Was JFK shot in the temple?
Malcolm Kilduff famously pointed to his right temple when describing JFK?s wound. He also clarified to reporters that he had somehow cane upon the knowledge of a right temporal injury. Dr. Malcolm Perry, as per a WOR radio broadcast, apparently agreed, as did Dr. Kemp Clark in the NBC log. JFK was apparently shot ?in the front as he faced the assailant.?
A review of the reports of the Parkland doctors, however, reveals no discussion of this wound. They did, oddly enough, talk about a
left temporal wound. In CE-392, Dr. Robert McClelland claims the chase of death was of gunshot wound of the left temple. He later swore on the veracity of this report to Specter. Did he confuse left from right, and confirm what Kilduff and the famous CT entrance wound? Not at all. Firstly, Dr. Clark claimed to have never seen this wound, and Dr. Marion Jenkins made this perplexing remark:
?I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right at the hairline and right above the zygomatic process.?
Here?s the zygomatic process.
Dr. Adolph Giesecke likewise stated to the WC,
?It seemed that from the vertex to the left ear, and from the brow? line to the occiput on the left-hand side of the head the cra?nium was entirely missing.?
Father Oscar Hubert stated he saw a wound near the left eye, and Boswell noted a 0.4cm something-or-other (we?re never told) at the left eye.
Per Jenkins, it looks almost like the Parkland staff only inferred the existence this wound, given its lack of presence at autopsy and its physical impossibility. The top of the zygomatic process at the hairline is, at Z-312ish, completely invisible to any assassin anywhere in the Plaza. It couldn?t have been exit wound due the lack of a dead Mrs. Kennedy. Not even a shooter on the south knoll had a line of sight to that point.
What do we make of this wound? Confusing left and right? The ER doctors haven?t been of much help recently. Despite confirming that his report was accurate to his knowledge, Dr. McClelland never mentions the wound in his testimony, and denied ever seeing such a wound in later interviews (usually when asked a right temporal wound).
The mysterious vanishing wound. First everybody saw it, then they just knew about it, then not even that.
Of course, Dr. Charles Crenshaw of Parkland and Dennis David, the mortician at Bethesda, became CT darlings after saving the day by observing a right temporal wound near the top of the head, at the Kilduff (rather than the bottom as supposed by Jenkins).
Dr. Lattimer has noted the presence of a lesion in this spot on the photos of the head and inside the skull, included in Lawrence Angel?s reconstruction. They proposed it to be an exit portal for the rearward striking bullet, but others beg to differ. Obviously.
Whatever is up with this left temporal wound seems to suggest the Parkland staff might not be as reliable as customarily asserted by CTs.
Anybody able to make heads or tails of this?