Throat Wound

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Carrico was the first doctor to see JFK in the hospital. Here is the pertinent part of his WC testimony (v. 3 pp. 361-362):

Carrico: (The wound was) located in the lower third of the neck, below the thyroid cartilage, the Adam’s apple.

Dulles: Will you show us about where it was?

Carrico: Just about where your tie would be. . . . All we knew this was a small wound here.

Dulles: And you put your hand right above where your tie is?

Carrico: Yes, sir.

IOW Carrico demonstrated with his hand for the WC that the wound was "right above where your tie is."

Carrico recalled and elaborated on this for Weisberg (Post Mortem, pp. 375-376; quoted in Never Again, pp. 241-242):

Carrico was the first doctor to see the President. He saw the anterior neck wound immediately. It was above the shirt collar (italics in original). Carrico was definite on this. . . . when I asked if he saw any bullet holes in the shirt or tie, he was definite in saying ‘No.’ I asked if he recalled Dulles’s question and his own pointing to above his own shirt collar as the location of the bullet hole. He does remember this, and he does remember confirming that the hole was above the collar, a fact hidden with such care from the (Warren) Report. . . . He saw neither the nick in the tie nor the cuts in the shirt before the nurses started cutting.

I consider Carrico to be a very credible witness, I do not believe he was a conspirator, and I believe based on his certainty about what he saw and testified to that the throat wound was ABOVE THE COLLAR. So poof, there is no mystery as to why no hole in the collar, tie, or front of the shirt.

1. When FBI Agent Henry Heiberger examined the shirt worn by JFK, he examined the rear entry/back entry hole.

This hole was X-rayed and revealed metallic residue embedded in the fabric which surrounded the edge of the hole.

Thereafter, Heiberger cut the fabric from around the back entry hole and subjected the materials to what was a destructive "flame analysis", which consumed the examples while revealing the metallic residue to be copper.

2. Heiberger conducted absolutely no examination of any purported hole which was located in the front collar area of the shirt which was worn by JFK, and was in fact completely unaware of the existence of any such hole, even though he had personally held and examined the shirt.

3. The tie was found to have an "abraised" area. (actual location on tie unknown). There was no fabric missing.

The tie was also X-rayed and found to also contain metallic residue embedded in the cloth in the vicinity of the abraised area.

Thereafter, FBI Agent Henry Heiberger was sent out of town!

As a final sidenote:

A. There was absolutely no physical examination of the coat worn by JFK.

B. There were absolutely no "comparison"/control samples taken from the shirt of JFK.

Agent Heiberger stated that since copper was not an inherent part of the manufacture of clothing and that since the only indications of metallic residue were in the edges of the damaged areas of clothing, that there was absolutely no need to take comparison and/or control samples from anywhere on the clothing.

Heiberger further stated that if any "nick" existed on the tie in which fabric was actually absent, then it must in fact be where one of the other FBI Lab Agents cut the fabric from the tie in order to determine the chemical composition of the metallic residue which he had found by X-ray, prior to being shipped to Georgia to evaluate "Oswald was Here" which was found written in chalk on the inside of an abandoned railroad boxcar.

None of the Agents assigned to the spectrographic analysis lab claim to have had any connections with testing and evaluation of the clothing of JFK, with the exception of Henry Heiberger.

Lastly, FBI Laboratory Analysis sheets were completed on each and every piece of evidence that was examined.

Anyone see any such evidence anywhere within the volumes of the WC?

[Michael Hogan]

"We had gotten ourselves in dutch with with the neck and throat wounds with regard to the Secret Service."

(HSCA memorandum from Andy Purdy describing his interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, August 17, 1977)

Almost 20 years later, Jeremy Gunn (ARRB) asked Dr. Boswell about this cryptic comment. Boswell's answer was not exactly a model of clarity.

Gunn:

Could you look at the first sentence of the following paragraph that begins, "Dr. Boswell indicated that we had gotten ourselves in Dutch with the neck and throat wounds with regard to the Secret Service"'? Do you see that?

Boswell:

Yes.

Gunn:

Does that seem accurate to you in terms of recounting what you said?

Boswell:

Yes.

Gunn:

What did you mean by gotten yourself in Dutch with the Secret Service?

Boswell:

Well, that they were reporting things and some of the things that they told people became public and they just hadn't gotten the entire information.

Gunn:

So how was it misreported or—

Boswell:

There was some question you asked me earlier that they had—oh, it was about the probing of the wound, and they said that we probed and couldn't find it and thought that the bullet must have been knocked out while—during the resuscitation. That was the sort of thing that was happening while they were on the phone.

Gunn:

Did the Secret Service ever come and talk to you about that during the course of the autopsy or subsequently about that issue?

Boswell:

No.

