The Head Wounds Revisited

[Albert Doyle]

They have every opportunity to finish off Lifton by coming out with this secret switch story. Why don't they? Could it be because it would bring attention to the real story of a secret switch and pre-autopsy wound alteration?

[Albert Rossi]

This is why I asked whether the Kennedys knew about the security measure. I mean, knowing RFK, if plans like these for crowd control were formulated, I would think he'd know and have given final approval. At such a great distance from the event (and more than thirty years since the publication of Best Evidence), it is surprising that his or Jackie's being privy to such a maneuver has not come out by now. Plus there were others in the entourage (Godfrey McHugh, for instance, other SS agents, and even Burkley) who claimed to have been with the body all the time, so if this was done, they would have had to know. But we are completely in the realm of speculation here.

Of course, just for the sake of completeness , we should remember that it could be argued that the story of the hearse is wrong too, that that arrival (of some other deceased officer) was confused with the transfer of JFK to the morgue. But then you've got to deal with O'Connor's (and Custer's, and maybe Jenkins') testimony (whatever the time of entry was) that JFK was in a "shipping casket". It seems to me the only way out of that bind is just to say they were wrong. I'm not sure I'm prepared to just chalk this up to false closure or some other mnemonic illusion.

[Gordon Gray]

I have always wondered why it would have been even necessary to alter the body. All they had to do was falsify the autopsy report to fit the desired scenario, which they did, falsify the X rays and photos, which they did, and swear all witnesses to secrecy, which they did. Reading the interviews and depositions of the various autopsy witnesses is like Rashomon. No one tells a consistent story, they have different recollections of time lines, and what they saw. One claimed the body was brought in in the early afternoon and was fully clothed with the head wrapped in a plastic bag. I would love to find one witness there, who saw a shipping casket delivered at 6:35, taken immediately into the morgue proper, opened, a body bag taken out, the president's body, removed from the body bag, and placed on the examining table. I don't believe there is one person who testifies to having seen all of this. For me the most compelling testimony is of the two FBI agents. As O'Neill himself pointed out they were the only ones there with no agenda. They were simply recording what they saw and heard with little understanding of it's implications.

About your post #7 on this thread:

The closest thing to the kind of witness you would likesomeone who saw a shipping casket brought in at 6:35 PMis Paul O'Connor. No, O'Connor was not wearing a watch, but he was inside the morgue and opened the shipping casket, and inside was a body bag. He opened the body bag, and inside was the President's body.

How do we know it was 6:35 PM plus a few minutes?

Because the person who brought the shipping casket to the morgue was the group of men assembled by Dennis David. Among them was Donald Rebentisch. I first interviewed Dennis David in July, 1979, by phone, and his account appears, verbatim, in Chapter 25 of Best Evidence. I interviewed him on camera in October, 1980. Similarly, I interviewed Paul O'Connor, by phone, in August,l 1979; and then on camera, in October 1980. The August 1979conversaton is Chapter 26 of Best Evidence.

All of the above filmed interviews are included in the home video documentary, BEST EVIDENCE: The Research Video.

I interviewed Donald Rebentisch in January 1981. He was one of the group that carried in the shipping casket, and then came back upstairs, there to see Mrs. Kennedy waiting in the lobby for the elevator. So obviously, the coffin in the naval ambulance was empty.

Dennis David told me that he witnessed the arrival of the black hearse with the shipping casket about 20 minutes prior to the arrival of the naval Ambulance carrying Jacqueline Kennedy, which arrived at 6:53 or 6:55 PM. So that would place his obseration at about 6:35 PM.

In 1997, the ARRB found the actual document executed by Sgt. Roger Boyajian, head of the USMC Security Detail at the morgue. That document states that the body was delivered at 18:35 (6:35 PM).

Of course, it would have been nice if there were security cameras placed all around Bethesda Naval Hospital, recording these events, and creating a time-stamped filmed record. But we don't have that. So we have to rely on human testimony, and its via those accounts that its possible to draw the inferences I have drawn, about when the body arrived, in the shipping casket.

I know there's been several attempts to bitch and moan about this data. But I think its pretty good data, and in fact quite definitive.

At to you opening point: "All they had to do was falsify the autopsy report. . " etc. No, its not so easy. Because you can't just have a "conspiracy of liars." The evidence itself had to be falsified, and that's what happened in this case.

