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Wound of Entry

Gil Jesus

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Gil Jesus

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Wound of Entry:
Dr. Malcolm Perry's journey into darkness


by Gil Jesus ( 2022 )


 



At the news conference, Dr. Perry answered a series of hypothetical questions and stated to the press that a variety of possibilities could account for the President's wounds....Dr. Perry said his answers at the press conference were intended to convey his theory about what could have happened, based on his limited knowledge at the time, rather than his professional opinion about what did happen.....Commenting on his answers at the press conference, Dr. Perry testified before the Commission:

I expressed it [his answers] as a matter of speculation that this was conceivable. But, again, Dr. Clark [who also answered questions at the conference] and I emphasized that we had no way of knowing. ( Report, pg. 90 )


The truth is that Dr. Malcolm Perry was NOT answering a hypothetical question and he did NOT speculate. The question was direct and the doctor's response was direct.

The bullet wound he saw in the front of the throat was a wound of entry.



The first press conference

On November 22, 1963, after the President had been pronounced dead, the Parkland doctors held a press conference to advise what the President's wounds were and to describe the treatment they used in trying to save his life.


 



Dr. Clark attended to the President's head wound and Dr. Perry attended to his throat wound.

During that press conference, Dr. Perry was directly asked about the throat wound three times and three times he indicated that it was an entrance wound and its direction had been one of coming at the President.

In the 1990's, the Assassination Records Review Board released as part of its master medical records a White House transcript of that press conference:


 



As you can see, there was nothing hypothetical about the questions and Dr. Perry's response was not one where he was speculating what was conceivable or discussing a variety of possibilities.

Perry flat out stated that "there was an entrance wound in the neck". Further proof of his comment was published in the November 23rd edition of the New York Times.


 



The point is that Dr. Perry's description of the throat wound to the press was unambiguous and more importantly the testimony he gave in his deposition for the Warren Commission was exposed by the transcripts of that press conference as being less than truthful.

In other words, he perjured himself.

So we're left with asking what caused Dr. Perry to lie about what he said on November 22, 1963 ?



The second press conference

In his deposition of March 25, 1964, Dr. Kemp Clark described a second press conference held on the morning of Saturday, November 23, 1963. During that testimony, Dr. Clark said that although he attended the conference, Dr. Perry "said very little". ( 6 H 22 )

Dr. Perry was shying away from providing information to the press. According to Dr. Clark:

"Dr. Perry stated that he had talked to the Bethesda Naval Hospital on two occasions that morning and that he knew what the autopsy findings had shown and that he did not wish to be questioned by the press, as he had been asked by Bethesda to confine his remarks to that which he knew from examining the President and suggested that the major part of this press conference be conducted by me." ( 6 H 23 )

Dr. Perry had been "asked" to not give his opinion on the throat wound, but to only report what he observed upon examination.

In other words, Dr. Perry was being censored.



Witness tampering

The pressure on Dr. Perry to change his opinion on the throat wound started almost immediately after the body arrived at Bethesda.

Dr. Perry's description of the throat wound is found in the notes of autopsist Commander James J. Humes, who consulted with Perry on the night of the assassination regarding the size of the wound. Those notes can be found in Commission Exhibit 397 ( 17 H 29 ) and describe the wound that Perry told Humes he saw as 3-5 mm.


 



Humes knew this was too small a hole to have been a wound of exit so the debate went back and forth between Dr. Perry and Bethesda.

Parkland nurse Audrey Bell was the supervising nurse of the Operating and Recovery Rooms. She told the ARRB in 1997 that the morning after the assassination, Dr. Perry told her that he had been up almost all night with the autopsy doctors and they were trying to get him to change his mind about the throat wound being a wound of entry.


 



But the pressure to have Dr. Perry change his opinion didn't stop there. He was visited by the Secret Service, according to his testimony, "at least three times". ( 6 H 17 )

The Secret Service agent whose responsibility it was to get Dr. Perry to change his mind about that he saw was Elmer Moore.

In May 1970, Moore was the hot-tempered head of the Seattle office of the Secret Service. A graduate student named James Gochenaur was interested in the Kennedy assassination and had contacted him about obtaining a photo.

Moore invited Gochenaur to come by his office.

Once there, Gochenaur claimed that Moore went into a tirade that frightened him. Moore admitted that he was ordered to "badger" Dr. Perry into changing his testimony about the throat wound.

Armed with the autopsy reports and photographs, Moore was able to get Perry to back down and say that the wound Perry saw could have been either an entrance wound or an exit wound.

On March 30, 1964, five days after his initial testimony, Dr. Perry was deposed a second time and testified that the wound he saw could have been either an entrance or an exit wound.

By the time he testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Dr. Perry's estimation of the size of the wound had grown from 3-5mm in 1963, to 6-7 mm. ( 7 HSCA 94 )

By going along with the faked autopsy record, Perry had testified under oath to something he knew was not true. The problem with making false statements under oath is that it is punishable by law and once you commit to those falsehoods, there's no going back.

So Perry was forced to publicly tow the line while privately expressing his real opinion. More on that in a little bit.

But the witnesses were not the only thing tampered with. The Secret Service collected ALL of the video from the doctors' press conference to hide the fact that Dr. Perry had publicly described the throat wound as a wound of entry.

That video evidence, like much of the evidence exonerating Oswald, has vanished into eternity.


Dr. Perry wasn't the only one who the Secret Service took an interest in. According to Dr. Clark, he "talked to a member of the Secret Service approximately a month after the assassination. I talked to him on two occasions, once by phone, and he asked me if I had a copy of a written report by Dr. Ronald Jones and I told him I did not." ( 6 H 27 )

The Secret Service had reason to worry about that written report because in that report, Dr. Jones described the throat wound as an "entrance wound".


