Any prevailing theories on the back wound?

[Ray Mitcham]

Ray # 445: GREAT view of SGK. I've never seen a better one. It looks plenty high up enough to do what I'm suggesting---clear the windshield and roll-bar. Do you know how soon after the shooting the top photo was taken? I wish that exact same photo had been taken at Z190. Major muchos gracias.

Roy, This is the photo by Cancellare, from which the small insert was made. which seems to show that the photo was taken within seconds of the shooting.

[Sandy Larsen]

I was just listening to the recorded interview of the 1978 HSCA interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey, and I believe I have learned the true nature of his role in the autopsy. I believe some of us mistakenly believed he was assisting in the autopsy, and that he was a medical personnel with some experience in autopsy procedures. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as aide de camp to General Wehle, his duties were in assisting to coordinate movement of JFK's casket to Bethesda. As he admits himself early on in the interview, he merely observed the autopsy, and not all of it, either. At about the 14:00 mark, he actually tells the interviewers that JFK's corpse was the first corpse he had ever seen.

I believe this deals a serious blow to the confirmation of whether or not the metal probe, used by Humes to probe JFK's back wound, was actually stopped from entering the pleural cavity by an intact pleural membrane. Once again, we must consider the very real possibility that the probing was part of a charade and that Lipsey, from his POV as an observer, very likely could not get close enough to JFK to look inside his pleural cavity, and was relying entirely on what was being said by Humes.

I guess I should have said something. I know Lt. Lipsey's story well because he played a role in the decoy hearse thing that Lifton exposed in Best Evidence. I knew he wasn't a medical guy. And he said himself that he didn't have a good view.

The reason I found his testimony interesting is because it was like a tape recording of what the doctors were saying. He seemed to remember well the gist of what was going on. His testimony rang true to me when I read it. Though I did keep in mind as I read it that he wasn't a medical type and he didn't have a good view.

You know, I can't remember what it was in Lipsey's testimony that confirmed or otherwise affected our view of Jenkins' statement about seeing the probe pushing on an intact pleural membrane. Oh wait... Lipsey talked about the bullet going down into the rib cage or something like that, right? Which would contradict Jenkins. Right? Jenkins is a medical technician, so he was the one I took more seriously on the details.

But your point is well taken on the charade card.

[Sandy Larsen]

So, now we know that Lt. Richard Lipsey was not participating in the autopsy but, rather, was a non-medical officer in the audience, is it safe to assume Humes lied about there being no hole in the pleura, and that the back wound bullet very likely entered the top of JFK's right lung?

Remember, it was Jenkins (was it not?) who said he saw the probe pushing the pleura. I wish it was Lipsey who said it, because then it would be easier for me to dismiss. Which would simplify things.

[Robert Prudhomme]

So, now we know that Lt. Richard Lipsey was not participating in the autopsy but, rather, was a non-medical officer in the audience, is it safe to assume Humes lied about there being no hole in the pleura, and that the back wound bullet very likely entered the top of JFK's right lung?

Remember, it was Jenkins (was it not?) who said he saw the probe pushing the pleura. I wish it was Lipsey who said it, because then it would be easier for me to dismiss. Which would simplify things.

You're right, I had forgotten it was Jenkins who claimed to have seen the probe pushing on the pleura.

[Chris Davidson]

Ray # 445: GREAT view of SGK. I've never seen a better one. It looks plenty high up enough to do what I'm suggesting---clear the windshield and roll-bar. Do you know how soon after the shooting the top photo was taken? I wish that exact same photo had been taken at Z190. Major muchos gracias.

Roy, This is the photo by Cancellare, from which the small insert was made. which seems to show that the photo was taken within seconds of the shooting.

Roy,

I believe my brother was at about the red X when he took this photo.

[Ron Ecker]

You can see James Tague in the Cancellare photo. And it was right about that time that he said he encountered a uniformed policeman (a possible shooter from on top of the overpass moments before?) who asked him what happened. Tague later changed his story.

