Don Teel Curtis, dentist of destiny

[Lance Payette]

Every time I venture into conspiracy world, I emerge agog and in need of another Bloody Mary.

I watched the recent testimony of Dr. Don Teel Curtis, a retired dentist, at the Luna hearing. The folks at the Ed Forum, including some conspiracy big names, are breathlessly enthusiastic about old Don and his bombshell testimony. Bullet hole in the right temple! Parkland doctors intimidated! Fraudulent autopsy materials! Yee-ha!!!

This caused me to do some minor league investigation of the good dentist.

He now says he observed a wound in the right temple of JFK and that the back of the head was blown out with a clear exit wound. He said nothing like this when he testified to the WC. He said nothing like this when he wrote to Vince Palamara in 1998, where he described the rear head wound as “either an exit wound or a tangential entrance wound.”

He appears to have flown under the radar until 2013. He said nothing about a temple wound then either, although now the rear head wound was a “large exit wound”: https://jfkfacts.org/memories-parkland-doctor/. The possible tangential entrance wound had gone poof.

If you Google “Don Curtis” and “JFK,” you'll discover that the internet is a veritable ocean of autographed Don Curtis JFK-related photographs and memorabilia. One example among many: https://www.ebay.com/itm/296875347820. Like many latter-day witnesses, he has morphed from an obscure nobody to a key figure in conspiracy world. The pattern is now so familiar that it’s boring. (He’s a dentist, for God’s sake – but now he opines about bullet trajectories!)

He clearly was one of the early folks in Trauma Room 1, a mere oral surgery resident. In Kemp Clark’s WC testimony, he never even mentioned him. Ditto for Dr. Perry, although he said in response to a question by Specter it was possible that Curtis was there. (Dr. Carrico clearly placed him there, the point being that he was merely a bit player.)

His description of Clark’s statements and actions in response to the “frontal” head wound sounds like fantasy, completely at odds with what Clark himself and others in the room described. But we’ll let it go because once again my focus is on epistemology.

Let us stipulate:

• The conspirators were planning a Presidential assassination, not a robbery of the local 7-11.
• It was important to the conspirators that Lee Harvey Oswald be identified as the lone assassin; hence the need to intimidate the Parkland witnesses and do whatever needed to be done with the autopsy materials.
• If the conspirators knew they could intimidate the Parkland witnesses, alter the autopsy materials and "stuff like that," they were some seriously powerful folks.

Let’s now ask some of those pesky “What sense does this make?” questions.

• It is critical that Oswald be identified as the lone assassin. Then why do you have any frontal gunman when the TSBD, Dal-Tex Building and County Records Building are available? Numerous locations could have provided a trajectory reasonably consistent with Oswald’s perch (and a hell of a lot more consistent than any frontal gunman), but you opt for a frontal gunman?
• How do you have any idea what the shot(s) from the front are going to do? Perhaps your frontal gunman misses or just clips JFK, thereby sending one or more bullets into Dealey Plaza that Oswald could not possibly have fired. Perhaps your frontal gunman does the job but leaves a clean hole in JFK’s forehead that everyone sees; perhaps he blows JFK’s face off, making clear that Oswald was not a lone assassin.
• Your conspiracy contemplates intimidating numerous Parkland (and perhaps Bethesda) witnesses and altering autopsy materials when these fantastic risks (with great potential to blow up in your face) could have been entirely avoided by simply having all gunmen be located at the rear?
• Despite your best efforts, you actually don’t do a very good job of intimidating witnesses or controlling autopsy materials, so lots of witnesses say things you wish they hadn’t said and conspiracy theorists 60 years later are still drooling over all the clues you left behind. What’s up with that?

Are there any plausible answers to questions such as these? Are there any that aren’t self-evidently absurd?

The CT answer is always something like, “They needed a frontal gunman as a last resort to make sure the job got done.” Oh, just in case the two professional snipers in the Dal-Tex Building both missed? How would the frontal gunman know they had missed? How would he know the shots from the rear weren’t fatal? How would he know he needed to shoot - because Dark Complected Man was waving his arms?

