JFK's Shallow Back Wound and Knowledge of the Throat Wound at the Autopsy

[Bill Chapman]

If this were any other case, if you had so many witnesses independently saying the same thing and mutually corroborating each other, this would be taken as very strong evidence that their accounts were accurate. But, LNers cannot accept this logical conclusion because it destroys their position on the JFK case, even though CT scans of comparable male torsos prove there was no path from the back wound to the throat wound without smashing through the spine.

Several witnesses ID'd Oswald running, displaying a pistol on Patton
shortly after shots were fired nearby


Bill Chapman
Dead Oswald Tour

[Jack Trojan]

And you people still refuse to come to grips with the hard scientific evidence that the autopsy skull x-rays have been altered. Your abject refusal to deal credibly with this evidence is on full display in the thread "Clear Evidence of Alteration in the JFK Autopsy Skull X-Rays."

The only LNers left here are the hard core denialists, which is why they are still here. They will never admit that they have wasted decades defending the LN position, when in fact it has been disproven many times over. You only need to prove it was a conspiracy and the LN hypothesis goes kaput.

The logistics make the LN hypothesis unfathomable, however, the proof is as simple as demonstrating that Oswald could not have taken all the shots from the TSBD; hence conspiracy. For example, a photogrammetric analysis (unlike what Jerry Organ does), of the Magic Bullet proves that there wasn't a valid trajectory from the 6th floor, at a 17 degree declination that entered JFK's back at the T1 vertebrae and exited at C7 out the throat. A simple reenactment demonstrates this.

Therefore, Oswald could not have taken the MB shot(s) and he was therefore not a LN assassin, who coincidently got a job right next to the limo route. And if this was a conspiracy, then Oswald must have been a patsy, because every good coup de 'at needs one. Just maybe Ozzy was telling the truth that he never even fired a shot because there is no way in hell the conspirators would rely on him to use a crap rifle with a wonky scope to assassinate the POTUS. They sheep dipped him with the backyard photos showing him holding commie lit and linking him to the rifle. But those backyard photos are just further proof of conspiracy. Without a doubt, the following 2 backyard photos were taken with different cameras since their spherical aberrations do not match, hence a conspiracy.

http://www.kohlbstudio.com/images/anim5.gif


Debunking the Magic Bullet

My contention is that there isn't a trajectory from the 6th floor of the TSBD that enters JFK’s back at the T1 vertebrae and exits his throat at the C7 vertebrae then enters Connally at the right 5th rib. That's what makes the bullet magical.

Here is an overhead of the magic bullet’s trajectory thru JFK relative to the TSBD.

http://www.kohlbstudio.com/images/MRI_MB_T1_8b.png


Note that the magic bullet struck the T1 vertebrae yet LNers claim it did not hit any bones as it passed thru JFK’s body.

http://www.kohlbstudio.com/images/x-ray_mb.gif


Take the 2 laser challenge and be the 1st to prove that the magic bullet was possible, if not feasible. Get in between 2 lasers aimed at each other at a 17 deg angle and note where each laser strikes your body.

http://www.kohlbstudio.com/images/JFK_2lasers.png


Can you make them match the autopsy photos?


http://www.kohlbstudio.com/images/JFK_Entrance_Exit_Wounds.jpg

When I took the 2 laser challenge I held a mirror in the photo to show where the front laser struck me as the corresponding back laser struck me on the back of the neck. The only way to match the autopsy wounds was to bend forward with my head almost between my legs, however, JFK was never in that position and slouching didn’t help.

http://www.kohlbstudio.com/images/MB2lasers2.png


Maybe Jerry Organ can post the results of his 2 laser challenge that actually makes it work (without cheating), otherwise, checkmate MB.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Dr. George Burkley, JFK's personal physician, provided key evidence that the back wound was at around the level of T3 (third thoracic vertebra), well below the throat wound. Burkley was the only medical professional who was at both Parkland Hospital and the autopsy, giving him a unique knowledge of Kennedy’s wounds.

-- Burkley signed the official death certificate, which said the back wound was "at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra." This position is confirmed by the holes in the back of JFK's coat and shirt and by the back-wound dot on the autopsy face sheet.

