Brain Injury

[Bill Brown]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

Geez, Bill. I have written books on this stuff, in which I go through these and other conclusions and show why 1) why we shouldn't trust them, and 2) why they are wrong. 

Your first paragraph is correct except for the fact it was 1966, not 1967. You also leave out the context. This review was conducted after members of the media realized that the back wound was a back wound and not a neck wound, and that the single-bullet theory was suspect. Days after this review was performed Boswell was pressured? into claiming that after reviewing the photos he could state that the drawings showing the wound to be on the neck were accurate. Early the next year, at the request of CBS, another review was performed, this one without Ebersole and Stringer, but with Finch. This review reached similar conclusions, and formed an intro to Humes' appearance on CBS that June in which he claimed that the drawings showing the wound to be on the neck were accurate...something he would have to have know was false after viewing the photos. 

Your second paragraph leaves even more out. The Clark Panel was convened in secret to "debunk"  the "junk" in Tink Thompson's book, most certainly including that the head wound trajectory proposed by the WC made no sense in light of JFK's position at Z-312/Z-313. To do this they needed to "find" a wound higher up on the head, and voila! they did so! Never mind that no such wound was reported by anyone who'd seen the body. They needed this smudge to be the entrance wound described at autopsy or they would have to admit that both the trajectory and lack of damage within the brain suggested there were in fact two head wounds. So...the two head wound theory was narrowly avoided via the fabrication of a make-believe bullet hole higher-up on the body. And the doctors knew this was a problem because...unique among the "reviews' of the medical evidence, they had a lawyer along for their protection. 

Your third paragraph is also misleading. The Rockefeller Commission's consultants issued no report. They issued separate papers or were simply asked to testify. In any event they were not as consistent as you seem to believe. Dr. Wecht was not convinced of a single headshot, and Dr. Fred Hodges said the entrance wound was as described in the autopsy report (and thus not where the Clark Panel claimed it to have been). 

Well, this brings us to the HSCA. For this panel, Dr. Baden selected almost entirely colleagues of the Clark Panel's Dr. Fisher, so it should not be a surprise they pretty much rubber-stamped his findings. The exception was Dr. Wecht, who was included on the panel at the insistence of Robert Tanenbaum, but who was sidelined by Baden to minimize his influence on the others. (E.G. He was not allowed to attend the session attended by Dr.s Humes and Boswel.) In any event, they relied upon the experience of Tom Marshall, an Irish doctor they thought was familiar with full-metal jacket ammunition head wounds, vis his study of the wounds received in the Bloody Sunday massacre, but who it turns out had been duped by the British military, as the fatal wounds had actually been created by dum-dum bullets. And that's not even to mention that they placed the head wound entrance and head wound exit at the same level within the skull, which led the HSCA's trajectory analysis to pretend JFK was actually sitting fairly upright at the moment of the fatal headshot, instead of sharply forward (which even Dale Myers knows is nonsense.) Well, it follows then that their conclusions were based on hoo-ha, and probably more suggestive of multiple shots than one. 

 

 

"Your first paragraph is correct except for the fact it was 1966, not 1967."

 

Yep.  November of '66.  Thanks for the correction.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Good catch. I was in a hurry and wasn't thinking. JFK suffers the BACK WOUND around 190 or so before he went behind the sign, and receives the EOP bullet around Z-224, which is why he and Connally appear to be reacting at the same time. He then receives another shot to the head at 313. 

I have a step by step explanation of my "theory" in chapter 20, but am honestly more interested in facts than theories, even my own. 

I admire your work.

I think we are in rough agreement, although I contend JBC was shot ~Z295. 

I have read and re-read sections of your excellent work. 

 

[Michael Griffith]

23 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

It's become clear to me that very few are aware of or have bothered to read my research regarding wound ballistics and brain injury. This material is available in Chapters 16b and 16c at patspeer.com. Should one be able to separate oneself from the body alteration distraction for a moment and actually read this material, one will find that the body as reported by the autopsy doctors, and as recorded in the autopsy photos and x-rays, is clear-cut evidence for two head shots, and by extension two shooters. 

Here is a taste of what is there: 

This is the skull of a prisoner shot while escaping, from a distance of 90 feet, by a guard using a rifle and cartridge more powerful than the rifle and carriage purported to kill Kennedy. It comes from Louis Anatole La Garde's book Gunshot Wounds, in which LaGarde also described the brain injury suffered by this prisoner.

