I see Nickerson is still peddling the absurd bunched-clothing theory, ignoring the fact that no photo or frame taken within 3 seconds of the back-wound bullet's impact shows JFK's coat with a bunch even close to the bunch that would have been required to account for the location of the bullet holes in the back of the coat and shirt, not to mention that Willis slide 5, taken a fraction of a second within the bullet's impact, shows the coat lying virtually flat. This is just more proof that WC apologists here will never admit anything, no matter how obvious it is.
It is worth repeating that one WC defender, Jim Moore, has been objective enough to admit that the bunched-clothing theory is nonsense. He correctly observes that the shirt and coat would have had to bunch in nearly perfect “millimeter-for-millimeter correspondence” and that the odds against such bunching “boggle the imagination” (
Conspiracy of One, 1991, p. 155). Moore also acknowledges that the photographic evidence refutes the idea that JFK’s coat was markedly bunched during the timeframe the SBT supposedly occurred (
Conspiracy of One, pp. 154-155).
It is very curious to see WC apologists citing the autopsy doctors and the Clark Panel on the back wound's location when that same Clark Panel said the autopsy doctors mislocated the rear head entry wound by a whopping 4 inches, an unfathomable error. This would require us to believe that the autopsy doctors could not tell the difference between a wound near the EOP in the occipital bone and a wound 4 inches higher above the lambdoid suture and to the right of the sagittal suture in the parietal bone.
That would literally be like mistaking a wound in the center of the wrist for a wound in the knuckle of the middle finger.
What makes this gigantic-blunder theory even more absurd is the fact that the back of the head, according to the autopsy photos, was entirely intact. Of course, we know those photos are fraudulent, that there was an orange-sized hole in the right occipital-parietal area. However, the point is that if we assume the autopsy photos are accurate, this makes the alleged mislocating of the rear head entry wound even more absurd and unbelievable.
Moreover, the autopsy skull x-rays
appear to show no bone matter missing from the occiput. Of course, we now know that optical-density measurements of the skull x-rays indicate a sizable amount of missing occipital bone, even though the x-ray images do not appear to the naked eye to show such damage.
But, the point is that if there was no bone missing from the occiput at the autopsy, the pathologists would have had no trouble whatsoever identifying an entry wound near the EOP in the occiput and could not possibly have mistaken the EOP wound for the cowlick entry site, because the wound would have been clearly
below the lambdoid suture,
nowhere near the sagittal suture,
4 inches below the lambda, and obviously
nowhere near the parietal bone.
The Clark Panel, like other government panels in the JFK case, were willing to acknowledge facts that they believed were uncontroversial and/or facts that they did not realize were fatal to the lone-gunman theory, such as the panel's observation that the skull damage indicated the head had been hit by a high-velocity bullet. The panel members felt safe in acknowledging this fact, since the autopsy report says the same thing. Neither the panel members nor the autopsy doctors seemed to know that the alleged murder weapon was not a high-velocity rifle and that the FBI's chief firearms experts had described the rifle to the WC as having "a very low velocity" (3 H 414).
Now, regarding the Clark Panel's statements relating to the back wound and the single-bullet theory, even the uber-cautious Pat Speer has noted their problematic nature. I quote a small portion of his critique on the subject:
Now, should one think I've gone too far in proposing the Clark Panel was not on the up and up, there's still another point to consider--one that only became apparent in the subsequent years. As discussed, Dr. Fisher knew the magic bullet, CE 399, showed no signs of having struck a bone. He told Weisberg “we were convinced it was possible for a bullet tract to connect the entrance and exit wounds without being deflected by, or hitting the bony vertebrae.” Now note that he wrote "WE." Well, that would include the panel's radiologist, Dr. Russell Morgan.
So what did Dr. Morgan tell Dr. Lattimer, the first independent doctor to view the autopsy materials, after Dr. Lattimer viewed the x-rays at the archives in 1972, and came to believe he saw bone fragments in the neck?
In Kennedy and Lincoln (1980), Dr. Lattimer writes:
"Admittedly it is difficult to distinguish between small fragments of metal and bone, and it was the first reaction of Dr. Russell H. Morgan, of the 1968 panel of experts, who discovered them, that they might be metal because they showed up so well. In a personal letter to me, Dr. Morgan agreed, however, that the presence of these fragments, regardless of whether they are bone or metal, indicates that the cervical spine was struck (brushed) by the neck bullet. He wrote: 'Regardless of the nature of the opacities, it seems clear to me that the bullet that passed through President Kennedy's neck, brushed the cervical spine before emerging in front.'"
Let's recall here that the Clark Panel, on which Morgan was the sole radiologist, issued a report claiming "There is no evidence of fracture of either scapula or of the clavicles, or of the ribs or of any of the cervical or thoracic vertebrae," and that this report later added "the X-ray films show no bony damage in the thorax or neck.
Well, heck, it seems clear from this that, subsequent to the issuance of the panel's report, Morgan had come to realize that his government-sanctioned conclusion that the cervical vertebrae were undamaged was not gonna stand the test of time, and had decided to get out from under this deception by claiming the previously unacknowledged damage within the neck may have been caused by a bullet's brushing the cervical spine, and not a direct hit. This avoided, of course, that he'd previously claimed there was no such damage within the neck. (A New Perspective on the John F. Kennedy Assassination, Chapter 10: "Examining the Examinations," online book, https://www.patspeer.com/chapter10examiningtheexaminations)Needless to say, if the alleged magic bullet even grazed the spine during its supposed journey, it is doubly impossible that it could have created a throat wound that was small (5 mm), neat, and punched inward, much less a throat wound that had damage behind and beneath it that was larger than the wound itself.
