WC apologists who refuse to face the fact that there's at least one small back-of-head bullet fragment on the autopsy skull x-rays don't seem to care that no expert on either side has denied this fact. They don't want to acknowledge a back-of-head fragment because they know that such a fragment could not have come from an FMJ bullet.
The fact that the autopsy x-rays show at least one small back-of-head fragment has been acknowledged by everyone from Dr. Joseph Riley to the HSCA medical panel to the Clark Panel to Dr. David O. Davis to Dr. Norman Chase to Dr. Larry Sturdivan. This is the fragment that for many years was misidentified as the lateral-view image of the 6.5 mm object. It is about 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site.
-- Dr. Riley acknowledges that a small back-of-head fragment appears on the lateral x-rays. One of Riley's main reasons for arguing that the 6.5 mm object is just behind the right eyebrow is that the small back-of-head fragment does not correspond to the 6.5 mm object in density and brightness, and that therefore the small fragment and the 6.5 mm object must be two different fragments ("The Head Wounds of John Kennedy: One Bullet Cannot Account for the Injuries,"
The Third Decade, March 1993, pp. 9-10,
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/R%20Disk/Riley%20Joe/Item%2004.pdf).
It is important to keep in mind that Riley wrote his two articles on JFK's head wounds in the mid-1990s, before Dr. Mantik's OD measurements were published in the 1998 book
Assassination Science. Thus, Riley, like everyone else, assumed that the 6.5 mm object was a bullet fragment and did not realize that the object is not metallic.
-- Dr. John Fitzpatrick, the ARRB's forensic radiologist, acknowledged that there's a small fragment on the back of the skull on the lateral x-rays. Like Riley, he noted that the fragment does not have "anywhere near the density/brightness required for it to correspond" to the 6.5 mm object, and he therefore concluded that "no object directly and clearly corresponding to the bright, 6.5 mm wide radio-opaque object in the A-P x-ray could be identified on the lateral skull x-Rays" (ARRB meeting report, 2/6-7/96, p. 2).
-- The HSCA medical panel acknowledged that the lateral x-rays show a small bullet fragment on the outer table of the skull, 1 cm below the alleged cowlick entry site. However, they did not address the obvious disparity in density and brightness between this small fragment and the 6.5 mm object, and they incorrectly claimed that the small fragment was the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object. Everyone from Riley to Sturdivan to Mantik has taken the panel to task for making this impossible assumption. Notes Riley,
It is inexplicable that the Panel would assert that the large round fragment seen on the frontal x-ray [AP x-ray] corresponds to the fragment near the asserted entrance wound on the lateral x-ray. Comparing the frontal and lateral x-rays demonstrates that it is impossible that the images correspond to the same fragment. ("The Head Wounds of John Kennedy," p. 9, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/R%20Disk/Riley%20Joe/Item%2004.pdf)
Anyway, the point is that the HSCA medical panel did acknowledge the presence of a small bullet fragment on the back of the skull on the lateral x-rays.
-- The Clark Panel, like the HSCA medical panel, claimed that the back-of-head fragment on the lateral x-rays is the 6.5 mm object seen on the AP x-ray, but the Clark Panel did so in a much more oblique, passing manner (Clark Panel report, p. 11).
-- Dr. David O. Davis, one of the HSCA's radiology consultants and the chairman of the Department of Radiology at George Washington University Hospital at the time, identified a bullet fragment on the back of the skull in the lateral x-rays. He said nothing about the fragment's size, but he noted that on the lateral view it was "3-4 cm above the lambda" ("Examination of JFK Autopsy X-Rays," 8/23/78, p. 1, 7 HSCA 222).
On an important side note, Davis also noted that the high fragment trail is 6 cm
above and in front of the 6.5 mm object, that the trail extends "“anteriorly from the inner table of the skull at a point approximately 6-cm. antero-superiorly [in front of and above] from the previously described embedded metallic fragment” ("Examination of JFK Autopsy X-Rays," 8/23/78, p. 2, 7 HSCA 223).
-- Dr. Norman Chase, another one of the HSCA's radiology consultants and a radiologist at the New York University Medical Center at the time, acknowledged that the lateral x-rays show a bullet fragment, and he concluded that it was the 6.5 mm object seen on the AP x-ray. Using the AP x-ray as his starting point, Chase stated that "the large metal fragment prominent in the x-ray . . .
corresponds to the metal fragment in the rear of the head as evidenced on the lateral view" ("Outside Contact Report," 2/27/78, pp. 1-2, 7 HSCA 281-282, emphasis added).
-- Dr. Larry Sturdivan, who served as a wound ballistics consultant for the HSCA, treats the small back-of-head fragment in a curious manner. In commenting on the HSCA medical panel's findings, he correctly notes that this fragment cannot be the companion image of the 6.5 mm object, and that the 6.5 mm object cannot be an FMJ bullet fragment:
The frontal x-ray of the head . . . shows a nearly circular density near the higher entry site that the panel identified as a bullet fragment deposited on the skull at entry. It appears to be a disk of something as dense as metal, with a small circular "bite" taken out of the lower edge. . . . This second bit of evidence was discussed several times during the meetings of the FPP [the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, aka the HSCA medical panel] and is mentioned by Dr. Baden [chairman of the panel] as a "relatively large metal fragment". . . . It is interesting that it was phrased that way, ducking the obvious fact that it cannot be a bullet fragment and is not that near to their proposed entry site. A fully jacketed WCC/MC [FMJ] bullet will deform as it penetrates bone, but will not fragment on the outside of the skull. In the Biophysics Lab tests, most of the test bullets' jackets ruptured about midway through the skulls. . . .
