The Head Wounds Revisited

[David Josephs]

David J.,
You Write: "I challenge you to find anyone present who stated xrays were taken AFTER the Y incision and AFTER the organs were removed."

I already did. Dr. Finck wrotein his report to General Blumberg that "The brain, the heart and the lungs hadbeen removed before my arrival." He then goes on to say that after probing of the back wound failed to reveal the location of a bullet, "I suggest X rayfilms be taken...of the entire body, before going any further with the autopsy. This radiologic survey does not reveal any major missile in the President'scadaver." (ARRB MD28) That's what he said. Whether he is correct or not I donot know. He's certainly contradicted by a good number of witnesses.

Martin Finck asking that xrays be taken again, and them actually being taken are two separate things. The FBI report states that "Uponc ompletion of X-Rays and photographs, the first incision was made at 8:15 p.m." At the bottom of this ginourmous post we find that when all the xrays/photos were done, they waited for Finck to arrive....

Mr. CORNWELL. Approximately whattime of the day or night did the autopsy begin?
Dr. HumEs. Well, the President'sbody, as I recall, arrived about 7:35, 7:40 in the evening and after somepreliminary examinations, about 8 or 8:15.
Mr. CORNWELL. Just very briefly, inwhat order or sequence did you conduct the autopsy?
Dr. HumEs. Well, the first thing we did was make manyphotographs which we knew would obviously be required for a wide variety ofpurposes, took basically whole bodyX-rays and then proceeded with theexamination of the two wounds that we very shortly detected were present,starting with the wound in the head and proceeding to the wound in the backof the neck, upper thorax.

More importantly is Ebersole telling usthe SS asked that the chest and head xrays be taken TWICE… which he says HAD to be completed before the beginning of the autopsy.
If you can provide any evidence that xrays were actually taken and developed AFTER the Y incision, please post….Finck "asking" is not the same as it being done.

You write: "WHEN are you saying the body arrived?"

The record is obviously muddled and contradictory and I will notpretend to know exactly when the body arrived. Nor will I pretend to see it asa big deal. Humes said in his ARRB deposition that it was somewhere around 6:45to 7:00 P.M. Francis O'Neil said the body arrived at the morgue between 7:00and 7:05. James Sibert apparently told Arlen Specter that preparation for theautopsy began 7:17. So I guess I'd go for somewhere around the 7 P.M. mark.

As you can tell I'm going tohave a real problem with this… The limo with the casket did not arrive at Bethesda until 7pm. Humes goes on later to tell us he viewed the body at6:45… Ebersole says just after 6:30, Reed says just after 6:30… in a metal shipping casket… As much as you'd like to simply dismiss this evidence out of inconvenience… it must be addressed in the overallscheme of the thing.

The Joint Casket Bearer Teambrings in A CASKET at 8pm… what were they doing if JFK was in the morgue at 7pm?
The SS/FBI men wheeling in the bronze casket at 7:17 after meeting up with Kellerman who comes out the morgue door is recounted in MANY reports from a variety of angles…. Did this happen?

Dr. Ebersole tells us that whenhe saw the body unwrapped

Upon removing the body from thecoffin, the anterior aspect, the only things noticeable were a small irregularecumonic (sic no such word) areaabove the super ecolobular (sic no such word) ridge and a neatly sutured transverse surgical wound across the low neck. REALLY?

So prior to starting the autopsywe were asked to x ray the body to determine the presence of a bullet. Wetook several X rays of the skull, chest, trunk. These were taken in theautopsy room on the autopsy table. They were hand carried by me in theircassettes to what we designate as Tower Four, the forth (sic) floor of thehospital, handled by a dark room technician, given back to me and hand carriedby me to the autopsy room.

