Chesser/Mantik cut from Mock Trial

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

I meant the photo which is captioned, "Was anything said in the autopsy report or in witness statements about the black round hole seen in this autopsy photo?"

 Where did you get that one?  From the Robin Unger gallery?

If you got it there, then its likely untouched.  If you look at Robinson's declassified  interview with the HSCA, he talks about a hole in JFK's temple just inside the hairline that he filled in with wax to prepare for burial.  So yes, a witness did see that. (Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB, Vol. 2 p. 599)

What I am saying is that if you have that photo, Robinson's testimony, Chesser's work, and the Kilduff photo/film, that is the kind of evidence you can submit to a court for a frontal head shot.  Because they are different types of evidence--witness testimony, x ray analysis, photo--and they are independent of, yet support each other.

So, did you get it from Robin?

Edited December 2, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Chris Davidson]

Click the blue box (at the bottom of page) to view photos.

http://www.jfklancer.com/photos/autopsy_slideshow/

Edited December 2, 2017 by Chris Davidson

[Michael Walton]

Where did you get that one?  From the Robin Unger gallery?

If you got it there, then its likely untouched. 

Jim I'm  pretty sure I  got  it from there as its a high res version. You can still see the hole in it.

https://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/displayimage.php?album=28&pos=25

Wow I  was not aware that the funeral guy said he plugged a hole in the temple. Also Chessers presentation  says that it's  very likely that a wound like that could be overlooked  due to the bloody hair.

[Cliff Varnell]

8 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Actually, neither of those doctors ever said the wound was on the back.

P.S. Most of the Parkland doctors have at one time or another deferred to the authenticity of the autopsy photos. Even McClelland has said the photos are legit. (He thinks scalp has been pulled up on the BOH photo, and that this conceals the true extent of the wound.)

There is no authenticity to the autopsy photos if you don't have a chain of possession.

Pat, you can polish this turd all you want but it's just a turd.

You're claiming that two inches of JFK's shirt and two inches of his jacket were bunched up entirely above the top of his back but the Elm St. photos show the lower margin of his jacket collar resting in a normal position just above the base of his neck.

What you are claiming is contrary to readily observed reality.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

14 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

You're claiming that two inches of JFK's shirt and two inches of his jacket were bunched up entirely above the top of his back but the Elm St. photos show the lower margin of his jacket collar resting in a normal position just above the base of his neck.

What you are claiming is contrary to readily observed reality.

I call it the David Von Pein Intellectual Honesty Test.

When presented with the normal amount of JFK's shirt collar shown in the Elm St. photos DVP immediately conceded there was no significant bunching of JFK's clothing on Elm St.

Well, Pat?

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Mike.  And Chris.

That is really good.  I did not know about how clear that photo was.

 

[Pat Speer]

14 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

There is no authenticity to the autopsy photos if you don't have a chain of possession.

Pat, you can polish this turd all you want but it's just a turd.

You've watched too many TV dramas, Cliff. Read some books on law enforcement.

Verification by Continual Possession is only done when a witness is unwilling or unable to testify as to the accuracy of a photograph. As Humes, Boswell, Finck, and Stringer repeatedly verified that the autopsy photos were the photos Stringer took of Kennedy, and accurately depicted Kennedy's wounds, It has no bearing on this case.

Evidence for the Law Enforcement Officer, a McGraw-Hill textbook, relates: "Once a photograph is introduced to evidence, it speaks for itself. But it must be introduced through some witness who is in a position to attest to the accuracy of the photograph. There is no presumption that the photograph is a true and correct reproduction. This attestation of the correctness of the photograph is is known legally as 'verification' or 'authentication' of the photograph. This verification may be accomplished by any person who witnessed the scene and can testify to the accuracy of the photograph. It does not have to be done by the photographer who took the picture. The witness attesting to the accuracy of the photograph does not even have to have been present when the photograph was taken. The only thing necessary is that the witness should have seen the scene which is depicted in the photograph, and so is in a position to testify that it is an accurate reproduction of what he saw."

 

Edited December 3, 2017 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

I have two sections devoted to McClelland and his views in my online book, Sandy.

