Why JFK's Tie and Shirt Slits Destroy the Single-Bullet Theory

[Michael T. Griffith]

This is how Cyril Wecht demonstrates the SBF. Yes really!!

1. The seats were not horizontally level and in addition, Elm street had a 3 degree slope.
2. Connally's jump seat was about 4 inches to the left.
3. Kennedy and Connally were much closer in height.
4. Wecht erroneously says that the bullet passed upwards through Kennedy at 11.5 degrees(which places the assassin below the limo?) whereas Kennedy's autopsy photos definitively confirm a downward trajectory.
5. Also, the Zapruder film confirms a violent simultaneous reaction.

And just to be clear, and expanding on point 4 above, we know the bullet passed straight through Kennedy because after extensive X-rays there was NO bullets inside Kennedy.

Mr. SPECTER - Did you search the body to determine if there was any bullet inside the body?
Commander HUMES - Before the arrival of Colonel Finck we had made X-rays of the head, neck and torso of the President, and the upper portions of his major extremities, or both his upper and lower extremities. At Colonel Finck's suggestion, we then completed the X-ray examination by X-raying the President's body in toto, and those X-rays are available.
Mr. SPECTER - What did those X-rays disclose with respect to the possible presence of a missile in the President's body?
Commander HUMES - They showed no evidence of a missile in the President's body at any point. And these were examined by ourselves and by the radiologist, who assisted us in this endeavor.

JohnM

Says the guy who twice failed to do basic subtraction to calculate the difference in the distances between background objects in the backyard rifle photos. Your reply is riddled with inexcusable errors and omissions, and then you conclude by quoting Humes' WC testimony, as if that proves anything.

Let me just take one example of your inexcusable gaffes: You claim that the autopsy photos "definitively confirm a downward trajectory" for the back-wound bullet. Wrong. The HSCA's forensic experts pointed out that the autopsy photo of the back wound shows that the bullet struck at an upward angle and that the interior of the wound is tunneled upward (7 HSCA 87, 175). As Dr. Wecht notes in the video that you cite, Dr. Baden, the chairman of the HSCA's forensic panel, explained this upward trajectory by claiming that JFK was leaning forward by more than 60 degrees when the bullet struck. Baden even demonstrated on camera how far forward he was assuming JFK was leaning when the bullet hit, and anyone can see that Baden is assuming a forward lean that is nowhere to be seen in any photo or film of the assassination.

Yet, you get on here and claim that the autopsy photos "definitively confirm a downward trajectory."

Again, people need to be aware that you are the same guy who just recently twice failed to do simple subtraction to calculate the difference between the 133A and 133B gate-bolt-to-screen parallax measurements of the backyard rifle photos. You repeated this stunning blunder even after I pointed out your error to you. Instead of acknowledging your error, or instead of just dropping the subject, you doubled down and repeated the blunder.

As for Tim Nickerson's claim that we don't know that the autopsy doctors positively established during the autopsy that the back wound had no exit point, here is some of the evidence that he and you keep waving aside:

Secret Service agent Bill Greer, who was also present for the entire autopsy, is yet another witness who heard nothing about the back wound having an exit point during the autopsy:

Specter: Was anything said about any channel being present in the body for the bullet to have gone on through the back?

Greer: No, sir; I hadn't heard anything like that, any trace of it going on through. (2 H 127) 

In a moment, I'll quote Sibert and O'Neill's ARRB testimony and O'Neill's HSCA interview, but let's see what they said just four days after the autopsy in their report on the autopsy:

During the latter stages of this autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders. . . . This opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60 degrees. Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger. (Francis O'Neill and James Sibert, "Autopsy of Body of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy," 11/26/1963, p. 4, http://22november1963.org.uk/sibert-and-oneill-report#sibert-oneill-report)

Well, no wonder the WC ignored this report, did not include it in the published hearings and exhibits, and buried it in the National Archives, where Harold Weisberg discovered it in 1966. 

But let's get even closer to the time of the autopsy. Sibert and O'Neill sent a telegram to FBI Director Hoover at 2:00 AM on 11/23/1963, just hours after the autopsy, and therein they said the back wound was located below the shoulder and was a shallow wound that had no exit point:

One bullet hole located just below shoulders to right of spinal column, and hand probing indicated trajectory at angle of 45 to 60 degrees downward and hole of short depth with no point of exit. (O'Neill and Sibert, FBI teletype: Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 11/23/1963, p. 1, ARRB document MD 149)

Dr. Robert Karnei was a resident surgeon at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963 and witnessed the autopsy. In a 1991 recorded interview, Karnei said the autopsy doctors positioned the body in multiple ways to facilitate the probing of the back wound, and that “the men” who saw the probing commented that they could see the end of the finger and then the end of the probe “from inside the empty chest”! He added that the pathologists worked “all night long with the probes” to find the bullet’s path through the body:

A: They did have the body--trying to sit it up and trying to get that probe to go. . . .
Q: Why didn't they turn the body over?
A: Well, they did. They tried every which way to go ahead, and try to move it around. . . .
Q: But this was after the Y incision?
A: Yes. The men described being able to see the end of the finger and the probe from inside the empty chest. They were working all night long with probes trying to make out where that bullet was going on the back there. (p. 10) 


In his 3/10/97 ARRB interview, Karnei said that by around midnight the autopsy doctors "had not found a bullet track through the body, nor had they found an exit wound for the entry in the shoulder" (p. 001476).

