Post by John Duncan on Oct 2, 2020 20:52:31 GMT -5
JFK's Rear "Neck" Wound
By Gil Jesus 2005
The Warren Commission's Rydberg drawing (CE 386) placed the "back wound" at the base of [President John F.] Kennedy's neck. This drawing was supervised by Commander Humes, who led the autopsy team. Locating the wound at the base of the neck was necessary for the "Single Bullet Theory" to work. The House Select Committee's rendering of the same back wound placed it lower, but in order to align the back and throat wounds, they indicated that Kennedy was leaning forward when shot, something that, according to the Zapruder film, was clearly not true. Note how in both renderings, the wound is located ABOVE the top of the shoulder.
Just what is the evidence that the bullet in question struck the President at least five inches down in the back, and not on or near the neck?
1. The holes in JFK's shirt and coat place the wound five to six inches below the collar line, 3-4 inches below the top of the shoulder. The claim that his coat and shirt were bunched up on his back when the bullet struck in such a way as to make the proposed higher back wound line up with the clothing holes is refuted by the photographic evidence, as even lone-gunman theorist Jim Moore concedes. This bunched-clothing theory will be dealt with at greater length further on in this article.
JFK's shirt and coat. The bullet holes in both were 3-4 inches BELOW the top of the shoulder. This location was verified by Dr. Burkley's Death Certificate, Dr. Boswell's autopsy face sheet, and numerous witnesses who saw the wound and described its location. It is also supported by the autopsy photo.
2. Dr. Boswell's autopsy face sheet diagram shows the wound five to six inches below the neck. That face sheet, by the way, was marked "verified."
3. The President's death certificate places the wound at the third thoracic vertebra, which corresponds to the holes in the coat and shirt. This document was also marked "verified."
4. Dr. John Ebersole, who got a look at the back wound during the autopsy, said the wound was near the fourth thoracic vertebra (Harrison Edward Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: DECEIT AND DECEPTION IN THE JFK CASE p.721). This is even slightly lower than where the death certificate places the wound.
5. Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was called to the morgue for the specific purpose of viewing Kennedy's wounds, said the entrance point was "about six inches below the neckline to the right-hand side of the spinal column" (David S. Lifton, BEST EVIDENCE, pgs.77-78). Hill's placement of the wound corresponds closely to the location of the holes in the President's shirt and coat.
6. The FBI's 9 December 1963 report on the autopsy, which was based on the report of two FBI agents who attended the autopsy (James Sibert and Francis O'Neill), located the wound BELOW the shoulder (i.e., below the top of the shoulder blade) (ibid, 83, 149-168).
7. Three Navy medical technicians who assisted with the autopsy, James Jenkins, Paul O'Connor, and Edward Reed, have stated that the wound was well below the neck. Jenkins and O'Connor have also reported that it was probed repeatedly and that the autopsy doctors determined that it had no point of exit (Harrison Edward Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, pgs. 260, 262, 302-303; Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: p.720)
8. Floyd Riebe, one of the photographers who took pictures at the autopsy, recalls that the back wound was probed and that it was well below the neck (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, pgs. 162-163, 302).
9. Former Bethesda lab assistant Jan Gail Rudnicki, who was present for much of the autopsy, says the wound was "several inches down on the back" (ibid, pg. 206).
10. Former Parkland nurse Diana Bowron, who washed the President's body before it was placed in the casket, has indicated that the back wound was two to three inches BELOW the hole shown in the alleged autopsy photo of JFK's back, and this hole, by the HSCA's own admission, is about two inches lower than where the WC placed the wound. In other words, Nurse Bowron located the wound five to six inches below the neck, and at the same time challenged the authenticity of the alleged autopsy picture of the President's back. We will return to her account in a moment.
(Some WC defenders argue that Bowron told the WC she didn't see any wound other than the large head wound. But if one reads her testimony carefully, it is clear she was speaking of the condition of Kennedy's body when she first saw it in the limousine. What she said in effect was that she didn't notice any wounds other than the head wound when she first saw his body lying in the limousine. (6 H 136.)