Keep in mind that the bullet through this skull traveled a trajectory almost identical to what the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel claimed for the bullet killing Kennedy. Here's La Garde: "On the calvarium being removed the surface of the dura mater presented a state of intense congestion. To the right of the longitudinal fissure it was torn through for a distance of about 4 inches, about one inch from and parallel to it. A furrow corresponding to the injury of the dura was ploughed through the right hemisphere in the region of the superior frontal convolution about 1/2 inch deep."

Well, how about that? The Supplementary Autopsy Report of President Kennedy claimed a "longitudinal laceration" (which has long been presumed to be a bullet track, and is often described as a furrow) through Kennedy's brain ran "approximately 4.5 cm. below the vertex in the white matter."

A half-inch deep is about 12 mm. 4.5 cm is 45 mm. The furrow through Kennedy's brain was almost 4 times as deep as the furrow through the dead prisoner's brain, even though the bullets creating these furrows, according the HSCA FPP, sped along a nearly identical trajectory. 

The HSCA's trajectory is nonsense.

At some point, you are going to have to admit that you cannot accept the EOP entry site without conceding that the autopsy brain photos are fraudulent, because those photos show a virtually undamaged cerebellum and right-rear occipital lobe. There is no credible, feasible path from the sixth-floor window, or from any other nearby upper-floor window, that can hit at the EOP site without tearing through the cerebellum and the right-rear occipital lobe. 

Nothing in Chapters 16b and 16c explains or shows how a bullet fired from the sixth-floor window or from another upper-floor window could have entered at the EOP site and avoided tearing through the cerebellum and the right-rear occipital lobe.

Any scenario that accepts the EOP entry site but also accepts the brain photos as genuine is impossible.

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Tom Gram]

14 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

And second of all, the size of the defect above the ear is much greater than one would expect from a full-metal jacket bullet passing through brain. (That's the point of the image above... 120 years of wound ballistics literature tells us that full metal jacket bullets passing through brain don't blow the top of the head off, particularly at 90 yards, as proposed by the WC.

I think this needs to be qualified by the word “stable”. The extent of damage is entirely dependent on how much kinetic energy is transferred from the bullet, not the type of round. If an FMJ bullet tumbles and/or fragments on impact it can cause massive wounds similar to that observed in JFK. 

There are many problems with Oliver’s tests, and as far as I know the raw data from those tests has never been released to the public, but the tests did show in concept that a 6.5 mm FMJ striking occipital bone could lose stability, fragment, and do severe, atypical damage to the brain and skull. 

One problem with the Edgewood tests if I recall is they didn’t attempt to simulate the trajectory/distance from the TSBD to the EOP and didn’t place the skulls at the same angle as JFK’s head in z312. The in-skull trajectory is one of the most frequently cited problems with the EOP shot theory, and for good reason, since a shot from the TSBD would need to have travelled upward and to the right within the skull to blow out the top/side of JFKs head. 

What’s interesting IMO is Boswell put that arrow next to the EOP wound on the face sheet pointing up and to the left. It is not clear if he just made an assumption or if the entrance beveling indicated such a direction, but I think we can suspect the latter, since the arrow is pointing away from the large head wound. 

Assuming Boswell’s arrow reflects an actual observation, how do we reconcile an upward entrance trajectory with a shot from above and behind? Well, JFK was leaning sharply forward and to the left in Z312. The back of the skull also curves forward, so a bullet striking above the EOP on a forward/left leaning head from above, behind and to the right seems like it could plausibly enter the plane of the skull heading up and to the left. 

Well then how could we explain the bullet curving sharply to the right? Bullet yaw within the body is dependent on the angle of yaw on impact. If a bullet strikes yawing upward it will yaw in that same direction within the body, but at a much faster rate due to increased drag forces. A bullet’s trajectory in the body will also tend to curve in the direction of its yaw - kind of like a plane taking off. 

