Why do some conspiracy theorists accept the X-rays and autopsy photos as genuine?

[Keven Hofeling]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Thanks for this Keven, I've never read Doug Horne's full work, nor seen this summary of missing photo's.   # 5 I have read about, probes in the back.  # 8, propped up by pathologists is a bit sickening (three sources though).  #17 is weird.  #18 is really important, puncture wound over right eye in hairline, also three sources.  Christmas is over.

Robert Richter was the associate producer for a four-part TV special entitled A CBS News Inquiry: The Warren Report, which aired between 6/25-6/28/1967. In a 1/10/1967 CBS internal memo to executive producer of special projects Les Midgley, Richter discloses information attributed to Jim Snyder of the network's Washington bureau. According to the memo, Snyder was acquainted with Dr. James Humes, the lead pathologist at Kennedy's autopsy. Humes allegedly told Snyder that, during the body examination, an x-ray was created which showed a surgical probe inserted from the back to the throat. There is no such x-ray or photograph currently present in the official collection of autopsy materials:

The memo reads:

"Jim Snyder of the CBS bureau in D.C. told me today he is personally acquainted with Dr. Humes. They go to the same church and are personally friendly. Snyder also knows Humes' boss in Bethesda; he is a neighbor across the street from Snyder. Because of personal relationships Snyder said he would not want any of the following to be traced back to him; nor would he feel he could be a middleman in any CBS efforts to deal with Hume.

Snyder said he has spoken with Humes about the assassination. In one conversation Humes said one X-ray of the Kennedy autopsy would answer many questions that have been raised about the path of the bullet going from Kennedy's back through his throat. Humes said FBI agents were not in the autopsy room during the autopsy; they were kept in an ante room, and their report is simply wrong. Although initially in the autopsy procedure the back wound could only be penetrated to finger length, a probe later was made---when no FBI men were present---that traced the path of the bullet from the back going downward, then upward slightly, then downward again exiting at the throat. One X-ray photo taken, Humes said, clearly shows the above, as it was apparently taken with a metal probe stick of some kind that was left in the body to show the wound's path.

Humes said that a wound from a high-power rifle, once it enters a body, causes muscle, etc. to separate and later contract; thus the difficulty in initially tracing the wound's path in the case of Kennedy. Also, once a bullet from a high power rifle enters a body, its course can be completely erratic; a neck wound could result in a bullet emerging in a person's leg or anywhere else.

Humes refused to discuss with Snyder the "single-bullet" theory in which the Warren Commission contends the same bullet described above went thru both Kennedy and Gov. Connally.

[...]

Humes plans to retire from the navy this July and has apparently agreed to accept a $50,000 a year job at a local suburban hospital as a pathologist. Snyder mentioned this as one indication that Humes was not "just another hack Navy doctor," as some reports have made him out to be.

Snyder also mentioned that Humes recently spoke with a Saturday Evening Post writer (probably Richard Whalen) who promised Humes that he, the writer, would do away with the "sensationalism" of reports on the autopsy and deal with the matter accurately. However, the article--which has just come out--"ridicules" the autopsy, tries to tear it to pieces so much that Humes has since contacted an attorney and is investigating a suit against the writer and/or the magazine.

Snyder said part of Humes' story--should Humes ever agree to be interviewed--is the followup to his autopsy, the controversy the inaccuracies, etc., as well as the facts of the autopsy itself."

https://www.rareddit.com/r/JFKsubmissions/comments/drv348/discussing_jfks_torso_wounds_part_12_possible/

 

Edited January 20 by Keven Hofeling

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

#18 is really important, puncture wound over right eye in hairline, also three sources. 

Plus Chesser, Mantik's Scientific analysis.  An entrance wound over the right ear, not examined by instruction.

[Pat Speer]

20 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Mr. Speer:

As an aside, I notice that in your "A Matter of Proportion" slide, you appear to be identifying the red spot that Michael Baden advised medical illustrator Ida Dox to enhance (resulting in her drawing it as a bullet hole) as a bullet entry. You don't accept the HSCA's upward movement of that wound as being accurate, do you?

 

Secondly, F-8, the "Mystery Photograph," was originally labeled as a "Missile Wound of Entrance in Posterior Skull, Following Reflection of Scalp,"  and I suppose it could be the same photo as Horne lists as number 1 in his article, but then, that still doesn't account for the other 17 on the list. 

F-8 is the occipital parietal wound that you have built a cottage industry attempting to deny existed, as Dr. David Mantik has demonstrated based upon several bases of evidence, including biological landmarks in the original photographs that are not present in the publicly available bootleg versions of the photograph (identified by by Dr. Mantik at the National Archives and verified by Forensic Pathologist Robert Kirschner).

 

Dr. Mantik's placement of the Harper Fragment is shown here in F-8 in the occiput.

Dr. Mantik's placement of the Harper Fragment of course relies heavily on the X-ray provided to him by the late John Hunt.

It seems pretty clear to me that Dr. Mantik's interpretation of F-8, and his placement of the Harper Fragment in the occiput are sound and valid conclusions.

This is Dr. David Mantik's commentary and notes on the photo F-8:

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

CORRECT ORIENTATION OF JFK F8 AUTOPSY PHOTO REVEALS IT TO BE OCCIPITAL-PARIETAL WOUND (BACK OF HEAD) AND REVEALS LOCATION OF HARPER FRAGMENT AT OCCIPUT:

 

'Postscript: The Mystery Photograph F8 by Dr. David Mantik'

 

https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_Medical_Evidence_Decoded.pdf

"...From this photograph, we can be certain that the back of the head was blown out, quite dramatically in fact, just like all of the witnesses said. It is very difficult to escape the conclusion that a frontal headshot led to this injury. This deduction, of course, also corroborates the recollections of all of those new and old witnesses who saw autopsy photographs with such a massive defect, which, in turn, means that other photographs really have disappeared."