Its always seemed ironic to me that the people who talk glibly of high level plots (e.g., DiEugenio and his pals) reject the most important evidence pertaining to exactly that: the alteration of the President's body prior to autopsy.

Former UCLA Law Professor Wesley Liebeler "got it" within minutes of being exposed to this evidence. And that's why he wrote the 13 page memorandum he did, in November 1966, about the existence of such evidence in the files of he WC. So did Doug Horne, when he first read Best Evidence. And when he and Jeremy Gunn had Dr. Boswell under oath, and Boswell drew a diagram, on a medical school skull, of how huge the head wound was at Bethesda, Horne had no doubt that my analysis was correct.

It's the President's body that is the most important evidence in this case, and those that want to argue the case by saying the Single Bullet Theory is wrong, or that there was "more than one assassin"and that's their "conspiracy" are, imho, swimming in the shallow end of the kiddie pool.

The most critical evidence in this case is President Kennedy's body, and the alteration of the wounds, prior to autopsy, is the most important evidence of a conspiracy to obstruct justice in force on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.

DSL
6/16/13; 1:15 AM PDT
Los Angeles, California

To begin with the best evidence IMO, as presented at a trial is not the actual body, but the description of that body as given by testimony of autopsy doctors, their official report, bolstered by photographs, drawings and X Rays. All of which could be falsified. There have been numerous instances of these reports being fudged, faked and falsified in regular murder cases, how much more likely in and autopsy done under military jurisdiction. Secondly, if Mr. OConnor is the best witness to the shipping casket/ body bag/presidents body, did he recall who carried this coffin into the morgie? Was it the honor guard, the two SS agents and FBI agents, the marine security team or the team of enlisted men headed by David? Was he asked? If not, why not? He may not have worn a watch but his partner Jenkins remembers arriving to prepare for the autopsy at around 40 to 30 minutes prior to the beginning of the autopsy, which I would take to be the formal Y incision. Was Jenkins there before or after OConnor arrived? Where did David's team deliver the shipping casket, the cooling antechamber or the morgue proper? What became of the child and the Air Force Col. who were to be examined "subsequent" to the president's autopsy, according to Jenkins? If X Rays were taken after the Y incision according to Custer, this happened after 8:00, so any sightings of the Kennedy entourage couldn't have been of their initial arrival at 7:00. If X Rays were taken during an earlier pre autopsy who took them? Did Custer and R eed take them twice? Why have they never mentioned this? Who placed the president's body back into the ceremonial casket and carried it back to the Navy ambulance, and why does no one recall this happening. It had to have happened if the honor guard carried the coffin back into the morgue at 8:00. Were they present when the body was removed for the second time? Were any of them asked about this? Perhaps all these questions have been answered and I just can't find them on the internet?

[Albert Rossi]

To switch directions here, I have a different question to pose.

I was just perusing the Roberdeau composite diagram (see the sticky thread on this forum), and must confess that I never realized how far down the street the Harper fragment ended up.

Yet the original Dallas doctors (Harper, Cairns, Noteboom) at Methodist, along with a host of others, including Mantik, and even at one point Dr. Angel, identify this fragment as occipital/parietal (top back) (differently, as we all know, from where the forensic panel for the HSCA ended up placing it; see for instance John Hunt, "A DEMONSTRABLE IMPOSSIBILITY: The HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel's Misrepresentation of the Kennedy Assassination Medical Evidence", on Rex Bradford's History Matters site).

So how did this happen? How did a fragment from the back of the head get projected forward ... and that far forward?

[Albert Doyle]

I find it hard to believe the transporters were worried about the press at a military hospital. The action of stalling the bronze casket would actually have exposed the transfer to more press instead of less. I don't buy it.

[Gordon Gray]

I find it hard to believe the transporters were worried about the press at a military hospital. The action of stalling the bronze casket would actually have exposed the transfer to more press instead of less. I don't buy it.

I don't think anyone is trying to sell you anything, but if what you say is so why did they have Boyajian's Marine security detail stationed around the morgue?

[Albert Rossi]

Gordon, all good questions. Really do need to review the sources here.