11. In the transcript of the 27 January 1964 executive session of the Warren Commission, we read that chief counsel J. Lee Rankin said the bullet entered Kennedy's back BELOW the shoulder blade (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: p.632). Rankin even referred to a picture which he said showed that "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade" (Robert J. Groden, THE KILLING OF A PRESIDENT: THE COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION, THE CONSPIRACY, AND THE COVER-UP pgs. 78-79).
12. Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who got a very good look at the President's body, said the wound was "in the shoulder."
13. Three recently released HSCA wound diagrams place the wound well below the neck, and in fact in almost the exact same spot shown on the autopsy face sheet. The diagrams were drawn for Select Committee investigators by Kellerman, Sibert, and O'Neill, each of whom got a very good, prolonged look at the body.
This shows that when Kellerman said the wound was "in the shoulder," he meant it was visibly below the top of the right shoulder blade. Each agent placed the wound well below the neck, and visibly below the throat wound.
This correct placement of the back wound destroys the single-bullet theory because given the fact that the bullet entered JFK's back at a sharply downward angle, and at a point five to six inches below the top of his shirt collar (and thus well down on the back), there is no way it could have exited his throat, unless perhaps if it struck bone, but the chief autopsy doctor said he found no evidence that the missile had done so, and the HSCA's own medical panel agreed (Walt Brown, "November 22, 1963: Origin of Media Apathy, pg. 272; Bonar Menninger, MORTAL ERROR: THE SHOT THAT KILLED JFK, pg. 328; 6 HSCA 56). The only other way the missile could have exited Kennedy's throat is if JFK had been leaning far forward when the bullet struck. The Select Committee's own trajectory consultant said that Kennedy was leaning forward by no more than 18 degrees when the bullet struck. We know from the Zapruder film that when JFK emerges from the street sign, he is seated upright and not leaning forward. Nor can it be claimed that JFK suddenly leaned far forward when the limousine was behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. The car was only behind that sign for nine-tenths of a second, and the Zapruder film shows Kennedy sitting upright as the car reemerges into view. As one member of the HSCA's medical panel indicated, not even the most talented athlete could have leaned back and forth that fast, much less JFK, who had a bad back and was wearing a back brace.
We know that bullet didn't exit the President's throat because we have solid, credible accounts from medical technicians and doctors who were at the autopsy that the back wound was probed repeatedly, both with fingers and with a surgical probe, and that no exit was found. James Jenkins, one of the medical technicians at the autopsy, has reported that he could even see the probe pushing against the lining of the chest cavity (Anthony Summers, CONSPIRACY: THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON THE JFK ASSASSINATION, pg. 477). "There was," he says, "no entry into the chest cavity."
This is substantial proof that the bullet that entered the back did not exit the body at all, let alone the throat.
Let us now address some of the arguments concerning JFK's back wound that have been advanced by lone-gunman theorists.
1. Dr. Burkley, the President's physician and the person who prepared the death certificate, misplaced the back wound.
If Burkley were the only one who placed the back wound five to six inches below the top of the collar, this claim might have some plausibility, although it would require us to believe that Burkley made a rather puzzling error,.specifically stating that the wound was at the "third thoracic vertebra", when it was really on the base of the neck. But, Burkley's placement of the wound in the death certificate agrees with the holes in JFK's coat and shirt, with Boswell's face sheet diagram, with SSA Hill's placement of the wound, with Riebe's placement of the wound, with the location of the wound given in the FBI's report on the autopsy, with Dr. Ebersole's placement of the wound, and with the statements of four Navy medical assistants who saw the bullet hole in the back at the autopsy. In addition, the autopsy photograph of the wound shows that it is BELOW the top of the shoulders.
First of all, the x-rays prove nothing either way about the bullet's direction or entry point. One private radiologic expert studied the x-rays at the National Archives and concluded they show that no bullet could have gone straight from the back wound to the throat wound without crashing right into the spinal column.
