JFK's body flew back in another plane?!

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48753#relPageId=17

 

Interesting piece. The author seems unaware the bronze casket was so heavy that the absence of a body would not have been noticed. 

[Joe Bauer]

4 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48753#relPageId=17

 

Interesting piece. The author seems unaware the bronze casket was so heavy that the absence of a body would not have been noticed. 

Totally agree. The coffin itself was enormously heavy.

I was a pall bearer once and had to help carry one of those super heavy coffins from it's wake service display table, out the building, down many steps and into the back of a waiting hearse.

We had about 6 big strong men carrying this and even then it was a real heavy load and you worried about losing it down those steps.

JFK himself weighed what? Maybe 185 lbs? That weight in a plain bare bones casket would have been a super easy lightweight carry for just 4 men.

JFK's body, if missing from that Bismark sized bronze behemoth, wouldn't have been noticed imo.

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Yes, various people assert the fancy bronze casket was never out of view, even for a moment, after JFK's body was put in.

And yet there seems to be multiple credible witnesses that JFK's body arrived at Bethesda in a steel-colored, government-issue ordinary casket. 

Lifton posits the body was switched while in flight. I have always wondered if AF1 carried a government-issued casket as part of regular supplies. After all, AF1 could be expected to cross the Pacific from time to time with a bunch of older men on board, and a death might occur. Having a casket on board might not be so strange. 

Still, JFK aides say they sat with the bronze casket through th flight. Something fishy happened.

I got to wondering where a "pink/grey" shipping casket may have come from. I mean, what does a hospital do when a person arrives DOA at a hospital, or dies during surgery, etc? Do hospitals keep a supply of caskets in storage or something?

Dr. Price, Parkland Hospital Administrator was asked this. In his Warren Commission Price Exhibit 33, page 111 he wrote this:

http://www.aarclibra...ice_Ex_2-35.pdf

“About this time a secret service man came to me and asked how we could move the president's body. He asked if we had a casket, a basket or anything that we could get to move the body immediately. I told him that we had nothing like that, but that we had several military installation nearby where we could get a casket, or we could get one from a local funeral director. He asked me to wait where I was, stating he would be back in just a minute,. I noticed that Steve had started out of the area with a secret service man and asked where he was going. He said to get a casket, and I told him to wait a minute as someone had just asked me about one and had asked that no further action be taken at that tine. Another man in the group who had been talking with Mrs. Kennedy and the other secret service agents near her came to me and asked that we get a casket of any kind from any place the quickest possible way. I then turned to Steve and relayed the request to him, and asked that he see what could be done about it.”

I don't know who this "other man in the group talking with Mrs. Kennedy" was. If you needed a "pinkish/grey" shipping casket similar to ones used to ship servicemen home from Vietnam, what better place to get one than from a military installation?

Is this how the casket was removed?

On page 110 of this Exhibit, Price wrote:

“While talking with Mrs. Nelson, one of the secret service men who had been bruised or had a minor injury came to me and asked if there were another way that the President and Mrs. Kennedy could be taken out of the building. I told him there was a tunnel exit and that if he would come with me, I would walk it off for him. I walked down to inspect the tunnel, then returned to the surgery area of the Emergency Room.”

(Does anyone know about a Secret Service man who had been bruised or had a minor injury?)

“While I was talking with him, (a Mr. Maher) another secret service man grabbed me by the arm and asked if I knew an alternate route the Johnson*s could use for an exit. I told him I had walked out an alternate route with another agent a few minutes ago and that if he would come with me, I would show him. We went to the Emergency Room elevator, one of the maintenance men was manually operating it and told him to take us to the basement....

I instructed the elevator operator to go to second (floor for an emergency delivery of blood),and then to take us on down to the basement. The secret service agent and I "ran" the alternate route, then when we got back to the Emergency Room area, he asked me to show him where the Johnsons were.”

While all the attention was on Air Force One, could the shipping casket have been placed on Air Force Two, or the C-130 military plane that took the limousine back to Washington? I would have to find the radio logs for Air Force Two or the cargo manifest for the C-130 to find out more.

Steve Thomas

[Pete Mellor]

15 hours ago, Jamey Flanagan said:

I know most of you will probably ridicule this, and I'm not saying that this is what I believe (I do find it an intriguing alternative to Lifton's theory from Best Evidence), but what if JFK'S body wasn't swapped from the bronze ceremonial casket to the shipping casket only to be swapped back to the ceremonial casket again? Confused yet? Well, most of you would consider it a stretch of the imagination at best, but Robert D. Morningstar has a very interesting theory. His theory is that Tippit, who bore somewhat of a resemblance to JFK, and was frequently teased by friends and fellow officers calling him Jack (as in Jack Kennedy), was used as a JFK body double. Sounds pretty crazy, right? But how many aspects of this case have seemed crazy at first glance? I have seen mafia men being interviewed and body swapping was quite common to them. Anyway, Morningstar did a half JFK half Tippit picture and all of the bone structures matched up for the most part. Tippit's eyebrows were a little bushier and would need plucking and thinning out. And Tippit's hairline was a little more receding, but the "JFK" morgue pics did have that weird looking thing going on with the hairline. Maybe that was the reason for the surgery to the head area that the Sibert & O'Neil report referred to. The scalp being refracted to hide the hairline. There was a website many years ago where he laid his theory out but not sure if you can still access it. He had comparison photos of the Tippit autopsy and the "JFK" Bethesda autopsy. In one the supposed body of JFK had a defect in his lower chest area near the bottom of the pic. Tippit had the same wound on him. If I recall correctly there was a mole on the ear of both men, or possibly the neck, that wasn't present in other pics of JFK. If nothing else I do believe those supposed JFK X-Rays that showed the orbital bone shattered above the right eye when JFK had no damage to the front of his face or that kind of damage around his orbital socket were of Tippit. He had a wound just like that. I know some people saw a right temple wound but that still wouldn't correlate to those X-Rays. And I think they could have used Tippit's brain as one of the brains that were weighed. I'm pretty sure I have lost all of you at this point, lol, but just suppose.........what if Tippit was the Bethesda autopsy body? And JFK stayed in the ceremonial casket. Tippit, after work done on him by Liggett to resemble JFK more closely, was placed in the shipping casket and was put on another plane that got to Washington BEFORE Air Force One carrying the body of JFK. Then you don't have all this casket swapping going on. Maybe this scenario is just too hard to believe. BUT, it could be an explanation for the dead secret service agent stories that were out there early on. As a cover story for why they were flying two caskets back to Washington instead of one. When no questions were asked they got away with it so to speak, the dead agent story is dismissed as just a rumor. Lol, just something to think about.

