Pat Speer

Clay pot = porcelain. White bone looks like porcelain.

Okay. Let's say "they" did replace the fragment found in the limo with a piece of JFK's frontal bone removed at autopsy. This fragment had both exit beveling and metallic fragments at the site of the beveling. Are you claiming they shot the bone after prying it loose from JFK's skull? Since this area of frontal bone is missing on the x-rays, moreover, and the x-rays show brain still in the skull cavity, your theory holds that they broke this bone from the skull with the brain drill in situ. Does that make sense? As far as the other part--where you now have the Harper fragment being broken off from the actual bone fragment found in the limo... The Harper fragment shows exit beveling. So that would mean the fragment found in the limo had exit beveling. Well, then why break it up? Why not just use the original fragment? I'll give you an out here and offer that IF the large fragment included the low occipital bone, they might want to break that part off so they could pass the remaining part (the Harper fragment) off as parietal bone. But why go to the trouble? The autopsy doctors had already declared the other bone had exit beveling. And besides, the doctors were not even told about the Harper fragment for some fifteen years or so. So who did the faking? And for what audience?

Wait. You're saying they mutilated the president's corpse to fake a photo no one was supposed to see and make it match a film no one was supposed to see, and that they did this within hours of the assassination? And that Clint Hill--who said he saw a large fragment on the floor of the limo on the road to Parkland...was lying? And Sam Kinney--who said he found the fragment on the floor of the limo...was lying?

Wait. What? You're joking, right? The large fragment was x-rayed at the autopsy, and put back in the skull. The Harper fragment was found the next day, and gives no appearance of having been broken off from the large fragment. As both the x-rays of the large fragment, and photos of the Harper fragment, show beveling--but not the identical beveling--they depict either two different exits or two parts of one exit.

Yikes. It's not a matter of trusting anyone. I used the drainage hole to prove the proper orientation for the photo 15 years ago. As far as the large fragment, yikes. It is mentioned in the FBI report. It is mentioned in the autopsy report. And three x-rays were taken of it along with the other two fragments flown back from Dallas. And the man taking these x-rays was...Jerrol Custer. As demonstrated ad nauseam, its existence is a huge problem for the single-assassin scenario. So, no, it's extremely doubtful it was added into the record by a mysterious they in order to fool anybody.

I spent a considerable amount of time looking at this stuff 20 years ago or so. And I think there are three take-aways. 1. There were a lot people tangentially connected to the Kennedy assassination and a lot of these "witnesses" died over time, And their deaths are not suspicious. Many of these were minor witnesses but were made out to be important witnesses by those compiling lists and selling books. An example of one such witness is Lee Bowers. Lee died in an auto accident well after he'd said all he had to say. (Or at least all he hinted at knowing,) Another such witness is James Worrell--who also died in a traffic accident, as I recall. We have no reason to believe their deaths are connected. This was Texas, after all, where it was legal to drink and drive until what? yesterday? 2. But then there's the likes of Rose Cherami, whose death remains a bit of a mystery. She may have seen enough in her travels where somebody would want to shut her up. I think we should count her as a "maybe". I would include Kilgallen on this list as well. It's unclear whether anyone would really want to kill them, but their deaths remain curious. 3. And then there's the the likes of Roselli and Giancana. They were murdered while the assassination was being investigated, and at a time when they were believed to be cooperating with authorities. I met Sen. Gary Hart once briefly, and heard him speak on the assassination another time (I don't remember where) but he stressed the point that the members of the Church Committee were on the fence as to whether JFK's death was a conspiracy until their witnesses started dying. And then they knew. So, in short, a mysterious deaths list is interesting, and potentially valuable, but only to the extent it's been edited. The more the merrier is less, in this instance.

Thanks, Vince. Now, a related question. A number of the depositions were televised, and a number of the interviews were recorded. I have compared a few of these recordings (e.g. Baden, Sturdivan, Canning, Finck) against the transcripts of their testimony, and found that the transcripts are at times inaccurate and/or misleading. Does Smith get into those weeds--what was actually said vs. what the transcripts claim was said?

It's worse than that. I talked to Blakey at the 2014 Bethesda Conference and he said he wanted me to send him some of what I had on Guinn and Canning. He gave me his email address at Cornell. I sent him some prime stuff, including that Guinn changed the number for silver from his HSCA testimony when he moved on to sell his conclusions to his colleagues in forensic journals. Guinn didn't perform new tests--he just changed his number. I also went through Canning's conclusions, step by step, and showed Blakey that Canning concluded JFK was leaning forward when struck in the back, then sat up before being struck in the head. I never received a response from Blakey, if even to tell me what I sent was unconvincing. I suspect the man has a hard time admitting he was wrong... Like most of us.

