A new angle on the headshot

[David Andrews]

Deleted

Edited December 22, 2008 by David Andrews

[John Dolva]

Does it seem to people when they watch the Z-film that the frontal shot seems to come from a gunman who is looking Kennedy in the face? Does it also seem that the entrance point in the upper temporal is in perfect line with the rear damage, which not only included the opening of the low right occipital-parietal, but the shattering of the top rear of the skull?

Lately I have favored a South Knoll shooter for the headshot, but I've never been able to reconcile the available angles with Jackie's position or the turn of Kennedy's face to his left. When I try to estimate (and I am no Archimedes!) what Kennedy is facing, what he would have been looking at were he unwounded, I'm imagining it's the Main Street entrance to the Triple Underpass. When I imagine a shooter there, I think of one on the northernmost side of the entrance, since the Z-film can also lead us to think that the shot came from the Grassy Knoll fence.

Can anyone estimate what Kennedy's last POV would be, were he conscious and looking ahead? Would anyone care to plot the angle on a DP map or photo? A shot from this direction may have had to have been fired through the windshield.

This isn't a topic without its problems. I myself think that the blood spray and bone fragments that we see in the available Z-film are excessive for the reliable reports of the entrance wound, while the rear exit is retouched - so any viewing of the entrance wound moment is compromised. But it really seems like the entrance wound comes from a point directly in front, and maybe to the right, of JFK's last POV angle, and that it is confirmed by the rearward motion and by those effects of the rear exit wound that we can still discern.

By the way, one under-reported effect of Greer's driving that day is to move Kennedy closer to the center of the plaza than he was when he was nearer the Houston Street building angle, thus better exposing JFK to shots from left and right front ground positions. Plus he stopped there, as far south as the motorcycles would allow.

from Inspeck topic

At this site one can download a demo version of a program that has some very useful features.

"InSpeck EM Demo Section

In this section you will be able to download a free version of InSpeck’s

award winning 3D Editing and Merging software. With this package you

can view 3D Models with full texture, wire mesh or even solid mesh."

http://www.inspeck.com/support/download/download.asp

It's possible to view a head model according to xyz cooordinates and with that orientation shifted or 'translated' up down left right.

The model can be viewed as a solid texture or a mesh or transparent texture (and other ways) in perspective or not, at a varying zoom.

One can enter the desired coordinates and the program rotates the model accordingly.

What this means is that if one can develop corresponding cooordinates in a virtual Dealey Plaza one can then view a model of a head from anywhere in the plaza simply by filling in the appropriate field in a menu.

So all that is needed is to understand and then compute the coordinates. I have attempted to find the coordinates of Kennedys head when viewed from the film surface of Zapruders camera for Z313. What this means is that the z axis runs perpendicularly from the film plane to Kennedy's head and x and y are as usual. The problem then is that this does not immediately relate to a horizontal vertical space.

the 'BIG' problem is working out how to easily convert from one space to the other using the data in Wests survey so that the program can be used to see what is and what is not possible as far as trajectories go.

_______

To the extent I estimate, by framing an outline of the model at 312 313, the face does indeed face the south knoll underpass area. I've posted the snapshot before but can't access at moment. Perhaps someone has a copy in their rubbish bin??

[David Andrews]

Thank you, John, for that information.

It's hard to try to intuit the direction of the fatal headshot from the altered Z-film, so I'm deleting some of the attempts at it that I made in this post.

Since the post is quoted above, I'll just say that in the end it does look as if it's a shot from JFK's right hand front, probably from far west on the stockade fence line. I don't envision the South Knoll angle that I once did, and certainly not the Main Street lane of the underpass - which I think was my way of abandoning the South Knoll position without rejecting a shot from JFK's left.

Edited December 22, 2008 by David Andrews