Autopsy photograph F8 (the label derives from the list of Fox photographs) has generated endless controversy. This view has been exceptionally difficult to orient, even for the pathologists. Line BA was interpreted by Michael Baden, M.D., of the HSCA as passing from left to right, with the visible bone lying immediately anterior to the coronal suture. In fact, point B lies deep in the occiput, while point A is situated toward the front of the skull. Line BA divides the skull into left and right. Point L identifies the lead deposit on the Harper fragment; its location on the skull is remarkably consistent with the pathologists' skull entry site. The small white triangle identifies a triangle discussed in the text. The black circumferential perimeter outlines the site of origin of the Harper fragment. Letters C and D identify small bone fragments that are also identified in Figures 4A and 7. In F8 the Harper fragment appears distorted because of the perspective offered by the camera. Beyond point A (in the photographs at the Archives) a tangential view of the chest and abdomen (with fat pads folded back) can be seen. I determined this by stereo viewing of two, nearly identical, color photographs of F8.

 

In this section I present proof that this photograph (B& W # 17, # 18 and color #44, #45 in the current collection) shows the posterior skull. Even Robert McClelland, M.D., insisted, after his visit to the Archives, that the collection included a view of the large hole as seen at Parkland Hospital. It must have been F8. During their initial inventory review (signed on 10 November 1966), the pathologists labeled this as a posterior view: "Missile Wound of Entrance in Posterior Skull, Following Reflection of Scalp." Furthermore, in his ARRB deposition (reported to me by Douglas Home), Humes located the entry wound (in the posterior skull) toward the bottom of this photograph (as oriented here). This agrees with my interpretation, but disagrees with Baden, who described it more as a view from the left side. At their ARRB depositions, none of the pathologists could orient this photograph. However, when the X-rays are used in conjunction with the photograph, then its orientation becomes unambiguous, as I describe here in stepwise fashion.

 

1. Note the remaining frontal bone (Figure 12), as determined from the frontal skull Xray. This is consistent with Boswell's drawing at the autopsy (Figure 4A) and also with his drawing for the ARRB, as rendered by Home (Figure 9A-D). Note that the upper edge of the remaining frontal bone lies close to the hairline. Although not shown here, these drawings are also consistent with the drawings of Angel, the physical anthropologist, who served as an expert witness for the HSCA (7HSCA228-230). Giesecke (6H74) is one Parkland physician who did describe the large skull defect as extending from the occiput to the browline, in remarkable agreement with Boswell.

 

2. On the lateral skull X-ray (Figure 11B), I have indicated, with a line passing through the metallic debris, how the X-ray beam would have transited the skull when the frontal X-ray was taken. For confirmation of this X-ray trajectory note that (a) on the frontal X-ray (Figure 14) the metallic debris is closely bunched from top to bottom, as would be expected if the X-ray beam were traveling nearly parallel to this debris, (b) the transverse fracture just above the left eye (on the right side of the page) corresponds to the discontinuity at the rear of the lateral X-ray, and (c) the 7 x 2 mm metal fragment lies well above the right eye socket on both views. (There is additional evidence for this conclusion not given here.) 82

 

3. On the frontal X-ray, all of the bone is absent just above the trail of metallic debris.

 

4. In the HSCA interpretation of F8 (I have watched Baden demonstrate this on television), the segment BA runs from left to right across the skull at the coronal suture; therefore, according to the photograph, almost all of the bone anterior to this line segment was intact. This conclusion made some sense, because the largest, late arriving bone fragment had a suture line at one edge, which the HSCA took to be the coronal suture. Angel agreed that this was the coronal suture, but he placed this bone fragment anterior to the coronal suture, whereas Baden (in an unintended confirmation of the confusion that reigned over this issue) placed it posterior to the coronal suture. [What convinced Baden was the semicircular notch just below the letter C in the photograph) at the edge of the bone, which he took to be the exit site for the posterior bullet. Furthermore, this largest, late arriving bone fragment showed (on its X-ray image) multiple, tiny, metal particles, strongly suggestive of an exit site, meaning that it had to fit next to the notch (in Baden's view). The largest bone fragment can probably be placed anterior to the coronal suture (as Angel did), thus still permitting the actual exit site to lie at or near the coronal suture. (The X-ray’s leave an irresolvable ambiguity about the orientation of the bone fragments: it is impossible to distinguish inside from outside, and, strangely enough, the pathologists said nothing to clarify this. No photographs were taken either.)

 

5. Notice, however, that we have now arrived at a reductio ad absurdum there is a fatal contradiction in Baden's interpretation: from the X-rays, we know that bone must be missing all the way forward to the hairline, but Baden has just told us that it is present all the way back to the coronal suture! (On the lateral X-ray, this is where the skull is fractured at the skull vertex.) If the bone really were present to the coronal suture, then, on the frontal X-ray, we would see bone right at the very top on the right side of the skull, just as it is present on the left side. We can be certain of this because we know (from step 1) what the beam's eye view is, i.e., we know the direction that the X-ray beam traveled at the top of the skull during the taking of the frontal X- ray. Therefore, Baden's orientation of F8 is certainly wrong.

 

6. On the other hand, if F8 is the back of the head, then the line segment BA is the midsaggital line. There is further confirmation that this is the correct. While at the Archives, I viewed this photograph and its near twin (most views are pairs, taken with the camera slightly displaced in successive views) with a stereo viewer, which, for this view, is particularly illuminating. The bone surface (left of midline) was quite rounded, as would be expected for the occiput. In addition, the fractured bone islands at the right front (labeled C and D) could now be appreciated in 3D. After some staring, I realized that there were only two, and that they corresponded to the two bone islands on the frontal X-ray (also labeled C and D). Their sizes, shapes, and locations all fit perfectly. But one additional feature surprised me. In the color photographs at the Archives, there was more to see beyond the top edge of the film than is visible here. I finally realized that I was looking tangentially across the chest and abdomen. I could actually see a nipple (extending out into space in 3D) and the biggest surprise; I could see fat pads folded back from the abdominal incision. 83

 

7. There is a specimen bottle at the bottom left of this photograph (not well seen here), which seemed to suggest that Baden might have been right after all. However, now that I knew where parts of the body were located, I could conclude that the head had merely been rotated into a nonstandard orientation, no doubt to better expose the large, occipital hole for the camera, and that the specimen jar posed no special problem in interpretation.

