What bullet trajectory created the back-of-head blowout wound?

[Michael Walton]

22 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Maybe they hoped that by stitching the tracheotomy up they might be able to have that wound overlooked or explained away in some way.

There's nothing in the record that says the throat wound was stitched up.  David Von Pein recently posted here (I think or elsewhere) that the throat wound and trachea procedure looked "exactly like it did when he left the hospital" according to one of the doctors who was in there with the body.

That's a frontal shot right there and nothing was done about during the body alteration theory. The back wound terminated there - that's proof that more shots needed to have been fired to hit JBC.  That's conspiracy. So why didn't the body alteration team do something about it?

Have you ever seen plastic surgery videos? These things take hours to do. It goes against all reason and plausibility ...

33 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

They were tasked with covering up shots from the front as much as possible.

They did a very poor job of it.  But more reasonably, it never happened.

27 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

That's right Andrej... just forget about anything new that David Lifton may have discovered about this. Since Michael Walton has declared that Lifton's theory is wrong, and that everything is known about what took place in Parkland, there is no reason to wait and see what Lifton has to say.

Unfortunately for folks who want to believe that the case was a massive conspiracy with many side trips going on - body alterations and film faking and clones running around in each other's shadows - they simply cannot accept the fact of things being much simpler and plausible. The last thing this case needs is yet another crazy theory of Earl Rose(!) being in cahoots with the planners.

[Sandy Larsen]

45 minutes ago, Michael Walton said:

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Maybe they hoped that by stitching the tracheotomy up they might be able to have that wound overlooked or explained away in some way.

There's nothing in the record that says the throat wound was stitched up.

 

Au contraire,  here is what Dr. Ebersole told the HSCA:

"Upon removing the body from the coffin, the anterior aspect, the only things noticeable were a small irregular ecumonic area above the super ecolobular ridge and a neatly sutured transverse surgical wound across the low neck. As we turned the body on the autopsy table there was a textbook classical wound of entrance upper right back to the right of the midline three or four centimeters to the right of the midline just perhaps inside the medial board to the upper scapula."

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Michael Walton said:

Have you ever seen plastic surgery videos? These things take hours to do. It goes against all reason and plausibility ...

Have you heard of "meatball surgery?"

 

Edited December 18, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Michael Walton]

18 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

a neatly sutured transverse surgical wound across the low neck.

According to John McAdams, no other witness remembers this.  Further, the autopsy photo shows no such suture. Sounds like another misremembered piece of testimony.

[Michael Walton]

22 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Have you heard of "meatball surgery?"

No and thanks for mentioning it as I learned something new here. Still, the body alteration theory sounds really far fetched like a lot of other far fetched theories.  And now Lifton will bring yet another "revealing and amazing" theory into play with his "Rose in Dallas was part of the conspiracy" theory. Who are we then going to believe - the DC alteration team? Or the Dallas alteration team that tried to alter the body but was unable to because the Secret Service, with Jackie's support, wanted to get the body back to DC ASAP so they could, unknown to them (I guess) could have the body stolen onto a copter and whisked away for the DC alteration team to perform their meatball surgery?

Also, I want to remind you that you brought up the decoy ambulance above - in other words one was empty to mislead everyone while the real one had his body and it was taken in through the back so the body alterations could take place.

BUT - keep in mind that Lifton's  theory is the body was taken out of the plane, put into a helicopter and flown out for the body alteration.  So which was it? And if your reply was it was taken away in a copter, why didn't they just fly the body direct to BNH and carry it in the back?  This would seem more reasonable and plausible to me because if we got two ambulances driving around in each other's shadows practically, wouldn't that have been a highly risky maneuver?

It really is amazing how these professional murderers seemed to take a lot of risk in revealing their plot.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Michael Walton said:

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

a neatly sutured transverse surgical wound across the low neck.

According to John McAdams, no other witness remembers this.

How does McAdams know that? Were the other witnesses asked if they saw the sutures?

 

1 hour ago, Michael Walton said:

  Further, the autopsy photo shows no such suture.

 

Maybe the stitches were removed before the photo was taken.

 

[Pat Speer]

Re: the throat incision...

 

From patspeer.com, chapter 18d:

Those claiming the tracheostomy incision apparent on the photos too wide to have been the incision made by Dr. Perry miss that this was not a typical tracheostomy incision from the 1980's or afterward--that is, a vertical incision performed to establish an airway--but a 1960's-era horizontal incision through a bullet wound which could not only be used to establish an airway, but serve as a portal to view the extent of the wound...and through which vascular surgery could be conducted if necessary.

