New Evidence in Kennedy Killing (Dallas not Mass)

History Channel ^ | Image of an Assassination

[keving]

Did anyone see the show on the History Channel about the archiving of the Zapruder film?

"Image of an Assassination"

Saturday, November 22 @ 8am ET/PT

On November 22, 1963, Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder brought his movie camera to film President John F. Kennedy's motorcade for his grandchildren. As it turned out, Zapruder captured one of the 20th century's most important documents. In 1997, two media companies created a digital replica of the original, which is presented here, along with Zapruder's business associates, photography experts, and National Archives employees, who piece together the history of the crucial 26-second film. TV PG-V

It was very interesting. The most revealing part was that the frames that claim to be the Zapruder film are cropped copies of the original (1/3 to 1/2 screen).

The best part of the film is that the "fatal" blow when Kennedy's head explodes is cleary shown traveling from the side of the limo - grassy knoll area.

The "expanded" version or original version of the film included the trajectory of the bullet which could not be indicated on the cropped photo version.

Please view programs - it is very clear.

[texasbluebell]

The melons and gelaton used it tests sited on subsequent replies in this post were not attached to the bulk of a human body,

This is what I keep saying too. How can a skull/melon/whatever, unattached to a spinal cord, compare in any way to a human body?

[graycamel]

I Know I'll get kicked off for being a kook, but I think Kennedy was in so much pain, he was on pills you know, that he had himself eliminated. He couldn't have killed himself or everyone would have called him a coward. But let some others do the job, and he's called one of the greatest presidents.

[mathluv]

There was also a book about 10 years ago from the 'lady in red'. She was one of the witnesses - in a red coat that day. Her camera was confiscated. She swears a shot was fired from the grassy knoll.

[Ophiucus]

You describe a physical immpossibility. Think of two cars hitting - car A hits car B. If car A is travelling east, would car B suddenly jump west?

There is no "force" from a bullet exiting the body - it's not like a self-propelled rocket. It is a mass with simple inertia and anything it hits moves in the same direction - not opposite.

[texasbluebell]

Thanks for posting that link!

[Mr. Wright]

Will someone please download the photo showing the
motorcade passing the Stemmons Freeway Keep Right Sign
(backs of agents on President's car are seen).
Look to the right of the Zapruder party (inside the concret
memorial)you will see the image of a man standing inside the
memorial. Why is he in there - I believe he is the "phoney"
SS agent who people later said was on the Grassy Knoll.

Invert the picture so light objects are dark and dark objects are light - you will see the inside of the memorial has a
light object through the rectangle -all the rest of the rectangles are dark!!

[Ophiucus]

Apparently the penetrating bullet exerts little force on the melon

Having treated a large number of gunshot wounds - this statement is absolutely wrong. The bullet begins to transfer a massive amount of kinetic energy the millisecond it strikes the body. The body also immediately begins to move or spin in the direction of the bullet's path.

Those bullets did the most remarkable dances you have ever seen. The only thing they didn't do is travel in a straight line

This is known as cavitation. The bullet creates a pressure wave inside the body. This wave of immense pressure results in an irregular path, massive damage to tissues away from the bullet's path, and upon exiting, a much larger exit wound. Exiting, however, does not cause a recoil.

I remember seeing the Nova episode you mention. I also remember laughing at the way the melons were positioned and shot - a lot of tricks with angular momentum. The melon spun like a top but still went backwards. Try it yourself - put a melon on a fencepost.

However, the dynamics of shooting a melon are nothing like that of the human cranium. Nothing - not in density, strength, etc.

[Ichneumon]

[There was no pristine bullet found on the stretcher; that was purely fictionalized in the "JFK" Oliver Stone movie.]

Oh, have they changed history where the magic bullet is concerned? Have the facts been successfully rearranged to fit the foredrawn conclusion?

No, that's what the conspiracy theorists do when they try to claim that the bullet found on the stretcher was "pristine", when it very certainly was *not*.

There was no "pristine" bullet. There was, however a significantly deformed bullet, consistent with passage through JFK's neck and Connally's chest/wrist.

Bullet on left is the so-called "pristine" bullet, bullet on right is an unfired round.

Note the crease on the nose, and the warping of the side (the lower portion as oriented in the picture) and the flattened surface directly facing the camera.

Here's a close-up of the tail end of the bullet:

Note how much the lead is deformed and cracked by the bullet's deformation.

Of course, I'm being facetious. But it's better to be facetious than misinformed.

So you won't misinform anyone by calling the bullet "pristine", I hope.

Don't blame Oliver Stone for this story. He was merely depicting history.

