Sandy Larsen

When I was searching for information on money orders using punch codes, I came across the same news article pointed out by David Von Pein:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat=19620623&id=2PQiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Nc0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5330,4714873&hl=en

This 1962 article reports on a new money that uses punched holes on "IBM-like" cards which could be read by machines. At the time, I dismissed the relevancy of the article because IBM cards were made of a thick/stiff stock of paper, whereas the Hidell MO was clearly made of a thin paper. Given that the Hidell money order similarly used punched holes, I figured that it must be some kind of predecessor to the IBM-like card MOs being tested at select locations, as mentioned in the article.

At that point I wondered how it was possible for a machine to read MOs like the Hidell one. Such thin sheets of paper could not have been kept in correct alignment for a machine to read the holes. Some form of "registration" was needed. ("Registration," in technical parlance, is a term used to mean "means for maintaining correct alignment.")

At the time, I figured that the round holes in the MO must have been what was used for registration purposes. The MOs would have been placed on a plate with pins perfectly matched to the size and location of the MO's round holes, and these would hold the MOs securely in place while the machine read the rectangular holes.

I later rejected that idea when I looked more closely and noticed that the holes seemed to be spaced perfectly for holding numerical information. After that I simply forgot about the registration problem, as I went on to decode the round holes.

Well, today I remembered the registration problem when I again saw that 1962 news report about the IBM-like card MOs. And I thought, since the round holes were not used for registration, how was it possible for a machine to have reliably read the holes in MOs like the Hidell one?

Well, now I realize that the Hidell MO is almost certainly the same MO reported on in the news article. That explains how the holes in the card could have been read by a machine. It makes perfect sense that the Dallas post office began using the new card around the same time as the post offices noted in the news article. (Actually, the post offices noted were in "... nine states, ... Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina, all in the Atlanta postal region, and five states in the Denver region." Texas was likely one of the five states in the Denver region, with Dallas being among the post offices using the new money order)

Having concluded that, I now have a full appreciation for John Armstrong's criticism regarding bleed-thru of stamps on the Hidell MO. In my opinion, the bleed-thru of the "Mar 12 1963" postal stamp is PROOF POSITIVE that the Hidell MO is made of regular (thin) paper, not the card stock that it should have been made of. THIS IS YET ANOTHER SMOKING GUN OF A FAKED MONEY ORDER.

This money order is fake, fake, fake! It is strong evidence Oswald was being framed as the shooter of JFK.

Once again I am amazed by the depth of research done by John Armstrong.

Presumably when in DCA and speaking directly to Burkley, Kinney asked, "What should I do with it?" and Burkley replied "Get rid of it!"

Wow.

Do you know if the portable unit was used for all the x-rays?

According to the two x-rays techs, ONLY the portable machine was used.

there was a period of time (about an hour?) when Humes had the body before the gallery was filled and the official autopsy began. A regular x-ray machine might have been used then.

The non-portable x-ray equipment was on the 4th floor. IMO the body would have been seen at sometime during the required round trip, and we would have at least heard stories that this had happened.

Tom said:

Why chop up the lungs looking for bullets/fragments when you could send the right lung with one of the techs to use the available high-res x-ray machine? Unless of course your goal was to destroy the evidence of a perforated lung with dust-like "particles that look like metal but are actually dirt" to quote Ebersole and the HSCA.

But the part about dust-like particles looking like metal to a radiologist, Dr. Ebersole, certainly grabs my attention, particularly in light of this frangible/exotic bullet discussion. Unexposed film in hospitals doesn't get dirty.

ALL of the removed internal organs could have been transported to the high-res x-ray machine and x-rayed en masse by one or both techs while Humes and the others continued with their work. With this option readily available, what possible reason could they have for breaking out the meat cleaver? Hmmm...the topic of a frangible as well as an 'exotic' type of bullet was brought up by the FBI, who immediately called the FBI Lab to ask about these alternatives to an FMJ. The FBI concluded these were possibilities. Of course, If you are not allowed to produce evidence of a frangible bullet then you would NOT use the equipment that would have revealed one if it was present.

The cut-up organs were 'put back into the body'. Is this normal procedure, or was it a quick and easy way to get rid of incriminating evidence?

Tom

All good points, Tom.

Maybe I'm working too hard to make an honest man out of Humes. It's just that Robert's latest theory, if on track, seems to make Humes's testimony more honest. And David Lifton's new book apparently will do the same. Other than for the latest change he made that required burning the first autopsy report, Humes seemed to have been a more honest broker than I thought.

Even if banks did use punch holes for endorsements at the time, so what? The Hidell money order has no such holes punched.

And after receiving your Masters Degree in "Keypunch Hole Evaluation" just a few hours ago after your one-day crash course at Keypunch School, you actually feel confident enough to make the statement you just made about the Hidell money order having "no such holes punched" in it?

Amazing.

Thank you, David.

