11/22/63 Parkland Medical Reports, the Throat Wound, and the Large Head Wound

[Ray Mitcham]

How incompetent were the Parkland doctors not to see the this top of the head wound as in the "official" photos,
https://i.postimg.cc/bvxx153B/Jfkautopsyrotateright.jpg

[Louis Earl]

This has always reminded me of the story of the blind men describing an elephant. 

[Michael T. Griffith]

How incompetent were the Parkland doctors not to see the this top of the head wound as in the "official" photos,
https://i.postimg.cc/bvxx153B/Jfkautopsyrotateright.jpg

Indeed, and one of the Parkland doctors was a neurosurgeon (Kemp Clark). Dr. Clark specified in his 11/22/63 report that two wound were noted: "two external wounds, one in the lower third of the anterior neck, the other in the occipital region of the skull, were noted. . . ."

The Parkland doctors would have had to be blind not to notice this wound.  Not only did the Parkland doctors not see that wound, but neither did the nurse who held a pressure bandage on the head wound and the nurse who packed the head wound with gauze squares to prepare the body for the casket--both of those nurses said the large head wound was in the "back of the head." In addition, most of the Bethesda witnesses said the large wound was in the back of the head, just as did the Parkland doctors

The mortician and a few others explained that Humes did the damage to the top of the head when he sawed the top of the head. Humes created the top-right "flap" when he sawed JFK's skull.

When the ARRB showed the mortician, Tom Robinson, the top-of-head photos, such as the one you linked, he explained that Humes and Boswell did that damage, that when the body arrived the top of the head did not look like that.

Going back to Dealey Plaza, Clint Hill saw the large head wound for several minutes up-close on the way to the hospital, and he saw the wound again at the Bethesda morgue. Hill consistently said the large wound was in the right-rear part of the head:

"a bloody, gaping, fist-sized hole clearly visible in the back of his head.”

"“The right rear portion of his head was missing."

"There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound…except for the one… in the right rear portion of the head.”

"As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed a portion of the President's head on the right rear side was missing and he was bleeding profusely. Part of his brain was gone."

What is so compelling about Hill's account is that he was called to the Bethesda morgue for the express purpose of viewing JFK's body again and that he saw the body after the autopsy while the morticians were preparing the body for placement in the casket. He once again saw the same right-rear head wound:

"At approximately 2:45 a.m., November 23, I was requested by ASAIC Kellerman to come to the morgue to once again view the body. When I arrived the autopsy had been completed and ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, General McHugh and I viewed the wounds. I observed a wound about six inches down from the neckline on the back just to the right of the spinal column. I observed another wound on the right rear portion of the skull. Attendants of the Joseph Gawler Mortuary were at this time preparing the body for placement in the casket." (https://www.jfk-online.com/clhill.html)

This is crucial because two of the morticians and others explained that the right-rear head wound was still visible even after the skull had been reconstructed. Notice that Hill mentioned no wound on the top of the skull.

[John Iacoletti]

where he ends up is a subconscious attempt to save face and/or just a muscle memory trace of his usual deceptive location.

Says "Mytton" the mindreader.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Quote from: John Mytton on August 15, 2020, 08:49:01 AM
where he ends up is a subconscious attempt to save face and/or just a muscle memory trace of his usual deceptive location.

You must be joking. Have you ever actually watched the NOVA documentary from which the GIF was taken? Here is what Dr. McClelland says in the documentary as he starts to draw a diagram of the large head wound's location, before he views the autopsy photos:

Let me show you to my best recollection what the wound looked like to me that day in Trauma Room 1.  [Starts drawing a diagram of the wound]  I could see the president's head wound quite well.  I was probably looking into a wound [holds hand on the right-rear side of his head] that was probably on the lateral or the side part of the head and the back part of the head [still holding hand on the right-rear part of his head]. . . .

And here is what Dr. McClelland says, and demonstrates, right after he has viewed the autopsy photos for NOVA:

I find no discrepancy between the wounds as they are shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly. There was a very large wound that I saw on the back of the head and the side of the head [holds hand on the right-rear part of his head] that I described earlier.

