Pat Speer

We can agree on this. The "shored" wound argument pushed by Lattimer and propped up by Baden et al was a hoax. While it is true "shored" exit wounds are exits that look a lot like entrances, I found a top textbook with a section on how to tell a shored exit apart from its corresponding entrance. According to this textbook, the entrance wound leading to a shored exit is inevitably smaller than the shored exit. Well, hell, JFK's back wound was, by all estimates, larger than his throat wound. If one assumes they are connected, then, one is forced to assume the back wound is the exit, and not the throat wound. P.S. I'll save the SBT-lovers out there their next post where they claim whoever wrote this textbook was an idiot, etc. It was Dr. Charles Petty-THE top gunshot wounds expert among the members of the HSCA Pathology Panel. Even Worse, he wrote his chapter on gunshot wounds while serving on the HSCA Pathology Panel. So he damned well knew the throat wound was not a shored wound of entrance, even while signing onto a report pretending his throat wound was a shored wound of exit. . FWIW, I had a meeting with Dr. Wecht at the 2014 Bethesda conference that focused on this issue. He was disgusted by Petty's subterfuge. I sent him the following slide, and half-expected him to add it or at least add the info provided into his presentations. But he never did. For whatever reason, he was reluctant to call out his colleagues on their obvious deceptions, and instead chose to pretend they were simply mistaken. I believe he should have taken the other route.

We've been through this, but the fact remains that there is NO evidence the shooter was wearing a t-shirt. None of the witesses described such a thing. And none of them noticed the shooter's bare arms. So the facts strongly suggest the sniper was NOT wearing a t-shirt.

The fibers weren't lodged in the crevice. They were wrapped around the edge of the butt plate on top of fingerprint powder. That is why the FBI offered that they were snagged and just dangling there until someone, presumably Day, brushed the rifle, and "innocently" wrapped the fibers around the butt plate on top of the powder. I think we can agree this was nonsense.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the rifle was wiped down, even a little bit. Have you seen the trigger guard prints? They are not smudged. It follows then that the rifle was not wiped down. I would think, moreover, that you, as an Oswald-did-it person, would believe it wasn't wiped down, as that would support that Scalice was able to make an ID of the trigger guard prints. Can I take from your belief it was wiped down that you don't put much stock in Scalice's ID?

A slight correction. The reversed stills were not in Life Magazine, but were the stills as published in the WC's 26 volumes. As I recall, this was noticed by Lifton, who turned around and sent Hoover a letter pointing this out, and actually received a response. If I recall Hoover readily admitted the mistake. The Life Magazine deception was in one of its first descriptions of the Zapruder film. It claimed JFK turned to face the TSBD before getting shot in the neck. This was before the back wound had become public knowledge, and long before the SBT had been developed. So they had to explain how JFK received what was then a presumed entrance wound in the throat when the TSBD was behind him. So they pretended he turned around. When I was putting together my timelines on this stuff I noticed something that had previously gone unrecognized, moreover. The claim JFK turned--and that that was how he received an entrance wound in the neck--preceded the Life Mag article. If I recall it was in several news reports leading up to that article, which attributed this description to White House sources. So, yeah, it appears that Life fed the public bs--but that it was bs that had been fed them by the WH.

It was a cadaver, not an empty skull. I have photos of the head before the removal of the flesh on my website, in this chapter. https://www.patspeer.com/chapter16bdigginginthedirt

Geez, Gerry, you're just making stuff up. The thinnest part of the skull is not the top of the skull, but the temples. And Olivier's tests absolutely positively did not replicate the explosion of skull shown in the Z-film. The image I posted, moreover, is quite relevant to the case. The Clark Panel on down rejected the EOP location because the brain injuries were totally inconsistent with an EOP entrance/top of the head exit. So they conjured up the cowlick entrance. The trajectory in the cadaver skull is basically the reverse of the HSCA trajectory, with an M/C bullet fired from much closer than JFK's location at 313, and yet the top of the skull remained intact. I have numerous images on my website taken from textbooks showing the wounds expected from M/C rifle and similar rifles, and the top of the head just doesn't blow off the way the top of JFK's head blew off, UNLESS the bullet has impacted at that location on a tangent.

