Robert Prudhomme

Did I ask the wrong question?

Hello Gary and Pat

Is it just me, or is there something decidedly odd about the fact Dr. Shaw, in all of his testimonies, interviews, reports and statements, does not once mention whether the elliptical entrance wound was vertical or horizontal?

P.S.

Did Dr. Shaw happen to mention how the entrance wound came to be described as 3 cm. in his post operative report? Surely, some researcher must have asked him this question.

Hi Gary

I just finished reading Dr. Shaw's post-operative report. Something tells me you knew that I would find an oddity there, and said nothing, to not spoil the surprise. (and to see if I would actually track the report down and read it LOL)

Well, I am most definitely puzzled by one of the things Shaw reported. On Page 531, I read the following:

"The wound of entrance was approximately three cm. on its longest diameter....."

Was this a mistake on Shaw's part?

P.S.

You were right, Shaw makes absolutely no mention of Connally suffering a through and through wound of the chest in the post-operative report. "Dr." Photon is still batting .000 this season.

Hello Gary

Thank you for responding to my questions. It's probably just laziness on my part but, I am grateful for you pointing me towards CR87. Finding anything in the WCR can be very challenging and, unless one is an "old hand" such as yourself, it is difficult to know where to even begin looking.

I didn't really believe there was anything to "Dr." Photon's claim but it is good that I will be able to read CR87, that I may speak from an informed perspective. It is amazing how much these disinfo agents rely on bluff, likely because so few people possess the knowledge to call them on their bluffs.

Hello Gary

Over at jfkfacts.org, I have been in discussion there with another member who goes by the name of Photon. Just recently, he has claimed that he is a physician and has cared for hundreds of ICU patients, plus dealing with many open pneumothoraces.

This is somewhat laughable, as another member was very quick to point out that, only last year, Photon had claimed to possess medical knowledge, but was not a physician.

Anyways, Photon firmly believes Gov. Connally suffered a "through and through" bullet wound of the chest, and not the tangential bullet strike that followed the outside of Connally's 5th rib. When pressed on this matter, Photon claims the "operative report" clearly states Connally's chest wound was through and through.

By operative report, I can only assume he is referring to the report filed by Dr. Shaw in regards to the operation he performed on Connally, and that if anyone had studied such a report closely, it would be you.

Is this the report Photon is referring to, and is there any portion of it that would indicate Shaw claimed there was a through and through wound? Is it possible to view this report on line?

Does no one care to address that the entrance wound, as shown on the WC's diagram, makes it impossible for the bullet to have caused Connally's chest wound? If he was facing forward, the bullet might have caused a tangential wound at the very outside of his rib cage, but it would not have been able to travel right to left and exit medial to his right nipple. If Connally was rotated to his right, the posterior of the 5th rib would now be aligned with the entrance wound, and the bullet would have struck the 5th rib squarely and entered the right lung.

I will also repeat that I believe it impossible for the bullet to run alongside the outside of the 5th rib, depressing the rib inward, without the bullet being deflected at least 5-10° from its original trajectory.

Comments?

Think of it this way, James. The exiting bone fragments, which seem to congregate much further to Connally's left than the exiting bullet, may be indicative of the bullet's trajectory when it struck Connally's back. If the bullet were deflected to Connally's right by the resistance it ran into pressing the rib inwards, it will be seen exiting on a trajectory more to Connally's right.

I could be wrong but, I can't see the bullet running along 10 cm. of the rib without being deflected at least 5° to the right, if not more.

Here is something else that no one has thought of.

The bullet struck Connally's 5th rib a tangential glancing blow, hard enough to strip much of it out, to leave it depressed into the pleural cavity hours later and to cause a stress fracture of the 5th rib, close to the point it attached to the vertebra.

As a deer hunter who knows that a light cross wind is enough to throw a bullet off from its trajectory of aim, I can tell you that a bullet encountering this much resistance, on one side only, does not have a very good chance of not being deflected from its true course, unless it truly was a "magic" bullet.

Let us see what Dr. Shaw has to say about this.

"Mr. Specter - What effect, if any, would the striking of that rib have had to the trajectory of that bullet?

Dr. Shaw - It could have had a slight, caused a slight deflection of the rib, but probably not a great deflection of the rib, because of the angle at which it struck and also because of the texture of the rib at this time.

Mr. Specter - You say deflection of the rib or deflection of the bullet?

Dr. Shaw - Deflection of the bullet, I am sorry."

So, what defines a "slight" deflection of the bullet, as opposed to a "great" deflection of the bullet? I think it is obvious, to anyone who has studied the medical evidence, that a deflection of as little as 5-10° throws everything out the window; especially if one considers the Sniper's Nest was only 9° laterally from a line drawn longitudinally through the centre of the limo at z223/4.