*snort*. Shall I list all the ways he distorted the known facts about the wounds, the positions of the people in the car, and the condition of the bullet?

The 'magic bullet' WAS (conveniently) found on a gurney at Parkland (at just the moment the conspirators needed it to be found because they could not otherwise account for all those extra gunshot wounds).

LOL! My favorite thing about conspiracy theorists is how they postulate all sorts of absurd things that seem "obvious" to them but make no sense otherwise.

Perhaps you could explain for us exactly how a bullet on a stretcher would suddenly "account" for the alleged "extra gunshot wounds"?

The really funny thing about this suggestion is that simultaeously you're suggesting a) more bullets were fired at the scene than currently believed, and b) *ADDING* another bullet to the evidence (on top of the bullets and fragments already on the scene due to the shooting(s) themselves) was somehow going to cause investigators to *reduce* their estimate of how many bullets were involved.

Go ahead, pull the other leg now.

Another problem with most of the JFK conspiracy tales is the exact same problem with the OJ Simpson conspiracy tales: It suggests that a large team of "evidence planters" was running all over the various crime scenes planting evidence BEFORE THEY HAD ANY WAY OF KNOWING what physical evidence or possible witnesses were going to turn up when the investigators did their jobs. In the OJ case, the allegations that officers were frantically planting OJ's blood evidence at the murder scene in the first hour or so to frame him are ludicrous given that as far as they knew, subsequent analysis of the "real" evidence might well turn up clear evidence of the real killer(s) -- in which case the evidence-forging officers would have one hell of a hard time explaining how OJ's blood got there, wouldn't they?

Likewise for the various JFK "evidence planting" screwball theories -- for example, for all they knew the bullet that struck Connally might have been in his body (he was still in surgery at the time the not-so-pristine bullet was discovered). How stupid would the conspirators have to be to plant an *extra* bullet in order to "sidetrack" the investigation when the *actual* bullet might turn up at any moment (and if it did, the "planted" bullet would *prove* conspiracy, not turn people away from that theory). For that matter, where *did* the "real" bullet go if the bullet at the hospital was "planeted"? Conspiracy theorists never seem to want to answer that one.

And more outrageous than (but just as true as) that, that miraculous bullet was not discovered at Parkland until AFTER Kennedy's body was already in Washington.

Is it too much to ask that conspiracy theorists get even their basic facts straight? Yes, I suppose it is.

1. JFK was shot at 12:30.

2. The not-so-pristine bullet was found within 90 minutes of the assassination itself (i.e., at or before 2:00 pm.

3. Jacqueiline Kennedy, four Secret Service agents, and Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh left the hospital in an ambulance with JFK's body, heading for the airport at 2:04.

4. JFK's body was loaded onto the plane at 2:18.

5. The plane lifted off at 2:47.

6. The plane carrying JFK's body touched down at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 5:58pm Eastern time (4:48 pm Dallas time).

I guess I don't have the sort of piercing intelligence it takes to be a conspiracy theorist, because I don't see how "on or before 2pm" is somehow "AFTER" 4:48pm.

Or even 2:04pm -- not only was the bullet not found "AFTER Kennedy's body was already in Washington", it was found while JFK's body was still in the freaking Dallas hospital.

But while you're giving your explanations for your amazing claims, perhaps you can also explain how it makes any bloody difference, conspiracy-wise, whether the bullet was found before or after JFK's body was in any particular place.

Read up on the circumstances that FOLLOWED the assassination and you will see why so many of us continue to scream conspiracy.

Um, because you make things up as you go along, or rely on the writings of people who do?

If you investigate the subject a little deeper, and if you care about the truth, I think you might come to the same conclusion.

Been there, done that, have very much *NOT* come to have any greater faith in the theories, reliability, or mental faculties of the conspiracy theorists. Quite the contrary, in fact.

After years of following this stuff and researching it, I have in fact come to the conclusion that if a conspiracy theorist says that grass is green, it's quite likely that it was instead blue. They can't even get the easy stuff right (e.g. is 2pm before or after 4:48p?), much less the more complicated aspects of the issue.

You might start with "Best Evidence" by James Lifton. That is, if you are really interested in what really happened.

ROFL! Ooookay....

This is, of course, the same book in which Mr. Lifton puts forth his theory that "the President's body was inside the Dallas casket when it was put aboard Air Force One at 2:18, but it was no longer inside the casket at 2:47, as the plane rolled down the runway."

