JFK's Head Was Hit with Frangible Ammo, not FMJ Ammo

[Michael T. Griffith]

Larry Sturdivan is well aware of this case.

He was not aware of it at the time of the HSCA. He said that if a frangible bullet had hit the skull, he would expect to see a cluster of fragments near its entry point, yet he said nothing about the fact that that x-rays show a cloud of fragments in the right-front part of the skull So he was either lying through his teeth or he was not aware that the original x-rays show a cluster of fragments in the frontal region, exactly as Sturdivan indicated you would expect to see from a frontal shot with a frangible bullet.

In his book The JFK Myths, Sturdivan says nothing--not one word--about the small genuine fragment inside the 6.5 mm object and about the small fragment next to it (the one that Dr. McDonnel identified, and that Dr. Mantik has confirmed).

In his book, Sturdivan reaches and strains to explain the "snow storm" of fragments visible on the lateral skull x-rays. He suggests they were "flushed out" by blood and got stuck in the bone flaps on the way the way to the hospital! Seriously? And this guy is your go-to "expert"?

Sturdivan also says that no forger would have planted the 6.5 mm object because it could not be a bullet fragment, adding that a forger would have planted something "that could actually be mistaken for a bullet fragment." Uh, is Sturdivan not aware that three federal medical panels--the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission's medical panel, and the HSCA's forensic pathology panel--concluded that the 6.5 mm object was a bullet fragment?! So the forgery was good enough to fool all the forensic pathologists and radiologists on those panels.

Sturdivan does not even attempt to explain why the high fragment trail was not mentioned in the autopsy report and why the doctors insisted they saw a low fragment trail between the EOP and the right eye. Crickets.

Nor does Sturdivan say a word about Dr. Mantik's OD measurements, even though he mentions the book Assassination Science, which contains a section on the measurements. (By the way, that section was proof-read by Dr. Arthur Haas, who was the director of Kodak's Department of Medical Physics at the time.)

Three medical doctors have confirmed via OD measurements that there is a small fragment inside the 6.5 mm object but that the 6.5 mm object is not metallic but is a ghosted image. None of the experts on the above-named panels realized this because they didn't do any OD measurements. Again, Sturdivan simply ignores the OD measurements.

I have never heard a true ballistic expert, agree with your point. Have you? If so, can you name them and provide a link?

Huh? Are you saying that you have a "true ballistics expert" who denies that the autopsy skull x-rays show a cloud of fragments in the frontal area? Who is this "expert"? And since when do ballistics experts read x-rays?

Anyway, Sturdivan said that a frangible bullet would have left a cloud of fragments near its entry point:

Mr. MATTHEWS: Mr. Sturdivan, taking a look at JFK Exhibit F-53, which is an x-ray of President Kennedy's skull, can you give us your opinion as to whether the president may have been hit with an exploding bullet? . . .

Mr. STURDIVAN: In those cases, you would definitely have seen a cloud of metallic fragments very near the entrance wound. (1 HSCA 401, emphasis added)

And that is exactly what we see on the skull x-rays: there is a cloud of fragments near the right temple, and several witnesses saw a small wound in JFK's right temple (the mortician filled the small hole with wax).

It is humorous to see you dismiss the conclusions of forensic pathologists and pretend that only the opinions of ballistics experts count when it comes to bullet behavior. Most ballistics experts have no experience with gunshot wounds on actual people.  They have never seen firsthand the effects of bullets on the body. They have never done autopsies on gunshot victims, have never removed bullet fragments during autopsies, etc., etc. And, most ballistics experts have no training in reading x-rays.

Perhaps you are taking this silly position because so many forensic pathologists have noted that the head-shot bullet did not behave like an FMJ missile. On an interesting side note, we now know that the autopsy doctors themselves expressed surprise during the autopsy that there were so many fragments in the head from the supposedly FMJ bullet.

Off the top of my head, I can name you two ballistics experts who argue that the head-shot bullet did not behave like an FMJ bullet: Howard Donahue and Dr. Roger McCarthy.

