Cont: JFK Conspiracy Theories VI: Lyndon Johnson's Revenge

[Stamuel]

Okay, the vast majority of the evidence indicates that the autopsy pathologists lied about their ignorance of the throat wound at the time of the autopsy. Does anybody have any argument about this? My evidence for that has already been stated pages and pages before.

Here are some thoughts I have put together after reading your sources in this thread.

To prove that the autopsy doctors all lied together, you at least need to show that the evidence is inconsistent with the autopsy concluding before the phone call from Bethesda to Perry (that is, the call during which the autopsy doctors learned that the tracheotomy covered a bullet wound). If the evidence is consistent with the autopsy ending first, then there is no reason to think the doctors lied. Their testimony on this point would be consistent with the other evidence.

As it turns out, there is a lot of evidence that supports the doctor’s time line.

First, some things that appear to be supported by all available evidence, and appear to be agreed upon by all sides (correct me if I am wrong):

• The final casket arrived at Bethesda around 2:00 AM.
• The final casket containing JFK left Bethesda between 3:30 AM and 4:00 AM.

Here is some evidence:


The autopsy doctors
Though you reject them all as liars, the autopsy doctors’ testimony still exists.

They all said that they only found out about the throat wound after the autopsy. The testimony of those directly involved is all consistent about this. This supports the claim that they found out about the throat wound after the autopsy.

Further, Humes said the autopsy ended around 11PM and he called Perry Saturday morning. At some point, he said it was 9 or 10 in the morning. If he is correct, the call was well after the end of the autopsy.


Perry and the phone call
Perry gave the earliest estimate of the time of the phone call. Here is his testimony:

Mr. SPECTER - Dr. Perry, did you have occasion to discuss your observations with Comdr. James J. Humes of the Bethesda Naval Hospital?
Dr. PERRY - Yes, sir; I did.
Mr. SPECTER - When did that conversation occur?
Dr. PERRY - My knowledge as to the exact accuracy of it is obviously in doubt. I was under the initial impression that I talked to him on Friday, but I understand it was on Saturday. I didn't recall exactly when.
Mr. SPECTER - Do you have an independent recollection at this moment as to whether it was on Friday or Saturday?
Dr. PERRY - No, sir; I have thought about it again and the events surrounding that weekend were very kaleidoscopic, and I talked with Dr. Humes on two occasions, separated by a very short interval of, I think it was, 30 minutes or an hour or so, it could have been a little longer.

Vague, but he tentatively remembers it as Friday. Friday in Dallas ends at 1AM Bethesda time. Most people would describe 1AM Saturday as “Late Friday night,” so his testimony could be consistent with a call at 2AM. It is hard to say, since he is so unsure and vague. Midnight Dallas (1AM Bethesda) is certainly consistent with his testimony.

This is the earliest anyone said the phone call was, as far as I am aware. Any estimate that puts the end of the autopsy before 1AM Bethesda time is consistent with Perry’s admittedly vague testimony.


Embalming timing
Here is how the autopsy is described in contemporaneous documentation: “UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MR. HAGAN, THE EMBALMING, COSMETICS, RESTORATION (EXTENSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE), DRESSING AND CASKETING WAS COMPLETED BY 4 A.M. ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963.”

That is a lot of work to do, and 3 hours is a reasonable estimate. If the embalming, cosmetics, restoration, dressing, and casketing took 3 hours total, this alone would put the end of the autopsy before 1AM. As we will see later, there is a testimony suggesting that it did take 3 hours.


Hagan’s direct statement
Hagan, of Gawler’s funeral home, stated that “the embalming began shortly after midnight, and concluded about 3 A. M.” This puts the end of the autopsy at shortly after midnight at the latest.

(Hagan had a hard time remembering what went on. He recalled arriving with the casket, but also recalled arriving “no later than 12:30AM.” But the casket arrived at 2AM. His testimony cannot all be correct, as he himself later realized. Nevertheless, he directly testified to the embalming starting shortly after midnight.)


Agent Sibert leaves
FBI Agent James Sibert said he left before midnight. He also said he left at the end of the autopsy. This is how he described the scene as he was leaving the autopsy:

I don't recall much activity, because they were getting things together, Boswell had been making some drawings there. And Humes had his notes and material. And I think it was sort of a summation getting together, the receipt and all that, and the photographs and the packs of film and X-rays.

If we take Sibert at his word, the doctors were not even attending to the body at the time he left. He testified that the doctors were gathering records, completing the final cataloguing, and filling out paperwork after the autopsy. You have tried very hard to dismiss his testimony as irrelevant by saying he just assumed the autopsy was over, but it is much stronger than that. He witnessed them stop working on the body and start working on the concluding paperwork.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Kellerman estimates the times
During Kellerman’s WC testimony, he often that he used estimates of duration, rather than specific memory of the time, to determine when events occurred. Still, he supports an early autopsy end time (and a 2AM end time). At one point he states:

So at the latest, 7:30, they began to work on the autopsy. And, as I said, we left the hospital at 3:56 in the morning. Let's give the undertaker people 2 hours. So they were through at 2 o'clock in the morning. I would judge offhand that they worked on the autopsy angle 4 1/2, 5 hours.

When Specter asked, “about what time, then, did they [the embalming team] complete their work?” Kellerman replied, “They were all through at 3:30.”

If we accept his most confident statement—that the autopsy began by 7:30—and also accept that the autopsy was 4.5 to 5 hours, then the autopsy ended between midnight and 12:30 AM. If we accept his two hour estimate for embalming and his statement that they were through by 3:30AM, then they began at 1:30AM. The autopsy must have ended earlier than that.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Manchester writes a book
This description comes from Manchester’s The Death of a President.

The autopsy team had finished its work, a grueling, three-hour task, interrupted by the arrival of a fragment of skull which had been retrieved on Elm Street and flown east by federal agents.
[…]
The cosmetician then went to work. In Hagan’s words, “He was really under the gun. There were about thirty-five people, led by General Wehle, breathing down our necks. We were worrying about skull leakage, which could be disastrous. We did not know whether the body would be viewed or not.” The application of cosmetics required nearly three hours. It was quite unnecessary, but that was not the undertakers’ fault.