Yes, James, thank you for presenting all three diagrams together for comparison. It is a little easier now to understand how the wounds evolved over those months to fill the needs of the SBT.

One thing has always bothered me about the location and orientation of the back entry wound that was approved by Dr. Shaw on all three diagrams, it appears. As seen in the diagrams, the entry wound is a vertical oval wound that clearly misses the scapula (shoulder blade) by no more than a millimeter. If the trajectory of the bullet was parallel to a line drawn through Connally's spine and sternum, a bullet entering here would be able to strike a tangential blow on the outside of the 5th rib, and exit from the flesh at the side of the chest, well to the right of the right nipple.

But, this is not what happened, and there is much evidence to support something completely different. As Gary Murr told us, the FBI's SA Robert Frazier did a careful examination of Connally's suit coat and shirt, and determined the bullet followed a trajectory across the front of Connally's chest, exiting to the right of the right nipple, that was 20° from a line, drawn through the right shoulder, that was parallel to a line drawn through the spine and sternum.

Do you see the problem here? How did the bullet enter where it is shown, and end up exiting medial to the right nipple, without making an impossible left turn somewhere on Connally's chest?

Now, if we rotate Connally, we solve the problem of the bullet trying to follow the rib but, if we keep the entrance wound in the same location, we have an entirely new problem. BTW, I now have seen estimates of the amount of rotation of Connally at z223/4, and it varies from 14-37°, and not a single person can adequately explain how they arrived at their particular estimate. Anyways, if you rotate Connally, and have the bullet strike directly beside the scapula, as shown, you no longer have a tangential strike on the 5th rib. Instead, any amount of rotation has the bullet striking the 5th rib squarely, and it would enter the pleural cavity. Do you see what I am saying? With the entrance wound where it is, there can only be a tangential strike if the bullet strikes Connally on a trajectory 90° to a line drawn through the shoulders.

The only way to have a tangential strike on the 5th rib with Connally rotated, is to move the entrance wound to the extreme outside edge of the side of the back; right at the point where the thorax and arm combine to make what is known as the "axillary fold" or "crease" of the armpit and, surprisingly, exactly where Shaw told the WC the entrance wound was.

"It was just medial to the axillary fold or the crease of the armpit, but we could tell that this wound, the depth of the wound, had not penetrated the shoulder blade."

The most deceiving thing about the diagrams prepared by the SS is that they are two dimensional drawings, portraying no depth, and Shaw's description of "medial to the axillary fold" can be very confusing. While the distance from the entrance wound to the axillary fold looks very short in the diagram, in three dimensions it is necessary to follow the curve around the outside of the thorax, and this now becomes a much greater distance. "Just medial to the axillary fold" could easily be a location still on the outside edge of the thorax, much further away from the scapula than shown. This would explain the horizontally elliptical hole in the back of Connally's suit coat, observed by SA Frazier, and the horizontal scar observed by Baden. If Connally was struck at the outside edge of his chest, there likely was a horizontally elliptical entrance wound, as the bullet would be travelling almost parallel to the point it struck, and would have made a tangential wound.

As I stated, I have read Shaw's testimonies several times, and I am deeply troubled that his meticulous and detailed descriptions of Connally's wounds do not contain one single reference to the vertical/horizontal orientation of the entrance wound in Connally's back. Something stinks here, and I believe every effort has been made, and is continuing to be made, to draw our attention away from the fact that Connally's chest wound was a right to left trajectory across the front of Connally's chest.

Hi Gary

You never cease to amaze me with the gems you pull from your collection. I would love to get a look at all of your material some day, though I can appreciate just how many years it likely took you to gather it all.

Okay, just for clarification, you're saying that Frazier gave a right to left lateral angle of 20° for the path of the bullet, measured from a line passing through Connally's shoulders?? Or, in another way of describing it, a right to left trajectory of 70°, measured from a line passing through his spine to his sternum?

My God, Frazier is describing a bullet trajectory that was almost travelling sideways through the front of Connally's chest.

Am I interpreting something incorrectly here?

Hi Gary

I am assuming the 20° angle from right to left stated by Frazier would be measured from a line running through the Governor's spine and sternum?

I would imagine, considering that we can see the Governor's suit jacket hanging open in the Zapruder film, that the bullet holes in the suit coat would be of very little help in determining an accurate right to left or lateral angle for the Governor's chest wound. It would be very interesting to see just how SA Frazier actually was able to deduce a lateral angle of 20°, using only the suit coat. From my perspective, that number seems woefully small.

In fact, the exact location of the entrance wound in Connally's back is one of those "elastic" pieces of FBI evidence, and I believe it is no coincidence that the vertical/horizontal orientation of this wound is not found anywhere in Dr. Shaw's testimony. He may have stated what the orientation was, but there are many other instances where the testimony that ended up in the WCR was not quite what the witness stated.

