Robert Prudhomme

Has this tie been completely laid flat and ironed out, or is this a photo of it as it was removed from JFK's neck? Is that the nick, about 3 inches up from where the tie was severed? Does the tie only appear to be 3-3.5 icons wide at this point, simply because the tail was not flattened out? Can you see the nick anywhere else in this photo, or any other photo of the tie where the tie has been opened up and laid flat, outside of this closeup photo? Isn't it a bit odd that the tie was never laid out flat, and the specific spot on the tie with the nick pointed out?

You're right about this, Ron. So, bringing it back to Lipsey -- Lipsey didn't realize that he was supporting the CTers -- he thought he was supporting the LNers. I think that's what Robert wanted to bring out with this thread. Regards, --Paul Trejo Precisely, Paul. In fact, I don't think Lipsey was actually "supporting" anyone, CTer or LNer. I don't think it even occurred to him that anyone was doing anything underhanded at the autopsy, even years later in the HSCA interview. "SECTION 2 LIPSEY: And once again, and I'm sorry, the best I can tell you is my recollection after all these years and obviously some speculation on my part. The only thing, and it's certainly not going to hold up under any court of law-type thing. But, I can remember when the Warren Commission was formed. Everybody's writing books about it. All the comments on how many times he was shot and the angles. I remember Walter Cronkite doing this big CBS thing on who shot him -- how many directions it came from. I can remember vividly in my mind on literally hundreds of occasions, saying these people are crazy. I watched the autopsy and I know for a fact he was shot three times. And the doctors were firmly convinced they all came out of the same gun because of the type of wounds or the entrances, whatever. I wish I could be more specific. I remember going back to the autopsy. I can remember specifically the next week, the next month. Over the period of the next year or so. Which was when I really remember what went on in the room. These people were crazy. I can remember in my own mind, they're trying to read something into it that didn't happen. One book came out that he was shot from three different angles, another report came out he was only shot once, another that he was shot seven times. All kinds of…Everybody had their own versions of what happened, how many sounds they heard, and the angles of the fire they came from. I definitely remember the doctors commenting they were convinced that the shots came from the same direction and from the same type of weapon -- and it was three shots." He does not seem to have ever put a lot of deep thought into the assassination and what he learned at the autopsy. This is why I find him so believable.

Of course not, Cliff. He concluded the upper back shot exited the throat. Do you believe that one?

Do you recall Humes' autopsy report stating there was an entrance wound next to the EOP?

READ Lipsey's interview, Cliff. There was no gallery. Lipsey clearly states there was only a railing separating him from JFK, and that he was 12-15 feet away from the corpse. I suppose you are going to call Lt. Lipsey a xxxx now. Is that what you mean by "...if he was in the autopsy room at all"? Anyone that fouls up your pet theory, dismiss him as a xxxx. Great research methods, Cliff. Almost as impressive as Ashton's research methods, but not quite. This is hilarious coming from a guy who says all the Dealey Plaza close proximity witnesses, Parkland throat entrance wound witnesses, and any number of Bethesda autopsy witnesses got it wrong. Cherry pick much, Robert? Present your proof there was a wound in the upper neck other than the testimony of one guy. Present your proof Lipsey attended the autopsy. Don't you mean LOWER neck, Cliff? From the WC testimony of Dr. Malcolm Perry: "Mr. SPECTER - Dr. Perry, you mentioned an injury to the trachea. Will you describe that as precisely as you can, please? Dr. PERRY - Yes. Once the transverse incision through the skin and subcutaneous tissues was made, it was necessary to separate the strap muscles covering the anterior muscles of the windpipe and thyroid. At that point the trachea was noted to be deviated slightly to the left and I found it necessary to sever the exterior strap muscles on the other side to reach the trachea. I noticed a small ragged laceration of the trachea on the anterior lateral right side. I could see the endotracheal tube which had been placed by Dr. Carrico in the wound, but there was evidence of air and blood around the tube because I noted the cuff was just above the injury to the trachea."