Oh my. Let me clarify a few things. First of all, the pathologists who viewed the bone in Dallas did so while under the impression the back of the head was blown out, as that is what had been reported in the papers--an entrance wound in the throat possibly connected to a large wound on the back of the head. They were not forensic anthropologists or neuroanatomists and had no special expertise in anatomy. So they were presented with a bone and asked if it could be from Kennedy and they said "Well, it looks kinda like occipital bone." But it didn't really. The occipital bone in that region is like Colorado (mountainous), and the Harper fragment is more like Kansas (flat). As far as the frontal bone fragment--you could not be more wrong. The 10cm fragment/triangular fragment/late arriving fragment are one and the same--the largest fragment retrieved, far larger than the Harper fragment. It was found on the floor of the limousine by Secret Service agent Sam Kinney, and presented to the autopsy doctors at Bethesda, and added back into the skull during reconstruction. Before this was done, moreover, the doctors studied it and came to the conclusion it showed exit beveling, and assumed this meant the large head wound was an exit for the entrance wound they found down by the EOP. (The Harper fragment-which would complicate this scenario--had not yet been discovered). The fragment was not photographed, but it was x-rayed, and the x-rays have been part of the record since the night of the autopsy. This failure to photograph the fragment became a problem, of course. When the HSCA pathology panel realized it would need to be parietal bone to support the single-assassin conclusion, they claimed the x-ray was taken from the opposite side of the bone as their consultant had assumed, and flipped it over from frontal bone to parietal bone. (The great John Hunt proved this to be a hoax.) And this failure to photograph was probably not part of a conspiracy. Several witnesses, including Clint Hill, made note of a large fragment in the car with hair still attached. This would have to have been the triangular fragment. We can suspect then that they felt photographing this hairy piece of bone to be a bit much. So, no, the fragment did not appear out of nowhere as part of a conspiracy. It was seen by Clint Hill in Dallas, and recovered by Sam Kinney on the plane back from Dallas. And it is presumed to be authentic, and frontal bone, by Mantik, and Livingstone, etc.

Why do you keep insisting on such nonsense? That the triangular fragment is frontal bone is not something "anti-alterationists" cooked-up to make you cringe. It is the viewpoint of Mantik, and pretty much everyone to write on the medical evidence. The one exception that comes to mind is Randy Robertson, who convinced himself the triangular fragment is parietal bone at the top of the back of the head. And came under fire from Mantik for saying so. That the triangular fragment is frontal bone is also not the "official story" or "government position." As I have made clear the HSCA Panel bent over backwards to hide that it was frontal bone, because the acceptance it was frontal bone severely weakens, maybe even kills, the government's proposition there was but one head wound and one shooter named Lee Harvey Oswald. So why are you so desperate to hide what "they" want hidden?

When I was looking into Guinn, I realized that Guinn coughed up his report supporting the SBT only days before the medical panel went to the archives and viewed the photos. I took from this that Blakey told Baden they had scientific proof supporting the SBT and that the panel should get on board. Lopez confirmed there was a meeting of some sort from which Purdy emerged claiming they were going with the SBT. I am fairly certain Guinn was the cause of this. But I've always hoped someone would pop up with a document proving this was the case.

Just curious. A lot of what we know about the behind the scenes goings on of the HSCA comes from John Hunt. Is he mentioned in the book? Or did Smith just read the testimony, and put his own spin on it, without making note of what others have discovered, including Hunt and myself?

This is priceless. I point out a piece of evidence suggesting a conspiracy upon which most all the top researchers agree, and you counter by citing some fairy tale which no one actually believes. You may as well have said the tooth fairy put the fragment in the limo. Or, even better, that it was teleported into the limo by Scotty under orders from Mr. Spock.

The forward-exploding fragment proves the HSCA FPP to be incorrect on a crucial point--a point so crucial Baden flat-out lied about it. The trajectory of this fragment--whether or not the Z-film is faked--is a crucial piece of evidence. I don't believe any of those claiming the film is fake etc. claim the large fragment was found other than in the limo, and I don't believe any of them claim it came from other than the frontal bone. So this is a piece of evidence all CTs can (and I dare say, should) embrace. As stated, the mystery photo shows exit beveling on the back half of the head. The Clark Panel tried to dodge this by claiming the photo really showed the front of the head. And the HSCA FPP concurred, claiming it showed the frontal bone, with an exit on the coronal suture. The fragment's exploding forwards the way it did PROVES it was frontal bone. And this proves the mystery photo does not show frontal bone, and strongly supports that it shows what the doctors said it showed--the back of the head. Well, it follows that this photo shows beveling on the back part of the head. So, WHY the heck hasn't the research community embraced this as one of its talking points?

