JFK's Throat Wound Was an Entrance Wound: Refuting the Shored-Wound Theory

[Jack Nessan]

The question is the same. How about if you are not able to understand it or answer it, maybe just state why you won't. All of this make-believe information and supposed expert opinion from half-baked pseudo experts is pathetic, not impressive. Apparently not one of them could think past his nose and ask themselves the important question about JBC's wounding.

You want someone to ask you a question. How about just repeat to you the question you are dodging and afraid to answer.

Once again, the same old random nonsense and unbelievably loose with the facts. How do you explain Gov Connally's wounds if the bullet does not first pass through JFK?

[Michael T. Griffith]

Now is a good time to discuss the HSCA testimony of Richard Lipsey. Lipsey was an aide to Major General Philip Wehle, the commanding general of the military district of Washington, D.C. Lipsey was ordered by Wehle to monitor JFK's body during the autopsy. Lipsey arrived at the autopsy just before the body was taken out of the casket, and he remained in the autopsy room long after Sibert and O'Neill left. Lipsey noted that he was about 12-15 feet from the autopsy table.

Lipsey confirmed that the autopsy doctors found that the back wound had no exit point. He said the doctors were "bound and determined to find that bullet because it didn't have an exit mark" (HSCA interview: Richard Lipsey, 1/18/78, p. 5). He said they spent some two hours trying to find the back-wound bullet (p. 7). He described how the doctors opened the chest cavity and removed all the chest organs (pp. 8, 13-14). Said Lipsey,

. . . then they cut his chest open, you know, and they got all of his insides out, that was the only gory part, they took them out a piece at a time and laid them up on, I remember, a beautiful clean stainless steel rack. . . .

I remember they were bound and determined to find that bullet because it didn't have an exit mark. . . .

But the one that I remember they spent so much time on, obviously, was the one they found did not come out. There was a bullet -- that's my vivid recollection cause that's all they talked about. For about two hours all they talked about was finding that bullet.

They turned the body up at one point to determine where that bullet that entered back here that didn't have an exit mark. Where was that bullet? And so when it got to down to where they thought it hit his chest cavity, they opened him up and started looking in here. That's why I remember one thing, they took, after they had taken all his organs out, during the autopsy they had them sitting up there: "Now let's see if we can find the bullet". . . .(pp. 5, 7, 8, 14)

In a fascinating twist, Lipsey said the doctors concluded that the bullet that hit low in the back of the head had exited the throat (pp. 7, 20). This is a revealing datum because we know from the 1/27/64 WC executive session transcript that one of the first drafts of the autopsy report said a fragment from the head shot exited the throat, that the throat wound was the exit point for a head-shot fragment. This is also further proof that the pathologists knew about the throat wound during the autopsy.

This datum is also important because it is further evidence that the rear head entry wound was near the EOP/hairline, as the autopsy doctors reported, and not 4 inches higher above the lambda in the parietal bone. Lipsey said the wound was in the "upper neck/lower part of your head" and "in the hairline" (pp. 22). Lipsey several times spoke of the area just above the hairline as being part of the "upper neck," but he clarified this to mean "lower part of your head."

BTW, Lipsey said there was visible damage to JFK's face but that the face looked "great" after the morticians did their reconstruction work. He said the visible facial damage included considerable loss of structure, and that the damaged area included the right eye, the right forehead, and an area slightly beyond the hairline (pp. 6-7).

Now this is mighty interesting because this is the damage you'd expect to see in the "stare of death" autopsy photo, given the frontal-bone damage shown in the skull x-rays. No wonder Smithsonian Institution forensic anthropologist Dr. Doug Ubelaker told the ARRB that "the apparent absence of bone in much of the anterior portion of these x-rays seems inconsistent with the intact appearance of the right forehead in the photos" (ARRB meeting report: Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, 1/26/96, p. 2).

Lipsey's testimony is also crucial because he heard the autopsy doctors talking about a wound scenario after Sibert and O'Neill left the autopsy room that was different from the one the doctors had conveyed shortly before Sibert and O'Neill had departed. Lipsey said the autopsy doctors concluded that three bullets hit JFK: one on the right side of the head, one just above the hairline, and one in the lower part of the neck. Dr. David Mantik:

Horne’s clue to this changing story came from a 1978 HSCA interview with Richard Lipsey, the former military aide to the commanding general of the military district of Washington, General Philip C. Wehle. Horne emphasized that in 1978, Lipsey “was very certain of his recollections—his oral account is noteworthy for the conviction with which he recounted his memories.” He continued: “Mr. Lipsey relayed an account that is different from both the Sibert-O’Neill report, and from the autopsy now present in the Archives, CE 387.” He then stressed the following:

"It is a virtual certainty that the autopsy conclusions he [Richard Lipsey] was privy to were identical with the contents of the first draft of the autopsy which was reviewed by Drs. Humes, Boswell, and [Robert O.] Canada [the commanding officer of the naval medical hospital at Bethesda] on Saturday, November 23rd, and which was destroyed less than twenty four hours later in the fireplace of James J. Humes."

According to Lipsey, sometime after midnight -- and after the two FBI agents had disappeared -- the pathologists declared that JFK had been hit by three shots from behind. That first autopsy draft had concluded that the sole headshot had “entered the back of the head and blew out part of the right side of the skull, creating one large defect that represented both the bullet’s entrance and exit.” It also concluded that a “second bullet entered very high up on the back of the neck, just inside the hairline [i.e., on the back of the head between the hairline and the EOP], and exited from the throat” -- and a “third bullet entered at the bottom of the neck, or high in the back, and did not exit.”