If the autopsy took about the hours, that would put its end at about 10:30PM. If the embalming took almost 3 hours, that would mean it started by 1 AM, probably earlier. That would mean the autopsy had to have ended earlier.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Lipsey
Here is what Lipsey had to say:

So, we watched the autopsy. Once again, my hours are a little fuzzy. The autopsy lasted approximately, if I'm not mistaken, approxiately 3 - 4 hours. After that we stayed in the room. When the men from the funeral home came in, because, by this time when Gen Wehle had come back down, but he was in and out. He was still making a lot of arrangements, but he would come in occasionally for a couple of minutes to let me go out and take a little break. Then the men from the funeral home came in and we sat there while they more or less put him back together and made the cosmetic, made the different cosmetic changes that had to be made on the body.
[…]
The autopsy was Friday night. I remember we left after the autopsy. I was sitting there with Sam. the funeral people put Kennedy back together. That took almost as long as the autopsy. It was sometime in the very early hours of the morning. I've got that documented at home. I guess it was sometime between 3 and 4 in the morning. We finally finished and we put the body back into the hearse. And Jackie Kennedy came down and got into the hearse with the body herself. Still had on the pink suit -- she hadn't changed clothes.

Everything about this supports a midnight end for the autopsy. If the autopsy started between 7 and 8PM and lasted 3 to 4 hours, that puts the end before midnight. If the funeral people took almost as long as the autopsy and they finished between 3 and 4AM, that means they started by about 1AM.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Enough for now
That is a lot of evidence supporting the autopsy doctors. It is hard to conclude they are lying, especially when there is no coherent reason for them to do so. I know you have presented evidence for a different conclusion, but your conclusion requires the evidence is inconsistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy. All this evidence supporting the doctors makes your already difficult task that much more difficult, in a way you have never acknowledged.

 

[MicahJava]

One of the pathologists was pressured by the media to make a statement. He said that the throat wound was an entry wound, but said this before he had seen the GSW in JFK's upper back. Once he saw that GSW he realised he was wrong about the throat wound. Unlike Conspiracy Theorists, this is what REAL investigators and REAL scientists do when they discover evidence that does not fit their opinion... they change their opinion, their don't hand wave the evidence away.

I havean't yet encountered this level of confusion. The Parkland staff didn't claim to see a wound in the back, and when informed they never contradicted anything they said about the appearence of the throat wound.

 

[RoboTimbo]

I havean't yet encountered this level of confusion. The Parkland staff didn't claim to see a wound in the back, and when informed they never contradicted anything they said about the appearence of the throat wound.

How many entrance and exit wounds did they find in the skull?

 

[HSienzant]

Okay, the vast majority of the evidence indicates that the autopsy pathologists lied about their ignorance of the throat wound at the time of the autopsy. Does anybody have any argument about this?

Everyone here has had argument about that with you. You essentially either hand-waved the counter-arguments away, or ignored them and repeated your own. You never addressed the counter-arguments and the counter-evidence. And when stuck for a response, you would vanish for a few days or a week, and come back and change the subject.

My evidence for that has already been stated pages and pages before. [emphasis added]

You're doing it again. Confusing your beliefs with evidence. They are not the same thing.

The testimony of the autopsy doctors is evidence.

Your arguments about what they said, and your interpretations of what they meant are not evidence.

Your arguments are not evidence.
Your interpretations are not evidence.
Your beliefs are not evidence.

You have no evidence.

You have nothing.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

I havean't yet encountered this level of confusion. The Parkland staff didn't claim to see a wound in the back, and when informed they never contradicted anything they said about the appearence of the throat wound.

The wound was said to be entirely compatible with an exit wound, which is what the autopsy said it was.

Mr. SPECTER - And are the findings in the autopsy report consistent with your observations and conclusions concerning the source and nature of the President's wounds?
Dr. PERRY - Yes; they are. I think there are no discrepancies at all. I did not have that information initially, and as a result was somewhat confused about the nature of the wounds, as I noted--I could not tell whether there was one or two bullets, or from whence they came, but the findings of the autopsy report are quite compatible with those findings which I noted at the time that I saw the President.
Mr. SPECTER - And have you noted in the autopsy report the reference to the presence of a wound on the upper right posterior thorax Just above the upper border of the scapula, being 7 by 4 mm. in oval dimension and being located 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below the tip of the right mastoid process?
Dr. PERRY - Yes; I saw that.
Mr. SPECTER - Assuming that was a point of entry of a missile, which parenthetically was the opinion of the three autopsy surgeons, and assuming still further that the missile which struck the President at that spot was a 6.5-mm. jacketed bullet shot from a rifle at a distance of 160 to 250 feet, having a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second, and that upon entering the President's body, the bullet traveled between two strap muscles, through a fascia channel, without violating the pleural cavity, striking the trachea, causing the damage which you testified about being on the interior of the President's throat, and exited from the President's throat in the wound which you have described in the midline of his neck, would your findings and observations as to the nature of the wound on the throat be consistent with the set of facts I just presented to you?
Dr. PERRY - It would be entirely compatible.
Mr. SPECTER - And what is the basis for your conclusion that the situation that I presented to you would be entirely compatible with your observations and findings?
Dr. PERRY - The wound in the throat, although as I noted, I did not examine it minutely, was fairly small in nature, and an undeformed, unexpanded missile exiting at rather high speed would leave very little injury behind, since the majority of its energy was expended after it had left the tissues.
Mr. SPECTER - And would the hole that you observed on the President's throat then be consistent with such an exit wound?
Dr. PERRY - It would. There is no way to determine from my examination as to exactly how accurately I could depict an entrance wound from an exit wound, without ascertaining the entire trajectory. Such a wound could be produced by such a missile.

Dr. Perry said a wound in the back could exit the throat and leave the wound he saw.

We're done here.

Hank

 

[MicahJava]

Here are some thoughts I have put together after reading your sources in this thread.

To prove that the autopsy doctors all lied together, you at least need to show that the evidence is inconsistent with the autopsy concluding before the phone call from Bethesda to Perry (that is, the call during which the autopsy doctors learned that the tracheotomy covered a bullet wound). If the evidence is consistent with the autopsy ending first, then there is no reason to think the doctors lied. Their testimony on this point would be consistent with the other evidence.

As it turns out, there is a lot of evidence that supports the doctor’s time line.

First, some things that appear to be supported by all available evidence, and appear to be agreed upon by all sides (correct me if I am wrong):

• The final casket arrived at Bethesda around 2:00 AM.
• The final casket containing JFK left Bethesda between 3:30 AM and 4:00 AM.

Here is some evidence:


The autopsy doctors
Though you reject them all as liars, the autopsy doctors’ testimony still exists.

They all said that they only found out about the throat wound after the autopsy. The testimony of those directly involved is all consistent about this. This supports the claim that they found out about the throat wound after the autopsy.

Further, Humes said the autopsy ended around 11PM and he called Perry Saturday morning. At some point, he said it was 9 or 10 in the morning. If he is correct, the call was well after the end of the autopsy.