Yes, that's right, Lifton postulates an elaborate shell game involving rapid exchanges of coffins, a decoy ambulance, and a switched body shroud. He contends that once the body was stolen from under the noses of Jackie Kennedy and Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh (who, as official escort of the dead President, never left the coffin unless Jackie was with it), a covert team of surgeons surgically altered the corpse to "fake" evidence of rearward bullet entry, then managed to swap it back (um, *when*?) for the decoy casket before the autopsy a few hours later at Bethesda, which took place immediately upon arrival. This despite the fact that the casket was never left unattended at any point.

In other words, Lifton is insane.

He doesn't want to face the actual medical evidence, so he comes up with a paranoid and ridiculous massive conspiracy which shows how the medical evidence was "faked". Uh huh...

He bases this ludicrous nutball fantasy on minor nitpicks like statements from bit players at Bethesda (orderlies, etc.) which can be read to indicate that JFK's body arrived in a body bag instead of wrapped in sheets (actually, the coffin was plastic-lined) and in a different coffin (yes, that's right, the conspirators managed to swap/steal the original coffin for an identical decoy in an operation beyond the abilites of the Impossible Mission team, yet they somehow were stupid enough to accidentally put the altered body back into the *wrong* coffin before they swapped it back without any of the hundreds of people at Bethesda noticing...)

At the same time, he ignores clear and compelling evidence that JFK's coffin was attended and watched over every moment during its travels, establishing a clear "chain of evidence" for the body, as well as various statements and evidence clearly invalidating his scenario.

In short, it's par for the course for the conspiracy whackos -- build mountains from molehills, then pretend the actual mountain of contrary evidence doesn't even exist. (Or invent elaborate conspiracies to explain how the real evidence is actually only "faked" evidence.)

"Lifton gets away with crap, and no one challenges him. I could assemble a whole team of the best surgeons in the country and still not be able to accomplish in a day what Lifton says was done in a few hours."
-- Forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, one of the most vocal medical critics of the Warren Commission

"In 1967, Lifton had a theory of fake trees, that a construction company put in fake scenery and so forth in Dealey Plaza, and then after the shooting, it was removed. He thought it helped the assassins get close for the shooting and also confused the people... Lifton is a beast... [does] gross plundering. It's almost as though he is a religious convert, and he is proselytizing for a false religion"
-- Historian and assassination researcher Professor David Wrone

"Lifton is just bizarre... On a scale of one to ten, his theory is a zero."
-- Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee

"[We] rejected it as illogical, even absurd. [...] preposterous notion [...] at best, the book is a monument to one man's ingenuity. At worst, it is an appalling hoax."
-- Richard Billings, editorial director of the House Select Committee

[Ichneumon]

you will see the image of a man standing inside the memorial. Why is he in there

Because people were all over the plaza so they could watch the President go by...

[DoughtyOne]

Well I can't explain autopsy photos or anything else. I can only say what it looks like on that film. In a few frames it appears to me a skin flap is blown open in his facial area. Next time you observe that film, see if you can what I'm talking about.

Thanks for the comments.

[HitmanLV]

Ihave seen this many times too, and clearly, the film shows a shot from behind, as evidenced by the head snapping back as the bullet comes out of the front of his head.

Probably the most amazing thing about the cult of kennedy conspiracy is how the proponents sometimes loose sight of the obvious. I read something yesterday that insisited it was 'impossible' for the assasin to get off his shots and go down four floors to a soda machine in about 80 seconds.

In fact, 80 seconds, to anyone who bothers to pay attention for 80 seconds, is plenty of time to do a lot of things. They insist with wide eyed wonder how something like that could be possible, when it's obvious to anyone in average health that they could come down 4 flights of stairs and walk across a hall to a sode machine in well under 80 seconds and not be notably winded in any respect.

Only 80 seconds, they say!!! Some of my most tender romantic memories lasted about 80 seconds, for example! ;-)

[HitmanLV]

...it doesn't make ANY sense to me that as someone is hit that the head would move TOWARD what hit it.

Sorry about your accident I hope you are well.

That being said, it makes perfect sense to anyone who has studied the matter.

[Ophiucus]

There was, however a significantly deformed bullet, consistent with passage through JFK's neck and Connally's chest/wrist.

Have you ever been involved in the procedure to remove a bullet from a human body? Especially one that has struck bone? Or one that hit or grazed more than one bone?

There is almost nothing left of those bullets original shape. Nothing! A penny ran over by a train has more form than a bullet striking bone.

The "deformed" bullet in your picture looks like it was dug out of a dirt and straw backstop at a firing range. Come to my ER and I'll show you bullets from a body.

[HitmanLV]

Which clearly means that if you believe the Warren Commission's findings, the magic pristine bullet found on the stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, then I have some swamp land to sell you.

You are right in your analysis but wrong in your conclusion.

