Daniel Gallup

[Apples and oranges. The perps designed the killing to look like a conspiracy -- a Castro conspiracy. But the patsy was captured alive, at which time cooler heads prevailed and Oswald was framed as a lone nut, requiring very rapid alterations of the skull wounds (as per the FBI report on the autopsy), and one can reasonably speculate the throat wound may have been enlarged. The more elaborate body alteration theories of Lifton and Horne don't hold water, or so I'm prepared to argue. Cliff, It seems I need to read Hancock, for he, among others, seems to be a primary source for your contention that Oswald was not to be captured alive. Who was supposed to kill him? Tippit? Baker? Persons unknown? Now I have a confusion --- if Oswald's being captured alive triggered the need to intercept Kennedy's body, it is my understanding that Oswald was captured around 1:51 p.m., and at 1:58 Jfk's casket is wheeled from the emergency room to the awaiting hearse for the trip to Love Field. But there was quite a commotion about keeping the body in Dallas for a proper autopsy. This may well have started before Oswald's capture; this makes me think the Secret Service never intended the body to be given a Texas autopsy, regardless of whether or not Oswald was captured. This would be all the more important if their understanding of the wounds was the same as the Dallas doctors: that Kennedy was hit twice from the front (apologies to Bennett). Remember, the Dallas doctors gave no hint that Kennedy had a wound in his back. Oswald wouldn't do as a suspect if the bullets came from the front. Come to think of it, what difference would it make had Oswald been shot or not? The body (as the Secret Service would have understood it at that hour) displayed only indications of shots from the front. That couldn't be allowed to remain as such. In light of this, it is hard for me to see how those who killed Kennedy and those covering up the true nature of the crime constituted two entirely groups of people, or am I not understanding your position? Best, Daniel

Apples and oranges. Weaponry and sniper positions are exclusive to a study of the murder of John F. Kennedy. Body alteration is exclusive to a study of the cover-up of the murder of John F. Kennedy. Z-film alteration is exclusive to the study of the cover-up of the murder of JFK. The events captured between frames Z186 and Z255 are exclusive to a study of the murder of JFK. The perps designed the killing to look like a conspiracy -- a Castro conspiracy. But the patsy was captured alive, at which time cooler heads prevailed and Oswald was framed as a lone nut, requiring very rapid alterations of the skull wounds (as per the FBI report on the autopsy), and one can reasonably speculate the throat wound may have been enlarged. The more elaborate body alteration theories of Lifton and Horne don't hold water, or so I'm prepared to argue. The more elaborate theories of which you speak, argue that it's not "apples and oranges," but instead the plotters plan to murder the president included their intention of hiding their involvment and framing a patsy. This could only happen through the planting of evidence and removing evidence of frontal shots from the President's body, which meant bullet retrieval and wound obliteration/alteration/fabrication. If you accept evidence planting and if you accept some degree of wound alteration, how do you suppose this was pulled off as if on the fly? As if around 1:00 p.m., when the President was declared dead, no one had any idea of how and whom to frame, and then it just "came" to the plotters to plant evidence and falsify the wounds? In other words, if you accept wound alteration, it seems to this reader you open yourself up to the idea that there were larger machinations going on, considered before hand, as part of the crime. As OReilly would say, "Tell me where I'm going wrong." Best, Daniel

Jim, I don't think anyone is out to smear Bowron and Bennett. In BE Lifton claims between Willis 5 and Algens photo taken around Z 255, that Bennett was facing to the right. I find the arugment on 284-5 of BE calm, calculated, and detached, the way an investigator should proceed. These claims can be easily checked; have you done so? On Bowron, what makes me nervous about her testimony to the back wound is that it comes so late after the assassination -- not from her WC testimony where she said she saw only the one wound, but years later to Harrison Livingston. When Lifton wrote BE, for example, Bowron had made no comment about the back wound, prompting him to ask if the nurses, Bowron and Henchcliffe, who washed the body, would have missed it (192). Nurse Henchcliffe, to my knowledge, made no mention of the wound, nor the orderly David Sanders who assisted them. Nurses Pat Hutton and Doris Nelson may also have been with the body at that time; in sum it is very odd that after washing the body there was no report of the back wound. All of this, at the very least, should be raising eyebrows. Respectfully, Daniel