Perry and the phone call
Perry gave the earliest estimate of the time of the phone call. Here is his testimony:



Vague, but he tentatively remembers it as Friday. Friday in Dallas ends at 1AM Bethesda time. Most people would describe 1AM Saturday as “Late Friday night,” so his testimony could be consistent with a call at 2AM. It is hard to say, since he is so unsure and vague. Midnight Dallas (1AM Bethesda) is certainly consistent with his testimony.

This is the earliest anyone said the phone call was, as far as I am aware. Any estimate that puts the end of the autopsy before 1AM Bethesda time is consistent with Perry’s admittedly vague testimony.


Embalming timing
Here is how the autopsy is described in contemporaneous documentation: “UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MR. HAGAN, THE EMBALMING, COSMETICS, RESTORATION (EXTENSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE), DRESSING AND CASKETING WAS COMPLETED BY 4 A.M. ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963.”

That is a lot of work to do, and 3 hours is a reasonable estimate. If the embalming, cosmetics, restoration, dressing, and casketing took 3 hours total, this alone would put the end of the autopsy before 1AM. As we will see later, there is a testimony suggesting that it did take 3 hours.


Hagan’s direct statement
Hagan, of Gawler’s funeral home, stated that “the embalming began shortly after midnight, and concluded about 3 A. M.” This puts the end of the autopsy at shortly after midnight at the latest.

(Hagan had a hard time remembering what went on. He recalled arriving with the casket, but also recalled arriving “no later than 12:30AM.” But the casket arrived at 2AM. His testimony cannot all be correct, as he himself later realized. Nevertheless, he directly testified to the embalming starting shortly after midnight.)


Agent Sibert leaves
FBI Agent James Sibert said he left before midnight. He also said he left at the end of the autopsy. This is how he described the scene as he was leaving the autopsy:



If we take Sibert at his word, the doctors were not even attending to the body at the time he left. He testified that the doctors were gathering records, completing the final cataloguing, and filling out paperwork after the autopsy. You have tried very hard to dismiss his testimony as irrelevant by saying he just assumed the autopsy was over, but it is much stronger than that. He witnessed them stop working on the body and start working on the concluding paperwork.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Kellerman estimates the times
During Kellerman’s WC testimony, he often that he used estimates of duration, rather than specific memory of the time, to determine when events occurred. Still, he supports an early autopsy end time (and a 2AM end time). At one point he states:



When Specter asked, “about what time, then, did they [the embalming team] complete their work?” Kellerman replied, “They were all through at 3:30.”

If we accept his most confident statement—that the autopsy began by 7:30—and also accept that the autopsy was 4.5 to 5 hours, then the autopsy ended between midnight and 12:30 AM. If we accept his two hour estimate for embalming and his statement that they were through by 3:30AM, then they began at 1:30AM. The autopsy must have ended earlier than that.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Manchester writes a book
This description comes from Manchester’s The Death of a President.



If the autopsy took about the hours, that would put its end at about 10:30PM. If the embalming took almost 3 hours, that would mean it started by 1 AM, probably earlier. That would mean the autopsy had to have ended earlier.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Lipsey
Here is what Lipsey had to say:



Everything about this supports a midnight end for the autopsy. If the autopsy started between 7 and 8PM and lasted 3 to 4 hours, that puts the end before midnight. If the funeral people took almost as long as the autopsy and they finished between 3 and 4AM, that means they started by about 1AM.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.


Enough for now
That is a lot of evidence supporting the autopsy doctors. It is hard to conclude they are lying, especially when there is no coherent reason for them to do so. I know you have presented evidence for a different conclusion, but your conclusion requires the evidence is inconsistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy. All this evidence supporting the doctors makes your already difficult task that much more difficult, in a way you have never acknowledged.

I have to leave overnight right now, I will get back to your comment soon.

 

[HSienzant]

One of the pathologists was pressured by the media to make a statement. He said that the throat wound was an entry wound,

You're thinking of Dr. Malcolm Perry in Parkland hospital, one of the doctors who tried to save JFK's life. None of the pathologists who performed the autopsy made any interim statements to the media or anyone else. Humes wrote up the autopsy results on Sunday morning, and it was submitted later that day.

... but said this before he had seen the GSW in JFK's upper back.

That's correct. The Parkland doctors never saw the back wound, nor the rear entry head wound, because they never turned JFK over. They were most concerned - and reasonable so - with the massive head wound. Realistically, they had no chance to save JFK's life, but they had to try.

Once he saw that GSW he realised he was wrong about the throat wound.

Perry never saw the back wound. He was, however, given an opportunity to read the autopsy report, and he affirmed their conclusions were consistent with what he saw in Parkland. His testimony on that is quoted above.

Unlike Conspiracy Theorists, this is what REAL investigators and REAL scientists do when they discover evidence that does not fit their opinion... they change their opinion, their don't hand wave the evidence away.

That's correct.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

I have to leave overnight right now, I will get back to your comment soon.

Of course you do. My post above explains the nature of this overnight trip very well.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12213129&postcount=544

Hank

 

[MicahJava]

Of course you do. My post above explains the nature of this overnight trip very well.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12213129&postcount=544

Hank

It's called having a job.

I dedicate this NSFW song to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0IkZ08M4k4

Not in an insulting way, necessarily. It is a legitimately catchy tune.

 

[RoboTimbo]

I have to leave overnight right now, I will get back to your comment soon.

And you'll be able to answer all those pesky questions you've been running away from all this time? The ones that destroy your arguments so you don't dare answer them?

"Going to work" is a CTist's euphemism for what?

 

[smartcooky]

And you'll be able to answer all those pesky questions you've been running away from all this time? The ones that destroy your arguments so you don't dare answer them?

"Going to work" is a CTist's euphemism for what?

"Running away from hard questions".

At some time in the near future, he will be "back from work" which is also a euphemism... for fringe reset!

 

[BStrong]

You should grasp at this point that I simply do not care about experimental evidence

Also on the noise suppressors:

FIFY.

Quoting someone else that doesn't know what they're talking about doesn't constitute evidence of anything past ignorance.

 

[MicahJava]

Here are some thoughts I have put together after reading your sources in this thread.

To prove that the autopsy doctors all lied together, you at least need to show that the evidence is inconsistent with the autopsy concluding before the phone call from Bethesda to Perry (that is, the call during which the autopsy doctors learned that the tracheotomy covered a bullet wound). If the evidence is consistent with the autopsy ending first, then there is no reason to think the doctors lied. Their testimony on this point would be consistent with the other evidence.

As it turns out, there is a lot of evidence that supports the doctor’s time line.

