What James Jenkins Actually Said

[Pat Speer]

I see that on another thread Keven is trying to propagate a myth about what James Jenkins actually said about JFK's large head wound. 

From chapter 19f. 

The earliest record of James Jenkins' recollections is an 8-29-77 HSCA memo written by Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy (ARRB Medical Document 65). This document reflects that the head wound observed by Jenkins resided "in the middle temporal region back to the occipital." While this is a bit confusing, as the temporal bone is on the side of the head, one must realize that Jenkins is quoted as saying "temporal region" and not "temporal bone."

Well, a quick google search demonstrates that the temporal region includes but is not restricted to the temporal bone, and stretches up onto the parietal bone.

Here, then, is a depiction of "the boundaries of the temporal region," found online. The temporal bone itself is in red.

 

 

 

 

Well, think  about it. The wound, according to Jenkins, went back to the occipital. This suggests it resided on the right side of the head, presumably the right top side of the head, but did not stretch onto the far back of the head, below the level of the ears. 

On this point, moreover, Jenkins remained consistent. He was next interviewed by author David Lifton on 9-23-79. As recounted in Best Evidence (1980), Jenkins told Lifton that the large head wound was "situated toward the rear" and that "the general way the fragments were distributed--the way scalp with bone attached seemed to have been exploded outward and to the rear" convinced him "that the shot must have come from the front" (Note: these are Lifton's words and are not direct quotes.) Lifton then repeated that Jenkins told him that the large defect "extended toward the rear...with fragments that seemed to be hanging on."

Lifton then quoted Jenkins with a more precise description of the wound's location: “I would say the parietal and occipital section on the right side of the head---it was a large gaping area, even though, I think, as we put it back together, most of the skull, the bone itself was there. It had just been crushed, and kind of blown apart, toward the rear…I’m laying my hand on the back area of my skull. And my hand is probably five to six inches from the span of my little finger to the tip of my thumb. So if I spread my fingers and put my hand back there, that probably would be the area that was missing.”

Well, this is a bit confusing. Jenkins described a large gaping area, but acknowledged that most of the bone itself was there. It seems probable, then, that when he described a five to six inch area where bone was "missing," Jenkins meant "missing afrter the scalp was reflected," and not "missing before the beginning of the autopsy."

Well, then, what about the gaping hole of missing scalp and bone as first observed? Where, exactly, was that?

In High Treason 2, author Harrison Livingstone reported that he spoke to Jenkins on 10-8-90, and that Jenkins told him “Everything from just above the right ear back was fragmented…there was (an absence of scalp and bone) along the midline just above the occipital area…this (wound) would not have been low enough to have gotten into the cerebellum.”

So...okay. It was above the occipital area, and did not overlay the cerebellum. This puts it at the top of the back of the head, presumably on the right side.

And, sure enough, this is where Jenkins placed the wound when asked to show its location in a 1991 video-taped interview with Harrison Livingstone. This is demonstrated below.

 

 

 

 

When speaking to William Law in 1998, for that matter, Jenkins said much the same thing. When asked to estimate the size of the head wound, Jenkins told Law: "It would be difficult to estimate because a lot of the hair was still attached to the skull fragments--the skull was fragmented. But I would say that if you take your hand and you put the heel of your thumb behind your ear, that would cover the basic part of the wound with the open hole approximately in that area." Law filmed this interview, moreover, and this showed that Jenkins' hand --the location of the "open hole"--was entirely above the highest tip of his ear, on the parietal bone, and not on the back of the head below the highest tip of his ear, the location of the occipital bone, and cerebellum.

Here, then, is Jenkins, as he said "open hole."

 

 

 

 

I, myself, had a chance to discuss this with Jenkins on November 22, 2013. In focus group discussions at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas he told a group of people, including at one point Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. David Mantik, and myself, that a common "misconception is that that there was actually skull missing" on the far back of Kennedy's head. He explained that "the skull was fragmented from here (he pointed to the top of his head) to here (he pointed to the low back of his head), but it was intact." He later re-iterated "All of this back here (he pointed to the back of his head between his ears) was attached" and still later, in a second discussion close to midnight, that "The only thing keeping the skull structure intact was the scalp" and that it all collapsed when they pulled the scalp back.

This last point, as we've seen, and shall see, was supported by the words of Dr. Humes and Jerrol Custer. 

Now, for some, Custer's numerous statements regarding the head wound in the 1990's and Jenkins' supporting statements to Law and others, including myself, would be the end of the blown-out hole low on the back-of-the-head theory. But not for David Mantik. Not only did he turn around and report that Jenkins' recollections didn't jive with the official autopsy photos, but his representation of Jenkins' statements led Doug Horne to post a widely-disseminated post on his blog about Jenkins' supporting his and Mantik's claims the occipital bone was blown out. Horne then used this to support his theory holding that Dr. Humes performed a pre-autopsy on the body to conceal this from the bulk of the witnesses.

It was to my relief, then, that I got a second chance to talk to Jenkins on 11-20 and 11-21-15. He was once again in attendance at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas--this time to help promote a Blu-ray disc put together from a group interview conducted a decade earlier. David Mantik was another participant in this interview. As a consequence, he was on the panel on which Jenkins spoke.

In an effort to avoid a confrontation, then, I talked to Jenkins first, out in the hallway, on 11-20, and then second, after his appearance on a panel the next evening. When I asked him about the location of the large head wound, he once again specified that it was above the occipital bone, and did not involve the cerebellum. When I told him that this was in direct opposition to Dr. Mantik's recently-released e-book, in which he insisted, despite all the evidence, that the Harper fragment was occipital bone, and that the cerebellum was blasted, Jenkins responded with a shrug and said something like "Well, people are gonna believe what they wanna believe." (Not a direct quote) When I then explained to him that Mantik and Horne were trying to shoehorn all the evidence into their jointly-developed theory, and then sell this to the research community, and that their theory holds both that the Harper fragment exploded from the occipital bone, and that Dr. Humes concealed this from the record via pre-autopsy surgery, he looked at me in disbelief, and told me (and others who were listening in, including Matt Douhit) that he was with the body from the moment it was taken from the casket, and that there was no pre-autopsy surgery. I then asked him if he was willing to state for the record that Mantik and Horne's theory was nonsense, and he gave me an uncomfortable look, and finally allowed that "If it happened, it was not in the morgue I was in." (And yes, that is a direct quote.) Spotting a loophole, I then asked him if the body could have been altered in some other room down the hall. He then corrected me, and said there was no other room in which it could have taken place, and that he meant that if it occurred, it would have to have taken place somewhere else entirely.

So there you have it, from the best witness still living...the best evidence available. The Mantik/Horne theory is nonsense.

And TOXIC to the credibility of the JFK research community...

Now it pains me to write this, but it seems clear Jenkins was subsequently convinced to play along with the Mantik/Horne charade. In 2018, he released At the Cold Shoulder of History, a book on his experiences and recollections of the autopsy. For this book, he made some appearances, most notably, an interview with Patrick Bet-David put up on Youtube on 11-22-18. Well, in this video, Jenkins demonstrated just where there was a gaping hole on the skull, and where the skull was fractured but intact. 

