Pete Mellor

Transcription of presentation given by Bethesda witness Jim Jenkins with researcher William Law, given at the ‘November in Dallas’ ‘JFK Lancer’ conference at the Adolphus Hotel on Friday 22nd November 2013. J.J.:- The sheets from the head were on the floor and my impression was I had to clean that up. It was picked up along with the sheets that were removed from the torso and placed in the linen room, which was a small room off of the morgue. The examination of the head started as a precursor to Dr.Finck arriving. When I asked who Dr.Finck was I was told that he was a specialist in war, I mean in war field wounds. At that point in time we proceeded with the autopsy. Dr.Humes was at the end along with Dr.Finck, Dr.Humes stood on the left side of the body, Dr.Finck was on the right side and I was at Dr.Finck’s right shoulder and at the shoulder of the president’s body and Dr.Boswell was on the other side opposite of me. When they began to examine the body Dr.Finck and Dr.Humes who were right here with me and as I was observing them, there was a small entry…..exit, anyway a small wound that appeared to be approximately four….right in front of the top of the right ear and slightly above it. There was a discussion between Dr.Finck and Dr.Humes as to a grey area that actually surrounded the wound and there was speculation by Dr.Finck that maybe that was lead from a bullet. After that there, it was not really probed or much of a discussion continued after that because at that point in time there was a discussion with Dr.Humes and Admiral Burkley, and that exchange was pretty much the norm for the rest of the night. Dr.Humes would go to Dr.Burkley because Dr.Burkley would call him over and they would discuss and he would come back and he and Dr.Finck would look at other aspects of the head wounds. About the same time Dr.Boswell and I started the autopsy on the torso. We made the usual autopsy cuts, ours was little different, we went from one shoulder to the other shoulder in a single U shaped incision and we moved this flap, it was caused back up over the face, took the ribcage and then we removed the organs intact. We did that by tying off the major arteries, severing the trach and the oesophagus and lifting it all out. We placed it on a cutting board, the cutting board was placed over the chest area, or slightly down toward the mid-section. The cutting board was pretty much a corp type board with a scale that was mounted on the corner of it. As Dr.Boswell dissected out the organs as whole organs, he weighed them and he gave me the weights. The weights are what you see (referring to projected slide) at the top that’s where the results were added. Again….to….is significant because that is not my handwriting. My handwriting doesn’t look that nice. At that time, you know, we finished the organs, the heart was…at Bethesda we did autopsies a little different. We did the sources to heart like normal protocols, in other places where I’ve done autopsies we actually went in to the ventricles and we opened up so we could see the walls and so forth and not have to see them in sections. The heart was examined in that manner. The intestinal tract, both large and small intestines were taken out and taken to the deep sink. Now normally in other autopsies, that was my job. We would open up the intestinal tract, lay it open, clean it with the water and then we would examine it for lesions and things of that nature. Now, with the residents, we cleaned the intestines. Paul (referring to O’Conner) and I according to which of us got the task when we were there and the rest would come and check for lesions, tumours, particular things of that nature. That was done by Dr.Boswell. He did that personally. Then there were some controversies about whether to take the testicles or not, and they were taken. I’m not sure what the controversy was and so forth but the kidneys were also examined. Due to the fact, I’ve heard, I’m not sure, I didn’t see any of the final results from these organs, just the gross (weight) at the autopsy, but I think they were asked because there was a possibility if there was Addison’s disease involved. Moving on. During the time that we were dissecting and weighing the organs, Dr.Humes was probing the back wound. On this same sheet that was approximately where the wound was placed and that’s where I remember it being, in the back. But the significance of this is I watched the operation of Dr.Humes probing that wound with his finger. He probed it to the depth of that wound with his finger. I could see the impression on the pleural, on the back of the pleural cavity, the chest cavity, but it never entered the chest cavity. He and Dr.Finck took a sound. A sound is for, many of you probably know what a sound is, but I suggest they probably used a sound, because a sound is rounded. (?) Because one of the things that they expressed was the fact that we don’t want to create an entry into the pleural cavity if there’s none there. Now, moving on to the lungs, this is related to the lungs. On