Take a look at the following page, where I explain the holes in more detail:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=22434

All the holes are explained. There are no holes left for punched bank stamps.

It has been brought it to my attention that I haven't really explained how the holes punched in the Hidell money order are to be decoded. Yes, I see that I am guilty of that. So I will explain it here. It's not difficult.

But first, for the record, the topic was first brought up on this forum when David Von Pein proclaimed that the "money order wasn't cashed" theory had been debunked. He and other LNers came to that conclusion when they notice that one Brian Castle had theorized that the holes were punched during the processing of the money order. They assumed that the holes were being used as a substitute for traditional bank stamps, and that this explained the absence of those stamps on the reverse side of the money order. As I will show, they are wrong.

Following are the front and rear sides of the money order:

You can see the tiny rectangular holes near the left end of the front of the money order.

I drew straight lines through the holes, both vertical and horizontal, so it would be easy to keep them in order. And also so I could label the meaning of each row, as you will see in a moment. Here is the reverse side of the money order with my lines added:

You can see that I have numbered some of the horizontal lines 0 through 9. A popular punch code used at the time was the Hollerith code, widely used for computer punch cards. Because the Hollerith code uses twelve rows, not ten, I had to add two extra lines, which labeled X and Y.

It's easy to read the code once that the rows are labeled. The first number is marked by the right-most vertical line. What you do is see where that line crosses over a hole. Unfortunately it's difficult to see that particular hole. It's also difficult to see the hole crossed over by the second vertical line from the right. For now, just trust me that these first two lines cross their respective holes at horizontal line 2. So the first two numbers are decoded as 22.

The next hole is easy to see. Look at the third vertical line from the right and see where it crosses its hole. It crosses at horizontal line 0. So that digit is 0, and so far we have 220.

Repeat this procedure for the other seven vertical lines to get the seven remaining digits. The fourth hole is also difficult to see. It is at horizontal line 2. With that we have 2202. The remaining holes are all easy to see. The fifth line from the right crosses its hole at horizontal line 1, so we have 22021. Continuing on, we end up with the following ten digits:

2202130462 or 2,202,130,462

This is precisely the same number that is printed on the front of the the money order. It is the money order number, the equivalent to a check number.

LNers may want people to believe that these holes are punched when the check is being processed, and that this somehow signifies that the money order was actually cashed. But that is simply not true. The holes merely duplicate what is printed on the front of the money order and has nothing to do with clearing of the check. The holes are punched at the same time the money order number is printed, before the money orders are even issued to post offices.

You may have noticed two more vertical lines located further to the left. The first crosses two holes and this pair represents the letter P. The last (leftmost) line crosses the horizontal line labeled "Y" and this represents the "-" (dash) mark. (You need to have access to a Hollerith code table to see these.) I haven't spent any time trying to figure out the meaning of these.

Finally, there are five round holes on the opposite half of the money order. At first I ignored them since five digits isn't sufficient to represent a number on a bank stamp. I thought perhaps they represented a post office routing number. But I have since spent more time on them and discovered that they actually represent the number 02145, which obviously refers to the $21.45 value of the of the money order.

So in summary, the ten rectangular holes represent the money order number and are punched when the money order is manufactured. The round holes represent the price/value of the money order and are punched when the money order is purchased.

I like to use the Hidell money order against LNers because it is extremely reliable evidence that Oswald was being framed as the shooter of the assassin's rifle. It's impossible for LNers to explain away how bank stamps can be missing from a canceled money order. But of course they will try.

... do you really think Klein's would have shipped a $21-dollar rifle to somebody (Oswald/Hidell or anybody else on the planet) without having first been PAID for the item?

No, I don't. If the TSBD Carcano was bought from Klein's, somebody paid for it. But not with the Hidell money order.

They definitely shipped to PO Box 2915 in Dallas on 3/20/63?

Well if they did, it wasn't paid for with the Hidell money order. The evidence proves it.

Obviously, in 1963 and thenabouts, money orders had their issue numbers both printed and punched on them before they were issued to post offices.

My guess is that the Hidell money order is real, was stamped on the front at a post office, but was either filled out by an impostor or Oswald was told to fill it out under false pretenses. It obviously was never cashed. Even if banks did use punch holes for endorsements at the time, so what? The Hidell money order has no such holes punched.

Ive looked at several canceled checks from that era and they all have multiple endorsement and other stamps on them. Some of the checks also have holes punched in them. The ones with holes were all issued by the U.S. Government. So the U.S. Government apparently used punch codes for internal bookkeeping purposes. I wouldn't be surprised if other large institutions used such codes as well.

Hi all,

Check this out if you're interested:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=22418

Post #10 debunks the debunking.

David,

Well I hate to be the one to burst your bubble... but... here is what I found.

