Larry Hancock Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Chris, twenty years ago certainly does feel wrong...not sure if it seems longer or shorter than that though. The individual who presented was not a practicing Doctor at the time of the assassination, only an intern - wish I could remember his name but he presented well after that summary was done, at least ten years or more. I'll ask Deb and see if she remembers him.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Blank Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 I have come to believe today that the choices of Humes, Boswell and Finck were planned. It might have been short range, but they wanted three guys who they could control and who were not at all at the top of their game. If they really wanted a good autiopsy they could have gotten a practicing pathologist from AFIP. If they wanted a great autopsy, they could have flown in Milton Helpern from NYC on a MATS shuttle flight. Helpern was the gold standard at that time in private autopsies. (See Tommy Thompson's non fiction classic Blood and Money.) Why didn't they do either? And, of course, if you read the WC and its files, it does not seem that anyone was curious about this point. And, of course, Mr. Cover up Arlen Specter never asked why so many of the standard autopsy protocols were violated, something like 90 of them, as Charles Wilber noted in his book. So, if you ask me, stuff like that does not happen by accident. The military guys there wanted a horrendous autopsy. (And, as Finck revealed at the Shaw trial, they actual interfered to make it so.) One so bad, that to this day, no one can say for certain what really happened to President Kennedy. That is about as bad as it gets. i might substitute the word "intended" for "planned." planned seems to convey a sense of far in advance when i think it was more of a scramble than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Blank Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) deleted Edited October 12, 2015 by Martin Blank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Newton Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 I have come to believe today that the choices of Humes, Boswell and Finck were planned Jim, I've been saying this all along. Some people want to separate the act of murder from the post-event escape. If this is a planned conspiracy, an act of treason, then there is no way that ever goes down like that. If I may throw some complete conjecture into the ring: If the conspirator were a Naval Flag Officer it would make perfect sense to direct the body to Bethesda rather than Walter Reed. A Naval or Marine subordinate would be much easier to order around than one from the Army. The threat of being transfered to a war zone (or the South Pole) is sometime sufficient to keep people in line. I'm not saying that the Doctors were part of a conspiracy earlier than that afternoon but whomever was directing "the show" knew he was going to use them. I think Finck was duped. He came in after the pre-autopsy surgery, saw there were problems and then was told to get in line or else. Long after the fact, the threat of being prosecuted for high treason would keep most anyone's mouth shut. There's always the possibility the Pitzer "suicide" was a message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Knight Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Dr. Finck was Chief of Wound Ballistic Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, located in the Army Medical Museum and Library at Independence Avenue and 6th Street SW in Washington DC from 1877-1969. It closed its doors September 15, 2011. [Prior to 1877, it was located at the site of Ford's Theater...oddly enough.] i think that Dr. Finck's participation in the JFK autopsy, which was already in progress when he arrived, was an afterthought. I think that someone decided that Finck's mere presence would give the autopsy some legitimacy. After all, if his area of expertise was wound ballistics...then why were the autopsy doctors NOT dissecting bullet wounds to determine exact bullet paths BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT? Well, maybe THAT was because, as Finck testified in New Orleans, the autopsy doctors had orders NOT to do what a legitimate autopsy would've done. My point? That Dr. Finck was brought in NOT to actually participate in a legitimate autopsy, but to add a name that carried an impressive title to the sham of an autopsy that the most important man in America was given. We can argue from now until two weeks past doomsday about who gave the order NOT to dissect those wounds; since the order is not written, to our knowledge, we can only speculate...because that order is a baby whose father won't claim it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) I don't think Bethesda was pre-planned. My guess is the plotters planned to hide the evidence of frontal shots in Parkland neurology, but the EOP bullet damaged the brainstem enough to stop JFK's breathing. Walter Reed was clearly the second choice. By the time they got to Bethesda, they were scrambling and if you read the witness reports to the Bethesda autopsy, it was mostly an exercise in finding the bullets. I suppose someone gave the autopsy