the right top of the middle lobe, almost….it’s a junction. The lung has three lobes. There was a blue, a blueish type of indentation probably about the size of your thumb. Speculation was that that was caused by the bullet that entered at the point in the back. I know that this is one of the major controversial points related to the neck wound. At the point that the back wound is, it is probably, just roughly guessin’, ten, maybe a little more, a little less, centimetres below the wound in the throat. At no time in the autopsy did we do any examination of the throat trach. We were told that’s what it was, that it was a trach. Now, there were questions about it because of how large it was. It was I think on the face sheet it says it was 6.5cm., that’s a little over 2 inches. The other thing was that this trach was done, it was horizontal in relation to the neck. Most trachs were much smaller and in those days they were done in the vertical. The description of the wound here as you see it was vastly different from what we got from Parkland, as was a lot of other information we got later. W.L.:- Have you ever seen a trach like that, that big? J.J.:- No. I’ve never seen a trach that way and I’ve never seen one that large, because the old metal tracheotomy tubes were, my guess would be probably 5mm., 3 to 8mm., something like that. We never really questioned it. The only thing we did was when the flap was up, and the flap was up over the face Dr.Boswell kinda lifted the flap and looked up and he stuck his fingers in there. No comment. No nothin’ at that point in time, but that wound was never probed. It was never examined for entry or exit. Which brings another controversial point. We did multiple X-rays, before we actually proceeded with the autopsy itself. W.L.:- Jim, when you say multiple, take a guess and tell us how many X-rays would you estimate you took? J.J.:- I think Custer (referring to Jerrol Custer) and I took, we took the original AP (anteroposterior) and laterals. We took multiple, I would say probably for every one we took, we did five repeats at the request, my impression was, at the request of the gallery. Nothing seemed to be pleasing the people in the gallery. Actually, nothing being done in the autopsy seemed to be pleasing to the people in the gallery. We were directed again, at one time we were directed away from the wound in the neck because the reason we were given was that it would have been too….if we had actually examined it, we would have had to open it into the trach and that would have been too hard for the mortician to conceal it. W.L.:- To find the path of the bullet would you need to do that? J.J.:- Yes! Yes you would have to actually do the incisions involved and follow the path in there. At least you would have probed it to see where it went. The other thing with the X-rays, we were finding no bullet fragments. We found no bullet fragments that were in the body itself. Now, the bullet fragments that people relate to were bullet fragments that were brought in after the autopsy was underway and given to us in a small tie top bag. It’s similar to a zip lock except it has a tie that runs across the top and is folded over and that type of thing, that was placed on the autopsy table by the right ear. W.L.:- Can you estimate the time that you remember that? J.J.:- No. That’s always been a question that I’ve had about time. It was a military morgue so it had a huge clock, but the clock was at the other end of the morgue over a huge order plate. My attention was such that I had to be aware of the needs of the pathologist, that was my purpose for being there. So my attention was focussed on that table, on whatever they asked for help with. At the conclusion of the autopsy my personal ideas of the things that I said, I was sure that the entrance wound was above the right ear and that the large wound in the back (of the head) was an exit wound. In the wound in the back (of the head) there were some questions by Dr.Boswell to the gallery. He made a statement, or asked a question really, “was there any surgery done on the head at Parkland?” What he was referring to is that there seemed to be an incision at one of the points on the large incision that radiated out toward the middle suture, and at that point in time I just looked at it as maybe something he was curious about and so forth, but then I realised that later on when the brain was removed, that incision made it possible for the wound to be spread, where we did not have to do the skull cap. We did the skull cap. Normally the way we took the brain out of the cranium, we made an incision from this ear to this ear across. We spread the scalp back and forward and we took a saw and made a notch at the front of the skull to orientate us when we replaced it, and we took the whole skull cap off and then we removed the brain. At that time we always attempted to remove the brain intact with the spinal cord. Sometimes it worked…very rarely did it work. Most of the time the spinal cord was torn off and we had to go in