This theory has been around some time.  So whose body was Earl Rose performing an autopsy on at 3:15 at Parkland on the 22nd?

+ Autopsy photographs of J.D. certainly i.d. J.D. & do not resemble JFK in any way.

+ JFK didn't have 'Tippitt' tattooed on his left arm.

+ Tippitt had one gunshot wound by his right nipple, which is not visible on JFK's Bethesda photographs.

I'm sure of some magic tricks performed that day, but Morningstar's theory I can't buy. 

[Benjamin Cole]

17 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

I got to wondering where a "pink/grey" shipping casket may have come from. I mean, what does a hospital do when a person arrives DOA at a hospital, or dies during surgery, etc? Do hospitals keep a supply of caskets in storage or something?

Dr. Price, Parkland Hospital Administrator was asked this. In his Warren Commission Price Exhibit 33, page 111 he wrote this:

http://www.aarclibra...ice_Ex_2-35.pdf

“About this time a secret service man came to me and asked how we could move the president's body. He asked if we had a casket, a basket or anything that we could get to move the body immediately. I told him that we had nothing like that, but that we had several military installation nearby where we could get a casket, or we could get one from a local funeral director. He asked me to wait where I was, stating he would be back in just a minute,. I noticed that Steve had started out of the area with a secret service man and asked where he was going. He said to get a casket, and I told him to wait a minute as someone had just asked me about one and had asked that no further action be taken at that tine. Another man in the group who had been talking with Mrs. Kennedy and the other secret service agents near her came to me and asked that we get a casket of any kind from any place the quickest possible way. I then turned to Steve and relayed the request to him, and asked that he see what could be done about it.”

I don't know who this "other man in the group talking with Mrs. Kennedy" was. If you needed a "pinkish/grey" shipping casket similar to ones used to ship servicemen home from Vietnam, what better place to get one than from a military installation?

Is this how the casket was removed?

On page 110 of this Exhibit, Price wrote:

“While talking with Mrs. Nelson, one of the secret service men who had been bruised or had a minor injury came to me and asked if there were another way that the President and Mrs. Kennedy could be taken out of the building. I told him there was a tunnel exit and that if he would come with me, I would walk it off for him. I walked down to inspect the tunnel, then returned to the surgery area of the Emergency Room.”

(Does anyone know about a Secret Service man who had been bruised or had a minor injury?)

“While I was talking with him, (a Mr. Maher) another secret service man grabbed me by the arm and asked if I knew an alternate route the Johnson*s could use for an exit. I told him I had walked out an alternate route with another agent a few minutes ago and that if he would come with me, I would show him. We went to the Emergency Room elevator, one of the maintenance men was manually operating it and told him to take us to the basement....

I instructed the elevator operator to go to second (floor for an emergency delivery of blood),and then to take us on down to the basement. The secret service agent and I "ran" the alternate route, then when we got back to the Emergency Room area, he asked me to show him where the Johnsons were.”

While all the attention was on Air Force One, could the shipping casket have been placed on Air Force Two, or the C-130 military plane that took the limousine back to Washington? I would have to find the radio logs for Air Force Two or the cargo manifest for the C-130 to find out more.

Steve Thomas

Yes, it seems possible JFK's body could have been secreted out of Parkland through a tunnel exit. At that point, I suppose all that is needed is a body bag. 

Perhaps the body is placed onto AF2, which passed AF1 on the way back to DC. 

And then some work done on the body. 

Interestingly, Richard Lipsey (HCSA interview), said the autopsy doctors had concluded JFK had been struck by three bullets, all from above and behind, two shots to head and one to upper back. 

I suspect the shots and smoke from the Grassy Knoll area were a diversion. 

Of course, two shots to the head would have been simultaneous, given what we see on Zapruder film...Oswald had a single-shot bolt action rifle. 

I have to say, I am not a fan of conspiracy theories that have a lot of participants. But we have statements for the record from people at Bethesda that do not line up with the official record. 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

In his ARRB testimony Commander Humes described the casket in which JFK's body was brought into the morgue.

He stated it was a wooden casket with long metal handles. A fine casket.

He stated he and Dr. Boswell removed JFK's body from this, with a caveat that maybe some medical tech corpsman also may have assisted.

So, Humes testimony doesn't rule out and even suggests the possibility that Bethesda medical tech Paul O'Conner was the corpsman who helped lift JFK's body out of the casket. And/or maybe it was medical tech James Jenkins who helped lift JFK's body out of the delivered casket? O'Conner and Jenkins testified they both lifted the body.

Either way...who do you believe and why regarding the casket JFK's body was lifted out of in the preparation room?

Hume's fine wooden casket with long metal handles? Or, O'Conner's plain one?

It seems to me that if JFK's body was unloaded out of the back of an ambulance and onto a loading dock and carried into a distant room, that there must have been at least a dozen or more personnel present and needed for all this movement, especially if the casket was the huge, ornate 400+ pound bronze one?

Wasn't Dennis David directly involved in unloading the arriving casket?

With David and at least a dozen other casket moving helpers, you would have a good sized number of eyewitnesses who could verify the type of coffin imo.

Anyone ever try to trackdown more than one or two of these eyewitnesses?

 

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Micah Mileto]

The Death of a President (1967) has that mysterious passage about somebody inquiring about purchasing a new ceremonial coffin because the first coffin was "cheap and thin". The bronze casket was neither. Who knows, we might find the citation for that line once more of Manchester's files come out.

[Ron Bulman]

On 2/6/2021 at 10:11 AM, Steve Thomas said:

I got to wondering where a "pink/grey" shipping casket may have come from. I mean, what does a hospital do when a person arrives DOA at a hospital, or dies during surgery, etc? Do hospitals keep a supply of caskets in storage or something?

Dr. Price, Parkland Hospital Administrator was asked this. In his Warren Commission Price Exhibit 33, page 111 he wrote this:

http://www.aarclibra...ice_Ex_2-35.pdf

“About this time a secret service man came to me and asked how we could move the president's body. He asked if we had a casket, a basket or anything that we could get to move the body immediately. I told him that we had nothing like that, but that we had several military installation nearby where we could get a casket, or we could get one from a local funeral director. He asked me to wait where I was, stating he would be back in just a minute,. I noticed that Steve had started out of the area with a secret service man and asked where he was going. He said to get a casket, and I told him to wait a minute as someone had just asked me about one and had asked that no further action be taken at that tine. Another man in the group who had been talking with Mrs. Kennedy and the other secret service agents near her came to me and asked that we get a casket of any kind from any place the quickest possible way. I then turned to Steve and relayed the request to him, and asked that he see what could be done about it.”

