What are the holes in Donahue's Theory?

[Jon Banks]

From the Baltimore Sun:

Howard Charles Hinman Donahue, a retired gunsmith and nationally known ballistics expert who concluded that a Secret Service agent fired the bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday of complications of pneumonia at his Towson home. He was 77.

Mr. Donahue first came to national attention in 1967 when CBS television investigated the Warren Commission report and had several gunning experts test-fire the same make and model of the Mannlicher-Carcano Italian rifle that was used by Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot at Mr. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.

Under nearly identical conditions, Mr. Donahue became the only man on record to re-create the three shots that occurred within the much-debated 6.5 seconds captured on the famed Zapruder film.

"Did Oswald get off a third shot? If he did, it could have gone wild, and the sound of it could have blended with the sound of the shot [fired] accidentally by a Secret Service man from the following car," Mr. Donahue told The Sunday Sun Magazine in a 1977 interview.

While agreeing with the Warren Commission that Oswald acted alone, Mr. Donahue said that an examination of the medical, ballistic and other evidence pointed to a bullet from the agent's AR-15 rifle that blew the president's skull apart.

"It is a ballistically unshakable fact that the fatal shot came from a position behind and to the left of the president. Since 1969, I have been unable to turn up evidence that shakes any part of my conclusion," he told the magazine.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-12-21/news/9912210051_1_donahue-ballistics-expert-warren-commission

I don?t agree with the SS theory but I think Donohue is correct that head shot was fired by a different rifle from a different location to the President?s rear

[John Iacoletti]

IIRC, Donohue didn't enter the picture until the CBS documentary in '67. And he was a gunsmith, not a "ballistics expert."

As we know, you have to be a urologist to be a real ballistics expert.

[Mitch Todd]

From the Baltimore Sun:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-12-21/news/9912210051_1_donahue-ballistics-expert-warren-commission

I don?t agree with the SS theory but I think Donohue is correct that head shot was fired by a different rifle from a different location to the President?s rear

I don't think that a Newspaper reporter is a particularly reliable judge of who is and who isn't an expert. Menninger tried to establish Donohue's bona-fides as a court-accepted expert witness. However, the only cases he cites where Donohue testified as an accepted expert, the expertise is in gunsmithy. If Menninger couldn't find an example where Donohue was accepted as a GSW expert, then we can safely assume that Donohue wasn't one.

[Mitch Todd]

As we know, you have to be a urologist to be a real ballistics expert.

Lattimer bought a Carcano, a pile of WCC ammunition, did experiments then published the results in refereed journals. That's far more than Donohue ever managed, vis a vis gunshot wounds.

[Chris Bristow]

Joe, regarding your sphere based on a 20 foot radius, I think you would have to take into account the fact that the SS agent was facing towards JFK and picked up the rifle from the floor in front of him. That would make it far more likely to fire to the front than the side and even less to the rear. So the odds can't be based on the full area of a sphere. Maybe a box extending 30 degrees to each side and 50 up and down. More up and down since he was said to have fallen back when the gun fired which overall moves the barrel upward.

[Chris Bristow]

The hardest coincidence for me to accept is that this accident happened at the very same time an actual assassination was taking place. I know that the assassination attempt would have been the catalyst for the accidental shooting but it is still weird.