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The Vanishing Low Fragment Trail: An Unsolvable Problem for WC Apologists

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Mark Ulrik:

--- Quote from: Michael T. Griffith on June 15, 2026, 07:23:02 PM ---
--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 05:33:40 PM ---So why did you ignore Mark Ulrik's polite requests to share Mantik's supposed research that you referenced ... hmmmm?

--- End quote ---

Umm, just a few days ago I posted some of Dr. Mantik's recent comments about how DNA evidence refutes 9/11 Truther claims. Sheesh. . . .

--- End quote ---

Good Lord, man! You posted a snippet from a scientific-style article, with endnote numbers, supposedly posted in a private email chain. When I politely inquired about the availability of the article and its cited sources, you ignored me - but maybe that was just you being your arrogant self.

Michael T. Griffith:

--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---I am sleazy to the core, but you'll have to show me and the audience where I questioned Mantik's integrity. I know nothing about him except that shoplifting incident at Walmart and the animal abuse allegations.  :D :D :D
--- End quote ---

You talk like an unserious teenager.


--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---It has nothing to do with it. Enquiring minds simply wonder why you ignored Mark's request if Mantik is now neck-deep in 9/11 studies.
--- End quote ---

I know this might come as a shock to you, but I don't always read every reply and I don't always respond to all the replies I read. You are posturing to imply that I have somehow lied about Dr. Mantik's views on 9/11. If you'll message me, I can give you his email address, and you can ask him yourself.

The point is you purposely used a dated statement of Dr. Mantik's about 9/11 when you knew that Dr. Mantik has recently been posting DNA evidence against 9/11 Truther nuttiness.


--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---Ah, the references to "college dropout Pat Speer" and his "blundering, amateurish and erroneous" attacks on Mantik were mere slips of the keyboard. Well, it happens.
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I feel like I'm arguing with a teenager who has problems comprehending English.

Nothing I said in my previous reply suggested I was backing away from those statements, and I don't know how you could claim otherwise. Speer is a college dropout, and, yes, as I said in my two previous replies, his attacks on Mantik's OD research are embarrassingly erroneous, sometimes almost comically so. That's what happens when you take on a genuine scientist on an issue that you don't understand. Again, Speer even says that OD measurements can't be done on metal objects--he says this in a humorous effort to explain away Dr. Mantik's OD measurements of the back-of-head bullet fragments.


--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---Do you actually have a little home shrine to Mantik, replete with votive candles and whatnot? The cast of characters with whom Mantik has been associated does not exactly inspire confidence. Pat Speer's massive critique is still up, includes pretty recent references, and seems devastating to me ("Mantik's numerous and repeated mistakes form a pattern--a pattern in which he misrepresents evidence to support a dubious theory and then misrepresents more evidence to defend his theory against heretics like myself"). But others can judge for themselves: https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-19d-stuck-in-the-middle-with-you.
--- End quote ---

Yes, they can. I encourage everyone to read both sides. I think you'll see that Dr. Mantik, always the gentleman, politely proves that Speer has no clue what he is talking about when it comes his optical-density research and how to read the skull x-rays. This isn't even a close call.

https://themantikview.org/pdf/Speer_Critique.pdf


--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---I am relentlessly dishonest in addition to being sleazy, but I pretend nothing. I respect all of Pat's efforts. I haven't done a quantitative analysis as to the percentage I agree with, but it's all worth a look.
--- End quote ---

I think this is a dishonest dodge. You either haven't read Speer's online book or you don't want to admit that in truth you agree with almost none of his conclusions about the major JFKA issues.

I agree with about 80% of Speer's conclusions on the major issues in the case. Judging from everything I've seen you say in this forum, I'd say you "might" agree with 15% of his conclusions on the major issues.

In addition, I cite Speer on a number of issues because, as I've said many times, his research on many issues is solid. The only time I've ever seen you cite Speer is to cite his rejection of Mantik's OD research.


--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---I don't "need" to explain anything. When the autopsy doctors, WC and HSCA couldn't agree within 4" about the wound entry, and the Harper fragment has been fitted just about everywhere but JFK's crotch, and characters like Mantik see things that no one else sees, I merely watch in wonderment as the debate unfolds.
--- End quote ---

Uh-huh. Read: another flimsy dodge. And, BTW, many other experts have agreed with Dr. Mantik's findings, including Dr. Arthur Haus, Dr. Greg Henkelmann, Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Michael Chesser, Dr. Art Snyder, to name a few. You'd know this if you had done a modicum of balanced research. Your baseless claim that "characters like Mantik see things that no one else sees" is further proof of your shallow research and unserious demeanor. 

You of all people are in no position to be calling Dr. Mantik a "character." The one and only reason you've grasped at Speer's research is that he has attacked Dr. Mantik's OD research.

For any newcomers who don't know about Dr. Mantik, he is a board-certified radiation oncologist who is also licensed in radiology. In addition, he holds a doctorate in physics and taught physics at the University of Michigan. He has also had several papers involving radiology published in peer-reviewed scientific medical journals. As a radiation oncologist, he routinely used OD measurements of x-rays to form his diagnoses (he retired a few years ago).


--- Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 08:19:45 PM ---I was quite impressed by Sturdivan's book, but your use of terms such as "magically" and "impossible" tells us you are simply a crank.
--- End quote ---

Phew! I am a "crank"?! If anyone here is a crank, it is you. Every single time you've tried to engage me on actual JFKA evidentiary issues, I've chewed you to pieces and proved that you, like John Corbett, don't even have a handle on many of the basics of the case.