READ Lipsey's interview, Cliff. There was no gallery. Lipsey clearly states there was only a railing separating him from JFK, and that he was 12-15 feet away from the corpse. I suppose you are going to call Lt. Lipsey a xxxx now. Is that what you mean by "...if he was in the autopsy room at all"? Anyone that fouls up your pet theory, dismiss him as a xxxx. Great research methods, Cliff. Almost as impressive as Ashton's research methods, but not quite. From the HSCA interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey, January 18, 1978: "Q: Were you in the positions to be able to hear any conversations among the doctors? LIPSEY: Yeah, I was, but truthfully, I paid attention to what I wanted to pay attention to. it was one of those deals where I was curious how many times he'd been shot, or where he'd been shot. Medical definitions of what type of wounds they were, and whatever, I tuned all that out probably. I didn't know what they were talking about and I just didn't care. I should have cared more-- I wish now I could have taped it, if possible. No. I really don't know…I heard their conversations. I was interested in the parts I wanted to be interested in. It's been too long to recall the other parts of their conversations. Q: I'd like to stop the tape in order to change sides. The time is 12:17. ----------------------- Time is 12:18 beginning the tape again. Q: Getting back to the question that he just asked you. In terms of feet, how close were you to the table where the autopsy was being performed? Were you right behind? LIPSEY: When you walked in the autopsy room from the back door where they brought the body in, you turned left down a very little short hallway. Had the doors right there. When you walked in there was sort of a like a little spectator's gallery, on the right there were several chairs on the right with a railing in front. The table was in front of that. I would say I was about as far as from that jacket, maybe, from the doctors, approximately about 12-15 feet."

P.S. Banshees banned from my view, Ashton? Wow, what a great researcher you are. Anything that doesn't agree with your theory, just close your eyes, plug your ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!!!"

Hi, Roy. Yes, that is a nick, not a hole (the latter assertion being just more disinformation), and what you have suggested is a perfectly reasonable possibility—not small potatoes at all. I originally attempted to do that version, too, but because of extremely compressed time, I only did the animation that I posted. Attempting to "stretch" the flat tie-with-nick image so that it conforms to the "knot" shape, while trying NOT (pun unavoidable) to prejudicially distort evidence, and trying to get the icons to properly align, is an enormously time-consuming and tedious task. If no one else will do it, I promise that I will get back to it as soon as I can find breathing time. Perhaps now that the banshees have been banned from my view, I will be able to. Although there are also other complications that arose in attempting to do it the way you suggest, which I will take up later. Thanks for your interest and rational discussion. Ashton This is assuming, of course, that whatever caused the nick was moving in the same direction as the nick is long. If this was the tail of the tie, which all of the evidence clearly points to it being, it would have been the piece that passed through the knot, and would not have been part of the "wrapping" of the knot. Imagine this section being the segment that poked out the narrow bottom of the knot, squeezing this part so that the "nicked" section was folded over. Instead of the projectile passing lengthwise through the nick, the projectile was as wide as the nick is long, and the segment that was nicked was folded over and sticking out.

Here is likely the best evidence of the throat wound being an exit wound for a bullet, a fragment of a bullet, or a component of a type of frangible bullet. This is from Lt. Richard Lipsey, aide to General Wehe, who sat through almost the entire autopsy and enbalming procedure, 12-15 feet from JFK's corpse, and who was able to listen to the entire autopsy discussion between Humes, Finck and Boswell, "Q: Getting back to the entrances you just stated one exit you believed was on the right hand side of the head. Now what about the other entrances, what about the corresponding exits if there were any? Let's clarify that a little more. For starting, one… LIPSEY: The bullet entered lower part of the head or upper part of the neck. [long pause] To the best of my knowledge, came out the front of the neck. But the one that I remember they spent so much time on, obviously, was the one they found did not come out. There was a bullet -- that's my vivid recollection cause that's all they talked about. For about two hours all they talked about was finding that bullet. To the rest of my recollection they found some particles but they never found the bullet -- pieces of it, trances of it. The best of my knowledge, this is one thing I definitely remember they just never found that whole bullet."