 

8. Having concluded that the large defect extended all the way to the anterior hairline, Boswell's 13 cm measurement for the large hole fits better than it would for an anterior border at the coronal suture. This is further confirmation of my conclusion.

 

9. When questioned about this notch (on the bone edge) in F8 by the HSCA, Humes (7HSCA249) did not hesitate to say that the notch was not in the frontal bone, thus disagreeing with Baden's orientation!

 

10. In conclusion, the orientation described here is consistent with the historical orientation, with the X-rays, with Humes's comment about the notch, with Boswell's two drawings (one at the autopsy and one for the ARRB), and even with Angel's drawings, but not with Baden's orientation. From this photograph, we can be certain that the back of the head was blown out, quite dramatically in fact, just like all of the witnesses said. It is very difficult to escape the conclusion that a frontal headshot led to this injury. This deduction, of course, also corroborates the recollections of all of those new and old witnesses who saw autopsy photographs with such a massive defect, which, in turn, means that other photographs really have disappeared."

 

'THE MEDICAL EVIDENCE DECODED'

By David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.

https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_Medical_Evidence_Decoded.pdf

 

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/4989902384399124/

 

Yes, of course, the cowlick entry was a hoax. That was the point of my video series. The slide above shows that the red spot in the cowlick that was called an entry did not match the proportions of the entry discussed in the autopsy report. While everyone knows the report's description of a wound to the right and slightly above the EOP is at odds with the cowlick entry, moreover, I believe I was the first to prove the red spot is not an inch to the right of midline, nowhere close. It is absolutely positively not the wound described in the autopsy report. It was in the wrong vertical location, wrong horizontal location. It had the wrong proportions and did not match the description provided for the wound. 

Once one realizes that, moreover, one realizes that the autopsy photos fail to support the HSCA's analysis of the photos.

Once one studies the case, one realizes why--that the Clark Panel was asked to solve the riddle of the low entry/high exit, and just decided to move the wound. This parallels what happened with the back wound, moreover. The autopsy doctors were asked to solve the problem of the back wound being higher than the throat wound, and voila! they showed up at their depositions with drawings in which the back wound was two inches or so higher than the throat wound, and two inches or more higher than its location as shown in the photos. 

So, in short, the problem was not that the body was altered, or that the photos were faked, it was that the doctors tasked with analyzing and presenting the medical evidence misrepresented what was demonstrated in the photos.

And the problem doesn't stop with those pushing the Oswald-did-it agenda. Those who've pushed conspiracy have been also guilty of misrepresenting the evidence.

 

Edited January 21 by Pat Speer

[Keven Hofeling]

42 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

So, in short, the problem was not that the body was altered, or that the photos were faked, it was that the doctors tasked with analyzing and presenting the medical evidence misrepresented what was demonstrated in the photos.

And the problem doesn't stop with those pushing the Oswald-did-it agenda. Those pushing conspiracy have been also guilty of misrepresenting the evidence to push their agenda. .

 

So the Lone Nutters and the Conspiracy Theorists have both been guilty of misrepresenting the evidence to push their agendas? 

 

About ten years ago, Dr. Gary Aguilar schooled Mr. Speer on the circumstances that led to Dr. Robert McClelland mistakenly reporting that President Kennedy had died as the result of a gunshot wound "of"  the left temple, and Sandy Larsen just a week or so ago more succinctly and very effectively schooled him again by presenting the following in a post as exhibits:

___________

Exhibit 2

It was getting late in the evening, Dallas time, but before I ended the interview. I reminded Dr. McClelland of the fact that in his Parkland Hospital admission note at 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, he had written that the president died "from a gunshot wound of the left temple." "Yes," he said, "that was a mistake. I never saw any wound to the president's left temple. Dr. Jenkins had told me there was a wound there, though he later denied telling me this.

(Vincent Bugliosi, "Reclaiming History." p. 406)

Exhibit 3

"I'll tell you how that happened," Jenkins explained, "When Bob McClelland came into the room, he asked me, 'Where are his wounds?' And at that time I was operating a breathing bag with my right hand, and was trying to take the President's temporal pulse, and I had my finger on his left temple. Bob thought I pointed to the left temple as the wound.

(Gerald Posner, "Case Closed." p. 313)

___________

Sandy has recently written the following summary of the circumstances that led to Dr. McClelland's "left temple" mistake, and the aftermath which has resulted in much confusion:

___________

When Dr. McClelland arrived at the operating room, Dr. Marion Jenkins and several other doctors were already attending to President Kennedy. Dr. McClelland asked Dr. Jenkins where Kennedy's wounds were. Jenkins pointed to what he thought was a small entrance wound on the left temple.

Later, McClelland got a good view of the gaping wound on the back of Kennedy's head. (According to his testimony before the Warren Commission.)

So McClelland thought there were two wounds.

Some time later, Dr. Jenkins changed his mind about there being a small wound on the left temple, and he denied ever thinking so to Gerald Posner. And in fact, he blamed McClelland for ever thinking there was a wound there. Jenkins told Posner that he had been busy operating a breathing bag with his right hand and checking for a pulse on Kennedy's left temple, with a finger on his other hand. According to Jenkins, McClelland mistakenly thought that he was pointing to a small wound on the left temple.

McClelland never understood why Jenkins denied showing him where the left-temple wound was. Had he (or if he) ever read Case Closed, he would have seen why. He would have seen that Jenkins was a bald-face l.i.a.r.