Horne asked a critical question: “Why didn’t the autopsy conclusions, reported by Richard Lipsey, and committed to writing in the first draft of the autopsy report, become the official conclusions?” He elucidated:

"The answer to this question, I believe, is a simple one. By the time Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Canada met and reviewed the draft autopsy report on Saturday, November 23rd, the entire nation, and indeed the world, had become aware that one shot had missed, and had wounded bystander James Tague in the cheek, after striking a curb on Main Street in Dealey Plaza. This account was in the Dallas newspapers Saturday morning, and 'hit the wire' the same day, thus becoming available to newspapers (and radio stations) all across the country. This meant that the autopsy conclusions witnessed by Richard Lipsey could not stand, for the central conclusion reached by the pathologists after midnight was that the President had been hit by three shots.

"It was for this reason that the autopsy conclusions witnessed by Richard Lipsey, and likely memorialized in the first written draft of the autopsy protocol, did not last for even 24 hours. Because any report that postulated that President Kennedy had been hit by three bullets was now contradicted by ‘the facts on the ground.’ James J. Humes destroyed the first draft of the autopsy protocol, along with any notes indicating three shots hit the President, in his fireplace before dawn on Sunday November 24th, 1963. In response to the missed shot that hit James Tague, the autopsy conclusions now evolved back into a two-hit scenario, but one which now accounted for the bullet wound in the anterior neck." [Quoting Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB, Vol. 3, pp. 856-857, 863]

According to Lipsey, sometime after midnight -- and after the two FBI agents had disappeared -- the pathologists declared that JFK had been hit by three shots from behind. That first autopsy draft had concluded that the sole headshot had “entered the back of the head and blew out part of the right side of the skull, creating one large defect that represented both the bullet’s entrance and exit.” It also concluded that a “second bullet entered very high up on the back of the neck, just inside the hairline, and exited from the throat”—and a “third bullet entered at the bottom of the neck, or high in the back, and did not exit.” (The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis, 2024, pp. 59-61)

[John Corbett]

Now is a good time to discuss the HSCA testimony of Richard Lipsey. Lipsey was an aide to Major General Philip Wehle, the commanding general of the military district of Washington, D.C. Lipsey was ordered by Wehle to monitor JFK's body during the autopsy. Lipsey arrived at the autopsy just before the body was taken out of the casket, and he remained in the autopsy room long after Sibert and O'Neill left. Lipsey noted that he was about 12-15 feet from the autopsy table.

Lipsey confirmed that the autopsy doctors found that the back wound had no exit point. He said the doctors were "bound and determined to find that bullet because it didn't have an exit mark" (HSCA interview: Richard Lipsey, 1/18/78, p. 5). He said they spent some two hours trying to find the back-wound bullet (p. 7). He described how the doctors opened the chest cavity and removed all the chest organs (pp. 8, 13-14). Said Lipsey,

. . . then they cut his chest open, you know, and they got all of his insides out, that was the only gory part, they took them out a piece at a time and laid them up on, I remember, a beautiful clean stainless steel rack. . . .

I remember they were bound and determined to find that bullet because it didn't have an exit mark. . . .

But the one that I remember they spent so much time on, obviously, was the one they found did not come out. There was a bullet -- that's my vivid recollection cause that's all they talked about. For about two hours all they talked about was finding that bullet.

They turned the body up at one point to determine where that bullet that entered back here that didn't have an exit mark. Where was that bullet? And so when it got to down to where they thought it hit his chest cavity, they opened him up and started looking in here. That's why I remember one thing, they took, after they had taken all his organs out, during the autopsy they had them sitting up there: "Now let's see if we can find the bullet". . . .(pp. 5, 7, 8, 14)

In a fascinating twist, Lipsey said the doctors concluded that the bullet that hit low in the back of the head had exited the throat (pp. 7, 20). This is a revealing datum because we know from the 1/27/64 WC executive session transcript that one of the first drafts of the autopsy report said a fragment from the head shot exited the throat, that the throat wound was the exit point for a head-shot fragment. This is also further proof that the pathologists knew about the throat wound during the autopsy.

This datum is also important because it is further evidence that the rear head entry wound was near the EOP/hairline, as the autopsy doctors reported, and not 4 inches higher above the lambda in the parietal bone. Lipsey said the wound was in the "upper neck/lower part of your head" and "in the hairline" (pp. 22). Lipsey several times spoke of the area just above the hairline as being part of the "upper neck," but he clarified this to mean "lower part of your head."

BTW, Lipsey said there was visible damage to JFK's face but that the face looked "great" after the morticians did their reconstruction work. He said the visible facial damage included considerable loss of structure, and that the damaged area included the right eye, the right forehead, and an area slightly beyond the hairline (pp. 6-7).

Now this is mighty interesting because this is the damage you'd expect to see in the "stare of death" autopsy photo, given the frontal-bone damage shown in the skull x-rays. No wonder Smithsonian Institution forensic anthropologist Dr. Doug Ubelaker told the ARRB that "the apparent absence of bone in much of the anterior portion of these x-rays seems inconsistent with the intact appearance of the right forehead in the photos" (ARRB meeting report: Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, 1/26/96, p. 2).