The person only opined on the nature of the bullet coming from behind, and not on any other matter.

The truth is, the bullet clearly does come from behind and exits out of the front, leaving a pretty big hole in JFK's face.

But that doesn't mean the magic bullet found on the stretecher is legit, or anything else in the Warrens findings are legit. It is a reasonable conclusion to draw from watching the film.

Coming to that conclusion does not mean that one accepts all the conclusions of the Warren report, or the legitimacy of the pristine bullet, at all. I have no idea what makes you think it would.

[HitmanLV]

Well said, and as much is clear to anyone who has watched the film closely.

[HitmanLV]

Thanks - that is clearly and unambiguously a shot from behind.

[Vinnie]

I have seen the Zapruder film a few times. There is no doubt that Kennedy was shot from the rear. None.

The spray out the front of his head is an exit wound.

I haven't noticed his facial distortions before. I'll look for that the next time, if I ever do, watch it.

If there was a second gunman, his only contribution was a blown out piece of concrete in the curb.

I didn't realize the 6.5 mm bullet was 161 grains. Pretty heavy for that caliber. It would have trememdous penetration and could easily go through several people (vis a vis striking Kennedy and Connelly twice ).

[Endeavor]

I agree with your conclusions. I think LBJ made it possible. I believe Oswald was a CIA operative who was a patsy. There's too much of a connection to the New Orleans crowd of Bannister, Ferry, Oswald and Jack Ruby in Dallas. I buy the Billy Sol Estes/LBJ connection.

[Ichneumon]

"The final assessment on Oswald's shooting ability, or lack of it, is left to Carlos Hathcock, a retired gunnery sergeant, who has been described as the most famous sniper in American history. He was credited, while on duty in Vietnam, with 93 confirmed kills. He said he attempted to reconstruct the shooting, incorporating all the elements, height, distance, moving target and time frame, but no matter how many times he or his team attempted it, they could never duplicate Oswald's alleged performance."

Yawn. Let's check Hathcock's actual statement first, shall we?

"I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did."

Note he specifically speaks of what "the Warren Commission said". The Warren Commission was mistaken about how quickly the shots were fired. They thought the shots were fired in an elapsed time of between 4.8 and 5.6 seconds.

The problem with trying to reproduce *that* scenario is that the Warren Commission was wrong. Later analysis of the Zapruder film and other evidence clearly indicates that the three shots occurred over an elapsed time of 8.3 seconds. The first shot was fired, then 3.5 seconds later the second shot was fired, and then 4.8 seconds later the third shot was fired.

Maybe Hathcock had trouble doing the shots in 4.8 seconds, but even middling marksmen could have made them in 8.3 seconds -- and have.

CBS, for example, reconstructed the shooting for a 1975 documentary. Eleven volunteer marksmen took turns firing three bullets at a moving target. None of them had practice with the Carcano's bolt action, as Osald had had almost daily in New Orleans. Yet the average performance was 5.6 seconds, with two out of three hits on the target.

Other reconstructions by other groups have achieved similar results. Hell, *I* could have made those shots. With the 4X scope Oswald was using, JFK was an effective 25 yards away at the time of the shots -- an easy shot with a rifle, especially when braced on boxes as Oswald's rifle was. Furthermore, while it's true the car was moving, it was not moving very fast, and it was moving directly *away* from Oswald, reducing its apparent motion to almost zero. And it helps that shooting from an elevation tends to cause a shot to land high, while the motion of the car would have caused an unlead shot to land low -- each effect would help to cancel the other.

Any conspiracy theorist who claims that the shots were "impossible" or "have never been duplicated" is simply grossly misinformed.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the comments Vinnie.

[Oztrich Boy]

7.2 seconds? The Zapruder film establishes the timeline, and it's 6 SECONDS

First shot at c. frame 161, third shot at frame 313. 152 frames elapse. Divide by the 18.3 f/sec of Zaprider's camera gives 8.3 seconds.

6 SECONDS. One shot every two seconds

NO. The sequence runs load: aim: fire: f.161
(clock starts running)
eject: load: aim: fire: f.224
eject: load: aim: fire: f.313
{clock stopped)
cycles are 3.4 and 4.9 secs

[texasbluebell]

I do know what you're describing. I can't explain any of it any better than you are.

We're all just left to speculate as best we can, because our govt doesn't want to give us a clue.

[Mr. Wright]

That may be - however, the Commission has worked to
identify everyone on the Knoll in the general area of
the Zapruders. How come there is no mention of this
person anywhere at anytime? Nor does the media, or anyone
else even note the individual shown in this photograph!!!!

