Warren Commission Testimony:
Mr. SPECTER. What experience, Doctor, have you had, if any, in evaluating
gunshot wounds?
Dr. (Robert) SHAW. I have had considerable experience with gunshot wounds and wounds due to missiles because of my war experience. This experience was not only during the almost 2 years in England. but during the time that I was head of the Thoracic Center in Paris, France, for a period of approximately a year.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you be able to give an approximation of the total number of bullet wounds you have had occasion to observe and treat?
Dr. SHAW. Considering the war experience and the addition of wounds seen in civilian practice, it probably would number well over a thousand, since we had over 900 admissions to the hospital in Paris.
---30---
OK, so Shaw was not only educated in medicine, he was a (very) practicing doctor in the exact field of thoracic bullet wounds.
(I consider myself a layman in these matters, so I defer to Shaw. I understand many JFKA buffs have knowledge and experience that exceed that of Dr. Shaw.)
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Here Shaw ponders the very low probability that a missile first traveling through Gov. JBC's chest could then penetrate the dorsal (wristwatch) wide of JBC's wrist, and then exit the volar (palm) side:
Mr. SPECTER. He (Dr. Gregory) has described that he concluded that the wound of entry was on the dorsal aspect of the (Connally's) right wrist, but your thought was that perhaps that was the wound of exit?
Dr. SHAW. Yes; in trying to reconstruct the position of Governor Connally’s body, sitting in the jump seat of the limousine, and the attitude that he would assume in turning to the right---this motion would naturally bring the volar surface of the right wrist in contact with the anterior portion of the right chest.
SPECTER. Well, is your principal reason for thinking that the wound on the dorsal aspect is a wound of exit rather than a wound of entry because of what you consider to be the awkward position in having the dorsal aspect of the wrist either pointing upward or toward the chest?
Dr. SHAW. Yes, I think I am influenced a great deal by the fact that in trying to assume this position. I can’t comfortably turn my arm into a position that would explain the wound of the dorsal surface of the wrist as a wound of entrance, knowing that the missile came out of the chest and assuming that one missile caused both the chest wound and the arm wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Might not then that conclusion be affected if you discard the assumption that one missile caused all the wounds?
Dr. SHAW. Yes, if two missiles struck the Governor, then it would not be necessary to assume that the larger wound (on the volar side) is the wound of entrance.
---30---
OK, so Shaw says if a second missile struck Gov. JBC, then the wound to the dorsal side of his wrist is explicable. OK, that is informative.
Add on:
Dr. SHAW. Yes; I feel that the line of trajectory as marked on this diagram (Specter's SBT diagram) is accurate as it could be placed from my memory of this wound.
Mr. SPECTER. And, on that trajectory; how do you postulate the bullet then passed through the wrist from dorsal to volar or from volar to dorsal?
Dr. SHAW. My postulation would be from volar to dorsal.
---30---
So Shaw again posits a slug exiting JBC's chest likely could have only entered the volar (opposite of wristwatch) side of JBC's wrist. Yet Dr. Gregory, the wrist surgeon, concluded the slug had entered JBC's wrist on the dorsal side, then exited through the volar. Dr. Shaw, upon conversing with Dr. Gregory, accepted Gregory's analysis of the wrist wound.
So how did Gov. JBC receive his wrist wound?
I don't know. The reasonable explanation is the JBC's wrist wound was not inflicted by the slug that passed through JBC's chest first.
Interesting side note:
Evidently, the slug that entered JBC's thigh actually left metallic fragments on his femur (the major leg bone in the thigh), according to the WC testimony of Dr. Shaw.
So...how did this missile, embedded in JBC's leg all the way to the bone...exit his body? If it was removed in surgery, then it would have been placed in an envelope and given to police, as every hospital everywhere did then and now.
Yet we are told CE-399 caused this injury to JBC, thus was embedded near his thigh-bone, but was later found in a hallway outside Trauma Room 2, underneath a gurney.
The Parkland hospital employee Tomlimson found a pointy-head slug in the hallway, by the report of O.P. Wright, former police chief and then hospital administrator. Does this CE-399 story hold water?
In one of the most important homicide and attempted murder cases of all time, Parkland Hospital Trauma Room 2 doctors, attendants and nurses...just let a slug, removed from JBC's thigh...get lost?
Topic: The Interesting Dr. Robert Shaw (Read 141 times)