Pat Speer

I think Mantik was humoring you. He has written numerous articles and books on the x-rays, and his conclusions run counter to your conclusions. He claims, for example, that the OD readings on the lateral x-ray prove there was a hole in the occipital bone. Well, think about it. In your theory, this hole would be on the front of the head, and not on the occipital bone. And his OD readings would be pointless. So, no, I don't buy for a second that he supports your conclusions. I'm sorry if that sounds rude. But I have been in this world for 20 years now. I have been to and spoken at numerous conventions, and have met most of those considered to be prominent researchers. And they just don't toss aside their research because someone sends them an email proposing a new theory. It doesn't even matter if you're right. That's just not how it works. Now, if you really want to continue on this trail, you're gonna need to show how the un-enhanced x-ray could be flipped around, whereby the white patch is now at the front, and then overlay this onto the pre-mortem x-ray in a way that makes sense. I mean, that is what what you're saying, right? That the un-enhanced x-ray has been reversed and then superimposed onto the pre-mortem x-ray to create the enhanced x-ray. I have spent a lot of time with these images and I don't see how this could be. But if you created some visual aids, maybe your ideas would become clearer to myself and others. Regards.

A defect is not necessarily a hole. It can be a hole, but it can also be a fracture or a malformation. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to say. If you really believe that the unenhanced x-ray has the face on left side, you've got your work cut out for you. A number of radiologists have viewed these x-rays and have never noticed such a thing. Heck, even Dr. Mantik acknowledges that the skull sutures on the x-rays match up with the skull sutures on JFK's pre-mortem x-rays.

Not really. The presumption is that the unenhanced x-ray shows the the face in the lower left corner, which is absurd. It is clearly the back of the head. Another presumption is that the skull in the unenhanced x-ray does not match up with the skull in the enhanced x-ray, which is not true. If one matches it up by the skull fractures, one will find that they do in fact match, but that the enhanced x-ray has been cropped and provides more detail, due to the enhancement.

My impression of the witness statements is that they placed the wound around the location of the word parietal on the image you've posted. My observation--for which I have been vilified, and harassed--is that those claiming the witnesses suggest the occipital bone was blown out of the skull--are being deceptive. It's clear the vast majority of witnesses placed the wound higher than that. And it's also clear the depictions of the wound in the McClelland drawing et al do not depict the bone flap observed and noted by Perry and Baxter. So why not admit as much? I mean, if one is to admit the witnesses placed the wound high on the back of the head, and then conclude based upon the initial claims of some that they saw cerebellum, that these witnesses placed the wound too high, then that would be an honest presentation of the evidence. Possibly incorrect, but honest. But we'e been told by writer after writer that the Parkland witnesses claimed the occipital bone was blown out of the skull, and that their recollections prove there was a hole over the occipital bone--no bone flap or anything, just a hole. And that's just not true.

