The Three Small Puncture Wounds in JFK's Right Cheek: Proof of a Second Gunman

[Royell Storing]

 Just my opinion, but to me, there is Only 1 kind of "testimony" and that is "Sworn Testimony". To me, an "interview" usually results in "note taking" or a "summation" after the fact. This being debatable. There is No claiming that "testimony" is equivalent to an "interview". 

[Lance Payette]

HSCA witness interviews were generally not under oath. In legal practice, interviews generally are not. If anything, the interview will later be used by the attorney to prepare an affidavit for the witness to sign. There is no indication in the HSCA transcript that Robinson was under oath. Purdy reminds him at the beginning that a tape recorder is running - he does not add "and you are under oath."

The meeting with the ARRB was clearly not under oath. It is documented only by Horne's "Meeting Report." The attendees are indicated on page 1. There is no indication the meeting was taped. No transcript was made. If Robinson had been put under oath, his interview would have been taped so verbatim statements could later be incorporated into the report if needed. If there had been a tape or transcript, Horne's lengthy summary would have been completely unnecessary.

I have been unable to find any indication that Robinson's marked-up photo showing the cheek punctures was even preserved. Surely, much ado about nothing.

For the cheek punctures, we have only Horne's notes and terminology, and even they suggest nothing spectacular or that Horne regarded them as anything spectacular. The whole point of embalming fluid is to fully penetrate the tissue so as to preserve it. I at least picture very inconsequential holes that no one else noticed and that Robinson himself didn't notice until he saw that embalming fluid was seeping through. It seems from my reading that embalming fluid seeping through tissue and unobserved outlets during the embalming process - and even after - is common. Surely, much ado about nothing.

I have no idea what Robinson was all about. In later interviews, he seems credible and sincere and not a publicity hound. He is simply an outlier, like many JFKA witnesses and some eyewitnesses in every case. FWIW, here's a short 2006 video interview with Robinson in which he comes across (to me) as fairly credible.

[Royell Storing]

     I seriously doubt that an every day Zit, Wart, Cut from shaving, etc, would permit embalming fluid seepage on JFK's cheek/face. Robinson also mentioned that every bone in JFK's Face was broken. I think Robinson also made mention that bruising around an eye was beginning to show. Personally, I believe that ALL of what Tom Robinson described in the JFK Face area is the result of the JFK Body having been dropped, fallen off the table, etc. This could have even happened at Parkland Hospital before the JFK body was placed inside the ceremonial casket.   

[Lance Payette]

     I seriously doubt that an every day Zit, Wart, Cut from shaving, etc, would permit embalming fluid seepage on JFK's cheek/face. Robinson also mentioned that every bone in JFK's Face was broken. I think Robinson also made mention that bruising around an eye was beginning to show. Personally, I believe that ALL of what Tom Robinson described in the JFK Face area is the result of the JFK Body having been dropped, fallen off the table, etc. This could have even happened at Parkland Hospital before the JFK body was placed inside the ceremonial casket.   

And so what? As you seemingly always do, you weave speculation out of the thin air. If JFK's body actually were dropped, presumably someone would have noticed and mentioned that fact somewhere along the line (or was this yet another "conspiracy"?). And if it was dropped - well, so what? This would have nothing to do with Michael's goofy theory about windshield shards from a frontal shot.

If you can stomach it, Google (or AI) "embalming fluid seeping or oozing during embalming process." It can even occur because the skin is unusually thin due to the decedent's use of certain drugs. (Corticosteroids are the primary treatment for Addison's disease, and thinning of the skin is one of the primary side-effects.) There is absolutely no reason to think that Robinson's observation of embalming fluid seeping from previously unobserved spots of some sort - on a body that had been shot in the head, treated in an emergency room (including a tracheotomy), flown across the entire country, and autopsied - is anything but the proverbial nothingburger.

