Paul Landis Revelation About Assassination Bullet

[Peter Fokes]

On 9/26/2023 at 3:50 PM, David Von Pein said:

A Landis Summary.....

As of the time I'm writing this post on September 26, 2023, I think there are five versions of Paul Landis' "bullet" story, with versions 2 and 3 being virtually identical. I'll outline those versions and variations below:


Version #1: November 1963. In this earliest version, via two separate Secret Service reports (one of which is extremely long and detailed), Landis doesn't say a word about seeing or finding any type of "bullet" or "bullet fragment":

PAUL LANDIS' REPORTS (11/27/63 & 11/30/63)


Version #2: November 1983. In this version, which appeared in at least two Ohio newspapers, Landis tells Associated Press writer Tim Curran that "there was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat" which Landis said he "picked up and gave to somebody":

THE COSHOCTON (OHIO) TRIBUNE (NOV. 20, 1983)

GREENFIELD (OHIO) DAILY TIMES (NOV. 22, 1983)


Version #3: November 1988. This version is nearly identical to Version 2, with the only difference being that Mr. Landis, in 1988, doesn't specifically say he found the fragment "on top" of the back seat. In his 1988 interview, he merely says he found a fragment "on the seat".

But another key difference in this 1988 article is the fact that the reporter/writer has placed quotation marks around the key words being spoken by Mr. Landis, indicating that these words (shown below) are not just a mere paraphrasing on the part of the author of the article, but instead represent a direct and verbatim quote coming from the mouth of Paul E. Landis Jr.:

"I distinctly remember there was a bullet fragment on the seat which I picked up and handed to somebody."

THE COLUMBUS (OHIO) DISPATCH (NOV. 20, 1988)


Version #4: 2010 (in the book "The Kennedy Detail"). In this version, like the 1983 and 1988 newspaper accounts, Landis says he saw a bullet "fragment" in the back portion of JFK's limousine. But in this 2010 version, unlike the earlier articles from the 1980s, Mr. Landis doesn't say anything about giving the fragment to another person. Instead, he says he placed the fragment "on the seat".

Here's the complete excerpt concerning Landis and the "bullet fragment" as it appears on Page 225 of the 2010 book "The Kennedy Detail" (with thanks going to Vincent Palamara for providing the screen capture linked below):

"When Agent Paul Landis helped Mrs. Kennedy out of the car he saw a bullet fragment in the back where the top would be secured. He picked it up and put it on the seat, thinking that if the car were moved, it might be blown off."

PAGE 225 OF "THE KENNEDY DETAIL" (2010)


Version #5: Landis' current version, which first surfaced publicly in September 2023, which has Landis now saying he saw and picked up a whole bullet off of the top portion of the back seat of the Presidential limousine on 11/22/63, with Mr. Landis, unlike all previous statements he has ever made concerning the discovery of any type of "bullet" material, now claiming to have put that whole bullet in his pocket and then carrying it himself into Parkland Hospital where he then placed the whole bullet at the foot of the stretcher being occupied by John F. Kennedy in Trauma Room #1.

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL LANDIS (SEPT. 12, 2023)

-------------------------------

DVP's JFK Archives / Discussion About Paul Landis

 

So he saw a fragment and a whole bullet?

 

Two items?

[Peter Fokes]

On 9/10/2023 at 8:01 AM, Bill Fite said:

And there's another bullet found in the car according to Navy Dr James Young:

https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/navy-doctor-bullet-found-jfks-limousine-never-reported/

from Dr. Young's letter to then president G Ford:

 

Here a bullet, there a bullet, everywhere a bullet.

Trouble is no one really knows how many bullets there were.

Dismissing one agent's story about "A" bullet because it contradicts another agent's story about "A" bullet begins with a false premise unless there is a DEFINITIVE count of bullets found.

And that is murky at best. Some bullets might have gone missing. Into the abyss.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Peter Fokes
clarify

[Marjan Rynkiewicz]

5 hours ago, Peter Fokes said:

Here a bullet, there a bullet, everywhere a bullet.

Trouble is no one really knows how many bullets there were.

Dismissing one agent's story about "A" bullet because it contradicts another agent's story about "A" bullet begins with a false premise unless there is a DEFINITIVE count of bullets found.

