"took it out of the body bag." - Richard Lipsey, JFK Honor Guard

[Ron Bulman]

This is just the start of where the medical evidence gets murky.  One reason I don't trust much of it past the statements  of Dr's. and Nurses at Parkland from that afternoon, before SS agent Elmer Moore visited a few day's later.  Think about it.  If Oswald was set up possibly months in advance (New Orleans, Mexico City), whoever did that knew in advance they had to make it look like he was the only shooter or Boom, Conspiracy.  This would have included removal of any evidence to the contrary, including too many bullets or fragments and any from the wrong direction.

Yes, a body bag would have come from the military, if it was a Government shipping casket it would too.  But the CIA and Army Intelligence worked hand in hand often (see Prouty, Lansdale).  I've read an unsupported Theory that maybe the reason the SS insisted on no local autopsy and removed the casket from Parkland by force, at gunpoint is that it was already empty.  I have no idea if transferring the body from the ornate local casket was possible time wise.  But whoever set up Oswald would have known they had to have control of the body in a private setting at some point for at least several minutes to remove any evidence of a conspiracy.  I've also read as part of this "theory"  that there was a back entrance to the emergency room/hospital involving a elevator trip down a floor, down a hallway to a back dock (where they normally took out bodies of those deceased instead of past incoming patients at the ER entrance?).  Never been there, no evidence, but it doesn't sound totally illogical.

Then we get to Washington.  While they lowered the empty ornate casket to the waiting hearse before the cameras, JFK was rushed out the other side into a helicopter, taken to Walter Reed Army Hospital for pre autopsy surgery then taken to Bethesda.  No, he went straight to the Bethesda back parking lot and in for Humes to do pre autopsy surgery, afterwards LeMay and others were allowed in to observe, comment and smoke, cigars, if desired...  It gets kind of murky from here...

But the brain stem was already severed, it practically fell out...

The x-ray's resemble a Rorschach test.

Why does the death stare photo exist?  His eyes were closed according to the Priest who gave him Last Rites (Thanks Ray).  Who opened them and why is his throat butchered from a small entrance wound and small incision to open it slightly to inset a small tube?

Edited August 10, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[Joe Bauer]

On 8/8/2018 at 2:31 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Ron, if our agencies and military could quickly think up and implement a stealthy false casket transport scheme where the casket in the ambulance at Andrews air base with Jackie didn't contain JFK, and instead a plain casket that was flown to Bethesda in a helicopter did, then this reality fact could give some credibility to the scenario of switching caskets before the heavy ornate one was driven to and lifted upon Air Force 1.

Also, I have a curious thought regards Richard Lipsey's recollections about JFK's body being taken to a ( morgue? ) after the autopsy to be worked on by embalmers whose job it was to make JFK's face and head something better in appearance than gore.

Lipsey stated the embalmers did an amazing job in doing this.

Could one of these embalmers have been the notorious "John Liggitt?"

Known as one of the most talented reconstructionist in the business?

Liggitt's wife at the time ( Lois) said that Liggitt was called away soon after JFK was killed and told his wife he couldn't talk about what he was doing ( except that it was extremely important ) and that he would come home when he could.

Lois then stated that her husband John didn't return home until 24 hours later, tired, disheveled and agitated. When he arrived he told Lois she and her kids and he had to get out of town right away "until things die down."

Perhaps embalmer John Liggett was put aboard Air Force 1 and went with JFK's body to Washington D.C.? Where he was part of the team that late that night through the next morning was tasked with the job of making JFK look somewhat presentable in the area of reconstruction?

It would be so easy for Liggitt to have then be flown back to Dallas via a military plane. His being kept up all those hours and saddled with such a traumatic Earth shaking task...could explain everything his wife Lois described upon seeing John Liggitt when he returned home. ???

Quote

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2018 by Joe Bauer

[Micah Mileto]

On 8/9/2018 at 7:38 PM, Joe Bauer said:

A few things in Lipsey's HSCA testimony and TED TALK statements that gave me pause. Some minor. Some not.