[Royell Storing]

        Per Tom Robinson, ALL the bones in JFK's face were broken and Bruising was just beginning to show around the eye. There are claims of JFK's body being: (1) inside a Body Bag, and (2) delivered within a cheap metal shipping casket. The explanation for all of this is that the body was moved and dropped in the process. This shattered ALL of his facial bones and bruised an eye.   

[Michael T. Griffith]

HSCA witness interviews were generally not under oath. In legal practice, interviews generally are not. If anything, the interview will later be used by the attorney to prepare an affidavit for the witness to sign. There is no indication in the HSCA transcript that Robinson was under oath. Purdy reminds him at the beginning that a tape recorder is running - he does not add "and you are under oath."

The meeting with the ARRB was clearly not under oath. It is documented only by Horne's "Meeting Report." The attendees are indicated on page 1. There is no indication the meeting was taped. No transcript was made. If Robinson had been put under oath, his interview would have been taped so verbatim statements could later be incorporated into the report if needed. If there had been a tape or transcript, Horne's lengthy summary would have been completely unnecessary.

I have been unable to find any indication that Robinson's marked-up photo showing the cheek punctures was even preserved. Surely, much ado about nothing.

For the cheek punctures, we have only Horne's notes and terminology, and even they suggest nothing spectacular or that Horne regarded them as anything spectacular. The whole point of embalming fluid is to fully penetrate the tissue so as to preserve it. I at least picture very inconsequential holes that no one else noticed and that Robinson himself didn't notice until he saw that embalming fluid was seeping through. It seems from my reading that embalming fluid seeping through tissue and unobserved outlets during the embalming process - and even after - is common. Surely, much ado about nothing.

First off, yes, Robinson's ARRB interview was recorded.

I notice you offered no explanation for what caused the three puncture wounds. Puncture wounds don't just magically appear out of thin air. Something causes them. You know that your scenario has no possible explanation for those wounds, so you lamely declare they are "much ado about nothing" without even bothering to try to explain what made them.

You ignore the fact that Robinson said the puncture wounds would be visible in the right-side profile photo if the photo were of better quality. This indicates that after Robinson noticed the wounds and cleaned them, they were visible now that he knew they were there. IOW, the small wounds would be visible in a higher-quality version of the right-side profile photo, but only if you knew to look for them and if the photo were enlarged. Such small wounds can be easily overlooked, even though you can see them once you know to look for them.

So? This is just a red herring, and it actually hurts your argument: the sudden emergence of embalming fluid from JFKs face would have made the wounds even more easily apparent to everyone else in the room. The morgue was still full of people during the embalming process. Do you think that everyone in the morgue during the autopsy suddenly vanished the second that the embalming started?  And --again-- none other than Robinson ever said they saw any wounds to JFK's face nor saw embalming fluid leaking out therefrom.

Oh, so Robinson just lied about the three punctures??? He just made it all up??? Really??? This is the kind of pitiful argumentation you are reduced to offering because you know your shooting scenario has no way to explain the three small puncture wounds.

No, the morgue was not "full of people during the embalming process." Many attendees left after the autopsy was completed and after the autopsy doctors told the morticians to start their work. It was, after all, 1:00 AM when the autopsy ended, according to Sibert and O'Neill. O'Neill said even the autopsy doctors left the room and went into a different room when the embalming and reconstruction work began (ARRB interview, 9/12/97, p. 139).

Dr. Robert Karnei said he saw the morticians "putting some wax into a tear or laceration on the side of the face near the eye, and that when they were finished, you could not even tell there had been any damage to that area" (Meeting Report, ARRB, 5/21/96, p. 3). Well, well. Where is this tear in the autopsy photos of the face? Humm? And, gee, according to your logic, since Karnei was the only one who reported seeing the tear near the eye and the only one who reported seeing the morticians repairing the tear, he must have been lying about the tear and its repair.

MG: Robinson also explained that the punctures don't show up in the right-superior profile photo because the photo is of poor quality ("because of the photo's poor quality"). Gee, did you just miss this statement too?

There are several photos showing JFK's face. You really think all those photos are that bad? You're talking about wounds you claim were made by jagged pieces of shrapnel. Those create equally ragged, irregular injuries. Not the kind of thing that's difficult to spot, even when small.

