AN INTERNET DISCUSSION CONCERNING PAUL LANDIS' ALLEGED BULLET DISCOVERY:
JONATHAN COHEN SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I, myself, find it nearly impossible to believe former Secret Service agent Paul Landis' story (which Landis evidently tells in his new 2023 book, "The Final Witness") about finding a bullet "resting on the top of the back of the seat" of the Presidential limousine (which is a quote from this 9/9/2023 Vanity Fair article written by James Robenalt).
How on Earth could a whole bullet have managed to have been located in that odd position on 11/22/63? "Resting on the top of the back of the seat"? Without Clint Hill ever noticing it or disturbing it, even though Hill was clinging to the back of the car all the way to Parkland? Highly doubtful.
And even more importantly, why wouldn't Agent Landis have told someone else in authority (anyone else!) that he had picked up a bullet and moved it to President Kennedy's stretcher?
It makes no sense whatsoever for Landis to have remained totally silent about finding (and moving) such a bullet in the limo on November 22.
Did Mr. Landis think that the details about where and how the bullet was first found weren't important details at all, and therefore he felt he didn't even need to tell the Chief of the Secret Service or the FBI or anybody in Trauma Room No. 1 at Parkland about his discovery at all?
Such a mindset and behavior for a Secret Service agent is utterly ridiculous—and most certainly unbelievable.
Plus....
If Mr. Landis' bullet story is to be believed, we would then have to believe that the bullet he placed on JFK's stretcher was either never noticed by anyone else in the very busy Trauma Room No. 1, or the bullet was deliberately deep-sixed and disposed of, or the bullet was moved to yet another stretcher in the hospital (Governor Connally's).
Each of the above choices, in my opinion, also resides in the category marked "unbelievable".
A 4th choice would be: The bullet was accidentally lost (after, of course, it was never noticed by a single living soul in Trauma Room No. 1). Yet another unbelievable option.
Addendum....
Below is a portion of what Special Agent Paul Landis said in this extremely detailed Secret Service report that he wrote on November 30, 1963. Here's what Landis said he found "on the back seat" of the Presidential limo at Parkland:
"By this time someone was lifting the President's body out of the right side of the car. Agent Hill helped Mrs. Kennedy out of the car, and I followed. Mrs. Kennedy's purse and hat and a cigarette lighter were on the back seat. I picked these three items up as I walked through the car and followed Mrs. Kennedy into the hospital."
VINCE PALAMARA SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Paul Landis, following his new "revelation", really doesn't have much of a choice but to have doubts about Oswald acting alone. Because if what Landis theorizes is true (i.e., the back-wound bullet to Kennedy ended up on the top of the back seat after JFK was thrown to the rear at the time of the head shot), then that would almost certainly have to mean that a second assassin shot Kennedy in the throat with a frontal shot.
(Unless Mr. Landis wants to theorize that it wasn't a BULLET at all that caused JFK's throat wound, but instead it was a fragment from the head shot that did the throat damage, with that damage giving the false appearance of a bullet hole to Dr. Perry.) ~shrug~
But with each additional theory comes even more questions and problems. Such as:
If a single bullet didn't wound both JFK and Connally....and if the bullet that Landis allegedly found was, indeed, CE399 (which I think Landis says he believes is the case)....then what the heck happened to the bullet (or bullets) that hit Governor Connally?!
With the Single-Bullet Theory in place, of course, we don't need to ask the question I just posed above. There are no "missing bullets" with the SBT. But with the LBT (Landis Bullet Theory) in the mix of possible scenarios now, this question will always be hanging out there, never to be satifactorily answered by any conspiracy theorist:
Where did the bullet go that struck John Connally and ended up making a shallow wound in his left thigh?
CTers can, of course, always resort to the theory that has a fragment from the JFK head shot creating the superficial wound in Connally's leg. But that still won't answer the question of: What happened to the bullet that hit Connally?