Here's the second one, from Chapter 18d:

 

 

 

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of  Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

Robert N. McClelland M.D.
Asst. Prof. of Surgery
Southwestern Med.
School of Univ of Tex.
Dallas, Texas

(Note: in this, his earliest statement on the assassination, Dr. McClelland reveals that he was easily confused and prone to speculation. First of all, he gets himself all turned around and mistakenly says there was a wound in the left temple. He says nothing of a wound on the back of the head or behind the ear. As but one head wound was noted at Parkland, and as no competent doctor would mention a wound he did not see while failing to mention the one he did, it seems probable McClelland meant to say this wound was of the right temple, not left. Second of all, he states, without offering any supporting evidence, that the throat wound was a fragment wound. This shows he was prone to speculation.

In light of the fact many conspiracy theorists cite McClelland as the most reliable of the Parkland witnesses, McClelland's next statements are even more intriguing. McClelland was the prime source for the 12-18-63 article by Richard Dudman published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in which the Secret Service's visit to the Parkland doctors, and its attempt to get them to agree Kennedy's throat wound was an exit, was first revealed. And yet McClelland told Dudman that after being told of the wound on Kennedy's back "he and Dr. Perry fully accept the Navy Hospital’s explanation of the course of the bullets." And yet he told Dudman "I am fully satisfied that the two bullets that hit him were from behind." And yet he told Dudman "As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front." Repeat...NO reason to suspect any shots came from the front... That's right...in the very article most conspiracy theorists believe first exposed the government's cover-up of Kennedy's wounds, Dr. McClelland, the man they consider the most credible of the Parkland witnesses, spelled out--and made CRYSTAL CLEAR--that he did not think the large head wound he observed was an exit wound on the far back of the head.

This is confirmed yet again by the first article on the wounds published in a medical journal. Three Patients at Parkland, published in the January 1964 Texas State Journal of Medicine, was based upon the Parkland doctors' 11-22 reports, and repeated their descriptions of Kennedy's wounds and treatment word for word. Well, almost. In one of its few deviations, it changed Dr. McClelland's initial claim Kennedy was pronounced dead "at 12:55" to his being "pronounced dead at 1:00." This was an obvious correction of an innocent mistake. In what one can only assume was another correction of an innocent mistake, moreover, it re-routed Dr. McClelland's initial claim "The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple" to the more acceptable "The cause of death, according to Dr. McClelland was the massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the right side of the head." Right side of the head. Not back of the head. While some might wish to believe the writer and/or editor of this article took it upon himself to make this change without consulting Dr. McClelland, and that he'd changed it to fit the "official" story, the fact of the matter is there was NO official story on the head wounds at this point, beyond the descriptions of the wound in the reports of McClelland's colleagues published elsewhere in the article. And these, in sum, described a wound on the back of the head. It seems likely, then, that McClelland himself was responsible for this change.

In any event, on March 21, 1964, Dr. McClelland testified before the Warren Commission. In contrast to his earlier statements, he now claimed: “As I took the position at the head of the table that l have already described, to help out with the tracheotomy, I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered ... the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.” 

Note that McClelland specifies both that he was at the head of the table helping out with the tracheotomy when he examined Kennedy's head wound, and that this put him in position to closely examine the wound. Here is Figure PR10.1, "Position for Tracheotomy", from the textbook Emergency Medicine (edited by Harold May, 1984):

 

Note that in order to expose the neck the head is tilted sharply backwards in the tracheotomy position. So how in the heck could McClelland 1) closely examine a wound low on the back of Kennedy's head while Kennedy was in such a position and he (McClelland) was standing at the head of the table? and 2) claim his standing at the head of the table put him in "such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound"?

McClelland's words only make sense if the wound he was observing was on the front half of Kennedy's head. It seems likely then that McClelland, as Clark, was confused by the rotation of Kennedy’s head. 

And it seems just as likely McClelland is not the man many if not most conspiracy theorists assume him to be. Notes on a 12-1-71 interview of McClelland by researcher Harold Weisberg reveal that McClelland "volunteered at some length about Garrison's men, describing Garrison as a psychopath, and seemed proud that he had talked them out of calling him as a witness...McC was quite bitter about Garrison and Lane, but he was without complaint about Specter and the Warren Commission..."

So there it is. Dr. Robert McClelland--whom many conspiracy theorists believe an unshakeable truth-teller--was a supporter of the Warren Commission's for years and years after the assassination--to such an extent even that he refused to cooperate with Jim Garrison's attempts to re-open the case. Well, is it any wonder then that McClelland, while continuing to insist he saw a wound on the back of Kennedy's head, repeatedly defended the legitimacy of the autopsy photos? And that he told the producers of the television show Nova in 1988 that "I find no discrepancy between the wounds as they're shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly?"

