2 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

So did Jay Epstein.   Weeks ago.  

Yes---Epstein was largely ignored, especially compared to Lifton.

Harry Connick Sr., lightning-rod longtime New Orleans DA, dies at 97 (msn.com)

Thanks for the comment, Pat. Question- I cannot find your specific comment, but you said recently that not one witness saw both a small and a large hole on the back of the head...what about Roy Kellerman?

History Matters Archive - MD 56 - Kellerman-Purdy HSCA Interview (8/24-25/77), pg (history-matters.com)

Bonus- Completely overlooked WC reference to Crenshaw's presence on 11/24/63: 21 H 265(report by Parkland Administrator Charles Price)---“Dr. Charles Crenshaw was in the corridor and said they had been alerted. He said, ‘You’re not going to put him [Oswald] in the same room the President was in, are you?’ [I] told him I surely was glad he had thought of it and by all means, not to.”

George Hickey also thought the shots were street level: 18 H 761-764: report dated 11/30/63---”After a very short distance I heard a loud report which sounded like a firecracker. It appeared to come from the right and rear and seemed to me to be at ground level...At the moment he was almost sitting erect I heard two reports which I thought were shots and that appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them."

Thomas Maurer Atkins, Navy White House photographer, rode in Camera Car 1 in motorcade; Shot the film "The Last Two Days", culled from his films from the Texas trip of 11/21-11/22/63 (deceased 8/24/2011):

Richard Trask's Pictures of the Pain, p. 388, based off Trask’s 3/19/1986 interview]: “And to see pictures of the autopsy and what the bullet had done to the hair…those are things that just stick out in your memory.” [Emphasis added; this was said to Trask over two years before some of the autopsy pictures began appearing in books like the 1988 Carroll & Graf paperback edition of David Lifton's Best Evidence (and his appearance on Nova) and 1989's High Treason by Groden & Livingstone.

Did Atkins see the photos, possibly at NPC with fellow Navy man and WH photographer Robert Knudsen, during the weekend of the assassination?

3/1/77 tabloid publication “Midnight”: article by Robert Sibley, a civilian who worked at NPC and was hired by Atkins (see also Pictures of the Pain, pp. 385-386, Crossfire, pp. 16-17, and Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 19):” The shots came from below and off to the right side from where I was…I never thought the shots came from above. They did not sound like shots coming from anything higher than street level.” Interestingly, Leonard Pullin, a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy who helped in the filming of Atkins’ “The Last Two Days,” was killed in a single-car accident in 1967 (Crossfire, p. 561, and JFK: The Dead Witnesses, p. 43)

Page 386 of Pictures of the Pain: “What Atkins does recall quite clearly is that as his car was traveling down Houston Street towards the Texas School Book Depository the “shots sounded in front of me. I didn’t get the sensation that they were from up high. It sounded like in the crowd at my level. I had not even seen the grassy knoll at that point. If they were coming from anywhere, they were coming from that turn. If they had come from the grassy knoll, I don’t think they would have been near as loud, because I think the buildings there tended to throw the sound at us.”

54 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Yes...but did CIA assets have correct CIA officer ID? Or other ID that said "CIA" on it?

I don't know the answer. I am asking.

Of course, back then it was the CIA that printed up CIA and Secret Service credentials, as I recall.  So, I suppose even a CIA asset could be provided official-looking CIA credentials, for a one-day op. 

Being a federal law enforcement agent, Andy Berger recognizing a CIA agent's ID and duly noting this in an official report speaks volumes.

This is huge- asset, officer or agent...aren't we splitting hairs here?

4 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Good question, but the CIA'er is reported to have shown correct ID. 

That strikes me as ID that a CIA officer would have, not merely a CIA asset or agent. 

You are correct, that the CIA refers to staffers as "officers" and not "agents."

CIA officer, agent, whatever: still very important and extremely overlooked. Not until little old me pointed this out in 1991 (and all my books) did people go "wow" and, even then, so many do not know of this.

History Matters Archive - Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XVIII, pg (history-matters.com)

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

So this is a CIA agent at Parkland Hospital while Kennedy is there in the ER?

