital-parietal area, to be precise) on the lateral x-rays is an optical 'patch' (i.e., a 'light-blasted' area) superimposed on top of the authentic x-ray image...The transmission ratios between area 'P' and the ear canal are different on the JFK lateral skull x-rays because the forged composite copy films created after the autopsy were imperfectly created--that is, the right lateral was 'light-blasted' more than the left lateral was during the copying process, when the occipital-parietal blowout was obliterated by exposing the copy film to extra light in that region."

And here is how Mantik presented his findings in his 2009 JFK Lancer presentation: "The White Patch was likely added in the dark room, to both left and right lateral X-rays. Its purpose was to obscure the loss of tissue at the back of the skull and its effect (especially alongside the very dark area at the front) was to suggest a bullet entry from the rear that blew out tissue from the front."

And here is how Mantik, in an interview uploaded to youtube on 3-31-10, responded to his friend and supporter James Fetzer's assertion the white patch was probably created "in order to conceal the massive blow-out to the back of the head reported by more than 40 different witnesses including massive, experienced physicians at Parkland Hospital"...crickets. Fetzer said the white patch was perhaps Mantik's "most celebrated" discovery, and said it was probably done to conceal the large defect observed at Parkland Hospital, and Mantik didn't deny it. And, should one assume Mantik was simply being polite, one should note how Mantik responded to Fetzer's subsequent question about Kennedy autopsy radiologist John Ebersole. When asked whether Ebersole would be the "prime candidate" for being the one who'd "effectuated the obfuscation of the defect," Mantik replied: "Yes, he would."

And here is how...just kidding. I'm sure you get it by now. Mantik said the white patch covered the hole on the back of the head noted by the witnesses and the research community echoed his claims. As he also claimed the Harper fragment had exploded from the back of the head, moreover, it seemed obvious Mantik had simultaneously claimed the white patch covered the hole from which the Harper fragment had exploded. That's what everyone thought. And I dare say that's what Mantik wanted them to think.

But then I came along. From leafing through some radiology books, and putting two and two together, I realized that the central claim regarding Mantik's findings--that the white patch covered a hole on the back of Kennedy's head--was hoo-ha, as the "white patch" was on the side of the head, and did not reach the back of the head.

I began stating as much online. Now, this led to attacks by Dr. Fetzer in which he called me the worst researcher ever, etc. But my efforts were not in vain. On 10-11-10, in a Fetzer post on the Education Forum, Mantik responded to my assertion the Harper fragment did not correlate with the white patch. He wrote: "I have never demonstrated exactly where on the lateral skull X-ray the Harper would appear, but it would be at the very rear." Well, the white patch is not at the very rear. He had thereby confirmed my conclusion.

But he failed to state as much publicly. As a result, writers continued to cite either Mantik's original claim about the white patch, or Fetzer and Horne's subsequent claims. Here is Phillip F. Nelson in LBJ: Mastermind of the JFK Assassination (2013): "Dr. Mantik's expert analysis of the two lateral skull x-rays proved conclusively that 'a very dense optical patch [was] superimposed on the copy films over the occipital-parietal area behind the ear to mask the blow-out or exit wound seen in Dallas in the back of the head.'"

But alas, all things must pass. On October 17, 2013, as part of our "duel" presentations on the Harper fragment at the Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh, Mantik finally admitted: "The white patch has nothing to do with the missing Harper fragment!"

Now this didn't come as a surprise. I'd noticed some years earlier that Mantik had retreated from his earliest claims regarding the white patch. To wit, his 2003 paper summing up his findings had said merely that "the white patch 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." Well, heck, that's a long cry from claiming its purpose was to conceal the occipital-parietal blowout described by the Parkland witnesses.

And this was nothing new. A 12-12-98 post by Mike Griffith on the alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup reported: "In other correspondence with me, Dr. Mantik pointed out that the large white patch is NOT in the same area as the right occipital-parietal wound described by so many witnesses. In light of this, I asked him to explain why the white patch was placed on the x-rays. He replied as follows:

MANTIK: TO MISDIRECT ATTENTION TO THE DARK FRONTAL AREA--IT LOOKS MORE LIKE AN EXIT THEN. ALSO, IN REALITY, THERE WAS BRAIN MISSING AT THE REAR (WHICH WOULD BE CONSISTENT WITH A REAR EXIT) BUT BY USING A WHITE PATCH THIS MISSING BRAIN WAS OBSCURED."

So the white patch which Mantik originally claimed covered a hole now only covered up the missing brain near the hole. Now, what had changed since Mantik first popped on the scene, claiming it had covered the hole observed by the witnesses? Well, a quick review of Mantik's writings shows that he never mentioned the Harper fragment in his early articles, and that he first claimed it fit into the middle of the back of Kennedy's skull in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000). So it seems clear from this that somewhere between 1994 and December 1998 he realized he couldn't have it both ways--a blow-out hole on the right side as well as on the middle of the back of the head--and decided to ditch his original claim the white patch covered a hole on the right side.

But did Mantik acknowledge that he'd changed his mind on this issue? Or that, at the very least, he'd misled the research community on this very important point?

No, of course not. In 2014, in his book Panjandrum, Harrison Livingstone claimed "A primary reason for altering the skull X-rays was that the large defect or hole in the back of the head created by an exiting bullet (seen by nearly all witnesses) had to be obliterated..." Now, this was what Mantik had told Livingstone back in 1993.

Now note how Mantik responded to this claim in his CTKA review of Livingstone's book: "The need for such a cover-up is totally false...the defect caused by the Harper fragment lies at the very rear of the skull. Missing bone due to the Harper fragment is not (and never was) obvious on the X-rays, so it did not need to be covered up. I have never held (or stated) any other position, although others have misinterpreted my position on this matter".

Wow..."Missing bone due to the Harper fragment". Perhaps Mantik wants us to believe that when he told Livingstone and the country that "someone...put a great white patch on the back of the lateral X-ray to cover up the hole, which is why the area is so extraordinarily white" that he was talking about a hole other than the hole created by the missing Harper fragment.

But no, that doesn't work either.