I can answer one of them about the X-rays, however: Horne's timeline (vol. 2, pp 620-627) claims:

1. The skull X-rays "must have been taken approximately 30-45 minutes after the body's arrival (and no later) in order to allow time for their development and viewing, and to permit time for Dr. Humes to call Pierre Finck on the phone and ask him to participate in the autopsy telling him, in the process, that he had a 'good set of skull films'."
2. "About 6:55" Custer, "possibly carrying the x-ray cassettes for 5 skull x-rays or possibly after being dismissed from the morgue for about 15 minutes prior to the exposure of the skull films" sees Jackie K.
...

Now Horne has to do some selection from the record to get this to work out. Ed Reed said they were absent for 15-20 minutes. Custer said for 1-2 hours. Custer said the x-rays were taken after the Y-incision. But in order to reconcile Hume's statement to Finck with this, Horne pushes the head X-rays to an earlier time before the Y-incision. That's not the only trouble he has with the "evolution of Custer's testimony" over time (see the chart on p. 539).

I presume that Horne must just chalk up the inconsistencies to the "less reliable" part of this testimony.

I also believe that Dennis David's team put the casket in the anteroom.

[Albert Doyle]

I find it hard to believe the transporters were worried about the press at a military hospital. The action of stalling the bronze casket would actually have exposed the transfer to more press instead of less. I don't buy it.

I don't think anyone is trying to sell you anything, but if what you say is so why did they have Boyajian's Marine security detail stationed around the morgue?

Think about that...

[Albert Rossi]

Who placed the president's body back into the ceremonial casket and carried it back to the Navy ambulance, and why does no one recall this happening. It had to have happened if the honor guard carried the coffin back into the morgue at 8:00.

Lifton devotes a whole chapter to this issue ("The Clandestine Intermission Hypothesis") and then also does some modifications of that hypothesis in a later chapter. His idea, I believe, is that the original "audience" is asked to leave during the taking of X-rays or some other "inspection" of the body. Horne's take on this is a little different, but essentially the idea of keeping the FBI and original witnesses out while this happened is what is proposed. These are by nature reconstructions as there is no direct testimony for the return of the body to the coffin and then to the Navy ambulance, but it is putatively during that period that the bronze casket was damaged. I think that's a fair high-level summary of what the two authors have in mind.

[David Lifton]

For Donald Rebentisch, a petty officer who was stationed at Bethesda on the night of the autopsy, there was no big secret. Rebentisch was studying dental and medical equipment repair at the hospital at the time. According to Rebentisch, two ambulances carrying two caskets were employed one of them empty and one with the body of Kennedy in a deliberate charade to slip the President's body into Bethesda Naval Hospital. Rebentisch says his commanding officers told him the secrecy was planned to avoid the media and other onlookers. The empty casket was brought in the front door while the casket carrying Kennedy's body was driven in a 1958 Chevrolet hearse to the back of the hospital where medical officials were to perform an autopsy:

Apart from the issue of a casket "brought in the front door" (certainly not what Sibert & O'Neill state), the problem with Rebentisch's version, as I see it, then becomes when the casket with JFK's body was put into the black hearse, Chevrolet or Cadillac or whatever. We have the film of the transfer from Air Force One to the Navy ambulance. Either that casket was already empty, or somewhere along the line it got switched from Jackie & RFK's ambulance to the hearse (which I don't know we have any evidence for). I don't think Rebentisch's statements help clear up exactly how this supposed security measure was effected.

I have no idea if Rebentisch's story is accurate, but it seems credible. If it is the case, why would it not be reasonable to assume the placement of the body in a different casket was cleared by Bobby or someone else in the Kennedy family. In which case it could happened on Air Force I once it had landed at Andrews. I've have been on that plane and there is a door on the left side of he galley where the coffin was kept during it's flight from Dallas, and it could easily have been unloaded from that door, on the far side of the plane, away from the cameras, and helicoptered to Besthesda.

Gordon,

To cut to the chase (and in answer to your question): The casket was already empty at the time AF-1 landed at Andrews Air Force Base. And, as I stated in Best Evidence: an empty casket at the Bethesda front entrance meant an empty casket on take-off from Dallas. Macmillan's top executives were aware of that, and so were the lawyers--so they approved a national advertising campaign which featured a photograph of the casket being offloaded at Andrews with the caption: "The Casket was empty."