I use the terms "magically" and "impossible" to describe Sturdivan's specious trajectory explanation because they absolutely apply. I notice you made no effort to explain how a bullet that penetrated the skull at a downward angle 1 cm above the EOP could have suddenly veered sharply upward. That is Sturdivan's theory. That is how he gets the bullet (1) to hit the EOP site at a downward angle (since he assumes Oswald fired the shot), and (2) to still create any semblance of the WC-HSCA exit wound above the right ear.   

Please, do, tell us how that would have worked. I'm assuming, perhaps errantly, that you understand the contrary damage indicated on the autopsy skull x-rays and in the WC's wound ballistics tests, a problem that Sturdivan does not even address.

Just to give you some clue about the problems with Sturdivan's theory, allow me to quote what I say about it in my book A Comforting Lie:

Surely Sturdivan knew that not one of the bullets in the WC’s head-shot ballistics tests veered so markedly, either horizontally or vertically. Surely he knew that brain tissue could not have caused such a drastic change in the bullet’s horizontal and vertical trajectory. And surely he knew there is no way that the high fragment trail could have been made by an FMJ bullet striking the EOP at a downward angle of 15 degrees. (p. 252)

Lance Payette:
Here is Dr. Mantik's website: https://themantikview.org/.

Can you say "self-promoting huckster," boys and girls? "Doug Horne on steroids," perhaps?

The most recent presentation Mantik features on his site was at Fetzer's "False Flags and Conspiracies Conference 2025" just last December: https://falseflagsandconspiraciescon.com/. Ye gods.

The presentation includes a blurry photo of a "CIA photographer in a sailor's cap" that is worthy of our own Jake Maxwell. Ye gods.

No wonder MTG worships at his feet - this guy believes absolutely anything and everything. The JFKA was more complex than the invasion of Normandy.

It all came back to me that I had ordered his most recent book, The Final Analysis, on Kindle. I tried reading it for a day, thinking I would give him a fair shot, and it became one of only three Kindle books (out of hundreds) that I have ever returned for a refund.

Even we unserious teenagers have our standards, dude.

I'll leave it at that. If you find Mantik credible, go for it!

Michael T. Griffith:

--- Quote ---Quote from: Lance Payette on June 15, 2026, 05:33:40 PM
As with Bart Kamp, I can appreciate the thoroughness and value of Pat's work without agreeing with everything he says (and I am inclined to agree with his placement of the head wound entry).
--- End quote ---

Do you understand that if you agree that the rear head entry wound was 1 cm above and 2.5 cm to the right of the EOP, as the autopsy report says, then you must acknowledge that the autopsy brain photos cannot be photos of JFK's brain? The HSCA FPP proved this beyond any rational doubt. No bullet entering the head at the EOP site could have missed tearing through the rear part of the right occipital lobe, yet the brain photos show no damage whatsoever in that area. An EOP-site bullet may have been able to barely miss the cerebellum, but it could not have missed the rear part of the right occipital lobe.

Furthermore, even if we assume that the EOP-site bullet barely missed the cerebellum, it should have at least caused some visible bleeding in the cerebellum, as FPP member Dr. George Loquvam pointed out to Finck during Finck's testimony, and Finck had no answer. In fact, let's read Loquvam's exchange with Finck on this key point:

Dr. Loquvam. If a missile had entered at this point, would it have entered the posterior cranial vault and produced subarachnoid hemorrhage in the cerebellar hemisphere?

I have pointed to color picture No. 43 at the point of entrance that Dr. Finck is saying the entrance is and I am referring to the four color photographs of the brain in which I see no subarachnoid hemorrhage other than postmortem.

My question is, if this is the point of entrance, isn't that at the level of the posterior cranial vault where the cerebellar hemispheres lie and would we not see subarachnoid hemorrhage if a slug had torn through there?

Dr. Finck. Not necessarily because you have wounds without subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Dr. Loquvam. You can have wounds in the brain without a missile track slug tearing through brain tissue?

Dr. Finck. I don't know. I cannot answer your question. ("Testimony of Pierre A. Finck," HSCA, 3/11/78, p. 97)

Another member of the FPP, Dr. Charles Petty, pointed out the conflict between the EOP site and the undamaged condition of the rear part of both occipital lobes. In addition to noting the "intact" condition of the cerebellum, he pointed out to Humes and Boswell that the brain photos show no damage to the occipital lobes, i.e., the part of the lobes directly behind the EOP. Let's read Dr. Petty's very politely phrased observation about this huge contradiction:

Dr. PETTY. Well we have some interesting information in the form of the photographs of the brain, and if this wound were way low, we would wonder at the intact nature not only on the cerebellum but also on the posterior aspects of the occipital lobes, such as are shown in Figure 21. Here the cerebellum is intact as well as the occipital lobes. (7 HSCA 259)

Even a layman can look at diagrams of the brain and the skull and see that the EOP lies directly over the rear part of the right and left occipital lobes. There is just no way on this planet that a bullet entering at the EOP site at a downward and rightward angle could have missed tearing through the rear section of the right occipital lobe.

So, pick your poison: Either admit that the brain photos are fraudulent or repudiate the EOP site. You can't accept the EOP site and still believe the brain photos are authentic.

I explain this fact in more detail in my ongoing thread on the subject:

Undeniable Proof of Fraud: The Impossible JFK Autopsy Brain Photos
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,4609.0.html

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