[Roy Wieselquist]

Guys, with your recent posts, I have cracked the case of the throat-entry and back-exit bullet. Somewhat.

Ray Mitcham #466--Cancellare photo (originally #455 I believe). I never knew how high up that car park is; it's above the train tracks, 2 feet higher according to James Gordon #405. It would have been easy for a sniper to set up a position with blinds among those cars, with a couple spotter/lookouts around him keeping wanderers away. And the rifle of a man shooting from the shoulder is five feet above the ground. And JFK is less than 300 feet away, for a 1 in 12 pitch, with the tilt down, forward. I wish I could compute it exactly. I believe this is plenty of angle, close to 15*, for a telescopic sight to get a bead on the president's throat, clearing windshield and roll bar, which is above all the occupants.

Chris Davidson #470--brother's position on left side of bridge, over the sidewalk/access tunnel beside Commerce, looking down on DP. Great photo-shot. It looks like plenty of angle to clear the limo's roll bar/roof support. And the car park is a good 50-60 feet farther to the left, from Jack's view that is. One very minor measurement. The road surface is at least 4 inches higher now than it was in 1963 due to re-paving. This was pointed out in re-enactments of a rifle (Johnny Roselli?) possibly firing from the drainage opening in the curb of the North side of Elm where DPD Hargis (?) dropped his cycle before charging up the NGK. The 2015 road surface could be six inches higher at the crown now than it was in 1963. Not much, but something.

Ron Ecker #471, or should I say the super-perceptive Ron Ecker with the memory of ten elephants and the web-page distilled to pure salience--------- yes, James Tague is still in his spot and the Newmans are still laying in their spot. And you remembered an early Tague recounting of being accosted by an unidentified policeman who appeared out of nowhere. He didn't rappel down the face of the overpass, that's for sure. Where did he come from? Was he one of the phony lawmen that Dealey was lousy with that day?

If we could magnify that Cancellare photo enough, we may be able to see Lucien Sarti lighting up a Gitane.

Edited November 13, 2015 by Roy Wieselquist

[Ron Ecker]

Somewhere in Cancellare years ago someone here pointed out what is conceivably the image of a man holding a rifle upright in the car park. As I recall it was kind of like Badge Man, maybe it's there and maybe it isn't.

[Chris Newton]

Ron,

You may be referring to Tosh P.?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17786&hl=%22south%20knoll%22&page=2

[Ron Ecker]

Ron,

You may be referring to Tosh P.?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17786&hl=%22south%20knoll%22&page=2

No, I remember the search for Tosh. I'm referring to the supposed image of a shooter in the car park. If you or someone can blow up Cancellare, I'm sure it can be found again.

[Ron Ecker]

Just found this thread: South Knoll Shooter in Cancellare? Strangely enough, I started the thread myself.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5732

[Chris Davidson]

Scroll down for photos from the south knoll.

http://jfkthefifthdecade.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-south-knoll-assassins-paradise.html

[Pat Speer]

Lipsey's testimony and subsequent statements are discussed in detail in chapter 17 of patspeer.com. Here is section in which I discuss his subsequent statements.

The Return of Richard Lipsey

And, speaking of strange... As the country neared the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death, Richard Lipsey re-appeared in a series of interviews and articles in which he pushed that Oswald acted alone. (While there are probably more, I have come across a November 2013 article on Lipsey in Country Roads Magazine, an 11-17-13 article on Lipsey in the Baton Rouge Advocate, an 11-20-13 article on Lipsey in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, an 11-22-13 interview of Lipsey on radio station WKRF, and an 11-22-13 interview of Lipsey on C-SPAN2.) Now, it's not so strange that Lipsey would reappear as the country neared the 50th anniversary. He was an important witness, after all. No, what's strange is the content of his interviews. He said he'd been impressed with Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, and that he also supported Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History, even though he had never actually got around to reading it.

