From: schuck@fraser.sfu.ca (Bruce Jonathan Schuck)
Subject: Re: Lattimer, Question 11
Reply-To: Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:47:00 GMT


grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant) writes:

>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?"

[....lots of drivel deleted....]

>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."

Lattimer suggests that 70% of the right side of the brain was missing.
Thats probably true. However, the autopsy claims the JFK brain weighed
1500 grams. Normal human brains are 1400 - 1700 grams. 
Even if JFK had a maximum size brain [1700 gms] it should weigh 65% of
1700 gms -- ie .5 * 1700 + ((.5 * 1700) * .3) = ~ 1100 gms.

I wonder whose brain they were actually weighing?


>"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, 

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'.

A chunk of the occipital bone [rear] was blown backwards and found by
Billy Harper, a medical student.

A piece of JFK's skull ended up on the trunk of the limo, which Jackie
crawled out to retrieve.

A tangential strike explains the abscence of fragments on the left
side of JFK's head, and Lattimer should/could have tested for it and
didn't.

>and since Mrs. Kennedy was not hit by any fragments

A tangential strike from the right front would not have resulted in
Jackie being hit as she was to the left of JFK, not behind him.

Conversely, I ask how a bullet travelling downwards and slightly right
to left, did not produce any fragments that hit the SS agent in the
shotgun seat? [Connally was laying in Nellies lap by then]

It also failed to spray him or the windshield with blood
or brain matter, while in reality, motorcycle policement to JFK's left
and rear *were* hit by blood and brain matter while motorcycle cops to
JFK's right and rear were not.

A tangential strike from the right front explains the dispersement of
blood, brain tissue and skull pieces that actually occurred.

>and photographer Zapruder was not visibly jolted from his perch
>by a deafening rifle shot almost beside him, we find it very

Bzzzzztttttt. Very wrong. Alvarez's jiggle analysis clearly shows
Zapruders camera jumping like crazy and Zapruder himself heard a shot
from his right rear.

>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, 

What did they do, fire into a test skull at 90 degrees? What a lousy
test!! A tangential shot, coming in from the stockade fence would have
been at an angle no more than 35 degrees. A tangential shot, entering
near the ear, would have taken off the right rear of JFK's head and
produced *no* fragments that could hit Jackie.

>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.

Every Doctor and Nurse at Parkland, as well as several SS agents
clearly saw a large exit wound in the right rear of JFK's head. Even
Humes, the much maligned pathologist, saw a wound there as well. He
describes a 13cm wound extending from the occipital [rear of head]
throught the parietal, to the temporal bone [the temporal bone ends
above the ear -- most people think of the temple when they hear
temporal, but that is actually the frontal bone]

All the medical technicians at Bethesda also saw a large gaping wound
in the right rear of JFK's head.

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.






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