Let’s pull out our trusty Arlen Specter Autograph Model Plausibility-O-Meter ($29.95 at Amazon until June 1st) and see which seems more likely:

• JFK’s wounds were a ghastly mess, the scene at Parkland was utter chaos, the desperate efforts to save JFK were over in minutes, and the brouhaha over the removal of the body was worthy of Shakespeare. As always happens with eyewitnesses, people recalled very different observations and events - both at the time and as years went by. The autopsy room was likewise chaotic and the autopsy itself scarcely a textbook model, but the autopsy materials much more accurately reflect the actual wounds. Characters like Don Curtis are dissembling and inserting themselves into this historical event as happens with almost every major crime and historical event. Old Don may not even be consciously aware of the extent to which he is dissembling and being manipulated. Or ...
• Despite this being a Presidential assassination and the conspirators being very powerful people who were determined to frame Oswald, they inexplicably proceeded like utter buffoons who couldn’t have robbed the local 7-11 without making a mess of it. Their thinking from the get-go was almost insanely risky and their execution of the plan a model of how not to do it.

I opt for #1. The fact that so many opt for #2 is what leaves me agog and in need of another Bloody Mary. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE anyone actually believes #2??? Isn’t it painfully obvious this is all just ad hoc, after-the-fact theorizing in furtherance of a conspiracy world agenda? You're stuck with what actually occurred, so you have to put a conspiracy spin on it no matter how unlikely that spin is and then rely on characters like Don Teel Curtis.

Representative Luna is pretty hot, however, and that's what counts.

[Lance Payette]

Thank you, Lance, for another insightful contribution. I find that I am in general agreement with almost everything you say.

I have expanded my minor league research into Dentist Don to include everything I could find. Yep, he's a nutcase.

First, it's astonishing what a complete nobody he is. HOW ON EARTH would he have been selected for the Luna hearing? He was literally invisible from his brief WC testimony in 1964 until his 1998 letter to Vince Palamara (in connection with one of Vince's books) and then out of sight again until a speech to some obscure historical society in 2013.

Second, the amount of "Don Curtis autograph" JFK memorabilia for sale on the internet is really quite astonishing. This surely has to call into question his motives.

Third, one more substantive item to establish that, yep, he's a nutcase:

In The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis (2024), authors Mantik and Corsi report an email conversation between Dentist Don and conspiracy enthusiast Dr. Michael Chesser. Dentist Don told Chesser:

"I [Curtis] was standing at the other side of the gurney on the left side and Dr. [Kemp] Clark, on the right side, raised [JFK’s] head to describe the wound. I did hear him [Dr. Clark] say cerebellum, which places the wound posterior and inferior. After they [the other physicians] left, I went around to the head of the table, and what I saw, with the head back down on the pillow, was the right wound margin and cranial contents on the pillow. I did not see the right temporal wound, however, my chief, Dr. Robert Walker, told me the following morning that he did see what appeared to be a bullet hole in the right temple. He well knew a bullet hole."

According to Mantik and Corsi, Dentist Don said this in an email on May 19, 2019.

Two problems:

1. This is NOT what Dentist Don says at the Luna hearing! At the hearing, it is Kemp Clark who carefully points out the existence of the right temple wound to all the doctors in attendance, solemnly making sure that each one understands the import of what he is saying. Alas, this little ceremony was not recalled by Clark or anyone else.

2. Dr. Walker, to whom Dentist Don attributes the right temple observation in his 2019 email, said nothing of the kind! Below is his 2009 interview with the Sixth Floor Museum, in which he was still very sharp. He says "no wound was visible" except the fist-sized rear head wound and that there was really "no assessment of wounds" because the focus was entirely on saving JFK. He also says there was no role for him and he simply watched what was going on. When JFK was declared dead, the room immediately cleared.

Yep, Dentist Don is a nutcase, a garden variety huckster whose story just keeps getting better. Put Buell Frazier, Paul Landis, Judyth Vary Baker and Dentist Don in the same room and it will be the functional equivalent of an acid trip.

