Evidence of a Frontal Shot --- Part II / The Exit Wound

[Gil Jesus]

https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/rear-head-wound.mp4

[Harvey Brammer]

Thanks,Gil

[Denise Hazelwood]

Excellent video compilation.

And yet...the Zapruder Film shows a front of the head blow-out. Solution: The Z-film is an altered product.

And yet...the autopsy X-rays and photographs show a front of the head blow-out. Solution: The autopsy images are altered. However, the originally published HSCA lateral image (at https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol7/html/HSCA_Vol7_0060b.htm) is closer to the truth. Note its original caption,  "showing the occipital defect," which is medical-speak for a back of the head blow-out. The "computer-enhanced" X-ray image showing a front of the head blow-out is actually a composite of this original image and JFK's "living" X-ray.

[Denise Hazelwood]

And yet...the autopsy doctors insisted that there was an entrance wound at the back of the head at the EOP location. This is corroborated by the metallic smear on the outside of the Harper Fragment (indicating an entrance), which Dr. Mantik places at the EOP location in his skull reconstruction. Solution: There were two head shots: one from the front, and one from the rear. 

So which head shot occurred first, the one from the front or the one from the rear?

By Puppé's Rule, skull fractures help determine entrance/exit locations and the order of shots. The first entrance wound location causes a series of fractures. The exit wound creates a new series of fractures, but each fracture line stops when it encounters a previously created fracture line (from the original entrance). Each subsequent head shot creates its own entrance/exit wounds, with fractures that stop when they encounter previously formed fracture lines.

Moreover, as Dr. Mantik notes in one of his more recent videos (posted 2019, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw2JtxQ4a0A at about 1:57:11) he describes something very interesting. Now, Mantik apparently believes that the EOP shot was first and the frontal shot second, but that belief is apparently based on the Zapruder Film (about which he believes frames were removed, but apparently not more extensive alteration), but more to the point, he notes that eyewitnesses described a very visible "halo of debris" spray from the shot that occurred when the limousine was on Elm Street (somewhere between Mary Moorman's position and the stairs up the knoll). This visible spray would only be possible after a number of seconds had passed between the first shot, allowing blood and fluid to accumulate inside the skull before the second head shot could cause that "halo" effect (though Mantik agrees that it didn't occur when the limousine was in the Z313 position, but was farther down Elm Street). The blood-type halo was created because enough time had passed after the first head shot for blood to accumulate inside the skull, before the second head shot struck.

Which, of course, matches my scenario exactly (of a first/frontal head shot when the limousine had just finished its turn onto Elm, with the second head shot when the limousine was near the stairs, with the Moorman shot being the one that struck Connally).

 

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

And yet...the autopsy doctors insisted that there was an entrance wound at the back of the head at the EOP location. This is corroborated by the metallic smear on the outside of the Harper Fragment (indicating an entrance), which Dr. Mantik places at the EOP location in his skull reconstruction. Solution: There were two head shots: one from the front, and one from the rear. 

So which head shot occurred first, the one from the front or the one from the rear?

By Puppé's Rule, skull fractures help determine entrance/exit locations and the order of shots. The first entrance wound location causes a series of fractures. The exit wound creates a new series of fractures, but each fracture line stops when it encounters a previously created fracture line (from the original entrance). Each subsequent head shot creates its own entrance/exit wounds, with fractures that stop when they encounter previously formed fracture lines.

Moreover, as Dr. Mantik notes in one of his more recent videos (posted 2019, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw2JtxQ4a0A at about 1:57:11) he describes something very interesting. Now, Mantik apparently believes that the EOP shot was first and the frontal shot second, but that belief is apparently based on the Zapruder Film (about which he believes frames were removed, but apparently not more extensive alteration), but more to the point, he notes that eyewitnesses described a very visible "halo of debris" spray from the shot that occurred when the limousine was on Elm Street (somewhere between Mary Moorman's position and the stairs up the knoll). This visible spray would only be possible after a number of seconds had passed between the first shot, allowing blood and fluid to accumulate inside the skull before the second head shot could cause that "halo" effect (though Mantik agrees that it didn't occur when the limousine was in the Z313 position, but was farther down Elm Street). The blood-type halo was created because enough time had passed after the first head shot for blood to accumulate inside the skull, before the second head shot struck.

Which, of course, matches my scenario exactly (of a first/frontal head shot when the limousine had just finished its turn onto Elm, with the second head shot when the limousine was near the stairs, with the Moorman shot being the one that struck Connally).
 

Denise: Which, of course, matches my scenario exactly (of a first/frontal head shot when the limousine had just finished its turn onto Elm, with the second head shot when the limousine was near the stairs, with the Moorman shot being the one that struck Connally).
 

Pat: Am I reading that last paragraph correctly? Are you claiming JFK was shot from the front just after the limo turned onto Elm Street? It appears you place great weight on eyewitness recollections. Are there any witnesses to such a thing? 

