Rereading William Matson Law's In the Eye of History last week sent me off on a brief William Bruce Pitzer tangent. Pitzer’s mysterious death has been the subject of previous threads here (for example: https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,984.0.html), so I’m not going to rehash all the twists and turns. The Pitzer saga has everything a JFKA junkie could want – elements of genuine mystery, tons of conspiratorial misinformation, hoaxers, crackpots, and witnesses whose credibility is difficult to assess. Your intrepid factoid-buster remains at least somewhat intrigued and perplexed.

I was fortunate to find, right off the bat, this 132-page e-book: WITHOUT SMOKING GUN: Investigating the Death of Lt. Cmdr. William Pitzer, https://www.memresearch.org/wsg/WSG-2019.pdf. The author, Kent Heiner, had originally published the book in 2004. The link is to his 2019 edition. He admits that in 2004 he was too quick to jump on the conspiratorial bandwagon and align himself with one of the worst of the hoaxers/crackpots (Dan Marvin, who claimed the CIA had attempted to recruit him to assassinate Pitzer). He now accepts, as do most people who are knowledgeable about the case, that Pitzer in fact committed suicide and was not whacked as one of the "JFKA mystery deaths."

Is that the end of the story? Just a Lieutenant Commander in charge of the Audio/Visual Department at Bethesda who shot himself in the head on October 29, 1966? Everything else is just a mishmash of conspiracy factoids?

Well, no, not so fast, for three reasons that cause me to remain perplexed.

1. There is no clear – or even murky – explanation for Pitzer’s suicide. It just doesn’t fit who he was or what was going on in his life. His family was adamant that he never would have, and did not, commit suicide. Read the book. And yet, if he did kill himself, there had to be some reason, right?

2. Dennis David – one of those whose credibility is difficult to assess – was a friend of Pitzer’s. Pitzer served as a mentor to him several days a week in his quest to become an officer. On the day of the JFKA, David was Chief of the Day at Bethesda and thus was involved in the proceedings. See https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdavidD.htm. He was interviewed for Law’s book. To his credit, he made no claims about Pitzer being at the autopsy, which would have bolstered the tale I'll describe in the next paragraph; the highly dubious Jerrol Custer subsequently claimed that Pitzer was all over the place, filming the proceedings, but Custer’s story is almost surely BS.

David did claim, however, that he visited Pitzer in his office a couple of days later on personal business unrelated to the JFKA. Pitzer was surrounded by autopsy photos and was examining a 16mm film of the autopsy. Since Pitzer was the head of the Audio/Visual Department, this is not implausible. David said he and Pitzer didn’t engage in extensive discussion but did observe a bullet hole in JFK’s forehead and agreed he’d been shot from the front.

David first surfaced in 1979, when a newspaper article (in which David had simply mentioned a black hearse and a shipping casket in an offhand way) caused David Lifton to contact him during the preparation of Best Evidence. Lifton had great respect for him and wrote a memorial of sorts at the Ed Forum when he died in 2017.

David initially had all sorts of “facts” in support of a Pitzer homicide that turned out to be flat wrong (e.g., Pitzer was left-handed but the gunshot was to his right temple – in fact, Pitzer was right-handed). He did acknowledge his mistakes, however, and in posts at the Ed Forum indicated he was equivocal on the issue of suicide versus homicide. He doesn’t strike me as a publicity-seeking wacko.

3. Could David’s tale of the encounter in Pitzer’s office possibly tie into the suicide of Pitzer almost three years later, on October 29, 1966? I don’t know, but these two facts are intriguing even to a factoid-buster:

On October 24, 1966, just five days before Pitzer’s death, Lifton made his first contact with former WC attorney Wesley Liebeler, then a UCLA law professor, about his body-alteration theory. We don’t know what Liebeler did with the information.

On October 29, the very day of Pitzer’s suicide, the executors of the estate of JFK executed a deed of gift to the National Archives of the autopsy materials, https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/pdf/md111.pdf. RFK had announced shortly before that the Kennedy family had made this decision.

If what David described were true, could either or both of these events have triggered Pitzer’s otherwise inexplicable suicide? A serious, by-the-book officer, did he fear he was about to be caught up in the ultimate scandal? We’ll never know, but it’s too intriguing for me to declare the Pitzer death just another busted factoid. If there is no connection, it’s certainly one more bizarre twist in an assassination that is chock-full of them.

So Pitzer supposedly killed himself because he was about to be caught up in a scandal regarding the JFK autopsy materials?! Seriously?! This is not the kind of backward logic one would expect from a self-professed "academic."

