Let us examine in more detail the lone-gunman theory’s inability to explain the subcortical and cortical damage to JFK's brain. There is no wound path or fragment trail between these two wound paths—in other words, these are two separate, unconnected wound paths. The cortical damage is near the very top of the skull; it is close to the high fragment trail and is on the outer (or cortical) surface of the brain. The subcortical wound path is nearly 2 inches below the cortical damage and spans the length of the brain from front to back.
The cortical damage was described in detail by the HSCA FPP (7 HSCA 131). The subcortical damage was described in detail by the autopsy doctors in the supplemental autopsy report (CE 391, p. 1). Incredibly, however, the HSCA FPP never specifically described the subcortical damage, and the autopsy doctors said nothing about the cortical damage! More on this in a minute.
In his article “The Head Wounds of John Kennedy: One Bullet Cannot Account for the Injuries,” Dr. Joseph Riley, a neuroscientist who specialized in neuroanatomy, explained the problem posed for the lone-gunman theory by these two separate areas of damage:
In addition to the cortical damage just described, there was massive subcortical damage. This subcortical damage was far more extensive in terms of volume of tissue damaged than the damage to the superficial cerebral cortex. In non-technical language, in addition to damage to the outside layer of the brain, there was massive damage deep inside as well, extending the entire anterior-posterior length of the brain. . . .
To understand this damage, it is important to keep several points in mind. First, when a bullet passes through the brain, it causes many types of damage in addition to direct mechanical damage from the missile. The multiple factors that can cause this additional damage need not be described here. The point, however, is that this wound may be viewed as a "cylinder of disruption" with a radius of approximately one inch that extends from back to front and passes through the center of the brain. . . .
Even the most superficial examination of the evidence demonstrates that the high entrance wound cannot account for all of the posterior subcortical damage, yet the Panel [the HSCA FPP] provides no explanation or analysis of the subcortical wounds. It is difficult to understand how a panel of competent forensic pathologists could have ignored the subcortical damage in their report. Clearly, the "high" entrance wound does not and cannot account for the observed subcortical damage. (“The Head Wounds of John Kennedy: One Bullet Cannot Account for the Injuries,” The Third Decade, March 1993, pp. 10-11, 14, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/R Disk/Riley Joe/Item 04.pdf)
Dr. Riley phrased it this way in his article “What Struck John”:
In the HSCA trajectory, the bullet path is restricted to the outer (cortical) surface, almost tangent to the brain. Yet there is a cavitation wound along the length of the brain, deep and parallel to the cortical surface. . . . The cavitation wound corresponds exactly to a trajectory predicted from the observations of the autopsy prosectors [i.e., the EOP entry site’s trajectory].
The exit wound is not and cannot be located where the HSCA Forensics Panel places it. Similarly, the autopsy photographs show intact cerebral cortex at where government panels have claimed there was a "high" entrance wound. (https://kenrahn.com/Marsh/Autopsy/riley.html))
Dr. Riley also noted that the EOP entry site described in the autopsy report cannot account of for all the fragments and the damage to the cerebral cortex (i.e., the outer layer of brain tissue/the cerebrum’s outer layer):
The fragments distributed in and the damage to the cerebral cortex cannot be due to the shot described by Humes et al.; the wounds are discontinuous. (https://kenrahn.com/Marsh/Autopsy/riley.html)
Here is one of Dr. Riley’s diagrams of the subcortical damage from his article “The Head Wounds of John Kennedy: One Bullet Cannot Account for the Injuries”:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f3TWcg1KIC_lyQNEJoCpxrsB5zf-ozZQ/view?usp=sharingBritish researcher Martin Hay puts it this way:
. . . There were two separate and distinct areas of damage to the President’s brain, in the cortical and subcortical regions, and “no evidence of continuity” between the two. “An entrance wound located in the posteromedial parietal area cannot account for the subcortical damage. An entrance wound in the occipital region, as determined by the autopsy prosectors, may account for the subcortical damage but cannot account for the dorsolateral cortical damage.” As Dr. Riley concluded, “The cortical and subcortical wounds are anatomically distinct and could not have been produced by a single bullet. The fundamental conclusion is inescapable: John Kennedy’s head wounds could not have been caused by one bullet.” (https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/robert-a-wagner-the-assassination-of-jfk-perspectives-half-a-century-later)
Revealingly, the HSCA FPP gave only a brief, superficial description of the subcortical damage, a description that, incredibly, gave the reader no idea that the damage was subcortical, that it was well below the cortical damage (7 HSCA 129)! On the other hand, the autopsy doctors said nothing about the cortical damage, just as they said nothing about the high fragment trail! Why these glaring omissions? Because the HSCA FPP and the autopsy doctors were only willing to acknowledge one bullet strike to the head and thus only one entry site. To make matters worse, the HSCA FPP refused to deal with evidence that contradicted the now-debunked cowlick entry site, and the autopsy doctors refused to deal with evidence that contradicted the EOP entry site.
And what have the leading WC apologists said about the two clearly separate cortical and subcortical wound paths in the brain? Nothing. Not one word. Vincent Bugliosi said nothing about it in his error-riddled tome
Reclaiming History. Similarly, Gerald Posner says nothing about it in his mistitled propaganda book
Case Closed. Crickets. Not one syllable.
One of the important disclosures that came from the ARRB releases in the mid-1990s is the evidence that the autopsy doctors were aware that there were two separate bullet-damage trajectories through the skull that intersected at the EOP site. We learned that two “angle lines” were drawn on the right lateral skull x-ray by the autopsy radiologist, Dr. John Ebersole. The lines converge at the EOP site. In their report on their late-1966 review of the autopsy materials, the autopsy doctors specifically described those lines as “angle lines.” One of the lines goes upward at a 32-degree angle from the EOP site to a spot on the high point of the forehead.
Crucially, the other line goes straight through the area of the subcortical damage.
When the HSCA FPP asked Dr. Ebersole about these lines, he came up with the cockamamie cover story (or he repeated the cover story that was given to him) that the lines were merely anatomical landmarks that would be recognized by an artist for preparing a sculpture of JFK’s head. This, of course, makes no sense for several reasons, the most obvious being that any sculpture of JFK’s head would not have been based on x-rays of his badly damaged, blasted skull but on premortem x-rays of his intact, undamaged skull. Martin Hay discusses the disclosure of the trajectory lines on the right lateral skull x-ray in his 2013 article “The Head Wounds Revisited” (
https://themysteriesofdealeyplaza.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-head-wounds-revisited.html).
Also, regarding the right-frontal cloud of fragments seen on the unenhanced skull x-rays, this is indicative of a right-frontal shot. Why? Because, in conformity with the laws of physics, when a bullet disintegrates after striking a skull, the smaller, dust-like fragments are found closer to the entry point, while the larger particles are found closer to the exit. Naturally, the larger fragments, having greater mass, have more momentum and are carried farther away from the point of entry. In the skull x-rays, we see a cloud of small particles at the right temple, whereas the larger fragments are farther away, toward the upper rear part of the skull, revealing a front-to-rear trajectory.