-- Burkley marked as "verified" the autopsy sheet, which includes a dot for the back wound that places the wound well below the neck and at around T3. We should keep in mind that the Warren Commission (WC) suppressed this "verified" version of the autopsy face sheet--it did not surface until the ARRB released it in the mid-1990s.

"At about the level of the third thoracic vertebra" does not mean it was exactly on the T3 vertebra. It could mean it was slightly above the T3 vertebra or halfway in between T2 and T3, or even just slightly below T2. Any of these locations corresponds very closely with the holes in the back of JFK's coat and shirt and with the descriptions of the back wound given by numerous witnesses; in fact, they also are arguably consistent with the location of the wound seen in the back-wound autopsy photo.

Since we have such strong evidence that the back wound had no exit point, the location of the back wound is not as crucial as it used to be, but it is still very important. Why? Because the only way the WC could get its silly single-bullet theory (SBT) to work was to assume the back wound was actually in the neck, visibly above the shoulder blade and the neck line, as we see in CE 386. However, even the problematic autopsy photo of the back wound clearly refutes that placement and shows the wound 2-3 inches lower.

One reason the back-wound photo is problematic is that it was taken with JFK's head tilted substantially backward. You can see two lines of folded skin on the neck. As a result, the photo does not show the neck in its normal position, which obscures the spatial relationship between the back wound and the neck and between the back wound and the hairline. However, you can clearly see in the photo that the back wound is below the neck and below the top of his right shoulder--a hand is resting on the right shoulder, and the back wound is undeniably below the shoulder line. This location is consistent with a wound at around T3.

No one can honestly conclude that the back-wound photo shows the wound at C6 or C7. As any good anatomy diagram will show (e.g., https://basicmedicalkey.com/surface-anatomy-of-the-back-and-vertebral-levels-of-clinically-important-structures-2/), C7 is right at the base of the neck, and the back-wound photo undeniably shows the wound was below the base of the neck and below the shoulder line of the right shoulder.

Some might ask, "Don't the rear clothing holes provide clear, compelling evidence that the back wound was below the neck?"

Well, you would think so. But, since admitting this fact would destroy the SBT, virtually all WC apologists adhere to the ludicrous theory that JFK's coat and his tailor-made shirt were both bunched upward by about 5 inches and in nearly perfect correspondence with each other, so that when the bullet allegedly struck at C6 or C7, it made holes in the coat and shirt that were at least 3 inches lower than the back wound's alleged C6/C7 location. This nutty theory makes the accidental-erasure explanation for the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tape seem downright credible by comparison.

Even WC apologist Jim Moore doesn't buy the bunched-clothing fantasy. Moore concedes that "the odds against this millimeter-for-millimeter correspondence boggle the imagination" (Conspiracy of One, p. 155). Moore also notes that the photographic evidence refutes the idea that Kennedy's clothing was markedly bunched; he points out that the Willis and Betzner pictures both show JFK's white shirt collar, "which would not be visible were his jacket bunched" (p. 155).

Former HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi noted the utter absurdity of the idea that JFK's shirt bunched along with the coat:

Kennedy was one of the best-tailored presidents ever to occupy the White House, and if it is possible--but not probable--that he was wearing a suit jacket baggy enough to ride up five or six inches in the back when he waved his arm, it is inconceivable that a tightly buttoned shirt could have done the same thing.(The Last Investigation, p. 27).

Some might also ask, "Doesn't the back-wound dot on the autopsy face sheet, verified by Dr. Burkley, provide additional strong evidence that the wound was below the neck?" Well, here, too, you would think so.

But, WC apologists cite the measurements for the back wound's location written on the autopsy face sheet. The written measurements say the wound was 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below the top of the right mastoid process. This could support placing the wound at C6.

However, the written measurements are penned in ink, whereas the other notations are in pencil--they are clearly darker than any other notation. Of course, this indicates the measurements were not written at the same time as the other notations, which in turn suggests they were added later. Furthermore, the two features used as reference points in the measurements--the acromion process of the shoulder and the mastoid process of the skull--are not fixed reference points and can produce different measurements, depending on the body’s position.

