Ray Mitcham

"Bill Newman, like many other witnesses that day, was simply mistaken." The usual Lone nutter reply to anything that doesn't agree with the Warren report conclusion.

Two. QUESTION In the same interview, where did Bill Newman say the shots came from?

Whether the rifles turned at an angle of 10˚ or 20 ˚ is immaterial as the ratio of the length of the rifle to the length of the scope stays the same, as they are both in the same plane. IMO

Michael, Baker said in his affidavit that he " was riding motorcycle escort for the President of the United States. At approximately 12:30 pm I was on Houston Street and the President's car had made a left turn from Houston onto Elm Street. Just as I approached Elm Street and Houston I heard three shots" How does that gel with Craig's comments that he was stationary on traffic duty? Was Baker lying about being on motor escort?

Neck does not equal throat. She may have thought he meant the back of th neck. And why would Dulles want to show the wound above the tie ?

Nurse Bowron was also questioned during the HSCA hearings: BOWRON. There was a gaping wound in the back of his head. Q. So, in this massive hole, was there a flap of scalp there, or was scalp actually gone? BOWRON. It was gone. Gone. There was nothing there. Just a big gaping hole. Q. We're talking about scalp first, and then bone, right? BOWRON. Yeah. There might have been little clumps of scalp, but most of the bone over the hole, there was no bone there. Bowron was among the nurses who, after JFK’s death, washed the body and prepared it for the casket. It was at that time she got her best view of the body. In a letter to researcher Harrison Livingstone January 24, 1993, Bowron described what happened: “When the president expired everyone left the room apart from Miss Hinchcliffe, a male orderly and myself. We tidied the room and changed the linen on the gurney and washed the body as best we could. Miss Hinchcliffe and the orderly left the room, but I was told to remain with the body until the casket arrived. I was told that I had to stay because I had been one of the people who had taken the body from the car. I remained in the room while the widow paid her respects. After she had left I was asked, by a man I assumed was Secret Service, to collect all pieces of skull and brain I could find and place them in a plastic bag which he gave me. This I did and returned the bag to him (there were only a few fragments of bone that had stuck to the dressings and towels that we had used to pack the hole in the back of the head). I remained in the room until the people from the funeral home arrived. After we had placed the body in the casket and it had been closed I was allowed to leave. During the time I was with the body only the widow and the priest came into the room, any dealings I had with the Secret Service were done in the doorway; no one else entered the room and no photographs were taken. Apart from 2-3 mins, when I left the trauma room to collect blood from the Blood Bank, I was with the body from the car until it was placed in the casket. Being new to the establishment, I was assigned to Minor Medicine and Surgery, which was across the hall from the Triage desk and the major sections of the Emergency room. It being very quiet, there were only two or three patients waiting for the results of tests, I was talking with the Triage nurse when the call went up for gurneys. I grabbed a gurney in the hall and together with an orderly ran to the entrance. I saw that the person in the back of the car was injured so I climbed in to render what assistance I could until such time as we could move him to a trolley, then to the trauma room (others were assisting the Governor in the front seat). I saw that there was a massive amount of blood on the back seat and in order to find the cause I lifted his head and my fingers went into a large wound in the back of his head; I turned his head and seeing the size of the wound realized that I could not stop the bleeding. I turned his head back and saw an entry wound in the front of the throat, I could feel no pulse at the jugular and having seen the extent of the injury to the back of the head I assumed that he was dead. (not my job, only a Doctor can certify death) When we got the President to the Trauma room, word had reached the Trauma team and they were ready with IVs etc. I worked with the team, assisting where needed for about 10 mins (time is difficult to judge in those circumstances), when I was told to go to the Blood Bank. I was away 2-3 mins and on my return I continued to assist where needed until the President was declared dead. That OK, Sandy?

Further indication that the cuts were caused by a scalpel rather than a bullet. The slit in the lower side of the shirt, i.e. the right half, is much smaller than the one on the left side of the shirt which would indicate less pressure on the lower side after the tie was cut off. (How could a bullet or projectile make two different size holes in the same shirt?)

I agree that IMO a bullet did not go through the tie or the shirt, but went through the President's throat above both. The President's jacket and the back of his shirt showed a bullet hole. The holes in the collar of the shirt were slits, not a bullet hole. The slits in the shirt do not line up as they would if they were caused by a bullet. The one on the left of the shirt is higher than the one on the right of the shirt. If they had been caused by a bullet the left side would have overlapped the right side. Dr Carrico said that the wound was above the where the tie was. Nurse Bowron said that she saw a bullet hole in the throat as she was helping to get the President out of the limo. Nurse Hinchcliffe said she saw a bullet hole in the President's throat. Spectrographic examination showed that there were traces of copper, from the bullet, on the President's coat and the hole in the back of the shirt, but none on the slits in the collar.

Does anybody really think that the above slits were caused by a bullet? The position of the slots doesn't even match.

Since when does a bullet cause slits in a shirt rather than holes?

