Pat Speer- I am confused (so what else is new?)...re: JFK head wound

[Robert Prudhomme]

You're embarrassing yourself, Pat. Why don't you just stop.

[Pat Speer]

We live in different realities, Robert.

In my take, the research community was led astray and told the "smoking gun" lay in the testimony of a bunch of people whose statements were supposedly consistent and reliable, when they were neither.

Yes, when separated out from the rest of the evidence, the statements of the Parkland witnesses do suggest there was a wound on the back of the head. But that's the point. Their statements suggest something. What is suggested by the evidence is not always true. The earwitnesses, after all, suggest there was but three shots.. And one might honestly conclude as much...until one studies further, and finds counter-indications. The same is true for the medical evidence. When one takes a broader look at the evidence one realizes that in order to conclude the Parkland witnesses were correct you have to reject the statements of the Dealey witnesses, the films, photos, and x-rays. All of which suggest a conspiracy. And that makes little sense.

At least to me...in my reality. So tell us, do you really think some mysterious THEY faked all this evidence, in order to suggest a conspiracy? And, if so, why?

As far as the argument EXPERTS don't make mistakes...oh please. No really, PLEASE read up on human cognition and memory. One thing you will find is that experts are MORE LIKELY to make certain kinds of mistakes.

Yep, someone who's never seen a head wound is more likely to remember its exact location, etc, than someone who's seen many, because those in the first group would be less likely to confuse it with another head wound, and less likely to be persuaded to change their recollection to a location that feels equally familiar.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Pat Speer

[Chris Newton]

Pat,

I agree somewhat but I also think that there are some events you never tend to forget. If I close my eyes and recall the most traumatic things that I have heard with my own ears or seen with my own eyes I can imagine them in vivid detail. If I recall where I was, what I was doing on Sept. 11, 2001, I can even recall what I was wearing but I can't recall what I was wearing last Tuesday. Some memories are embedded in our memories based on their impact and our emotions.

Do you think, (if you were a surgeon for instance), that the death of a President right before your very eyes would be stored in your memory the same as any one of the other gunshot wounds you treated in your career or would that event be recalled differently?

[Ken Davies]

I find it hard to believe that the "head of neurosurgery" would be mistaken as to the location of a head wound. Yes, professionals do make mistakes, but rarely such obvious ones.

[Ray Mitcham]

I find it hard to believe that the "head of neurosurgery" would be mistaken as to the location of a head wound. Yes, professionals do make mistakes, but rarely such obvious ones.

Hear hear, Ken. It seems Pat prefers to believe (possibily altered/fake) photos and x rays rather than the testimony of experienced surgeons, who saw what they saw. Perhaps it might be better to let things.

[Cliff Varnell]

Since we don't know how many times JFK was shot in the head and we don't know whether or not pre-autopsy surgery was performed on the head...isn't any discussion of the head wound(s) a waste of time?

The "smoking gun" is the clothing evidence/T3 back wound.

Those who don't get that, imho, don't understand the first thing about JFK's murder.

[Andric Perez]

Pat,

I agree somewhat but I also think that there are some events you never tend to forget. If I close my eyes and recall the most traumatic things that I have heard with my own ears or seen with my own eyes I can imagine them in vivid detail. If I recall where I was, what I was doing on Sept. 11, 2001, I can even recall what I was wearing but I can't recall what I was wearing last Tuesday. Some memories are embedded in our memories based on their impact and our emotions.\

When you learned about 9-11, was your attention divided between that tragedy and trying to make a President breathe by working on his throat in order to save his life? By the way, I don't remember what I was wearing on 911

Edited December 28, 2013 by Andric Perez

[Andric Perez]

Drs. Clark and McClelland were at the head of the gurney and had the best view of President Kennedy's head wound.

In fact, depending on the head-of-the-gurney doctors' point of view while they saw the wound (For example, JFK's head upside-down relative to the doctors' heads), this may be the worst view. Unfortunately, people continue to ignore the research cited by Speer.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Andric Perez

[Pat Speer]

Pat,

I agree somewhat but I also think that there are some events you never tend to forget. If I close my eyes and recall the most traumatic things that I have heard with my own ears or seen with my own eyes I can imagine them in vivid detail. If I recall where I was, what I was doing on Sept. 11, 2001, I can even recall what I was wearing but I can't recall what I was wearing last Tuesday. Some memories are embedded in our memories based on their impact and our emotions.