And is it any wonder then that in both his Nova appearance and ARRB testimony McClelland ventured that the back of the head photo depicts sagging scalp pulled over a large occipito-parietal wound? Now this is strange indeed. Scalp overlying explosive wounds to the skull does not stretch and sag, it tears. No such tears were noted on the back of Kennedy's head at autopsy, and none are shown in the autopsy photos whose legitimacy McClelland defends. 

And it's not as if NOVA was the end of McClelland's strange ride...in which he defended the authenticity of the autopsy photos, while describing wounds at odds with the autopsy photos. A May 19, 1992 Newsday article by Steve Wick for which Dr. Humes was interviewed--and in which Humes claimed there was no conspiracy and all the shots came from the rear--also featured some quotes from McClelland, in which he similarly argued those claiming there was an exit wound on the back of Kennedy's head were mistaken. McClelland told Newsday: "I saw the wound more closely than anybody...There was a massive wound on the back rear portion of his head. There's no way you can tell, based on a wound that size, which way he was shot."

I mean, McClelland is as erratic as can be. Where he once assured journalists suspecting shots came from the front that "there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front," and where he later told researchers he'd created a drawing in which an exit wound behind Kennedy's right ear was depicted, he now tells crowds --such at that at the 2013 Wecht conference--that 1) "the whole right side of his skull was gone;" 2) the appearance of this wound--and not its location--suggested it was an exit wound; 3) it was Kennedy's response to this shot in the Zapruder film that convinced him the shot came from the front...and 4) he'd never been pressured into lying about Kennedy's wounds! The man's recollections are just not reliable.

And are instead ever-changing. On November 18, 2013, McClelland was interviewed by CBS11 in Dallas. There, according to the station's article on the interview, he repeated one of his latest claims--that shortly after his arrival in Trauma Room One, he said "'My God, have you seen the back of his head?’ And they said, ‘No, we came in just ahead of you.’ And I said, ‘Well, the whole back of his head is missing on the right side...Well, when I saw that injury to the back of his head, it became apparent to all of us, all three of us who were gathered around the President’s head working on him, that this was a fatal injury.”  So what's wrong with that, you might ask? Well, the first day reports suggest there was relatively little bleeding from the throat wound. So where did Dr.s Perry, Baxter and Carrico--the primary respondents prior to McClelland's arrival--supposedly think the blood and brain matter covering Kennedy's hair, the cart, and the floor had come from? It seems clear they'd noticed the head wound, and, sure enough, the reports of all three doctors indicate that they'd taken a look at the head wound upon their arrival on the scene. So, here, once again, McClelland appears to be embellishing his story in order to elevate the importance of his personal observations.

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

12 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

You've watched too many TV dramas, Cliff. Read some books on law enforcement.

Good idea.

Emphasis added...

http://www.practicalhomicide.com/articles/LegalCS.htm

PRACTICAL CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION:
Legal Considerations

By
Vernon J. Geberth, M.S., M.P.S.
Author of Practical Homicide Investigation, Copyright 2003
REPRINT: LAW and ORDER Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 2003

The search of the crime scene is the most important phase of the investigation conducted at the scene. Decisions of the courts restricting admissibility of testimonial evidence have significantly increased the value of physical evidence in homicide investigations. Therefore, law enforcement personnel involved in the crime scene search must arrange for the proper and effective collection of evidence at the scene.

Physical evidence, which is often referred to as the "unimpeachable witness," cannot be clouded by a faulty memory, prejudice, poor eyesight, or a desire "not to get involved." However, before a forensic laboratory can effectively examine physical evidence, it must be recognized as evidence.

 

Quote

Verification by Continual Possession is only done when a witness is unwilling or unable to testify as to the accuracy of a photograph. As Humes, Boswell, Finck, and Stringer repeatedly verified that the autopsy photos were the photos Stringer took of Kennedy, and accurately depicted Kennedy's wounds, It has no bearing on this case.

We have far more witnesses who describe the back wound much lower than depicted in the Fox 5 autopsy photo.

In what legal universe does the photograph of physical evidence trump actual physical evidence?

It is physically impossible for JFK to have suffered a wound at T1 with the bullet holes in his clothes two inches lower.

Are you saying that the autopsy photo trumps the clothing evidence?

