Part 1387 of my "JFK Assassination Arguments" series includes a variety of my posts and comments covering the period of April 1—30, 2025. To read the entire forum discussion from which my own comments have been extracted, click on the "Full Discussion" logo at the bottom of each individual segment.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
A bogus, planted CE 399 is one of the linchpins of [conspiracy] gospel, is it not? And yet, I am deeply concerned that a bogus, planted CE 399 makes no sense whatsoever in any of the 15 or 20 conspiracy theories I’m willing to entertain.
Help me out here. Explain how a bogus, planted CE 399 actually does make sense in the context of a conspiracy theory – any conspiracy theory.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/CE399
Excerpt from above articles....
"...Since there's so much OTHER stuff (bullet-wise and shell-wise) that links Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano to the assassination, CTers who continue to want to believe that CE399 didn't really come out of Oswald's rifle when JFK's car passed through Dealey Plaza on November 22nd have a very large mountain to climb in order to advance the "399 Is A Fraud" conspiracy theory.
Because if CE567 and CE569 (the two front-seat bullet fragments linked conclusively to Oswald's rifle) are the Real McCoy (i.e., genuine evidence that wasn't tampered with in some manner)....
And: if the three bullet shells that were found by the police underneath the sniper's window on the sixth floor are also genuine....
Then common sense (plus the overall ODDS) would certainly indicate that it's very, very likely that Bullet #399 was ALSO a "genuine" article as well, with that whole bullet exiting Lee Harvey Oswald's gun at 12:30 PM on 11/22/63 in Dealey Plaza.
And if the CTers wish to travel down the "ALL OF THE CARCANO (C2766) BULLET EVIDENCE IS TAINTED" road, then they've got THREE "This Evidence Is Tainted" mountains to climb -- the "CE567/569" mountain; the "Shells In The Window" mountain; and the large hill marked "CE399" too.
I hope those CTers are in good shape and are really good mountain climbers. Because getting to the top of just ONE of those three Mount Everests is likely to give an average (and reasoned-thinking) person a coronary.
But that hasn't stopped certain conspiracy theorists from heading up that unclimbable series of peaks. Has it?" -- DVP; Oct. 2007
DAVID VON PEIN ALSO SAID:
Darrell Tomlinson told Ray Marcus in 1966 that the bullet he was shown by the FBI "appeared to be the same one" that he (Tomlinson) found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital on 11/22/63.
Plus:
The fact that the FBI forthrightly admitted in their July 7, 1964, report (aka Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2011) that neither Darrell Tomlinson nor O.P. Wright could positively identify the CE399 bullet is a very good indication that there's nothing phony about any of the verbiage we see in CE2011.
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/Marcus-Tomlinson 1966 Interview
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/Darrell Tomlinson And CE399
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
As you suggest, it seems to me that much supposed “evidence of conspiracy” actually points in the opposite direction.
I can sincerely stipulate that the condition of CE 399 in the context of the SBT is problematical, the recollections of Tomlinson and Wright are problematical, what Odum said is problematical, and the chain of custody of CE 399 is problematical even if we take Tomlinson and Wright out of the equation.
We then have to ask, “OK, what best explains all this?” If we say a conspiracy does, we then have to either answer the questions I have posed in a way that actually makes sense (which seems impossible to me) or hypothesize that the conspirators in a Presidential assassination were bungling fools who, again and again, made absurd decisions and couldn’t even cover their own tracks (which likewise seems impossible to me).
We are then left with the axiom that when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, improbable as it may be, is the truth. In the utter chaos of the JFKA, a considerable amount of confusion and human error was inevitable. Hence, I accept CE 399 as a bullet that was fired from Oswald’s rifle, was found at Parkland, and probably did what the SBT posits (although I’m not even sure this is essential to the LN narrative).
The bottom line being that the unlikely condition of CE 399 and the defects in the chain of custody actually cut in favor of authenticity. If there had been a conspiracy surrounding CE 399, it would not be in the condition it is in, it would not have been found at Parkland, the Tomlinson-Wright scenario and confusion would never have been part of the record, and the chain of custody would have been as clean as a whistle.