In the TED TALK interview he exaggerated the distance he was seated from the autopsy table. He told the host he was no more than 2 feet extra distance away from the body than the distance between himself and the TT interviewer and that looked to be about 3 feet. That's 5 to 6 feet away from the autopsy table?

In Lipsey's HSCA testimnoy he told them he was 12 to 15 feet away. That's a lot of extra room and would definitely affect his recollections of what he saw and heard versus just 6 feet away.

He also mentioned his fear when landing in the Army helicopter behind Bethesda that one slight mistake and the helicopters rotator blades could cut off the heads of many in the crowd of 4,000 there. 4,000?

He also said to the HSCA that he didn't know how many people came in to the autopsy room when he first sat down.

He also was seated on the left side of JFK's body which blocked any view of the much more right side head damage to JFK's body.

He mentions Sam Bird having one of his men go and get them hamburgers which they then ate during the autopsy while seated there.

 Really?  No one came to tell them that this baseball game munch down might be a little inappropriate in that situation?

How many times did Lipsey mention "3 shots" in the HSCA interview? In the Ted Talk interview he never mentions 3 shots.

His HSCA testimony tone seemed weirdly flippant to me. Inter-spiced with a few added unimportant personal feeling comments that I guess he thought was funny.

 

There's more. Will add soon.

 

I think there was another witness who reported remembering some people eating in the autopsy viewing. The whole post-mortem lasted 8 hours, that part doesn't seem implausible.

[Joe Bauer]

On 8/8/2018 at 2:31 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

"I've read Lipsey's HSCA testimony and most of it consistent with testimony from others."

Sandy, I sure disagree.

How many others who were present at the autopsy have given detailed accounts of this besides the pathology doctors and Paul O'Conner?

That's not a lot of separate accounts.

Paul O'Conner was right next to JFK's body the whole autopsy.

O'Conner's up close eye-witness recollections have more weight to me than Lipsey who was 12 to 15 feet away and on the left side of the body which blocked his view of the right side head wounds. Plus include the fact that O'Conner had been involved with many autopsies and knew the terminology.

Lipsey had never seen an autopsy before let alone a dead body!

Lipsey also seemed to exaggerate at times. Not hugely, but telling the TED TALK interviewer that he was just a couple of feet farther away from the autopsy table than the three feet he was from the interviewer. ( 5 - 6 feet away? )

In his HSCA testimony he said this distance was "12 to 15 feet" away.

That's a significant difference regards seeing the autopsy close up and maybe overhearing the doctor's discussion during this.

Lipsey talked about fearfully pondering the helicopter he rode in to Bethesda making just a slight landing maneuver mistake and potentially chopping the heads off of many in the crowd of ... "4,000 people?"

4,000 people gathered on the lawn area behind Bethesda...at night?

Lipsey said the only people he saw close to JFK's body during the autopsy had doctor's gowns on. Then he later hedged and said maybe someone not in a gown might have been in this close up position. Maybe even a man in uniform.

Lipsey said he didn't know how many people entered the autopsy room when he entered? Yet he says repeatedly in the Ted Talk interview it was never crowded.

Lipsey says his military companion (1st Lieutenant Sam Bird )  had one of his men go get hamburgers which they then ate in the autopsy room while watching the autopsy. Really?

Yes, it was late and Lipsey hadn't eaten since that morning, but it just seems perversely incongruous to picture these two military men just 12 to 15 feet away from the dead body of the President of the United States being cut up and gutted, eating a hamburger...as if they were at a ball game.

No one even approached them about the disrespectful inappropriateness of this? And wouldn't most people choose to take a brief break outside the autopsy room to eat, especially if the smell of chemicals was present?

And there seemed to me to be a flippancy in Lipsey's HSCA testimony presentation.  Somewhat out of place with the seriousness of the investigation proceedings.

Lipsey just doesn't feel right to me. Specifically his qualifications and sureness in proclaiming Oswald as the lone killer of JFK.

Bethesda stationed Navy corpsman and autopsy assistant Paul O'Conner was right next to JFK's body during the autopsy. His sworn testimony in the "Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald" is so contradictory of Lipsey's description of the scene in that room that evening that one is forced by common sense and logic to accept the fact that either Lipsey or O'Conner was lying or highly exaggerating in their personal eye witness accounts of this event.