Lipsey's testimony is also crucial because he heard the autopsy doctors talking about a wound scenario after Sibert and O'Neill left the autopsy room that was different from the one the doctors had conveyed shortly before Sibert and O'Neill had departed. Lipsey said the autopsy doctors concluded that three bullets hit JFK: one on the right side of the head, one just above the hairline, and one in the lower part of the neck. Dr. David Mantik:

Horne’s clue to this changing story came from a 1978 HSCA interview with Richard Lipsey, the former military aide to the commanding general of the military district of Washington, General Philip C. Wehle. Horne emphasized that in 1978, Lipsey “was very certain of his recollections—his oral account is noteworthy for the conviction with which he recounted his memories.” He continued: “Mr. Lipsey relayed an account that is different from both the Sibert-O’Neill report, and from the autopsy now present in the Archives, CE 387.” He then stressed the following:

"It is a virtual certainty that the autopsy conclusions he [Richard Lipsey] was privy to were identical with the contents of the first draft of the autopsy which was reviewed by Drs. Humes, Boswell, and [Robert O.] Canada [the commanding officer of the naval medical hospital at Bethesda] on Saturday, November 23rd, and which was destroyed less than twenty four hours later in the fireplace of James J. Humes."

According to Lipsey, sometime after midnight -- and after the two FBI agents had disappeared -- the pathologists declared that JFK had been hit by three shots from behind. That first autopsy draft had concluded that the sole headshot had “entered the back of the head and blew out part of the right side of the skull, creating one large defect that represented both the bullet’s entrance and exit.” It also concluded that a “second bullet entered very high up on the back of the neck, just inside the hairline [i.e., on the back of the head between the hairline and the EOP], and exited from the throat” -- and a “third bullet entered at the bottom of the neck, or high in the back, and did not exit.”

Horne asked a critical question: “Why didn’t the autopsy conclusions, reported by Richard Lipsey, and committed to writing in the first draft of the autopsy report, become the official conclusions?” He elucidated:

"The answer to this question, I believe, is a simple one. By the time Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Canada met and reviewed the draft autopsy report on Saturday, November 23rd, the entire nation, and indeed the world, had become aware that one shot had missed, and had wounded bystander James Tague in the cheek, after striking a curb on Main Street in Dealey Plaza. This account was in the Dallas newspapers Saturday morning, and 'hit the wire' the same day, thus becoming available to newspapers (and radio stations) all across the country. This meant that the autopsy conclusions witnessed by Richard Lipsey could not stand, for the central conclusion reached by the pathologists after midnight was that the President had been hit by three shots.

"It was for this reason that the autopsy conclusions witnessed by Richard Lipsey, and likely memorialized in the first written draft of the autopsy protocol, did not last for even 24 hours. Because any report that postulated that President Kennedy had been hit by three bullets was now contradicted by ‘the facts on the ground.’ James J. Humes destroyed the first draft of the autopsy protocol, along with any notes indicating three shots hit the President, in his fireplace before dawn on Sunday November 24th, 1963. In response to the missed shot that hit James Tague, the autopsy conclusions now evolved back into a two-hit scenario, but one which now accounted for the bullet wound in the anterior neck." [Quoting Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB, Vol. 3, pp. 856-857, 863]

According to Lipsey, sometime after midnight -- and after the two FBI agents had disappeared -- the pathologists declared that JFK had been hit by three shots from behind. That first autopsy draft had concluded that the sole headshot had “entered the back of the head and blew out part of the right side of the skull, creating one large defect that represented both the bullet’s entrance and exit.” It also concluded that a “second bullet entered very high up on the back of the neck, just inside the hairline, and exited from the throat”—and a “third bullet entered at the bottom of the neck, or high in the back, and did not exit.” (The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis, 2024, pp. 59-61)

MTG remains stuck in neutral. He can't get past the early erroneous observation of "no exit" which the autopsy team abandoned once they opened up the chest as saw that there was a clear trail of tissue damage leading from the back entrance wound to the tracheostomy incision in the throat. When they observed the damaged trachea which was just short of the incision, they only logical conclusion at that point was the bullet had exited there. Of course they would need to confirm that with Dr. Perry which apparently they did. MTG insists they have to stick with the early observation of "no exit" and ignore that trail of tissue damage which led to a much different conclusion than the idea they floated earlier.

As is his custom, MTG turns to the least qualified person in the room to bolster his desired beliefs and ignore what the prosectors discovered during the remaining hours of the autopsy and in their communications with Perry. What an asinine way to analyze the autopsy results but that is what we have come to expect from MTG.

[Michael T. Griffith]

One of the biggest problems with the single-bullet theory (SBT) is that there were far too many bullet fragments in Governor John Connally's body to have come from CE 399.

Although Dr. Charles Gregory later said the fragments removed from Connally's wrist were merely "flakes of metal" and that they weighed less than a postage stamp, there didn't seem to be any question about the wrist fragments in the first hours and days after the shooting. Dr. Gregory's own 11/22/63 Parkland Hospital operative record states that "small bits of metal were encountered at various levels" of the wrist wound, and that "wherever they were identified and could be picked up were picked up and have been submitted to the pathology department for identification and examination" (CE 392; 2 H 375).

This squares with Nurse Audrey Bell's account of the wrist fragments. Nurse Bell was the nurse who handled the bullet fragments that were removed from the governor's wrist. She insisted the fragments were not merely flakes but were identifiable pieces of metal anywhere from 3 to 4 mm in length and about 2 mm wide. 3-4 mm x 2 mm fragments are not large fragments, but they are certainly not flakes either. She said there were four or five fragments of this size removed from the wrist.

This, in turn, squares with the recollection of one of Connally's other surgeons, Dr. Robert Shaw. Interviewed for the award-winning 1988 documentary Reasonable Doubt: The Single-Bullet Theory, Shaw said,

I am sure that the bullet that inflicted these wounds on Governor Connally was fragmented much more than this bullet [CE 399] shows.

