But though unnecessary, there is additional medical evidence—indeed, conclusive proof—that the wound to the back of the president’s head was an entrance wound. The autopsy surgeons found “coagulation necrosis of the tissues” at the inner margins of the head wound.64 Dr. Wecht acknowledged in 1967 that coagulation necrosis is a “sure sign” of an entrance wound.65 Although I haven’t looked at more than fifty autopsy reports in my career, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the term coagulation necrosis in any of them. When I asked Dr. Wecht to define the term for me, he wrote that “in gunshot wounds of entrance, the dermis [outer layer of skin]…shows microscopic changes in the collagen, the protein material that comprises the dermis to a great extent. These changes in the collagen fibers are caused by the thermal [heat] effects of the bullet in distant wounds. In close range wounds, the changes are produced by the hot gases emerging from the muzzle of the weapon. These collagen alterations are referred to as coagulation necrosis. They cannot be seen by the naked eye.”66
In a follow-up phone conversation, Wecht said that although, as he indicated earlier, not all entrance wounds have abrasion collars, “all have coagulation necrosis.” He acknowledged that findings of coagulation necrosis normally do not appear in his autopsy reports or those of other prominent forensic pathologists, repeating that changes to the dermis can only be seen by use of a microscope.
“Doctor,” I said, “you would agree that a finding of coagulation necrosis in an autopsy report is a very sophisticated one, would you not?”
“Yes, I would.”
“How do you reconcile that, then, with the almost universal view that the autopsy surgeons in the Kennedy case conducted a very inferior and amateurish post-mortem?”
All Dr. Wecht could say was, “I’ll tell you where the coagulation necrosis finding came from—Dr. Finck. He specializes in this type of thing. I can guarantee you it didn’t come from Humes or Boswell.”67 It didn’t come from too poor a source. As indicated, Dr. Finck at the time was the chief of the Wound Ballistics Pathology Branch of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and as Finck said, he “was asked” by Humes to participate in the autopsy “specifically to interpret the wounds…It was my mission in that autopsy room. My main mission was to study the wounds.”68*
So we see that despite the insistent and strident claims by conspiracy theorists that the fatal wound to the president’s head was fired from his right front, all of the medical and scientific evidence proves not just beyond a reasonable doubt but beyond all doubt that it was fired from his rear, and the wound to the backside of the president’s head was an entrance wound. Based on the evidence, the Warren Commission naturally concluded that “the…hole in the rear of the President’s skull was the point of entry” of the fatal bullet.69
Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists never stop pointing out that the Warren Commission never viewed the autopsy X-rays and photographs. Hence, they say, the Commission’s conclusions were invalid. But nearly all of them fail to add that three other later groups did examine the autopsy X-rays and photographs and unanimously reached the same conclusion as the Warren Commission.
In 1978–1979, the House Select Committee, based on the findings of nine forensic pathologists on its panel who examined close-up photographs and X-rays of the president’s head wound, concurred with the Warren Commission’s conclusion, saying, “The President was struck by [a] bullet…that entered in the right rear of the head near the cowlick area.” The committee added that “there is no medical evidence” that the president was struck from the front.70
The Clark Panel in 1968 and the Rockefeller Commission in 1975, which also examined the photographs and X-rays, came to the same conclusion, that the president was struck once in the back of the head by a bullet fired from his rear.* The four-member Clark Panel concluded that “the decedent’s head was struck from behind by a single projectile. It entered the occipital region 25 mm. to the right of the midline and 100 mm. above the external occipital protuberance…Photographs and X-rays indicate that it came from a site above and slightly to his right.”71
The five-member Rockefeller Commission, citing the specific location of the head entrance wound found by the Clark Panel, concluded that this “head shot” was “fired from the rear” and that there was “no evidence to support the claim that President Kennedy was struck by a bullet fired from either the grassy knoll or any other position to his front, right front or right side…No witness who urged the view [before the Rockefeller Commission] that the Zapruder film and other motion picture films proved that President Kennedy was struck by a bullet fired from his right front was shown to possess any professional or other special qualifications on the subject.” The Rockefeller Commission noted that even Dr. Cyril Wecht had testified before the commission that the evidence establishes there was only one head shot, and it was fired from the rear.72
What this means is that the three pathologists who conducted the autopsy, the nine pathologists for the HSCA, the three pathologists (and one radiologist) from the Clark Panel, and the three pathologists, one of whom, Dr. Werner V. Spitz, was also on the HSCA medical panel from the Rockefeller Commission—that is, seventeen pathologists, even Dr. Wecht—all agreed that the wound to the back of the president’s head was an entrance wound.