For conspiracy advocates, it always seems to be:
So many wounds .... So few bullets.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Another rather incredible claim that ex-Secret Service agent Paul Landis is now making (via the Vanity Fair article) is his claim that he saw two "bullet fragments" lying on the back seat as well.
Of course, as we all know, there were no bullet fragments recovered from the BACK seat. The two large bullet fragments (CE567 & CE569) were found in
the FRONT seat of the limousine after the car was flown back to Washington.
Some people (mostly CTers) can always claim, of course, that Agent Landis really did see a couple of bullet fragments lying on the back seat on Nov. 22, but the Bucket Brigade (clean-up crew) scooped those fragments up when they (allegedly) washed out the back of the limo at Parkland.
Bottom Line regarding Mr. Paul Landis (IMO):
It's absolutely ridiculous and wholly unbelievable to think that a member of the United States Secret Service, right after discovering and moving a piece of very important evidence connected directly to the shooting of a U.S. President, wouldn't have mentioned to anyone on the very day it happened the fact that he found a whole bullet right there in the same car where JFK was murdered.
Landis' explanation for why he never uttered a word to anyone else about his bullet discovery (via the Vanity Fair article) is this:
"The special agent simply never gave the bullet a second thought, he says. He had left it where someone would find it."
The above reasoning which has Landis just assuming that somebody in the Parkland Hospital emergency room would notice the bullet after he placed it on JFK's stretcher is, in my opinion, just not a believable excuse at all for not saying a word to anyone about his discovery, especially since Landis also readily admits in that same Vanity Fair article that "he believed it was crucial evidence and needed for the autopsy".
So, Agent Landis supposedly finds a bullet, doesn't maintain possession of it, but then decides to not tell another living soul in the hospital about his discovery after he leaves that bullet lying on President Kennedy's stretcher?! That's just laughable and idiotic. And, of course, not the slightest bit believable.
Landis also says (again via the Vanity Fair article) that in later years he thought of his bullet discovery as merely "a minor detail".
That's a fairly large "minor detail", if you ask me.
And nobody can possibly use the fact that Mr. Landis, in later years, suffered from PTSD, which is, indeed, unfortunate for him. But any PTSD that was suffered by Mr. Landis certainly can't explain his lack of communicating with someone (anyone!) the fact he had found (and moved) a bullet on November 22, 1963.
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
Here's one more reason to doubt Paul Landis' new revelation:
Landis seems to think that the bullet he says he found on the back of the Presidential limousine, which he does seem to believe was, indeed, Warren Commission Exhibit No. 399, somehow rolled off of Kennedy's stretcher and onto John Connally's stretcher at some point prior to the time when Darrell Tomlinson found the bullet on a stretcher in the corridor of Parkland Hospital.
But the timing of such a speculative "bullet-hopping" event just doesn't line up at all, as explained by author Vincent Bugliosi in the book excerpt pictured below.
Click to enlarge:
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ARLEN SPECTER -- "Is it possible that the stretcher that Mr. Kennedy was on was rolled with the sheets on it down into the area near the elevator?"
MARGARET M. HENCHLIFFE (Parkland Hospital Nurse) -- "No, sir."
MR. SPECTER -- "Are you sure of that?"
MISS HENCHLIFFE -- "I am positive of that." [6 H 142]
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PAT SPEER SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But Landis isn't talking about a WHOLE bullet there, Pat. He's talking only about a "fragment". Big difference.
And now Landis is saying he saw a whole bullet PLUS two different fragments lying on the back seat.
So that's three bullet items he's now claiming to have seen.
Yeah, right.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
While performing an online newspaper search for "Paul Landis, Secret Service" on the morning of September 11, 2023, I came across the 1983 newspaper article seen below, which contains an interesting passage that totally contradicts Landis' new 2023 claims. The '83 article says:
"Landis said that when he got to the Kennedy limousine outside the hospital, the president had already been taken inside, but he helped Mrs. Kennedy out. He said there was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat that he picked up and gave to somebody."