I wish I had the time to make detailed replies to many of the other posts on this thread. . .unfortunately, I don't. But let me just make a few comments about Rebentisch. I was in Los Angeles on 1/24/81, about ten days after the official publication date of BEST EVIDENCE (1/13/81)--when the phone rang in my hotel room at the Bonaventure. It was Jerry Morlock, of the Grand Rapids, Michigan, newspaper. He is the journalist who originated the Donald Rebentisch story. After learning what DR had to say, I immediately telephoned Rebentish, in Michigan, and had a detailed conversation with him, recording it on a micro-cassette recorder. My main objective was to get a valid historical record, before he read my book--and in fact I accomplished that. All Rebentisch knew was what he had read in the just-published Time Magazine story about Best Evidence (see January 19, 1981, Time, "Now, a Two-Casket Theory"). Of course, it was very gratifying and exciting to hear that there were 3 people (himself, and two others) who corroborated the fact that there was more than one ambulance that arrived with a casket that night. Recently, I located that microcassette, and sent it to Pat Valentino, who duped it, and then spent hours making a transcript. The audio is excellent and it is loaded with data that corroborates Dennis David's account. When I asked Rebentish what he would have told people a week after the assassination, if the matter had come up in conversation, he replied (and this captures his mis-impression that a casket entered the front of the hospital):

The main thing I would tell them is the fact that "you people were watching television, and you seen a casket go in the front of the Bethesda Naval Hospital [by which I assume he was referring to the arrival of the Naval ambulance carrying Jacqueline Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. ] And I told them "when you were watching that casket, I'd already delivered the casket to the back of the hospital that went to the morgue." I says "you people were not seeing what actually happened." I've been telling people this for 17 years!"

A few weeks later, I was contacted by Canadian Broadcasting Company producer Brian McKenna, who wanted to do a story on Best Evidence. I supplied the footage from my filmed interviews, and then McKenna and I flew to Michigan, and filmed Rebentisch. McKenna then produced and edited a fine 30 minute documentary titled "The Empty Casket" which was broadcast on "The Fifth Estate," the Canadian equivalent of our "60 Minutes." Much of the footage on that program came directly from the material you will find in BEST EVIDENCE: The Research Video, the home video documentary I produced and which was distributed nationally by Warner, in 1989.

As to when the casket was offloaded from Air Force One: that occurred in Dallas, at Love Field, between 2:18 CST when the casket was first placed aboard, and 2:47 PM CST, at the time of takeoff. Bobby Kennedy did not know, or authorize, any removal of his brother's body from the casket--but I have evidence that Lyndon Johnson implied to certain third parties that it was indeed authorized; moreover, RFK certainly did learn about it shortly thereafter--i.e., he was aware of the situation at the time AF-1 landed at Andrews. However, the press coverage concerning my book was misleading: There were no "strangers" on board AF-1 who "stole the body" or any such thing: It was covertly transferred from the coffin--presumably under the color of authority--and removed via a forklift truck on the rear starboard side. This event occurred while the entire Kennedy group was down on the tarmac, and before Jacqueline Kennedy ascended the stairs (as shown in the Stoughton photo). I have more information about this, and will be publishing it. Remember: I interviewed General Chester Clifton on July 15, 1980, when Best Evidence was already in galleys, at his office, in Washington, D.C. It was a completely on-the-record interview, with my SONY TC-800 reel to reel recorder on the desk between us. Clifton was, by that time, aware of the impending publication of Best Evidence (which is why he granted the interview) and we went over every radio transmission that I (then) knew of concerning the body, the coffin, etc.

What I think many people do not understand is that this was a "body-centric" plot from the outset: i.e., it was planned from the outset to shoot the President and then to alter the wounds, to provide the basis for a false autopsy. However, the original plan was derailed when Governor Connally was unexpectedly shot. So a number of things occurred that were not part of the original scenario. Those involved in this affair were improvising, using "national security" as their excuse to do this or that.

But I digress. . . let's get back to Rebentish: What was memorable about my January, 1981 interview was that when Rebentisch related his account, and claimed to know Dennis David, I asked him a key question to verify that: What was Dennis David's wife's name? Just three months before, I had interviewed Dennis David on camera, in Hoopston, Illinois, and met his wife. Rebentish answered the question immediately, and his answer was correct.

DSL
6/17/13; 1:20 AM PDT
Los Angeles, California