Back in August 2010, I
detailed on this blog my belief that author Dr. Donald B. Thomas was
most likely correct in asserting that President Kennedy was struck in
the head by only one bullet, fired from the grassy knoll. Having
revisited the works of radiologist Dr. Randy Robertson and
neuroscientist Dr. Joseph N. Riley, I have realized that Dr. Thomas
(and I) must be wrong and that, in fact, JFK's skull was hit by two
separate bullets¾one
from the right front and one from the rear. More than this, the
evidence shows that the rear entrance wound was precisely where
autopsy doctors Humes, Boswell, and Finck said it was in their
report: "2.5 centimeters to the right, and slightly above the
external occiptal protuberance [EOP]”.
Much
of my own personal confusion about the rear entry wound was caused by
the contradictory official accounts; most especially the fact that
official U.S. government panels had moved the wound 10 cm up the
skull from where it was located by the autopsy surgeons. On top of
this, there appeared to be disagreement among the autopsy doctors
themselves about the very nature of this alleged entry hole, with Dr.
James J. Humes claiming that it was a "through-and-through"
hole in an otherwise intact plate of bone, Dr J. Thornton Boswell
saying it was a semi-circular notch on the margin of a larger defect,
and Dr. Pierre Finck appearing to give both versions at different
times. Add to this the fact that the Assassination Records Review
Board asked three independent experts to review the autopsy
materials, and none of them could locate an entry hole anywhere on
the skull, and it seemed obvious that the whole story was built on a
lie. The whole reason they couldn't get their stories about the
alleged rear entrance hole straight, I thought, was that no such hole
ever existed.
I thought wrong.
Reason to Reconsider
It
was reading Walt Brown's unique book The Warren Omission that sent me
back to the head wounds. Brown highlighted a passage from the
testimony of Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman that, although I had
read his testimony at least twice before, I had somehow managed to
forget. Asked by the Commission to describe what he saw at the
Bethesda autopsy, Kellerman described a large exit wound,
approximately 5 inches in diameter, in the right rear of the head. He
continued:
KELLERMAN: Entry into this man's head was right below that wound, right here.
SPECTER: Indicating the bottom
of the hairline immediately to the right of the ear about the lower
third of the ear?
KELLERMAN: Right.
But it was in the hairline, sir.
SPECTER: In his hairline?
KELLERMAN: Yes, sir.
SPECTER: Near the end of his hairline?
KELLERMAN: Yes, sir.
SPECTER: What was the size of that aperture?
KELLERMAN: The little finger.
SPECTER: Indicating the diameter of the little
finger.
KELLERMAN:
Right. (2H81)
Despite
Arlen Specter's somewhat ambiguous interjection, "to the right
of the ear", it is clear that by describing an entry that was at
the "lower third of the ear" Kellerman provided independent
corroboration of an entrance wound low down on the back of the skull;
just as described in the autopsy report. And, in fact, Kellerman clarified this in a sketch he prepared for the HSCA:
For
me, this was extremely compelling because I could see no reason for
Kellerman to have lied. With this is mind, I decided to go back to
the statements and testimonies of the various individuals present at
the autopsy. It occured to me that in my previous readings I had
always been looking for recollections of the exit wound. This time I
wanted to see who else, if anyone, remembered the entrance wound.
Re-reading
the statements reaffirmed my recollection that the majority of those
who saw the President's body only recalled the large 17 cm wound on
the right side of the head described in the autopsy report as an
exit. This is probably not surprising given how shocking this massive
wound must have been for many of them. However, there were a few
witnesses who gave evidence of an entrance wound in the rear. There
was Richard Lipsey, aide to U.S. Army General
Wehle, who
told Andy Purdy of the HSCA that there was an "entrance in the
lower head...just inside the hairline." [1] There was
FBI Agent Francis O'neill who told Purdy that "The autopsy
doctors felt that the bullet that entered the head struck the centre,
low portion of the head" [2] and prepared a sketch
showing this low entry wound.
And
there was Bethesda photographer John Stringer whose ARRB testimony
includes this exchange:
Q. Now let me point out to you a circle, which is on the back of the skull¾that's a small, self-contained circle¾which Dr. Boswell identified as being the entrance wound, or what he believed to be the entrance wound. Does that small circle seem to be, to you, accurate in terms of showing where the hole was in the --
A.
I though it was over here.
Q.