Furthermore, Dr. Humes, in the Rydberg drawing which he supervised, located the wound two inches higher than where the HSCA placed it. Dr. Boswell, on the other hand, prepared an autopsy face sheet diagram showing the wound five to six inches below the neck. Moreover, what about the several witnesses who saw the wound at different times and who all placed it very close to where Dr. Boswell located it? Are we to believe that every single one of these people misplaced the wound by three to four inches? Are we to believe that they couldn't tell the difference between a wound that was visibly above the top of the shoulder blade and one that was well below it? And what about the holes in the President's coat and shirt, which confirm the lower placement?
The above autopsy photo shows the bullet wound to have been BELOW the top of the shoulder, exactly where Dr. Burkley's death certificate, Boswell's face sheet, the President's clothes, and all of the witnesses who saw the wound indicated it was. All of this evidence, including the autopsy photo, is PROOF that the back wound was a back wound and not a neck wound and that Commander Humes lied to the Commission about its location. His placement of the wound on the base of the neck was to align the back and throat wounds in support of the Single Bullet Theory. The lower location of the back wound places it BELOW the throat wound and proves Arlen Specter's Single Bullet Theory is a fantasy and not a reality.
The shirt hole in question consisted of two overlapping slits. Robert Frazier, the FBI expert who examined the hole, stated that it could NOT be positively identified as a bullet hole. The Warren Commission itself admitted this. After advancing the claim that the "characteristics" of the hole "established" that it was an exit hole, the Commission turned right around and said:
One of the most fragile underpinnings of the official version of President Kennedy's murder is the proposition that a bullet entered his back, passed through his body, exited from his lower neck, and went on to pass through Governor Connally. Official medical experts largely agree that this is what happened. If it did not happen this way, it is generally agreed, then there was a second assassin, and thus a conspiracy. The whole flimsy case becomes unglued. Enormous official effort has gone into trying to prove this particular point. Comedy has flashed through the outrageous as doctors arbitrarily moved the location of the back wound several inches upward so that it could be high enough to manage a logical exit from the front of the neck--even though the bullet, which the Warren Commission said hit no bones in Kennedy, was supposedly moving at a sharply downward angle when it entered Kennedy's back.
The initial difficulty with the government's case was that the FBI laboratory--after spectrographic analysis--could find no metal traces on the tie or the neckband of the collar, traces that should have been there if a bullet had caused the damage. The second major problem was one that often.plagued the commission: a highly credible witness who saw and said things that contradicted the larger picture. Dr. Charles Carrico, the doctor who examined Kennedy in the emergency room BEFORE his shirt and tie were removed, testified to the Warren Commission (and later confirmed in an interview) that the anterior [front] neck wound was ABOVE THE KNOT OF HIS TIE. A wound location this high in the front would render fatuous the whole teetering premise of the Warren Commission.
In conclusion, the lack of an exit point for the back wound PROVES that it was not a bullet from Oswald's rifle that created this wound. Oswald's bullets were copper-jacketed military-style ammunition designed to travel through bodies. It also PROVES that the throat wound, for lacking an entrance point, was not an exit wound and thus HAD to have been an entrance wound, putting at least one gunman in front of the President and thus supporting the conclusion that Kennedy was murdered by multiple gunmen as a result of a conspiracy.
By Gil Jesus 2005
The Warren Commission's Rydberg drawing (CE 386) placed the "back wound" at the base of [President John F.] Kennedy's neck. This drawing was supervised by Commander Humes, who led the autopsy team. Locating the wound at the base of the neck was necessary for the "Single Bullet Theory" to work. The House Select Committee's rendering of the same back wound placed it lower, but in order to align the back and throat wounds, they indicated that Kennedy was leaning forward when shot, something that, according to the Zapruder film, was clearly not true. Note how in both renderings, the wound is located ABOVE the top of the shoulder.
Just what is the evidence that the bullet in question struck the President at least five inches down in the back, and not on or near the neck?
