Thomas Atkins and the NPC connection: corroboration for Robert Knudsen as an autopsy photographer?

[Vince Palamara]

Thomas Maurer Atkins, Navy White House photographer, rode in Camera Car 1 in motorcade; Shot the film "The Last Two Days", culled from his films from the Texas trip of 11/21-11/22/63 (deceased 8/24/2011):

Richard Trask's Pictures of the Pain, p. 388, based off Trask’s 3/19/1986 interview]: “And to see pictures of the autopsy and what the bullet had done to the hair…those are things that just stick out in your memory.” [Emphasis added; this was said to Trask over two years before some of the autopsy pictures began appearing in books like the 1988 Carroll & Graf paperback edition of David Lifton's Best Evidence (and his appearance on Nova) and 1989's High Treason by Groden & Livingstone.

Did Atkins see the photos, possibly at NPC with fellow Navy man and WH photographer Robert Knudsen, during the weekend of the assassination?

3/1/77 tabloid publication “Midnight”: article by Robert Sibley, a civilian who worked at NPC and was hired by Atkins (see also Pictures of the Pain, pp. 385-386, Crossfire, pp. 16-17, and Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 19):” The shots came from below and off to the right side from where I was…I never thought the shots came from above. They did not sound like shots coming from anything higher than street level.” Interestingly, Leonard Pullin, a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy who helped in the filming of Atkins’ “The Last Two Days,” was killed in a single-car accident in 1967 (Crossfire, p. 561, and JFK: The Dead Witnesses, p. 43)

 

Page 386 of Pictures of the Pain: “What Atkins does recall quite clearly is that as his car was traveling down Houston Street towards the Texas School Book Depository the “shots sounded in front of me. I didn’t get the sensation that they were from up high. It sounded like in the crowd at my level. I had not even seen the grassy knoll at that point. If they were coming from anywhere, they were coming from that turn. If they had come from the grassy knoll, I don’t think they would have been near as loud, because I think the buildings there tended to throw the sound at us.”

Edited January 27 by Vince Palamara

[Vince Palamara]

George Hickey also thought the shots were street level: 18 H 761-764: report dated 11/30/63---”After a very short distance I heard a loud report which sounded like a firecracker. It appeared to come from the right and rear and seemed to me to be at ground level...At the moment he was almost sitting erect I heard two reports which I thought were shots and that appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them."

Edited January 27 by Vince Palamara

[Vince Palamara]

Bonus- Completely overlooked WC reference to Crenshaw's presence on 11/24/63: 21 H 265(report by Parkland Administrator Charles Price)---“Dr. Charles Crenshaw was in the corridor and said they had been alerted. He said, ‘You’re not going to put him [Oswald] in the same room the President was in, are you?’ [I] told him I surely was glad he had thought of it and by all means, not to.”

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Vince Palamara said:

Thomas Maurer Atkins, Navy White House photographer, rode in Camera Car 1 in motorcade; Shot the film "The Last Two Days", culled from his films from the Texas trip of 11/21-11/22/63 (deceased 8/24/2011):

Richard Trask's Pictures of the Pain, p. 388, based off Trask’s 3/19/1986 interview]: “And to see pictures of the autopsy and what the bullet had done to the hair…those are things that just stick out in your memory.” [Emphasis added; this was said to Trask over two years before some of the autopsy pictures began appearing in books like the 1988 Carroll & Graf paperback edition of David Lifton's Best Evidence (and his appearance on Nova) and 1989's High Treason by Groden & Livingstone.

Did Atkins see the photos, possibly at NPC with fellow Navy man and WH photographer Robert Knudsen, during the weekend of the assassination?

3/1/77 tabloid publication “Midnight”: article by Robert Sibley, a civilian who worked at NPC and was hired by Atkins (see also Pictures of the Pain, pp. 385-386, Crossfire, pp. 16-17, and Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 19):” The shots came from below and off to the right side from where I was…I never thought the shots came from above. They did not sound like shots coming from anything higher than street level.” Interestingly, Leonard Pullin, a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy who helped in the filming of Atkins’ “The Last Two Days,” was killed in a single-car accident in 1967 (Crossfire, p. 561, and JFK: The Dead Witnesses, p. 43)

 

Page 386 of Pictures of the Pain: “What Atkins does recall quite clearly is that as his car was traveling down Houston Street towards the Texas School Book Depository the “shots sounded in front of me. I didn’t get the sensation that they were from up high. It sounded like in the crowd at my level. I had not even seen the grassy knoll at that point. If they were coming from anywhere, they were coming from that turn. If they had come from the grassy knoll, I don’t think they would have been near as loud, because I think the buildings there tended to throw the sound at us.”

No one disputes that Knudsen developed the photos. That's the official story. What is in contention is whether or not he took photos during the autopsy, of the body. And that's just nonsense. Autopsy photography is a specialized field. The odds of his being corralled into taking autopsy photos is slim to begin with, and of his doing so without anyone in attendance noticing is a million to one. It's BS. And if he told this to his family, well, then, he was lying. 

So, that said, this quote from Atkins does raise the possibility Knudsen showed the photos he'd developed to others, which would help explain the Joe O'Donnell mystery. O'Donnell claimed Knudsen showed him photos, but his descriptions of these photos to the ARRB were pretty wild, and it turned out he'd had dementia, along with an obsession with the Kennedy family.So it was hard to take him seriously. And no, this isn't me being mean. As you probably know, towards the end of his life, he was selling photos of the Kennedys taken by others and claiming that he took them. And, heck, his dementia was on display even when speaking to Horne--as he spilled out some story about screening the Z-film for Jackie and the two of them editing it together. 

[Vince Palamara]

Thanks for the comment, Pat. Question- I cannot find your specific comment, but you said recently that not one witness saw both a small and a large hole on the back of the head...what about Roy Kellerman?

 

History Matters Archive - MD 56 - Kellerman-Purdy HSCA Interview (8/24-25/77), pg (history-matters.com)

[Micah Mileto]

I am still interested in your theory that the wooden fence, beside the storm drain on the grassy knoll, was rebuilt on the day of the assassination to make the drain be behind the fence rather than in front. Aren't there any better photographs of that area from the time? Shouldn't there be very many clear photos showing the fence?