doctors the speech about national security, and maybe they did some preautopsy explorations to take the bullet out of the neck and open the head wound. But the evidence they left behind argues strongly for two shots to the head; so that indicates they reported much of the autopsy as they saw it and then went with the national security required two shots from the back conclusions. Regarding the difference in head wound appearance between Parkland and Bethesda, how about between the Z film and Bethesda? Frame Z335 shows a big skull flap hanging down in front of JFK's right ear; exactly as the back of head photos do. When people talk about Clint Hill's testimony about looking down into a hole in JFK's head, they should realize that JFK was lying on his left side in Jackie's lap, so he would be looking down into the right side of JFK's head. Sorry, Ollie but, your last statement requires Clint Hill, along with a number of trained surgeons, to be unable to distinguish between the right rear of JFK's headf and the right side of his head ahead of his right ear. If there was a large gaping wound between JFK's right ear and his face, would it not have been obvious to the surgeons at Parkland? Wouldn't one of them have mentioned it in his medical report? Why did they all refer to the large gaping wound as involving JFK's occipital bone? Occipital bone shown in green. They didn't. Perry and McClelland made no mention of the occipital bone. A better question, IMO, is why didn't McClelland say the wound was on the back of the head, if it were so obviously on the back of the head. PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ADMISSION NOTE DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone. Robert N. McClelland M.D. Asst. Prof. of Surgery Southwestern Med. School of Univ of Tex. Dallas, Texas Edited October 12, 2015 by Pat Speer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) Chris, twenty years ago certainly does feel wrong...not sure if it seems longer or shorter than that though. The individual who presented was not a practicing Doctor at the time of the assassination, only an intern - wish I could remember his name but he presented well after that summary was done, at least ten years or more. I'll ask Deb and see if she remembers him.... From patspeer.com, chapter 18d: This brings us to Zelditz... When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Dr. William Zelditz reported that he arrived in Trauma Room One just before the tracheotomy was performed and noted "a massive head injury to the right occipito-parietal area (right posterior-lateral) of the cranium." He said the wound covered an area approximately 10-12 centimeters in diameter. Well, this is too big to be the wound in the McClelland drawing, but it appears to be close enough. Zelditz spoke in public at the 2003 Lancer Conference in Dallas, however, and further detailed his observations. He said Kennedy was supine (flat on his back) when he (Zelditz) came in the room. He then said the head wound was "massive--the entire posterior and right side of the head was nothing but matted hair and clots, and pieces of bone and tissue, and it was a mess. I gently palpated the area and it felt like somebody had boiled an egg and then dropped it. And then picked it up. The bones were just in crinkly pieces." He was asked about this again and added: "There was an area, I'd say, 8 by 12 centimeters in the back of the head on the right hand side on the occipito-parietal area, that was gone. And it was filled with blood, tissue, hair, bone fragments, and brain fragments, and that's all you could see." Well, this is not the gaping hole behind the ear depicted in the McClelland drawing. Zelditz was then asked to depict the location of Kennedy's head wound on his own head. He placed his hand on the back of his head, with his fingers stretching from above his right ear on back to just below the top of his ear. He then admitted that beyond this area one "couldn't really tell the depth of it, or the extent of it." He was then asked if he had to rotate Kennedy's head to get a good look at the wound, and responded "No, no, there was enough of it there." He was then asked if he'd placed his hand under the head to palpate the skull, and said "No, it was in the back, and to the side." When then asked if he'd felt the extent of the wound, he admitted "No, I didn't see all of the wound. I couldn't see all of it because he was laying on that." (He then pointed to the back of his head)." He was then asked about the wound again. He put his hand back where the wound is in the McClelland drawing, and responded "It wasn't strictly straight back." He then moved his hand up to the top of his head with his fingers stretching above his right ear, and continued "It was top, back, and side." When then asked if the skull in this area was gone, he replied "It was in pieces." When then asked if the shattered skull in this area was still attached to the scalp, he continued "I could not tell. It was covered with blood and hair and other stuff. I could feel the bones but they felt like they were (he wiggled his fingers) loose." He expanded "The bony fragments that were there were loose. And there was a spongy mass in the center of that, most obvious without bone, so I guess