From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Subject: Lattimer, Question 11
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date:  8 OCT 92 13:37:27 PDT


Question eleven: "Was there any evidence of a bullet traveling
through the President's head or body from one side to the other
(as from the grassy knoll), rather than exclusively from 
back to front?"

Here is Lattimer's description of the head wound, pp. 209-212

"I now turned my attention to the final and fatal wound - the
shot that shattered President Kennedy's skull - and began to
study and analyze the evidence spread before me about that 
massive and terrible wound.

[entry wound description already presented]

The front part of the scalp appeared to have been greatly 
stretched by the force of the exiting bullet and skull
fragments, with a jagged tear across the top of the forehead.
One long tear ran along the front side area about one inch
above the frontal hairline, extending to the left of the
midline.  Another tear extended downward and outward to the
right temple and then back above the right ear.  Still other tears
were described in the autopsy report in more detail.

The front edge of the scalp defect appeared to correspond 
approximately with the front edge of the large bony defect
in the top of the skull and probably reflected the explosive
outward force as the disrupted, powerful bullet fragments
exploded the three skull fragments forward and upward for
a distance fo thirty or forty feet, as can be clearly seen
starting in frame 313 of the Zapruder motion picture.  The
eversion and then contraction of these flaps of expanded and
everted scalp are visible for seven frames (313 through 319)
of the Zapruder movie.

This is a familiar phenomenon with high-speed bullets that strike
the head.  The configuation and separation of these flaps of scalp
could be caused only by skull fragments from the exploding head
traveling upward, forward, and slightly to the right, and in no
other direction.  Their magnitude was decidedly in keeping with
the very powerful ammunition used in Oswald's rifle.

Another question I had in my mind, as I perused the restricted
materials, was why the official sketch of Kennedy's head wound,
placed in the Warren Commission report, contained no suggestion
of the severe skull fracture lines that such a heavy, high-speed
military rifle bullet would have been expected to create, not
only in the top of the skull, but also in its base.  Seeing the
actual X-rays convinced me that the configuration and magnitude
of such cracks were indeed such as one would expect from this
high-energy bullet.  In fairness to Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell,
who wrote up the autopsy under rushed, harassed, and restricted
conditions without the help of the excellent photographs and X-rays
they had ordered taken so carefully for reference purposes, their
written autopsy description does mention these cracks.  In his later,
more detailed testimony before the Warren Commission, Humes stated
that these cracks were so numerous and severe that the fragments
of the skull came apart in his hands, so that little or no sawing
of the calvarium was needed to remove the brain.

Thus, I was convinced that the extent, severity, and character
of the scalp and skull wounds were compatible (sever enough)
with those to be expected from a high-speed military-rifle bullet."

(p. 214)

"The X-rays of the head taken before the start of the autopsy
revealed at least thirty-five small metal fragments, mostly
less than 1 mm in diameter, scattered throughout the right
side of the top of the head.  The largest was a 6.5 mm rounded
fragment sheared off and stuck on the sharp margin of the bone
at the wound of entry in the back of the skull.  All of the metal
fragments were confined to the right side of the brain area and
all the fragments were above an imaginary line drawn from the
wound of entry through the top of the frontal sinus.  Their
configuration was in keeping with the track of a bullet entering
at the rear of the right side of the skull, near the midline,
disrupting and exiting from the front of the head on the right.
It was compatible with no other direction.  There were no bullet
fragments in the left side fo the skull to indicate a transverse
bullet wound, as from the front right."

(p. 218)

"There was a rounded beveled cone-shaped defect in this same corner
of [the] largest skull fragment, around which [a] dozen or so 
metal fragments were embedded.  The margin of the frontal bone, at 
its right end, had a similar rounded beveled notch about 1 cm wide.
Although there was no immediate way to prove an association, these 
rounded beveled defects or notches would have matched the approximate
size of either the partial bullet jacket fragment (WCC exhibit 569)
found on the floor of the presidential automobile along with some 
smaller particles, or the partial bullet fragment (WCC exhibit 567)
found on the front seat of the presidential car.  All of these
fragments from the President's head and from the car came from the
same bullet, as demonstrated by the 1978 activation analysis.

The brain, when removed, showed a relatively intact left hemisphere,
except for some surface hematoma over the frontal gyri adjacent
to the main wound.  From the right side of the brain, however,
it appeared that approximately 70 percent of the right cerebral
hemisphere was missing, with only a torn and flattened portion of
the base of the right hemisphere remaining.  This was compatible
with the huge cavities that can be demonstrated to form in soft
tissues, such as the brain, in the high-speed photographs taken
of bullets passing through soft tissues by the armed forces 
medical research teams."

Finally, pp. 258-259, following a long discussion of test firings
into skulls:

"We tried to fire an additional bullet from the side, into the initial
wound of exit, on experimental heads that simultaneously sustained
a head wound like the one Oswald inflicted.  But we ran into
difficulties with this.  First, the air was filled with a curtain
of vaporized brain substance.  Second, the target jerked abruptly
to the left (as toward the rear of the car), and, third, fragments
would hit the simulation of Mrs. Kennedy, which we had placed
directly to the left of the model of the President's head.

Most impressive, any bullets fired into the skull from the right
front always caused very obvious destruction of the left side
of the skull and left bullet fragments against this side of
the skull.  Since there was no such damage to the left side
of Kennedy's head, and no bullet fragments against the left
side of his skull, and since Mrs. Kennedy was not hit by any fragments
and photographer Zapruder was not visibly jolted from his perch
by a deafening rifle shot almost beside him, we find it very
difficult to believe that another supersonic bullet was fired
from the grassy knoll in the general vicinity of Zapruder."

In short, in the only grassy knoll test firings to date that
I know of, as expected, the bullets went through and through
the cranium generating, upon exit, fragments that would almost
certainly have struck Mrs. Kennedy, inflicting damage not
even remotely observed on the z-film, at Parkland, at the
autopsy, or by any of the numerous forensic pathologists
who have reviewed the autopsy material, every single one of
whom agrees that President Kennedy was struck from behind,
and only from behind, by two bullets.

Joel Grant (speaking on his own behalf)


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