I don't know who this "other man in the group talking with Mrs. Kennedy" was. If you needed a "pinkish/grey" shipping casket similar to ones used to ship servicemen home from Vietnam, what better place to get one than from a military installation?

Is this how the casket was removed?

On page 110 of this Exhibit, Price wrote:

“While talking with Mrs. Nelson, one of the secret service men who had been bruised or had a minor injury came to me and asked if there were another way that the President and Mrs. Kennedy could be taken out of the building. I told him there was a tunnel exit and that if he would come with me, I would walk it off for him. I walked down to inspect the tunnel, then returned to the surgery area of the Emergency Room.”

(Does anyone know about a Secret Service man who had been bruised or had a minor injury?)

“While I was talking with him, (a Mr. Maher) another secret service man grabbed me by the arm and asked if I knew an alternate route the Johnson*s could use for an exit. I told him I had walked out an alternate route with another agent a few minutes ago and that if he would come with me, I would show him. We went to the Emergency Room elevator, one of the maintenance men was manually operating it and told him to take us to the basement....

I instructed the elevator operator to go to second (floor for an emergency delivery of blood),and then to take us on down to the basement. The secret service agent and I "ran" the alternate route, then when we got back to the Emergency Room area, he asked me to show him where the Johnsons were.”

While all the attention was on Air Force One, could the shipping casket have been placed on Air Force Two, or the C-130 military plane that took the limousine back to Washington? I would have to find the radio logs for Air Force Two or the cargo manifest for the C-130 to find out more.

Steve Thomas

Thanks for this Steve.  I thought I'd read of the basement/tunnel/back dock exit before but didn't remember where.  Important I think.  I guess the official casket commandeered by the SS went back out the ER to the funeral home ambulance, which Jackie rode in? 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Ron Bulman

[Joe Bauer]

Some of Commander James Humes actual ARRB testimony.

Q. Approximately how many people were in the autopsy room at the time President Kennedy was--
A. Geez, that's a good question. That's one of my--I should have thrown them all out. That was

one of my biggest problems.
There were, I guess--there was an Air Force aide, the Naval aide, an Army aide to the President. They were the most shook-up people you ever saw in your life. And I guess it was around

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15 people there off and on, maybe 20.
Q. During the autopsy, was the room quiet and hushed or noisy and bustling? How would you describe the scene?
A. It varied. We were there for a long time. We were there from about 6:00 or 6:30 in the evening until 5 o'clock the next morning. It was very hushed around 5 o'clock in the morning. But in the early evening, it was--I mean, we had X-ray technicians coming in and photographers and photographers' assistants there, the kind of thing that you would expect under any circumstances, plus these other people, the Secret Service and the FBI, who wouldn't normally be present. But I had to concentrate on what I was doing. I mean, I really couldn't get too worried about these other people, as long as they didn't get in my way, which they didn't.
Q. In the JAMA article, if they quoted you correctly, you said that the scene in the autopsy room was somewhat like trying to do delicate neurosurgery in a three-ring circus.

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A. At times it was. Not always, but at times when there was a lot of people around. You had to stage stuff. I mean, you couldn't be taking X-rays of the whole body and photographs simultaneously. You know, somebody had to decide who was going to do what when, and I had to do that. George Burkley sure as hell didn't, you know.
Q. Did anyone make suggestions to you other than Drs. Boswell and Finck, regarding any procedures--
A. No.
Q. --during the autopsy?
A. No.
Q. None whatsoever?
A. None. I don't know who it would have been or who would have the...
Q. Was your commanding officer there?
A. I had a separate commanding officer, and he was there, it seems to me, part of the time. John Stover was his name. Everybody called him Smoky Stover. At that time, we had a separate command called the Naval Medical School. The Naval

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Hospital did not have any laboratories. The Naval Medical School had laboratories, and we provided the laboratory service to the hospital. So the guy that was really my commanding officer by rules and regulations was John Stover. But he had--we had a very cordial, pleasant relationship, but he never commanded me to do anything in my life, period. He was off in a different area. We conducted training courses for technologists and technicians and occupational thera--all kind of training courses, and that was his main role, to run the training aspects of the, quote-unquote, medical school.
At one time, when my uncle was a Navy doctor, every new doctor coming into the Navy first was assigned to this Naval Medical School for, I think, six or nine months, and they taught some tropical medicine and they taught shipboard sanitation--you know, the kind of things that you'd need to know in the Navy. But if Smoky was there-- and I think he was for part of the time--we had no dialogue at all. He would never have presumed to tell me anything, I don't believe. He was a

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general practitioner, is what he was. He was a field--he spent a lot of time in the Marine Corps. He was a field medical officer, and a very good one, very much respected.
Q. Who was Captain Stover's commanding officer?
A. Admiral Galloway.
Q. Was he present at the autopsy?
A. I don't think so. I don't think Cal came down there at all. I mean, I can't swear that he was or wasn't there. But if he was, he played no role in it whatever.
Really, other than more than look in the room, I don't think Admiral Galloway was there at all.
Q. Was the Surgeon General of the Navy present--
A. No.
Q. --during the autopsy? That's Rear Admiral Kenny?
A. Kenny.
Q. And he was not present at all in the

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autopsy room?
A. I can't recall that he was. You know, he might have, again, looked in, stuck his head in the door or something. But I don't recall him being in the room. If he was, it was very fleetingly.
Q. Previously, you made reference to the President's Air Force aide. Was that reference to General McHugh?
A. I didn't know who they were, to tell you the truth. Still don't know who they were. And they didn't stay long. They came about the time the body was delivered, and they didn't--I mean, I didn't concentrate on what these people were doing. It really didn't interest me. I was empathetic with their concern, but as far as otherwise, I didn't have anything to do with them, or they with me.
Q. Previously, you made reference to the commanding general for the military district of Washington.
A. Yes.
Q. Was that General Wehle?

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A. You got me. You know, he told me, he said he was in charge, and I heard later that that was his role. I said to somebody else, "Who's that guy?" And that's what they said; he's the CO of the military district of Washington. I never saw him before or since, didn't know who he was then.
Q. Was he present at all during the autopsy?
A. No, he was not. Or if he was, I didn't know he was there. Let's put it that way. I don't think he was at all.

>>>>   Q. Would you have recognized Joint Chiefs of Staff as of 1963?  <<<<

>>>>   A. No.   <<<<

Q. For example, Curtis LeMay, would you have recognized him?
A. Oh, I'd recognize him if he was there, but he was not.

>>>>  HUMES JUST SAID HE WOULD NOT HAVE RECOGNIZED JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF !  <<<<

Q. Did you ever hear any speculation about whether any members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were present at the autopsy?
A. No, never heard, but if they were, it was unknown to me totally. I doubt very seriously that

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they were.