part of the bone was gone, but still there were fragments of bone still there." When then asked the million dollar question if he felt the autopsy photos showing the back of the head to be intact were altered, he clarified "The back of the head was not intact, but it was covered, as again I mention, with hair, blood, tissue, y'know, it was all there so you couldn't tell whether it was intact underneath that or not." Yikes, Zelditz had placed the wound about half-way between the location of the wound in the autopsy photos and the location of the wound in the McClelland drawing. His extended description of the wound, and insistence he could see it without rotating Kennedy's head, moreover, supported that the wound was as depicted in the autopsy photos, and not as depicted in the McClelland drawing. Edited October 12, 2015 by Pat Speer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Hancock Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Thanks Pat, good to see my recollection was reasonably close...and that you had the right name ready to hand... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Von Pein Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) I have come to believe today that the choices of Humes, Boswell and Finck were planned. It might have been short range, but they wanted three guys who they could control and who were not at all at the top of their game. More pure B.S. from DiEugenio. The reason why Humes and Boswell did the autopsy is merely because they were the doctors who were available at that time at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a location that was selected (primarily) by Jackie Kennedy during the flight from Dallas to Washington. (Do you really think Jackie was going about the task of choosing which doctors she wanted to perform the autopsy on her husband, Jim?) And it was Dr. Humes himself who requested the services of Dr. Finck at the autopsy. I suppose conspiracy theorists must think that Humes was merely reading from a script when he told the Warren Commission the following in 1964, eh Jim?.... DR. JAMES J. HUMES -- "When I ascertained the nature of the President's wounds, having had the facilities of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology offered to me by General Blumberg, the commanding officer of that institution, I felt it advisable and would be of help to me to have the services of an expert in the field of wound ballistics and for that reason I requested Colonel Finck to appear." Edited October 12, 2015 by David Von Pein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David G. Healy Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 I have come to believe today that the choices of Humes, Boswell and Finck were planned. It might have been short range, but they wanted three guys who they could control and who were not at all at the top of their game. More pure B.S. from DiEugenio. The reason why Humes and Boswell did the autopsy is merely because they were the doctors who were available at that time at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a location that was selected (primarily) by Jackie Kennedy during the flight from Dallas to Washington. (Do you really think Jackie was going about the task of choosing which doctors she wanted to perform the autopsy on her husband, Jim?) And it was Dr. Humes himself who requested the services of Dr. Finck at the autopsy. I suppose conspiracy theorists must think that Humes was merely reading from a script when he told the Warren Commission the following in 1964, eh Jim?.... DR. JAMES J. HUMES -- "When I ascertained the nature of the President's wounds, having had the facilities of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology offered to me by General Blumberg, the commanding officer of that institution, I felt it advisable and would be of help to me to have the services of an expert in the field of wound ballistics and for that reason I requested Colonel Finck to appear." LOL.... the image you've left at AMAZON says a lot about who has the BS factor going for them. You and the nutter contingent are getting clobbered there (JFK Assassination III forum)! When I think overwhelm bs factor I think DVP's 15 (JFK assassination-related only) websites , 19 blogs (JFK assassination-related only), 5 YouTube channels (JFK assassination-related only), 235,000 (est.) posts to forum/boards (JFK assassination-related only) over the past 12 years, etal. And not 1 (one ) personal appearance, anywhere.... the ghost of Vinnie... Talk about BS... You're a grand composite, son! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Von Pein Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) Addendum to my last post (as I breeze merrily past Healy's daily batch of flatulence and empty insults)....I can, however, certainly understand the awkward predicament that CTers like James DiEugenio are in concerning President Kennedy's autopsy. Since the Bethesda autopsy conducted by Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Finck doesn't even come close to confirming or supporting the multi-gun conspiracy that CTers like DiEugenio have placed their faith in (with the autopsy pretty much doing just the opposite--i.e., confirming that JFK was hit with just two bullets, both fired from above and behind the President's car, which is perfectly consistent with a scenario of Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone assassin), it means that those conspiracists have no choice but to attack the autopsy findings, as well as the men who performed the autopsy, and even attack the manner in which the autopsy was arranged.But even though President Kennedy's autopsy doctors can definitely be criticized for making some mistakes during the course of the autopsy (and I have criticized them for some things too), the most important fact (by far) that was reached by the three autopsists at Bethesda on November 22, 1963, is the one that is revealed in the paragraph below. And not a single one of the autopsy physicians, as far as I know, has ever maintained that the information contained in this paragraph of their final autopsy report is flawed, inaccurate, or otherwise subject to any doubt whatsoever:"It is our opinion that the deceased died as a result of two perforating gunshot wounds. .... The projectiles were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased." -- From Page 6 of JFK's Autopsy Report [Warren Report; Page 543] Edited October 12, 2015 by David Von Pein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Prudhomme Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 Chris, twenty years ago certainly does feel wrong...not sure if it seems longer or shorter than that though. The individual who presented was not a practicing Doctor at the time of the assassination, only an intern - wish I could remember his name but he presented well after that summary was done, at least ten years or more. I'll ask Deb and see if she remembers him.... From patspeer.com, chapter 18d: This brings us to Zelditz... When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Dr. William Zelditz reported that he arrived in Trauma Room One just before the tracheotomy was performed and noted "a massive head injury to the right occipito-parietal area (right posterior-lateral) of the cranium." He said the wound covered an area approximately 10-12 centimeters in diameter. Well, this is too big to be the wound in the McClelland drawing, but it appears to be close enough. Zelditz spoke in public at the 2003 Lancer Conference in Dallas, however, and further detailed his observations. He said Kennedy was supine (flat on his back) when he (Zelditz) came in the room. He then said the head wound was "massive--the entire posterior and right side of the head was nothing but matted hair and clots, and pieces of bone and tissue, and it was a mess. I gently palpated the area and it felt like somebody had boiled an egg and then dropped it. And then picked it up. The bones were just in crinkly pieces." He was asked about this again and added: "There was an area, I'd say, 8 by 12 centimeters in the back of the head on the right hand side on the occipito-parietal area, that was gone. And it was filled with blood, tissue, hair, bone fragments, and brain fragments, and that's all you could see." Well, this is not the gaping hole behind the ear depicted in the McClelland drawing. Zelditz was then asked to depict the location of Kennedy's head wound on his own head. He placed his hand on the back of his head, with his fingers stretching from above his right ear on back to just below the top of his ear. He then admitted that beyond this area one "couldn't really tell the depth of it, or the extent of it." He was then asked if he had to rotate Kennedy's head to get a good look at the wound, and responded "No, no, there was enough of it there." He was then asked if he'd placed his hand under the head to palpate the skull, and said "No, it was in the back, and to the side." When then asked if he'd felt the extent of the wound, he admitted "No, I didn't see all of the wound. I couldn't see all of it because he was laying on that." (He then pointed to the back of his head)." He was then asked about the wound again. He put his hand back where the wound is in the McClelland drawing, and responded "It wasn't strictly straight back." He then moved his hand up to the top of his head with his fingers stretching above his right ear, and continued "It was top, back, and side." When then asked if the skull in this area was gone, he replied "It was in pieces." When then asked if the shattered skull in this area was still attached to the scalp, he continued "I could not tell. It was covered with blood and hair and other stuff. I could feel the bones but they felt like they were (he wiggled his fingers) loose." He expanded "The bony fragments that were there were loose. And there was a spongy mass in the center of that, most obvious without bone, so I guess part of the bone was gone, but still there were fragments of bone still there." When then asked the million dollar question if he felt the autopsy photos showing the back of the head to be intact were altered, he clarified "The back of the head was not intact, but it was covered, as again I mention, with hair, blood, tissue, y'know, it was all there so you couldn't tell whether it was intact underneath that or not." Yikes, Zelditz had placed the wound about half-way between the location of the wound in the autopsy photos and the location of the wound in the McClelland drawing. His