Part 1400 of my "JFK Assassination Arguments" series includes a variety of my posts and comments covering the period of May 1—31, 2026. 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.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The Kennedy family never wanted the grisly [autopsy] pictures seen by the public; nor should they really be available to us right to this very day.
ANTHONY MARSH SAID:
As I said before, your position is to cover up the evidence. That's how the WC [Warren Commission] got away with its lies for so many years.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In Tony Marsh's oft-used parlance -- Nonsense.
I'm not advocating that anything should have been "covered up". My comment -- "nor should they [JFK's autopsy photos] really be available to us right to this very day" -- was only referring to the fact that the Kennedy family didn't want those photographs released for public scrutiny (ever). The comment wasn't meant to imply or to mean anything more than that.
And I've said in the past that it's my opinion that the single silliest/dumbest/most ignorant decision made during the whole Warren Commission investigation was the decision to not have the autopsy photos made available to the very Commission assigned to look into President Kennedy's murder. That was absolutely idiotic!
There's no reason whatsoever that those pictures couldn't have been used and examined by the Commission and its staff during the 10-month Warren Commission probe.
An agreement with the Kennedy family could have easily be arranged (I would surmise) that would have given the Commission access to the photographs, but at the same time would have prohibited the photos from being published anywhere in the Warren Report or its supporting volumes.
In addition to such a proposed stipulation, a simple one-paragraph passage could have been added to the final Warren Commission Report, fully explaining the reason(s) why the autopsy photographs have not been printed in the Warren Report or within the 26 supporting volumes, with that same paragraph also noting that THE COMMISSION HAS, HOWEVER, BEEN ABLE TO EVALUATE ALL OF THESE MATERIALS AT ITS LEISURE TO DETERMINE THE FACTS IN THE CASE, BUT THE PHOTOS CANNOT BE PUBLISHED DUE TO THE WISHES OF THE KENNEDY FAMILY.
I ask: What in the world would have been wrong with the above stipulation? Why would the Kennedy family have possibly objected to such an arrangement concerning the autopsy pictures of John F. Kennedy?
The fact that Arlen Specter had to BEG for (and still not receive) permission to see the autopsy photos (and X-rays also, which is even more preposterous; what's so grisly about an X-ray??) is something that I still cannot understand to this very day. It's utterly ridiculous, in my opinion.
Earl Warren, who apparently might have seen some of the photos briefly if I understand things correctly, should have demanded full access to those critical materials during the Commission's investigation. And he should have never given up until those important autopsy photos were made available to the Warren Commission and its staff.
David Von Pein
May 11, 2007
Re-posted May 5, 2026
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BARB JUNKKARINEN SAID:
Why do you believe that a wound to the rear of the head means a shot had to come from the front?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
By strict definition, you're correct. A large "BOH" [Back Of Head] wound would not necessarily HAVE to equal a shot from the front.
But in THIS (JFK) CASE specifically, we can be pretty sure there was no large-sized BOH wound...because if there were such a wound on the President's body, it would have been reported by the three autopsy surgeons.
IOW -- There was absolutely no good enough reason for those autopsists to want to hide any of JFK's wounds.
Why?
Because even if there had been a large BOH hole in JFK's head, and even if the doctors were worried about World War 3 (or whatever other imagined catastrophe that might befall the country in the wake of the assassination of the President), the doctors would still have had the IRONCLAD PROOF, via the two irrevocable small bullet wounds of ENTRY in JFK's upper back and in the back of his head, that Kennedy was hit by bullets that came only from BEHIND him (from the direction of Lee Harvey Oswald's gun).*
* This, of course, also assumes that the doctors would have had all of this detailed knowledge about the trajectories and about what LHO could or could not have accomplished with his one rifle from his TSBD POV at 12:30, which is very unlikely of course...esp. since we KNOW that none of those autopsy physicians was even aware of the widely-seen press conference given by Clark and Perry in Dallas, since not a person in that autopsy room had any idea that there was a bullet hole in JFK's throat.
It's absolutely incredible, IMO, that not a single person at Bethesda knew of this widely-known "throat wound" fact as of 8:00 PM. Why on Earth didn't somebody tell somebody at Bethesda?