In his 8/27/77 HSCA interview, Karnei said that he recalled the autopsy doctors "putting the probe in and taking pictures" (p. 5). Karnei was not the only witness who saw pictures taken of the probing, but those pictures were never included in the official collection of the autopsy materials. I think we all know why.

Karnei also told the HSCA that he saw "the chest cavity opened and watched the removal of the organs," and that after this he saw Finck "working with a probe and arranging for photographs" (p. 6). This is another reference that indicates photos were taken of the probing.

-- Dr. Robert Canada was the commanding officer of the treatment hospital at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963, and he witnessed the autopsy. In a 1968 interview with Dr. Michael Kurtz, Canada said that the back wound was at around T3, that the bullet “did not exit,” and that its wound tract ended in the chest near the stomach ((Kurtz, The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy, University Press of Kansas, 2006, p. 91; see also https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/altered-history-exposing-deciet-and-deception-in-the-jfk-assassination-medical-evidence-part-1/, segment on Dr. Canada begins at 1:08:20). Dr. Canada asked Dr. Kurtz not to reveal his account until 25 years after he died, so Kurtz did not write about it until 2006.

-- James Jenkins, a medical technician who assisted Dr. Boswell during the autopsy, stated in his 8/29/1977 HSCA interview that Dr. James Humes, the chief autopsy pathologist, found that the bullet tract had not "penetrated into the chest" and that Humes had been able to "reach the end of the wound." Jenkins specified that the back wound "was very shallow" and that "it didn't enter the peritoneal cavity [the chest cavity]. He noted that there was quite a “controversy” because the doctors “couldn’t prove the bullet came into the chest cavity” even though they probed the back wound “extensively” (pp. 5, 7, 10-11, 13).

Jenkins added that at around the time of the probing "they repeatedly took x-rays of the area” (p. 8 ). For obvious reasons, those x-rays were not included in the official collection of the autopsy materials.

In a 1979 filmed interview, Jenkins said the following:

Commander Humes put his finger in it, and, you know, said that ... he could probe the bottom of it with his finger. . . . I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the probe . . . through the pleura. You could actually see where it was making an indentation. . . . It was pushing the skin up. . . . There was no entry into the chest cavity.

-- In his 7/16/96 ARRB interview, autopsy photographer John Stringer said that the back wound was probed and that the probe did not come out of the neck:

Q: Was the probe put into the neck, or did it come of the neck?
A: It was put into the back part.
Q: The back of the body. And then did the probe come out the neck?
A: No. (p. 73)

-- O'Neill revealed in his 9/12/97 ARRB interview that at the end of the autopsy, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the bullet that was found in Dallas had fallen out of the back wound:

There was not the slightest doubt when we left there that the bullet found on the stretcher in Dallas was the bullet which worked its way out through external cardiac massage. And the doctor said, since the body had not been turned over in Dallas, “External cardiac massage was conducted on the president, and the bullet worked its way out."

There was not the slightest doubt, not a scintilla of doubt whatsoever, that this is what occurred. . . .

Because I was closer to the President’s body than I am to you, and you’re only about a foot and a half away or two feet away. And viewing them with the surgical probe and with their fingers, there was absolutely no point of exit and they couldn’t go any further. And that presented a problem, one heck of a problem. . . .

Q: You previously made reference to attempts to probe that wound. Did you ever see any kind of metal object used to probe that wound?

A: Yes. They used a metal probe, in addition to their fingers. . . . In the back, they probed it to a point where they could not probe any further. In other words, it did not go any further. (pp. 30-31)

O'Neill stated in his 11/8/78 HSCA affidavit that "Humes and Boswell couldn't locate an outlet for the bullet that entered the back." He added, "I know for a fact that when the autopsy was complete, there was no doubt in anyone's mind in attendance at the autopsy that the bullet found on the stretcher in Dallas came out of JFK's body," i.e., out of the back wound (p. 000573).

O’Neill also offered this gem of an observation: "I do not see how the bullet that entered below the shoulder could have come out the front of the throat" (p. 000575).

-- Sibert echoed O’Neill in his 9/11/97 ARRB interview. Sibert said he called Killion to see if any bullets had been found because the autopsy doctors said the back wound had no exit point:

Q: Can you tell me, was the phone call made to Mr. Killion before or after the body was unloaded from the casket?

A: Oh, that was after the body was removed; it was on the autopsy table, and the autopsy was in progress. Because the reason I made that call was that the pathologists said, "There’s no exit to this back wound,” and probed it with rubber glove and a chrome probe. (p. 59)

Sibert explained more about the probing and the fact that the autopsy doctors--"Finck, in particular"--said they could feel the end of the back wound:
 
But when they raised him up, then they found this back wound. And that’s when they started probing with the rubber glove and the finger, and also with the chrome probe.

And that’s just before, of course, I made this call, because they were at a loss to explain what had happened to this bullet. They couldn’t find any bullet.

And they said, "There's no exit.” Finck, in particular, said, "There's no exit.” And they said that you could feel it with the end of the finger. I mean, the depth of this wound. (p. 111)

-- Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the autopsy, stated in his 3/11/78 testimony to the HSCA’s medical panel that the autopsy doctors determined that the back wound had no exit point:

Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger, inasmuch as a complete bullet of any size could be located in the brain area and likewise no bullet could be located in the back or any other areas. An inspection revealed there was no point of exit. The individuals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why they could find no bullets. (p. 57)