DOUG HORNE'S RESPONSE TO GARY AGUILAR'S REVIEW

[Keven Hofeling]

 

 

 

insidethearrb

January 6 2024, 20:20

https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/23105.html

DOUG HORNE'S RESPONSE TO GARY AGUILAR'S REVIEW

Dr. Gary Aguilar just posted a review of the Paramount Plus documentary, JFK: WHAT THE DOCTORS SAW, at Jim DiEugenio's website Kennedys and King: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-what-the-doctors-saw-an-important-addition-and-a-missed-opportunity

He had largely favorable things to say about the documentary---just as I have---but he essentially "trashed" me and the things I had to say in the program. In doing so, he has attacked the central thesis of my work, so I feel compelled to respond.

POSTED BELOW IS MY PUBLIC RESPONSE TO HIS VERY PUBLIC REVIEW:

Dear Gary,

I am in receipt of the blind copy of your review that you just sent to me, as a professional "courtesy."

I'm not going to "fulminate" or rant about the very different ways we view the autopsy evidence, because people have well-formed views at our stages of life, and are unlikely to change their minds.

But in defense of my position, I would simply like to observe that I do think you have a major "blind spot" about the Bethesda evidence. I'm going to do this in what I consider to be a respectful, rational manner. No ad hominem attacks here. I don't endorse that kind of behavior. Reasonable people can disagree about what evidence means, and about which evidence is more important than other evidence.

I believe that what I perceive as your "blind spot" concerns two major items of evidence: namely, the Boswell autopsy sketch of the damage to the top of JFK's skull, and the two sets of autopsy photos showing the top of JFK's skull opened up, with the cranial bone missing and the scalp shredded (one set in color, one set in black and white).

I wish to make a couple of points:

(1) If the Boswell notation on his sketch of "10 X 17 [cm], missing" in the top of the skull [the area of missing cranial bone, denoted by the dotted line in his sketch] had been the condition of JFK's skull in Dallas, surely all of that missing bone in the top of the cranium, and the concomitant scalp tears, would have been noted by the Parkland treatment staff. 

 

 

But that was not the case. Both Audrey Bell and Charles Crenshaw told Jeremy Gunn and I in 1997 that the top of JFK's head appeared to be intact at Parkland.

 

 

 

 

 

And furthermore, Dr. Jones testified at his ARRB deposition in August of 1998---volunteered, actually---that he observed no such damage to the top of the skull when he saw JFK at Parkland. 

 

Furthermore, none of the treatment notes the day of the assassination mentioned that the top of the head was missing, or damaged.

 

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

 

(2) If the top of JFK's head shown in those two sets of autopsy photos was the way the top of his head looked at Parkland, then why didn't any of the Parkland physicians see that and describe that kind of damage? The answer is that they DID NOT see the top of his head totally disrupted and missing, as shown in those two sets of autopsy photos.

 

 

And, there are two witnesses at Bethesda who saw JFK's head sawed open, even though Humes stated under oath to Arlen Specter in 1964 (and to Dr. Finck, during the autopsy after Finck arrived late, 30 minutes after the autopsy began) that he did not perform a craniotomy. As Humes told Dr. Finck, "No sawing of the skull was necessary" (per Finck's notes to Blumberg). Humes lied about this, to both Specter, and to Finck.

 

The two witnesses to the unorthodox craniotomy performed by Humes with a saw were Tom Robinson of Gawler's Funeral Home, and Navy x-ray technologist Ed Reed.

(1) Robinson told the ARRB in 1996 that the dotted lines in his diagram of the back of the head were where the pathologist made "saw cuts" before removing the brain.

 

 

(2) Ed Reed testified to the ARRB in 1997 that it was Dr. Humes, by name, who he observed sawing open JFK's frontal bone just behind the hairline, in the forward-top portion of the head.

 

 

Thus, as observed by both Robinson and Reed, we now know the true cause of the massive area of missing bone in Boswell's autopsy sketch, and in the two aforementioned sets of autopsy photos showing massive damage to the top of the head: saw cuts made by a pathologist at Bethesda.

IN FACT, when Tom Robinson studied the massive damage to the top of the head in the B&W autopsy photos, he said to the ARRB staff in 1996: "That makes it look like that's what the bullet did; THAT IS NOT WHAT THE BULLET DID---THAT'S WHAT THE DOCTORS DID." (Since Robinson was present at the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and not at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, when he said "That's what the doctors did," he was clearly referring to the Bethesda pathologists.)

 

Therefore, as I see it, JFK's cranial damage---as represented by Boswell's sketch on the back of the autopsy descriptive sheet, by his skull model markings at his deposition, and by those two sets of autopsy photos showing the top of the cranium (bone) removed---is damage incurred at Bethesda prior to 8:00 PM. It has to be damage incurred prior to 8 PM at Bethesda, given that no such damage was noted in 11/22/63 treatment notes from Parkland. This, to me, is definitive.

JFK's body arrived at Bethesda with the same localized, occipital-parietal exit wound in the right rear of the skull that was observed in Dallas at Parkland Hospital. The three witnesses to this fact were Tom Robinson (note his HSCA and ARRB occipital wound diagrams); CAPT Canada (per his 1968 description of an avulsed, occipital blowout to researcher Michael Kurtz); and Dr. Ebersole, the autopsy radiologist at Bethesda (per his 1978 HSCA deposition, in which he termed the head wound "occipital"). None of these three Bethesda eyewitnesses noted any gross or apparent damage to the TOP of JFK's head; nor did Dr. Malcolm Perry at Parkland, who consistently described the head wound the day of the assassination as "posterior." (Dr. Perry did not describe the head wound as "superior" or "anterior.") It was this localized posterior head wound in the right rear of the head---observed at Parkland Hospital as well as upon the arrival of JFK's body at Bethesda shortly after 6:35 PM---that was so dramatically expanded prior to 8:00 PM by the post mortem surgery described by Tom Robinson and Ed Reed, and which was then documented, afterwards, by the two graphic series of autopsy photos showing the top of the head gone. Shortly after 8:00 PM, when the "autopsy of record" began, JFK's cranium was no longer in the same condition that it had been in Dallas, or at 6:35 PM, when his body arrived at the Bethesda morgue. The "extraordinary evidence" of this is provided by a simple comparison of the autopsy photos of the top of the head with the way JFK's head wound looked to Tom Robinson, CAPT Robert Canada, and to Dr. Ebersole, when it first arrived at Bethesda, 85 minutes before the official autopsy began.

 

 

And Navy corpsman Jim Jenkins noted that when Humes publicly removed the brain after 8 PM, the spinal cord had already been surgically severed on both sides by two uneven perpendicular cuts (he did not see Humes do this after 8 PM when Humes removed the brain in front of the large morgue audience), and that he had extreme difficulty in infusing the brain because the brain's two carotid arteries had retracted into the Circle of Willis. These two observations have led Jenkins to conclude, both in Dallas in 2013 (you were there, and I have the video taken by a member of the audience), as well as in 2018 to Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Mike Chesser, that the brain had been previously removed prior to 8 PM that night. The only reason he could cite for someone having done this, in his discussions with Mantik and Chesser in 2018, was for someone to remove bullet fragments from JFK's brain, thus sanitizing the crime scene. I respect his observations and opinions. The very fact that Jenkins observed JFK's brain practically fall out into Dr. Humes' hands after 8:00 PM, without Humes performing any cutting of the brain stem or other structures helping to secure the brain in the cranium, is the most obvious evidence of its prior removal that night at Bethesda.
 

The James Curtis Jenkins Revelations at JFK Lancer Confirm a Massive Medical Cover-up in 1963

by Douglas P. Horne, author of Inside the Assassination Records Review Board
(former Chief Analyst for Military Records, Assassination Records Review Board)

https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/10811.html

SO, to sum up, I see the Boswell autopsy sketch of damage to the top of the head as a "con job," intentionally misrepresenting the results of post mortem surgery---to get access to the brain and remove bullet fragments and bullet tracks---as "what the assassin's bullet did." This is why that one set of notes (the sketch), in spite of being blood-spattered, was not burned along with the other bloodstained notes: his diagram was retained to justify the massive damage to the top of the skull seen in the autopsy photos.
 

I have summarized here what I consider to be our major points of disagreement---points that, as far as I can determine, you do not publicly discuss in your discussion of the Bethesda evidence. (What I have perceived is that you avoid discussing these items of evidence.) I see widespread evidence in the record of an intentionally fraudulent autopsy, and you do not; you believe the only serious problem with the autopsy was "incompetence." INCOMPETENCE DID NOT CREATE TWO ROUNDS OF AUTOPSY PHOTOS SHOWING THE TOP OF JFK'S HEAD MISSING, WHEN THAT DAMAGE WAS NOT DESCRIBED AT PARKLAND HOSPITAL THE DAY OF THE ASSASSINATION IN TREATMENT NOTES.

Nevertheless, the Paramount Plus documentary has performed a valuable public service by presenting Dr. McClelland and Dr. Jones as eminently credible, and by presenting powerful remarks by Robert Tannenbaum in support of the credibility of the Parkland physicians. I was pleased to play my own limited role in resurrecting the story of the Parkland doctors' observations to a new generation of Americans. Part of the context of their story is what happened after JFK's body arrived at Bethesda; it was this part of the story that Paramount Plus wished me to comment on, and I was honored to do so.

I suppose that for the remainder of our lives, if you do not change your position and come to interpret the evidence I have provided above as I do, then we will have to "agree to disagree."

I wanted to take the opportunity presented by your review to make sure that you understand my position. My interpretation of the evidence has nothing to do with David Lifton, and everything to do with the evidence I find so compelling: the Boswell autopsy sketch which shows damage to the top of JFK's head not seen at Parkland; the two sets of autopsy photos showing damage to the top of JFK's head not seen at Parkland; and the recollections of Robinson and Reed (to the ARRB) that JFK's head was indeed sawed open to get the brain out. [And of course, Reed identified the culprit as Humes, when he was under oath before the ARRB.] If Humes' sawing the skull open to remove the brain had been a legitimate procedure done for normal forensic purposes, I do not think Humes would have denied it, and lied about it.

If I did not respond to the comments you made about me in your review, it may inadvertently have given the impression that I was acquiescing to your criticisms. Since I take great exception to your critique of my participation, I considered a spirited and evidence-oriented response to be mandatory.

END OF MY PUBLIC RESPONSE.

 

[Keven Hofeling]

 

JFK: WHAT THE DOCTORS SAW - AN IMPORTANT ADDITION, AND A MISSED OPPORTUNITY'

Written by Gary Aguilar | Thursday, 04 January 2024 04:08 | https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-what-the-doctors-saw-an-important-addition-and-a-missed-opportunity

 

"Dr. Gary Aguilar examines and evaluates the evidence in the Paramount Plus special exposing the deceptions surrounding the false claims of the House Select Committee on the exit hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull."

 

Paramount Plus’ new documentary, JFK: What the Doctors Saw, is a valuable contribution to the story of the assassination. It features interviews conducted during the past six years with the trauma surgeons who tried to save President John F. Kennedy’s life after he was shot in Dallas on 11/22/63. It will inevitably expand and enliven the never-ending controversy about whether Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, could have inflicted the wounds these doctors saw. On film, they make a compelling case that the answer is no.

Whether one agrees with them or not, one can simply not watch them without concluding that these are sincere, highly experienced surgeons with no axe to grind, speaking truthfully about what they witnessed on perhaps the most dramatic day in their long and distinguished careers. Importantly, what they emphasize on film is something they’ve always said, right from the day Kennedy was assassinated: JFK arrived in Parkland Hospital’s Trauma Room One with a large, rearward skull wound.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late ‘70s, and Warren Commission defenders ever since, maintain that the Dallas doctors were mistaken. JFK’s actual head wound they say was where it appears in the autopsy photographs, on the right side of his skull toward the front, not the rear. It’s a question that is at the very heart of the question of conspiracy.