In part 2 of his "Final Synthesis" (2014), Mantik wrote: "The White Patch has nothing to do with missing occipital bone. That Patch lies far anterior to the missing occipital bone (where HF originated). This point has often been misunderstood by researchers, who think that the White Patch was superimposed in order to cover up the missing HF, but of course they are wrong. In fact, the darker areas on the JFK skull X-rays often represent missing brain rather than missing bone; a point I have often made, but which still tends to be overlooked. On the lateral X-ray, the HF defect is not apparent to the naked eye (nor should it be, because it is too far posterior); so there was nothing for forgers to cover-up at that site. So why was the White Patch added? We can only guess, but most likely the forgers wanted to draw attention away from the rear of the skull (where some brain was actually missing), so that viewers would instead focus on the anterior skull, where lots of brain is missing (on both lateral X-rays). The resulting visual impression would, of course, suggest that a bullet exited from the front, but not from the rear; thus further implicating Oswald. Had I altered the skull X-rays, I would have omitted the White Patch; it just seems like overkill. It would have been enough just to add the 6.5 mm object. But when someone gets a clever idea, such as altering X-ray films in the darkroom, it is easy to get carried away with one's own ingenuity."

And he followed this up with an extended appearance in the documentary film A Coup in Camelot (2016). There, when discussing the reason the white patch was added, Mantik mused "If there were a dark area at the back (of the head), that would imply a lot of missing tissue in the back of the head, wouldn't it? And that would suggest a shot from the front. So they didn't want that. So they added the white patch to make it look like the back of the brain was all okay."

Now, let's not pretend. With this article and this interview, Mantik was in full retreat. He'd become the darling of the research community when he told them the white patch covered up the hole observed by the witnesses. While he may have believed it covered up the evidence for a hole, i.e. missing brain, and not an actual hole on the skull, he never took the time to explain this to anyone, and instead let his followers believe what they wanted to believe and write what they wanted to write. Then I came along, and pointed out that the white patch does not cover the location of the hole Mantik claims was on the back of the skull. He then and only then admitted that the white patch had nothing to do with the hole on the skull, and complained that those claiming it did--essentially all his closest colleagues and supporters--had misunderstood what he'd told them.

If he'd actually told them... On May 22nd, 2015 a 75 minute-long interview of Mantik's closest associate Doug Horne was put up on youtube under the title "JFK--The Medical Cover Up". In this video Horne discussed the white patch as follows: "The skull x-rays in the record today do no reflect the damage seen at Parkland Hospital or the damage done by assassins' bullets. They reflect the damage done by post-mortem surgery. And  in fact, the right and left lateral x-rays--taken from the side--do not show a blow-out in the right rear of the head. What they do show is a bright white patch, which according to Dr. David Mantik in his analysis emits about 500 times more light than it should in a normal x-ray...His conclusion is that all three surviving skull x-rays are altered copies...The ones taken from the right and left side were fixed, by light blasts, it's that simple."  Well, it certainly seems from this that Horne never got a memo from Mantik telling him that "the white patch has nothing to do with missing occipital bone."

And the white patch isn't the only aspect of Mantik's conclusions that has proved too confusing for his supposed supporters to follow... In October 2013, just as Mantik was preparing to declare that the white patch had nothing to do with the presumed hole in the occipital bone, Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell pushed out They Killed Our President!, a surprising best-seller. Now, in their book, Ventura and Russell repeated a claim about Mantik I'd heard dozens of times online, a claim that was 100% wrong, moreover. Ventura and Russell started out by quoting some of Mantik's comments in Doug Horne's Inside the ARRB. They then summarized: "In other words, the wounds didn't change by themselves. What that means in plain English is that they were altered and the massive exit wound at the rear was disguised medically so that it could be represented in the official autopsy photos and x-rays as displaying the effects of a shot from the rear." They then quoted a review of Horne's book by Brian Rooney. It read: "At this point, Dr. Humes performed clandestine surgery of the head to enlarge the head wound to create "evidence" of a temporal/parietal exit and an incision was made to remove evidence of a right forehead entry. The scalp and skull were manipulated to conceal the size and location of the occipital "blowout" and a "wound" was created to simulate a small entrance wound on the back of the head."

Well, first of all, I think Rooney was wrong. Neither Mantik nor Horne, to my understanding, have ever claimed the small entrance wound on the back of the head was created by the doctors. 

And second of all...yikes, this series of quotes suggests just what so many supporters of Mantik and Horne incorrectly believe about their research and conclusions--that they suggest the x-rays were faked to hide a hole on the back of the skull. Now, Mantik thinks the back of the head autopsy photos were faked, and Horne, to my undertstanding, thinks that scalp was manipulated to conceal a large wound in those photos. So it's a bit confusing. But let's be clear. Although Mantik initially claimed the white patch on the x-rays covered a hole on the back of the skull, and later admitted that it didn't cover a hole on the skull but perhaps covered a dark area of missing brain, he never said anything about the x-rays proving someone had re-constructed the skull prior to the x-rays being taken. He, in fact, claimed the opposite: that the x-rays were taken when a blow-out was apparent on the skull, and that this blow-out WAS NOT covered.

And yet I have run into the claim Mantik's research proves the large wound was covered over over and over again over the years. (Yep, that's four "overs" within six words. A new world record?) The problem stems, I think, from cognitive dissonance. Mantik's conclusions make no sense to most studying the case. (I mean, really, Mantik is a leading light of assassination research...who's concluded there's a HUGE blow-out on the back of Kennedy's head...that can not be readily observed on the x-rays???) When confronted with such a dilemma, many if not most of those exposed to Mantik's conclusions check out, and assume he's concluded something else entirely--either that the white patch covered this HUGE blow-out, or that the HUGE blow-out was concealed via skull reconstruction prior to the taking of the x-rays. That Mantik pretends to believe and Horne actually believes the body was altered to ADD a HUGE blow-out to the top of the skull, and that the x-rays are thereby deceptive in that they show MORE damage to the skull than was observed at Parkland Hospital, is simply indigestible* to most of those studying the medical evidence.

(*With apologies to Robert Palmer...)

And no, I'm not misrepresenting Mantik's claims...

In Part 2 of his 2014 "Final Synthesis," Mantik attempted to rebut Robertson's claim the x-rays showed no hole in the occipital area.

Here is his rebuttal:

"Robertson relied heavily on JFK's lateral skull X-ray to conclude that occipital bone was intact. Actually, at first glance Robertson appears to be correct; occipital bone does seem to be present. Ironically, though, Robertson's argument can also be used to show that no frontal bone is missing; which is clearly false. Let us illustrate this: since frontal bone is visible on the lateral skull X-ray, we should (according to Robertson's logic) conclude that (almost) no frontal bone was missing. On the other hand, based on the AP X-ray, we know that some frontal bone (mostly on the right side) really is missing. Therefore, mere gross inspection of the lateral X-ray cannot tell us whether some frontal bone is missing. The human eye is simply not sensitive enough for this task.

