HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK?S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG
Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham
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II. THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATES JFK?s AUTOPSY
Introduction ? The Government?s Private Response to Public Doubts
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JFK?s Entire Autopsy Team Swears Autopsy Photographs Are Missing
"The upshot is that there is reason to doubt that the signers really believed no autopsy photographs were missing when they signed ?their? affidavit. Instead, as we will see, it appears that Justice arranged for the principals to falsely affirm the integrity of autopsy evidence they knew to be incomplete. From both public and once-secret files, we have learned that each of JFK?s threepathologists and both autopsy photographers later repeatedly testified under oath that photographs they took on the night of the autopsy were missing from the official inventory they had signed off as complete in 1966.[149]
For example, in a once-secret memo, HSCA counsel, D. Andy Purdy, JD, reported that during an interview, chief autopsy photographer, "(John) STRINGER (sic) said it was his recollection that all the photographs he had taken were not present in 1966 (when Stringer saw the photographs for the first time.) [150] Among the missing pictures are those taken of the interior of JFK?s chest. None survive in the current inventory. Yet every autopsy participant who was asked recalled that photographs were taken of the interior of JFK?s body, as indeed they should have been to document the passage of the non-fatal bullet through JFK?s chest:"
? John Stringer told the HSCA he recalled taking ?at least two exposures of the body cavity.? A. Purdy.[151]
? James Humes, MD was reported in an HSCA memo to have, "... specifically recall(ed photographs) ... were taken of the President's chest ... (these photographs ) do not exist."[152] As already discussed, Humes had told the Warren Commission in 1964 that he had taken pictures of the interior of Kennedy?s chest.[153]
? J. Thornton Boswell, MD, the second in command, backed up Stringer and Humes. The HSCA recorded that, "... he (Boswell) thought they photographed '... the exposed thoracic cavity and lung ...' but (he) doesn't remember ever seeing those photographs."[154]
? Robert Karnei, MD, a Navy pathologist who assisted but was not a member of the official autopsy team, told the HSCA, "He (Karnei) recalls them putting the probe in and taking pictures (the body was on the side at the time) (sic)."[155]
"Finally, regarding JFK?s still-controversial skull wound, In formerly secret testimony taken 24 years ago, Dr. Finck described to the Select Committee how he had photographed the beveling in JFK?s skull bone to prove that the low wound in occipital bone was an entrance wound. In the following exchange, Dr. Finck was being asked by the Select Committee?s forensic consultants whether the official images were those Dr. Finck had claimed were missing."
Charles Petty, MD: "If I understand you correctly, Dr. Finck, you wanted particularly to have a photograph made of the external aspect of the skull from the back to show that there was no cratering to the outside of the skull."
Finck: "Absolutely."
Petty: "Did you ever see such a photograph?"
Finck: "I don't think so and I brought with me memorandum referring to the examination of photographs in 1967... and as I can recall I never saw pictures of the outer aspect of the wound of entry in the back of the head and inner aspect in the skull in order to show a crater although I was there asking for these photographs. I don't remember seeing those photographs."
Petty: ?All right. Let me ask you one other question. In order to expose that area where the wound was present in the bone, did you have to or did someone have to dissect the scalp off of the bone in order to show this??
Finck: ?Yes.?
Petty: ?Was this a difficult dissection and did it go very low into the head so as to expose the external aspect of the posterior cranial fascia (sic - meant ?fossa?)??
Finck: ?I don?t remember the difficulty involved in separating the scalp from the skull but this was done in order to have a clear view of the outside and inside to show the crater from the inside ? the skull had to be separated from it in order to show in the back of the head the wound in the bone.?[156]
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