from the interior of the body. At autopsy we removed parts of the spinal cord off the spinal column and took that out. We did not have to do that with the President’s body. Actually I don’t really remember that we ever removed the cord itself, just the brain. W.L.:- Jim, let’s stop you for a minute because this is where the big controversy comes in. Paul O’Conner is well known, famous for saying that when he saw the head, there was no brain, that it had been blown out. Yet when we were in New Orleans 15 years ago you told me….you have to understand that Jim did not know me from Adam, and when I finally worked up the courage to be able to come and see him, he agreed. I didn’t know whether he was going to give me ten minutes or fifteen minutes. You have to understand that unlike Paul O’Conner, who was a wonderful gregarious person with a great sense of humour, he would tell you anything you wanted to know. Jim doesn’t do this stuff so that’s why we’re lucky to have him tonight. He just doesn’t involve himself. He’s never sought the limelight in this thing. Anybody that ever wanted to talk to him, they’ve always had to hunt him down and find him, if they were lucky enough to get to talk to him. So I was very lucky to be in a room, sitting with him asking these questions, and I could tell the look on his face, it was reluctant. He was reluctant to do it, but he did it and at one point I’m sitting there and Jim said, “one of the doctors made an exclamatory statement, and he was looking right at me when he said, I think what he said o.k., was meaning the brain, ‘the damn thing fell out in my hand.’” I asked Jim what does that mean to you? Tell ‘em what you said to me. J.J.:- O.k. That statement was made by Dr.Humes. To remember that Humes and Finck were actually the people who were working with the head, the head wounds. That was the statement. As I said before it was a statement that kinda surprised me, but as they took the brain out he handed it to Dr.Boswell who was actually across the table from me. Since I had been assisting with Dr.Boswell, I was the only corpsman at that point in time that was working with Dr.Boswell. I followed Dr.Boswell to the bucket of formalin where we infused the brain. I told William, I gave him some of the impressions that I had of the brain when I first saw it. My first impression was, the damage to the brain does not correlate with the extensive damage to the skull. What I mean with that was the right interior portion of the brain was damaged and there was some tissue missing. The brain due to the trauma apparently was in that area was kinda gelatinous and that pretty much stands to reason, because when you traumatise the brain, it’s not like traumatising a muscle, or something like that, where you get bruising and so forth. The brain actually has a large amount of fluid in so it kinda becomes mushy and gelatinous, that was what I saw. The other thing, I didn’t think that the brain was large enough. I had an impression that it was smaller than what it should be coming out of the cavity that it came out of. Now these were just impressions on my part. That was a first sight, first impression type thing. Dr.Boswell carried the brain to our bucket where we infused the brain. How we did it is important, because our normal method was we had a stainless steel bucket, we filled the bucket approximately half full of formalin. We had created a gauze sling that went over the top of the bucket. We laid the brain upside down in that sling. We had a two needle apparatus that came from a supply of formalin that was up on the top of the cabinets. What we did with it was, we took those needles, we infused the brains through the two internal carotids at the base of the brain. Those carotids were retracted and it was extremely difficult, and as a matter of fact we had one of the residents come in, which was the chief resident, because Dr.Boswell and Dr.Humes did not do this menial type thing of placing these suture needles in and so forth. So what we did was, we infused the brain and it was extremely difficult because of the condition of the carotids. W.L.:- So what does that mean to you Jim? J.J.:- Well, in my experience when vessels are severed for a period of time they retract, especially arteries, because of the way they’re constructed, and over a period of time it’s almost like they begin to close off themselves. The other thing I noticed was the brain stem, where the brain stem was cut to remove it from the cranium, the brain stem looked like it had been cut from two different sides, from each side met in the middle. I can relate that because if you’ve ever tried to cut something from the right side and go back and cut it from the left side, it never, almost invariably never is the same level, and this is what the brain stem looked like. You know, I’ve been asked many times about this, ‘did I think that the brain had been removed prior to the autopsy?’ Taking into consideration the abnormal things that I just described….I feel like it was. James Curtis Jenkins c1963.