Notice how little people always resort to slander and name calling, right about the time they run out of logical arguments? You might as well just leave now, Ashton, or would you like us all to witness your meltdown?

*PLONK* There. That screeching is out of my life for good. Now I won't have to put up with 800 more repetitions of Carrico's exquisitely ambiguous influenced testimony about a tie knot. Now I won't have to endure someone insisting hysterically, repeatedly, over and over and over and over and over, that the back of a rearview mirror in a photo is a face. Now I won't have to deal with the sad shambles of those too technology challenged to be able to quote messages in a forum—while insisting that they are superior to all others. Now I won't have to be subjected to the tag-team disinformation twins—unless there are others who are determined to be their water carriers by quoting them over and over and over and over again. But there's a solution for that, too. The wonderful thing about the Kook File is that it is a marvel of modern technology, because it is infinitely expanding. There's plenty of room for anyone who would like to join TweedlePrudhomme and TweedleVarnell there, and dance round and round and round until the end of time, singing the same sheepheaded songs endlessly, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and... Ashton Just can't stand the fact that your arguments don't hold water, and I can poke holes in them all day long.

*PLONK* Anybody else want to join him? The Kook File is infinitely expandable, so there is plenty of room. Just let me know. Ashton Brilliant response, Ashton. I'd be cautious about labelling others "kooks" on this forum. Remember, you're the one that brought up the theory about the Parkland doctors poisoning JFK and then "obliterating" the evidence.