Dr. Pierre Finck, the only forensic pathologist at the autopsy, told the WC that CE 399 could not have been the bullet that hit Connally's wrist because there were many fragments described as being in the wrist:

Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Finck, have you had an opportunity to examine Commission’s Exhibit 399? . . . And could it have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally’s right wrist?

Colonel FINCK. No; for the reason that there are too many fragments described in that wrist. (2 H 382)

Similarly, Dr. James Humes, the chief pathologist at the autopsy, understood the clear implications of Dr. Gregory's 11/22/63 operative record. Dr. Humes was asked if CE 399 could have been either the missile that struck the head or the one that hit Connally's wrist. He replied in the negative in both cases and cited the operative record as the basis for his conclusion about the wrist bullet, saying he thought it was "most unlikely" that CE 399 could be the bullet that hit the wrist:

Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, I show you a bullet which we have marked as Commission Exhibit No. 399. . . . Now looking at that bullet, Exhibit 399, Doctor Humes, could that bullet have gone through or been any part of the fragment passing through President Kennedy's head in Exhibit No. 388?

Commander HUMES. I do not believe so, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. And could that missile have made the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?

Commander HUMES. I think that that is most unlikely. May I expand on those two answers?

Mr. SPECTER. Yes, please do.

Commander HUMES. The X-rays made of the wound in the head of the late President showed fragmentations of the missile. Some fragments we recovered and turned over, as has been previously noted. Also we have X-rays of the fragment of skull which was in the region of our opinion exit wound showing metallic fragments.

Also going to Exhibit 392, the report from Parkland Hospital, the following sentence referring to the examination of the wound of the wrist is found: "Small bits of metal were encountered at various levels throughout the wound, and these were, wherever they were identified and could be picked up, picked up and submitted to the pathology department for identification and examination."

The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket appears to me to be intact, and I do not understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of these locations. (2 H 374-375)

Also, we should keep in mind that there were at least two other fragments left in Connally's body: one was left in his chest and another was left in his thigh. Where in the devil could those fragments have come from CE 399?   

Remember, too, that the FBI's Robert Frazier told the WC that CE 399 may not have lost any of its substance, and that at the most it lost less than 4 grains of its substance. To give you some idea of what a microscopic amount of material we're talking about, 4 grains is less than 83/10,000ths of a troy ounce or less than 0.0083 troy ounces.

Finally, notice that Humes acknowledged that CE 399 is "basically intact," and that its jacket "appears  to me to be intact." Recall that Frazier told the WC that CE 399 is only "slightly flattened or twisted" and that this slight damage "is hardly visible unless you look at the base of the bullet and notice it is not round" (3 H 429). Yet this bullet supposedly tore through seven layers of skin, shattered a rib bone, and shattered a distal radius bone.

[John Corbett]

One of the biggest problems with the single-bullet theory (SBT) is that there were far too many bullet fragments in Governor John Connally's body to have come from CE 399.

A lie.

Although Dr. Charles Gregory later said the fragments removed from Connally's wrist were merely "flakes of metal" and that they weighed less than a postage stamp, there didn't seem to be any question about the wrist fragments in the first hours and days after the shooting. Dr. Gregory's own 11/22/63 Parkland Hospital operative record states that "small bits of metal were encountered at various levels" of the wrist wound, and that "wherever they were identified and could be picked up were picked up and have been submitted to the pathology department for identification and examination" (CE 392; 2 H 375).

This squares with Nurse Audrey Bell's account of the wrist fragments. Nurse Bell was the nurse who handled the bullet fragments that were removed from the governor's wrist. She insisted the fragments were not merely flakes but were identifiable pieces of metal anywhere from 3 to 4 mm in length and about 2 mm wide. 3-4 mm x 2 mm fragments are not large fragments, but they are certainly not flakes either. She said there were four or five fragments of this size removed from the wrist.

This, in turn, squares with the recollection of one of Connally's other surgeons, Dr. Robert Shaw. Interviewed for the award-winning 1988 documentary Reasonable Doubt: The Single-Bullet Theory, Shaw said,

I am sure that the bullet that inflicted these wounds on Governor Connally was fragmented much more than this bullet [CE 399] shows.

Shaw was a surgeon, not a ballistics expert but MTG doesn't care.

Dr. Pierre Finck, the only forensic pathologist at the autopsy, told the WC that CE 399 could not have been the bullet that hit Connally's wrist because there were many fragments described as being in the wrist:

Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Finck, have you had an opportunity to examine Commission’s Exhibit 399? . . . And could it have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally’s right wrist?

Colonel FINCK. No; for the reason that there are too many fragments described in that wrist. (2 H 382)

Finck was not present at Connally's surgery. How the hell would he know? Did he weigh the fragments and/or CE399? The only way Finck's statement would make sense is if the weight of the fragments plus the weight of CE399 weighed more than an unfired Carcano bullet(160-161 grains).

Similarly, Dr. James Humes, the chief pathologist at the autopsy, understood the clear implications of Dr. Gregory's 11/22/63 operative record. Dr. Humes was asked if CE 399 could have been either the missile that struck the head or the one that hit Connally's wrist. He replied in the negative in both cases and cited the operative record as the basis for his conclusion about the wrist bullet, saying he thought it was "most unlikely" that CE 399 could be the bullet that hit the wrist:

Why would MTG cite Humes when Humes wasn't present at Connally's surgery nor is he a ballistics expert? MTG has never cared about things like that. As long as someone says something that supports his silly narratives, that's good enough for him. No critical thinking involved.

Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, I show you a bullet which we have marked as Commission Exhibit No. 399. . . . Now looking at that bullet, Exhibit 399, Doctor Humes, could that bullet have gone through or been any part of the fragment passing through President Kennedy's head in Exhibit No. 388?