When they break up in the target, real bullets break into irregular pieces of jacket, sometimes complete enough to contain pieces of the lead core, and a varying number of irregular chunks of lead core. It cannot break into circular slices, especially one with a circular bite out of the edge. As radiologist David Mantik points out, . . there is no corresponding density on the lateral x-ray. The slightly lighter area indicated by the FPP as the lateral view of this object is not nearly light enough to be a metal disk seen edge-on [from the side/sideways]. As bright as it is seen flat in the frontal x-ray [AP x-ray], it should be even brighter when seen edge-on in the lateral. If an object is present in only one x-ray view, it could not have been embedded in the President's skull or scalp. (The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the JFK Assassination, 2005, pp. 184-185)
Now, why is Sturdivan so vague about the small back-of-head fragment? He does not deny its existence. But, he never calls it a fragment. He calls it "the slightly lighter area." He admits that the HSCA medical panel identified it as the 6.5 mm object on the lateral x-rays, and does not dispute the panel's identification and placement of the fragment. However, he does not go beyond observing that the fragment cannot be the lateral image of the 6.5 mm object or of a metal disk. Why the apparent vagueness? Because he has just acknowledged that FMJ bullets will not fragment on the outside of the skull, so he knows that this fragment could not have come from an FMJ bullet. I suspect this is also why he says nothing about the McDonnel fragment.
-- Dr. Mantik points out that the small back-of-head fragment 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site is only 3-4 mm thick but that the 6.5 mm object's OD measurement shows that it would be nearly 40 mm thick if it were actually metallic; in contrast, the 7 x 2 mm fragment is 2 mm thick on the lateral x-rays, which is consistent with its OD measurement of 1.44 (
JFK Assassination Paradoxes, 2022, p. 24).
In OD measurements, larger numbers mean less density, while smaller numbers mean more density. As mentioned, the 6.5 mm object's OD measurement is an impossible 0.60, 0.84 lower than that of the 7 x 2 mm fragment. Even more revealing, the OD measurement of the four dental fillings
combined is 0.76, 0.16 higher than the 6.5 mm object's measurement. Thus, if the 6.5 mm object were a bullet fragment, it would be denser than all four dental fillings combined, an obvious impossibility and a clear indication of forgery.
-- We should remember the fact that the small back-of-head fragment and the 6.5 mm object are at the same vertical level, since the small fragment is actually inside the 6.5 mm object when viewed on the AP x-ray. Nobody knew that the small fragment is visible inside the 6.5 mm object under high magnification until Dr. Mantik discovered this (and confirmed its existence with OD measurements). Placing the small fragment inside the 6.5 mm object ensured that the two objects would align vertically. This is important because if the 6.5 mm object were higher or lower than where it is now, it would not align vertically with the small fragment, and nobody would have ever identified the small fragment as the companion image of the 6.5 mm object, and the forgery of the 6.5 mm object would have been obvious. Dr. Mantik explains this point further:
On the AP X-ray, the authentic metal fragment lay at the anatomic right side of the 6.5 mm object, but it was located entirely inside of the 6.5 mm object. In fact, it appeared that the darkroom worker had positioned his double-exposed 6.5 mm image to precisely match the (anatomic) right border of the authentic metal fragment. Furthermore, by doing so, he had guaranteed that the 6.5 mm image would not be left without a partner image on the lateral X-ray. On the other hand, if he had not matched the 6.5 mm image to an authentic metal fragment, the 6.5 mm object would have had no partner image on the lateral X-ray, and the forgery would have been obvious. (JFK Assassination Paradoxes, pp. 24-25)
This vertical alignment was part of the reason that so many experts erroneously concluded that the two images were the same fragment. For example, the HSCA medical panel noted that the AP x-ray shows the 6.5 mm object to be "in approximately the same vertical plane as in the above-described lateral view" (7 HSCA 109).
The forgery of the 6.5 mm object was not perfect, but it was good enough to fool every expert who examined the x-rays for over three decades. The forgers should have created an object on the lateral x-rays that matched the 6.5 mm object in size, density, and brightness, but this would have required a more complicated double-exposure than the 6.5 mm object, and they may have assumed that placing the 6.5 mm object over the image of the small back-of-head fragment would suffice (it did for over three decades). Plus, the science of optical density analysis of x-rays was barely in its infancy in 1963, so the forgers had no idea that one day a radiation oncologist who also happened to be a physicist would detect their forgery with OD analysis.
-- Obviously, the small back-of-head fragment misidentified as the lateral image of the 6.5 mm object is not the McDonnel fragment. The McDonnel fragment is about 5 cm above the lambda, "lies medial" to "the depressed fracture in the right occipital bone," and is "between the galea and the outer table of the skull" ("Report of G.M. McDonnel," 8/4/78, p. 2, 7 HSCA 218), whereas the other fragment is 3-4 cm above the lambda on the lateral view, is 2.5 cm to the right of the midline on the AP x-ray, is 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site, and is on the outer table of the skull.
The McDonnel fragment could not have come from an FMJ bullet and could only be a ricochet fragment. Similarly, the small fragment 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site could not have come from an FMJ bullet and could only be a ricochet fragment. These facts prove that more than one gunman fired at JFK.
