JFK Facts - Kennedy's Head Wound

KENNEDY’S HEAD WOUND

Although the exact sequence of shots is unknown, it is certain that the final shot was the shot that caused Kennedy’s fatal head wound. The Warren Commission claimed that this shot as did all, came from the Book Depository from behind the car.

In frame 313 of the Zapruder film Kennedy’s head jerks sharply back and to the left, blowing his brain out the back of his head and a gush of red out of the front right of his face. He is clearly shot from the front and right; directly consistent from being shot from the grassy knoll which would be to the front and right of the car at this point, and completely inconsistent from being shot from behind from the Book Depository as the Warren Commission claimed.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations later performed acoustical tests in conjunction with the Zapruder film to determine where this shot had come from. Their experts testified the shot had come from the grassy knoll. However the Committee concluded, “In this analysis, the head shot occurring at frame 312 [Sic, 313] would, according to the acoustics results, have originated from the grassy knoll. This alternative however, was rejected.”

Eye witnesses told the Warren Commission that they were certain the final head shot came from the grassy knoll, yet the Warren Commission chose to ignore their testimony.

Presidential aid David F. Powers road in the car of Secret Service agents following the President’s car. He described the head wound for the Warren Commission. “...then there was a third shot which took off the top of the President’s head and had the sickening sound of a grape fruit splattering against the side of a wall.” Powers said that the shots seemed to come from the area of the Book Depository and the area of the grassy knoll. “The total time between the first and third shots was about 5 or 6 seconds. My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass.”

Another presidential aid, Kenneth O’Donnell testified that after the fatal head shot he made the sign of the cross. “It was such a perfect shot-- I remember I blessed myself. I was rather convinced that was a fatal blow.”

Bystander Hugh W. Betzner, standing behind the car said that he saw brain fragments flying out of the President’s car. “I heard at least two shots fired and I saw what looked like a fire cracker go off in the President’s car. My assumption for this was because I saw fragments going up in the air.”

Bystander Jack Frenzer said he heard the shot come from the grassy knoll and saw an explosion of fragments in the car.

Bill Newman and his family stood on the grassy knoll. Newman said that he heard a gunshot from the grassy knoll and saw the shot hit Kennedy in the front right of his head and saw, “...flesh fly from the President’s head.”

BJ Martin was a motorcycle officer riding to the left rear of the car. He testified that he was splattered with brain fragments.

Mr. Ball.

And were there any other spots of any other material on the helmet there besides blood?

Mr. Martin.

Yes sir, there was other matter that looked like pieces of flesh... there was blood and matter on my left shoulder of my uniform.

Officer Bobby Hargis rode beside Martin. Hargis testified that he heard the gunshot from the grassy knoll and, “...his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain...”

James Simmons stood on the triple underpass. He said he heard shots and saw smoke come from the grassy knoll and saw Kennedy blown to his left.

“...I heard three loud reports I presumed to be shots... Well, he fell and there was matter and a halo of blood... It went over the side of the car... Well, after I heard the shots I looked to see if I could see where they were coming from and underneath the trees up on the grassy knoll by the fence I detected what appeared to be a puff of smoke or a wisp of smoke.”

Mrs. Connally told the Warren Commission, “It felt like spent buckshot falling all over us, of course, I too could see that is was the matter, brain tissue, or whatever, just human matter, all over the car and both of us.” She also said that it seemed to her as though the shot came from the right.

Governor Connally said that the shots occurred so fast that he thought that someone was shooting at them with an automatic rifle and that some of the brain landed on his lap. He later told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the head shot, “...hit with a very pronounced impact... I could see blood and brain tissue all over the interior of the car and all over our clothes. We were both covered with brain tissue, and there were pieces of brain tissue as big as your little finger. It was something that was unmistakable. There was no question in my mind about what it was.”

Mrs. Connally testified that after the fatal head shot Mrs. Kennedy screamed, “Jack, they have killed my husband! They have killed my husband! I have his brains in my hands!”

The majority of the mass media has reported that Mrs. Kennedy then tried to climb out the back of the car until her personal body guard, Secret Service agent Clinton J. Hill ran from the car behind and pulled her back into the car. However Hill testified that Mrs. Kennedy had climbed onto the back of the car in order to grab a piece of the President’s skull and brain. Hill said that she continued to cling onto it at Parkland hospital until it was taken away from her by a nurse.