I think there is very very good reason to believe the throat wound was widened and a bullet extracted. Reason 1: Lifton was able to get Perry on the record (1966) as to the size of the trach incision. "2-3 cm," was Perry's estimate. When Lifton called Carrico he got the same estimate. Afterwards Lifton got contrary reports agreeing with the autopsy report. What is the likelihood that Perry, who made the incision, and Carrico, who was with him, were wrong, and later commentators, who very likely understood the purpose of Lifton's questioning, were correct? I think the Dallas personnel were circling the wagons. Reason 2: Clark reports to the New York Times a few days after the assassination that a bullet entered the throat downward, and did not exit. Apparently this is what Perry told him. How would Perry know this unless the bullet track was clear and even the bullet itself seen? So why a large gaping wound in the front of the throat that does not represent the work of Perry? To remove the bullet, quite simply. Maybe it wasn't a conventional round. Maybe it went throught he windshield first -- I'm no ballistic expert. I only have the words to Clark, Perry, and Carrico go on, and their words suggest bullet retrieval through wound tampering. Best, Daniel

David, exactly when was that photo taken? I always worry about memory failures, especially when the government autopsy report places an exit wound somewhat where Doris Nelson is putting her hand. I cannot find anything she said or wrote contemporaneously. In fact I would argue that she is indeed inaccurately placing her hand. Why? Anecdotal comments by physicians and nurses place the exit wound in the occiput. Before the ARRB Audrey Bell asked Perry where the head wound was, and Perry turned the head to the anatomical left, so that she could see the right rear posterior wound, which she described as occipital in both her oral remarks and in her drawings (from p. 166 First On the Scene by Brad Parker). As I have stated before, an action like Perry is something a nurse would remember the rest of her life. If the wound was where Doris Nelson puts it, Audrey Bell's question would have been unnecessary. Another example: Dr. Peters said the occipital was blown out, and the parietal was wrinkled (1966 conversation with Lifton). To Lifton: "I was trying to think how he could have had a hole in his neck and a hole in the occiput and the only answer we could think of was perhaps the bullet had gone in throuigh the front, hit the spinal column, and exited thriough the back of the head..." (BE, 317). This kind of Sherlock Holmes deduction was proved to be inaccurate, but it illustrates the contemporaneous state of mind of those who saw the wounds in a way a relatively recent picture of Doris Nelson cannot. Best, DAniel

David's picture on p. 310 of Best Evidence looks very similar to McClelland's drawing, and both look similar to the drawings of Bell and Chrenshaw for the ARRB. All are consistent with the wound at the level of the cerebellum, which is why that part of the brain was observed herniating from the hole in the back of Kennedy's head. In fact Bell's placement of the wound is slightly lower than Crenshaw's. Bell, as a nurse, may well be better insulated from pressure to alter her view of the wound than were the Dallas doctors, some of whom through the years have changed their tune. Even Perry before the WC denied he had told the press the throat wound was one of entrance, such was the pressure exerted upon him. Specter: "What responses did you give to questions relating to the source of the bullets, if such questions wer aked?" Perry: "I could not, I pointed out that both Dr. Clark and I had no way of knowing from whence the bullets came." This is very slippery of Perry, because everyone knew he said three times the throat wound was one of entrance, so at least he knew that, but obfuscated before Specter for several pages of testimony. Audrey Bell, however, was left alone and gave no testimony until called by the ARRB. True, by that time memory can fail, but at least it seems she was under no pressure to alter her views. That gives her deposition, IMO, more importance. She has to be one of the unsung Parkland heros. Best, Daniel.

Pat, What about the reports of cerebellum? Just so. Pictures of people putting their hand in the back of the head, while certainly backing the notion that there was an exit wound there, pales in significance to the actual type of brain herniation observed and recorded contemporaneously at Parkland. I would suggest everyone go back to Dr. Peter's description to Lifton of the interior of the back of the head, BE chapter 13, esp pp. 324-5. Best, Daniel