The same is true for the occipital bone; based on the lateral X-ray, our eyes cannot tell us whether some occipital bone is missing. The problem is that we are viewing this site tangentially; and so long as some bone intercepts the X-ray beam we will see some occipital bone on the lateral X-ray. And, just as we had to assess missing frontal bone by using the AP X-ray, likewise we should try to assess missing occipital bone on the AP X-ray. Unfortunately, for this task our eyes are simply not good enough; in particular, on the AP X-ray there is too much intervening tissue (both brain and bone). So instead (on this AP X-ray) we must rely on the OD data."

Well, heck. Mantik said nothing about the OD readings on the lateral x-rays proving there was a hole on the back of the head--his revelation in his debates with myself and then Robertson. No, instead, he retreated to his earlier position; that it was the OD data on the AP x-ray which proves occipital bone was missing!

Now, he sees it. Now he don't.

Dr. Mantik vs. Your Lyin' Eyes

But what's more important at this point is that we see what he doesn't want us to see.

In Mantik's "Final Synthesis", he presents the right lateral x-ray as Figure 14. Here is its caption:

"Figure 14. JFK lateral skull X-ray. Notice the apparent presence of frontal bone (red arrow), where we know that some bone (on the right side) was absent, and the apparent presence of occipital bone (yellow arrow). The metal fragment on the rear of the skull is identified by the orange arrow; on the AP X-ray, its partner image lies inside the 6.5 mm object (as seen at the Archives). The center of the White Patch is identified by the green arrow. The cyan arrow locates the anterior border of Seaton's guess for my placement of HF. That is far too anterior; that anterior border should instead lie near the tip of the yellow arrow."

Well, I'll be. If Mantik had run down the middle of a busy street wearing a chicken suit he couldn't have done more to damage his credibility. Look at Mantik's placement of the Harper fragment on the slide above. Look at the location of the H. It's at the middle of the skull, right? Well, the skull curves forward from this location. It only follows then that the left and right edges of the Harper fragment stretch forward from the rear of the skull, and that the hole left by the loss of the fragment should be apparent on a lateral x-ray from this forward location on back, at least in the areas where the defect encompasses both sides of the skull.

Now look at where Mantik places the yellow arrow signifying the anterior edge of the Harper fragment. Now let this sink in. Mantik wants--no, expects--us to believe that the seemingly intact skull from that arrow to the back of the head is an illusion, and that in reality (Mantik's reality, at least) most of that bone--for 2 1/2 inches up and down the back of the head, mind you--is missing.

A "Hole" Filled with Bone?

And no, I'm not kidding. In 2013, Mantik reviewed Sherry Fiester's book Enemy of the Truth and approximated the location for the "orange-sized hole" he thinks people saw on the back of Kennedy's head. He approximated this, moreover, with an orange arrow on Figure 6, an image of Kennedy's right lateral x-ray. Now, this is the same x-ray Mantik used for Figure 14 of his "Final Synthesis." There, he presented a yellow arrow to designate the anterior edge of the former location of the Harper fragment, that is, the anterior edge of this "orange-sized hole" on the x-ray.

I have overlapped these Figures on the slide above. This proves that there is significant bone at the back of the head between what Mantik claims is the front of the hole and what Mantik claims is the back of the hole.

THERE IS NO HOLE THERE, PEOPLE!!!!

Still, perhaps I'm missing something. Here, then, is Mantik's caption for Figure 6:

"Figure 6. The yellow arrow represents the trail of metallic debris on this JFK lateral skull X-ray. The cyan arrow identifies the 7 x 2 mm metal fragment – removed by Humes at the autopsy. The dark blue arrow identifies the small fragment at the rear, which is seen as a phantom image through the 6.5 mm object on the AP skull X-ray. The beige arrow locates the orbit, while the green arrow identifies the EOP (external occipital protuberance). The violet arrow locates the ear canal, and the orange arrow approximately locates the orange-sized hole reported by most witnesses. I have explained elsewhere why such a hole would likely not be visible on a lateral skull film." [58]

When one goes to footnote 58, however, all one finds is a link to Mantik's bizarre review of my website--in which he failed to offer an explanation for why such a hole would likely not be visible--accompanied by the following comment: "In particular, the defect left by the Harper fragment would not be expected to be visible on this lateral x-ray."

So, there it is. Mantik's explanation for why "such a hole would likely not be visible" is that such a hole "would not be expected to be visible." That's circular reasoning, folks.

Still to be fair, in his "Final Synthesis" Mantik finally offers up an "explanation" for his preposterous claim we shouldn't expect to notice a giant gaping hole on the back of the skull on a lateral x-ray. He wrote: "so long as some bone intercepts the X-ray beam we will see some occipital bone on the lateral X-ray." But this is hogswallop, pure and simple. If Mantik is correct, and the Harper fragment was dislodged from the middle of the back of Kennedy's head, NO bone can intercept an x-ray beam at the middle of the back of the head because all the bone is missing...on BOTH SIDES of the skull.

The Unseeable Border Between Too Much and Nothing

There is another problem with Mantik's yellow arrow, for that matter, one that is especially hard to digest... (Not that one should digest arrows...)

The placement of this arrow on the x-ray proves that, in Mantik's mind, if nowhere else, the "hole" he says we're not equipped to see with our eyes, but which can be "seen" via his OD measurements... begins at the posterior edge of the white patch.

Well, let's think about this. Since his first visits to the archives, Mantik has claimed the area he calls the white patch is too white to be explained by overlapping bone, and that, if authentic, it actually suggests Kennedy was a "bonehead" in this area, with solid bone running across the skull from one side to the other.

He has claimed, furthermore, that the "whitest area" of the white patch "lies immediately anterior to the inner table of the occipital skull."

And now he's switched things up and claimed the area just posterior to this white patch is not the inner table of the occipital skull (as claimed in his 2011 review of this website), but the former location of the Harper fragment... that, in other words, there really is no bone in this area...and that, by extension, our eyes just aren't equipped to detect the border between too much and nothing.

And that, gulp, only he can detect such a thing...using his special machine.

Well, this is voodoo science, people. 

Birdbrain Meets Bonehead

Now all this talk of voodoo science makes me think of witch doctors, which in turn reminds me that Mantik is a highly-educated doctor of western medicine with real-life actual patients...many of whom die of cancer...

Alas, this brings us to "Birdbrain". "Birdbrain" is Mantik's name for a lateral skull x-ray taken of one of his patients (now deceased), onto which he has superimposed a pteranodon shape. He has presented this x-ray in articles and presentations to show how easy it is to superimpose a "white patch" on an x-ray. One problem is that this "patch" is a solid patch, and bears little resemblance to the "white patch" on Kennedy's x-rays, through which one can make out underlying features and fractures.

But perhaps that's just nit-picking. A far bigger problem, IMO, is that the skull in the x-ray onto which Mantik has added a pterosaur is a skull with "many dark opacities" that, in Mantik's own words, "suggest a diagnosis of multiple myeloma."