You guys always quote the first part of his statement but omit the second part, the part where he says that the autopsy photos that he saw showed the same large head wound that he had described earlier.

Here is a screencap that shows Dr. McClelland demonstrating the wound's location while he is giving the above-quoted description:



And here is the diagram (on the right) that Dr. McClellan approved for NOVA as a representation of the wound that he saw:



You really need to do some homework and get a handle on the facts of the case, and stop just blindly defending the lone-gunman nonsense.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Organ: That drawing was published 11 years prior to the NOVA program in the book "Six Seconds in Dallas".

Yes, Dr. McClelland's drawing of the large wound was done years before the NOVA documentary, but he approved the drawing for NOVA as an accurate representation of the wound that he saw. The NOVA narration states this. Did you miss this when you watched the documentary?

Organ: Isn't there a voice-over being heard at the moment of your screen grab?

Yes, there's a voice-over, but I was only quoting what Dr. McClelland says in that segment, and he says that the photos he saw showed the large back-of-head wound that he had described earlier. You guys always omit that part and only quote the first part where he says he saw no discrepancy between the photos and the wound he saw at Parkland.

Organ: Later on McClelland runs his fingers over that area of the head when discussing some scalp tears he theorized had fallen back to there.

Oh, gosh. This nonsense again? As you know, you are simply ignoring what McClelland himself says while he demonstrates the wound. Why can't you guys ever just admit plain fact? In the post-photo-viewing segment, McClelland says that the wound he saw in the autopsy photos was in the right-rear part of the head, that it was the same wound that he had described just before seeing the photos. Let's read what he says again, and he says this while he puts his hand on the right-rear part of this head:

I find no discrepancy between the wounds as they are shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly. There was a very large wound that I saw on the back of the head and the side of the head [holds hand on the right-rear part of his head] that I described earlier.

Why oh why do we have to go over this stuff again and again? Answer: Because you guys simply refuse to acknowledge facts that everyone can see and hear when McClelland describes and demonstrates the wound. One would think that at some point you guys would realize that you are embarrassing and discrediting yourselves with these pathetic evasions and denials.

McClelland described and demonstrated the same back-of-head wound that Nurse Henchliffe held a pressure dressing against, the wound that Nurse Bowron packed with gauze, the wound that Clint Hill saw for several minutes in two different locations, and the wound that the mortician filled with rubber to prepare the body for burial: the large wound in the back of the head, in the right occipital-parietal region, the wound that can be seen in its pre-skull-reconstruction form in autopsy photo F8.

I mean, for crying out loud, how can any honest, rational person believe that the mortician who handled the large head wound, cleaned it, reconstructed it, and packed the remaining part of it with rubber could "mistake" that wound for a wound that was above and forward of the right ear?! Even more surreal, how can anyone really believe that the nurse who cleaned the wound and packed it with gauze squares hours earlier made the same colossal blunder and mistook the wound for a wound that was 4-5 inches away on a different part of the head when she had the EOP and the right ear as reference points?

Demonstrations and diagrams of JFK's head wound:

[Michael T. Griffith]

First, regarding Jerry Organ's reply about McClelland's NOVA comments, rather than waste time answering Organ's repeated lies, evasions, and false denials, I just invite you to go watch the segment for yourselves, and you will see that McClelland said exactly what I quoted him as saying, and that he did in fact put his hand over the right-rear part of his head both times.

You will also see that the NOVA narrator did in fact say that McClelland approved the drawing of the back of the head that they showed next to a back-of-head autopsy photo rendition and by itself, i.e., the drawing that McClelland himself had drawn years earlier that shows a right-rear wound. You will hear the narrator say, "The drawing was approved by Dr. McClelland" (46:21 to 46:25 in the documentary). Pull up the documentary on YouTube, fast-forward to 46:21, and you will hear the narrator say these words.