Quote

Evidence for the Law Enforcement Officer, a McGraw-Hill textbook, relates: "Once a photograph is introduced to evidence, it speaks for itself. But it must be introduced through some witness who is in a position to attest to the accuracy of the photograph.

There is no presumption that the photograph is a true and correct reproduction. This attestation of the correctness of the photograph is is known legally as 'verification' or 'authentication' of the photograph. This verification may be accomplished by any person who witnessed the scene and can testify to the accuracy of the photograph.

What about the 15 witnesses who contradict the wound location in the BOH photo?

Chopped liver?

The death certificate was signed off as verified; the properly prepared portion of the autopsy face sheet was signed off as verified.

And you cannot reconcile the location of the bullet defects in the clothes with a T1 wound.

Quote

It does not have to be done by the photographer who took the picture. The witness attesting to the accuracy of the photograph does not even have to have been present when the photograph was taken. The only thing necessary is that the witness should have seen the scene which is depicted in the photograph, and so is in a position to testify that it is an accurate reproduction of what he saw."

Contradicted by 4 times as many witnesses who stated the wound was lower.

Photos can be doctored; witness testimony can be suborned; but clothing cannot move multiple inches with casual body movement.

That's why the physical evidence is determinative.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2017 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 12/2/2017 at 10:19 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

I call it the David Von Pein Intellectual Honesty Test.

When presented with the normal amount of JFK's shirt collar shown in the Elm St. photos DVP immediately conceded there was no significant bunching of JFK's clothing on Elm St.

Well, Pat?

Well?

Pat?

Show us how a multi-inch wad of clothing elevates entirely above the top of the back without pushing up on the jacket collar resting in its normal position just above the base of the neck.

Why is it David Von Pein can acknowledge there was no significant elevation of the clothing on Elm St., but Pat Speer cannot?

Physical evidence trumps photos of physical evidence.

Period.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Cliff Varnell

[Sandy Larsen]

17 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I have two sections devoted to McClelland and his views in my online book, Sandy.

Here's the second one, from Chapter 18d:

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of  Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

Robert N. McClelland M.D.
Asst. Prof. of Surgery
Southwestern Med.
School of Univ of Tex.
Dallas, Texas

(Note: in this, his earliest statement on the assassination, Dr. McClelland reveals that he was easily confused and prone to speculation. First of all, he gets himself all turned around and mistakenly says there was a wound in the left temple. He says nothing of a wound on the back of the head or behind the ear. As but one head wound was noted at Parkland, and as no competent doctor would mention a wound he did not see while failing to mention the one he did, it seems probable McClelland meant to say this wound was of the right temple, not left. Second of all, he states, without offering any supporting evidence, that the throat wound was a fragment wound. This shows he was prone to speculation.

In light of the fact many conspiracy theorists cite McClelland as the most reliable of the Parkland witnesses, McClelland's next statements are even more intriguing. McClelland was the prime source for the 12-18-63 article by Richard Dudman published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in which the Secret Service's visit to the Parkland doctors, and its attempt to get them to agree Kennedy's throat wound was an exit, was first revealed. And yet McClelland told Dudman that after being told of the wound on Kennedy's back "he and Dr. Perry fully accept the Navy Hospital’s explanation of the course of the bullets." And yet he told Dudman "I am fully satisfied that the two bullets that hit him were from behind." And yet he told Dudman "As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front." Repeat...NO reason to suspect any shots came from the front... That's right...in the very article most conspiracy theorists believe first exposed the government's cover-up of Kennedy's wounds, Dr. McClelland, the man they consider the most credible of the Parkland witnesses, spelled out--and made CRYSTAL CLEAR--that he did not think the large head wound he observed was an exit wound on the far back of the head.

This is confirmed yet again by the first article on the wounds published in a medical journal. Three Patients at Parkland, published in the January 1964 Texas State Journal of Medicine, was based upon the Parkland doctors' 11-22 reports, and repeated their descriptions of Kennedy's wounds and treatment word for word. Well, almost. In one of its few deviations, it changed Dr. McClelland's initial claim Kennedy was pronounced dead "at 12:55" to his being "pronounced dead at 1:00." This was an obvious correction of an innocent mistake. In what one can only assume was another correction of an innocent mistake, moreover, it re-routed Dr. McClelland's initial claim "The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple" to the more acceptable "The cause of death, according to Dr. McClelland was the massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the right side of the head." Right side of the head. Not back of the head. While some might wish to believe the writer and/or editor of this article took it upon himself to make this change without consulting Dr. McClelland, and that he'd changed it to fit the "official" story, the fact of the matter is there was NO official story on the head wounds at this point, beyond the descriptions of the wound in the reports of McClelland's colleagues published elsewhere in the article. And these, in sum, described a wound on the back of the head. It seems likely, then, that McClelland himself was responsible for this change.