In this diagnosis, moreover, Mantik is almost certainly correct. Here are some x-rays (found online) depicting multiple myeloma:

This image was found here: http://jnm.snmjournals.org. The caption to this image reads: "Stable focal osteolytic bone lesions of skull and right humerus in a patient with multiple myeloma in complete remission for 5 years." (And yes, I have cropped off the humerus--and no ,that's not a joke.)

A similar article explains: "Multiple myeloma is named for the "clock face" appearance of these cancer cells when seen under a microscope. They infiltrate virtually all of a patient's bone marrow. In x-ray images of multiple myeloma, it looks like holes have been "punched out" of the bone." (This article and the image below can be found here: https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases--conditions/multiple-myelomaplasmacytoma

The caption to this image reads: "A skull x-ray taken from the side shows typical findings of multiple myeloma and multiple "punched-out" holes. The arrow is pointing at one of the larger holes." Well, heck, this proves that a circle of cancerous bone will not only be recognizable along the back of the skull, but easily recognizable.

And, finally, this image was found here: http://www.medical-labs.net. 

First note that the dark circles (osteolytic lesions) suggesting multiple myeloma are as recognizable at the back of the head as elsewhere. Now note that the back of the head has a white patch approximately as white as the white patch on Kennedy's x-ray. While I have no idea why this is, it's significant, IMO, that this x-ray (which I just stumbled across online) replicates a situation (the parietal bone's being nearly as white or as white as the petrous bone) that Mantik would have us believe is impossible, and indicative of alteration.

And that's not even to mention the elephant in the room. These images depicting multiple myeloma, Mantik's "birdbrain" included, suggest that Mantik knows perfectly well that missing or even cancerous bone along the back of the skull on a lateral x-ray... is readily detectable... And that Mantik's claim otherwise is smoke.

Mantik's Semantics

Yep, Mantik's "Final Synthesis" was nothing if not smoke. Its central claim was that the Harper fragment derived from JFK's upper occipital bone. Well, a quick glance at an anatomy book proves there are a number of ridges on the internal aspect of the upper occipital bone. In between two of these ridges, moreover, there is a groove, which corresponds with the superior sagittal sinus of the brain.

And yet...the internal aspect of the Harper fragment is nearly flat, with none of the ridges and grooves you would expect to find if it were upper occipital bone...

And this isn't just something I came up with. Dr. Joseph Riley, a neuro-anatomist, pointed this out to Dr. Mantik...in the 1990's. Yep, way, way, back, well before I entered the fray, Riley had already pointed out that in contrast to parietal bone occipital bone has "internal markings, including deep sulci ("grooves") that are much larger than vascular grooves; these are grooves for the transverse sinus and superior sagital sinus. No such deep grooves are visible in the photographs of the Harper fragment."

Now, to be fair, it's not as if he didn't present images of the internal occipital bone in his "Synthesis." It's just that he presented them in such a manner that a quick comparison with the Harper fragment was difficult, if not impossible. In Part 2 of his "Synthesis" (a part in which, curiously enough, the Harper fragment itself was never shown) Mantik presented, first, the internal aspect of the occipital bone on an actual skull, and second, the internal aspect of the occipital bone as depicted in Gray's Anatomy.

Here is what he had to say before presenting the first image: "Figure 17A shows the inner occipital surface of an authentic human skull that I purchased...In Figure 17A the sulcus for the transverse sinus is identified. On the skull that I purchased that sulcus is actually quite deep but that impression of depth is lost in this two dimensional photograph. On HF a similar loss of depth may also have made the superior sagittal sinus appear more superficial than it actually was; that may explain why Riley could not recognize it as sagittal sinus."

Feel free to read that again. Mantik was offering up excuses for Riley's not noting the ridges and grooves only Mantik sees on the Harper fragment. The pictures were 2-D, you see, when the actual Harper fragment was 3-D.

Now, on first glance, this might appear to be mighty kind of Mantik.

But it avoids yet another elephant in the room. (He really needs to get that door fixed!) Image 17 A is below. The skull in this image was cut an inch or so down from the upper margin of the occipital bone. If Mantik's orientation for the Harper fragment is correct, the middle of the skull along the cut line should correspond to the middle of the Harper fragment. But there's no resemblance. At the middle of this skull along the cut line there's a ridge that separates the right and left lobes of the brain. And there's nothing like that whatsoever on the Harper fragment.

So how did Mantik get around this?  Well, Mantik got around this by playing semantics. Here is the relevant part of the caption to Figure 1, an image of the Harper fragment, of his "Synthesis:" "A vascular groove (blue arrow) can also be seen in 1B. Another groove (green arrow) has been cited by some (e.g., Riley) as an ordinary vascular groove; however, it might instead be the sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus."

And here is a passage from later in Part 1, in which Mantik once again discusses Riley: "the sulcus (or groove) for the superior sagittal sinus may actually be visible on HF (Figures 1 and 30B). Riley did not specifically address that possibility."

Hmmm... It "might" be. It "may" be. "Riley didn't specifically address..." Well, this might be funny if it wasn't so godawful. Mantik's friend Fetzer regularly attacks writers for using "weasel words." And here Mantik is, pulling the weaseliest trick in the business. Mantik's Figure 1 consists of the two photos of the Harper fragment presented on the slide above, with a number of added arrows. On the slide above, I have placed a green arrow on the photo of the internal aspect of the fragment exactly where Mantik placed it on his Figure 1. And I have placed a similar arrow on an anatomy drawing showing the internal aspect of the occipital bone, as viewed from the front. And I have matched up the relative sizes of the bones in the photo and drawing. Well, ding ding ding, anyone with eyes can see that the thin vascular groove Mantik points out bears no resemblance whatsoever to the much deeper and wider groove for the superior sagittal sinus.

So how can Mantik criticize Riley for not specifically addressing a possibility that is, at best, a minute possibility, a possibility on the level of the moon's being made of cheese, or George W. Bush's being a secret Muslim?

And why didn't he show his readers the internal aspect of the occipital bone alongside the Harper fragment? I mean, that's what one does, right? When one writes that something "might" be a something else, one usually presents a photo or drawing of this first something along with the something it might be. And yet, no images of the internal aspect of the occipital bone were presented alongside the internal aspect of the Harper fragment in any of Mantik's writings in which he claims the Harper fragment is occipital bone.

In any event, here is the relevant part to Mantik's caption for the  image up above: "In my reconstruction, the Harper fragment lies entirely superior to the internal occipital protuberance (violet arrow). The sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus is identified by the blue arrow. This sulcus may also be visible on the inner surface of HF." Well, heck, there it is again: "may".

