Rare medical quotes in Philadelphia Bulletin article from 11/31/1963, Kennedy's casket lined with "rubber sheet", body clad in "paper shroud", head wrapped in "several plastic bags"?

[Micah Mileto]

Some exclusive quotes from Dr. William Kemp Clark appear in the rarely cited 11/31/1963 Philadelphia Bulletin article Assassination Day–Step by Step by Adrian I. Lee and Hugh E. Flaherty. The article, while describing the wound in Kennedy’s throat as an entry, still acknowledged the information indicating that the shots came from behind him. Vernon B. O’Neal of O’Neal Funeral Home was quoted as saying that Kennedy’s body had been clad in “an expendable paper shroud”, and the article continued on to read “...the agents ordered Oneal to place the President’s body in the bronze, brown velvet-lined casket. This, Oneal and his two attendants did, lining the casket first with a rubber sheet and further shrouding the President’s head in several plastic bags–all against the possibility of further bleeding”. This article is very long and contains many interesting details, details which better specialists in the case might be able to spot: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/Autopsy%20JFK%20Thorton%20Boswell/Item%2008.pdf , https://archive.org/details/nsia-AutopsyJFKBoswellJThorton/nsia-AutopsyJFKBoswellJThorton/Autopsy%20JFK%20JTB%2001/mode/2up , https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mkSXbnAaK7tjIJox_mO-nSfCSrMz-AMn/view

 

4 Bullets in Rifle

 

[...]

 

The immediate question occurring the rifleman was, of course, whether to fire during the approach of the President’s big, blue limousine, wait until it went into the long, slow turn at the corner or wait until the automobile was departing down the other street.

 

Firing on the approach to the big, pink brick building presented an instant danger.

 

It would be immediately apparent that a bullet full in the President’s face could only come from straight ahead. And straight ahead there was no place to look but at the school book depository. Police surmise that Secret Service agents would have located him quickly and shot him out of the window.

 

On the turn then, as the big limousine with its presidential seals glistening inside the black doors, wheeled from Houston into the other highway.

 

Moving Target

 

The gunman almost would have had to lean out the window–so steep was the angle of fire.

 

Also, the automobile at the moment would have been moving across his line of sight, which meant that he would have had to keep his rifle barrel moving across his line of sight, which meant that he would have had to keep his rifle barrel moving in a slow arc to keep the cross hairs on target.

 

It was to be within this angle of fire–encompassed by these two streets–that the shots were to be delivered going. And they were to be delivered going away.

 

This provided maximum safety for the gunman since a following shot would be–as indeed it was–hard to trace immediately.

 

Also, it would be easier to keep on target since the limousine would be leaving in a fairly straight line, necessitating smaller corrections of aim.

 

[…]

 

At 12.31, the presidential limousine had almost reached a highway directional sign–“Fort Worth Turnpike–Keep Right”–in white and green.

 

Standing just across the highway from this sign was Charles F. Brehm, 38, with is five-year-old son, Joseph.

 

Brehm, a carpet salesman, was a World War II rifle an in the 5th Ranger Battalion. He was wounded at Brest in the invasion of France. He has seen other men hit, too.

 

First Shot Heard

 

As the President passed him about 20 feet away, Brehm said, he heard the first shot.

 

It was 12:32 PM. “He (the President) stiffened,” said Brehm. “He had been sitting forward on the seat–not sitting deep back.

 

“He seemed to straighten out–as if digging his heels into the floor of the car.”

 

The President's hand came up slowly to his neck, said Brehm. “He gave a cringe of pain,” he said.

 

This was not the bullet which caused the massive head wound, said Brehm.

 

“I saw what the next bullet to hit him did to his head,” he said.

 

So this first bullet was the one which entered the President's body at the neckline, and, perhaps splintering, left a wound in his neck just below his Adam's apple near the knot of his necktie, and coursed down into his chest.

 

Both Brehm and Truly, who was standing in front of the depository, thought that at this moment the limousine swerved–or “jerked” as Brehm put it–to the left as if about to speed away.

 

Car Slows

 

Then, however, Brehm said, it seemed to lose momentum–“almost as if the driver had taken his foot off the gas.”

