From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Film Proves JFK Shot From Behind, Scientist Says
Date: 25 JAN 93 13:41:59 PDT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
NNTP-Posting-Host: RIPPLE


In article <1993Jan17.100532.22683@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> Michael Rivero 
writes:

>>	All of the Washington personnel, from Jackie to Mrs. Johnson
>>	to LBJ were not inclined, under the circumstances, to spend
>>	a whole lot of time in Dallas or at Parkland hospital.  They
>>	wanted to get back to Washington ASAP.  Johnson wouldn't
>>	leave without Jackie and Jackie wouldn't leave without her
>>	husband's body.  So Kennedy's aides arranged for a coffin
>>	to be sent over, arranged for the body to be placed in the
>>	coffin, and moved it out of the hospital, into a 
>>	hearse/ambulance (Oneal's vehicles served double duty) and
>>	onto the plane.  Dr. Burkely told Dr. Rose that he was 
>>	welcome to come along and observe the autopsy so as to
>>	tighten up the chain of evidence, but Dr. Rose was unable
>>	to jump on a plane and fly out of state at a minute's notice.

>	It doesn't MATTER what anyone felt, the law at the time was that
>the investigation fell under Texas jurisdiction. Even if Rose had gone along,
>it didn't alter the fact that the body had been removed from the jurisdiction
>of the legal investigative body.  

	What they felt matters in determining the motive for moving 
	Kennedy's body from Dallas.  Either this action lends credence
	to conspiratorial speculations or it does not.  I submit that
	the circumstances of the removal do not support such 
	speculation.

	As for the body having been removed from Dallas, I quite agree
	that it should not have been removed, at least not before Dr.
	Rose could perform the appropriate medicolegal autopsy.  That 
	this did not happen might have been relevant in court; it is not
	relevant to arguments about Oswald's (or anyone else's) actual
	culpability.  That is, unless you feel that Jackie's desire to
	leave ASAP, and with her husband's body, is somehow suspicious.

>>	If you want to get technical, they did, as the body was
>>	released by a duly constituted authority, Justice of the
>>	Peace Theron Ward.

>Texas law requires a Justice of the Peace to participate in the paperwork
>surrounding the death, but he cannot "release" a body that is material evidence
>in a murder case. 

	Theran Ward, after consulting with District Attorney Henry Wade,
	came to the conclusion that the body of a President, as 
	Commander in Chief, could in fact be released to the custody
	of a military facility.  Providing a JoP concurred - and Ward
	clearly did - it was quite legal.

>  There were others at Parkland who felt very threatened indeed by all
>those hung-over Secret Service men. There was one in the operating room who had his gun out all the time, and some of the doctors were concerned about his
>accidentally shooting someone else.

	While nine of the Agents were out late the night before 
	(arriving back at hotel at various times) there is no evidence
	that any of them had enough to get drunk, let alone be hungover.

	As for the guy in the operating room, it was Clint Hill, and
	he left after Nurse Doris Nelson informed him that, whoever
	had been shooting at the President, he wasn't in Trauma Room
	One, and would he (Hill) kindly put the damned gun away?  Which
	he did, and left the ER.  Certainly, a loaded gun being waved
	about represents a danger, and the medical personell had good
	reason to fear an accidental discharge.

	However - what, actually, is your point?  Do you think Clint
	Hill was involved in a conspiracy, as evidenced by his having
	freaked out in the minutes after the shooting?  

>   In all 50 states, a murder is investigated in the city in which it
>is committed, and the chief of police and district attorneys decide
>when that investigation ends. In 1963, the Federal Government could intercede
>only if the suspects were known to have crossed state lines, or if the
>police department requested the help of the FBI.  Neither of these conditions
>was met.

	I assure you that the investigation of the murder of President
	Kennedy took place, primarily, in Texas rather than, say, Iowa.
	Because that's where the evidence was.

	There were no guidelines on what to do when a President is shot.
	You will grant, I assume, that shooting a President poses rather
	different problems than shooting Joe Blow over a blown drug 
	deal?
	
	In either case, multiple jurisdictions were involved in the 
	investigation.  The Texas Attorney General wound up publishing
	something like 24 volumes of evidence turned up by Texas 
	officials.  The Dallas Police did most of the initial evidence
	gathering.  The Secret Service was briefly involved, and the
	FBI conducted a massive investigation.  While there were
	jurisdictional frictions the Dallas Police were more than happy
	to have the FBI track down the rifle's ownership and to 
	otherwise assist in the investigation.  They were not pleased
	(Fritz and Wade and Curry in particular) that they wound up
	playing second fiddle.  Who would?

