Oswald's behavior when shot

[Ron Ecker]

Was there anything unusual about the fact that Oswald lost consciousness immediately when shot in the gut? I can understand it happening when someone is shot in the head, but I've seen plenty of movies, and know of one real-life case, in which people shot in the gut still stagger around and talk, sometimes for a pretty good while, before passing out or dying. But Oswald went out like a light.

The real-life incident was a fellow in my hometown who had a pistol pulled on him in a parking lot. He said, "You're not going to shoot me with that." Whereupon the person shot him in the gut. Grabbing his wound, he said, "You did shoot me, didn't you."

[John Dolva]

Was there anything unusual about the fact that Oswald lost consciousness immediately when shot in the gut? I can understand it happening when someone is shot in the head, but I've seen plenty of movies, and know of one real-life case, in which people shot in the gut still stagger around and talk, sometimes for a pretty good while, before passing out or dying. But Oswald went out like a light.

The real-life incident was a fellow in my hometown who had a pistol pulled on him in a parking lot. He said, "You're not going to shoot me with that." Whereupon the person shot him in the gut. Grabbing his wound, he said, "You did shoot me, didn't you."

He fell out of sight right off. How's it known he was unconcious?. He disappeared in the confusion as they subdued Ruby. From memory he was taken to the back room and supposedly given inappropriate treatment that could have contributed to loss of consciousness like pumping blood out of his system by compressing his chest.

[Ron Ecker]

He fell out of sight right off. How's it known he was unconcious?

You're right. I guess I've just always assumed he was unconscious from the way he looked, eyes closed, going down. He may well have been conscious, in which case it would sure be nice to know what he said, since the wound would not prevent him from talking.

In trying to see Oswald right after he was shot, I looked again at the TV footage of the shooting. I am struck more than ever how it looks staged, literally stagy like a scene from one of those old live TV dramatic shows like Studio One. They come walking out, careful to have no one in front of Oswald blocking the view or a bullet, and Leavelle looks like a very bad actor, as if stiffly concentrating on behaving and taking the exact number of steps as called for by the director. But I guess it's all just my imagination.

Parenthetically, Jack White recently mentioned on this forum that Jim Leavelle was wearing a bulletproof vest. Jack, is there a source for that?

[David Williams]

Ron i dont think Oswald went out right away, because you hear him moan a few times.

David

[J. William King]

I remember reading or seeing an interview with Jim Leavelle where he said he leaned down and told Oswald something like "You're hurt really bad son. Is there anything you want to say?". Oswald either said "no", or didn't answer him. I don't remember which right now.

Edited May 25, 2009 by J. William King

[Christopher Hall]

What has always bothered me about the Oswald assassination is the fact that Ruby shot him only once (I believe) and didn't squeeze off a few extra quick shots to ensure that he had done the job.

Am I correct that Ruby shot Oswald once?

If so, it looks like he got lucky by disposing of Oswald fairly quickly.

From what I have read, most mob-style hits leave little to luck (by emptying a magazine or cylinder in the victim).

I understand that Ruby was working in close quarters and put himself at great risk.

Thanks for any comments that any of you may have.

[Bernice Moore]

“ The Day Kennedy Died “

Dr. Robert McClelland held JFK’s head in his hands.

He massaged Oswald’s heart. Forty-five years later, his students are still riveted by the surgeon’s tales.

By by Michael J. Mooney, portrait by Randal Ford

D Magazine NOV 2008

McClelland followed Shires to Parkland. When they arrived and changed clothes—something they didn’t take the time for with Kennedy—Oswald was just being wheeled in. When Kennedy arrived, every faculty member on site was called into the emergency room. With Oswald, there were only a few doctors working on him. Twenty-eight minutes after Jack Ruby’s shot, they were inside Oswald’s abdomen.

(“He was as white as this piece of paper,” McClelland tells the med students. “He had lost so much blood. If he hadn’t turned when he saw Ruby coming, he might have been all right.”)

When Oswald saw the gun in Ruby’s hand, he had cringed slightly, flinching. Because of this, the bullets went through his aorta and inferior vena cava, the two main blood vessels in the back of the abdominal cavity. There was enormous loss of blood. The medical team pumped pint after pint of untyped blood, 16 in all, through his body. Shires and Perry eventually got a vascular clamp to stop the bleeding, and the two set about clearing away intestines to get enough room to repair the damage.

They worked on Oswald for an hour when his heart arrested. The blood loss was just too much, and the brief but severe shock too damaging. Perry opened Oswald’s chest, and he and and McClelland, who was also assisting, took turns administering an open heart massage.