1. The holes in JFK's shirt and coat place the wound five to six inches below the collar line, 3-4 inches below the top of the shoulder. The claim that his coat and shirt were bunched up on his back when the bullet struck in such a way as to make the proposed higher back wound line up with the clothing holes is refuted by the photographic evidence, as even lone-gunman theorist Jim Moore concedes. This bunched-clothing theory will be dealt with at greater length further on in this article.
JFK's shirt and coat. The bullet holes in both were 3-4 inches BELOW the top of the shoulder. This location was verified by Dr. Burkley's Death Certificate, Dr. Boswell's autopsy face sheet, and numerous witnesses who saw the wound and described its location. It is also supported by the autopsy photo.
2. Dr. Boswell's autopsy face sheet diagram shows the wound five to six inches below the neck. That face sheet, by the way, was marked "verified."
3. The President's death certificate places the wound at the third thoracic vertebra, which corresponds to the holes in the coat and shirt. This document was also marked "verified."
4. Dr. John Ebersole, who got a look at the back wound during the autopsy, said the wound was near the fourth thoracic vertebra (Harrison Edward Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: DECEIT AND DECEPTION IN THE JFK CASE p.721). This is even slightly lower than where the death certificate places the wound.
5. Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was called to the morgue for the specific purpose of viewing Kennedy's wounds, said the entrance point was "about six inches below the neckline to the right-hand side of the spinal column" (David S. Lifton, BEST EVIDENCE, pgs.77-78). Hill's placement of the wound corresponds closely to the location of the holes in the President's shirt and coat.
6. The FBI's 9 December 1963 report on the autopsy, which was based on the report of two FBI agents who attended the autopsy (James Sibert and Francis O'Neill), located the wound BELOW the shoulder (i.e., below the top of the shoulder blade) (ibid, 83, 149-168).
7. Three Navy medical technicians who assisted with the autopsy, James Jenkins, Paul O'Connor, and Edward Reed, have stated that the wound was well below the neck. Jenkins and O'Connor have also reported that it was probed repeatedly and that the autopsy doctors determined that it had no point of exit (Harrison Edward Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, pgs. 260, 262, 302-303; Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: p.720)
8. Floyd Riebe, one of the photographers who took pictures at the autopsy, recalls that the back wound was probed and that it was well below the neck (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, pgs. 162-163, 302).
9. Former Bethesda lab assistant Jan Gail Rudnicki, who was present for much of the autopsy, says the wound was "several inches down on the back" (ibid, pg. 206).
10. Former Parkland nurse Diana Bowron, who washed the President's body before it was placed in the casket, has indicated that the back wound was two to three inches BELOW the hole shown in the alleged autopsy photo of JFK's back, and this hole, by the HSCA's own admission, is about two inches lower than where the WC placed the wound. In other words, Nurse Bowron located the wound five to six inches below the neck, and at the same time challenged the authenticity of the alleged autopsy picture of the President's back. We will return to her account in a moment.
(Some WC defenders argue that Bowron told the WC she didn't see any wound other than the large head wound. But if one reads her testimony carefully, it is clear she was speaking of the condition of Kennedy's body when she first saw it in the limousine. What she said in effect was that she didn't notice any wounds other than the head wound when she first saw his body lying in the limousine. (6 H 136.)
11. In the transcript of the 27 January 1964 executive session of the Warren Commission, we read that chief counsel J. Lee Rankin said the bullet entered Kennedy's back BELOW the shoulder blade (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: p.632). Rankin even referred to a picture which he said showed that "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade" (Robert J. Groden, THE KILLING OF A PRESIDENT: THE COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION, THE CONSPIRACY, AND THE COVER-UP pgs. 78-79).
12. Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who got a very good look at the President's body, said the wound was "in the shoulder."
13. Three recently released HSCA wound diagrams place the wound well below the neck, and in fact in almost the exact same spot shown on the autopsy face sheet. The diagrams were drawn for Select Committee investigators by Kellerman, Sibert, and O'Neill, each of whom got a very good, prolonged look at the body.
This shows that when Kellerman said the wound was "in the shoulder," he meant it was visibly below the top of the right shoulder blade. Each agent placed the wound well below the neck, and visibly below the throat wound.