And, no, I'm not clutching at straws. While most recent manuals and websites describing tracheostomies describe a vertical incision, vertical incisions were not the norm in 1963. An Atlas of Head and Neck Surgery, by Dr. John M. Lore, Jr., a medical text from 1962, for example, instructs: "About one or two centimeters below the cricoid cartilage a horizontal incision is made from 4 to 6 cm in length." Well, heck, the incision on Kennedy's neck was reportedly 6.5 cm, only slightly wider than normal, and not the wide, gaping, act of mayhem claimed by all too many conspiracy theorists anxious to "debunk" the photos.

And that's not all. Lore then notes "The vertical skin incision has been completely abandoned." Completely abandoned!

So, yes, those claiming the photos showing the neck wound are fake (or indicative of pre-autopsy surgery in which a bullet was removed from the neck) are completely off-base, and serial spreaders of manure...

Not to mention total hypocrites... I mean, really. Dr. Robert McClelland, the Parkland witness most often quoted by those claiming the autopsy photos are fake has gone on the record numerous times regarding the neck wound, and has always said the neck wound in the photos reflects his recollection of the neck wound he helped create by pulling upwards with an Army/Navy retractor.

No, seriously. When commenting on the incision shown in Kennedy's autopsy photos for the PBS program Nova in 1988, McClelland said the incision was "exactly the same size and the same configuration" as the incision he saw in Dallas. And this wasn't just McClelland telling a news program what he thought it wanted to hear. After being shown the tracheostomy incision in the so-called stare of death photo, McClelland told a 1991 Conference put together by Harrison Livingstone "This is the incision. And that does look like the incision that I saw that day...It may be somewhat longer than usual but at that time it was not unusual at all (that) in haste of putting in a tracheostomy tube, for an incision to be that length." He's repeated this numerous times, moreover, and in numerous public appearances, including his appearance via Skype at the 2013 Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh.

So how can those claiming his recollections regarding the head wound are irrefutable, and not to be doubted, simply ignore his statements regarding the neck wound and tracheostomy incision, and defer instead to the recollections of others such as Dr. Charles Crenshaw, who were in the room but a few seconds...and who had nothing to do with the incision?

[Ray Mitcham]

18 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Re: the trach incision --- Here's something I pointed out in 2013....

"I loved the [Nov. 2013] Posner/Waldron radio debate [which can be heard here]. .... And here's a piece of advice for Gerald Posner --- The next time some conspiracy buff brings up the "gaping" nature of JFK's trach wound, show them the video on this webpage of Dr. Robert McClelland saying on PBS-TV in 1988 that the trach incision in the autopsy pictures looks "exactly the same size and the same configuration" as it was when he saw it at Parkland. Maybe that will make Waldron flinch a little bit. And even though I think Dr. McClelland is as kooky as a 9-dollar bill with regard to his comments concerning the location of JFK's large head wound, I certainly don't have any reason to think he's kooky about his comments regarding the trach wound -- and that's because I don't believe for a single second that anybody "altered" any of JFK's wounds between Parkland and Bethesda." -- DVP; November 2013

" Dr. Robert McClelland saying on PBS-TV in 1988 that the trach incision in the autopsy pictures looks "exactly the same size and the same configuration" as it was when he saw it at Parkland. "

Do you know of certain which autopsy photos the doctors shown, David? If not. You can't say that the wound was the same as shown in the photos we see. 

 

[Ray Mitcham]

Quote by {Pat Speer.

"

And, no, I'm not clutching at straws. While most recent manuals and websites describing tracheostomies describe a vertical incision, vertical incisions were not the norm in 1963. An Atlas of Head and Neck Surgery, by Dr. John M. Lore, Jr., a medical text from 1962, for example, instructs: "About one or two centimeters below the cricoid cartilage a horizontal incision is made from 4 to 6 cm in length." Well, heck, the incision on Kennedy's neck was reportedly 6.5 cm, only slightly wider than normal, and not the wide, gaping, act of mayhem claimed by all too many conspiracy theorists anxious to "debunk" the photos. "

 

It would appear that  you don't know the difference between length and width, Pat.

[Ray Mitcham]

For every doctor in Parkland to mistake this head wound for a wound in the occipital area the size of an orange, means one of two things. Either they were all blind and/or incompetent, or the damage seen was done after the body left Parkland.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Ray Mitcham

[Michael Walton]

5 hours ago, Ray Mitcham said:

It would appear that  you don't know the difference between length and width, Pat.

Ray, what's important to remember is Dr. McC was there touching and looking at the body. How could we NOT deny what he actually saw and felt with his own two eyes?