You asked me, would I recognize them? Sure, you know, from newspapers and television, one thing or another. I probably knew them all by sight. But they weren't there.
MR. GUNN: Let's take a short break, a couple minutes to get a drink of water.
[Recess.]
MR. GUNN: We're back on the record following the first recess.
BY MR. GUNN:
Q. Dr. Humes, when did you first see the body of President Kennedy?
A. I didn't look at my watch, if I even had a watch on, but I would guess it was 6:45 or 7 o'clock, something like that, approximately.

Q. Was the body in the casket when you first saw it?
A. Yes, it was in a casket.
Q. Could you describe the casket in just very general terms?
A. Yes. It was a wooden casket with long

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handles on both sides like you usually see for the use of pallbearers and so forth. One of the handles was broken. I forget which side it was on. But it was a handsome--the standard of those things. It was a good-looking casket.

Q. Where did you first see the casket?
A. As the people--I think they were sailors that were--it was a Navy ambulance, a Navy ambulance crew who had picked up the body at the airport, and they brought it into the morgue and promptly left.
Q. Do you remember what color the ambulance was?

>>>>  A. No--oh, gray.  I saw it on television later.  <<<<

 

And all our ambulances were gray in those days.

Q. Were you with the casket from the time it was unloaded from the gray ambulance until you opened the lid of the casket?
A. I didn't go out on the loading dock. I was there from the time it came through the door of the morgue until the President left the next

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morning.
Q. How many rooms or hallways are there between the loading dock and the morgue where you first saw--
A. Just a very brief hallway. I guess maybe 15, 20 feet, something like that. No rooms.
Q. And was the casket opened in the morgue?
A. Yes.
Q. Who else was in the room when the casket was opened?
A. Oh, I can't tell you that. Dr. Boswell and I removed the body from the casket, and I--I don't know who. There were some enlisted helpers, technicians from our department there, and I don't know who else was there. I can't tell you. I was too intent on what I was doing and too, to tell you the truth, a little bit shook by the whole procedure, initially at least. It was disturbing to have a deceased President there in your arms, you know. It's not an unemotional experience. But I was not worrying about who was around or whatever. It was the least of my worries.

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Q. Who else in addition to Dr. Boswell, if anyone, helped you remove the body from the casket?
A. I don't recall that anyone did, but I don't gainsay the possibility that one of the enlisted men may have helped. But nobody else.
Q. How was the President's body wrapped?
A. It was wrapped in white sheets and the head was--head wound, massive head wound, was covered with gauze sponges and gauze dressing.
Q. Was there any plastic or rubber sheeting at all near the President's head?
A. No. Well, I'm not sure what finally tied down the gauze bandage over the skull wound. It might have been plastic or something, but, you know, I don't know. Adhesive tape or God knows what. It was easily removed. It wasn't tight at all.
Q. Was there any plastic sheeting or rubber sheeting of any kind that you saw in the casket--
A. No.
Q. --with the exception of possibly with the head?

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A. No.

Now, here is a different recollection as stated by Bethesda Naval Medical Tech Paul O'Conner who was in the morgue with Humes and Boswell:

I'll post the Humes testimony contradicting description of JFK's body when it arrived to the morgue by Paul O'Conner paragraph first and alone. If you want to read the entire O'Conner interview transcript below this it is also very exposing of many other Humes testimony contradictions.

O'Connor: Aubrey Rike. He was an ambulance driver for the O'Neal Funeral Home. They were at Parkland at the time the body was brought in and they were told to call Mr. O'Neal at the Funeral Home and have him bring his best, most expensive, casket to Parkland Hospital, post haste. When they got it there, Aubrey Rike told me they put him in a bed liner. Now a bed liner is something that goes over a bed-it's a plastic covering that keeps bodily fluids from bleeding into the mattress. It's not a body bag. A body bag is a bag that a body is put into and zipped from the head to the toe. He was wrapped in sheets around his chest and his torso, and when we received him he was not in a bed liner.

He was in a body bag, but nothing wrapped around his torso. It was an unclothed body The only thing on his body was a bloody sheet around his head. So that was another thing that was extremely disturbing to hear about.

Law: How did that make you feel?

O'Connor: That somebody somewhere high up in government - it had to be the government - was concealing evidence, vital evidence, from the American public about what actually transpired between Parkland and Bethesda.

 

(1) William Matson Law, In the Eye of History (2005)

Law: How many autopsies have you done or assisted?

O'Connor: Probably at that time fifty to sixty.

Law: You knew what you were doing when you were in there?

O'Connor: Absolutely.

Law: Do you feel that you got an opportunity to follow a normal autopsy?

O'Connor: On the brain?

Law: On any of it.

O'Connor: No.

Law: What was different about it?

O'Connor: Number one, as I said before, the wound was so massive inside of his head there was hardly any brain matter left. There was no brain really. There was no brain really for us, for myself, to take out. There was no need for me to open up the cranium because the cranium was completely shattered. When I say "shattered," not only was the brain blown open, where nothing was left, but the rest of t he cranium - the skull cap - was totally fractured. By "totally fractured," I mean it was comminuted. Comminution means if you took a hard-boiled egg and dropped it on the floor, there are hundreds of fractures in the shell and that's the way the president's skull was. It was just malleable - moved back and forth - and what was left of the cranium was completely shattered. His right eye, as I remember, was poked completely out of the orbit, the eye casing. I remember that Dr. Boswell and I looked into the back of the cranium, looking towards the front, and the orbit-the bony casing around where the eye sits was completely fractured.

Law: When you saw there was no brain, what took place then?

O'Connor: It got very tense. Admiral Galloway started getting very agitated again, because there was a wound in his neck. Now the wound - and of course I had seen tracheotomies, where you make an incision and you make it up to down to put in a tube to help a person breathe-the wound was a big gash and more horizontal-and I remember the doctors were going to check that out when Admiral Galloway told them, "Leave it alone. Don't touch it. It's just a tracheotomy".

Law: So he basically stopped anyone from going further?

O'Connor: He stopped anybody from going further. Drs. Humes and Boswell, Dr. Finck, were told to leave it alone, let's go to other things.

Law: Now you've seen tracheotomies before. You've dealt with them. What was your thought when you saw that? The hole in the president's throat that was said to be a tracheotomy?