When you say "over here", you're pointing more towards the
external occipital protuberance?
A.
Yes.
Q.
Is that right?
A.
Yes. (pgs. 87-88)
Alongside
Kellerman, these witnesses provided independent corroboration for an
entrance wound not simply in the rear, but lower down on the back of
the skull near the EOP¾precisely
where Humes and Boswell said it was. Conversely, I could not find a
single witness who saw an entrance wound higher up, in the "cowlick"
area, where most modern lone nutters wish to believe it was.
The "Tell Tale Trajectory Lines
Roughly
two decades ago, Dr. Randy Robertson and Dr. Joseph N. Riley
independently studied the X-rays and identified the same defect in
the skull as being the wound of entrance.
To his credit, researcher
Pat Speer (who understands as much about the medical evidence as any
of us laymen could be expected to) has trumpeted this finding for a
good number of years. And with good reason since this defect is
located precisely where the autopsy doctors said the entrance wound
was. Yet for some time I remained unconvinced, at least partly
because the independent experts contracted by the ARRB had not
identified it as an entry hole. In the end, it was Dr. Robertson's
compelling article, "The Tell Tale Trajectory Lines", that
caused me to reconsider my position.
As
Dr. Robertson explains, there are two converging (or diverging)
pencil lines on the right lateral skull X-ray that were drawn by Dr.
John Ebersole, the radiologist present at Kennedy's autopsy. In a
November 1, 1966, inventory of the autopsy materials, the autopsy
doctors described these as "angle lines" but did not
elaborate further. [3] When the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel
(FPP) studied the X-rays over a decade later, Dr. James Weston raised
the possibility that these might actually represent trajectory lines
and so Ebersole was called upon to explain their presence. According
to Robertson, "Dr. Ebersole was not a willing participant and
would have preferred not to have come to Washington to testify"
but was persuaded to do so in a phone conversation with the head of
the FPP, Dr. Michael Baden. "In an interview to his hometown
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, newspaper, Dr. Ebersole said that the most
important reason for his consenting to go to Washington was to clear
up a matter about pencil lines present on the X-rays."
[4] Apparently, Dr. Baden had convinced him that it was important they
get the "right" explanation on record.
In
his testimony before the FPP, Ebersole claimed that "sometime
within a month of the assassination" he recieved a call from Dr.
James Young of the White House medical staff. "Dr. Young asked
me if I could review the skull X-rays for the purpose of getting some
measurements for a sculpture." [5] In so doing he made
the two pencil lines on the X-ray; a horizontal line from the nasion
to the occiput, and a vertical line from the high point of the
forehead back to the occiput. According to Dr. Ebersole, these
represented anatomical landmarks that would be recognized by an
artist. He also claimed that the whole thing was conducted in such
secrecy that he had to give his measurements in verbal code over the
telephone. But as Dr. Robertson points out, none of this makes any
sense. If a sculpture of President Kennedy really was to be made, why
would poor quality X-rays of his decimated, post-mortem skull be used
when good quality pre-mortem skull X-rays were available? Why was
there any need for secrecy if the measurements were being made for a
sculpture that would presumably be on public display? And what
special experience and qualifications did Dr. Ebersole possess that
other radiologists did not?
It
is quite obvious that Dr. Ebersole's story was designed to cover-up
the fact that the two pencil lines on the X-ray both lead to the
entrance hole at the EOP; an entrance hole the FPP was determined to
deny the existence of. Why? Because, as Dr. Joseph N. Riley observed,
"If the
rear entrance wound is located where Humes et al. described it, it
proves a second shot to the head. The fragments distributed in
and the damage to the cerebral cortex cannot be due to the shot
described by Humes et al.” because “the wounds are
discontinuous.” [6] Indeed, the trail of metallic debris ends more than
10 centimetres above the entrance in the EOP which is quite obviously
one of the reasons why it was deemed necessary to move the entry hole
up the skull. As I noted in my previous post about the head shot from the knoll, the dispersion of the fragments reveals the direction in which the missile passed through the head. When a bullet disintegrates on striking a skull, the smaller, dust-like fragments are found closer to the entry point and the larger particles are found closer to the exit. This is because the larger fragments, having greater mass, have greater momentum and are carried further away from the point of entry. And what we see on the autopsy X-rays is that the smaller particles are located at the right temple and the larger ones towards the top back part of the skull; revealing a front to rear trajectory.