extended description of the wound, and insistence he could see it without rotating Kennedy's head, moreover, supported that the wound was as depicted in the autopsy photos, and not as depicted in the McClelland drawing. Wouldn't the wound described by Zelditz be visible in the Back of Head autopsy photo? In Zelditz's own words, "massive--the entire posterior and right side of the head was nothing but matted hair and clots, and pieces of bone and tissue, and it was a mess." How could such a wound be cleaned up to appear to be in a pristine state in the BOH photo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Prudhomme Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) Note that Zelditz describes the wound as being "occipito-parietal". "When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Dr. William Zelditz reported that he arrived in Trauma Room One just before the tracheotomy was performed and noted "a massive head injury to the right occipito-parietal area (right posterior-lateral) of the cranium." " As the only place on the skull where the parietal and occipital bones meet anywhere close to being on the side of the skull is quite a distance behind the ear, a massive wound in the right occipito-parietal area should have been visible on the Back of Head autopsy photo. Looking at the above diagram, it is clear that the temporal bone occupies a large portion of the side of the skull and, as the occipital bone occupies chiefly the rear of the skull, a large gaping wound in the occipito-parietal region would have to be somewhat low in the rear of the skull, and should be plainly visible in the Back of Head autopsy photo. Edited October 12, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon G. Tidd Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 DVP writes: "The reason why Humes and Boswell did the autopsy is merely because they were the doctors who were available at that time at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a location that was selected (primarily) by Jackie Kennedy during the flight from Dallas to Washington." C'mon. The President of the United States, the leader of the Free World, the most powerful individual on planet Earth has just been shot to pieces, and the U.S. Government can't do better than Humes and Boswell? As for Jackie "primarily" selecting Betheda, the best extant AF-1 tape reveals clearly just how hard McGeorge Bundy pushed for Bethesda. The idea Jackie pushed for Bethesda because Jack was a navy veteran always has been bunk; Jackie was clearly, according to all accounts, in a state of shock and was hardly capable of making any argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Prudhomme Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 I don't think Bethesda was pre-planned. My guess is the plotters planned to hide the evidence of frontal shots in Parkland neurology, but the EOP bullet damaged the brainstem enough to stop JFK's breathing. Walter Reed was clearly the second choice. By the time they got to Bethesda, they were scrambling and if you read the witness reports to the Bethesda autopsy, it was mostly an exercise in finding the bullets. I suppose someone gave the autopsy doctors the speech about national security, and maybe they did some preautopsy explorations to take the bullet out of the neck and open the head wound. But the evidence they left behind argues strongly for two shots to the head; so that indicates they reported much of the autopsy as they saw it and then went with the national security required two shots from the back conclusions. Regarding the difference in head wound appearance between Parkland and Bethesda, how about between the Z film and Bethesda? Frame Z335 shows a big skull flap hanging down in front of JFK's right ear; exactly as the back of head photos do. When people talk about Clint Hill's testimony about looking down into a hole in JFK's head, they should realize that JFK was lying on his left side in Jackie's lap, so he would be looking down into the right side of JFK's head. Sorry, Ollie but, your last statement requires Clint Hill, along with a number of trained surgeons, to be unable to distinguish between the right rear of JFK's headf and the right side of his head ahead of his right ear. If there was a large gaping wound between JFK's right ear and his face, would it not have been obvious to the surgeons at Parkland? Wouldn't one of them have mentioned it in his medical report? Why did they all refer to the large gaping wound as involving JFK's occipital bone? Occipital bone shown in green. They didn't. Perry and McClelland made no mention of the occipital bone. A better question, IMO, is why didn't McClelland say the wound was on the back of the head, if it were so obviously on the back of the head. PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ADMISSION NOTE DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone. Robert N. McClelland M.D. Asst. Prof. of Surgery Southwestern Med. School of Univ of Tex. Dallas, Texas I would think that "a gunshot wound of the left temple" would indicate McClelland believed the bullet entered JFK's left temple, but you believe whatever you like, Pat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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