 

“Maybe I was just imagining it,” said Brehm. “Maybe I thought it was swerving because I just wanted that thing (the limousine) to leap out of there–get out fast.”

 

And then, for a long few seconds, there seemed to be silence. There seemed to be no immediate awareness of what happened.

 

Brehm said the President's smile was “sagging.” He had a pain-stricken look on his face,” he said.

 

The President was still sitting straight, said Brehm. It wasn't until the President was hit again that he slumped against his wife, and she took his head in her arms.

 

“He seemed to be conscious that something terrible had happened to him,” said Brehm. “It didn't look like it knocked him out.”

 

Two facts of hideous portent emerge from the stories told by Brehm and others.

 

Head Still Visible

 

The President's head was still visible above the leather upholstered seat of the limousine to the eye on the other side of the telescopic sight.

 

Also, the car was still moving at 15 to 18 miles an hour.

 

The rifleman, however, shifted his aim to Texas Gov. John B. Connally.

 

Brehm said he heard a second shot, but didn't know where it went.

 

“I was watching the President,” he said.

 

This shot hit Connally in the back just under the right shoulder blade. It splintered the fifth rib, coursed down through the body, and emerged from his side to break his right wrist lying in his lap and lodge in his left thigh.

 

Brehm said he knew by the sound of the shots that they had crossed his line of vision rather than coming from over his shoulder or from the other side of the road.

 

And still–after the second shot–the President's head was still visible above the seat; still there was no sudden burst of speed.

 

The effect of the third bullet was murderous. It hit the back of the President's head with an ax-like or chopping effect.

 

Another fraction of an inch–and the bullet might just have creased the President's head. Still another fraction of an inch and it might have missed him altogether.

 

As it was, it hit at a shallow angle, ripping off a piece of skull “perhaps the diameter of a teacup,” said Dr. William Kemp Clark, a neurosurgeon.

 

[…]

 

Fight for Life

 

The dying President was carried into Trauma One–a gray-tiled emergency room about ten feet by 15–and laid on a rubber-tired cart.

 

It was 1.38 P.M.

 

Mrs. Kennedy watched from the doorway as nurses and doctors scissored away his coat, shirt and undershirt and struggled to reverse what Dr. Clark called the “irreversible process of death.”

 

A massive blood transfusion was commenced; intravenous fluids were administered.

 

To help sustain respiration, Dr. Malcolm Perry, surgeon, widened the hole in the President’s neck and inserted a metal breathing tube in his throat.

 

It seemed that the bullet–perhaps a fragment–which hit the President in the neck had coursed down into his chest, striking his lung.

 

Air from this collapsing lung was escaping into the chest cavity and rising to the hole in his neck as a red froth.

 

A tube was inserted on either side of his chest between the ribs to draw off this air.

 

One Bullet Lost

 

Dr. Clark said he thought the bullet which hit the back of the President’s head and exited, leaving–if anything, only minute fragments of lead adhering to the bone.

 

And doctors thought the other bullet was still in the President–perhaps his chest, when he was taken back to Washington.

 

[Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade said earlier this week that a bullet removed from the President, presumably at Bethesda Naval Hospital, matched the gun abandoned by the sniper as he fled the sixth floor of the depository]

 

Dr. Clark said “a considerable portion” of brain tissue was done when the President arrived and that “he never knew what hit him.”

 

As the President’s pulse ebbed, then disappeared, Dr. Clark commenced heart massage, placing the heel of his palm on the President’s chest, his other hand on top of that, then pushing rhythmically 60 to 70 times a minute, “close to normal heart rate.”

 

Pulse Stops

 

Dr. M. T. Jenkins, anesthesiologist, said he could feel a pulse.

 

But it stopped after “only three or four beats,” indicating that not only had the President’s heart failed but that it had nothing to pump.

 

“Under pressure of heart message,” said Dr. Clark, “some kind of pulse is felt as long as there is blood to pump; for the pressure literally forces the blood from the heart into the arteries with a consequent pulse.”

 

The President’s loss of blood was “massive,” he said. “Half of the more than five quarts a man the size of the President would have had been exhausted” in Trauma One alone.

 

And continued Dr. Clark, he had bled profusely before arrival.

 

Veins Nearly Empty

 

The President’s veins were almost empty, he said.