Well, it was a flap. While laying on his back the flap would have been mostly closed. Perhaps that's why Perry, one of the few Parkland witnesses to actually inspect the wounds, mentioned the flap, while it went mostly unmentioned by others. Dr. Baxter, who was present during Perry's inspection, so to speak, did mention the flap. Here is my take on Baxter. From Chapter 18d: Baxter’s statement is undoubtedly intriguing. If “the rt temporal and occipital bones were missing”, as Baxter claimed, there would be a huge hole on the side and back of Kennedy’s head. Perhaps then, he meant only that parts of the temporal and occipital bones were missing. Baxter's testimony is even more intriguing. When he testified for the Warren Commission, (at a time when no one but no one was talking about the body being altered between Parkland and Bethesda), he testified that he observed a "temporal parietal plate of bone laid outward to the side," and that "the right side of his head had been blown off." He was also asked to read his earlier report into the record. While doing so, however, he read the line "the rt temporal and occipital bones were missing" as the "temporal and parietal bones were missing." This, in effect, moved the wound from the side and back of the skull, to the side and top of the skull. While some might claim he was pressured into doing so by Warren Commission Counsel Arlen Specter, who took his testimony, this is a bit of a stretch seeing as none of the other doctors recalled receiving any similar pressure regarding their own descriptions of the head wound. The probability, then, is that Baxter was inconsistent in his recollections, and "correcting" his earlier statement on his own. If this is so, moreover, he would continue on this winding course from that point onward. In 1992, he is reported to have told writer Gerald Posner that "The wound was on the right side, not the back," and to have told a writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association that he defers to the findings of the autopsy report. Now that would seem to have settled the matter. But he didn't stop there. He also told Tom Jarriel on the news program 20/20 that it was impossible to tell the direction of the bullet from what he observed. And this wasn't the last time he tried to wash his hands of the matter, only to muddy the water. Baxter responded to a letter from single-assassin theorist Francois Carlier in 1997 and once again confused. In response to Carlier's questions about the wounds he wrote "head--occiput--1 x 1/2 cm--skull detached." Well, this makes no sense. A 1 x 1/2 cm hole is a very small hole. It seems likely then that when Baxter wrote "occiput--1 x 1/2 cm" he was describing the supposed entrance wound on the back of the head--a wound unobserved at Parkland. And that when he wrote "skull detached" he was describing the much larger wound found elsewhere on the skull. Adding to this probability--that Baxter was trying to defend the official story--is his response to the follow-up questions. When asked his opinion on where the shots came from he wrote "from the rear." When then asked his response to Dr. Crenshaw's book claiming an exit wound was on the back of the head, and that the doctors were pressured to lie about it, he wrote "fabricated!!" He then confirmed this position by praising single-assassin theorist Gerald Posner's book Case Closed and insisting David Lifton's theory the wounds were altered was "Bull!" He then pulled back a bit. In 1998, while sitting with some of his fellow Parkland witnesses, he told the ARRB that "None of us at that time, I don't think, were in any position to view the head injury. And, in fact, I never saw anything above the scalpline, forehead line, that I could comment on.” My current suspicion is that there were two large flaps, actually. One on the top of the back of the head, that opened up a bit when JFK was on his back. And one by the ear that closed up when he was on his back. As a result of these flaps, those viewing the body at Parkland would perceive the wound as more posterior than those viewing the body at Bethesda. Now, does that explain the Parkland/Bethesda controversy? Not entirely. After Lifton popped up with his body alteration theory, some sought to shoot it down by claiming the wound observed at Parkland was the same as the wound observed at Bethesda, and that the Parkland witnesses were simply mistaken. And others countered that by saying no no no, the wound observed at Parkland was yes indeed the same as the wound observed at Parkland, but the Parkland doctors were correct, and the autopsy photos were fakes and the autopsists were lying about what they saw. And found support for this with some of the statements of the Bethesda witnesses, who described a giant wound including the back of the head. What they missed, however, was that these witnesses were almost certainly describing the wound as observed after the scalp was peeled back and skull fell to the table, and even after the brain was removed. Now, it's funny. JFK researchers are a fickle group, and alliances appear where one would not expect. But on this point, David Lifton and I were in agreement. We agreed that the wound descriptions differed between Parkland and Bethesda. He thought this was because the wound was altered. I thought this was because the body was viewed under different conditions. Will this ever be resolved? It's doubtful.