This correct placement of the back wound destroys the single-bullet theory because given the fact that the bullet entered JFK's back at a sharply downward angle, and at a point five to six inches below the top of his shirt collar (and thus well down on the back), there is no way it could have exited his throat, unless perhaps if it struck bone, but the chief autopsy doctor said he found no evidence that the missile had done so, and the HSCA's own medical panel agreed (Walt Brown, "November 22, 1963: Origin of Media Apathy, pg. 272; Bonar Menninger, MORTAL ERROR: THE SHOT THAT KILLED JFK, pg. 328; 6 HSCA 56). The only other way the missile could have exited Kennedy's throat is if JFK had been leaning far forward when the bullet struck. The Select Committee's own trajectory consultant said that Kennedy was leaning forward by no more than 18 degrees when the bullet struck. We know from the Zapruder film that when JFK emerges from the street sign, he is seated upright and not leaning forward. Nor can it be claimed that JFK suddenly leaned far forward when the limousine was behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. The car was only behind that sign for nine-tenths of a second, and the Zapruder film shows Kennedy sitting upright as the car reemerges into view. As one member of the HSCA's medical panel indicated, not even the most talented athlete could have leaned back and forth that fast, much less JFK, who had a bad back and was wearing a back brace.
We know that bullet didn't exit the President's throat because we have solid, credible accounts from medical technicians and doctors who were at the autopsy that the back wound was probed repeatedly, both with fingers and with a surgical probe, and that no exit was found. James Jenkins, one of the medical technicians at the autopsy, has reported that he could even see the probe pushing against the lining of the chest cavity (Anthony Summers, CONSPIRACY: THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON THE JFK ASSASSINATION, pg. 477). "There was," he says, "no entry into the chest cavity."
This is substantial proof that the bullet that entered the back did not exit the body at all, let alone the throat.
Let us now address some of the arguments concerning JFK's back wound that have been advanced by lone-gunman theorists.
1. Dr. Burkley, the President's physician and the person who prepared the death certificate, misplaced the back wound.
If Burkley were the only one who placed the back wound five to six inches below the top of the collar, this claim might have some plausibility, although it would require us to believe that Burkley made a rather puzzling error,.specifically stating that the wound was at the "third thoracic vertebra", when it was really on the base of the neck. But, Burkley's placement of the wound in the death certificate agrees with the holes in JFK's coat and shirt, with Boswell's face sheet diagram, with SSA Hill's placement of the wound, with Riebe's placement of the wound, with the location of the wound given in the FBI's report on the autopsy, with Dr. Ebersole's placement of the wound, and with the statements of four Navy medical assistants who saw the bullet hole in the back at the autopsy. In addition, the autopsy photograph of the wound shows that it is BELOW the top of the shoulders.
And then there is the recent interview with former Parkland nurse Diana Bowron. As mentioned, Nurse Bowron washed the President's body before it was placed in the casket. Nurse Bowron got a good look at the back wound. In a drawing she sent to Harrison Livingstone, she placed the wound at least five inches below the neck (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH: p.183, in conjunction with first photo page). With regard to the alleged autopsy photo of JFK's back, Nurse Bowron remarked, "This is not the back I saw."
2. The photographic evidence shows that Kennedy's coat was bunched up on his back, thus explaining the low location of the holes in his shirt and coat.
The photographic evidence does not support the claim that Kennedy's coat was bunched in the required location or to a sufficient degree at around the time the bullet hit him. Josiah Thompson argues that Willis slide 5 "shows clearly that the President's clothing was NOT bunched at the time he was wounded in the back" (Josiah Thompson, SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS, p.281, original emphasis).
On the other hand, some motorcade photos do show a moderate bunch in Kennedy's coat, but this bunch was not large enough (3-4 inches), and not in the right location, to explain the clothing holes.