___________

Mr. Speer raises all kinds of issues about Dr. McClelland's first day Admission Note, claiming that McClelland omitted mention of the large avulsive back of the head wound with extruded macerated cerebellar tissue, that McClelland's phrasing in the Note that President Kennedy died "from a gunshot wound [OF] the left temple" means that Dr. McClelland was aware of only one large wound that McClelland mistakenly placed at the left rather than the right temple (as Speer essentially alleges about all of the back-of-the-head wound witnesses), and that McClelland's lack of specificity about the back-of-the-head wound constituted medical malpractice, and ultimately means that McClelland didn't see the large avulsive back-of-the-head wound at all.

In post after post Speer rails on about how if we all read medical journals like he claims he does, that we would know that the use of the word "of" instead of "to" the left temple automatically means that McClelland was referring to one wound only. What Mr. Speer either doesn't know or won't tell you is that during the time period that McClelland attended medical school, it was very common in the medical profession to describe bullet wounds by use of the word "of," as in a bullet wound "of" the brain. See a 1942 article via the following link for an example of the use of the word "of" in the medical phraseology of the era: 'GUNSHOT WOUNDS OF THE BRAIN REPORT OF TWO UNUSUAL COMPLICATIONS; BIFRONTAL PNEUMOCEPHALUS AND LOOSE BULLET IN THE LATERAL VENTRICLE':   https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/545730

Contrary to Speer's claim, Dr. McClelland's first day Admittance Note (See below) clearly notes that there were two wounds, "a massive gunshot wound of the head," AND "a gunshot wound of the left temple." We know this because none of the doctors who filed Admittance Notes along with Dr. McClelland's reported frontal wounds of the left or the right temple, much less a large frontal wound. Instead, their Admittance Notes contain terms like "back of the head,""occipital," "posterior," and "cerebellum" to describe the large head wound. Thus, McClelland's reference to a "massive" gunshot wound to the head necessarily denotes the large back-of-the-head wound reported by the other doctors, and the none of them reported the left temple wound that McClelland mistakenly reported (See  COMMISSION EXHIBIT NO. 392: APPENDIX VIII - MEDICAL REPORTS FROM DOCTORS AT PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, DALLAS, TEXAS: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/app8.htm

As for Speer's allegation that McClelland's lack of specificity about the back-of-the-head wound constituted medical malpractice, inspection of the Admittance Notes of the other doctors reveals that they too, in varying ways, were brief and abbreviated. These Parkland doctors were simply reporting the brief resuscitation efforts of the trauma team, and the death of the President. Speer takes the matter out of context by expecting that McClelland should have written an autopsy report, or exercised the degree of specificity that would be expected for a patient about to go into surgery or receive further treatment. This point is made abundantly clear by the much greater specificity of the reports concerning Governor Connelly which are also included in Commission Exhibit No. 392. Mr. Speer's allegations that McClelland's admittance Note constitutes medical malpractice are arguably libelous, and I am forced to wonder whether he waited until after McClelland's death to make them. The honorable thing for Mr. Speer to do would be to scrub his social media of these allegations and to immediately publicly apologize to Dr. McClelland's family. We shall see...

And utterly ridiculous is the notion that Dr. McClelland didn't see the wounds that day. With all of the accounts by many other witnesses in half a dozen investigations, McClelland's whereabouts and actions during the attempt to resuscitate President Kennedy that day in Trauma Room One are probably the most well documented in the history of medicine. Mr. Speer insults our intelligence by suggesting otherwise. 

___________

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

COMMISSION EXHIBIT NO. 392: APPENDIX VIII - MEDICAL REPORTS FROM DOCTORS AT PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, DALLAS, TEXAS: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/app8.htm

 

LINKS TO ORIGINAL DOCUMENT: 

PAGE 1: https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0019a.htm

PAGE 2: https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0019b.htm

___________

 

Edited January 20 by Keven Hofeling

[Pat Speer]

11 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

So the Lone Nutters and the Conspiracy Theorists have both been guilty of misrepresenting the evidence to push their agendas? 

 

About ten years ago, Dr. Gary Aguilar schooled Mr. Speer on the circumstances that led to Dr. Robert McClelland mistakenly reporting that President Kennedy had died as the result of a gunshot wound "of"  the left temple, and Sandy Larsen just a week or so ago more succinctly and very effectively schooled him again by presenting the following in a post as exhibits:

___________

Exhibit 2

It was getting late in the evening, Dallas time, but before I ended the interview. I reminded Dr. McClelland of the fact that in his Parkland Hospital admission note at 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, he had written that the president died "from a gunshot wound of the left temple." "Yes," he said, "that was a mistake. I never saw any wound to the president's left temple. Dr. Jenkins had told me there was a wound there, though he later denied telling me this.

(Vincent Bugliosi, "Reclaiming History." p. 406)

Exhibit 3

"I'll tell you how that happened," Jenkins explained, "When Bob McClelland came into the room, he asked me, 'Where are his wounds?' And at that time I was operating a breathing bag with my right hand, and was trying to take the President's temporal pulse, and I had my finger on his left temple. Bob thought I pointed to the left temple as the wound.

(Gerald Posner, "Case Closed." p. 313)

___________

Sandy has recently written the following summary of the circumstances that led to Dr. McClelland's "left temple" mistake, and the aftermath which has resulted in much confusion:

___________

When Dr. McClelland arrived at the operating room, Dr. Marion Jenkins and several other doctors were already attending to President Kennedy. Dr. McClelland asked Dr. Jenkins where Kennedy's wounds were. Jenkins pointed to what he thought was a small entrance wound on the left temple.

Later, McClelland got a good view of the gaping wound on the back of Kennedy's head. (According to his testimony before the Warren Commission.)

So McClelland thought there were two wounds.