The rectangular holes turns out indeed to be a Hollerith code, which consists of 12 rows of holes. The hard part in decoding the holes was determining which row was X and which was 9 (the two extremes). It turns out that one row at the top has no holes, and two rows at the bottom have no holes. Once I figured that out the rest was easy. The encoded "message" begins with the rightmost hole in the above image. (Its hard to see the holes for the first two and the fourth characters, but they can easily be seen on the front side of the money order.)

Here is the decoded message:

2202130462 P -

So what is this? It's the issue number of the money order, as printed on its front side!

As for the round holes, they represent a five digit number. One of the following four, I believe:

13256

65231

86743

34768

This could be a routing number for the post office that issued the MO. It doesn't have enough digits to represent a particular account at a particular bank (account number + routing number). And it certainly doesn't have enough digits to represent a check reference number that a federal reserve bank might stamp on a check.

So the problem still stands that a Carcano rifle wasn't paid for with this money order. Nor was anything else.

Ray,

To me it looks like the guy is standing behind the truck.

But I think you're posting this in the wrong thread.

Hi Sandy,

If you enlarge the photo, you will see that he appears to be in the back of the truck.

I posted it here because you were talking about shots from the South Knoll.

Ohhh, okay! Thanks. Yeah, that gives me a better idea as to what the south terrain looks like.

Strange that one minute this flat bed truck has a man in the back, then it has a cover.

Ray,

To me it looks like the guy is standing behind the truck.

But I think you're posting this in the wrong thread.

At Z190, before the front bumper of the limo reached the Stemmons sign, someone on SGK could have fired (with a sound-suppressor of course) a shot that entered the president's throat, grazed his right lung, and exited his back.

Roy, I'd like to see a diagram showing how that could be done. A cross sectional view of the plaza showing how a trajectory from the south knoll could possibly hit JFK's neck without hitting the windshield or the bar the runs across and above the passenger/driver partition.

Well, as you pointed out, there are some definite problems with my theory, such as the angle from EOP to C3/C4 to throat being a bit on the steep side, and Jenkins claim that he could see the probe pushing up against the pleura, but not actually finding a path through it.

Here's a thought: Given the angle of the EOP, could the bullet have hit near the bottom of the skull, around the superior nuchal line, created a small hole through the skull through which a fragment of the bullet entered, while the remainder of the bullet broke up and was deflected downward toward C3/C4? (Sorry if this sounds like another magic bullet.)

(BTW, don't feel compelled to respond if I throw out a silly idea. Ones like this one are meant to hopefully trigger thoughts in your mind that are more reasonable than mine.)

I wonder what it was that "convinced" the surgeons that a fragment of this bullet is what exited the throat. Knowing that would be helpful.

I've always had trouble with Jenkins' stating he saw a probe pushing the pleural lining and how he viewed this from the inside of the empty pleural cavity. In his HSCA interview with Andy Purdy, he describes it as an 8 inch metal probe, and that 2-4 inches of this probe was inserted into the back wound. It is my belief that there is simply not 2-4 inches of tissue, between the skin and the pleural lining, and this is confirmed by Jenkins telling Purdy that the only way this probe could be inserted was almost straight downward or, as he put it, at a "...fairly drastic angle downward so as not to enter the cavity."

Here's a thought (that I may have already stated long ago): Humes is told just prior to the autopsy that, among other things, he is not to find a collapsed lung. So when he's looking for the back-wound bullet fragments, he intentionally pushes the probe in the wrong direction, through intact muscle, just to show whoever's watching (Jenkins) that the pleura (and thus the lung) wasn't penetrated. But then, this would be a part of the "charade" idea.

Again, just throwing ideas out.

Considering the overlying muscles of the back and the intercostal muscles between the ribs together do not amount to any great thickness, my question is, why were they attempting to probe this wound with a metal probe? A basic knowledge of human anatomy is enough to tell us that an entrance wound between the vertebrae and the shoulder blade, at the level of T3, is directly over the top of the right lung, and does not have to travel through very much flesh to get to it.

And why would the probe be forced straight down, likely parallel to the rib cage? Did someone think JFK was shot from a helicopter? This, combined with the very shallow depth of the tissue they were probing (before they would have put the probe into the pleural cavity), tells me something very odd was going on here.

This is slightly off topic but, does anyone know what became of the section of the rear of JFK's head that Clint Hill observed lying on the back seat of the limo?

P.S.

Interesting point you made, Sandy, about the lower quality of the portable x-ray machines. Would this be compounded by the fact the portable x-ray machine they used might have been a late 50's (or older) model? That would certainly explain the oddity of slicing up all of the organs in their search for a bullet. Call me stupid but, why not just take the organs to the stationary x-ray unit and get a better look?

The reason a stationary x-ray machine produces better images than a portable is because they can produce higher energy x-rays than portable units can. To produce higher energy x-rays, an x-ray system needs two things: 1) A higher-power power supply unit, and 2) a way to cool an x-ray tube that will be hotter. A stationary x-ray machine has a very bulky and heavy power supply that resides in a nearby cabinet. And it has a bulky and heavy heat sink attached to the tube.