I don't think Angel dealt with the wing of bone. While it's clear he was shown the mystery photo, it's not clear how much he relied upon other photos. As for the wing of bone... Consider this... A powerful impact shatters the top of the skull. Bone fragments explode away from it, tearing the scalp in the process. Through this tearing the momentum of the fragment dissipates. One fragment, now folded outwards, and upside down, begins to peel away from the scalp, with the side furthest from the impact (but now closest to the impact location) peeling first. But this fragment never fully disconnects from the scalp. For a brief second it appears to be twice as large as its actual size, due to the scalp being stretched forward and the still-attached fragment's being flipped inside out and forwards. But the fragment recoils back to the side of the head. But it is now inside out. It's unfortunate that the autopsists spent so little time describing this wing, and how they removed it, etc, but Baxter and Perry described a bone sticking out and sure enough there it is in the photos. My two cents.

It sounds like you're convinced that nothing actually traveled from back to front... How, then, do you explain... 1. The crack on the front windshield? 2. The bullet fragments found in the front section of the limo? 3. The bullet fragment striking the curb by Tague? 4. The skull fragment found on the floor of the limo? 5. The skull fragment shown flying skywards in the Z-film? Which appears to correlate with 6. The skull fragment found forward of the limo's location in the plaza?

Angel assumed (he probably was told) that the mystery photo showed the front of the head. So he took from the photo that the beveled exit (he called it a lecuna, or some such thing) was above the right eye. Of course this didn't fit with the panel's belief the exit was on the coronal suture. So they ignored it. But I think there's a world of difference between ignoring what a forensic anthropologist and expert on skull reconstruction concluded based upon what he was told about a photo, as opposed to ignoring what this expert concludes after studying the shape and details of a bone fragment. That was his forte after all. That was why they brought him in. While most anyone--the members of this forum, for example--can look at the mystery photo and have a different interpretation, forensic anthropology is a specialized field. And yet Dr. Baden--who had ZERO experience, let alone expertise, in forensic skull reconstruction--all by his lonesome created cut-outs of the bone fragments and fit them onto a skull (an exhibit that subsequently disappeared). And we know it was a joke because after doing so he claimed the Harper fragment was not from the back of the head, as originally believed, nor from the top of the head, as concluded by Angel and other experts, but from the side of the head, where the wing of bone can be seen on the photos. It was a total con, and yet no one really noticed it until John Hunt figured out what he was up to, and people like myself followed up. And yes, I think Angel had it right--the triangular fragment is frontal bone. And on this issue, amazingly, men like Livingstone and Mantik agree.

The GIF I created has been slowed down from the original film. I suppose I should have explained that in the other thread. I added 20 milliseconds between frames. So, if my math is correct, the fragment is traveling 36% faster than we see in the GIF. But you're right about the scalp slowing down the explosion somewhat.. When bone explodes from the skull it tears the scalp as it flies away from the skull. And this tear ends in a point. So the V-shaped tear is not proof of alteration, but strong evidence a fragment with scalp still attached had exploded from the skull on a forward tangent. P.S. I added the three red dots to the image above to show where the Pathology Panel had determined there was evidence for an exit. Their interpretation of the mystery photo was adjusted so that the red dot on the right matched up with the red dot in the middle. And to make room for this the central fragment had to be flipped over in place. And that left Dr.Baden to claim the Harper fragment matched up with this hole from below, and that the Harper fragment was actually on the side of the head. This allowed the Panel to pretend there was but one exit from the skull. So why the desperation? Well, apart from the fact there was no evidence on the x-rays for multiple bullet fragment trajectories through the brain, the panel had concluded that the large fractures at the top of the head must have come from a missile larger than the bullet fragments later recovered. IOW, they needed to claim the bullet exited while mostly intact, even though they claimed a piece of the bullet was imbedded on the skull by the entrance. So it fell upon Baden to make sense of all this (within the confines of the single-assassin conclusion) and he did so by claiming the bullet leaked a large fragment out of its base upon impact and then traveled through the brain intact only to break up upon impact with the windshield frame. It's a fairy tale.

