LNers: Your Views of the Missed Shot?

[Micah Mileto]

Which "variation" of the SBT was proposed during the autopsy? I've never read that. From what I've read the autopsy doctors never considered the wounds on Connally. Why would they? Their job was to determine the cause of the injuries to JFK not Connally. Moreover, Humes said (the JAMA article, for example) they couldn't figure out where the bullet that entered the back went to. It wasn't until the next morning when he called Perry and learned that the trachestomy covered a wound to the throat that they concluded it had exited there.

The FBI summary report didn't have access to the autopsy report. They relied on the Sibert and O'Neill account of the autopsy, an account which was incomplete. From that the FBI concluded two shots hit JFK and a separate shot hit Connally. No SBT at all. No missed shots. Three shots, three hits.

FBI report is here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10402#relPageId=3&tab=toc

JAMA article is here: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md22/html/Image00.htm

James Curtis Jenkins 9/23/1979 interview with David Lifton

[Part VI ? 1979: The Coffin/Body Problem], [Chapter 27 ? The Recollections of James Curtis Jenkins, et al.], [Interviewing Jenkins]

Jenkins had vivid recollections about the controversy concerning the neck trajectory. The wound at the front of the throat, throughout the autopsy, he said, was assumed to be a tracheotomy. Yet, said Jenkins, the civilians who seemed to be in charge seemed to be trying to get Humes to conclude that a bullet passed from back to front through the body. Jenkins had a clear recollection that that wasn?t possible. He remembered very clearly Humes? probing the back wound with his little finger. ?What sticks out in my mind,? Jenkins told me, ?is the fact that Commander Humes put his little finger in it, and, you know, said that . . . he could probe the bottom of it with his finger, which would mean to me [it was] very shallow.? He had another recollection. After the body was opened and the organs removed, Jenkins watched the doctors probe it again. ?I . . . I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the probe . . . through the pleura [the lining of the chest cavity]. . . .?

LIFTON: Explain that to me. You could see the probe that he was putting in the wound? You could see it through the pleura?

JENKINS: You could actually see where it was making an indentation.

LIFTON: . . . an indentation on the pleura.

JENKINS: Right . . . where it was pushing the skin up. . . . There was no entry into the chest cavity . . . it would have been no way that that could have exited in the front because it was then low in the chest cavity . . . somewhere around the junction of the descending aorta [the main artery carrying blood from the heart] or the bronchus in the lungs. . . .

LIFTON: Did you hear Humes say he could feel the bottom of it with his finger?

JENKINS: Yes, I did.

I told Jenkins that Humes testified that he found a bruise atop the upper lobe of the lung, and that was the evidence for the bullet going all the way through. Jenkins told me he had no recollection of any such bruise being examined the night of the autopsy.

I was unwilling to believe that Humes made that up out of whole cloth; and, anyway, photographer Stringer told me he had photographed it.

I asked Jenkins what conclusions he had expected the au- topsy report to state based on what he saw while he was there. He said he assumed the report would have concluded that the President had been shot once in the back from behind ??and that they could not find the bullet?? ?and that the second shot, to the head, came from the front.

I asked Jenkins how he explained the autopsy report that was written. Jenkins minced no words. He said that Humes was a ?super-military type of person??? not in the sense that he was authoritarian , but that he was concerned with his next promotion and his career in general. ?He was the type of individual that would do anything anybody above him told him to do . . . my personal feeling is that he was probably directed to write the autopsy report.??

Jenkins told me he has always assumed such ? directions?? came ?from someone outside the hospital.??

I said that the chain of command was short? Humes? senior officers were Stover, C .O. of the Medical School; Galloway, C.O. of the Medical Center, and Kenney, the Surgeon General. ? And then you?re either at the Joint Chiefs of Staff or orders from the White House.?? Jenkins replied : ?I didn?t say that; you did.

It was obvious that he had given the matter some thought, and he was not comfortable discussing it.