Mantik then presented a drawing from Gray's Anatomy.

Here is Mantik's caption for this image: "Figure 18. Interior view of the human skull. In the lower occiput, note the sulcus for the transverse sinus (red arrow). In the upper occiput note the sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus (blue arrow), which may be visible on the interior surface of the Harper fragment."

So there it is again. It "may" be. The thought occurs that Mantik knows or at least suspects that the Harper fragment is not occipital bone, but desperately wants his readers to believe otherwise.

And that wasn't the end of it. In Part 3 of his essay, published the next spring, Mantik reported that researcher John Hunt had only recently discovered the FBI's photos for the Harper fragment. He then questioned if "based on this new evidence (especially the possible sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus)" Dr. Riley would change his opinion regarding the orientation of the Harper fragment, and come to agree that it was in fact occipital bone. Mantik then presented the "new" photos discovered by Hunt in the archives. The photo of the internal aspect is shown below.

Here is Mantik's caption for this image: "The rather straight groove (green arrow) may be the sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus. For comparison, see that structure in Figure 17A (my purchased skull) and Figure 18 (a textbook figure). As would be expected for this sulcus, it appears straighter than most meningeal grooves."

So that's six times Mantik wrote "may," "might," "possible", when he should have written, "I'm sorry for wasting your time on this, but there's just no freaking way the Harper fragment is occipital bone." 

(Correction... As Mantik would recycle the image above in a 2019 review of Dr. Robertson's findings and claim "the straight groove (green arrow) may be the sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus," the current count is actually seven, or more...) 

So, yes, Mantik has repeatedly embraced the "maybe" as a way of avoiding the "nope."

Here is yet another example.  In his 2015 book John F. Kennedy's Head Wounds,  Mantik cites the statements of Dr. Cairns, the first pathologist to be shown the fragment, in support of his analysis. But he recognizes a problem. Although Cairns claimed to have concluded the fragment was occipital bone from observing the fragment itself, Cairns made no mention of the superior sagittal sulcus (the vertical groove on the inside of the occipital bone we've discussed), which even Mantik recognizes as the key to identifying a bone fragment as occipital bone. So how does he (Mantik) get around this? 

You got it--more weasel words. 

First, he repeats his frequent claim that the photos he'd taken of the skull he'd purchased had failed to reveal the depth of the sulcus, and then extrapolates from this that "a similar loss of depth may also have made the the superior sagittal sinus (sic, he meant sulcus) appear more superficially than it actually was" on photos of the Harper fragment. 

And second, he claims that "perhaps Cairns meant this sulcus" when he told Andy Purdy of the HSCA there were "suture and inner markings where blood vessels run around the base of the skull." and then offers, in his footnotes, that "Cairns may have said 'sulcus' (for the superior sagittal sulcus) where Purdy wrote 'suture'" in Purdy's report on his talk with Cairns. 

I mean, anything, absolutely anything,  but admit Cairns--who, let's recall, Mantik relied upon while claiming the  fragment had entrance beveling when the photos prove it had exit beveling--failed to note a sulcus on the fragment that Mantik needs to be apparent on the fragment...but that's not apparent on the photos of the fragment..  

To recap. Mantik has admitted something doesn't appear to be something else, but says maybe that's because the photos of this something are deceptive. And he has acknowledged as well that the best witness he has to this something being something else...failed to describe the one thing that would indicate this something really was something else. And he has offered as an explanation for this that maybe the person recording the statements of this witness had misheard him. 

That's the weakest of sauces, essentially water.

Let's boil it down even further. Here is the essence of Mantik's argument: "Something is not shown in a photo, but maybe the photos are deceptive. And yeah I know the statements of the best witness to it in real life reflect that he did not see it either, but maybe that's because the report on what he saw was in error." 

Never mind water. Mantik's secret sauce is water vapor, essentially hot air... Without even the substance of smoke... 

And it's less than that. Mantik has taken Cairns' obviously incorrect guess the Harper fragment was occipital bone, and drawn from this not only that Cairns was correct, but that the Harper fragment has features (the sulcus) not shown in the photos, and other features ( beveling) which are misleading, as the obvious exit beveling is really, well, entrance beveling. 

It's like he's waving a magic wand and saying "Who you gonna believe? Dr. Cairns and myself? Or your lying eyes?"

If you've read this far, I assume you've chosen the latter. 

So let's take a closer look. The photo of the Harper fragment above is significantly over-sized relative to the skull photo and anatomy drawing above. And yet the thin vascular groove on the Harper fragment is still not as wide as the "groove" for the superior sagittal sinus on the skull photo and anatomy drawing.

And that's not even to mention that the groove on the skull photo and anatomy drawing runs down the middle of a ridge separating the right and left cerebral fossa, and that no such ridge is apparent on the Harper fragment...

Here is how Gray's Anatomy describes the internal surface of the occipital bone: "The internal or cerebral surface is deeply concave. The posterior part or tabulur is divided by a crucial ridge into four fossa. The two superior fossa receive the occipital lobes of the cerebrum, and present slight eminences and depressions corresponding to their convolutions. The two inferior, which receive the hemispheres of the cerebellum, are larger than the former, and comparatively smooth; both are marked by slight grooves for the lodgment of arteries."

And here is how the two superior fossa are depicted on Wikipedia... Note that Mantik contends that the nearly-flat interior aspect of the Harper fragment correlates to the middle of the pink area.

So, yes, there's no way around it. It seems readily apparent that for his "Final Synthesis," Dr. Mantik synthesized smoke--that he kept his exhibits separate and used "weasel words" to conceal from his readers what he feared they'd discover for themselves, namely, that the internal aspect of the Harper fragment bears no resemblance whatsoever to the internal aspect of the upper occipital bone where he has long placed the fragment.

But, no, he still wasn't done. On July 23, 2015, Mantik published an e-book covering the same material covered in his four-part article. This was more modestly entitled "John F. Kennedy's Head Wounds: A Final Synthesis--and a New Analysis of the Harper Fragment. Not a Novel." He then rallied his friends Jim Fetzer and Jim Marrs into helping him promote the book, and a number of other JFK researchers and writers (e.g. Jim DiEugenio, Vince Palamara, Doug Horne, Larry Hancock, Peter Janney, Greg Burnham, Joseph Mcbride, Cyril Wecht, and Wallace Milam) into writing rave reviews for the book on Amazon.com.

Although mostly a reprint of his online article, this e-book included a few surprises that led me to further question Mantik's credibility. In both the article and the book, Mantik claimed the central portion of the lambdoid suture is not visible on the A-P x-ray, and that this suggests the center of the back of the skull is missing. He then claimed the Harper fragment completes this missing area on the back of the skull. Now, here's the switch. Towards the end of his book, Mantik admitted that he no longer believes the lambdoid suture is present on the Harper fragment!