First, some things that appear to be supported by all available evidence, and appear to be agreed upon by all sides (correct me if I am wrong):

• The final casket arrived at Bethesda around 2:00 AM.

• 
  
  I am not so sure if the Mahogany casket arrived at the hospital at 2 AM.
  
  Remember, Kennedy aide David F. Powers wrote a contemporaneous journal (within November 22 and 23) which said "Around midnight Ken, Larry, and I picked out a coffin for our President". This was cited in William Manchester's book The Death of a President (relevant section here)
  
  Comparing the record, I have found no satisfying way to reconcile the notation "2 A.M." on the Gawler's Funeral Home "First Call Sheet" which records events of November 22-23,1963 with the 11 PM - 12 AM hospital arrival time indicated by Joseph E. Hagan. Above the "CASKET DELIVERY DETAILS" on the same document, it says "Arrangements:-When 11 p.m.". How does the Kennedy aide's casket selection "around midnight" fit into this? Although Tomas Evan Robinson and John Van Hoesen made statements to the HSCA, Lifton, ARRB, etc. that they arrived at the autopsy very early when the examination of the body had started, I tend to go with Joe Hagan who indicated that the Gawler's funeral team arrived around 11:00 PM - 12:00 AM. Joe Hagan, Tom Robinson, and John Van Hoesen have all made statements that they had to wait at least around half an hour until autopsy procedures were completed. Compare that to the statements of FBI agent James Sibert who always swore that he and Franis X. O'Neill departed Bethesda when the Gawler's funeral team arrived. Francis X. O'Neill himself told some very tall tales about staying at Bethesda long enough to witness the reconstruction, embalming, and dressing of Kennedy's body. We'll get to that later.
  
  From Harrison Livingstone's 1993 book Killing The Truth: Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case, here are the relevant parts of his interview with Joseph E. Hagan:
  
  
  (page 728)[...]
  
  Appendix J
  
  [...]
  
  PREPARING THE BODY FOR BURIAL
  
  Joe Hagen: "I had some guy screaming at us the whole time... some air force major... There was a lot of interference with the autopsy, I understand." (Interview of Hagen by Harrison Livingstone and Kathlee Fitzgerald)
  
  The professionals from Gawlers Funeral Home arrived while "they were proceeding with the most mortem... the head, I think the thoracic cavities and all, had been opened... our hearse took the (mahogany) casket out to the Naval Hospital late that evening... we dressed him and rolled the casket right in and put him in it." (Interview of Joe Hagen by Harrison Livingstone and Kathlee Fitzgerald, 8/15/91)
  
  [...]
  
  (page 740-741)[...]
  
  Appendix J
  
  [...]
  
  THE "SHIPPING CASKET" STORY
  
  A document discovered by Patrick Boyles surfaced, which originated at Gawlers Funeral Home in Washington, and was passed around at the 1992 Dallas A.S.K. Conference. The document had a handwritten notation on it which read "Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda."
  
  Joe Hagan, the president of Gawlers, wrote this himself. (Interview with Kathlee Fitzgerald and the author, March 31, 1993.) Hagan explained that the confusion is over semantics. He told me that the use of the term "casket" cannot be confused with what bodies are normally shipped in, such as a Zigler case, an air tray, a combination casket, or a "shipping container" which he said is what the military normally ships a body in. He stated that it would always be called a "container" in that case, and is not considered a casket, nor would it be called a casket.
  
  Hagan went on to say that "The only reason we use that phrase was to identify the casket as a casket and as metal." He said that noone at Gawlers saw the body come out of the casket. nor was anyone from the funeral home there when the body arrived, but came much later, so they had no knowledge of it. He wrote the notation about a shipping casket because this is what he was told the body came in from Dallas. He said that noone would have called it a casket if it had been a shipping container or anything else, and that a casket is only called a casket if it is for viewing. (See Medical Encyclopedia Appendix for witnesses and events regarding the shipping casket.)
  
  
  And here is the ARRB's report of 5/17/1995 and 6/11/1996 interviews with Joe Hagan: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=713
  
  And Tom Robinson: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=711
  
  
  And John Van Hoesen: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=712
  
  Before the HSCA, the only interviews the Gawler's men ever did were with William Manchester for his 1967 book The Death of a President and Jim Bishop's 1968 book The Day Kennedy Was Shot.
  
  Relevant section from The Day Kennedy Was Shot here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12083285&postcount=3041
  
  

  [*]The final casket containing JFK left Bethesda between 3:30 AM and 4:00 AM.

Correct.

Here is some evidence:


The autopsy doctors
Though you reject them all as liars, the autopsy doctors’ testimony still exists.

They all said that they only found out about the throat wound after the autopsy. The testimony of those directly involved is all consistent about this. This supports the claim that they found out about the throat wound after the autopsy.

Further, Humes said the autopsy ended around 11PM and he called Perry Saturday morning. At some point, he said it was 9 or 10 in the morning. If he is correct, the call was well after the end of the autopsy.


Perry and the phone call
Perry gave the earliest estimate of the time of the phone call. Here is his testimony:

Mr. SPECTER - Dr. Perry, did you have occasion to discuss your observations with Comdr. James J. Humes of the Bethesda Naval Hospital?

Dr. PERRY - Yes, sir; I did.

Mr. SPECTER - When did that conversation occur?

Dr. PERRY - My knowledge as to the exact accuracy of it is obviously in doubt. I was under the initial impression that I talked to him on Friday, but I understand it was on Saturday. I didn't recall exactly when.

Mr. SPECTER - Do you have an independent recollection at this moment as to whether it was on Friday or Saturday?

Dr. PERRY - No, sir; I have thought about it again and the events surrounding that weekend were very kaleidoscopic, and I talked with Dr. Humes on two occasions, separated by a very short interval of, I think it was, 30 minutes or an hour or so, it could have been a little longer.

Vague, but he tentatively remembers it as Friday. Friday in Dallas ends at 1AM Bethesda time. Most people would describe 1AM Saturday as “Late Friday night,” so his testimony could be consistent with a call at 2AM. It is hard to say, since he is so unsure and vague. Midnight Dallas (1AM Bethesda) is certainly consistent with his testimony.

This is the earliest anyone said the phone call was, as far as I am aware. Any estimate that puts the end of the autopsy before 1AM Bethesda time is consistent with Perry’s admittedly vague testimony.

Dr. Humes certainly was not talking about a phone call at 2 AM when he told his version of the Perry phone call story (by the way, Perry always described two separate phone calls with Humes, while Humes always reported one).

Dr. Humes gave an approximate 10:30 - 11:00 AM 11/23/1963 time for the Perry phone call, and indicated that he and Boswell indicated that they personally met together at the time of this phone call.