[Michael Walton]

5 hours ago, Ray Mitcham said:

Do you know of certain which autopsy photos the doctors shown, David? If not. You can't say that the wound was the same as shown in the photos we see. 

Ray, my own interpretation of the back of the head wound looks something like this but only after you peel back the scalp. And obviously that is what's happening below because you can clearly see the scalp reflected over to the left:

The photo you displayed above shows him with his head possibly covering up this wound and the scalp in the normal position, meaning you cannot see the open wound as in my photo above.

So it's not a matter of your photo being fake; it's a matter of the wound not being able to be clearly seen unless you pull back the scalp. As weird as that sounds, there is a difference between the two.

[Ray Mitcham]

3 hours ago, Michael Walton said:

Ray, what's important to remember is Dr. McC was there touching and looking at the body. How could we NOT deny what he actually saw and felt with his own two eyes?

It is important to know which autopsy photographs Dr Mc saw when he said he agree with them. Without knowing that, we can only go on what he has always said  that the hole in the back of the head was in the occipital region and the six of an orange. This is nothing like the damage shown to the top of the head.

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Ray Mitcham said:

It is important to know which autopsy photographs Dr Mc saw when he said he agree with them. Without knowing that, we can only go on what he has always said  that the hole in the back of the head was in the occipital region and the six of an orange. This is nothing like the damage shown to the top of the head.

He was shown the throat wound in the photos by both Nova in 1988 and Livingstone in 1991, plus God knows how many other times. And he always said that was the incision he saw in Dallas. He also said that's the way they did tracheostomies back then.

It is logically inconsistent to cite McClelland's recollections as "proof" the back of the head was blown out, but then totally reject his recollections of the throat incision, and say that wound was also altered. You can have one, but not the other.

As far as your assertion McC said the wound was in the occipital and the size of an orange, you must be confusing him with someone else. He originally said the wound was "of the left temple" and only changed it to being on the back of the head months later, after he'd learned of the accounts of the other doctors. While he has, at times, provided support for the so-called "McClelland drawing" (which he, in fact, did not draw, or help be drawn), he has, when pressed, acknowledged it is grossly inaccurate, and fails to show the front part of this wound on top of the head McClelland now remembers. (FWIW, he also supports the single-bullet theory.)

Here are some revealing quotes from McClelland.

"what we were trying to depict here was what the posterior part of the wound looked like. In other words, it's not the entire wound. It's simply the posterior part of it and what I thought of as the critical part of it at that time and still do."  McClelland to the ARRB, when discussing the so-called McClelland drawing.

"The whole right side of his skull was gone...(Kennedy) was initially hit from a bullet fired from the sixth floor that went through his back and out through his neck.The next injury was caused by somebody behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll firing a shot that blew out the right side of his head." McClelland via Skype to the 2013 Wecht Conference.

"Well, I think it's only that one picture. I discounted that picture because I thought someone was pulling the scalp over it, but someone told me they weren't, but it sure looked like they were. I think they were, so I was not mystified by saying it doesn't look like what I saw. The wounds that I saw when that flap is not covering them were just the kind of same wounds that I had seen in Trauma Room One. That picture where they are pulling the flap up was the only one out of several photos, which didn't jive with what I saw." McClelland as quoted by Jacob Carter in When History Dies (2015).

 

This is an important point...the only photo McClelland has expressed a problem with is the back of the head photo. He thinks that perhaps the scalp is being pulled up in that photo. While this may seem significant to those wanting to believe the photo is fake, it is also significant that McClelland has never expressed a problem with the right profile and top of the head photos, which show a wound in the same location as the back of the head photo. As shown here:

Edited December 18, 2017 by Pat Speer

[David Andrews]

On 12/14/2017 at 8:25 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I appreciate his posting it and the time he spent. And I did look for the things he pointed out. But I could see nothing (other than Black Dog Man, or whatever that thing is called).  Is it just me?

 

There have been other photos posted in past threads showing persons with apparent camera equipment in the west pavilion of that pergola.  The trouble is, if these people were there, they booked out of there very fast, and there's no photo showing them by the time of, say the photographs of the newsmen standing over the Newman family lying on the grass.  Zapruder and Sitzman didn't speak of anyone in the pavilion (not that that proves anything),.  When Charles Hester left his wife on the ground to look through the apertures at the back of the pergola, he may have been looking at someone fleeing the pavilion.  We'll never know.  But we ought to compare the useful photos.  It would have been nice had there been recorded witnesses behind the pergola.

Edited December 20, 2017 by David Andrews