So, in 1983, Mr. Landis was saying it was merely a "bullet fragment" that he picked up in the limo, which he "gave to somebody". But now, forty years later in 2023, it's a whole bullet (not just a fragment) which he didn't give to anyone but which he himself carried into the hospital and placed on JFK's stretcher.
Looks like Mr. Landis' credibility issues just got a lot worse.
Click to enlarge:
MICHAEL GRIFFITH SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I disagree very strongly with Mr. Griffith above. Mr. Landis' total silence about finding a bullet in the limo is most certainly not "perfectly understandable" to me at all. In fact, it's totally mystifying to me as to why on Earth he didn't TELL SOMEONE about the bullet IMMEDIATELY after putting it on JFK's stretcher (if, in fact, that's what he did).
And the reason for why his total silence is not believable (or "understandable") is because at the time Landis did what he said he did with that bullet, he had absolutely no knowledge or information about any of the details concerning the assassination. He had no idea who Oswald was at that time and he had no idea if a conspiracy might be involved. He knew nothing at that point. And yet he tells NOBODY about finding (and moving!) an important piece of evidence like a bullet?!
Such dead silence by a member of the U.S. Secret Service (or anyone in law enforcement) in such a situation is completely beyond belief, not to mention totally irresponsible on Landis' part.
And, in my opinion, even if it had been days or weeks or months later that he had somehow come across a piece of new evidence connected with JFK's death, it still would not be at all "perfectly understandable" that he would just keep completely silent about coming into contact with such a piece of potentially vital evidence in the case of a murdered President.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Fred Litwin, in this article on his website, posted a quote from The Columbus Dispatch newspaper dated November 20, 1988, which confirms something that is also found in this November 1983 newspaper article that I posted online two days ago:
The 1988 paper (seen in the pictures below), like the 1983 Associated Press newspaper article that I previously posted, says that Mr. Landis "picked up" a bullet "fragment" (not a whole bullet) and "handed" that fragment "to somebody".
So we now have two different newspaper accounts in the 1980s, five years apart, of Paul Landis saying to two different reporters that he had picked up only a "fragment" of a bullet, and that he had given that fragment "to somebody" (vs. Landis himself carrying any type of bullet or fragment into the hospital).
Also note that in the 1988 article seen below, the reporter/interviewer has placed quotation marks around these key words:
"I distinctly remember there was a bullet fragment on the seat which I picked up and handed to somebody."
So the reporter in 1988 is representing those words as having been directly spoken by Paul Landis. It's not being represented as merely something coming from the interviewer's memory of what Landis said, because there are quotation marks around that entire sentence.
The fact that we now have access to two different newspaper articles featuring interviews with Paul Landis that include the exact same information, with those articles and interviews being conducted some five years apart, virtually guarantees that Mr. Landis was not "misquoted" in either article concerning those two key "fragment" and "gave it to somebody" issues.
And Landis is, indeed, now saying that he was misquoted in at least one publication concerning those two important elements of his story. But the notion that two different interviewers (one in 1983 and another in 1988) both made the same mistakes and misquoted Landis in the exact same manner when it comes to both of those bullet-related issues does not seem to me to be a very credible or believable argument for Mr. Landis to be making.
Click these two images for a slightly larger view:
FWIW....
Here's what I think happened....
Paul Landis really did see and pick up a bullet fragment (not a whole bullet) off of the back seat of the Presidential limousine at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963. He then might very well have given that fragment to someone else nearby, with that person never being identified.
And, it would seem, that particular bullet fragment which Mr. Landis handled never came to light as evidence either. But we must keep in mind that a lot of tiny fragments from the fatal head shot that were probably scattered all over the car and in Dealey Plaza were never introduced as official evidence either. After all, more than half of the bullet that struck President Kennedy in the head was never found or recovered at all.
But now, in 2023, for some unknown reason, that bullet fragment (which he gave to someone else at Parkland on 11/22/63) has now been embellished by Mr. Landis and has morphed into a whole bullet (the CE399 "stretcher bullet" or so-called "magic bullet"), with Landis embellishing things further by also now saying he took that whole bullet into the hospital himself and placed it on JFK's stretcher in the emergency room.
