Back of Head Wound AGAIN!

[Robert Prudhomme]

My favourite argument from the Lone Nut crowd (and others) is that the surgeons at Parkland Hospital who attempted to save JFK could not possibly have seen a large gaping wound in the right rear of JFK's head because JFK was lying on his back the entire time he was in Trauma Room One, and such a wound would have been hidden from their view.

The absurdity of what they are saying is very obvious, yet it requires a little thought before it becomes totally apparent.

First off, it is necessary to accept that JFK DID have a large gaping wound SOMEWHERE on his head. Once we accept this, the obvious question comes next. If JFK had a large gaping wound anywhere on his head (top of head, right side of head, etc.), except the back of his head, would it not be extremely obvious to any surgeon standing within three feet of JFK's head, and would that surgeon not have mentioned this wound, either in his first day medical report, or his testimony to the Warren Commission? Would resuscitation have even been begun, if it was known the full extent of the damage to JFK's head?

I'm sorry but, the very lack of mention of a large gaping wound anywhere on JFK's head but the back of it tends to make the Back of Head wound a winner by default, and the Back of Head autopsy photo a cheap and insulting hoax.

Edited October 11, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme

[Ron Ecker]

Amen. Why do you think the head looked so different at Bethesda? (A large wound that Humes said "extended somewhat" into the back of the head.) Pre-autopsy surgery, no?

[Jon G. Tidd]

Amen, Ron Ecker.

[Jon G. Tidd]

The second-most important question for me is whether Humes, Boswell, and Finck were merely incompetent, or whether their apparent incompetence was dictated from above.

I can buy either proposition but not both.

Incompetence is clear. The issue is whether Humes, Boswell, and Finck were independently incompetent, or whether they were ordered to behave as if they were.

Humes and Boswell were great in that they were anatomical, not forensic, autopsists. Easy to blame them with mere incompetence. Neither had ever performed a gunshot autopsy. Finck was a forensic autopsist, but by the time of JFK's autopsy, he was a consultant only, not a hands-on autopsist.

FWIW, as an aside, I can tell everyone here that to be a competent tax lawyer, one must be a student of the tax law every day of one's career. One must be a constant learner, and one's knowledge and understanding must evolve, based on both learning and experience. I assume the same is true of physicians. Pretty clearly to me, Finck was coasting by the time of the JFK autopsy. Sure, he was coasting at a pretty high level but still coasting. He was not a sharp, cutting-edge forensic autopsist.

If I had to guess, I'd guess senior military officers pressured Humes, Boswell, and Finck. That's just a guess. It doesn't say why senior military officers would have pressured the physicians.

Pretty clearly to me, the autopsy was pre-planned. Not by Humes, et al. But by guys like McGeorge Bundy.

[David Von Pein]

Jon G. Tidd said:

Pretty clearly to me, the autopsy was pre-planned. Not by Humes, et al. But by guys like McGeorge Bundy.

And when such a fantastic (and absurd) notion gets embedded in a person's mind, it becomes all but impossible for an innocent party to exonerate himself. Such as when Dr. Humes made the following statement in 1992. Is any CTer who has decided (without a speck of proof, of course) that JFK's autopsy was "pre-planned" going to believe a single word uttered by Dr. Humes now? Of course not. Just like gum on your shoe, a false allegation, if repeated by enough people, is almost impossible to combat....

"In 1963, we proved at the autopsy table that President Kennedy was struck from above and behind by the fatal shot. The pattern of the entrance and exit wounds in the skull proves it, and if we stayed here until hell freezes over, nothing will change this proof. It happens 100 times out of 100, and I will defend it until I die. This is the essence of our autopsy, and it is supreme ignorance to argue any other scenario. This is a law of physics and it is foolproof--absolutely, unequivocally, and without question. The conspiracy buffs have totally ignored this central scientific fact, and everything else is hogwash. ***There was no interference with our autopsy, and there was no conspiracy to suppress the findings.***" -- Dr. James J. Humes; 1992

Edited November 27, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Robert Prudhomme]

Pretty clearly to me, the autopsy was pre-planned. Not by Humes, et al. But by guys like McGeorge Bundy.

And when such a fantastic (and absurd) notion gets embedded in a person's mind, it becomes all but impossible for an innocent party to exonerate himself. Such as when Dr. Humes made the following statement in 1991. Is any CTer who has decided (without a speck of proof, of course) that JFK's autopsy was "pre-planned" going to believe a single word uttered by Dr. Humes now? Of course not. Just like gum on your shoe, a false allegation, if repeated by enough people, is almost impossible to combat....

"In 1963, we proved at the autopsy table that President Kennedy was struck from above and behind by the fatal shot. The pattern of the entrance and exit wounds in the skull proves it, and if we stayed here until hell freezes over, nothing will change this proof. It happens 100 times out of 100, and I will defend it until I die. This is the essence of our autopsy, and it is supreme ignorance to argue any other scenario. This is a law of physics and it is foolproof--absolutely, unequivocally, and without question. The conspiracy buffs have totally ignored this central scientific fact, and everything else is hogwash. ***There was no interference with our autopsy, and there was no conspiracy to suppress the findings.***" -- Dr. James J. Humes; October 1991

Sounds as if Humes, in his old age and possible senility, was actually beginning to believe the charade he participated in was reality. How sad.