Mrs. Kennedy’s testimony after the fatal head shot is deleted from the Warren Report. As she begins to discuss what happened her testimony is cut short and only reads, “[Reference to wounds deleted.]”

Mr. Specter.

What did you observe as to President Kennedy’s condition on arrival at the hospital?

Mr. 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 one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.

Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman who was riding shotgun testified that after the first shot hit Kennedy, a final “flurry” of shots hit the car. When the Commission pressed Kellerman on saying that he only heard three shots total, he said, “President Kennedy had four wounds, two in the head and shoulder and the neck. Governor Connally, from our reports, had three. There have got to be more than three shots.” He testified that during the autopsy at Bethesda, the head entry wound was just above the left ear and there was a large wound five inches wide in the rear of the head.

The doctors who examined the President at Parkland Hospital said that the wound came from the front and the right. Or at least concluded that there was a very large rear head wound and not a small one.

Diana Bowron was a nurse who helped remove the President from the car. She testified that she observed a very large rear head wound.

Mr. Specter.

And what, in a general way, did you observe with respect to President Kennedy’s condition?

Miss. Bowron.

He was very pale, he was lying across Mrs. Kennedy’s knee and there seemed to be blood everywhere. When I went around to the other side of the car I saw the condition of his head... The back of his head... Well it was very bad--- you know.

Mr. Specter.

How many holes did you see?

Miss. Bowron.

I just saw one large hole.

Mr. Specter.

Did you see a small bullet hole beneath that one large hole?

Miss. Bowron.

No, sir... I helped to lift the head and Mrs. Kennedy pushed me away and lifted his head herself onto the cart and so I went around back to the cart and walked off with it. We ran on with it to the trauma room and she ran beside us.

Dr. Marion Jenkins said the head wound was so bad that during cardiac massage, “... with each compression of the chest, there was a great rush of blood from the skull wound. Part of the brain was herniated; I really think part of the cerebellum, as I recognized it, was herniated from the wound; there was part of the brain tissue, broken fragments of the brain tissue on the drapes of the cart on which the President lay.”

Dr. Charles Rufus Baxter told the Warren Commission, “...we had an opportunity to look at his head wound then and saw that the damage was beyond hope, that is, in a word-- literally the right side of his head had been blown off. With this and the observation that the cerebellum was present-- a large quantity of brain was present on the cart, well-- we felt that such an additional heroic attempt was not warranted, and we did not pronounce him dead but ceased our efforts, and awaited the priest and last rites before we pronounced him dead... This wound was in temporal plate of bone laid outward to the side and there was a large area, oh, I would say 6 by 8 or 10 cm of lacerated brain oozing from this wound, part of which was on the table and made a rather massive blood loss mixed with it and around it.”

Dr. Adolph H. Giesecke Jr. Testified, “There was a great deal of blood loss which was apparent when he came in the room-- the cart was covered with blood and there was a great deal of blood on the floor... I noticed that he had a very large cranial wound, with loss of brain substance, and it seemed that most of the bleeding was coming from the cranial wound.”

Dr. William Kemp Clark testified, “I then examined the wound on 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. There was considerable blood loss evident on the carriage, the floor, and clothing of some of the people present. I would estimate 1,500 cc. of blood being present.

Dr. Ronald Jones also testified that the brain had been blown out the back of the head.

Mr. Specter.

Will you describe as precisely as you can the nature of the head wound?

Dr. Jones.

There was a 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. Robert McClelland told the Warren Commission that the rear head wound was so large that he could even see 1/3 of the brain. “...I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound... you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebeller tissue had been blasted out. There was a large amount of bleeding which was occurring mainly from the large venous channels in the skull which had been blasted open...”

Mr. Specter.

Did you observe a small gunshot wound below the large opening on the back of the head?

Dr. McClelland.

No.

The testimony of the Parkland doctors would seem to be enough overwhelming evidence for anyone to clearly see that head wound came from the front, or that at least there was a very very large rear head wound. However both the government and the media have chosen to believe that the head wound came from behind, leaving only a very small wound on the rear of the head. This conclusion seems to be based on the autopsy report and testimony of Dr. James Humes. Humes claimed to have found no large rear head wound but only a small one measuring only 15mm by 6mm. Humes concluded that the shot must have entered from behind leaving a small rear wound and exited out of the front right leaving a large wound. However, this is all based on the word of Dr. Humes who has proven to be less than credible. Not only did he later reverse his testimony and admit that the bullet from the back wound had fallen out, but he also refused to answer questions concerning the possibility that Kennedy had Addison’s disease. Why would Humes lie? He was a military doctor under orders.