If one uses those written measurements as evidence for the accuracy of CE 386, which shows the wound no lower than C6, one must ignore the back-wound photo, the rear clothing holes, the back-wound dot on the autopsy face sheet, the death certificate, and numerous eyewitness accounts that put the wound well below the neck.

I should add that the slits in the front of JFK's shirt do not overlap when the collar is buttoned. Anyone can look at the photo of the slits and see this very easily for themselves. Moreover, slits have no fabric missing from them, tested negative for metallic traces, and are clearly at a point that would be behind the very bottom part of the tie knot. And, the tie knot has no hole through it and no nick on either edge, so obviously no bullet exited the shirt slits.


 

[Michael T. Griffith]

First, a few points about the photos that Jerry Organ has (surprisingly) included in his replies. They show that a wound just below the Adam's Apple would not have needed to exit through the shirt slits (which makes sense since three of the Dallas doctors independently confirmed that the throat wound was above the collar). They show what numerous scholars have long noted: that the slits are irregular and would not overlap if the collar were buttoned. And not one of the photos of JFK's coat shows the coat bunched upward by 5-6 inches (as even WC apologist Jim Moore has admitted, JFK's collar would not be visible if the coat were bunched this high, and the Betzner and Willis photos refute any notion of a markedly bunched coat).

And, again, the shirt slits have no fabric missing from them and tested negative for metallic traces. Furthermore, how on earth would a bullet that left a small, neat, punched-in wound in the throat have created the jagged, irregular, non-overlapping shirt slits? And how would it have done so without removing any fabric and without leaving behind any traces of metal?

The photo of the nick in the tie knot clearly shows the nick was not on the edge of the knot. Photos of the back of the tie show there was no hole there. Perhaps this is the reason that Organ did not include any of the photos of the back of the tie. This is also undoubtedly the reason that Harold Weisberg had to battle in court for years to get the FBI to release the photos of the back of the tie. Those photos prove that no bullet went through the tie and no bullet nicked either edge of the tie knot. JFK's tie knot would have had to be severely off-center to allow the bullet to miss it, but no photo shows the tie knot in such a position.

Second, I think it would be useful to quote part of Dr. Gary Aguilar's discussion on evidence that the autopsy doctors knew about the throat wound during the autopsy in his article "How Five Investigations Into JFK's Medical/Autopsy Evidence Got It Wrong":

Is it reasonable to believe that the pathologists were ignorant of JFK’s throat wound that horrid night? There had been ample coverage of the President’s wounds, including his throat wound [see below] in contemporaneous television and radio reports that were monitored by virtually the entire nation. Moreover, JFK’s personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, had remained with JFK from the shooting, to the frenzied, futile efforts at the hospital and on through the grim vigil in the morgue. By all accounts, the admiral worked closely with the emergency surgeons in Dallas, conferring with Malcolm Perry, MD, who performed the tracheotomy, and Kemp Clark, MD, the physician who pronounced JFK dead.[35] He also dwelt at length with his fellow Navy physicians who labored in the morgue.

Is it reasonable to assume that neither Dallas doctor told Burkley about one of JFK’s wounds, or that the admiral kept the autopsists in the dark about one of JFK’s wounds? To do so would have been a violation of one of the most uniformly observed, time-honored practices in medicine: a physician’s providing pertinent medical information to his consulting colleague. And even if Burkley had kept mum, would everyone in the crowded morgue, including the three Secret Service agents [Kellerman, Greer and Hill, who had been with JFK throughout] have neglected to mention what everyone else in the country had been told about JFK’s throat wound? Improbably, Kennedy’s autopsists have steadfastly insisted that they were, in fact, oblivious of the throat wound until the next morning’s call to a doctor in Dallas, Malcolm Perry, MD. . . .

The absence of word about Kennedy’s throat wound in the FBI report is far from proof of the surgeons’ ignorance. . . .

Manchester discovered that the course of events that makes the most sense to us today is in fact what actually happened: that the autopsy team had indeed heard Perry’s comments on the afternoon of the murder, and that they had dutifully communicated with Dallas during the post mortem.

