Micah Mileto

Humes told the WC that pieces of skull bone fell to the table as soon as they started examining the scalp. No bone fragment was said to have been found at Parkland hospital.

Nobody would take a dollar bill that's torn in half. I hope that didn't just get thrown in the trash - the two half bills or the partially-torn whole bill.

Lifton suspected that, since Jenkins and Paul O'Connor were related (cousins or something), Jenkins felt that he needed to "best" O'Connor in some way by expanding his story to add the part about the spine being severed.

Hi

James Curtis Jenkins reportedly did not say anything about the spine being disconnected in his long interviews with David Lifton before Best Evidence came out. When Lifton raised the possibility of head wound alteration to Jenkins, Jenkins said "That's pie in the sky stuff, David". But ever since he spoke to Harrison Livingstone, now the body arrived with the spine severed from the brainstem.

Where are the dollar bills and change?

Thanks! Wow, the SFM really been going through all of their oral histories trying to upload all of them.

Tom Robinson and Floyd Riebe's description of sawing specifically doesn't contract the official version. Humes told the Warren Commission that "virtually" no sawing of the skull was necessary, and he told the ARRB that "we had to cut sone bone as well".

Could that be a shadow from a curl of hair?

Yeah, but the scalp would be reflected to towards the left side of the head in the theory that the photos show the back of the head, so either way, the flap is in the same basic spot. Any specific part of the flap you think you can identify? I've spent a long time in the past staring at the photos trying to find one identifying marker.

What specific part of the bone flap looks the same in both images, in a way that precludes it still being a rear-head view?

Like what? Any anatomical markers? My suspicion now is that the skull photographs show the upper back of the head and the curved-looking protrusion off to the side in dim lighting is the external occipital protuberance. 2 medical professionals also identified a nipple off to the other side in the full-quality stereoscopic viewer - that would also support the idea of the photos showing the back of the head.

Pat changed his opinion since his 2009 videos - his website now says that he believes the skull photos show the UPPER back of the skull, not the lower back as suggested above.

Pockets of air trapped between tissues can create black spots on x-rays - those black spots do not necessarily mean missing tissue. https://www.ajronline.org/toc/ajr/154/3 https://www.ajronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2214/ajr.154.3.2106206

The official interpretation of the skull photographs, with an intact entry and exit hole in the intact skull cannot be true unless the some parts of the back of the skull were somehow separated and then placed back in after the brain removal procedure but before the taking of the photographs The proposed location of the beveled entrance and exit holes in the skull are only 5 inches apart. Therefore the HSCA apparently claimed that Kennedy's whole brain fit through a 5 inch-wide hole, and that is too small. In a brain removal procedure, not only is adequate room required to sever the brainstem and spinal cord, but also to delicately cut the tentorium cerebelli as well as the cranial nerves. From seeing several medical sources, it would seem like there are three ways you can cut a skull wide enough to remove the brain: a. a lot of the back of the skull is separated, b. a lot of the front of the skull is separated, c. a good portion of both is separated. The HSCA's intended geometry of this photograph apparently doesn't allow for enough room to lift or rotate the brain. Example: https://i.imgur.com/4nyJKxy.jpg The required minimal size for a proper skull cavity would envelop the official locations of the wounds in the photographs. I took this model skull and drew an outline representing the absolute maximum size skull cavity that could exist while still being consistent with the official HSCA interpretation of the autopsy skull photographs: https://imgur.com/a/9UMt94M Clearly, this is too small to lift or even rotate the official brain through. Removing a brain requires enough space to fit your hands underneath the brain. It really does seem incontrovertible that 5 inches is too small. The skull cavity in these images must be larger than the HSCA theorized. The only way the HSCA's interpretation of these photographs could be correct is if a portion of the back of the skull had been placed back in prior to photography.

There is no known documentation that explains how the autopsy photos ended up in the custody of the National Archives. No piece of paper, no witness taking responsibility. Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln claimed that the autopsy photos and body specimens were taken by Angelo Novello, while Novello herself later claimed she had no knowledge of having anything to do with the autopsy materials. It took Dr. Wecht to notice that the specimens were missing even if the photographs weren't.

If it is absolutely true that the autopsy photographs show a nipple there (This may be possible to verify by having trained observers view the full-quality images from the official autopsy collection, including the original color positive film frames, which contain the full-quality images, unlike the negative color film frames which are just copies of the positives), then... Is there any conceivable way that a nipple would still be visible if the official story is true, that the camera is pointed at Kennedy's forehead, not the rear of his head? Could Kennedy's disconnected neck or head arrange themselves in such a way on the autopsy table, perhaps with the doctors holding him up like that are in some photos? Or would a nipple automatically mean the camera is pointed at the rear of the head?

Wouldn't it be better to allow the evidence to be admitted, just so that the jury can be subject to a lengthy discussion about the questionable authenticity of things like the autopsy photographs? My point was that the public has no knowledge of any solid, surviving information that explains how the autopsy camera film was developed.

