Denise Hazelwood

If you look at the JFK autopsy photo you can see a hole above the right ear, where an area of scalp has been pulled back from the head. This would be James Jenkins’ hole, which roughly corresponds to the WC exit (although without the blowout), which is where I place the AR-15 exit. It didn’t create a blowout because there was already a blowout at the back of the head from the first TSBD shot (forehead entry), and all the energy dissipated out through that, creating a “halo” of blood and brain tissue.

Freak accidents happen all the time. It’s in the news on an almost daily basis that somebody or other was the unintended victim of a shooting. In this case, the victim just happened to be the POTUS. The only way to eliminate accidental shootings is to eliminate the guns. No one saw the gun being aimed because it was not aimed. It discharged when Hickey fell over due to the sudden stopping of the follow up car. Plenty of people saw that, and thought that he had been killed, too. Hence the erroneous early reports that a Secret Service agent was also killed during the assassination. The early AR-15 had a flaw in its too- heavy firing pin, which could cause it to discharge unintentionally in a “slam fire” event, especially if sudden movement was involved—like, say, the agent handling the weapon suddenly falling over. Opinions like yours (that it would have to have been intentional if it happened) are part of why it was covered up.

I believe that in a testimony, Youngblood said that he “didn’t remember” vaulting into the back seat, but that “Johnson said he did.” Which is true. Youngblood didn’t remember because he didn’t do it, and Johnson did say that he had done it. Willing dissemination. That said, the motivation may have been to hide Johnson’s “participation” in the assassination, but to hide the SS Keystone Cops type of response to the attack—which included the slow responses by most of the JFK (hungover) protective agents and the AR-15 slam fire accident. So the Youngblood fiction was added to the Clint Hill true-life bravery (not that Hill was all that honest in his accounts of the assassination—my documentary has a video of various Hill interviews in which he gives inconsistent descriptions of the head wound, including his saying “rear” of the head while indicating the front of the head, or sometimes correctly indicating the back of the head blow out, or sometimes saying “above the ear”—not exactly the most honest person) in order to keep the Agency from looking like total morons. The AR-15 accident also explains why LBJ didn’t want too many “trigger happy” (LBJ’s description) SS agents surrounding him. I keep coming back to how shocked LBJ was immediately after the shooting, when he was brought into Parkland Hospital. LBJ was an ass, by all accounts, and may or may not have had anything to do with the motivation behind Oswald or other suspicious dealings, but his Civil Rights Act was a good thing—although that may have been politically motivated rather than morally motivated. But by all accounts, he was genuinely in shock right after the shooting. The words of LBJ’s “mistress” (if she really was) are hearsay and might be revenge for being slighted or something, rather than being true. Or if true, might have referred to something other than LBJ planning to murder JFK—like a plan for political character “assassination” by exposing JFK’s sexual affairs or drug use.

I just took a closer look at the pictures of the shirt and tie in the Archives (https://www.maryferrell.org/photos.html?set=NARA-JFKCLOTHES) and pictures of JFK in the motorcade before the shooting. The bottom of the collar below the top button of the shirt shows holes that would line up if the shirt was buttoned. There are also corresponding holes in the tie (see photo 8, several inches to the right of where the tie was cut off, and on the right edge next to the fold on the long piece). In the pictures of JFK pre shooting, the collar pretty much covers the Adam’s apple, with the tie knot covering about where the throat wound shows in the autopsy photos (albeit altered), which is below the Adam’s apple. The holes in the clothing were penetrating, not cut from the edge as the nurses would have done (as the cut across the tie was done, at some point in the back or side of the neck). If the nurses in were to have done that, they would have had to poke through the layers of both sides of the collar and two layers of the tie with the point of the scissors, which I think is very unlikely. Conclusion: the throat wound was shored by the shirt and tie, which gave it the appearance of an entrance (with an abrasion/contusion collar) when it was really an exit. I contend that it was caused by a small fragment rather than an intact bullet, which further confused the issue with its small size.