[Martin Blank]

The second-most important question for me is whether Humes, Boswell, and Finck were merely incompetent, or whether their apparent incompetence was dictated from above.

The most important question is: Who in their right mind would design air participate in an assassination plot that required the kidnaping, alteration, and return of the president’s body without detection for the plot to succeed?

Pretty clearly to me, the autopsy was pre-planned. Not by Humes, et al. But by guys like McGeorge Bundy.

Please see answer to above question.

For Phase II to be successful once it was chosen as the option to follow, the wounds in JFK s body had to track back to Harvey Oswald shooting from the sixth floor of the TSBD, i.e., the shots fired at JFK came from behind and only from behind the president.

The problem was that JFK had ridden through an ambush in which several gunmen fired from a number of directions, including the front, and hit the president in the front and the back. It was an ambush more in keeping with Phase I (international communist conspiracy) than Phase II (lone nut).

In order to turn the body into the “best evidence” to account for shots from the rear and pin the crime on Oswald, it would have to be stolen, altered, and returned to Bethesda Naval Hospital for the “real autopsy.” Obviously, it would take some time to set all this up and even more time to carry it out. The decision to go with Phase II and abandon Phase I had to be made in a way that would allow the necessary time for the shell game to be carried out and the medical forgery to be completed.

The time frame for doing this was fairly tight. The decision couldn’t be made too late in the day because that wouldn’t have allowed enough time to complete everything involved with the alterations.

On the other hand, common sense dictates it could not have been made too far in advance either. Ask yourself: Who in their right mind would design an assassination plot that required the kidnaping, alteration, and return of the president’s body without detection for the plot to succeed? Surely, no one would. It was too risky. So why was it done?

It was done, I believe, because it had to be done. It wasn't part of the original plan. Instead, it was a reaction to something that changed. It may have had to do with Oswald still being alive. Or it could have involved the switching of the phases themselves. Or both together. Or something else entirely. I don’t know.

I do know that there seemed to be a great deal of Phase I in play on November 22, lasting from the morning into the evening. The triangulated crossfire ambush, rumors about Oswald’s background, and even a reporter friend of David Phillips who seemed to be checking (for Phillips?) on what the decision had been in regard to what phase had been chosen based on the indictment. This was at 10 p.m. on November 22. Strange. Especially if the decision had been made in advance of that day to switch to Phase II.

(Who can blame LBJ, no matter what his level of involvement in the plot, not wanting to begin his presidency with a nuclear war and tens of millions of dead on both sides?)

So, the decision could not, as has been suggested, have been made before November 22. Neither could it have been made that evening. The time that the autopsy and other associated shenanigans took place argue against both scenarios.

Do these Phase I activities suggest that the decision to switch to Phase II had not been made yet or was it something more ominous. Did some of the more hard-core plotters – those who were determined to do an invasion of Cuba the right way this time – attempt an end run? Were they saying “No we have come too far in this. Lost too many good friends. Been frustrated far too often to let this opportunity slip away. We are going to get Fidel no matter what you decide.”

Or was it a sign that the switch had not been approved or fully communicated until the morning of the assassination – too late to cover bases that could be taken care of later. This would explain Cliff Carter’s phone calls and help explain what LBJ was up to during those times he was missing.

Some have intimated that people on Air Force 1 were talking about Oswald as the lone deranged assassin and LBJ was conferring with military and national security advisors on board the plane, which got airborne at 2:47 p.m. This information was very helpful and may be key for me in developing an accurate portrait of this facet of the crime. It would appear Phase II was initiated around the time the assassination took place – early afternoon. I just don’t know exactly when.

Ultimately, Dr. Humes announced the results of the autopsy at midnight: shots from behind killed the president. At 12:20 a.m. Oswald was indicted for JFK’s murder.

How convenient.

Larry Hancock deals with this in his SWHT in much more detail.

[Ron Ecker]

Humes and Boswell were great in that they were anatomical, not forensic, autopsists. Easy to blame them with mere incompetence. Neither had ever performed a gunshot autopsy. Finck was a forensic autopsist, but by the time of JFK's autopsy, he was a consultant only, not a hands-on autopsist.

This itself is evidence of pre-planning. Seems to me that a completely honest, unplanned reaction to the assassination would be to find the best forensic autopsists available for an autopsy of the President of the United States. Only despicable pre-planners would deliberately choose incompetents having no experience with gunshots.

[Martin Blank]

Humes and Boswell were great in that they were anatomical, not forensic, autopsists. Easy to blame them with mere incompetence. Neither had ever performed a gunshot autopsy. Finck was a forensic autopsist, but by the time of JFK's autopsy, he was a consultant only, not a hands-on autopsist.