Some time later, Dr. Jenkins changed his mind about there being a small wound on the left temple, and he denied ever thinking so to Gerald Posner. And in fact, he blamed McClelland for ever thinking there was a wound there. Jenkins told Posner that he had been busy operating a breathing bag with his right hand and checking for a pulse on Kennedy's left temple, with a finger on his other hand. According to Jenkins, McClelland mistakenly thought that he was pointing to a small wound on the left temple.

McClelland never understood why Jenkins denied showing him where the left-temple wound was. Had he (or if he) ever read Case Closed, he would have seen why. He would have seen that Jenkins was a bald-face l.i.a.r.

___________

Mr. Speer raises all kinds of issues about Dr. McClelland's first day Admission Note, claiming that McClelland omitted mention of the large avulsive back of the head wound with extruded macerated cerebellar tissue, that McClelland's phrasing in the Note that President Kennedy died "from a gunshot wound [OF] the left temple" means that Dr. McClelland was aware of only one large wound that McClelland mistakenly placed at the left rather than the right temple (as Speer essentially alleges about all of the back-of-the-head wound witnesses), and that McClelland's lack of specificity about the back-of-the-head wound constituted medical malpractice, and ultimately means that McClelland didn't see the large avulsive back-of-the-head wound at all.

In post after post Speer rails on about how if we all read medical journals like he claims he does, that we would know that the use of the word "of" instead of "to" the left temple automatically means that McClelland was referring to one wound only. What Mr. Speer either doesn't know or won't tell you is that during the time period that McClelland attended medical school, it was very common in the medical profession to describe bullet wounds by use of the word "of," as in a bullet wound "of" the brain. See a 1942 article via the following link for an example of the use of the word "of" in the medical phraseology of the era: 'GUNSHOT WOUNDS OF THE BRAIN REPORT OF TWO UNUSUAL COMPLICATIONS; BIFRONTAL PNEUMOCEPHALUS AND LOOSE BULLET IN THE LATERAL VENTRICLE':   https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/545730

Contrary to Speer's claim, Dr. McClelland's first day Admittance Note (See below) clearly notes that there were two wounds, "a massive gunshot wound of the head," AND "a gunshot wound of the left temple." We know this because none of the doctors who filed Admittance Notes along with Dr. McClelland's reported frontal wounds of the left or the right temple, much less a large frontal wound. Instead, their Admittance Notes contain terms like "back of the head,""occipital," "posterior," and "cerebellum" to describe the large head wound. Thus, McClelland's reference to a "massive" gunshot wound to the head necessarily denotes the large back-of-the-head wound reported by the other doctors, and the none of them reported the left temple wound that McClelland mistakenly reported (See  COMMISSION EXHIBIT NO. 392: APPENDIX VIII - MEDICAL REPORTS FROM DOCTORS AT PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, DALLAS, TEXAS: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/app8.htm

As for Speer's allegation that McClelland's lack of specificity about the back-of-the-head wound constituted medical malpractice, inspection of the Admittance Notes of the other doctors reveals that they too, in varying ways, were brief and abbreviated. These Parkland doctors were simply reporting the brief resuscitation efforts of the trauma team, and the death of the President. Speer takes the matter out of context by expecting that McClelland should have written an autopsy report, or exercised the degree of specificity that would be expected for a patient about to go into surgery or receive further treatment. This point is made abundantly clear by the much greater specificity of the reports concerning Governor Connelly which are also included in Commission Exhibit No. 392. Mr. Speer's allegations that McClelland's admittance Note constitutes medical malpractice are arguably libelous, and I am forced to wonder whether he waited until after McClelland's death to make them. The honorable thing for Mr. Speer to do would be to scrub his social media of these allegations and to immediately publicly apologize to Dr. McClelland's family. We shall see...

And utterly ridiculous is the notion that Dr. McClelland didn't see the wounds that day. With all of the accounts by many other witnesses in half a dozen investigations, McClelland's whereabouts and actions during the attempt to resuscitate President Kennedy that day in Trauma Room One are probably the most well documented in the history of medicine. Mr. Speer insults our intelligence by suggesting otherwise. 

___________

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

COMMISSION EXHIBIT NO. 392: APPENDIX VIII - MEDICAL REPORTS FROM DOCTORS AT PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, DALLAS, TEXAS: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/app8.htm

 

LINKS TO ORIGINAL DOCUMENT: 

PAGE 1: https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0019a.htm

PAGE 2: https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0019b.htm

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Why do you keep repeating this gibberish? Aguilar has bought me dinner on several occasions, and has asked me to speak at conferences, and even stay at his house. We're friends. This idea of yours that he has schooled me or that I am a pariah in the research community because of my research and conclusions is nonsense. There is no consensus. Most everyone's theories are annoying to someone. While some of my theories annoy others, most all those annoyed by one or more of my conclusions will cite my research on one thing or another, or email me to ask me where I learned something or found this or that.

Which brings me back to Aguilar. If you read his recent review of the Parkland film you'll see that he was extremely critical of Horne's involvement. Now why is that? Because Horne twists everything to support his theory of body alteration, that's why. Well, what about Mantik? You probably think Aguilar supports Mantik, right? Wrong. Aguilar does not believe the Harper fragment was occipital bone, and finds Mantik (and Horne's) three head shot theory laughable. 

So why am I being singled-out for refusing to pretend there is a consensus on the medical evidence, that has all the answers? No one honestly believes that, IMO. Certainly not Aguilar, or Mantik, or Horne, or Groden, or lesser known but widely respected writers on the medical evidence like Randy Robertson and Joe Riley. 

Just who are you trying to impress? Or, if not impress, support?

I've asked a few times and am still not sure where you stand. 

1. Do you think the head wound was altered between Parkland and the beginning of the autopsy? (If so, well, then you better watch out before Aguilar, Groden, Robertson and Riley "school" you on this topic.) 

2.  Was the occipital bone blown out? (If so, well, then, you better watch out before Robertson and Riley "school" you on this one as well.)