And that is murky at best. Some bullets might have gone missing. Into the abyss.

A good scientific method is to make a hypothesis & then cherry pick the evidence that fits.

Oswald's shot-1. We found 2 half jackets in the limo. We found lead fragments in galea on back of jfk head (xray).

Oswald's shot-2. We found the (magic) bullet on a gurney. We found fragments in Connally.

Oswald did not fire his shot-3. We found one full round remaining in the Carcano.

Oswald had one old previously fired casing, found on the floor in the TSBD.

Hickey fired at least 4 times. Fragments found in jfk's head. Fragments found on windshield.

Some small lead fragments found in the limo might have been from shot-1 or from one of Hickey's shots.

The supposed Young fragment or bullet could have been from shot-1 if it was a fragment with no jacket -- or it could have been from Hickey's headshot if it was a small fragment.

Examining the whole evidence & trying to deduce a hypothesis can be a waste of time.

[David Von Pein]

7 hours ago, Peter Fokes said:

So he saw a fragment and a whole bullet?

Two items?

He's now saying (starting in 2023) that he saw THREE bullet items --- a whole bullet on top of the back seat, plus two smaller fragments lying in a pool of blood on the back seat itself.

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by David Von Pein

[Pamela Brown]

On 9/30/2023 at 11:07 AM, Peter Fokes said:

Here a bullet, there a bullet, everywhere a bullet.

Trouble is no one really knows how many bullets there were.

Dismissing one agent's story about "A" bullet because it contradicts another agent's story about "A" bullet begins with a false premise unless there is a DEFINITIVE count of bullets found.

And that is murky at best. Some bullets might have gone missing. Into the abyss.

It seems like yesterday that some of the old stalwarts at EF seemed outraged at my claim that the SS, in effect, sanitized the limo before turning it over to the FBI for an actual forensic exam....

[Pamela Brown]

On 9/30/2023 at 10:52 AM, Peter Fokes said:

So he saw a fragment and a whole bullet?

 

Two items?

Apparently, none of these random 'sightings' are grounded in a timeline.  The limo was at PH only a short time, and during much of that time the SS was putting the roof on the limo...

[David Von Pein]

Here's the recent interview that Larry Schnapf & Jeff Morley did with James Robenalt. Not really much of anything new revealed here that we hadn't heard in prior interviews. I was hoping to hear more details about how Paul Landis has attempted to explain the contradictory info that appears in the newspaper interviews that Landis did back in the '80s, in which Landis claimed to have found a bullet "fragment" that he then "gave to somebody". But there's not a single word spoken by Robenalt in this recent interview about those contradictions. And neither Schnapf nor Morley even asked about it.*

* 10/21/2023 EDIT ---- And this full-length version of the interview (which is 10 minutes longer than the edited one below) also doesn't say a word about Landis' contradictory 1983 and 1988 newspaper interviews, despite the fact that Larry Schnapf said on October 14, 2023 (via a JFK e-mail group), that he did, in fact, ask Robenalt specifically about those '80s statements during this interview. ~shrug~

 

Edited October 22, 2023 by David Von Pein

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Here's the recent interview that Schnapf & Morley did with James Robenalt. Not really much of anything new revealed here that we hadn't heard in prior interviews. I was hoping to hear more details about how Paul Landis has attempted to explain the contradictory info that appears in the newspaper interviews that Landis did back in the '80s, in which Landis claimed to have found a bullet "fragment" that he then "gave to somebody". But there's not a single word spoken by Robenalt in this recent interview about those contradictions. And neither Schnapf nor Morley even asked about it:

 

Neither here not there, but Robenalt was at least tolerant of, and appeared to embrace, the Warren Commission version of events in 2013. 

Robenalt "hosted" the above event, with Willens and Griffin arch-defenders of the WC.

So, Robenalt (it least it appears) was and is not a longtime CT'er who handled Landis and fashioned a CT book. 

One might even assume the opposite: Robenalt appears to be a LN'er, who somehow got control of Landis and his book. 

I guess Robenalt has concluded Landis is telling the truth, as Landis remembers it. Maybe Robenalt was unaware of the ramifications of what Landis was saying. 

Still, the smell of gunsmoke was heavy in Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA, while the wind was blowing towards the TSBD from the triple overpass. 