With today's technology, a higher-powered power supply unit could definitely be designed to fit inside a portable x-ray machine. So MAYBE today's portables are better than those of the 1950s/60s. However, if cooling the tube is the limiting factor, then no, today's portables probably aren't much better.

Unfortunately I don't know if the limiting factor in the older portables was the power supply or the cooling of the tube. So I can't answer your question. based on those factors. However, the mere fact that they had and used portable machines back then, and complained of their resolution just as they do today, makes me think that the performance of portables probably hasn't changed much. Because I'm pretty sure the performance of stationary ones hasn't either. Tube technology for traditional x-raying was pretty mature in the 1950s/60s.

Interesting point you made, Sandy, about the lower quality of the portable x-ray machines. That would certainly explain the oddity of slicing up all of the organs in their search for a bullet. Call me stupid but, why not just take the organs to the stationary x-ray unit and get a better look?

Robert and Sandy,

In my post #317-806 on 11-04-2015 I pointed out that the radiology techs stated that the portable x-ray machine was low resolution and only good enough to find bullets or large fragments. I stated the same conclusion that you did. i.e. Why chop up the lungs looking for bullets/fragments when you could send the right lung with one of the techs to use the available high-res x-ray machine? Unless of course your goal was to destroy the evidence of a perforated lung with dust-like "particles that look like metal but are actually dirt" to quote Ebersole and the HSCA. And of course the sole x-ray of the lungs has disappeared from the archives.

Tom

Tom,

Thanks for bringing up again the info on the portable x-ray machine. I couldn't remember who had posted it and I'd forgotten the details (low resolution, etc.)

Do you know if the portable unit was used for all the x-rays? It seems likely, as I don't recall any mention of JFK's body being moved, for example to be x-rayed with a regular machine.

However, we need to keep in mind that there was a period of time (about an hour?) when Humes had the body before the gallery was filled and the official autopsy began. The so-call pre-autopsy autopsy period that most people are unaware of. A regular x-ray machine might have been used then.

A regular x-ray machine would have definitely produce better images than a portable. Though, as I understand it, a portable would work fine for areas with less mass, like the limbs. Maybe even so for the lungs, given that much of that area is air.

Tom said:

Why chop up the lungs looking for bullets/fragments when you could send the right lung with one of the techs to use the available high-res x-ray machine? Unless of course your goal was to destroy the evidence of a perforated lung with dust-like "particles that look like metal but are actually dirt" to quote Ebersole and the HSCA.

Because of Lt. Lipsey's testimony that the surgeons spent a large portion of the autopsy looking for the back wound bullet, I'm not ready to (preliminarily) conclude that the purpose of slicing up the organs wasn't to find bullet fragments from the back wound. But the part about dust-like particles looking like metal to a radiologist, Dr. Ebersole, certainly grabs my attention, particularly in light of this frangible/exotic bullet discussion. Unexposed film in hospitals doesn't get dirty. There had to have been something in the body capable of blocking x-rays enough to make a noticeable image on the film, IMO.

Robert said:

Call me stupid but, why not just take the organs to the stationary x-ray unit and get a better look?

Impatience? X-rays had already been taken... some people don't like to do things twice.

Or maybe they figured the first x-ray of the lungs was good enough, if it's the case that a portable x-ray machine give a reasonably good image of the less-massive lung area.

I'm just throwing these ideas out.

Why couldn't the Dallas post office have simply run out of their supply of blank U.S. Postal money orders shortly before Oswald purchased his M.O. on March 12th? It's fairly obvious to me that that is what happened.

Does John Armstrong really think that the Dallas post office had an unlimited supply of money orders on hand at all times? How silly.

At some point, the supply of money orders would run low and the Dallas post office would replenish its stock. And when they do get fresh stock, the serial numbers are, of course, going to be much higher than the ones they just ran out of, since they are "U.S. POSTAL MONEY ORDERS" with unique serial numbers attached to each one and are being continuously supplied to post offices and other institutions all around the entire country, not just the Main Post Office branch in Dallas, Texas.

Why on Earth is my above "Ran out of stock and simply replenished their supply with money orders that obviously would have much higher serial numbers" explanation not even to be considered by conspiracy theorists like John Armstrong?

~big shrug~

------------

More:

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/10/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1058.html

I agree with David on this one. Not that I know for sure that what he described is what happened... only that what he described could have happened. And so there is no reason to suspect foul play in this regard.

Now, if somebody were to show that all post offices across the country could not have used 118,000 money orders over the given time period, then a cloud of doubt could again be cast on this.

Rather than point to other other problems found with Oswald's purchase of the gun, I think we should stick with the topic given here. Does the code punched on the money order represent the processing of the money order at a federal reserve bank.