 

Since it was awkward for Dr. Clark to reach through the tangle of tubes in the President’s neck and chest, a steel stool was brought and Dr. Perry stood on it to continue the heart massage.

 

A cardiotachioscope was brought to determine if any electrical impulses still were reaching his heart from the damaged brain.

 

This is a tube-shaped instrument, 18 inches lone, three inches wide. Protruding from one end are three wires. Set in the other is a glass screen.

 

A bead of yellow light traves across the glass to register impulses– or the lack of them: a wavy line for the former, a straight line for the latter.

 

The wires were inserted in the President’s arms and one leg.

 

The line–with its faint yellow afterglow–was straight. All communication between brain and heart had ceased.

 

Wife Told of Death

 

Since the brain damage had been the apparent cause of death, it was up to Dr. Clark to say so. And he said: “I guess this is it.”

 

He went to where Mrs. Kennedy was standing in the doorway and told her the President was dead.

 

“I’m all right.” she said. “I understand; may I go to him.”

 

Nurses and doctors commenced plucking out the tubes and wires in his body.

 

It was 1 P.M.

 

[…]

 

Paper Shroud

 

Oneal said that by the time he arrived, the President’s head had been wound around and around with gauze until his eyes, nose, mouth and chin–his whole face–were covered. He had been clad in “an expendable paper shroud,” said Oneal.

 

[…]

 

Casket Moved

 

Meanwhile, the agents ordered Oneal to place the President’s body in the bronze, brown velvet-lined casket.

 

This, Oneal and his two attendants did, lining the casket first with a rubber sheet and further shrouding the President’s head in several plastic bags–all against the possibility of further bleeding.

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by Micah Mileto

[Matt Allison]

45 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

This, Oneal and his two attendants did, lining the casket first with a rubber sheet and further shrouding the President’s head in several plastic bags–all against the possibility of further bleeding.

Hell of a find, Micah. Kudos

[Micah Mileto]

Currently trying to map out all of the differences between the transcript of the 11/22 conference and the media quotations of it. Also trying to map out all of the news reports of Dr. Kemp Clark at the parkland press conferences that occured in the days following 11/22.

[K K Lane]

Thanks for this post.   It's always interesting to see comments before the narrative was set.

[Micah Mileto]

10 hours ago, K K Lane said:

Thanks for this post.   It's always interesting to see comments before the narrative was set.

Actually, I have found that Dr. Kemp Clark was apparently reading off the same prepared statement in each of the press conferences at Parkland, word-for-word. This amazing fact has probably confused researchers, who read newspaper articles on the later conferences and just assumed it was the media who had been re-using quotes from the 11/22 conference, even though the articles directly attribute the identical quotes to dates after 11/22. Unless there's something I'm not getting, that's pretty weird. I will post proof soon here.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Micah Mileto

[Karl Kinaski]

 Quote from the newspaper article (Sunday Bulletin Philadelphia)provided:

Quote

"(At Parkland) Oneal and two of his attendants rolled the casket into Traume One, where Mrs Kennedy was standing at her husband's head. Oneal waited there for perhaps 20 minute, he said, after the agents told him they would come back to tell him when to put the president into the casket. 

 What always puzzled me. Kennedy was dead at13h. Johnson left the hospital.  The Secret Service wasn't in a hurry at that moment in time. They seem to have  all the time in the world. The were calling a funeral home, despite there were coffins available at Parkland. Oneal arrived. The Oneal-team was waiting additional 20 minutes in the hospital for reasons unknown. Then they began to put the corpse in the bronze casket. They had all the time of the world. But around 13.55-14: 00 PM when the dead president was at Parkland for almost 1 hour, the Secret Service all of a sudden was eager to get him out of the hospital and Dallas with pistols drawn! 

  My guess: They were all kept waiting, till the preplanned murder of Tippit and the preplanned detention of Oswald in the Texas Theater tying him to Tippit's killing was executed without undesired incidents. Now that "they" had Oswald on whom they intended to put the Lone nut tag "they" had to hijack the corpse which showed marks of multiple shooters. In Washington they would mutilate the body that he would fit the LN Oswald ... to create a legend spoilng US politics down to the present day. 

 

KK

[Chuck Schwartz]

Karl, that appears to be a very educated guess.