JFK's Head Snap and the Implausible Jet-Effect and Neurospasm Theories

[Tim Nickerson]

I already provided a link to a detailed article on this very issue, which you obviously did not bother to read. Are you just too terrified to read anything that you know will challenge what you desperately want to believe about Kennedy's death? Here is the link again:

https://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/ADemonstrableImpossibility/ADemonstrableImpossibility.htm

From that article:

"Autopsy ballistics consultant, Pierre Finck reported to his superior, General Bloomberg, that frontal bone was missing."[50]


I read through Finck's report to the General and cannot find where he wrote that frontal bone was missing. The large wound extended up to where the bullet exited but, as I pointed out already, that didn't include any significant portion of the frontal bone.

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md28/html/Image00.htm

[Tim Nickerson]

I already provided a link to a detailed article on this very issue, which you obviously did not bother to read. Are you just too terrified to read anything that you know will challenge what you desperately want to believe about Kennedy's death? Here is the link again:

https://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/ADemonstrableImpossibility/ADemonstrableImpossibility.htm

From that article:

====================================================================================
"Autopsy prosector, J.T. Boswell recalled the missing frontal bone for the ARRB and drew the hole on a plastic skull (see Figure H-12b, below)."
====================================================================================

I just finished reading Boswell's ARRB deposition in its entirety. The above claim made by Hunt is FALSE.  No where in his deposition did Humes recall that the frontal region of the skull was missing bone. He that there was some fracture that extended from the frontal bone through the floor of the orbit. But nothing about any missing frontal bone. The only time that he came close to saying that there was frontal bone missing was when he was asked his opinion on what the dark space seen in the lateral X-Ray view represented.

GUNN. To an untrained eye such as my own, there appears to be a large, dark space, almost as if it's a figure eight, in the frontal area, somewhat behind the eye and down into the cheek. Do you see that area that I'm referring to?

BOSWELL. Mm-hmm.

GUNN. Can you tell me what that represents?

BOSWELL. Well, it looks almost like a pneumo- encephalogram where you got air in and displaced tissue, but--I suspect that that's what that is. I think that's a space with a lot of air in it.

GUNN. So though it is darker, that does not signify that it is missing skull?

BOSWELL. Oh, I don't think--well, the missing skull is all over. Of course, the drawing we have there is sort of similar to that, isn't it?

Do we have an AP, one straight on?

GUNN. Yes.

BOSWELL. What was the one I just--

GUNN. The first one.

BOSWELL. The first one? May I look at that one again? Yes, you're right. Here it is. See, this is what's missing here.

GUNN. So you're pointing at what I would describe as the temporal and parietal bone on the right hemisphere? Is that--

BOSWELL. I guess that would--actually, that looks like frontal there, doesn't it? Frontal, temporal, and some parietal. But that's where this space is here.

He's trying to make out what the X-Rays are showing and comes close to saying that the AP view shows frontal bone missing.  Even if he said outright that it shows frontal bone missing, it would be a far cry from him saying that he recalled missing frontal bone. Hunt was being somewhat less than honest.

[Michael T. Griffith]

You claim that Drs Notebloom and Harper were both pathologists but I've yet to find any bios or curriculum vitae's of theirs that shows what their specialties were. Also, where can we read their statements on the fragment?

That information is in the articles I've linked for you, which obviously you still have not read. This is getting silly. Why are you so afraid to read the other side?

Has not.

Then why do you keep avoiding Dr. Mantik's observations and points that establish that the fragment is occipital bone?  Three times now I have asked you to address his points and observations, which deal with Angel's and Riley's arguments, but you just keep snipping the long quote and ignoring them.

Oh come on. Mantik isn't even a radiologist. You slur Dr Lattimer as being a quack when that label is probably morely aptly applied to Mantik.

So Dr. Mantik "isn't even a radiologist"? No, he's a radiation oncologist who also happens to be a physicist. A radiation oncologist receives extensive training in radiology because he has to expertly read x-rays. Let me know when anyone catches Dr. Mantik outright faking test data and misrepresenting others' test data, as Lattimer was caught doing. Go look at Lattimer's SBT model, for starters.