Going over the HSCA interviews with Lt. Lipsey (aide to Maj. General Wehle and present at the autopsy) and Jerrol Custer (x-ray technician at Bethesda that night), I have come up with another theory that might explain all of JFK's wounds..

Robert,

I like your theory for a number of reasons. I can't think of any testimony that contradicts it, and it does seem possible to me that the bullet did as you describe.

But I'd like a little more info about the following: Isn't the angle from the EOP, through the skull, and down to C3/C4 too steep to have come from the TSBD? After fragmenting, could the particles have deflected to this steeper angle?

One of your concerns is how the skull got broken up into so many pieces, including some in the face. This doesn't concern me because I believe pre-autopsy surgery was done in order to obfuscate any wounds from the front. There was a gaping wound in the back at Parkland and it was obfuscated elsewhere by enlarging the blowout to cover the whole top of the head. (Right side only, that is.) How would one do that? With a saw? How about a chisel and hammer? The latter would look more convincing as a wound. I studied this topic (two caskets, three entrances, pre-autopsy surgery) in great detail and came away convinced of it. (Not in full agreement with DSL, but close.) How the various witnesses to the autopsy were brought in at various times helps explain why some people saw a blowout in the back and others saw the top of the head missing. Different witnesses saw different wounds in Bethesda. But they all included the missing occiput area.

Anyway, if you're open to that idea, the great damage to the head isn't hard to explain.

After reading Best Evidence I came away not trusting what Humes said. But as time has passed and I've read the testimony of others, like Lt. Lipsey, things have gradually started to fit together and I have come to believe that Humes was more honest than what I had originally imagined. (Though I never thought he was all that bad... just that his every step was being controlled.)

This is how I have come to accept the EOP entrance wound as being real. The fact that Humes held his ground for so long before giving into the HSCA regarding the BOH wound being at the EOP and not the cowlick area. Why would he do that if it was one of the lies being told?? (If you haven't read that testimony it's pretty interesting. One congressman was saying they were all "nuts" for letting the tape recorder run during Humes's objections.)

Now that I'm being exposed to the complexities of the shots not having exits, the frangible bullets make sense. Though I don't know what to make of the jackets not being found. Maybe they were jacket-less? There actually were reports of a few fragments being removed from the body (NOT official reports). Could these have been jacket fragments? I don't anything about that stuff, but it sounds ridiculous, mistaking copper for lead.

As for the back wound, I've wrestled with the fact that they cut the organs up when they could have simply x-rayed them. But recently it occurred to me that maybe they x-rayed the organs *before* the dissection looking for the fragments. They couldn't find any because (in their way of thinking) they were using a low-powered portable machine. I've fixed many of my radiologist friend's x-ray machines over the years (I'm an electrical engineer) and I know they always want me to get the repair done quickly because the images from the portable machine aren't very good.

So anyway, they take poor x-rays, don't see anything, and assume they didn't find bullet fragments because of the poor images. So the decide to dissect and cut up the organs. They don't x-ray the organs *after* the dissection simply because they already did, and they think they can find fragments by slicing the organs. It doesn't pan out and they scratch their heads wondering where the bullet went.

One thing I like about your theory is that it actually agrees with what Humes really did and what Lipsey actually saw. According to Lipsey, the surgeons were certain the EOP bullet exited the throat. and it did (in a way, according to your theory). The surgeons couldn't find the back wound, as they shouldn't (according to your theory). The top of Kennedy's head was blown off with "surgery to head," and Humes has to make up a pretend bullet entrance and exit, both in the hole area. This according to Lipsey. But of course this is because of the pre-autopsy surgery. The bullet really entered one of the temples and fragmented, blowing out the back of the head.

Why didn't they (including Jenkins) not see a hole in the pleura? Because... I don't know. If somehow the bullet could have disintegrated before entering the pleural cavity, the tiny particles could have penetrated the pleural cavity and lung, and the tiny holes in the pleura go undetected. But from your lessons on frangible bullets, it seems that could not have happened. So this remains unsolved. And the copper jacket problem remains unsolved, though maybe they were necessary for some reason.

I'm running these peripheral thoughts by you and the others, hoping they might trigger ideas to go along with your new theory.

Well Jean Davison must be a "somebody" in the LN crowd. I found her post in alt.assassination.jfk and she got a reply from our pal John McAdams:

John McAdams, On 6 Nov. 2015:

Another Armstrong thing shot to hell.

David Von Pein destroyed the "mailed at a distant mailbox" thing.
David, if you are lucking, you might post the link (I'm too lazy to go
find it).

.John

David, I'd like to take a look at your "mailed at a distant mailbox" destruction page. Can you give me a link?

JEAN DAVISON SAID:

"The money order wasn't cashed" debunked....