The initial films showed theusual metallic fragments in the skull but no evidence of a slug, a bullet. Thiswas a little bit disconcerting. We were asked by the Secret Service agentspresent to repeat the films and did so Once again there was no evidence of abullet

Martin this is all occurring BEFORE the start of the autopsy, BEFORE the first incision. 4 xrays of the head, twice; 8 xrays of the arms and legs; 4 xrays of the torso (twice?) which only makes sense if the body if in the morgue AND there is enough time to take all these films… (5-6 minutes developing time each) AND as we see from Humes once again… PHOTOSwere taken BEFORE the xrays….

Can you start to see the contradictions here? Unless the body wasalready in the morgue as the ambulance arrives from Andrews, there is simplynot enough time to accomplish what is said to have been accomplished prior to8:15. The FBI report while not clearat all as to time is pretty emphatic about when the xrays and photos werefinished and when the autopsy started…

Who was Reed, Custer andEbersole xraying before the SS/FBI team off loads the casket from the ambulanceto the morgue? And over an hour before the Joint Casket Bearer Team does its job at 8pm?

You write: "WHEN are you saying the first incision occurred?"

I'd say Sibert and O'Neil's report is the best evidence we have onthis, being contemporaneous. So approximately 8:15 P.M.

So while the official record of the transfer of the casket occurs at 8pm… first incision at 8:15… you are stating here that the body of JFK was already in the morgue we saw the bronze casket loaded in Dallas and offloadedat Andrews. The ambulance does not getto Bethesda until 6:55-7pm. AND SITSTHERE. Reed/Custer see Jackie come in ASTHEY ARE TAKING XRAYS TO THE 4[SUP]TH[/SUP] FLOOR FOR DEVELOPING…

If JFK was in the casket coming from Andrews to Bethesda how is JFK in the morgue at 7pm?

You write: "WHEN was the first and last xray taken?( I will return tothis in a minute)"

I don't know and neither do you. No one that I know of noted the exacttimes.

That's simply not true Martin. Only three men were involved inthe taking of xrays that evening… Reed, Custer and Ebersole.
After the body is received…Custer and Reed are sent to the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] floor. Ebersole and Humes, atleast, are in the morgue with the body of the president. 15-20 minutes later Reed/Custer are called back tothe morgue. This all has to occur between 6:30 and 7pm… why? Reed, Custer,David all see the ambulance with the casket and Jackie arrive…. They see her come inside and go upstairs… all the while a casket taken in full view from AF1 at Andrews is sitting in the back of this ambulance and Greer, Sibert and O'Neill are still out front.

Q: What did you do, in order totake the lateralX-ray?
A(Reed): First, I discussed it with Dr.Ebersole. And he said, Take a lateral view of the skull."

We read above how Ebersole basically repeats the info yet claims HE does the running…

Q: Did you take any X-rays at anysubsequent point (to the 11 they had counted) during the evening?
A(Reed): No.

SIBERT: When the motorcade from the airport arrived at the Naval Hospital,
Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy were let off at the Administration Building.
O'Neilland I helped carry the damaged casket into the autopsy room with some Secret Service agents.

You are of course staring to "get"where I'm going… Your casual statement thatthe body was in the morgue from 7pm on AND that there was no time to do anything to the head is simply mistaken. Custer and Reed are asked to leave with the body on the table… this MUST happen prior to 7pm. The FBI men are in reality gone from the morgue from 7:17 until 8pm… but since JEH ordered them NOT to leave the body, you think maybe there was some CYA going on?

It takes until the ARRB and release of the Sibert/O'Neill HSCA "reports on their testimony"… and their ARRB Testimony and the HSCA correct affidavits provided for them as well as their other related docs from the end of Nov 1963… to learn that they were NOT in the morgue from 7:17 until 8pm…. That Reed/Custer were running xrays around while yet another xray technician supervisor, Dr. Ebersole, remained… with multiple xrays to develop, it could be 10-15 minutes per set that Custer and Reed are gone from the morgue.

In the time between the body arrives and Reed/Custer comes back down… here is Reed's description before heleaves:

(Reed p31 line 3) You know, superficially,I could put maybe two or three fingers in there. But I - It wasn't the kind ofwound that you could actually observe into the cranium. I did not see any brain material.

