Don Teel Curtis, dentist of destiny

[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.)

[Tom Graves]

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.

https://jfkfacts.substack.com/p/the-double-significance-of-dr-curtis

[Lance Payette]

https://jfkfacts.substack.com/p/the-double-significance-of-dr-curtis

Alas, Larry Schnapf is one of those CTers I had previously thought was at the "kinda sane" end of the spectrum but who has in recent times revealed himself to be "kinda not sane" (IMHO anyway). It must be the desperation of realizing that Conspiracy World is on the brink of going poof unless Something Big happens pretty darn soon. Me and Edna have news for Larry: Dentist Don ain't that Something Big. Whatever happened to the Luna hottie anyway - has she moved on to the Aliens Among Us thing, or is this just a lull while she attempts to come to grips with the full ramifications of Harvey & Lee?

[Lance Payette]

You folks didn't think I was going to allow my all-time favorite bit of persiflage to sink into oblivion, did you?

Yesterday, I happened to read two scathing reviews of Luna’s UFO (UAP) hearings by serious, longtime ufologists (yes, there are such things). Here is one: https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2025/09/restoring-public-trust-through-uap.html (“Well, that was a colossal waste of time.”). Both emphasized that these were clown shows in which the witnesses included some of the least-credible names in the field and nothing resembling actual evidence was presented. They also noted that the festivities played out in front of a nearly empty room.

Then I read this piece by a presidential historian and JFK biographer named Alexis Coe at MSNBC (so you know what her politics are): “I testified at a congressional hearing on the JFK files – I won’t make that mistake again,” https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jfk-files-congress-conspiracy-theories-anna-paulina-luna-rcna210504.

She testified at the Dentist Don hearing. She, too, emphasizes what a non-serious effort these hearing are and how her perspective as an actual historian was distinctly unwelcome. She also notes that the room was almost empty. Some of her comments about the other guests are quite humorous, to wit: “They understood archives the way toddlers understand taxes: not at all, and mostly through tantrum.”

Here, my fellow Luna enthusiasts and CT hopefuls, is what the dais actually looks like during one of these bombshell hearings. In his heyday, Dentist Don had more people in his waiting room.