It has long been argued that since the money order for Oswald's rifle lacked a bank stamp on the back, it was never cashed. For instance here:

http://harveyandlee.net/Guns/Guns.html

Recently Brian Castle debunked that claim on the reopenkennedycase.org forum by making an observation that seems obvious now but that no one seems to have noticed before.

QUOTE:

"The scuttlebutt is that the money order was never cashed or deposited in any US bank.

However.... take a look at the money order. Here's a picture:

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/Vol17

See the little holes in the paper? They're "punch holes", made by a "keypunch machine". In the old days, there was no ASCII and the computer people commonly used a "Hollerith code" for punch cards.

The idea is, that WHEN the money order or check is processed by the bank (or a clearing house), it's run in a BATCH along with a thousand other checks, and each batch is handled by a keypunch operator with a keypunch machine [......]"

UNQUOTE

You can read the rest here:

http://reopenkennedycase.org/about-that-money-order

Bravo, Brian Castle, well done!

DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Thank you, Jean. And thank you, Brian Castle.

Great jumpin' Jehosaphat, David!

When I suggested you bring this new find up in the forum, I had no idea you were gonna declare outright victory -- that the Oswald money order not-being-cashed thing had been debunked! What I meant was that you should present the new evidence and let the members study it. I mean... you guys haven't even deciphered the code yet!

Well, never mind. I just think you're jumping the gun. Don't you?

Anyway, now that you've brought it up, I'll give it a go myself.

P.S. Who's Jean Davison?

Robert,

As I read your theory, I kept waiting for the part where you tell us what happened to the bullet to the back.

...please let me know where I went wrong... what happened to the bullet to the back.

Perhaps you should take the time to re-read my post. I was proposing that part of the bullet entering at a downward angle at the EOP (external occipital protuberance) might have impacted at C3/C4 (cervical vertebrae or neck), not T3/T4 (thoracic or upper back vertebrae).

Oops! Yeah, that's where I got messed up. You wrote "C3/C4" and my mind read "T3/T4."

Different smal topic: the wild-goose chase I might've caused Sandy RE a possible hole in the backseat that JFK had his back pressed against. I believe that if a Sherlock Holmes, with magnifying glass and most sensitive fingers, were to get a hold of that exact piece of material, he would have trouble finding the damage caused by that missile that entered throat, exited back.

I saw a nice, color, profile-view of the presidential limo today and was going to post it. Unfortunately it got lost between then and when I finished a chore my wife had gotten after me to do. (That's what happens when you're not looking and you have a curious five-year-old around.)

I was surprised to see how high JFK's back rose above the back cushion. I mean, it was really high, seeming not to match other images, like those from the Z-film. I wanted to get Robert's opinion on how far above the cushion the back wound would have been, based on that photo. To my untrained eye it looked way too high for a bullet to have entered the top of the cushion. To me it looked like a bullet would have hit the trunk lid.

FWIW.

From looking at that photo I realized I'd never really taken a good look at the limo before. Because I'd never noticed that bar running across the top of the car (it appears to be part of the passenger/driver partition thing). My reason for mentioning this (other than revealing my ignorance, ha!) is that it reveals yet one more obstacle to a potential shot from the front. Including Roy's shot from the left-front.

Not looking good for Roy's Theory. Sorry Roy.

Good thing Robert has a theory.

Here's an interactive 3D recreation of Dealey Plaza from which you can explore various shooter points:

http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2013/11/22/jfinteraktive-the-assassination-of-john-fitzgerald-kennedy/

Thanks for that, Ollie. I just wish I could get it to work on one of our computers here.

David V.P.,

I read some of the material you linked to. Why don't you present here on the forum the new information about the punch holes on the money order?

David H., did you see that? About the possibility that the holes punched into the money order replaced what would have been bank stamps?

I don't know if that is the purpose of the holes, but it will be interesting to find out. I'm amazed that I never noticed the holes before. There are some rectangular ones and some round ones.

I actually punched some EBCDIC cards myself when I was college. EBCDIC, introduced in 1964, replaced whatever code that is on the money order.

Sandy

Going over the HSCA interviews with Lt. Lipsey (aide to Maj. General Wehle and present at the autopsy) and Jerrol Custer (x-ray technician at Bethesda that night), I have come up with another theory that might explain all of JFK's wounds. Unfortunately, my theory requires there to have been at least six shots fired, and I am not sure if even the use of suppressors on three of those shots could have made it sound as if there were only three shots. Also, this only accounts for the wounding of three people (JFK, Connally and Tague) and does not account for the crack (hole) in the windshield or the dented frame above the windshield.

First, I should state that I believe all of the evidence points to JFK being shot twice in the head, with one bullet entering in the right (or possibly left - that theory is far from dead) temple and one bullet entering low and to the right on the rear of JFK's head. I believe the back of the head was the first bullet to enter, and that the large wound created by the temple shot partially obliterated the rear entrance wound in the skull. However, I shall be calling into question the true location of the rear head wound, as Lt. Lipsey tells some very interesting things about this wound and the throat wound to the HSCA.

