The Connally Memory and Verifiable Established Fact

[Gary Murr]

As a STUDENT--as opposed to a theorist--of the JFK assassination, I wish to state that this is one of the most enlightening and informative threads to grace this forum in quite some time. Thanks to all the principals involved.

Speaking for myself, Mark, thank you for taking the time to read this thread.

Gary Murr

[David Andrews]

Just a thought: Could Charles Brehm's claim that he heard "the first shot" that hit Kennedy while Brehm was opposite the limo mean that he actually heard the shot that struck Connally in the back? Compare the Robert Harris video below:

I had pegged Connally's first hit at c. Z-290 (see my post above), and Z-285 is within one second of Connally's open-mouthed reaction.

Did the shot come from behind Charles Brehm?

Edited October 25, 2014 by David Andrews

[Mark Knight]

In case it hasn't already been posted...Here's a link to "Gregory Exhibit 1," diagrams of the locations of Connally's wounds:

http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0026b.htm

[James R Gordon]

Mark,

Thanks for the chart. The one you posted was for the doctors deposition in March 1964.

I wondered if it would be of help if I post the original chart, the Warner copy and the March chart you posted.

The original January 28th Chart created at Parkland.

I have annotated the chart. One point I might be wrong about is with regard to Charles Gregory comment on the right hand. I state there what he said was “location of Entry.” I am wondering whether he meant exit?

The Warner Copy:-

When you compare this to the original the changes are quite extraordinary. It could be argued that some were innocent - I am not saying I agree - but changing the wrist entrance and exit points: that was deliberate. And it was deliberately to deceive.

The March Deposition:-

As can be seen, Charles Greogory did not allow such a distortion to remain. He did not just change it here he also changed it in April when presented with another copy of the Warner diagram.

James.

[Mark Knight]

Thanks for that, James. Up to now we've been discussing this without the graphic evidence we're discussing. Your copies explain quite a bit.

Thanks to both you and Gary Murr for your work on this topic.

[Robert Prudhomme]

Yes, James, thank you for presenting all three diagrams together for comparison. It is a little easier now to understand how the wounds evolved over those months to fill the needs of the SBT.

One thing has always bothered me about the location and orientation of the back entry wound that was approved by Dr. Shaw on all three diagrams, it appears. As seen in the diagrams, the entry wound is a vertical oval wound that clearly misses the scapula (shoulder blade) by no more than a millimeter. If the trajectory of the bullet was parallel to a line drawn through Connally's spine and sternum, a bullet entering here would be able to strike a tangential blow on the outside of the 5th rib, and exit from the flesh at the side of the chest, well to the right of the right nipple.

But, this is not what happened, and there is much evidence to support something completely different. As Gary Murr told us, the FBI's SA Robert Frazier did a careful examination of Connally's suit coat and shirt, and determined the bullet followed a trajectory across the front of Connally's chest, exiting to the right of the right nipple, that was 20° from a line, drawn through the right shoulder, that was parallel to a line drawn through the spine and sternum.

Do you see the problem here? How did the bullet enter where it is shown, and end up exiting medial to the right nipple, without making an impossible left turn somewhere on Connally's chest?

Now, if we rotate Connally, we solve the problem of the bullet trying to follow the rib but, if we keep the entrance wound in the same location, we have an entirely new problem. BTW, I now have seen estimates of the amount of rotation of Connally at z223/4, and it varies from 14-37°, and not a single person can adequately explain how they arrived at their particular estimate. Anyways, if you rotate Connally, and have the bullet strike directly beside the scapula, as shown, you no longer have a tangential strike on the 5th rib. Instead, any amount of rotation has the bullet striking the 5th rib squarely, and it would enter the pleural cavity. Do you see what I am saying? With the entrance wound where it is, there can only be a tangential strike if the bullet strikes Connally on a trajectory 90° to a line drawn through the shoulders.