 




A public explanation, a private conviction

Dr. Perry publicly stated under oath that the wound could have been either an entrance or exit wound and that remained his public stand.

But privately, he gave a different opinion.


On December 1, 1971, noted researcher and author Harold Weisberg interviewed Dr. Perry at the Southwest University School of Medicine. Weisberg noted that during this interview, Perry "let a few things drop then tried to cover".

Perhaps the most important of those was his repeated statement that when he first saw the wound in the throat, he took a quick look, wiped it off and started cutting. He added that the edges were bruised "as they always are."


 



The importance of this slip of the tongue is that only an entrance wound would leave an "abrasion ring" on the edges around it.


 

 

 

Weisberg asked Perry of he was ever asked about this signifcant fact. Perry blushed and then "tried to cover" by saying, "there was blood around the edges." Weisberg then notes that he didn't press Perry, that what he said was clear: if blood on the edges had initially prevented Perry from seeing them, it certainly didn't after he had wiped it off.

Another person he expressed a different opinion to was Dr. Donald Miller, who served with Dr. Perry at the University of Washington, beginning in 1975.

Dr. Miller was interested in the JFK assassination and asked Dr. Perry on several occassions about the throat wound. Each time Dr. Miller tried to probe for information, Dr. Perry was not interested in talking about it.

Then one day, after a long surgery, the two were in the doctors' lounge having coffee, Dr. Miller once again pressed Perry about the throat wound. This time Perry said, "it was an entrance wound, definitely an entrance wound."

It's obvious that on the weekend of the assassination, Dr. Perry was sure what he had seen was an entry wound in the throat. Every description he gave was indicative of an entry wound. He was pressured from the time the President's body arrived at Bethesda to the time he was deposed on March 25, 1964 to change his story. In the end, they got Perry to back down publicly and at the same time destroyed any copy of the press conference video.



Scripting the answers

The Commission dealt with the Dallas doctors by pre-interviewing them before their depositions. Dr. Perry was one of those who sat down and talked "about the purpose of this deposition and the questions I would be asking you on the record", with none other than Arlen Specter, the father of the Single Bullet Theory. ( 6 H 18 )

As I have mentioned in other essays of mine, in an ordinary court proceeding, where there is an adversarial format and witnesses are allowed to be cross-examined by defense counsel, this would be normal.

Prosecutors need to know what the witness is going to say under cross-examination.

But in this format, the intent of pre-interviewing of witnesses before they go on the record can only be to control or "coach" what they're going to say. They go over what questions will be asked and how the witness is to answer.

Since there is no court reporter or stenographer present, only the Commission's counsel and the witness, the witness may also be given notes by which to refer to during his answers.

And Dr. Perry wasn't the only one pre-inteviewed by Arlen Specter.

He pre-interviewed Dr. Charles Baxter ( 6 H 44 ), Dr. James Carrico ( 6 H 7 ), Dr. Ronald Jones ( 6 H 57 ) and nurse Margaret Henchliffe ( 6 H 142 ) as well.

In fact, anyone who described the wound in the throat as an entrance wound or a small smooth wound, was pre-interviewed by Specter.

Talk about a conflict of interest.



Specter's hypothetical

The Warren Commission had a big problem with the throat wound. Most of the doctors had described the wound consistent with a wound of entry. So Specter devised a 180-word hypothetical question to get them to say that the bullet was a wound of exit. With some variation, this is the question he put to each of the Dallas medical witnesses who saw the throat wound :


"Assuming some factors in addition to those you personally observed, what would your opinion be if these additonal facts were present:

First, the President had a wound of entry on the right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula with the wound measuring 7 by 7 mm in oval shape, being 14 cm from the tip of the right acromion and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process---assume that this is the set of facts that the wound just described was caused by a 6.5mm bullet fired from approximately160 to 250 feet away from the President, from a weapon having a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet per second, assuming as a third factor that the bullet passed through the President's body, going in between the strap muscles of the shoulder without violating the pleura space and exited at a point in the midline of the neck, would the hole which you saw on the President's throat be consistent with an exit wound, assuming the factors I have just given you ?"


In other words, if the bullet had exited Kennedy's throat, would the wound you saw in the President's throat be consistent with an exit wound ?


Well, duh !!



Clues in the testimony

"....entry wounds are generally smaller and more regular than exit wounds. Entry wounds show invagination of tissue into the wound, while exit wounds show outward beveling of tissue."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556119/#:~:text=Entry%20and%20Exit%20Wound&text=These%20are%20entry%20wounds%20and%20show%20outward%20beveling%20of%20tissue.

Adding to the evidence that the wound was NOT an exit wound, Drs. Baxter ( 6 H 42 ), Perry ( 6 H 9 ), Carrico ( 6 H 3 ) and Jones ( 6 H 54 ) all described in testimony a wound whose size was smaller than the diameter of the bullet that the Commission alleged had made it.

After a bullet enters through the skin, the skin retracts due to its elasticity and thus will make the wound appear smaller than the bullet that has passed through it, but this only applies to entrance wounds.

Exit wounds are generally larger than the entrance wound because as the round moves through the body of the victim it decelerates and shatters the tissue and surrounding muscle. The exit wound normally looks larger and significantly more destructive than the entrance wound. Its edges are ragged and seem everted or "punched out".


 

 



In other words, the wound could not have been an exit wound and at the same time, smaller than the bullet that made it.

Dr. Baxter described the wound as "spherical" and "did not appear to be jagged." ( 6 H 42 )

Dr. Carrico testified that the wound was "fairly round" and "had no jagged edges". ( 3 H 362 )

Dr. Perry described it as "roughly spherical to oval in shape, not a punched out wound, actually, nor was it particularly ragged. It was rather clean cut.." ( 6 H 9 ).

