Sandy Larsen

There was no exit or bullet found for the bullet entrance in the back. So yeah, it's possible that somebody made that hole. But I think it is much more likely that @Cliff Varnell got that right. That it was a high-tech melting bullet. I don't buy that it was an undercharge bullet that fell out due to massage. But I'm not altogether ruling that out either. It's a real mystery. What do you think happened to the bullet?

No, I don't believe that. But someone examining that possibility does not seem like a crazy thing to me. I thought that the main thesis was that the body was altered to make it appear, as well as possible, that the shots came from the 6th floor of the TSBD. Yes, that's what I thought Lifton was saying. And I will add, there seems to be some truth to Lifton's body alteration theory. Namely, the multiple lacerations in the top of the scalp that make the gaping wound appear to be on the right-top part of the head. Just like what we see in the Z film, BTW. Also the apparent fact that somebody else's brain was inserted in place of Kennedy's. Recall that Humes said the brain virtually just fell out, or something like that. That is something that cannot happen on its own... someone needs to cut arteries and veins, not to mention the optic nerves, and especially the spinal cord. The new brain better represented the damage that a shot from behind would create. If you are referring to the multiple entries of a casket, each being carried by a different group of men, this is something that I believe Lifton got close to 100% right. As he did the ambulance chase that occurred before the autopsy.

Thanks for posting the video, Keven. It is very compelling. Before watching this, I thought that the only modifications to the Zapruder film were the following quick ones: The blacking out of the back-of-head gaping wound. The painting in of the right side "blob." The removal of a few frames to speed-up the slowed-down limo at Z313. While those changes may have been the only ones made intermediately after the assassination, I now believe that more extensive changes may have been made subsequent to those. Though obviously the whole film wasn't remade or we wouldn't be seeing any "back and to the left" movement on Kennedy's part.

Lifton wrote several long posts on this forum over the last few years of his life, and none of them seemed like the guy being described by a few participants. That is to say, his posts weren't bizarre at all. (Save for a anti-DiEugenio tirade or two that I vaguely recall reading.) I wonder how this can be explained. It reminds me of people bringing up Lifton's earlier bizarre theories, like the plastic tree thing. And yet reading nothing bizarre in his book.

Micheal, I take exception to the way you smear Fletcher Prouty. It is reminiscent of the anti-Mormon rhetoric used to smear people like you and me over the years and decades, saying that we are sexual deviants because of our polygamist associations, and racists because many people we have associated with agreed with and participated in the withholding of the priesthood and temple ceremonies from Africans and their descendants. That's precisely what you do to Fletcher Prouty in my opinion, and its ugly.

It has been indisputably proven that there was a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head. Which in turn proves that the back-of head photos and x-rays are fraudulent. And that the Zapruder film has been altered. I don't necessarily agree with Lifton on his body alteration theory. But the two things he got right were the ambulance chase and how the three casket entrances worked.

Call it what you want... it was apparently created by multiple lacerations with a knife. And not a soul noticed it in Dealey Plaza or Parkland. Yet very pronounced at Bethesda.

A Retrumplican, no doubt.

Bless you.

What evidence do you have for that conclusion? Tony, how do you think the top of Kennedy's scalp got all shredded up between the time his body was in Parkland hospital and when the autopsy started?

What evidence do you have for that conclusion?

So you believe the Parkland doctors and nurses were all wrong when they said the gaping wound was on the back of the head? I ask because the Zapruder film contradicts them all and shows that the wound was on top of the head.

I'm not buying it Tom. You want a controlled experiment? Well here you go: Take 50 coins and flip them. What are the odds that 40 of them will agree (i.e. come up all heads or all tails)? n = 50 x = 40 p = 1/2 q = 1 - p = 1/2 The online BPD calculator gives the answer: 1 / 109,606 The odd are 1 in 109,606 that 40 of the 50 coins will come up the same. There is no pandemonium. There is nobody looking for a wound or anything else, etc., etc. There aren't even people involved... just 50 randomly flipped coins. This a very controlled experiment. Now, replace those 50 coins with 50 witnesses. Each one has a coin and flips it. Now what are the odds that 40 of the 50 coins come up the same? Same as before... 1 in 109,606 Next, let's have each witness say there was a hole on the back of the head if they flip a head, but NO hole on the back of the head if they flip a tail. Now what are the odds that 40 of the 50 witnesses will say the same thing? Same as before... 1 in 109,606 What I have just done is used a controlled experiment to prove that the odds of 40 out of 50 head witnesses agreeing on whether or not there is a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head is less than 1 in 109,606. NO MATTER HOW THE WITNESSES CAME TO THEIR CONCLUSIONS. This is the very best case that can be made for Pat's side of the argument. Of course, in reality, many of the witnesses would have given a more accurate answer than a random coin toss. And so the odds would be much lower than 1 in 109,606 that 40 of the 50 witnesses agreed. The problem for Pat's side of the argument is that there are just too many witnesses agreeing. And there's no way to get around that. As much as you want to Tom, you can't. It is thereby proven that there was a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head. And by virtue of that, it is proven that the back-of-head photos are fraudulent; and the lateral head x-ray is fraudulent, as is likely the A-P x-ray; and the Zapruder film has been tampered with.

