So here we have a prime example of a witness who completely changes his story decades later, yet WC apologists gobble up his new story because it supports their theory of the shooting, i.e., the lone-gunman theory.
When Carrico was interviewed by Harold Weisberg in the late 1960s, he insisted the throat wound was above the collar, just as he told the WC in 1964. He also told Weisberg that he saw no nick in the tie nor slits in the shirt before the nurses began cutting away JFK's clothing.
In his 11/22/63 Parkland Hospital report, which he wrote just hours after seeing JFK's wounds, Carrico said that there was blood oozing from the cerebellum, and that there was a "penetrating" wound in the throat (Parkland Memorial Hospital Admission Note, Dr. James Carrico, 11/22/63, pp. 1-2; CE 392, pp. 4-5).
In his 11/23/63 summary report, Dr. Kemp Clark, the head of neurosurgery at Parkland, reported that Dr. Carrico noted a wound "in the occipital region of the skull" (CE 392, p. 2).
When Carrico testified before the WC four months later, in March 1964, he once again put the wound in the back of the head and also said there was shredded brain tissue in the back of the head:
There was a 5- by 71-cm defect in the posterior skull, the occipital region. There was an absence of the calvarium [skull cap] or skull in this area, with shredded tissue, brain tissue, present, and initially considerable slow oozing. (3 H 361)
When Carrico was interviewed by the HSCA in 1978, he once again put the wound in the back of the head, saying the large head wound was "in the right side of the . . . parietal-occipital area" and that he could see "both cerebellum and cerebrum fragments in that wound" (7 HSCA 268). As most here know, he could not have seen cerebellar fragments in the wound if the wound did not include a substantial part of the right side of the occiput.
Carrico's repeated statements about JFK's wounds discredit the autopsy brain photos, since they show the cerebellum intact, and also discredit the back-of-head autopsy photos, since they show no large head wound that included any part of the occiput. I should add that Carrico's initial descriptions of the large head wound closely match those given by most of the other Parkland doctors, by the two FBI agents at the autopsy, by the two Secret Service agents who observed the body in the morgue right after the autopsy, by the Parkland nurses who cleaned the head wound and packed it with gauze to prepare the body for the casket, and by the three morticians at the autopsy.
But, over 30 years later, in his interview with the Sixth Floor Museum, Carrico uses his right hand to place the large head wound even farther forward than the WC or the HSCA placed it, and you guys just gobble it up. You don't care that he said nothing about his initial description of the wound, given hours after he saw it and repeated by Dr. Clark in his report written the next day, or that he said nothing about the description of the wound that he gave to the WC, or that he said nothing about the description of the wound that he gave to the HSCA. You also don't care that he said nothing about seeing damaged cerebellar tissue in his 11/22/63 admission note, in his March 1964 WC testimony, and in his HSCA interview.
"Nah, never mind all that," right?
To follow up on the correctness of Dr. Carrico's first descriptions of the large head wound as being in the right-rear area of the skull (i.e., in the right parietal-occipital region), I should add that optical-density measurements have established that one of the JFK autopsy skull x-rays (the AP x-ray) indicates
missing occipital bone.
When the forgers altered the autopsy skull x-rays, they concealed the missing occipital bone from observation by the naked eye, but they could not and did not anticipate the development of the science of optical-density (OD) measurement and the onset of advanced densitometers that could perform incredibly precise OD measurements.
Dr. David Mantik was prompted to review his existing OD measurements of the back of the skull and to take more OD measurements of that area when he became aware of Dr. J. Thornton Boswell's wound diagram that shows much of the lambdoid suture missing. Dr. Mantik knew that any sizable amount of missing lambdoid suture meant there had to be missing occipital bone. Dr. Mantik found clear evidence from the OD measurements that
the AP x-ray indicates missing occipital bone (
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis, 2024, pp. 269-272).
For the sake of reference, the occipital bone, aka the occiput, is the bone that constitutes most of the back of the skull. It is centered between the rear part of the right and left parietal bones, and it includes the bump on the back of the skull (the external occipital protuberance). The autopsy pathologists stated in the autopsy report that the large head wound extended slightly into the occiput. The HSCA FPP portrayed the large head wound as
not including any part of the occiput.
We should keep in mind that Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the autopsy, informed the HSCA that a large skull fragment that arrived from Dallas during the autopsy was
occipital bone. We should also remember that Dr. Boswell insisted to the HSCA and the ARRB that about half of the rear head entry wound was contained in one of the skull fragments that arrived from Dallas. Since the rear head entry wound was only 1 cm above the external occipital protuberance (EOP), the skull fragment that contained half of the wound could only have been occipital bone.
Yet, the autopsy photos of the head show no missing occipital bone and no exposure of cerebellar tissue, not to mention that the autopsy brain photos show an intact cerebellum and also show no damage whatsoever to the rear part of the right and left occipital lobes (the part of the brain directly above the cerebellum).
Another point to keep in mind is that the cerebellum is located only behind the lower part of the occiput. No one could have seen damage to cerebellar issue, i.e., damage to the cerebellum, much less blood and fluid oozing from the cerebellum, unless part of the occipital bone was missing. Otherwise, the damage simply would not have been visible.
This, of course, brings us to the fact that you cannot accept the autopsy report's placement of the rear head entry wound if you believe the autopsy brain photos are authentic, since they show an intact cerebellum and no damage to the rear area of the right and left occipital lobes. But, if you accept the cowlick entry site, a whopping 4 inches above the EOP site, you must explain the fact that the autopsy photos show intact cerebral cortex exactly in the location of the cowlick site, as noted by neuroanatomist Dr. Joseph Riley and as confirmed by WC defender Dr. Robert Artwohl when he viewed the autopsy materials at the National Archives (Dr. Mantik later confirmed this at the National Archives as well).
Finally, one has to wonder just what Dr. Carrico had read about the JFK case by the time of his interview for him to make the baffling statement that he had not seen any validated evidence that refuted the WC's conclusions. Good grief. Carrico did the interview in 1997, years after many thorough refutations of the WC's lone-gunman theory had been published, and years after the HSCA had determined that JFK was killed by a conspiracy. Apparently Carrico had not read such careful and superb scholarly works as Henry Hurt's book
Reasonable Doubt, Dr. David Scheim's book
Contract on America, Harold Weisberg's book
Post Mortem, Anthony Summers' book
Conspiracy, G. Robert Blakey's book
Fatal Hour, or Howard Roffman's book
Presumed Guilty, among others, all published before 1997.
