If nothing else, I am thorough. In a frenzy of near-terminal boredom, I peeked out of the rabbit hole and skimmed all 387 posts at the Ed Forum in which Dennis David was mentioned. Understandably, the vast majority dealt with the shipping casket issue, which does not interest me at all. However, I did discover some negativity toward David – especially on the part of Pat Speer, who for some reason seems almost incensed by David’s Pitzer claims and who fudges the truth a bit himself.
For the sake of completeness, let’s include this stuff …
Pat says that Lifton had “warned him” about David “years ago,” suggesting that David had never said anything to him about Pitzer and that David was a bit of a “fantasist.” Pat himself notes that it’s possible this was sour grapes on Lifton’s part because he had failed to follow up on the Pitzer angle, which would have been perfect for
Best Evidence. The Heiner e-book sides with David on this issue. In the 1975 newspaper article, the subject of which was Pitzer, David did refer to having seen “slides” that showed a frontal wound – so it seems almost unbelievable that Lifton would not have pressed David for what the hell that was all about. It also seems unlikely that Lifton, who relied so extensively on David as a major player in the body-alteration scenario, would have “warned” Speer that David was a “fantasist.”
In his 2017 memorial tribute to David, Lifton declined to dive into the Pitzer matter. He said, “Yes, of course we talked about it, and that was the one thing we had to ‘agree to disagree’ on.” He indicated that the difference related to whether Pitzer had been murdered (David) or committed suicide (Lifton). He felt that David had been close to Pitzer and that believing in murder invested the death with greater meaning; he did not address David’s claim of the encounter in Pitzer’s office.
To me, David’s claim in the 1975 interview of having seen slides showing a frontal wound strongly suggests to me that the Pitzer encounter was not a long-after-the-fact invention. Speer repeatedly refers to David as having surfaced “decades later.” 1975 was not decades after 1963, and for all we know David might not have surfaced at all if the erroneous newspaper article had not raised his hackles. He was no Judyth Vary Baker.
Here is a post by Pat describing why David’s story is “riddled with problems”:
1) Pitzer did not work with film and photos, but closed-circuit TV.OK, but he was the officer in charge of the Audio/Visual Department.
2) There is no evidence the closed-circuit TV system was in use on 11-22-63.OK, but David never said it was. (There has been speculation, however, as to whether it might have been in operation during the autopsy.)
3) There is no evidence he had anything to do with JFK's autopsy.OK, but David never said he did. David himself was not at the autopsy and specifically said he didn’t believe Pitzer was either. He did not know the origin of the film and photos he saw in Pitzer’s office.
4) David had credibility issues of his own. To sell the murder angle, he'd told people Pitzer was left-handed, but his family insisted he was right-handed. And when Eaglesham saw the autopsy photos, he confirmed that the wound was on the right side.OK, but David had played cards with Pitzer on many occasions and saw him deal with his left hand. It was a natural assumption on David’s part. The issue was not resolved until 1995, when “Dangerous Dan” Marvin spoke with Mrs. Pitzer by telephone. The rumor of a wound to the left temple was not started by David and was not put to rest until Eaglesham examined the photos many years later.
Moreover, Pat like everyone else seems to assume that David’s claims go poof if Pitzer committed suicide. The question I have raised is:
Do they? Sure, it would be way more exciting if a plausible claim of murder could be made, but I don’t believe a verdict of suicide necessarily puts the issue to bed.
The final “problem” highlighted by Pat is that David changed the location of the frontal wound over the years:
5) And that's not the only reason to question David's credibility. He started out claiming the small entrance on JFK's head was here:The photos below illustrate what Pat was talking about. He said David “was recently discredited by our own Sandy Larsen, when Sandy demonstrated that David had initially claimed the wound shown him was on the temple, but then changed it to being high on the forehead, after becoming a darling of the research community.” You can decide for yourself how significant this change was. It looks pretty close to me. Pat referred to David as having become a “darling” of Mantik and Aguilar, and it’s quite possible that David did fudge a bit as he become more enmeshed in the CT community – but it seems to me that his claims remained quite consistent and low-key. Moreover, Sandy took Pat to task for "dishonestly" mischaracterizing what he had actually found.
The first image is from "The Men Who Killed Kennedy."
Lastly, concerning the issue of possible lucrative post-retirement employment offers to Pitzer, Allan Eaglesham stated in 2004, “Mr. David also says Pitzer had offers for employment from local TV stations. I believe there were two offers, made over the telephone, from a national network.” By the time of Eaglesham’s involvement, I believe that Pitzer’s plan to teach at a junior college was known, so apparently David was talking about other offers and was sticking with the story he had told the newspaper in 1975.