And, guess what? He'd flip-flopped from his earlier representations!

Here, see for yourself. About half-way through the video, Jenkins picks up a rubber skull, and says "The wound was here, approximately where my finger is. It was about 3 1/2 inches long and about 2 inches wide. That is where the missing bone was."

 

 

 

 

Well, yikes, this stretches down into the occipital region--precisely where Jenkins had previously claimed the skull was fractured but intact beneath the scalp.

He then added, while pointing at the following location... "This area was fractured but it wasn't gone--it was still being kept intact by the scalp."

 

 

 

 

Well, gulp, this is exactly where Jenkins said there was an "open hole" years earlier.

Now, after viewing this video, I downloaded Jenkins' recently released e-book, At the Cold Shoulder of History, to see if he'd flip-flopped on the head wound location before or after its writing.

I found my answer. Before. Early in the book, Jenkins describes his first impressions of the head wound. He writes: "As Dr. Humes removed the wrappings from the head, the wound gaped open along a laceration that ran forward along the top of the head...The first appearance of the head wound was deceiving..." Well, maybe. But, if so, why did it take Jenkins more than 50 years to see through this deception, and realize the hole was really on the back of the head?

A bit later, Jenkins asserts "The scalp was torn and macerated with fractured bone fragments still clinging to the scalp. The entire area was covered with matted hair and dried blood. This made it difficult to determine the true extent of the wound." He then claims "after the scalp was reflected back from the skull, the wound that had been missing scalp and bone appeared to be more consistent with the shape and dimensions previously described by Dr. McClelland." He then describes: "The wound, missing bone and scalp, was a large gaping wound in the occipital-parietal area of the right posterior side of the head. It looked to be about 2.5 to 3 inches (5 to 7 cm) by 1.5 to 2 inches (3 to 5 cm) in size with a rounded border at the top traveling downward in an elongated rectangular/triangular shape with irregular margins."

Well, my God! Someone--seemingly Jenkins himself--but quite possibly Jenkins under the influence of his co-writer, William Law--has tried to make Jenkins' description of the wound align with the so-called McClelland drawing, and the latter-day descriptions of the wound by Dr. Robert McClelland...but has failed to note that the wound described by Jenkins is far smaller! To wit, the wound described by Jenkins could be as small as 2.5 by 1.5 in (or 3.75 sq in) and as large as 3 by 2 in (or 6 sq in) while, as of 2012, McClelland has taken to claiming the wound missing scalp and bone on the back of the head was 4 by 5 in (20 sq in--3 1/3 to 5 1/3 times as large!)

Now, to be clear, there's some confusion on this point... Jenkins returns to the subject of the wound's size later in his book, and admits "I think it is only fair to say that my given measurements--2.5 to 3 inches (5 to 7 cm) by 1.5 to 2 inches (3 to 5 cm)--of the wound, missing bone and scalp area, are approximations and not measured ones, even though the difference between 3 inches and 5 inches is obvious to most people." Well, this is curious. This reference to "5 inches" might be a reference to McClelland, and his approximation of the wound's size. But I doubt it. In the context of the sentence, it seems far more likely the "3 inches and 5 inches" was supposed to read "3 cm and 5 cm."

In any event, it's clear from the measurements provided by Jenkins that his flip-flop--his movement of the open hole he'd previously described at the top of the head to the far back of the head--was not performed in close coordination with Dr. Mantik and Doug Horne. Horne, after all, proposed that Dr. Humes expanded the size of the head wound observed at Parkland, and that the wound observed at Bethesda by those not in on this clandestine pre-autopsy surgery to the head (including Jenkins) was 4 to 5 times as large as the wound observed at Parkland. And this was nothing new. Long before Horne, Lifton had proposed that the wound seen at Bethesda was more than 4 times as large as the wound seen at Parkland. And yet, here's Jenkins, claiming that the wound he observed at Bethesda was but 1/5 as large as the wound observed by Lifton and Horne's star witness, Dr. Robert McClelland, at Parkland!

So, yeah--EEGADS--the numbers don't lie. The "open hole" described by Jenkins was roughly 1/20 as large as it needed to be to support Lifton and Horne's theories!

Now, I know, for some this is hard to believe. So, here's Horne's theory as summarized by Horne to Dick Russell in On the Trail of the JFK Assassins (2008): "Dr.s Humes and Boswell...performed the post-mortem surgery that so drastically altered the head wound--enlarging it to four to five times its original size in an attempt to make it appear more or less consistent with a large exit wound caused by a shot fired from behind. In altering the head wound they not only dramatically expanded the size of the rather localized exit wound in the rear of the head seen in Dallas, to encompass the top of the skull and part of the right side, but also surgically removed from the body evidence of an entry wound in the right front of the head."

Now let's compare this to Jenkins' latter-day claims... 1. He says he was with the body from the beginning and failed to observe any pre-autopsy surgery performed by Humes and Boswell. 2. He says the open hole he saw at the beginning of the official autopsy was small--far smaller, in fact, than the wound currently described by Dr. McClelland. 3. He says he saw a bullet entrance on the right side of the head, and that this was not removed from the "body evidence" by Humes and Boswell, but, instead, briefly studied by Finck and Humes, and then ignored.

In short, then, Jenkins' recollections are thoroughly at odds with what Lifton and Horne have proposed. Central to Lifton and Horne's theories (i.e. JFK body alteration theories in general) is that Kennedy's body was altered before the beginning of the autopsy to disguise the direction of fire on the skull and that a wound on the back of the head was expanded to include the top of the head. Jenkins, however, says that at the beginning of the autopsy there was an exit wound on the back of the head, and that the wound expanded on its own to include the top of the head once the scalp was reflected. And he says as well that an entrance wound was apparent on the right side of the head.

And yet, this divide between the theories of Lifton and Horne, and Jenkins' 2018 recollections, is largely invisible to those prone to swallow the body alteration theory. Jenkins has come to believe the brain he infused at autopsy was not Kennedy's actual brain, and had somehow been switched. And Jenkins has come to disown the bulk of the autopsy photos, and come to suspect they were taken in a morgue other than the one at Bethesda. And that's mighty interesting.

But it does NOT support the theories of Lifton and Horne, which hold that the body was altered before Jenkins first viewed the body, so that the photos would reflect a different shooting scenario than the scenario apparent at Parkland.

The theories are, in fact, mutually exclusive. If Jenkins is to be believed, then Lifton and Horne are wrong. Period. No one manipulated the wounds. Period. While Jenkins supports a whole new possibility--that the autopsy photos are, yessirree, fakes, taken at some other morgue, and presumably involving a different body--this doesn't align with Lifton and Horne's thinking that a diversion of the body to a morgue before its arrival at Bethesda would have been performed to alter the body...to FOOL those at Bethesda...NOT to fake some photos and then restore the wounds to their appearance as currently recalled by Jenkins.

Of course, this doesn't stop Jenkins (and presumably his co-writer William Law) from trying to make his recollections fit into the back-of-the-head scenario pushed by Lifton and Horne et al.

