So is David Lifton's Final Charade just going to be lost to history?

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

This is not true. In fact, I have recently posted that the argument for the throat wound's being too small is far greater than the argument for the head wound's being in the wrong place, and I would agree that the argument that the back wound was too low is also a much stronger argument. 

Statements that something "looked like an entrance" after all, are meaningless. What is important is why they thought it looked like an entrance and that is that it was extremely small, and, according to the HSCA, smaller even than the small back wound. 

Now, that's telling. Because the HSCA's Charles Petty wrote a textbook claiming that a wound of such small size should be considered an entrance wound. Now, there are exceptions to this in that a low velocity projectile will often barely escape the skin and leave an extremely small exit wound. 

The hairline fracture of the right T1 transverse process could only have been caused by a throat entrance.

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

But that only supports the importance of this wound. Whether or not the throat wound was an exit for a slow moving projectile or the entrance of one, is not that important, as both destroy the single-bullet theory and both lead us to the conclusion there was more than one shooter. 

That’s a given.  We need to move beyond the obvious and deal with the root facts: (1) JFK suffered an entrance wound in the soft tissue of his back, with no exit and no bullet recovered during the autopsy.  (2) He suffered a wound of entrance in the soft tissue of his throat, with no exit and no bullet recovered during autopsy.

This wound pattern is inconsistent with conventional firearms.

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

Now let's circle back to the head wound.

This is where I depart.  I find discussion of the head wound(s) futile.

Edited February 9 by Cliff Varnell

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The hairline fracture of the right T1 transverse process could only have been caused by a throat entrance.

That’s a given.  We need to move beyond the obvious and deal with the root facts: (1) JFK suffered an entrance wound in the soft tissue of his back, with no exit and no bullet recovered during the autopsy.  (2) He suffered a wound of entrance in the soft tissue of his throat, with no exit and no bullet recovered during autopsy.

But Cliff, the argument that there was a 5 x 16 mm bullet hole (whether it was entrance or exit is a separate issue) at the rear hairline, as attested by the three autopsists and other witnesses and shown with devastating force in Pat Speer's chapter 13, one of the strongest and most significant chapters in Pat Speer, is extremely compelling (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter13solvingthegreatheadwoundmyster). 

It is true the Warren Report tried to connect that to a head wound exit but that is impossible, and that interpretation of that bullet track was simply in error. But that does not change the empirical existence of that rear hairline bullet hole at the rear hairline. 

There is no other possible connection to that rear hairline bullet hole than the throat wound. 

The only issue is which was the entrance and which was the exit at either of those two ends (and associated questions, the caliber of bullet and from where the origin of the shot). But what cannot be in question is that those two wounds are connected, a bullet entering/exiting at those two ends, the one bullet hole being the exit for the other's entrance. Because once the rear hairline bullet hole is acknowledged to be fact, then there is no other possibility. 

That still leaves the back entrance wound unexplained. But the back wound cannot connect to the throat wound (as in the single-bullet theory) because the throat wound is connected to the rear hairline wound.

So far as I can tell I believe this logic is airtight, even if it is not widely recognized.

Edited February 9 by Greg Doudna

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

But Cliff, the argument that there was a 5 x 16 mm bullet hole (whether it was entrance or exit is a separate issue) at the rear hairline, as attested by the three autopsists and other witnesses and shown with devastating force in Pat Speer's chapter 13, one of the strongest and most significant chapters in Pat Speer, is extremely compelling (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter13solvingthegreatheadwoundmyster). 

It is true the autopsists tried to connect that to a head wound exit but that is impossible, and that interpretation of that bullet hole was simply in error. But that does not change the empirical existence of that rear hairline bullet hole at the rear hairline. 

There is no other possible connection to that rear hairline bullet hole than the throat wound. 

And this accounts for the hairline fracture at T1, the air pocket overlaying C7/T1, and JFK holding his fists in front of his throat 6 seconds before the head shot(s)?

T1 is a couple of inches below the hairline.

For all we know JFK may have taken three shots to the head.

 

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Etc etc...

Edited February 9 by Cliff Varnell

[Greg Doudna]

But Cliff, what do you do with the bullet hole just above the rear hairline? Deny its existence? On what grounds?