In any event, on March 21, 1964, Dr. McClelland testified before the Warren Commission. In contrast to his earlier statements, he now claimed: “As I took the position at the head of the table that l have already described, to help out with the tracheotomy, I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered ... the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.” 

Note that McClelland specifies both that he was at the head of the table helping out with the tracheotomy when he examined Kennedy's head wound, and that this put him in position to closely examine the wound. Here is Figure PR10.1, "Position for Tracheotomy", from the textbook Emergency Medicine (edited by Harold May, 1984):

 

Note that in order to expose the neck the head is tilted sharply backwards in the tracheotomy position. So how in the heck could McClelland 1) closely examine a wound low on the back of Kennedy's head while Kennedy was in such a position and he (McClelland) was standing at the head of the table? and 2) claim his standing at the head of the table put him in "such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound"?

McClelland's words only make sense if the wound he was observing was on the front half of Kennedy's head. It seems likely then that McClelland, as Clark, was confused by the rotation of Kennedy’s head. 

And it seems just as likely McClelland is not the man many if not most conspiracy theorists assume him to be. Notes on a 12-1-71 interview of McClelland by researcher Harold Weisberg reveal that McClelland "volunteered at some length about Garrison's men, describing Garrison as a psychopath, and seemed proud that he had talked them out of calling him as a witness...McC was quite bitter about Garrison and Lane, but he was without complaint about Specter and the Warren Commission..."

So there it is. Dr. Robert McClelland--whom many conspiracy theorists believe an unshakeable truth-teller--was a supporter of the Warren Commission's for years and years after the assassination--to such an extent even that he refused to cooperate with Jim Garrison's attempts to re-open the case. Well, is it any wonder then that McClelland, while continuing to insist he saw a wound on the back of Kennedy's head, repeatedly defended the legitimacy of the autopsy photos? And that he told the producers of the television show Nova in 1988 that "I find no discrepancy between the wounds as they're shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly?"

And is it any wonder then that in both his Nova appearance and ARRB testimony McClelland ventured that the back of the head photo depicts sagging scalp pulled over a large occipito-parietal wound? Now this is strange indeed. Scalp overlying explosive wounds to the skull does not stretch and sag, it tears. No such tears were noted on the back of Kennedy's head at autopsy, and none are shown in the autopsy photos whose legitimacy McClelland defends. 

And it's not as if NOVA was the end of McClelland's strange ride...in which he defended the authenticity of the autopsy photos, while describing wounds at odds with the autopsy photos. A May 19, 1992 Newsday article by Steve Wick for which Dr. Humes was interviewed--and in which Humes claimed there was no conspiracy and all the shots came from the rear--also featured some quotes from McClelland, in which he similarly argued those claiming there was an exit wound on the back of Kennedy's head were mistaken. McClelland told Newsday: "I saw the wound more closely than anybody...There was a massive wound on the back rear portion of his head. There's no way you can tell, based on a wound that size, which way he was shot."

I mean, McClelland is as erratic as can be. Where he once assured journalists suspecting shots came from the front that "there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front," and where he later told researchers he'd created a drawing in which an exit wound behind Kennedy's right ear was depicted, he now tells crowds --such at that at the 2013 Wecht conference--that 1) "the whole right side of his skull was gone;" 2) the appearance of this wound--and not its location--suggested it was an exit wound; 3) it was Kennedy's response to this shot in the Zapruder film that convinced him the shot came from the front...and 4) he'd never been pressured into lying about Kennedy's wounds! The man's recollections are just not reliable.