See the relevant section here:

Dr. BADEN. We're talking about also photographs Nos. 13 and 14. Did--in further discussing the exit perforation through the tracheotomy, did you have occasion to explore in the neck area beyond what is in the protocol, beyond what the description was? As to what was injured?

Dr. HUMES. Well, the trachea, I think we described the irregular or jagged wound of the trachea, and then we described a contusion in the apex of the lung and the inferior surface of the dome of the right pleural cavity, and that's one photograph that we were distressed not to find when we first went through and catalogued these photographs, because I distinctly recall going to great lengths to try and get the interior upper portion of the right thorax illuminated-you know the technical difficulties with that, getting the camera positioned and so forth, and what happened to that film, I don't know. There were a couple films that apparently had been exposed to light or whatever and then developed, but we never saw that photograph.

Dr. BADEN. From the time you first examined them, that particular photograph was never seen?

Dr. HUMES. Never available to us, but we thought it coincided very neatly with the path that ultimately we felt that that missile took.

Dr. BADEN. Continuing with the path. There is present in the X-rays Solne Opaque material to the right of the lower cervical spine which has been interpreted as being tiny bullet or bone fragments. Would the track, as you recall, be consistent with the missile striking a transverse process?

Dr. HUMES. Well, I must confess that we didn't make that interpretation at the time. I'm familiar with the writings of Dr. John Lattimer and of some reprints of his articles, and I'd have to go back and restudy it the way he has done. But as you can see from the point of entrance, it wasn't that far lateral. It could conceivably have nicked a--the edge of a transverse process.

...

Dr. HUMES. Laterally to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance is a lacerated wound which I describe for your identification. You may wish to go back and look and add some corrections and whatever to this note. There's another fact of this. Having completed the examination, others might he interested in this--

Dr. BADEN. Yes. We're in session, Joe.

Dr. HUMES. Having completed the examination and remaining to assist the morticians in the preparation of the body, we did not leave the autopsy room until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. It was clearly obvious that a committee could not write the report. I had another commitment for that morning, a little later, a religious commitment with one of my children. And so I went home and took care of that, slept far several hours until about 6 in the evening of the day after, and then sat down and wrote the report that's sitting before you now myself, my own version of it. without any input other than the discussions that we thought that we had had, Dr. Boswell, Dr. Finck and myself. I then returned that morning and looked at what I had written--now wait, I'm a day ahead of myself---Saturday morning we discussed--

Dr. BOSWELL. Saturday morning we got together and we called Dallas.

Dr. HUMES. We called Dallas. See, we were at a loss because we hadn't appreciated the exit wound in the neck, we had been-- I have to go back a little bit. I think for your edification. There were four times as many people in the room most of the time as there are in this room at this moment, including the physician to the President, the Surgeon General of the Navy, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical Center, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical School, the Army, Navy, and Air Force aides to the President of the United States at one time or another, the Secret Service, the FBI and countless nondescript people who were unknown to me. Mistake No. 1. So, there was considerable confusion. So we went home. I took care of this obligation that I had. To refresh my mind, we met together around noon on Saturday, 11 in the morning, perhaps 10:30, something like that and---

Dr. BADEN. Now this is the day after?

Dr. HUMES. The day after, within 6 or 8 hours of having completed the examination, assisting Waller's and so forth for the preparation of the President's remains. We got together and discussed our problem. We said we've got to talk to the people in Dallas We should have talked to them the night before, but there was no way we could get out of the room. You'd have to understand that situation, that hysterical situation that existed. How we kept our wits about us as well as we did is amazing to me. I don't know how we managed as poorly or as well as we did under the circumstances. So I called Dr. Perry. Took me a little while to reach him. We had a very nice conversation on the phone in which he described a missile wound, what he interpreted as a missile wound, in the midline of the neck through which he had created a very quick emergency, as you can see from the photographs, tracheotomy incision effect destroying its value to us and obscuring it very gorgeously for us. Well, of course, the minute he said that to me, lights went on, and we said ah, we have some place for our missile to have gone. And then, of course, I asked him, much to my amazement, had he or any other physician in attendance upon the President, examined the back of the patient, his neck, or his shoulder. They said no, the patient had never been moved from his back while they were administering to him. So, the confusion that existed from some of his comments and the comments of other standby people in the emergency room in Dallas had been in the news media and elsewhere, so that added to the confusion. So, following that, and that discussion, and we having a meeting of minds as to generally what was necessary to be accomplished, and being informed by the various people in anthority that our gross report should be delivered to the White House physician no later than Sunday evening, the next day, 24 hours later, or not quite 24 hours later. Not having slept for about 48 hours, I went home and rested from noon until 8 or 10 that evening, Saturday evening, and then I sat down in front of other notes on which I had made minor comments, handwritten notes. I wrote the report which is present here. Now we also have here--and since it's in the record I want to comment about it some comments that I destroyed, some notes related to this, by burning in the fireplace of my home, and that is true. However, nothing that was destroyed is not present in this write-up. Now, why did I do that? It's interesting, and I've not spoken of this in public. Not too long here of this, I had had the experience of serving as an escort officer for some foreign physicians from foreign navies, who were being entertained and given a course of instruction in the United States. We had 20 or 30 of these chaps, and they used to come through every year or two, and I often was escort officer for them. They spent 5 weeks in Washington or 5 weeks in the field, then we went various places. We went to submarine bases and Marine Corps installations and naval training centers to teach them how physicians function in the American Navy. One of the places to which I happened to take them--and we tried to teach them a little Americana--I took them to Greenfield Village, which, as many of you know, Henry Ford set up adjacent to his former home in suburban Detroit, Dearborn. And in that location is a courthouse in which President Lincoln used to hold forth when he was riding the circuit, and these men were very impressed with that, and they knew who President Lincoln was and were impressed with his courthouse and many other things in Greenfield Village. But what I was amazed to find there, because I personally did not know it was there until I made that visit, was the chair in which President Lincoln sat when he was assassinated. Somehow or other they got that chair out of Ford's Theatre, and Henry Ford got it into Greenfield Village, and it's sitting in this courthouse. Now the back of that chair is stained with a dark substance, and there's much discussion to this day as to whether that stain represents the blood of the deceased President or whether it is Macassar. I don't know if you all remember what Macassar is. When people our age were young and you'd visit yoar grandmother, on the back of the sofa there were lovely lace doilies in the homes of many people. And if you recall what I'm speaking of--they were on the sofas and reclining chairs--and those lace doilies bear the name antimacassar. You could go to a store in this country and buy an anti macassar. They don't exist any more. And Macassar was a hair dressing that gentlemen wore in those days to keep their hair in place. And these officers were appalled that the American people would wish to have an object stained with the blood of the President on public display. And I was--it kind of bothered me a little bit-it still does, to this day. And here I was, now in the possession of a number of pieces of paper, some of which unavoidably, and in the confusion which I described to you earlier, were stained in part with the blood of our deceased President. And I knew that I would give the record over to some person or persons in authority, and I felt that these pieces of paper were inappropriate to be turned over to anyone, and it was for that reason and for that reason only, that, having transcribed those notes onto the pieces of paper that are before you, I destroyed those pieces of paper. I think I'd do the same thing tomorrow. I had a similar problem, because I felt they would fail into the hands of some sensation seeker.