P.S. I just went back and read your bizarre diatribe about McClelland, in which you insist he mentioned two head wounds in his initial report. This is preposterous. Such a statement makes me worry about you. NONE of the Parkland witnesses claimed to see two wounds in their reports, or in their testimony. And McClelland never said he saw two wounds. So what you're saying is what I've been saying. IF the wound of the left temple in his report was a description of an entrance wound--which he admittedly never saw--and his description of the massive wound was a description of a wound on the back of the head, which he later claimed to see, he is guilty of making a major mistake. A bad one. Doctors do not give locations for wounds they did not see while failing to provide locations for wounds they did see. At least not competent ones. As the news was filled with witnesses pointing to their temples, moreover, it's actually much more respectful to McClelland's reputation for us to assume he didn't pay much attention to the exact location and was confused by what he saw on TV, than to say he gave a location for a wound he never saw.

Snark alert: his family is awaiting your apology. 

P.P.S. You made out that I'd accused McClelland of malpractice. This is not true. Malpractice does not mean making a mistake, it means making a mistake that causes a patient harm. I know you know this stuff. So why are you trying to put words in my mouth? And besides...just how is it offensive for me to say McClelland made a mistake when he claimed he'd made an even worse mistake? I mean, we've had threads on this forum where it was postured that Perry cut into Kennedy's throat to finish him off, and we've had a prominent member of this forum write a book in which he offered that a number of the Parkland doctors were in on the plot to kill Kennedy. And few objected. But my claiming McClelland's mistake was less severe than his admitted mistake makes me the bad guy? Why? How is that? Oh, because in my offered possibility, I indulge the sacrilege that the wound observed by McClelland was a few inches forward from where you want it to be? Okay. Got it. 

 

Edited January 20 by Pat Speer

[Sandy Larsen]

9 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

So why am I being singled-out for refusing to pretend there is a consensus on the medical evidence, that has all the answers?

 

The one thing there IS a consensus on for most prominent CT researchers is that the gaping hole was on the back of the head. You're the only notable holdout.

 

[Pat Speer]

22 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

The one thing there IS a consensus on for most prominent CT researchers is that the gaping hole was on the back of the head. You're the only notable holdout.

 

This is ridiculous. A number of prominent researchers are convinced the wound was at the top of the back of the head, and not low on the back of the head. My GIFs of the autopsy photos have proven, for that matter, that the top of the back of the head--where many witnesses placed the wound--was a flap, that would have flapped open while JFK was laying on his back at Parkland. So, no, your implication all the top CT researchers believe the autopsy photos are fake falls flat. It's just not true. 

Now, some, like Aguilar, whose cherry-picked arguments you so happily swallow, will not commit one way or the other. Or has he? 

 

Edited January 21 by Pat Speer

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Keven Hofeling writes:

Quote

While the camera successfully detected the vibrant red color of the roses, the discrepancy arises when we consider the apparent absence of the reported bloody mess at the back of JFK's head ... your argument asserting its inability to register the graphic nature of the head wound

The point I was making was in reply to your comment that "There is no visible indication of skull and brain fragments being 'blasted out' of the back of JFK's head at Z-313 of the Zapruder film as there should be, based upon witness testimony." I explained that the length of time the shutter was closed could have allowed any horizontal debris to fly out of sight between frames 312 and 313. I assume you accept that this is a plausible explanation for that apparent anomaly.

I'm not sure what the roses have to do with anything. The roses were in sunlight; the back of JFK's head was in shadow.

[Sandy Larsen]

20 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

46 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The one thing there IS a consensus on for most prominent CT researchers is that the gaping hole was on the back of the head. You're the only notable holdout.

20 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I know you pride yourself on your lack of knowledge on the case, but this is ridiculous. A number of prominent researchers are convinced the wound was at the top of the back of the head, and not low on the back of the head.

 

Where in my statement did I say there is a consensus (sans you) of the wound being LOW on the back of the head?

Now kindly remove from your post what I have highlighted in red.

 

[Pat Speer]

1 minute ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Where in my statement did I say there is a consensus (sans you) of the wound being LOW on the back of the head?

Kindly remove from your post what I have highlighted in red.

 

Shall I make a similar request of yourself, and your numerous and insulting misrepresentations of my research and methodology? (For example, you keep stating that I arrange the facts to fit my preconceived notions, when I am quite possibly the least guilty researcher of that particular crime.)

FWIW, my comment was not meant as an insult. I seem to recall that you once boasted that you didn't want to read what others had written about certain subjects because you didn't want that clouding your ability to come up with stuff on your own. I apologize if I'm confusing you with someone else. My point remans that if you HAD actually studied the medical evidence, you'd know that a number of prominent researchers such as Thompson and Robertson do not believe the photos are fakes, and that some, like Wecht and Aguilar, question their authenticity but refuse to commit, either way. 

As far as "low on the back of the head," I applaud you for your consistency, in that you continue to refuse to buy into the wound's being in that location. 

But this raises an additional question... Why are you and the boys so intent on going after me, for saying the head wound was at the top of the back of the head, and was inconsistent with the single-assassin solution, when some of the people you seem to support continue to pretend that an area low on the back of the head was blown out...which can easily be disproved, or at least used to make us all look silly. I mean, now, who is REALLY "hurting the cause" or "holding us back"? Not me. 

[Sandy Larsen]

58 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Shall I make a similar request of yourself, and your numerous and insulting misrepresentations of my research and methodology? (For example, you keep stating that I arrange the facts to fit my preconceived notions, when I am quite possibly the least guilty researcher of that particular crime.)

 

I merely stated facts... facts that are proven on the pages we've been posting to. You, on the other hand, mocked me. I made a factual statement and you mocked me for it.

I will allow you to leave your mockery in place if you can prove it to be correct. (Though I don't need to be so generous.) Now, kindly remove your mockery... it is a forum violation.