Furthermore, I am still waiting for you to name me a single ballistics expert who claims that it is not at all unusual for an FMJ bullet that strikes a skull (1) to fragment into dozens of pieces, (2) to leave two mid-section fragments on the outer table of the skull 1 cm below the entry point or 9 cm above the entry point, and (3) to eject the nose and tail from the skull.

I know that Sturdivan would never endorse such a ludicrous position. He argued that the 6.5 mm object must be an artifact because he said that the object would have had to be a mid-section fragment and that an FMJ bullet would never deposit such a fragment. And I agree that an FMJ bullet would never, ever, ever behave like that.

Ok, then you guys need to explain the two small fragments on the back of the head. They're on the outer table of the skull. They're not even near an entry point. They are 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry point, and 9 cm above the EOP entry site. It is clear, obvious, and self-evident that they are ricochet fragments--there is no other rational, plausible, scientific explanation for them, but you guys can't admit this because your version of the shooting won't allow it.

Stop the presses. Yes, this is well known. If you had read a Larry Sturdivan’s book, “The JFK Myths”, you would know what property of a material is most important in what damage it will do to a bullet. And that property is density. It’s not hardness, it’s density. So soft tissue, which has the same density as water, will not deform a WCC/MC bullet, even if hit at muzzle velocity. But bone, which generally has a density of twice that of water, will.

Oh?! So bone will deform FMJ bullets?! Well, yes, I agree. Bone won't cause FMJ bullets to shatter into dozens of pieces, but it most certainly can deform them. So how do you explain CE 399? Its lands and grooves are not even disrupted. Bullets fired into soft materials have emerged with more deformity than CE 399 has.

What is the density of Ponderosa pine wood? Slightly less than that of water. So, even through wood is hard, it won’t damage a WCC/MC bullet anymore than soft tissue will. So naturally it will come out undeformed after going through, as I recall, 47 inches of soft wood.

LOL! This sets a new record for absurdity and silliness. This is every bit as comical as flat-Earth arguments. Let's just say this: You go get a bullet and try to push the bullet through pine wood, and then try to push that same bullet through water. I guarantee you that you will have no trouble  pushing the bullet through the water but that you will be unable to push the bullet through the pine wood. I guarantee it. You won't be able to push the bullet through the pine wood because pine wood is vastly tougher than water.

What ballistic expert says that there are lead fragments near the wound of entry (the back of the head) of JFK’s X-Rays?

LOL! Humm, well, I wasn't aware that ballistics experts were trained in radiology. You keep ignoring the fact that Dr. Mantik has confirmed the presence of those two fragments with OD measurements. Their OD measurements are comparable to the OD measurements of the two largest fragments in the frontal region, so we know they are metallic.

Anyway, I can name a whole bunch of radiologists and medical experts with training and experience in radiology who have identified at least one fragment in the rear outer table of the skull on the autopsy skull x-rays: McDonnel, Seaman, Fitzpatrick, Ubelaker, Fisher, Chesser, Mantik, Aguilar, Morgan, Carnes, Moritz, Lindenberg, Robertson, etc., etc.

And again, this brings up the question as to how old were the test skulls? How much had they dried up? Was the density of the bone still twice the density of water, as it is with living bone?

Now, on the question of why we don’t small lead fragments within the test skull X-Rays, like we do with JFK’s head X-Rays. You do realize that these test skulls were bare skulls, don’t you? How can I explain this to you? The test skulls were similar to your own head. There was nothing between the ears. There was no organic material, like the brain, that the badly deformed bullet would travel through, which strips off small fragments as the bullet with its exposed lead core moves through the brain. And even if, somehow, such fragments were created, they would not remain suspended in space within an empty skull. So, we should not expect to see any X-Ray of a test skull to look identical to an X-Ray of JFK’s skull, with both showing a trail of fragments along the bullet’s path.