Could a bullet striking the EOP at Z312 from the TSBD change direction enough to exit the right side of the skull? I have no idea, but I suspect it’s not impossible. This study shows how much FMJ handgun bullets can change direction after straight-on direct impact with simulated frontal bone (Figure 8), and I think it’s reasonable to suspect that an angled impact on occipital bone could increase the magnitude of deflection.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5807523/

Before I get blasted for arguing in support of the WC shooting scenario, my main interest in this is to try to identify any “chokeholds” that would make an EOP entrance 100% under any imaginable conditions incompatible with JFK’s (official) head wounds. I never worked with actual wounds but I do have real-world experience studying terminal ballistics, and I suspect that a lot of the things cited as impossible are unlikely, but not actually impossible. 

The high fragment trail is another one. Pat argues that the fragments were scattered from a tangential strike. I could be wrong on this, but I do not recall ever seeing any evidence that an FMJ tangential strike can scatter fragments of various sizes in front of and behind the point of impact. This is literally just one test shot photo from one study, so it’s not exactly conclusive evidence, but it does suggest a plausible mechanism for the high fragment trail driven by temporary cavity expansion (Figure 2): 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jan-Kromeier/publication/236934203_The_varying_size_of_exit_wounds_from_center-fire_rifles_as_a_consequence_of_the_temporary_cavity/links/00b7d51aae58848a31000000/The-varying-size-of-exit-wounds-from-center-fire-rifles-as-a-consequence-of-the-temporary-cavity.pdf?origin=publication_detail

I just think it’s an interesting exercise to try to reverse-engineer the (official) head wound while stipulating to a single EOP shot. There are plenty of other problems, like fractures, scalp wounds, back-and-to-the-left, etc. - but if there’s any scenario at all that’s even remotely possible, some WC diehard will inevitably cite it as conclusive evidence that Oswald did it, so it’s worth the effort to find that stuff and see if it could actually work, IMO. 

[Pat Speer]

2 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

I think this needs to be qualified by the word “stable”. The extent of damage is entirely dependent on how much kinetic energy is transferred from the bullet, not the type of round. If an FMJ bullet tumbles and/or fragments on impact it can cause massive wounds similar to that observed in JFK. 

There are many problems with Oliver’s tests, and as far as I know the raw data from those tests has never been released to the public, but the tests did show in concept that a 6.5 mm FMJ striking occipital bone could lose stability, fragment, and do severe, atypical damage to the brain and skull. 

One problem with the Edgewood tests if I recall is they didn’t attempt to simulate the trajectory/distance from the TSBD to the EOP and didn’t place the skulls at the same angle as JFK’s head in z312. The in-skull trajectory is one of the most frequently cited problems with the EOP shot theory, and for good reason, since a shot from the TSBD would need to have travelled upward and to the right within the skull to blow out the top/side of JFKs head. 

What’s interesting IMO is Boswell put that arrow next to the EOP wound on the face sheet pointing up and to the left. It is not clear if he just made an assumption or if the entrance beveling indicated such a direction, but I think we can suspect the latter, since the arrow is pointing away from the large head wound. 

Assuming Boswell’s arrow reflects an actual observation, how do we reconcile an upward entrance trajectory with a shot from above and behind? Well, JFK was leaning sharply forward and to the left in Z312. The back of the skull also curves forward, so a bullet striking above the EOP on a forward/left leaning head from above, behind and to the right seems like it could plausibly enter the plane of the skull heading up and to the left. 

Well then how could we explain the bullet curving sharply to the right? Bullet yaw within the body is dependent on the angle of yaw on impact. If a bullet strikes yawing upward it will yaw in that same direction within the body, but at a much faster rate due to increased drag forces. A bullet’s trajectory in the body will also tend to curve in the direction of its yaw - kind of like a plane taking off. 

Could a bullet striking the EOP at Z312 from the TSBD change direction enough to exit the right side of the skull? I have no idea, but I suspect it’s not impossible. This study shows how much FMJ handgun bullets can change direction after straight-on direct impact with simulated frontal bone (Figure 8), and I think it’s reasonable to suspect that an angled impact on occipital bone could increase the magnitude of deflection.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5807523/

Before I get blasted for arguing in support of the WC shooting scenario, my main interest in this is to try to identify any “chokeholds” that would make an EOP entrance 100% under any imaginable conditions incompatible with JFK’s (official) head wounds. I never worked with actual wounds but I do have real-world experience studying terminal ballistics, and I suspect that a lot of the things cited as impossible are unlikely, but not actually impossible. 