In order to make this theory work, the majority of bullets, excluding the one from the front, had to originate from behind and fairly high up. All bullets fired had to be frangible bullets, although likely of a fairly primitive construction strongly resembling frangible range bullets (M37 Magistri) made for the 6.5mm Carcano.

To begin, it is my theory that a frangible bullet hit JFK's back at about the level of T3, entered the top of his right lung and disintegrated. While the bullet would have disintegrated totally into powder, thus stymieing any search for bullet fragments, the jacket itself would not have disintegrated, and the fact they found no jacket fragments has always bothered me.

A frangible bullet, likely the last shot, also entered JFK's right temple, although there is also a lot of information pointing to the fact this bullet entered the left temple. Either way, the large blowout in the rear of JFK's head was created by this shot. While it may not seem possible for a shot to the right temple to cause a blowout in the right rear of the skull, my experience hunting deer with hollow point bullets has demonstrated that the large hydraulic pressure created by such a bullet will cause the skull to blow out in unexpected places. For example, a shot entering the side of the head that one would expect to exit the opposite side of the head actually causes the top of the head to blow off. An exit wound also does not mean an intact bullet actually exits from that sight. In fact, in the case of a frangible bullet, I would be surprised if any part of the bullet exited through an "exit" wound.

Now, the throat wound and the bullet that entered the rear of JFK's skull. The throat wound, as we all know, has been the most difficult to explain. I will present a theory that attempts to explain what occurred with the throat wound.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that a bullet struck the rear of JFK's head and entered just to the right of the External Occipital Protuberance, something very obvious comes to light, as can be seen in this x-ray:

External Occipital Protuberance (EOP) designated by arrow.

X-ray showing location of cervical vertebrae, EOP and throat.

Note how low in the rear of the skull the EOP is, and how the surface of the skull is actually sloping inwards at this point. I have always assumed the bullet entering just to the right of the EOP would have made a clean entrance wound and, if it broke up, would have remained inside of JFK's skull. However, seeing the location of this entrance wound on an x-ray, and considering the distinct possibility many of the shots came from high up on a building to the rear of the limo, I am not so sure the entire bullet remained inside JFK's skull any more.

Here are some of the clues I have been contemplating; most of which emerged with the release to the public of HSCA interviews in the 1990's.

In Lt. Lipsey's interview, he related that most of the time spent in the autopsy he observed was spent in trying to locate the bullet that entered JFK's back. As the autopsists were quite convinced the shots from behind were all from high up, it was believed this bullet may have ranged downwards in JFK's torso. However, Lipsey also goes into some detail describing a bullet that entered the lower rear of JFK's head. While never really pinpointing the exact location of this entrance wound, Lipsey finally relays that it would be about where the rear hairline meets the neck, which is considerably lower than the EOP. Lipsey then states that the autopsists were quite convinced that, because of the steep angle the bullet was travelling at, this bullet, or a fragment of it, continued on and exited the right side of JFK's throat. I believe, looking at the x-rays above, this may be a distinct possibility.

Jerrol Custer was the x-ray technician on duty at Bethesda the night of JFK's autopsy. He, too, was interviewed by the HSCA, and he made one observation that has bothered me since I first read it. In his interview, he stated the x-rays purported to be of JFK's neck were not the ones he remembered seeing. The ones he recalled showed many metallic fragments in the vicinity of cervical vertebrae C3/C4. Looking again at the x-rays above, we can see the location of C3/C4 is directly in line with a bullet path originating at the EOP and exiting at the throat, just below the Adam's apple.

Once again, this would require that a frangible bullet had been used in this shot, as I have no doubt a full metal jacket (FMJ) bullet would have easily passed through his neck (including the vertebrae) without leaving fragments behind. I also believe the design of this frangible bullet would have been somewhat primitive, as compared to modern frangible bullets, and would not have been 100% powdered lead inside the jacket. Rather, it might have resembled the 6.5mm Carcano M37 "Magistri" frangible range bullet, pictured below:

6.5mm Carcano M37 Magistri frangible range bullet on right.

As the cutaway above shows, this bullet was of an odd construction. Inside the copper alloy, two-piece jacket, there was sand in the base of the bullet, powdered lead above the sand and, above that in the nose of the bullet, was a solid pellet made from lead or "maillechort". Was this pellet what made the throat wound, described as being from 3-8 mm in diameter by Parkland surgeons, while the powdered lead, sand and bullet jacket were deposited on bone at C3/C4?

The only fly in the ointment here comes, once again, from another HSCA interview. Thomas Robinson, one of the enbalmers from Gawlers Funeral Home who prepared JFK's body following the autopsy, reported that, as viewed from inside JFK's empty skull, every bone in JFK's face appeared to be broken. While this statement hardly seems to be supported by the "stare of death" photos of JFK, it must still be taken into consideration.