Dr. Jones described the wound as "no larger than a quarter of an inch in diameter" with "very minimal disruption or interruption of the surrounding skin." A wound with "relatively smooth edges around the wound". A " very small, smooth wound". ( 6 H 54 )

Nurse Margaret Henchcliffe told the Commission that the hole "was as big around as my little finger" and that it was "an entrance bullet hole". When pressed by Specter if the hole could have been an exit wound, she said that she could not remember ever seeing an exit bullet hole "that looked like that". ( 6 H 141 )

Their descriptions in testimony indicate that the wound they saw was a wound of entry.

And their descriptions of the wound under oath weren't the only evidence that the wound they saw was a wound of entry.

Written statements that the doctors made 2-3 hours after attending the President are of immense significance. Not only are they the first accounts of trained medical professionals regarding the President's wounds, they are pure medical data, devoid of any "single bullet theory" or other factors that would affect opinions.



Clues in the initial notes

We need to look no further that Dr. Carrico's initial statement that the wound in the throat was a "small penetrating wound in the anterior neck in lower 1/3."


 



Penetrating trauma is an open wound injury that occurs when an object pierces the skin and enters a tissue of the body, creating a deep but relatively narrow entry wound.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetrating_trauma#:~:text=Penetrating%20trauma%20is%20an%20open%20but%20relatively%20narrow%20entry%20wound.


Dr. Carrico, within a few hours of attending the President, was describing the President's throat wound as a "penetrating wound" or wound of entry.

There was another doctor in Trauma Room 1 that day, who was ignored by the Commission and described the type of throat wound he saw that afternoon as a wound of entry.



The ignored doctor

One of those witnesses the Commission chose to ignore was Dr. Charles Crenshaw, who was mentioned eight times in testimony as having been in attendance in Trauma Room 1. ( 15 H 761 )

Dr. Crenshaw claimed that the wound he saw was a wound of entry.

 



The HSCA circus

In the 1970's the House Select Committee on Assassinations took up the issue of the clean edges of the throat wound. Its Medical Panel gave an opinion that defies every known fact regarding bullet exit wounds. You have to read it for yourself:


 



That's right: the President's tie and shirt offered enough resistance to prevent the outward exploding of the tissue of the neck as the bullet exited.

But the Medical Panel did not address the FBI's spectrographic tests of the holes in President's shirt and tie which showed that no excess copper was in those locations and no copper was found that "could be attributed to projectile fragments." ( 20 H 22 )

If the shirt and tie were sufficient to shore, buttress or reinforce the skin ( as the Medical Panel said ), there should have been traces of the copper jacket of CE 399 left on the shirt and tie.

There were none.



Conclusion

Dr. Perry correctly identified the throat wound as an entrance wound on the afternoon of the assassination.

The transcript of the press conference released by the ARRB proves that both Dr. Perry and the Commission lied about his response to questions. There were no hypotehtical questions about the throat wound and Dr. Perry was not expressing possibilites.

The questions were direct and his answers were direct.

For that very public opinion, he was repeatedly harrasssed by the authorities at Bethesda and the Secret Service to the extent that his participation in any subsequent press conferences were, by his choice, minimal.

He was convinced to change his opinion that he didn't get a good look at the throat wound and it could have either been a wound of entry or exit.

He was deposed and went on the record testifying under oath to something he knew was not true. As a result, he was forced to repeat it time and time again over the years.

When you lie about something under oath, you own it. You can't go back and change it because you're admitting you lied and regardless of the reason, you're under the penalties of perjury.

Those who were behind Perry's backpedalling didn't realize that while you can change someone's mind about their opinion, you can't change their description of what they saw.

And there lies the truth.

Dr. Perry's original opinon that the throat wound was an entrance wound was buttressed by the medical professionals who saw the wound before the tracheostomy and gave descriptions consistent with an entrance wound.

Dr. Perry told Harold Weisberg that the edges of the wound were bruised, consistent with the abrasion ring made by an entering bullet.

He told Dr. Donald Miller that the wound, "was an entrance wound, definitely an entrance wound."

It becomes obvious that Dr. Perry DID examine the wound before he made the tracheostomy incision, that he had a clear indication of whether the wound was one of entrance or exit and that he based his opinion on the evidence he saw.

It also becomes evident that since he made his opinion public he was badgered into changing that opinion and lying under oath. And it bothered him to do that to the extent that he refused to talk about the wound except in rare occasions.

At some point, Dr. Perry had to realize that he, like many of the witnesses in this case, was a victim of a coverup. Like Seymour Weizman and other witnesses who surrendered the truth to the lie, his descent was into a darkness that would cling to him for the rest of his life.

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Gil Jesus Mentor

Gil Jesus

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2 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Bruising is not an abrasion ring which is actually scraped-off skin. Bruising can occur around either entry or exit wounds, and also exit wounds can have something similar to abrasion rings called "shored exit wounds".

Shored gunshot wound of exit is produced when the outstretched skin is impaled, sandwiched, and crushed between the outgoing bullet and the unyielding object over the exit site, thus leaving an abrasion collar on the wound margin. In contrast to the entrance wound, the supported exit wound shows a scalloped or punched-out abrasion collar. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6637946/

This wound, as described by Dr. Perry, was not "punched out".

Dr. Perry described it as "roughly spherical to oval in shape, not a punched out wound, actually, nor was it particularly ragged. It was rather clean cut.." ( 6 H 9 ).

This was NOT a shored exit wound.