We know that with the test result of Skull # 8170, a bullet will get very badly mangled upon striking a skull, even of just a bare skull which has, no doubt, undergone some drying after death. So, if some skulls have dried out enough so that they no longer can mangle a WCC/MC bullet, that doesn’t matter. All that counts is what the skull of a still living man will do to such a bullet.

So I guess you're saying that all the head-shot ballistics tests are meaningless because they did not involve a live person's skull! Yeah, right. The problem is that those tests show that the JFK head-shot bullet did not behave like an FMJ bullet.

FYI, in Olivier's ballistics tests for the WC, the skulls were coated with a gelatin thick enough to simulate scalp, and the skulls were also filled with gelatin to simulate brain tissue (5 H 87).

And, as we have discussed, the 10 bullets that were fired into those skulls produced only about 30 fragments, for an average of three fragments per bullet. Not one of them blew up into dozens of fragments. Not one of them magically deposited two fragments (much less two mid-section fragments) on the outer table of the skull.

I'll have to read more about Lattimer's head-shot ballistics test. If he failed to wrap or coat the skulls, that would be a surprising oversight. If he failed to put any kind of tissue simulant in the skulls, that would be another surprising oversight.

I once again invite you to cite a single case in the known history of forensic science where an FMJ bullet struck a live person's skull and (1) shattered into dozens of fragments, (2) left two fragments 1 cm below or 9 cm above the entry point, and (3) also ejected its nose and tail from the skull. Find me just one case where this has occurred. Just one.

[Michael Carney]

Ah, such fun stuff!!

[Michael T. Griffith]

By the way, Lucien Haag, cited by lone-gunman theorists as a ballistics expert, admitted in his 2014 article that when he shot fiber-glass-wrapped melons with FMJ bullets, not one of them fragmented. He acknowledged that the bullets "failed to expand or fragment during their penetration of the melons" and that "the melons (which were free to move) remained in place, and the entry and exit holes were small."

So did Haag admit that his tests proved that the lone-gunman theory's head-shot bullet did not behave like an FMJ bullet? No, but, oddly enough, he did admit that after his first set of tests (the ones where the FMJ bullets did not fragment), he did another set of tests in which he first cut off part of the bullets' noses to expose their lead cores! Think I'm exaggerating? Let me quote him:

"The noses of subsequent WCC Carcano bullets were slightly compromised to expose the soft lead cores for the subsequent shots. Just as with an impact to thick bone, these modified bullets immediately deformed and fragmented as they entered the melons, resulting in large exit defects and the expulsion of large quantities of the internal contents."

As I have said, the Haags are quacks, or frauds, when it comes to the JFK case. Below is a critique of  Haag's article on the lone-gunman theory's missed shot written by forensic scientist Frank DeRonia. DeRonia earned a Master's degree in metallurgy from Columbia University and worked in the FBI's crime lab for over 20 years. After he retired from the FBI, he continued to provide forensic metallurgy and engineering services through his company Forensic Metallurgy Associates. He has been accepted as a forensic expert on more than 150 occasions in more than 30 states (in both federal and state courts).

"Lucien Haag’s Flawed Analysis of the First Shot Fired in the JFK Assassination"
https://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2016/11/haag.html

[Michael Carney]

So did Haag admit that his tests proved that the lone-gunman theory's head-shot bullet did not behave like an FMJ bullet? No, but, oddly enough, he did admit that after his first set of tests (the ones where the FMJ bullets did not fragment), he did another set of tests in which he first cut off part of the bullets' noses to expose their lead cores! Think I'm exaggerating? Let me quote him:

"The noses of subsequent WCC Carcano bullets were slightly compromised to expose the soft lead cores for the subsequent shots. Just as with an impact to thick bone, these modified bullets immediately deformed and fragmented as they entered the melons, resulting in large exit defects and the expulsion of large quantities of the internal contents."

Sounds like he was creating hollow point or frangible rounds to see what would happen, sounds like he learned that he was wrong about the head shot.