I've been writing about Lipsey on this forum for a decade. My study of the medical evidence (as opposed to the witness testimony) led me to believe Kennedy was shot three times, once in the back, once at the base of the skull, and once on the right top side of the head above the ear, with the second of these shots exiting the front of the throat. It never occurred to me that a witness to the autopsy would support these conclusions, and claim these were in fact the conclusions of the doctors at the autopsy. And then I stumbled on Richard Lipsey and Tom Robinson, TWO witnesses to the autopsy who claimed the doctors described the very scenario I'd proposed. But I'm not here to blow my horn, but to share some information. Lipsey didn't disappear, Robert. From chapter 17 at patspeer.com: The Return of Richard Lipsey As the country neared the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death, Richard Lipsey re-appeared in a series of interviews and articles in which he pushed that Oswald acted alone. (While there are probably more, I have come across a November 2013 article on Lipsey in Country Roads Magazine, an 11-17-13 article on Lipsey in the Baton Rouge Advocate, an 11-20-13 article on Lipsey in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, an 11-22-13 interview of Lipsey on radio station WKRF, and an 11-22-13 interview of Lipsey on C-SPAN2.) Now, it's not so strange that Lipsey would reappear as the country neared the 50th anniversary. He was an important witness, after all. No, what's strange is the content of his interviews. He said he'd been impressed with Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, and that he also supported Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History, even though he had never actually gotten around to reading it.Well, this might lead one to believe Lipsey had changed his mind, and that he no longer stood by what he'd told the HSCA back in 1978. Beyond claiming that "the direction" of the bullets as determined at autopsy supported that the shots came from behind, after all, he avoided detailed discussion of the President's wounds. One might conclude, then, that he no longer stood by his earlier account of the autopsy, an account that was totally at odds with the autopsy as presented by Posner and Bugliosi. But one would almost certainly be wrong. In one of the interviews, Lipsey let it slip that he'd studied the FBI's report on the autopsy, and that he largely agreed with it. This report claimed that no passage connecting the back wound with the throat wound had been discovered during the autopsy. This was precisely what Lipsey had told the HSCA. Well, if Lipsey had subsequently come to believe there had been such a passage, well, then, why didn't he say so? When one sifts through another article on Lipsey, this one published in The Advocate back on 9-6-92, for that matter, one finds even more reason to believe Lipsey never backed off from his 1978 recollections. The article claimed: "Lipsey said he also spoke years later with two other men in the room, Lt. Sam Bird, who was in charge of the honor guard that carried the casket from Air Force One to the ambulance and from the ambulance into the hospital, and FBI agent Francis O'Neill. Lipsey said that a few months ago O'Neill let him read the report he submitted after the autopsy. "I agreed with, like, 90 percent of what he said, and I'm sure the 10 percent I didn't agree with wasn't because he was correct or I was correct," Lipsey said. "It was because... after 30 years your memory gets a little foggy. His report that was written one hour after the autopsy really corroborates my way of thinking." O'Neill's report, of course, claimed the bullet creating the back wound did not enter the body. While it's possible Lipsey thought this an understandable mistake that was cleared up the next day, it's hard to see how he could think such a thing, and 1) claim his disagreements with O'Neill (who never believed the bullet entered the body) were due to the passage of time, and 2) still claim O'Neill's report "corroborates my way of thinking."And there's yet another reason to suspect Lipsey never wavered from his statements to the HSCA. In none of these post-HSCA interviews did Lipsey bring up his earlier claim a bullet entered low on the back of the head and exited from the throat. But more to the point, in none of these interviews did the interviewer point out that the "official" story pushed by the men to whom Lipsey was now deferring--Posner and Bugliosi--holds that no bullet of any kind entered low on the back of the head, and that, as a consequence, no discussion of a bullet entering low on the back of the head could have been overheard by Lipsey during the autopsy. And that Lipsey's statements to the HSCA were thereby balderdash... In fact, these interviews failed to mention Lipsey's ever saying anything at odds with the Posner/Bugliosi version of the Oswald-did-it scenario. But he was not always so careful. A 10-31-09 article on Lipsey found on 225BatonRouge.com, for example, claimed that upon re-reading his statements to the HSCA, Lipsey, "notes that some of his responses were not as clean and concise as they could have been." He didn't admit he was wrong, mind you. The article then discussed the autopsy in some detail, and claimed the "doctors concluded there were three entry wounds: one in the lower neck, one in the upper neck/lower skull region and one at the rear crown of the head." Well, this was just bizarre; one might guess that the writer of this article, LSU Professor, James E Shelledy, was trying to hide that the bullet hole now claimed to be the fatal bullet hole, the one on the crown of the head, was not observed or discussed at the autopsy. To wit, Shelledy then offered "Several years later, second opinions by doctors determined Kennedy was hit by only two bullets." So, yeah, Shelledy made a strange mistake, and this mistake allowed him to conceal that the wound now claimed to be the fatal entrance wound was not observed by any witness to the autopsy, including Lipsey, and that Lipsey also failed to recall any discussion of such a wound. A look back at Lipsey's words to the HSCA, however, put this strange passage in context, and make it clear Lipsey was responsible for the description of three bullet entrances, and not Shelledy. Lipsey told the HSCA's investigators: "as I remember them there was one bullet that went in the back of the head that exited and blew away part of his face. And that was sort of high up, not high up but like this little crown on the back of your head right there, three or four inches above your neck. And then the other one entered at more of less the top of the neck, the other one entered more or less at the bottom of the neck." And to this, he later added: "I feel that there was really no entrance wound --maybe I said that --in the rear of his head. There was a point where they determined the bullet entered the back of his head but I believe all of that part of his head was blown. I mean I think it just physically blew away that part of his head. You know, just like a strip right across there or may have been just in that area -- just blew it out." So, there it is. The entrance by the crown, to Lipsey's recollection, was the rear entrance to the large head wound he claimed had been described as a wound of both entrance and exit. It was not the small red spot in the cowlick later "discovered" by the Clark Panel. Lipsey had, after all, no recollection of an entrance wound in the cowlick. And this goes to show that Lipsey, as late as 2009, still believed the doctors had on the night of the autopsy concluded the large head wound was a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. And that they only subsequently decided that this wound was connected to the wound at the upper neck/lower skull. We have good reason to doubt, then, that Lipsey ever changed his mind about what he told the HSCA. He supported O'Neill, who claimed there was no passage from the back wound into the body. And he continued, as late as 2009, to claim the doctors initially concluded the large head wound was a wound of both entrance and exit. It seems clear from this, moreover, that Lipsey, who left the military in 1964 to embark on a long and prosperous career as an arms dealer and big game hunter, wanted it both ways. Much as Governor Connally, and FBI agent Frank O'Neill, before him, he wanted to go on the record as saying Oswald did it by all himself, even though his personal recollections were in conflict with that conclusion. Strange. And sad. Hi Pat Yes, strange and sad. Yet, if we simply ignore what Lipsey may or may not have agreed with years after the HSCA interview, I believe this is where the true value here lies, It's just a shame the interview wasn't done in 1963, when Lipsey's memories were still fresh. "LIPSEY: That's why they spent so much time looking for it. They traced it through the back of his neck through, you know, when they did the autopsy, through the inside of his body and there was no where the bullet was then where it should have exited, it was not. And at the angle it was traveling, and from, you know, with the other things they saw visible in the chest area once they cut him open, you know, it had started down, but where was it? Q: When they opened up the body from the front, did -- were they able to discern any part of the track of the bullet? LIPSEY: I'm convinced they were in the upper part of his body -- yes -- because that's how they started following it. And then I think, that's when they started taking his organs out, you know, one at a time only. They took all of the insides out, I remember that, boy. They had four or five piles of insides sitting on the table. And they thoroughly examined each one of those. They just had a big hollow chest and stomach cavity left -- or particularly chest cavity, when they got through. And, I'm very convinced, in my own mind, that they were very convinced that bullet was somewhere in him. Because, from their conversations, they tracked this bullet as far as they could in a downward position before they couldn't tell where it went. That's when they started taking organs apart and looking where ever they could look without going ahead and just cutting him apart. And I think their decision finally was, we're just, you know, not going to completely dissect him to find this bullet. So they tracked the bullet down as far as it went. Obviously, by that point it wasn't that important."