And an 8:00 - 9:00 AM estimate for his 2/13/1996 ARRB interview:

Q. During the course of the autopsy--

A. Let me interrupt there. May I?

Q. Sure.

A. My problem is, very simply stated, we had an entrance wound high in the posterior back above the scapula. We didn't know where the exit wound was at that point. I'd be the first one to admit it. We knew in general in the past that we should have been more prescient than we were, I must confess, because when we removed the breast plate and examined the thoracic cavity, we saw a contusion on the upper lobe of the lung. There was no defect in the pleura anyplace. So it's obvious that the missile had gone over that top of the lung.
Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to go out from the neck.
It was the only place it could go, after it was not found anywhere in the X-rays. So early the next morning, I called Parkland Hospital and talked with Malcolm Perry, I guess it was. And he said, Oh, yeah, there was a wound right in the middle of the neck by the tie, and we used that for the tracheotomy. Well, they obliterated, literally obliterated--when we went back to the photographs, we thought we might have seen some indication of the edge of that wound in the gaping skin where the--but it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to go slashing open the neck. What would we learn? Nothing, you know. So I didn't--I don't know if anybody said don't do this or don't do that. I wouldn't have done it no matter what anybody said. That was not important. I mean, that's--

Q. Do you know what the standard autopsy protocol is for gunshot wounds and autopsy of the neck?

A. Well, no. I haven't seen that in--what you say, standard, I mean, many times if you have a track of a missile, it's helpful to take a long probe and put it in the position. It can tell you a lot of things. If you know where the point of entrance and the point of exit are, it's duck soup. But for me to start probing around in this man's neck, all I would make was false passages. There wouldn't be any track that I could put a probe through or anything of that nature. It just doesn't work that way.

Q. Was any probe used at all to track the path--

A. I don't recall that there was. There might have been some abortive efforts superficially in the back of the neck, but no.
And if there's a standard protocol, I don't know where you'd find it, to tell you the truth.

...

Q. Dr. Humes, I'd like to go through the events as they occurred, as best you can recollect them, on November 26th, starting from--

A. 26th?

Q. Excuse me. November 22nd, starting in the afternoon. The first question I'd have for you would be whether you heard from anyone prior to the time the autopsy began about the nature of the wounds that President Kennedy had suffered.

A. Not at all.

Q. Are you familiar with the name of Robert Livingston, Dr. Robert Livingston?

A. Is this him? No, that's Harry Livingstone. No, I'm not.

Q. I'd like to show you a transcript of some testimony that he offered in the case of Crenshaw v. Sutherland?

A. May I ask who is Dr. Livingston?

Q. Yes.

A. Not the guy in the jungle.

Q. According to "Who's Who in America," Robert Livingston is a neuroscientist who received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University, and he was a resident at Stanford Hospital in San Francisco. In 1963, he was the chief of the Neurobiology Lab at the National Institute of Mental Health.

A. Okay.

Q. Does that help refresh your recollection of who Dr. Livingston is?

A. I don't know him from Adam, personally. I never heard of him before this minute, but I don't doubt his qualifications or whatever.

Q. I'd like you to take a moment, if you would, and read the deposition from page 23, line 1, to page 26, line 16.

You should also feel free to read any other part of the deposition that you'd like.

A. Now, where?

Q. Page 23, line 1. This is in microscript.

A. Page 22--okay. I see it now. Okay.
[Pause.]
BY MR. GUNN:
Q. For the record, the exhibit number is No. 24.

A. Well, this is ridiculous. I was at home at this time. He never talked to me, period. Absolutely never did talk to me. I don't need to read any further, to tell you the truth. I mean, I don't know what he's talking about. I was at home helping my wife prepare for a social event that night, and our first knowledge of the death of the President was when our children came home from school on the school bus, came in running, yelling, all screaming, of course, "The President was shot." And I couldn't even remember where the President was, to tell you the truth, at that time. But I never talked to this person.

Q. Could you complete through page 26, line 16, please?
A. I get confused. It stops and goes over to another...

Q. 24, 25, 26.

A. It doesn't follow, sir. It doesn't follow.

Q. 23.

A. I see.

Q. 24.

A. Well, this doesn't follow this. It makes no sense. It's a nonsense. I don't mean it frivolously.

Q. At this point it says--there is an objection, calls for speculation, then there's some colloquy, and it's back to--

A. What? All I see is the word "speculation"--oh, somebody objects--

Q. "Objection, calls for speculation."

A. Oh, okay.

Q. The passage between the two pages.

A. Okay. I didn't understand that. This is fantasy. Pure fantasy. I don't know where this guy was or where he's coming from. He was concerned about the autopsy, he called me and talked to me about it? He never talked to me. I mean, I'll read it, but I don't know what good it's going to do you.
Never happened. That's all I can tell you. If I did, I mean, I developed amnesia of some kind or other. But a long conversation like this at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, absolutely, categorically did not occur.

Q. Just so the record is clear here, you are saying that--would it be fair to say that you're saying that Dr. Livingston never called you on the 22nd--

A. To my recollection, he never called me. The only person, outside of the people right there on the scene, I spoke to was Bruce Smith. Bruce Smith, a very dear friend, close friend of mine, was the Deputy Director-Navy at the AFIP at that time. He called and offered the services of the AFIP, anybody I needed, which was very logical. I had been stationed at the AFIP. You know, it was home to me. It was a very cordial conversation. "Bruce," I said, "Thanks a lot. Let me see what the problem is, and if I need any help, I'll call you back." When I saw what the problem was, I needed a ballistics person. And I called Bruce back. I said, "Who do you have that's in ballistics?" He said, well, Colonel Finck just got back from Panama, where he'd been unscrambling some who-shot-whom between the Americans and the Panamanians, one of the typical--which was familiar to me because I served for a couple years in Panama during a revolution. So I was very familiar with that. I said, "Well, that sounds great."
I welcomed the assistance of Dr. Finck. That is absolutely the only person that I spoke to outside of that building that day. Now, whether he talked to somebody else, I can't--it could be. He could have talked to J or he could have talked to any number of people in our department. We had a big department, you know, but I did not speak with him.