In fact, a few minutes later, the narrator makes the rather amazing statement that the McClelland drawing shows the wound that the doctors "and NOVA" saw in some of the autopsy photos! I quote:

The drawing suggests what many of the photos examined by the doctors and by NOVA show: a large wound about this size and location. (51:14 to 51:21 in the documentary)

The narrator then goes on to note the contradiction between McClelland's drawing and the artist rendition of a back-of-the-head autopsy photo that shows no damage to the occiput and no damage to the right-rear parietal area.

I might add that when McClelland testified before the WC and the ARRB, he said that the large head wound was in the right-rear part of the head, and he said the same thing at every recorded public appearance whenever he talked about the wound's location.

As for the Clint Hill video clip in Organ's post, which was filmed many years after the fact, I will simply note that Hill's description of the wound in the video is very different from the description he gave in his official report and in his WC testimony. I'll take his original report and WC testimony over his decades-later change of story. I could also show you a video clip made a few years earlier than the one Organ shows in which Hill said the head blew off "the back" of JFK's head. Hill's official report and WC testimony say nothing about any damage to the top or side of the head, not one word.

Before moving on to the main subject of this post, let it be noted that autopsy photo F8 shows a large occipital wound, that OD scans of the autopsy skull x-rays prove that a substantial amount of occipital bone was blown away, and that new research on the Harper fragment has firmly established that it is occipital bone.

Now to the main subject of this post: the 11/22/63 medical report of Parkland Hospital’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Kemp Clark. It should be noted that his report says the same thing about the large head wound that he said in a press conference earlier that day.

At 3:30 PM, three hours after the assassination, Dr. Clark and Dr. Malcolm Perry held a telephonic press conference for local reporters who had been unable to attend the official press conference. One of the local reporters on the line was Connie Kritzberg of the Dallas Times-Herald. The next day, 11/23/, her article on the teleconference was published. She reported that Dr. Clark said the large head wound was in “the right-rear side of the head” and added that the throat wound was described as “an entrance wound”:

Wounds in the lower front portion of the neck and the right rear side of the head ended the life of President John F. Kennedy, say doctors at Parkland Hospital. . . .

The front neck hole was described as an entrance wound. . . .

Dr. Clark said the President's principal wound was on the right rear side of his head. (https://archive.org/stream/nsia-KritzbergConnie/nsia-KritzbergConnie/Kritzberg%20Connie%2001_djvu.txt)

A few months later, Dr. Clark told the Warren Commission (WC) that he had “examined” the wound “in the back of the President’s head,” that it was in the “right posterior part” of the head, and that cerebellar and cerebral brain tissue was exposed in the wound:

I then examined the wound in the back of the President's head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed. (6 H 20)

So the hospital’s neurosurgeon “examined” the large head wound and reported that it was in the “right posterior” part of the head, and also noted that he could see cerebellar tissue in the wound. Any first-year medical student knows that cerebellar tissue looks very different than other brain tissue, and that cerebellar tissue is located only in the back of the head.

There is a Parkland witness whom I have not yet mentioned: Al (Aubrey) Rike. Rike worked for O'Neal's Funeral Home and helped load JFK's body into the casket at Parkland Hospital after the head and body had been wrapped in sheets. He reported that while he had his hand on the back of JFK's head ("had my hand behind his head"), he could feel the edges of a wound and could feel brain tissue in the wound. I quote from his recorded interview with David Lifton:

When we picked him up, you could feel the mushy part of the brain and the brain, the bone was kind of putting enough pressure on my hand that you knew that there was a jagged portion of it, but it wasn't cutting my hand or anything, but you could still feel that through the sheets, as I was raising the head up and had my hand behind his head.

So we have yet another witness who handled the wound and who noted that it was in the back of the head.

[Michael Walton]

Here is an illustration of two autopsy photos being combined. Though made for illustrative purposes only, it does appear to be somewhat accurate because you can clearly see the reflected scalp with the bullet hole in it. The autopsy states that a rear head shot was documented. The image is a GIF and may take a moment to load as it's a large file: