About 5.5 cm below a transverse fold in the skin of the neck. 3.5 cm above the exit wound in the throat.
The photo of the back has been doctored. This is obvious from the fact that it shows no damage to the back of the skull (the occipital and right-parietal regions), whereas optical density measurements of the autopsy skull x-rays indicate there is bone missing in the occipital region, whereas the Harper Fragment came from the occipital region, and whereas autopsy F8 shows significant damage to the occipital region. Yet, in the autopsy photo of the back, the occipital region is undamaged.
We also know the back photo has been altered because of the numerous accounts and diagrams, two of them in official medical forms, that put the back wound at T3. I quote from my article "Where Was President Kennedy's Back Wound?":
* Dr. Boswell's autopsy face sheet diagram shows the wound five to six inches below the neck. That face sheet, by the way, was marked "verified."
* The President's death certificate places the wound at the third thoracic vertebra, which corresponds to the holes in the coat and shirt. This document was also marked "verified."
* Dr. John Ebersole, who got a look at the back wound during the autopsy, said the wound was near the fourth thoracic vertebra (63:721). This is even slightly lower than where the death certificate places the wound.
* Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was called to the morgue for the specific purpose of viewing Kennedy's wounds, said the entrance point was "about six inches below the neckline to the right-hand side of the spinal column" (18:77-78). Hill's placement of the wound corresponds closely to the location of the holes in the President's shirt and coat.
* The FBI's 9 December 1963 report on the autopsy, which was based on the report of two FBI agents who attended the autopsy (James Sibert and Francis O'Neill), located the wound below the shoulder (i.e., below the top of the shoulder blade) (18:83, 149-168).
* Three Navy medical technicians who assisted with the autopsy, James Jenkins, Paul O'Connor, and Edward Reed, have stated that the wound was well below the neck. Jenkins and O'Connor have also reported that it was probed repeatedly and that the autopsy doctors determined that it had no point of exit (10:260, 262, 302-303; 63:720).
* Floyd Riebe, one of the photographers who took pictures at the autopsy, recalls that the back wound was probed and that it was well below the neck (10:162-163, 302).
* Former Bethesda lab assistant Jan Gail Rudnicki, who was present for much of the autopsy, says the wound was "several inches down on the back" (10:206).
* Former Parkland nurse Diana Bowron, who washed the President's body before it was placed in the casket, has indicated that the back wound was two to three inches below the hole shown in the alleged autopsy photo of JFK's back, and this hole, by the HSCA's own admission, is about two inches lower than where the WC placed the wound. In other words, Nurse Bowron located the wound five to six inches below the neck, and at the same time challenged the authenticity of the alleged autopsy picture of the President's back. We will return to her account in a moment. (Some WC defenders argue that Bowron told the WC she didn't see any wound other than the large head wound. But if one reads her testimony carefully, it is clear she was speaking of the condition of Kennedy's body when she first saw it in the limousine. What she said in effect was that she didn't notice any wounds other than the head wound when she first saw his body lying in the limousine. See 6 H 136.)
* In the transcript of the 27 January 1964 executive session of the Warren Commission, we read that chief counsel J. Lee Rankin said the bullet entered Kennedy's back below the shoulder blade (63:632). Rankin even referred to a picture which he said showed that "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade" (68:78-79).
* Three recently released HSCA wound diagrams place the wound well below the neck, and in fact in almost the exact same spot shown on the autopsy face sheet. The diagrams were drawn for Select Committee investigators by Kellerman, Sibert, and O'Neill, each of whom got a very good, prolonged look at the body. This shows that when Kellerman said the wound was "in the shoulder," he meant it was visibly below the top of the right shoulder blade. Each agent placed the wound well below the neck, and visibly below the throat wound. (https://miketgriffith.com/files/backwound.htm)
Dr. Mantik on the death certificate and Dr. Ebersole's placement of the wound at T4:
Admiral George Burkley's death certificate (dated 23 November 1963) placed this wound at T3 (the third thoracic vertebra). Burkley's choice of T3 raises a serious question. It is not likely that he would merely have glanced at the body and made this correlation by himself. More likely, he obtained this information from the pathologists, either at the autopsy, or during the next day when the autopsy report was being written. Ebersole, in my conversation with him, actually placed the wound at T4. Ebersole's comments must be taken seriously because his specialty (like mine) was radiation oncology. This is the sole specialty in which correlation of internal anatomy with external anatomy is essential. ("The Medical Evidence Decoded," p. 39, https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_Medical_Evidence_Decoded.pdf)
And, of course, the bullet holes in the rear of Kennedy's coat and shirt prove the wound was at the lower location identified and/or diagrammed by federal agents, medical technicians, and doctors who saw the body, much lower than the single-bullet theory can allow.