[Michael T. Griffith]

I thought it would be instructive to take a quick look at one of Dr. John Lattimer’s articles on the medical evidence. We will look at his article titled “Observations Based on a Review of the Autopsy Photographs, X-Rays, and Related Materials of the Late President John F. Kennedy,” published in Resident and Staff Physician in May 1972.

Let us start with what Dr. Lattimer said about the numerous bullet fragments seen in the autopsy skull x-rays. Be advised that he accepted the Clark Panel’s cowlick entry wound, which was a whopping 10 cm/4 inches higher than where the autopsy doctors said it was.

CLUSTER of FRAGMENTS -- An elongated (4 cm) cluster of about 19 tiny metallic fragments in the front of the head was scattered along a line from the anterior edge of the large head wound of exit, back in the direction of the wound of entrance. Four or five similar tiny metallic fragments were embedded in the bone near the anterior edge of the wound of exit and a half-round 1 cm notch in the corner of the largest loose fragment of skull also had a crescent of tiny metallic particles arranged around it. . . .

Several other tiny fragments were scattered between the wound of entry and the wound of exit. . . .

The x-rays of the head taken before the start of the autopsy, revealed at least 35 small metal fragments, mostly less than 1 mm in diameter, scattered throughout the right side of the top of the head.

Comment: Lattimer’s wording can be confusing, but if you look at his diagram (Figure 7), he puts the cluster of 19 fragments to the right of the right ear, and part of the cluster seems to extend into the frontal region.

So far, not a single ballistics test done with FMJ bullets and simulated or cadaverous human skulls has produced an FMJ missile that fragmented into 35 or more fragments, and forensic science knows of no head-shot case where an FMJ bullet behaved in this manner.

BULLET FRAGMENT IN FRONT OF BRAIN -- The second largest metallic fragment (7 mm x 3 mm but crescentic) had come to rest in the front margin of the brain just above the top of the frontal sinus on the right. . . .

The largest was a 6.5 mm rounded fragment stuck on the sharp margin of the bone at the wound of entry into the back of the skull.

Comment: Lattimer badly misread the AP x-ray as showing the 6.5 mm object to be in the back of the head, when in fact it is near the right eye. The Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission's medical panel, and the HSCA medical panel made the same mistake, a mistake that was not corrected until Dr. David Mantik, a radiation oncologist and physicist, examined the x-rays at the National Archives and took optical density measurements with an optical densitometer. The three ARRB medical experts, one of whom was a forensic radiologist, confirmed Dr. Mantik’s finding, as have Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Michael Chesser, Dr. Joseph Riley, and a number of other experts. We now know that the 6.5 mm object is a ghosted image that a forger placed on the AP x-ray. It was ghosted over the image of one of the two smaller, genuine fragments in the rear outer table of the skull.

THE WOUND OF ENTRY IN THE HEAD -- The head "wound-of-entry" could be clearly seen In four of the color photographs to consist of an ovoid penetrating wound of the back of the head about 7 x 15 mm in size, and about 2 cm to the right of the midline, high up above the hairline and where the calvarium was starting to curve forward.

Comment: If the cowlick entry wound could “clearly be seen” in four of the autopsy photos, how in the world did the autopsy doctors miss it? The three ARRB medical experts saw no such wound when they examined the original autopsy photos, and they noted that no such wound appears in the skull x-rays, a finding that Dr. Mantik and several other experts have confirmed. When the HSCA showed the autopsy doctors the autopsy photos, the doctors rejected the claim the cowlick wound could be seen in the photos.

So what in the world is going on here? Either the autopsy doctors were legally blind and unbelievably incompetent or the extant autopsy photos that show the back of the head intact have been altered. The autopsy doctors had the body in front of them for over three hours. They handled the head repeatedly. It is absurd to argue that they somehow “mistook” a wound in the cowlick for a wound that was 4 inches lower at the EOP, especially when they had the EOP itself and the hairline as reference points. Such a colossal, mind-boggling “mistake” is just not plausible or believable.