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Paul Brancato Mentor

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Thank you Gil for the excellent and well organized essay. The degree to which the screws were applied immediately to Dr. Perry show the concerted effort to control the story to fit the lone gunman from the rear. One cannot explain this by saying that LBJ, Hoover, and others were worried about nuclear war with the Soviets. That came later, once LHO, disaffected Marxist, was the accepted shooter. This State Secret is still being hidden, and by the last three presidents in particular. There is nothing patriotic about this, no matter what those in a position to do something about it, might tell themselves. The throat wound was the original first day evidence, and those of us that followed the case from the beginning (I was 16) were aware of it almost immediately. 

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John Cotter Experienced

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2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Thank you Gil for the excellent and well organized essay. The degree to which the screws were applied immediately to Dr. Perry show the concerted effort to control the story to fit the lone gunman from the rear. One cannot explain this by saying that LBJ, Hoover, and others were worried about nuclear war with the Soviets. That came later, once LHO, disaffected Marxist, was the accepted shooter. This State Secret is still being hidden, and by the last three presidents in particular. There is nothing patriotic about this, no matter what those in a position to do something about it, might tell themselves. The throat wound was the original first day evidence, and those of us that followed the case from the beginning (I was 16) were aware of it almost immediately. 

Amen to that.

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Joseph McBride Rising Star

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The throat shot may have come from the storm drain

at the right edge of the picket fence at the top of the knoll, where it meets

with the bridge of the triple overpass. I have been

at that spot and found the man-sized hole at that

corner of the picket fence. When I lowered myself into it, I found that it

offered a clear, perfect, direct angle toward the front of the limousine. And it

offered cover for a sniper and a quick and easy escape into the parking lot.

Edited by Joseph McBride
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Pat Speer Grand Master

Pat Speer

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5 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

Shored gunshot wound of exit is produced when the outstretched skin is impaled, sandwiched, and crushed between the outgoing bullet and the unyielding object over the exit site, thus leaving an abrasion collar on the wound margin. In contrast to the entrance wound, the supported exit wound shows a scalloped or punched-out abrasion collar. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6637946/

This wound, as described by Dr. Perry, was not "punched out".

Dr. Perry described it as "roughly spherical to oval in shape, not a punched out wound, actually, nor was it particularly ragged. It was rather clean cut.." ( 6 H 9 ).

This was NOT a shored exit wound.

Presumably under the influence of Dr. John Lattimer, the HSCA FPP concluded that it was indeed a shored exit wound. And this even though Dr. Charles Petty, presumed to have been the FPP member with the most experience with gunshot wounds, was working on a textbook at the time that said shored wounds, while small, are nevertheless invariably larger than the corresponding exit wound. 

While some, including Dr. Wecht, wish to believe the HSCA FPP members were simply misguided, and anxious to blame it on Oswald, without realizing their conclusions were in contradiction with what they'd claimed elsewhere, I am not able to give them a free pass on this stuff. I think they knew what they were doing, and didn't care. 

This came to a head, literally, a few years back when I was reading everything I could on gunshot wounds to the brain, and found an article that described Kennedy's wounds to a tee, and reported that such wounds were symptomatic of a blow downwards at the top of the head. I was shocked to realize that the authors of this article were Dr. Russell Fisher (leader of the Clark Panel, and mentor to most of the HSCA FPP) and Dr. Richard Lindenberg, a consultant on Kennedy's wounds to the Rockefeller Commission (and former poopoo). There is no way these guys didn't realize that Kennedy's brain wounds reflected a blow at the top of the head, with the force heading downwards, and not a blow from the back, with the force heading upwards, or even evenly across the top of the head. 

But I don't know. I'm just a reader. It appears that doctors throw out what they've read (and written) when they see a chance to get in good with Uncle Sam. 

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Paul Cummings Proficient

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29 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

The throat shot may have come from the storm drain

at the right edge of the picket fence at the top of the knoll, where it meets

with the bridge of the triple overpass. I have been

at that spot and found the man-sized hole at that

corner of the picket fence. When I lowered myself into it, I found that it

offered a clear, perfect, direct angle toward the front of the limousine. And it

offered cover for a sniper and a quick and easy escape into the parking lot.

I also suspect Jackie blocked southside shooters as she turned to JFK. I often thought that's where the throat shot came from and that person just left.

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Benjamin Cole Grand Master

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"As I have mentioned in other essays of mine, in an ordinary court proceeding, where there is an adversarial format and witnesses are allowed to be cross-examined by defense counsel, this would be normal.

Prosecutors need to know what the witness is going to say under cross-examination."---GJ

Amen.

The Warren Commission was, in essence, a show trial in print. There was no active defense presenting defense witnesses and evidence, or challenging the prosecution's evidence and witnesses. 

Specter presented not an investigation, but rather the prosecution's brief against LHO. 

Specter took on faith LHO as the lone assassin, and then worked backwards---that led to the SBT. He then presented the SBT without challenge. 

BTW, regardless of your political beliefs, show trials are always highly dubious affairs. When you see a show trial format, step back and stay skeptical. 

When you see a public show trial...even more so. This goes beyond politics and is one of the enduring lessons from the JFKA. 

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Ron Bulman Grand Master

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28 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

"As I have mentioned in other essays of mine, in an ordinary court proceeding, where there is an adversarial format and witnesses are allowed to be cross-examined by defense counsel, this would be normal.

Prosecutors need to know what the witness is going to say under cross-examination."---GJ

Amen.

The Warren Commission was, in essence, a show trial in print. There was no active defense presenting defense witnesses and evidence, or challenging the prosecution's evidence and witnesses. 

Specter presented not an investigation, but rather the prosecution's brief against LHO. 