Well, just think about that. If the lambdoid suture is not present on the Harper fragment, then the fragment does not complete the missing area on the back of Kennedy's skull Mantik claims he's ID'ed on the the AP x-ray. That's plain as day, right?

Well, yeah, that's plain as day, even to Mantik. In both the article and the book Mantik covered himself by writing "The missing sutures may have been on small bone fragments that were ejected." Well, there it is again... "May". Whenever Mantik runs into a seemingly insurmountable problem, he thinks up a "may" that allows his "pet" theory another day of life. (Hmmm... Maybe he should have been a veterinarian.)

In any event, here's another surprise from Mantik's book. While repeating his latter-day confession there was no connection between the Harper fragment and the white patch, Mantik assured his readers that "no significant missing bone is apparent on JFK's lateral x-ray in the area that I labeled the White Patch." Well, great googly moogly. This was the same guy who'd emerged on the scene claiming "someone...put a great white patch on the back of the lateral X-ray to cover up the hole, which is why the area is so extraordinarily white." He had now admitted this was pure speculation on his part, and that there was nothing on the x-rays to suggest this was true. 

The Migrating Discontinuity

This brings us to the biggest surprise in Mantik's book. Here is Mantik's (hopefully) final observation regarding the lateral x-rays: "Indicator 10: On the lateral x-ray, over the back of the skull, an abrupt change in OD occurs precisely where the HF defect begins...It was only as i prepared the present essay that I realized I might see a discontinuity in the OD data precisely where occipital bone was missing at the very rear of the skull. In fact, that turned out to be correct. As I examined the data a discontinuity appeared just where the lamdoid sutures were missing." He later concluded: "on the lateral x-ray, the sudden jump in ODs (from superior to inferior at the rear of the skull) strongly implies absent occipital bone--into which HF could fit."

Mantik was thereby doubling-down on what he'd claimed at the 2013 and 2014 conferences. He explained why he never mentioned it before his "debates" with myself and Robertson by saying it was a recent discovery. Well, this might make sense had he mentioned this in the massive article published two months after his debate with Robertson. And it might make sense if this "discontinuity" was where he'd said it was when he pointed it out in his debate with Robertson. But it wasn't. It was inches away, on another bone. One might rightly wonder, then, if he'd added this into his book in an attempt to cover his tracks.

To be clear, here's why one might wonder such a thing. Mantik and myself had a little-seen debate on 10-17-13. Mantik and Robertson had a little-seen debate on 9-27-14. In these "debates" Mantik claimed the lateral x-ray showed a hole on the back of the head. This was something he'd never said before. On 11-20-14, Mantik published a 2-part online article, entitled in part "Final Synthesis", which specified that no hole on the back of the head could be found on the lateral x-ray, but that such a hole was suggested by the A-P x-ray. No mention of an upcoming book was made at this time. On 3-2-15, the Mantik/Robertson debate was put online. Now people could see that Mantik had claimed to have discovered a hole on the back of the head on the lateral x-ray. Part 3 of Mantik's article was put online 4-4-15. (It's unclear whether Mantik mentioned his discovery in this part, seeing as it was subsequently taken down and was strangely not recorded by The Wayback Machine.) In any event, on 5-12-15 Dr. Mantik made an appearance on his buddy Jim Fetzer's interview program The Real Deal, in which he announced an upcoming book. This was a 2-hour interview in which Dr. Mantik repeated that one should not expect to see a hole on the back of the head on the lateral x-rays, and made no mention whatsoever of his supposedly important discovery of just such a hole, using his OD measurements. Mantik's e-book, in which he announced his discovery of a hole on the lateral x-rays (albeit in a different location than he claimed the year before), was published on 7-23-15. The 4-part article in which Mantik presumably failed to mention such a hole was then disappeared, sometime before September.

To me, this seems suspicious. But I'm willing to believe it isn't. It could be that Mantik prepared his 11-20-14 article well in advance of his 9-27-14 debate with Robertson, and forgot to add in his most recent discovery. And, as long as we're giving him the benefit of the doubt, it could be that his article was taken down to maximize sales of his book.

But, no, that doesn't work. In the Acknowledgements section of his e-book, Mantik acknowledged he'd worked on his "monograph" and "interminable essay" in Santa Fe NM and Carlsbad CA in August 2014. Bethesda MD in September 2014, Portland OR in October 2014, and his home in Rancho Mirage CA on his birthday on October 14, 2014. So how could he have failed to mention a discovery he'd first reported in October 2013? And, since he brought it up, Mantik is a doctor from Rancho Mirage, California. This area is quite affluent. The money derived from book sales would presumably be pocket change compared to his regular income. It seems probable, then, that exposure from the 4-part article would be more valuable to Mantik than money from his e-book sales. So why was the article taken down, if not to hide something? Mantik had made mistakes in his earlier articles on CTKA, and had never gone back to correct them. So why was this article disappeared?

It's probably not worth thinking about. But, unfortunately, I think about a lot of things that aren't worth thinking about. The location for the discontinuity pointed out by Mantik in his debate with Robertson was on the side of the head, INCHES away from where he now claims it to be, at the middle of the lambdoid suture at the very back of the head. Had Mantik had a brain fart? Had he briefly confused the location for the white patch with the location of his latest discovery on the lateral x-ray? Or had he blown smoke at myself and Robertson, and then covered himself by adding a more credible version of this smoke into a book written months later?

We have reason to suspect the latter. In his most recent "Final" discussion of the "discontinuity" on the back of the head in the lateral x-rays Mantik admits there is no corresponding "discontinuity" below. Well, hello! He had thereby admitted he had nothing by which to approximate the size of this hole, if it was in fact a hole. And he had thereby self-destructed his subsequent claim the discontinuity "strongly implies absent occipital bone--into which HF could fit."

He also offers up some numbers for our digestion. He writes that "the OD values are nearly constant (OD = 1.10) just superior to this discontinuity, and then again nearly constant (OD = 1.46) inferior to this discontinuity." Well, heck, this is not nearly as impressive as he pretends. In fact, it's more depressing than impressive. For starters, the Harper fragment is not uniform in shape. It is, in Mantik's orientation, 2 times or more wider near its middle (where it covers the entire back of the head and wraps around onto the side) than at its top (where it fails to cover the back of the head). So why would the ODs of the hole left in its absence be "nearly constant"?