The word "occipital" is routinely used by doctors to describe the rear part of the head. It does not relate specifically to the occipital bone. So, in stating the wound was parietal-occipital, Perry was stating that the wound was on the top-back of the head. This is not the occipital bone blow-out depicted in the McClelland drawing, or by Mantik and his devotees. The fact that Perry mentioned a flap is further evidence for the authenticity of the photos over the drawings and depictions of researchers, as the drawings do not depict such a flap. So, no, it is not I who has been misrepresenting Perry's statements to support what I want to believe., I WANTED to believe the books and articles of men like Lifton, Groden, and Mantik, etc. But their work just doesn't stand the test of time, and thorough research. IMHO. From chapter 18d: Perry simply describes the large head wound as posterior. Within a few days of the shooting, Dr. Perry was the source for an article by Jimmy Breslin in the New York Herald-Tribune which was not so vague, claiming "The occipito-parietal, which is a part of the back of the head, had a huge flap." This flap, of course, is readily apparent on the autopsy photos but is nowhere to be seen on the "McClelland" drawing purported to represent the wound as seen by Perry. When testifying before the Warren Commission's attorneys on 3-25-64, for that matter, Perry would further describe the wound as being both in the "right posterior parietal area of the head exposing lacerated brain" and as a "large avulsive injury of the right occipitoparietal area." On 3-31-64, when testifying before the Commission itself, he would again describe the wound as "a large avulsive wound of the right parietal occipital area, in which both scalp and portions of skull were absent" with "severe laceration of underlying brain tissue." The wound described was, no surprise, higher on the skull than the wound depicted in the "McClelland" drawing. While Dr. Perry told the HSCA's Andy Purdy in 1978 that "some cerebellum" was seen, moreover, he either changed his mind about this or was referring to what someone else claimed to see, as he was reported to have told Gerald Posner in 1992 that he'd never actually seen cerebellum. In support that he'd actually told Posner such a thing, an article in the 4-5-92 Ft. Worth Star-Telegram had Perry rejecting Dr. Charles Crenshaw's assertion Kennedy was shot from the front, and claiming "There were no wounds at the front of the head at all." It also had Perry claiming that most of the doctors who'd seen Kennedy at Parkland failed to talk much about the shooting not because they'd been silenced, but because it was "a painful experience most of us don't want to relive." This, in turn, led to a 5-27-92 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which Dr. Perry further denounced Dr. Crenshaw and his belief Kennedy was shot from the front. This time he went a bit further, however. To counter Crenshaw's claim that his fellow Parkland physicians, including Perry, had participated in a "conspiracy of silence" about Kennedy's wounds, in order to save their careers, Perry responded by saying that, if Dr. Crenshaw had truly felt Kennedy's wounds were evidence of a conspiracy, and had kept his silence for 29 years, then that was "despicable." In 1997, in a letter to single-assassin theorist Francois Carlier, moreover, Perry made his rejection of the conspiracy theorist claim Kennedy's head wound was on the back of the head at Parkland, but on the top of the head at Bethesda, crystal freaking clear. When asked by Carlier if he was familiar with David Lifton's theory the body was kidnapped and altered, Perry responded "I didn't know this--what a joke!" When then asked what he thought of Lifton's theory, he responded "Don't know or care what he says. He wasn't there." And it's not as if Perry was just telling Carlier what he wanted to hear. In 1998, when conspiracy theorist Vincent Palamara similarly pushed Perry for clarification on Kennedy's wounds, Perry wrote him back and insisted he'd made "only a cursory examination of the head" and that both his findings and those of his colleague Dr. Clark were "consistent with those described by Dr. Humes et al during the autopsy." Yes, it's more than clear. Perry, as Carrico, felt the wounds he saw at Parkland were consistent with the wounds observed at Bethesda. He was not a conspiracy theorist. And conspiracy theorists should stop pretending he was.

When Columnist Jimmy Breslin interviewed Malcolm Perry on the day after the assassination, Perry told him that the head wound had a huge flap. While he said this was occipto-parietal, his description and placement are nevertheless far more supportive of the wound in the autopsy photos than the wound in the so-called McClelland drawing. ‘A Death in Emergency Room One’ New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 24, 1963 By Jimmy Breslin ... Then Malcolm Perry stepped up to the aluminum hospital cart and took charge of the hopeless job of trying to keep the 35th president of the United States from death. And now, the enormousness came over him. Here is the most important man in the world, Perry thought. The chest was not moving. And there was no apparent heartbeat inside. The wound in the throat was small and neat. Blood was running out of it. It was running out too fast. The occipitoparietal, which is a part of the back of the head, had a huge flap. The damage a .25-caliber bullet does as it comes out of a person’s body is unbelievable. Bleeding from the head wound covered the floor. ...