And are instead ever-changing. On November 18, 2013, McClelland was interviewed by CBS11 in Dallas. There, according to the station's article on the interview, he repeated one of his latest claims--that shortly after his arrival in Trauma Room One, he said "'My God, have you seen the back of his head?’ And they said, ‘No, we came in just ahead of you.’ And I said, ‘Well, the whole back of his head is missing on the right side...Well, when I saw that injury to the back of his head, it became apparent to all of us, all three of us who were gathered around the President’s head working on him, that this was a fatal injury.”  So what's wrong with that, you might ask? Well, the first day reports suggest there was relatively little bleeding from the throat wound. So where did Dr.s Perry, Baxter and Carrico--the primary respondents prior to McClelland's arrival--supposedly think the blood and brain matter covering Kennedy's hair, the cart, and the floor had come from? It seems clear they'd noticed the head wound, and, sure enough, the reports of all three doctors indicate that they'd taken a look at the head wound upon their arrival on the scene. So, here, once again, McClelland appears to be embellishing his story in order to elevate the importance of his personal observations.

 

Pat,

I am not interested in reading your hit piece on Dr. McClelland. Given that his testimony shatters your interpretation of the large head wound, I can understand your desire to discredit him as much as possible. But I am satisfied with the truth of his testimony because it is corroborated by the early testimonies of 20 of the 21 Parkland witnesses to the wounds. (Only Dr. Giesecke's testimony differs... he said the wound was on the left side.)

(Source: Dr. Aguilar's List)

McClelland always insisted that there was a large hole on the back of the head and that he saw cerebellar tissue oozing from it. He said, “That’s where there was a massive hole in the back of his head. I looked at that hole from 18 inches for about 12 minutes.”

Here he is again in 2013 saying the same thing. Go to 6:00:
 

 

 

[Pat Speer]

You're too much, Sandy.

If relating what people have said in the past qualifies my writing as a "hit piece", then I'm proud to be a hit man.

But please please stop with your alternative facts.

Here's what you keep repeating.

"McClelland always insisted that there was a large hole on the back of the head and that he saw cerebellar tissue oozing from it."

Here's McClelland's original description of the only head wound he observed on 11-22-63.

"The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple."

"The left temple" is not "on the back of the head", Sandy.

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Pat Speer

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

You're too much, Sandy.

If relating what people have said in the past qualifies my writing as a "hit piece", then I'm proud to be a hit man.

But please please stop with your alternative facts.

Here's what you keep repeating.

"McClelland always insisted that there was a large hole on the back of the head and that he saw cerebellar tissue oozing from it."

Here's McClelland's original description of the only head wound he observed on 11-22-63.

"The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple."

"The left temple" is not "on the back of the head", Sandy.

 

 

Pat,

As much as you may wish it to be the case, McClelland was not describing the "one and only wound he observed" when he said the cause of death was a "gunshot wound of the left temple." Do your honestly believe that Dr. McClelland was so stupid as to confuse a large blowout wound on the right-rear of the head with a wound to the left temple? I'm afraid that your bias regarding the large head wound is of such a magnitude that it prevents you from considering far more likely explanations than what you have chosen to support your view.

McClelland considered the large wound in the rear of JFK's head to be an exit wound. I think it's likely that he assumed from that that the corresponding entrance wound must therefore have been on the opposite side of the head, which would have been around the left temple. Another possibility is that he saw what some thought was a wound in the right temple area, assumed that to be the entrance wound, but then misspoke when he reported it being on the left side.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

23 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 The only thing necessary is that the witness should have seen the scene which is depicted in the photograph, and so is in a position to testify that it is an accurate reproduction of what he saw."

16 witnesses to the low back wound.

1) Dr. Admiral George Burkley, JFK's personal physician observed the body at Parkland and Bethesda, wrote on the Death Certificate that the back wound was "about the level of the third thoracic vertebra."

2) The autopsy face sheet diagram prepared by Dr. J. Thornton Boswell shows a wound location consistent with the holes in the clothes (4 inches below the bottom of the collars).

The diagram was filled out in pencil and signed off as "verified," also in pencil, also in accordance to proper autopsy protocol. The "14cm from the mastoid" notation was made in pen, which is a violation of proper autopsy protocol. Boswell signed off on three different "posterior" wound locations.

3) Dr. John Ebersole attended the autopsy and told David Mantik in a 1992 interview that the back wound was at T4. (Harrison Livingstone's KILLING THE TRUTH pg 721)

4) James Curtis Jenkins was a lab tech at the autopsy and made this statement t oDavid Lifton:

 (quote on)

I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the probe...through the pleura [the lining of the chest cavity]...You could actually see where it was making an indentation...where it was pushing the skin up...There was no entry into the chest cavity...it would have been no way that that could have exited in the front because it was then low in the chest cavity...somewhere around the junction of the descending aorta [the main artery carrying blood from the heart] or the bronchus in the lungs.