	But, again, what point are you trying to make?  If you are
	arguing about admissibility, as I say, I ain't a lawyer, and
	if I were a lawyer, I doubt I'd be a specialist in Texas
	criminal procedure, c. 1963.  If you're trying to get Oswald
	off on a technicality, there may be better sources than either
	of us for that task.

>	Interesting that Dr. Rose, who burned his notes of the Oswald
>	and Ruby autopsies wasn't fired. 

>  Neither were JFK's Secret Service men, who were out drinking the night
>before until 3 A.M. in direct violation of SS procedures while on the
>road. In the Altgens photo (full frame, not the cropped Warren version)
>Johnson's SS protection is already getting out of their car to cover
>him, while JFK's SS men haven't even started to move. SS policiy is
>NO alcohol at all while on travel status, with any violation whatsoever
>grounds for immediate termination. None of JFK's SS men were even
>disciplined.

	You are quite right about the `no drinking while on travel
	status' policy.  At least nine of the agents violated this
	policy, and in the normal course of things should have been
	canned.  Of course, in the normal course of things their
	drinking at the Fort Worth Press Club (the Cellar Coffee
	House, to which they repaired later, didn't serve booze
	that late) wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, since it is 
	far from unusual for Agents on the road to have a couple of
	drinks after they get off duty.  It's against the rules, but
	they do it.

	Whether or not any or all of the affected Agents would have
	been able to save Kennedy's life had they not been up so late
	falls into the realm of coin-flipping.

>>	As for there being no evidence, what do you call the clothing,
>>	x-rays, photographs, extant notes, and testimony of the
>>	participants?

>  Connolly's suit was sent to the dry cleaners immediatly. The limo was
>rebuilt at once, destroying any physical evidence it contained. The
>"extant" notes you refer to are the 2nd-3rd-4th versions, with the
>original notes destroyed to keep them out of the hands of collectors.

	Connally's suit shouldn't have been sent to the cleaners.  Is
	there something controversial about it?  The physical evidence
	was removed before the limo was rebuilt.  And if you need blood
	on your autopsy notes, refer to Dr. Boswell's.  You might also
	want to cast a glance at the TOP SECRET report that Finck did
	at the direction of his boss, General Blumberg.  It took an 
	action under the FOIA to pry it out of the government's hands.
	It is interesting reading.


>The X-Rays are of a head which is missing the right eye and orbital
>bone structure, yet photos of Kennedy clearly show that the face around the
>eyes is intact. The testimony is highly selective, as is the case
>where the Warren commission decided that the approximatly 50 people who
>saw/heard shooters on the knoll were mistaken (which was later reversed
>when the HSCA concluded there was a 2nd shooter on the knoll; which
>makes it a conspiracy whether the 2nd shooter hit anything or not)

	The x-rays are not of a head missing the right eye and orbital
	structure.  This is clear even to us amateurs when we look at
	the computer-enhanced version prepared by the HSCA.

	There were not 50 earwitnesses to a knoll shot, there were
	21 out of 178 - see the psycyoacoustic study contracted for
	by BBN, the same firm who did the dictabelt analysis.  They
	concluded that it was unbelievable that anyone had fired from
	the knoll.  And they were aware that on November 22, 1963, and
	for many years later, not a single solitary person saw anyone
	with a gun anywhere other than on the 6th floor of the TSBD.
	No one.  That is, until people like Jean Hill, years after the
	fact, started to change their stories.

	BTW - if you correlate the various after-the-fact stories of
	people fleeing the knoll and/or firing from the knoll, you will
	find that they are for the most part mutually exclusive.  So you
	might want to pick a favorite story and try to find some 
	evidence to shoehorn it in.

>  In most cases, the evidence pointed to has had it's chain of
>evidence broken, and without a clear chain, it would be inadmissable.
>An example would be the empty shells recovered at the scene on the Tippet
>shoting. The Detective in charge marked the shells with his initials,
>which is a standard procedure in establishing chain of evidence. When next
>seen, the presence of the initials tells him they are the cartridges
>he picked up at the crime scene. In this particular case, the cartridges
>presented to him by the Warren Commision did NOT have his initials.

