Pat Speer's Chapter 16b conclusions

[Keyvan Shahrdar]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

skull fractures associated with the temp cavity would be the same if the bullet exited during the point of maximum cavitation or after.

This is another area that I have been concentrating on, I am glad that you brought up the skull fractures.  The indirect concentric skull fractures from intracranial over pressure originated from the entry shot next to the EOP.  What happened to this bullet is a mystery as no visible exit wound can be seen. There have been remarks that there was a bullet lodged near his ear.

IMO - The sequence of events is the EOP bullet caused intracranial over pressure, maybe the bullet exited maybe not.  Caused the indirect concentric skull fractures in the occipital, parietal, temporal regions.  Seconds after this cranial trauma, the tangential shot drives a wedge to the top of the skull.  This makes sense to me.

Study -  Ballistic impacts on an anatomically correct synthetic skull with a surrogate skin:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00414-017-1737-9

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Keyvan Shahrdar

[Benjamin Cole]

7 hours ago, Henry Frost said:

From what we see in the Zapruder film and the autopsy photos, the Z313 impact does look like a keyhole tangential wound.

Pat, I notice you mentioned Gerda Dunckel on your website, she was indeed a wizard with image processing.

She created a gif starting a few frames before Z313 for about 20 Z-frames.  But if you extract the frames, there are more than 20 frames.  She used a process known as frame interpolation, where the software generates intermediate frames between existing ones that approximate what they should look like. The end result is a perceived higher frame rate than the 18 fps of the Zapruder film.

Anyway, I thought her work should be in the record.  Warning, clip is graphic:

https://imgur.com/a/fkLjEOx

 

 

Yes, horribly graphic. Warning.

I am happy in my work to concentrate on the timing of the shots that struck JBC and JFK, which seem to me as much less controversial--that is, there is about one second from when JBC was struck, and then JFK in frame in 313. Ergo, no one man armed with a single-shot bolt-action rifle could have inflicted both wounds. 

I have posited that the Grassy Knoll bang-and-smoke was possibly just a diversion. 

But I have to say, the imagery above sure looks like a shot from the Grassy Knoll area. 

That is why I think the JFKA community should emphasize the timing, rather than the disputable directions and type of shots, ammo etc. that might have been fired on 11/22.

It does not help that the autopsy was limited and evidence lost, destroyed or even faked. 

[Henry Frost]

Ben, I can see why people avoid it.  Don't go the Chapter 16b if you're squeamish.

Some of us want to understand the nature of the wounds to try to get a better grip on what happened and how it happened to place constraints on what is possible and what isn't.  Pat Speer has made great progress in this area IMO.

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Henry Frost said:

Ben, I can see why people avoid it.  Don't go the Chapter 16b if you're squeamish.

Some of us want to understand the nature of the wounds to try to get a better grip on what happened and how it happened to place constraints on what is possible and what isn't.  Pat Speer has made great progress in this area IMO.

Yes, Pat Speer makes strong arguments. But other earnest and smart researchers have come to different conclusions. Frankly, given the autopsy, and evidence tampering, and destruction, and possible faking of evidence....

In addition, hunters and people who had the misfortune to be on battlefields, or medics who worked on a lot of battle victims, all say the same thing: bullets do strange things when striking bodies. 

In a couple months I will post my most-simple explanation yet of the timing of the JBC-JFK shots. 

As a teaser, consider this HSCA testimony by JBC:

"Connally: I was knocked over, just doubled over by the force of the bullet. It went in my back and came out my chest about 2 inches below and the left of my right nipple. The force of the bullet drove my body over almost double and when I looked, immediately I could see I was just drenched with blood. (1 HSCA 42)"

Check the Z-Film for when this happens. Count frames until Z-313. 

 

 

[Tom Gram]

14 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I have a a wide-ranging discussion of the effect of high-velocity bullets on a skull at the end of Chapter 13a, in a section entitled Blasts from the Present. These are the modern views. In chapter 13b I go back to the beginning of the field of wound ballistics and discuss the history of wound ballistics associated with the presumed assassination rifle. 

In any event, I just went back and re-read a lot of Blasts from the Present, and the tests therein described indicated that the fractures created by a temporary cavity happen immediately, even before the exit of a bullet. So the large skull fractures associated with the temp cavity would be the same if the bullet exited during the point of maximum cavitation or after. I think it makes sense to assume, moreover, that a bullet exiting after the point of maximum cavitation would create smaller fractures upon exit. But I don't recall any testing along these lines.

I think a big part of the confusion comes from Olivier and Sturdivan's testing of the M-16. They got it in their head and pushed upon the public that a high-velocity bullet will explode the skull at a mid-point in its trajectory through the skull. While this was true, it led many of those studying the JFK case to assume this explosion would create massive fractures...separate from the entrance fractures. But this wasn't true. Skulls exploding as a result of a large temporary cavity inevitably reveal a spider web of fractures leading back to the entrance.  No such pattern was noted on Kennedy's skull. This was so problematic to a nouveau EOP entrance LN doctor named Peter Cummings that he told Fox on the 50th that there actually was a spider web pattern of fractures deriving from the EOP entrance on Kennedy's skull.

Well, this would have been news to the autopsy surgeons, who measured the fractures on the skull, and reported that the fractures at exit were far longer than at entrance...

There was, of course, no mention of this during Cummings' segment...

 

 

 

Now that you mention this, I remember reading it in your online book. It’s been a while since I went through chapter 13b - I’ll go back and review it. 

That’s really interesting about the spider web fracture patterns, and definitely counterintuitive. I can see how people would think that an explosive exit, occurring within the temp cavity would create separate, large fractures - possibly different from the spider web expected from a cavity expanding within the skull as opposed to right next to the skull wall by the exit - cause that’s basically what I was thinking yesterday.  

I’ll reread chapter 13b, and thanks again for your thoughtful replies. 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Tom Gram