The only way to have a tangential strike on the 5th rib with Connally rotated, is to move the entrance wound to the extreme outside edge of the side of the back; right at the point where the thorax and arm combine to make what is known as the "axillary fold" or "crease" of the armpit and, surprisingly, exactly where Shaw told the WC the entrance wound was.

"It was just medial to the axillary fold or the crease of the armpit, but we could tell that this wound, the depth of the wound, had not penetrated the shoulder blade."

The most deceiving thing about the diagrams prepared by the SS is that they are two dimensional drawings, portraying no depth, and Shaw's description of "medial to the axillary fold" can be very confusing. While the distance from the entrance wound to the axillary fold looks very short in the diagram, in three dimensions it is necessary to follow the curve around the outside of the thorax, and this now becomes a much greater distance. "Just medial to the axillary fold" could easily be a location still on the outside edge of the thorax, much further away from the scapula than shown. This would explain the horizontally elliptical hole in the back of Connally's suit coat, observed by SA Frazier, and the horizontal scar observed by Baden. If Connally was struck at the outside edge of his chest, there likely was a horizontally elliptical entrance wound, as the bullet would be travelling almost parallel to the point it struck, and would have made a tangential wound.

As I stated, I have read Shaw's testimonies several times, and I am deeply troubled that his meticulous and detailed descriptions of Connally's wounds do not contain one single reference to the vertical/horizontal orientation of the entrance wound in Connally's back. Something stinks here, and I believe every effort has been made, and is continuing to be made, to draw our attention away from the fact that Connally's chest wound was a right to left trajectory across the front of Connally's chest.

[Mark Knight]

Robert, if you go to the 5th drawing at the link in the WCR, you'll notice--it jumped off the page at me--that they have the EXIT side of Connally's wrist next to the chest.

NOT gonna happen...even WITH the "disclaimer" at the bottom of the drawing. [This may be something you pointed out previously, but it bears repeating, IMHO.] And just TRY to turn your right wrist in the direction the wound occurred, and hold it next to your chest. [Again, you may have covered this ground.]

I think that some of the researchers who came before us may have had it right, when they said that the answers were all in the WC evidence, waiting for us to discover them. It's just that the "answers" in the 26 volumes aren't spelled out perfectly. Or, as Doyle said it: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

And I think this applies to the right-to-left trajectory across Connally's chest.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Mark Knight

[Robert Prudhomme]

Here is something else that no one has thought of.

The bullet struck Connally's 5th rib a tangential glancing blow, hard enough to strip much of it out, to leave it depressed into the pleural cavity hours later and to cause a stress fracture of the 5th rib, close to the point it attached to the vertebra.

As a deer hunter who knows that a light cross wind is enough to throw a bullet off from its trajectory of aim, I can tell you that a bullet encountering this much resistance, on one side only, does not have a very good chance of not being deflected from its true course, unless it truly was a "magic" bullet.

Let us see what Dr. Shaw has to say about this.

"Mr. Specter - What effect, if any, would the striking of that rib have had to the trajectory of that bullet?

Dr. Shaw - It could have had a slight, caused a slight deflection of the rib, but probably not a great deflection of the rib, because of the angle at which it struck and also because of the texture of the rib at this time.

Mr. Specter - You say deflection of the rib or deflection of the bullet?

Dr. Shaw - Deflection of the bullet, I am sorry."

So, what defines a "slight" deflection of the bullet, as opposed to a "great" deflection of the bullet? I think it is obvious, to anyone who has studied the medical evidence, that a deflection of as little as 5-10° throws everything out the window; especially if one considers the Sniper's Nest was only 9° laterally from a line drawn longitudinally through the centre of the limo at z223/4.

[James R Gordon]

Robert,

Lets look at this from a different position.

My problem has been interpreting what Robert Shaw meant by medial to the right nipple. Was the entire wound medial or was the centre of the wound medial? It would appear the latter might - and I stress might - be the case. As I have said so often before the exit wound was a combination of two exiting forces.

