SOMEONE NAMED BILL WROTE
TO ME VIA E-MAIL AND SAID:
The bullet which caused the neck wound in Kennedy was fired from the front and never left the body. His back wound and neck wound are separate wounds.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Oh, come now, Bill. That would mean we'd have TWO mysterious "disappearing" bullets, instead of just Wecht's one vanishing missile that exited JFK's throat.
TWO bullets going into JFK but not exiting---and then NEITHER bullet is found or recovered?? That's even more ridiculous than Dr. Cyril Wecht's theory.
And, in fact, the "2 Vanishing Bullets In JFK" theory is something I wish Vincent Bugliosi would have mentioned more often in his many 2007 radio interviews, because it would have served his purposes even better than just highlighting Wecht's theory.
But Vince kept thinking that most conspiracy theorists are like Dr. Wecht (i.e., believing in just ONE disappearing bullet), when in fact most CTers are just like you, Bill -- they believe in a theory that's even more improbable than Wecht's silliness.
BILL SAID:
Why is it silly or improbable? .... Nothing mysterious at all about these two bullets. No one is saying they were NEVER recovered. Hidden? Maybe.
All the doctors at Parkland claimed that the throat wound was one of entry.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
JFK's entire body was X-rayed at autopsy, and no bullets were found in his body. The only reasonable conclusion is that the bullet that hit his upper back exited his throat. And that's exactly what the three autopsy doctors concluded (at
2 H 364):
ARLEN SPECTER -- "Did you search the body to determine if there was any bullet inside the body?"
DR. JAMES J. HUMES -- "Before the arrival of Colonel Finck, we had made X-rays of the head, neck, and torso of the President, and the upper portions of his major extremities, or both his upper and lower extremities. At Colonel Finck's suggestion, we then completed the X-ray examination by X-raying the President's body in toto, and those X-rays are available."
MR. SPECTER -- "What did those X-rays disclose with respect to the possible presence of a missile in the President's body?"
DR. HUMES -- "They showed no evidence of a missile in the President's body at any point. And these were examined by ourselves and by the radiologist, who assisted us in this endeavor."
MR. SPECTER -- "What conclusion, if any, did you reach as to whether point "D" on [Commission Exhibit] 385 was the point of entrance or exit?"
DR. HUMES -- "We concluded that this missile depicted in 385 "C", which entered the President's body, traversed the President's body and made its exit through the wound observed by the physicians at Parkland Hospital and later extended as a tracheotomy wound."
[End Quotes.]
---------------
BTW, the fibers on the front side of JFK's shirt were pointed OUTWARD, compatible with an exiting bullet, not an entrance wound.
And Dr. Malcolm Perry said that the throat wound could be "either" an entry or an exit (at 3 H 373).
BILL SAID:
I'd love to read where you read that the fibers were pointed "outward" on Kennedy's clothing.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's common knowledge, Bill.
Here's a passage concerning the subject from Vincent Bugliosi's JFK book:
[Quote On:]
"Not seen by the three pathologists until they testified to the Warren Commission in 1964, the president's clothing would have confirmed that the bullet had exited at the throat. In a 1965 memorandum describing his examination of the clothing, Finck wrote..."immediately below the upper button of the front [of the president's shirt] is a bullet hole perforating both flaps of the shirt, right and left. There is dry blood on the margins of both holes. The innermost hole reveals fibers directed outward, which indicates an exit perforation. The outermost hole also shows this outward orientation of the bloody shirt fibers, but to a lesser extent." [end Finck quote]
In the FBI's laboratory examination of the hole in the shirt shortly after the assassination, investigators too found that the "fibers of the cloth" were "protruding outward," characteristic of an exit hole for a projectile." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 400-401 of "Reclaiming History"
[End Quote.]
---------------
Bugliosi's sources for the above information are as follows:
AFIP [Armed Forces Institute of Pathology] Record 205-10001-10002, Memorandum, Finck to Blumberg, p.7.
5 H 60-61, WCT Robert A. Frazier; CD 205, p.154; FBI Record 124-10024-10173.
---------------
To expand upon Robert Frazier's Warren Commission testimony regarding President Kennedy's clothing, we also find this on page 61 of WC Volume 5:
ROBERT A. FRAZIER -- "In each instance for these holes, the one through the button line and the one through the buttonhole line, the hole amounts to a ragged slit approximately one-half inch in height. It is oriented vertically, and the fibers of the cloth are protruding outward; that is, have been pushed from the inside out. I could not actually determine from the characteristics of the hole whether or not it was caused by a bullet. However, I can say that it was caused by a projectile of some type which exited from the shirt at that point and that is again assuming that when I first examined the shirt it had not been altered from the condition it was in at the time the hole was made."