Specter took on faith LHO as the lone assassin, and then worked backwards---that led to the SBT. He then presented the SBT without challenge. 

BTW, regardless of your political beliefs, show trials are always highly dubious affairs. When you see a show trial format, step back and stay skeptical. 

When you see a public show trial...even more so. This goes beyond politics and is one of the enduring lessons from the JFKA. 

Ben, you should now be able to contribute to the forum's continued existence, given your proclivity for posting.  I think Sandy has fixed the pay pal problem you had.

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Gil Jesus Mentor

Gil Jesus

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14 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Thank you Gil for the excellent and well organized essay. The degree to which the screws were applied immediately to Dr. Perry show the concerted effort to control the story to fit the lone gunman from the rear. One cannot explain this by saying that LBJ, Hoover, and others were worried about nuclear war with the Soviets. That came later, once LHO, disaffected Marxist, was the accepted shooter. This State Secret is still being hidden, and by the last three presidents in particular. There is nothing patriotic about this, no matter what those in a position to do something about it, might tell themselves. The throat wound was the original first day evidence, and those of us that followed the case from the beginning (I was 16) were aware of it almost immediately. 

I agree. The CIA's excuse for continuing to stonewall release of the remaining documents is to protect their sources and methods. It's been 60 years and the sources are long gone. IMO, what they're protecting are methods and that's scary when you consider that they may be protecting them because they plan to use them again in the future.

I wanted this to be a narrative on Dr. Perry and the enormous pressure he faced ( as did other witnesses ) by telling the truth. Because of that, I didn't even get into the other physical evidence like the lack of a bullet track through the President's body, a track that should have been there if the throat wound had been caused by a transiting bullet on exit.

It's not possible to have a transiting bullet through a body without a bullet track.

I believe it's important for future generations to understand that this was not a normal homicide investigation but rather an investigation to gather evidence against Oswald. And to that end, witnesses were harrassed, evidence disappeared and statements were altered. Never in my life have I seen a case where all of the main evidence was initally misidentified as something else. Cops are human, yes and humans makes mistakes. But you'd think that at least they could have gotten one piece of evidence right the first time.

And in spite of all of these errors, the same officers who couldn't correctly identify evidence that was clearly marked were sharp-witted enough to capture the right guy.

Yeah, right.

 

Edited by Gil Jesus
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Micah Mileto Experienced

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On 10/8/2022 at 9:42 AM, Gil Jesus said:

Shored gunshot wound of exit is produced when the outstretched skin is impaled, sandwiched, and crushed between the outgoing bullet and the unyielding object over the exit site, thus leaving an abrasion collar on the wound margin. In contrast to the entrance wound, the supported exit wound shows a scalloped or punched-out abrasion collar. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6637946/

This wound, as described by Dr. Perry, was not "punched out".

Dr. Perry described it as "roughly spherical to oval in shape, not a punched out wound, actually, nor was it particularly ragged. It was rather clean cut.." ( 6 H 9 ).

This was NOT a shored exit wound.

Whether or not a wound appears to be "punched in" or "punched out" can be considered a separate issue from whether a wound has an abrasion collar.

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Eddy Bainbridge Collaborator

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I think your essay is excellent Gil and I think there is another piece of indirect evidence for a wound of entry: Could someone confirm the timing of the Life magazine article stating that Kennedy had turned round in the limo, thus explaining a shot at his throat from the rear? I am guessing that article was written after the Perry press conference, and after the Z-film confirmed this to be a lie (To Life Magazine at least) BUT before the decision that the 'Kennedy turned round' lie would not stand scrutiny. 

 

If I'm right about the timing, it's glaring evidence of an incompetent start to the medical cover-up.

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Gil Jesus Mentor

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On 10/8/2022 at 9:08 AM, Gil Jesus said:

 

On 10/8/2022 at 9:08 AM, Gil Jesus said:

 

On 10/8/2022 at 9:08 AM, Gil Jesus said:

Wound of Entry:
Dr. Malcolm Perry's journey into darkness


by Gil Jesus ( 2022 )


 



At the news conference, Dr. Perry answered a series of hypothetical questions and stated to the press that a variety of possibilities could account for the President's wounds....Dr. Perry said his answers at the press conference were intended to convey his theory about what could have happened, based on his limited knowledge at the time, rather than his professional opinion about what did happen.....Commenting on his answers at the press conference, Dr. Perry testified before the Commission:

I expressed it [his answers] as a matter of speculation that this was conceivable. But, again, Dr. Clark [who also answered questions at the conference] and I emphasized that we had no way of knowing. ( Report, pg. 90 )


The truth is that Dr. Malcolm Perry was NOT answering a hypothetical question and he did NOT speculate. The question was direct and the doctor's response was direct.

The bullet wound he saw in the front of the throat was a wound of entry.



The first press conference

On November 22, 1963, after the President had been pronounced dead, the Parkland doctors held a press conference to advise what the President's wounds were and to describe the treatment they used in trying to save his life.


 



Dr. Clark attended to the President's head wound and Dr. Perry attended to his throat wound.

During that press conference, Dr. Perry was directly asked about the throat wound three times and three times he indicated that it was an entrance wound and its direction had been one of coming at the President.

In the 1990's, the Assassination Records Review Board released as part of its master medical records a White House transcript of that press conference:


 



As you can see, there was nothing hypothetical about the questions and Dr. Perry's response was not one where he was speculating what was conceivable or discussing a variety of possibilities.

Perry flat out stated that "there was an entrance wound in the neck". Further proof of his comment was published in the November 23rd edition of the New York Times.


 



The point is that Dr. Perry's description of the throat wound to the press was unambiguous and more importantly the testimony he gave in his deposition for the Warren Commission was exposed by the transcripts of that press conference as being less than truthful.