Representative Luna is hot, however, and that's what counts.

[Lance Payette]

Your intrepid reporter further notes:

At the Ed Forum, Larry Schnapf repeatedly emphasizes that Dentist Don always insisted it was fellow oral surgeon Walker who saw the right temple wound. "Always" as in post-2013. "Always" as in not at the WC, not in the 1998 letter to Vince, and not at the Luna hearing. Well, I guess "always" is kind of a flexible concept.

Your intrepid reporter notes that Dr. Walker died in 2011. Hence, by the time Dentist Don inserted him into the tale, he was conveniently not available for comment.

Yep, he's a nutcase. Yep, they're all nutcases. But not Representative Luna, who is hot, and that's what counts.

[Lance Payette]

Hold your applause, but my perseverance has paid off. I am in direct contact with Dentist Don, or the Teelmeister as he prefers to be called. Really a charming guy. He only looks to be about 40 on Zoom and had more tats and piercings than I noticed at the Luna hearing, but he knows his stuff.

For $500, he offered to testify that the exhumed body of Oswald had “the dentation of one of the higher-order primates, likely a Gibbon.” Interestingly, Sandy Larsen at the Ed Forum has proven to a medical certainty that the exhumed body had non-human teeth, although I believe Mr. Larsen leans toward a young female wallaby.

When I observed that I thought Gibbons had fangs, the Teelmeister insisted I was confusing a Gibbon with a Gaboon viper and offered to include five 8x10 autographed glossies of himself with a big red X on the right temporal lobe. When I balked, he upped the ante to include a lock of Rep. Luna’s hair with a certificate of authenticity from her main squeeze (some guy named Oliver).

Well, even I have my price. So now me, Sandy Larsen and the Teelmeister will all be at the next Luna hearing. I’ll be the one on the right in a white Adidas visor, giggling and making Gibbon-like faces.

We’re also negotiating with Fleer for a line of "Dentist of Destiny" collectible trading cards (my idea!). Themes will include not only the Teelmeister’s involvement with the JFKA but also his close professional association with the murder of JonBenet (Patsy did it), the Lindbergh baby kidnapping (Amelia Earhart did it) and the Zodiac killer (Harvey Lee Oswald, but you already knew that).

Well, that’s all the news for now.

As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up. Or maybe you can. Yep, he's a nutcase.

(What am I having this morning, you ask? Let’s see, that would be something called SKYY vodka – gee, can’t they spell? – and something called Mr. and Mrs. T’s Original Bloody Mary Mix, which may well be another successful venture by the enterprising Teelmeister family.)

[Lance Payette]

Well, the unauthorized biography of Dentist Don continues. I thought I was being silly in the last installment, readers, but you literally CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP.

Over at the Ed Forum, Larry Schnapf now emphasizes that Dentist Don has been telling the same consistent tale about Dr. Walker seeing the right temple wound “since 2018.” Oh, well, that changes everything. “Always,” we now learn, means “since 2018.” (Is it just me, or have others noticed that since the JFKA records release turned into a pumpkin, even CTers you once regarded as at least “kinda sane” have shown themselves to be “kinda not sane”?}

If this were not enough to induce giggles, the Ed Forum discussion now focuses on others who mentioned a temple wound – including a left temple wound. That’s right, if someone hallucinated a left temple wound, this now supports Dentist Don’s tale that Dr. Walker saw a right temple wound! Hello? By this logic, the throat wound supports a right temple wound. Get it?

While Dentist Don may have been telling the right temple tale since 2018, he was not telling it when he surfaced in 2013, along with a host of other minor figures who spoke at the illustrious Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. He told the Panhandlers that in 1963 he had been “certain” the throat wound was an entrance wound and that he “got a good look” at the rear head wound, noting that the “cerebellum was gone.” In other words, by 2013 he'd at least been diving into conspiracy literature but had not yet formulated his own right temple contribution.

