Pat Speer

I have long concluded that: CE 399 was a short round, that barely struck Kennedy, thereby creating the shallow back wound. It was found in the limo. It did not hit the interior of the limo. The neck wound was not connected to the back wound. The neck wound most probably connected to the low entrance on the back of the skull. This would explain why the neck was not dissected, at least not officially. If they had discovered a pathway between these two wounds, after all, they would almost certainly have had to say there were two shooters. The lead fragment that struck the curb was most probably the missing middle of the bullet that struck Kennedy on the skull, at the supposed exit. This was the second of three loud sounds. The third sound was, I suspect, a diversionary firecracker, which was set off behind the arcade on top of the knoll.

Vince. Here's what I've had on my website for 8 years or so. You may want to add some of these to your list. An 11-22-63 UPI article, most likely reflecting the words of UPI’s man-on-the-scene Merriman Smith, reported on this clean-up, stating: “Outside the hospital, blood was cleaned from the limousine.” An 11-23-63 New York Times story by Tom Wicker similarly reported, “A bucket of water stood by the car, suggesting that the back seat had been scrubbed out.” (In the 1965 anthology John Fitzgerald Kennedy...As We Remember Him, and then again in his 1978 book On Press, Wicker explained just why this bucket suggested as much and specified that it wasn't just a bucket of water, but “a bucket of bloody water.”) An article on the assassination by Hugh Sidey in the 12-20-63 issue of Time Magazine confirmed these accounts, and claimed he'd witnessed: “A young man, I assume he was a Secret Service man, with a sponge and a bucket of red water, and he was trying to wipe up the blood and what looked like flakes of flesh and brains in the back seat.” (Sidey repeated this allegation in an 11-28-88 Time article. He wrote: "The presidential limousine rested at Parkland Hospital. A grim young man was washing away the blood and flesh that had splattered the leather upholstery...The young man in his neat dark suit, sleeves pushed up, swabbed the seats. They glistened in their miserable wetness. Beside the car was a bucket with brownish red water. If any doubt remained about this calamity, it was swept away in one glance at that bucket. So simple. so hideous." ) And as if that weren't enough, Newsweek’s Charles Roberts also confirmed these accounts. In his 1967 defense of the Warren Report, modestly entitled The Truth About The Assassination, Roberts said simply that on 11-22-63 he saw two Secret Service men "starting to put the fabric top" on the President's limo, and thought "Why now?" Now that was vague, but Roberts would later expand on this. In an interview conducted for Robert MacNeil's 1988 book The Way we Were, Roberts admitted that he'd actually seen these agents “mop up the back seat” before putting on the fabric top, and that he'd thought it “ironic” that one of the Secret Service agents waved him aside and told him “you can’t look,” when "this wall of protection...of course could do no good." And then, for good measure, there's Sid Davis, a reporter for Westinghouse Radio. On 11-9-13, in a taped interview with The Newseum, Davis shared that when he arrived at Parkland Hospital ”'I could see the Secret Service agents cleaning up the back of the limousine. I went to take a look and a friend of mine, Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine, said 'Don’t look, it’s too horrible.'" Thus, five respected newsmen, all verified to have been at Parkland Hospital on 11-22-63, claimed they saw either someone cleaning blood from the limo, or the bloody bucket used in this clean-up. And they weren't alone. In the decades following the assassination, White House photographer Cecil Stoughton, Associated Press photographer Henry Burroughs, and ambulance driver Aubrey Rike added their names to the list of those witnessing this clean-up. In 1983, Life Magazine--not exactly a propagator of conspiracy theories--published a photo taken by Stoughton of a bucket beside the limo with the caption "Outside Parkland, agents clean the bloody limousine." In Richard Trask’s 1994 book Pictures of the Pain, moreover, a number of similar photographs were published, all taken by Stoughton, and all showing a bucket by the limousine.