In his book, Jenkins continues: "My given measurements also approximated more closely the diminutions given by Dr. McClelland at Parkland as he observed the wound in the emergency room than those listed in the official report." (Well this is a bit deceptive, seeing as Jenkins admits he believes the size of the wound described in the official report is the size of the wound AFTER the scalp was pulled back, and the brain removed.) The so-called McClelland drawing (which is shown on the Boswell and Johnson slide, above, and the JFK and the Unthinkable slide, below) is then shown the reader, after which Jenkins claims "This closely matches the wound that I saw after the scalp was retracted from the skull. The area shown was the area where both bone and scalp were missing." (Now, this, too, is deceptive. Jenkins has long claimed that fragments of skull stuck to the scalp and/or fell to the table as the scalp was retracted, and that, in any event, the wound changed appearance as the scalp was retracted.) Jenkins then tries to explain how the "McClelland" drawing of the wound (before retraction of the scalp) could match his recollections of the wound (after retraction of the scalp): "While some bone was separated from the scalp as it was being retracted, you could still readily see the true area where there was an absence of bone and scalp." He then admits "My original thought when I first saw this drawing was that the wound appeared to be a little more caudal, toward the neck, and lateral, than the wound seen at autopsy. This may be (mis)perception on my part due to the slightly turned head in the drawing." He then closes "The position of the wound in the drawing correlates well with the wound that I saw at autopsy after the scalp was retracted."

So what happened? Why did Jenkins, after decades of claiming the hole was at the top of the head,  suddenly find it necessary to make his recollections of the large head wound align with the wound as depicted in the "McClelland" drawing? And why didn't anyone tell him that a number of witnesses--including McClelland himself--had long-since acknowledged the inaccuracy of this drawing?

I mean, it doesn't add up. Probably the most interesting part of Jenkins' book is a transcript to a 1993 interview for which he'd been hypnotized. There, 30 years after Kennedy's autopsy, Jenkins described his first impression of the head wound when viewing Kennedy's body as it was laying flat on its back on the table: "From where I am standing...from the top of the head, I don't see any holes or anything. I just see tissue and scalp, actually scalp that looks like it's intact--It's kind of pressed in. Right in front of the ear, back toward the back of the head...Now, they are lifting the body up for--I can see the wound on the side. It's fairly extensive. It's fairly high in the back of the head. Really the gaping starts toward the center, back behind the ear. It's a lot of scalp and tissue. It's being held together by--a lot of the bones were held together by scalp."

Now, this doesn't match up with Jenkins' 2018 description of the wound, now does it? The "fairly high in the back of the head" open hole best viewed from "the side" above an area where the bones were  held together by scalp had become a small hole low on the back of the head not visible from the side below an area where the bones were held together by scalp.

Of course, we already knew this--that Jenkins had pulled a switcheroo--based upon his '91 interview with Livingstone, and '98 interview with Law, and numerous discussions with researchers, including yours truly in 2015.

So...I repeat. What happened? What, or who, happened to Jenkins as he was preparing to write his book?

Well, Jenkins made numerous mentions of a "neurologist friend" in the interview conducted by Bet-David. This "neurologist friend," moreover, had recently been shown the autopsy photos. Well, this could only be Dr. Michael Chesser, Dr. Mantik's head cheerleader, and the only doctor selected by Jenkins to write a chapter for his book. In his 2018 appearance at the JFK Lancer Conference, for that matter, Jenkins asked Chesser and Mantik to share the stage with him, and confirmed that he'd met Chesser at the 2015 conference, and had engaged in a lot of "back and forth" with Chesser whiie writing his book.

So, yikes, let's refresh. In 2013, James Jenkins came forward at the urging of William Law, and began speaking to the research community. At that time he was insistent the back of the head was intact beneath the scalp--something he had maintained for decades. Nevertheless, David Mantik and Doug Horne pounced on his statements as support for their theory the back of the head was missing when Jenkins first saw the body.  But he puttered on, and continued to claim the back of the head was intact, as late as 2015. He was then befriended by Mantik's number one acolyte, Michael Chesser, and--VOILA--he suddenly started claiming the back of the head was missing when he first saw the body. 

We don't need to connect the dots because they form a straight line....

 

[Richard Bertolino]

I think it is more important what the Parkland doctors said in November of 1963. Didn't they all say that there was a big hole in the back of the head?

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Richard Bertolino said:

I think it is more important what the Parkland doctors said in November of 1963. Didn't they all say that there was a big hole in the back of the head?

This is the source of all the attacks on me. The initial statements mostly indicated there was a hole towards the back of the head. After being shown the autopsy materials years later, however, the key witnesses either said they'd been mistaken or that the autopsy photos were misleading. 

A certain faction of the research community chooses to believe these men were lying (or even in on the killing to begin with). I, on the other hand, performed months of research into human cognition which made it painfully obvious they could have been mistaken. That doesn't mean they were, of course. But I also spent years reading up on wounds of this nature and it's crystal freaking clear the damage described in the autopsy report and depicted in the photos is NOT supportive of a lone assassin firing the weapon and bullets as claimed. Well, this led me to believe the evidence is largely legit but that the official interpretations of this evidence are bogus. 

And this is where it gets interesting. The attacks I've endured for almost 20 years now come almost entirely from people claiming they support the Parkland witnesses (when they actually think the key witnesses are liars), whose belief the evidence was faked strangely, very strangely, IMO, helps protect the reputations of the HSCA's forensic pathology panel, etc--men who studied the medical evidence and came to clearly incorrect conclusions, IMO. 

For example, one of my first discoveries, nearly 20 years ago now, was that the HSCA's chief medical consultant Dr. Baden testified with a key exhibit upside down, and misrepresented the large wound his panel believed was on the top of the head as a wound on the side of the head. This could have and should have been used to destroy his credibility within the mainstream media. But did ANY of the most prominent researchers--those with friends in the mainstream media--pick this up and run with it? I mean, to me, this is something far more relevant than some octogenarian coming forward and claiming something he never said before, and then saying something totally different two weeks later. This is concrete evidence the "experts" who supposedly closed the case were incompetent, or at least seriously ignorant of the facts. But no, no one ever ran with it. It was never reported in the press, or even discussed in prominent presentations outside my own. 

And that brings me to a more recent discovery. A number of years back I came across the first published reports on the assassination rifle...by a Romanian writing in French. In any event, he concluded photos of what a through and through bullet to the head SHOU:LD have looked like. This image DESTROYS the official story, IMO. And when I showed this to the "top" researchers years ago, they agreed. But did any of them include this in their 2023 presentations? Or dscuss this in a TV appearance? Of course not. (I should point out, however, that a fairly prominent guy asked me to re-send him this photo the other day so maybe just maybe this means the gridlock has finally been broken.)

In any event, a lot of important info has been swept under the rug over the past 15 years, at least some if it, IMO, because I was the source of this info. 

Here, btw, is the image. 