O'Connor: It looked very sloppy, very nasty, very ugly. Usually a tracheotomy is made with a very sharp, pointed knife and it's very clean. This tracheotomy, or so called tracheotomy was all macerated and torn apart, and it went this way, both sides, which is very dangerous. If you do a tracheotomy across the throat, you stand a chance of killing a person, because you have on each side of the trachea two large arteries, the carotid arteries, and right beside them are the jugular veins. Arteries run the blood up into the brain and the jugular veins run the blood down back into the heart and lungs. If you make a horizontal incision, you stand a good chance of severing those arteries, which would make a person bleed to death immediately.

Law: Having been told to leave the tracheotomy alone, what happened next?

O'Connor: When we started an autopsy, the first thing we always did - and we never deviated from our procedures-was to weigh and measure the body. We'd check for any scars, contusions, any abnormalities, and so on. But, in this case, we didn't turn the body over to look at the back while we were doing that. Finally we turned the body over, and there was a bullet wound-an entrance wound-in his back, on the right side of his spinal column. To emphasize where it was in proximity to the rest of his body: if you bend your neck down and feel back, you feel a lump and that's the seventh cervical vertebra. This bullet wound was about three inches down and an inch or two to the right of the seventh cervical vertebra. I remember that there was a big gush of surprise that nobody had' actually thought about turning him over right away, you know after we had done our initial investigation of the president's body. Dr. Humes took his finger and poked it in the hole - the bullet-wound hole, the entrance-wound hole- and said it didn't go anywhere. There was a very big argument, a lot of consternation, that he shouldn't have stuck his finger in the hole.

Law: What difference would it make?

O'Connor: Well, when you take your finger and stick it into a bullet wound, you avulse the wound, which means that you make the wound abnormal.

Law: You think that happened when he stuck his finger in the back?

O'Connor: Yes.

Law: Could it have created a false track?

O'Connor: Well, not necessarily a false track as much as a false impression of the entrance of the missile that went into his back.

Law: Who was arguing?

O'Connor: Dr. Finck had come over from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Army Hospital. He was a forensic pathologist and he strongly objected to Commander Humes doing what he did. He took a sound. Now a sound is a probe, a metal malleable, non-rigid probe. Malleable means you can move it hack and forth and bend it a little bit and trace a bullet path through the body. Now, there are high-powered weapons that will drive a bullet straight through a body and a rigid probe will trace its path all the way through. We started out with a rigid probe and found that it only went in so far. I'd say maybe an inch and a quarter. It didn't go any further than that. So we used a malleable probe and bent it a little bit and found out that the bullet entered the body, went through the intercostal muscles - the muscles in between the ribs. The bullet went in through the muscles, didn't touch any of the ribs, arched downwards, hit the back of the pleural cavity, which encases the lungs, both front and back. It bounced off that cavity and stopped. It actually went down and stopped. Went through the ribs and stopped (photo 10). So we didn't know the track of the bullet until we eviscerated the body later. That's what happened at that time. We traced the bullet path down and found out it didn't traverse the body. It did not go in one side and come out the other side of the body.

Law: You can be reasonably sure of that?

O'Connor: Absolutely.

Law: It was just from the probe then?

O'Connor: Oh yes.

Law: And these doctors knew that?

O'Connor: Absolutely.

Law: While it happened?

O'Connor: Absolutely. And another thing, we found out, while the autopsy was proceeding, that he was shot from a high building, which meant the bullet had to be traveling in a downward trajectory and we also realized that this bullet - that hit him in the back - is what we called in the military a "short shot," which means that the powder in the bullet was defective so it didn't have the power to push the projectile - the bullet-clear through the body. If it had been a full shot at the angle he was shot, it would have come out through his heart and through his sternum.

Law: After you traced the wound, what happened then?

O'Connor: After that, we looked at the head wound and found that there were no bullets in the cranium. Minute fragments were scattered through the bone area of the cranium front and back. I remember distinctly because, having worked in funeral homes since I was thirteen years old, I had seen bullet wounds before, and also I served in Vietnam and saw bullet wounds there. It looked to me like a bomb had exploded inside his brain and blew out the whole side of his head. I've never seen a more horrendous destruction of the cranium, unless it was done by a very high caliber weapon. I found out later that it was done by a Mannlicher Carcano - a cheap Italian rifle - just about what I would call a thirty caliber or a thirty-thirty caliber rifle.

Law: In your opinion is it capable of doing that kind of damage?

O'Connor: Absolutely not.

(2) William Matson Law, In the Eye of History (2005)

Law: Now, in talking to some of the other fellows who were with you, some of your colleagues, I'm struck with the fact that all of you know bits and pieces. It's like you're all on different frequencies. You all noticed different things. Did you all get together at one point and shared any kind of information? I mean early on, not years later. I'm talking about within that week, within a few days?

O'Connor: No. What happened was - that took place on a Friday, of course, he was buried on the Monday and on Tuesday of that next week we were called into Captain Stover's office - who was one of the commanders of the Naval Medical School - where we were instructed and told that we were going to sign orders of silence under the penalty of general court martial, and other dreadful things like going to prison, if we talked to anybody about anything that happened that night. Period.

Law: So you were threatened basically with being thrown in jail?

O'Connor: In prison.

Law: In prison if you talked about this to anybody?

O'Connor: To anybody. Now that was the worst experience of my life. The Kennedy assassination autopsy was bad. But that scared me to death because I was a good loyal navy hospital corpsman, had done nothing wrong and was thrown into a situation that I couldn't control. And all of a sudden I was told that if I was to say something to anybody, anybody - and they left that wide open anybody-that, if found out, we'd go to prison and be dishonorably discharged from the navy.

Law: So what happened to you in the years after? Did you think about this often? Did it affect your life? Did you have nightmares from this experience?

O'Connor: No.

Law: Did you just forget about it?

O'Connor: I forgot about it. Matter of fact 1 put it completely out of my mind. I knew what I had to do. I didn't want to go to prison. I wanted to continue my navy career. So I kept my mouth shut and continued my navy career.

Law: So what happened-when did you first-who did you first reveal this to-that you had been involved in this, and how did these circumstances come about?

O'Connor: Actually I was married soon after school and transferred to a naval base in Florida, and I mentioned it briefly to my wife. I was scared to death to do that, but I did. I figure a husband and wife have the most intimate secrets in the world they can share with each other without anybody knowing anything about them, so that's what we did. She was a little bit doubtful about what I was talking about, but she didn't say anything and I didn't say anything else anymore.

Law: So what happened - did you get calls over the years? Did anyone know who you were? How did it come about that people knew who you were?