	The Dallas PD officer you are referring to was named Poe, and
	he was not in charge of the evidence at the Tippit crime scene,
	Sgt. Barnes was.  Poe was handed two shells by Domingo Benavides
	(there were two other shells ballistically matched to Oswald's
	gun, and Poe wasn't involved with them) and Poe then handed them
	over to Barnes, who was on the scene with his portable crime 
	lab.

	Testifying later, Poe wasn't sure if he had marked the shells 
	or not.  He did know that he had given them to Barnes, who did
	mark the shells.  This is more than sufficient to establish a
	chain of evidence.  It is recommended that shells and bullets
	be marked (providing it can be done without interfering with
	identification analysis) but initials on evidence are not 
	absolutely required to establish a clear chain.  If initials
	were always required then things like fiber evidence would not
	be admissable.  In such cases the evidence is placed into a
	container and the container is initialed.  

	Further, since a civilian turning in evidence cannot be expected
	to know about `chain of evidence', if initials were always
	required, on the evidence or the container of evidence, 
	evidence turned in by a civilian would be automatically
	disbarred.  But that doesn't happen, since the courts tend
	to be reasonable about these things, unlike writers like
	Henry Hurt...

>>  In fact, there is sufficient evidence for
>>	more than a dozen subsequent qualified examiners to state:
>>	two shots from behind.  

>  Which autopsy room? Parkland or Bethesda?  Remember that at  the very
>least, the body at Bethesda had been altered outside the examination
>of the attending autopsists by (at the very least) the doctors at Parkland
>trying to save the patients life. The chain of evidence regarding the
>throat wound was broken when it was enlarged to a tracheotomy. Likewise,
>they canot make any judgements about the other wounds because the wound tracks
>were not dissected.

	The forensic pathologists and radiologists who have studied
	the autopsy materials have more than enough information to 
	determine that Kennedy was shot twice from behind.  ME's are
	accustomed to working with far less evidence than is available
	in the Kennedy case.  Cause and manner of death can sometimes
	be determined from a corpse that's been under water for a
	couple of years; a pile of bones can tell a story; and so on.

	The lack of wound track dissection is regretable, but hardly
	fatal to a proper diagnosis, as even Dr. Wecht has admitted 
	every time he has looked at the evidence as a scientist.

	
>>	two shots from behind.  The HSCA interviewed every single
>>	person present in the autopsy room. 

>  NOT! William Pitzer, the Navy staff photographer (whoes film was removed 
>from his his camera and held up to the light by one of the Secret Service men)
>was murdered in his office at Bethesda shortly before the HSCA convened.
>The Navy has refused to de-classify it's investigation.

	You are confusing Pitzer with Floyd Riebe.  Riebe is the guy
	whose film was exposed by an obnoxious FBI agent.

	Pitzer's story - and it is actually Dennis David's story
	*about* Pitzer - is that he was sitting in the gallery with
	a movie camera filming the autopsy.  Given what happened
	to Riebe, whose job it was to photograph autopsies, do you really
	believe that anyone would be allowed to sit in the gallery
	with a movie camera and film the autopsy?  And that no one
	actually noticed he was doing this?  It strains belief, to
	put it mildly.  Not to mention the fact that, even though
	David claims to have seen at least slides from the alleged
	film, no one else has seen diddly.

	Pitzer didn't die "shortly" before the HSCA investigation.
	He died on October 29, 1966, more than a decade before the
	HSCA convened.  Since Pitzer's presence was not noted by
	the FBI at the time and was not uncovered by the HSCA
	investigation (which turned up six people the FBI head-counter
	missed, and that number included four people from the funeral
	home) Pitzer wouldn't have been deposed anyway.

	As for his death, Livingstone quotes Pitzer family members
	to the effect that "he wouldn't have committed suicide"
	from which I infer the ME ruled the death a suicide.  On the
	other hand, Livingstone says the case is still open, and
	that nothing is being done due to jurisdictional buck-passing.
	So it's difficult to determine just what the situation is.

	One thing is very clear, though: Livingstone believes it could
	not have been a self-inflicted wound because the autopsy did
	not reveal surface powder burns.  Livingstone apparently 
	thinks that all close-range gunshots leave such evidence
	behind.  But ME's distinguish between three types of wounds:
	`contact' wounds, which (depending upon the type of gun) can
	range from up to six inches away, `arm's length' wounds, up to
	2 or 3 feet, and `distance' wounds.