Unfortunately, the film’s great value is somewhat diminished by the theory that JFK underwent a secret surgical procedure before the official autopsy began at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Douglas Horne, an Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) investigator, said on film that he believed that Commander James Humes, MD, JFK’s chief pathologist, had surreptitiously removed JFK’s brain to extract bullet evidence of a shot from the front. He then, says Horne, put Kennedy’s picked-over brain back into his shattered brain case, only to remove it again later during the official autopsy which Horne described as a “charade.” His extraordinary claim is made without extraordinary evidence, and so will persuade few and be dismissed by this author.

That aside, there is much to recommend this work, especially the fact that the seven featured Parkland doctors have been consistent in their descriptions of JFK’s wounds for nearly 60 years. They still think Kennedy’s throat wound was probably an entrance wound, but never opined as to where that bullet might have gone. However, they seemed willing to consider the more likely possibility: that it was an exit wound for a shot that struck from behind. For while bullet fragments were found in front of JFK from a likely back-to-front trajectory, there is no evidence a bullet or fragments popped out behind Kennedy, nor any signs - X-ray or otherwise - that a bullet was retained anywhere in JFK’s chest or abdomen from a shot in front. The Parkland crew were less equivocal about JFK’s fatal head wound.

As documented by the trauma surgeons in hospital notes written on the day of the murder and published by the Warren Commission, the Dallas crew still says there was major damage to right rear portion of JFK’s head. Kennedy’s autopsy photographs show no such wound. On film Doug Horne offered a possible explanation. “Everything changed as soon as JFK’s body left Parkland Hospital,” he said, reprising the claim first made by author David Lifton in his book, Best Evidence. As regards Kennedy’s head injury at least, new information shows that things don’t appear to have changed all that much between Dallas and the autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

In the 1990s, The Assassinations Records Review Board released suppressed interviews with witnesses at JFK’s autopsy that the House Select Committee had conducted in the late 1970s.Their descriptions of Kennedy’s skull injuries are strikingly similar to what the Parkland doctors said on the day of the assassination, as well as in interviews over the past 60 years and again in the documentary.

By way of background, the following sampling of quotes are taken from notes written by the trauma surgeons who attended Kennedy on 11.22.63 and published in the Warren Report[1]:

• Kemp Clark, MD, professor of neurosurgery: "There was a large wound in the right occipito-parietal region…There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue was extruding from the wound." (WR, p. 518) And, "a large 3 x3 cm remnant of cerebral tissue present…there was a smaller amount of cerebellar tissue present also…There was a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region…Much of the skull appeared gone at the brief examination…" (WR p. 524-525)
• Malcolm Perry, MD: p. 521: "A large wound of the right posterior cranium was noted…" (WR p. 521)
• Charles Baxter, MD: "…the temporal and occipital bones were missing and the brain was lying on the table." (WR p. 523)
• Marion Thomas Jenkins, MD, the professor of anesthesiology who held JFK’s head in his hands during the resuscitation effort: "There was a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound." (WR p. 529-530)

Paramount Plus had the Dallas doctors reaffirming those observations, but it said nothing about what the autopsy witnesses had reported. Given Doug Horne’s remark, viewers were thus left to assume everything had changed. But it hadn’t.

In formerly suppressed witness interviews that were not available to David Lifton when he wrote Best Evidence, but were to Doug Horne, the HSCA reported the following:

• Bethesda lab technologist James Jenkins told the HSCA that, “he saw a head wound in the ‘…middle temporal region back to the occipital.’”[2]
• In an affidavit prepared for the HSCA, FBI agent James Sibert wrote that, "The head wound was in the upper back of the head … a large head wound in the upper back of the head…”[3]
• The HSCA’s Andy Purdy interviewed Tom Robinson, the mortician who prepared John Kennedy's remains for burial.: "Approximately where was (the skull) wound located?" Purdy asked. "Directly behind the back of his head," Robinson answered. Purdy: "Approximately between the ears or higher up?" Robinson, "No, I would say pretty much between them.”
• Jan Gail Rudnicki, Dr. Boswell's lab assistant on the night of the autopsy, told the HSCA’s Mark Flanagan, the “back-right quadrant of the head was missing.”[4]
• When first asked, John Ebersole, MD, the attending radiologist who took JFK's autopsy X-rays, told the HSCA, “The back of the head was missing,” Hethen waffled after being shown the autopsy photographs.[5]
• Regarding the Commanding officer of the military District of Washington, D. C., Philip C. Wehle, the HSCA reported that, “(Wehle) noted that the wound was in the back of the head so he would not see it because the President was lying face up.”[6] (emphasis added throughout)

Besides these clear statements, several autopsy witnesses drew diagrams of President Kennedy’s wounds for the HSCA. (Figures 1 and 2)

Fig. 1. Left — Diagrams of JFK’s wounds prepared for the HSCA by autopsy technician, James Curtis Jenkins.[7] Right — Diagrams of JFK’s wounds prepared for the HSCA by autopsy witness, FBI agent James Sibert.[8]

Fig. 2. Left — Diagrams of JFK’s wounds prepared for the HSCA by Tom Robinson, the mortician who prepared Kennedy’s body for burial.[9] Right — Diagrams of JFK’s wounds prepared for the HSCA by autopsy witness, FBI agent Francis O’Neill, Jr.[10]
[These and other, similar accounts are further elaborated upon in the 2003 on-line essay: “HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG.[11]]

In neglecting the autopsy witnesses, the program missed a great opportunity – a long known, underreported HSCA scandal that the producer, Jacque Lueth, knew all about from repeated, personal conversations with me over the past several years. (Ms. Lueth told me she wanted to present this material on film but was blocked by others involved in the documentary.) Only when the ARRB released the accounts of the autopsy witnesses in the late 90s did we discover that the Select Committee had misled the public about what they had said in the 1970s. It had everything to do with the heart of Paramount’s documentary: JFK: What the Doctors Saw.

Confronting the conflict between autopsy photos that show no damage to the rear of JFK’s skull and the Parkland doctors who said damage was in the rear, the HSCA reported it had resolved the problem. “Critics of the Warren Commission’s medical evidence findings have found (sic) on the observations recorded by the Parkland Hospital doctors,” they wrote. “They believe it is unlikely that trained medical personnel could be so consistently in error regarding the nature of the wound, even though their recollections were not based on careful examinations of the wounds…In disagreement with the observations of the Parkland doctors are the 26 people present at the autopsy. All of those interviewed who attended the autopsy corroborated the general location of the wounds as depicted in the photographs; none had differing accounts … Further, if the Parkland doctors are correct, then the autopsy personnel are either lying or mistaken. It did not seem plausible to the Committee that 26 persons would by lying or, if they were, that they could provide such a consistent account of the wounds almost 15 years later. Second, it is less likely that the autopsy personnel would be mistaken in their general observations, given their detailed and thorough examination of the body…it appears more probable that the observations of the Parkland doctors are incorrect.” (7HSCA37-9. Emphasis added.[12])

This was clearly false. The autopsy witnesses had described a rearward skull defect to the HSCA verbally, in writing, and by sketch diagram. The HSCA, however, reported that the autopsy witnesses had refuted the Dallas witnesses whom, in fact, they had actually corroborated. There is an additional aspect of this that might have also been worth a few moments of film.

At the one hour, 18-minute mark, the program showed a clip of the HSCA’s Andy Purdy declaring that the ‘Dallas doctors are wrong; these recollections afterward are faulty.’ As noted above, it was Purdy who was wrong, as the doctors’ ‘recollections afterward’ closely aligned with what Parkland’s experts documented on the day of the murder as per the Warren Report. They also snugly fit with the suppressed claims of the autopsy witnesses whom Purdy had himself interviewed, and whose diagrams he had signed (See Figs. 1 & 2). Though arguing that the public has been misled, Paramount Plus missed a perfect opportunity to both expose the government’s false claim, while debunking one of the government officials whom they had on film pushing that claim, Andy Purdy.

There is another, evidence-based problem for those who argue that Parkland got it all wrong. Research has shown that experienced, credible witnesses working in their usual environment, simply do not make mistakes of this nature. Furthermore, how could a different group of credible witnesses at a multi-hour autopsy at a different location have made the same error as the Texans? Though witness claims are often disparaged as unreliable, the reigning authority on eyewitness testimony, Elizabeth Loftus, has reported that there are circumstances in which their reliability tends to be high.[13] She based her conclusions on evidence from a 1971 study. In a Harvard Law Review paper[14] Marshall, Marquis and Oskamp reported that, when test subjects were asked about “salient” details of a complex and novel film clip scene they were shown, their accuracy rate was high: 78% to 98%. Even when a detail was not considered salient, as judged by the witnesses themselves, they were still accurate 60% of the time.

Loftus has identified the factors that tend to degrade witness accuracy, most of which are relevant to the Kennedy case. Principal among them are poor lighting, short duration of an event, or a long duration between the event and when a witness is asked questions about it, the unimportance of the event to the witness, the perceived threat of violence during the event, witness stress or drug/alcohol influence, and the absence of specialized training on the witness’s part. Absent these factors, Loftus’s work shows that witnesses are very reliable.[15]

JFK’s skull damage would certainly have been considered a “salient detail” to the senior trauma surgeons in Trauma Room I, as well as the witnesses in the morgue. Negligible adverse circumstances were present in either location that would explain how both groups of witnesses might have erred. They were working as highly trained experts in their usual capacity, in their usual circumstances, and in their usual setting. Moreover, both groups had no reason to dissemble, and more than ample time and opportunity to make accurate observations, many of which were recorded immediately. Though the overwhelming odds are that they were right, Warren Commission loyalists are constrained to insist they were nearly 100% wrong, and somehow wrong in the same way. Their case hinges on the official autopsy photographs, which are regarded as unimpeachable proof the Parkland doctors were wrong. Presumably, they also prove that the autopsy witnesses were unimpeachably wrong, too: they show no damage to the right rear portion of JFK’s head.

For Warren Commission skeptics, however, this documentary, combined with evidence declassified by the ARRB, offer reasons to believe the Dallas doctors and the autopsy witnesses were probably right.

First, the extant autopsy photos may not tell the whole story. We learned from ARRB releases and other evidence that all three of JFK’s pathologists, both autopsy photographers, and the two government employees who developed Kennedy’s autopsy photographs have claimed, sometimes under oath, that photos they either took, or later saw after development, are missing.[16] Assuming they had no reason to lie, it’s likely the photographic record is incomplete. Among the pictures that may well be missing is an image (or images) of the full extent of Kennedy’s skull wound taken from his injured, right side. (Interestingly, in the official collection there is one of uninjured, left side of JFK’s head.)

Autopsist J. Thornton Boswell’s face sheet diagram, prepared on the night of the post mortem, specifies that 17-cm of JFK’s skull was missing. No autopsy photograph captures such a huge defect. It strains credulity to think that the surgical team tasked with documenting JFK’s cause of death would have neglected to take such an image. In fact, as documented elsewhere, autopsy witnesses say such an image, or images, were taken.[17]

Second, in the documentary Dr. McClelland said that the image of the back of Kennedy’s head does not show the wound he saw. He pointed out that a hand is holding JFK’s torn scalp over the rearward wound that he saw. (Figure 3)

Fig, 3: Bootleg copy of an autopsy photo from JFK’s autopsy in the correct orientation, with JFK lying on his left side. A hand appears to be holding the scalp forward over the back of the President’s head, over what Dr. McClelland said was a large rearward skull defect.

In a similar vein, Kenneth Salyer, MD said he thought that the autopsy photos appeared to have been tampered with, and that they had replaced the scalp over an area that was wide open (1 hr., 20 min. mark).

Near the end of the film Dr. Salyer made a suggestion that some of us skeptics have long believed plausibly explains why the Parkland doctors and autopsy witnesses said JFK’s wound was right-rearward. A flap of JFK’s scalp had fallen backward, Salyer said, and it “bunched up” at the base of Kennedy’s occiput.

