"Bone Flap"

[Robin Unger]

History of the Autopsy photo's

Credit: JFK Lancer

For research purposes only.

    President Kennedy's Autopsy was carried out at Bethesda Naval Hospital on November 22-23, 1963. The official autopsy photographs have never been published and are under seal at the National Archives.

    On November 23, 1963, James K. Fox, photographer with the Intelligence Division of the US Secret Service, was given the autopsy film holders by JFK's personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, and told to develop them. On three occassions, he supervised their processing. According to Fox, Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman said to make himself copies as they would be history someday. He made three sets of black and white autopsy photo prints at the Secret Service lab. On November 27, 1963, additional official copies were made at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC).

    In 1981, those pictures were sold to JFK researcher Mark Crouch. During this time copies of the photos were given to several JFK researchers. Fox died in 1987. Writer David Lifton published the Fox set in "Best Evidence" (1988 Carrol & Graf Reprint). Later the photos were published in other books. Crouch retired from research in 1993 and sold his JFK assassination collection, including negatives made from the photos, to researcher Walt Brown who continues to make them available to researchers.

    In 1992, the official autopsy photos were specifically exempted from the JFK Records Act and will not be released. ARRB Senior Staffer Doug Horne stated that after viewing digital copies of the original photos, he noted the Fox unofficial photos are cropped differently and are degraded as compared to the originals in the National Archives but are basically the same. Some photos taken at the autopsy missing and are not now a part of the official collection. Horne's further, specific comments on the photos are available here. (1998 JFK Lancer Conference)

    The color photos were obtained by JFK researcher and amateur photographer Robert Groden who served as an upaid consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Groden photographed the color autopsy photos without permission. Groden was paid by "The Globe" tabloid at their 1991 printing of those photos and has also published them in his books.

    The photos below on our website are the "Lifton" copies named as he included them in his book, "Best Evidence". The X-rays are exhibits from the HSCA hearings and were obtained by JFK Lancer from the National Archives.

[Patrick Jackson]

You're quite right Patrick,
I was completely unaware there was evidence that whoever "published this photos was most probably searching through autopsy photos files to find most suitable to JFK wounds."
Can you point me to that evidence please.
On the other hand, if this is something you've just completely made up based on zero evidence, could you clarify that.

Thanks.

No, I cannot provide you with the evidence same as you cannot provide evidences for your claims. After all, I wrote "most probably" and as you can see from Robin respond we are constantly reading said, heard, told, made copies, copies, copies... Is there a single, solid proof that this are genuine autopsy photos? No.

What I wrote is based on numerous discussions, inconsistent testimonies, lack of solid proofs and details seen on the photos. For example, the ruler seen on the photos is MOST PROBABLY a white plastic promo ruler popular during 60s, 70s, 80s. Do you expect to see a plastic promo ruler at Bathesda Naval Hospital? No. Do you expect to see Centimetres only ruler in US? No. Same with latex gloves which were introduced bit after the November 1963.

[Dan O'meara]

No, I cannot provide you with the evidence same as you cannot provide evidences for your claims.

What claims?

[Patrick Jackson]

What claims?

That these are genuine autopsy photos.

[Dan O'meara]

That these are genuine autopsy photos.

I've not made that claim anywhere.
You've just completely made that up.
Just like you made up that silly story about someone searching through autopsy photos until they found of a white male, the same build and hairstyle, with the same type of catastrophic head injury, with a 'bone flap' hanging down from the right side etc.
Just take a second to think about how silly that story is. And what's this about latex gloves:

"... latex gloves which were introduced bit after the November 1963."

Really?

"The first recorded use of latex gloves was in 1883 by William Stewart Halsted at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. To protect his nurse's hands he asked the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company if they could make a rubber glove that could cope with being dipped in carbolic acid. The nurse soon became so adept with using the gloves that others, began following her example and using them too.

It wasn't until 1884 that the gloves are recorded as being used on a daily basis for medical procedures at Johns Hopkins hospital. The hospital has documentation by surgeons at the time complaining about how difficult it is to get the gloves fully onto their hands!"

[https://www.cascadehealthcaresolutions.com/History_of_Latex_Gloves_a/338.htm#:~:text=The%20first%20recorded%20use%20of,being%20dipped%20in%20carbolic%20acid.]

[Steve M. Galbraith]

History of the Autopsy photo's

Credit: JFK Lancer

For research purposes only.