The frontal bone is not the forehead. It is the forehead AND the first few inches in back of the forehead at the top of the head. Dr. Angel's placement of the bone is shown on the slide below. To be clear, moreover, Dr. Angel didn't say the triangular fragment was recovered from the floor of the limo. He may not have even known about it. But. Clint Hill said he saw a large fragment on the floor and Sam Kinney said he found a large fragment on the floor--and this is the fragment whose x-ray Angel studied, the so-called 10 cm fragment or triangular fragment. FWIW, moreover, most every prominent researcher, including those thinking the back of the head was blown out, agree with Angel that the triangular fragment was frontal bone. So, the Z-film only confirms what most everyone already believes. Now, as explained above, this fragment's being frontal bone destroys the conclusions of the Clark Panel and HSCA, just tears them to shreds. So why can't people rally around this point?

I recently started a thread on the downward/forward moving fragment apparent in the Z-film. I was hoping that people would just accept it for what it was and not try to bury it under a mountain of "it must be" fake nonsense. But they did. Here is what they don't want you to know... In 1977 the HSCA hired Dr. Lawrence Angel of the Smithsonian institute to study JFK's skull fragments, and figure out from where they originated. Angel was perhaps the premier Forensic Anthropologist in the world, IOW he was an expert, probably THE expert, when it came to reconstructing skulls from skull fragments. One of his key conclusions was that the large triangle -shaped fragment was frontal bone. Now, the frontal bone is kinda of like an L-shape in that it comprises both the forehead and the front part of the top of the head. In Angel's estimation, it had been dislodged from the front part of the top of the head, from just forward of the coronal suture. Well, this was most disturbing to the HSCA Pathology Panel. You see, there was a photo of JFK's skull after the scalp was peeled to the side and the brain removed. This photo had what appeared to be a beveled exit near the center of the photo. Now, the autopsy doctors viewed this photo in 1966 and said it showed the entrance on the skull low on the back of the head. But this proved to be a problem for the Justice Department. In Six Seconds in Dallas, Tink Thompson demonstrated that the bullet trajectory proposed at autopsy--from low to high--was at odds with the Zapruder film, which showed JFK leaning forward when struck, but not nearly far enough to support the low to high trajectory proposed by the autopsists. So they put together a secret panel which--voila!--concluded there was no low to high trajectory because the bullet didn't hit low, but high. And they claimed a red smudge in the photos was the entrance observed at autopsy, only inches away from where the doctors said they'd observed the bullet's entrance. But what to do with the photo of the back of the head with the scalp peeled aside--the one which the doctors said showed the entrance? Amazingly, this secret panel covered their butts by claiming this photo actually showed the front of JFK's head, and not the back of his head. (FWIW, this is the subject of my video series The Mysterious Death of Number 35.) So now we come to the HSCA Pathology Panel, made up of friends of the members of the Clark Panel. Well, they don't want to side with the autopsy doctors, because that would make their friends on the Clark Panel look bad, real bad. To say the problematic photo showed the back of the head would be to say there was an entrance low on the back of the head--which doesn't fit the single-assassin solution, and a beveled piece of bone near the crown of the head--which doesn't fit the single-assassin solution. So they took the lead of their friends on the Clark Panel and said yeah the photos shows the front of the head. And not only that, but that the beveled bone marked an exit on the coronal suture. So this brings us back to Angel. As the panel's orientation for the so-called mystery photo required that the frontal bone be intact, they needed Angel to tell them that the fragment was parietal bone, not frontal bone. But he did not. So what did they do? They simply ignored him. They had hired a top expert (Angel) as a consultant and then ignored his conclusions when they realized they couldn't get them to align with the single-assassin conclusion. (This is discussed in Chapter 14 at patspeer.com, in which I make use of material first developed by John Hunt So, thanks John.) But it gets weirder. As the triangular fragment was found on the floor of the limousine, the obvious conclusion should have been that the bullet exited at the top of the fragment and snapped it downwards. But they couldn't say that...now that they had abandoned both Dr. Angel's conclusions and common sense and had decided the fragment was parietal bone, to the rear of the bullet's exit. So Dr. Baden, to his everlasting shame, supervised the creation of F-66, which showed he triangular fragment's exploding upwards from the skull defect, even though he knew full well it was found on the floor of the limo. The forward/downward movement of the triangular fragment is thereby a smoking gun. It destroys the single-assassin solution. And the creation of F-66 proves the cover-up.