O'Connor: Well, after I was stationed in southern Florida, I got orders to go to Vietnam in 1965. And I served with the United States Marine Corps in combat over in Vietnam, was wounded in Vietnam and eventually was discharged medically from service. After I was out of the service, I knew I could talk to anybody I wanted to about it, because the military had no sway over me. But, I never said anything, because I didn't think anyone would believe anything I had to say about seeing this. So I didn't say anything for years, until the mid-seventies I think. Correct me if I'm wrong-the Freedom of Information Act was passed and my name was released with the files and all the autopsy crew. I started getting calls from people all over the United States and Canada and Europe. They wanted to talk about what I saw during the Kennedy autopsy. A lot of them were very strange people, what we call cuckoos and nuts. A lot of them were very honest people, with a lot of integrity. I finally started talking to an author who was going to write a book on the assassination named David Lifton. We corresponded for, I guess, over a year or so, before he came out with a book on the Kennedy assassination, which opened up new chapters for me because I found out through talking to other people, who were ordered to keep silent, that a lot of things weren't right.

Law: As far as?

O'Connor: The autopsy, the bullet wounds, the massive destruction of the cranium. I was able to talk to the doctors in Parkland Hospital in Dallas several years later. We collaborated and talked about our experiences: Parkland vs. Bethesda.

Law: Did you do this on your own?

O'Connor: No. Actually we were brought together by different groups. Mr. Lifton and other people who were getting more interested in the idiosyncrasies of what had happened at that time. There was a group that started a big conference in Dallas back in the seventies, late seventies I guess it was, or early eighties, I can't remember really. That's when we found out-when the Dallas doctors and I got together-that something was terribly, terribly wrong between Parkland and Bethesda. What they saw in Parkland-what they did in Parkland-did not jibe with what we saw in Bethesda. What astounded me was the doctor who first got to JFK in the emergency room in Parkland said he had a bullet wound-an entrance wound-in his throat.

Law: Was he adamant that it was an entrance wound?

O'Connor: Adamant. Very. He had been an emergency room physician at Parkland for a number of years, treated a multitude of gunshot wounds. He knew what an entrance wound looked like, knew what an exit wound looked like. Entrance goes in small and neat and comes out big and nasty. If it comes out; a lot of them don't. He explained to me that he saw a bullet wound in the president's throat and made an incision through the bullet wound into his trachea to insert the enforceable tube to inflate his lungs. They worked on that They did several life-saving procedures for quite a long time. I guess several, maybe five or ten, minutes, until a neurosurgeon declared the president dead. According to the Dallas doctors, the wound they saw was approximately this big and the wound we saw in Bethesda was this big, and so we were both in a kind of state of complete puzzlement at what had been going on. You know what happened? Did something happen between Parkland hospital and Bethesda? Then I found out that the casket I saw come into our morgue in Bethesda wasn't the same coffin that he was put in at Parkland to ship to Bethesda. He was put into a bronze, ornate casket at Parkland that came from the O'Neal's Funeral Home. I found out also - which was amazing-that the Secret Service and the Dallas police department almost had a gun battle on who the body belonged to. Did it belong to the State of Texas or the United States Government? Well, actually it belonged to the State of Texas because the president was killed, murdered in the State of Texas. They had a big fight. There were no guns drawn, but a friend of mine-can't remember his name now, he was the ambulance driver...

O'Connor: Aubrey Rike. He was an ambulance driver for the O'Neal Funeral Home. They were at Parkland at the time the body was brought in and they were told to call Mr. O'Neal at the Funeral Home and have him bring his best, most expensive, casket to Parkland Hospital, post haste. When they got it there, Aubrey Rike told me they put him in a bed liner. Now a bed liner is something that goes over a bed-it's a plastic covering that keeps bodily fluids from bleeding into the mattress. It's not a body bag. A body bag is a bag that a body is put into and zipped from the head to the toe. He was wrapped in sheets around his chest and his torso, and when we received him he was not in a bed liner. He was in a body bag, but nothing wrapped around his torso. It was an unclothed body The only thing on his body was a bloody sheet around his head. So that was another thing that was extremely disturbing to hear about.

Law: How did that make you feel?

O'Connor: That somebody somewhere high up in government - it had to be the government - was concealing evidence, vital evidence, from the American public about what actually transpired between Parkland and Bethesda.

 

 

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

Commander Humes in his ARRB testimony described the casket with JFK's body inside when it first arrived in his morgue.

He said it was a large wooden casket. With long wooden handrails on the sides, one of which was broken.

"Q. Dr. Humes, when did you first see the body of President Kennedy?
A. I didn't look at my watch, if I even had a watch on, but I would guess it was 6:45 or 7 o'clock, something like that, approximately.
Q. Was the body in the casket when you first saw it?
A. Yes, it was in a casket.
Q. Could you describe the casket in just very general terms?
A. Yes. It was a wooden casket with long

---

Page 67

handles on both sides like you usually see for the use of pallbearers and so forth. One of the handles was broken. I forget which side it was on. But it was a handsome--the standard of those things. It was a good-looking casket."

 

In the following video clip of this supposed same casket being off-loaded from Air Force One at Andrews Air Force base the evening of 11,22,1963 into the elevated mechanical lift and then out of the lowered lift to the ambulance parked in front, my eyes see men on "both" sides of the casket clearly holding onto "something" ( handrails? ) in carrying the casket out of the lift and especially into the back of the ambulance.

If one of the caskets long side handles was broken as Humes testified to, what the heck were these side located casket lifters hanging onto?

 

The casket containing John Fitzgerald Kennedy's body is carried to an ambulance f...HD Stock Footage

 

In this clip notice also the extreme ambulance body drop in the back compared to the front as it pulls away.

The back is just inches higher than road scraping level versus the front which is much higher.

Looked like a 1970's L.A. low rider special.

That coffin in back must have weighed a ton!

 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Bulman]

On 2/6/2021 at 10:11 AM, Steve Thomas said:

I got to wondering where a "pink/grey" shipping casket may have come from. I mean, what does a hospital do when a person arrives DOA at a hospital, or dies during surgery, etc? Do hospitals keep a supply of caskets in storage or something?

Dr. Price, Parkland Hospital Administrator was asked this. In his Warren Commission Price Exhibit 33, page 111 he wrote this:

http://www.aarclibra...ice_Ex_2-35.pdf

“About this time a secret service man came to me and asked how we could move the president's body. He asked if we had a casket, a basket or anything that we could get to move the body immediately. I told him that we had nothing like that, but that we had several military installation nearby where we could get a casket, or we could get one from a local funeral director. He asked me to wait where I was, stating he would be back in just a minute,. I noticed that Steve had started out of the area with a secret service man and asked where he was going. He said to get a casket, and I told him to wait a minute as someone had just asked me about one and had asked that no further action be taken at that tine. Another man in the group who had been talking with Mrs. Kennedy and the other secret service agents near her came to me and asked that we get a casket of any kind from any place the quickest possible way. I then turned to Steve and relayed the request to him, and asked that he see what could be done about it.”