I recommend the lengthy chapter on Pitzer's death in Richard Belzer and David Wayne's best-selling book Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination, published in 2013 (chapter 26). For an online source, I recommend the article on Pitzer's death on the Spartacus Educational website: https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKpitzerW.htm.

A few facts that Belzer and Wayne document:

-- Pitzer was just about to retire and had a good job lined up. He had no conceivable motive to kill himself.

-- Pitzer's right hand tested negative for GSR/nitrates, indicating he had not fired a revolver.

-- The FBI's own paraffin test in this case indicated the revolver was held some 3 feet away from Pitzer's head when it was fired.

-- The FBI was unable to find any evidence that Pitzer had acquired ammo for the revolver that was signed out from the security office in his name.

-- A heel print found near Pitzer's body was not from the shoes Pitzer was wearing.

-- Pitzer wrote himself a note to remind himself to return the revolver he had signed out.

-- Pitzer's family said he had been repeatedly threatened to keep quiet about his knowledge of the JFK autopsy.

And, pray tell, other than the fact that his story, if true, suggests Pitzer was murdered, what is your basis for saying that Lt. Col. Dan Marvin, a decorated war hero, was "one of the worst of the hoaxers/crackpots"? Where do you get that? As an Army vet and a Vietnam War scholar, I am well acquainted with Lt. Col. Marvin's outstanding service in Vietnam.

I agree with Belzer and Wayne:

Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, a decorated war hero, has testified and written extensively about how he was requested by the CIA to assassinate Lieutenant Commander Pitzer. Lieutenant Colonel Marvin had nothing to gain (and a lot to lose) by clarifying the historical record. A man of high character and loyalty, no one has been able to refute his account. (p. 288)

Lt. Col. Marvin authored the highly acclaimed book Expendable Elite: One Soldier's Journey into Covert Warfare. Marvin fought in the Korean War and then took part in Special Forces operations in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Marvin commanded Green Beret Team A-424 in South Vietnam and headed 12-man Special Forces team that attacked Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia. In Vietnam, he frequently worked with the CIA. He received three decorations for heroism.

Marvin was also honored by the Hoa Hao in Vietnam. He was awarded with the Hoa Hao purple silk scarf by the Hoa Hao Central Committee when they named Marvin an Honorary Hoa Hao, the only American ever to receive that honor.

As a 21-year Army vet myself, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when some WC apologist smears a decorated Army Special Forces veteran just because that veteran held a different view of the JFK case and of Pitzer's death. (Lt. Col. Marvin died in 2012.)

When I read this, I feel like I'm in a time warp and I've traveled back to 1991.

Where did you get the idea that Oswald only had 6 seconds to fire 3 shots. Was it from Josiah Thompson's lame book Six Seconds in Dallas? The WC never concluded 3 shots were fired in 6 seconds, only that it was a theoretical possibility. 3 shots in under 6 seconds is only necessary if one believes the second shot was the missed shot. There is a general consensus among lone assassin proponents that the first shot was the missed shot. This gives Oswald at least 8 seconds to fire the three shots and some have hypothesized 10-11 seconds. Without definitive proof of exactly when Oswald fired that first missed shot, we can't really say how long it took him to fire all 3 shots. What we can be fairly certain of is that there was almost 5 seconds between the two shots that hit JFK.

The single bullet was a product of the Secret Service recreations which showed at the time JFK was shot in the back, JBC was directly in line to be hit by the bullet that exited from JFK's throat. Such a bullet could hardly have missed him. There are no eyewitnesses to a second shooter. There is no photographic evidence of a second shooter. There is no medical evidence of a second shooter. There is no ballistic evidence of a second shooter. The three recovered shells and the only two recovered bullets were positively matched to Oswald's Carcano rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons in the world. It is a mortal lock that Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK. There is zero credible evidence he had even a single accomplice.

As for the Connallys, Nellie Connally is probably one of the worst witnesses we have. Nothing she said she saw is supported by the Z-film. John Connally was sure of one thing. He had been hit by the second bullet. He had no way of knowing whether JFK had been hit by the first or second shot. For some reason he had been led to believe that JFK had been hit by the first which is why he rejected the SBT. The reality is that both men were hit by the second shot.