So why did Dr. Ebersole draw those trajectory lines? Dr. Robertson explains:
We
can now go back to the time when Dr. Ebersole first drew these angle
lines and ask ourselves what artist might have been interested in
these specific lines which do not conform to any known "
anthropomorphic" measurements. We should have a high degree of
suspicion, as did one member of the FPP, that these were indeed
trajectory lines. Given that they were drawn on the lateral skull
x-ray of a homicide victim who suffered a gunshot wound to the head
with one line being on the horizontal and the other corresponding to
the points of entry and exit described in the autopsy report, this
seems a very likely possibility. Dr. Ebersole's story about the
purpose of these lines did have some elements of truth in it except
their true purpose. In fact there was an artist who might have been
very interested in this trajectory in the first few months after the
assassination. That artist was Harold Rydberg who was preparing CE
388. By an amazing coincidence the pencil lines drawn on the lateral
skull x-ray match almost to the degree the
trajectory lines present on CE 388.
They
both measure very close to 32 degrees. [see graphic below with pencil lines highlighted in red] It is beyond my imagination to
believe that these matching trajectory lines were drawn on CE 388
without the direct or indirect use of the measurements off the
lateral skull x-ray. Interestingly the perspective of CE 388 is in
the same straight side view of the head just as the lateral x-rays.
There are strong implications that the x-rays were used as a template
for CE 388 which made no attempt to take into account the tilted
attitude of the President's head towards the left at the moment the
fatal head wounds struck. When CE 388 and the lateral skull x-ray are
compared side by side you see that they both intersect the skull at
the same level _slightly above the EOP. The clue that they point to
is the transverse fracture of the right occipital bone which was
created as a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano bullet entered the back of the
skull at this lower level. [7]
Reading the above
was a revelation for me. In his HSCA FPP testimony, Dr. Ebersole was
asked a number of times where he thought the bullet entered the skull
but he never gave a meaningful answer, saying at one point, “...I
would say on the basis of those X-rays...one might say one would have
to estimate there that the wound of entrance was somewhere to the
side or to the posterior quadrant.” [8] But I believe Dr.
Robertson's analysis shows that Ebersole knew damn well where that
entrance wound was. And as a qualified diagnostic radiologist he also
knew damn well what it meant: JFK was struck in the head by two
different bullets from two different directions.
Sequencing the Head Shots
In his classic 1967
book, Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson was the first author to
posit that JFK was shot from three different directions. He was also
the first to realise that there were two shots to the head; one from
the Texas School Book Depository and one from the Grassy Knoll. And
because he discovered by taking measurements from the Zapruder film
that Kennedy's head moves forward approximately 2.5 inches in 1/18 of
a second, right before it is driven violently backwards, Thompson
reasoned that the rear entering shot came first. But whilst Thompson
was correct about the big picture, he was wrong about the details.
Anyone who has visited this blog before probably knows that I am a
firm believer in the validity of the acoustics evidence. It is my
belief that the acoustics provides us with hard scientific evidence
of the number and sequence of shots and that this hard evidence is of
far greater weight than subjective interpretations of the Zapruder
film alone. And what the proper synchronization of the dictabelt and
the Zapruder film tells us is that the shot from the depository came
approximately 0.7 seconds after the shot from the knoll.
The
first of the two head shots came from the Grassy Knoll and struck at
Zapruder frame 313 causing the head to explode in what Dr. Donald
Thomas has labelled a typical “Kronlein Schuss” (named for the
German ballistics expert who first demonstrated the effect with
clay-filled skulls). The energy deposited as the bullet passed
through the brain imparted a momentum so great that a temporary
cavity was formed. Consequently, a violent wave of hydraulic pressure
was applied to the cranium causing it to burst open. The effect was
worsened by fractures radiating from the point of entrance giving way
under pressure from the brain fluid and macerated tissue, which then
burst out through the upper right side of the skull. As forensic
pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht told me, the bullet that did the damage
was “most
likely was some kind of 'soft lead' (i.e., frangible) ammunition
rather than the kind of bullet that is the 'hero' of the SBT” which
was “military type ammunition that would have produced a different
pattern of fragmentation and overall craniocerebral damage. According
to Dr. Wecht, “A FMJ [full metal jacket] bullet should not produce”
the “lead snowstorm within the brain” that is seen on the autopsy
X-rays. [9] This “soft lead” bullet came in at a high, almost 60°
angle and struck tangentially at the right temple near the hairline.