I choose to believe Navy Corpsman Paul O'Conner's straight forward and less subjective version of the JFK autopsy event over Lipsey's much more personal anecdotal side-story one and for the reasons I have stated above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[B. A. Copeland]

"Now wait....isn't it documented that JFK's body left Parkland in 

On 8/8/2018 at 2:31 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

I've read Lipsey's HSCA testimony and most of it consistent with testimony from others. For example, he spoke of the doctors hypothesizing a bullet path where it enters the EOP and exits the throat. Humes et. al. testified for the HSCA and elsewhere that the bullet penetrated the scalp at the EOP site, and then tunneled along the skull between the skull and the skin. At that point of the HSCA testimony one of the docs cautioned that what they were talking about shouldn't be on the record, and the tape recorder was shut off. But what they said is consistent with what Lipsey said. They apparently thought that the bullet penetrated the scalp near the EOP,  skidded down along the skull, traveled through the neck, and exited the throat.

If I remember correctly, Lipsey testified that the doctors were adamant about that being the path the bullet followed. I've wondered if Humes reported that in his first autopsy report... the one he burned.

 

Sandy have you ever read Twyman's book Bloody Treason? I found it very interesting when I first read it where he mentions that there was certainly another corpse in the autopsy room that night, that of an USAF officer(?) This was specifically mentioned on pg. 207 (254 on the .pdf):

Quote

O'Connor said that a strange thing had occurred on the night of the autopsy: he was told that the body of an Air Force major had been delivered to the anteroom in a coffin. O'Connor said that during the autopsy he was able to see, through the door, part of the coffin placed there. O'Connor said it was peculiar that an Air Force major's body would be delivered to Bethesda because they normally handled only Navy personnel. He had never recalled Army or Air Force personnel being sent to Bethesda. He had never recalled Army or Air Force personnel being sent to Bethesda. I suggested to O'Connor the possibility that when the bronze coffin was first brought in to the morgue, it was brought in to the anteroom empty Then, the Air Force major's body was placed in the coffin and it was then taken back out to the Navy ambulance where it was returned to the front of the hospital. It was at this point where the ambulance was joined with the casket team and the ambulance was then driven to the rear of the morgue where the bronze casket (with the Air Force major's body in it) was removed from the ambulance, then taken into the anteroom of the morgue, and opened for viewing. The coffin was then closed and later removed from the anteroom with the Air Force major's body in it. I asked O'Connor if it seemed possible that something like this could have happened from his vantage point during the autopsy He said, yes, it was possible.

(Bold) emphasis mine, posted with the rest of the paragraph that I found relevant.

Edited August 13, 2018 by B. A. Copeland

[Sandy Larsen]

On 8/9/2018 at 9:41 PM, Joe Bauer said:

On 8/8/2018 at 3:31 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Ron, if our agencies and military could quickly think up and implement a stealthy false casket transport scheme where the casket in the ambulance at Andrews air base with Jackie didn't contain JFK, and instead a plain casket that was flown to Bethesda in a helicopter did, then this reality fact could give some credibility to the scenario of switching caskets before the heavy ornate one was driven to and lifted upon Air Force 1.

Also, I have a curious thought regards Richard Lipsey's recollections about JFK's body being taken to a ( morgue? ) after the autopsy to be worked on by embalmers whose job it was to make JFK's face and head something better in appearance than gore.

Lipsey stated the embalmers did an amazing job in doing this.

Could one of these embalmers have been the notorious "John Liggitt?"

Known as one of the most talented reconstructionist in the business?

Liggitt's wife at the time ( Lois) said that Liggitt was called away soon after JFK was killed and told his wife he couldn't talk about what he was doing ( except that it was extremely important ) and that he would come home when he could.

Lois then stated that her husband John didn't return home until 24 hours later, tired, disheveled and agitated. When he arrived he told Lois she and her kids and he had to get out of town right away "until things die down."

Perhaps embalmer John Liggett was put aboard Air Force 1 and went with JFK's body to Washington D.C.? Where he was part of the team that late that night through the next morning was tasked with the job of making JFK look somewhat presentable in the area of reconstruction?