Thanks, Tom. I'll take a look.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=146599#relPageId=39

I've read probably 50 books and articles on the radiology of gunshot wounds and don't recall ever coming across any dealing with tangential wounds. As far as the bulk of the fragments being on the outside of the skull, I first saw this in an article by Mantik--in which he pointed out that the top of the brain was purportedly missing, and thereby could not retain fragments, and then noticed that this observation was in keeping with the observation of Dr. Davis of the HSCA, who said the fragments appeared to be on the outside the skull. I then tried to figure this out for myself, by figuring out the angle of the skull in the x-rays, along with the magnification of the front of the head vs. the back of the head. And this convinced me that yessiree the trail of fragments is on the outside of the skull.

As smaller fragments travel a shorter distance from impact than larger fragments, the whole point of the fragment trail argument is that the smaller fragments are near the front of the head, and thus suggestive of a front to back trajectory. Chesser is a disciple of Mantik's. He does not hold that the trajectory was back to front. He says front to back and even thinks he's found evidence of an entrance on the front of the head. I, of course, believe the fragment cloud is near the middle of the head, and is suggestive of an impact in that location. As the largest fragment was found behind the right eye, moreover, it seems probable this shot came from behind. But this is of little importance as far as conspiracy/no conspiracy. Whether one agrees with Mantik and Chesser that the fragment trail is from front to back, or with myself that the impact appears to have occurred above the ear, the point is that the fragment trail is not supportive of the autopsists' claim of a bullet striking low on the back of the head and erupting from the top of the head, nor the subsequent panels' claim of a bullet striking high on the back of the head. The fragment trail proves the first is wrong, and makes the second highly doubtful, which when added to the fact no one saw an entrance wound high on the back of the head, extremely doubtful.

I believe the point made by Chesser and others is that the cloud of smaller fragments is towards the front of the head, not rear, which would not be in keeping with a bullet's heading from back to front, as smaller fragments have less momentum, and travel shorter distances than larger fragments.

From Chapter 7b: Alan Smith is one of the more mysterious witnesses. He claimed he witnessed the shooting from up close while standing on Main Street, which made little sense. As a result, I avoided adding him to this list for a long time. In 2012, however, researcher Chris Scally looked into Smith and was able to confirm he attended the school he claimed to have attended, and was only 14 at the time of the shooting. Scally also made a tentative ID of Smith as one of the two boys standing under the Stemmons Freeway sign in the Betzner and Willis photos. (Scally's article on Smith can be found in the Winter 2012 Dealey Plaza Echo.) In any event, Scally's article convinced me that Smith's claim of being on Main Street was probably an honest mistake, and that he may very well have been on Elm. I mean, how many 14 year-olds from the suburbs know the names of the downtown streets in your hometown? Not a lot, I would guess. (11-22-63 datelined article found in the 11-23-63 Chicago Tribune) "A wide-eyed 14-year-old boy, who was standing 10 feet away and looking directly at President Kennedy at the time of the assassination, told THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE of his astonishment at watching the historic event unfold. "It made me weak! I felt like sitting down! It was horrible!" Alan Smith, a Boy Scout and a 9th grade pupil at Stockard Junior High School, related. "I was standing on the curb watching the parade along Main street. We were permitted to skip school, if we had a note from our parents, to watch it." "The crowds were cheering, but all at once they changed to screaming. The car was about 10 feet from me when a bullet hit the President in his forehead. The bullets came from a window right over my head in the building in front of which my friends and I were standing." "Mr. Kennedy had a big wide smile. But when he was hit, his face turned blank. There was no smile, no frown - nothing. He fell down over Jackie's knees and didn't say anything. She stood up screaming 'God, oh God, no.' There was blood all over her and everything. She tried to raise him up but he fell back over her." "It sounded like the governor (John B. Connally) moaned when he was hit, I couldn't be sure." "The car went about five feet and stopped. Two policemen on foot rushed up. Then motorcycle policemen who had been leading the parade came back." "In a few minutes there were hundreds of policemen around the Dallas School Depository building, where they said the shots came from. They stuck ladders up to the building. They surrounded the whole place and moved the crowds away, so I had to leave." "Everything seemed terrible all over Dallas. Crowds of people were running all thru the city. I never saw anything like this before." Further thoughts. 1. While Smith said he was on Main Street.this is probably just a mistake. Even so, both this statement and the statement the car was about 10 feet from him prove his impressions are not to be relied upon, but to be interpreted in the context of the other witnesses. 2. He says nothing about a first shot, and Kennedy's stopping his wave and moving to his left or anything. after a first shot. It seems clear then he failed to realize the President was hit before the head shot. When one reads through the statements of hundreds of witnesses (which I have collected and made available on my website), it becomes clear that those oblivious to the first shot were almost all standing in the middle of the plaza, a la Moorman and Hill. This strongly supports Scally's conclusion Smith was one of the boys by the Stemmons' sign. It would have been weird, after all, for him to have been directly in front of the building and to have witnessed Kennedy being shot in the head while in front of him, and for none of the other witnesses to have noticed this until JFK was shot in the head 50 yards or so down the road. 3. It follows then that Smith's placement of himself as being directly in front of the building is misleading, as he was actually a number of yards to the west of the building. But of course that's thinking of the plaza as a grid. If one considers that Smith was turning his head to watch the President as he passed him, and that he was turned to the southwest when JFK was shot in the head, well, then, Smith is actually correct, as the TSBD would then be behind him, with a window (presumably the west window) right over his head. Now, if so, that is not all that surprising. A number of witnesses to the shooting placed the last shot or shots at locations west of the so-called sniper's nest, and east of the picket fence. Most prominently, Bill Newman. But F. Lee Mudd, another witness whose location was a bit of a mystery, who I assume was the man standing with Emmet Hudson on the steps by the picket fence, similarly said he saw an open window in the TSBD, and had thought the shots came from there.