This, of course, raises the issue of the fragment trail in the autopsy skull x-rays. The fragment trail that Lattimer, the Clark Panel, and the HSCA FPP identified is high in the skull. But the autopsy doctors mentioned no such fragment trail in the autopsy report, nor in their testimony. Instead, they described a much lower fragment trail, one that started at the EOP and went to a point just above the right eye. However, no such low fragment trail appears in the extant autopsy skull x-rays.

Again, what in the world is going on here? Were the autopsy doctors once again legally blind and mind-bogglingly incompetent? Didn’t they see the very noticeable high fragment trail on the skull x-rays? If so, why didn’t they mention it in the autopsy report or in their testimony? And why do the extant skull x-rays show no trace of the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report? These are enormous discrepancies that raise unsolvable problems for those who argue that the autopsy materials have not been altered.

It is just not credible to suggest that all three autopsy doctors, plus the radiologist, somehow “mistook” the fragment trail now seen on the skull x-rays for a trail that started at the EOP, especially on the lateral x-rays, where the difference between a top-of-head fragment trail and an EOP-to-right-eye fragment trail would have been obvious even to a first-year medical student.

The conspirators who were handling the medical cover-up were faced with two severe problems: (1) the bullet that struck just above the EOP could not have come from the Oswald window, and (2) the high fragment trail, with its cluster of fragments in the front part of the skull, suggested a frontal shot. It appears that they first opted to ignore the high fragment trail but that later they decided that the EOP entry site was a more severe problem.

Therefore, they ensured that the autopsy report said nothing about the high fragment trail; but, later, they changed their minds and attempted to change the location of the rear head entry wound and added the 6.5 mm object, in order to avoid the EOP site’s impossible trajectory and to attempt to explain the high fragment trail. Their alterations fooled the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA FPP (but not some of the FPP’s outside consultants, who raised questions about the cowlick entry site and who noted the presence of a second fragment on the back of the head).

Here is a link to Lattimer’s article:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1fa2/bee3d41bc4815f0874d9dd74598ad4fcb55e.pdf

[Michael Carney]

I think with so much conflicting information and Lattimers mistakes and confusing description I need to get out of the minutia and get above it all. What do we know? A frangible round hit JFK in the back of the head depositing small fragments inside the head. There were FMJ 2 fragments on the back of the head from the ricochet and several seen on the interior on an x-ray admittedly placed there by Jerrol Custer as ordered to do so by Dr Ebersole. A frangible round could have also come from the front. 

So again we have to ask what was the source of the frangible round from the back?

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

[Michael T. Griffith]

I think with so much conflicting information and Lattimers mistakes and confusing description I need to get out of the minutia and get above it all. What do we know? A frangible round hit JFK in the back of the head depositing small fragments inside the head. There were FMJ 2 fragments on the back of the head from the ricochet and several seen on the interior on an x-ray admittedly placed there by Jerrol Custer as ordered to do so by Dr Ebersole. A frangible round could have also come from the front. 

So again we have to ask what was the source of the frangible round from the back?

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Oh, Lattimer's research is loaded with errors--and not just minor errors, but rather severe errors. For example, if you look at the rest of Lattimer's article, he includes an SBT diagram that shows the back wound noticeably above the throat wound, even farther above the throat wound than the WC placed it (Figure 2).

Lattimer also describes Oswald's alleged bullets as "high-speed bullets" and gives their speed as 2200 fps, but the alleged murder weapon was a low-/medium-velocity rifle, so it would not have fired any "high-speed bullets." Plus, 2200 fps is not considered to be "high speed" for rifle bullets anyway. 2200 fps is toward the lower end of the scale for rifle muzzle velocities (the M-1 had a muzzle velocity of 2800 fps; the AR-15 had a muzzle velocity of 3300 fps).

Yet, Lattimer is one of the WC apologists' top "experts."

And, yes, the key point is that the ammo that hit JFK in the head behaved nothing like FMJ ammo but behaved very much like frangible ammo.