I don't know who this "other man in the group talking with Mrs. Kennedy" was. If you needed a "pinkish/grey" shipping casket similar to ones used to ship servicemen home from Vietnam, what better place to get one than from a military installation?

Is this how the casket was removed?

On page 110 of this Exhibit, Price wrote:

“While talking with Mrs. Nelson, one of the secret service men who had been bruised or had a minor injury came to me and asked if there were another way that the President and Mrs. Kennedy could be taken out of the building. I told him there was a tunnel exit and that if he would come with me, I would walk it off for him. I walked down to inspect the tunnel, then returned to the surgery area of the Emergency Room.”

(Does anyone know about a Secret Service man who had been bruised or had a minor injury?)

“While I was talking with him, (a Mr. Maher) another secret service man grabbed me by the arm and asked if I knew an alternate route the Johnson*s could use for an exit. I told him I had walked out an alternate route with another agent a few minutes ago and that if he would come with me, I would show him. We went to the Emergency Room elevator, one of the maintenance men was manually operating it and told him to take us to the basement....

I instructed the elevator operator to go to second (floor for an emergency delivery of blood),and then to take us on down to the basement. The secret service agent and I "ran" the alternate route, then when we got back to the Emergency Room area, he asked me to show him where the Johnsons were.”

While all the attention was on Air Force One, could the shipping casket have been placed on Air Force Two, or the C-130 military plane that took the limousine back to Washington? I would have to find the radio logs for Air Force Two or the cargo manifest for the C-130 to find out more.

Steve Thomas

This does get deep but I think something unusual happened.  I can't see them waiting on a shipping casket from say NAS in Grand Prairie, 15 minutes away.  Nor Parkland having one on hand.  If the body went in the body bag and shipping casket at Parkland then the need for such was planned in advance.

Whatever happened likely was.  

Along that line one could have been waiting on AF1, a body bag at least.

Several years ago some researcher whose name escapes me went into the body being taken from the ornate bronze casket to a level below in AF1.  Access from a few feet away from the casket to a large baggage area below.  This researcher went to the AF Museum where AF1 is kept and was allowed access to photograph such access.  I need to look for this, unless others remember?

What would it have taken to open the casket, put the body in a body bag, and move it to the nearby baggage area.  A minute or two, three?   

Out of such an area to a waiting shipping casket and into a chopper (as heard in the back parking lot a Bethesda).

[Joe Bauer]

I would think either Navy medical tech Paul O'Conner or James Jenkins, who were both present in the morgue with Humes and who both claimed to have helped lift JFK's body out of a coffin, would have clearly noticed and remembered lifting JFK's body out of such a huge, heavy and ornate shiny bronze coffin. 

Just to get a coffin of that size and weight into the morgue and set on the floor there would have taken a half dozen men or more. 

And once JFK's body was removed from it, it would have taken an equal number of men to come in and remove the still super heavy coffin as well. 

One would also reasonably assume they wouldn't leave this huge coffin on the floor next to any morgue examining table simply because it would be a free movement restriction causing obstacle. 

O'Conner's explanation as to why he didn't say anything publicly about what he witnessed in the autopsy room up close within inches from JFK's body for years until he was out of the service makes absolute, credible sense. He was majorly threatened by his superiors and took their threats very seriously.

O'Conner sounds more credible, direct and honest in recounting his observations during JFK's autopsy than Navy Commander Humes imo.

Humes ARRB testimony regards many important areas of the entire JFK arrival and examination is filled with contradictory statements.

Humes would often make simple and firm claims of denial. "No, that person was not present" and immediately refute and weaken that statement by saying "Well, not that I was aware of" or, "couldn't say for sure" or "I was too focused on my responsibilities to notice" etc. etc.

ARRB question to Humes:

Q. "Would you have recognized Joint Chiefs of Staff as of 1963?"  <<<<

>>>>   A. "No."   <<<<

Q. "For example, Curtis LeMay, would you have recognized him?"
A. "Oh, I'd recognize him if he was there, but he was not."

What?  Wait a minute. You wouldn't have recognized these Chiefs...but you then would?

Read Humes's account regards the completely contradictory JFK brain weight mix up. Final autopsy report listed JFK's hugely blown away brain weight at 1400 grams? More than an average male full weight brain? No brain weight listed on Humes first filed summary report? Humes says he simply can't explain this most important missing info.? JFK's removed brain that was supposedly placed in a bucket of formaldhyde goes "completely missing" not long after?

Sorry, but the credibility factor as far as this JFK brain finding report issue is concerned is totally suspect imo.

O'Conner's description of the total damage to JFK's entire skull and brain is the most clear, honest and detailed of any other eyewitness imo.

Of how it was much more totally obliterated than Humes relates.

And which, as O'Conner states, is indicative of a much higher caliber bullet causing this much damage versus a smaller Carcano 30 to 33 caliber one.

O'Conner had more physical hands and visual eyes on experience in observing bullet body wounds and especially skull and brain injury than Humes ever did. We know this as fact bolstered by Hume's own admission of not being a bullet wound expert therefore his need to call in wound expert Marine Dr. Pierre Finck to help him in this regards for the autopsy.

JFK's skull was so powerfully and completely obliterated (as in exploded from the inside out) good size pieces of his skull literally blew off, up and out onto the street and limo trunk and enough brain matter, blood and other fluid was ejected to cover the limo occupants, the limo interior and the motorcycle police escorts feet behind the limo with this.

JFK's entire skull was shattered into many multiple cracked pieces like a dropped hard boiled egg shell as O'Conner related.

All from a 30 to 33 caliber fired Carcano bullet? Bullet and head wound experienced Paul O'Conner says ...no way.

 

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Steve Thomas]

Posted by David Andrews in the Education Fourom 23 August 2012 - 12:48 AM entitled:

How JFK's body was wrapped.

David Andrews in the Education Forum 8/22/12

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19412

“Kellerman's and other SS agents' behavior on leaving Parkland in a hurry, with guns drawn, knocking people out of the way, could have been to prevent Texas authorities' possession and opening of an empty coffin. (Otherwise, it was necessary to keep the pre-autopsy alterations in DC on schedule.)

I tend to think that David Lifton was on track in Best Evidence, and JFK's body actually returned to Washington on Air Force Two (the V-P plane). Which would mean switching the body at Parkland.”

Edited by David Andrews, 23 August 2012 - 12:52 AM.