Start with f6 or f7 and tell methat you can't see brain material there…
And the image we get to see thatBoswell draws…. The entire top of hishead is gone…
This is NOT consistent with what Reed saw and represents a huge difference to the recollections of Dallas/Parkland/Hill…


David, I'm still struggling to see what you're getting at here. I guessyou're trying to say that there wasn't enough time for all the X-rays to havebeen taken before the first incision. It seems to me that they had around anhour and that's plenty of time but I'm sure you'll disagree. But the thing is,the testimony establishes that the X-rays of the skull were taken before theskull wound was enlarged. Therefore the X-rays show the wound in its originalstate. What more needs to be said? If you're suggesting that there was a secretpre-autopsy in which the head wound was enlarged BEFORE the X-rays were taken,then why do the X-rays show the occipital bone largely intact? Were the X-raysaltered to hide the alteration? If so, what was the point of the alteration?Please explain what you're getting at.

You say that when Ed Reed arrives "he see a shipping casket and seesthe body with Humes, Ebersole and Boswell among others....No Sibert, NoO'Neill, No ceremonial casket, No Greer". Where in his deposition does he saythat? When is he asked who was present when he arrived?

The HSCA was a charade.. a joke and a scam. In its section on the authentication of the autopsy xrays THIS is the conclusion:

(610) To summarize, the skull and torso radiographs taken atautopsy
match the available ante mortemfilms of the President in such a wealth
of intricate morphological detail that there can be no reasonable doubt
that they are in fact X-rays ofJohn F. Kennedy, and no other person.

So I wonder Martin… if the xrays match the sever degradation of the spine that JFK experienced… as my other thread asks… "No Gross Abnormalities of the Skeleton?"
Do you not find this over sight as bad as JFK's brain weighing more than a complete brain?

Best Evidence suggested the alterations were done on AF1… at least the widening of the trach wound
(a side note: my wife is a nurse, I showed her the death stare photo and her first reaction was, "there is no way hospital staff would allow the body to be left with a wound like that if inflicted by the doctors… it would have either been sutured (Ebersole) or it would never have looked like that. A trach wound basically closes on itself up after the tube is removed."

I am more than willing to keep the conversation about the head wound and the vast difference between Dallas and Bethesda… I think I've shown there was time to smash up the skull… that Reed's seeing Humes use a saw on the forehead was, at this point quite unexplainable… except that this incision into the forehead and subsequent sawing of the bone… at this time Reed and Custer are asked to leave…. I am starting to come into the opinion that Ebersole was involved in the creation of xrays showing an altered head... while Reed/Custer did not.... but its only an opinion at this point... :-)

Dr. BADEN. I see. When ColonelFinck came in these had already been taken?
Dr. EBERSOLE. Yes, and repeated once.
Dr. BADEN. Now when you say repeated, wereX rays repeated after the autopsy had started? Do you have an independentrecollection of that?
Dr. EBERSOLE. The second group of X rays were taken either before the incision was made or very shortly thereafter.

Martin… Sibert nor O'Neill say anything about this in their report. In fact in his ARRB testimony, O'Neill tells us on page 67 that when he and Sibert were asked to leave for "photos and xrays" they were gone 10-12 minutes and then went back in…xrays and photos were completed… yet he also says that they wanted to wait for the xrays and for Dr. Finck to arrive being the only forensic pathologist in attendance (and he wouldn't have even been there other than for Humes callinghim… CYA?)

Rather than go on and on… you'd need to read thru the ARRB testimony of both men. The contradictions are everywhere… and yet these two remained the only non-military, non-medical personnel there… with no agenda and no threat of court martial… all they had to do was please Hoover… and that meant lying about ever being away from the body….

DJ
(btw - IDK why the words get pushed together when I copy from WORD into this area...?? but they do)