And, more incredible still, is the fact that Dr. Perry never bothered to tell ANYONE in the Kennedy party, or the Secret Service or the Dallas Police, that he totally obliterated a bullet hole that he had to know would never be seen at the autopsy that night due to the trach incision....which is an autopsy that Perry HAD to know was going to be taking place after the President left Perry's care.
Dr. Malcolm Perry, in my opinion, was very foolish for not saying to SOMEBODY in authority: "Hey, by the way, I made a trach cut right through what looked to me like a bullet hole."
BARB JUNKKARINEN SAID:
And, you are aware, right, that virtually the entire right side of JFK's skull was destroyed?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Doesn't really look that way to me. There's a good deal of "right side" damage, yes. But it doesn't look like "virtually the entire right side of JFK's skull was destroyed" to me. At least not from this photo:
However, I know that the autopsy doctors did, indeed, say that there was a good deal of skull missing in the right hemisphere of the head.
The whole "BOH" argument is pretty much a moot one anyway (i.e., an argument that pretty much "goes nowhere")....because there's undeniable proof that JFK was shot in the head just ONE time, with that bullet positively coming from behind and entering the back of President Kennedy's head, producing the characteristic "bevelling in" effect, which proves beyond all doubt that that wound was a wound of entrance....just as Dr. James Humes told the CBS-TV viewing audience in June of 1967 (in his first interview since his Warren Commission testimony). Here are Humes' exact words from that 1967 CBS-TV "Warren Report" documentary:
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DAN RATHER (CBS NEWS) -- "About the head wound....there was only one?"
DR. HUMES -- "There was only one entrance wound in the head; yes, sir."
DAN RATHER -- "And that was where?"
DR. HUMES -- "That was posterior, about two-and-a-half centimeters to the right of the mid-line posteriorly."
DAN RATHER -- "And the exit wound?"
DR. HUMES -- "And the exit wound was a large, irregular wound to the front and right side of the President's head."
DAN RATHER -- "Now can you be absolutely certain that the wound you describe as the entry wound was in FACT that?"
DR. HUMES -- "Yes, indeed, we can. Very precisely and incontrovertibly. The missile traversed the skin and then traversed the bony skull....and as it passed through the skull it produced a characteristic coning or bevelling effect on the inner aspect of the skull. Which is scientific evidence that the wound was made from behind and passed forward through the President's skull."
DAN RATHER -- "This is very important....you say there's scientific evidence. Is it conclusive scientific evidence?"
DR. HUMES -- "Yes, sir; it is."
DAN RATHER -- "Is there any doubt that the wound at the back of the President's head was the entry wound?"
DR. HUMES -- "There is absolutely no doubt, sir."
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I'll now turn things over to Vincent T. Bugliosi to complete this post:
"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." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 410 of "Reclaiming History"
BARB JUNKKARINEN SAID THIS.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Thank you for the above-linked post, Barb. Very nicely stated.
But we're still left with this statement from Dr. Humes in 1967:
"And the exit wound was a large, irregular wound to the front and right side of the President's head." -- Dr. James J. Humes
Footnote -- I suppose it's quite possible indeed that Humes merely wanted to talk about only the MOST RELEVANT portions of the large, gaping wound to JFK's head in his interview on CBS-TV -- i.e., the place on Kennedy's head where he KNEW FOR A FACT THE BULLET EXITED (the "right front" of the head).
Therefore, Humes doesn't mention to the CBS audience anything about the fragmentation of the President's skull that might have existed in the BOH after the scalp was reflected, which would be considered (in Humes' mind) secondary (or extended) skull fractures.
It's something to ponder, for sure. I.E.: The idea that the doctors, who were dealing with a more massive head wound than most people believe, only felt the need to discuss and/or document the location on JFK's head where the autopsists knew the bullet EXITED the head, which was "chiefly parietal" (right side, top, and toward the front of the skull).
Allow me to interject another Vince Bugliosi quote which goes directly to the subject being discussed. The following text is taken directly from my review of Vince's book, "Reclaiming History"....
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DVP: In the endnotes located on the CD-ROM included at the back of the book, Bugliosi goes into additional detail with respect to the precise location of the exit wound in JFK's head:
"On the issue of the locus of the head exit wound, perhaps the most overlooked piece of medical and scientific evidence in books on the assassination that proves the exit wound was in the right front of the president's head is the fact that of the three fragments of the skull found inside the presidential limousine, the HSCA forensic pathology panel said that autopsy X-rays show that the largest one, triangular in shape, contained "a portion of the right coronal suture." [i.e.:]...The juncture between the parietal (side and top) and frontal bone.