Well, this might lead one to believe Lipsey had changed his mind, and that he no longer stood by what he'd told the HSCA back in 1978. Beyond claiming that "the direction" of the bullets as determined at autopsy supported that the shots came from behind, after all, he avoided detailed discussion of the President's wounds. One might conclude, then, that he no longer stood by his earlier account of the autopsy, an account that was totally at odds with the autopsy as presented by Posner and Bugliosi.

But one would almost certainly be wrong. In one of the interviews, Lipsey let it slip that he'd studied the FBI's report on the autopsy, and that he largely agreed with it. This report claimed that no passage connecting the back wound with the throat wound had been discovered during the autopsy. This was precisely what Lipsey had told the HSCA. Well, if Lipsey had subsequently come to believe there had been such a passage, well, then, why didn't he say so?

When one sifts through another article on Lipsey, this one published in The Advocate back on 9-6-92, for that matter, one finds even more reason to believe Lipsey never backed off from his 1978 recollections. The article claimed: "Lipsey said he also spoke years later with two other men in the room, Lt. Sam Bird, who was in charge of the honor guard that carried the casket from Air Force One to the ambulance and from the ambulance into the hospital, and FBI agent Francis O'Neill. Lipsey said that a few months ago O'Neill let him read the report he submitted after the autopsy. "I agreed with, like, 90 percent of what he said, and I'm sure the 10 percent I didn't agree with wasn't because he was correct or I was correct," Lipsey said. "It was because... after 30 years your memory gets a little foggy. His report that was written one hour after the autopsy really corroborates my way of thinking."

O'Neill's report, of course, claimed the bullet creating the back wound did not enter the body. While it's possible Lipsey thought this an understandable mistake that was cleared up the next day, it's hard to see how he could think such a thing, and 1) claim his disagreements with O'Neill (who never believed the bullet entered the body) were due to the passage of time, and 2) still claim O'Neill's report "corroborates my way of thinking."

And there's yet another reason to suspect Lipsey never wavered from his statements to the HSCA. In none of these post-HSCA interviews did Lipsey bring up his earlier claim a bullet entered low on the back of the head and exited from the throat. But more to the point, in none of these interviews did the interviewer point out that the "official" story pushed by the men to whom Lipsey was now deferring--Posner and Bugliosi--holds that no bullet of any kind entered low on the back of the head, and that, as a consequence, no discussion of a bullet entering low on the back of the head could have been overheard by Lipsey during the autopsy. And that Lipsey's statements to the HSCA were thereby balderdash...

In fact, these interviews failed to mention Lipsey's ever saying anything at odds with the Posner/Bugliosi version of the Oswald-did-it scenario.

But he was not always so careful. A 10-31-09 article on Lipsey found on 225BatonRouge.com, for example, claimed that upon re-reading his statements to the HSCA, Lipsey, "notes that some of his responses were not as clean and concise as they could have been." He didn't admit he was wrong, mind you. The article then discussed the autopsy in some detail, and claimed the "doctors concluded there were three entry wounds: one in the lower neck, one in the upper neck/lower skull region and one at the rear crown of the head." Well, this was just bizarre; one might guess that the writer of this article, LSU Professor, James E Shelledy, was trying to hide that the bullet hole now claimed to be the fatal bullet hole, the one on the crown of the head, was not observed or discussed at the autopsy. To wit, Shelledy then offered "Several years later, second opinions by doctors determined Kennedy was hit by only two bullets." So, yeah, Shelledy made a strange mistake, and this mistake allowed him to conceal that the wound now claimed to be the fatal entrance wound was not observed by any witness to the autopsy, including Lipsey, and that Lipsey also failed to recall any discussion of such a wound.

A look back at Lipsey's words to the HSCA, however, put this strange passage in context, and make it clear Lipsey was responsible for the description of three bullet entrances, and not Shelledy. Lipsey told the HSCA's investigators: "as I remember them there was one bullet that went in the back of the head that exited and blew away part of his face. And that was sort of high up, not high up but like this little crown on the back of your head right there, three or four inches above your neck. And then the other one entered at more of less the top of the neck, the other one entered more or less at the bottom of the neck." And to this, he later added: "I feel that there was really no entrance wound --maybe I said that --in the rear of his head. There was a point where they determined the bullet entered the back of his head but I believe all of that part of his head was blown. I mean I think it just physically blew away that part of his head. You know, just like a strip right across there or may have been just in that area -- just blew it out."