[Vinnie]

CBS, for example, reconstructed the shooting for a 1975 documentary. Eleven volunteer marksmen took turns firing three bullets at a moving target. None of them had practice with the Carcano's bolt action, as Osald had had almost daily in New Orleans. Yet the average performance was 5.6 seconds, with two out of three hits on the target.

I remember seeing that . I thought it was circa 1970 and said so in a post yesterday.

The shooters duplicated the feat, time and target, from the correct angle, etc.

It was Oswald, alone.

[texasbluebell]

The problem with trying to reproduce *that* scenario is that the Warren Commission was wrong.

The WC wrong about something? Whoa! Watch out now. A forbidden comment.

What else were they wrong about, I wonder...

(I can't answer to the timing and such that you're talking about, others probably will though. But thanks for that info.)

[Ichneumon]

Have you ever been involved in the procedure to remove a bullet from a human body? Especially one that has struck bone? Or one that hit or grazed more than one bone?

No, but Dr. Martin Fackler, president of the International Wound Ballistics Association has -- and most likely far more than you'll ever see -- so I'll defer to his expertise on this matter.

After much study on the matter, he declares to condition of the Parkland hospital bullet to be "entirely consistent" the bullet that caused the wounds of JFK and Gov. Connally. "It is a long bullet and I would expect it to be flattened on the side, just like you had squeezed it in a vice."

There is almost nothing left of those bullets original shape. Nothing! A penny ran over by a train has more form than a bullet striking bone.

Uh huh... Bullet fired through thick layers of wet newspaper (22 inches of penetration):

Bullet fired through a cow-knuckle bone (at 1140 fps) under 4 inches of wet newspaper:

Doesn't look like a penny-on-a-railroad-track to me.

More to the point, Dr. Fackler and Failure Analaysis did tests to determine the actual amount of deformation on Carcano rounds under conditions similar to the JFK shooting.

Results of these and other actual firing tests: A Carcano bullet passing through Kennedy's neck at full velocity (it hit no bone passing through JFK) was not deformed at all after passing through an appropriate amount of goat skin and meat. Another shot at full velocity (which exceeded the case for Connally, the bullet would have lost velocity passing through JFK) at an anesthetized goat striking the rib of the goat had only a slight flattening, similar to CE 399, the not-so-pristine bullet. Wait, I thought you said that any bullet striking or even grazing bone would have "nothing left" of its original shape"... Hmm.

After passing through JFK's neck and Connally's chest and grazing his rib, the bullet would have a lowered remaining velocity. Tests using a Carcano bullet at a reduced 1100 feet per second (consistent with the expedted velocity loss -- actually best estimates are 900fps) into the wrist of a cadaver resulted in a bullet that was *non-deformed* and was *not flattened in the least*, and had nowhere near the level of damage of CE 399.

The 6.5mm Carcano round is a big, heavy bullet, and it had traversed the thicknesses of *two* bodies before it struck any bone. I don't doubt that you see a lot of fragmented bullets, but I doubt that you see many which have had as much chance to be decelerated before they first contact any.

The "deformed" bullet in your picture looks like it was dug out of a dirt and straw backstop at a firing range. Come to my ER and I'll show you bullets from a body.

I accept your invitation. In which ER do you practice?

[Oztrich Boy]

There was also a book about 10 years ago from the 'lady in red'. She was one of the witnesses

She's a proven liar. her testimomy is worthless.

She told the Warren Commission (and confirmed to numerous interviwers over the years) that she lead the Charge up The Grassy Knoll when she dashed across the street immediately after Kennedy's car passed. "When I ran across the street the first motor cycle that was right behind nearly hit me".

Yet when footage of the incident was shown on TV 10 years ago, she could be clearly seen standing still on the opposite side of the street to the grassy knoll while the entire motorcade right up to the final press bus passed.
Then she starts to follow the mob to the Grassy Knoll.

[Ichneumon]

All the talk of recoil and melons misses the bigger point.

While it's true that the simple momentum of a bullet will tend to push the target in the direction of its motion (although nowhere near as much as most people -- or Hollywood -- imagine, since the bullet may be fast, but it's quite light in comparison to the body it strikes), and while it's true that matter ejected from the site of the exit wound can also propel the body *backwards* towards the direction of the shot, both of these are minor compared to the larger issue.

The larger issue is that when the brain gets destroyed by massive trauma, the body will jerk in a *completely unpredictable* manner due to the effect of the trauma on the remaining brain/spinal/nerve tissues. The direction of JFK's motion after the head shot is almost surely determined primarily by reflexive spasmodic jerking of the body due to the destruction of much of the brain, and as such nothing can be drawn about the angle of the shot from the subsequent motion of the body.