One serious question. Does anybody believe the cover story that the SS arranged for a decoy ambulance from Andrews to Bethesda in case somebody tried to intercept it. Really? The body of the slain president surrounded by numerous SS, and military personnel, and they were worried that somebody would try to intercept? The real reason for a decoy ambulance was for nefarious reasons.

"Custer is mistaken." So that's your reason. How do you know Custer was mistaken. Were you there or do you have special powers? EYEWITNESSES TO DELIVERY OF A CASKET AT 6:35-6:45 pm Roger Boyajian was a marine sergeant in charge of a detail of marines on the evening of 11/22/63. His orders from Admiral Calvin Galloway, CO of the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) at Bethesda (of which the Naval Hospital is part), were to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering restricted areas around the morgue [2], as well as to prevent the press from interfering with the delivery of the president's casket. On November 26, 1963, Boyajian wrote an after-action memo describing the duties of his team including [3]: At approximately 1835 (6:35 PM) the casket was received at the morgue entrance and taken inside. Although he provided no details of its appearance, the coffin he saw being unloaded and delivered to the morgue could not have been the ornamental bronze casket in which the president's body had been placed at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, because, at 6:35 PM, that casket was en route from Andrews Air Force Base. Dennis David, Chief of the Day for the Medical School (also part of the NNMC) on the evening of the autopsy, told the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1997 that he supervised the removal of a gray shipping casket from a black hearse at about 6:45 [4]. A group of sailors under his command carried the shipping casket into the anteroom of the morgue. After this event, David witnessed the arrival of the navy ambulance -- carrying the ornamental casket and Mrs. Kennedy -- at the front of the NNMC. He saw Mrs. Kennedy exit the ambulance and enter the lobby. David also described the hearse as a black Cadillac, which, he was certain, arrived well before the gray navy ambulance. His recollection of the time of arrival of 6:45 PM is consistent with that of Sgt. Boyajian. In February 2009, the author asked Dennis David what, if anything, he had noticed when he supervised the delivery of the shipping casket to the anteroom. He responded that he "saw marines in the morgue hallway." The ten-man security detail under Boyajian's command was composed of marines, whose presence would be conspicuous to a navy man. Edward Reed a technician at Bethesda Naval Hospital, took a number of x-rays of the president's body during the autopsy. In his 1997 deposition to the ARRB, he stated that he reported to the morgue after being paged over the PA system [5, p. 20]. In 1978, he told Mark Flanagan of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) [6] that he arrived at the morgue at around 6:30 PM, where, according to his ARRB testimony, he found that the casket containing the president's body had already been delivered and was being guarded by five or six marine corpsmen [5, p.22]. Reed helped carry the casket into the autopsy room, was present when it was opened and saw that the body was inside a "plastic bag" [5, p. 24; 6]. Mr. Reed's account corroborates those of Boyajian and David of an early arrival of a casket at the Bethesda morgue and, furthermore, provides proof that this casket contained the president's body. Hospital corpsman Floyd Riebe assisted in taking photographs during the autopsy on President Kennedy's body. He told the ARRB [7, p. 28] in 1997 that a gun-metal gray casket, brought into the autopsy room, contained the president's body, which was inside a body bag [7, p. 30] and that Paul O'Connor (see below) assisted in removing the body from the casket. Paul O'Connor was a medical technician who assisted at the autopsy. In 1997 he told HSCA staff members that a pink shipping casket contained the president's body, which was in a body bag [8]. Mr. O'Connor's observations are consistent with those of Reed and Riebe. Like Paul O'Connor, James Jenkins was a medical technician who was interviewed by HSCA staff members in 1977 [9]. Mr. Jenkins was not asked to describe the casket containing the president's body. However, in a phone conversation with author David Lifton in 1979, he said that the casket "was not a really ornamental type thing...not something you'd expect a president to be in" [1, p. 609]. Gawler's First Call Sheet. Gawler's Funeral Directors (Washington, DC) supplied a Marsellus 710 mahogany casket [10] as a replacement for the ornamental bronze casket, because the latter had been damaged in transit from Dallas. The president's body was interred at Arlington Cemetery inside the Marsellus casket. Gawler's First Call Sheet, dated November 22, 1963, states [10]: Body removed from metal shipping Casket at USNH at Bethesda. No time is given for this event; however, it is consistent with eyewitness accounts of delivery to the Bethesda morgue of a shipping casket containing the president's body. EYEWITNESSES TO DELIVERY OF A CASKET AT 7:17 PM When the plain shipping casket containing the president's body was carried into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35-6:45 PM, the motorcade bringing Mrs. Kennedy was en route from Andrews Air Force Base. One of the vehicles in the motorcade was a gray navy ambulance carrying the ornamental bronze casket that had been flown from Dallas; on arrival at Andrews AFB, it had been placed in the ambulance by an all-service honor guard, under the command of Lieutenant Samuel Bird. The honor guard made the journey to Bethesda by helicopter. James Sibert and Francis O'Neill, FBI agents, were in the third car of the motorcade as it traveled from Andrews AFB to Bethesda. Their responsibilities were to maintain constant vigil over the bronze ornamental casket, which they believed carried the president's body, to attend the autopsy and to collect bullets or fragments recovered from the body. Their duties and activities are described in their subsequent report [11] and statements to Arlen Specter [12], to the HSCA [13; 14] and to the ARRB [15; 16]. FBI Agent O'Neill told the ARRB that, upon his (and Agent Sibert's) arrival at the front entrance of the hospital (at approximately 6:55 PM [17]), he observed Mrs. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and probably Dr. Burkley exit the gray navy ambulance, which contained the ornamental bronze casket, and enter the hospital along with Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman. After some time, during which the navy ambulance had not moved, he and Sibert approached Larry O'Brien (president's assistant) and asked about the delay. O'Brien said that SSA William Greer, who had driven the ambulance from Andrews AFB to Bethesda, was not sure how to find the morgue. Since O'Neill and Sibert were familiar with the Bethesda Hospital grounds, they drove to the morgue entrance at the rear of the hospital, with SSA Greer following. Upon arriving at the loading dock outside the morgue, O'Neill noted SSA Kellerman coming out of a door to a corridor leading into the autopsy room, at which point he (O'Neill) introduced himself to Kellerman. Clearly, Kellerman had found his way from the front entrance of the hospital to the morgue complex. Sibert and O'Neill, along with Greer and the ambulance, arrived at the morgue entrance just prior to 7:17 PM. Sibert told the ARRB that he and O'Neill assisted Greer and Kellerman in taking the ornamental bronze casket into the anteroom of the morgue at about 7:17 PM [15, p. 45; p. 50]. In their interview with Specter, both agents said that "preparations for the autopsy" occurred at approximately 7:17 PM [12, p. 2]. From "JFK 22/1163Body/Casket Chicanery at the Bethesda Morgue By James Rinnovatore The above testimonies do not agree that JFK's casket arrived at 7.35.p.m.