[ P.S. You're still running from my question. Was the wound you imagine to be on the back of Kennedy's head ABOVE or BELOW the top of his right ear? Pat, since Dr. Fetzer mentioned me on page one of this thread, I feel compelled to mention the early reports of cerebellum protruding from the gaping wound in the back of the head. In his report to Parkland Administrator J.C. Price on the day of the assassination, Dr. Jenkins witnessed "...there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the crebellum had protruded from the wound." (CE 392 in 17WCH 15). Jenkins told Specter the same(6WCH 48&51) and years later to Purdy (7HSCA 286-7). In 1978 Jenkins told the Nov. 24, 1978 Amercian Medical News that "part of his cerebellum was hanging out."(p. 14) I would ask anyone on this forum, and Pat, you in particular, how the cerebellum could be protruding from a wound high in the back of the head. Perry told the WC: "We speculated as to wheter he had been shot once to twice because we saw the entry in the throat and noted the large occipital wound." (emphasis mine). Dr. Peters tod the WC ofa "large defect in the occiput... in the right occipitoparietal area" (6 WCH 21) and told Lifton in 1966: " I could see the back of his head quite well. The whole occipital area was blown out, and the skin was shoved a little bit forward and his parietal was a little bit wrinkled...[the wound ] was more occipital than parietal...because we had to get up to his head, to look in through the back, to see the extent of the wound." (BE 316). When Lifton asked Peters what he meant by the back of the head, he indicated "much as if you were to put your hand to the back of the head, about where it would go, naturally." Where my hand goes naturally, I would expect some of my cerebellum to be hanging out, were I shot as Kennedy. Other witnesses to cerebellum: Dr. Kemp Clark, neurosurgeon, in a report filed the afternoon of the assassination (17 WCH 9-10); also Dr. Baxter (6 WCH 41), Dr. Carrico: ""We opened his shirt and coat and tie and observed a small wound in the anterior lower third of the neck,...The large skull and scalp wound had been previously observed and was inspected a little more closely. There seemed to be a 4-5 cm. area of avulsion of the scalp and the skull was fragmented and bleeding cerebral and cerebellar tissue." (page 3 of his deposition before Specter; also page 6:"The wound that I saw was a large gaping wound, located in the right occipitoparietal area, I would estimate its size to be about 5-7 cm in size, more or less circular...there was shredded macerated cerebral and cerebellar tissues both in the wounds on on the fragments of the dull attached to the dura."), McClelland in his famous description of the wound, Dr. Peters, quoted above, Dr. Perry before the HSCA (7 HAC 302):"And I looked at the head wound briefly by leaning over the table and noticed that the parietal occipital head wound was largely avulsive and there was visible brain tissue in the macard and some cerebellum seen.."; also Crenshaw before the ARRB (March 19,1997). Crenshaw's drawing of the wound encompasses both cerebral and cerebullar areas (Crenshaw 4). Audrey Bell's placement of the wound is very similar (Bell 3 and 4). If cerebellum was hanging out of the gaping hole in the back of Kennedy's head, then one may deduce that, however high the wound was, it was also quite low. If one take Carrico's 5-7 cm (about 3 inches in diameter) nearly circular wound and place the bottom of it at the upper part of the cerebellum, the wound would probably extend to the the top of the ear. This would be occiptial/parietal, just as the Dallas testimony indicates. The existence of cerebullar tissue hanging from the wound is decisive as to where the wound in the back of the head was. Best, Daniel.

I believe Dr. McClelland has claimed that the trach incision in the photos is consistent with what he saw at Parkland. So you could be on to something... For whatever reason, Perry made a large incision... Thanks, Pat. It is true that McClelland and a few others have claimed no inconsistency between the trach incision they remember and the autopsy photos. Then Tony, in your thinking there was no photographic tinkering with the trach wound as seen in the stare of death photo? I don't have my sources with me here at work, but how soon after Nov 22 did McClelland et al. confirm the size of the trach incision? Do early estimates of the size of the trach incision agree with later ones? If not, why not? Best, Daniel

In this second example, the first shot, which now does impact, occurs as the turn is made from Houston onto Elm: And here’s the process completed in example 3, with the presidential limousine now “50 yards past Oswald” on Elm: The film-as-film could not be shown while the above process of fraudulent harmonisation - of medical testimony and the lone-assassin-from-the-rear – was undertaken. More, it was predicated on the removal of the left turn from Houston onto Elm. Showing of that turn would have furnished visual-pictorial refutation of the entire elaborate deceit Excellent post Paul. I have a copy of Kemp Clark's statement to the New York Times which you referenced. I did some further poking some time ago and if memory is correct Clark got his information direcetly from Perry about the bullet 'ranging downward' and not exiting. I have always wondered about that statement. On its face it would say Perry saw the bullet track while doing the trach and communicated that to Clark, who came after Perry into Tramua Room 1. That Perry claimed it did not exit says to me he could either see the bullet or inferred from Dr. Carrico's quick palpatating of Kennedy's back and not finding any wounds that such was the case. I have always thought the limo stop and the lack of debris seen exiting Kennedy's head, and the area blacked out in Kennedy's head right where at the Parkland exit wound location, are the most obvious indications of forgery. The last requires minor alteration; removing the debris exiting Kennedy's head to the rear and the limo stop is another matter. Eyewitness testimony to both these events convinces me they in fact happened, even if I don't know how such alteration was accomplished. It's rather the same with the shipping casket -- I don't know how and when the perps got Kennedy's body into that body bag and shipping casket, but it seems from testimony at Bethesda that they nevertheless did. Perhaps we for a long time have been asking the wrong questions. Best, Daniel

I am Daniel Gallup, a mathematics instructor at Pasadena City College who, in 1982, discovered Lifton's Best Evidence and who has remained interested in the case ever since. While busy teaching, playing viola and golf, I nevertheless try to keep current on issues raised by those who spend a greater amount of time on the case than I am able, and always appreciate those hard efforts, even when I find myself in disagreement. I am currently 60 years old.