Correct- as duly noted in my books. Secret Service agent Andy Berger reported it. A CIA agent! From his report in the Warren Commission volumes. I "discovered" this back in 1991. 

Corroboration for Bolden

Bumping. See my latest post about 189 check

@James DiEugenio

 I was continuing to read the new and outstanding book THE JFK ASSASSINATION CHOKEHOLDS THAT PROVE THERE WAS A CONSPIRACY by Jim DiEugenio, Paul Bleau, Matt Crumpton, Andrew Iler, and Mark Adamcyzk and I came across a very interesting entry concerning Lee Harvey Oswald, Leonard Hutchison and a 189-dollar check that Oswald---or a double---attempted to cash which is a whopping 1,896 in 2023 dollars, a huge amount for the broke Oswald (Page 152; for the Warren Commission reference: 10 H 335) [see all corresponding images at the bottom of this post]

189 dollars? Hmmm. I knew I had heard of this unique check amount before with regard to events connected in some way to Oswald and the assassination.

And I had, indeed (18 H 672-673): JFK Secret Service agent Andy Berger ALSO tried to cash a 189-dollar check in the Dallas/Fort Worth area like Oswald in November 1963! This is also a huge amount for the mostly broke Secret Service agents (read Gerald Blaine's whining about their low pay in The Kennedy Detail)

Secret Service agent Andy Berger was one of the agents who caroused at both the Fort Worth Press Club (drinking alcohol against regulations) and The Cellar into the early morning hours of 11/22/63 (18 H 683). 

Berger would later drive JFK's body in the hearse out of Parkland Hospital and on to Love Field and Air Force One. Berger was also part of the shift that involved working with fellow agent Richard Johnsen, the keeper of CE399 (18 H 680).

As I discovered years ago, Berger was also the agent who reported the presence of a CIA AGENT at Parkland Hospital, as well as the presence of FBI agent Vince Drain, "a doctor friend of his", and an unidentified FBI agent who had to be restrained by Berger from entering the emergency room (18 H 795-796)! The unidentified FBI agent turned out to be J. Doyle Williams (JFK: From Parkland To Bethesda, page 87)

[J. Doyle Williams [see Reasonable Doubt, pp. 71-72 (based on Feb. 1983 interview); see also 18 H 795-796 (Berger), 798-799 (Johnsen); 21 H 261 (Price); RIF#18010082-10454: 1/31/78 HSCA interview of SS agent Tim McIntyre; Also: Bloody Treason, pp. 90, 91, 93, 96, and 110; 5 H 132, 144; 18 H 96 and Pictures Of The Pain, p. 105: photo of Williams; 22 H 841, 910; 23 H 681; 24 H 523; No More Silence, pp. 130 and 164. Doyle Williams was also the man who portrayed Connally in the Arlen Specter/follow-up car (limousine) re-enactments, wearing Connally's actual jacket]

Deathbed confession? FBI Doyle Williams planted CE399-? - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com)

From another forum today [5/29/17]:

"James Suggs--- The oddest thing I'm from Ft. Worth, Recently I was talking about JFK with an old friend I trust. He said his friend had told him that his uncle, Doyle Williams, who had been an FBI agent back then, had made sort of a deathbed confession that he had been the one that had placed the bullet found on the gurney at Parkland Hospital. Can Mr. Williams being an agent then, here(?), his whereabouts on 11/22/63 and whatever else be confirmed perchance."

J. Doyle Williams was also the FBI "stand-in" for John Connally during the May 23 - 24, 1964 Warren Commission reconstruction in Dallas.

Item 26.pdf (hood.edu)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Custer IS on record late 1970's (Lifton interviews) up to/ including 1992 stating that the back of the head was gone. THIS is why this whole issue is confusing- even Clint Hill (a BOH witness from 1963 to 2013) has been recently moving the wound to the side. I think it is clearly a case of some of the witnesses realizing the ramifications of what they said and are retreating at a late date (Dr. Jenkins "I never did say occipital"; Carrico did an about face on the issue; among others).

Look where Paul Landis places the wound!

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

From chapter 18c:

While radiology tech Jerrol Custer made many statements over the years indicating that he thought the autopsy photos and X-rays were faked, he actually told the ARRB, after having finally been shown the original X-rays, that they were indeed the ones he took on 11-22-63, and that he had been in error. He even specified that the x-rays showed an absence of bone in the parietal region and the temporal region behind the right eye, but a presence of bone in the occipital region. Now, some will say "But of course he caved, he was scared to death" but they really haven't done their homework. Custer told the ARRB a number of things which defied the official story of the assassination. He just didn't tell them what so many conspiracy theorists wanted him to say.

And it's not as if he changed his statements for the ARRB. Custer was interviewed by Tom Wilson in 1995. As quoted in Donald Phillips' book on Wilson's research, A Deeper, Darker Truth (2009), Custer told Wilson there was a "King-sized hole" in the top right region of Kennedy's head, and that Kennedy's skull was like "somebody took a hardboiled egg and just rolled it around until it was thoroughly cracked...Part of the head would bulge out, another part would sink in. The only thing that held it together was the skin. And even that was loose."

It should come as no surprise, then, that Custer pretty much repeated this in his 1997 testimony before the ARRB. He recalled: "The head was so unstable, due to the fractures. The fractures were extremely numerous. It was like somebody took a hardboiled egg, and just rolled it in their hand. And that's exactly what the head was like...This part of the head would come out. This part of the head would be in...The only thing that held it together was the skin. And even that was loose." He then described "a gaping hole in the right parietal region" and specified that "none" of the "missing" bone was occipital bone.

Don't believe me? When testifying before the ARRB, Custer added lines to an anatomy drawing of the rear view of the skull. The slanted lines represented the area of the skull that was unstable but extant beneath the scalp when he first viewed the body. Here it is:

 

The occipital bone was intact beneath the skin.

To wit, when asked by Jeremy Gunn if the wound on the back of the head stretched into the occipital bone (where Gunn's assistant Doug Horne and Horne's close associate David Mantik, among others, place the wound), Custer replied "The hole doesn't" and then clarified that the occipital region from the lambdoid suture to the occipital protuberance (basically the upper half of the occipital bone which Horne and Dr. Mantik claim was missing) "was all unstable material. I mean, completely." "Unstable" isn't "missing."

And this wasn't just a short-lived thing--a quick retreat before, and during questioning, by the government. In 1998, Custer was interviewed by William Law for his book In The Eye of History. When asked about the supposed wound on the back of the head, Custer corrected: "Here's where a lot of researchers screw up. Not the back of the head. Here's the back of the head (Custer then pointed to the area of the head in contact with the head holder in the left lateral autopsy photo). The occipital region. The defect was in the frontal-temporal region. Now, when you have the body lying like that, everybody points to it and says, 'That’s the back of the head.' No! That’s not the back of the head." He then pointed to the top of the head on the left lateral autopsy photo: "That’s the top of the head!" Law then asked Custer how, if the wound was where researchers claim it was, the head could have rested on the head holder used in the autopsy. Custer then specified: "Because the back of the head wasn’t blown out. This was still intact." (As he said this, he pointed to the lower portion of the back of the head in the left lateral autopsy photo). He continued: "It may not have been perfectly intact, there were fractures in there of course with all the destruction. If the back of the head was gone, there would be nothing there to hold the head up...The (head holder) would have been all inside."

Now this, of course, was years after the publication of Groden's book. Even so, when one watches Groden's video, JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, one can see that Custer was never really a "back of the head" witness, as he does not point out a wound on the back of Kennedy's head, as suggested by the frame used in Groden's book, but drags his hand across the entire top of his head while claiming the wound he saw stretched "From the top of the head almost to the base of the skull..." He was thereby describing the wound's appearance after the scalp was reflected, and the brain was removed. (In support of this proposition, it should be noted that he'd also claimed there was no brain in the skull that he could remember.)