Oh wait, I forgot. Mantik now claims there "may have been...small bone fragments that were ejected." These fragments, one can only assume, can be rustled up to explain the "nearly constant" ODs. And yet, this would be totally at odds with Mantik's orientation for the Mystery Photo, in which he fits the Harper fragment into the back of the head like a puzzle piece. Hmmm...something wrong here...

And not just there, but here... In Assassination Science (1998) Mantik published the OD values surrounding the small metal fragment on the back of the head just above what he now claims as the"discontinuity." These values, recorded clockwise, starting at 12:00, were 1.72, 1.45, 1.33, 1.25, 1.11, 1.24, 1.41, and 1.59. He then reported the values for the air off the back of the skull, 3.30, 3.24, 3.49, and 3.44. Note first that there is a jump of .27 from the 12 o'clock position to the 1 o'clock position. This approximates the .36 jump Mantik finds so significant. And yet Mantik fails to claim this as a "discontinuity", and then wonder if there is a hole in this location... Now note that four of these values, at the 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 6 o'clock and 7 o'clock positions, are nearly as large or larger than the value of Mantik's proposed hole.

And now realize that Mantik's OD measurement for the small fragment itself--the fragment he says is real and readily apparent to one's eyes when looking at the unenhanced x-rays--is 1.50.

Well (pukes in mouth) this means that Mantik's supposed hole was whiter and more dense than what he claims is a fragment of metal embedded in intact bone at the back of the head...a half an inch or so away.

There was no large hole, except, perhaps, in Mantik's mind.

The real problem as I see it is this: Mantik commands too much respect within certain circles. It's almost like a cult. If you publicly question Mantik's findings, an internet thread or article will soon appear challenging your expertise and your right to question the findings and/or competence of the great David Mantik. Few if any of the issues will be addressed. The focus will be on who are you to disagree, as opposed to why you disagree.

Here's a recent example. In November 2015, Dr. Michael Chesser endorsed Dr. Mantik's theories. Now, I responded to this by presenting a few reasons why I thought he was in error. And a number of articles popped up as a result. One such article (which I was able to confirm was written by Mantik himself) was written as a dialogue between Miguel Cervantes, Sancho Panza, and Don Quixote, in which I was Quixote, a pretend knight with a penchant for attacking windmills, and Panza, his pretend squire, a combination of several other members of the Education Forum. Well, this was quite insulting to these other members, none of whom could be considered "followers" of anyone, let alone followers of myself.

This article was also, shall we say, poorly-researched. Time and time again it put words I'd written into the mouth of Panza, and words others had written into the mouth of Quixote. It was as if accuracy had become irrelevant to its author. I'd drawn blood so he wanted some blood in return.

So why even mention the article? Well, it included an important development. In his desperation to hold onto his own impossible dream--his dream the Harper fragment is occipital bone--Mantik jumped the shark, IMO. I mean, I don't see how any of his closest supporters can honestly support him on this one. In an effort to address the problems I'd demonstrated regarding the appearance of the Harper fragment, i.e., that it failed to show the ridge running down the middle of the inside of an occipital bone, Mantik wrote: "Chronic use of steroids (e.g., JFK) is often associated with osteoporosis. Not only can bones become thinner, but actual bone remodeling can occur. Although the professional literature strongly suggests that osteoporosis is not likely to occur in the skull, the critical question seems unanswered: Can bone remodeling, even without overt osteoporosis, occur in the skull? To be more specific: Could this mechanism have decreased the prominence of JFK’s sulci in the upper occipital bone?"

Well, this was as disgusting as it was surprising. Quite clearly, Mantik had come to realize that his photo of the interior aspect of the occipital bone--on which he'd added captions and arrows in an apparent effort to conceal the ridge--still showed too much ridge, and had decided to try to offset this by arguing that, gee whiz, perhaps Kennedy's Addison's disease had thinned out his bones to such an extent that this ridge was no longer visible. Well, this was a page from Dr. Lattimer's book. When Dr. Lattimer realized Kennedy's back wound was below his shoulder line, and almost certainly at or below the level of his throat wound, Lattimer raised up the shoulder line by claiming Kennedy's Addison's disease had made him a hunchback. Now, Mantik had done much the same. I'd demonstrated to the research community that the interior aspect of the Harper fragment bore no resemblance to the interior aspect of the occipital bone, and Mantik had countered by claiming Kennedy's Addison's disease might have "remodeled" his occipital bone. To quote David Spade, in his so-bad-it's-good classic, Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star, this is nucking futs!

Of course, Mantik is not the only "researcher" and "theorist" whose "research" demands more "research", and whose theories make me scream and/or quote David Spade. And his book is but one of dozens I can whole-heartedly not recommend. I would, in fact, urge caution when reading any book on the assassination, whether CT who-dunnit or Oswald-did-it Bible. It takes a lot of assumptions and/or blind beliefs to make sense of this nonsense--and some of those assumptions and blind beliefs are bound to be wrong.

Mantik in a Nutshell

So why spend so much time on Mantik, then? Well, it goes back to what I mentioned a minute ago: that Mantik commands too much respect in the research community. He has led it astray, IMO. It is my hope, then, that my shining a light on the bizarre nature of Mantik's claims will prove helpful to those just beginning their journey.

When assessing Mantik's credibility, to be clear, one should keep in mind:

• After first viewing the autopsy materials, Dr. Mantik told his fellow researchers his OD measurements proved the x-rays had been altered, and that a white patch had been added to the lateral x-rays to cover a hole on the back of the head. (1993) He later backed off this claim, and said the white patch had been added to make the back of the head appear more white than the front of the head. (1998) He was then confronted with the fact the white patch didn't actually cover the back of the head, and that his original claim had been incorrect. (2010) He then claimed he'd never said the white patch had been added to cover a hole on the back of the head, and that it was all a misunderstanding. (2013) He also said his OD measurements for the lateral x-rays actually suggest there was a hole on the back of the head, posterior to the white patch. It's just that we can't see it. (2013)

• He would subsequently admit that his newly-discovered evidence for this "hole" consists of a sudden change in optical density from 1.1 to 1.46 along the back of the head, and that there was no corresponding change in optical density at a lower point along the back of the head. In other words, that this "hole" wasn't a hole but a line... And that wasn't the worst of it. Unstated but apparent when one compares Mantik's 2014 appearance announcing this discovery with his subsequent discussion of this discovery in his book is that the location for this sudden change in optical density had moved across the skull, from the parietal bone to the occipital bone. (2014-2015). And that still wasn't the worst of it. When one re-reads Mantik's chapter in Assassination Science (1998), one finds that Mantik claimed his OD measurement for the small metal fragment he claims to see near the supposed location of the cowlick entrance was 1.50. Well, this makes the supposedly metal fragment supposedly embedded in bone along the back of the skull less dense than the 2 1/2 inch triangular hole below it. And that's insane.