    President Kennedy's Autopsy was carried out at Bethesda Naval Hospital on November 22-23, 1963. The official autopsy photographs have never been published and are under seal at the National Archives.

    On November 23, 1963, James K. Fox, photographer with the Intelligence Division of the US Secret Service, was given the autopsy film holders by JFK's personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, and told to develop them. On three occassions, he supervised their processing. According to Fox, Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman said to make himself copies as they would be history someday. He made three sets of black and white autopsy photo prints at the Secret Service lab. On November 27, 1963, additional official copies were made at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC).

    In 1981, those pictures were sold to JFK researcher Mark Crouch. During this time copies of the photos were given to several JFK researchers. Fox died in 1987. Writer David Lifton published the Fox set in "Best Evidence" (1988 Carrol & Graf Reprint). Later the photos were published in other books. Crouch retired from research in 1993 and sold his JFK assassination collection, including negatives made from the photos, to researcher Walt Brown who continues to make them available to researchers.

    In 1992, the official autopsy photos were specifically exempted from the JFK Records Act and will not be released. ARRB Senior Staffer Doug Horne stated that after viewing digital copies of the original photos, he noted the Fox unofficial photos are cropped differently and are degraded as compared to the originals in the National Archives but are basically the same. Some photos taken at the autopsy missing and are not now a part of the official collection. Horne's further, specific comments on the photos are available here. (1998 JFK Lancer Conference)

    The color photos were obtained by JFK researcher and amateur photographer Robert Groden who served as an upaid consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Groden photographed the color autopsy photos without permission. Groden was paid by "The Globe" tabloid at their 1991 printing of those photos and has also published them in his books.

    The photos below on our website are the "Lifton" copies named as he included them in his book, "Best Evidence". The X-rays are exhibits from the HSCA hearings and were obtained by JFK Lancer from the National Archives.

The forensic pathologist Peter Cummings examined the autopsy photos, x-rays and clothing stored at the National Archives for the Nova show "Cold Case" and said the "sharpness" in the originals are "much better" than the publicly available ones.

Cummings: "It was a real honor. It's something that I grew up with. As a boy, seeing the Zapruder film was one of the things that really fueled my interest in doing forensics. This was John F. Kennedy, and I was handling his clothing. Even though I went there for a very specific reason, and a scientific reason, certainly that moment wasn't lost on me.
The photographs themselves are crystal clear. The sharpness is amazing. You can get a lot of detail from them. Much better than anything you can find that's publicly available."

He also said: "Based on this fracture pattern in this skull, I think we can definitively say, "No. There was no shot from the side or from the front..."

Link here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/cold-case-jfk/

[Louis Earl]

I don't think we have any photograph or set of photographs that acccurately depict the body as it lay on the autopsy table at Bethesda.  This might be by design or it might be because that night the federal government staffed the autopsy of the president with the most incompetent people available.  People who didn't know what to photograph or how to photograph it.  In picture after picture we ache to see something vital which is just outside the range of the photo.  I get the feeling that the actual photos show conditions which would refute the autopsy and WC findings.  I could take better photos with my $10 camera in 1963 than these jokes. 

[Patrick Jackson]

I've not made that claim anywhere.
You've just completely made that up.
Just like you made up that silly story about someone searching through autopsy photos until they found of a white male, the same build and hairstyle, with the same type of catastrophic head injury, with a 'bone flap' hanging down from the right side etc.
Just take a second to think about how silly that story is. And what's this about latex gloves:

"... latex gloves which were introduced bit after the November 1963."

Really?

"The first recorded use of latex gloves was in 1883 by William Stewart Halsted at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. To protect his nurse's hands he asked the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company if they could make a rubber glove that could cope with being dipped in carbolic acid. The nurse soon became so adept with using the gloves that others, began following her example and using them too.

It wasn't until 1884 that the gloves are recorded as being used on a daily basis for medical procedures at Johns Hopkins hospital. The hospital has documentation by surgeons at the time complaining about how difficult it is to get the gloves fully onto their hands!"

[https://www.cascadehealthcaresolutions.com/History_of_Latex_Gloves_a/338.htm#:~:text=The%20first%20recorded%20use%20of,being%20dipped%20in%20carbolic%20acid.]

First latex medcal gloves were introduced in 1964. Go back and search better.

How many autopsies were done at Bathesda? Do we have any other photos from the same place and why not?