In an earlier post Gary agreed that I was correct to state that parts of the Arrow shirt was pierced by rib fragments. However he continued that it was difficult to state how many. Although we cannot identify every fragment hole I can identify 42 of them. I have placed a red circle round each one. You might question how can you tell each is a hole. Answer you can visibly see the fabric damage.

See the Complete Shirt-

See the Upper shirt:-

See the Lower Shirt:-

As I have shown each - bullet and the direction of the bone fragments - approximately the same angle of direction. I am not sure it is important what the angle is other than both appear to have the same one.

What is striking is the separation between the exiting bullet holes and the stream of exiting fragments. I am wondering if bullet and fragments exited from different sides of the exit wound and where exactly were these extremities on the body.

James.

[Robert Prudhomme]

Think of it this way, James. The exiting bone fragments, which seem to congregate much further to Connally's left than the exiting bullet, may be indicative of the bullet's trajectory when it struck Connally's back. If the bullet were deflected to Connally's right by the resistance it ran into pressing the rib inwards, it will be seen exiting on a trajectory more to Connally's right.

I could be wrong but, I can't see the bullet running along 10 cm. of the rib without being deflected at least 5° to the right, if not more.

[Pat Speer]

As discussed in my Bethesda presentation, Connally's wounds conflict with the SBT in a number of ways.

The tests performed by Olivier for the WC smashed it to pieces, and showed that the bullet/bullets striking Connally's chest, Connally's wrist and Connally's thigh were all traveling at a greatly reduced velocity, and were not consistent with CE 399.

Arlen Specter was aware of this problem, moreover. Undoubtedly aware that Olivier's numbers didn't add up unless the bullet lost far more velocity in Connally's chest than suggested by his tests on a goat, Specter asked him if the bullet would lose more than 400 fps if it first struck Kennedy and was wobbling. Olivier said it would have lost more but he couldn't say how much more. The Warren Report then claimed it would have lost "SUBSTANTIALLY more" and cited Olivier's testimony saying it would have lost more but he couldn't say how much more.

(At this point in my Bethesda presentation, WC lawyer Burt Griffin walked out.)

In any event, here is the text from one of my slides demonstrating the velocity problem encountered by Specter in pushing the SBT.

A comparison between the 5-13-64 testimony of Dr. Alfred Olivier before the Warren Commission, the 9-8-78 testimony of Larry Sturdivan before the HSCA, and Sturdivan’s 2005 book, The JFK Myths. (Note that these numbers are all supposedly based on the tests performed by Dr. Olivier in 1964.)

Velocity of the bullet: OLIVIER STURDIVAN 1978 STURDIVAN 2005

as it leaves the muzzle 2,160 f/s 2,000 f/s 2,130-2,190 f/s

upon impact with Kennedy’s neck 1,904 f/s 1,700-1,800 f/s 1,985-2,045 f/s

upon impact with Connally’s back 1,772 f/s 1,600-1,700 f/s 1,780-1,880 f/s

lost within Connally’s chest >400 f/s 400-(600 f/s) (1,180-1,480 f/s*)

upon impact with Connally’s wrist none given 1,100-1,300 f/s 400-600 f/s

lost within Connally’s wrist 82 f/s none given (245-485 f/s)

upon impact with Connally’s thigh “very low” none given 115-155 f/s

at which M/C bullets deform on bone

while travelling sideways none given 1,000 f/s 1,400 f/s

(numbers in parentheses are implied, not stated)

Edited October 28, 2014 by Pat Speer

[Gary Murr]