The inability of CTers to grasp this reality tells me that their agenda is something other than the truth about the JFKA.
JON BANKS SAID:
There are many reasons to doubt the SBT.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And there are even more reasons to conclude that the Single-Bullet Theory
is true.
In fact, after evaluating all of the stuff that I talk about in the links provided HERE, it becomes fairly obvious that it would be virtually impossible for the SBT to NOT be true.
JON BANKS SAID:
The Zapruder film all but proved that JFK and Connolly [sic] weren't struck by the same bullet (frame 225-268).
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The exact opposite is true, of course. Frames 223 to 230 of Abraham Zapruder's film pretty much prove that Kennedy and Connally were definitely hit by the same bullet, as discussed at length HERE and HERE.
David Von Pein
April 14-15, 2025
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LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
In the [1986] mock trial of Oswald, the defense did object to CE 399 - Spence being no fool - and the judge, a sitting federal judge, ruled it admissible at a pretrial evidentiary hearing.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
"The admissibility of CE 399 (along with other items of evidence) was, indeed, dealt with in London by Judge Lucius Bunton at a pre-trial evidentiary hearing, and Bunton, a sitting federal judge in Texas at the time, ruled in my favor that CE 399 (not the actual bullet, of course, which we did not have in London) was admissible at the London trial." -- Vincent Bugliosi (Via letter to DVP); August 2009
More here:
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/Vincent Bugliosi On CE399
And still more "CE399 Chain of Custody" talk here:
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/The SBT And CE399's Chain Of Custody
David Von Pein
April 17, 2025
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PAT SPEER SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Pat's #6 item above is totally untrue (of course). The totality of the medical evidence proves ONE head shot, not two.
"There was only one entrance wound in the head."
-- Dr. James Humes; Via This 1967 Video
But, amazingly, Pat Speer thinks he knows way more on this subject than the leading physician at JFK's autopsy.
And Pat thinks he knows more on the "head wound" subject than the entire Warren Commission and the HSCA too.
That's quite remarkable, Patrick.
PAT SPEER SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And the simple explanation for why there was no path through the brain from the alleged EOP entrance wound is because the entrance wound wasn't in the EOP. It was high on JFK's head, just as the autopsy photograph clearly shows, via the only thing in the photo (the red spot) which comes even remotely close to looking like a bullet wound.
PAT SPEER SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The virtual proof that the head entry wound was located at the location of the red spot in JFK's cowlick area is the placement of the ruler in the autopsy photo below.
If the entry wound had really been located in the place where Pat Speer seems to think it was located -- HERE -- does anyone truly believe that the person who was in charge of holding that ruler up to President Kennedy's head in the picture below would be holding it in the location where we see it in the photograph (i.e., right next to the "red spot" in the picture)? I don't think so. ....
Also....
Do you, Pat, agree with me that the area I've circled in yellow on the autopsy photo (below) looks very similar to the area that you have also circled on the very same image? If so, does this mean I should think the yellow circle represents yet another entry wound in the back of Kennedy's cranium?
If we look hard enough, I'm sure we could find two or three more imaginary "entry wounds" in the BOH [Back Of Head] picture.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Let's do a "Ruler Being Placed Right Next To The Entry Wound" comparison of the two JFK autopsy photos below. Now, where do you suppose the entry wound is located in each of these pictures? The answer is blatantly obvious:
CORY SANTOS SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
But the BOH autopsy photo (which shows no huge occipital "blow-out" and was authenticated by the HSCA's Photographic Panel) is always going to be there as part of the record in this case. So it's something that all CTers are just going to have to learn to live with. Just as I, too, have to live with something that I cannot fully reconcile---the many witnesses who incorrectly said there was a big gaping hole in the back of JFK's head. That's a mystery that will likely never be fully resolved.
So, life's not always smooth and easy when studying the JFKA....no matter which side you're on.
LANCE PAYETTE SAID:
If it [the ruler in the autopsy picture] were pointing out the entrance wound, why did the autopsy doctors then place it 4" lower?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
That's one of the questions we'll probably never be able to completely answer, along with this related question:
Why on Earth didn't any of the three autopsy surgeons (Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Finck) make note of the precise "north/south" measurement of where the bullet entry wound was located on JFK's head? Just saying the wound was "slightly above" the EOP is not nearly precise enough and has caused only further confusion and controversy concerning the President's wounds.