The LN version is that Gov. JBC makes a 180-degree turn in his seat to look for JFK---after JBC was been shot through the chest, an injury JBC describes (believably) as immediately incapacitating. 

Maybe Landis did find the slug in the limo. It does explain the shallow wound in JFK's back, if it was a shallow wound. 

 

[Tom Gram]

If anyone’s interested, Vinny from ROKC posted the relevant excerpts from Landis’ book yesterday:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2787-the-landis-bullet

[David Von Pein]

After having just now [on October 13, 2023] read the key "bullet" portions of Paul Landis' newly-released book "The Final Witness" (via the book excerpts that have been made available on this webpage [thanks, Tom Gram, for posting the link]), some additional problems and questions arise, with one of these problems being a massively important one regarding the precise location of where Landis says he left the whole bullet that he says he found on the top of the back seat in the Presidential limo.

All of the available testimony from the Parkland Hospital personnel makes it clear that President Kennedy was never moved from his stretcher (gurney) during the entire time the President was being treated in Trauma Room No. 1.

Former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, however, says something completely different in his book. He says this (quoting from the book itself):

"As I entered—or, more to the point, was pushed into—the trauma room, the president’s lifeless body was already being lifted off the gurney and placed onto a white cotton blanket that covered the surface of a stainless-steel examination table in the middle of the room." [End Quote.]

Landis then goes on to say this in his book:

"I removed the bullet from my pocket, and reaching out over the examination table, I carefully placed it on the white cotton blanket next to the president’s left shoe." [End Quote.]

But let's now compare the above book excerpt with the following statement made by the same Mr. Landis just one month ago:

"I put the bullet on the gurney right by his [JFK's] feet" -- Paul Landis; September 12, 2023 (NBC Interview)

So the question of great importance now becomes: Did Landis drop the bullet onto JFK's stretcher/"gurney"? Or did he leave it on an "examination table"?

That's an exceedingly important question to answer, because if we're to believe he left it on an exam table instead of the stretcher (with a stretcher, of course, having wheels on it, which means it could easily be moved from one part of the hospital to another), we've then got to ask: How, then, did that bullet (if it was really CE399, which Mr. Landis does seem to think it was) manage to get from the exam table to a stretcher in the corridor of Parkland Hospital, where it was then found by hospital employee Darrell C. Tomlinson a short time later?

Another possible problem with Landis' story crops up in the book excerpts linked above, although this "problem" isn't nearly as important or imperative as the "gurney vs. exam table" head-scratcher. This additional problem concerns the timing of Vice President Johnson's arrival at Parkland Hospital on 11/22/63. Landis says in his book that LBJ and the Vice President's Secret Service car had not yet arrived at Parkland Hospital by the time JFK's body was being lifted out of the back seat and onto a stretcher. Quoting again from Mr. Landis' book:

"The vice president’s limo had yet to arrive, so there were no agents from his detail in sight. In fact, there were no other agents in sight anywhere to the rear, to my right, or to the front. Where are they? Where the hell is SA Greer? He was driving the president’s limo. He should be here. The follow-up car was empty too. Where the hell is Special Agent Sam Kinney? He was driving it. Jeez, oh man! Where the hell is everyone? Where did all the agents go? Who is going to secure the car AND THE CRIME SCENE? Everyone seemed to be crowded around the president’s body. No one was paying attention to anything else. My immediate concern was the bullet. It would be visible to anyone happening to walk by. What about photographers? Or worse yet, What about a souvenir hunter? Thoughts continued to race through my mind." [End Quote.]

But with regard to Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his exact whereabouts at the time when President Kennedy was being wheeled into the hospital, there is evidence (via the observations of ambulance driver Aubrey Rike) which would indicate that Johnson actually entered Parkland Hospital prior to the time when either JFK or wounded Governor John Connally entered the emergency room entrance.

Listen to the chronology of events provided by Aubrey Rike, in two separate interviews he did on November 22, 1963, HERE.

If Rike's chronology of the timing for when each man entered the hospital is correct --- i.e., Johnson, then Connally, then Kennedy --- that would, in my opinion, place a serious cloud of doubt over Mr. Landis' account (and his mindset) concerning those same events.