In other words, he perjured himself.

So we're left with asking what caused Dr. Perry to lie about what he said on November 22, 1963 ?



The second press conference

In his deposition of March 25, 1964, Dr. Kemp Clark described a second press conference held on the morning of Saturday, November 23, 1963. During that testimony, Dr. Clark said that although he attended the conference, Dr. Perry "said very little". ( 6 H 22 )

Dr. Perry was shying away from providing information to the press. According to Dr. Clark:

"Dr. Perry stated that he had talked to the Bethesda Naval Hospital on two occasions that morning and that he knew what the autopsy findings had shown and that he did not wish to be questioned by the press, as he had been asked by Bethesda to confine his remarks to that which he knew from examining the President and suggested that the major part of this press conference be conducted by me." ( 6 H 23 )

Dr. Perry had been "asked" to not give his opinion on the throat wound, but to only report what he observed upon examination.

In other words, Dr. Perry was being censored.



Witness tampering

The pressure on Dr. Perry to change his opinion on the throat wound started almost immediately after the body arrived at Bethesda.

Dr. Perry's description of the throat wound is found in the notes of autopsist Commander James J. Humes, who consulted with Perry on the night of the assassination regarding the size of the wound. Those notes can be found in Commission Exhibit 397 ( 17 H 29 ) and describe the wound that Perry told Humes he saw as 3-5 mm.


 



Humes knew this was too small a hole to have been a wound of exit so the debate went back and forth between Dr. Perry and Bethesda.

Parkland nurse Audrey Bell was the supervising nurse of the Operating and Recovery Rooms. She told the ARRB in 1997 that the morning after the assassination, Dr. Perry told her that he had been up almost all night with the autopsy doctors and they were trying to get him to change his mind about the throat wound being a wound of entry.


 



But the pressure to have Dr. Perry change his opinion didn't stop there. He was visited by the Secret Service, according to his testimony, "at least three times". ( 6 H 17 )

The Secret Service agent whose responsibility it was to get Dr. Perry to change his mind about that he saw was Elmer Moore.

In May 1970, Moore was the hot-tempered head of the Seattle office of the Secret Service. A graduate student named James Gochenaur was interested in the Kennedy assassination and had contacted him about obtaining a photo.

Moore invited Gochenaur to come by his office.

Once there, Gochenaur claimed that Moore went into a tirade that frightened him. Moore admitted that he was ordered to "badger" Dr. Perry into changing his testimony about the throat wound.

Armed with the autopsy reports and photographs, Moore was able to get Perry to back down and say that the wound Perry saw could have been either an entrance wound or an exit wound.

On March 30, 1964, five days after his initial testimony, Dr. Perry was deposed a second time and testified that the wound he saw could have been either an entrance or an exit wound.

By the time he testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Dr. Perry's estimation of the size of the wound had grown from 3-5mm in 1963, to 6-7 mm. ( 7 HSCA 94 )

By going along with the faked autopsy record, Perry had testified under oath to something he knew was not true. The problem with making false statements under oath is that it is punishable by law and once you commit to those falsehoods, there's no going back.

So Perry was forced to publicly tow the line while privately expressing his real opinion. More on that in a little bit.

But the witnesses were not the only thing tampered with. The Secret Service collected ALL of the video from the doctors' press conference to hide the fact that Dr. Perry had publicly described the throat wound as a wound of entry.

That video evidence, like much of the evidence exonerating Oswald, has vanished into eternity.


Dr. Perry wasn't the only one who the Secret Service took an interest in. According to Dr. Clark, he "talked to a member of the Secret Service approximately a month after the assassination. I talked to him on two occasions, once by phone, and he asked me if I had a copy of a written report by Dr. Ronald Jones and I told him I did not." ( 6 H 27 )

The Secret Service had reason to worry about that written report because in that report, Dr. Jones described the throat wound as an "entrance wound".


 




A public explanation, a private conviction

Dr. Perry publicly stated under oath that the wound could have been either an entrance or exit wound and that remained his public stand.

But privately, he gave a different opinion.


On December 1, 1971, noted researcher and author Harold Weisberg interviewed Dr. Perry at the Southwest University School of Medicine. Weisberg noted that during this interview, Perry "let a few things drop then tried to cover".

Perhaps the most important of those was his repeated statement that when he first saw the wound in the throat, he took a quick look, wiped it off and started cutting. He added that the edges were bruised "as they always are."


 



The importance of this slip of the tongue is that only an entrance wound would leave an "abrasion ring" on the edges around it.


 

 

 

Weisberg asked Perry of he was ever asked about this signifcant fact. Perry blushed and then "tried to cover" by saying, "there was blood around the edges." Weisberg then notes that he didn't press Perry, that what he said was clear: if blood on the edges had initially prevented Perry from seeing them, it certainly didn't after he had wiped it off.

Another person he expressed a different opinion to was Dr. Donald Miller, who served with Dr. Perry at the University of Washington, beginning in 1975.

Dr. Miller was interested in the JFK assassination and asked Dr. Perry on several occassions about the throat wound. Each time Dr. Miller tried to probe for information, Dr. Perry was not interested in talking about it.

Then one day, after a long surgery, the two were in the doctors' lounge having coffee, Dr. Miller once again pressed Perry about the throat wound. This time Perry said, "it was an entrance wound, definitely an entrance wound."

It's obvious that on the weekend of the assassination, Dr. Perry was sure what he had seen was an entry wound in the throat. Every description he gave was indicative of an entry wound. He was pressured from the time the President's body arrived at Bethesda to the time he was deposed on March 25, 1964 to change his story. In the end, they got Perry to back down publicly and at the same time destroyed any copy of the press conference video.