The high fragment trail is another one. Pat argues that the fragments were scattered from a tangential strike. I could be wrong on this, but I do not recall ever seeing any evidence that an FMJ tangential strike can scatter fragments of various sizes in front of and behind the point of impact. This is literally just one test shot photo from one study, so it’s not exactly conclusive evidence, but it does suggest a plausible mechanism for the high fragment trail driven by temporary cavity expansion (Figure 2): 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jan-Kromeier/publication/236934203_The_varying_size_of_exit_wounds_from_center-fire_rifles_as_a_consequence_of_the_temporary_cavity/links/00b7d51aae58848a31000000/The-varying-size-of-exit-wounds-from-center-fire-rifles-as-a-consequence-of-the-temporary-cavity.pdf?origin=publication_detail

I just think it’s an interesting exercise to try to reverse-engineer the (official) head wound while stipulating to a single EOP shot. There are plenty of other problems, like fractures, scalp wounds, back-and-to-the-left, etc. - but if there’s any scenario at all that’s even remotely possible, some WC diehard will inevitably cite it as conclusive evidence that Oswald did it, so it’s worth the effort to find that stuff and see if it could actually work, IMO. 

"The extent of damage is entirely dependent on how much kinetic energy is transferred from the bullet, not the type of round."

You are correct in the narrow sense, in that the velocity of FMJ bullets has been increased within the last 70 years, to the extent they are now in violation of their raison d'être, and are actually designed to fragment. But I was using the term FMJ bullets as a reference to the bullets developed in the late 1800's, of which the Mannlicher/Carcano is one.  These bullets at 90 yards do not create massive temporary cavities that blast the top of a head into the air. But don't trust me. Trust the dozens of books and articles cited in Chapter 16b. 

"If an FMJ bullet tumbles and/or fragments on impact it can cause massive wounds similar to that observed in JFK." 

Hypothetically, yes. But we're talking about a specific rifle and cartridge fired from a specific range. To which the answer is no. That's not what happened.

To begin with, the lack of metal by the EOP should lead us to suspect nothing fragmented at that location. Now, some have conflated hunting ammo with FMJ ammo and assumed the bullet entered in one piece and intact, but then broke up while tumbling through the brain. But that's bs. That doesn't happen unless the bullet is already fractured, and bullets don't fracture unless they first deform and the small size of the entrance by the EOP suggests the bullet wasn't deformed upon entry. And, besides, there was no trail of fragments through the brain. None were found by the doctors within the skull outside the two behind the eye. And the fragments on the x-rays were in the scalp. And, yes, I know, Spitz claimed the right side of the skull was out of alignment and that this made the fragments appear higher than the cowlick entrance, and Sturdivan claimed they uniformly slid upwards within the skull, but I think we can agree they were grasping at straws. 

Furthermore, an FMJ bullet could create a wound as large as JFK's, yes, but not an M/C bullet, not at 90 yards. Unless it struck tangentially... Now, Olivier did present one test skull in his testimony and report that had a large exit wound. But it was on the face. Well, a bullet from behind exiting the face would have encountered bone along the way--the back of the eye sockets--and this would have created secondary projectiles and a much larger wound of exit than expected if the bullet exited from the top of the head. So his presenting this image was a deliberate deception, IMO, designed to disguise that none of the exit wounds they observed resembled JFK's.  

As far as tumbling... While Larry Sturdivan and others have claimed the bullet tumbled and that a tumbling bullet creates a large temporary cavity and large temporary cavities can explode the head, etc... this is hypothetical silliness, IMO. There is no record of the top of the head exploding high into the sky in any test performed on cadavers, etc. (The Disco Channel, on the other hand, accidentally re-created such a journey when striking their simulated JFK in the head...tangentially.) But, more to the point, there is NO sign of such a cavity within JFK's brain. NO bullet track was found connecting the EOP entrance to the top of the head exit, let alone a large track suggestive of the bullet's tumbling. And no bullet track was found connecting the supposed cowlick entrance to the supposed exit either. The brain injuries only make sense if the bullet impacted at the top of the head, at the supposed exit. 

[Michael Crane]

Pat,

I thought that motor skills was brain activity & usage.

I just looked it up tonight and found out that I had the wrong definition of motor skills.

I feel shame.