...

[color]Q. When is the first time you had a conversation with anyone outside of people in the autopsy room regarding the nature of the President's wounds?

A. The next morning when I called Malcolm Perry.

Q. Approximately--

A. I'm pretty sure that's who I spoke to. I know it is.

Q. Approximately what time did you speak to Dr. Perry?

A. I think 8 or 9 o'clock on Saturday morning.

Q. Were you aware of any telephone calls being made from the autopsy room during the time of the autopsy?

A. Well, you see, that's possible. Certainly not by me, but we had a large defect in the side of--in the right side of the President's skull, and there was dialogue back and forth between somebody- -I don't know whether the FBI or Secret Service-- that fragments of bone had been picked up on the street. And there was conversation back and forth between--I guess they were Secret Service people. I had no idea, to tell you the truth. And they were going to be sent to us, which was fine because we needed to close the defect if we could. It didn't turn out to be enough to totally close the defect. We did other things to accomplish that. But your specific question, if these phone conversations were going on, I was not directing them, I was not involved in them, and really it wasn't my problem.

Q. Was there a telephone in the autopsy room?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you recall whether anyone was stationed at the telephone during the course--

A. No, no. If there was, I didn't have anything to do with it.

Q. Did you make any attempts to call anyone in Dallas prior to the completion of the autopsy?

A. No.

Q. Were you aware of any other kinds of communications, in addition to telephone calls, between Bethesda Hospital and Dallas regarding wounds of the body?

A. No.

Q. In addition to the call that you had with Dr. Perry, did you speak with any other person who had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination regarding the nature of the President's wounds?

A. Contemporaneously at that time?

Q. Thank you. Let me try the question again. Prior to the time that you had completed the autopsy protocol, did you speak with any other doctor--

A. No.

Q. --or law enforcement official about the nature of the wounds on President Kennedy's body?

A. I did not.

Q. Dr. Perry is the only one, then, prior to the completion--

A. Right.

Q. --of the autopsy protocol?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see any written materials prior to the time that you completed the autopsy protocol that discussed or described events in Dallas?

A. No.

Q. In the autopsy protocol, there is reference to information that happened in Dallas. Do you recall how you came to have that information?

A. I'd have to know--

Q. I'll show you the autopsy protocol.

A. Yes. I can't recall.

Q. Just start with the first two paragraphs of the autopsy protocol.

MR. GUNN: Dr. Humes is now examining Exhibit 3.

[Pause.]

THE WITNESS: Yes, this makes reference to the local newspapers, which is the source, plus I may have had the television on sometime on Saturday. I'm not sure. I was busy doing a lot of things. I can't tell you for sure. I had no personal knowledge. I had to get it secondhand, whatever it was. It was not my job. It was not my responsibility in the first place.[/color]

...

Q. Did you consider the autopsy to be a medical-legal autopsy?

A. Yes. Oh, sure.

Q. And there was a gunshot wound to the neck, wasn't there?

A. Well, you'd better clarify that. There was a big gaping tracheotomy wound in the anterior neck. I learned later that there had been a gunshot wound in that location, but I didn't know it. That was 99 percent of my problem. There was a bullet wound in the back above the scapula, like I mentioned earlier, and there was a wound of entrance in the back of the skull and a wound of exit in the skull. Those were the wounds.

...

A. Well, we looked at this wound in the upper part of his neck, and we made a customary Y-shaped incision to do the rest of the autopsy and removed the breast plate, which was standard operating procedure, and examined the inside of the thorax. And that's when we saw the contusion of the dome of the upper lobe of the right lung, and we wondered, Where's the bullet? You know. Should have called Dallas right then and there. It would have saved me a lot of worry and grief for several hours, because X-rays hadn't found it for us. Like it could have been in his thigh or it could have been in his buttock. It could have been any damn place. We don't know where it went. It was obvious after we talked to the doctors the next morning where it went. It went out. That's why we couldn't find it. And we weren't going to spend the rest of the night there, you know.
Meantime, George Burkley is telling me, you know, the family wants to get out of here sometime tonight. Then we proceeded with the dissection of the lungs, heart, and abdominal contents and so forth.

...

Q. During the time that you were performing the autopsy, did you ever identify what you took to be the margin of a wound in the area of the trach incision?

A. No.

...

Q. During the course of the deposition, we have talked three photographs that you had had some understanding existed and that you did not see here today. I'd like to ask you a question about another possible photograph or X-ray to see if you have any recollection of it. Do you recall any photograph or X-ray that was taken with a probe inserted into the posterior thorax?

A. No, absolutely not. I do not have a recollection of such.

Embalming timing
Here is how the autopsy is described in contemporaneous documentation: “UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MR. HAGAN, THE EMBALMING, COSMETICS, RESTORATION (EXTENSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE), DRESSING AND CASKETING WAS COMPLETED BY 4 A.M. ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963.”

That is a lot of work to do, and 3 hours is a reasonable estimate. If the embalming, cosmetics, restoration, dressing, and casketing took 3 hours total, this alone would put the end of the autopsy before 1AM. As we will see later, there is a testimony suggesting that it did take 3 hours.

Sibert and O'Neill had to have left by then. It takes at least 45 minutes to drive to the FBI lab, and FBI lab firearm expert Robert Fraier wrote in this report that the two large fragments recovered from the autopsy had been personally delivered by Sibert and O'Neill at 1:45 AM: https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FrazierSpeaks/Figure1.jpg

And at 2:00 AM a teletype was sent describing the autopsy findings as summarized by Sibert and O'Neill: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=680

According to Google Maps, it takes at least 45 minutes at night to drive from the former Bethesda Naval Hospital to the FBI crime lab. Now there's the unknown element of how much time would be spent walking, waiting, etc.


[/quote]Hagan’s direct statement
Hagan, of Gawler’s funeral home, stated that “the embalming began shortly after midnight, and concluded about 3 A. M.” This puts the end of the autopsy at shortly after midnight at the latest.

(Hagan had a hard time remembering what went on. He recalled arriving with the casket, but also recalled arriving “no later than 12:30AM.” But the casket arrived at 2AM. His testimony cannot all be correct, as he himself later realized. Nevertheless, he directly testified to the embalming starting shortly after midnight.)