It would be so easy for Liggitt to have then be flown back to Dallas via a military plane. His being kept up all those hours and saddled with such a traumatic Earth shaking task...could explain everything his wife Lois described upon seeing John Liggitt when he returned home. ???

I just want to say that I did not write the quotation above that is attributed to me.

 

[Joe Bauer]

Sorry Sandy. I must have cleared out your post content and not cleared your name above when I did.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 8/12/2018 at 9:45 AM, Joe Bauer said:

On 8/8/2018 at 3:31 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

"I've read Lipsey's HSCA testimony and most of it consistent with testimony from others."

Sandy, I sure disagree.

How many others who were present at the autopsy have given detailed accounts of this besides the pathology doctors and Paul O'Conner?

That's not a lot of separate accounts.

Paul O'Conner was right next to JFK's body the whole autopsy.

O'Conner's up close eye-witness recollections have more weight to me than Lipsey who was 12 to 15 feet away and on the left side of the body which blocked his view of the right side head wounds. Plus include the fact that O'Conner had been involved with many autopsies and knew the terminology.

Lipsey had never seen an autopsy before let alone a dead body!

Lipsey also seemed to exaggerate at times. Not hugely, but telling the TED TALK interviewer that he was just a couple of feet farther away from the autopsy table than the three feet he was from the interviewer. ( 5 - 6 feet away? )

In his HSCA testimony he said this distance was "12 to 15 feet" away.

That's a significant difference regards seeing the autopsy close up and maybe overhearing the doctor's discussion during this.

Lipsey talked about fearfully pondering the helicopter he rode in to Bethesda making just a slight landing maneuver mistake and potentially chopping the heads off of many in the crowd of ... "4,000 people?"

4,000 people gathered on the lawn area behind Bethesda...at night?

Lipsey said the only people he saw close to JFK's body during the autopsy had doctor's gowns on. Then he later hedged and said maybe someone not in a gown might have been in this close up position. Maybe even a man in uniform.

Lipsey said he didn't know how many people entered the autopsy room when he entered? Yet he says repeatedly in the Ted Talk interview it was never crowded.

Lipsey says his military companion (1st Lieutenant Sam Bird )  had one of his men go get hamburgers which they then ate in the autopsy room while watching the autopsy. Really?

Yes, it was late and Lipsey hadn't eaten since that morning, but it just seems perversely incongruous to picture these two military men just 12 to 15 feet away from the dead body of the President of the United States being cut up and gutted, eating a hamburger...as if they were at a ball game.

No one even approached them about the disrespectful inappropriateness of this? And wouldn't most people choose to take a brief break outside the autopsy room to eat, especially if the smell of chemicals was present?

And there seemed to me to be a flippancy in Lipsey's HSCA testimony presentation.  Somewhat out of place with the seriousness of the investigation proceedings.

Lipsey just doesn't feel right to me. Specifically his qualifications and sureness in proclaiming Oswald as the lone killer of JFK.

Bethesda stationed Navy corpsman and autopsy assistant Paul O'Conner was right next to JFK's body during the autopsy. His sworn testimony in the "Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald" is so contradictory of Lipsey's description of the scene in that room that evening that one is forced by common sense and logic to accept the fact that either Lipsey or O'Conner was lying or highly exaggerating in their personal eye witness accounts of this event.

I choose to believe Navy Corpsman Paul O'Conner's straight forward and less subjective version of the JFK autopsy event over Lipsey's much more personal anecdotal side-story one and for the reasons I have stated above.

 

Joe,

I didn't watch the TED TALK interview. I only read Lipsey's HSCA testimony. It didn't sound flippant to me.

It sounds like Lipsey resorted to exaggeration in his interviews which came much later. I don't put much weight in late testimony (unless I can test it) because of human failings like that.

I said that I found Lipsey's HSCA testimony to be consistent with the testimony of others. I guess I should have qualified that with my and David Lifton's hypothesis that different people saw different things because they were ushered into and out of the autopsy at different times. For example, one witness said that there was no brain, and that could be because he was admitted to the autopsy after the brain had "fallen out." (The brain stem had already been cut.)