So, there it is. The entrance by the crown, to Lipsey's recollection, was the rear entrance to the large head wound he claimed had been described as a wound of both entrance and exit. It was not the small red spot in the cowlick later "discovered" by the Clark Panel. Well, it follows, then, that Lipsey thought this large wound was later found to be an exit for the bullet entering on the "upper neck/lower skull". Lipsey had, after all, no recollection of an entrance wound in the cowlick.

And this goes to show that Lipsey, as late as 2009, still believed the doctors had on the night of the autopsy concluded the large head wound was a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. And that they only subsequently decided that this wound was connected to the wound at the upper neck/lower skull.

We have good reason to doubt, then, that Lipsey ever changed his mind about what he told the HSCA. He supported O'Neill, who claimed there was no passage from the back wound into the body. And he continued, as late as 2009, to claim the doctors initially concluded the large head wound was a wound of both entrance and exit.

It seems clear from this, moreover, that Lipsey, who left the military in 1964 to embark on a long and prosperous career as an arms dealer and big game hunter, wanted it both ways. Much as Governor Connally, and FBI agent Frank O'Neill, before him, he wanted to go on the record as saying Oswald did it by all himself, even though his personal recollections were in conflict with that conclusion. Strange. And sad.

[Ron Ecker]

Here's the "shooter" image from Cancellare. Standing to the right of the tree trunk. (Having found the old thread, I just realized that I still had the image on my computer.)

[Roy Wieselquist]

Ron Ecker #476, 479 -- These are Great: 1.) December 2005 thread "South Knoll shooter in Cancellare?", 2.) magnified SK. General observations: The figure to the right of the tree in the blow-up (the second tree left of the overpass in the full photo) is a largish man in dark clothes. Like a dark uniform, like a police uniform. True, his back is to the sun, so his front is in shadow, but his clothes look a lot darker than his face and the shady side of everything around him. And don't snipers like to have the sun at their back, hence the sun in the face of their victims?

Someone suggested he's like another Badge Man. I've lost count of how many phony and/or crooked lawmen were in DP that day. One more doesn't make much difference. My speculation: he's the rear guard, the last guy in the group to walk/drive away, making sure that his confederates are safe and cozy.. I don't see any definite rifle.

John Dolva made a great observation in that late 2005 topic of Ron's: the pick-up truck nearest Badge Man #2 sure has some dark windows, way darker than the windows of any other vehicle nearby. As if it has some kind of blinds. You can see that phenom in the full photo.

Chris Davidson #477 -- Great article in The Fifth Decade 6-28-2013, "The South Knoll: An Assassin's Paradise?" Great photos in that, though they're all recent, right? The last pic is from The Spot, "a good vantage point," he says in the next to last paragraph. And continues, "Could a shot have cleared the windshield?", the thorny problem. The author speculates about a shot through the windshield. That didn't happen, or some of the passengers would have been peppered with glass shards, probably in the face. He concedes that by Z313, sure, the angle is great enough to clear the windscreen (and also the roof support, let's remember). I think it's enough at Z200, especially if Greer's hitting the brakes, which would tip the car down from the horizontal AND throw JFK forward a little, making the angle greater for the trajectory through him.

Is anyone here an expert on the possible French/Corsican assassins? Michel Mertz claims that he had gone straight by this time, but that, variously, Jean Souetre and Lucien Sarti were using his name. One checked into a Dallas hotel under his name, possibly as revenge for MM leaving the French Mafia/OAS, in the event that JS or LS were caught. A South Knoll set-up has all the Modus Operandi of this bunch. They figured they had learned from their mistakes against DeGaulle at the Day of the Jackal August 1962.

Edited November 14, 2015 by Roy Wieselquist