 

 

Edited May 6 by Pat Speer

[Richard Bertolino]

Well, there may be other explanations for what some doctors and experts said later. They don't all need to be liars. I'm no fan of prominent researchers, but I don't think the Romanian Francophile's skull photo, or their reaction to it, is a good way to judge them. But I don't know the "medical evidence" very well. I tend to dismiss much of it because it comes from very controlled or controllable sources. And I don't think JFK was shot even once from behind.

[Tom Gram]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

This image DESTROYS the official story, IMO.

Isn’t this a frontal bone entrance though? It definitely suggests that a direct hit from 6.5mm MC ammo doesn’t typically blow heads off, but the Edgewood tests showed that under certain conditions, MC ammo can cause “explosive” type skull damage after impact with occipital bone.

As you know, there are plenty of problems with those tests, most notably that the raw data has never been seen by anyone and that the faces got blown off, but the tests did at least demonstrate that atypical wounding scenarios are not impossible.

The 6x15mm entrance dimensions also suggest that the bullet struck at a significant yaw angle, which would increase the chances of an explosive exit and a curved wound track within the skull. 

I just think the wound-is-impossible argument is a bit overstated. I’d love to find evidence that a shot to the EOP from Oswald’s rifle on the 6th floor could not have caused JFK’s (official) head wound under any circumstances, but my limited wound ballistics research has led me to suspect that is not the case. Unlikely? Yes. Less likely than a tangential wound? Almost certainly. Impossible? Not quite. 

Edited May 6 by Tom Gram

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

Isn’t this a frontal bone entrance though? It definitely suggests that a direct hit from 6.5mm MC ammo doesn’t typically blow heads off, but the Edgewood tests showed that under certain conditions, MC ammo can cause “explosive” type skull damage after impact with occipital bone.

As you know, there are plenty of problems with those tests, most notably that the raw data has never been seen by anyone and that the faces got blown off, but the tests did at least demonstrate that atypical wounding scenarios are not impossible.

The 6x15mm entrance dimensions also suggest that the bullet struck at a significant yaw angle, which would increase the chances of an explosive exit and a curved wound track within the skull. 

I just think the wound-is-impossible argument is a bit overstated. I’d love to find evidence that a shot to the EOP from Oswald’s rifle on the 6th floor could not have caused JFK’s (official) head wound under any circumstances, but my limited wound ballistics research has led me to suspect that is not the case. Unlikely? Yes. Less likely than a tangential wound? Almost certainly. Impossible? Not quite. 

Where is Robert Prudhome when you need him?  A former weapons / wounds expert poster who disappeared.  You remind him of me in ways though he was a Canadian hunter/EMT, not from Texas. 

[Keven Hofeling]

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I see that on another thread Keven is trying to propagate a myth about what James Jenkins actually said about JFK's large head wound. 

From chapter 19f. 

The earliest record of James Jenkins' recollections is an 8-29-77 HSCA memo written by Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy (ARRB Medical Document 65). This document reflects that the head wound observed by Jenkins resided "in the middle temporal region back to the occipital." While this is a bit confusing, as the temporal bone is on the side of the head, one must realize that Jenkins is quoted as saying "temporal region" and not "temporal bone."

Well, a quick google search demonstrates that the temporal region includes but is not restricted to the temporal bone, and stretches up onto the parietal bone.

Here, then, is a depiction of "the boundaries of the temporal region," found online. The temporal bone itself is in red.

 

 

 

 

Well, think  about it. The wound, according to Jenkins, went back to the occipital. This suggests it resided on the right side of the head, presumably the right top side of the head, but did not stretch onto the far back of the head, below the level of the ears. 

On this point, moreover, Jenkins remained consistent. He was next interviewed by author David Lifton on 9-23-79. As recounted in Best Evidence (1980), Jenkins told Lifton that the large head wound was "situated toward the rear" and that "the general way the fragments were distributed--the way scalp with bone attached seemed to have been exploded outward and to the rear" convinced him "that the shot must have come from the front" (Note: these are Lifton's words and are not direct quotes.) Lifton then repeated that Jenkins told him that the large defect "extended toward the rear...with fragments that seemed to be hanging on."

Lifton then quoted Jenkins with a more precise description of the wound's location: “I would say the parietal and occipital section on the right side of the head---it was a large gaping area, even though, I think, as we put it back together, most of the skull, the bone itself was there. It had just been crushed, and kind of blown apart, toward the rear…I’m laying my hand on the back area of my skull. And my hand is probably five to six inches from the span of my little finger to the tip of my thumb. So if I spread my fingers and put my hand back there, that probably would be the area that was missing.”

Well, this is a bit confusing. Jenkins described a large gaping area, but acknowledged that most of the bone itself was there. It seems probable, then, that when he described a five to six inch area where bone was "missing," Jenkins meant "missing afrter the scalp was reflected," and not "missing before the beginning of the autopsy."

Well, then, what about the gaping hole of missing scalp and bone as first observed? Where, exactly, was that?

In High Treason 2, author Harrison Livingstone reported that he spoke to Jenkins on 10-8-90, and that Jenkins told him “Everything from just above the right ear back was fragmented…there was (an absence of scalp and bone) along the midline just above the occipital area…this (wound) would not have been low enough to have gotten into the cerebellum.”

So...okay. It was above the occipital area, and did not overlay the cerebellum. This puts it at the top of the back of the head, presumably on the right side.

And, sure enough, this is where Jenkins placed the wound when asked to show its location in a 1991 video-taped interview with Harrison Livingstone. This is demonstrated below.

 

 

 

 

When speaking to William Law in 1998, for that matter, Jenkins said much the same thing. When asked to estimate the size of the head wound, Jenkins told Law: "It would be difficult to estimate because a lot of the hair was still attached to the skull fragments--the skull was fragmented. But I would say that if you take your hand and you put the heel of your thumb behind your ear, that would cover the basic part of the wound with the open hole approximately in that area." Law filmed this interview, moreover, and this showed that Jenkins' hand --the location of the "open hole"--was entirely above the highest tip of his ear, on the parietal bone, and not on the back of the head below the highest tip of his ear, the location of the occipital bone, and cerebellum.

Here, then, is Jenkins, as he said "open hole."

 

 

 

 

I, myself, had a chance to discuss this with Jenkins on November 22, 2013. In focus group discussions at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas he told a group of people, including at one point Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. David Mantik, and myself, that a common "misconception is that that there was actually skull missing" on the far back of Kennedy's head. He explained that "the skull was fragmented from here (he pointed to the top of his head) to here (he pointed to the low back of his head), but it was intact." He later re-iterated "All of this back here (he pointed to the back of his head between his ears) was attached" and still later, in a second discussion close to midnight, that "The only thing keeping the skull structure intact was the scalp" and that it all collapsed when they pulled the scalp back.

This last point, as we've seen, and shall see, was supported by the words of Dr. Humes and Jerrol Custer. 

Now, for some, Custer's numerous statements regarding the head wound in the 1990's and Jenkins' supporting statements to Law and others, including myself, would be the end of the blown-out hole low on the back-of-the-head theory. But not for David Mantik. Not only did he turn around and report that Jenkins' recollections didn't jive with the official autopsy photos, but his representation of Jenkins' statements led Doug Horne to post a widely-disseminated post on his blog about Jenkins' supporting his and Mantik's claims the occipital bone was blown out. Horne then used this to support his theory holding that Dr. Humes performed a pre-autopsy on the body to conceal this from the bulk of the witnesses.