Alleged autopsy photos of the President’s head are also questionable. Some of the autopsy photos show a small rear head wound, while others show a very large rear head wound. Not only do these photos contradict each other but the doctors at Parkland also said that these photos were fake.

HSCA’s photographic expert Robert Groden indeed noted the vast discrepancies between the alleged photos and the eyewitness medical statements of that day. “The autopsy photographs show a massive wound. But it’s in the right temporal area and not in the parietal area which is behind it between the two. It is inconceivable to me that every single one of the witnesses who saw the president’s head could be wrong and specifically wrong about this particular wound. They describe an avulse exploded open wound in the rear head. In the autopsy photographs you see a small neat wound of entrance. It’s obvious to me those photographs have been faked.”

Photos of the front right of the head clearly have some type of perfectly shaped black triangle blocking the area.

In 1972 Dr. Cyril Wecht obtained a court order to examine the President’s brain which was preserved in formaldehyde in the National Achieves. Wecht hoped to examine the brain to determine from where the gunshot came. He was told by the National Archives that the President’s brain had disappeared!

Dr. Wecht was dismayed by the lack of interest in the matter by HSCA and his fellow forensic pathologists on its panel.

“Somewhere between April of 65 and the end of October 66 these things were literally taken illegally—stolen—removed from the National Archives. And to this day as we sit and talk, nobody has ever accounted for these missing items. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what this would mean in a routine murder case?... Do you know what would happen in that case probably? The judge would throw it out of the courtroom.

“But in this case the government hasn’t been concerned. And my colleagues in forensic pathology were not concerned. And yet there’s not one of them who would ever tolerate that kind of abhorrent, unacceptable, unethical, and immoral illegal procedure or policy in his own office. But in this case it just rolls off their back along with the acceptance of the single bullet theory and all the other things.

Over the years there has been a great deal of misinformation about the head wound spread by the media. After the controversy of Oliver Stone’s film ‘JFK’, CBS ran a sham news report in 1992 on ‘48 Hours’ entitled, ‘Who Killed JFK?: Facts not Fiction’. Apparently CBS decided to focus only on the fiction element. Dan Rather offered numerous explanations as to why the President’s head moved backward in the Zapruder film. Each one was more ridiculous than the last.

q 1.Upon close inspection of the Zapruder film, Kennedy’s head actually moves forward.

q 2.Since the car was speeding up, Kennedy was thrown backwards by the whiplash.

q 3.Mrs. Kennedy grabbed her husband and threw him backwards.

q 4.All of the brain fragment was thrown forward and the explosion of brain fragment in the front of the head caused the head to move backwards.

After reviewing CBS’s fiction, here are the facts which were left out.

Ø 1.The Zapruder film can be examined close up, far away, in slow motion, in fast forward, in negative, upside down, in a house with a mouse, in a box with a fox, the film can be examined here or there, it can be examined anywhere, the head still moves backwards!

Ø 2.A film taken of the rear of the President’s car shows the car with its break lights on during the time of the fatal head shot. This means that the car was slowing down not speeding up. In the film Kennedy’s head also moves backwards.

Ø 3.In order for this scenario to work Mrs. Kennedy must have had the strength of ten men in order to push Kennedy back so far that he is nearly blown out the back of the car. And it would be some coincidence that this happens at exactly the same time as Kennedy is struck in the head.

Ø 4.While some brain matter did fly forward the majority of brain matter flew backwards. Witnesses behind the car all said that they saw the brain blown out the back of the head. Mrs. Kennedy even grabbed pieces of the President’s head which had been blown out the back. Doctors at Parkland hospital said they saw between 1/4 and 1/3 of the back out the head blown out.

After reviewing the facts and the fiction ‘48 Hours’ is with the right network, CBS. All you see is BS.

Jim Garrison summed up the head shot best by saying, “All any intelligent person, even a child has to do is look at the Zapruder film. After the shot hits him in the head, the critical shot, John Kennedy goes backwards, towards the back of the car, so he’s almost blown out the back of the car. John Kennedy was obviously hit from the front, everybody knows it, and especially the government.”