Why the need to assume a “slumped forward” position? Either the EOP or the Cowlick can be hit from the TSBD sniper’s nest.
The need for a “slumped forward” position is only needed if one does not understand that bullet fragments do not always follow a straight path through the body. Indeed, in general, bullet fragments follow a curved path. This is something any true ballistic expert can tell you. And has clearly demonstrated many times with photographs of ballistic gel blocks, after they have been shot with an embedded bone target, resulting in clearly visible curved paths in the ballistic blocks formed by the resulting fragments.
But this was something that was not understood by the HSCA. Hence, their totally unnecessary “slumped forward” hypothesis. To allow a straight line from the TSBD sniper’s nest, through the cowlick entry wound that they “deduced”, which allowed a straight-line path through the exit wound.
Of course, this explanation is no good. It goes against what is seen in the Zapruder film. And because of where the fragments struck windshield frame and windshield, which are not anywhere near this straight line. And is totally unnecessary because a bullet could strike either the EOP or cowlick, follow a curved path, exit the exit wound and head straight for the windshield frame or windshield on slightly diverting paths. It is just more plausible if the bullet struck the EOP. The resulting curve is less extreme and simpler than the curve that would correspond to the cowlick entry.
But, CTers will happily continue to site this gaff by the HSCA even though this “slumped forward” hypothesis has never been a leading contender among LNers. But CTers will continue to pretend that it has been and still is.
More silly drivel from our professional conspiracy-theory denier. For the sake of others, a few facts:
* Bullets do not make sharp turns in soft tissue. They veer, but they do not make sharp turns. Ballistics tests films showing bullets traveling through simulated soft tissue prove this. No bullet in any ballistics tests has veered to the degree required by the EOP-entry-site trajectory.
* A bullet fired from the sixth-floor window would have struck the EOP at a downward angle of 16 degrees. After penetrating the skull at a 16-degree downward angle, there is no way on this planet that the bullet could have made the exit wound claimed by the WC and the HSCA. As ballistics expert Howard Donahue noticed long ago, a bullet fired from the sixth-floor window and entering the skull at the EOP would have exited far below the right-front parietal bone.
* A bullet entering just above the EOP could not have created the fragment trail seen on the extant autopsy skull x-rays. That fragment trail has been noted by numerous forensic pathologists and radiologists, even by lone-gunman theorist Dr. John Lattimer, who was not a pathologist. As I document in my article, that fragment trail is impossible to align with the trajectory of a bullet entering the EOP.
* Oddly enough, but not surprisingly, the autopsy report says nothing about the high fragment trail. The only fragment trail it describes is one running from just above the EOP to the right supraorbital ridge, i.e., just above the right eye.
* The WC realized the trajectory problem with the EOP entry site, and so they published a diagram showing Kennedy leaning far forward. Only a marked forward lean creates a plausible bullet trajectory from the EOP to the right-front parietal area. The problem is that the Zapruder film refutes this idea. The film shows JFK leaning forward, but not nearly to the degree required to make the EOP-to-right-eye trajectory work.
* The small bullet fragment and the four tiny bullet fragments near it on the back of the head could not have come from an FMJ bullet, regardless of which entry site you accept. Any ballistics expert or forensic pathologist will tell you that FMJ bullets do no deposit cross-section fragments on the outer table of the skull when they strike skull, and forensic science knows of no case where an FMJ bullet has done so.