You want to talk resumes? Have you seen the resumes of Roland Zavada, Dr. Randy Robertson, Harry C. Andrews, Richard J. Blackwell, Thomas N. Canning, Robert Chiralo, David B. Einsendrath, Ronald Francis, William K. Hartmann, Bob R. Hunt, Donald H. Janney, Ellis Kerley, Cecil W. Kirk, Charles J. Leontis, C.S. McCamy, Gerald M. McDonnel, Everett Merritt, Paul G. Roetling, Frank Scott, Robert H. Selzer, Bennet Sherman, Philip N. Slater, Clyde C. Snow, George W. Stroke, and Dr J. Lawrence Angel?

LOL! Have you only been studying the JFK case for a few years? Nearly all the names on your list were experts who only had brief contact with the JFK case because they were asked by a government body to provide input on certain items of evidence, and who have never written anything about the case on their own.

FYI, Dr. Robertson argues that JFK was shot from two directions, and that there were two gunmen. I'm guessing you were not aware of this.

Furthermore, some of the experts on your list gave evidence that was ignored or dismissed because it destroyed the lone-gunman theory. Dr. Canning did not accept the HSCA FPP's placement of the back wound, so he ignored it, and he also reported that the windshield damage was too high to have been caused by bullet fragments from the head shot--and for these sins, Canning was treated very badly by members of the FPP.

Similarly, Dr. Angel provided very unwelcomed analysis of the autopsy skull x-rays--he put the Harper fragment in the rear part of the parietal bone, rejected the FPP's claim that the three skull fragments joined and revealed an exit hole, and noted that the x-rays showed that considerable frontal bone was missing. The HSCA FPP, like the WC, dared not admit that frontal bone was missing because no such damage is seen in the autopsy photos that show the face, so they simply ignored Angel's finding.

The FPP was not happy with Dr. McDonnel either, and the feeling became mutual. Dr. McDonnel provided the stunning but every unwanted discovery of another bullet fragment on the back of the head, on the outer table of the skull near the 6.5 mm "fragment"--a fragment that everyone knew could not have been deposited by the kind of ammo that Oswald allegedly used. McDonnel also confirmed that the skull x-rays showed frontal bone missing. Released internal HSCSA memos and interviews reveal that the HSCA FPP tried to get McDonnel to "change his mind," and in return he became suspicious of the FPP's motives and suspected they would misquote him, if they quoted him at all. The FPP ended up simply ignoring McDonnel's discovery of the extra rear-head fragment and dismissed his observation that the skull x-rays showed missing frontal bone.

Now, here is a partial list of experts who reject the lone-gunman theory and who either were active on the JFK case for many years or who are still active on the JFK case:

-- Dr. Cyril Wecht (past president of the American Academy of Forensic Science)
-- Dr. John Nichols (professor of pathology, University of Kansas)
-- Dr. Milton Helpern (forensic pathologist and a former chief medical examiner for NYC)
-- Dr. Art Snyder (a physicist at Stanford University)
-- Dr. Roger McCarthy (wound ballistics expert)
-- Dr. Michael Chesser (specialist in neurology and neurophysiology)
-- Dr. David Mantik (radiation oncologist and physicist, with post doctoral work in biophysics at Stanford University)
-- Dr. Gary Aguilar (professor of clinical surgery at Stanford University and the University of California)
-- Dr. Charles Crenshaw (professor of clinical surgery at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas)
-- Dr. Robert Livingston (Scientific Director of the National Institute for Neurological Diseases)
-- Dr. Joseph Riley (neuroscientist)
-- Doug Horne (Chief Analyst for Military Records, ARRB)
-- Daryll Weatherly (mathematician, State University of New York)
-- Dr. Roderick Ryan (film and photography scientist, formerly with Kodak)
-- Dr. G. Paul Chambers (physicist, formerly a research physicist with the Condensed Matter and Radiation Sciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in DC)
-- Dr. Doug DeSalles (MD and conducted wound ballistics experiments that disproved the jet-effect theory for JFK's head snap)
-- Dr. Donald Thomas (entomologist, a senior scientist with the United States federal government, and a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Texas)
-- Hershel Womack (professor emeritus of photography, Texas Tech University)
-- Dr. John Newman (former military intelligence officer, served as executive assistant to the director of NSA, and now teaches political science, international terrorism, and counterterrorism at James Madison University--his JFK work has been in the area of Oswald's intelligence connections)
-- Dr. Randy Robertson (radiologist)
-- Dr. John Costella (physicist with degrees in electrical engineering and the sciences from the University of Melbourne, in addition to his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Melbourne, with three years of postdoctoral research and lecturing at the University of Melbourne on mathematics and physics)
-- Dr. Cliff Spiegelman (distinguished professor of statistics at Texas A&M University, author of over 100 scientific publications, and the author of the award-winning paper recognized by the American Statistical Association: “Chemical and Forensic Analysis of JFK Assassination Bullet Lots: Is a Second Shooter Possible?”)

The 6.5 mm is "just above the right eye." And as I pointed out, Humes et al did not omit it from the autopsy report. It's the 7 mm x 2 mm fragment.

"Roentgenograms of the skull reveal multiple minute fragments along a line corresponding with a line joining the above described small occipital wound and the right supra-orbital ridge. From the surface of the disrupted cerebral cortex two small irregularly shaped fragments of metal are recovered. These measure 7 x 2 mm and 3 x 1 mm.”

HUH??? You have no clue what you're talking about. The 7 x 2 mm fragment is in the front of the head. The 6.5 mm "fragment" is in the back of the head, near the cowlick. You understand that these fragments also appear on the lateral skull x-ray, right? Right? So there is no way Humes et al "mistook" a fragment at the front of the head for a fragment at the back of it. Here are two articles that will bring you up to speed on the basics about this issue:

https://miketgriffith.com/files/65fragment.htm

https://miketgriffith.com/files/65fragment2.htm

Let's look at the following article by Mantik:

https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/JFK-Autopsy-X-Rays-Mantik.pdf

It is copyrighted so I'll refrain from using his graphics. I'll just duplicate them myself. Looking at his first two images:

He maintains that the higher fragment, the one high in the forehead, is the 7 mm x 2 mm fragment that Humes removed.

You are lost in space on this issue. The 7 x 2 mm fragment and the 6.5 mm are two separate fragments at opposite ends of the skull on the skull x-rays. Here is one of Dr. Mantik's articles on the 6.5 mm fragment and on his finding via optical density measurements that it is a fake image--he also found that it is not even a continuous image:

https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_JFK_Autopsy_X-rays.pdf

But zooming in on the lateral view we can see that that higher fragment looks to be imbedded in the frontal skull bone.  That effectively rules it out as being the larger one that Humes removed. From Humes' WC testimony: [snipping stuff that you clearly do not understand]

Please just stop. You don't know what you're talking about here. Let's back up and deal with the issue at hand: Humes said nothing about the 6.5 mm "fragment" in the autopsy report, even though it would have been the largest and most obvious fragment on the x-rays. Nor did any of the autopsy doctors mention the fragment in their notes. Humes had at least one lateral-view skull x-ray, so he would have had no problem seeing the fragment and distinguishing it from the 7 x 2 mm fragment. Humes did not mention the 6.5 mm fragment in his WC testimony--he was clearly, undeniably referring to the 7 x 2 mm fragment.

You know we have testimony from one of the x-ray technicians at the autopsy that he was ordered to take skull x-rays with a bullet fragment taped onto a skull, right? Did he just dream this? How would he have been "mistaken" about this? And his testimony is all the more  compelling because he was a very reluctant witness. This information came out thanks to the ARRB.

Sturdivan believes that the fragment was an artifact but he does not believe that it was added to the x-rays. He's wrong about it being an artifact.