Now I know this comes as a shock to many readers. Custer is a hero to those claiming the back of Kennedy's head was missing. Even though he is actually one of the strongest witnesses supporting that it was not missing. Just think of it. When preparing to take the A-P x-ray, Custer lifted Kennedy's head up to place it on the cassette holding the x-ray film. IF the back of Kennedy's head was missing, Kennedy's brain would have rested directly on this cassette. Custer would undoubtedly have noticed such a thing, and almost certainly have remembered such a thing. And yet Custer not only never mentioned such a thing, he actively disputed that such a thing occurred.

Not a back of the head witness. Defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos and x-rays.

(It's unfortunate, in retrospect, that Custer died before he got the chance to shoot down some renegade theories. Custer died in 2000. The 2003 book The Assassinations featured an article by Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Cyril Wecht in which they discussed the ramifications of the optical density data accumulated by Mantik while Custer was still alive and answering questions. They concluded from the lateral x-rays that Kennedy's brain was torn loose from the dura--and that it had settled down onto the back of the head. They then used the optical density of a "dark band on the frontal x-ray just below the right orbit, where posterior bone appeared to be absent" to approximate the amount of brain remaining on the right side. Well, heck, if this posterior bone was indeed absent, as subsequently claimed by Mantik, this puts the brain directly on the cassette, at worst, or on inexplicably intact scalp, at best. Nope, not going for it.)

So let's be clear. Neither Jerrol Custer nor Edward Reed, the radiology tech who assisted Custer on the night of the autopsy, saw a big ole hole low on the back of Kennedy's head at the beginning of the autopsy. Custer, as we've seen, denied seeing such a hole in his 1997 ARRB testimony. And Reed did the same. When asked about the head wound by Jeremy Gunn, Reed testified that it was in the "temporal parietal region, right side...slightly anterior" to the ear. In other words...just where it is shown in the autopsy photos.

William and I both interviewed Custer over two days in March 1998. Custer passed away in 2000, as did Tom Wilson. Myself, Custer and Wilson are all from Pittsburgh, PA. I had also interviewed Custer on 11/22/91 (again, on video) with Harry Livingstone (and Tom Wilson) for High Treason 2:

5 hours ago, Marcus Fuller said:

I watched a video last night on Vince Palamara's youtube channel which featured interviews with the guys that moved JFK's body in/out of the coffin and about his head wound at those times. The hole at the rear of the skull wasn't that large when it left Parkland, but was big enough for Custer to fit both his hands into when he did the x-rays.  He said there was no brain and that he remembers putting both hands (held together) into the empty skull. 

I like that channel very much.

On 12/17/2023 at 1:22 PM, Pat Speer said:

While a careful study of the eyewitness evidence suggests the wound was further towards the back of the head than shown in the autopsy photos, the autopsy photos and x-rays are clear-cut proof for more than one shooter, and are most certainly accurate. 

Here's another one.... The widespread belief that the recollections of the Parkland doctors prove the back of the head was a blow-out exit for a bullet entering on the front of the head is both a misrepresentation of what many if not most of them believed, and a misrepresentation of the reliability of eyewitness recollections. 

Here's a third... This widespread belief became so prominent within the JFK research community that people hounding old people as to what they remembered about a seconds-long incident from 30, 40, 50 years earlier were considered experts on the medical evidence, despite their never picking up a textbook or reading a forensics journal which would have shed far more light upon the nature of JFK's wounds. 

And a fourth... This distraction essentially sucked all the air out of the room, and allowed those with an interest in propagating the single-assassin fantasy to continue to do so while arguing against a belief in ghouls and boogie-men, instead of what they should have been forced to argue against: hard science

I like this sentence especially: "the autopsy photos and x-rays are clear-cut proof for more than one shooter, and are most certainly accurate."

I hope your health improves, Pat. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and your family.

23 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

It's become clear to me that very few are aware of or have bothered to read my research regarding wound ballistics and brain injury. This material is available in Chapters 16b and 16c at patspeer.com. Should one be able to separate oneself from the body alteration distraction for a moment and actually read this material, one will find that the body as reported by the autopsy doctors, and as recorded in the autopsy photos and x-rays, is clear-cut evidence for two head shots, and by extension two shooters. 