Commander HUMES. I do not believe so, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. And could that missile have made the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?

Commander HUMES. I think that that is most unlikely. May I expand on those two answers?

Mr. SPECTER. Yes, please do.

Commander HUMES. The X-rays made of the wound in the head of the late President showed fragmentations of the missile. Some fragments we recovered and turned over, as has been previously noted. Also we have X-rays of the fragment of skull which was in the region of our opinion exit wound showing metallic fragments.

Nobody has proposed that CE399 was the headshot.

Also going to Exhibit 392, the report from Parkland Hospital, the following sentence referring to the examination of the wound of the wrist is found: "Small bits of metal were encountered at various levels throughout the wound, and these were, wherever they were identified and could be picked up, picked up and submitted to the pathology department for identification and examination."

The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket appears to me to be intact, and I do not understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of these locations. (2 H 374-375)[/font]

Humes was not an expert in ballistics. His pathology work was done primally on patients who had died from cancer or heart ailments, not gunshot wounds.

]

Also, we should keep in mind that there were at least two other fragments left in Connally's body: one was left in his chest and another was left in his thigh. Where in the devil could those fragments have come from CE 399? [/quote[

Still doesn't establish that there were more lead fragments in Connally's body than were missing from CE399.

 

Remember, too, that the FBI's Robert Frazier told the WC that CE 399 may not have lost any of its substance, and that at the most it lost less than 4 grains of its substance. To give you some idea of what a microscopic amount of material we're talking about, 4 grains is less than 83/10,000ths of a troy ounce or less than 0.0083 troy ounces.

The only way to establish if more lead was in Connally's body than was missing from CE399 by weighing both the fragments and CE399. Did anybody do that? Didn't think so.

Finally, notice that Humes acknowledged that CE 399 is "basically intact," and that its jacket "appears  to me to be intact." Recall that Frazier told the WC that CE 399 is only "slightly flattened or twisted" and that this slight damage "is hardly visible unless you look at the base of the bullet and notice it is not round" (3 H 429). Yet this bullet supposedly tore through seven layers of skin, shattered a rib bone, and shattered a distal radius bone.

MTG continues to fall back on the same myths he was hawking back in 1991. The reason  CE399 is flattened at the base and not the nose is because it had tumbled before striking rib or wrist bone. It had also been slowed by passing through two torsos before striking any bone. Not hard to figure out when you weigh all the available information.

[Michael T. Griffith]

I think now is a good time to quote from British physiologist Russell Kent's superb refutation of the single-bullet theory (SBT) in his outstanding 2022 book JFK Medical Betrayal: Where the Evidence Lies. Recall that Dr. Vincent DiMaio changed his mind about his earlier acceptance of the SBT after extensive correspondence with Russell Kent.

Dr. Cyril Wecht wrote the foreword for Kent's book. Here's some of what Dr. Wecht had to say about Kent's research:

Russell Kent does not stop in his excellent research with the autopsy debacle. He proceeds to analyze, dissect, and discuss each of the subsequent medical reviews established and implemented in an official fashion by a US governmental agency, beginning with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the bipartisan Warren Commission in the months after the murder. . . .

JFK Medical Betrayal reviews in a candid, no-nonsense, detailed fashion all of those investigations, leaving no stone unturned in critically exposing the various kinds and levels of a cover-up that the US Government has passively accepted over the past five decades. Anyone who has harbored an interest in the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, including readers with no medical, legal, or forensic science education, will find JFK Medical Betrayal an intriguing, informative, intellectually enjoyable book. (p. 8 )

And now let's read some of what Kent says about the SBT:

The Warren Commission concluded that the single bullet, which it labelled CE399, caused a perforating wound when passing through JFK’s neck entering ‘at the base of the back of his neck’ and exiting his throat. There was, however, nothing to prove the wound in his back and the one in his throat were connected.

Humes tried to claim that a small bruise he described in the top right lung of the President was supportive, but it could not show direction of wounding and could equally have been caused by an entrance in the throat. Furthermore, the photograph he claimed to have of this injury is missing. The autopsy doctors did not dissect the path of the bullet. They did not cut away the skin, muscle and organs of the neck to reveal a bullet track. . . .

‘The base of the back of his neck’ description of the entry wound might also fail legal challenge as these words came not from a doctor, but from Warren Commissioner and future President Gerald Ford. The President’s autopsy report more correctly described it as a back wound and not a neck wound. Furthermore, two other documents supported the back location: The autopsy ‘face sheet’ completed by Dr. Boswell marked ‘verified’ by Admiral Burkley and JFK’s US Navy death certificate, also prepared by Burkley. JFK’s clothing also showed holes in the back and the physical evidence was corroborated by the eyewitness statement of Secret Service Agent Bennett and the testimony of Secret Service Agent Hill. How could a bullet fired from several floors up enter JFK’s back and then exit the midline of his throat? It would have to travel upwards from the lower wound to the higher and its trajectory could not continue into Connally’s back. . . .

Even with all this manipulation of evidence, which would never have gone unchallenged in a legitimate court, the Warren Commission could not make it fit. The lawyers had a theory and a magic bullet, but even some of the commissioners had doubts about it. What they needed was some experimental evidence, and it had to be generated in secrecy in case it was incompatible. Who better to ask than the US Army who had a research centre just up the I-95 from Washington DC at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland? Surely, they could clean up for the legal team. . . .

The tests involved the penetration characteristics of only Western Cartridge Company 6.5 mm rounds fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano, the appearance of resulting entrance and exit wounds, whether such rounds could produce the wounds seen in Governor Connally, the integrity of fired rounds and whether the JFK head wound could be ‘recreated’. Olivier dutifully performed the tests he was asked to run and in May 1964 testified to the Warren Commission.     