Jim, I wish you would have made a separate thread specifically for identifying the guys named in the FBI report regarding the phone call to the Connecticut Mrs. Tippit. This is an extremely long thread and I don't know where the dialog regarding those guys ended. I just wanted to point out that there is a new forum member, @György Kozma Kecskmeti, who wrote the following to me in an e-mail:

Jim, I'm beginning to believe that the above FBI document really does explain (or rather, helps to explain) the origin of HARVEY Oswald. The thing that got me to take it much more seriously is an argument put forth in this Paul Jolliffe post: Paul argues that the FBI would have known the NYC Communist leaders mentioned in the report, and that they buried the report because it contained Oswald information that was far too sensitive to leave the report filed as usual. You did say that that report was buried for thirty years. The significance of that didn't hit me till I saw Paul spelling it out.

I followed and commented in that thread. There was nothing substantive in Mark Stevens' argument. But by all means, everybody read the thread if you want. The only thing useful that came out of that thread is that one of the H&L critics noticed that two different names were used by an important H&L witness, former Stripling Junior High principal. The critic made a big deal about it, saying that it proved the H&L witness was unreliable. Unsurprisingly it turned out that the H&L critic was wrong. It was John Armstrong who made the mistake... in one place for Jim's website he accidentally used the name of the Stripling principal when Oswald attended, instead of the one in 1963 when the FBI took all the records on Oswald's attendance there.

Jeremy, Leslie did respond, but moderators removed all posts related to the squabble. I quoted your post here just in case you want to use it elsewhere, not on this forum

Actually, Tom, it's not more complex than a coin toss in this case. I'll explain. There were about 50 witnesses who said they saw the large head wound. Nearly all of them said there was a big hole on the back of the head, and yet the BOH photos show no such thing. You say that some of the doctors could have been wrong. Well, let's take that idea to the extreme and see what happens. Suppose that all fifty witnesses flipped a coin. Suppose further that if their coin came up heads, they would say that the wound was on the back of the head. If it came up tails, they would say that the wound was NOT on the back of the head. In other words, suppose the claims of the fifty witnesses were completely random. They were all idiots, so to speak. Pat and a few others believe that all those who said there was a hole on the back of the head were wrong. To make the calculation easy, and to make my point, lets supposed that all 50 witnesses got it wrong and placed a large hole on the back of the head. The odds of getting 50 heads is calculated as follows: 1/2 is the odds of each coin landing heads up. 1/2 to the power of 50 is the odds of all 50 landing heads up. (1/2) ^ 50 = 1 / 1,125,899,906,842,624 Therefore, the odds of all 50 witnesses wrongly placing the wound on the back of the head would be less than 1 in a quadrillion! And this is for the worst case, where all 50 witnesses are just guessing! Like you said, any of them could be wrong. Do you see the problem now? The problem for Pat's side is that so many witnesses said THE SAME THING... that there was a gaping wound on the back of the head. The only way so many could say the same thing is if most of them got it right. Not wrong! Now, having made my point, I admit that the calculated odds -- one in a quadrillion -- would be greatly increased (i.e. in Pat's favor) if some of those 50 said that there was no gaping wound on the back of the head. Okay, so let's do a reasonable, informed calculation and see if there is any chance at all that Pat could right. I didn't do this earlier because the calculation is more complicated. I have studied the back-of-head wound issue extensively. Luckily I have Dr. Aguilar's list of 44 witnesses who were at Parkland and Bethesda hospitals, and their histories of where they placed the gaping wound. There were also the Dealey Plaza witnesses. Their earliest recollections are the best, and so I use them. As I said earlier, all together there were about 50 witnesses. For my realistic, informed calculation, let's suppose 10 of those witnesses did NOT see a gaping hole on the back of the head. As for the probability of a witness making a mistake, lets assume that they each were half as likely as a random coin toss to be wrong. So instead of 50% (1/2) chance of being wrong, their odds of being wrong were 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 = 25%. The calculation for this requires to use of the Binomial Probability Distribution (BPD) formula, which is this In our case: success = wrongly seeing a hole on the back of the head n = 50 x = 40 p = 1/4 q = 1 - p = 3/4 Performing the calculation with this online BPD calculator, the result I get 0%. In other words, there's a 0% chance that 40 of the 50 witnesses would wrongly see a hole on the back of the head! I was a little surprised to see a 0% chance. Because, though I knew it would be close to zero, I also knew it wouldn't be exactly zero. I concluded that the online calculator I used hit an internal limit of it calculating power. Wanting to see the real odds, I decided it was worth the effort of calculating it manually, using the above formula and my Windows XP built-in scientific calculator. I knew from experience that this calculator is capable of calculating with extremely large and small numbers. Performing the calculation manually, I got this result: 1 / 2,089,874,696,731,895 So, the odds of 40 out of 50 witnesses WRONGLY placing the wound on the back of the head is less than 1 in 2 quadrillion! As I said, the problem for Pat's side of the argument is the large number of witness who say they saw a gaping hole on the back. Even if many disagreed with the majority, the odds of so many getting it wrong is so incredibly low that there is no way that they could have gotten it wrong. There is just no way of getting around this. The bottom line is that it is a proven fact that there was a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head. And by virtue of that, it is a proven fact that the back-of-head photos are fraudulent; and that the lateral head x-ray is fraudulent, as is likely the A-P x-ray; and that the Zapruder film has been tampered with.