Since the autopsy report documented that there were large scalp tears, and since JFK was lying face-up on the Parkland gurney, as well as on the autopsy table, it only makes sense that gravity would have drawn a torn flap downward to reveal what was present, a rearward skull defect described by both Parkland and Bethesda witnesses. It would jibe with Dr. Boswell’s 11/22/63 “face sheet” diagram specifying that 17-cm of President Kennedy’s skull was missing. (Figure 4) It would also fit with the anatomical ARRB sketch of Dr. Boswell’s depiction showing a massive skull defect. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. J. Thornton Boswell, MD’s “face sheet” diagram prepared during the autopsy on the night of JFK’s assassination at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Note the number “17” with arrows pointing fore and aft. Under oath, Dr. Boswell later explained that when examined, the President’s skull defect measured 17-cm.

Fig, 5. These diagrams are two-dimensional drawings prepared by the ARRB to depict JFK’s skull damage. They are based on markings made on a three-dimensional human skull model by J. Thornton Boswell, MD. Note that these diagrams reasonably match the face sheet diagram prepared on the night of the autopsy that documented 17-cm of Kennedy’s skull was missing . The images show what most skeptics believe: that Kennedy’s skull damage extended from the so-called “frontal bone” anteriorly well into the occipital bone posteriorly. A truly massive, fatal wound.

Despite its imperfections, including the omission of evidence such as the above that would have reinforced its case against the Warren Commission’s trustworthiness, JFK: What the Doctors Saw is a valuable, first-hand account by credible witnesses, a real contribution to the medical evidence in the Kennedy case.

At a minimum it confirms the widely held view that the government has not told the public the whole truth about the Kennedy case. It also adds to existing evidence from JFK’s X-rays, from the Zapruder film, from Dealey Plaza witnesses, etc. that have chipped away at the official version of Kennedy’s murder. It’s inescapable that the President’s mortal head wound was far larger than the 13-cm defect specified in the official autopsy report,[18] and much different than what can be gleaned from the extant file of autopsy photographs. Simply, by the most credible accounts imaginable, it’s too large and too different to be explained by a single shot fired from Lee Harvey Oswald’s alleged perch, “above and behind.”

---

[1] Warren Report. >https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/contents.htm

[2] HSCA interview with Curtis Jenkins, Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy, 8-29-77. JFK Collection, RG 233, Document #002193, p.4. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #65, see p.4 and diagram on p. 16.

[3] HSCA rec # 002191. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #85, see p. 3 and diagram on p. 9.

[4] HSCA rec. # 180-10105-10397, agency file number # 014461, p. 2.)

[5] https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md60/html/Image04.htm

[6] HSCA record # 10010042, agency file # 002086, p. 2.

[7] https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md65/html/md65_0016a.htm

[8] https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md85/html/md85_0009a.htm

[9] https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md63/html/Image13.htm

[10] https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md86/html/md86_0011a.htm

[11] https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_5.htm#_edn287

[12] 7HSCA37-39 https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol7/html/HSCA_Vol7_0024a.htm

[13] Loftus, Elizabeth F.Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 25 – 26.

[14] Marshall, Marquis and Oskamp, Vol.84:1620 - 1643, 1971.

[15] E Loftus, JM Doyle.Eyewitness Testimony: Civil and Criminal, Second Edition. Charlottesville:The Michie Company, 1992

[16] See HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG, Part V. https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_5.htm#_edn287

[17] See “Questions Arise about JFK’s Autopsy Photographs.” https://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_5.htm

[18] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-09.pdf

 

Edited March 12 by Keven Hofeling

[Pat Speer]

There are some major problems with Horne's response.  

1. He cites Audrey Bell as a credible witness, when she is not. She never mentioned anything about the head wound till decades after the shooting, after she had been embraced by the research community as a truth-teller for claiming she'd been handed numerous fragments from Connally's wrist and had handed them to an FBI or SS agent. This seemed important at the time because the official story was that she'd been handed but one fragment and had handed it to a member of the Texas Highway Patrol. Only...it turned out that her latter-day claims were inaccurate...as she'd written a first-hand account for a nursing magazine in 1968 in which she said she handed the fragment (singular) to an officer of the highway patrol (IOW, the official story.)

2. He cites Dr. Robert Canada in support of his claims. Well, this is just sad. The only source for Canada's supposed claims is Kurtz, an historian from New Orleans not known for his probing interviews. And yet he claimed late in life to interviewing Canada in the 60's (shortly before Canada's death) and having Canada spill the beans to him about the autopsy.  Whether a deliberate lie, or the blurry recollections of someone not in full control of his faculties, Kurtz was not telling the truth. As detailed in my online article Lost in the Jungle with Kurtz, Kurtz's last book, in which he claimed he'd interviewed Canada, was rife with juicy quotes from supposed interviews conducted decades before, that had gone unmentioned in a number of books and articles by Kurtz published after these interviews. And it's worse than that. From comparing the dates of these supposed interviews to public death records I was able to ascertain that at least 11 of his subjects were DEAD when he'd supposedly interviewed them. Kurtz's supposed interview with Canada never happened. And Horne is undoubtedly aware of this. 

3. He presents Robinson as a witness to the removal of the brain before the removal of the brain observed by Jenkins. This is silly. Jenkins has long been insistent that there was nowhere that such an operation could be conducted without his knowledge and that no such pre-surgery took place. When one considers, furthermore, what Robinson told the HSCA--that he'd been sitting on the left side of the President and had seen the doctors working on the right side of the head, one should question the accuracy of Horne's suggestion Robinson saw the removal of the brain from the back of the head, especially when one takes into account the statements of Jenkins and O'Connor, etc, confirming that the brain was removed from the right side of the head and not the back. I mean, I hope he doesn't expect us to believe Humes cut open the back of the head pulled out the brain, substituted it with another brain, and then pieced the back of the head back together so successfully that his autopsy assistants had no idea the back of the head had previously been removed. 

4. Horne uses Ed Reed's recollection of Humes' using a saw on the forehead to imply Humes did this to remove the frontal bone missing on the x-rays, which many believe correlates to the triangular fragment found in the limo. But he conceals that Reed said Humes used the saw AFTER the x-rays had been taken...and that Reed signed off on the authenticity and veracity of the x-rays in archives, which show frontal bone to be missing. It's a deliberate deception on Horne's part, to say the least. 

In short, Horne cherry-picks pieces of dubious info and concocts a scenario at odds with the statements of the autopsy participants. And that none of his fellow researchers actually believe. (David Mantik, his closest colleague, has long argued that the large fragment found in the limo was frontal bone, and that it did indeed explode from the head during the shooting sequence. And yet Horne here makes out that this fragment was cut from the skull by Humes, or some such thing.) 

In any event, Horne is entitled to his pet theory, but he shouldn't be surprised when a veteran researcher like Aguilar finds it an unnecessary distraction. 

Edited March 12 by Pat Speer

[Sandy Larsen]

Dr. Aguilar throws Doug Horne under the bus in his Kennedys & King review of the Paramount Plus documentary, JFK: What the Doctors Saw.

I have a good deal of respect for Dr. Aguilar. But in my opinion, what he says about Horne's pre-autopsy surgery theory, he does so out of ignorance. I don't think Dr. Aguilar truly understands the problems his position creates. If he does, then he just sweeps them under the rug like a good lone nutter would.

(I've seen numerous cases of forum members dismissing theories only because -- IMO -- they haven't studied the problem. It's frustrating.)

 

[Sandy Larsen]

35 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

There are some major problems with Horne's response.  

1. He cites Audrey Bell as a credible witness, when she is not. She never mentioned anything about the head wound till decades after the shooting...

 

Even if Pat is right about Audrey Bell not being a credible witness, it makes no difference. Horne could have chosen from among numerous other Parkland doctor and nurses who said the same things Bell said.

The reason Horne chose Bell is because he interviewed her personally.

 

35 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

2. He cites Dr. Robert Canada in support of his claims. Well, this is just sad. The only source for Canada's supposed claims is Kurtz, an historian from New Orleans not known for his probing interviews. And yet he claimed late in life to interviewing Canada in the 60's (shortly before Canada's death) and having Canada spill the beans to him about the autopsy.  Whether a deliberate lie, or the blurry recollections of someone not in full control of his faculties, Kurtz was not telling the truth. As detailed in my online article Lost in the Jungle with Kurtz, Kurtz's last book, in which he claimed he'd interviewed Canada, was rife with juicy quotes from supposed interviews conducted decades before, that had gone unmentioned in a number of books and articles by Kurtz published after these interviews. And it's worse than that. From comparing the dates of these supposed interviews to public death records I was able to ascertain that at least 11 of his subjects were DEAD when he'd supposedly interviewed them. Kurtz's supposed interview with Canada never happened. And Horne is undoubtedly aware of this. 

 

Because of Pat Speer's record of misrepresenting facts, I'm not going to trust his claim that researcher Kurtz interviewed people who turned out to be dead at the time.

Therefore, I believe that it is just Pat's opinion that Kurtz was a liar. I believe that Pat formed that opinion because Kurtz reported things that Pat doesn't believe. Like the gaping wound on the back of Kennedy's head. (I would believe Doug Horne over Pat any day of the week.)

But for the sake of argument, suppose that Pat is correct about Kurtz and his report on what Dr. Canada said, about the top of Kennedy's head being intact at Bethesda. Horne would still have the statements of Tom Robinson and Dr. Ebersole, which corroborate one another and say the same thing as what Kurtz claims Dr. Canada said.

To that, add the fact that Horne doesn't even need the words of these two witnesses... we know from the ~20 witnesses at Parkland Hospital that the top of Kennedy's head was intact before the pre-autopsy surgery

 

35 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

3. He presents Robinson as a witness to the removal of the brain before the removal of the brain observed by Jenkins. This is silly. Jenkins has long been insistent that there was nowhere that such an operation could be conducted without his knowledge and that no such pre-surgery took place. When one considers, furthermore, what Robinson told the HSCA--that he'd been sitting on the left side of the President and had seen the doctors working on the right side of the head, one should question the accuracy of Horne's suggestion Robinson saw the removal of the brain from the back of the head, especially when one takes into account the statements of Jenkins and O'Connor, etc, confirming that the brain was removed from the right side of the he'd and not the back. I mean, I hope he doesn't expect us to believe Humes cut open the back of the head pulled out the brain, substituted it with another brain, and then pieced the back of the head back together so successfully that his autopsy assistants had no idea the back of the head had previously been removed. 

 

I don't have time to critique this Speer argument. But I'll bet it is just another of his misrepresentation of the facts. I'm quite certain that Horne knows what he's talking about.

 

35 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

In short, Horne cherry-picks pieces of dubious info and concocts a scenario at odds with the statements of the autopsy participants. And that none of his fellow researchers actually believe. (David Mantik, his closest colleague, has long argued that the the large fragment found in the limo was frontal bone, and that it did indeed explode from the head during the shooting sequence. And yet Horne here makes out that this fragment was cut from the skull by Humes, or some such thing.) 

 

Horne is right about the triangular frontal bone being a product of the pre-autopsy surgery. There was no way for such a fragment to escape through the back-of-head gaping wound.

The skull fragment that was brought in later came from the back of the head, not the top.

 

[Pat Speer]

39 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Even if Pat is right about Audrey Bell not being a credible witness, it makes no difference. Horne could have chosen from among numerous other Parkland doctor and nurses who said the same things Bell said.

The reason Horne chose Bell is because he interviewed her personally.

 

 

Because of Pat Speer's record of misrepresenting facts, I'm not going to trust his claim that researcher Kurtz interviewed people who turned out to be dead at the time.

Therefore, I believe that it is just Pat's opinion that Kurtz was a liar. I believe that Pat formed that opinion because Kurtz reported things that Pat doesn't believe. Like the gaping wound on the back of Kennedy's head. (I would believe Doug Horne over Pat any day of the week.)