It was to my relief, then, that I got a second chance to talk to Jenkins on 11-20 and 11-21-15. He was once again in attendance at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas--this time to help promote a Blu-ray disc put together from a group interview conducted a decade earlier. David Mantik was another participant in this interview. As a consequence, he was on the panel on which Jenkins spoke.

In an effort to avoid a confrontation, then, I talked to Jenkins first, out in the hallway, on 11-20, and then second, after his appearance on a panel the next evening. When I asked him about the location of the large head wound, he once again specified that it was above the occipital bone, and did not involve the cerebellum. When I told him that this was in direct opposition to Dr. Mantik's recently-released e-book, in which he insisted, despite all the evidence, that the Harper fragment was occipital bone, and that the cerebellum was blasted, Jenkins responded with a shrug and said something like "Well, people are gonna believe what they wanna believe." (Not a direct quote) When I then explained to him that Mantik and Horne were trying to shoehorn all the evidence into their jointly-developed theory, and then sell this to the research community, and that their theory holds both that the Harper fragment exploded from the occipital bone, and that Dr. Humes concealed this from the record via pre-autopsy surgery, he looked at me in disbelief, and told me (and others who were listening in, including Matt Douhit) that he was with the body from the moment it was taken from the casket, and that there was no pre-autopsy surgery. I then asked him if he was willing to state for the record that Mantik and Horne's theory was nonsense, and he gave me an uncomfortable look, and finally allowed that "If it happened, it was not in the morgue I was in." (And yes, that is a direct quote.) Spotting a loophole, I then asked him if the body could have been altered in some other room down the hall. He then corrected me, and said there was no other room in which it could have taken place, and that he meant that if it occurred, it would have to have taken place somewhere else entirely.

So there you have it, from the best witness still living...the best evidence available. The Mantik/Horne theory is nonsense.

And TOXIC to the credibility of the JFK research community...

Now it pains me to write this, but it seems clear Jenkins was subsequently convinced to play along with the Mantik/Horne charade. In 2018, he released At the Cold Shoulder of History, a book on his experiences and recollections of the autopsy. For this book, he made some appearances, most notably, an interview with Patrick Bet-David put up on Youtube on 11-22-18. Well, in this video, Jenkins demonstrated just where there was a gaping hole on the skull, and where the skull was fractured but intact. 

And, guess what? He'd flip-flopped from his earlier representations!

Here, see for yourself. About half-way through the video, Jenkins picks up a rubber skull, and says "The wound was here, approximately where my finger is. It was about 3 1/2 inches long and about 2 inches wide. That is where the missing bone was."

 

 

 

 

Well, yikes, this stretches down into the occipital region--precisely where Jenkins had previously claimed the skull was fractured but intact beneath the scalp.

He then added, while pointing at the following location... "This area was fractured but it wasn't gone--it was still being kept intact by the scalp."

 

 

 

 

Well, gulp, this is exactly where Jenkins said there was an "open hole" years earlier.

Now, after viewing this video, I downloaded Jenkins' recently released e-book, At the Cold Shoulder of History, to see if he'd flip-flopped on the head wound location before or after its writing.

I found my answer. Before. Early in the book, Jenkins describes his first impressions of the head wound. He writes: "As Dr. Humes removed the wrappings from the head, the wound gaped open along a laceration that ran forward along the top of the head...The first appearance of the head wound was deceiving..." Well, maybe. But, if so, why did it take Jenkins more than 50 years to see through this deception, and realize the hole was really on the back of the head?

A bit later, Jenkins asserts "The scalp was torn and macerated with fractured bone fragments still clinging to the scalp. The entire area was covered with matted hair and dried blood. This made it difficult to determine the true extent of the wound." He then claims "after the scalp was reflected back from the skull, the wound that had been missing scalp and bone appeared to be more consistent with the shape and dimensions previously described by Dr. McClelland." He then describes: "The wound, missing bone and scalp, was a large gaping wound in the occipital-parietal area of the right posterior side of the head. It looked to be about 2.5 to 3 inches (5 to 7 cm) by 1.5 to 2 inches (3 to 5 cm) in size with a rounded border at the top traveling downward in an elongated rectangular/triangular shape with irregular margins."

Well, my God! Someone--seemingly Jenkins himself--but quite possibly Jenkins under the influence of his co-writer, William Law--has tried to make Jenkins' description of the wound align with the so-called McClelland drawing, and the latter-day descriptions of the wound by Dr. Robert McClelland...but has failed to note that the wound described by Jenkins is far smaller! To wit, the wound described by Jenkins could be as small as 2.5 by 1.5 in (or 3.75 sq in) and as large as 3 by 2 in (or 6 sq in) while, as of 2012, McClelland has taken to claiming the wound missing scalp and bone on the back of the head was 4 by 5 in (20 sq in--3 1/3 to 5 1/3 times as large!)

Now, to be clear, there's some confusion on this point... Jenkins returns to the subject of the wound's size later in his book, and admits "I think it is only fair to say that my given measurements--2.5 to 3 inches (5 to 7 cm) by 1.5 to 2 inches (3 to 5 cm)--of the wound, missing bone and scalp area, are approximations and not measured ones, even though the difference between 3 inches and 5 inches is obvious to most people." Well, this is curious. This reference to "5 inches" might be a reference to McClelland, and his approximation of the wound's size. But I doubt it. In the context of the sentence, it seems far more likely the "3 inches and 5 inches" was supposed to read "3 cm and 5 cm."

In any event, it's clear from the measurements provided by Jenkins that his flip-flop--his movement of the open hole he'd previously described at the top of the head to the far back of the head--was not performed in close coordination with Dr. Mantik and Doug Horne. Horne, after all, proposed that Dr. Humes expanded the size of the head wound observed at Parkland, and that the wound observed at Bethesda by those not in on this clandestine pre-autopsy surgery to the head (including Jenkins) was 4 to 5 times as large as the wound observed at Parkland. And this was nothing new. Long before Horne, Lifton had proposed that the wound seen at Bethesda was more than 4 times as large as the wound seen at Parkland. And yet, here's Jenkins, claiming that the wound he observed at Bethesda was but 1/5 as large as the wound observed by Lifton and Horne's star witness, Dr. Robert McClelland, at Parkland!

So, yeah--EEGADS--the numbers don't lie. The "open hole" described by Jenkins was roughly 1/20 as large as it needed to be to support Lifton and Horne's theories!

Now, I know, for some this is hard to believe. So, here's Horne's theory as summarized by Horne to Dick Russell in On the Trail of the JFK Assassins (2008): "Dr.s Humes and Boswell...performed the post-mortem surgery that so drastically altered the head wound--enlarging it to four to five times its original size in an attempt to make it appear more or less consistent with a large exit wound caused by a shot fired from behind. In altering the head wound they not only dramatically expanded the size of the rather localized exit wound in the rear of the head seen in Dallas, to encompass the top of the skull and part of the right side, but also surgically removed from the body evidence of an entry wound in the right front of the head."