I said it was safe to say he either actually was told such a thing by Kinney, or was pretending he did after reading what's been written online. As far as motive...yikes... To me it's clear as day. The SS agents in Kennedy's detail were horrified by the assassination, and were horrified by the looky-loos who'd been trying to get a peak at the brain and blood in the limo. So Kinney started cleaning it up. He quickly realized his actions were inappropriate, however--seeing as the limo was a crime scene--and stopped mid-wash. He'd already picked up the bullet, however. What was he to do with it? It belonged to the Dallas authorities, who had jurisdiction over the case. If he brought it back to Washington, for what's worse, he'd have to admit he cleaned up the limo, and risk termination. So he went Inside and placed it on the stretcher he thought had been used to bring Kennedy inside, and high-tailed it out of there. It's perfectly understandable to me, and not remotely surprising. We know, moreover, that Kinney was uncomfortable with his clean-up of the limo, as he never mentioned it any report. We know further that he wasn't the only one made uncomfortable by this. While the clean-up was widely reported in the press by newsmen who'd witnessed it firsthand, it went unreported in all the SS reports on the assassination, and was even rejected by William Manchester, who'd personally interviewed a number of those in Kennedy's detail. That no such clean-up occurred was part of LN lore, for that matter, until writers such as myself began compiling all the eyewitness accounts by newsmen, and the Disco channel admitted there was a clean-up in one of their Oswald-did-it specials.

I don't think I was alone in concluding Kinney had moved the bullet...long before Loucks came forward and said Kinney admitted moving the bullet. As a result, it's safe to say that either 1) Kinney really did move the bullet and tell this to Loucks, or 2) Loucks had read oniine discussions of the possibility Kinney moved the bullet, and had decided to spice things up by claiming Kinney had admitted moving the bullet. I would have to know more about Loucks before deciding which one is more likely. Did anyone look into Loucks' background after he came forward?

The bone found by Kinney was the large triangular fragment subsequently x-rayed at Bethesda. I can't recall, Vince, Did Kinney say it had hair on it?

To my understanding, they had a volatile relationship that at times turned violent. IOW, it wasn't just mean ole Lee taking his frustration out on his hapless wife. She hit him too.

I don't think Greg or Hosty said Oswald admitted going to Mexico City. He just didn't deny it, which is par for the course for Oswald. And I also didn't mean to imply the others lied about it. Hosty confronted him, and Oswald threw it back at him "Why do you wanna know?" or some such thing. And the others took this as a denial. The police, as many of us, take any non-affirmation as a denial, and any non-denial as an affirmation, depending on how the question is phrased. They think suspects should just tell them everything, even before they've contacted a lawyer. The presumption is always that the suspect is guilty, and if he doesn't come across and tell them everything they want to know, when they want to know it, they assume he is hiding something, or lying about something. This may very well be true most of the time, but it most certainly isn't true all of the time. Some people don't trust the police, and are unwilling to "spill the beans" even when those beans might prop up their innocence. Instead, they play hard to get, and make the cops squirm a little. I don't know if you've ever been deposed, but I have. On one of these occasions, my girlfriend at the time was suing her former employer for sexual harassment. This harassment had happened before she was my girlfriend. But I'd been a witness to this harassment. So I was called by her former employer's counsel as part of a fishing expedition. Were you sleeping with her when you witnessed the supposed harassment, etc.. When did you start sleeping with her? In which hotels did you have sex, etc? It became clear, moreover, where this was heading. He was hoping I'd paint her as a sex fiend, who'd openly invited the harassment. At a certain point, I'd had enough. I told him that none of this was any of his business, and that if he didn't want to take my word on it, I didn't care. I was not her witness. I was not scheduled to testify on her behalf. I then said further that it seemed to me that this whole line of questioning was worse than a witch hunt, as he knew his client was guilty, and he was just harassing and abusing me as a way of harassing her, and trying to force her to settle out of court. I then told him that to my understanding this was not kosher with the bar, and that I was thinking of contacting an attorney of my own, who would sue him for damages and perhaps go after his license. At that point I was told I was free to go. When I received a copy of my deposition to sign some weeks later, moreover, my last little speech was heavily edited. So I know that witnesses can play games with their interrogators, and I know that this isn't always accurately reflected in the transcripts.

I'm gonna go back to something I'd alluded to earlier. Did Oswald have a handler? Someone who tasked him with certain missions, and deliberately (or perhaps even inadvertently) implicated him into a plot, whereby he was a near-perfect patsy for a "commies-did-it" cover story? Or was Oswald just some weird loner that the big bad CIA framed up from the ground up? That is, where Oswald himself was the impetus behind his handing out pro-Cuba fliers (with Bannister's address on them), and then debating the merits of Cuba on radio and TV? Because there seems to be a lot of confusion on this matter. I mean, we know Oswald liked to travel. We know he talked of sending Marina back to Russia. We know as well that he was at least pretending to have an interest in going to Cuba. So the possibility he went to Mexico to try to arrange travel is in keeping with everything we know. So, yes, in this case--whether Oswald was some sort of puppet, or some sort of oddball with an interest in Cuba--it doesn't matter. As both Oswald the puppet and Oswald the oddball might very well have gone to Mexico. So why cloud everything up by desperately looking for evidence he didn't go to Mexico? Just where is it people think he went when all these people said he was in Mexico? Working at the Salvation Army? Earning extra money by helping blind people cross the street? Partying with Clay Shaw and David Ferrie?