No, sorry, but several scientists, including Dr. Mantik, have verified through optical density measurements that the 6.5 mm fragment is not a real fragment but is an image that was placed onto the x-ray.

Sturdivan's point is that he doesn't know how the "fragment" got on the x-ray but that there is no way it could be a fragment from the kind of ammunition that Oswald used, and that therefore it must be an artifact. Ballistics expert Howard Donahue made the same point--that there is no way on this planet that that fragment "sheared off" from an FMJ missile and therefore it could not have come from Oswald's alleged ammo.

It's by the late John Hunt. His stuff is hard to read because he was such an arrogant sort with very limited critical thinking ability.  I'll give it a read though. Well, the exit was considerably above the right eye. But above the right eye nevertheless. The HSCA FPP placed the exit where the parietal bone meets the frontal.

Phew, that's a rather forced, specious definition of "above the right eye."

There was no significant amount of frontal bone missing.

Uh, sorry, but the autopsy doctors and the HSCA FPP swore up and down that there was no frontal bone missing whatsoever--none. But now you're trying to weasel-word your way out of the problem by saying "no significant amount," but earlier you said none was missing. Two of your own experts (Angel and McDonnel), independently of each other, observed that frontal bone was missing, and not just a little bit. Dr. McDonnel got so fed up with the FPP over this issue that he came to question their motives. He didn't understand that the FPP could not afford to admit missing frontal bone because it would discredit some of the autopsy photos.

Many of them admitted that they had been mistaken.

No, "many" did not recant. How about all the witnesses who provided wound diagrams to the HSCA and the ARRB? They certainly did not "admit they had been mistaken."

Dr. Aguilar has written a good article on the witnesses who saw the large right-rear head wound:

http://www.assassinationweb.com/ag6.htm

What about those who reported that there was no large wound in the back of the head? Including those who actually performed the forensic examination of the body. Were  they all mistaken?

LOL! Only a handful of witnesses said there was no large wound in the back of the head, and three of them were the discredited autopsy doctors!

I'm going with the hard scientific evidence. You're the one who is ignoring it. You are putting your faith in the opinion of a "wannabe radiologist" who is making absolute conclusions on things seen in x-rays that were never intended to be used for such. The X-Ray machine was even outdated at the time and it was only being used to try and locate any bullet(s) that might not have exited. The X-Rays are poor quality. They were not even near the best that the machine could produce. Custer and Reed must have been under considerable stress. So, one can forgive them for producing substandard images by even the standard of the piece of crap machine itself. Optical density measurements cannot be anywhere accurately made with those X-Rays.

What a jumble of nonsense. Accurate optical density measurements most certainly can be made with the autopsy x-rays, especially given the fact that we can compare the measurements with those made on x-rays of JFK's head taken a few years before he was shot. You'd know this if you could just muster up the courage to read the optical density research. And Dr. Mantik, who is in fact highly qualified in radiology, is not the only one who has done these measurements. Dr. Michael Chesser, a specialist in neurology and neurophysiology, has also done optical density measurements on the skull x-rays and has confirmed Dr. Mantik's findings.

Neither Boswell nor Finck mentioned in their WC testimonies that frontal bone was missing and they both signed the autopsy report.

You just won't allow yourself to connect the dots, will you? Let's review again: Boswell's own notes taken at the autopsy mention missing frontal bone. Later, Boswell told the ARRB, under oath, that there was frontal bone missing. Finck told General Bloomberg the same thing. And your only reply is that, "Gosh, well, gee, Boswell and Finck signed the autopsy report!"

The problem is that you just won't allow yourself to consider the obvious conclusion that the autopsy report is a bunch of hokum that was produced to try to support the lone-gunman theory. That's why Humes burned his autopsy notes and burned the first draft of the autopsy report, an unprecedented action for a pathologist to take in a criminal gunshot case.

The very back of Kennedy's head cannot be made out with any clarity for more than just a few frames. But the lack of clarity is not unique to just his head. The backs of the heads of the others in the limo are "blacked out" as well.