Now let's compare this to Jenkins' latter-day claims... 1. He says he was with the body from the beginning and failed to observe any pre-autopsy surgery performed by Humes and Boswell. 2. He says the open hole he saw at the beginning of the official autopsy was small--far smaller, in fact, than the wound currently described by Dr. McClelland. 3. He says he saw a bullet entrance on the right side of the head, and that this was not removed from the "body evidence" by Humes and Boswell, but, instead, briefly studied by Finck and Humes, and then ignored.

In short, then, Jenkins' recollections are thoroughly at odds with what Lifton and Horne have proposed. Central to Lifton and Horne's theories (i.e. JFK body alteration theories in general) is that Kennedy's body was altered before the beginning of the autopsy to disguise the direction of fire on the skull and that a wound on the back of the head was expanded to include the top of the head. Jenkins, however, says that at the beginning of the autopsy there was an exit wound on the back of the head, and that the wound expanded on its own to include the top of the head once the scalp was reflected. And he says as well that an entrance wound was apparent on the right side of the head.

And yet, this divide between the theories of Lifton and Horne, and Jenkins' 2018 recollections, is largely invisible to those prone to swallow the body alteration theory. Jenkins has come to believe the brain he infused at autopsy was not Kennedy's actual brain, and had somehow been switched. And Jenkins has come to disown the bulk of the autopsy photos, and come to suspect they were taken in a morgue other than the one at Bethesda. And that's mighty interesting.

But it does NOT support the theories of Lifton and Horne, which hold that the body was altered before Jenkins first viewed the body, so that the photos would reflect a different shooting scenario than the scenario apparent at Parkland.

The theories are, in fact, mutually exclusive. If Jenkins is to be believed, then Lifton and Horne are wrong. Period. No one manipulated the wounds. Period. While Jenkins supports a whole new possibility--that the autopsy photos are, yessirree, fakes, taken at some other morgue, and presumably involving a different body--this doesn't align with Lifton and Horne's thinking that a diversion of the body to a morgue before its arrival at Bethesda would have been performed to alter the body...to FOOL those at Bethesda...NOT to fake some photos and then restore the wounds to their appearance as currently recalled by Jenkins.

Of course, this doesn't stop Jenkins (and presumably his co-writer William Law) from trying to make his recollections fit into the back-of-the-head scenario pushed by Lifton and Horne et al.

In his book, Jenkins continues: "My given measurements also approximated more closely the diminutions given by Dr. McClelland at Parkland as he observed the wound in the emergency room than those listed in the official report." (Well this is a bit deceptive, seeing as Jenkins admits he believes the size of the wound described in the official report is the size of the wound AFTER the scalp was pulled back, and the brain removed.) The so-called McClelland drawing (which is shown on the Boswell and Johnson slide, above, and the JFK and the Unthinkable slide, below) is then shown the reader, after which Jenkins claims "This closely matches the wound that I saw after the scalp was retracted from the skull. The area shown was the area where both bone and scalp were missing." (Now, this, too, is deceptive. Jenkins has long claimed that fragments of skull stuck to the scalp and/or fell to the table as the scalp was retracted, and that, in any event, the wound changed appearance as the scalp was retracted.) Jenkins then tries to explain how the "McClelland" drawing of the wound (before retraction of the scalp) could match his recollections of the wound (after retraction of the scalp): "While some bone was separated from the scalp as it was being retracted, you could still readily see the true area where there was an absence of bone and scalp." He then admits "My original thought when I first saw this drawing was that the wound appeared to be a little more caudal, toward the neck, and lateral, than the wound seen at autopsy. This may be (mis)perception on my part due to the slightly turned head in the drawing." He then closes "The position of the wound in the drawing correlates well with the wound that I saw at autopsy after the scalp was retracted."

So what happened? Why did Jenkins, after decades of claiming the hole was at the top of the head,  suddenly find it necessary to make his recollections of the large head wound align with the wound as depicted in the "McClelland" drawing? And why didn't anyone tell him that a number of witnesses--including McClelland himself--had long-since acknowledged the inaccuracy of this drawing?

I mean, it doesn't add up. Probably the most interesting part of Jenkins' book is a transcript to a 1993 interview for which he'd been hypnotized. There, 30 years after Kennedy's autopsy, Jenkins described his first impression of the head wound when viewing Kennedy's body as it was laying flat on its back on the table: "From where I am standing...from the top of the head, I don't see any holes or anything. I just see tissue and scalp, actually scalp that looks like it's intact--It's kind of pressed in. Right in front of the ear, back toward the back of the head...Now, they are lifting the body up for--I can see the wound on the side. It's fairly extensive. It's fairly high in the back of the head. Really the gaping starts toward the center, back behind the ear. It's a lot of scalp and tissue. It's being held together by--a lot of the bones were held together by scalp."

Now, this doesn't match up with Jenkins' 2018 description of the wound, now does it? The "fairly high in the back of the head" open hole best viewed from "the side" above an area where the bones were  held together by scalp had become a small hole low on the back of the head not visible from the side below an area where the bones were held together by scalp.

Of course, we already knew this--that Jenkins had pulled a switcheroo--based upon his '91 interview with Livingstone, and '98 interview with Law, and numerous discussions with researchers, including yours truly in 2015.

So...I repeat. What happened? What, or who, happened to Jenkins as he was preparing to write his book?

Well, Jenkins made numerous mentions of a "neurologist friend" in the interview conducted by Bet-David. This "neurologist friend," moreover, had recently been shown the autopsy photos. Well, this could only be Dr. Michael Chesser, Dr. Mantik's head cheerleader, and the only doctor selected by Jenkins to write a chapter for his book. In his 2018 appearance at the JFK Lancer Conference, for that matter, Jenkins asked Chesser and Mantik to share the stage with him, and confirmed that he'd met Chesser at the 2015 conference, and had engaged in a lot of "back and forth" with Chesser whiie writing his book.

So, yikes, let's refresh. In 2013, James Jenkins came forward at the urging of William Law, and began speaking to the research community. At that time he was insistent the back of the head was intact beneath the scalp--something he had maintained for decades. Nevertheless, David Mantik and Doug Horne pounced on his statements as support for their theory the back of the head was missing when Jenkins first saw the body.  But he puttered on, and continued to claim the back of the head was intact, as late as 2015. He was then befriended by Mantik's number one acolyte, Michael Chesser, and--VOILA--he suddenly started claiming the back of the head was missing when he first saw the body. 

We don't need to connect the dots because they form a straight line....

 

First of all, all of the links in your post are broken, which may not be that important if they are links only to the screenshots on your website.