• Mantik's claims regarding the A-P x-ray are similarly problematic. He initially claimed his OD measurements suggested a 6.5 mm fragment had been superimposed onto the x-ray. (1993) This was presumably done to give the impression a 6.5 mm bullet had entered at the back of the head. He would subsequently demonstrate both that the fragment on the x-ray isn't 6.5 mm (1998), and that it gives the appearance of two overlapping objects. (1998) He would bolster this last possibility, moreover, by claiming his OD's for this fragment show more metal at the top on the A-P x-ray, but more metal at the bottom on the lateral x-ray. (1998) When confronted with the possibility the large fragment was actually the fragment behind the eye recovered during the autopsy, and that it overlapped a smaller fragment on the back of the head, however, he refused to consider this possibility on the grounds "no prior viewer" had "recognized as metal" the fragment behind the eye on the lateral x-rays, which he acknowledged was not apparent on the pre-mortem x-rays, but nevertheless presumed to be bone. (2009) Instead, he stood by his claim the fragment discovered at autopsy and placed in the archives was not found behind the eye (where everyone present at the autopsy claimed it was discovered), but on the middle of the forehead, inches away! And this even though he'd previously concluded the fragment on the middle of the forehead on the x-rays could not be the fragment now in the archives! (2001) 

• Mantik's claims about this fragment revealed more about himself than the fragment, for that matter. A 7-3-98 newsgroup post from Mantik to researcher Clint Bradford, found online, has Mantik both agreeing that one should "pay more attention to the quality of the argument than the so-called prestige of the author", or even his "academic credentials", but whining that "there must be no more ad hominem attacks on individuals who judge the Z film to be altered--merely because they have not worked in special effects in Hollywood." (Mantik, we should be reminded, claims the Z-film was edited to remove the stopping of the limousine even though many of the witnesses he'd used to claim the limousine had stopped had actually said it did not stop and all the top experts to study the film, including renowned expert Rollie Zavada, felt certain no such edit was made in the film.) Now contrast this to what Mantik wrote in response to this website's discussion of the bullet fragment behind the eye removed at autopsy. He wrote: "The so-called “slice” that Speer identifies on the lateral X-ray is the ultimate “boner” ...No expert has ever identified that site as a piece of metal...The discussion that follows from his misidentification should just be ignored—totally. The reader should simply ask himself a simple question: Who is more likely to be correct—an amateur who has viewed only prints or zillions of experts, who have seen the X-rays?" (2011)

• And the beat goes on (or should I say, the beat down goes on)... By 2000, Mantik had also taken to claiming his OD measurements for the A-P x-ray proved something else entirely, namely, that occipital bone was missing. (2000) He said he'd identified the lambdoid suture on the back of the head in the x-ray, and that the middle section of this suture was missing. (2000) He claimed, moreover, that this area of missing skull "matched the size and shape of the Harper bone fragment uncannily well." (2001) He has more recently concluded, however, that the lambdoid suture is not present on the Harper fragment. And this, in turn, has led him to propose that the suture was present on some smaller bone fragments, that were ejected from the skull from above the Harper fragment and never recovered. (2015) Well, let's step back. Mantik's orientation for the Mystery Photo has the left side of the Harper fragment fitting into the back of the head like a puzzle piece. (2000-2015) So much for that. And so much for Mantik's claim the Harper fragment matches up with the missing skull on the A-P x-ray. (2001) I mean, these recently conjured-up bone fragments have to fit in somewhere. 

• Except don't tell that to Mantik. In November 2015, after the publication of the e-book in which he admitted no sutures were visible on the Harper fragment, Mantik made an appearance on the Night Fright radio show in which he claimed he saw the lambdoid suture on the A-P x-ray except "where the Harper fragment was." He said further that this was "a very powerful piece of evidence." He ignored completely that he'd recently concluded there were no sutures on the Harper fragment and that it therefore wasn't from where he just said it was. And this wasn't just a slip of the tongue. He repeated moments later that the suture was missing from "where the Harper fragment was and disappeared."

• And that's not all. With the publication of Murder in Dealey Plaza, Mantik told his fellow researchers that the Harper fragment was found close to where Jean Hill had been standing. (2000) This was behind Kennedy at the time of the head shot. This supported Mantik's conclusion the shot came from in front of Kennedy. Mantik was then confronted with the fact Harper had repeatedly pointed out the location where he'd found the fragment, and had even marked it on plats of the plaza...and that this location was well in front of Kennedy at the time of the head shot. Mantik then changed his position on this. He stopped claiming Harper found the fragment in a location behind Kennedy, and conjured up instead that some unnamed person or force had moved the fragment from behind Kennedy's position at the time of the head shot to a location in front of Kennedy's position, where it was subsequently found by Harper. (2013)

• And that was not the last of Mantik's conjuring. From the outset, Mantik has argued that the Harper fragment was occipital bone. When confronted by Dr. Joseph Riley, and told the Harper fragment did not look like occipital bone, Mantik played word games and claimed there were features on the Harper fragment which "may" be the features one would expect to find on the upper half of the occipital bone. (2009) When confronted with the fact this was balderdash, and that the Harper fragment in fact bears no resemblance to the upper half of the occipital bone, Mantik then reversed course, and claimed that while it doesn't look like the upper half of the occipital bone well you never know because the drugs taken by Kennedy to combat Addison's disease could have re-modeled his skull whereby the bones in his skull no longer display the ridges which keep the brain in place--not that there's any evidence such a thing could happen, or has ever happened, mind you. (2015)

So, YIKES! Mantik wants us to believe his study of the Harper fragment proves Kennedy was killed by a shot fired from in front of the limousine. To that end, he has concluded that a number of bone fragments were blasted out the back of Kennedy's head, even though the largest of these fragments--the Harper fragment--was recovered from a location in front of Kennedy's position at the time he was shot. He has acknowledged, moreover, that this fragment bears little resemblance to bone in the location of the skull from where he believes this bone was blasted, but holds that this could be because Kennedy's bones were remodeled by drugs. He has acknowledged, furthermore, that the back of Kennedy's skull on the x-rays is unaltered, and that Kennedy's x-rays show no evidence for a large hole on the back of the head that can be detected by a layman viewing prints on the internet, or even a radiologist viewing originals at the archives. And he claims, ultimately, that he's performed special tests through which this hole has been revealed.

There's no mistaking it. It's voodoo science, people!

Let's break free of its spell, then, and take a closer look at the "scientific" basis for so many of Mantik's "findings."

Patspeer.com

Chapter 19e: Dr. Mantik's Flying Circus