Jim Moore, a staunch lone-gunman theorist, has taken the same position (Jim Moore, CONSPIRACY OF ONE pgs. 154-155). He notes that the Betzner photo also refutes the idea that Kennedy's clothing was bunched, and he points out that the Willis and Betzner pictures both show the President's white shirt collar, "which would not be visible were his jacket bunched" (ibid, p.155). Moreover, Moore makes the compelling argument, which has also been voiced by WC critics, that the hunched-clothing theory would require us to believe that the shirt bunched inside the coat almost to the exact same degree as the jacket. Moore correctly observes, "The odds against this millimeter-for-millimeter correspondence boggle the imagination" (ibid, p.155).
Former HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi has this to say about the idea that JFK's shirt bunched along with the coat:
"Kennedy was one of the best-tailored presidents ever to occupy the White House, and if it is possible--but not probable--that he was wearing a suit jacket baggy enough to ride up five or six inches in the back when he waved his arm, it is inconceivable that a tightly buttoned shirt could have done the same thing." (Gaeton Fonzi, THE LAST INVESTIGATION, pg.27)
3. The autopsy photos show the back wound where the HSCA located it, and the autopsy x-rays support the claim that the bullet exited the throat.
The alleged autopsy x-rays and photos have long been disputed and questioned. However, the alleged autopsy photos do NOT locate the back wound on the base of the neck, as is evidenced in the photo above. Those pictures do show the wound to be noticeably lower than where Dr. Humes placed it in the Rydberg drawing for the WC. In addition, the creases in the neck indicate that the head is being elevated, most likely to move the mastoid process closer to the back wound for measuring purposes.
The autopsists had x-rays taken of the whole body, partly in an attempt to determine the back wound's point of exit. None of the autopsy doctors initially reported seeing any evidence in the x-rays that the back wound had an exit point, much less that it exited the throat. Furthermore, the x-rays do NOT show the back wound's location.
4. The written measurements for the back wound, which were placed in the margin on Dr. Boswell's face sheet diagram, place the wound on the neck.
But the autopsy photograph shows the wound below the top of the shoulder, in the BACK, not the neck. Besides, the written measurements for the back wound were penned in ink, whereas the rest of the face sheet was in pencil, indicating they were not written at the same time as the other face-sheet notations, which in turn suggests they were added at a later date. Sylvia Meagher makes a good point about the suspicious measurements :
. . . since the diagram purported to SHOW the location of the wounds, it is hard to understand why those measurements were recorded in the margin—recorded only for this particular wound but not for other wounds, scars, or incisions, and written in heavier ink than the other notations found on the same diagram. (Sylvia Meagher, ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT: THE WARREN COMMISSION, THE AUTHORITIES, AND THE REPORT, pgs.140-141, original emphasis)
Are we to believe that it is merely a coincidence that Dr. Boswell's dot for the back wound on the face sheet diagram just happens to conform to the location of the holes in JFK's shirt and coat? Are we also to attribute to chance the fact that Dr. Boswell's diagram places the wound in the same area that the death certificate locates it? Are we simply supposed to ignore the fact that Dr. Boswell's diagram of the back wound agrees with the testimony of several credible witnesses, including four medical technicians, one of the autopsy photographers, a doctor who attended the autopsy, and three federal agents? And what about the autopsy photograph that shows the bullet hole well below the top of the shoulder, in exactly the same place as Boswell, Burkley, the holes in the clothing and the witnesses who saw it place it?
5. The testimony that the surgical probe could be seen pushing against the lining of the chest cavity can be explained by assuming that the autopsy doctors accidentally created a false passage in their efforts to find an exit point.
The autopsists first probed the wound with their fingers, so they had some idea of the hole's general direction and angle. It is highly unlikely that they jammed the probe in so ineptly and inaccurately that they created a false passage.
6. The probing of the wound didn't reveal the wound's true path because the muscles involved had tightened and because the doctors didn't elevate Kennedy's arm to the position it was in when the bullet struck.
None of the autopsists said the body was so stiff that they couldn't conduct the probing. According to Dr. Robert Karnei, who assisted with the autopsy, the autopsists "tried every which way" to find the back wound's exit point with the probe (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, pg.189). Dr. Karnei indicates they moved the body into different positions--they tried, he says, to "move it around." They also turned the body over. The autopsy doctors, adds Dr. Karnei, spent "a long time" trying to find the exit point. One could certainly infer from Dr. Karnei's account that the autopsists lifted JFK's right arm as they tried "every which way" to find the exit point.