For ‘proving’ the possibility of the single-bullet theory, the experiments were almost worthless. Not only were they unscientific but breaking down a continuous event into discrete episodes will not necessarily prove the whole.

The Edgewood Arsenal Report states that a tissue-retardation study was done to determine the velocity lost when a 6.5 mm bullet passes through an amount of tissue equivalent to the distance travelled in the lower neck of the President. The testers concluded that the bullet that wounded JFK in the neck had sufficient remaining velocity to account for all Connally’s wounds. Apart from there being no hint of the word ‘alleged’, this is entirely the wrong experiment.

There should have been a test to answer the following question: could a shot through the neck exit in the midline of the throat without major damage to the spine? The Edgewood doctors had no answer to this as, remarkably, their experiment contained no bone. If the Commission’s proposed shot could not exit the front of the throat without damaging the spine, the single-bullet theory cannot be the truth. And, indeed, this is the case.

Many years later, using a CAT scan of a body whose upper chest and neck dimensions were the same as those of JFK, Dr. David Mantik (a radiation oncologist with a doctorate in physics) found that the trajectory proposed by the Warren Commission would hit the cervical (neck) vertebrae. Remember too, the passage of a bullet through JFK from back to front was never proven, only presumed. . . .

A third Edgewood Arsenal test involved shooting the wrists of 10 human cadavers to see whether Connally’s wrist wounds could be produced using the alleged assassination rifle and ammunition. Briefly stated, the wounds could not be recreated. The damage done to the cadavers’ wrists was always greater than the damage done to Connally.

Olivier decided this was because the bullet was moving more slowly when it hit Connally’s wrist. He speculated that deceleration had occurred when the bullet perforated Connally’s chest. No consideration was given to whether a different bullet, fired from a different weapon at a different range might also have produced the same results.

The entrance wounds in the tests were always smaller than the exit wounds, whereas the reverse was true in Connally. Olivier concluded this was because in Connally’s case the bullet was yawing (travelling more sideways than end on). But in his tests, the bullet always hit the wrist nose-first. Where were the tests for yawing bullets through cadaver wrists? There were none. . . . 

A further test was to see whether a Western Cartridge Company 6.5 mm, copper-jacketed bullet could break a rib and remain unscathed. The testers shot 11 anaesthetised goats, X-rayed their chests, and collected the bullets. Only one such experiment was presented to the Warren Commission, probably because the results most closely matched the desired outcome (fractured rib and intact bullet). Disreputable as this is, even here the intact bullet (CE853) was far more flattened than the alleged single bullet from the JFK assassination (CE399). All the bullets fired should have been exhibits, but we are left to wonder about the condition of the other 10 unfortunate animals and the rounds that injured them. . . .

As the Edgewood Arsenal tests were about to begin in April 1964, to help deal with the incompatible medical conclusions, the Commission convened two conferences. An honest investigation would have noted that the memoranda of these meetings caused more problems for the single-bullet theory than they solved. Instead, they were then hidden and never referred to in the Commission report.

Warren Commission lawyer Norman Redlich and Assistant Counsels Melvin A Eisenberg, and Specter held the meetings on 14 April and 21 April 1964. At the first, according to Eisenberg, a group met, ‘to determine which frames in the Zapruder film portray the instants at which the first and second bullets struck.’     Drs. Boswell, Finck and Humes (JFK’s autopsy surgeons) were there. The FBI was represented by Inspector Leo J. Gauthier, Inspector James R Malley, photography expert Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt and two others whose names are not given. John Howlett (from the Dallas office) and Thomas Kelley (later Assistant Director) appeared on behalf of the Secret Service. Edgewood Arsenal sent along Drs Light and Olivier.

Eisenberg produced a three-page memo destructive of the single-bullet theory. It explained that ‘. . . the bullet recovered from Governor Connally’s stretcher does not appear to have penetrated a wrist.’     The memo also suggested the facts better match a different theory regarding Connally, ‘. . . if he was hit by this (the first) bullet, he was probably also hit by the second bullet.’     

Of the 15 people there on 14 April 1964, including five doctors (three of whom were experts in wounds) and two FBI photographic experts, only Specter, the Warren Commission enthusiast of the single-bullet theory, believed JFK’s alleged neck wound and all of Connally’s wounds were caused by the same bullet.

Present at the second meeting on 21 April 1964 were Mr. and Mrs. Connally along with Dr. Charles F Gregory and Dr. Robert R Shaw, the doctors who had treated Connally in Dallas and had the closest look at his wounds. The FBI sent along Gauthier, Shaneyfelt, and one other unidentified agent. Assistant Counsel David W. Belin, Eisenberg, Warren Commissioner John J McCloy, General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, Redlich and Specter represented the Warren Commission. From Edgewood Arsenal, there was Drs. Dolce, Light, and Olivier.

This time, Eisenberg produced a two-page memo which, again, the Warren Commission could not find room to include. Once more, the memo was troublesome for the single-bullet theory, particularly the final paragraph. ‘In a discussion after the conference, Drs. Light and Dolce expressed themselves as being very strongly of the opinion that Connally had been hit by two different bullets, principally on the ground that the bullet recovered from Connally’s stretcher could not have broken his radius without having suffered more distortion.’     

