The Head Wounds Revisited

[Albert Rossi]

Gordon, lots of questions. Yes, I've read Dr. Aguilar, and Dr. Mantik. I am familiar with what they say and I respect both of their opinions as worthy of consideration. But while Dr. Aguilar would seem to discount any "enlargement", it seems to me (unless he has changed his opinion) that Dr. Mantik isn't entirely ruling out that the head had been subjected to some form of manipulation before the X-rays (see my earlier post #12).

But just to be clear here, and to get back to the question at hand: which bone (if any) in evidence corresponds to that piece of the back of the head found in the car? From Kinney's description it doesn't quite sound like the Harper fragment, though Mantik's positioning of the latter is precisely in that region (see Phil's post #6).

I quote here from Palamara's interview:

Survivors Guilt: The Secret Service and the JFK Murder, pp. 8-9, 28, 55-56, 78-80,81-82, 110-111 --- Sam told me twice that he saw the back of JFK's head come off immediately when the fatal shot struck the President's head. Once at Parkland Hospital, Kinney helped remove the President from the back seat of the limousine along with Clint Hill, Roy Kellerman, and Dave Powers, thereby receiving an extremely vivid, close-up look at the wound on JFK's head. "His brain was blown out," Sam said, " there was nothing left !" I pressed further, to which Sam added: "There was brain matter all over the place...he had no brains left in his head." And, while aboard the C-130 aircraft, he found the piece of the back of JFK's head lying in the rear seat of the bloody limousine! Sam told me it was "clean as a pin" and that it resembled a "flowerpot" or "clay pot" piece. Kinney added: "It was a big piece-half his head was gone." When I pressed him on thispoint and asked him if he was sure of the skull piece's orientation, he said " I don't know what else it could have been but the back of his head."

Now Kinney is not a medical expert, so take his testimony for what it is.

If Kinney's assessment is right (and I'm not saying it is), that fragment cannot be any of the (X-rayed) fragments in evidence that were putatively brought into the morgue later. While there is dispute over where the largest triangular piece would fit, none, as far as I recall, was identified as occipital. (See the John Hunt article I cited at post #44.)

Finally, what of Jackie K? I have been rummaging around trying to find a reference to what happened to that one. I don't trust my memory at this point, so I won't make any statements based on vague recollection ... I need to run this down.

I can understand what David is saying: if you think that 2-3 in hole was all that was there, then all the detritus begins to seem a little like the relics of the true cross, which if gathered up would build a cross 5 stories high.

The amount of debris certainly squares better with a larger wound (not necessarily the 17 cm X 10 cm footprint of Boswell), or perhaps two wounds which became one (as I believe Aguilar also suggests). But in the end it really does feel like Phil's "scattering to the winds"; this stuff is indeed the Sibyl's leaves: as with all the material evidence in this case, it's hard even to make scientific deductions with surety because authenticity (chain of custody) is always crumbling in our fingers.

David, is the (one way or another) phonied Harper fragment your own theory, or have others written about this as well?

Thanks to you both for the input, -Al