Also note that when you watch the Zapruder film, there seems to be a short but noticeable delay between the moment of the "blood spray" and the moment the head/body begins to actually move backwards, constent with a reflex action and not consistent with imparted momentum (which is imparted instantaneously).

[Maria S]

An outstanding post on your part!

The 2-hour Peter Jennings special debunked many of the conspiracy theories, and concluded that Oswald was the lone shooter. I personally do not care for Peter Jennings, but the presentation was well done, I thought. Especially the computer segments showing various positions along the roadway, etc.

An interesting segment, IMO, discussed the 1991 Oliver Stone movie starring Kevin Costner. In the words of Robert Goldberg, who wrote 'Enemies Within':

"No book or program has done more to promote the JFK conspiracy theory...[than the Oliver Stone movie]. Stone has convinced me that the most powerful historians of the 20th century are filmmakers. It is these images [from the movie] that we remember. Most Americans know of the Kennedy assassination through Oliver Stone's mind and Oliver Stone's images."

Jack Valenti, aide to LBJ said, similarly: "[The movie] was a package of unfathomable lies packaged together with a cinematic artist's great skill that was a blending and a mélange of real photographs and fictional scenes merged together with such skill that you were unable to tell the difference." He was very disdainful of Stone's claims of "dramatic license."

I would hope Barbra Streisand would begin to understand WHY so many people were upset at the "dramatic license" taken with the Reagan movie. And SOMEBODY might suggest to that fat slob, Moore, that he return his oscar for 'Bowling for Columbine.'

One further comment; I think Goldberg’s comment of "Stone has convinced me that the most powerful historians of the 20th century are filmmakers" is right on target. Liberal movie makers are making the majority of historical stuff now...and THEIR twist and delivery of historical figures are all that young people are judging to be the truth.

[THUNDER ROAD]

On the day that Desert Storm began in January of 1991, there was a headline in the news of a young man in Texas who found some information in his deceased Uncles attic having to do with JFK's murder.

I remember seeing this too.
I've been waiting for 12 years now ....
but not another word was ever heard about it.

This was not the first time that someone
has stepped up to say that they had info that would
discredit the Obviously Bogus Warren Report....
and then... would Never be heard from again !

After all of the revelations about that event..
I have been amazed this week by the number of Freepers
that Still maintain that Oswald...was the Lone GunMan !
They will not be convinced otherwise untill.....
Dan Blather , Tom BrokeJaw , or Peter****Jennings..
tell them to !!

.....THUNDER.....

[Ichneumon]

She's a proven liar. her testimomy is worthless. She told the Warren Commission (and confirmed to numerous interviwers over the years) that she lead the Charge up The Grassy Knoll when she dashed across the street immediately after Kennedy's car passed. "When I ran across the street the first motor cycle that was right behind nearly hit me". Yet when footage of the incident was shown on TV 10 years ago, she could be clearly seen standing still on the opposite side of the street to the grassy knoll while the entire motorcade right up to the final press bus passed.

Her name is Jean Hill, and a favorite "witness" of conspiracy theorists. The problem is that she is clearly a "confabulator", one of those people who is either a pathological liar, or more likely unable to separate her own imaginings from reality.

There have been dozens of irreconcilable differences between her version of events and everyone else's (including photographic evidence), and her story keeps changing over time.

One of the most damning is the one you mention, whereby she tells a tale of rushing across the street to chase the "grassy gnoll gunman", and yet photographic evidence (the Zapruder film gets all the attention, but there were *hundreds* of still photos taken by spectators that day) show her doing nothing more than standing and then sitting next to her companion Mary Moorman.

More minor items in her story don't bear so heavily on the actual events, but cast great doubt on her reliability. She claimed that "Just as Mary Moorman started to take a picture we were looking at the president and Jackie in the back seat and they were looking at a little dog between them", and described it as a "white fluffy dog". Needless to say, there was no dog in the car, and when this was pointed out to her she said she was confused by the white roses. The roses were red.

She claimed that as the car passed she leapt to the edge of the street and yelled, "hey, we wnat to take your picture", and JFK turned and was looking at her just as he was shot. The Zapruder film shows Hill never moved or said a word as the President passed, and she was not even looking at him when he was first shot.

Hill claims she heard Jackie shout, "My God, he has been shot!". No one else that day, not even the other occupants of the car, heard Jackie say anything at the time of the shootings.

On the day of the shootings she told the sheriff's department that she saw "someone in plain clothes shooting back..."