Neither Allman nor Smith said they thought the shots came from the front. In fact they both said they thought the shots were fired from a building. And neither one said they saw a wound on the back of the head. The closest Allman came to saying such a thing, as I recall, is when he quoted Bill Newman as saying "They got the side of his head."

Denise: Which, of course, matches my scenario exactly (of a first/frontal head shot when the limousine had just finished its turn onto Elm, with the second head shot when the limousine was near the stairs, with the Moorman shot being the one that struck Connally). Pat: Am I reading that last paragraph correctly? Are you claiming JFK was shot from the front just after the limo turned onto Elm Street? It appears you place great weight on eyewitness recollections. Are there any witnesses to such a thing?

Some claim they've already discovered this. But their evidence is well... When I first noticed this, and reported back to people who would prefer not be harassed that others were describing an entrance on the front of the head--that went unobserved at Parkland and Bethesda--that connected to an exit on the left side of the back of the head--that went unobserved at Parkland and Bethesda--they wouldn't believe me. One prominent researcher even emailed me a number of times flipping out about this. He couldn't believe they were relying upon witnesses who never saw the body--and who were repeating what they claimed to remember being shown in photographs 30 years earlier. That is the sloppiest kind of research, essentially not research at all. Jeremy Gunn said his experience with the ARRB led him to distrust the recollections of witnesses from 30 years prior--and he cited in support that one of the Parkland doctors insisted Jackie was wearing white on the day of the shooting, and had blood stains on her white clothing. Well, if he'd asked around he probably could have found another witness to confirm she'd been wearing white, and voila! we'd have another a couple of books and a couple of thousand online posts about how "they" faked all the photos and films to show her wearing a pink outfit. Heck, give us a couple of years and someone will raise the ante by claiming there were FOUR headshots.

Ok, thanks. That's what I remembered. The article was based on the FBI's report in which the throat wound was attributed to a fragment from the bullet striking the head. True to the Sibert/O'Neill report, moreover, the bullet creating the back wound did not transit. You are correct, furthermore, in that this third-hand account makes it sound like the bullet creating the back wound was recovered during the autopsy.

