A rational solution to the "shipping casket" factoid?

[Lance Payette]

A few things to remember:

1.) There is no kind of casket called a "shipping casket." The military term for the item is a "Human Remains Transit Case." It's not a casket, per se, as it's not intended to be used for burials, but to transport human bodies (and be reused). There are civilian analogues, particularly the "Ziegler case" that do the same thing, and are also not considered to be caskets. While Hagen did write "shipping casket," he explained that the term referred literally to a casket in which the body was shipped. That is, JFK was shipped in casket, not a case, and Hagen should know the difference. "Shipping casket" is a personal term invented by Paul O'Connor, as he says in the Best Evidence research video. It's interesting that O'Connor didn't use any variation of "transit case," implying that he had little, maybe no, experience with them while a corpsman.

FWIW, in the follow-up conversation between Hagan and Horne on 6/18, Horne specifically asked if the term shipping casket had a specific meaning in the funeral trade. Hagan said it did and went on to describe what you call a transit case. He said he had only been told that JFK had arrived in a metal casket, so he apparently assumed this meant a transit case - probably because Gawler's was the premier funeral home in Washington and had lots of contact with the MDW and thus with transit cases. So he was thinking "transit case" but wrote "shipping casket" to mean the same thing. He said he had not realized JFK was shipped in a "ceremonial casket" that was in fact metal (bronze).

[Royell Storing]

Good Lord, give it up. I have no idea what point you think you are making. Humes first saw the body when he opened the Dallas casket. You are the one insisting his ARRB testimony of seeing the body at approximately (very approximately) 6:45 or 7 somehow supported Horne and Boyajian's description of the arrival of a shipping casket at 6:35. You seemingly saw the coincidence between 6:35 and Humes' ARRB testimony as some sort of smoking gun. What are you now suggesting - the body was received in a shipping casket at 6:35 and tampered with by someone else before it was put back into the Dallas casket in its Parkland wrappings for Humes and Boswell to open at 6:45 or 7??? What the hell sense does that make? I simply pointed out that Humes' testimony at the WC and HSCA was consistent about the body arriving in the Dallas casket shortly before the autopsy began at around 8 and that his very uncertain time estimate in 1996 was some 33 years after the event and he made clear that he had done no preparation at all.

My belief is that an empty shipping casket was indeed delivered by MDW at 6:35 but was never used because a decision was made that the embalming would take place at Bethesda rather than Gawler's, the Dallas casket with JFK's body arrived sometime around 7:17, and Humes participated in opening the casket shortly thereafter. Not sexy enough for CTers, I know, but not batspombleprofglidnoctobuns crazy either.

   You are behind the curve with respect to Doug Horne and Gunn/ARRB. They think there was More than 1 "autopsy". I would recommend you read "Best Evidence" by Lifton. That will supply you with a very solid foundation. You're currently punching above your weight.

[Lance Payette]

   You are behind the curve with respect to Doug Horne and Gunn/ARRB. They think there was More than 1 "autopsy". I would recommend you read "Best Evidence" by Lifton. That will supply you with a very solid foundation. You're currently punching above your weight.

BEST EVIDENCE was one of the first JFK books I read when I became relatively seriously interested eons ago, just about the time it was published in 1980. Over the years, David Lifton (RIP) established to my satisfaction that he was as close to completely insane as one is likely to find in the CT community, and that's pretty damn close to completely insane. You vastly underestimate my knowledge of the JFKA if you think I need to read BEST EVIDENCE to educate myself. I enjoyed Horne's documentary only because it clearly set forth the casket issue in a way that clarified the physical aspects of Bethesda and what the body alteration loons are talking about, albeit without addressing the critical issue of how the body got from Air Force One to the mystery helicopter without anyone noticing. I had never given ten seconds of thought to the "shipping casket" factoid because I had dismissed the body alteration stuff as absurd long ago, but now that I have I can see how bogus Horne and his work is. He is well on his way to joining Lifton in my pantheon of the completely insane, as distinguished from the merely whacked-out.

Has anyone else pointed out that you never actually respond when someone points out the flaws in your posts? You just move on to interject another non-responsive point. It is truly like playing Whack-a-Mole, for which I have limited patience.

[Royell Storing]

 "Surgery to the head area" all by itself puts Lifton in the JFK Researcher's Hall Of Fame. I do like that Horne credited "The JFK Theorist" in the beginning of his presentation. That teenager is all over this case.

[Michael T. Griffith]

I have now spent an additional hour on this issue. FWIW, I discovered that in a 2024 piece at Kennedys & King, conspiracy god James DiEugenio describes Boyajian as "not reliable," notes (as I did) that Boyajian never says "the casket" arriving at 6:35 PM was JFK's, and seems to go so far as to suggest the unsigned Boyajian report is bogus. Well, how rude. I won't go that far. I also note that Dennis David was likewise not told that the casket was JFK's. He was told "your visitor has arrived."

This is your very first paragraph, and it is stuffed with baffling errors. The only casket that Boyajian would have guarded would have been JFK's because his detail was the Marine security detail charged with entry security and with ensuring the safe arrival of JFK's casket for the autopsy. Boyajian's memo notes that "the casket" arrived "at the morgue entrance" and was "taken inside."

Pray tell, why would Boyajian's security detail have guarded any other casket except JFK's casket, given that guarding JFK's casket to ensure its safe entrance into the morgue was one of its two primary duties?

Moreover, the Gawler's Funeral Home call sheet specified that JFK's body arrived in a shipping casket. Six other sources likewise said JFK's body arrived in a shipping casket.

Furthermore, Dennis David said that Dr. Boswell confirmed to him that the shipping casket contained JFK's body.

Mortician Tom Robinson saw Dr. Humes sawing JFK's skull before the official autopsy began. Obviously, this would have been impossible if JFK's body had not already been brought to the morgue.

All of these facts are discussed in Doug Horne's new documentary on three caskets arriving at Bethesda, which you said you watched. How did you miss the information?

Your "solution" is anything but "rational." Your supposed "factoid" is a fact that is documented by two written sources (Boyajian's report and the funeral home call sheet) and by six witnesses.