Here is a 2013 newspaper report, as well as the story first surfacing at the Ed Forum in 2013:

https://www.lubbockonline.com/story/news/state/2013/11/22/amarillo-doctor-tried-save-kennedys-life/15065585007/

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/20770-dr-donald-teel-curtis-examined-throat-front-wound-into-skull/

If I were still a lawyer, and Dentist Don said he had testimony potentially helpful to my client’s case, I’d run away as fast as I could. He would be so utterly destroyed on cross-examination that I might risk sanctions against me personally if I put him on the stand. But not in conspiracy world, where even CT-oriented lawyers insist he’s the real deal. Yep, they’re all nutcases.

But not Representative Luna, who has informed me by email that I may henceforth refer to her as JFK Babe if I wish:

[Lance Payette]

Mea culpa, people. I’ve apparently been too hard on Dentist Don.

1. The imposter to whom I spoke on Zoom was in fact one Josh Rubens, former drummer of the 80’s punk band Feral Kitty & The Naked Yokels. Josh has hit on hard times and thought he saw a way to make a fast $500 on the assumption that everyone involved with the JFKA is in fact a credulous naked yokel. Not me, Josharoo, as you learned when the Bayonne Police Department knocked on your door. He confessed, I forgave him, and the “Dentist of Destiny” collectible trading cards are still on the table. Shirley Tafoya (aka Feral Kitty) says hi.

2. I received a scathing missive from one Ralph Haynesworth Middleton of Amarillo, who informed me that in 1992 or thereabouts Dentist Don did an “absolutely superb job” on his right wisdom tooth. He distinctly recalls the Teelmeister tapping him on the right temple with a dental tool and saying, “I’m tellin’ ya, boy, rite cheer is where that dang varmint Kennedy was shot deader’n a panhandle jackalope.” Amazingly, the resin filling in Ralph’s tooth is still intact after all these years.

3. In an effort to make amends, I telephoned the Curtis home. Mrs. Dentist Don, or Madam Teelmeister as she prefers to be called, simply said, “I told the old fool not to eat them damn mushrooms from Crazy Shirley’s garden” and hung up. I understood this to mean, “My Donnie has related the right temple account to me repeatedly over the past 46 years, you impudent Lone Nut twit.”

My bad. Sorry everyone. Ignore all preceding entries, if you haven’t already.

[Lance Payette]

Madam Teelmeister - we're now on good enough terms that I call her Edna and she teasingly calls me Bugliosi - called back to ask if I'd noticed these nuggets from Dentist Don in 2013:

“Through the years, it has been of little interest to me,” Curtis said, “but it has become worrisome to me in the last year."

Little interest even though you, Kemp Clark and every doctor in the room supposedly knew JFK had been shot from the front, as you testified at JFK Babe's hearing? I know pulling teeth is fascinating, but this stretches credulity. In fact, I'm taking three Aleve right now in an effort to relieve my stretched credulity before it ruptures.

It unnerved him, he said, that of around 1,400 people called to testify before the Warren Commission, 118 died unusual and sometimes mysterious deaths. Oliver Stone’s 1991 conspiracy-centric movie, “JFK,” didn’t help.

Yep, by 2013 he'd been conspiracized (a new term I may have just invented). The "118" mysterious deaths sounds rather specific and I'm not sure where he got it; Jim Marrs listed a mere 103 in Crossfire and Richard Belzer had far fewer in Hit List. Possibly Dr. Walker whispered "118" into Dentist Don's ear just before he expired?

The "1,400" is also an oddity. Possibly this is the number CTers think should have been called?

Well, anyway, Edna and I will be doing lunch at Tyler's Barbecue in Amarillo next Friday, and I'll get back to you with any news.

Oh, Edna did email me a short family video of Dentist Don in his fun-loving prime.

[Lance Payette]

This shall be the final installment of the short-lived soap opera, The Days of Dentist Don (“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the ever-shifting tales of Dentist Don”). Yes, it’s already about four installments too many, but the CIA still pays me by the word.