	Pitzer was clearly killed by a bullet fired from very close
	range.  Livingstone gives us the wound description from the
	autopsy, and the skin is badly charred, and gunpowder was 
	found beneath the outer layers of skin.  This is typical
	of a contact wound. Gunpowder on the surface of the
	skin is typical of an arm's length wound.  Livingstone is
	confused on this point.

	The man was shot in the area of the right temple with a gun
	at very close range.  Without reading the entire autopsy 
	report and the circumstances of the crime scene (like: did
	he have the gun in his hand?) I'm not sure what else to
	say.

	
>	The evidence on the brain indicates, but does not prove to
>	a certainty, that Bobby destroyed or otherwise disposed of
>	it to keep it out of the hands of macabre collectors.  
>	Medical evidence of the famous has a tendency to disappear.
>	Einstein's brain was stolen.  The four JFK skull framents
>	are missing but I haven't noticed much complaint about
>	that, perhaps because their physical presence wouldn't
>	tell us much more than the photographic record does.

>  The Harper fragment would. It was clearly occipital bone, from the
>lower rear of the skull.

	No, it's parietal bone, though even Dr. Petty was briefly
	fooled when he first examined it.  

>>	There is sufficient evidence, published by the HSCA, for
>>	professional diagnoses to be made.  Those diagnoses have
>>	been made, by numerous forensic experts, and the diagnosis
>>	is: two shots from behind.


>  You work with computers enough to know the GIGO law. Garbage in, garbage
>out. 

	Ah, yes, and I've read enough conspiracy books to know this
	rule in spades.   ;^)

>  For the record, Drs. Perry and Carrico enjoyed quite a bit of
>notoriety in the Boston Globe, but have changed their stories
>several times over the years, starting with a story that that the
>throat wound was an entry wound and that there was a section missing
>from the back of the head, then as time has gone on, moving closer and closer
>to the HSCA version. But, their quotes are forever enshrined in the
>microfilms of their extensive interviews in the newspapers and
>Prry, I believe, has just published a book in which he reverts back to
>his original story of the a throat entry wound, and a missing piece on the
>rear of the skull.

	I've read Crenshaw's book; if Perry has also written a book,
	contradicting what he said last May I'd be very interested to
	read it.

	But they have been utterly consistent in stating that they did
	not closely examine the small wound in the throat and they did
	not examine Kennedy's body.  They never turned him over and
	had no chance to even begin to sort out the forensic facts.  
	All of their opinions are based upon a hasty and incomplete
	viewing of Kennedy's body.  The speculation that the wound
	in the throat could have been an entrance wound was based
	solely on the fact that it was small and rather neat.  They
	were used to seeing the exit wounds made by much softer
	ammunition.  

>>	ER physicians, no matter how well trained and talented
>>	(and the Parkland team was quite excellent) are not 
>>	chartered with making forensic determinations.  Nor do
>>	they try, nor did the Parkland doctors.

>	Dallas, being the kind of a city it was, gave the ER doctors
>far more experience with gunshot wounds than the Bethesda Navy doctors 
>(none of whom had served as combat surgeons) had.

	Both Gregory and Shaw (who treated Connally) had combat
	experience; in fact, I believe I recall that Shaw was in
	WWII and in Korea.  I don't recall any of the doctors treating
	Kennedy as having combat experience, unless it was Jenkins.
	But be careful about assigning weight to extensive treatment
	of military gunshot wounds.  Dr. Lattimer was a WWII surgeon,
	stationed in Germany and Italy, and he is typically dismissed
	as a "only" a urologist.   ;^)

	But you can't have it both ways.  If the three pathologists
	who studied Kennedy's body at Bethesda were not competent
	to diagnosis inshoot/outshoot locations, even though they
	had several hours to work, and even though Finck was a
	qualified forensic pathologist with especial expertise in the
	pathology of wound ballistics - how is it that the ER doctors,
	with less than twenty frantic minutes, never even turning over
	the doctors, *can* determine inshoot/outshoot locations?  Why
	do you think we have autopsies?  Even when the deceased has been
	treated in an emergency room prior to death?

>>	.  With the exceptions of Dr. 
>>	Crenshaw (who believes the wounds were altered) and
>>	Dr. McClellan (who believes the wounds were not altered,
>>	but supports a shot from the front based on the z-film)
>>	the Parkland doctors find no conflict between the autopsy
>>	findings and what they observed during 14 frantic minutes
>>	on 11/22/63.