I have chapters on my website devoted to JFK's head wounds, and the wound ballistics of 6.5 mm carcano ammunition, and what you describe is not in keeping with reality. Here, for example, is a photo from the first published tests of a 6.5 mm Carcano. The bullet enters at the front of the skull and exits from the rear. The top of the skull does not blow off. The temporary cavity does not explode and leave no trace of itself.

Michael, these arguments have been addressed on my website for 15 years or so. They are just wrong. Most of the witnesses pointing to a "back of the head" wound point to a location far above the cerebellum, for example. The real problem is not that "I won't admit" the autopsy photos are fake, it's that virtually no one in conspiracy land has ever taken the time to figure out what the photos actually show. There is a cadre that is just desperate to believe anything proving a shot from the front, and will twist anything to fit that scenario. But when one steps back and reads up on gunshot wounds to the brain, one realizes that the autopsy report and brain photos are at odds with the single-assassin solution, and strongly suggest the fatal bullet impacted at the top of the head, at the supposed exit. (As this leaves the EOP entrance unaccounted for, this indicates two shots to the head, and thus conspiracy.)

Oh my. The temporary cavity does indeed collapse--this is why it is called temporary cavity. But there is a permanent cavity that remains behind that is readily probe-able, in most body parts, and within the brain after it has been fixed. No such cavity was observed within Kennedy's brain. Chapter 16c at patspeer.com is on this very topic and is one of the most important chapters ever written on the JFK case, IMHO. Here is an image showing a permanent cavity within a brain after the brain has been fixed, and sectioned.

The scenario you describe would indicate a funnel-shaped brain wound which was largest at the exit at the top of the skull and smallest back at the EOP. No such wound was noted at autopsy or in the photographs. Instead, the report and photos suggest a large trench on the top right side from front to back. This suggests a different scenario entirely. P.S. Those pushing an EOP entrance/top of the head exit acknowledge that the angles don't add up, and hold instead that the bullet curved sharply upwards within the skull--something that failed to occur in the WC's tests. Is that your claim? Or do you really believe a bullet fired from the SN and entering the EOP at 313 would exit at the top of the head?

LOL. I have chapters on a number of unreliable "researchers," including Mantik. If one reads it one will find that many of Mantik's views have changed over the years--some after I'd pointed out his errors--and that many of his statements have been self-contradictory, and just plain bizarre.

I state an obvious fact we agree upon and you try to turn it into a bone of contention. I wrote that the single-assassin solution was "highly unlikely." You insist, like a belligerent blind man, that there is nothing you haven't seen that you could ever accept as possibly existing. And you claim a mass amount of eyewitness support that doesn't actually exist. Very few if any of the witnesses to the back wound and throat wound insisted the back wound was at T-3 and the autopsy photos were fake, and/or that the throat wound was absolutely positively an entrance wound and could not be an exit wound under any circumstances. So why pretend? I mean, think about it. These people attended a movie premiere with Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. They later said Ava was wearing a red dress. When they were shown photos of the wedding, however, they said "Huh, I guess she wasn't wearing a red dress, she was wearing a green dress." But then Cliff jumps in and says "No, she was wearing a red dress, and all the photos are fake, and it's all a part of a mass conspiracy." A voice of reason then says "But why change the dress, when the point was that the photos show Frank with Ava, at a time when he was married to someone else. That's the key. That's the problem. The color of the dress is a minor problem. Why go to such lengths to disguise it when the "faked" photos remain a major problem? To refresh, the SBT led the WC and doctors to push that the back wound was at the base of the neck. The back wound photos prove that to be a lie. If the back wound photos were faked, well, why in heck weren't they faked to show what they were supposed to show, namely that the back wound was in line with the throat wound? And yes, I know. The SBT was developed months later. So, assuming the back wound photos were "faked" within a day or two of the assassination, the question becomes why, why, why, would they do such a thing? If they really thought there were three shots, three hits, and that the bullet creating the back wound fell out, how would having this wound at T-1 be preferable to having this wound an inch or two lower? It makes no sense. No sense at all.

I have a whole chapter on Mantik's findings. Many of his current claims are "corrections" after I pointed out problems with his earlier claims.