(“You pumped Oswald’s heart in your hands?” a student asks. “We took turns, each going until we got tired. We went for, oh, about 40 minutes.”)

The heart got flabbier and flabbier. They squeezed and pumped. The blood around his heart collected on their gloves. Then, no more. Almost two hours after being shot, Lee Harvey Oswald was pronounced dead. The first live homicide on public television was witnessed by 20 million viewers.

The entire emergency room was in a daze. First the president. Two days later, in the room next door, the president’s assassin. It was as if the community had tumbled into one of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone episodes.

For McClelland, it got stranger. One of the sheriff’s deputies who had been escorting Oswald during his public transfer—the taller deputy America saw in the Stetson hat—was waiting outside the trauma room to see how Oswald was doing. He told the doctors something odd had happened, even more odd than the public murder.

After the shot, the deputy explained to McClelland, when Oswald was on the ground, he got on his hands and knees and put his face right over Oswald’s.

“I said, ‘Son, you’re hurt real bad. Do you wanna say anything?’ ” the deputy said. “He looked at me for a second. He waited, like he was thinking. Then he shook his head back and forth just as wide as he could. Then he closed his eyes.”

They would never open again. Looking back, McClelland would wonder if Oswald was tempted to say something. If maybe he was worried he would regret it. He didn’t know he was going to die, McClelland thought......

http://www.dmagazine.com/2008/10/24/The_Da...nnedy_Died.aspx

B..

Edited May 26, 2009 by Bernice Moore

[Len Colby]

What has always bothered me about the Oswald assassination is the fact that Ruby shot him only once (I believe) and didn't squeeze off a few extra quick shots to ensure that he had done the job.

Am I correct that Ruby shot Oswald once?

If so, it looks like he got lucky by disposing of Oswald fairly quickly.

From what I have read, most mob-style hits leave little to luck (by emptying a magazine or cylinder in the victim).

I understand that Ruby was working in close quarters and put himself at great risk.

Thanks for any comments that any of you may have.

Though I’m undecided about the shooting I lean towards suspecting someone pushed/coerced Ruby into doing it. What you said if correct would be strong argument in favor of the ‘official’ version i.e. that the strip joint proprietor killed Oswald of his own accord. However as I make out the newsreel Ruby was tackled by the cops pretty quickly.

[John Dolva]

The question arises in me, never thought of it, always assumed unthinkingly simply by accepting the newsflash, ruby kills oswald : Who killed Oswald?

____________

add : re phot stetson : stet.jpg

Edited May 26, 2009 by John Dolva

[Lee Forman]

Depends upon the severity of the wound received....

"The bullet has shattered the top of the spleen, damaged the area around the pancreas, tore off the top of the right kidney and the right lobe of the right liver before lodging in the right lateral body wall." The bullet also injured Oswald's stomach.

...and the care provided afterwards...

Mr. SORRELS. No; a public elevator--and got down to the basement floor, and I headed right into the jailer's office. And at that time Oswald was laying on the floor and someone was giving him artificial respiration.

Mr. HUBERT. By mechanical means?

Mr. SORRELS. No; by hand. I recall slicing [sic] his stomach was uncovered, his shirt was pulled up like that, and the man apparently was over him giving him artificial respiration by his hands.

Somewhere, someone credits Sorrels with being amazed by this [Palamara has a reference using this expression], but I cannot discover an original reference...

Sorrels, to his amazement, saw a plainclothes man kneeling between Oswald's thighs, administering aftificial respiration. Sorrels did not recognize the man; Curry later would merely identify him as "a detective."

Providing artificial respiration to a gut shot victim, according to Manchester someplace, is like applying a bellows to a fire. Sounds logical. If you consider this event in 2009, someone receiving a similar gut shot wound, with a response by a trained paramedic of artificial respiration, and death ensuing, I can't see losing the lawsuit - unless it was with the ghost of Henry Wade presiding.

[John Bevilaqua]

Depends upon the severity of the wound received....

"The bullet has shattered the top of the spleen, damaged the area around the pancreas, tore off the top of the right kidney and the right lobe of the right liver before lodging in the right lateral body wall." The bullet also injured Oswald's stomach.

...and the care provided afterwards...

Mr. SORRELS. No; a public elevator--and got down to the basement floor, and I headed right into the jailer's office. And at that time Oswald was laying on the floor and someone was giving him artificial respiration.

Mr. HUBERT. By mechanical means?

Mr. SORRELS. No; by hand. I recall slicing [sic] his stomach was uncovered, his shirt was pulled up like that, and the man apparently was over him giving him artificial respiration by his hands.