So let me get this straight. In his book, Hosty: 1) made out that Oswald never denied going to Mexico. This was counter-productive to his thesis and the accepted doctrine of his brethren holding that Oswald was a snivelly xxxx who killed the President, and lied about everything. This also makes sense in light of Fritz and Leavelle's assertions that Oswald was incredibly deft at handling interrogation, and revealed almost nothing. 2) made out that Oswald apologized for his outburst when he realized Hosty was the man who'd tried to speak to Marina. This was also counter-productive to his thesis and the accepted doctrine of his brethren holding that Oswald was an unrepentant hothead who hated authority figures. Such a man, after all, would never apologize for yelling at a Fed. These revelations, moreover, suggest that Oswald's interrogation was at least in some parts misrepresented in the notes and reports of those in the room. But no, we're supposed to believe Hosty was just making stuff up out of some previously unrevealed softness towards Oswald, and that the reports inaccurately reporting Oswald's statements and failing to report his apology to Hosty are sacrosanct. Because, you know, these men were all dedicated truth-tellers who would never ever ever let bias creep into their reports. I mean, geez, why would you record interrogations when you have these truth-telling machines on hand to accurately report everything that was said?

I'm with Greg on this one. That Oswald denied going to Mexico is accepted as a fact by CT's because they think it's harmful to their cause if Oswald went to Mexico, and accepted as a fact by LNs because it supports their chosen narrative that Oswald was a weaselly xxxx who killed the President. But what if they're both wrong? The scenario outlined by Hosty, and Greg, makes total sense to me. Oswald asked Hosty how he knew he'd gone to Mexico, without ever confirming that he did in fact go. The witnesses in the room then saw this through the prism of Oswald's being a weaselly xxxx, and claimed he'd denied going to Mexico, when he'd done no such thing. This is why second hand reports and even notes, just aren't reliable. I should add as well that I have no problem with Oswald's going to Mexico. Many who've studied this case in detail have come to accept that Oswald was some sort of operative...taking orders from someone. It's not surprising then that he would be asked to go to Mexico. This doesn't mean, however, that he attended the embassies on the days he supposedly attended, and made the phone cals he is reported to have made. It could very well be that the CIA's info about Oswald's visits came from human contacts (or bugs) within the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy, and that a cover story was made to hide this fact, and dummy up the record to indicate he'd been observed and recorded on the phone. (In such case, the photographs of "him" would not be of him, and the recordings of "him" would not be of him.)

For the record, David, I didn't have a problem with you quoting our exchanges, as long as it was respectful and in context. I seem to recall that you were taking people's quotes not to show how different people think, but to mock them and make them look stupid. I know I've done that myself at times, but there is a higher road we can all aspire to.

The John Hunt photos posted by Gary Murr were FBI photos taken before the FBI took a gouge from the tip for spectrographic testing. Apparently, the photo at left above was taken with the bullet titled slightly away from the camera, so as to accentuate the gouge, which is apparent in the photo at right, just below the crest of the bullet. The key to orienting these photos is the nick to the right of the ovals. In one this nick is near the middle of the bullet. In the other it is on the right. When one cross references the ET in the photos to the nick on the right and the gouge above the E, it seems apparent that the ETs are in the same location.

I've read a boatload of books on forensics, and there was no legally recognized test on whether or not a rifle had recently been fired. It would seem, however, that Fritz or Day or someone would have given it a quick smell test, just to see, but we can probably assume they found a rifle on the same floor as they found some shells, made a connection, and just didn't bother. I mean, even if one were to assume everything was on the up and up--which I don't--one can not escape that the DPD police were incredibly half-assed and borderline incompetent. As a reminder, this is the official story... 1. They found a paper bag by where they found the shells and assumed this bag had been used to transport the rifle, but forgot to take a picture of this bag in place or anywhere within the depository. 2. They found a palm print on a box they assumed the assassin had sat upon, but failed to take a picture of this box in situ, or the raised print on the box while intact. Instead they tore a corner off the box and brought it into the department, only to return a few days later and place this torn-off corner back on the box for pictures. 3. They knew a chemical test was the preferred test to find prints on cardboard, but failed to perform such a test on the boxes they assumed had been a rifle rest, and left the boxes behind until the FBI asked for them days later. 4. That night, while inspecting the rifle, Lt. Day found several prints on the rifle barrel, but failed to take photographs of these prints before handing it off to the FBI, or write a note to the FBI alerting them to these prints. He did, however, take numerous photos of the prints on the trigger guard, which the FBI (apparently falsely) claimed were too smudged for identification.