Good question Joe. Who was in the morgue from 18:30 to 20:00hrs? Certainly the room was cleared while X-rays were taken. According to testimony from Jim Jenkins JFK's brain was removed after 20:00hrs with the military in attendance & after the arrival of Finck.

Wasn't it Giancana's predecessor in Chicago, Tony Accardo who was involved in the St. Valentine's Day massacre?

Joe, DSL is really the man to answer your questions above.....but, "the question of JFK's body being removed from the Dallas ornate casket between Dallas and D.C." is strongly implied in Best Evidence p620 when Jerrol Custer recalled taking X-rays of JFK to an upper floor at Bethesda for developing and meeting the arriving Jacqueline Kennedy at the main entrance, with the Navy ambulance outside and therefore the ornate Dallas casket still to arrive at the morgue. According to Rydberg drawings of the Bethesda morgue with the viewing amphitheatre, was all in one room with two autopsy tables. To my thinking the autopsy may well have begun around that stated time of 8:00, after the room had been cleared of viewers/FBI-SS etc for X-rays and photographs of the body, taking up the time period around 6:30-8:00.

Stone explained he is having a hard time finding a distributor. Both Netflix and National Geographic turned down the documentary as a result of an unapproved fact check. “Where are you going to find this information except in this film,” Stone questioned. “If they do a fact check, according to conventional sources, of course it’ll come out like that is not true.” So MSM is still following the W.C.🐑

A cat amongst pigeons. A post on DPUK's FB page today. Firstly, let's dispose of the question mark at the ed forum about whether they had a ledger (questioned because I indicated they did). I use "ledger" and "register" interchangeably. Was that really so confusing for anyone?Here is what Gladys said:Mrs. JOHNSON. You know, I'm sorry I didn't bring my register. I couldn't tell you exactly; I imagine I had about 10 or 12.So no matter the terminology, they kept records in a book or pad of some type. According to Pat Hall in some of her many interviews during the 50th, her grandmother destroyed this registry due to all the hassle caused by Oswald having stayed there. If so, she still seems to have had it at the time of her testimony and she should have been asked to provide it at a later date.The cops also confirmed looking through this register when they attended, but again, failed to take it as evidence.In lieu of the registry, Gladys brought in the original of this - now known a Johnson Exhibit A.Karl Hilliard made some very good observations about it and the claim that cops found the address of the boarding house in Oswald's pocket. 1. He wouldn't be carrying it around - not unless he did not live there, but had the address as somewhere to move to soon. And that was not the case. Again, absolutely correct. I think I have made this point before, but can't find it.What I believe it originally said was "Moved out" and the date that was erased was the date that happened.Moreover, it was not in regard to Oswald but to H. Lee.The "O" was added - as was the date the next payment was due so as to give the impression of still living there as at Nov 22. There was NO OH Lee. It was a misreading of the registry which most likely showed something like Room 0 H Lee.You can see clearly on this exhibit that the room in question was designated as "Room 0". All of the lying about how the cops found the place can be put down to covering up that it came from Fay Puckett to Dallas police via a reserve officer friend of the family - and that she had mistaken Oswald for "H Lee" - aka Herbert Leon Lee.The case was a whole series of clusterf-c-s that they managed to massage to their advantage.One last (and probably minor point). It seems likely that the room was given that number because it was a converted library. By the time it became a bedroom, all the other rooms had long been numbered starting at 1 - the bedroom nearest the old library. It was simply easier and cheaper to call the "new" room 0, then have to renumber all of the rooms.

This theory has been around some time. So whose body was Earl Rose performing an autopsy on at 3:15 at Parkland on the 22nd? + Autopsy photographs of J.D. certainly i.d. J.D. & do not resemble JFK in any way. + JFK didn't have 'Tippitt' tattooed on his left arm. + Tippitt had one gunshot wound by his right nipple, which is not visible on JFK's Bethesda photographs. I'm sure of some magic tricks performed that day, but Morningstar's theory I can't buy.

Sibert and O'Neil's 302 report states "The president's body was removed from the casket in which it had been transported and was placed on the autopsy table". As the FBI agents were in the Andrews AFB to Bethesda motorcade they must have been referring to the Dallas casket. Contrary to Dennis David's + others stated arrival time & shipping casket. Another mystery.