But for the sake of argument, suppose that Pat is correct about Kurtz and his report on what Dr. Canada said, about the top of Kennedy's head being intact at Bethesda. Horne would still have the statements of Tom Robinson and Dr. Ebersole, which corroborate one another and say the same thing as what Kurtz claims Dr. Canada said.

To that, add the fact that Horne doesn't even need the words of these two witnesses... we know from the ~20 witnesses at Parkland Hospital that the top of Kennedy's head was intact before the pre-autopsy surgery

 

 

I don't have time to critique this Speer argument. But I'll bet it is just another of his misrepresentation of the facts. I'm quite certain that Horne knows what he's talking about.

 

 

Horne is right about the triangular frontal bone being a product of the pre-autopsy surgery. There was no way for such a fragment to escape through the back-of-head gaping wound.

The skull fragment that was brought in later came from the back of the head, not the top.

 

Let's be clear.

1. The triangular fragment IS the fragment that was brought in later, during the autopsy. It had been discovered by Secret Service Agent Sam Kinney, who had noticed it on the floor of the limo as it was flown back from Dallas. 

2. The doctors noted a beveled exit on this fragment and concluded it derived from the top of the head.

3. Dr. Angel, the forensic anthropologist whose conclusions were s-canned by Dr. Baden when he couldn't get them to align with the single-assassin conclusion, concluded this fragment was frontal bone, at the the front of the right side of the top of the head.

4. The Harper Fragment was discovered in Dealey Plaza on the day after the assassination. It was never viewed by the autopsy doctors, and played no role in their conclusions. 

5. Dr. Angel viewed photos of the Harper Fragment and concluded that the Harper fragment was parietal bone, from the middle of the right side of the top of the head.

6. Dr. Baden ultimately claimed the triangular fragment was from the middle of the right side of the top of the head, and that the Harper fragment was from the side of the head below it.

7. Dr. Mantik has concluded that the triangular fragment was frontal bone.

8. Dr. Mantik had concluded that the Harper fragment was occipital bone. 

9. The triangular fragment is far too large for both it and the Harper fragment to be occipital bone. 

10. Whether the triangular fragment was from the back of the top of the head, as claimed by Randy Robertson, or the front of the back of the head, as claimed by Angel and Mantik and many many others, it still came from the top of the head. 

11. One can not postulate then that the witnesses supposedly claiming there was a large wound on the back of the head, and a large wound nowhere else, are accurate...unless...one postulates that the triangular fragment was not missing at Parkland, and was removed afterwards. 

12. If one is to go down this road, however, one must postulate further that the purported finding of this fragment in the plaza, and its being thrown in the limo by a Secret Service Agent, is nonsense. 

13. And if one is to go down this road, one must postulate as well that Sam Kinney lied about his discovery of this fragment, and that the doctors lied about the beveled exit on this fragment, and that the x-rays were faked to show a beveled exit or entrance on this fragment. 

And what would be the point?

If the goal was to kill Kennedy, the plotters would not care one iota if he was shot from behind or the front. If the goal was to kill Kennedy and frame Oswald, this could have been done from behind, more easily than from the front. 

So what would be the point of all these shenanigans?

Why have the only beveled exit be found on a piece of bone not even present at the beginning of the autopsy? Did they remove the bone? And leave it to others to add this exit to the bone during the early stages of the autopsy? And then pretend to have it delivered into the autopsy suite?

How many people were involved? We are now up to a dozen or so, right? Everyone flying in with Kinney, and everyone involved in the pre-surgery? 

When the whole problem could have been avoided by having Humes claim there was a beveled exit...in the intact skull.

 

[Pat Speer]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Even if Pat is right about Audrey Bell not being a credible witness, it makes no difference. Horne could have chosen from among numerous other Parkland doctor and nurses who said the same things Bell said.

The reason Horne chose Bell is because he interviewed her personally.

 

 

Because of Pat Speer's record of misrepresenting facts, I'm not going to trust his claim that researcher Kurtz interviewed people who turned out to be dead at the time.

Therefore, I believe that it is just Pat's opinion that Kurtz was a liar. I believe that Pat formed that opinion because Kurtz reported things that Pat doesn't believe. Like the gaping wound on the back of Kennedy's head. (I would believe Doug Horne over Pat any day of the week.)

But for the sake of argument, suppose that Pat is correct about Kurtz and his report on what Dr. Canada said, about the top of Kennedy's head being intact at Bethesda. Horne would still have the statements of Tom Robinson and Dr. Ebersole, which corroborate one another and say the same thing as what Kurtz claims Dr. Canada said.

To that, add the fact that Horne doesn't even need the words of these two witnesses... we know from the ~20 witnesses at Parkland Hospital that the top of Kennedy's head was intact before the pre-autopsy surgery

 

 

I don't have time to critique this Speer argument. But I'll bet it is just another of his misrepresentation of the facts. I'm quite certain that Horne knows what he's talking about.

 

 

Horne is right about the triangular frontal bone being a product of the pre-autopsy surgery. There was no way for such a fragment to escape through the back-of-head gaping wound.

The skull fragment that was brought in later came from the back of the head, not the top.

 

Horne's suggestion Humes removed frontal bone with a saw, and was observed by Reed, is a scam. Reed specified in his statements to the ARRB that Humes' use of the saw occurred AFTER Custer and himself had taken the skull x-rays...the skull x-rays Reed claimed were the same x-rays later shown him by Gunn...and the x-rays showing frontal bone to be missing.

It would be hard for Humes to have removed bone that was already missing. 

Edited March 12 by Pat Speer

[Benjamin Cole]

Many years ago I reviewed Michael Kurtz' work. 

Unfortunately I concluded Kurtz was not in his right mind. As Pat Speer points out, incredible quotes surface that surely would have been worth including in earlier works. There are other questionable aspects, but I no longer remember details. 

 

[Pat Speer]

25 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Many years ago I reviewed Michael Kurtz' work. 

Unfortunately I concluded Kurtz was not in his right mind. As Pat Speer points out, incredible quotes surface that surely would have been worth including in earlier works. There are other questionable aspects, but I no longer remember details. 

 

From Chapter 19d: Lost in the Jungle with Kurtz

The bibliography to 1982's Crime of the Century, a book Kurtz obviously spent some time on, listed the following interviews:

Roger Craig 8-18-72 (Curiously, one of the end notes refers to a 10-6-72 interview of Craig.)

Helen Forrest (Mrs. James Forrest) 5-17-74

Jerry Herald 4-17-78

Fred Bouchard 5-18-78

George Wilcox 9-9-79

Van Burns 9-1-80

Numerous other interviews, the transcripts of which are in the author’s possession.

This bibliography listed hundreds of sources--books, articles, government reports, etc. But, of the numerous interviews Kurtz claimed to have conducted, only these six were listed. Strikingly, none of these interviews (with the possible exception of Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig) were of a well-known witness or high-ranking member of the government.

The 1993 edition of Crime of the Century, moreover, listed an additional hundred or so sources--books, articles, audio visual materials, etc... And yet, no more interviews were listed.

So who were Craig, Forrest, Herald, Bouchard, Wilcox, and Burns? Well, Herald was a free-lance news photographer in 1964. He purportedly told Kurtz the real story behind a few of the stories to come out of Dallas in the aftermath of the shooting. Bouchard, on the other hand, was a supposed ballistics expert, who supposedly told Kurtz some details about the supposed assassination weapon. Okay, we have little reason to doubt these interviews occurred.

The other interviews were more suspicious. No information is provided on Wilcox, other than that he supposedly saw Oswald with David Ferrie. Van Burns was a sociology professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. His interview with Kurtz was unexplained in the 1982 edition of Crime of the Century, but explained by Kurtz in his 1993 introduction, when he reported that Burns was yet another witness claiming he saw Oswald with Ferrie. (In The JFK Assassination Debates, of course, Kurtz fails to even mention these supposedly important witnesses that he himself uncovered.)

That leaves Craig and Forrest. Craig was a Dallas County Deputy Sheriff, one of the first to run towards Dealey Plaza. He told the Warren Commission he saw Oswald run out to a car after the shooting, but was not believed by the commission, nor by his superiors in the Sheriff's office. It seems possible he spoke to Kurtz in 1972. This brings us to Forrest. She is purported to have not only backed up Craig's story, claiming she was in the plaza after the shooting and saw a man who looked like Oswald run out to a car, but to have backed up Kurtz's ultimate conclusion the first shot was fired from the second floor of the school book depository, by telling him she saw someone with a rifle on the second floor of the depository around noon, a half hour before the shooting.

Now, this is puzzling. Kurtz claimed to have discovered a key witness who saw something no one else claimed to see, but provided no details as to what she saw (I mean, really, WHERE on the second floor did she see this man with a rifle?), and no details as to how he came to interview her. While many researchers have innocently quoted Kurtz's claims about Mrs. Forrest, for that matter, no researcher, outside Kurtz, has ever claimed to have spoken to her or been able to ascertain the validity of 1) her account, and 2) Kurtz's claims of her account. For all we know, she was a schizophrenic Kurtz met at Mardi Gras. For all we know, Kurtz had a fever dream about the big band singer Helen Forrest, in which she sang about Oswald and a man with a rifle, while backed up by the Harry James Orchestra.

Now compare and contrast the list of interviews provided in Crime of the Century to a list of interviews cited in The JFK Assassination Debates--which I have created from Kurtz's end notes. (Where I have found the date of death of the interviewee, I have added it in parentheses. Names without DODs do not necessarily mean the interviewee is still alive, only that I couldn't readily ascertain the interviewee's date of death.)

6-6-68 Robert O Canada (DOD--12-6-72, age 59)

3-6-70 Charles Gregory (DOD 4-76, age 56)

1-10-71 Clem Sehrt (DOD 6-1-74, age 64)

5-5-72 Roger Craig (DOD 5-15-75, age 39) (Note that the date of this interview fails to match either of the dates presented in Crime of the Century.)

5-17-72 Bernard Fensterwald (DOD 4-2-91, age 69)

9-6-72 Henry Kmen (DOD 9-1-78, age 62)

8-18-73 Consuela Martin

10-9-75 Milton Helpern (DOD 4-22-77, age 75)

5-15-77 Craig Craighead

5-8-78 Billy Abel

7-8-78 Jesse Curry (DOD 6-22-80, age 66)

6-8-79 Henry M. Morris (DOD 4-91, age 69)

3-15-81 Hunter Leake (DOD 5-5-93, age 82)

3-18-81 Samuel Wilson (DOD 93, age 82)

3-18-81 Bernard Eble (also cited as Eberle?) (DOD 8-19-09?, age 95?)

3-14-82 Henry M. Morris (DOD 4-91, age 69)

4-16-83 Santos Miguel Gonzalez (later listed as Miguel Santos Gonzalez)

5-7-83 Robert A Maurin Sr. (DOD 1962, age 75) (Note: He probably meant Robert Maurin II--DOD--1988, age 70)

12-14-83 George Burkley (DOD 1-2-91, age 88)

1-16-84 Roy Kellerman (DOD 3-22-84, age 69)

1-16-84 William Greer (DOD 2-23-85, age 75)

3-18-84 Jesse Curry (DOD 6-22-80, age 66)

6-8-84 Hamilton Johnson (DOD 12-12-99?, age 93?)

6-17-84 Edward Grady Partin (DOD 3-11-90, age 66)

7-7-85 Edward Grady Partin (DOD 3-11-90, age 66)

7-17-85 William George Gaudet (DOD 1-19-81, age 72)

9-3-85 Allen (Black Cat) Lacombe (DOD 7-89, age 71)

9-6-85 Seth Kantor (DOD 8-17-93, age 67)

11-12-85 William Hawk Daniels (DOD 1-22-83, age 68)

5-17-86 Robert Shaw (DOD 1992, age 87?)