Here is a taste of what is there: 

This is the skull of a prisoner shot while escaping, from a distance of 90 feet, by a guard using a rifle and cartridge more powerful than the rifle and carriage purported to kill Kennedy. It comes from Louis Anatole La Garde's book Gunshot Wounds, in which LaGarde also described the brain injury suffered by this prisoner.

Keep in mind that the bullet through this skull traveled a trajectory almost identical to what the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel claimed for the bullet killing Kennedy. Here's La Garde: "On the calvarium being removed the surface of the dura mater presented a state of intense congestion. To the right of the longitudinal fissure it was torn through for a distance of about 4 inches, about one inch from and parallel to it. A furrow corresponding to the injury of the dura was ploughed through the right hemisphere in the region of the superior frontal convolution about 1/2 inch deep."

Well, how about that? The Supplementary Autopsy Report of President Kennedy claimed a "longitudinal laceration" (which has long been presumed to be a bullet track, and is often described as a furrow) through Kennedy's brain ran "approximately 4.5 cm. below the vertex in the white matter."

A half-inch deep is about 12 mm. 4.5 cm is 45 mm. The furrow through Kennedy's brain was almost 4 times as deep as the furrow through the dead prisoner's brain, even though the bullets creating these furrows, according the HSCA FPP, sped along a nearly identical trajectory. 

The HSCA's trajectory is nonsense.

This is good to hear, Pat. For a second I was thinking you were in the no-conspiracy category. I know Matt Douthit is bummed that you do not believe that the back of JFK's head was missing.

17 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I can only recommend, David, that you (and anyone with an interest) read chapter 16c on my website. The descriptions of the brain from the supplementary autopsy are the descriptions of a brain that has received a tremendous blow at the top of the head. It's not really subjective, even. It's just a scientific fact that the scalp, skull, and brain injuries all suggest an impact at the supposed exit location. 

Pat, in one sentence: where was the head wound located at?

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

Here are some of the people not included on Gary's list, FWIW. 

From Chapter 18d: 

The recollections of Dr. Joe Goldstrich are similarly problematic. Goldstrich's observations were first reported in Breaking the Silence, by Bill Sloane, in 1993. He said he was in Trauma Room One for a minute and saw Kennedy lying on his back, He said he saw Kennedy's face, but "didn't have a clear view of the back of his head," but nevertheless had "a vague recollection of seeing a portion of his brain exposed." Well, think about it. This suggests the exposed brain was elsewhere on the head, almost certainly the top of the head.

The wound described by Dr. Donald Seldin was also not the one true wound purported by Lifton and others. When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Seldin is reported to have claimed that the bullet exploded the skull, and that the "frontal, parietal, and temporal bones were shattered." He did not mention the occipital bone. While Seldin's recollections were at odds with both those claiming the bullet entered from the front and those claiming it entered on the back of the head--he told Palamara the bullet struck Kennedy in the forehead--he was nevertheless most adamant that his recollections not be used to spread doubts. He is reported to have told Palamara "I believe that the official story is accurate in all details."

And what about Zedlitz? When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Dr. William Zedlitz reported that he arrived in Trauma Room One just before the tracheotomy was performed. He said he noted "a massive head injury to the right occipito-parietal area (right posterior-lateral) of the cranium." He said the wound covered an area approximately 10-12 centimeters in diameter. Well, this is too big to be the wound in the McClelland drawing, but is in the approximate location of that wound. Zedlitz spoke in public at the 2003 Lancer Conference in Dallas, however, and further detailed his observations. He said Kennedy was supine (flat on his back) when he (Zedlitz) came in the room. He then said the head wound was "massive--the entire posterior and right side of the head was nothing but matted hair and clots, and pieces of bone and tissue, and it was a mess. I gently palpated the area and it felt like somebody had boiled an egg and then dropped it. And then picked it up. The bones were just in crinkly pieces." He was asked about this again and added: "There was an area, I'd say, 8 by 12 centimeters in the back of the head on the right hand side on the occipito-parietal area, that was gone. And it was filled with blood, tissue, hair, bone fragments, and brain fragments, and that's all you could see." Well, this is not the gaping hole behind the ear depicted in the McClelland drawing.