So, in my opinion, Mr. Landis' current story probably does contain a layer of truth in it, which is very common among witnesses who have, shall we say, enhanced or added things to their assassination stories over the years (with Jean Hill, Roger Craig, and Buell Wesley Frazier coming to mind as three such examples).
I think Paul Landis probably did see (and perhaps also pick up) a small bullet fragment in the limousine. That's the "layer of truth" that exists in his account. And the two newspaper articles from the 1980s cited above tend to confirm that "layer of truth". But the remainder of Landis' current 2023 story just simply cannot be believed, in my opinion.
SANDY LARSEN SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's highly doubtful that the 1983 interview with Landis was "incorrectly reported", as Sandy Larsen speculated above. In fact, it's almost impossible to believe such a thing happened (unless you want to believe the very same TWO mistakes/assumptions about the "bullet fragment" and "gave to somebody" occurred in both 1983 and again in 1988), because in November 1988, five years after his '83 interview, a different reporter quoted Landis saying this:
"I distinctly remember there was a bullet fragment on the seat which I picked up and handed to somebody."
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
BTW / FWIW....
Here's another 1983 newspaper (pictured below) featuring the same article about Paul Landis that I've already linked to previously, except that in this 11/22/83 paper from Greenfield, Ohio, the author of the article is also shown ("Tim Curran, Associated Press Writer").
Click to enlarge:
VINCE PALAMARA SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Vince, I really haven't the slightest idea what Landis' motive might be.
Mr. Landis certainly gives the appearance of being a very forthright and truthful person. And I certainly don't relish the notion of calling him an outright teller of deliberate falsehoods. But the fact remains: He changed his story significantly over these last 40 years. I don't think there can be any question about that fact after you take a look at the two newspaper clippings I have posted above.
Perhaps his advanced age has taken its toll on his memory and his ability to be able to recall things clearly and correctly. But when we've got TWO different interviews from the 1980s (when Mr. Landis was a much younger man) which are verifying BOTH of the key elements of his "bullet" story --- i.e., it was a bullet "fragment" he saw/handled and "gave to somebody" --- then it seems pretty clear what the truth really is when it comes to Mr. Landis' 11/22/63 involvement with any type of "bullets" or "fragments" in the limo.
Mr. Landis, IMO, needs to be confronted with BOTH of the above newspaper articles at the same time, which each say the very same thing concerning the matter of the "bullet fragment".
I'd be interested to know if Landis thinks he was misquoted in both of those articles, five years apart.
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
I suppose that Paul Landis could, if he wanted to, now start saying that he did indeed retrieve a bullet "fragment" from the limo and "gave it to somebody", but he ALSO saw and picked up a "whole bullet" on the back seat and took it into the hospital. And the reason he never told a single soul about the "whole bullet" ON THE DAY OF THE ASSASSINATION was because.....well.....uh.....um.....[fill in your own choice of reasons here, because I can't think of a single good one myself].
But I think that even that opportunity may have passed Mr. Landis by, because I read a few days back that Landis has, indeed, claimed he was "misquoted" in one of the earlier newspaper articles.
So he now needs to have BOTH the '83 and the '88 articles shoved before his eyes at the same time while a live microphone awaits his response.
SANDY LARSEN SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But in addition to the 1983 and 1988 interviews, there's also this book excerpt supplied by Vince Palamara from the 2010 book that Landis was a part of ("The Kennedy Detail"), in which Landis seems to be confirming the part about finding only a FRAGMENT, with that fragment being located "in the back where the top would be secured".
So there are TWO things there (in the 2010 book) that perfectly match what Landis was saying in 1983 -- "fragment" and the "top" of the back seat (vs. just the "back seat").
But now, in 2023, that "fragment" found on the TOP of the back seat has been changed by Mr. Landis into a WHOLE BULLET that he found on the TOP of the back seat.
So the location of the found bullet item has remained the same in Landis' accounts from 1983 to 2023, but the size of that item has grown quite a bit indeed.