6-6-86 William Hawk Daniels (DOD 1-22-83, age 68)

9-14-86 Abe Fortas (DOD 4-5-82, age 71)

9-16-86 Leon Jaworski (DOD 12-9-82, age 77)

10-9-86 Joseph R. Dolce (DOD 3-15-94, age 85)

12-7-86 Henry Mentz (DOD 1-23-05, age 84)

5-19-87 Seth Kantor (DOD 8-17-93, age 67)

8-23-87 Manuel Artime (DOD 11-18-77, age 45)

6-12-88 Joseph R. Dolce (DOD 3-15-94, age 85)

10-8-88 Henry Mason

10-20-88 Eddie Adams

4-19-89 Deborah Schillace (DOD 1-1-12, age 56)

8-12-89 Morey Sear (DOD 9-6-04, age 75)

10-13-89 Robert Bouck (DOD 4-27-08, age 89)

8-15-90 Robert Livingston (DOD 4-26-02, age 83)

9-17-90 Sidney Johnston

2-17-91 William Eckert (DOD 9-24-99, age 73)

5-5-91 Edward Brown

11-6-91 Richard M. Bissell, Jr. (DOD 2-7-94, age 84)

11-7-93 Oren Anthony (Orien Anthon on final list)

11-18-93 David Belin (DOD 1-17-99, age 70)

11-18-93 J. Wesley Liebeler (DOD 9-25-02, age 71)

10-3-94 Richard Helms (DOD 10-23-02, age 89)

8-6-95 William Eckert (DOD 9-24-99, age 73)

3-18-97 James Humes (DOD 5-06-99, age 74)

11-21-2003 Henry Lee

Kurtz's end notes also make reference to these undated interviews:

Sylvia Meagher (DOD 1-14-89, age 67)

Luis Alvarez (DOD 9-1-88, age 77)

Tad Szulc (DOD 5-21-01, age 74)

Lou Russell

On page 246, furthermore, Kurtz provides a master list of those he'd interviewed in relation to the assassination. This includes the additional names:

Gary Aguilar

Russell Fisher (DOD 5-21-84, age 67)

Michael Griffith

Vincent P. Guinn (DOD 11-7-02, age 85)

David Mantik

John McCone (DOD 2-14-91, age 89)

Charles Nelson

Dean Rusk (DOD 12-20-94, age 85)

Well, first note the number of high-profile interviews. While Crime of the Century boasted no interviews with prominent witnesses or high-ranking government officials, The JFK Assassination Debates laid claim to interviews with the two Secret Service agents riding in the front of Kennedy's limousine at the time of the shooting, the head of the Presidential Protection unit of the Secret Service, Kennedy's personal physician, the doctor who performed Kennedy's autopsy, the Commanding Officer of the hospital where the autopsy was performed, two of Governor Connally's doctors, the chief of the Dallas Police, two Warren Commission attorneys, a wound ballistics expert who consulted with the Warren Commission, two prominent physicists who conducted research related to Kennedy's assassination, three prominent forensic pathologists, a legendary forensic scientist, two former directors of the CIA, one of whom was a former director of black ops for the CIA, a second former director of black ops for the CIA, Kennedy's Secretary of State, two judges, and a former Supreme Court justice and top adviser to President Lyndon Johnson. Most of these interviews, furthermore, were purported to have occurred before Crime of the Century was re-issued in 1993. Well, why weren't these interviews mentioned in Crime of the Century? Or in articles or at conferences written or conducted prior to the release of The JFK Assassination Debates in 2006? To be clear, Dr. Kurtz teased his upcoming book in a 11-4-03 press release put out by Southeastern Louisiana University, and this press release mentioned but one interview--with Dr. Robert Shaw, Governor Connally's doctor, whose rejection of the single-bullet theory had been in the public record for decades. If Kurtz had actually interviewed rarely-interviewed doctors such as Canada, Burkley, Humes, and Fisher he would almost certainly have mentioned them before mentioning his interview with a more commonly-interviewed subject as Shaw. That only makes sense.

Let's get real. One would think an historian would brag to the high hills about his numerous interviews with important historical figures. And yet here we have an historian who listed "numerous interviews" in the only book he was likely to write on a subject, only to come back 24 years later and claim that among these "numerous interviews" were some of the most prominent figures of the 1960's, nearly all of whom were now dead. This doesn't ring true, at all.

Here is a promotional blurb put out by The University of Tennessee Press for the 1982 edition of Crime of the Century: "Thoroughly documented and based on the most exhaustive research carried out to date on John Kennedy's murder, Crime of the Century draws on a variety of primary source materials from the National Archives and the FBI's and CIA's declassified assassination files. It utilizes the latest source materials released by the House Select Committee's investigation. The depth of research, the rigorously objective sifting of evidence, and the incisive critique of official investigative bias make this a book of importance not only to students of the Kennedy assassination in particular, but also to scholars of government response to political violence in general."

Notice anything? By 1982, Kurtz had supposedly already interviewed both Robert Canada and Hunter Leake, two of the most revelatory interviews ever conducted, or at least claimed to have been conducted, regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. And yet these interviews were not only not mentioned in Kurtz's 1982 book based on the "most exhaustive research carried out to date on John Kennedy's murder", they were not mentioned in a blurb put out by his publisher pushing the greatness of his research. No interviews, in fact, are mentioned anywhere in the blurb. Hmmm... Which seems more likely? That Kurtz's publisher forgot to add in that "Oh yeah, by the way, the good professor has been conducting his own investigation into the assassination, and has conducted some interviews that will change the way we look at Kennedy's autopsy and Oswald's possible connections to the CIA"? Or that Kurtz kept these interviews a secret from his own publisher? Or that, by golly, these interviews were never actually conducted?

Now note that, aside from Roger Craig, whose interview in The JFK Assassination Debates has a different date than the two offered in Crime of the Century, the interview subjects listed in Crime of the Century, including the mysterious Helen Forrest, who Kurtz relied upon at two key points in Crime of the Century, and the mysterious George Wilcox, who purportedly saw Oswald with Ferrie, are no longer even listed among those Kurtz has interviewed.

Now note that the first interview listed for The JFK Assassination Debates is Kurtz's interview with Dr. Robert Canada. This is more than curious. Why would Kurtz conduct his first interview regarding the assassination with Dr. Canada? Why not with Dr.s Humes, Boswell, and Finck, who'd actually performed the autopsy? Or some of the witnesses to the assassination itself? And why would Kurtz's second interview regarding the assassination not come until 1970, when he supposedly interviewed one of Governor Connally's doctors, Dr. Charles Gregory? Is it a coincidence that, much as Dr. Canada, Dr. Gregory died in 1976, at a relatively young age? (Canada died at 59. Gregory died at 56.) Is it another coincidence, for that matter, that they died at a younger age than all but one of the subjects Kurtz claimed to have interviewed prior to 1987? I mean, really, did Kurtz simply have a knack for interviewing people no one else was interviewing--before they dropped dead and no one else could interview them? Or is it more likely that, hmmm, Kurtz was just making up dates for a number of his interviews, and was forced to place the dates for those who died young in years preceding his other interviews?

Now note the date of the last interview. It's Dr. Henry Lee on 11-21-03. Well, that's the day Kurtz moderated a panel on the basic facts of the assassination at the Solving the Great American Murder Mystery Conference in Pittsburgh. Dr. Lee was also in attendance at this conference. It seems likely, then, that this "interview" was not set up in advance, with prepared questions, but was more like a discussion of two men at a conference.

Now note the date of the last interview before the one with Dr. Lee. It's an interview with Dr. James Humes, who performed Kennedy's autopsy, on 3-18-97. Well, this is nine years before the release of The JFK Assassination Debates. Are we really supposed to believe that someone claiming to have conducted "numerous interviews" relating to Kennedy's assassination in the 1970's and 1980's would fail to conduct ANY interviews while piecing together a book that is likely to be his final word on the subject? I mean, not one?

Now note the highlighted interviews. These interviews all supposedly took place when the interview subject was DEAD.

[Keven Hofeling]

On 3/12/2024 at 10:25 AM, Pat Speer said:

There are some major problems with Horne's response.  

1. He cites Audrey Bell as a credible witness, when she is not. She never mentioned anything about the head wound till decades after the shooting, after she had been embraced by the research community as a truth-teller for claiming she'd been handed numerous fragments from Connally's wrist and had handed them to an FBI or SS agent. This seemed important at the time because the official story was that she'd been handed but one fragment and had handed it to a member of the Texas Highway Patrol. Only...it turned out that her latter-day claims were inaccurate...as she'd written a first-hand account for a nursing magazine in 1968 in which she said she handed the fragment (singular) to an officer of the highway patrol (IOW, the official story.)

2. He cites Dr. Robert Canada in support of his claims. Well, this is just sad. The only source for Canada's supposed claims is Kurtz, an historian from New Orleans not known for his probing interviews. And yet he claimed late in life to interviewing Canada in the 60's (shortly before Canada's death) and having Canada spill the beans to him about the autopsy.  Whether a deliberate lie, or the blurry recollections of someone not in full control of his faculties, Kurtz was not telling the truth. As detailed in my online article Lost in the Jungle with Kurtz, Kurtz's last book, in which he claimed he'd interviewed Canada, was rife with juicy quotes from supposed interviews conducted decades before, that had gone unmentioned in a number of books and articles by Kurtz published after these interviews. And it's worse than that. From comparing the dates of these supposed interviews to public death records I was able to ascertain that at least 11 of his subjects were DEAD when he'd supposedly interviewed them. Kurtz's supposed interview with Canada never happened. And Horne is undoubtedly aware of this. 

3. He presents Robinson as a witness to the removal of the brain before the removal of the brain observed by Jenkins. This is silly. Jenkins has long been insistent that there was nowhere that such an operation could be conducted without his knowledge and that no such pre-surgery took place. When one considers, furthermore, what Robinson told the HSCA--that he'd been sitting on the left side of the President and had seen the doctors working on the right side of the head, one should question the accuracy of Horne's suggestion Robinson saw the removal of the brain from the back of the head, especially when one takes into account the statements of Jenkins and O'Connor, etc, confirming that the brain was removed from the right side of the he'd and not the back. I mean, I hope he doesn't expect us to believe Humes cut open the back of the head pulled out the brain, substituted it with another brain, and then pieced the back of the head back together so successfully that his autopsy assistants had no idea the back of the head had previously been removed. 

In short, Horne cherry-picks pieces of dubious info and concocts a scenario at odds with the statements of the autopsy participants. And that none of his fellow researchers actually believe. (David Mantik, his closest colleague, has long argued that the large fragment found in the limo was frontal bone, and that it did indeed explode from the head during the shooting sequence. And yet Horne here makes out that this fragment was cut from the skull by Humes, or some such thing.) 

In any event, Horne is entitled to his pet theory, but he shouldn't be surprised when a veteran researcher like Aguilar finds it an unnecessary distraction. 

PAT SPEER WROTE:

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There are some major problems with Horne's response.  

1. He cites Audrey Bell as a credible witness, when she is not. She never mentioned anything about the head wound till decades after the shooting, after she had been embraced by the research community as a truth-teller for claiming she'd been handed numerous fragments from Connally's wrist and had handed them to an FBI or SS agent. This seemed important at the time because the official story was that she'd been handed but one fragment and had handed it to a member of the Texas Highway Patrol. Only...it turned out that her latter-day claims were inaccurate...as she'd written a first-hand account for a nursing magazine in 1968 in which she said she handed the fragment (singular) to an officer of the highway patrol (IOW, the official story.)

 

As you are well aware there is a very recent thread on this forum concerning the credibility of Nurse Audrey Bell in which your regurgitated nonsense about her was completely blown out of the water: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29693-victory-for-the-credibility-of-parkland-nurse-audrey-bell/

On that thread, even after you had already been debunked, you summarized your regurgitated position on Audrey Bell as follows:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29693-victory-for-the-credibility-of-parkland-nurse-audrey-bell/?do=findComment&comment=515808

In short then, the witnesses many are most excited by--someone who comes out years later with a fantastic tale that will change history--are the least credible--even if, perhaps especially if, their story confirms something many want to believe.