I have reported your violation. Either prove your mockery to be correct or remove it. If you don't, you will receive double the warning points, as per the rule that gives any member the right to ask a person to remove a forum violation.

 

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I merely stated facts... facts that are proven on the pages we've been posting to. You, on the other hand, mocked me. I made a factual statement and you mocked me for it.

I will allow you to leave your mockery in place if you can prove it to be correct. (Though I don't need to be so generous.) Now, kindly remove your mockery... it is a forum violation.

I have reported your violation. Either prove your mockery to be correct or remove it. If you don't, you will receive double the warning points, as per the rule that gives any member the right to ask a person to remove a forum violation.

 

Wait. You're stating it's a FACT that I am the only researcher to believe the autopsy photos are legit?

I asked you in my last post...Did you or did you not once brag that you preferred not to read what others have written? If not, and I'm mistaken, well, yeah, I owe you an apology. But you haven't denied that yet, so I'm guessing what I wrote is true. 

 

[Micah Mileto]

I have already posted the most important statements from McClelland on the left temple wound. His final version of the story (post 1980s) is that there was a spot of blood on the left temple that looked like a wound. I have decided to combine my two-years-late "Case for an Altered Throat Wound" with the temple wound information, under the basic theme of information suggesting the coercion of Parkland witnesses

Edited January 20 by Micah Mileto

[Greg Doudna]

Update 1/24/24: For reasons given in Pat Speer’s response, what I wrote in this post was not correct. The suggestion that the Parkland doctors' major gaping head wound was a different wound from the gaping head wound of Z313 and the autopsists’ and the subsequent panels' descriptions, was not right: reviewing the testimonies it is clear, as Pat responded, that the major gaping head wound described by the Parkland witnesses is the same wound, and cannot be interpreted as an exaggeration in perception of the distinct second head wound of the autopsists situated by the autopsists near the EOP in the lower back of the head. It is clear the Parkland witnesses were not referring to that one when they referred to the actual one and only major gaping wound higher up in the head. gd

Edited January 24 by Greg Doudna

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Pat's responses in bold. 

Pat S., on that top of the back-wound photo ... it looks like a straight-line cut ... could that be from a saw and that photo taken after the brain had been removed (with the saw used to cut the skull to be able to get the brain out? 

I have been thinking ... please comment? ... 

Setting aside interpretation of the BOH photo for the moment, I would like to try out a possible alternative explanation on you ... as a possible different way of explaining the apparent Parkland-autopsy contradictions.

Consider that there were two major wounds in the head which contrary to assumptions are unrelated. (Okay, but you should realize no one saw two major wounds.) The one was the right temple/right forward side major hit, your tangential hit, the hit of Z312, which spewed blood and gore everywhere in the limousine in Dealey Plaza. It both entered and exited along the right side of the head and upper part of the brain, basically your analysis intact on that.  

But that is not the wound the Parkland witnesses meant when they spoke of the rear of the head--whether a little higher or lower in the rear may vary to the witnesses but doesn't matter--all of those descriptions were of a different wound that indeed was occipital-rear and looked to them like a blowout. Those are simply different descriptions from those witnesses of a wound that you too have in the same place--what you call an entrance wound low in the rear of the head near the EOP. (Okay, you've lost me already. Very few of the so-called back of the head wound witnesses placed the wound as low as the EOP.) Consider that that is the same location where those Parkland doctors were seeing what they saw as a gaping wound from which a number said they saw brain and cerebellum spilling or pouring out. (I hope you realize that Grossman claimed he saw an entrance wound in that location, and that the doctors testifying before the Warren Commission, to a man, went along with Specter's proposal there was an entrance wound by the EOP--without even one objecting and stating that that was where they saw a large exit wound.)

Consider that was not because the Parkland doctors were confused over the location of the gaping wound of Z313, the the tangential wound of your analysis. In which by mistake some of those doctors mistook one wound in a part of the head for some entirely different location on the head, and nearly all making the same nature of optical illusion explanation error. Maybe that's not what was going on. (Maybe. But my conclusion is not that all the witnesses were confused by an optical illusion, etc, it's that a few were, and that the rest deferred to what they said, and then more and more deferred to what they were told by conspiracy theorists anxious to prove the medical evidence to be fake...because they mistakenly thought it showed evidence for only two shots, fired from behind. It's all a giant fluster cluck, IMO.)

Instead, consider that there was an element of illusion happening with those Parkland witnesses but not over the location of the wound but rather in its size or significance, simply from what it looked like when they saw it. Consider that the Parkland doctors interpreted that rear near-EOP wound--the same one you call an entrance wound-- to be a gaping blowout wound, due to gravity and the way JFK's head was positioned, with blood and gore pouring out of it, and not pouring out of the Z313 wound, the tangential hit on the forward right side of the head, for the same gravity reason.

Imagine that wound in the rear of the head was where the brain and cerebellum was pouring out that many of those witnesses reported seeing, due to gravity, and maybe it was larger than the size of an entrance wound but smaller than the size of many of the estimates (the optical illusion being in its size, not location). I don't think anyone at Parkland measured it right? So it was all visual estimate from what they saw pouring out of it? But maybe they were basically describing the same rear of the head occipital location, and that location was not mistaken from all those witnesses after all? (Obviously allowing for individual variability, speaking in general terms.) (The small entrance by the EOP would not have gushed brain matter onto the cart, etc. I think you should also take into account that JFK was on his back, with his feet up in the air, and that the majority of witnesses viewed him exclusively from the front, and never actually saw the back of his head.)