>  There's an interesting pattern to your writing. Repeatedly you make a
>sweeping statement that every-all (doctors, pathologists , lawyers, police)
>unanimously agree with your view of the story, then follow it up with
>one or two dissenters, phrased in such a way that implies we can
>disregard their input.

	Since I don't do that in the passage you quote I presume you
	are referring to other passages that make up the "pattern"
	you feel you perceive?

	Here's the thing.  If I use a universal, I use a universal.
	If a data point is disputed by one or more people, I will 
	point that out.  When mutually exclusive views exist, one 
	either throws up one's hands, or makes a choice based upon
	the weight of the evidence.

>  I don't care what the reasons for it may have been. The way the body was
>taken from the lawful jurisdiction; the call from Johnson to Dallas Police 
>Chief Curry to STOP their investigation; the non-autopsy at Bethesda;
>the altered photos of Oswald with the rifles; the UNaltered photos
>of Oswald in the book depository doorway during the shooting;
>the magic palm-print; the negative paraffin and nitrate tests; etc. etc. etc.

	If you don't care what the reasons were, precisely what 
	relevance, from a factual standpoint, do you find?

	Since Dallas didn't stop their investigation, I guess LBJ
	must have been pissed, eh?  What they did stop was their motormouth
	conspiracy talk, which (at least) Hoover feared would tip off
	possible co-conspirators.

	It wasn't a non-autopsy; if you don't believe me, consult
	with Harrison Livingstone.

	That isn't Oswald in the doorway, it's Lovelady, just like
	Lovelady says it is.  The palmprint isn't magic.  And since
	nitrate tests were known, even prior to the assassination, to
	be absolutely worthless in determining whether a person had
	or had not fired a gun (no one tests for nitrates anymore)
	the fact that Oswald "passed" the nitrate test for his hands
	is not considered of probative value.


>  I find it hard to believe that these are ALL just coincidents or
>"poor judgement" errors. There are too many unanswered questions.

	You just don't like the answers.

>  Why are so many records missing from Oswalds CIA file?

	If you're talking about the 201 file, no records are
	missing.

>  Why are Lee Harvey Oswalds tax returns still classified?

	They're not.

>  Who was the shooter on the grassy knoll?

	Based on the description, Claude Rains.   ;^)

>  Were 2 of the 3 tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza Frank Sturgis and
>E. Howard Hunt( later of Watergate fame) as the photos taken of them
>suggest? Recall tht Hunt has lost a lawsuit to prove that that isn't
>him in Dealey Plaza.

	No, none of the tramps were Sturgis or Hunt.  Hunt's lawsuit
	had to do with an article alleging he was involved in the
	conspiracy; he did not sue on the basis of whether or not he
	was physically present in Dealy that day.

>  Why did Richard Nixon lie about being in Dallas that day, until 
>hard evidence forced him to reverse his story?

	Nixon was in town the night before on business.  Did he fly
	out on the 22nd or the 21st?  Why do you care?

>  Just who WERE those men on the grassy knoll claiming to be Secret
>Service men? Did they all work for Lee Harvey Oswald?

	The HSCA interviewed everyone who had stated they had been
	confronted by "secret service" men with the exception of
	DPD officer Joe Smith.  Smith was dead.  They all said that
	they had simply assumed that anyone in plainclothes, 
	accompanied by a police officer, must have been secret service.
	
	I suspect that Smith had a similar experience.  He was *behind*
	the fence, by his own admission very jumpy and nervous, and he
	pulled out his gun.  Startled, a man in a suit produced 
	credentials, presumably worred about being shot by this
	freaked-out cop.  Smith later remembered the credential as
	having been secret service.  Maybe they were.  Maybe someone
	was back there whipping out bogus credentials when confronted
	with a gun.  If the allegation is that these alleged bogus
	secret service agents were there to keep people from going
	behind the picket fence or otherwise observing the scene, they
	certainly did a lousy job, since the place was jam-packed with
	police and civilians within moments of the assassination.


>  Oh yeah, the correct term is "tracheotomy". "Tracheostomy", the way
>you spell it, means to remove the trachea entirely.

	Nope, that ain't true.  Get a medical dictionary or (better
	yet) a surgery handbook and see for yourself.


>P.S. No faxes yet!  :)

	Seems that Oliver Stone and his crew have been keeping them
	busy lately...   ;^)

Joel Grant (speaking on his own behalf)