A couple of questions. 1. You mention early news accounts of a bullet being recovered from the President's shoulder. I don't remember reading such an account. Can you post a link? FWIW, the December news accounts taken from leaked FBI reports which I do remember involved a fragment exit from the throat. 2. At the end you make note of a possible exit of such a fragment from the throat. But you indicate you believe this was a ricochet from a shot from the front. Well, where did this bullet enter? And how do you explain the EOP entrance? Or do you think that was just made up? It seems like we're on the same page with some of this but in different books on other. Which is fine. In fact, it's pretty much the purpose of this forum. (Or at least the original purpose of this forum.)

Thanks, Stu. I loved Dad humor long before I became a dad

You are speaking as a member of a "we" to which you don't really belong, Sandy. Lifton believed the interpretations of the autopsy doctors et al were correct--but that the body was altered to fool them. Then Groden and Livingstone countered with but no it wasn't the body that was altered but the photos showing no hole on the back of the head. And Groden said further that the Z-film does show a blow-out on the back of the head. And then Lifton and Fetzer et al said but no the Z-film does not show a blow-out on the back of the head, so it must also be fake. And then Horne came up and said yeah the body was altered but not to fool the doctors, as they were the ones actually altering the body. And then I said huh well no one is really talking about what the evidence shows, and spent years reading a hundred thousand or more pages of medical texts and forensics articles. And, guess what, the supposedly altered evidence was proof for conspiracy all the freakin' time.

To be clear, Gary and I are not in lockstep. I believe he thinks the hole went further down on the back of the head than I do. But I know for fact he doesn't think the body was altered to hide the true nature of the wounds, nor that the films and photos showing a hole at the top of the head were faked. There are basically two schools of thought on this. One holds that the back of the head was blown-out--a hole in the middle of the back of the head from a bullet entering the front of the head, and that all the photos and films have been faked or some such thing, and all the witnesses describing a large defect near the ear were hallucinating. This is preposterous, IMO. The second school includes folks like Gary, Tink, Randy Robertson, and Dr. Doug DeSalles. These men think there was a hole at the top of the head which stretched to the top of the back of the head, and that the autopsy photos, x-rays and Z-film, while misleading in some aspects, are most likely authentic. I am a student at this second school. While I don't agree with these men on everything, we agree that the official medical evidence provides us all we need to demonstrate that the WC was a hoax, and the HSCA a perpetuation of this hoax. As far as the quote I provided from Gary...it was not supposed to be controversial. He was merely agreeing that the bone flaps apparent on the photos and x-rays may have opened up at Parkland, and given the impression that the wound was more rear-ward than as shown in the back of the head photos. This should not be a big deal. That so much fuss came as a result just goes to show what we're up against. The spirit of Lifton/Fetzer (essentially, the urge to prove conspiracy by claiming the evidence is fake--which is a de facto acknowledgement that the evidence suggests no conspiracy) lives on. And I refuse to submit to it. Perhaps we need to redefine what is meant by a conspiracy theorist. I am a conspiracy theorist because I firmly believe the official evidence suggests a conspiracy. But Lifton/Fetzer et al are conspiracy theorists because they believe the official evidence suggests no conspiracy, and that this evidence must thereby be fake. IOW, the whole alterationist school is built upon their fundamental belief that the WC and HSCA interpretations of the autopsy photos, x-rays, and Z-film are CORRECT. And in that regard, they have more in common with LNs than CTs like myself. And that is why they find me a threat, and have made me a target. Because they know if I am correct, and that the official evidence does in fact suggest a conspiracy, well, then, their belief everything was faked makes little sense. I am so sorry to have upset their apple cart. OK. OK, Not really...