Although the bullet fragmented upon striking bone in the president's head, the HSCA concluded that the main part of the bullet literally exited along the coronal suture line to the right front of the president's head.
Dr. Michael Baden [of the HSCA's pathology panel] told me, "The autopsy photographs clearly show that the semicircular defect was half of a bullet wound with an exit beveling, and this caused most of the damage to Kennedy's parietal and frontal bones" (Telephone interview of Dr. Michael Baden by [Vincent Bugliosi] on January 8, 2000). ....
The fact that the largest fragment found of the president's skull was along the coronal suture, that this triangular fragment was one of three that, in the aggregate, lined up, on reconstruction, with the large defect to the right front of the president's skull, and that this large fragment of bone was beveled on its outer surface, rather than its inner surface, provide conclusive evidence of an exiting bullet to the right front of the president's head." -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Pages 235-236 of "Reclaiming History" (Endnotes)
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David Von Pein
July 15-17, 2007
Re-posted May 5, 2026
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A CONSPIRACY THEORIST NAMED BILL SAID:
I was merely trying to expose the sheer emptiness of your suggestion that Oswald was looking for police cars surrounding his rooming house.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
It's not an empty suggestion at all (IMO). In fact, it's the only really logical conclusion to reach for why Oswald would have wanted to SLOW HIMSELF DOWN BY ABOUT 5 MINUTES (5 min., 45 sec., in fact, per the Warren Commission's re-creation of the trek from Beckley & Neely to 1026 Beckley) by telling cab driver William Whaley to go three blocks beyond his actual destination after just having committed a Presidential murder.
BILL SAID:
To suggest that Hosty -- if he'd had Oswald's phone number, which he did not -- would have arranged such a scenario in an effort to apprehend Oswald when he came home after killing the president of the United States assigns a level of stupidity to Hosty and the Dallas Police previously not imagined even in the most farfetched conspiracy theories.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Why on Earth does James Hosty necessarily have to enter into this "Looking For Police Cars" equation at all (from Lee Oswald's own point-of-view, that is)? Obviously, Hosty doesn't have to enter into it whatsoever.
Oswald had just shot the President 2.5 miles from 1026 Beckley. He knows it's been about a half-hour since he did so. He can't possibly know how many people might have seen him shooting as he sticks his rifle out the Depository window. And he can't be sure the cops aren't already aware of his home address as of 1:00 PM on Nov. 22nd either.
All of these things are "unknowables" to murderer Oswald at 1:00 PM. Why wouldn't he possibly suspect some cops were on his tail almost immediately?
I can think of no better reason than the "I Better Check The Area For Police Before I Depart This Cab" reason for Oswald wanting to intentionally slow down his getaway by five or more minutes by having the cab driver take him three blocks beyond 1026 Beckley. Did he want to just get a little extra exercise that day by walking the extra 3 blocks?
BILL SAID:
Because Hosty would have been the only possible means by which anyone in authority could have possibly determined Oswald's rooming house address....IF Ruth Paine had given the phone number to him, which she did not.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Meaningless argument....because we're talking about what Oswald would have been thinking at the time. He can't possibly know all the potential forces that might be surrounding him a half-hour after he shot the President. Hosty doesn't need to enter into it at all.
Paranoia on LHO's part is probably going to start sinking in (I would think anyway). He just shot JFK....therefore everybody in the world is going to be looking for the person who just shot the President. And who WAS that person? Lee Harvey Oswald. (And that's a really good reason to start getting paranoid about the cops if you ask me.)
BILL SAID:
You've offered no plausible reason for Oswald to care if Whaley had learned his rooming house address.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Tony Marsh did it for me in an earlier post -- i.e., cops wanting to know where taxi drivers dropped their passengers.
All of this Monday-morning quarterbacking is merely a parlor game anyway. The bottom line facts are: Oswald killed Kennedy and Oswald did tell Whaley to drive 3 blocks beyond his home.
The "Why?" portion of the scenario can never be answered to everybody's satisfaction. Nor does it need to be, of course, to decide whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald was a double-murderer.
David Von Pein
March 25, 2008
Re-posted May 5, 2026