[End Quote.]
---------------
Many conspiracy theorists are more than willing to assume, however, that Bob Frazier of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was lying his ass off when he said what he said to the Warren Commission above -- or, as an alternative to advance the notion that the Single-Bullet Theory is a crock of shit, those same conspiracy theorists are willing to theorize that the fibers of JFK's shirt were altered by someone before Mr. Frazier of the FBI examined the shirt, in order to make it look like a bullet had exited from the President's throat.
But regardless of what the conspiracists want to believe, Robert Frazier's testimony about the fibers of Kennedy's shirt "protruding outward" is still going to be in the official record for all time.
BILL SAID:
If you watched the video I sent the link on, Connally's attending surgeon basically, and without knowing it, admits that CE 399 was planted on the stretcher that Tomlinson found it on in Parkland.
If a surgeon removes a bullet from a patient's thigh, it would be passed on to the authorities as evidence. It could not have ended up underneath a mattress on a random stretcher.
At best, we have an extra bullet in the equation which would also prove a conspiracy.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
You're right about one thing -- if a bullet had been recovered from Governor Connally's thigh, it most certainly WOULD have made it into the hands of the authorities on November 22, 1963. Which is one of the best reasons we have to know that NO BULLET at all was removed from Connally's leg at Parkland Hospital.
The only bullet in the official record of this case that can be connected in any way to the wounding of John Connally is CE399, which was found on a stretcher by Darrell Tomlinson prior to 2:00 PM CST on 11/22/63 (at a time, btw, when no conspirators who might have been bent on planting a bullet in the hospital could have possibly known if JFK or Connally still had bullets in their bodies, making the idea of planting ANY bullet on ANY stretcher at Parkland simply too foolish to consider--unless they WANTED their plot to possibly be exposed almost immediately).
We can be confident that no bullet at all was found inside Governor Connally's body by any of the doctors or nurses at Parkland Hospital, and the reason we can be confident of that fact is because one of Connally's own surgeons, Dr. Charles F. Gregory, told us so (at 4 H 125):
DR. GREGORY -- "We were disconcerted by not finding a missile at all. Here was our patient with three discernible wounds, and no missile within him of sufficient magnitude to account for them, and we suggested that someone ought to search his belongings and other areas where he had been to see if it could be identified or found, rather."
[End Quote.]
---------------
Plus: I always like to point out to conspiracy promoters the following testimony of Darrell C. Tomlinson, the person who found CE399 on the stretcher at Parkland. In his WC testimony, it couldn't be any clearer that Tomlinson just simply was not sure which of the two stretchers in question he had taken off of the elevator shortly before he found a bullet on one of those stretchers.
And Tomlinson emphasizes his uncertainty not just once--he does so FIVE SEPARATE TIMES during this brief section of his Warren Commission questioning (which can be found at 6 H 132):
ARLEN SPECTER -- "What did you tell the Secret Service man about which stretcher you took off of the elevator?"
DARRELL TOMLINSON -- "I told him that I was not sure, and I am not--I'm not sure of it, but as I said, I would be going against the oath which I took a while ago, because I am definitely not sure."
MR. SPECTER -- "Do you remember if you told the Secret Service man which stretcher you thought you took off of the elevator?"
MR. TOMLINSON -- "Well, we talked about taking a stretcher off of the elevator, but then when it comes down on an oath, I wouldn't say for sure, I really don't remember."
[...]
MR. SPECTER -- "You say you can't really take an oath today to be sure whether it was stretcher A or stretcher B that you took off the elevator?"
MR. TOMLINSON -- "Well, today or any other day, I'm just not sure of it, whether it was A or B that I took off."
[End Quotes.]
---------------
The Single-Bullet Theory is as true and logical today as it was in 1963 and 1964. Any other theory that conspiracy believers use to try and knock the SBT out of contention only makes the SBT look stronger and stronger as time goes on. Such as the alternate idea that TWO separate bullets went into JFK's upper back and throat and never exited, with both of those bullets then going AWOL.
Is that type of alternative theory REALLY supposed to be more reasonable than the single-bullet conclusion? If so, then we're living in a crazy, mixed-up world.
David Von Pein
June 8, 2010