MAX HOLLAND SAID (VIA AN E-MAIL DISCUSSION):
David,
By your count, how many versions/iterations are there of the Landis recollection?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
As of the time I'm writing this post on September 26, 2023, I think there are five versions of Paul Landis' "bullet" story, with versions 2 and 3 being virtually identical. I'll outline those versions and variations below:
Version #1: November 1963. In this earliest version, via two separate Secret Service reports (one of which is extremely long and detailed), Landis doesn't say a word about seeing or finding any type of "bullet" or "bullet fragment":
PAUL LANDIS' REPORTS (11/27/63 & 11/30/63)
Version #2: November 1983. In this version, which appeared in at least two Ohio newspapers, Landis tells Associated Press writer Tim Curran that "there was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat" which Landis said he "picked up and gave to somebody":
THE COSHOCTON (OHIO) TRIBUNE (NOV. 20, 1983)
GREENFIELD (OHIO) DAILY TIMES (NOV. 22, 1983)
Version #3: November 1988. This version is nearly identical to Version 2, with the only difference being that Mr. Landis, in 1988, doesn't specifically say he found the fragment "on top" of the back seat. In his 1988 interview, he merely says he found a fragment "on the seat".
But another key difference in this 1988 article is the fact that the reporter/writer has placed quotation marks around the key words being spoken by Mr. Landis, indicating that these words (shown below) are not just a mere paraphrasing on the part of the author of the article, but instead represent a direct and verbatim quote coming from the mouth of Paul E. Landis Jr.:
"I distinctly remember there was a bullet fragment on the seat which I picked up and handed to somebody."
THE COLUMBUS (OHIO) DISPATCH (NOV. 20, 1988)
Version #4: 2010 (in the book "The Kennedy Detail"). In this version, like the 1983 and 1988 newspaper accounts, Landis says he saw a bullet "fragment" in the back portion of JFK's limousine. But in this 2010 version, unlike the earlier articles from the 1980s, Mr. Landis doesn't say anything about giving the fragment to another person. Instead, he says he placed the fragment "on the seat".
Here's the complete excerpt concerning Landis and the "bullet fragment" as it appears on Page 225 of the 2010 book "The Kennedy Detail" (with thanks going to Vincent Palamara for providing the screen capture linked below):
"When Agent Paul Landis helped Mrs. Kennedy out of the car he saw a bullet fragment in the back where the top would be secured. He picked it up and put it on the seat, thinking that if the car were moved, it might be blown off."
PAGE 225 OF "THE KENNEDY DETAIL" (2010)
Version #5: Landis' current version, which first surfaced publicly in September 2023, which has Landis now saying he saw and picked up a whole bullet off of the top portion of the back seat of the Presidential limousine on 11/22/63, with Mr. Landis, unlike all previous statements he has ever made concerning the discovery of any type of "bullet" material, now claiming to have put that whole bullet in his pocket and then carrying it himself into Parkland Hospital where he then placed the whole bullet at the foot of the stretcher being occupied by John F. Kennedy in Trauma Room #1.
INTERVIEW WITH PAUL LANDIS (SEPT. 12, 2023)
JOE BAUER SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Mr. Landis is now, in 2023, clearly not a person who believes in the Single-Bullet Theory. And as such, I can't help but wonder why the blurb pictured below still occupies space on Landis' book page at Amazon.com?
Landis has stated in some of his interviews this month [September 2023] that he thinks Lee Oswald WAS, indeed, the sole assassin in Dallas. But, as all of us here at The Education Forum know, if the SBT goes down the tubes, then it's almost impossible (barring some kind of miracle) for there to have been only one shooter in Dealey Plaza.
Which means that Mr. Landis is simply not very well-informed when it comes to certain things relating to the assassination (e.g., the timing of the gunshots and analysis of the Zapruder Film).
Or....
Perhaps Mr. Landis has another "bombshell" waiting for us when his book is released on October 10th, 2023, and perhaps he's going to tell us how (in his opinion) Lee Harvey Oswald was able to assassinate JFK all by himself but WITHOUT the Single-Bullet Theory being a part of the equation.