Yeah, you bet. Clint Hill was on the trunk of the limousine and saw the fresh head wound from just 2-3 feet away, and he saw the same wound when he was sent to Bethesda for the express purpose of recording the location of JFK's wounds. Nurse Bowron packed the large head wound with gauze while preparing the body for transport--she saw the same large right-rear head wound that Hill saw. Fast forward a few hours to Bethesda: Tom Robinson, the mortician, had to prepare the skull and the rest of the body for burial, and he saw a large wound in the back of the head (he also saw a small entry-like wound in the right temple--he filled it with wax).

While the location that Harper told her was improbable, his placing it that far forward it does indicate that the fragment was found considerably forward of where the limo was at the time of the head shot.

I notice you ignored his FBI statement, which simply said "south" of the limo.

The first two reenactment surveys were done on Nov 25, 1963 and Nov 27, 1963. Was Harper consulted prior to or during those surveys?

Huh? Why in the world would they have consulted Harper for the reenactment surveys? They didn't care about where Harper found the fragment. They were surveying to identify the location of the limo for each of the shots. If you look at where those surveys placed the limousine at the time of the head shot, the limousine was well forward of either of the locations that Harper identified. Chuck Marler wrote a very detailed, helpful chapter on the surveys in Assassination Science (pp. 249-262). The book is available for free PDF download:

https://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Assassination_Science.pdf

[Tim Nickerson]

Then why do you keep avoiding Dr. Mantik's observations and points that establish that the fragment is occipital bone?  Three times now I have asked you to address his points and observations, which deal with Angel's and Riley's arguments, but you just keep snipping the long quote and ignoring them.

FYI, Dr. Robertson argues that JFK was shot from two directions, and that there were two gunmen. I'm guessing you were not aware of this.

[Tim Nickerson]

Now, here is a partial list of experts who reject the lone-gunman theory and who either were active on the JFK case for many years or who are still active on the JFK case:

-- Dr. Cyril Wecht (past president of the American Academy of Forensic Science)
-- Dr. John Nichols (professor of pathology, University of Kansas)
-- Dr. Milton Helpern (forensic pathologist and a former chief medical examiner for NYC)
-- Dr. Art Snyder (a physicist at Stanford University)
-- Dr. Roger McCarthy (wound ballistics expert)
-- Dr. Michael Chesser (specialist in neurology and neurophysiology)
-- Dr. David Mantik (radiation oncologist and physicist, with post doctoral work in biophysics at Stanford University)
-- Dr. Gary Aguilar (professor of clinical surgery at Stanford University and the University of California)
-- Dr. Charles Crenshaw (professor of clinical surgery at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas)
-- Dr. Robert Livingston (Scientific Director of the National Institute for Neurological Diseases)
-- Dr. Joseph Riley (neuroscientist)
-- Doug Horne (Chief Analyst for Military Records, ARRB)
-- Daryll Weatherly (mathematician, State University of New York)
-- Dr. Roderick Ryan (film and photography scientist, formerly with Kodak)
-- Dr. G. Paul Chambers (physicist, formerly a research physicist with the Condensed Matter and Radiation Sciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in DC)
-- Dr. Doug DeSalles (MD and conducted wound ballistics experiments that disproved the jet-effect theory for JFK's head snap)
-- Dr. Donald Thomas (entomologist, a senior scientist with the United States federal government, and a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Texas)
-- Hershel Womack (professor emeritus of photography, Texas Tech University)
-- Dr. John Newman (former military intelligence officer, served as executive assistant to the director of NSA, and now teaches political science, international terrorism, and counterterrorism at James Madison University--his JFK work has been in the area of Oswald's intelligence connections)
-- Dr. Randy Robertson (radiologist)
-- Dr. John Costella (physicist with degrees in electrical engineering and the sciences from the University of Melbourne, in addition to his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Melbourne, with three years of postdoctoral research and lecturing at the University of Melbourne on mathematics and physics)
-- Dr. Cliff Spiegelman (distinguished professor of statistics at Texas A&M University, author of over 100 scientific publications, and the author of the award-winning paper recognized by the American Statistical Association: “Chemical and Forensic Analysis of JFK Assassination Bullet Lots: Is a Second Shooter Possible?”)[/size]

That's a bogus list. There are some of the names that I don't recognize. Helpern and Speigelman don't belong on the list. I suspect that some of the others don't as well.