What struck me is that that no one at Parkland who saw what they called that "rear blowout" or rear of the head occipital or occipital-parietal in the rear or however they termed it ... none of them (either hardly any or actually none, whichever it is) saw a separate entrance wound at that same near-EOP location, (outside of  possibly Clark, they did not even look in that location) and the Humes autopsy which said there was a near-EOP entrance wound did not see a rear blowout there at the same location. All (or nearly all, whichever it is) of the witnesses seem to see either one or the other, but not both! Maybe because these descriptions are different versions of the same wound!!! (Well, you're on the right track. The descriptions of the wound observed by the Parkland witnesses on the back of the head match the wound described in the autopsy report and depicted in the autopsy photos at the top of the head. Which leads to the conundrum...who do we trust? As explained over and over and over again the tie-breaker for me is the Dealey Plaza witnesses, who described a wound on the right side of the head, and even pointed out the location of such a wound in the minutes and hours after the shooting. Now, to be clear, they only saw one wound...on the right side, when many of them were looking right at the back of the head. Well, it follows then that there was no back of the head blow-out.)

(Differing from your interpretation that the near-EOP entrance wound is real but the Parkland witnesses who seem to be referring to a blowout exit wound at that identical location were confusing the location of the right front temple/over the ear tangential wound.) (Once again, it's not the identical location. Heck, even Mantik presents the blow out wound as being above the EOP entrance location.)

So, the Parkland witnesses may have been basically correct on the location of that wound they were describing, and gravity pouring JFK's brain and cerebellum out that wound simply looked or increased the look of it as being gaping-wound to those witnesses but they were not mistaken as to the location because it is the same location as your near-EOP wound because it is the same wound! (This discussion is raising an interesting point, for me at least. Did any of the witnesses claiming to see a wound on the back of the head claim they looked and there was NO wound on the top of the head? Off the top of my head...(add rimshot sound) I don't recall any of them doing so.) 

Then consider that that near-EOP wound at the rear of the head seen at Parkland, with blood and brain pouring down through it from gravity, and Humes'/autopsy "entrance wound" near EOP/occipital--that wound--actually was an exit, a blowout exit, though not from a front head shot. (An exit wound for a FMJ bullet does not entail a large amount of missing scalp and skull...unless it is actually a tangential wound. Clark noted the missing scalp and said both in the press conference and in his testimony that the wound appeared to be a tangential wound. So, no, the wound he studied was not a simple exit wound for a bullet entering elsewhere.)

Instead, the original intuition at Parkland of McClelland, Jones, and Peters: it was the blowout exit wound for where the bullet went which entered at the front of the throat. (McClelland said a lot of things. Jones specified many times that he did not get a good look at the wound and had no reason to doubt the autopsy photos. Peters, on the other hand specified on numerous occasions where he saw a wound--and it was at the top of the back of the head, and not down by the EOP.)

Then with that rear-of-the-head wound (not illusory as to location) of the Parkland witnesses disconnected from the "right front" gaping wound of Z313 and that right front "flap" of the BOH photo ... maybe some things could make better sense?

• no longer is there the red herring objection to a blowout exit wound there from a front head shot, that there is no damage track in the brain corresponding to it, because the bullet of that near-EOP exit wound never passed through the brain except possibly a little at the underside
• the tangential wound of the right front side (of your analysis, of Z313) never did have anything to do with the rear of the head wound or what the Parkland witnesses meant when they gestured to the rear of the head
• the trail of specks on the x-ray high in the head or brain of a fragmented or broken up bullet are from that tangential hit and unrelated to the near-EOP exit wound or rear of the head blowout. (Agreed.)

And on Zapruder

• Z313 is the tangential hit to the head, both entrance and exit wound, per your analysis of that, the blood and gore in Zapruder and to the witnesses in Dealey Plaza and in the limousine. 
• The distinct shot that was a front-of-throat entrance and occipital rear-of-head exit was the shot of Z327, and that exit does not show in Zapruder at Z327 because there was no bloody spray in that exit, and the area was in shadow in Zapruder. 

Back to the BOH photograph

• the top of the back-wound photo published by Lifton may show not original wound but post-sawing and removal of the brain during the course of the autopsy
• (The doctors insisted that skull fell to the table as they peeled the scalp to the left. The scalp in the BOH photo has not been peeled to the left.)
• the "flap" of the BOH photo at the right front is from the right side tangential hit, the one of all the blood in Zapruder at Z313.
• the BOH photo (and back-wound photo) do not show either the rear exit wound (the rear blowout of the Parkland witnesses) or your and the original autopsy's entrance wound there (same wound! same location!) (The EOP entrance wound is in fact shown on the photos. See Chapter 13.)
• The absence of visibility of that wound where both the Parkland witnesses and you have it (same wound, same location), on the BOH photo, indeed calls for explanation, and I do not know what that explanation is. Maybe the explanation has something to do with the Parkland witnesses referring to the same near-EOP wound you call an entrance wound were misled by the quantity of blood and brain pouring through it and estimated its size larger than it really was?

The key insight is that the Parkland witnesses may not have been wrong on the location, only the size of that wound. And here is what may be a final and irrefutable evidence that the Parkland witnesses were not fundamentally confusing a right-temple location for an occipital-rear of the head location: three of those Parkland doctors-- Jones, Peters, and McClelland--said in their Warren Commission testimony that they had considered that rear of the head wound to be the exit of an entrance wound in the front of the throat, and that all of the doctors in general had at first considered that. 

They could not have considered connecting a front of the JFK neck entrance with an exit that was actually the right front side of the head. There was no mistake on those Parkland witnesses' location of the bloody, brain-spilling wound they saw at the rear of the head. 

The only puzzle, just as with your wound which you have in the same location, is why that does not show on the BOP photo and back-wound photos taken at the same time). Maybe there is a mundane explanation and the photo was not altered, or maybe someone did fiddle with those photographs among the other irregularities surrounding the history of reporting of the autopsy materials, I don't know. But the conclusion would be a rear-of-the-head occipital wound really was there, even though it does not show in the BOH photograph.  

OK, ready for you to rip this to pieces Pat! 🙂  But what do you think? (I appreciate your thinking outside the box. But beware. There are a lot of zealots in CT land, and some may take offense to your questioning their religion.)