Finally, Hill was interviewed within half an hour of the assassination by a local Dallas TV crew. Asked if she saw anybody or anything that drew her attention, she answered simply, "no". And yet over the years her story has changed so much that in 1986 she told Jim Marrs, "I saw a man fire from behind the wooden fence. I saw a puff of smoke and some sort of movement on the grassy knoll where he was." In 1989 she added a "flash of light".

Even her husband made fun of her testimony, and he's probably got a better idea of her reliability than anyone.

And yet, sadly, a great deal of the conspiracy literature (and Oliver Stone's "JFK") is based on her fantasies.

[maestro]

Your# 31 etc.

To this day, I believe Oswald was the only shooter. If there is any cover-up, I would say that it is that the Powers That Be prefer the public to think of Kennedy as a martyr rather than some poor schmuck who was killed by mistake. The irony boggles the mind.

Yep,......If there was a conspiracy, LHO was the world's greatest shooter.

And,.....since LHO was the world's greatest shooter,....his being a bad shot,...is part of the conspiracy!

It gets confusing,....'cause,....everyone can have a 'bad' day on the job.

/sarcasm

[lodwick]

LOL - good job HM.

[lodwick]

Of course, you're a smart, informed person.

[Ophiucus]

Heartland Medical...come anytime.

Besides, cow-knuckle, mostly cartilage, is not the same as rib, scapula, ulna, and radius. Decreased velocity or not - there would be much more significant deformation and fragmentation even with modern jacketed 'cop killers.' Furthermore, Fackler himself has said of using one or two simulated shots that, "A series of shots through a 14 or 15 cm block of tissue simulant or the leg of a 25 kg animal can give enough variation so that, by selective choice of exit wound photographs, one can "prove" any point one wishes." He focused on military jacket rounds and even so, has written much about how bullets "commonly break up after 7 inches" of travel through a body - without hitting bone. Once bone, especially a long bone or high density bone, is struck, with a force to break that bone, the bullet deforms and fragments .

Do not depend too much on Dr. Fackler. He has made a name for himself as a government and defense witness expert. He also has stated under interview, to Chistopher Ruddy, (NewsMax, I believe)that "he is not a pathologist." He is however a prolific publisher for Army ballistic.

Impressive as his credentials are - he has his critics. His Ruby Ridge testimony has been described as "inaccurate, sometimes wild, conclusions, and [he] failed to adequately research the issues involved in the case before he testified. He proposed one scenario that was patently absurd." (Jess Walter in covering Ruby Ridge)In the ABA mock trial of Oswald in 1992, he stated that the bullet that supposedly caused the multiple injuries of Kennedy and Connely with lands and grooves intact, little nose damage, nose, little body buldge, and base deformation visible only at certain angles was "typical" for that type of bullet, trajectory, and damage. Yet, the other experts refuted him with the simple fact that no other bullet of similar path and damage result ever emerged with so little deformity.

I'll go with the bullets I've seen.

[RightWingNut]

We wrote a very interesting book on the subject also. I finished it last night/early this morning.

[Tribune7]

Who killed Kennedy? Freep the poll.

[chudogg]

Why doesnt anyone shut down Dealey Plaza For a weekend, put a fresh corpse in a remote controlled contvertible, and let snipers have at it from every possible angle mentioned to see which way they head matter would explode and which way his body would fall to?

[Ophiucus]

since the bullet may be fast, but it's quite light in comparison to the body it strikes

Sorry, but that is incorrect. In the kinematic mechanism of trauma, it is the square of the velocity that is significant not the mass of the projectile.

The direction of JFK's motion after the head shot is almost surely determined primarily by reflexive spasmodic jerking of the body due to the destruction of much of the brain, and as such nothing can be drawn about the angle of the shot from the subsequent motion of the body.

This explanation was refuted during the Warren inquiry itself. There can be some seizing after the shot, rarely tgat great - but never such that it would interfere with drawing conclusions about where the shots came form when analyzing body motion afterwards. Forensic pathology does exactly that - looks at bullet wounds, body motion if available, and position of the body after the shot to determine where the shot originated.

The idea that this 'neuromuscular event' would overcome the momentum of a bullet shot has long been held as one of the silliest things to come from the Warren commission.

[Oztrich Boy]

In the kinematic mechanism of trauma, it is the square of the velocity that is significant not the mass of the projectile.

That's energy, (a measure of the potential for damage) not momentum, (which causes the movement).

I made a calculation 10 years ago (last time this subject was flavour of the day). IIRC if only 10% of the bullet energy had gone into moving brain tissue foward (as shown on the Zapruder film) that would have given a rearward momentum (from large mass at low velocity) to the skull of FOUR times the previous momentum from the bullet (tiny mass at high velocity).