There is a long-time member of the research community with whom I frequently discuss Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Although scientists are supposed to drop theories answering questions when a better theory comes along to answer these questions, they rarely do. In fact, Kuhn found that new theories, which represented what he called a "paradigm shift," are almost universally rejected for years and even decades after their first publication by those who had previously embraced the old theory, and sometimes fail to take hold until the proponents of the old theory have departed the scene. Needless to say, this happens with JFK research as well. Over the years I have uncovered and demonstrated that 1) Michael Baden testified with his exhibit upside down and spewed tons of nonsense in his subsequent books and statements about the case...and yet he is still cited by some as an authority. 2. Michael Kurtz invented numerous interviews for his final book The JFK Assassination Debates...and yet a number of prominent writers continue to recite his obviously fabricated quotes as evidence. 3. The vast majority of witnesses claiming they saw JFK at the time of the first shot said he reacted to this shot...and yet a sizable percentage of theorists and writers continue claiming the first shot missed, and that JFK continued calmly waving to the crowd after this shot. There's probably 50 more. And hundreds more including the work of others, such as yourself...

That just isn't true, Gerry. An intact bullet through the brain will leave both a permanent cavity (a tunnel) and a temporary cavity (a temporary expansion of the tunnel, which manifests itself as black tissue upon subsequent examination). This is what you will find in the wound ballistics literature, over and over again. Nobody is shooting cadaver brains. These are the brains of actual murder victims. Now, a shotgun wound to the head or such would create a disgusting mess, where no bullet could be tracked. But an M/C bullet at almost 90 yards would not be so explosive, and would leave an identifiable track through the brain, should it have traveled from low to high.

You're forgetting about the brain, Tom. One of the rarely discussed aspects of the case is that the Clark Panel moved the wound to the top of the head to get around the incredibly inconvenient fact that the brain showed no signs of transit of a bullet on a low to high trajectory. The photos should have showed something like the wound on the left. Note that the brain remained intact above the well-defined entrance of the bullet on the left. But instead the photos showed a groove along the top of the head starting inches above the EOP entrance. As a consequence I don't see any chance for a new panel's signing off on the EOP entrance absent that panel's simultaneously claiming there was more than one head shot.

Well, thanks Stu. I think. A couple of points. 1. Yes, Sturdivan and a few others were swayed by Canal, who was indeed an interesting hybrid of a researcher. Not only did he think Oswald was killed as part of a conspiracy. But he also had come to conclude that the Clark Panel was a deliberate cover-up. 2. While I have recently come under fire for not believing witnesses who'd claimed the back of the head was blown out--which is something contradicted by other witnesses--I am similarly treated as an outlier and pariah for claiming the large fragment found at autopsy was found behind the right eye--on which I am in agreement with ALL the witnesses, AND for which there is confirmation on the x-rays. So, really, I don't feel the slightest need for "expert" verification on this issue. I have pointed out something that is logical, and obviously factual. Every witness at the autopsy noting the removal of a large fragment said it was removed from behind the right eye. And there is a fragment on the x-rays behind the right eye. Now, some have mused that this fragment is not a metal fragment, but a bone fragment. But NONE of the HSCA or ARRB's experts" to view the x-rays were sufficiently familiar with the case to know that a metal fragment was found behind the right eye, and none were asked if there was yes indeed a fragment behind the right eye. But if they had been you can bet the farm they'd have said yeah there it is right where the doctors said they'd found it, and right where they depicted it in the Rydberg drawings. As far as Mantik et al, they maintain that the fragment everyone said was found behind the right eye was actually found in the middle of the forehead, even though they acknowledge there is a fragment of some sort behind the right eye, and even though they acknowledge the fragment in the archives bears no resemblance to the fragment in the middle of the forehead (the fragment first noted by Lattimer). So, no, no expert opinion is necessary. That the fragment was behind the right eye is a fact. Let's make an analogy. A grounds crew at a stadium say they found a fluffy toy poodle sleeping on the fifty-yard line and took it to the pound. But then someone else comes along and says I have looked at photos of the stadium and what they said was a fluffy toy poodle was really a big fluffy cat. And says further that the grounds crew must have been thinking of a tiny chihuahua seen running through the end zone in one of the photos. And then admits the dog in the pound is not a chihuahua, but doubts it is the poodle described by the grounds crew, because the dog in the pound is not fluffy. And then it turns out that with the slightest bit of research he'd have discovered that the poodle was shaved upon arrival at the pound. But will this guy admit he was wrong? No, of course not.