Zedlitz was then asked to depict the location of Kennedy's head wound on his own head. He placed his hand on the back of his head, with his fingers stretching from above his right ear on back to just below the top of his ear. He then admitted that beyond this area one "couldn't really tell the depth of it, or the extent of it." He was then asked if he had to rotate Kennedy's head to get a good look at the wound, and responded "No, no, there was enough of it there." He was then asked if he'd placed his hand under the head to palpate the skull, and said "No, it was in the back, and to the side." When then asked if he'd felt the extent of the wound, he admitted "No, I didn't see all of the wound. I couldn't see all of it because he was laying on that." (He then pointed to the back of his head)." He was then asked about the wound again. He put his hand back where the wound is in the McClelland drawing, and responded "It wasn't strictly straight back." He then moved his hand up to the top of his head with his fingers stretching above his right ear, and continued "It was top, back, and side." When then asked if the skull in this area was gone, he replied "It was in pieces." When then asked if the shattered skull in this area was still attached to the scalp, he continued "I could not tell. It was covered with blood and hair and other stuff. I could feel the bones but they felt like they were (he wiggled his fingers) loose." He expanded: "The bony fragments that were there were loose. And there was a spongy mass in the center of that, most obvious without bone, so I guess part of the bone was gone, but still there were fragments of bone still there." When then asked the million dollar question if he felt the autopsy photos showing the back of the head to be intact were altered, he clarified "The back of the head was not intact, but it was covered, as again I mention, with hair, blood, tissue, y'know, it was all there so you couldn't tell whether it was intact underneath that or not."

So, yeah... Zedlitz had placed the wound about half-way between the location of the wound in the autopsy photos and the location of the wound in the McClelland drawing. His extended description of the wound, and insistence he could see it without rotating Kennedy's head, moreover, supported that the wound was not as depicted in the McClelland drawing.

And that's not the end of the Parkland witnesses claiming the wound was NOT on the far back of the head. Should one choose to look beyond Zedlitz, one can find Sharon Calloway. Calloway, an x-ray intern at Parkland on the day of the shooting, performed an oral history interview for the Sixth Floor Museum on 1-27-02, and claimed she saw the back of Kennedy's head in the hallway before he was moved into Trauma Room One. She claimed: "The top of his head was gone... One of the doctors came down the hall shaking his head and he said it looked like someone had dropped a ripe watermelon on the floor. This is what the top of his head looked like. And we could see that. We could see his head. It wasn't draped yet."

And, no, Calloway was not the last such witness to come forward. On 11-21-15, the producers of a film on the Parkland doctors presented three of these doctors before the audience at the JFK Lancer Conference. Two of these three claimed the wound was not on the back of the head, and the third, Dr. Joe Goldstrich, never commented on the head wounds. One of the two claiming the wound was not on the back of the head, Dr. Kenneth Salyer, has already been discussed. But the other, Dr. Peter M. Loeb, had not previously spoken on this issue, as far as I know. In any event, Loeb said that he got a quick glimpse of Kennedy in the hospital and that "When I looked at Kennedy, the top of his head was blown off." Top, not back.

So, there it is, yet another Parkland witness claiming to have observed an opening on the top of Kennedy's skull, inches away from its location in the McClelland drawing.

Pat, it sounds like you do not believe one single doctor that stated that the right rear of the head (either lower, middle or upper rear) was missing. What about Dr. Boswell before the ARRB and the skull drawing and diagram? Do you believe the head wound was only on the right side?

19 hours ago, Anna Maria Kuhns-Walko said:

Vince, very much still in the fight.

I'm currently working on my book DENIED: TRUTH AND JUSTICE IN THE KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION.

Just released from hospital last night. I do miss Pittsburgh.

😇😁AMKW

WOW---great to hear!

@James DiEugenio Hill continues to disappoint me