It seems particularly odd to me that the vertical (north/south) measurement for that head entrance wound was not fully documented, since the lateral (east/west) measurement was specifically measured from a body landmark and noted in the autopsy report ("approximately 2.5 centimeters"). And 10 centimeters (or 100 millimeters, which is four inches) is 4 times as great a distance when compared to just 2.5 centimeters.
It makes no sense to me that the much larger north/south measurement was not noted or documented by the autopsy team, but the much smaller lateral distance was noted in the autopsy report. And we must remember that the Clark Panel in 1968, after viewing the original autopsy photographs and X-rays, confirmed that the entry wound in JFK's head was in fact located 4 inches above the EOP (see the Clark Panel excerpt below). Many CTers, of course, think the four-man Clark Panel was full of nothing but feces (and deliberate lies) when they wrote the following words:
"There is an elliptical penetrating wound of the scalp situated near the midline and high above the hairline. The position of this wound corresponds to the hole in the skull seen in the lateral X-ray film #2. .... On one of the lateral films [X-rays] of the skull (#2), a hole measuring approximately 8 mm. in diameter on the outer surface of the skull and as much as 20 mm. on the internal surface can be seen in profile approximately 100 mm. above the external occipital protuberance. The bone of the lower edge of the hole is depressed." -- Via the 1968 Clark Panel Report
JOHN MYTTON SAID:
I made this morph [below] from a pair of autopsy photos in which the hole is obviously the priority of these photos and you can clearly see that as the scalp is stretched, the hole narrows! .... [This] should finally end the "controversy" that the bullet entrance hole is a "smudge"!
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you, John.
This seems like a good time to replay the following exchange I had with Pat Speer from ten years ago, in June of 2015:
PAT SPEER SAID:
There is a red oval in the back of the head photo that resembles a gunshot wound. But it was quite clearly not the bullet wound identified at the autopsy. You seem to think it is...
DVP SAID:
Pat,
Okay, I'll stop you right there. You readily acknowledge the fact that the "red oval" in the autopsy photograph "resembles a gunshot wound".
So, here's a simple observation and what I think is a very logical (and basic) question to ask after reading your quote above....
Since there is a spot on the back of JFK's head that DOES look like it could be a bullet hole---and since we both KNOW for a fact that there WAS, indeed, one single bullet hole of entry on the back side of President Kennedy's head---then what do you suppose the chances are of the thing that "resembles a gunshot wound" in the autopsy photo really NOT being a bullet hole in JFK's head after all?
Seems like a fair question to me. And I don't think it's a question that can be reasonably answered in the following manner (as some CTers and LNers seem to want to do).....
Well, DVP, the red spot only LOOKS like a bullet hole. The REAL bullet hole is hiding somewhere else in that autopsy picture. It's just a coincidence that the red spot (of blood?) in the photo just happened to take the form and general shape and appearance of a bullet hole. Whereas the REAL bullet hole, which cannot be seen at all in the picture (or at least most people have a hard time seeing it, except perhaps Patrick J. Speer) has decided to go AWOL from the photo, with no "redness" or other qualities to it at all that can be easily noticeable, even though that photo was taken under very good (and bright) lighting conditions. ~shrug~
[End Silly Explanation.]
So I'm just trying to wrap my head around the notion that the thing that looks like the bullet hole in the back of JFK's head really isn't a bullet hole at all. But at the same time, there really is a bullet hole of entrance somewhere else on the back of JFK's head in the above photograph.
What an amazing piece of unintentional and miraculous photographic misinterpretation that would turn out to be indeed, if it is to be believed. And, amazingly, Pat Speer (and many other CTers and LNers) actually do believe in it. I, however, cannot stretch unbelievable coincidence quite that far.
The red spot, in my opinion, is definitely the bullet hole.
[End 2015 Replay.]
More "Entry Wound Location" debate HERE and HERE.
David Von Pein
April 19-20, 2025
April 20-21, 2025