[Tim Nickerson]

HUH??? You have no clue what you're talking about. The 7 x 2 mm fragment is in the front of the head. The 6.5 mm "fragment" is in the back of the head, near the cowlick. You understand that these fragments also appear on the lateral skull x-ray, right? Right? So there is no way Humes et al "mistook" a fragment at the front of the head for a fragment at the back of it. Here are two articles that will bring you up to speed on the basics about this issue:

https://miketgriffith.com/files/65fragment.htm

https://miketgriffith.com/files/65fragment2.htm

You are lost in space on this issue. The 7 x 2 mm fragment and the 6.5 mm are two separate fragments at opposite ends of the skull on the skull x-rays. Here is one of Dr. Mantik's articles on the 6.5 mm fragment and on his finding via optical density measurements that it is a fake image--he also found that it is not even a continuous image:

https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_JFK_Autopsy_X-rays.pdf

Please just stop. You don't know what you're talking about here. Let's back up and deal with the issue at hand: Humes said nothing about the 6.5 mm "fragment" in the autopsy report, even though it would have been the largest and most obvious fragment on the x-rays. Nor did any of the autopsy doctors mention the fragment in their notes. Humes had at least one lateral-view skull x-ray, so he would have had no problem seeing the fragment and distinguishing it from the 7 x 2 mm fragment. Humes did not mention the 6.5 mm fragment in his WC testimony--he was clearly, undeniably referring to the 7 x 2 mm fragment.

You have just dismissed what I posted with a wave of the hand instead of actually addressing it. The 7mm x 2mm fragment that was removed by Humes is the "6.5 mm" radio-opaque object seen in the AP view. Not only is it mentioned in the autopsy report, Humes refers to it in his WC testimony as well. 33 years later he was having trouble with memory and in trying to make out what he was seeing in the X-Rays and the "6.5 mm" object was throwing him off a bit but he came to the realization of what it was:

"Two small irregularly-shaped fragments of metal are recovered. They measure 7 by 2 and 3 by 1. Well, that large one that you saw in that first AP view of the skull could be the 7-by-2 millimeter one that we handed over to the FBI."

It's absolutely what it was. It cannot be the fragment seen higher in the forehead. That fragment is imbedded in the skull. The largest fragment removed by Humes was somewhat behind the eye. It was in the brain. That is something that others involved in the autopsy confirmed as well. Mantik is wrong and no amount of explanation, scientific or other, is going to get around that fact. You need to stop and acknowledge it and admit that you are wrong as well. Here again are the two images.





Mr. SPECTER - When you refer to this fragment, and you are pointing there, are you referring to the fragment depicted right above the President's right eye?
Commander HUMES - Yes, sir; above and somewhat behind the President's eye.
Mr. SPECTER - Will you proceed, then, to tell us what you did then?
Commander HUMES - Yes, sir. We directed carefully in this region and in fact located this small fragment, which was in a defect in the brain tissue in just precisely this location.
Mr. SPECTER - How large was that fragment, Dr. Humes?
Commander HUMES - I refer to my notes for the measurements of that fragment.
I find in going back to my report, sir, that we found, in fact, two small fragments in this approximate location. The larger of these measured 7 by 2 mm., the smaller 3 by 1 mm.

[Tim Nickerson]

Uh, sorry, but the autopsy doctors and the HSCA FPP swore up and down that there was no frontal bone missing whatsoever--none.

Oh really? Let's see the statements of those doctors in which they swear up and down that there was no frontal bone missing whatsoever.