The precise location of this entrance wound as stated by the autopsy surgeons in the autopsy report (“slightly above the external occipital protuberance”), however, has been established as being incorrect by every pathologist who has subsequently studied the autopsy photographs and X-rays. Although the pathologists for the Clark Panel said the entry wound was “approximately 100 millimeters” (10 centimeters, close to 4 inches) above the external occipital protuberance (a little, bony bulge we can feel at the base of the skull), the HSCA forensic pathology panel measured it precisely as being 9 centimeters above the protuberance in the so-called cowlick area of the scalp.73 Since 9 centimeters is approximately 3½ inches and the autopsy surgeons said the wound was “slightly above” the protuberance (without specifying how far), we can roughly say the surgeons were 3 inches off in their calculation. Is it possible we are talking about two separate wounds to the back of the head? No. All seventeen pathologists said there was only one gunshot wound to the back of the president’s head. So, by definition, we have to be talking about the same wound. Moreover, the fourteen pathologists who followed the three autopsy surgeons were able to demonstrate that the wound they found was the same wound (same dimensions) the autopsy surgeons described in their report.
Not only do the autopsy photos and X-rays definitively show that the entrance wound is in the upper part of the president’s skull, but they show a bullet track (deposit of small metal fragments as the bullet proceeded forward) “only in the upper portion of the skull.” Additionally, if the bullet had entered the president’s skull at the lower point the autopsy surgeons said it did, there would have been damage to the cerebellum, the lower part of the brain, which there was not. Dr. Baden testified that his forensic pathology panel “did not see any photographic or X-ray evidence…indicating any injury of the brain other than the extensive damage to the right upper part of the brain, consistent with the upper track which the panel agrees to.” In concluding that the autopsy surgeons were wrong about the precise location of the entrance wound (as described in the autopsy report), the HSCA also noted that photographs show the lower area of the president’s brain to be “virtually intact”—an impossibility had the bullet entered the skull as low as the three autopsy pathologists contend.74
How have the three autopsy pathologists reacted to this apparent gaffe in their report? Not very well, I’m afraid. By and large, most people don’t want to admit they made a mistake. The three autopsy surgeons were no exception.* When asked about the discrepancy in 1977, both Drs. Humes and Boswell repeated their 1964 testimony, insisting that the entrance wound was low in the skull (this time both said the wound was slightly below the external occipital protuberance)75 and
that the photographs were misleading—a consistent theme in numerous subsequent interviews.76 An HSCA memo says that Dr. Humes, obviously reluctant to second-guess what he had written fourteen years earlier, stated categorically “that his physical measurements are correct and emphasized that he had access to the body itself and made the measurements of the actual head region.” In addition, he said that “photographs and X-rays have inherent limitations which are not present when one is examining the subject.”77 Also, in 1978, Dr. Finck testified to the HSCA that the entrance wound was low in the back of the head, identifying a small piece of white brain tissue, seen in autopsy photographs near the hairline, as the point of entry.78 Finck, too, pointed out to the committee that interpreting photographs of the body after the fact is never as good as examining the actual body, and chalked up the discrepancy as “the difference between the interpretation of photographs and the [actual] autopsy wounds.”79
The HSCA pathology panel reported that the lead autopsy surgeon, Dr. Humes, had changed his mind during the committee’s public hearings and “supported the panel’s conclusion as to the location of the wound.”80 But actually, Humes wasn’t quite that clear. In fact, when he was asked specifically by HSCA counsel to explain the discrepancy between the language in the autopsy report, which placed the entrance wound “slightly above” the occipital protuberance, and the forensic panel’s conclusion, which placed the entrance wound 4 inches above the occipital protuberance, Humes replied, “Well, I have a little trouble with that; 10 centimeters is…significant—4 inches.”81*
But in the final moments of his appearance before the HSCA, as the committee sought to come to some understanding how a nearly 4-inch error might have been made, Dr. Humes offered something that helps to answer the question and furnish the reason for Humes’s error. After explaining that he didn’t get much sleep between the conclusion of the autopsy and the writing of the report, Humes was asked if he had any notes from which to work in the preparation of his autopsy report. Humes said that he had “draft notes” that were written in the autopsy room.