Robert/James et al

To me one of the variables involved with utilizing the holes in Connally's clothing, but in particular those in his Arrow dress shirt, as an implement of "measurement" of the potential angle of passage for the wounding bullet, back to front, is a decision as to the Governor's precise position at wounding impact, at least as far as it is humanly possible to ascertain. I think we would all agree that there is a certain amount of "right-to-left" involved with this tangential strike and again based upon what I am reading herein I believe we also all agree that this/these angles can change as one "rotates" the Governor's body. I might suggest that the evidence of "holes" on the left hand side of the shirt might be indicative of a combination of the Governor being well on his left side at impact coupled with the shirt bunching/moving underneath the suit jacket. I will go back and look at the colour images I had taken of the shirt in 1999 to see if I can find support for James' contention for the number of holes he feels are prevalent in this particular area. There would appear to be little doubt to me that the now dried blood stain pattern we see on the left side of the shirt occurred as a result of the Governor's position as he lay across the jump seats in the back of the limousine enroute to Parkland. In analyzing this same wound tract I keep coming back to Robert Shaw's description of it as one that possessed a "tunnelling" aspect in and through the chest wall only, a wound in turn that was, to the doctors mind, producing a fairly shallow wound tract. He uses the term "slapping" in describing his thought of impact with the lateral/anterior portion of the fifth rib, with this same slapping impact resulting in the fracture and displacement of the rib inward and moving in concert with this the flying rib fragments. It is important to note that the largest rent/tear that Shaw found was in the lower basal aspect of the right lung, a slice that he repaired with suturing. The majority of the rib fragments, some of which he described as "matchstick" in size he removed from the pleural cavity. I went back and took a brief look at the rough post op notes of Shaw and Red Duke last evening and saw that in their original description of the point of exit for the thoracic wound they placed it "under" not medial to the right nipple, but again these were initial observations observed with the Governor in the manipulated OR position.

Gary

[James R Gordon]

Gary,

You need to increase the resolution quite considerably to be sure what you are seeing is a hole and not a stain. Of course the high the resolution the integrity of the image changes.

Here is a small section which is at around 1300 dpi. Having increased it to this size I can now see that some of the areas I suggested were holes may actually be stains.

Link to file:-

Very interesting comment about the original location of the exit wound.

James.

[Gary Murr]

I agree James, regarding holes vs stains. As I indicated, I will go back and take a look at the original colour images and the ones I had taken in 1999. As an example, as you know from materials I have shared with you the front of the shirt has a long tear that extends for some length horizontally besides the "buttons" side of the shirt. It is also apparent that some of the buttons are missing from the shirt, I believe. This may have occurred as the shirt was hurriedly opened at Parkland. And again as you know from Frazier's report, he indicated that the "weak" nature of the fibers in the shirt caused it to tear easily. I do not recall, at this time, seeing a number of smaller "holes" on the front lower left of the shirt, though I must admit that at the time I was allowed access to the shirt I was working under a time constraint and was more interested in the hole of exit on the front of the shirt as well as the damage to the right French style cuff on the right shirt sleeve.

Gary

[Gary Murr]

Hi Pat:

I am glad to see you included the information you have shared with us at the Bethesda Conference/Presentations. For those that have not done so, and even for those who may have read it in the past, interested parties should read John Hunt's excellent essay on CE-399 and the concept of breakability and diminished velocities, a copy of which can be found on the History Matters website, among other places. I exchanged e-mails on this subject with Larry Sturdivan after the releases of his book in 2005. In addition, one of the other subject matters, "conclusion" pushed by the WC and its defenders, is the concept that because Connally's thorax was theoretically "thicker" than that of a goat, the wounding missile would have suffered less loss in velocity in traversing Connally than that shown in the goat. However, I acquired a copy of the goat autopsy and as I show in volume 3 of Controlling The Past, the 6.5mm bullet that struck the goat in a manner deemed most "similar" to that wounding suffered by Connally actually passed through more tissue than the missile that passed through Connally's chest cavity wall. There really is no argument of "thick vs thicker" in this instance, due in no small part to the excellent autopsy conducted on the goat wounded at Edgewood Arsenal.

Gary