Please demonstrate. The angles of the cameras to the bullet are not identical. But if you compare the ET to the other initials and the gouge, it appears to be in the identical location in all the photos.

Not sure what you mean. There is no "they" here. John had plenty of opportunities to make his entire cache available to everyone. He told me he planned to do so. But he died before he could get around to it. We still have a lot of his images--including the ones posted earlier by Gary Murr. And it shows what looks like the ET just where you would expect it to be.

This was a 2 1/2 inch triangle. There is no such flat spot on the occipital bone. The flat spot you might feel on the back of your head is from the top of your ears and up. That is largely parietal bone.

Oh my. If you really think the back of the head is flat, I suggest you take this tool called a hand and place it on the back of your head. You will quickly realize that the area stretching from the suture on down 2 1/2 inches is far from flat. Here is a 3-D presentation of the occipital bone, showing its interior aspect. It is not flat, and Mantik's suggestion Kennedy was diseased and that this flattened out the interior of his skull is disgusting and/or laughable. P.S. Should one want to see this image while it rotates one can view it in chapter 19a of my website.

Riley made a number of presentations on this issue at conventions. He used anatomy diagrams to demonstrate that the ridges on the interior of the Harper fragment are incompatible with those on the interior of the occipital bone. I demonstrate this quite clearly on my slide. While a 3-d reconstruction might be helpful, we should know by now that most 3-d re-constructions performed for this case have been GIGO. Just look at all the 3-d reconstructions of the single-bullet theory... As far as Cairns' opinion the bone was occipital, it was really a quick glance at the bone at a time when the papers were indicating shots came from the front, and William Harper thought he'd found the skull behind the location of the limo at the time of the head shot. (When he later showed researchers where he found the bone, it was, of course, well in front of Kennedy's location at the time of the head shot.)

The Parkland witnesses and Bethesda witnesses agreed on one important point. There was a large open wound in the skull AND scalp. Forensic journals--most tellingly those written by members of the Clark Panel, Rockefeller Commission panel and HSCA pathology panel--insist that you can tell entrance and exit by the lack scalp...i.e. there is missing scalp at entrance but not at exit. So the large wound represented an entrance--almost certainly a tangential entrance. So how did the HSCA panel get around this??? In one of the overlooked (at least till I came around) footnotes in their report they offered that Humes was probably mistaken when he said the large wound was missing scalp. They ignored of course that Clark had written the same thing in his report before Humes had sat down to write his report. The missing scalp is the smoking gun that will lead to a re-appraisal of the medical evidence...

Oh my. That's just not true. Dr. Joseph Riley, a professional neuroanatomist (i.e. an expert on the skull) ruled out the occipital as a location for the Harper fragment. He confirmed, moreover, what Forensic Anthropologist (i.e. an expert on skull reconstruction) Dr. Lawrence Angel had presented in his report to the HSCA--that it would have to be high parietal (above the ear at the top of the head and not on the far back of the head, as suggested by Baden's awful drawing for the HSCA.) (Baden would in fact come to disavow that drawing himself, and would tell the HSCA the Harper fragment derived from the side of the head in front of the ear--an obvious lie designed to conceal that the two largest fragments--the triangular fragment and Harper fragment--each exhibited exit beveling and each showed small metal fragments--an impossibility if there was only one small exit hole for the bullet as Baden had told the committee.) In any event I tackled this myself and Riley was obviously correct--there's no way the Harper fragment is occipital bone. P.S. Mantik still insists it was occipital bone but acknowledges that Riley is correct in that it does not appear to be occipital bone...he offers instead that Kennedy's Addison's disease had altered the appearance of his skull. That's incredibly weak sauce, IMO. And desperate...