I've met Mike a couple of times, and he's a nice guy. But he's not a forensic radiologist and as of yet no forensic radiologists have supported his (and Mantik's) interpretation of the x-rays. So, one can't rightly aay he's proved anything, Not yet anyhow.

The EOP entrance is right where the doctors said it was. It's just hard to make out in the photos, seeing as they failed to shave the hair. But it's there, alright, and is readily visible in gifs combining the color and b and w back of the head photos. Here it is in a still. Now look at that location in the gif. P.S. This is discussed in great detail in Chapter 13 at patspeer.com, which also features a large blow-up of the gif above. https://www.patspeer.com/chapter13solvingthegreatheadwoundmyster

The media reported on much of the testimony, including testimony suggesting a conspiracy, during the committee's hearings. It then waited around for a report. The report was a compromise, and Blakey and Stokes' public defense of the report didn't help much. As the committee concluded there was probably more than one shooter, but failed to connect Oswald to a specific second shooter, it was purported that the committee had concluded that a second shooter--ALSO ACTING ALONE--just so happened to fire shots at the exact same time as Oswald. This, of course, was nonsense, and led to much confusion. Blakey, of course, publicly pushed and continued to push that Oswald fired the shots as part of a mob conspiracy. To the point that many believed the committee had concluded as much, when it did not. In short, the HSCA is exhibit 1A as to why government committees quite often fail. The congressmen were just too busy and too political to get to the bottom of it all. Some would never conclude there was a conspiracy in which Oswald had been a patsy, and some were overly friendly with Arlen Specter, and were reluctant to second-guess the Warren Commission. It's incredible, in retrospect, that any good came of it.

I don't recall anyone saying the sniper was wearing a red shirt.

It's safe to say we've reached the same conclusion. That the single-assassin solution is highly unlikely, and that the WC and subsequent panels twisted the evidence to make it seem reasonable to assume Oswald fired all the shots, when this was--by their own test results--demonstrated to have been highly unlikely.

I discuss the shooting re-enactments and what they demonstrate here: https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4g-thoughts-on-shots-and-the-curtain-rod-story

I believe I mentioned this documentary recently to counter the oft-stated claim the mainstream media has always covered for the CIA. Not exactly so, eh? FWIW, Moyers wrote a book to accompany this documentary, which I'm fairly certain was heavily promoted on his PBS program, etc. In any event, I have it somewhere.

In order to have perspective, one needs to see things from another angle. Suppose Hunter Biden enthusiastically met with Chinese agents prior to an election. Suppose Joe Biden then publicly called on China to hack into computers and find some useful dirt on his opponent in this election. Suppose a website soon thereafter put up this useful dirt, and suppose a subsequent investigation proved this dirt came from hackers sponsored by the Chinese Government. Now suppose one of Biden's closest advisers was in contact with this website at this time, and that he lied about his contacts to investigators. Now suppose as well that Biden's campaign manager was providing important polling and demographic information to Chinese billionaires, who were in contact with Chinese government sponsored hackers, who were using fake profiles to spread reams of misinformation on social media. And now suppose that within months of taking office, Biden covered Xi with praise, defended China against its adversaries, and presented China with top secret information from another country, that was meant for U.S. eyes only. An investigation into the Biden campaign's actions would be appropriate, yes? YES!! YES!!! Absolutely YES!!!

I asked someone who'd been close to Lifton if any progress had been made in reviving Lifton's unfinished book. I failed to receive a response. So I suspect it really is lost.

I believe that is what she said. She said she was trying to piece together what happened, and added some post-assassination-reported events onto her calendar so she could better understand the timeline.

I remember them discussing Russo's "conclusion" regarding Oswald's supposed belief he was killing JFK on behalf of Cuba, and his attempt at getting to an airplane which would fly him to Cuba. But I don't recall seeing his face. Maybe I was looking the other way at that point. In any event, the last half of the program presented Cuba-did-it, the Russians did it, the mob did it, etc, and even presented a bit on Garrison which acknowledged Oswald knew Ferrie, etc. So the last half wasn't a total disaster. Like I said, it seems the History Channel is now open to any conclusion, any conspiracy, as long as Oswald is the shooter.