Do you think, (if you were a surgeon for instance), that the death of a President right before your very eyes would be stored in your memory the same as any one of the other gunshot wounds you treated in your career or would that event be recalled differently?

Research has shown that the significance of an event will increase the recollection of the emotional impact of an event, but not necessarily the facts. This clear recollection of how one felt, moreover, creates the illusion one's recollections of the facts are also accurate, but this often proves to be just that, an illusion. The ARRB's Jeremy Gunn discussed this after talking with the Parkland witnesses. One of them--was it Jenkins?--told Gunn how he'd never forget the image of all that blood on Mrs. Kennedy's white outfit. Mrs. Kennedy was wearing pink.

[Pat Speer]

Since we don't know how many times JFK was shot in the head and we don't know whether or not pre-autopsy surgery was performed on the head...isn't any discussion of the head wound(s) a waste of time?

The "smoking gun" is the clothing evidence/T3 back wound.

Those who don't get that, imho, don't understand the first thing about JFK's murder.

The "smoking gun" of the cover-up is the location of the hole on the clothes and the back.

But if one wishes to look further, beyond the fact we were lied to, to try and figure out what actually happened, a study of the head wounds becomes pertinent, IMO.

When one does so, the alteration of the wounds becomes a non-issue. I mean, why would they alter the wounds to make it look like Kennedy had more than one head wound?

[Pat Speer]

This new book about the Parkland witnesses entitled We Were There, from what I can gather, supports my thoughts on the "back of the head" issue. Although I haven't read it, it is quoted in an 11-11-13 article in the National Enquirer. Note that this is a conspiracy article, in that it presents the throat wound as an entrance, but that it quotes Carrico and Clark as saying the wound was on the right side, and not confined to the far back of the head, as presumed by so many.

"Four Parkland doctors, experts in gunshot wounds who saw JFK before he was given a tracheostomy, believe a terrible injury to the politician’s neck was caused by a bullet entering, not leaving, his body.

Parkland’s Dr. Jim Carrico says he saw a hole in Kennedy’s neck “just to the right” where a breathing tube had been inserted "And certainly where his collar should have been.”

Their disclosures in the book “We Were There: Revelations from the Dallas Doctors Who Attended to JFK on November 22, 1963” fly in the face of the official conclusion of the Warren Commission report.

It says the President was shot from behind by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired as the motorcade passed the Texas school Book Depository building overlooking Dallas’ Dealey Plaza.

The doctors’ statements also support eyewitnesses who claim to have seen a gunman fire from a grassy knoll near the parade route and the Zapruder film, which some investigators say proves a bullet came from the front.

Flat-lined from onset the book by Dr. Allen Childs details the gripping accounts of 46 doctors who battled in vain to save JFK and provides chilling testimony about his final moments.

The doctors reveal Kennedy had a wound the size of a grapefruit in his head with a large mass of bone and scalp missing, along with an entry wound in the front of the neck.

Dr. Robert Duchouquette witnessed the frenzied efforts to save the life of JFK as he was wheeled into Parkland’s Trauma Room 1 on an ambulance gurney. “As soon as he was placed from the gurney onto the emergency table, it was obvious from his ghastly head wound that he was DOA and…there was no hope of restoring his life,” he says.

“He was fat-lined from the onset. However, the official word went out that physicians were working toward that end, and it was erroneously reported by the press that he was alive for 35 minutes after his fatal wound.”

President Johnson, accused of masterminding THE MURDER used the delay in the death announcement to board Air Force One.

Carrico, the first physician to see JFK, reported only slow breathing and occasional heartbeats were detectable. There was no pulse or blood pressure.

Two external wounds were noted -- one in the neck and one that shredded JFK’s brain tissue.

“He still had breathing and he still had some heartbeat,” recalls Carrico. “He had a terrible looking wound.

“The first thought I had was the President’s had it. I mean, he’s not going to make it.

“Second is, we’ve got to do something. We can’t just let the President die. Third thought was…what if we get him alive and then he’s a vegetable?