The importance of the vertical/horizontal orientation is this; investigators needed to portray the entrance wound as close as possible to Connally's shoulder blade, in order to show a wound made by a bullet that originated from JFK's throat and travelled from there to Connally on a downward angle and, most importantly, it also had to strike Connally's 5th rib a glancing blow on the way by. By showing the entrance wound as vertical, the impression is given of the bullet entering from high up, on the flat of the back, through the latissimu dorsi muscle, just medial to the armpit crease. This would line up a bullet from JFK's throat with the 5th rib and, if Shaw's testimony about the bullet exiting medial to the right nipple (between the right nipple and sternum) was ignored, one could almost believe a bullet originating from behind the limo could have caused Connally's chest wound.

However, if the orientation of the wound was horizontal, as SA Robert Frazier's testimony about the horizontal bullet hole in the back of Connally's suit coat would indicate, the bullet would have hit the side of Connally's chest, at the crease of the armpit, and left a horizontal wound for the simple fact it hit the side of the chest at an oblique angle.

Originating from JFK's throat, a bullet entering at this point would have missed the 5th rib altogether, passing only through the latissimus dorsi muscle.

However, Shaw's evidence clearly indicates the bullet traversed Connally's 5th rib at a right to left lateral angle of 25-40° and exited to the LEFT of Connally's right nipple.

This means one of two things happened. If Connally received his chest wound at z223/4, the bullet could not have originated from anywhere behind the limo, but would have originated from a point well to the right of the rear of the limo, as viewed from behind the limo. If Connally was wounded by a bullet originating from the SE corner of the TSBD, he would need to be turned quite far to his right, something he is not seen doing until z236, long after JFK is seen reacting to his wound(s).

A couple of questions.

When or where did Dr. Shaw state the lateral (right to left) angle of the chest wound track was 25°, measured, I am assuming, from a line drawn straight across Connally's thorax?

Outside of the fact this is where the FBI marked the entrance wound on a diagram, how do we know the entrance wound was not out at the extreme portion of the latissimus dorsi muscle, instead of just to the right of the scapula?

Why do you jump back and forth from lateral angle to angle of decline?

If Connally was turned 14-25° to his right, and the bullet entered the extreme edge of the latissimus dorsi muscle, contacted the 5th rib at the mid axillary line, travelled 10 cm. of that rib and exited MEDIAL to the right nipple, there is no way that bullet originated from the SE corner of the TSBD, the Dal-Tex Building or the County Records Building. The origin of the bullet had to be much further west in the TSBD, as it is likely this bullet was travelling a fairly severe right to left angle across the right front of Connally's chest.

The right to left angle of 24° for the bullet travelling through the front of Connally's chest, did you calculate that with the bullet exiting just below Connally's right nipple, or did you calculate that angle with the bullet exiting just below AND medial (closer to the sternum) to his right nipple, as Dr. Shaw testified to the WC in his second appearance before them?

James

That is not what I am asking. I am asking if you can explain how he arrived at an angle of 27°. You say Dale is "not far out". Is this a guess on your part, and are you accepting Dale Myers estimation of Connally's shoulder angle on blind faith, or can you tell me how the angle measurement was made?

P.S. It is hard to accept anything Dale says, when his cartoon of the limo shows Connally sitting on JFK's lap.

But how did he determine the angle?

James

Dale Myers says a lot of things, which doesn't necessarily make them true. I would be very interested in seeing how he arrived at a figure of 27° for Connally's turn to the right at z223/4.

Thanks, Pat. I was starting to come to the same conclusion. I've been looking at photos and maps of Dealey Plaza and nowhere does the "island" between the two Elms extend past the beginning of the front steps of the TSBD, nor is it ever shown nearly as wide as in the first map. The real clincher came when I went back to the photos taken from the SN during the re-enactment.

Oh well, the angles would have been the ruin of the SBT, and then what would we do for fun?

Hello Pat

You did indeed come up with some unique material. The one thing that fascinates me the most is the diagram, right at the beginning of Chapter 2b, accompanying the article "A Matter of Degrees". I would like to post the diagram here, for the benefit of the other members and guests but, unfortunately, I have never been able to make the cut and paste function work on this forum. Perhaps I could get you to post the diagram?

Anyways, the diagram relates to something I have long wondered about and, being so far from Dealey Plaza here in northern Canada, have been completely unable to determine for myself. This something is the lateral or horizontal angle from the SE corner of the TSBD to the two positions it is believed by some that JFK was wounded at; namely, those positions that correspond to the limo's location at z210-220 and z313 in the Zapruder film. Of course, these angles would be measured from a longitudinal line running down the centreline of the limo.

The one and only time I was in Dealey Plaza, in 1996, I was in a bit of a rush as I was catching a Greyhound bus just a block or two away to a horseshoeing school just south of Oklahoma City. I wish I had made more time available, as it would have been a simple matter of purchasing a compass and measuring the bearings for myself. Subtracting one from the other would have given me the angles from the SN.