Audrey Bell is a textbook case. She expanded the number of fragments she was handed over time, and changed who she gave them to, and suddenly began describing the head wound when she never had before, with a story without support. She is not to be believed on the things that make people ooh and ahh. While Micah's discovery is helpful to her credibility--in that it lends credence to her being in Trauma Room One--it is also harmful--in that it shows her story was liquid, and changed over time.

As you know, your regurgitated position had been -- and evidently continues to be -- that Audrey Bell just suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the 1980's and started throwing around claims about being in Trauma Room One on the day of the assassination, despite not being mentioned in any of the Warren Commission depositions, and your website narrative making the case that Audrey Bell just inserted herself into the Parkland resuscitation efforts liberally sprinkles the word "bullshit" into the account. But @Micah Mileto struck a devastating blow to your narrative last September by starting the above referenced thread about a November 1967 paper authored by Bell herself, published in the journal of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, titled Forty-Eight Hours and Thirty-One Minutes, thereby demolishing the substance of your claims   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001209208700474

That article contains references to events supporting the representations Bell would make in the 1980's, such as referencing her proximity to Dr. Perry and the performance of the tracheotomy, and "the massive head wound:"

I helped cut the President's shirt from his right arm, and positioned the tracheotomy tray for Dr. Perry.    

It was then that I saw the massive head wound. Even though the prospect of surgery-after viewing the proportions of the wound and the general condition of the President-was improbable, I rushed off in search of a telephone to call the Operating Room.

But despite this, you continued to nitpick over her account in subsequent posts, deceptively attributing discrepancies to her in her various accounts of turning over bullet fragments to the authorities, relying on same in support of your position that Audrey Bell's claims are "bullshit."

However, @Michael Griffith demolished your bullet fragment discrepancy claims in short order as follows:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29693-victory-for-the-credibility-of-parkland-nurse-audrey-bell/?do=findComment&comment=515533

So once again you are weakening the case for conspiracy by offering convoluted alternative explanations, holding certain witnesses to an unreasonably rigid standard, and dismissing solid evidence. A few facts:

-- As Nurse Bell pointed out to the ARRB, the 11/22/63 evidence envelope that she herself filled out on the day of the shooting reads "fragments," plural, not "fragment" (ARRB meeting report, 4/14/97, p. 1).

-- It was the FBI that quoted Nurse Bell as saying that she handed over a single fragment to a Texas state trooper. Bell disputed that report:

          When shown an FBI FD-302 dated November 23,1963 (Agency File Number 000919, Record #180-l 0090-10270), she felt it was inaccurate in two respects: it quotes her as turning over “the metal fragment (singular),” whereas she is positive it was multiple fragments; it says she turned over the fragment to a Texas State Trooper, whereas she recalls turning it over to plainclothes Federal agents who were either FBI or Secret Service. (Ibid., p. 1)

-- Nurse Bell also disputed CE 842:

          When shown CE 842 (page 841 in Warren Commission Volume XVII), she said that the fragments photographed in the container were too small, and were too few in number, to represent what she handled on 1 l/22/63. (Ibid., p. 2)

So once again -- exactly as is the case with your nonsense about Dr. Robert McClelland's first day admittance report -- we find ourselves in the position of reading your regurgitated accusations that Audrey Bell's claims are "bullshit" despite the fact that your "reasoning" to that effect has previously been thoroughly debunked. It is as if you are either completely incapable of incorporating new facts and knowledge into your repertoire or are pursuing an agenda that makes such new facts and knowledge irrelevant to your true objectives.

One crucial point that I must emphasize, highlight and underscore is your biased and selective treatment of historical accounts from witnesses such as Audrey Bell and Dr. Charles Crenshaw regarding the assassination date. You argue that their credibility is diminished because they were not Warren Commission witnesses and did not share their accounts about the assassination resuscitation efforts until years later. This bias is evident in how you attempt to discredit Bell and Crenshaw, while glorifying and endorsing accounts from other witnesses like Dr. Robert Grossman, who were also notably absent from early historical records related to the assassination. These individuals are the most likely actual suspects for not being present in Trauma Room One on 11/23/1963 but later inserting themselves into the narrative for personal gain and publicity. In Grossman's version, he introduces a memory discrepancy that you frequently reference in your writings that is the most significant discrepancy in JFKA history, and you ominously do so without attributing it to him. This inconsistency involves Grossman remembering Jackie Kennedy in her WHITE dress on the day of the assassination. Despite Grossman's contradictions, you prominently feature him on your website and in your content because his narrative supports your mythological belief that the back of JFK's head remained intact. Conversely, you scrutinize Audrey Bell for similar inconsistencies, despite evidence disproving your accusations against her. This double standard exposes clear hypocrisy and highlights the shortcomings in your approach, thus raising doubts about your true intentions and motivations.

"THE ISSUE IS NOT WHETHER DR. GROSSMAN'S VIEW OF JFK'S WOUNDS -- OFFERED 40 YEARS AFTER THE FACT -- IS WORTHY OF BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY AT THIS LATE DATE, BUT RATHER, WHETHER DR. ROBERT GROSSMAN WAS IN THE ROOM AT ALL."  By David Lifton. https://www.jfk-assassination.net/grossman.htm

 

PAT SPEER WROTE:

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2. He cites Dr. Robert Canada in support of his claims. Well, this is just sad. The only source for Canada's supposed claims is Kurtz, an historian from New Orleans not known for his probing interviews. And yet he claimed late in life to interviewing Canada in the 60's (shortly before Canada's death) and having Canada spill the beans to him about the autopsy.  Whether a deliberate lie, or the blurry recollections of someone not in full control of his faculties, Kurtz was not telling the truth. As detailed in my online article Lost in the Jungle with Kurtz, Kurtz's last book, in which he claimed he'd interviewed Canada, was rife with juicy quotes from supposed interviews conducted decades before, that had gone unmentioned in a number of books and articles by Kurtz published after these interviews. And it's worse than that. From comparing the dates of these supposed interviews to public death records I was able to ascertain that at least 11 of his subjects were DEAD when he'd supposedly interviewed them. Kurtz's supposed interview with Canada never happened. And Horne is undoubtedly aware of this.

Just as @Sandy Larsen has pointed out concerning your assertions about Michael Kurtz, I have unearthed inaccuracies within your claims after scrutinizing them extensively so many times that I am forced to doubt their veracity. However, I have found that information about Michael Kurtz and Robert Canada is very sparse, so again like Sandy, my position is that there is such an abundance of Bethesda autopsy witnesses who have attested to the occipital-parietal wound (Ebersole, Stringer, Riebe, Custer, O'Connor, Jenkins, etc.) that Canada's account is not critical to the analysis.

 

PAT SPEER WROTE:

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3. He presents Robinson as a witness to the removal of the brain before the removal of the brain observed by Jenkins. This is silly. Jenkins has long been insistent that there was nowhere that such an operation could be conducted without his knowledge and that no such pre-surgery took place. When one considers, furthermore, what Robinson told the HSCA--that he'd been sitting on the left side of the President and had seen the doctors working on the right side of the head, one should question the accuracy of Horne's suggestion Robinson saw the removal of the brain from the back of the head, especially when one takes into account the statements of Jenkins and O'Connor, etc, confirming that the brain was removed from the right side of the he'd and not the back. I mean, I hope he doesn't expect us to believe Humes cut open the back of the head pulled out the brain, substituted it with another brain, and then pieced the back of the head back together so successfully that his autopsy assistants had no idea the back of the head had previously been removed. 

Mortician Tom Robinson was in fact a witness to the removal of the brain before the removal of the brain observed by James Jenkins. The following is what Robinson told the ARRB:

MD 180 - ARRB Meeting Report Summarizing 6/21/96 In-Person Interview of Tom Robinson:

http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md180/html/md180_0001a.htm

"...PAGE 2:

...- [mortician Tom Robinson] said he saw the brain removed from President Kennedy's body, and that a large percentage of it was gone "in the back" from the "medulla," and that the portion of the brain that was missing was about the size of a closed fist. He described the condition of the brain in this area as the consistency of "soup." He said that the brain was "not cut up" at the autopsy....

...-Visible damage to skull caused by the bullet of bullets (as opposed to damage caused by the pathologists): Robinson described 3 locations of wounds:

-he saw 2 or 3 small perforations or holes in the right cheek during embalming, when formaldehyde seeped through these small wounds and slight discoloration began to occur...

...-he described a "blow-out" which consisted of a flap of skin in the right temple of the President's head, which he believed to be an exit wound based on conversations he heard in the morgue amongst the pathologists (and executed two drawings of this right temporal defect on both a photocopy of a right lateral photograph of the President, and on a right lateral anatomy diagram of the human skull);

-he described a large, open head wound in the back of the President's head, centrally located right between the ears, where the bone was gone, as well as some scalp. He related his opinion that the wound in the back of the President's head was an entry wound occurring from a bullet fired from behind, based upon conversations he heard in the morgue among the pathologists. (Robinson executed two drawings of the hole in the back of the President's head, one on an anatomy drawing of the posterior skull, and one on an anatomy drawing of the lateral skull. On the annotated lateral skull drawing, the wound in the rear of the head is much larger than the wound in the right temple.)..."

"...REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT'S BRAIN: ROBINSON DREW DOTTED LINES ON THE DRAWING HE EXECUTED OF THE POSTERIOR SKULL WHICH SHOWS THE WOUND BETWEEN THE EARS. WHEN ASKED BY ARRB STAFF WHAT THE DOTTED...

PAGE 3:

"...LINES REPRESENTED, HE SAID "SAW CUTS." HE EXPLAINED THAT SOME SAWING WAS DONE TO REMOVE SOME BONE BEFORE THE BRAIN COULD BE REMOVED, AND THEN WENT ON TO DESCRIBE WHAT IS A NORMAL CRANIOTOMY PROCEDURE, SAYING THAT THIS PROCEDURE WAS PERFORMED ON JFK. HE SEEMED TO REMEMBER THE USE OF A SAW, AND THE SCALP BEING REFLECTED FORWARD (emphasis in this paragraph not in original)..."

"...FOX AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS:

After completing his four drawings of head wounds and describing those wounds, ARRB staff showed Mr. Robinson a set of what is alleged to be the Fox autopsy photographs to see whether they were consistent with what he remembered seeing in the morgue at Bethesda. His comments follow, related to...

PAGE 4:

...various Fox photos:

-Right Superior Profile (corresponding to B & W #s 5 and 6); He does not see the small shrapnel holes he noted in the right cheek, but he assumes this is because of the photo's poor quality.

-Back of Head (corresponds to B & W #s 15 and 16): Robinson said; "You see, this is the flap of skin, the blow-out in the right temple that I told you about, and which I drew in my drawing." WHEN ASKED BY ARRB WHERE THE HOLE IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD WAS IN RELATION TO THE PHOTOGRAPH, ROBINSON RESPONDED BY PLACING HIS FINGERS IN A CIRCLE JUST ABOVE THE WHITE SPOT IN THE HAIRLINE IN THE PHOTOGRAPH AND SAID "THE HOLE WAS RIGHT HERE, WHERE I SAID IT WAS IN MY DRAWING, BUT IT JUST DOESN'T SHOW UP IN THIS PHOTO." (emphasis not in original)

-Top of Head/Superior View of Cranium (corresponds to B & W #'s 7-10): ROBINSON FROWNED, AND SAID WITH APPARENT DISAGREEMENT, "THIS MAKES IT LOOK LIKE THE WOUND WAS IN THE TOP OF THE HEAD." HE EXPLAINED THAT THE DAMAGE IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH WAS "WHAT THE DOCTORS DID," AND EXPLAINED THAT THEY CUT THIS SCALP OPEN AND REFLECTED IT BACK IN ORDER TO REMOVE BULLET FRAGMENTS (THE FRAGMENTS HE HAD OBSERVED IN A GLASS VIAL). ARRB STAFF MEMBERS ASKED ROBINSON WHETHER THERE WAS DAMAGE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD WHEN HE ARRIVED AT THE MORGUE AND BEFORE THE BRAIN WAS REMOVED; HE REPLIED BY SAYING THAT THIS AREA WAS "ALL BROKEN," BUT THAT IT WAS NOT OPEN LIKE THE WOUND IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD (emphasis not in original)...."