“When we looked this wound in the side of his head, a great big wound. It was about as big it with my hand (grapefruit size) A big chunk of bone and scalp missing.

“That wound certainly looked like an exit wound. Wounds go in, wounds go out…this where a bullet (side of head)

“The only wounds we saw were this wound here (center of neck) and this big hole here (side of head).”

The doctors, who were frantically trying to restore JFK’s breathing, never turned him over so the wounds in his shoulder and back were not readily apparent. When a nurse took off Kennedy’s clothes, Carrico saw a hole “just to the right of the trachea.”

The Secret Service threw a tight security net over the area as doctors worked on their boss.

Dr. William Zedlitz recalls being confronted by an agent holding a rapid-fire weapon at his waist when he went to the ER. He was asked if he was a doctor and was escorted into Trauma Room 1.

He recalls the President’s “left eye seemed to be slightly bulging also, as if there had been a great deal of pressure intra-cranially.

“The large area in the back of the head on the right was spongy and covered with matted hair and blood.

“I would feel a crackling as I touched the area like the bones were in pieces. This is much like a hardboiled egg that has been dropped and the shell shattered but still held together by the tissue in the egg and you can feel the pieces of shell grating against one another.”

Dr. Riyad Taha remembered seeing JFK’s “brain tissue” all over First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s clothes.

“A bullet apparently exploded in his brain,” he says, “and there was no way we could resuscitate… Everyone was very sad.”

Neurosurgeon Dr. William Kemp Clark recalled the massive head wound, saying, “My God, the whole right side of his head is shot off. We’ve got nothing to work with.”

"His brains are all over the table.” Jackie overheard him. She had tried to enter Trauma Room 1, and the Secret Service attempted to hold her back. She broke free telling them, “I’m just as competent as you are.”

Dr. Clark concluded, “There’s nothing more to be done” and pronounced the President dead at 1 p.m., just 25 minutes after he was wheeled into the ER.

Says Carrico, “The decision was made to not actually pronounce the President dead until after the priest had come in and given him the Last Rites.”

[John Crites]

Carrico testified to occipitoparietal ? Now that would possibly suggest the wound was in the back of course, but up to the top somewhat as well, and I don't think he was referring to any entrance wound on the side of the head because he defines a large gaping wound - one wound.

Mr. SPECTER - Would you describe as precisely for me as possible the nature of the head wound which you observed on the President?
Dr. CARRICO - The wound that I saw was a large gaping wound, located in the right occipitoparietal area. I would estimate to be about 5 to 7 cm. in size, more or less circular, with avulsions of the calvarium and scalp tissue. As I stated before, I believe there was shredded macerated cerebral and cerebellar tissues both in the wounds and on the fragments of the skull attached to the dura.

[Andric Perez]

Carrico testified to occipitoparietal ? Now that would possibly suggest the wound was in the back of course, but up to the top somewhat as well, and I don't think he was referring to any entrance wound on the side of the head because he defines a large gaping wound - one wound.

In the National Enquirer article mentioned in the post preceding yours, we learn that Carrico places a big wound on the side of the head.

(National Enquirer, 11-11-2013, quoting Carrico): "The only wounds we saw were this wound here (center of neck) and this big hole here (side of head).” http://www.nationalenquirer.com/print/55944

To complicate matters even more, The Magnificent Director of Neurosurgery, Kemp Clark, is quoted as saying, in the same article, "“My God, the whole right side of his head is shot off. We’ve got nothing to work with.” This is the same Clark about whom a member said yesterday, "I find it hard to believe that the "head of neurosurgery" would be mistaken as to the location of a head wound. Yes, professionals do make mistakes, but rarely such obvious ones."

Edited December 29, 2013 by Andric Perez

[Robert Prudhomme]

So, Andric, you are telling us that your main source of research material is the National Enquirer????

[Cliff Varnell]

"Four Parkland doctors, experts in gunshot wounds who saw JFK before he was given a tracheostomy, believe a terrible injury to the politician’s neck was caused by a bullet entering, not leaving, his body."

Since the bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to have been associated with the throat wound, the doctors are merely corroborating what is brutally obvious -- JFK was shot in the throat from the front.

Renders the subject of the head wound(s) moot.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Cliff Varnell