I find it odd that you disagreed with my statement, which reads as follows: "I've read Lipsey's HSCA testimony and most of it is consistent with testimony from others." I gave an example of his testimony being consistent with the autopsists' HSCA testimony describing the EOP site bullet tunneling down between the scalp and skull and exiting the throat. (Though Lipsey went into much less detail.) I haven't seen any other autopsy witness noting that beside Lipsey.

Note that I never said that Lipsey's testimony was superior to that of Paul O'Connor's or anybody else's. So there is no basis for you to disagree with what I said on that count.

But I would appreciate it if you could point out some of the discrepancies between O'Connor's account and Lipsey's. Not from O'Connor's book, but rather from his HSCA testimony... assuming he did testify. Or from what he told researchers in the 1970s, like David Lifton.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

24 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Sorry Sandy. I must have cleared out your post content and not cleared your name above when I did.

 

No problem. It's just that I got a bit worried when I couldn't recall writing it. 

 

[Guest]

For those who may not know, Lipsey is one of the richest and most influential men in the state of Louisiana, the owner of one of the largest wholesale firearms distributors in the country (among other things), a former member of the Louisiana Board of Regents (chairman 2016-2018), and a controversial figure for his criticism of the LSU administration for lowering admissions standards.  The following is from the Board of Regents website, https://regents.la.gov/about/the-louisiana-board-of-regents/board-members/richard-a-lipsey-from-baton-rouge/.  This describes the controversy:  https://www.lsureveille.com/daily/opinion-former-board-of-regents-chairman-richard-lipsey-s-rants/article_1aec1d28-4f1a-11e9-8f86-03bd1cf27862.html.

Richard A. Lipsey is the owner, with his family, of Lipsey’s, one of the nation’s largest sporting goods distributors; HASPEL, a major line of men’s tailored clothing; and the founder and partner in Lipsey Communications, LLC, a chain of Sprint wireless phone stores that stretches from Arizona to North Carolina.

He is a graduate from University High School and LSU.  After two years service in the Army In Washington as an Aide to a General and working closely with President John F Kennedy, he returned to Baton Rouge and entered the family business, Steinberg Sports Centers.  He became President in 1966 and remained so until he sold the business in 1990.  In 1988 he graduated from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM).

Richard is currently a member of the Chief Executives Organization, the World Presidents Organization, the National Sports Shooting Foundation and the Pennington Medical Foundation and the Biomedical Foundation boards. Throughout the years, he has volunteered his time and served on many boards and chair capacities for companies and organizations and remains very active in various community and civic associations.

Among his numerous awards is the Outstanding Citizen of the Year (2000) &(2012) from the Boy Scouts of Baton Rouge; the 2004  and the 2015 “Man of the Year” from the Baton Rouge Chapter of Ducks Unlimited, Shot Business Magazine’s 2005 Man of the Year, and the 2005 National Conference of Christians and Jews annual Brotherhood Award. He was named the Baton Rouge Business Laureate in 2014 and Golden Deeds winner in 2013. He was also presented the Lifetime Achievement Award by both the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers and the National Shooting Sports Foundaton in 2015/2016. During the crisis that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, he organized rescue efforts in New Orleans and led a fund drive to assist families who had suffered total loss from Rita. For these efforts, he was awarded the Humanitarian Award (2006) by the Anti-Defamation League.

He resides in Baton Rouge with his wife, Susan Haspel Lipsey, and has two daughters and three grandchildren.

Mr. Lipsey represents the 6th Congressional District, has chaired the Board for two years and his term of service ends December 31, 2018.

Lipsey is, of course, an ardent supporter of the Lone Assassin explanation.  Except in the Conspiracy Game, where credentials such as Lipsey's are generally indicia of untrustworthiness, he would seem to be a model witness in terms of credibility.  From what I've read of his descriptions of the events up to and including the autopsy, his recollections seem quite confused - even as he admitted as early as 1978 in his HSCA interview.  They fit the well-documented pattern I've described regarding peoples' eyewitness recollections of sudden traumatic events.  Thus, I have little interest in all of the seeming inconsistencies and contradictions among autopsy witnesses and no desire to attempt to force-fit them into a single narrative (but this, of course, is the Conspiracy Game, where seeming inconsistencies and contradictions are the very stuff of which conspiracy theories are woven).