Bethesda Radiology Technician Ed Reed also reported to the ARRB that he witnessed the beginning of the craniotomy:

TESTIMONY OF EDWARD F. REED:

"...Q: Where you present during the time of the first incision.

A: Yes.

Q: What was the first incision?

A: The cranium. The scalp, right here.

Q: And can you describe how that procedure -

A: Commander Humes made an incision. After we brought all the X-rays back, we were all allowed to sit up in the podium and observe. And Commander Humes made an incision - that I could see from my vantage point - an incision in the forehead, and brought back the scalp.

Q: Okay.

A: Like this.

Q: And you were making a line first across the top of your forehead, roughly along the hairline -

A: With a scalpel.

Q: -and then pulling the scalp back.

A: That's correct. Just like this.

Q: And were you able to see the size of the wound when the scalp -

A: Not from my - not from where I was, no. The podium was a good 20 feet away.

Q: What else did you observe from where you were with regard to any incisions or operations on the head?

A: WELL AFTER ABOUT 20 MINUTES, COMMANDER HUMES TOOK OUT A SAW, AND STARTED TO CUT THE FOREHEAD WITH THE BONE - WITH THE SAW. MECHANICAL SAW. CIRCULAR, SMALL, MECHANICAL - ALMOST LIKE A CAST SAW, BUT IT'S MADE -

Q: Sure.

A: - SPECIFICALLY FOR BONE...." (emphasis not in original)

In The Matter Of: PDF https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/medical_testimony/pdf/Reed_10-21-97.pdf
Assassination Records Review Board
In Re: President John E Kennedy, J1:
Deposition of Edward E Reed
October 21, 1997

But Paul O'Connor told David Lifton that there was no craniotomy performed at the Bethesda autopsy:

 

When David Lifton interviewed Paul O'Connor on film in October of 1980, O'Connor learned of the profound differences between the head wound as it appeared at the Bethesda morgue as compared with how it appeared at Parkland Hospital, and O'Connor made a stunning and prescient observation: O'Conner speculated that a partial craniotomy conducted at Parkland Hospital might account for the appearance of the wound that he observed at Bethesda. Of course, since then, with the release of the once classified HSCA medical interviews, and the dedicated work of researchers such as David Lifton, Harrison Livingstone, and Doug Horne, we know today with a reasonable degree of certainty that Paul O'Connor was completely correct about the craniotomy, only it wasn't conducted at Parkland Hospital, but was clandestinely carried out at the Bethesda morgue prior to the start of the official autopsy:

 

QUESTION: Another irregularity in the autopsy, I gotta say, is that you know, the President's cranium was empty...

 

O'CONNER: Yes.

 

QUESTION: ...at Bethesda.

 

O'CONNER: Mostly empty, I'd say 90% empty, yes.

 

QUESTION: At Dallas it wasn't empty. It was a small excised wound at the right rear of the head, about the size of an egg. Two and three quarters inches is the measurements given by the Dallas doctors in sworn testimony. That's it. Two and three quarters inch. The wound at Bethesda is four times larger.

 

O'CONNER: Oh, at least.

 

QUESTION: Were you aware of that before?

 

O'CONNER: No I wasn't. That's strange. Cause as I said, when he was brought out of the casket he did have a massive head wound, unless at Parkland they decided to do a partial craniotomy, and then, again, I, they opened the brain, it was a jagged opening all the way through the head.

 

QUESTION: Tell, what's a craniotomy for the lay audience?

 

O'CONNER:  A craniotomy is an operation, a brain operation, where they bore holes in the brain in the cranium to get to the brain.

 

QUESTION: Right, um, would that also be called in plain English "surgery?"

 

O'CONNER: Yes sir.

 

EXCERPT OF OCTOBER 1980 INTERVIEW OF PAUL O'CONNOR BY DAVID LIFTON (Cued up for you in advance via the following link https://youtu.be/QI-iRHBP9Go?t=1499 ).

 

James Jenkins has been trying to tell us for years that the brain was removed before the body came to him. We don't know exactly what it was that Jenkins was saying opened up and closed when he first saw the body removed from the coffin (an immense amount of evidence, including Jenkins' own testimony indicates the body had been removed from the casket a previous time for the craniotomy to be performed, and this is buttressed by the testimony of former Parkland Nurse Dianna Bowron [and many others] that they had wrapped JFK's head in a bed sheet at Parkland, not in a towel), but it seems to be a very good bet that Jenkins was talking about one of the tears in the scalp connected to other tears by surgical incisions (and no such incisions had been made earlier at Parkland Hospital). There is an enormous amount of evidence of the craniotomy and other irregularities related to the pre-autopsy autopsy that Tom Robinson and Ed Reed have testified to, and you again are ignoring all of that evidence. 

 

JENKINS: "...Now the strange thing about it was at the top of this wound here there was an INCISION in the scalp [Jenkins points to parietal area above occiput on skull model] that went approximately to the coronal suture here [Jenkins demonstrates on skull model]. It went a little past here [Jenkins demonstrates on skull model].

QUESTION: An incision...

JENKINS: An incision.

QUESTION: ...that you saw?

JENKINS: Right, it was actually see...

QUESTION: Why would there be an incision?

JENKINS: That's a good question. The scalp had, you know, remember all of this area in this portion is fractured [Jenkins points to parietal area on the right side of skull model], okay, to the sagittal suture, which is this suture [Jenkins demonstrates on skull model]. All of this area was fractured now, but it wasn't gone, it was still being kept intact by the scalp. The scalp had rips and tears in it. Along this area [Jenkins points to parietal area on the right side of skull model], it seemed like some of those tears in the scalp had been surgically connected. The little connections to follow fracture line in here [Jenkins demonstrates on skull model]. And that extended to about here  [Jenkins points to parietal area on top of skull model]. Okay, you know, that was the same. When Dr. Humes took the wrappings off of the head, there was a secondary wrapping on it that I think, you know, I think was the towel, but the scalp and the whole thing, this was all matted hair, and missing scalp, torn scalp, fatty tissue from beneath the scalp...

QUESTION: Which is all normal?

JENKINS: Yea, which is all normal. Okay, it had kind of stuck to that secondary layer. So as he was taking it off this area kinda gaped open, but as soon as we separated it from the towel it went back together. Now that is significant for, the fact is you could actually, if you wanted to do that, you could actually lay this skull open. You could actually take your hands and seperate it. So that would have given you access to the brain. Y 

QUESTION: Which means?

JENKINS: Which... Again, speculation, is that, fact is that you would have had access, you would have had access to the brain before we received it in the morgue..."

[See James Jenkins answer at the following link which has been cued up for you https://youtu.be/2U7dXPA_juM?t=1823 ]

 

"...Jenkins stated that the standard incisions in the cranium required to remove the brain---a “skull cap” (his term for a craniotomy)---were not done, because they were not necessary. He thought this might be explained by prior incisions, meaning that some surgery had been done prior to the autopsy. He recalled that the damage to the top of the cranium was much more extensive than the damage to the brain itself, which he found unusual. Jenkins recalled Dr. Boswell asking if there had been surgery at Parkland Hospital. He recalled Dr. Humes saying: “The brain fell out in my hands,” as he removed the brain from the body.

Jenkins recalled that at the time Dr. Humes removed the brain, it was not necessary for Humes to resect the spinal cord in order to remove the brain. Jenkins stated that the spinal cord had already been completely severed [not torn] by incisions on each side, in different planes. Jenkins recalled that the total brain volume seemed too small, i.e., smaller than the skull cavity. He recalled that the right anterior brain was damaged, and some brain tissue was missing there, but recalled no damage to the left brain. He said about two thirds of the brain was present (which of course means that about one third of its mass was missing). He recalled that a large amount of posterior tissue---cerebral tissue---was also missing.

Jenkins stated that after Dr. Boswell put the brain upside down in a sling in a formalin bucket, he noticed both carotid arteries (at the Circle of Willis) leading into the brain were retracted, which made it very difficult to insert needles for infusion. Jenkins interpreted this retraction as meaning that the carotids had been cut some time before the autopsy.

When asked how he interpreted all of this data about the condition of the brain, Jenkins said he had concluded that the brain had already been removed before the autopsy began. In response to a question as to why this might have occurred, he stated quite clearly that the purpose would have been to remove bullet fragments...."

'THE JAMES CURTIS JENKINS REVELATIONS AT JFK LANCER CONFIRM A MASSIVE MEDICAL COVER-UP IN 1963'

by Douglas P. Horne, author of Inside the Assassination Records Review Board
(former Chief Analyst for Military Records, Assassination Records Review Board)

https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/10811.html
 

Thus, we have clear testimony that a craniotomy was performed, but Humes, Boswell, O'Connor and Jenkins all maintain there was no craniotomy (though Jenkins cites numerous indications that a craniotomy was indeed performed before he first encountered the body at autopsy).

As for Tom Robinsons ARRB sketch showing the saw cuts, it appears likely to me that he is conflating the craniotomy with the sawing and incisions that were made to search for and remove bullet fragments. Remember that many autopsy participants noted mysterious incisions that caused them to speculate whether there had been surgery to the head at Parkland, and that James Jenkins noted incised openings into the skull that in his opinion would have permitted removal of the brain, and that Jenkins did not see any bullet fragments removed during the official autopsy.

Another consideration is that Tom Robinson was not a medical illustrator, and that his placement of the occipital-parietal wound at the center of the back of JFK's head rather than on the right side of the back of the head suggests that there is some variation between his sketch and the actual anatomical features.

Finally, your quip about it being incredible that the autopsy technicians would miss the evidence of brain removal is disingenuous. As demonstrated above, there was such evidence, and it was noted and reported by several autopsy participants.

 

PAT SPEER WROTE:

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In short, Horne cherry-picks pieces of dubious info and concocts a scenario at odds with the statements of the autopsy participants. And that none of his fellow researchers actually believe. (David Mantik, his closest colleague, has long argued that the large fragment found in the limo was frontal bone, and that it did indeed explode from the head during the shooting sequence. And yet Horne here makes out that this fragment was cut from the skull by Humes, or some such thing.) 

In any event, Horne is entitled to his pet theory, but he shouldn't be surprised when a veteran researcher like Aguilar finds it an unnecessary distraction. 

 

"Horne cherry-picks pieces of dubious info and concocts a scenario at odds with the statements of the autopsy participants." I have just demonstrated above that nothing in your characterization is accurate, and that you are spinning it in an effort to hoodwink those who are unaware of all of the available evidence.

As for Dr. David Mantik's interpretation that the removed frontal bone is the result of gunfire rather than the craniotomy, to be perfectly honest, that baffles me and I would like to ask Dr. Mantik why his analysis doesn't take into consideration the damage that was caused by the off-the-record craniotomy. 

Dr. Mantik is well aware of the evidence of the illicit craniotomy, as he has written about it, and there is every indication that he accepts the veracity of the evidence, yet he does not mention it in his analysis of the head injuries. Why?