Jenkins? statement that the ?Friday night conclusion?? regarding the neck trajectory was different from the autopsy report was not new. That was the old ? non-transit/transit conflict between the FBI report and the navy autopsy. But the statement that the doctors did not come to a firm conclusion about the head shot, that their discussions were tentative, was new. To evaluate that , and much else Jenkins said, it is necessary to make a brief digression.

[...]

[Part VII ? Synthesis], [Chapter 30 ? The X-rays and Photographs Reconsidered], [The Puzzle of the Ruler]

James Jenkins told me that during the autopsy, when the "civilians" were practically arguing with Humes, they put the idea to him that the bullet entered at the rear, exiting through the tracheotomy incision , and that that bullet went on to hit Connally.**62

[...]

**Unfortunately, Jenkins never made a written record , and so it is easy to discount his recollections by claiming he was influenced by what he later read in books and magazines. But having spoken with him, I didn?t belive that was the case. Jenkins did not follow the case and, in fact, until I spoke with him in September 1979, did not know a bullet wound at the front of the neck had been observed in Dallas. Jenkins kept referring to it as the "tracheotomy incision," and couldn?t understand why those ?civilians in the autopsy room kept claiming that a bullet exited there.

[Steve Taylor]

Why do you think those are 'shooters'?

I'll limit myself to the 2d floor here.  I believe this man pictured at Z255 fired the first shot(s) and is withdrawing from the window.  He is standing, looking down at the rifle as he pulls it back in.  His left hand is visible blocking a complete view of the buttstock.  It looks like he is wearing a black glove.  The glasses are partially visible just below the brim of his cap and are reflecting the Sun. I believe the key to this being a rifle is the sharp curve on the object (to our left).  The rifle is laying on its side.  You see this outline on many types of rifle. I don't believe this could be an arm unless it has severe multiple fractures.

 

[Steve Taylor]

The Tague trajectory graphic I provided is an illustration of the claim that the curb strike originated from the head shot metal fragmentation.

The WCR could not decide between the two explanations in my post.

    "Even if it were caused by a bullet fragment, the mark on the
     south curb of Main Street cannot be identified conclusively
     with any of the three shots fired. Under the circumstances it
     might have come from the bullet which hit the President's head,
     or it might have been a product of the fragmentation of the
     missed shot upon hitting some other object in the area."

So you now can fault them for not concluding anything about the Tague hit, just as you would fault them if they had concluded something.

With reference to your graphic, LNers generally do not contend the Tague hit was a direct-line shot from the SN window.

You theory only accounts for 2 hits.  What happened to the 3rd bullet?

[Steve Taylor]

First, a general trend in the frames 194-206 may be noted. Beginning as early as frame 194, the President's body seems to undergo a motion forward and to the left. This motion, which can be visually approximated to be on the order of six or seven inches, seems to begin in frame 194 and continues through about frame 200. The President seems to move away from the seat back and tilt to to the left, away from the window ledge.

I agree with thee panel you cited.  Between 194-206 looks probable.

[Steve Taylor]

The FBI initially believed (upon accepting Tague?s story) that it was a result of headshot fragmentation, and a few variations of a SBT were proposed at the autopsy. The SBT stands for a few reasons, chief them was the existence of only two bullets and the torso wounds to JFK. Despite weirdly prevalent assertions to the contrary, a ?shallow back wound? is physically impossible.   

Same question I gave to Jerry - what happened to the 3rd bullet if Tague was injured by a fragment?  And why is a shallow back wound physically impossible?  To me, this is the main evidence that the MC, firing nearly 20 year old ammo, was involved at all.

[Bill Chapman]

Can people stop posting those giant images
You're eating up bandwidth for the sake of posting blobs of pixels that shoW SFA

[Joe Elliott]

Can people stop posting those giant images
You're eating up bandwidth for the sake of posting blobs of pixels that shoW SFA

Actually, these images show us a lot. They show us that CTers can see gunmen in almost any image from Dealey Plaza taken on November 22, 1963. They don?t tell us a lot about what happened. But they give us lots of insight into the minds of CTers.
I wonder if while in Kindergarten, if they could always spot Waldo immediately, but usually in the wrong place.