Of the 16 people there, including five doctors, all of whom were experts in bullet wounds, Specter alone believed the single-bullet theory. (pp. 40-41, 45, 47-48, 50-53, emphasis added)

[John Corbett]

I think now is a good time to quote from British physiologist Russell Kent's superb refutation of the single-bullet theory (SBT) in his outstanding 2022 book JFK Medical Betrayal: Where the Evidence Lies. Recall that Dr. Vincent DiMaio changed his mind about his earlier acceptance of the SBT after extensive correspondence with Russell Kent.

We only have MTG's word for this since he never provides an actual quote from Di Maio in which he recants his acceptance of the SBT. I suspect he is spinning something Di Maio said about wounds in general and was not speaking to the validity of the SBT.".

Dr. Cyril Wecht wrote the foreword for Kent's book. Here's some of what Dr. Wecht had to say about Kent's research:

Russell Kent does not stop in his excellent research with the autopsy debacle. He proceeds to analyze, dissect, and discuss each of the subsequent medical reviews established and implemented in an official fashion by a US governmental agency, beginning with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the bipartisan Warren Commission in the months after the murder. . . .

JFK Medical Betrayal reviews in a candid, no-nonsense, detailed fashion all of those investigations, leaving no stone unturned in critically exposing the various kinds and levels of a cover-up that the US Government has passively accepted over the past five decades. Anyone who has harbored an interest in the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, including readers with no medical, legal, or forensic science education, will find JFK Medical Betrayal an intriguing, informative, intellectually enjoyable book. (p. 8 )

And now let's read some of what Kent says about the SBT:

The Warren Commission concluded that the single bullet, which it labelled CE399, caused a perforating wound when passing through JFK’s neck entering ‘at the base of the back of his neck’ and exiting his throat. There was, however, nothing to prove the wound in his back and the one in his throat were connected.

Humes tried to claim that a small bruise he described in the top right lung of the President was supportive, but it could not show direction of wounding and could equally have been caused by an entrance in the throat. Furthermore, the photograph he claimed to have of this injury is missing. The autopsy doctors did not dissect the path of the bullet. They did not cut away the skin, muscle and organs of the neck to reveal a bullet track. . . .

‘The base of the back of his neck’ description of the entry wound might also fail legal challenge as these words came not from a doctor, but from Warren Commissioner and future President Gerald Ford. The President’s autopsy report more correctly described it as a back wound and not a neck wound. Furthermore, two other documents supported the back location: The autopsy ‘face sheet’ completed by Dr. Boswell marked ‘verified’ by Admiral Burkley and JFK’s US Navy death certificate, also prepared by Burkley. JFK’s clothing also showed holes in the back and the physical evidence was corroborated by the eyewitness statement of Secret Service Agent Bennett and the testimony of Secret Service Agent Hill. How could a bullet fired from several floors up enter JFK’s back and then exit the midline of his throat? It would have to travel upwards from the lower wound to the higher and its trajectory could not continue into Connally’s back. . . .

Even with all this manipulation of evidence, which would never have gone unchallenged in a legitimate court, the Warren Commission could not make it fit. The lawyers had a theory and a magic bullet, but even some of the commissioners had doubts about it. What they needed was some experimental evidence, and it had to be generated in secrecy in case it was incompatible. Who better to ask than the US Army who had a research centre just up the I-95 from Washington DC at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland? Surely, they could clean up for the legal team. . . .

The tests involved the penetration characteristics of only Western Cartridge Company 6.5 mm rounds fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano, the appearance of resulting entrance and exit wounds, whether such rounds could produce the wounds seen in Governor Connally, the integrity of fired rounds and whether the JFK head wound could be ‘recreated’. Olivier dutifully performed the tests he was asked to run and in May 1964 testified to the Warren Commission.     

For ‘proving’ the possibility of the single-bullet theory, the experiments were almost worthless. Not only were they unscientific but breaking down a continuous event into discrete episodes will not necessarily prove the whole.

The Edgewood Arsenal Report states that a tissue-retardation study was done to determine the velocity lost when a 6.5 mm bullet passes through an amount of tissue equivalent to the distance travelled in the lower neck of the President. The testers concluded that the bullet that wounded JFK in the neck had sufficient remaining velocity to account for all Connally’s wounds. Apart from there being no hint of the word ‘alleged’, this is entirely the wrong experiment.

There should have been a test to answer the following question: could a shot through the neck exit in the midline of the throat without major damage to the spine? The Edgewood doctors had no answer to this as, remarkably, their experiment contained no bone. If the Commission’s proposed shot could not exit the front of the throat without damaging the spine, the single-bullet theory cannot be the truth. And, indeed, this is the case.

Many years later, using a CAT scan of a body whose upper chest and neck dimensions were the same as those of JFK, Dr. David Mantik (a radiation oncologist with a doctorate in physics) found that the trajectory proposed by the Warren Commission would hit the cervical (neck) vertebrae. Remember too, the passage of a bullet through JFK from back to front was never proven, only presumed. . . .

A third Edgewood Arsenal test involved shooting the wrists of 10 human cadavers to see whether Connally’s wrist wounds could be produced using the alleged assassination rifle and ammunition. Briefly stated, the wounds could not be recreated. The damage done to the cadavers’ wrists was always greater than the damage done to Connally.

Olivier decided this was because the bullet was moving more slowly when it hit Connally’s wrist. He speculated that deceleration had occurred when the bullet perforated Connally’s chest. No consideration was given to whether a different bullet, fired from a different weapon at a different range might also have produced the same results.

The entrance wounds in the tests were always smaller than the exit wounds, whereas the reverse was true in Connally. Olivier concluded this was because in Connally’s case the bullet was yawing (travelling more sideways than end on). But in his tests, the bullet always hit the wrist nose-first. Where were the tests for yawing bullets through cadaver wrists? There were none. . . . 