Well, the HSCA's forensic experts said the autopsy photos "are generally of rather poor photographic quality" and that "due to their lack of documentation and poor quality, the defense could have challenged the use of these photos as evidence in a trial" (7 HSCA 46-47).

As you surely well know, the puncture wounds were made by very tiny fragments of some kind. Robinson clearly indicated that the wounds were visible but only if you knew to look for them, which is typical of such tiny wounds, which explains why he did not notice them until after the embalming process started and fluid began to leak from them, and why he said they would be visible on higher-quality right-profile photos.

MG: The fact that Robinson did not mention the three small punctures in his HSCA interview proves nothing.

You misrepresent what goes down in Robinson's interview with Purdy. Robinson described to Purdy the tracheotomy, the large head wound, and the small wound in the hairline at the temple. After that, Purdy asks Robinson "Were there any other wounds on the head other than the little one in the right temple area, and the big one in the back?" Robinson's reply is specific: "that's all." The fact that Purdy specifically cued Robinson as to additional wounds slams the door on your argument that it just somehow slipped Robinson's mind as he was prattling on.

Of course you apply a ridiculous, draconian standard to Robinson, a standard that you never apply to any pro-WC witnesses. As we'll see, you even accuse Robinson of outright lying, not only about the wounds but about even being present at the autopsy! Never mind that both Hagan and Von Hoesen also said that they and Robinson arrived at Bethesda at about 8:00 PM, when the autopsy started.

As I said, witnesses quite frequently remember certain things in one interview that they forgot to mention in another interview. But you refuse to apply that reasonable, reality-based standard to Robinson because you are determined to reject his account of the three puncture wounds, a small right-temple wound, and a large back-of-wound, and his rejection of the damage above the right ear/top of the head as a bullet wound (he said the doctors did that damage, not a bullet).

Also, in 1978, Robinson described two wounds to JFK's head: a large one at the rear and a small one in the temple in the hairline. 20 years later, he remembered a large wound at the rear, of large-ish triangular one on the side of the head above the ear, and two or three in the face. The small, temple hairline wound just disappears in the 20-year gap and new, previously undisclosed, injuries mysteriously appear. The difference can't be reconciled by your handwaving.

You are misrepresenting Robinson's statements. Robinson said the wound above the right ear/top of the head was not a wound but was damage made by the doctors (Meeting Report, ARRB, 6/21/96, p. 4). He also specified that at the start of the autopsy, the top-of-head wound was not an open wound like the back-of-head wound (Ibid., p. 4). Robinson further said that Ed Stroble, one of the morticians, covered the back-of-head wound with a piece of rubber that was about the size of an orange (Ibid., p. 4).

Robinson told the ARRB there was a wound "in the right temple." In both his HSCA and ARRB interviews, he opined that the right-temple wound, just inside the hairline, was the exit wound of a fragment. Yet, you still feel compelled to nitpick at his descriptions of the wound because the autopsy doctors ignored it and omitted it from the autopsy report.

Anytime Robinson's ARRB interview contains any additional information beyond his HSCA interview or fails to fails to describe something exactly as it's described in his HSCA interview, you accuse him of fabricating. Never mind that nearly every other witness at the autopsy, including the other morticians, also saw a large back-of-head wound. Never mind that the Parkland nurses who cleaned the head wound, packed it with gauze, and wrapped the head in a sheet--never mind that they, too, said they saw a large wound in the back of the head. 

Did Robinson lie? Well, he tries to claim that he was in the morgue from the beginning of the autopsy. However, the Sibert and O'Neil report says that "At the termination of the autopsy, the following personnel from Gawler’s Funeral Home entered the autopsy room to prepare the President’s body for burial: JOHN VAN HAESEN, EDWIN STROBLE, THOMAS ROBINSON, Mr. HAGEN." Manchester, in Death of a President, says that Robinson (described only as a "young cosmetician") accompanied  Joe Hagen, he mahogany casket, and one of the Gawlers to the Morgue in a hearse. Manchester places the selection of the casket  at "around midnight," citing Powers and Powers' contemporaneous notes of the events. The autopsy started about 8PM, and the brain, heart and lungs had already been removed by the time Finck showed up at 8:30PM. It's very hard to believe that Robinson could have seen the early stages of the autopsy --before the Y-incision had been made--  when he arrived close to midnight and was kept out of the morgue until the end of the autopsy proper.