What I am really interested in seeing are the videos that the screenshots of James Jenkins touching his head on your website are from. I've been unable to locate those videos on the web, but if the screenshots of Dr. McClelland's hand gestures that are on your website are to serve as a guide, then we can be relatively certain that your James Jenkins examples are deceptive, because I've already determined -- as you well know -- that your Dr. McClelland screenshots are intended to deceive:

For those desiring verification of this fact, see the first post in the following thread:

 

And as it seems that this thread was inspired by my post on another thread which catalogues a litany of factual misrepresentations you have made during the last six months alone -- https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30407-favorite-author-jim-dieugenio-favorite-researcher-pat-speer/?do=findComment&comment=535245 -- and as it is too late for me to address the above in great detail tonight, I am just going to start out by here reposting the segment of my post from the other thread concerning your next to most recent factual misrepresentations about James Jenkins:

________________

On April 20, 2024, Speer again recited his myth about HSCA autopsy technician James Jenkins allegedly denying the existence of the large avulsive wound in the back of JFK's head that Jenkins had described to the HSCA in 1977, and to David Lifton in 1979. Speer wrote:

"...Jenkins said the back of the head between the ears was shattered but still intact beneath the scalp in filmed interviews with Harrison Livingstone and William Law, and then again at two different JFK Lancer conferences which I attended. At the first of these, there was a breakout session with about 30 people in attendance in which he was repeatedly grilled by Aguilar and Mantik about the back of the head, and told them repeatedly that it was shattered but intact beneath the scalp. Of course Mantik turned around and told this to Doug Horne and within days Horne had an article online in which he claimed Jenkins had told this audience that the autopsy photos are inaccurate and Horne then twisted this into Jenkins' claiming the back of the head was blown out--when he had actually said the exact opposite..." https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30149-can-speer-and-his-confederates-counter-the-only-math-that-really-counts-re-jfks-occipital-parietal-wound/?do=findComment&comment=534135

In telling this myth, what Speer did not realize is that there is a transcript of James Jenkins's 2013 Lancer Conference presentation that was independently prepared by someone who has nothing to do with David Mantik and Doug Horne which was posted on the Education Forum demonstrating that, contrary to Speer's claim, what Jenkins actually said at the conference was the following:

"...there was a small entry…..exit, anyway a small wound that appeared to be approximately four….right in front of the top of the right ear and slightly above it...."

"...At the conclusion of the autopsy my personal ideas of the things that I said, I was sure that the entrance wound was above the right ear and that the large wound in the back (of the head) was an exit wound.  In the wound in the back (of the head) there were some questions by Dr. Boswell to the gallery...."  https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30149-can-speer-and-his-confederates-counter-the-only-math-that-really-counts-re-jfks-occipital-parietal-wound/?do=findComment&comment=534146

Best demonstrating the ridiculousness of Speer's slanderous mythology about James Jenkins is the following drawing of the occipital parietal wound Jenkins executed for the HSCA in 1977 (corroborating his HSCA testimony), and the excerpt of Jenkins's 1979 interview by Dvid Lifton which follows it:

________________

 

Edited May 6 by Keven Hofeling

[Michael Crane]

7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

So there you have it, from the best witness still living...the best evidence available.

It might be possible that Richard Lipsey might still be alive.

I found him kind of hit & miss in the interview that I saw of him,but like other evidence...sometimes you need more than one persons story.

I'll look for his video.

[Michael Crane]

^^^^^

 

[Keven Hofeling]

1 hour ago, Michael Crane said:

It might be possible that Richard Lipsey might still be alive.

I found him kind of hit & miss in the interview that I saw of him,but like other evidence...sometimes you need more than one persons story.

I'll look for his video.

 

[Pat Speer]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Isn’t this a frontal bone entrance though? It definitely suggests that a direct hit from 6.5mm MC ammo doesn’t typically blow heads off, but the Edgewood tests showed that under certain conditions, MC ammo can cause “explosive” type skull damage after impact with occipital bone.

As you know, there are plenty of problems with those tests, most notably that the raw data has never been seen by anyone and that the faces got blown off, but the tests did at least demonstrate that atypical wounding scenarios are not impossible.

The 6x15mm entrance dimensions also suggest that the bullet struck at a significant yaw angle, which would increase the chances of an explosive exit and a curved wound track within the skull. 

I just think the wound-is-impossible argument is a bit overstated. I’d love to find evidence that a shot to the EOP from Oswald’s rifle on the 6th floor could not have caused JFK’s (official) head wound under any circumstances, but my limited wound ballistics research has led me to suspect that is not the case. Unlikely? Yes. Less likely than a tangential wound? Almost certainly. Impossible? Not quite. 

The supposed trajectory through JFK's skull was an entrance on the back of the head, a passage through the brain, and an exit on the top of the head. The re-enactments shown the WC supposedly reproducing this were of an entrance on the back of the head, a passage through the brain, an impact on the back of the eye socket, and an explosion from the face by the bullet and the bone fragments from the destroyed eye socket. Over the years, moreover, the films of some of these re-enactments have become public and yessiree none of them show an explosion of skull from the top of the head. And that's because...gee...the Olivier/Sturdivan claim the passage of the bullet caused the top of the head to rocket from the head was a disgusting lie, a hoax perpetrated on the American people. 

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Michael Crane said:

It might be possible that Richard Lipsey might still be alive.

I found him kind of hit & miss in the interview that I saw of him,but like other evidence...sometimes you need more than one persons story.

I'll look for his video.

Thanks, Michael. Lipsey is indeed an interesting case.

From chapter 17:

And finally, there’s Richard Lipsey, who was a military aide to the general responsible for Kennedy’s funeral, General Philip Wehle. Lipsey was ordered to keep an eye on the President’s body during the autopsy. As a consequence, he sat close by and tried to listen to what the doctors were saying. 

Here's Lipsey receiving a medal from General Wehle.

 

 

 

 

On 1-12-78, Lipsey prepared a face sheet for the HSCA staff depicting the President’s wounds as he remembered them being discussed. And they’re exactly as Robinson suggested, and I've proposed! In dismissing Lipsey’s account, the HSCA medical report said “Lipsey apparently formulated his conclusions based on observations and not on the conclusions of the doctors. In this regard, he believed the massive defect in the head represented an entrance and an exit when it was only an exit. He also concluded the entrance in the rear of the head corresponded to an exit in the neck. This conclusion could not have originated with the doctors because during the autopsy they believed the neck defect only represented a tracheostomy incision...Thus, although Lipsey’s recollection of the number of defects to the body and the corresponding locations are correct, his conclusions are wrong and are not supported by any other evidence.” 

My, how strange that the writers of this report represent these as Lipsey’s conclusions, when his testimony is clear that this is simply what he believes he overheard! My, how strange that the panel never even asked the autopsy doctors if a shot connecting the wounds in the hairline and neck had ever been considered! Hmmm... This is a bit suspicious. 

I mean, the possibility of such a trajectory is never even discussed in the HSCA's report. If the HSCA forensic pathology panel had honestly believed Lipsey to be wrong then wouldn't they have asked the autopsy doctors if they recalled saying anything like Lipsey claimed they'd said, and then, assuming they said no, put in their report that Lipsey's recollections were in opposition to the recollections of the doctors? But no, there was no follow-up. Instead, the panel, which concluded that the Bethesda doctors' recollections were off by 4 inches on the head wound and at least 2 inches on the back wound, claimed Lipsey was obviously wrong because his testimony was in disagreement with the statements of the very doctors whose statements the panel had elsewhere refused to accept!

