These are the actual observations of some of the doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital on 22 November 1963, as interviewed by Gerald Posner in 1992 for his book Case Closed. It will clear up any misguided conceptions of the preposterously outlandish claim of a large wound in the rear of the President's head.
All that is interesting and perplexing as so many others saw a gaping wound in the side-to-rear of his head, from Clint Hill right up to the embalmer!
SSA Clint Hill:
The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.DP witness Phil Willis:
It took the back of his head offDP witness Marilyn Willis:
Matter was coming out the back of his headNurse Diana Bowron:
There was a gaping wound in the back of his head. It was gone. Gone. There was nothing there. Just a big gaping hole. There might have been little clumps of scalp, but most of the bone over the hole, there was no bone there. There was no damage to the front of his face,
only wound in the back of his head and the entry wound in his throat. The wound was so large I could almost put my whole fist into it[/i]
Nurse Doris Nelson:
There wasn’t even hair back there. It was blown away. All that area was blown out (when shown the rear of head autopsy photo)
Nurse Pat Hutton:
A doctor asked me to place a pressure dressing on the head wound. This was of no use, however, because of the massive opening on the back of the head.Dr Malcolm Perry:
there was blood noted on the carriage and a large avulsive wound on the right posterior cranium.Dr Robert McClelland:
I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted… we did not lift his head up since it was so greatly damaged. We attempted to avoid moving him any more than it was absolutely necessary, but I could see, of course, all the extent of the wound.
Dr Ronald Jones:
There was large defect in the back side of the head as the President lay on the cart with what appeared to be some brain hanging out of this wound with multiple pieces of skull noted next with the brain and with a tremendous amount of clot and blood.Dr Paul Peters:
I noticed the head wound, and as I remember--I noticed that there was a large defect in the occiput. It seemed to me that in the right occipitalparietal area that there was a large defect. There appeared to be bone loss and brain loss in the area…we speculated as to whether he had been shot once or twice because we saw the wound of entry in the throat and noted the large occipital woundDr Kemp Clark:
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.Nurse Audrey Bell:
Dr Perry turned the President's head slightly to the President's anatomical left so that she could see a right posterior head wound, which she described as occipitalNurse Margaret Hinchcliff:
the President had a gaping wound in the back of his head and an entrance wound in his throat.Dr. Charles Crenshaw:
The wound was the size of a baseball(photo depicts Crenshaw indicating right rear)Dr. Kenneth Salyer:
This wound extended into the parietal area(photo depicts Salyer indicating right rear)Dr. Charles Carrico:
There was a large, quite large, defect about here(photo depicts Carrico indicating right rear)
Aubrey Rike(Oneal Funeral Home, Dallas):
You could feel the sharp edges of the bone at the edge of the hole in the back of the headBethesda photographer Floyd Riebe:
...a big gaping hole in the back of the head
FBI SA Frank O’Neill:
...a massive wound in the right rearPetty Officer Saundra Spencer:
They had one(autopsy photo) showing the back of the head with the wound at the back of the head. It was just a ragged hole.Mortician Thomas Robinson:
...about the size of a small orange…Circular…ragged… directly behind the back of his head…they brought a piece of heavy duty rubber, again to fill this area in the back of the head…it had to be all dried out, packed, and the rubber placed in the hair and the skin pulled back over…and stitched into that piece of rubber.FBI SA James Sibert:
it was a good size, in the back part of the head there. Well, I think about 3 1/2 inches one way then quite a bit the other...they showed the pictures at that deposition that were neat in appearance, and boy, I don't remember anything like that
...but my recollection of the way the head looked is nothing that would appear as this photograph shows. This photograph is too neat. Right back here is where you would have had that massive wound, right in here, and you see that's neat. My thought was that that was probably taken after reconstruction was done... there was a big cavity there. I mean that you could look in to. The skull wasn’t intact, the bones weren’t in place…there definitely was a large cavity. It was just that apparent that there was so much skull missing