I am flummoxed – flummoxed, I tell you – to see that Larry Schnapf and Jim Di Oregano (hereinafter, “the Goofballs”) are still peddling Dentist Don as the real deal, the missing link, the Big Kahuna, he who confirms everything we've always suspected. (Pat Speer, to his credit, appears to be approximately as flummoxed as your reporter.)

There are only three conceivable bases – not necessarily mutually exclusive bases, by any means – on which this possible:

• The Goofballs are in such a state of desperation, now that the air has gone out of the records release balloon, that they simply don’t care about Dentist Don’s credibility so long as he continues to weave a tapestry of bombshell tales. But why would this be? I’ve only encountered this “I don’t even care if it’s true or makes sense” attitude among fanatical religious cultists. Does this perhaps confirm my suspicion that the JFKA conspiracy community is, in fact, a species of fanatical religious cult?
• The Goofballs are simply hucksters, so enamored of being big fish in the tiny swamp of JFKA conspiracy theorizing that they are locked into perpetuating the myths come hell or high water.
• The cogs of the Goofballs’ brains responsible for critical thinking simply aren’t meshing as they spin. I may have mentioned previously one of the little aphorisms I invented and pasted inside my hat after 20 or so years of legal practice: “Just because someone seems otherwise intelligent, educated, well-spoken and reasonable, and is high-functioning and successful in other areas of his life, do not assume that he is not bat-guano crazy in some weird corner of his mind.” This is why an increasingly vast body of psychological and sociological literature has identified a distinct conspiracy prone type who is not necessarily delusional or pathologically aberrant but whose critical thinking skills fly out the window when salivating over his pet conspiracies.

My suspicion is that at least two, and possibly all three, of these are at work among those who are promoting Dentist Don.

The two obvious problems with Dentist Don are:

• How dramatically his story changed after he become conspiracized circa 2013 (at which time he was 75, being 80 when he introduced the late Dr. Walker into the tale in 2018 and 87 at the time of his bombshell testimony at JFK Babe’s hearing).
• The fact that his current story is completely at odds with what everyone else in Trauma Room 1 described, at the time and long thereafter. This isn’t a matter of different perceptions; either everyone else flat-out lied or Dentist Don is weaving a fantasy.

As testimonial evidence goes, Dentist Don’s is literally worthless. No second-year law student would put him on the stand in a $25 speeding ticket case. He would be destroyed on cross-examination. Yet one of the Goofballs is a practicing lawyer who is lapping it up as though problems 1 and 2 above did not exist – and, somehow, JFK Babe and her staff were conned into allowing him to testify unchallenged.

There are aspects of the JFKA where conspiracy theorists at least make rational arguments worthy of discussion, but Dentist Don’s testimony should be an embarrassment to anyone not actually wearing a tinfoil hat with a propellor on top. It’s ABSURD, people. That some of your heroes – e.g., the Goofballs – are actually promoting Dentist Don should be enough to give you pause about all of conspiracy world.

This has been kind of a fascinating last straw for me. It puts in stark relief what an absurd waste of time the whole JFKA thing actually is. It’s so ridiculous that even ferreting out and exposing conspiracy factoids ceases to be fun. Apart from my three possible explanations for the Goofballs as set forth above, I have no idea why anyone persists.

Oh, did anyone notice this in Dentist Don’s WC testimony? Forget his “right temple wound” and “missing cerebellum” nonsense. THIS is what he said about the THROAT WOUND, for crying out loud, the throat wound that by 2013 he was “certain” was an entrance wound:

MR. SPECTER: Did you observe any perforation or hole in the President’s throat?
DR. CURTIS: No; I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
MR. SPECTER: Did you have an opportunity to look closely for it?
DR. CURTIS:  I focused my attention on his neck for an instant, and that’s all.

(Oh, good Lord.    Was Dentist Don’s testimony at JFK Babe’s hearing under oath? If it was, I don’t know how much slack I’d be willing to cut even an 87-year-old conspiracy puppet who told whoppers of the magnitude of Dentist Don’s.)