A bit harsh David. Cpt Moore passed away from Covid today, but couldn't have a Covid jab because of his pneumonia medication after a recent holiday in Barbados! He wasn't a Battle of Britain vet either. Served in the army in Burma.

Apologies to Larry for resurrecting this thread 😁 Interesting Shane O'Sullivan vid 'RFK Must Die' which includes (approx 1-10minute mark) of Ambassador audience persons of interest. RFK Must Die - The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11sDQFLmPX8&feature=youtu.be Worth watching anyway.

Yeah. Certainly along with Meagher the best book critique on the W.C.

Did he witness the type of casket that JFK's body was in? In David Lifton's 'Best Evidence' Sibert's report states:-"When the body was removed from the coffin and the wrapping taken off". Did he ever describe the Dallas coffin or a shipping casket?

Love it! 🤣 🐰

Author of 'Breach of Trust' has passed away in a retirement home in Lawrence, Kansas

Not released on Amazon in U.K. until end of February.

Try this Keyvan. irving street dallas texas - Bing https://www.bing.com/search?q=irving+street+dallas+texas&form=ANNTH1&refig=3bd5f39ec28947ddb5f3808509d97aa8&sp=1&qs=RI&pq=irving+street+dallas&sk=PRES1&sc=1-20&cvid=3bd5f39ec28947ddb5f3808509d97aa8

Ok Pat, not much of a big step. Kinney told Loucks he requested the bucket from a Parkland orderly and cleaned the rear seat area of the limo. So, if he then found the pristine bullet....why wander into the hospital and drop this piece of ballistic evidence onto any old gurney? He couldn't know whose gurney it was, nor could he know at that time of any agenda of three shots from behind from the TSBD or anyone known as Lee Harvey Oswald. According to Loucks he was a believer in conspiracy & shots from in front, yet he saw what became of CE399 and kept schtum for fifty years! Seems weird behaviour for a trained S.S. agent, and conveniently Loucks can only disclose this after Kinney's death. One more mystery to the case that we may never know the truth of

Cheers Vince. Re Gary Loucks... I concur. D.P.U.K. held an annual Zoom meet last week & I put forward recommendation for you to speak at one of our forthcoming monthly Zoom seminars on your 'Honest Answers' publication out in March. Recommendation was accepted, so someone should contact you soon on that. Regards.

Nice one Anthony!

Vince, There is a very brief vid at the 15:00 minute mark of S.S. follow-up driver Sam Kinney. You contacted and interviewed him back in '94. Was he the agent that cleaned the blood & gore out of the pres. limo at Parkland? In a recent publication. 'The Lone Star Speaks' an interview with Kinney's 'friend' Gary Loucks includes :-"He said he was the one who placed the bullet on the gurney in Parkland Hospital." Kinney found the 'pristine bullet' lying in the President's limousine as he cleaned the interior. This is a book full of 'hearsay' and unsubstantiated statements. What are your thoughts?

Fascinating post Mr Caddy! Reminds me of Robert Graves' quote from 'I Claudius' “Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”

Just ordered 'The Lone Star Speaks' Thank you for the reviews on this thread...Jim, Lawrence & Andrej. Amazon showed +Ve reviews too, e.g. "Really liked it. The material on Tom Alyea alone is invaluable."--Bill Simpich, attorney at law, Richmond, CA.

Still far and away the best English football anthem....and I'm not a supporter of Liverpool F.C. RIP Gerry Marsden!

Of many coincidences. Dulles was in Dallas five weeks prior to the assassination. Invited to speak at the Dallas Council on World Affairs. (Of which George de Mohrenschildt was a member.) I strongly advise getting a copy of Poulgrain's 'JFK vs Allen Dulles' which documents the links between Dulles and de Mohrenschildt going as far back as the 1930's. Information that George didn't disclose to the WC's Albert Jenner....commission sessions attended by Dulles!

Greg, while I was aware of Callaway's taking of Tippit's revolver, the involvement of Ken Holmes and the wallet is interesting. No less so because Ken Holmes Jr., drove me around Dallas in 2003 & among the places visited was 10th & Patton. Too late now to ask questions! As for U.K. police stitching people up, that's a given! That old Monty Python sketch was accurate!