Somewhere, someone credits Sorrels with being amazed by this [Palamara has a reference using this expression], but I cannot discover an original reference...

Sorrels, to his amazement, saw a plainclothes man kneeling between Oswald's thighs, administering aftificial respiration. Sorrels did not recognize the man; Curry later would merely identify him as "a detective."

Providing artificial respiration to a gut shot victim, according to Manchester someplace, is like applying a bellows to a fire. Sounds logical. If you consider this event in 2009, someone receiving a similar gut shot wound, with a response by a trained paramedic of artificial respiration, and death ensuing, I can't see losing the lawsuit - unless it was with the ghost of Henry Wade presiding.

Like Ron Ecker I have also seen lots of movies (grin), but the most convincing discussion of how and why gunshot wound victims first lose consciousness and then later die occurred on a discussion by an ER MD on The Most Dangerous Warrior. The consciousness issue is dependent on the severity of the sudden drop in blood pressure in the first few seconds and the onset of shock accompanying the rupture of multiple internal organs, as in the case of Oswald, or the severing of any major veins, arteries or capillaries. If 3 or 4 sealed organs ruptured at once it would as Lee described

it be roughly equivalent to puncturing your brake lines in 3 or 4 places at once. The resulting sudden drop in pressure within your brake fluid system would cause your brakes to perform miserably the next time you touched them. And likewise a person standing vertically would have about

1/2 of the blood in his head leaving for parts South within a few seconds causing almost an instantaneous fainting spell leading to loss of consciousness.

And I said that "Guns and Gore can yield no more" in 1993. And I still believe that. What did I know?

[Lee Forman]

Depends upon the severity of the wound received....

"The bullet has shattered the top of the spleen, damaged the area around the pancreas, tore off the top of the right kidney and the right lobe of the right liver before lodging in the right lateral body wall." The bullet also injured Oswald's stomach.

...and the care provided afterwards...

Mr. SORRELS. No; a public elevator--and got down to the basement floor, and I headed right into the jailer's office. And at that time Oswald was laying on the floor and someone was giving him artificial respiration.

Mr. HUBERT. By mechanical means?

Mr. SORRELS. No; by hand. I recall slicing [sic] his stomach was uncovered, his shirt was pulled up like that, and the man apparently was over him giving him artificial respiration by his hands.

Somewhere, someone credits Sorrels with being amazed by this [Palamara has a reference using this expression], but I cannot discover an original reference...

Sorrels, to his amazement, saw a plainclothes man kneeling between Oswald's thighs, administering aftificial respiration. Sorrels did not recognize the man; Curry later would merely identify him as "a detective."

Providing artificial respiration to a gut shot victim, according to Manchester someplace, is like applying a bellows to a fire. Sounds logical. If you consider this event in 2009, someone receiving a similar gut shot wound, with a response by a trained paramedic of artificial respiration, and death ensuing, I can't see losing the lawsuit - unless it was with the ghost of Henry Wade presiding.

Like Ron Ecker I have also seen lots of movies (grin), but the most convincing discussion of how and why gunshot wound victims first lose consciousness and then later die occurred on a discussion by an ER MD on The Most Dangerous Warrior. The consciousness issue is dependent on the severity of the sudden drop in blood pressure in the first few seconds and the onset of shock accompanying the rupture of multiple internal organs, as in the case of Oswald, or the severing of any major veins, arteries or capillaries. If 3 or 4 sealed organs ruptured at once it would as Lee described

it be roughly equivalent to puncturing your brake lines in 3 or 4 places at once. The resulting sudden drop in pressure within your brake fluid system would cause your brakes to perform miserably the next time you touched them. And likewise a person standing vertically would have about

1/2 of the blood in his head leaving for parts South within a few seconds causing almost an instantaneous fainting spell leading to loss of consciousness.

And I said that "Guns and Gore can yield no more" in 1993. And I still believe that. What did I know?

Very interesting John - and that also makes a great deal of sense.

Gary Mack informed me [thanks Gary!] that the individual in question, Beiberdorf, was under the impression that Oswald had no pulse / no heartbeat - in which case, he would have been justified to proceed with resuscitation - and, interestingly enough, Beiberdorf says he massaged the sternum - I believe that this would be different from CPR...

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...p;relPageId=181

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/bieberdo.htm

[John Bevilaqua]

To: Lee Forman Re: Anastase Vonsiatsky

Lee would you be willing to join in on the discussion of Anastase Vonsiatsky later this week?