Breaking up as it penetrated, it took, as objects in motion tend to
do, the path of least resistance so that it was deflected upwards and
leftwards; exiting high in the posterior near the midline.
The
second shot, coming from the depository building at approximately
Z327, entered the back of the skull slightly above the EOP and exited
near the supra-orbital ridge. This bullet¾likely
a 6.5 mm Mannlicher Carcano round behaved
as would be expected and
did
not disintergrate and leave a trail of missile dust in its wake. And
because the "pressure vessell" of the skull had already
been compromised, it did not create an "explosion" of bone,
flesh and fluid as did the shot from the right front. It did,
however, create the considerable damage to the subcortex, part of
which was described in the Supplemental Autopsy Report as "a
longitudal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal
in position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which
extends from the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of
the frontal lobe anteriorly." [10] According to Dr.
Joseph N. Riley, who has a Ph.D in neuroscience and specializes in
neuroanatomy and experimental neuropathology, the subcortical damage
is itself proof that the bullet did not enter 10 cm higher in the
skull as the Clark and HSCA panels claimed. "If a bullet entered
where the panel places the entrance wound", he writes, "it
is anatomically impossible to produce the subcortical wounds." [11]
Conclusion
It is now my conviction that I was wrong to believe there was only one shot to President Kennedy's head. The medical evidence shows damage to the skull and brain, as well as bullet fragmentation, that cannot be accounted for by a single bullet. Together with the eyewitness accounts, the post mortem X-rays establish that there was indeed an entrance wound in the back of the skull at the level of the EOP; just as Humes, Boswell, and Finck claimed all along.
Postscript: A Word About the Forward Motion
As I noted above, I believe that the hard evidence of the dictabelt recording is of far greater validity than subjective interpretations of the images on the Zapruder film, and this evidence establishes that the Knoll shot came first. But I know that there are no shortage of students and theorists who doggedly cling to the belief that the alleged 2.5 inch forward movement of Kennedy's skull between Z-312 and Z-313 can only be due to a shot from the rear. These folks may be interested to learn that the man responsible for introducing that theory, Josiah Thompson, has since abandoned it altogether.
In his online article
“Bedrock Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination”, Thompson writes, “In the years since
those measurements were made, I've learned I was wrong. Z312 is a
clear frame while Z313 is smeared along a horizontal axis by the
movement of Zapruder's camera. The white streak of curb against which
Kennedy's head was measured is also smeared horizontally and this
gives rise to an illusory movement of the head. Art Snyder of the
Stanford Linear Accelerator staff persuaded me several years ago that
I had measured not the movement of Kennedy's head but the smear in
frame 313. The two-inch forward movement was just not there.”
Whether or not Thompson is
correct that the alleged forward motion is an optical illusion is a
matter of intense debate. What is beyond dispute is what Thompson
didn't notice which is the
simple fact that the Zapruder film shows all of the occupants of the
limosuine move dramatically forward at almost the same instant as
Kennedy and continue to do so after he is hurled backwards by the
shot that exploded the right side of his head. This fact is clearly
demonstrated in the following two gifs from researcher David Wimp:
It stands to reason that
the same force which caused the other limo occupants to lurch forward
also affected the President. The question is, what was that force?
Well Physicist Luis Alverez may have inadvertently provided the
answer when he used the Zapruder film to calculate the velocity of
the limousine on Elm Street. Alverez found that the limo began to
decelerate a little under one second before the head shot at
approximately frame 300:
Based on this, it appears
likely that, for whatever reason, Secret Service driver William Greer
had touched the brakes and that this is what caused the limo
occupants to lurch forwards¾all except JFK who was quickly thrown
backwards by the first head shot. With the above in mind, the reader can
hopefully see that claims the forward
motion must have occurred as the result of a bullet impact from the rear have little to no basis
in fact.
NOTES
1. Assassination
Records Review Board (ARRB) Medical Document 87, page 9.
2. ARRB Medical
Document 47, page 5.
3. ARRB Medical
Document 12, page 1.
5. ARRB Medical
Document 60, page 5.
8. ARRB Medical
Document 60, page 28.
9. January 12, 2012,
private email from Cyril Wecht.
10. ARRB Medical
Document 4, page 1.
11.
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/R%20Disk/Riley%20Joe/Item%2004.pdf