[Denise Hazelwood]

On 2/15/2024 at 10:44 AM, Pat Speer said:

Pat: Am I reading that last paragraph correctly? Are you claiming JFK was shot from the front just after the limo turned onto Elm Street? It appears you place great weight on eyewitness recollections. Are there any witnesses to such a thing? 

Pierce Allman was one such witness, at least to the limousine's location at the time of the first shot. Alan Smith, a Boy Scout, was another, to both Kennedy's being "shot in the forehead" and the limousine's location. 

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

Pierce Allman was one such witness, at least to the limousine's location at the time of the first shot. Alan Smith, a Boy Scout, was another, to both Kennedy's being "shot in the forehead" and the limousine's location. 

Neither Allman nor Smith said they thought the shots came from the front. In fact they both said they thought the shots were fired from a building. And neither one said they saw a wound on the back of the head. The closest Allman came to saying such a thing, as I recall, is when he quoted Bill Newman as saying "They got the side of his head."

Edited February 18 by Pat Speer

[Eddy Bainbridge]

My view is that the Newman's are important witnesses to what occurred. Their testimony is provided extremely close to the events, and on TV. They saw a shot that matches the extant Z film from a very short distance away. Their natural reaction was to drop to the floor and cover up. If there was a second headshot they would not have seen it for the simple reason they were no longer looking at the scene. Their testimony convinces me there was a shot from the rear and that it was the first shot to strike the presidents head.

In my view the clearest dishonesty in the extant film is its failure to record the limo stop/near stop. At Z312 all occupants of the limo are moving forward due to braking and then Z313 fails to report the continuance of that motion. If Kennedy's head. in fact continued to slump, it would reach the position shown in the Ryberg drawing, and first headshot would then match the Warren report, and the repeated confirmation of the autopsists.

The best, and least contentious evidence of a frontal headshot are the fragment trails in the Lateral head xray. We can see straight lines of metallic fragments emanating from an explosion. We have reliable evidence that these trails come from an unseen (on internet viewable copies) cloud of smaller particles at the rear of the skull (See Chesser presentation) that are visible on the NARA version. This explanation needs no reliance on evidence of large rear blowouts, or evidence of frontal wounds in the hairline. Evidence of these two holes are continually impeached. I don't think the explanation above is easily challenged.

 

Edited February 18 by Eddy Bainbridge
Spelling

[Gil Jesus]

[Pete Mellor]

"I was standing on the curb watching the parade along Main street."  Has anyone identified Smith's location in movie or still photograph's?

Where exactly was he to be 10ft from Kennedy to see him hit in the forehead?  A name I haven't come across before.

[Mark Ulrik]

2 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

"I was standing on the curb watching the parade along Main street."  Has anyone identified Smith's location in movie or still photograph's?

Where exactly was he to be 10ft from Kennedy to see him hit in the forehead?  A name I haven't come across before.

https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-7b-more-pieces-in-the-plaza

Like Officer Chaney, who said JFK was "stuck in the face," Smith was probably talking about the large wound in the side of the head but associated it with the front. Both clearly thought the shots came from the TSBD (area).

Edited February 18 by Mark Ulrik

[Denise Hazelwood]

He got the name of the street wrong (he might also have said "the Main Street," meaning not the access road), but he was on Elm Street right in front of the TSBD window. He was probably one of the two boys in the Wiegman film, one of whom goes chasing after the limo. They can also be seen in the Altgens 6 photo. 

I'll also add to the witness list Ruby Henderson, who was standing at the corner in front of the Dal-Tex building. She saw what she "first thought was paper, but later realized was flesh"  flying out of the President's car. She doesn't give the limousine position, but in order to see it, her view would have to have not been blocked by the SS follow-up car, etc.

Edited February 18 by Denise Hazelwood
added information.

[Pat Speer]

30 minutes ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

He got the name of the street wrong (he might also have said "the Main Street," meaning not the access road), but he was on Elm Street right in front of the TSBD window. He was probably one of the two boys in the Wiegman film, one of whom goes chasing after the limo. They can also be seen in the Altgens 6 photo. 

I'll also add to the witness list Ruby Henderson, who was standing at the corner in front of the Dal-Tex building. She saw what she "first thought was paper, but later realized was flesh"  flying out of the President's car. She doesn't give the limousine position, but in order to see it, her view would have to have not been blocked by the SS follow-up car, etc.

From Chapter 7b:

 