DR. DAVID MANTIK ON DOUG HORNE'S ACCOUNT OF THE BETHESDA AUTOPSISTS CLANDESTINELY ALTERING JFK'S HEAD WOUNDS WITH A BONE SAW:

"...So why does Horne conclude that H&B illicitly removed (and altered) the brain shortly after 6:35 PM, before any X-rays were taken, and before the official autopsy began? He here introduces two intriguing witnesses – the two R's, namely Reed and Robinson. Edward Reed was assistant to Jerrol Custer (the radiology tech), while Tom Robinson was a mortician. Rather consistently with one another, but quite independently, both describe critical steps taken by H&B that no one else reports. (Horne documents why no one else reported these events – almost everyone else had been evicted from the morgue before this clandestine interlude.) After the body was placed on the morgue table (and before X-rays were taken), Reed briefly sat in the gallery.18 Reed states19 that Humes first used a scalpel across the top of the forehead to pull the scalp back. Then he used a saw to cut the forehead bone, after which he (and Custer, too) were asked to leave the morgue. (Reed was not aware that this intervention by Humes was unofficial.) This activity by Humes is highly significant because multiple witnesses saw the intact entry hole high in the right forehead at the hairline. On the other hand, the autopsy photographs show only a thin incision at this site, an incision that no Parkland witness ever saw. The implication is obvious: this specific autopsy photograph was taken after Humes altered the forehead – thereby likely obliterating the entry hole.
⁠
Reed's report suggests that Humes deliberately obliterated the right forehead entry; in fact, the autopsy photograph does not show this entry site. Paradoxically, however, Robinson (the mortician) recalls20 seeing, during restoration, a wound about 1/4º inch across at this very location. He even recalls having to place wax at this site. So the question is obvious: If Humes had obliterated the wound (as seems the case based on the extant autopsy photograph), how then could Robinson still see the wound during restoration? This question cannot be answered with certainty, but two options arise: (1) perhaps the wound was indeed obliterated (or mostly obliterated) and Robinson merely suffered some memory merge – i.e., even though he added wax to the incision (the one still visible in the extant photograph), he was actually recalling the way it looked before Humes got to it, or (2) the photograph itself has been altered – to disguise the wound that was visible in an original photograph. The latter option was seemingly endorsed by Joe O'Donnell, the USIA photographer,21 who said that Knudsen actually showed him such a photograph.
⁠
Regarding Robinson, Horne concludes that he arrived with the hearse that brought the body (i.e., the first entry). After that, Robinson simply observed events from the morgue gallery; contrary to Reed's experience, he was not asked to leave. Just before 7 PM, Robinson22 saw H&B remove large portions of the rear and top of the skull with a saw, in order to access the brain. (Robinson was not aware that this activity was off the record.) He also observed ten or more bullet fragments extracted from the brain. Although these do not appear in the official record, Dennis David recalls23 preparing a receipt for at least four fragments.24
⁠
Contrary to Reed and Robinson, Humes25 declared that a saw was not important:
⁠
"We had to do virtually no work with a saw to remove these portions of the skull, they came apart in our hands very easily, and we attempted to further examine the brain."
⁠
Although James Jenkins (an autopsy technician) does not explicitly describe the use of a saw, he does recall that damage to the brain (as seen inside the skull) was less than the corresponding size of the cranial defect; this indirectly implies prior removal of some of the skull.26...
⁠
...The reader might well ask why Reed and Robinson (and Custer, too) were permitted to observe (at least briefly) this illegal surgery by H&B. Horne proposes that the morgue manager that night (Kellerman) was not present for the first casket entry – that's because he was riding with Jackie and the bronze casket. Therefore, before he arrived (most likely that was shortly after 7 PM), there was no hands-on stage manager in the morgue. It is even possible that Kellerman himself ejected Reed and Custer as soon as he arrived. Robinson, on the other hand, dressed in civilian clothing, may have seemed to Kellerman a lesser threat, so Robinson stayed...."
⁠
⁠https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/horne-douglas-inside-the-arrb-part-iv
 

If it is true that Dr. Aguilar considers all of the evidence set forth above to be "an unnecessary distraction," I find that to be very unfortunate, especially considering that he nowhere even attempts to provide an alternative explanation. I do know that Dr. Aguilar has in the past written favorably about Doug Horne's hypothesis about brain substitution. I'm curious to know the explanation for why he changed his views about that, if indeed he has.

Like Zapruder film alteration, the clandestine craniotomy hypothesis is considered by many researchers to be "radioactive," and too far into the domain of forbidden knowledge to touch even with a ten-foot pole. I think it possible that the potential consequences to the reputations and respectability of medical professionals like Dr. Aguilar, Dr. Wecht and even Dr. Mantik may make it a bridge too far. I can sympathize to some extent with the knowledge that such "radioactive" topics are easier for me to write about publicly now that I am retired, as it is certainly something that could have had negative professional repercussions in the context of being considered for a judicial appointment, consideration for being made a partner in a law firm and the like.

However, like Doug Horne, I believe that the truth should be pursued wherever it may lead even though the Heavens may fall, and I did take such risks even before retiring, and the researchers who are willing to venture into those domains of "forbidden knowledge" are those that I most admire and respect.

 

Edited March 13 by Keven Hofeling

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Let's be clear.

1. The triangular fragment IS the fragment that was brought in later, during the autopsy. It had been discovered by Secret Service Agent Sam Kinney, who had noticed it on the floor of the limo as it was flown back from Dallas. 

 

The triangular fragment CANNOT be the fragment that was seen in the limo, discovered by SS Agent Kinney. Being a frontal bone, it could not have escaped through the back-of-head blowout wound.

The fragment found in the limo was, in fact, from the back of the head. It arrived at the autopsy too late to be put back in place. A piece of it was broken off and returned to Dealey Plaza and dropped on the grass ahead of where the limo was for the head shot so that it could be "discovered" by someone, who could be used as a "witness" for a (fake) head-shot from behind, i.e. Oswald's shot. Unfortunately for the coverup artists, it was picked up by Billy Harper who had close medical connections who would unanimously identify it as occipital bone. Which it was.

In contrast to the back-of-head/Harper fragment that was created by a gunshot, the triangular frontal bone fragment was a created by Dr. Humes during a secret pre-autopsy surgery designed to make it look like the blowout wound was on the top of the head instead of the back.

 

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

2. The doctors noted a beveled exit on this fragment and concluded it derived from the top of the head.

 

There was no such bevel on the triangular fragment. The docs pretended there was so they could say a bullet exited that area. Again, to support the official narrative of a head shot from behind.

In contrast, the Harper fragment indeed had a beveled entrance with a metal scraping on it. As Dr. Mantik has shown, had the Harper fragment been put back in place, that beveled entrance would correspond to the entrance wound near the external occipital protuberance noted by Dr. Humes.

 

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

5. Dr. Angel viewed photos of the Harper Fragment and concluded that the Harper fragment was parietal bone, from the middle of the right side of the top of the head.

 

The doctors who unanimously identified the fragment as being occipital actually held it in their hands. Dr. Angel is wrong.

 

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

7. Dr. Mantik has concluded that the triangular fragment was frontal bone.

8. Dr. Mantik had concluded that the Harper fragment was occipital bone. 

 

Dr. Mantik is right on both counts.

 

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

The triangular fragment CANNOT be the fragment that was seen in the limo, discovered by SS Agent Kinney. Being a frontal bone, it could not have escaped through the back-of-head blowout wound.

The fragment found in the limo was, in fact, from the back of the head. It arrived at the autopsy too late to be put back in place. A piece of it was broken off and returned to Dealey Plaza and dropped on the grass ahead of where the limo was for the head shot so that it could be "discovered" by someone, who could be used as a "witness" for a (fake) head-shot from behind, i.e. Oswald's shot. Unfortunately for the coverup artists, it was picked up by Billy Harper who had close medical connections who would unanimously identify it as occipital bone. Which it was.

In contrast to the back-of-head/Harper fragment that was created by a gunshot, the triangular frontal bone fragment was a created by Dr. Humes during a secret pre-autopsy surgery designed to make it look like the blowout wound was on the top of the head instead of the back.

 

 

There was no such bevel on the triangular fragment. The docs pretended there was so they could say a bullet exited that area. Again, to support the official narrative of a head shot from behind.

In contrast, the Harper fragment indeed had a beveled entrance with a metal scraping on it. As Dr. Mantik has shown, had the Harper fragment been put back in place, that beveled entrance would correspond to the entrance wound near the external occipital protuberance noted by Dr. Humes.

 

 

The doctors who unanimously identified the fragment as being occipital actually held it in their hands. Dr. Angel is wrong.

 

 

Dr. Mantik is right on both counts.

 

Thank you for the bad joke. I happen to like bad jokes, but they are not for everyone.

Here is the x-ray taken of the fragments brought in during the autopsy, as confirmed by everyone. 

Note the beveled entrance/exit, with metal fragments. Everyone to study this x-ray from the night of the assassination on down has noted this. Are you saying that they all lied? 

 

 

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes, of course, I noticed that you were just making all this stuff up so you won't have to admit you are wrong about anything. Why it was only what? yesterday? that you and your partner were claiming the triangular fragment was thrown into the limo. Now, today, after some guidance from your master (Horne) you are claiming the triangular fragment was cut off from the skull by Humes (even though it bears no sign of a saw cut, and even though Horne cites Reed as a witness to this when Reed specified that he saw Humes saw the forehead--not top of the head, forehead--AFTER he, Reed, and Custer had taken the x-rays of skull showing frontal bone already missing. It's GIGO. 

As far as the Harper Fragment...oh, please, do some research!!! If you pick up an anatomy book and look at the inner aspect of the occipital bone you will notice in a matter of seconds that the fragment bears no resemblance to the inner aspect of the occipital bone. For what's worse, you will notice that if the Harper fragment is occipital bone well it would encompass almost the entire occipital bone from side to side. So why do you continue claiming it was broken off a bigger piece of bone? How does that make any sense? I mean, really. In your take there is a massive hole on the back of the head. And no hole on the front of the head. And so you've conjured up this fantasy in which the fragment purportedly found in the limo was actually cut from JFK's head by Humes so they could pretend it came from a hole on the top of the head. Well, okay, this is bizarre, but at least it's consistent. So why include in your theory that the Harper fragment was broken off a bigger piece of bone and then thrown in the plaza? Does that make any sense? They already have a beveled entrance low on the back of the head (which you probably believe was faked). And they have a beveled exit on the triangular fragment (which you claim failed to exist). So NO more fragments were necessary for them to come to a conclusion. They had all they needed. If you agree with Mantik, moreover, then you believe the Harper fragment was clear-cut evidence for an entrance by the EOP. But they already had evidence for this on the intact bone. So why would they do anything other than destroy it, as its existence, once found, might prove the back of the head was blown out, and that they had lied about the EOP entrance?

Respectfully, your theory makes no sense. 

Oh, wait, I think I get it. You're trying to account for Hill and Kinney's claiming there was a fragment in the limo, while also explaining how the Harper fragment ended up to the west of the limo's location when fired upon. But it just makes no sense. Nothing would be gained by throwing the fragment back into the plaza. And, besides...how could a large bone fragment be blown out of the back of JFK's head,,,and then end up on the floor the limo? What? Do you think it was a flap? That Jackie pulled off and tossed to the floor? 

Edited March 13 by Pat Speer

[Sandy Larsen]

 

12 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Note the beveled entrance/exit, with metal fragments. Everyone to study this x-ray from the night of the assassination on down has noted this. Are you saying that they all lied?

 

On the large fragment, I see three darker areas around its perimeter that might be beveled partial holes. And I see one on the medium-sized fragment. But there's no way of knowing if any of these are bullet holes. For all we know, the beveled areas could all be due to bone breakage.

If there are metal fragments, that might give us a clue. Metal is very x-ray opaque, and so we might see pieces that appear to be floating in the darkness of a bevel, like in the image below.

I do see a few white dots at various locations on the film. Even if one or more of these are metal, they could be tiny bullet fragments from a bullet that passed nearby but not through the skull at that point.

The bottom line is there really are no definitive beveled bullet holes in the three fragments.