In 313 there is a blurry mass but in 314 the forward moving fragment becomes apparent. When I first got sucked into this rabbit hole some 20 years ago I spent a lot of time reading the web pages of LNers to balance against what I read on conspiracy web pages and the threads of this forum. One of these was the web page of Paul Seaton. I'm not sure when he first published it or when I first became aware of it but it would have to have been somewhere between 2004 and 2008 that I first came across a GIF on his website pouting out the fragment in 314. Since I came across this so long ago, I assumed most everyone knew about it, but realized the other day that not everyone did. In looking back at his GIF, moreover, I realized that it failed to point out that the fragment appears to bounce back up into frame around Z-323, which makes sense when you think about it. I mean, a bone fragment of that size would have a lot of momentum after exploding from a skull and wouldn't just go plop on the floor. So, in short, I'm crediting Seaton with the discovery it goes forward in 314, and myself for the realization it bounces back into frame a half sec later. But it would't surprise me at all if this was first discussed on the McAdams Forum 20 years ago, and if someone like Anthony Marsh or John Canal was the first to bring it up. FWIW, here's Seaton's GIF.

Ha! What made you check the index? I'm guessing you were reading along and going "Why does this guy keep mentioning Pat?" Well, the truth is I met Bob some years ago at one of Gary Aguilar's get-togethers and have stayed in touch with him ever since. But by that I mean like every three months or so, not every week or so. I knew he was working on a book but had no idea it was coming out anytime soon nor that he would make so many references to my work. So this comes as a pleasant surprise. I think. For those not in the know, this is Wagner's second book. While suspecting Oswald acted alone, he finds many CT arguments compelling, and rejects the single-bullet theory, last I checked. He is also quite a nice guy. In fact, I think you met him, Vince. if memory serves I was supposed to accompany Matt Douthit to Dealey Plaza and meet up with you, but I ran late after having lunch with Wagner. I think he came with me to the knoll, afterwards, where I caught up with you, but can't recall for sure. (Those nasty cancer meds!) In any event, I suspect many CTs could learn a few things from Bob's book, and know many LNs could learn a lot from both his book and example. I mean, Bob is an Oswald-probably-did-it person, but he understands that many of the points made by CTs are legitimate, and not paranoid ramblings. So he's a different kind of Lone-Nutter, much as you and I are a different kind of Conspiracy Theorist.

As you know, I discuss a lot of stuff on my website, including the Jet Effect. it's amazing that it ever got any traction. Amazing and sad, IMO. A jet is created when a highly-pressurized substance is emitted through a small hole. Heck, Alvarez knew this was a problem, and taped up his melons to assure the hole spewing melon goo was a small one. Only then did he get the Jet Effect to work. Only then did he get his melons to fly backwards after being struck. The large skull defect is proof this did not happen.

Since not everyone knows that a bone fragment explodes downward in the Z-film, I thought I'd post a GIF I created last night showing just where this fragment can be seen in the film. Note: this is not a thread on the nature of the head wounds, or the authenticity of the Z-film, etc. It is merely pointing out a fact, that may or may not be relevant. That is, the forward explosion of this fragment may be suggestive of the authenticity of the film, or the fakery of the film. But that's not what this post is about. It's about simply noticing what has been before us for decades.

It's not a matter of Seaton being correct. It's in the film, and always has been. A shape explodes forward from the skull that could very well be the large fragment found in the limo. None of the doctors frequently cited on this forum as support for the "back of the head blow-out" dispute that the large triangular fragment was frontal bone. And none that I'm aware of dispute that this fragment was found in the limo. To my understanding, they all agree it was. So how do they explain no one's seeing a giant hole on the front of the top of the head at Parkland? Well, they guess that the same people they claim could not be wrong about the head wound location failed to notice the gaping hole because well, maybe it wasn't gaping. And that's ludicrous. The triangular fragment is a large fragment, far bigger than the Harper fragment. There's no way it could be missing from the skull and no one notice. From Chapter 19A: 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 high forehead 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 the 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 Dr. Gary Aguilar kidding five years later when he wrote "It is not hard to imagine the possibility that during the time it took the Presidential limousine to get to Parkland Hospital, clot had formed gluing a portion of disrupted scalp down making JFK's skull defect appear smaller to treating surgeons than it later would to autopsy surgeons” (Murder in Dealey Plaza, 2000). And nor was Doug Horne kidding when he suggested something similar in the documentary film A Coup in Camelot (2016). (Although the words to follow were actually spoken by narrator Peter Coyote, they were spoken in a section on Horne's findings, and undoubtedly represent Horne's views, which tend to mirror Dr. Mantik's.) Here, then, are the 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." Eegads! Will someone please tell me why it's less logical to believe a number of medical professionals incorrectly recalled the exact location of a large gaping head wound in the middle of bloody hair than that they completely failed to notice a similar-sized hole on the skull at the top of the head, due to the overlying scalp's being folded back into place, and the blood along the edges of this scalp's acting like glue? I mean, from a medical perspective, it's far better for them to have incorrectly recalled the location of a fatal wound, than to have missed one altogether. So why has my defense of their competence become so controversial? Because I'd really like to know...