Question: “Was the distance between the wound and the external occipital protuberance noted on those notes?”
Humes: “It was not noted in any greater detail than appears in the final report.” (Remember, the autopsy report says only that the wound was “slightly above” the occipital protuberance.)
Question: “So, the exact distance, then, above the external occipital protuberance was not noted—?”
Humes: “It was not noted, with the feeling, of course, that the photographs and X-rays that we had made would, of themselves, suffice to accurately locate this wound.”
Indeed, the autopsy photographs and X-rays do locate the wound precisely, though, to Dr. Humes’s chagrin, not where the autopsy report says. Humes added to his concession by saying that he and his colleagues were “hampered by our inability, number one, to never have seen, after about midnight of that night, the X-rays, and to never have seen at any time until a year or two after the Warren Commission the photographs which we made. I think had we had those opportunities, some of the confusion and difficulties which seem to have arisen might not have arisen.”82
What happened to the bullet once it entered the rear of the president’s head? Once again, the opinion of all the pathologists who either conducted the autopsy or examined close-up photographs and X-rays of the president’s head and wounds was unanimous. As the HSCA medical panel concluded, the bullet “proceeded in an essentially straight and forward path” and exploded out of the right front of the president’s head.83 (See drawing in photo section for path of bullet.)
The autopsy report describes the damage caused by the exiting bullet as “a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal bone [above the ear] but extending somewhat into the temporal [front] and occipital [rear] regions.” The report also notes that there is an “actual absence of scalp and bone” producing a very large hole “that measures approximately 13 cm [51/10 inches] in greatest diameter.”84*The HSCA forensic pathology panel concurred. It found that the lacerated area caused by the exit wound was “in the right parietal region, anteriorly to the right frontal region…and posteriorly toward the occipital region.”85 Likewise, the Clark panel of pathologists concluded that the bullet wound to the back of the head “explosively fractured the right frontal and parietal bones as it emerged from the head.”86†
Clearly visible and exuding from this defect, the autopsy report said, was “lacerated [torn] brain tissue which on close inspection proves to represent the major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere.”87 X-rays support these observations, revealing multiple fracture lines (the longest measuring approximately 7½ inches) radiating from both the large defect on the right and the small entrance wound on the back of the skull.88 More importantly, with respect to the path of the bullet, Dr. Humes testified to the Warren Commission that the X-rays also showed “multiple minute fragments of radio opaque material [missile fragments] traversing a line from the wound in the occiput [rear head bone] to just above the right eye, with a rather sizable fragment visible by X-ray just above the right eye. These tiny fragments that were seen dispersed through the substance of the brain in between were…extremely minute, less than 1 mm. in size for the most part.”89‡ In other words, the X-rays conclusively showed that all of the minute missile fragments lay in a back-to-front pattern on the right side of the president’s head. None were seen on the left side of his head, as there would have been if the shot to the head had come from the grassy knoll or any other location on the right side of the presidential limousine (as conspiracy theorists maintain), since the bullet would be expected to proceed forward into the left side of the president’s brain.
