JOHN CANAL SAID:
He [DVP] posted once that it always bothered him that there were so many BOH wound witnesses...but, evidently, after he read RH ["Reclaiming History"] he threw all those (about 30 total) witnesses, including the autopsists under the bus...certain, I guess, that they were either lying or hallucinating.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And those "BOH" witnesses do still bother me to a large degree. It's still the #1 "mystery" (in my mind) in the entire case.
I still wonder how so many medical professionals could ALL get it totally wrong. But there is BETTER evidence that proves (beyond a reasonable doubt, IMO) that those "BOH wound" witnesses WERE, indeed, incorrect when they claimed the only large wound on the head of John F. Kennedy was located in the occipital area (far-right-rear) of his head. And that "better evidence" is the photographic record of JFK's head wounds, including the autopsy photos, the autopsy X-rays, and the Zapruder Film.
In fact, author Vincent Bugliosi places quite a bit of confidence in the Zapruder Film when it comes to specifically locating the large (exit) wound in JFK's head. Such as when Vince says this in his book:
"Lest anyone still has any doubt as to the location of the large exit wound in the head...the Zapruder film itself couldn't possibly provide better demonstrative evidence. The film proves conclusively, and beyond all doubt, where the exit wound was. Zapruder frame 313 and frame 328 clearly show that the large, gaping exit wound was to the RIGHT FRONT of the president's head. THE BACK OF HIS HEAD SHOWS NO SUCH LARGE WOUND AND CLEARLY IS COMPLETELY INTACT." [Bugliosi's emphasis.] -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 410 of "Reclaiming History"
MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PARKLAND WITNESSES:
I have also wondered why very, very few of the Parkland Hospital witnesses said they saw the large exit wound on the right side of JFK's head (which is an exit wound that we positively KNOW was there when JFK was in the emergency room at Parkland)?
Even if Jackie Kennedy closed up the flap of scalp on the right side of the President's head (which I think is quite possible), I would still think that a lot more people at Parkland would have been able to see the outline or at least SOME portion of the gaping RIGHT-FRONT exit wound, which is the wound that was causing (IMO) the large amount of "pooling" of blood toward the right-rear of JFK's head (which is what I believe to be the best explanation [to date] for how those Parkland witnesses could have all been mistaken about the location of the wound).
But I've never been totally pleased with that "pooling" explanation, mainly because I'm wondering why nobody at Parkland claimed to see TWO wounds on the right side of the President's head:
1.) The place where the blood and brain tissue was "pooling" (the right-rear; which was mistaken for an actual HOLE in the President's head).
and:
2.) The actual exit wound itself, located in the Right/Front/Top area of JFK's head, which is an exit-wound location that is confirmed in several different ways -- e.g., the Zapruder Film, the autopsy photos, the autopsy report, and the autopsy doctors' remarks about the exit wound location in post-1963 interviews, including these firm and unambiguous comments made by Dr. James Humes on CBS-TV in 1967:
"The exit wound was a large, irregular wound to the front and right side of the President's head." -- Dr. Humes; June 1967
BTW, I was a believer in the "Blood Pooling" theory before I ever read Vincent Bugliosi's 2007 book. So it wasn't Mr. Bugliosi or Dr. Baden who convinced me that this is probably the best explanation for the Parkland witnesses' BOH observations. In fact, before reading Vince's book, I was truly hoping that VB would drop a bombshell on me and come up with something different and, frankly, BETTER, to explain away those BOH witnesses. But, alas, Vince doesn't have any better explanation than the "pooling" theory described by Dr. Baden in the book excerpt shown below:
"Dr. Michael Baden has what I believe to be the answer, one whose logic is solid. [Quoting Baden] "The head exit wound was not in the parietal-occipital area, as the Parkland doctors said. They were wrong," [Baden] told me. "Since the thick growth of hair on Kennedy's head hadn't been shaved at Parkland, there's no way for the doctors to have seen the margins of the wound in the skin of the scalp. All they saw was blood and brain tissue adhering to the hair. And that may have been mostly in the occipital area because he was lying on his back and gravity would push his hair, blood, and brain tissue backward, so many of them probably assumed the exit wound was in the back of the head"." -- Pages 407-408 of "Reclaiming History" by Vincent Bugliosi
In 2006, I was theorizing the exact same thing:
"If I were to hazard a guess as to why (and how) so many different observers could all see the same (wrong) thing regarding JFK's head wound, I'd say it's possibly due to the fact that the massive amount of blood coming from the President's large wound on the right side of his head was pooling toward the BACK of his head while he was resting flat on his back on the hospital stretcher, creating the incorrect impression to the observers that the wound was located where the greatest amount of blood was seen." -- DVP; December 10, 2006
[Also see this 2011 discussion.]
JOHN CANAL SAID:
What gets me is that in RH, Bugliosi used the HSCA's Baden as his number-one source and even DVP has admitted that Baden was wrong on at least two issues. Go figure.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Well, for heaven's sake, John C., not everybody is 100% right ALL of the time. Take yourself, for example. I think you are right when you say that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy.
But I sure as heck think you're 100% wrong about some of the other things that you believe regarding this case -- such as your unique "BOH" beliefs and your belief that the 6.5 mm. "object" was planted on an X-ray, and your belief that Dr. Burkley "ordered" the autopsy doctors to "understate" the true condition of JFK's head wounds.
Another "Not Always Right" example would be Vincent Bugliosi. I've discovered multiple errors in Vince's JFK book (factual errors too, not just minor typos).
But, oddly enough, when those factual errors that I've noticed in Bugliosi's book are corrected, it actually bolsters VB's lone-assassin conclusions, instead of weakening his LN case.
I found that to be quite interesting. This is especially true regarding a portion of VB's book when he's discussing the amount of metal (bullet) fragments that were left inside Governor John Connally's body after he was operated on.
Mr. Bugliosi, in what could be considered a fairly large mistake, leaves the readers of his book with the incorrect impression that Governor Connally went to his grave in 1993 with up to "seven or eight" bullet fragments from Bullet CE399 inside his right wrist.
But, in fact, the "seven or eight" fragments that Vince thinks are BULLET fragments in Connally's wrist were not BULLET fragments at all -- they were BONE fragments. And this fact can easily be discovered by reading Dr. Charles Gregory's testimony in the Warren Commission volumes.
Gregory was positively talking about BONE fragments when he said that as many as "seven or eight" fragments (or possibly more) were seen inside Connally's wrist via X-ray. Vince Bugliosi, however, thinks that Gregory was talking about METAL fragments in that testimony.
So, when VB's "fragments" mistake is corrected, a strong argument can really be made for as few as just ONE tiny bullet fragment (per the totality of Dr. Gregory's testimony) being left in John Connally's right wrist (plus the one very small bullet fragment that was left in JBC's thigh wound) after he was operated on at Parkland Hospital in November of 1963.
The official record, however, as Mr. Bugliosi rightly points out in his book, is somewhat muddled and unclear as to the exact number of small metallic (bullet) fragments that Connally took with him to his grave.
But from the sources I can find (and by looking at Connally's post-operative X-rays), it becomes pretty clear that only a very, very small amount of metal was left inside Governor Connally's entire body after he was operated on at Parkland. And it certainly was not an amount of metal that would come even close to exceeding the approximately 2.2 to 2.4 grains of lead that are missing from Bullet CE399.
Sorry, I digressed to another topic entirely here. Forgive me. But I wanted to put that on the newsgroup record anyway. And this seemed like as good a time as any to do it. :)
BTW, thanks for the responses to my "poll" in this thread.
David Von Pein
May 21, 2009