The provenance of the autopsy photos on the internet is well-known. They all come from the collections of Mark Crouch or Robert Groden. Crouch received a black and white set from FBI agent Fox, which is presumed to have been made from the original negatives. Crouch then photographed these photos and used these negatives to make copies, some of which were published by Lifton, Groden and Livingstone in their books. I am fairly certain, moreover, that the copies provided Lifton, Groden and Livingstone were re-photographed, burned and dodged, and cropped before publishing. The vast majority of images online are scans or photos of the images in their books. So these are a long way from the original negatives. Crouch's original set, moreover, was sold to Walt Brown, who, to my knowledge, has never allowed them to be digitized. Groden himself made some color copies while working for the HSCA. But these were not prints made from the original negatives or slides. These were photos taken on the sly of the copies he was allowed to handle and analyze. The majority of color images online are scans from Groden's books or pamphlets. So these images are also pretty far down the line. I discovered this myself roughly 15 years ago, after realizing that there was a considerable difference between the images in Lifton's, Groden's, and Livingstone's books. Slowly, the answer became obvious. The copies provided by Crouch had been altered and cropped before publishing.

The GIF morphing the black and white and color BOH photos was created by single-assassin theorist John Mytton and posted on the JFK Assassination Forum. He made a similar GIF for the black and white top of the head photos. I used and replicated his work on my website. I later added two additional GIFs to my website, The first one was a GIF morphing together the two color BOH photos. The second was a series of GIFs morphing together the two so-called mystery photos (the photos showing the cranium after the brain had been removed). The significance of these GIFs can not be overstated. The GIF created by Mytton proves the opposite of what he thought it would. It proves that the so-called hole in the cowlick is not a hole. Upon close inspection, it also demonstrates a hole in the hair an inch or so to the right of the EOP--exactly where the autopsy doctors said it was. This GIF also proves that the top of JFK's skull was shattered and that the right top of his head in the photos was essentially a loose bone flap. IF the dolts in the mainstream media and medical establishment were to study this GIF it would lead to a re-opening of the case, IMO. The GIF of the top of the head is also interesting. It demonstrates the massive damage to the top of Kennedy's skull. The GIF morphing the two color BOH photos demonstrates furthermore that the Groden/Mantik claim the back of the head in these photos is a matte...is not a matte, as the back of the head changes slightly, and the instability at the top of the head apparent in the first morph is confirmed. As far as the GIFs of the two mystery photos...these demonstrate three things which most are still not ready to deal with. The first is that these photos were taken at a specific angle to the table that precludes these photos from being photos of Kennedy's forehead--the interpretation pushed by the HSCA FPP. The second is that these photos reveal a bullet hole an inch or so to the right of the EOP-just where the autopsy doctors claimed it was. And the third is that these GIFs prove that what most assume is a crack on the skull, and what is officially a crack on the skull, is really the handle of a tool sticking out of the skull, presumably a scalpel. This is perhaps my most interesting discovery. One prominent LN cursed me out over this because gosh darn it he realized I was right. The Clark Panel and HSCA FPP grossly misinterpreted/misrepresented these photos, and this can be demonstrated through the GIFs on my website. If the dolts in the mainstream media and medical establishment were to study these GIFs, it would lead to a re-opening of the case, IMO.

Actually, your wording was fine. By saying "SO that he could tell Lee of the Trans Texas Airways job offer" you indicated that he did not, in fact, tell Ruth Paine about the offer.

Not just black folks. The 50's was an era of segregation, self-destructive fear of communism, war in Korea, high taxation, rampant consumerism, and oppression against gays and women. The 60's was an era of racial tension, a war in Vietnam, a culture war at home. Assassinations. Much upheaval. Much unhappiness. The point can be made that the U.S. peaked under Clinton, and maybe as recently as the beginning of the Obama years, when the economy was on the rise, and most white people thought it was just dandy we had a black president. Things turned when a right-wing hate machine convinced many whites they were losing their place in society, and that we needed to turn fascist to restore order. So, yes, Trump was a symptom of a sickness. But he was also the sickness. It's impossible to think that any other politician of his ilk--e.g. Ted Cruz--could have been so harmful to American civility and reputation. Until he is put out to pasture, permanently, no reforms regarding income inequality or social justice are possible. While Biden has done much to restore American reputation around the world, moreover, I suspect many of our allies are still hesitant, seeing as the Orange Turd Blossom "Special" remains on the tracks, hoping to retake the main line.

It seems to me I saw the sheet for CE 399 in one of John Hunt's articles. Hopefully someone else will remember just where. In any event, the routing sheets were not published by the WC.