This agrees with what Zapruder shows - a small forward movement in framw 314, followed by a larger rearward momentum in th3e following frames.

[nonliberal]

You forgot on e crucial piece of evidence supporting the single bullet theory. The entry wound on Connally's back was the length and not the diameter of the bullet. This indicates that the bullet was tumbling end-over-end, thereby capable of doing significantly more damage.

[Graymatter]

http://www.copydesk.co.uk/archive/2003_11_21_index.shtml

I went here and watched the Zapruder film (critical few seconds) enlarged with Windows Media Player. Then went to http://www.jfklancer.com/aphotos.html where the autopsy photos are available.

Here's my two cents. The bullet grazed the side of his head, and it's misleading to speak of entry and exit wounds. It made one explosive wound as it passed just upon or beneath the surface of the skull. And while the "physicists" assure us that hit-from-behind causes backward recoil in the direction of the strike, it looks to me as if he was hit at the side, some matter obeyed the law and went AWAY from the head, and his body followed the rest of his head AWAY from the shot. Head and body went left, brain tissue went right.
If you hit a billiard ball on one side, doesn't it go to the other side? If you drove a billiard ball toward a hard-shelled egg and it grazed the side of the egg, cracking off a section, wouldn't the bulk of the egg go AWAY from the ball that struck it?

[Graymatter]

If you were putting together a conspiracy to kill the leader of the free world, would you enlist a character like Lee Harvey Oswald?
Or would you want decent odds of success?

[lilylangtree]

Heard about that. It's been a while ago but either read or saw on tv that Oswald's body was dug up and DNA taken due to the speculation that he wasn't dead or didn't die when he was shot. Either way, DNA tests show that Oswald's body is the one in the grave.

[Ophiucus]

The energy is also directly related to the force acting upon the head to change it's momentum. The velocity has a much greater significant effect than the mass.

Moving brain tissue forward within the head would never produce a backward motion unless the source of the movement originated in the head - like some sort of weird bomb. The bullet impacting the head imparts motion to the entire head. Hit the head and brain and skull move together in the diretion of the hit.

[Ophiucus]

If you drove a billiard ball toward a hard-shelled egg and it grazed the side of the egg, cracking off a section, wouldn't the bulk of the egg go AWAY from the ball that struck it?

Agreed. A glancing hit by a billard ball would cause the egg to move away at an angle but with a resultant vector in the same direction of the orignal ball - a pool shot that hit on the left side a second ball would make it appear to the right and away from the view of the cue stick. But even with wicked English, you can't hit that ball (or egg in your example) a glancing blow and make it come back to against the cue. Unless you use a bank shot....

The next mess comes with what would a glancing through and through head shot look like if fired from high above and to the rear. Then we get bogged down in the vast discrepancies between the ER doctors and nurses, the official autopsy reports, and the conflicting testimony of the Warren and the later House investigations.

Basically, his head would have been shoved partly forward and to the left with a "downward" angle of rotation. Which could result in some of the Warren testimony to the damage.

[wolficatZ]

 She claimed that "Just as Mary Moorman started to take a picture we were looking at the president and Jackie in the back seat and they were looking at a little dog between them", and described it as a "white fluffy dog". Needless to say, there was no dog in the car, and when this was pointed out to her she said she was confused by the white roses. The roses were red.

 

Jackie also had lavender-white astors (of the chrysanthemum family) and a LAMBCHOP puppet that was given to her at Love Field

 

I have pictures of both of the above. Regardless of whether or not Jean Hill is a credible witness there is too much blatant misinformation around here. One reason I haven't paid much attention to these threads.

[Ophiucus]

Why doesnt anyone shut down Dealey Plaza For a weekend, put a fresh corpse in a remote controlled contvertible, and let snipers have at it from every possible angle mentioned to see which way they head matter would explode and which way his body would fall to?

I would love to see that! But imagine the spectacle...corpse in a new suit and in a Presidential limo...pot shots from everywhere....and just one test isn't enough, need lots of fresh corpses...

Igor! More bodies, please.

[PA Engineer]

Heads-up to PA Freepers. PCN is now running the proceedings of the Cyril Wecht meeting of Forensic Pathologists. I hope they link the proceedings to their site at a later date.

www.jfk.duq.edu

Wecht also had a few words about the Ron Brown "murder" in his opening remarks.

[rightofrush]

Well, Duhhh - The car was going slooowwwwly and the spray wouldn't have gotten that far. Stuff goes out of the exit wound, not the entrance wound. I know that this must sound complicated to someone who believes the Warren report.