The HSCA concurred with the Warren Commission in this essential finding. “The [forensic pathology] panel examined X-ray films of the…skull with the naked eye and with 10 magnification…Within the right side of the head are randomly distributed, irregularly shaped, radiopaque shadows which are missile fragments. These shadows, measuring from 0.2 to 0.6 centimeters in diameter, extend from the back to the front.”90 The Clark Panel found that the bullet that entered the back of the president’s head left “a trail of fine metallic debris as it passed forward and laterally” through the head.91
In an interview with JAMA editor George D. Lundberg in October of 1991, Humes said,
In 1963, we proved at the autopsy table that President Kennedy was struck from above and behind by the fatal shot. The pattern of the entrance and exit wounds in the skull proves it, and if we stayed here until hell freezes over, nothing will change this proof. It happens 100 times out of 100, and I will defend it until I die. This is the essence of our autopsy, and it is supreme ignorance to argue any other scenario. This is a law of physics [referring to the fact that with a through-and-through wound of the cranium it is “always the pattern,” he said, that “the beveling or crater effect appears on the inside of the skull at the entrance wound and on the outside of the skull at the exit wound”] and it is foolproof—absolutely, unequivocally, and without question. The conspiracy buffs have totally ignored this central scientific fact, and everything else is hogwash.92
After examining the head wound, the three autopsy pathologists focused on a wound in the upper right part of the president’s back. According to the autopsy report, and the testimony of Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Finck, this wound was a “7 × 4 millimeter” (approximately ¼ 1/6 inch) oval entrance wound “just above the upper border of the scapula [shoulder blade]” located “14 centimeters [5½ inches] from the tip of the right acromion process” (the acromion is the extreme, outermost edge of the shoulder blade) and an equal distance “below the tip of the right mastoid process” (the bony protuberance just behind the ear).93 This terminology makes the location of the wound difficult to visualize for a layperson. The HSCA presented a sketch of the wound’s location (see photo section) and said that the right edge of the ruler that is on top of th
e president’s spinal column is “approximately 2.5 centimeters” (around 1 inch) away from the wound.94
The Warren Commission concluded that the wound just above the president’s right shoulder blade was a wound of entrance.95 Likewise, the nine-member HSCA forensic pathology panel, eight of whom, as we have seen, were chief medical examiners (coroners) in major cities throughout the United States, “unanimously concluded that a bullet entered the upper right back of the president”—that is, the president was shot from behind.96
Dr. Finck testified at the Clay Shaw murder trial in New Orleans that the edges of the wound to the president’s back were pushed inward and contained an abrasion collar: “I looked at it very closely and I had the opinion based on the characteristics I mentioned—regular edges, with abrasion, and turned inward—that this was a wound of entry.”97 The HSCA forensic panel later concurred with Dr. Finck’s assessment, concluding that autopsy photographs of the back wound showed it to be oval and surrounded by a sharply defined “abrasion collar resulting from the bullet scraping the margins of the skin at the moment of penetration,” characteristic of “wounds of entrance and not typical of exit wounds.”98 The forensic panel noted that the abrasion collar, though surrounding the entrance wound, was “most prominent between the 1 and 7 o’clock positions,”99 leading the panel to conclude that the bullet was moving “from right to left,”100 consistent with a shot from the Book Depository Building.
From this and also trajectory studies (see later text), the HSCA estimated that as opposed to the shot to the head, which was descending at a 16-degree angle below horizontal and from a point 29 degrees to the right of true north from the president, this earlier shot to the president’s back was descending at an angle of 21 degrees below horizontal as it approached him and from a point 26 degrees to the right of true north,101 that is, “moving from right to left,”102 again consistent with Oswald’s perch above and to the right rear of the presidential limousine.
Reclaiming History Page 75