You said there is no evidence of a second shooter yet I've yet to see evidence from any witness that stated they saw Oswald with a rifle in the TSBD or in the 6th floor window with a rifle. In a court of law in the United States first hand witnesses to the fact are first and foremost in any trial. They form the basis of most prosecutions and defences. Circumstantial and forensic evidence are used in conjunction with witnesses to the fact. 
Nell and John Connally were first hand witnesses to the fact, they were in the limo and if they both state that John Connally was hit two seconds after Kennedy was first struck then that is what we have to go with. If you don't then the constitution of the United States isn't worth the paper it was written on. That would be akin to suggesting that first hand witnesses are not trust worthy in ANY trial.
There are five video's available of five railroad workers who testified on film that they saw gunsmoke and heard shots fired from the picket fence. I'll post them later. None of them were allowed to testify before the Warren commission. Show me one video or piece of evidence from anyone who saw Oswald with a rifle in Dealey Plaza.

I will have to confess to finding my Mary Woodward factoid-hunt way more fun than I perhaps should.

1. As a journalism major who worked in that field for seven years before law school, I find it fascinating in the extreme that a 23-year-old reporter for a major newspaper would so blatantly fill her article with whoppers on a story of the magnitude of the JFKA. I am amazed that (1) Mary was able to continue to work in the field and (2) she was allowed for 54 years to get away with attributing the most insignificant of her whoppers to a "hearing problem" with NO ONE pointing out, "Uh, Mary, that doesn't begin to account for the whoppers in your article." You have to admit, claiming that she had thought "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" would be a serious BBC documentary is also "just a bit" out there. Maybe I'm morphing into Milicent Cranor (would that be good?), but there is something disturbing about all this that I can't quite put my finger on.

2. Exposing someone like Mary just always sort of makes my day. It's what we factoid-busters live for, like finding a previously unknown butterfly or something. Sorry that Mary was a seemingly pleasant and likeable dingbat, but she was indeed a dingbat.

3. Exponentially adding to the mirth is when someone such as TG digs in his heels and tries to preserve a character like Mary as supportive of his JFKA views. This is one of the most comical aspects of the JFKA - the inability of virtually everyone, CTer and LNer alike, to simply say "Oops, got that wrong, never mind." NO, WE CAN NEVER ADMIT WE HAVE MADE FOOLS OF OURSELVES on even the most insignificant issue because ... because ... well, I'm not sure why, but we can't. Early on at the Ed Forum, I made two rather large and comical mistakes, and a longtime CTer who became one of my biggest supporters congratulated me for having the honesty to say "Oops, got that wrong, never mind." Try it sometime.

4. And, of course, even more exponentially ratcheting up the mirth is when the heel-digger is TG, who inevitably ends up throwing a name-calling hissy fit and reveals who really is - i.e., fundamentally nuttier than almost anyone here. Indeed, fundamentally nuttier than almost anyone I've ever encountered on any internet forum. Indeed, fundamentally nuttier than ... oh, well, let's not overdo it.

RIP, dingbat Mary. You were a hoot, as are TG's efforts to prop you up. (Speaking of propping up, how many people know that English philosopher Jeremy Bentham specified in his will that his corpse would be preserved, appropriately clad, and occasionally wheeled out to preside at university meetings - and it was! Just one of those little tidbits of weirdness that fill approximately 2/3 of my brain.)

I hope you didn't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

When I first saw the conversation she had at the Sixth Floor Museum, I was pleasantly surprised to discover she had a fairly accurate account of the JFKA. Thanks to Andrew Mason, I had been led to believe that her account was that JFK had been hit by the first shot. Then I come to find out that she clearly remembered hearing a shot that hadn't hit anybody (with the possible exception of Tague who she was unaware of at the time). She did have the false impression that the shots had come from behind her which she acknowledged did not happen. She is absolutely correct in her belief that Oswald was the assassin. On that point, there should be no doubt although CTs have spent over six decades trying to manufacturer doubt.

As for TG, he and I differ by about 1.3 seconds as to when the first shot was fired and we have had serious disagreements on political matters having nothing to do with the JFKA, but he is essentially correct about how the shooting went down. One miss, followed by a single bullet striking JFK and JBC followed 4.9 seconds later by the fatal headshot.

Dr. Gary Aguilar gives his view of two shots striking JFK on 11.22, including one shot from the GK.

Aguilar is obviously intelligent, literate and informed on topic.

Interesting presentation, whether one agrees or not.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

And, as neuroanatomist Dr. Joseph Riley documented, there are two separate, unconnected wound paths in JFK's brain -- one is cortical and the other is sub-cortical.