(quote off)

5) Chester H. Boyers was the chief Petty Officer in charge of the Pathology Department atBethesda November 1963. This is from Boyers signed affidavit:

 (quote on)

Another wound was located near the right shoulder blade, more specifically just under the scapula and next to it.

(quote off)

The location just below the upper margin of the scapula is consistent with T3:

6) SSA Will Greer in his WC testimony (Vol 2 pg 127) placed the back wound “in the soft part of that shoulder,” consistent with the testimony of Boyers.

7) SSA Roy Kellerman testified before the WC (Vol. 2 pg 93) that the wound in the backwas “the hole that was in his shoulder.” Kellerman expanded on this for the HSCA witha diagram which placed the back wound in the vicinity of T-3.

8) FBI SA Francis O'Neill said that the first location for the back wound that Humes gave was "below the shoulder." Here's O'Neill's HSCA wound diagram:

http://www.jfklancer.../md/oneill1.gif

9) FBI SA James Sibert also diagrammed a lower back wound:

http://www.jfklancer.../md/sibert1.gif

10) Autopsy photographer Floyd Reibe stated that the back wound was a lower marking on the Fox 5 autopsy photo (Harrison Livingstone's Killing the Truth, pg 721).

11) Parkland nurse Diana Bowron stated the same thing to Livingstone: the back wound was lower than the "official" wound in the autopsy photo (KTT, pg 183).

12) Bethesda lab assistant Jan Gail Rudnicki told Livingstone that he saw "what appeared tobe an entry wound several inches down on the back." (Livingstone's High Treason 2, pg  206). This consistent with T3.

13) Bethesda x-ray tech Edward Reed reported seeing a back wound "right between the scapula and the thoracic column," although he thought it was an exit (KTT, pg 720). This location is also consistent with T3.

14) Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett wrote in a note the afternoon of 11/22/63:

(quote on)

I saw a shot hit the Boss about four inches down from the right shoulder.

(quote off)

4 inches below the right shoulder. Fact: the bullet hole in JFK's shirt is 4" below the bottom of the collar. Glen Bennett nailed the back wound.

15) Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, tasked with bearing witness to the location of JFK's wounds, testified before the Warren Commission:

(quote on)

...I saw an opening in the back, about 6 inches below the neckline to the right-hand side of the spinal column.

(quote off)

6 inches below the neckline. Fact: the bullet hole in JFK's shirt is 5 & 3/4" below the top of the collar. Clint Hill nailed the back wound.

16) In his notes mortician Tom Robinson wrote: "And wound 5-6 inches below the shoulder" .

Edited December 4, 2017 by Cliff Varnell

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Pat,

As much as you may wish it to be the case, McClelland was not describing the "one and only wound he observed" when he said the cause of death was a "gunshot wound of the left temple." Do your honestly believe that Dr. McClelland was so stupid as to confuse a large blowout wound on the right-rear of the head with a wound to the left temple? I'm afraid that your bias regarding the large head wound is of such a magnitude that it prevents you from considering far more likely explanations than what you have chosen to support your view.

McClelland considered the large wound in the rear of JFK's head to be an exit wound. I think it's likely that he assumed from that that the corresponding entrance wound must therefore have been on the opposite side of the head, which would have been around the left temple. Another possibility is that he saw what some thought was a wound in the right temple area, assumed that to be the entrance wound, but then misspoke when he reported it being on the left side.

 

It's you who's showing his bias, Sandy.

I believed "the Parkland witnesses ALL said it was a blow-out wound on the back of the head" myth until I took a closer look at the evidence, and realized it was a bunch of nonsense spun by people with an agenda.

As far as McClelland, you really need to go back and read everything he's ever said, including what I posted earlier.

To begun with,  the Parkland doctors did not assume the large head wound was an exit for a bullet entering elsewhere on the head. They thought it was either an exit wound for the bullet entering the throat,  or a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. This then puts McClelland's "left temple" comment in its proper context. As no remotely competent doctor would describe a wound neither he nor anyone else in the room saw, but fail to mention the wound he would later claim he'd studied in detail, it's clear to those without a bias that McClelland at one point thought the large head wound he'd noted was by the left temple.

Edited December 4, 2017 by Pat Speer