Oh my heavens! So Robinson even lied about being at the autopsy?! So all the details that he gave about what he observed during the autopsy were just fabrications?! He just made it all up?! Why? FYI, Joe Hagan told the ARRB that he and his team of morticians arrived at Bethesda at "about 8:00 PM" (Call Report, ARRB, 6/11/96, p. 1). Von Hoesen, one of the morticians, likewise said they arrived at Bethesda at around 8:00 (Ibid., p. 1) So both Hagan and Von Hoesen supported Robinson's statement that he and the other morticians arrived at right around the same time the autopsy started, but according to you Robinson lied about being at the autopsy.

BTW, in a reply in this thread, your fellow WC apologist Lance Payette says Robinson "seems credible and sincere and not a publicity hound." But according to you, he even lied about being at the autopsy.

MG: Robinson may simply not have thought to mention them in his HSCA interview since the focus was on the visible wounds to JFK's head

By Robinson's own description, the cheek wounds were literally "visible wounds to JFK's head."

Oh, hogwash. Are you just hoping people will forget that Robinson said he didn't even notice the tiny wounds until after the embalming process started and fluid began leaking out of them and they became discolored? Until then, he did not notice them. They were not "visible wounds to JFK's head" unless you knew to look for them because they were so small that Robinson didn't notice them until embalming fluid began to leak from them.

The bottom line is that you will never acknowledge any evidence of conspiracy, no matter how credible and corroborated it is. You will always look for any excuse, no matter how lame and forced, to reject evidence that you can't explain. We saw you do this repeatedly and in brazen fashion when it came to Vincent DiMaio's plain-English statements that FMJ bullets will not shatter into dozens of fragments when they penetrate skulls and that x-rays that show dozens of fragments rule out FMJ bullets as the ammo that produced the fragments.

Rather than offer any explanation for the cause of the three small puncture wounds, you stoop to accusing Robinson of not only lying about them but also lying about even being at the autopsy.

[Royell Storing]

And so what? As you seemingly always do, you weave speculation out of the thin air. If JFK's body actually were dropped, presumably someone would have noticed and mentioned that fact somewhere along the line (or was this yet another "conspiracy"?). And if it was dropped - well, so what? This would have nothing to do with Michael's goofy theory about windshield shards from a frontal shot.

If you can stomach it, Google (or AI) "embalming fluid seeping or oozing during embalming process." It can even occur because the skin is unusually thin due to the decedent's use of certain drugs. (Corticosteroids are the primary treatment for Addison's disease, and thinning of the skin is one of the primary side-effects.) There is absolutely no reason to think that Robinson's observation of embalming fluid seeping from previously unobserved spots of some sort - on a body that had been shot in the head, treated in an emergency room (including a tracheotomy), flown across the entire country, and autopsied - is anything but the proverbial nothingburger.

    "Thinning skin"? Seriously?   

[Lance Payette]

    "Thinning skin"? Seriously?   

I don't know about "seriously," but it is mentioned in the technical literature on the seepage of embalming fluid.

I have no pet theory. My only observation is that (1) no one else noticed these "wounds," (2) Robinson didn't notice them until embalming fluid began to seep out, and (3) ergo, it is highly unlikely these were punctures from windshield shards as Michael suggests. My guess would be that the "wounds" were internal, not external.

When we factor in that Robinson didn't mention it to the HSCA and even an ARRB loon like Horne didn't think it was worth following up, I have to believe we are squarely in the realm of Much Ado About Nothing.

I'll bet a lot of embalming fluid would've seeped through those Huge Gates, eh?