“They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. . . ." [Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 432-433)

. . . Parkland witness, Paul Peters, MD, told Boston Globe journalist, Ben Bradlee, that “We did find out almost immediately after President Kennedy was taken to Bethesda that there was a hole in the neck that we had not seen a the time. . . . But it was only a few hours later when we began to get calls back from Bethesda. . . ."

Author Harrison Livingstone reported another Parkland source for nighttime contact between the morgue and Dallas. In a 1991 interview, Livingstone said that Parkland Hospital nurse Audrey Bell told him, “Dr. Perry was up all night. He came into my office the next day and sat down and looked terrible, having not slept. I never saw anybody look so dejected! They called him from Bethesda two or three times in the middle of the night to try to get him to change the entrance wound in the throat to an exit wound.”

. . . By the later stages of the autopsy, Admiral Burkley was apparently talking to others about a wound in JFK’s throat, according to a Bethesda witness reported by author David Lifton. On 11/29/63, Coast Guardsman George Barnum wrote up a memo that concerned a conversation he had had with Admiral Burkley at Bethesda Hospital on the night of the autopsy. Barnum reported that Burkley had told him Kennedy had been hit twice, “The first striking him in the lower neck and coming out near the throat … .”[53] Barnum’s account is incomprehensible without accepting that Burkley’s remark suggests that either there was knowledge of the throat wound or, as per Boswell and Karnei, that a throat wound had been inferred by the autopsy team. Either way, Humes’ assertion to the Warren Commission to the effect a throat wound only dawned on him the next day, after a call to Dallas, seems open to dispute. Other witnesses add to the doubts. . . .

A case can be made for either knowledge or ignorance of Kennedy’s throat wound during the autopsy. The preponderance of evidence, and the weight of commonsense, however, seem to tip the scales toward there having been knowledge(https://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_1a.htm#_ednref41)

[Bill Chapman]

Apparently Kennedy wore a tent earlier in the parade

[John Iacoletti]

It appears the clothing hung on a clothes hanger might have been the basis for Burkley's T3 level, or one of the Secret Service supplied an opinion.

“It appears” that this thing I completely made up with no basis whatsoever is what happened.

[Bill Chapman]

Picard Maneuver

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=PICARD+MANUEVER&t=h_&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D3ar-eJwgTsM

I wonder how many 'Picard Maneuvers' it would take to
tame this sucker.

I did a search but found no mention of the back brace in any
of Griffin's word salads. Gotta watch out for that e-Coli

Ya just can't make this stuff up

[Michael T. Griffith]

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

The bunch was persistent through the motorcade.

Here's one from 1961. His right arm's yet to go out over the car rail.

Maybe he could ease his back pain a bit by slouching.

It is odd and rather humorous that you so frequently include photos that refute your argument. Not one of those photos shows JFK's coat bunched more than an inch or two. Surely you can see this. Of course you can.

To account for the rear clothing holes, his coat would have had to bunch far more than what we see in the photos you included. You know this. I know you do. You and others have posted these same photos before, and I and other skeptics have pointed out to you many times the obvious fact that not one of those photos shows the coat was bunched nearly enough to account for the location of the rear bullet holes in the coat and shirt. But you just keep posting those photos because you don't have any photos that show the coat bunched more than an inch or two.

I notice you said nothing about the Willis and Betzner photos, which were taken much later in the motorcade and much closer to the time of the shooting than the photos you included. What do those photos show? Hey? We both know the answer. I've pointed this out to you before. We've had this exact same discussion several times. But, you just keep lying about this over and over and over again.

And what about the tailor-made shirt? The shirt would have had to miraculously bunch in nearly perfect millimeter-for-millimeter correspondence with the coat, both vertically and depth-wise. Given that JFK's shirt was tailor-made, given that his shirt collar was buttoned, and given that he was sitting back against a seat, how in the world could his shirt have bunched more than a fraction of an inch?

This bunched-clothing theory is just ridiculous. If this were any other case, no rational, honest person would entertain such an absurd, demonstrably erroneous theory for a second. It would be dismissed as a lame, desperate attempt to avoid the obvious. The rear clothing holes are hard physical evidence that the back wound was below the throat wound, but you guys just keep lying about this because it destroys your version of the shooting.