Had the panel confused the Hippocratic Oath with a lifelong pledge to be hypocrites?

In any event, Lipsey didn't exactly dry up and blow away after being interviewed, and denounced, by the HSCA. 

A 9-6-92 article in The Advocate gives us reason to believe Lipsey never backed down, moreover. The article claimed: "Lipsey said he also spoke years later with two other men in the room, Lt. Sam Bird, who was in charge of the honor guard that carried the casket from Air Force One to the ambulance and from the ambulance into the hospital, and FBI agent Francis O'Neill. Lipsey said that a few months ago O'Neill let him read the report he submitted after the autopsy. "I agreed with, like, 90 percent of what he said, and I'm sure the 10 percent I didn't agree with wasn't because he was correct or I was correct," Lipsey said. "It was because... after 30 years your memory gets a little foggy. His report that was written one hour after the autopsy really corroborates my way of thinking." 

O'Neill's report, of course, claimed the bullet creating the back wound never entered the body, and did not exit from the throat wound. So the two shared that impression. We can suspect then that this is what Lipsey meant when he said O'Neill's report "corroborates my way of thinking."

And this wasn't the last time he spoke on the subject. A 10-31-09 article on Lipsey found on 225BatonRouge.com, to be sure, claimed that upon re-reading his statements to the HSCA, Lipsey, "notes that some of his responses were not as clean and concise as they could have been." He didn't admit he was wrong, mind you. The article then discussed the autopsy in some detail, and claimed the "doctors concluded there were three entry wounds: one in the lower neck, one in the upper neck/lower skull region and one at the rear crown of the head." 

Well, this was just bizarre; one might guess that the writer of this article, LSU Professor, James E Shelledy, was trying to hide that the bullet hole now claimed to be the fatal bullet hole, the one on the crown of the head, was not observed or discussed at the autopsy. To wit, Shelledy then offered "Several years later, second opinions by doctors determined Kennedy was hit by only two bullets." So, yeah, Shelledy made a strange mistake, and this mistake allowed him to conceal that the wound now claimed to be the fatal entrance wound was not observed by any witness to the autopsy, including Lipsey, and that Lipsey also failed to recall any discussion of such a wound. 

A look back at Lipsey's words to the HSCA, however, put this strange passage in context, and make it clear Lipsey was responsible for the description of three bullet entrances, and not Shelledy. Lipsey told the HSCA's investigators: "as I remember them there was one bullet that went in the back of the head that exited and blew away part of his face. And that was sort of high up, not high up but like this little crown on the back of your head right there, three or four inches above your neck. And then the other one entered at more of less the top of the neck, the other one entered more or less at the bottom of the neck." And to this, he later added: "I feel that there was really no entrance wound --maybe I said that --in the rear of his head. There was a point where they determined the bullet entered the back of his head but I believe all of that part of his head was blown. I mean I think it just physically blew away that part of his head. You know, just like a strip right across there or may have been just in that area -- just blew it out."

So, there it is. The entrance by the crown, to Lipsey's way of thinking, was the rear entrance to the large head wound he claimed had been described as a wound of both entrance and exit. It was not the small red spot in the cowlick later "discovered" by the Clark Panel. Lipsey had, after all, no recollection of an entrance wound in the cowlick.

And this goes to show that Lipsey, as late as 2009, still believed the doctors had on the night of the autopsy concluded the large head wound was a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. And that they only subsequently decided that this wound was connected to the wound at the upper neck/lower skull. 

We have good reason to doubt, then, that Lipsey ever changed his mind about what he told the HSCA. He supported O'Neill, who claimed there was no passage from the back wound into the body. And he continued, as late as 2009, to claim the doctors initially concluded the large head wound was a wound of both entrance and exit.

The Return of Richard Lipsey

As the country inched closer to the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death, however, Richard Lipsey re-appeared in a series of interviews and articles in which he pushed that Oswald acted alone. (While there are probably more, I have come across a November 2013 article on Lipsey in Country Roads Magazine, an 11-17-13 article on Lipsey in the Baton Rouge Advocate, an 11-20-13 article on Lipsey in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, an 11-21-13  article in the LSU Daily Reveille, an 11-22-13 interview of Lipsey on radio station WKRF, and an 11-22-13 interview of Lipsey on C-SPAN2.) Now, it's not so strange that Lipsey would reappear as the country neared the 50th anniversary. He was an important witness, after all. No, what's strange is the content of his interviews. He said he'd been impressed with Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, and that he also supported Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History, even though he had never actually gotten around to reading it.

Well, this might lead one to believe Lipsey had changed his mind, and that he no longer stood by what he'd told the HSCA back in 1978. Beyond claiming that "the direction" of the bullets as determined at autopsy supported that the shots came from behind, after all, he avoided detailed discussion of the President's wounds. One might conclude, then, that he no longer stood by his earlier account of the autopsy, an account that was totally at odds with the autopsy as presented by Posner and Bugliosi. 

But one would be wrong. In one of the interviews, Lipsey repeated what he'd admitted in 1992--that he'd studied the FBI's report on the autopsy, and that he largely agreed with it. Now, as we've seen, this report claimed there was no passage connecting the back wound with the throat wound...which was precisely what Lipsey had told the HSCA. 

Well, if Lipsey had subsequently come to believe there had been such a passage, well, then, why didn't he say so? 

And here's another reason to suspect Lipsey never wavered from his statements to the HSCA. In none of these post-HSCA interviews did Lipsey bring up his earlier claim a bullet entered low on the back of the head and exited from the throat. But more to the point, in none of these interviews did the interviewer point out that the "official" story pushed by the men to whom Lipsey was now deferring--Posner and Bugliosi--holds that no bullet of any kind entered low on the back of the head, and that, as a consequence, no discussion of a bullet entering low on the back of the head could have been overheard by Lipsey during the autopsy...and that Lipsey's statements to the HSCA were thereby balderdash...

In fact, these interviews failed to mention Lipsey's ever saying anything at odds with the Posner/Bugliosi version of the Oswald-did-it scenario. 

It seems clear from this, then, that Lipsey, who left the military in 1964 to embark on a long and prosperous career as an arms dealer and big game hunter, wanted it both ways. Much as Governor Connally before him, he wanted to go on the record as saying Oswald did it by all himself, even though his personal recollections were in conflict with that conclusion. Strange. And sad.

 

[Michael Crane]

Good info Pat.

I remember reading Lipsey's testimony and being very perplexed.I didn't dismiss it right away,but was always waiting for someone else to verify.

I just vagely watched a 3 hour Youtube video from Chesser on the head wound & x-rays last night before I went to sleep.I did fall asleep before the end.

I'll try & muster up that one also.

[Michael Crane]

Thanks for that contribution also Keven.

[Pat Speer]

About an hour into this, Jenkins says the wound he saw at Bethesda was pretty much the wound others described at Parkland... and is then verbally assaulted by someone from the alterationist school (who sounds a lot like James Fetzer.) 

Edited May 6 by Pat Speer