David Sanders, who helped clean Trauma Room# 1 Price Ehibit 25 http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_Price_Ex_2-35.pdf page 75

said that after Jackie came in and placed her ring on JFK's finger and kissing his hand, she left the room. Afterwards they placed the body in the casket.

Diana Bowron Price Exhibit 12

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_Price_Ex_2-35.pdf page 55

“When Mrs. Kennedy had left we placed the President's body on a plastic sheet in the casket. We all left the room and Mrs Kennedy entered alone and stayed with the body until it was removed a short time later.”

ACTIVITIES OF MARGARET HINCHLIFFE. Price Exhibit 30

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_Price_Ex_2-35.pdf page 91

“After Mrs.Kennedy and the priests left the room, Miss Bowron and myself, with the assistance of David Sanders, the orderly, prepared the body... We remained with the body until he was placed in the casket. Then, Mrs. Kennedy entered the room and everyone left the room and waited outside until the President's body was taken from the hospital.”

I tend to agree with David. I think the fight in the hallway was over an empty coffin.

I don't know how they managed it, but I think the coffin was empty. That makes a whole lot more sense than needing to fly JFK's body all the way back to Washington so they could an autopsy and to get Jackie out of Dallas.

Steve Thomas

[David Lifton]

On 1/17/2021 at 5:09 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Vince,

I can't believe that no one questioned that at the time.

I guess that this late in time, it would be impossible to find out where he got his information.

Steve Thomas

I investigated this very carefully back in the period 1967 - 1972 (years before the advent of the Internet); analyzing all relevant documents and telephoning all the relevant witnesses.  This is only an issue for someone who started so late in the game that their information comes from a YouTube video (and so their reaction is "Gee, how interesting! I never head of this before!")  

Bottom line: when the Dallas coffin left Parkland Hospital (about 1:55  PM, approx), it contained JFKs body.   When AF-1 took off from Love Field, the coffin was empty.  See Best Evidence for the many details.

Edited February 9, 2021 by David Lifton

[David Lifton]

On 2/6/2021 at 8:11 AM, Steve Thomas said:

I got to wondering where a "pink/grey" shipping casket may have come from. I mean, what does a hospital do when a person arrives DOA at a hospital, or dies during surgery, etc? Do hospitals keep a supply of caskets in storage or something?

Dr. Price, Parkland Hospital Administrator was asked this. In his Warren Commission Price Exhibit 33, page 111 he wrote this:

http://www.aarclibra...ice_Ex_2-35.pdf

“About this time a secret service man came to me and asked how we could move the president's body. He asked if we had a casket, a basket or anything that we could get to move the body immediately. I told him that we had nothing like that, but that we had several military installation nearby where we could get a casket, or we could get one from a local funeral director. He asked me to wait where I was, stating he would be back in just a minute,. I noticed that Steve had started out of the area with a secret service man and asked where he was going. He said to get a casket, and I told him to wait a minute as someone had just asked me about one and had asked that no further action be taken at that tine. Another man in the group who had been talking with Mrs. Kennedy and the other secret service agents near her came to me and asked that we get a casket of any kind from any place the quickest possible way. I then turned to Steve and relayed the request to him, and asked that he see what could be done about it.”

I don't know who this "other man in the group talking with Mrs. Kennedy" was. If you needed a "pinkish/grey" shipping casket similar to ones used to ship servicemen home from Vietnam, what better place to get one than from a military installation?

Is this how the casket was removed?

On page 110 of this Exhibit, Price wrote:

“While talking with Mrs. Nelson, one of the secret service men who had been bruised or had a minor injury came to me and asked if there were another way that the President and Mrs. Kennedy could be taken out of the building. I told him there was a tunnel exit and that if he would come with me, I would walk it off for him. I walked down to inspect the tunnel, then returned to the surgery area of the Emergency Room.”

(Does anyone know about a Secret Service man who had been bruised or had a minor injury?)

“While I was talking with him, (a Mr. Maher) another secret service man grabbed me by the arm and asked if I knew an alternate route the Johnson*s could use for an exit. I told him I had walked out an alternate route with another agent a few minutes ago and that if he would come with me, I would show him. We went to the Emergency Room elevator, one of the maintenance men was manually operating it and told him to take us to the basement....

I instructed the elevator operator to go to second (floor for an emergency delivery of blood),and then to take us on down to the basement. The secret service agent and I "ran" the alternate route, then when we got back to the Emergency Room area, he asked me to show him where the Johnsons were.”

While all the attention was on Air Force One, could the shipping casket have been placed on Air Force Two, or the C-130 military plane that took the limousine back to Washington? I would have to find the radio logs for Air Force Two or the cargo manifest for the C-130 to find out more.

Steve Thomas

Quoting Steve Thomas:

QUOTE ON:

Yes, various people assert the fancy bronze casket was never out of view, even for a moment, after JFK's body was put in.

And yet there seems to be multiple credible witnesses that JFK's body arrived at Bethesda in a steel-colored, government-issue ordinary casket. 

Lifton posits the body was switched while in flight. I have always wondered if AF1 carried a government-issued casket as part of regular supplies. After all, AF1 could be expected to cross the Pacific from time to time with a bunch of older men on board, and a death might occur. Having a casket on board might not be so strange. 

Still, JFK aides say they sat with the bronze casket through the flight. Something fishy happened. QUOTE OFF

RESPONSE:  No, I never wrote (or said) that the body was "switched while in flight."  Again: please focus on the words "while in flight."  What I did say --and demonstrated through careful analysis (see Chapters 28 - 31 of B.E.) --was that JFK's body was inside the Dallas coffin when that coffin left Parkland Hospital (2:05 CST approx), arrived at Love Field , and was brought up the ramp to the rear port door of Air Force One (at about 2:14 PM CST).  I also showed, through careful "timeline analysis," that the body was not in the Dallas coffin when Air Force One rolled to a stop at Andrew Air Force Base at about 6 P.M. EST. My own conclusion --and this is spelled out in the final chapters of Best Evidence -- was that JFK's body was removed from the Dallas casket after that casket was placed aboard AF-1 (at about 2:14 PM CST) and before AF-1 rolled down the runway and took off from Love Field about 2:47/2:48 PM CST.  In other words, it was during the general period when everyone was called to the front of the plane, to witness the swearing in of LBJ (2:38pm, CST, approx), that something most peculiar --and significant --took place at the rear of the plane.  There's no "Zapruder film" for that event, but if one existed, we would be able to see the dirty details and have answers to some of the major mysteries of the Kennedy assassination.  (DSL, 2/9/20, 2:50 PM PST)