Michael, in the context of Vince Salandria's comments, he was talking about Garrison's case being "complex and prolix" not Jim's contribution, which I sure you meant.

"The AssassinationsRecord Review Board (ARRB) in 1995 uncovered an FBI Field Office Dallas (89-43-1A-122) envelope. It was dated 12/2/63 and detailed the contents (since missing) of a 7.65mm shell found in Dealey Plaza after the assassination. This recovered evidence was unknown until the ARRB uncovered it. Unfortunately, it did not contain the 7.65mm shell and the outside of the envelope listed it as having no value and was destroyed." Strange that a 7.65mm shell was found if the rifle there never was a 7.65mm rifle around. Did Weitzman also mistake the type of scope that was on the rifle. He said at first it was a 2.5 Weaver, which turned out to be a 4x4 Japanese scope? Strange mistake to make. Incidentally, he was never shown the Carcano or asked if it was the rifle he saw.

A free version of Newman's "Where Angels tread lightly" is available here. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Angels-Tread-Lightly-Assassination-ebook/dp/B00X3VZED6/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492518153&sr=8-1&keywords=where+angels+tread+lightly.++Newman

Agreed, Patrick. I wonder how anybody can commit suicide with a rifle when the bullet went through his body between the first rib and the clavicle and travelled in a downward direction into his back. Why would anybody shoot himself like this way rather than through his heart or brain?

I don't think taking measurements from a copy of the layout of the TSDB, made on the 22nd November 1963 is wise.

The stone vertical columns in the above, don't line up. It looks like the columns in the sketch are about 10% closer together than in the photo. Does this matter?

Hey Dave, did Roger Craig commit suicide by shooting himself with a rifle?

Hi Andrej, just for info, the nice people at the TSDB were unable to tell me how deep the original top landing was, as there didn't appear to be any tangible signs of where the original doors were. Maybe there are some holes or scars that they missed when looking that one of of researchers could find.

Don't know, Alastair. Can't remember what I said the distance was before, but I've just checked the measurements I was given, and they are as follows. Bottom step 12 1/16" second step 12 1/4" third step 12 1/4" Fourth step 11 15/16" Fifth step 12 1/16" Sixth step 12 3/8" Just realised that the above figures don't add up to 7' 6 3/4". Adds up to 6'0 11/16" My bad. Got mixed up with my sixtieths. Used to working in metric. Well picked up Alastair.

I agree, Robin, The white car in Altgens is just about to turn the corner, but in Weigman's, it has already turned. I think that Altgens6 was taken earlier than the Weigmans frame.

Andrej, what measurement are you working to for the overall length of the steps front to back.?Don't know if it is important, but if you are making a scale version of the entrance, it probably is, the depth from the lip of the bottom step to the lip of the top step is 7'6 3/4"

Yes, I do, Tommy. Just that I wondered when and why they changed positions.