This itself is evidence of pre-planning. Seems to me that a completely honest, unplanned reaction to the assassination would be to find the best forensic autopsists available for an autopsy of the President of the United States. Only despicable pre-planners would deliberately choose incompetents having no experience with gunshots.

i wonder who was scheduled to do the autopsy at walter reed

[Chris Newton]

i wonder who was scheduled to do the autopsy at walter reed

Dr. Dick Davis, AFIP, has stated that there was a team being put together at Walter Reed. Boswell even claimed that Dr. Davis was at the first brain examination though he denies it.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/staff_memos/pdf/DH_BrainExams.pdf

[Ollie Curme]

I don't think Bethesda was pre-planned. My guess is the plotters planned to hide the evidence of frontal shots in Parkland neurology, but the EOP bullet damaged the brainstem enough to stop JFK's breathing. Walter Reed was clearly the second choice. By the time they got to Bethesda, they were scrambling and if you read the witness reports to the Bethesda autopsy, it was mostly an exercise in finding the bullets. I suppose someone gave the autopsy doctors the speech about national security, and maybe they did some preautopsy explorations to take the bullet out of the neck and open the head wound. But the evidence they left behind argues strongly for two shots to the head; so that indicates they reported much of the autopsy as they saw it and then went with the national security required two shots from the back conclusions.

Regarding the difference in head wound appearance between Parkland and Bethesda, how about between the Z film and Bethesda? Frame Z335 shows a big skull flap hanging down in front of JFK's right ear; exactly as the back of head photos do.

When people talk about Clint Hill's testimony about looking down into a hole in JFK's head, they should realize that JFK was lying on his left side in Jackie's lap, so he would be looking down into the right side of JFK's head.

[Robert Prudhomme]

I don't think Bethesda was pre-planned. My guess is the plotters planned to hide the evidence of frontal shots in Parkland neurology, but the EOP bullet damaged the brainstem enough to stop JFK's breathing. Walter Reed was clearly the second choice. By the time they got to Bethesda, they were scrambling and if you read the witness reports to the Bethesda autopsy, it was mostly an exercise in finding the bullets. I suppose someone gave the autopsy doctors the speech about national security, and maybe they did some preautopsy explorations to take the bullet out of the neck and open the head wound. But the evidence they left behind argues strongly for two shots to the head; so that indicates they reported much of the autopsy as they saw it and then went with the national security required two shots from the back conclusions.

Regarding the difference in head wound appearance between Parkland and Bethesda, how about between the Z film and Bethesda? Frame Z335 shows a big skull flap hanging down in front of JFK's right ear; exactly as the back of head photos do.

When people talk about Clint Hill's testimony about looking down into a hole in JFK's head, they should realize that JFK was lying on his left side in Jackie's lap, so he would be looking down into the right side of JFK's head.

Sorry, Ollie but, your last statement requires Clint Hill, along with a number of trained surgeons, to be unable to distinguish between the right rear of JFK's headf and the right side of his head ahead of his right ear.

If there was a large gaping wound between JFK's right ear and his face, would it not have been obvious to the surgeons at Parkland? Wouldn't one of them have mentioned it in his medical report?

Why did they all refer to the large gaping wound as involving JFK's occipital bone?

Occipital bone shown in green.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Robert Prudhomme

[Larry Hancock]

I've posted this numerous times but just to be redundant....we had a speaker at the Lancer conference several years ago, he was an intern at Parkland and one of the first individuals into the trauma room albeit soon replaced by more senior staff. He described being asked to slightly elevate the rear of the President's head, which he did by holding the rear in the area illustrated above in green - holding with both hands. He described the portion of the head that he was holding as feeling very much like a hard boiled egg which has its shell broken for peeling - he felt that the bone in that area was totally shattered and being held together only by tissue and hair. He did not actually look at it but only felt it briefly before being replaced. That suggested to me that it was very likely that pieces of bone in that area would eventually begin falling out, leaving a large open wound which might not have been easily visible at first. I forget his name, he was recorded and others may recall it; was a good eight years or so ago.

[Chris Newton]

Hey Larry here's a Lancer summary from 1995 (20 years ago - feels wrong(?))

http://www.jfklancer.com/parkland_drs.html

[James DiEugenio]

I have come to believe today that the choices of Humes, Boswell and Finck were planned. It might have been short range, but they wanted three guys who they could control and who were not at all at the top of their game.

If they really wanted a good autiopsy they could have gotten a practicing pathologist from AFIP.

If they wanted a great autopsy, they could have flown in Milton Helpern from NYC on a MATS shuttle flight. Helpern was the gold standard at that time in private autopsies. (See Tommy Thompson's non fiction classic Blood and Money.)

Why didn't they do either?

And, of course, if you read the WC and its files, it does not seem that anyone was curious about this point. And, of course, Mr. Cover up Arlen Specter never asked why so many of the standard autopsy protocols were violated, something like 90 of them, as Charles Wilber noted in his book.

So, if you ask me, stuff like that does not happen by accident. The military guys there wanted a horrendous autopsy. (And, as Finck revealed at the Shaw trial, they actual interfered to make it so.)

One so bad, that to this day, no one can say for certain what really happened to President Kennedy. That is about as bad as it gets.

Edited October 12, 2015 by James DiEugenio