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

But Cliff, what do you do with the bullet hole just above the rear hairline? Deny its existence? On what grounds?

Multiple shots to the head.

[Greg Doudna]

5 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Multiple shots to the head.

Where did that bullet go (if it is interpreted as an entrance)? Did it exit?

Edited February 9 by Greg Doudna

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Where did that bullet go (if it is interpreted as an entrance)? Did it exit?

Don’t know don’t care.

Years ago I asked James Gordon to model the trajectory of a bullet following the angle of T1 to C7 — it pointed directly to the damaged trachea.

[Joe Bauer]

"I'm afraid we were misled...All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. I see that now. We spent too much time microanalyzing the details of the assassination when all the time it was obvious, it was blatantly obvious that it was a conspiracy...The tyranny of power is here. Current events tell us that those who killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad. And that will lead not to revolution but to repression...[T]he interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt we are now dealing with an international conspiracy. We must face that fact -- and not waste any more time microanalyzing the evidence. That's exactly what they want us to do. They have kept us busy for so long..." (emphasis added)
Vincent Salandria, as quoted by Gaeton Fonzi in The Last Investigation


"The real history of the world is a history of competing conspiracies."
Ishmael Reed

Edited February 9 by Joe Bauer

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

"I'm afraid we were misled...All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. I see that now. We spent too much time microanalyzing the details of the assassination when all the time it was obvious, it was blatantly obvious that it was a conspiracy...The tyranny of power is here. Current events tell us that those who killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad. And that will lead not to revolution but to repression...[T]he interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt we are now dealing with an international conspiracy. We must face that fact -- and not waste any more time microanalyzing the evidence. That's exactly what they want us to do. They have kept us busy for so long..." (emphasis added)
Vincent Salandria, as quoted by Gaeton Fonzi in The Last Investigation


"The real history of the world is a history of competing conspiracies."
Ishmael Reed

I know a guy who used to post that with his avatar...thanks Joe!

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

And this accounts for the hairline fracture at T1, the air pocket overlaying C7/T1, and JFK holding his fists in front of his throat 6 seconds before the head shot(s)?

T1 is a couple of inches below the hairline.

I have read that .22 bullets, for example, can move around all sorts of ways inside a body after entrance. I have read differing explanations of air in the x-rays, and referred damage to locations not caused by direct bullet impact. Can you prove that a throat to rear hairline path (whichever direction it was) can NOT have caused what you cite? You KNOW that, do you? 

[Tom Gram]

56 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

I have read that .22 bullets, for example, can move around all sorts of ways inside a body after entrance. I have read differing explanations of air in the x-rays, and referred damage to locations not caused by direct bullet impact. Can you prove that a throat to rear hairline path (whichever direction it was) can NOT have caused what you cite? You KNOW that, do you? 

FMJ bullets can also change angle significantly on impact with the skull. Do we have a (reliable) calculation anywhere on what would be the EOP entrance angle to JFK’s skull at Z312-313 from the 6th floor window?

JFK was leaning left and forward at that time. I’m just curious to know exactly how much a bullet would need to have been deflected to exit out of the top/right etc. of the head if it entered the EOP.

I’m also curious about the 6 x 15mm dimension, and what specific yaw angle of a MC bullet would create that size of an entrance. Bullets will tend to yaw, and thus curve in the body, in the direction of yaw at entrance.  

That should be an easy calculation on a flat surface, but a bit trickier with skull curvature. We also don’t know the exact orientation of the entrance, which doesn’t help…

Sturdivan, Canal, etc. have tried to make a case for a single headshot with an EOP entrance. Pat has pointed out a lot of smoke-blowing from that group, but I think the EOP = conspiracy argument could be made a bit more robust from a modern wound ballistics standpoint. 

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

I have read that .22 bullets, for example, can move around all sorts of ways inside a body after entrance. I have read differing explanations of air in the x-rays, and referred damage to locations not caused by direct bullet impact. Can you prove that a throat to rear hairline path (whichever direction it was) can NOT have caused what you cite? You KNOW that, do you? 

You’re asking me to prove a negative?

Okay.  JFK emerged from behind the Stemmons freeway sign with his fists balled in front of his throat.  You claim that was unrelated to the throat shot.  So what was he doing — smelling the back of his hands?