Scripting the answers

The Commission dealt with the Dallas doctors by pre-interviewing them before their depositions. Dr. Perry was one of those who sat down and talked "about the purpose of this deposition and the questions I would be asking you on the record", with none other than Arlen Specter, the father of the Single Bullet Theory. ( 6 H 18 )

As I have mentioned in other essays of mine, in an ordinary court proceeding, where there is an adversarial format and witnesses are allowed to be cross-examined by defense counsel, this would be normal.

Prosecutors need to know what the witness is going to say under cross-examination.

But in this format, the intent of pre-interviewing of witnesses before they go on the record can only be to control or "coach" what they're going to say. They go over what questions will be asked and how the witness is to answer.

Since there is no court reporter or stenographer present, only the Commission's counsel and the witness, the witness may also be given notes by which to refer to during his answers.

And Dr. Perry wasn't the only one pre-inteviewed by Arlen Specter.

He pre-interviewed Dr. Charles Baxter ( 6 H 44 ), Dr. James Carrico ( 6 H 7 ), Dr. Ronald Jones ( 6 H 57 ) and nurse Margaret Henchliffe ( 6 H 142 ) as well.

In fact, anyone who described the wound in the throat as an entrance wound or a small smooth wound, was pre-interviewed by Specter.

Talk about a conflict of interest.



Specter's hypothetical

The Warren Commission had a big problem with the throat wound. Most of the doctors had described the wound consistent with a wound of entry. So Specter devised a 180-word hypothetical question to get them to say that the bullet was a wound of exit. With some variation, this is the question he put to each of the Dallas medical witnesses who saw the throat wound :


"Assuming some factors in addition to those you personally observed, what would your opinion be if these additonal facts were present:

First, the President had a wound of entry on the right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula with the wound measuring 7 by 7 mm in oval shape, being 14 cm from the tip of the right acromion and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process---assume that this is the set of facts that the wound just described was caused by a 6.5mm bullet fired from approximately160 to 250 feet away from the President, from a weapon having a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet per second, assuming as a third factor that the bullet passed through the President's body, going in between the strap muscles of the shoulder without violating the pleura space and exited at a point in the midline of the neck, would the hole which you saw on the President's throat be consistent with an exit wound, assuming the factors I have just given you ?"


In other words, if the bullet had exited Kennedy's throat, would the wound you saw in the President's throat be consistent with an exit wound ?


Well, duh !!



Clues in the testimony

"....entry wounds are generally smaller and more regular than exit wounds. Entry wounds show invagination of tissue into the wound, while exit wounds show outward beveling of tissue."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556119/#:~:text=Entry%20and%20Exit%20Wound&text=These%20are%20entry%20wounds%20and%20show%20outward%20beveling%20of%20tissue.

Adding to the evidence that the wound was NOT an exit wound, Drs. Baxter ( 6 H 42 ), Perry ( 6 H 9 ), Carrico ( 6 H 3 ) and Jones ( 6 H 54 ) all described in testimony a wound whose size was smaller than the diameter of the bullet that the Commission alleged had made it.

After a bullet enters through the skin, the skin retracts due to its elasticity and thus will make the wound appear smaller than the bullet that has passed through it, but this only applies to entrance wounds.

Exit wounds are generally larger than the entrance wound because as the round moves through the body of the victim it decelerates and shatters the tissue and surrounding muscle. The exit wound normally looks larger and significantly more destructive than the entrance wound. Its edges are ragged and seem everted or "punched out".


 

 



In other words, the wound could not have been an exit wound and at the same time, smaller than the bullet that made it.

Dr. Baxter described the wound as "spherical" and "did not appear to be jagged." ( 6 H 42 )

Dr. Carrico testified that the wound was "fairly round" and "had no jagged edges". ( 3 H 362 )

Dr. Perry described it as "roughly spherical to oval in shape, not a punched out wound, actually, nor was it particularly ragged. It was rather clean cut.." ( 6 H 9 ).

Dr. Jones described the wound as "no larger than a quarter of an inch in diameter" with "very minimal disruption or interruption of the surrounding skin." A wound with "relatively smooth edges around the wound". A " very small, smooth wound". ( 6 H 54 )

Nurse Margaret Henchcliffe told the Commission that the hole "was as big around as my little finger" and that it was "an entrance bullet hole". When pressed by Specter if the hole could have been an exit wound, she said that she could not remember ever seeing an exit bullet hole "that looked like that". ( 6 H 141 )

Their descriptions in testimony indicate that the wound they saw was a wound of entry.

And their descriptions of the wound under oath weren't the only evidence that the wound they saw was a wound of entry.

Written statements that the doctors made 2-3 hours after attending the President are of immense significance. Not only are they the first accounts of trained medical professionals regarding the President's wounds, they are pure medical data, devoid of any "single bullet theory" or other factors that would affect opinions.



Clues in the initial notes

We need to look no further that Dr. Carrico's initial statement that the wound in the throat was a "small penetrating wound in the anterior neck in lower 1/3."


 



Penetrating trauma is an open wound injury that occurs when an object pierces the skin and enters a tissue of the body, creating a deep but relatively narrow entry wound.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetrating_trauma#:~:text=Penetrating%20trauma%20is%20an%20open%20but%20relatively%20narrow%20entry%20wound.


Dr. Carrico, within a few hours of attending the President, was describing the President's throat wound as a "penetrating wound" or wound of entry.

There was another doctor in Trauma Room 1 that day, who was ignored by the Commission and described the type of throat wound he saw that afternoon as a wound of entry.



