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Don Teel Curtis, dentist of destiny

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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.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiAIQaUtlaU

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:

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