From the HSCA report:

Evaluation of the pre-autopsy film shows that there is some subcutaneous or interstitial air overlying the right C7 and T1 transverse processes. There is disruption of the integrity of the transverse process of T1, which, in comparison with its mate on the opposite side and also with the previously taken film, mentioned above, indicates that there has been a fracture in that area. There is some soft tissue density overlying the apex of the right lung which may be hematoma in that region or other soft tissue swelling.

Evaluation of the post-autopsy film shows that there is subcutaneous or interstitial air overlying C7 and T1. The same disruption of T1 right transverse process is still present. </q>

So according to your scenario this .22 round made an 180 degree turn up two inches immediately prior to exit or an 180 degree turn down two inches immediately after entrance without striking hard bone.

Your claim, the burden of proof is on you.

 

 

 

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I’m also curious about the 6 x 15mm dimension, and what specific yaw angle of a MC bullet would create that size of an entrance. Bullets will tend to yaw, and thus curve in the body, in the direction of yaw at entrance.  

From the foundation that there was a bullet hole just above the rear hairline--to the right of the EOP--as the autopsists and other witnesses said--Pat Speer makes an excellent argument that the huge gaping head wound was not connected to that but caused by a different, tangential shot, not a through-and-through shot with a separate entrance and exit for if that had been the case comparative parallels indicate (Speer cites) that it would not have blown out as much of the skull as a tangential shot would and, in the case of JFK, did.

The autopsists said the rear hairline bullet hole was an entrance wound due to beveling on the inside, but I would like to see that interpretation analyzed. I know Pat Speer accepts that it is an entrance wound with the exit in the throat. But there are several things that seem to me could weigh in favor of reversing that direction, with entrance at the throat and exit at the rear hairline. First, the impressions of nearly everyone who saw the throat bullet hole that it was an entrance. Second, the throat wound was only 3-5 mm, much smaller than the rear hairline 6 x 15 mm, and all else being equal, usually the smaller hole is the entrance, the wider hole is the exit.

Third, from some gunshot articles I have been reading, beveling in skull bone is a usually decisive argument on direction but there are exceptions; in the case of tangential hits there is beveling on both sides, or rather the bullet channels in making a "trough" on one side of the exit hole, from the inside (before beveling on the outside of the exit). But that "trough" on the inside can look like beveling too, which runs counter to the idea that beveling always is on the opposite side of the direction of the bullet. The question is whether the autopsists' 6 x 15 mm bullet hole could have had a "trough" looking like beveling on the inside, with the "oval" hole representing a tangential exit rather than an entrance. 

I was struck in reading Speer's chapter (13) by the analysis of the Clark and HSCA panels. I have come to see that those panels did not "move" the autopsists' rear-hairline bullet hole "up" four inches higher. No. What they did was they simply disappeared or declared nonexistent the autopsists' rear-hairline bullet hole. They then found a new alleged bullet hole at the cowlick, much higher, based on an indeterminate photo and an interpretation of an indeterminate lateral x-ray, both very equivocal in interpretations as necessarily indicating a bullet hole at that location. 

As Speer brings out, nobody had previously noticed any bullet hole at the cowlick before the Clark and HSCA panels newly "found" one there. The Clark and HSCA panels obviously did not have access to the actual skull so were working solely from photos and x-rays. Whether or not they were correct in finding a bullet hole at that location--Speer makes a good argument they were incorrect on that, that it was dried blood in that location--has no connection to whether they were right or wrong in "disappearing" the autopsists' and other witnesses bullet hole near the rear hairline. The cowlick clearly was not what the autopsists saw and measured and reported located as a bullet hole near the rear hairline. 

Then Speer argues the rear-hairline bullet hole is visible in the BOH photo and in the "mystery photo" of inside the skull. Speer goes through how the panels tried to get the autopsists to say they had mistakenly located the rear-hairline bullet hole and that they had really all along seen the one the panels were saying was located at the cowlick (which is pretty ridiculous, really)--but 8 of 9 (or whatever the numbers were) of the rear-hairline bullet hole witnesses refused to agree with that. The only one who did, one time, was autopsy author Hume, after he was threatened to be ripped apart publicly in a hostile cross-examination bringing out other errors he had made in a way that would ruin him professionally, in other words coercion. Humes then said what was wanted re the cowlick location, avoiding the threatened hostile public evisceration of his reputation, but after that Humes repudiated that and returned to his former (and all the others') original location of the rear-hairline bullet hole location as they had all measured and reported.