A further test was to see whether a Western Cartridge Company 6.5 mm, copper-jacketed bullet could break a rib and remain unscathed. The testers shot 11 anaesthetised goats, X-rayed their chests, and collected the bullets. Only one such experiment was presented to the Warren Commission, probably because the results most closely matched the desired outcome (fractured rib and intact bullet). Disreputable as this is, even here the intact bullet (CE853) was far more flattened than the alleged single bullet from the JFK assassination (CE399). All the bullets fired should have been exhibits, but we are left to wonder about the condition of the other 10 unfortunate animals and the rounds that injured them. . . .

As the Edgewood Arsenal tests were about to begin in April 1964, to help deal with the incompatible medical conclusions, the Commission convened two conferences. An honest investigation would have noted that the memoranda of these meetings caused more problems for the single-bullet theory than they solved. Instead, they were then hidden and never referred to in the Commission report.

Warren Commission lawyer Norman Redlich and Assistant Counsels Melvin A Eisenberg, and Specter held the meetings on 14 April and 21 April 1964. At the first, according to Eisenberg, a group met, ‘to determine which frames in the Zapruder film portray the instants at which the first and second bullets struck.’     Drs. Boswell, Finck and Humes (JFK’s autopsy surgeons) were there. The FBI was represented by Inspector Leo J. Gauthier, Inspector James R Malley, photography expert Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt and two others whose names are not given. John Howlett (from the Dallas office) and Thomas Kelley (later Assistant Director) appeared on behalf of the Secret Service. Edgewood Arsenal sent along Drs Light and Olivier.

Eisenberg produced a three-page memo destructive of the single-bullet theory. It explained that ‘. . . the bullet recovered from Governor Connally’s stretcher does not appear to have penetrated a wrist.’     The memo also suggested the facts better match a different theory regarding Connally, ‘. . . if he was hit by this (the first) bullet, he was probably also hit by the second bullet.’     

Of the 15 people there on 14 April 1964, including five doctors (three of whom were experts in wounds) and two FBI photographic experts, only Specter, the Warren Commission enthusiast of the single-bullet theory, believed JFK’s alleged neck wound and all of Connally’s wounds were caused by the same bullet.

Present at the second meeting on 21 April 1964 were Mr. and Mrs. Connally along with Dr. Charles F Gregory and Dr. Robert R Shaw, the doctors who had treated Connally in Dallas and had the closest look at his wounds. The FBI sent along Gauthier, Shaneyfelt, and one other unidentified agent. Assistant Counsel David W. Belin, Eisenberg, Warren Commissioner John J McCloy, General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, Redlich and Specter represented the Warren Commission. From Edgewood Arsenal, there was Drs. Dolce, Light, and Olivier.

This time, Eisenberg produced a two-page memo which, again, the Warren Commission could not find room to include. Once more, the memo was troublesome for the single-bullet theory, particularly the final paragraph. ‘In a discussion after the conference, Drs. Light and Dolce expressed themselves as being very strongly of the opinion that Connally had been hit by two different bullets, principally on the ground that the bullet recovered from Connally’s stretcher could not have broken his radius without having suffered more distortion.’     

Of the 16 people there, including five doctors, all of whom were experts in bullet wounds, Specter alone believed the single-bullet theory. (pp. 40-41, 45, 47-48, 50-53, emphasis added)

I'm not going to spend the next hour doing a point-by-point rebuttal of the nonsense presented in MTG's latest offering. I'll just pick out some of the sillier points made in MTG's new kook book.

Kent says there was nothing to prove the back wound and throat wound were connected. There is a clear trail of tissue damage leading from the back wound, across the pleura, the strap muscles, the trachea, and the exit wound which had been used for the tracheostomy incision. Would any critical thinker need proof that the above damage was caused by the same bullet. At some point, common sense has to be applied. Common sense is not in MTG's toolbox.

Kent says there is no proof which direction the bullet was traveling when it contused the pleura. Seriously. Again, common sense is needed here. Are we supposed to believe the bullet that entered JFK's back was not the one that struck the pleura? Are we supposed to believe another bullet traveling in the opposite direction contused the pleura? What the hell happened to the bullet? Where did it go? Don't expect MTG to reply to these questions. He never does when his silliness is pointed out.

Kent wrote that the Edgewood arsenal "experiments were almost worthless.". Of course they were. No shooting can be duplicated. Even if they had been, the tinfoil hatted kooks would have invented some excuse to dismiss them.

Lastly, he points out that at a meeting of various people in which the SBT was presented, there were people who disagreed. As if that is a litmus test for the validity of the SBT. JBC only knew he had been hit by the second bullet. He had no way of knowing whether it is was the first or second bullet that hit JFK. Nellie also couldn't have known whether both men had been hit by the same bullet. From her position, she couldn't have been looking at both of them at the same time. One or the other would have been in her periphery. He claims that five doctors who were all experts on bullet wounds disagreed with the SBT. Actually, Humes and Boswell were not experts in bullet wounds. They were general pathologist, not forensic medical examiners. Of all the other people who disagreed with the SBT for one reason or another, I doubt any of them considered the possibility of a tumbling bullet smashing into JBC's wrist at the base of the bullet rather than the nose. I'm not sure when the possibility of the bullet that exited JFK's throat yawed upon exit was first raised. I don't remember it being part of the conversation when I first joined the fray in the early 1990s. It has been shown experimentally that a Carcano 6.5mm bullet will yaw predictably when exiting ballistic gel. A tumbling bullet explains why the base of the bullet, not the nose, got flattened. It also explains why lead fragments from the bullet's core got deposited in JBC's wrist. The lead core is only exposed at the base.