Because without some sort of explanation to logically and reasonably explain to his readers how the Lone Assassin scenario is still valid (even without the SBT), then this blurb below doesn't make much sense at all....
BENJAMIN COLE SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I just noticed that James Robenalt has a Wikipedia page, and on that Wiki page we find this (FWIW):
"Robenalt helped former Secret Service agent Paul Landis "process his memories" of the JFK Assassination, enabling Landis to write his memoir The Final Witness (2023)."
The source used for the above quote is Peter Baker's recent [September 2023] New York Times article.
The term "process his memories" is quite interesting, isn't it?
DVP ALSO SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
After having just now [on October 13, 2023] read the key "bullet" portions of Paul Landis' newly-released book "The Final Witness" (via the book excerpts that have been made available on this webpage), some additional problems and questions arise, with one of these problems being a massively important one regarding the precise location of where Landis says he left the whole bullet that he says he found on the top of the back seat in the Presidential limo.
All of the available testimony from the Parkland Hospital personnel makes it clear that President Kennedy was never moved from his stretcher (gurney) during the entire time the President was being treated in Trauma Room No. 1. This fact is confirmed in the Warren Commission testimony of Parkland's Dr. Robert McClelland:
ARLEN SPECTER -- Was he [President Kennedy] on the stretcher at all times?
DR. ROBERT N. McCLELLAND -- Yes.
MR. SPECTER -- In the trauma room No. 1 you described, is there any table onto which he could be placed from the stretcher?
DR. McCLELLAND -- No; generally we do not move patients from the stretcher until they are ready to go into the operating room and then they are moved onto the operating table.
MR. SPECTER -- Well, in fact, was he left on the stretcher all during the course of these procedures until he was pronounced dead?
DR. McCLELLAND -- That's right.
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Plus, there's this information concerning JFK's stretcher.
Former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, however, says something completely different in his book. He says this (quoting from the book itself):
"As I entered—or, more to the point, was pushed into—the trauma room, the president’s lifeless body was already being lifted off the gurney and placed onto a white cotton blanket that covered the surface of a stainless-steel examination table in the middle of the room." [End Quote.]
Landis then goes on to say this in his book:
"I removed the bullet from my pocket, and reaching out over the examination table, I carefully placed it on the white cotton blanket next to the president’s left shoe." [End Quote.]
But let's now compare the above book excerpt with the following statement made by the same Mr. Landis just one month ago:
"I put the bullet on the gurney right by his [JFK's] feet." -- Paul Landis; September 12, 2023 (NBC Interview)
So the question of great importance now becomes: Did Landis drop the bullet onto JFK's stretcher/"gurney"? Or did he leave it on an "examination table"?
That's an exceedingly important question to answer, because if we're to believe he left it on an exam table instead of the stretcher (with a stretcher, of course, having wheels on it, which means it could easily be moved from one part of the hospital to another), we've then got to ask: How, then, did that bullet (if it was really CE399, which Mr. Landis does seem to think it was) manage to get from the exam table to a stretcher in the corridor of Parkland Hospital, where it was then found by hospital employee Darrell C. Tomlinson a short time later?
Another possible problem with Landis' story crops up in the book excerpts linked above, although this "problem" isn't nearly as important or imperative as the "gurney vs. exam table" head-scratcher. This additional problem concerns the timing of Vice President Johnson's arrival at Parkland Hospital on 11/22/63. Landis says in his book that LBJ and the Vice President's Secret Service car had not yet arrived at Parkland Hospital by the time JFK's body was being lifted out of the back seat and onto a stretcher. Quoting again from Mr. Landis' book:
"The vice president’s limo had yet to arrive, so there were no agents from his detail in sight. In fact, there were no other agents in sight anywhere to the rear, to my right, or to the front. Where are they? Where the hell is SA Greer? He was driving the president’s limo. He should be here. The follow-up car was empty too. Where the hell is Special Agent Sam Kinney? He was driving it. Jeez, oh man! Where the hell is everyone? Where did all the agents go? Who is going to secure the car AND THE CRIME SCENE? Everyone seemed to be crowded around the president’s body. No one was paying attention to anything else. My immediate concern was the bullet. It would be visible to anyone happening to walk by. What about photographers? Or worse yet, What about a souvenir hunter? Thoughts continued to race through my mind." [End Quote.]