You also have the fact that you have fragments on the JFK autopsy skull x-rays that are far removed from any other fragments. For example, the 7 x 2 mm and 3 x 1 mm fragments above and just behind the right orbit are well forward of the right-frontal fragment cluster that forms part of the high fragment trail, and that fragment cluster starts with tiny particles and progresses rearward with larger (though still relatively small) fragments, indicating, according to everything we know from ballistics and physics, that the bullet hit the right-frontal region. The heavier the fragments, the farther they will travel.

Dr. Michael Chesser, a neurologist who was allowed to view the autopsy materials at the National Archives, explains this while discussing the same right-frontal entry wound that Dr. David Mantik has identified:

This is what I saw on the original right lateral skull x-ray at the archives. There is a gap in the bone -- not very big, maybe 3 mm, but remember that this is a composite of all the material between the x-ray machine and the film—when viewed from the side, a hole in the frontal bone may not be seen at all, and if it is, it won’t appear as wide as its actual width. I think that this defect is probably due to a combination of an entry wound and associated radial fracture line(s).   

The most important finding here is the proximity of these tiny metallic fragments to this bone defect. This location, on the intracranial side of the bony defect, is highly suggestive of an entry wound. One of the principles of skull ballistics is that the largest fragments travel the farthest from the entry site, with the smallest fragments traveling the least distance, and that is exactly what is seen on this right lateral skull x-ray. Tiny fragments were seen on the inner side of this right front skull defect, and the largest fragments were noted in the back of the skull.

When you look at the x-rays that are stored at the archives now, on the lateral x-ray there is a fragment trail. It actually expands from front to back, and there are dozens of very tiny dustlike fragment particles up in this location.

Dr. David Mantik: Now why is that important? Well, what we know is that the larger bullet fragments travel farther, whereas the smaller ones tend to stay near the entry site. That’s what we see on these x-rays. In other words, we can reasonably interpret these as being consistent with a frontal bullet, but being radically inconsistent with a posterior bullet. . . .

Kinetic energy explains why larger fragments travel farther than smaller fragments. Kinetic energy = 1/2 mv2, where m = mass and v = velocity. Thus, a particle with more mass has more kinetic energy. Besides that, though, smaller fragments decelerate faster—the drag forces on them are relatively greater. Hence, the tiny particles near the forehead suggest an entry near that site. The larger fragment at the right rear provides additional evidence for a frontal entry. As expected, larger fragments travel farther. (In Mantik, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis, 2024, pp. 192-194)

Also, the two fragments near the right-orbit are much larger than the dozens of fragment particles in the forward part of the high fragment trail and are at least 1 inch forward of the particles. Dr. Mantik believes these two fragments are the remnants of the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report. The autopsy report says the low fragment trail ended near the supraorbital ridge, which is the upper part of the right orbit, so those two fragments are exactly where they should be if they're the remnant of the low fragment trail.

WC defenders, amazingly, simply ignore the fact that the current skull x-rays do not show the EOP-to-right-orbit fragment trail described in the autopsy report. The only fragment trail on the extant skull x-rays is some 4 inches higher, i.e., the high fragment trail, which includes the right-frontal cloud of about 30 tiny particles near the entry site identified by Drs. Mantik, Chesser, Henkelmann, Aguilar, Wecht, Robertson, DeSalles, and others.

Either the low fragment trail was removed from the x-rays in order to buttress the case for the 4-inch upward relocation of the rear head entry wound or Humes, Boswell, Finck, and Ebersole were so unbelievably incompetent that they mistook the high fragment trail for a trail that started some 4 inches lower and that ended at a spot well forward of the high fragment trail. It is hard to imagine a first-year medical student making such an unbelievable blunder, especially given the fact that the three autopsy doctors reviewed the autopsy materials in 1966 and reaffirmed the EOP entry location.

Here are three crucial Zapruder film frames that dispel the theory that President Kennedy "grabs","grabbed" or "clutched his throat".

Note that his right hand immediately jerks upward, and either in front of his mouth or over it.  His upper body is also thrust forward, twice as his right hand appears to cover his mouth.
 
Note that, except for the forefinger on his left hand, his fingers are curled, and is either against the under side of his right hand, or just below it.  Neither hand goes toward his throat, or anywhere near it. 

Also note in frame 248, JFK's right hand is at cheek level.  He has turned his head slightly to his left, while his hand is still at the same level it was in over/in front of his mouth.

Hi Steve. your copies of the Z film frames seem to be better than the ones I have. Could you show frame Z230 in the same way you have showed the frames above? I'd like to see that particular frame because I can't seem to fathom it. Thanks....James.