The smoking nipple ... From David Mantik: https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/thomas-donald-byron-hear-no-evil-social-constructivism-and-the-forensic-evidence-in-the-kennedy-assassination-two-reviews-2-part-1 It is strange that Thomas should be so certain that this is not a posterior view, despite never viewing this photo at NARA. I have not only done so, but have viewed it repeatedly in stereo. The upper left hand corner cannot be appreciated in reproductions, but it is highly relevant. In that corner, part of the abdomen is visible: the subcutaneous fat is seen folded out (as it was during the autopsy) and even a nipple is visible. Until the recent review by the ARRB, I was the only observer to note these features. Now, however, I am not alone: one of the ARRB experts, Robert Kirschner (a forensic pathologist, no less), saw the same anatomy in this corner of the photo. (See my Dallas lecture, slide 58.) Those specific anatomic landmarks in that corner can mean only one thing: this is a posterior view of the skull. David Mantik's 11/21/2009 presentation slides: http://assassinationscience.com/JFK_Skull_X-rays.htm From an ARRB staff report on a consultation with forensic pathologist Dr. Robert H. Kirschner: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=145280#relPageId=230tab=page (7) Photographs of ARRB "View 7," (#s 17, 18, 44, and 45) could not be oriented or identified with any precision. Dr. Kirschner did say that he could not visualize this photograph as being the rear of the head, and that the curvature of the exterior surface of the skull in the photo could represent frontal bone, but that he could not be sure. The "ripples" inside the cranial cavity were interpreted as probably being the base of the skull. The notch in the photograph was opined to be too large to be an entrance wound; it was further observed to exhibit external beveling. However, because of the lack of clearly identifiable anatomic landmarks, this photograph ultimately could not be definitely oriented. The "yellow spot" in the color photos near the skull was thought to be muscle and fat which had possibly been exposed by the reflection of skin pulled back as a result of the Y-incision during the autopsy. The artifact in the photograph which appears to be made of glass was tentatively identified by Dr. Kirschner as a formaldehyde bottle.

I don't think that's even half the list of custody issues with the official autopsy photos - their credibility can be shot to hell by so many different points of argument. For example - Saundra Spencer said that she only recalled seeing color negative film of the body, no black and white or color positive film (ARRB interview, 12/13/1996 [audio]; ARRB deposition, 6/5/1997 [text] [audio]). This is despite the fact that the color negatives in the official collection are supposed to be copies made from the color positives, as it is easier to make prints from negatives (Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi, 2007, Endnotes, Kennedy's Autopsy and the Gunshot Wounds to Kennedy and Connally). Spencer didn’t mention having access to any equipment which could have be used to copy an image from a positive onto a negative, and she even said that she didn’t think her section of the NPC was capable of developing color positives. As she explained, the White House Laboratory was one of multiple rooms situated in the Naval Photographic Center, and the building had another room which had equipment capable of developing color positive transparencies, but she didn’t think that room was used, as it was not occupied on the day described (ARRB interview, 12/13/1996 [audio]; ARRB deposition, 6/5/1997 [text] [audio]). Spencer said, in her deposition, that there were different occasions when she personally used those facilities to process color positives. Spencer also said that the Kennedy photos were developed using the “color negative C-22 process”, and that an “internegative cannot be processed C-22” – an internegative is a piece of negative film with an image copied from another piece of film. When asked “So that you are certain then that they were not inter-negatives that you developed?”, Spencer replied “No, they were original” (ARRB deposition, 6/5/1997 [text] [audio])

This was Lifton's most recent (edited 2022) and most definitive write-up on the Burrus article, and the leaks of medical evidence to the press. Only a couple of days before Lifton passed away, I tried sending him an email asking his opinion on what was apparently even earlier public acknowledgment on a back wound - the 11/27/1963 article in the Boston Globe, President's Neck, Head Hit by Bullets by Herbert Black. The article described it’s source of information as “an unofficial but authoritative source”… “This information did not come from doctors at the hospital here, who have said they were too busy trying to save the President to study the trajectory of the bullets. It is, however, from a source in position to know the facts, which were ascertained at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, where Mr. Kennedy was taken”. It read “...the sniper, firing from above and behind the President, first hit the President on the right side of the back part of his neck. This bullet passed through the windpipe and came out at the throat, just below his Adam's apple, making the large wound which doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital noted. This wound might not have been fatal, considering the quick medical attention which the President received”. The throat wound is oddly referred to as “large” instead of small. The wounding of the head was described with a reference to the left temple - “When he was struck, he apparently turned his head toward Mrs. Kennedy (to the left) and began to slump. A second bullet then tore into his left temple and emerged from the right top of his head, the mortal wound”... “This information was doubted at first because it reported that the President was hit on the left temple. It did not seem reasonable that a sniper above and to the right behind the car could hit him on the left side, but information from a film taken of the events tends to corroborate this” (Link). This may suggest that the article’s information came from somebody with access to the early Parkland hospital reports.

After this and David Joseph's posts a couple of years ago, how many more important modern sources on Mexico City are there?

Ok, then anybody who is willing to spend a few hundred dollars on doing experiments could maybe revolutionize our understanding of the bullet deformity issue. Unless anybody objects to the value in doing experiments where 6.5 rounds are fired into layers of ballistics gel and bone simulant plates... that might make a cool special on a local news channel. The 60th anniversary is coming up and virtually none of the experiments done on these kinds of "specials" in the past have gathered any useful information... save maybe the "discovery channel bullet", which has a deformity that new experiments should try to replicate (hit 2 ribs in ballistics dummy, bent at a 20+degree angle and slightly flattened). The idea of firing bullets into simple large, flat layers of bone and flesh simulant rather than an expensive ballistics dummy sounds way easier than trying to do it like the Discovery Channel with a dummy sniped precisely from a distance.

Why aren't there experiments being done on 6.5 rounds done on flat layers of ballistics gel and bone simulant? It wouldn't be that expensive, but they do sell flat panels of bone simulant material for the purpose of target shooting. This could be the best chance at trying to replicate a low-speed 6.5 round, tumbling through bone, remaining pristine.

Pine is one of the softest woods. Human bone is as strong as steel of the same density.