But with regard to Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his exact whereabouts at the time when President Kennedy was being wheeled into the hospital, there is evidence (via the observations of ambulance driver Aubrey Rike) which would indicate that Johnson actually entered Parkland Hospital prior to the time when either JFK or wounded Governor John Connally entered the emergency room entrance.
Listen to the chronology of events provided by Aubrey Rike, in two separate interviews he did on November 22, 1963, HERE.
If Rike's chronology of the timing for when each man entered the hospital is correct --- i.e., Johnson, then Connally, then Kennedy --- that would, in my opinion, place a serious cloud of doubt over Mr. Landis' account (and his mindset) concerning those same events.
Because if LBJ's car and his Secret Service follow-up car were actually there at the hospital prior to Landis and JFK and Mrs. Kennedy exiting the limo and going into the emergency room, it would also mean that Mr. Landis would very likely have had no reason to say this to himself --- "Where did all the agents go? Who is going to secure the car AND THE CRIME SCENE?" --- because there would have still been plenty of SS agents there at Parkland to look after the limousine/"crime scene".
So with each passing glance at Paul Landis' new 2023 story regarding the events of November 22nd, more and more questions (and doubts) seem to surface.
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
And here's yet another interesting twist to the Paul Landis bullet story:
In this video (which was uploaded to YouTube on September 11, 2023), Clint Hill says that Landis told him in 2014 that he (Landis) put the whole bullet on a stretcher "in the hallway" of Parkland Hospital, vs. putting it on Kennedy's gurney (or exam table), which is what Landis is now saying in 2023.
STU WEXLER SAID (VIA AN E-MAIL DISCUSSION):
I have been skeptical of the utility and soundness of the Landis report. But on another forum, someone posted the following (see the paragraph beginning with "Shanklin subsequently advised..."):
https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62266#relPageId=143
PAT SPEER SAID (VIA E-MAIL):
Thanks, Stu. That is interesting. Unfortunately, Landis claims he didn't tell anyone about his find, and the FBI would probably be the last to know if he did.
The early Shanklin and Belmont memos contain a lot of second-hand stuff that are essentially bad gossip. This appears to be one of them. It should be noted, in that light, that Shanklin's claim Sorrels had possession of the rifle also appears to be nonsense.
The official story, of course, has it in the DPD's possession until they transferred it to Vince Drain of the FBI. Shankin's confusion about this probably comes from the fact that Sorrels walked with Day when Day left the building with the rifle. Apparently, someone thought Sorrels was taking possession of it, when he did not.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In addition to the relevant and on-target points brought up by Pat Speer in his post above, let me add this....
The FBI report in question is dated "November 22, 1963" (at the top). If it had been dated November 23 or November 24, it would be a lot easier to make the claim that the report was talking about the two large bullet fragments that were recovered by the Secret Service from the front seat of the Presidential limo late on the night of Nov. 22 (with those fragments then being turned over to Robert Frazier of the FBI at 11:50 PM EST on Nov. 22; see Frazier's testimony at 5 H 67 for confirmation of the "11:50 PM" timestamp).
But since the FBI report which has the following information in it was dated Nov. 22nd, it's somewhat difficult to believe (but not totally impossible to accept) that these words below could be referring to the front-seat fragments, which are bullet fragments that weren't even found until close to midnight on the night of the 22nd....
"Shanklin subsequently advised information had been received that a Secret Service Agent had searched the car in which the President was riding and had found the bullet which allegedly killed the President."
And so....the mystery deepens.
David Von Pein
September—October 2023
December 5, 2023
[More discussion concerning Paul Landis HERE.]
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