From: schuck@fraser.sfu.ca (Bruce Jonathan Schuck)
Subject: Tangential wounds and the Z film (was Lattimer, Question 11)
Reply-To: Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 19:53:23 GMT

I'm posting this for Mike Brutvan who only has read access to netnews.

>  Bruce Schuck
>> Sjoerd de Vries

>Dr Kemp Clark, the neurologist at Parkland, examined JFK's head wound.
>It was in the right rear of his head, severely damaging the occipital and
>parietal lobes of his brain. Clark explained the wound by saying it
>was a tangential strike.
>
>What probably happened was the bullet hit JFK above the ear,
>blowing the rear right corner of his skull off. A skin
>flap, free to flap in the wind because there was no skull left,
>flapped forward and appears on the Z film as the red "blob'.

i have long felt that this is probably what happened with the head shot.
frankly, i think they were lucky on this one and barely got JFK.  the
path of the shot through his head probably didn't go more than an inch
deep from the surface at any point.

[stuff deleted]

>A tangential wound, with the bullet entering just above the ear, and
>exitting from the back of the head, blowing off the right rear corner
>of JFK's skull, explains the Z film 'blob', the Harper fragment, the
>spray of material hitting the motorcycle cops, and the testimony of
>the Parkland staff and the Bethesda staff.
>

i have a slightly different take on the 'blob' (for the moment discounting
the theory that the Z film was doctored by the CIA the night of the
shooting -- more on that in a while), especially in light of the two bits
of ejecta 'clearly seen going forwards and up' in Z313: namely, the blob
and ejecta actually represent a conic emission from the right side of JFK's
head as it would be seen looking down the centerline of the cone.  in other
words, the upward and forward motion of the ejecta is only the 2D
projection of a motion that is almost directly at Zapruder.  in fact, i
think it can be argued that the centerline of the emission cone is pointing
at (or pretty close to) the fence shooter.  i've been looking at emission
jets from quasars for several years now and the impression i get from the
JFK 'blob' is that it's a jet we're looking down the bore of....

[two posts pasted together at this point]

>>    To get a tangential strike the bullet track should lie completely
>>    in the tangent plane through the point of impact. You can't have
>>    a tangential strike at every point you like. For instance, a
>>    tangential strike at the right temple implies that the sniper was
>>    shooting from roughly JFK's viewing direction. A sniper to the right
>>    of JFK (relative to his head) cannot give a tangential shot at the
>>    temple.
>
[stuff deleted]
>
>Again, I don't think it hit JFK in the temple, I think it hit him
>farther back, slightly above the ear, and exitted near the rear centre
>of his head near the hairline, about where the white spot is on the
>back of the head pictures, the one the WC dismissed as brain tissue.
>
[more stuff deleted]
>
>I think if a shot came from stockade fence, closer to the Triple
>Overpass, and impacted near just above JFK's ear, it could have easily
>exitted at the rear hairline near the midline, blowing off the right
>rear corner of JFK's skull.
>
>This scenario accounts for the rearward moving skull pieces, which the
>WC and HSCA scenarios ignore.
>

here's exactly what i (currently) think happened: assassin #4 pops up from
behind the picket fence and snaps off a quick (eye-sighted, not scope'd)
shot that just barely catches JFK in the back right side of the head as he
leans towards jackie (#1 being the guy who dropped the firecracker out of
the 5th or 6th floor of the TSBD to start things off, #2 on the roof of the
dal-tex building -- for the connally shot -- and #3 somewhere up on the
knoll closer down to the TSBD than #4 -- this was the guy who did the
initial wound to the front of the neck).  the gunman quickly drops from
sight, joins up with #3 and anybody doing radio for them and hits the road.

the bullet that he fired (probably a dumdum) strikes JFK at about 10
o'clock relative to his ear, about 2-3 cm past the ear itself.  it "springs
open the bones of his skull" on impact (reference: one of the orderlies who
brought him in at parkland, i can't remember at the moment but can look it
up) causing a quick jet of blood/brains/bone to shoot out back along the
line of the shot (or close to it).  the bullet splits up also and sends
several shards tumbling briefly through JFK's brain cavity, in the process
blowing out a 5 cm squarish hole in the right rear of his skull and leaving
numerous shards here and there throughout the right side of the skull.

from here, i'm not so sure what happened, but i'll just add i do subscribe
to Lifton's body alteration rigamarole and also think that JFK was shot
from behind but not while he was alive.  go figure :-\

also:

there is another thing about the Z film that's been bugging me for a while.
after reviewing the post headshot sequence, i'd noticed two red spots
seemingly on the top edge of the door of the limo.  anybody think they
could be traces of the spray coming out the side of JFK's head?  the red
dots line up fairly well with where i'd imagined the jet i mentioned above
would be aimed.


just wonderin'
                                        mike brutvan
                                        space telescope science institute
                                        BRUTVAN@stsci.edu




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