It should be noted that before the autopsy doctors explored the back wound with the surgical probe, the chest was opened and the organs were removed, which was why the probe could be seen pushing against the lining of the chest cavity. The wound had no exit point. The autopsy pathologists could see this. So could Dr. Boswell's assistent, James Jenkins. This was why the autopsists were so certain on the night of the autopsy that the back wound was shallow and had no exit point. We know from new information from the investigation of the Assassination Records Review Board that on the night of the autopsy the doctors were absolutely positive, beyond any doubt, that the back wound had no exit point.
7. As the Warren Commission reported, the FBI determined that the hole in the front of JFK's shirt and the nick in his tie proved that a bullet exited Kennedy's throat. Therefore, the missile that struck him in the back must have exited the throat.
. . . the irregular nature of the slit precluded a positive determination that it was a bullet hole. (WCR 92)
The Commission also said this about the hole:
However, the hole could have been caused by a round bullet ALTHOUGH the characteristics were NOT sufficiently clear to enable the examining expert to render a conclusive opinion. (WCR 92, emphasis added)
The slits are indeed irregular. They are not the same length, nor are they the same shape--they are similar but not identical (Harold Weisberg, NEVER AGAIN: THE GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION, pgs.244-245). They were made with a scalpel by one of the nurses as they removed the President's shirt.
Harold Weisberg pressed his case in court to have the National Archives release clear photographs of the President's shirt and tie, because the pictures that had been provided by the FBI to the Warren Commission were unclear and virtually worthless. The photographs finally disclosed to Weisberg show that the suggested bullet holes in the shirt's front neckband are not bullet holes at all. They are slits made by scalpels used by nurses to cut off the President's necktie. One nurse who cut off the clothing confirmed this, adding impressive evidence to Weisberg's observations.
In conclusion, a quote from Henry Hurt's 1985 summary of the medical evidence as it relates to the single-bullet theory. Hurt, a former Rockefeller Foundation fellow, spent years investigating the assassination, and I believe his analysis of this issue is superb and cogent:
It was a tough case to make, and few people ever believed the government's feeble account. Still, though, it is the official version.
Government officials and their supporters have worked over the years to maintain this legend. Some apparently perjured themselves in service to their cause. Meanwhile, a lone citizen was pursuing the question from quite a different angle. Of the millions of Americans who believed the official version to be a lie, Harold Weisberg set out to prove it so. Alone, he has come far closer to making his case on this point than the whole United States government has in defending its.
Weisberg did not focus on the location of the back wound. He accepted that the body chart drawn and later disavowed by Commander Boswell was correct in showing the back wound to be between five and six inches below President Kennedy's collar line. . . . Weisberg was far more interested in the wound in the front of the neck that was supposed to be the exit for the bullet in the back. The autopsy report, which was embraced by the Warren Commission, described this wound as being in the "low anterior neck."
That front neck wound, of course, was largely believed to have been one of entry by those experienced observers at Parkland Hospital. That was the thrust of their initial impressions and was stated several times at a press briefing at the hospital by a White House official. But the official version ruled that it was a wound of exit and suggested that the exiting bullet caused the nick on the side of the knot of the President's tie. The government version also suggested that the slits through the front of the neckband of the President's shirt were caused by an exiting bullet.
(The commission ignored Dr. Carrico's testimony on this point, even though he was the doctor in the best position to have any direct knowledge.)
The testimony of Dr. Carrico, combined with the revelations in the photographs, shows with absolute certainty to almost any layman that the bullet that entered Kennedy's back nearly six inches below his collar at a sharply downward angle COULD NOT POSSIBLY have exited from Kennedy's neck, above the collar, where Dr. Carrico saw the wound. (Henry Hurt, REASONABLE DOUBT: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY, pgs. 58-60, original emphasis)