I don't have a problem with Pat disagreeing with Mantik regarding his placement of the Harper fragment in the occiput, as long as he uses facts to make his argument and isn't deceitful. Though I am more likely to believe Mantik over Pat. Mantik does, after all, have two or three doctors -- one a pathologist -- supporting him, having actually held the fragment in their hands and declaring it to be occipital. (I've always thought it was two doctors, but recently someone posted it was three.) Pat cites a Dr. Reilly who says there isn't to be seen in a photo of the fragment certain grooves that are supposed to be in the occiput. Well, the doctors who held it in their hand disagreed. About this, Dr. Mantik wrote: Moreover, the direction of the vascular grooves [on the Harper fragment], although consistent with a parietal site, was also surprisingly consistent with an upper occipital site, which was also not hard to demonstrate. I could easily see these on my skulls (the grooves did go in the right direction) and it was not hard to find photographs in texts that were equally supportive. (I doubt that Angel ever did this exercise, since he automatically ruled out the back of the head, nor do I really know if Riley performed this exercise for the upper occiput, since he seemed so focused on the lower occiput.) One thing that bugs me about Pat on this topic is that he makes fun of Mantik's apparently saying at some point that Kennedy's skull bone may have been affected by his having Addison's disease. It bugs me because it is a fact that Parkinson's patients are known to have bone problems, including osteoporosis, which result in the restructuring of bones. This occurs from being overly medicated with steroids over a long period of time. The steroid administered to Kennedy, cortisone, was new and considered a miracle drug in the 1950s. It was overly prescribed because of that, with its long-term side effect appearing only later.

Of course.

A small entrance wound is easy to miss in a bloody situation.

The problem is that Pat grossly cherry picks and misrepresents testimony in order to make his case. That's dishonest behavior in my book. This has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with someone. If someone on my side of an issue was called out for dishonest behavior, I wouldn't say a word in their defense. I'd think he had it coming. What Pat has presented is mathematically impossible. Using laws of probability, it's very easy to prove that there was a gaping hole in the back of the head. Which means the back of head photos are fraudulent. That should be the end of the discussion there. But I understand that people have a hard time believing a mathematical proof. That's relevant only if you think it's okay to use debunked theories to win converts.

Misinformation like your claim that McClelland once thought there was a large wound on Kennedy's left temple. Or right temple. It is obvious how the left-temple misunderstanding occurred, but you refuse to acknowledge it even after it is explained to you. And your insistence that "gunshot wound of the left temple" refers to the blowout wound when it is obvious it is referring to an entrance wound.

Nothing but misinformation, deception, and cherry picking. It's pissing people off, not because it's not what they believe, but because it's dishonest.

Mantik doesn't place the hole where you say. He places the Harper fragment there. The hole in the skull (and scalp) extended up and to the right from there. The Harper fragment area was mostly covered with scalp, which explains why witnesses didn't see the gaping wound extending further left where the Harper fragment had been. You are wrong. Mantik's claims are fully consistent with what the gaping wound witnesses said.