Nevertheless, Lipsey's explanation of the use of a decoy hearse during his HSCA interview makes sense to me:  "We met the body at Andrews Airforce Base. We had everything organized by that afternoon. We had Marines organized with their little Honor Guard. … Put it in a hearse. We had a decoy hearse because we knew there was a mob waiting at Bethesda Naval Hospital. So we got in a couple of these helicopters with our honor guard when they left and flew over to the hospital to get there before they did. And when they came in, one of the hearses went right up to the front door. All of the crowd, of course, rushed over there. The one with the body in it went around to the back where the morgue was and we unloaded it. We met them in the back and unloaded it right there to avoid the news media and the crowd and everything else."

Since here he is talking about a straightforward event in which he was personally involved, one would hope that his recollections are at least basically correct.  Since he is a Lone Assassin proponent, why would he have invented his decoy hearse and body bag story for the HSCA? (The decoy hearse was of course the one with the empty Dallas casket and Jackie in it - not, as some conspiracy authors suggest, the one that Lipsey says transported the body.  At least that's the only way his story makes sense and fits with what other witnesses reported about the hearse with the Dallas casket waiting at the front door while the body was delivered at the rear loading dock.)

The HSCA interviewers seem to me to have done an unfathomably poor job.  There was no follow-up at all about Lipsey's decoy hearse remark:  How did that work?  Who ordered the hearse that transported the body?  When was that decision made, and by whom?  Where did the transport hearse come from?  Was the body already out of the Dallas casket or did you see it taken out?  Was it already in the body bag?  When was the transport casket uploaded to the plane, if it was?  Where was the transport hearse parked?  When was the casket with the body offloaded to the transport hearse?  Who participated?  Why did no one report seeing any of this?  Why did no one else report any of this at the time of the WC investigation if it was a simple diversionary tactic and there was nothing nefarious about it? (I gather that at least Sibert and Rydberg have since also referred to a "decoy ambulance.")

In fact, I have been unable to find anyone posing questions such as the above to Lipsey.  Why is that, since he is very prominent and seems to have been entirely cooperative in speaking about his involvement even in recent years?  Wouldn't Enquiring Minds want to know?  Why didn't Best Evidence worshipper Doug Horne follow up when he was with the ARRB?  It appears that William Law had Lipsey at a gathering of Bethesda witnesses not too long ago, yet I have not seen any evidence that he asked these questions (feel free to correct me).  (Regarding Best Evidence, "Two years after Lipsey’s sworn statement, author David Lifton interviewed Lipsey for his 1981 book, Best Evidence. Lipsey asserts that Lifton distorted his testimony and took it out of context to fit conspiracy premises."  https://www.225batonrouge.com/article/a-witness-to-history  But, hey, who ya gonna believe - Mr. Career Conspiracy Capitalist or the ex-chairman of the Louisiana Board of Regents?  If the former, you then must believe Lipsey is such a buffoon that he revealed more to Conspiracy Guy Lifton than he had to the HSCA interviewers two years earlier.  OK, fine, that's Conspiracy Logic.)

Regarding the autopsy itself, it's impossible to believe that Lipsey was talking about some mysterious off-the-books "first autopsy" such as Lifton posits unless you think he was completely hallucinating:  "The autopsy lasted approx., if I'm not mistaken, approx. 3-4 hours. After that we stayed in the room. When the men from the funeral home came in, because, by this time when Gen Wehle had come back down, but he was in and out. He was still making a lot of arrangements, but he would come in occasionally for a couple of minutes to let me go out and take a little break. Then the men from the funeral home came in and we sat there while they more or less put him back together and made the cosmetic, made the different cosmetic changes that had to be made on the body."

Again, Lipsey's recollections of specifics may be garbled and confused, but it's difficult to believe he was off on the time factor by hours and about being there when the funeral home personnel prepared the body.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Guest