Paul Lipsey observed and heard exactly what was shown to him. Reading his interview, I don't believe Lipsey put much effort at all into analyzing what was presented to him and, if he was asked, I'm quite sure Lipsey would shrug his shoulders and say, "Three bullets from behind. One blew the skull apart from back to front. Must've been Oswald." In analyzing Lipsey's interview, I don't believe it is a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with Lipsey. I see him as a somewhat naive messenger, and nothing more. P.S. Regarding the head wound. Either a bullet entered the front and blew the back out, or a bullet entered the back and blew the front out. One or the other. Considering the head wound observed by almost everyone at Parkland, I tend to go with the front entry/rear blowout. What was observed at Bethesda by Lipsey could have only been brought about after the body left Dallas.

Lipsey seems unsure of a great many things. This points to him not being present all of the time but it also points to a man not on an agenda, and attempting to fill in gaps with biased fabrications. I think we should appreciate the honesty and naivete of Lipsey's responses, and glean what details we can from them.

I was just reading one of the posts above and realized I may not have fully answered one of the questions. Someone asked if there were a more "powerful" bullet that could have caused the skull bone to blow out at the entrance wound in the back of JFK's skull, and then go on to blow most of the right half of JFK's brain out a huge opening in the front of his skull. Conceivably, a rifle bullet could be made with a small amount of explosives in it, similar to a small cannon round but, how much damage could it do? If the round was set to detonate on contact with the skull bone at the back, and it completely detonated on the surface of the skull, nothing would be left to penetrate into the brain, out to the front of the skull, and detonate there. There is no magic. Either the round would fully penetrate the skull, leaving a small entrance wound, and detonate mid-brain (or just beyond) and take out the front of the skull, or the round would detonate on the rear of the skull, cratering it but leaving nothing to carry on to the front of the skull,

Yup, now we're on the right track!

You are correct, Robert. The narrow end of the tie -- the "tail" -- coming out the bottom of the knot can indeed be turned around. I have kept a mockup of Kennedy's tie around for the last 9 months and when I looked at it just now, I found the tail to be rotated by 180 degrees. Note, however, that a guy wearing a tie will generally try to make the tail come out the correct way. Well, a neat guy will. Even so, I can still envision one coming out sideways and then held straight further down with a tie clip or by pulling the tail through the keeper loop. The tail could be facing forward, but with the sides folded in where it enters the base of the knot.