Your diagram shows two different surveys of Dealey Plaza with bullet trajectories from the SN marked in. The first is a map from page 118 of CD5, the FBI's report of 11-30-63; prepared from information provided by Secret Service Agent John Joe Howlett. It shows a lateral angle of 27° for the first shot although it does not say which frame of the Z film this corresponds to. It then shows an angle of 17° for the last shot, and I would assume this corresponds to z313 of the Z film.

The other map is listed as document 4074-001 in Box 11, Folder 51 of the Dallas Municipal Archives, later CE 585, and is the plat created for the 12-5-63 Secret Service re-enactment. It shows, in place of the 27° and 17° trajectories, new trajectories for the same shots at 11° and 8°, respectively. It also shows the TSBD somewhat closer to Elm St., and the "island" in front of the TSBD steps truncated and shrunk some distance to the west.

Well, I imagine you have likely already figured out what my question is. Has any unbiased researcher ever taken the time to measure these angles for himself (or herself), to determine which if these maps is accurate? As it is unlikely either the TSBD or Elm St. have moved in the last 50 years, this should be a fairly straightforward task. If I lived a little closer, I would do it myself.

James

Do you think Connally was turned to his right at z223/4 and, if so, by how many degrees do you think he was turned?

Hello Pat

I began reading, from your website, Chapter 2b: The Secret Service Secrets, and came upon an amazing piece of information. I tried to send you a PM to ask several questions about this but you have your PM's blocked. Would you mind terribly if we discussed this information in the open forum?

James

I believe we are interpreting the medical evidence given by Dr. Shaw in two completely different ways. I know you are having difficulty understanding how the bullet could have entered Connally's back and exited just to the left of his right nipple, without passing through the pleural cavity, but the answer to this riddle is all in Shaw's testimony to the WC.

Shaw tells us some very important things about the 5th rib. The first is that the rib is quite spongy and thin at this lateral point, and would offer little resistance to pressure or fracturing.

Shaw then tells the WC that the 5th rib, as he observed during the operation, had a rather inward position in relation to the 4th and 6th rib on either side of it, due to the rib being broken and losing some of its substance.

Shaw then reveals a very important piece of evidence. While the bullet first contacted the 5th rib at the mid axillary line, he testifies that, because the rib was struck and bent, there was also a fracture of the rib only 4 cm. from where the rib attaches to the transverse process of the spine. Following, here is the most misunderstood part of Shaw's testimony regarding this additional fracture :

"Mr. Specter - And is the fracture, which is located there [4 cm. from the transverse process], caused by a striking there or by the striking at the end of the rib?

Dr. Shaw - It is caused by the striking at the end of the rib."

As this bullet exited Connally's chest long before it got anywhere near the sternum, it is difficult to understand what Shaw meant by "at the end of the rib". What is not well known is that the 5th rib does not actually connect directly to the sternum. Rather, the 5th rib connects to the 5th costal cartilage (roughly 7 cm. long) which bridges the gap between the end of the 5th rib and the sternum. The right 5th rib actually ends at almost the same position, just medial or left of the right nipple, as the exit point of the bullet. This is what Shaw means by saying the bullet struck the end of the rib, as the rib ends well before it reaches the sternum.

If we assume a great degree of elasticity in the rib cage, and in the anterior portion of the 5th rib in particular, we can picture the bullet striking a glancing blow to the 5th rib that did two things to it. It stripped it out for a 10 cm. section AND bent it inwards. What Shaw saw as an inward positioning of the 5th rib was likely nowhere near as far as the bullet pushed the rib inwards as it was passing through. The evidence of this is it was bent far enough to actually fracture the rib just out from where it joined the spine.

I do not believe Dr. Shaw made an error when he testified the 5 cm. exit wound was medial to and just below the right nipple. I believe there was a bullet track that travelled from right to left across the right front of Connally's rib cage, depressing the 5th rib along the way and allowing it to travel a straight line from the mid axillary line to just left of the right nipple.

Such a bullet path, if Connally was facing forward as he was at z223/4, would require the bullet to originate at a point west of the SE corner of the 6th floor of the TSBD. A bullet fired from the SE corner might have hit the lateral portion of the 5th rib but there is a very good chance the shoulder blade would have been hiding the 5th rib entirely, and if the bullet had missed the right shoulder blade, which it did, it would have passed only through the muscle tissue under the armpit.

Gary

I understand what you are saying. One question comes to my mind, does no one find it odd that Shaw, in his meticulous description of Connally's back and chest wounds, neglects to state the orientation of the elliptical wound?

James

Just out of curiosity, what angle are you using as the lateral angle from the SE corner of the TSBD to the midline of the limo at z223/224?