Gunn:

Did you understand that the Secret Service was displeased in some way with anything to do with neck or throat wounds in the autopsy?

Boswell:

No. Those people were in such an emotional state that they were running around like chickens with their heads off, and we understood their problem. But we never talked with them directly. They misquoted an awful lot of things that we said or did.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Following and understanding the genesis of the back wound which went nowhere, and the tracheotomy incision of the anterior neck, and how this ended up with the SBT theory, is as impotant in an understanding of the events as is understanding the genesis of the survey work and survey plats.

If one jumps from "A" directly to "Z", then it is most unlikely that an understanding of the alphabet will ever be gained and one will most probably remain confused.

[Ashton Gray]

Carrico was the first doctor to see JFK in the hospital. Here is the pertinent part of his WC testimony (v. 3 pp. 361-362):

Carrico: (The wound was) located in the lower third of the neck, below the thyroid cartilage, the Adam’s apple.

Dulles: Will you show us about where it was?

Carrico: Just about where your tie would be. . . . All we knew this was a small wound here.

Dulles: And you put your hand right above where your tie is?

Carrico: Yes, sir.

IOW Carrico demonstrated with his hand for the WC that the wound was "right above where your tie is."

Carrico recalled and elaborated on this for Weisberg (Post Mortem, pp. 375-376; quoted in Never Again, pp. 241-242):

Carrico was the first doctor to see the President. He saw the anterior neck wound immediately. It was above the shirt collar (italics in original). Carrico was definite on this. . . . when I asked if he saw any bullet holes in the shirt or tie, he was definite in saying ‘No.’ I asked if he recalled Dulles’s question and his own pointing to above his own shirt collar as the location of the bullet hole. He does remember this, and he does remember confirming that the hole was above the collar, a fact hidden with such care from the (Warren) Report. . . . He saw neither the nick in the tie nor the cuts in the shirt before the nurses started cutting.

I consider Carrico to be a very credible witness, I do not believe he was a conspirator, and I believe based on his certainty about what he saw and testified to that the throat wound was ABOVE THE COLLAR. So poof, there is no mystery as to why no hole in the collar, tie, or front of the shirt.

Without wishing at all to "change your mind," Ron, because I never fiddle with a man's faith, I yet would feel remiss in responsibility not to point out for the benefit of others—again—the testimony of another eyewitness, Secret Service Special Agent Kellerman, whose testimony directly contradicts Carrico's very lonely assertion (which was made, if you'll notice, under the guidance of Allen Dulles himself). Here, in contrast, is SA Kellerman's testimony:

• SPECTER: ...Did you observe any hole in the clothing of the President on the front part, in the shirt or tie area?
  KELLERMAN: No, sir.
  SPECTER: From your observation of the wound which you observed in the morgue which you have described as a tracheotomy, would that have been above or below the shirtline when the President was clothed ?
  KELLERMAN: It would have been below the shirtline, sir.
  

In support of Mr. Kellerman's observation, we have the testimony of Malcolm Perry that he made the tracheotomy incision "right through" the throat wound, and this visual evidence—from two different views that both tell exactly the same tale—concerning the location of said tracheotomy incision and its relationship to the collar and tie:

Ashton Gray

[Ashton Gray]

I'm posting this in two topics where it seems particularly germane.

In regard to the throat wound—which could not possibly have been caused by a projectile, as demonstrated repeatedly in this thread and others, and demonstrated again in the message just above—I several times have posted this image below as a type of device that could have been used to create the throat wound after John F. Kennedy's arrival at Parkland Hospital:

I think it's now time to mention a salient fact: prior to the murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963, at an exact date unknown, the CIA's Operation Division of the Office of Medical Services had produced a ball-point pen rigged with a hypodermic syringe. The purpose of the pen was a delivery system for a potent and deadly poison. The needle was "so fine," CIA's Dr. Edward Gunn later boasted, "that the victim would hardly feel it when it was inserted." Gunn compared it with "the scratch from a shirt with too much starch."

Indeed, and so well put, Dr. Gunn.

Of course if one is lulled into believing the CIA's own cover stories, one can become gullible enough to believe that this device had been developed to assassinate Fidel Castro—which never happened.

The same year the CIA developed this delivery system for poison, though, the President of the United States was assassinated. After having been shot several times, but not in the throat, he somehow came to have a puncture wound delivered to his throat—after arriving at Parkland Hospital—with some device not dissimilar in size and shape to a ball-point pen, a device very probably rigged with a hypodermic needle as a delivery system for a potent and deadly poison.

All useful forensic evidence of the puncture wound was almost immediately destroyed by Malcolm Perry in Trauma Room One of Parkland Hospital, and very soon afterward Malcolm Perry proclaimed to the entire world that the wound in the throat had been an "entry wound" of a bullet.

Ashton Gray