Don Teel Curtis, dentist of destiny

[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?