The Head Wounds Revisited

[Albert Rossi]

There are a number of accounts of Bethesda personnel witnessing the arrival of the gray Navy ambulance as x-rays were being developed.

Which would evidence a pre-autopsy wouldn't it?

Jerroll Custer claimed this (I can't recall whether Reed confirms this or not). But there are issues with Custer's testimony, which has shifted around over the years.

Dennis David does not talk about X-rays; he says that after he met the black hearse + civilians with the shipping casket on the morgue dock, he went up to was it the 4th floor in the tower at the front of the hospital and then saw the cortège with the Navy ambulance arrive at the front gate. David is unshaken in his testimony to this day, and is seconded by another witness whose name fails me at present. The only problem is, he did not witness the opening of the casket. O'Connor and Custer (for what his testimony is worth) are the only ones to tie these pieces together: the plain casket, the opening, JFK inside. Jenkins only partially corroborates this. This is what I believe Gordon was referring to. You have to piece the witnesses together in order to arrive at the full sequence. Can we do this reliably?

Then there is the business of multiple arrivals. That there are so many conflicting versions is, as in the case of the medical evidence itself, suspicious. But what really was going on in this apparent shell game (the impression you get if you simply combine all the versions)? Do we really have solid evidence enough to reconstruct this?

And then, there is this business with the Boyajian report (Horne, Appendix 38, http://maryferrell.org). Livingstone suspects that it indicates the arrival of some other deceased officer. Dennis David would have to be remembering this arrival. Now, this is certainly possible. But what bothers me are the following:

a) We now have three teams (aside from the FBI entry) claiming they unloaded some casket at the morgue entrance. But the Boyajian report does not speak of a black hearse and civilians, as does Dennis, nor does it describe the casket (point 3 of the report). The report does say that the team was scrambling around (double-timing) because there were conflicting orders as to where the casket would be arriving. All that commotion only makes sense in the context of JFK's arrival. Livingstone would thus require us to believe that they happened, just by chance, to be on hand to assist with bringing in the remains of someone else, and were not recalled thereafter to assist with JFK's casket (otherwise I would think the two separate incidents would have been reported). This all seems a bit strained to me.

b) Why was the name of this putative officer never logged? Who was it? David does not say he was told either way who was in the coffin, though his actions were a response to the orders he had just received concerning "his visitor" only 15 or 20 minutes prior.

c) And why would a military officer be brought in this way by civilians, according to Dennis (he actually spoke with the driver)?

d) Further, Custer explicitly refutes there being two bodies in the morgue; Custer as witness, however, admittedly does not generally inspire confidence, so I cannot call this probative evidence.

The matter, in my view, does not appear to be resolved. Doubts about the Boyajian report itself are well-taken: it may indeed never have been submitted because of its vagueness in terms of who was taken into the morgue. But then David also insists he gave a report of his activities to Boswell, a report which seems to have disappeared.