I know you were going to order The Russian Fascists last week and wondered if you read it

yet or obtained a copy?

At one time you either made a comment or made a posting something to the effect of:

"There HAD to be a person like Vonsiatsky (involved in the JFK Assassination). He could

be the "missing link" between George de Mohrenschildt and the leadership of The White Russian

Orthodox Church." (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) - ROCOR.

Did you see the posting about his wedding which occurred at St. Nicholas Cathedral at E. 97th Street in NYC

which was posted by Greg Parker? Vonsiatsky and his new bride spent their first married night on E. 95th Street

only 2 blocks from the Church. It was supposedly the former NYC Apt of her father, Louis B. Ream,

who died in 1915. Ream dealt extensively in Pork and Wheat Futures and later started U.S. Steel

and National Biscuit Company, too. Living that close to ROCOR headquarters might have been just

coincidental or it may have been rented or purchased by Annie in anticipation of his activity with ROCOR

going forward. If someone can find any relationship that Louis B. Ream had with either ROCOR or the

former Czarists relating to trading in Wheat or Pork with Russia or vis-a-vis his dealings with U.S. Steel that

would be very helpful and just an amazing find. He also had something to do with Marshall Fields in

Chicago as well. Did Marshall Fields have anything to do with the Czarists?

Vonsiatsky's friends in Philadelphia included multi-millionaires like J. Watson Webb, an heir to the Cornelius

Vanderbilt railroad fortune, Elliott Bacon a partner of Draper's favorite banker, J. P. Morgan and Samuel Vauclain

of Baldwin Locomotive who had 25,000 - 30,000 non-Union employees and once hired Vonsiatsky

a strike busting goon by trade, to make sure it stayed that way. Bacon was hit by flying glass during the

infamous Wall Street explosion in about 1924 while sitting in the offices of J. P. Morgan.

[Lee Forman]

To: Lee Forman Re: Anastase Vonsiatsky

Lee would you be willing to join in on the discussion of Anastase Vonsiatsky later this week?

I know you were going to order The Russian Fascists last week and wondered if you read it

yet or obtained a copy?

At one time you either made a comment or made a posting something to the effect of:

"There HAD to be a person like Vonsiatsky (involved in the JFK Assassination). He could

be the "missing link" between George de Mohrenschildt and the leadership of The White Russian

Orthodox Church." (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) - ROCOR.

Did you see the posting about his wedding which occurred at St. Nicholas Cathedral at E. 97th Street in NYC

which was posted by Greg Parker? Vonsiatsky and his new bride spent their first married night on E. 95th Street

only 2 blocks from the Church. It was supposedly the former NYC Apt of her father, Louis B. Ream,

who died in 1915. Ream dealt extensively in Pork and Wheat Futures and later started U.S. Steel

and National Biscuit Company, too. Living that close to ROCOR headquarters might have been just

coincidental or it may have been rented or purchased by Annie in anticipation of his activity with ROCOR

going forward. If someone can find any relationship that Louis B. Ream had with either ROCOR or the

former Czarists relating to trading in Wheat or Pork with Russia or vis-a-vis his dealings with U.S. Steel that

would be very helpful and just an amazing find. He also had something to do with Marshall Fields in

Chicago as well. Did Marshall Fields have anything to do with the Czarists?

Vonsiatsky's friends in Philadelphia included multi-millionaires like J. Watson Webb, an heir to the Cornelius

Vanderbilt railroad fortune, Elliott Bacon a partner of Draper's favorite banker, J. P. Morgan and Samuel Vauclain

of Baldwin Locomotive who had 25,000 - 30,000 non-Union employees and once hired Vonsiatsky

a strike busting goon by trade, to make sure it stayed that way. Bacon was hit by flying glass during the

infamous Wall Street explosion in about 1924 while sitting in the offices of J. P. Morgan.

I did make a comment along those lines. Didn't Georgi Visko sell wheat?

Promise to check it out as soon as I am able and follow along...

- lee

[Steve Kober]

Some thoughts on Ruby's shooting of Oswald.. We agree that Ruby was put in a position to kill LHO. Ruby MUST be successful the first time, there would be no second opportunity. Could the bullet that Ruby used have been a poisonous type? All Ruby would have to do was to make sure that bullet entered Oswald's body and not worry if he hits vital organs.

I seem to remember that LHO was said to have had intense convulsions and muscle spasms on his way to Parkland. Head, neck, body muscle tightening are symptoms of strychnine or cyanide poisoning. Did the Parkland doctors look for the presence of toxins or did they just assume that they had the cause of death? Was the bullet recovered and preserved?