First, you are quoting Weisberg, not Carrico. Second, even if the wound was above the collar, although by the autopsy photographs, it appears to be right AT the collar location, the collar was probably close enough to the wound to create a shoring effect. Furthermore, JFK was sitting up when he was shot, not lying down on a gurney as he was when Carrico saw him, which might have made a difference. I also keep going back to the C3/C4 fragments Custer described and the probe from the back of the head through the throat that Thomas Robinson was “adamant” about seeing. Moreover, the Parkland doctors testified under oath that the throat wound “might” have been an exit. Weisberg might have misunderstood something that Carrico told him, or Stone/Sklar might have misquoted Weisberg. Are Carrico’s statements recorded on a tape anywhere? Or a transcript, at the very least? What were Carrico’s original and exact words, without the filters of Weisberg or Stone/Sklar?

I believe that the wound was described as below the Adam’s apple, which would place it at the collar and tie level, which matches the round area at the bottom of the neck wound in the autopsy photo (not that I trust it to be truly authentic). Did any of the nurses admit to nicking the shirt and tie? Otherwise it would just be Weisberg’s hypothesis, which is theory, not fact. The wound might have had the APPEARANCE of an entrance without actually being an entrance, which is what I believe happened. I am certain that the Zfilm was altered, so I disregard any theory that relies upon it. If you do that and focus on witness accounts, with the caveat that many of the DP witnesses missed processing the early shot/s (because they were not expecting an assassination and first thought the sounds were firecrackers), then you get closer to the truth of what happened.

C3/C4 (where Custer testified to seeing metal fragments in the now missing neck X-ray) is above the level of the throat wound, which means that the track would have to have been either up towards the back of the head (which makes no sense) or down from the back of the head (which makes better sense). This is confirmed by mortician Thomas Robinson, who was “adamant” about having seen the throat wound probed from the back of the head. I contend that the throat wound was caused by a fragment that made an internal ricochet off the inside of the skull at the back of the head and then angled downward to the throat wound location. It had the appearance of an entrance due to its small size (still larger than the fragment but not as large as an intact bullet would have made on exiting). The “ring of bruising” can be explained by the shirt collar and tie “shoring up” the wound, per the article I linked above.

Donald Thomas has an excellent study on the acoustics in his book Hear No Evil. The “hold everything secure” utterance, which I certainly can’t hear, has an alternative explanation other than “crosstalk,” especially given the presence of the “hum” in the evidence tape. (Gary Mack, in his earlier work, showed that automatic gain control or AGC, which was present in the evidence tape, was not a part of the DPD system, and Chris Scalley demonstrated that the dicta belt known to be in the Archives is not in fact the original one. Nevertheless, there was enough information on one of the recordings for the acoustical experts to find “impulse” patterns that matched what would be expected for gunshots and their echoes, even having been run through AGC.) Dr. Thomas noted that the microphone matches were sequential, and that the “double-bang” in the evidence tape matched the “double-bang” reported by witnesses. He calculated the odds against that being by chance (I.e., that the recording was NOT gunshots) as something like 10,000 to be against, IIRC. (Might have been even greater than that.) If one considers that the “bike with the Mike” was also the “Knoll Rider” (Douglas Jackson), then the extraneous noises (engine sounds) make a lot of sense. Acoustically, there were 7 impulses. The first and last ones were rejected as “false positives” because they didn’t match volumes or echo patterns of test shots from the TSBD or GK (a premature rejection, in my opinion, but not really part of the “assassination sequence—the first one was probably a warning shot from one of Johnson’s agents who were farther back on Houston Street and could see the rifle in the TSBD window, and the last one was probably from overzealous SS or DPD officer who was chasing a phantom shooter up the knoll and probably injured an innocent bystander, thus accounting for the pool of blood at the top of the stairs). That leaves 5 “suspect impulses” as part of the assassination sequence. The HSCA rejected one as a “false positive” because Oswald did not have time to recycle his weapon— which Thomas describes as an ad hoc (Latin for “bullshit”) reason (and they rejected the wrong impulse for that reason if it even was a reason). To all that, I add that the mic placement diagram is deliberately misleading. The man who drew it was not actually present during the acoustical tests and made it based on a description of “street features” that no one has access to for verification of accuracy. Thus the wrong person (McLain) was thought to be the one who had the “bike with the Mike,” when it was actually Jackson. In the Gallery record, the gunshot impulses occur right after someone (Chaney?) says, “all right, Jackson” (as Gary Mack notes in the record).