Because if LBJ's car and his Secret Service follow-up car were actually there at the hospital prior to Landis and JFK and Mrs. Kennedy exiting the limo and going into the emergency room, it would also mean that Mr. Landis would very likely have had no reason to say this to himself --- "Where did all the agents go? Who is going to secure the car AND THE CRIME SCENE?" --- because there would have still been plenty of SS agents there at Parkland to look after the limousine/"crime scene".

So with each passing glance at Paul Landis' new 2023 story regarding the events of November 22nd, more and more questions (and doubts) seem to surface.
 

Edited October 13, 2023 by David Von Pein

[Vince Palamara]

20 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

If anyone’s interested, Vinny from ROKC posted the relevant excerpts from Landis’ book yesterday:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2787-the-landis-bullet

That "Vinny" is not me, but I DID just submit a detailed review of Landis book for Kennedys and King/ Jim DiEugenio

[Michael Crane]

Oh man,

I just posted this stuff on some clowns Youtube page.I have been verbally insulting and getting warnings from Youtube.

This last copy & paste job is from Landis himself.

He is not man enough to talk back.

 

[Vince Palamara]

2 hours ago, Vince Palamara said:

That "Vinny" is not me, but I DID just submit a detailed review of Landis book for Kennedys and King/ Jim DiEugenio

@James DiEugenio I sent you my detailed review for Kennedys and King

[Michael Crane]

2 hours ago, Michael Crane said:

Oh man,

I just posted this stuff on some clowns Youtube page.I have been verbally insulting and getting warnings from Youtube.

This last copy & paste job is from Landis himself.

He is not man enough to talk back.

 

Youtube just banned me for a day.I don't mind because I rarely post on Youtube.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Michael Crane

[Benjamin Cole]

On 10/13/2023 at 3:09 AM, David Von Pein said:

Here's the recent interview that Schnapf & Morley did with James Robenalt. Not really much of anything new revealed here that we hadn't heard in prior interviews. I was hoping to hear more details about how Paul Landis has attempted to explain the contradictory info that appears in the newspaper interviews that Landis did back in the '80s, in which Landis claimed to have found a bullet "fragment" that he then "gave to somebody". But there's not a single word spoken by Robenalt in this recent interview about those contradictions. And neither Schnapf nor Morley even asked about it:

 

In the above interview, James Robenalt seems a sensible smart guy, and he contends Landis is telling the truth, and had valid reasons for silence over the years. 

I had been skeptical, of course, of both Landis and Robenalt, for different reasons. 

But Robenalt seems to play it straight, and he regards Landis as earnest. 

Many witnesses described the first 11/22 shot sound as different in pitch and volume from the succeeding and rapid shots.

Perhaps the first shot that struck JFK was undercharged. Some have contended an undercharged shot would not have penetrated JFK by just two inches.  Or that an undercharged shot would have fallen short of target, sinking too low. 

Maybe. But if the gunman behind the undercharged had inadvertently aimed too high, and was shooting at a downward trajectory, maybe it pans out. After all, the distance was about 75 yards, or possibly less. 

Evidently, .38 special bullet travels at only 700 fps, while the Mannlicher Carcano fired bullets near 2000 fps (I think 1,800). 

Here is a blurb 

"The speed at which a projectile must travel to penetrate skin is 163 fps and to break bone is 213 fps, both of which are quite low, so other factors are more important in producing damage."

 

Here is another blurb: F"or example, a .177 airgun pellet traveling at 500 feet per second (FPS) will typically penetrate about 1/4 to 3/8 inch into the skin. "

 

So...an undercharged Mannlicher Carcano bullet, traveling at perhaps 700 fps, might be in the ballpark, and could have caused the shallow back wound to JFK. 

 

BTW, the bullet drop for 9mm Lugur at 100 yards is about 12 inches. 

 

So again, in the ballpark: One could expect an undercharged bullet fired from the TSBD to "drop" perhaps 9-10 inches at 75 yards, perhaps a little less in aiming downhill, so to speak.  

 

That actually works out, and would place an undercharged shot into JFK's upper back, assuming it was an intended head shot.

 

The case for an undercharged shot striking JFK in the back is reasonable, if the wound was in fact shallow. 

 

If Landis found the slug, I would call it case closed.