From my experience hunting, it seems unusual that a shot, entering the right temple and causing a blowout in the right rear of the skull, could cause such extensive breakage of bones in JFK's face, although I may be underestimating the explosive force of the bullet used.

One explanation may be that the EOP wound was not as neat as described in the autopsy and, considering the oblique angle it struck the rear base of the skull, the frangible bullet might have broken up penetrating the skull and sent part of the bullet into the skull, and part on its way to C3/C4.

Another explanation may be that the bullet entered the skull at the EOP, disintegrated shortly after entry, and parts of it either exited the base of the skull or exited through the "foramen magnum", the large opening at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord enters the cranial cavity.

Unfortunately, these last two possibilities place the wound slightly higher than the hair line wound, and do not line up anywhere near as nicely with C3/C4 and the throat wound.

Robert,

As I read your theory, I kept waiting for the part where you tell us what happened to the bullet to the back. That part never came. So I re-read your theory and saw the following paragraph of yours:

In Lt. Lipsey's interview, he related that most of the time spent in the autopsy he observed was spent in trying to locate the bullet that entered JFK's back. As the autopsists were quite convinced the shots from behind were all from high up, it was believed this bullet may have ranged downwards in JFK's torso. However, Lipsey also goes into some detail describing a bullet that entered the lower rear of JFK's head. While never really pinpointing the exact location of this entrance wound, Lipsey finally relays that it would be about where the rear hairline meets the neck, which is considerably lower than the EOP. Lipsey then states that the autopsists were quite convinced that, because of the steep angle the bullet was travelling at, this bullet, or a fragment of it, continued on and exited the right side of JFK's throat. I believe, looking at the x-rays above, this may be a distinct possibility.

Is this paragraph the place where you're telling us what happened to the bullet to the back? That is, as part of your theory, are you saying that the fragments from the bullet to the back "ranged downwards in JFK's torso," and some fragments from the EOP bullet went down to T3/T4? (BTW, I don't know if I can refer to frangible pieces/powder as fragments. But you know what I mean.)

If so, that strikes me as odd. That fragments from one bullet (EOP) end up "replacing" fragments I expect to see (at T3/T4) from a different bullet (T3). (I hope you know what I mean by that.) Not impossible... just a bit of a twist.

If not so, please let me know where I went wrong... what happened to the bullet to the back.

I didn't realize that if you say somebody misunderstood you, that this means you are blaming them for the misunderstanding.

"A" makes a statement -- "B" "misunderstands." i.e. by definition of the word "misunderstand"; "B" "fail(ed) to interpret or understand the words or action..."

When the word "misunderstand" is used by "A" in reference to communication with "B":

1. the statement of "A" is correct, and therefore "A" is BLAMELESS for the "misunderstanding."

2. "B" is solely responsible for the error in communication

An apparent or actual miscommunication can be caused by:

1. "A" failed to properly express himself, thus "A" is at fault

2. "B" understood but "A" INCORRECTLY believes that "B" did not understand, thus "A" is at fault

3. "B" understood but his poorly worded reply to "A" indicates to "A" that "B" failed to understand, thus "B" is at fault

4. "B" failed to comprehend the properly composed statement of "A", thus "B" is at fault

5. Either "A" or "B" or "A" and "B" are looking for an argument...

To acknowledge an *apparent* misunderstanding, use of the word "We" is highly recommended. The word "You" is not.

e.g. "We are experiencing a communication breakdown, and I don't know why."

Thus, a communication issue is presented, but NO BLAME is assigned to EITHER "A" or "B".

This technique is most often referred to as "I'm OK, you're OK."

Well, as I said before, I believe the word "misunderstand" merely denotes a case of Person A saying X and Person B interpreting it as Y, without regard for where any blame belongs. After all, how can one determine whether Person A said what he did clearly enough, or Person B didn't listen carefully enough? And even if one could, what purpose would be served in doing so? Just to point fingers?

My attitude in general is that pointing to people's mistakes in interpersonal relationships serves no useful purpose. People make mistakes... that's life.

Anyway, now that I know someone might take offense at the word "misunderstand," I will try to use it more carefully.

Dictionaries are wrong -- Got it!

Surely you know that the meaning of a word often has subtle differences depending upon the ethnicity, ancestry, customs, norms, etc., of the locality where it is used.

Where I grew up, "spring fever" meant that you were lethargic. Where I later lived it meant the opposite... that you were energetic. And different dictionaries at the time gave different definitions.

In college, we used the word "moot" to mean something was irrelevant. Yet the dictionary I had defined it as debatable.

I'm sure dictionaries have improved since then, but I'm also sure that subtleties remain.

Anyway, the meaning of "misunderstand" as I gave it is how I learned it. If you want to know precisely what I meant, you should use my definition. If you choose to continue using your definition for what I was trying to say, then there is nothing more I can do.