And troubling, is one of the autopsists, I forget which one, thought he remembered photos being taken of the skull showing that rear-hairline bullet wound, but none survive in the autopsy photos today, as if there may have been intentional "losing" of certain photos.

But back to the entrance versus exit issue of the rear-hairline/near-EOP bullet hole. If it was an entrance (as the autopsists' thought, citing I believe almost entirely beveling on the underside as their reason or evidence for that--but was that true beveling on the underside, or was that a long-trough one-side bevel of a bullet tangentially exiting?) ... if it was an entrance then there are the questions of when was that additional shot from the rear fired, what is the explanation for the small exit hole, and what became of the bullet. 

The other alternative, that it was an exit but the autopsists mistakenly thought it was an entrance, in some ways intuitively seems a better fit with the evidence, if the beveling issue could survive scrutiny and analysis on that point.

The very small entrance at the throat becomes the entrance wound that everyone's first impression of it was.

The trajectory would work with a shot from the storm drain. A storm drain shooter would have to have fired a handgun on practical grounds for space reasons. I have read that .22's were favored by professional assassins because they were quieter and easier to silence. On the other hand there were reports that an unexplained .45 bullet was found in the north knoll grass. Perhaps a storm drain shooter fired a .45 pistol, and the .45 bullet found was from that shot exiting near JFK's rear hairline.

The only timing window of opportunity for such a storm drain shot--which would be a perfect assassin's shot--would be just after the Z312-313 head shot, not before, and there is a whole literature of jiggle analysis as well as witnesses hearing shots close together at the end that support another shot after Z313, about 3/4 of a second later; perhaps this was it. At that timing and limousine location there is no windshield in the way of the shot, and JFK is leaned back and to the left lessening the discrepancy between trajectory and bullet path going up the neck and out near the rear hairline of the head.

And what happened to the bullet is no longer a problem with the rear-hairline being an exit since it either is the .45 bullet possibly found, or else some other bullet that ended up outside of the limousine, but does not need to be found inside the limo.

Cliff is skeptical that a T1 right transverse process could be damaged by a bullet in transit from the throat to a rear-hairline exit. I am not expert enough to know whether that is a real or illusory objection. I would be swayed if Cliff could cite convincing expert testimony on this point but am not willing to simply take Cliff's word for that on its own.  

As is well known there was no dissection of the neck to find where the throat bullet track "went", but I recall something about it did go "upward" in direction from the throat. And then there is mortician Robinson's testimony claiming he saw a probe inserted in the autopsists' rear-hairline bullet hole which he says he saw come out at the throat wound. If true--Robinson insisted it was--that would be decisive and end all argument on this. However that testimony of Robinson was decades later and no one else directly corroborated it to my knowledge, which seem to be major objections to considering that possible confirmation. 

I would be interested if someone knows of a concise, single article (or book chapter) which directly and in an informed way refutes or falsifies this line of analysis--the notion of a connection between the autopsists' near-rear-hairline bullet hole and throat wound.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Cliff is skeptical that a T1 right transverse process could be damaged by a bullet in transit from the throat to a rear-hairline exit. I am not expert enough to know whether that is a real or illusory objection. I would be swayed if Cliff could cite convincing expert testimony on this point but am not willing to simply take Cliff's word for that on its own.  

Are you willing to regard JFK balling his fists in front of his throat and deducing it was in response to the throat shot?  No?  Why not?

[Greg Doudna]

15 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Are you willing to regard JFK balling his fists in front of his throat and deducing it was in response to the throat shot?  No?  Why not?

It could be, but I think that could be a reaction to being hit in the upper back. 

Just out of curiosity, suppose the first shot that hit JFK was the upper back hit. How would you expect him to react differently than what we see in Zapruder with the elbows raising?

I take Bennets affidavit establishing a terminus ad quem, time no later than, for the back hit, which means the back shot was before Z313. Bennet saw the back shot there when he looked. I don’t see evidence of JFK reacting to another hit between the elbows-raising and Z313, therefore I reason that first hit, the one of the elbows raising, was the bullet in his back.