Alan Smith is one of the more mysterious witnesses. He claimed he witnessed the shooting from up close while standing on Main Street, which made little sense. As a result, I avoided adding him to this list for a long time. In 2012, however, researcher Chris Scally looked into Smith and was able to confirm he attended the school he claimed to have attended, and was only 14 at the time of the shooting. Scally also made a tentative ID of Smith as one of the two boys standing under the Stemmons Freeway sign in the Betzner and Willis photos. (Scally's article on Smith can be found in the Winter 2012 Dealey Plaza Echo.) In any event, Scally's article convinced me that Smith's claim of being on Main Street was probably an honest mistake, and that he may very well have been on Elm. I mean, how many 14 year-olds from the suburbs know the names of the downtown streets in your hometown? Not a lot, I would guess. (11-22-63 datelined article found in the 11-23-63 Chicago Tribune) "A wide-eyed 14-year-old boy, who was standing 10 feet away and looking directly at President Kennedy at the time of the assassination, told THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE of his astonishment at watching the historic event unfold. "It made me weak!  I felt like sitting down!  It was horrible!" Alan Smith, a Boy Scout and a 9th grade pupil at Stockard Junior High School, related. "I was standing on the curb watching the parade along Main street. We were permitted to skip school, if we had a note from our parents, to watch it." "The crowds were cheering, but all at once they changed to screaming. The car was about 10 feet from me when a bullet hit the President in his forehead. The bullets came from a window right over my head in the building in front of which my friends and I were standing." "Mr. Kennedy had a big wide smile. But when he was hit, his face turned blank. There was no smile, no frown - nothing.  He fell down over Jackie's knees and didn't say anything. She stood up screaming 'God, oh God, no.' There was blood all over her and everything. She tried to raise him up but he fell back over her." "It sounded like the governor (John B. Connally) moaned when he was hit, I couldn't be sure." "The car went about five feet and stopped. Two policemen on foot rushed up. Then motorcycle policemen who had been leading the parade came back." "In a few minutes there were hundreds of policemen around the Dallas School Depository building, where they said the shots came from. They stuck ladders up to the building. They surrounded the whole place and moved the crowds away, so I had to leave." "Everything seemed terrible all over Dallas. Crowds of people were running all thru the city. I never saw anything like this before."

 

Further thoughts.

1. While Smith said he was on Main Street.this is probably just a mistake. Even so, both this statement and the statement the car was about 10 feet from him prove his impressions are not to be relied upon, but to be interpreted in the context of the other witnesses.

2. He says nothing about a first shot, and Kennedy's stopping his wave and moving to his left or anything. after a first shot. It seems clear then he failed to realize the President was hit before the head shot. When one reads through the statements of hundreds of witnesses (which I have collected and made available on my website), it becomes clear that those oblivious to the first shot were almost all standing in the middle of the plaza, a la Moorman and Hill. This strongly supports Scally's conclusion Smith was one of the boys by the Stemmons' sign. It would have been weird, after all, for him to have been directly in front of the building and to have witnessed Kennedy being shot in the head while in front of him, and for none of the other witnesses to have noticed this until JFK was shot in the head 50 yards or so down the road. 

3. It follows then that Smith's placement of himself as being directly in front of the building is misleading, as he was actually a number of yards to the west of the building. But of course that's thinking of the plaza as a grid. If one considers that Smith was turning his head to watch the President as he passed him, and that he was turned to the southwest when JFK was shot in the head, well, then, Smith is actually correct, as the TSBD would then be behind him, with a window (presumably the west window) right over his head. Now, if so, that is not all that surprising. A number of witnesses to the shooting placed the last shot or shots at locations west of the so-called sniper's nest, and east of the picket fence. Most prominently, Bill Newman. But F. Lee Mudd, another witness whose location was a bit of a mystery, who I assume was the man standing with Emmet Hudson on the steps by the picket fence, similarly said he saw an open window in the TSBD, and had thought the shots came from there. 

Edited February 18 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Eddy Bainbridge said:

My view is that the Newman's are important witnesses to what occurred. Their testimony is provided extremely close to the events, and on TV. They saw a shot that matches the extant Z film from a very short distance away. Their natural reaction was to drop to the floor and cover up. If there was a second headshot they would not have seen it for the simple reason they were no longer looking at the scene. Their testimony convinces me there was a shot from the rear and that it was the first shot to strike the presidents head.

In my view the clearest dishonesty in the extant film is its failure to record the limo stop/near stop. At Z312 all occupants of the limo are moving forward due to braking and then Z313 fails to report the continuance of that motion. If Kennedy's head. in fact continued to slump, it would reach the position shown in the Ryberg drawing, and first headshot would then match the Warren report, and the repeated confirmation of the autopsists.

The best, and least contentious evidence of a frontal headshot are the fragment trails in the Lateral head xray. We can see straight lines of metallic fragments emanating from an explosion. We have reliable evidence that these trails come from an unseen (on internet viewable copies) cloud of smaller particles at the rear of the skull (See Chesser presentation) that are visible on the NARA version. This explanation needs no reliance on evidence of large rear blowouts, or evidence of frontal wounds in the hairline. Evidence of these two holes are continually impeached. I don't think the explanation above is easily challenged.

 

I believe the point made by Chesser and others is that the cloud of smaller fragments is towards the front of the head, not rear, which would not be in keeping with a bullet's heading from back to front, as smaller fragments have less momentum, and travel shorter distances than larger fragments. 

[Eddy Bainbridge]

20 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I believe the point made by Chesser and others is that the cloud of smaller fragments is towards the front of the head, not rear, which would not be in keeping with a bullet's heading from back to front, as smaller fragments have less momentum, and travel shorter distances than larger fragments. 

Incorrect , he draws dots to represent the cloud at the rear of the skull. Thus your analysis of the direction holds for front to back.

Edited February 18 by Eddy Bainbridge