No, I am not a medical doctor. However, I do have a lot of experience in research, not to mention linguistics and other analytical areas, and I know that people often get misquoted or misrepresented. I also know that people are human and make mistakes. Dr. Perry, for example, said that the throat wound had the APPEARANCE of an entrance, not that it WAS an entrance. There is a difference in the meaning. Linguistically, “appearance” gives some wiggle room that it it might LOOK like an entrance due to the small size, but could have been something else entirely. An ER doctor also is not an autopsy doctor. Perry did not dissect JFK to know for certain—although in this case, the autopsy doctors did a crappy job, as I think we can agree. I also don’t know whether Perry actually said that the throat wound had a “ring of bruising” or if that might be you misattributing that to him. Is a “ring of bruising” the same thing as an “abrasion rim”? Or just an indicator of projectile damage? Even an “abrasion rim” doesn’t necessarily mean an entrance, however, although it would make it more likely, assuming the wound was above the level of the neck and collar. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556119/) No, I don’t trust the autopsy photos. There’s plenty of reason to doubt their authenticity.

You are correct. I stand corrected. Only the passenger side visor is visible in the Moorman photo.

In the video, Perry said that the wound had the “appearance” of an entrance, not that it definitely WAS an entrance. As for the “ring of bruising,” I would want to know 1) the source, to verify that he actually said that and in what context, and 2) whether such bruising could occur with an exit as well as an entrance. Supposing that it was an entrance, the question then becomes, where did the bullet go? Given that C3/C4 (where Custer was said the fragments were located, is higher in the neck than the throat wound, either a missile (in this case a small bullet fragment) was traveling downward from the back of the head, or leaving one to wonder where the bullet went. Given the “king size fragment” that fell out of the body during the autopsy, per Custer, I really don’t think that it would have exited from the back wound. The alternative trajectory is that it travelled UPWARDS towards the back of the head (apparently leaving fragments in its wake), which makes absolutely ZERO sense. So the most logical explanation that I can see is that the throat wound was caused by one of a number of small fragments that traveled downward from the back of the head, or that that the C3/C4 fragments broke off from the larger missile traveling downward. I propose that the throat wound and fragments were from an “internal ricochet” of a fragment (or fragments) off the back of the skull, from the original forehead entry shot.

Given that the chrome damage happened with the first shot, as I contend, this makes sense. Good eye, both Steven and Christian, for your observations.

Jerrol Custer’s testimony to the ARRB described metallic fragments in the C3/C4 region of the neck (in a now missing neck X-ray), making it more likely to the throat wound was the exit from a small bullet fragment rather than an entrance for an intact bullet.

I believe that the exit was pretty much where the WC puts it—above the right ear, where James Jenkins noted a small hole (which he believed was an entrance)—but without the blowout depicted in their drawing. It was a small hole because there was already a blowout at the back of the head from the first shot, which let the energy dissipate out through that.

But was the Z-film he saw authentic? Alterations to the film could account for his discrepancies in exactly where was shot. I believe that he was shot concurrent with the Moorman photo and that the Z313 head shot is a fake. Moorman thought that her picture was concurrent with the FIRST shot, not the last. Viewers of the “other” Z film said that the head shot happened when the limousine was closer to the stairs, which is where the FBI model placed it.