The ignored doctor

One of those witnesses the Commission chose to ignore was Dr. Charles Crenshaw, who was mentioned eight times in testimony as having been in attendance in Trauma Room 1. ( 15 H 761 )

Dr. Crenshaw claimed that the wound he saw was a wound of entry.

 



The HSCA circus

In the 1970's the House Select Committee on Assassinations took up the issue of the clean edges of the throat wound. Its Medical Panel gave an opinion that defies every known fact regarding bullet exit wounds. You have to read it for yourself:


 



That's right: the President's tie and shirt offered enough resistance to prevent the outward exploding of the tissue of the neck as the bullet exited.

But the Medical Panel did not address the FBI's spectrographic tests of the holes in President's shirt and tie which showed that no excess copper was in those locations and no copper was found that "could be attributed to projectile fragments." ( 20 H 22 )

If the shirt and tie were sufficient to shore, buttress or reinforce the skin ( as the Medical Panel said ), there should have been traces of the copper jacket of CE 399 left on the shirt and tie.

There were none.



Conclusion

Dr. Perry correctly identified the throat wound as an entrance wound on the afternoon of the assassination.

The transcript of the press conference released by the ARRB proves that both Dr. Perry and the Commission lied about his response to questions. There were no hypotehtical questions about the throat wound and Dr. Perry was not expressing possibilites.

The questions were direct and his answers were direct.

For that very public opinion, he was repeatedly harrasssed by the authorities at Bethesda and the Secret Service to the extent that his participation in any subsequent press conferences were, by his choice, minimal.

He was convinced to change his opinion that he didn't get a good look at the throat wound and it could have either been a wound of entry or exit.

He was deposed and went on the record testifying under oath to something he knew was not true. As a result, he was forced to repeat it time and time again over the years.

When you lie about something under oath, you own it. You can't go back and change it because you're admitting you lied and regardless of the reason, you're under the penalties of perjury.

Those who were behind Perry's backpedalling didn't realize that while you can change someone's mind about their opinion, you can't change their description of what they saw.

And there lies the truth.

Dr. Perry's original opinon that the throat wound was an entrance wound was buttressed by the medical professionals who saw the wound before the tracheostomy and gave descriptions consistent with an entrance wound.

Dr. Perry told Harold Weisberg that the edges of the wound were bruised, consistent with the abrasion ring made by an entering bullet.

He told Dr. Donald Miller that the wound, "was an entrance wound, definitely an entrance wound."

It becomes obvious that Dr. Perry DID examine the wound before he made the tracheostomy incision, that he had a clear indication of whether the wound was one of entrance or exit and that he based his opinion on the evidence he saw.

It also becomes evident that since he made his opinion public he was badgered into changing that opinion and lying under oath. And it bothered him to do that to the extent that he refused to talk about the wound except in rare occasions.

At some point, Dr. Perry had to realize that he, like many of the witnesses in this case, was a victim of a coverup. Like Seymour Weizman and other witnesses who surrendered the truth to the lie, his descent was into a darkness that would cling to him for the rest of his life.

A final point on this if I may:

How the HSCA medical panel could have given such a far-out opinion on the roundness of the "exit" wound is puzzling in light of the tests done for the Warren Commission that showed that the Western Cartridge bullet was unstable on exit.

In other words, the tests showed that a bullet travelling through the President's neck would have been already tumbling before it exited.

The expert who gave the testimony was Dr. Alfred Olivier, the Chief of the Wounds Ballistics Branch of the Dept. of the Army. His group fired rifle CE 139 using Western Cartridge 6.5 ammo lot # 6000. They simulated the President's neck by using 13 1/2 to 14 1/2 centimeters of horsemeat and/or goatmeat. They covered that with goatskin to simulate the President's skin and covered that with a suit coat, a tie and a shirt over the entrance side only. ( 5 H 77 )

Commission Exhibit 850 is the result of the 6.5 ammo's effect on entering and exiting skin.

WH_Vol17_846-CE-850-647x1024.jpg

 

In its Report, the Commission concluded that "the exit holes, especially the one most nearly round, appeared similar to the descriptions given by Dr. Perry and Dr. Carrico to the hole in the President's throat." ( pg. 91 )

Of course, this is a lie. Dr. Olivier could not and did not testify to this because his testimony was given 12 days before the depositions of Drs. Perry and Carrico. And Drs. Perry and Carrico were never shown the goatskins and asked if the exit holes were similar to the hole they saw in the President's throat.

The footnotes refer to the testimony of Perry and Carrico, but only where they said the wound was round. At no time was anyone asked to compare the exit holes in the goatskin with the hole in the President's throat.

Why not ? Because they knew better.

Therefore, the Commission's conclusion that the exit holes in the goatskin were "similar" to the hole seen by Drs. Perry and Carrico is not based on any evidence or testimony.

As you can see, the exit holes were much larger than the entrance holes, regardless of their shape, further evidence that a 3-5 mm hole in the throat could not have been made by this ammunition which made a 7 mm entrance hole in the back ( or back of the neck, for that matter ).

It also disproves the HSCA's theory that the shirt and tie offered enough resistance to prevent the skin from punching outward upon the bullet's exit. The bullets started tumbling BEFORE they exited and the shirt and tie used in the test had NO EFFECT on altering the exit hole. 

When the US Army did the wound testing, they found that the 6.5mm Western Cartridge ammunition started tumbling BEFORE it exited the simulated neck of the President, causing elongated exit wounds. They also found that the ammunition left LARGER wounds upon exit. This totally destroys the Single Bullet Theory and the theory that the throat wound was a wound of exit. All of this evidence indicates that the throat wound was not an exit wound.

Dr. Perry was right. It was a wound of entry.

Edited by Gil Jesus
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