I have yet to see evidence pinpointing the exact location of the nick on JFK's tie. We do know, though, that the tie was only 5 icons wide at this point.

That is one possible explanation, Sandy. The other is that the nick was in the "tail" of the tie, not the front or "blade" of the tie. When a tie is tied, it is the blade that makes the knot around the tail of the tie, The tail runs straight through the knot, and by pulling on it, it is possible to tighten or loosen a tie. As the bottom of the tie knot is the narrowest, it is necessary for the blade and tail of the tie to be scrunched together as they pass through this narrow opening. In the process, the tail and blade get folded over. Could one of the folds in the tail not be sticking out as the projectile went by, and get nicked by the projectile?

You're grasping at straws, Cliff, and I'm getting tired of responding to you.

As I said to Ron Ecker....nope. Let me tell you a story. Where I live here, on a group of islands on the northwest coast of Canada, there is a species of deer that, while not being overly large, are extremely plentiful. They are so plentiful, the season goes from June of one year to the end of February next year. There is a yearly bag limit of fifteen deer per hunter, and the daily possession limit is three per hunter. When hunting deer, most hunters will try to go for a "lung shot" by shooting a deer in the chest. With a deer standing sideways to the hunter, the ribcage of the deer presents a fairly large target, both tall and wide. A bullet entering anywhere in this area will put a hole in the pleural cavity, as well as rupturing one and possibly both lungs and collapsing them. As well, the pleural cavity contains a large network of pulmonary arteries and veins, and one is almost guaranteed to sever some of these and induce a massive haemorrhage of blood. If the deer is able to still walk after being shot here, he won't go far. The problem with shooting smaller deer in this area, especially if one is attempting to recover the maximum amount of meat possible, is that it is very easy to be off a bit with your shot and damage meat in the shoulder or backstrap area. As well, many people find the heart to be a delicacy, and putting a bullet through the heart renders it inedible. The solution is to go for a head shot. It is a smaller target, though, and shooting a deer here does not always guarantee a clean kill. My favorite rifle was a bolt action .308 calibre rifle. I would sometimes hand load cartridges for it, and at other times just shoot "factory" ammunition. I found 130 and 150 grain bullets to be quite effective on our deer. One day, when purchasing ammo, I noticed on the shelf a box of 110 grain "hollow point" slugs in the .30 calibre size needed for my rifle. Knowing that hollow point bullets expanded much more and more rapidly than the soft point bullets I normally used, I purchased these slugs and hand loaded some rifle cartridges with them, in the hopes the rapid expansion of these bullets would make for a better kill in a head shot. Well, they worked, far better than I ever imagined they would. In fact, the results were so obscene, I was embarrassed to have anyone see these deer after I shot them, and quit using them after they ran out. Inevitably, there would be a very large exit wound, and not always in line with the path of the bullet. Shooting a deer in the side of the head, for instance, could sometimes blow the top of its head off; 90° from the path of the bullet. Do you know what every one of these shots had in common, though? On every deer, these hollow point bullets made a tiny entrance wound the same size as the bullet, and did no damage to any of the area around the entrance wound. The entrance wound described by Lipsey, in which the impact of the bullet "blows out" the skull around the entrance wound, is a lie, especially for a non-expanding full metal jacket bullet.

The only correction I would like to make is that I am unable to find anything in his interview that says he overheard there were three bullets that entered JFK's skull. From what I read, one bullet entered the skull, one entered the back of the neck high up just below the skull and the thirs entered low on the back of the neck.

Nope. But it fooled Lipsey, and several others.

The area you are referring to, between the thyroid cartilage and the trachea, is occupied by the cricoid cartilage. Perry makes no mention of any damage to the cricoid cartilage, and only says there was a tear in the trachea between the 2nd and 3rd tracheal rings. As much as you want to see a projectile enter above JFK's collar, there is no evidence to support this, Cliff. Give up.