Agent Sibert leaves
FBI Agent James Sibert said he left before midnight. He also said he left at the end of the autopsy. This is how he described the scene as he was leaving the autopsy:



If we take Sibert at his word, the doctors were not even attending to the body at the time he left. He testified that the doctors were gathering records, completing the final cataloguing, and filling out paperwork after the autopsy. You have tried very hard to dismiss his testimony as irrelevant by saying he just assumed the autopsy was over, but it is much stronger than that. He witnessed them stop working on the body and start working on the concluding paperwork.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.[/quote]

Yes, Sibert did witness the autopsy pathologists leave the room (by the way, what was up with Humes saying "I never left the room" to the HSCA?), perhaps to make a phone call?

I want to bring your attention to what Francis X. O'Neill told the HSCA and ARRB. We know from the 1:45 AM Robert Frazier document and the 2:00 AM teletype that they couldn't have left the autopsy much later than midnight, because the trip is like an hour away.

So O'Neill could not be telling the truth when he told the HSCA "I did not discuss any autopsy procedures with the embalmers. I last saw the body just prior to the dressing, after the morticians were through.":https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=628#relPageId=8&tab=page

Or when he told the ARRB that he saw the Gawler's funeral team reconstruct the body until it was in "good shape", embalming, dressing and casketing, speaking as if he had a clear recollection of this event: https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/medical_testimony/pdf/Oneill_9-12-97.pdf

Since it took at least 3:30 AM to get everything ready, with personnel reminding them to hurry up, it must have taken longer than 1:00 AM to get to this stage of the restoration work by Gawler's funeral team.

Kellerman estimates the times
During Kellerman’s WC testimony, he often that he used estimates of duration, rather than specific memory of the time, to determine when events occurred. Still, he supports an early autopsy end time (and a 2AM end time). At one point he states:



When Specter asked, “about what time, then, did they [the embalming team] complete their work?” Kellerman replied, “They were all through at 3:30.”

If we accept his most confident statement—that the autopsy began by 7:30—and also accept that the autopsy was 4.5 to 5 hours, then the autopsy ended between midnight and 12:30 AM. If we accept his two hour estimate for embalming and his statement that they were through by 3:30AM, then they began at 1:30AM. The autopsy must have ended earlier than that.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.

I want to point out the unexplained "2:00 - 2:45 AM" information.

1. 11/30/1963 statement of Secret Service agent Clinton J. Hill
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0371a.htm

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=758&tab=page

The President's body was taken to the morgue at the hospital, accompanied by ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, and Admiral Burkley, for an autopsy. SA Landis and I secured the 17th Floor of the hospital and remained there with Mrs. Kennedy. We established a communications system with the White House and handled all telephone calls both incoming and outgoing, screening each and every call. Any person attempting to reach the 17th Floor was also screened.

At approximately 2:45 a.m., November 23, I was requested by ASAIC Kellerman to come to the morgue to once again view the body. When I arrived the autopsy had been completed and ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, General McHugh and I viewed the wounds. I observed a wound about six inches down from the neckline on the back just to the right of the spinal column. I observed another wound on the right rear portion of the skull. Attendants of the Joseph Gawler Mortuary were at this time preparing the body for placement in the casket. A new casket had been obtained from Gawler Mortuary in which the body was to be placed.

I went back to the 17th Floor of the hospital at approximately 3:10 a.m. The President's body was taken from the U.S. Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, at 3:56 a.m., accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy, in the rear of a U.S. Navy ambulance driven by SA Greer. ASAIC Kellerman rode in the right front seat. I rode in the right front seat of a White House limousine immediately behind the ambulance. The motorcade was accompanied by motorcycle police and arrived at the White House at 4:24 a.m. The casket was taken immediately to the East Room and placed in the center of the room on a catephalt.

2. 11/29/1963 Statement of Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0371a.htm

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/sa-kelle.htm

Mrs. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and General McHugh sat in the rear of the ambulance- SAs Greer, Landis and myself with Dr. Burkley rode in the front to Bethesda, with a police escort. The body was immediately taken to the morgue and the family was assigned rooms in the Towers of the Center. Hill and Landis remained with Mrs. Kennedy in her quarters and William Greer and I remained in the morgue and viewed the autopsy examinations which were performed by Vice Admiral Gallway, Commanding Officer, NNMC, Chief Pathologist Cdr. James Humes, Lt. Col. Pierre A. Finck who is Chief, Military Environmental Pathology Division and Chief of Wound Ballistics, Pathology Branch, and J. Thornton Boswell, Cdr. Medical Corps, USN, together with the Naval Medical Staff. SA O'Leary was also in the morgue briefly. Agents O'Neill and Siebert were present.

During the night Joseph Cawlers Sons, Inc., funeral directors, were notified by Robert Kennedy and Sargent Shriver and a new coffin was obtained. After the completion of the autopsy and before the embalming I summoned SA Hill down to the morgue to view the body and to witness the damage of the gunshot wounds. The embalming was performed after the autopsy by the staff of Joseph Gawlers.

Prior to our departure from the Naval Hospital I received all film, x-rays, that were used during this autopsy, and upon arrival at the White House I turned them over to SAIC Bouck.

3. The Day Kennedy Was Shot by Jim Bishop 1968 (posted above)

4. The 2 AM casket delivery notation on the Gawler's "First Call Sheet"

5. Roy Kellerman's Warren Commission testimony (you posted that)

Manchester writes a book
This description comes from Manchester’s The Death of a President.

The autopsy team had finished its work, a grueling, three-hour task, interrupted by the arrival of a fragment of skull which had been retrieved on Elm Street and flown east by federal agents.
[…]
The cosmetician then went to work. In Hagan’s words, “He was really under the gun. There were about thirty-five people, led by General Wehle, breathing down our necks. We were worrying about skull leakage, which could be disastrous. We did not know whether the body would be viewed or not.” The application of cosmetics required nearly three hours. It was quite unnecessary, but that was not the undertakers’ fault.



If the autopsy took about the hours, that would put its end at about 10:30PM. If the embalming took almost 3 hours, that would mean it started by 1 AM, probably earlier. That would mean the autopsy had to have ended earlier.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.

Did you forget the line "Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors who had been in Trauma Room No. 1."?

BTW you should also probably read these:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11931229&postcount=956

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11931291&postcount=962

 

[Steve]

I am not so sure if the Mahogany casket arrived at the hospital at 2 AM.

Remember, Kennedy aide David F. Powers wrote a contemporaneous journal (within November 22 and 23) which said "Around midnight Ken, Larry, and I picked out a coffin for our President". This was cited in William Manchester's book The Death of a President (relevant section here)

Comparing the record, I have found no satisfying way to reconcile the notation "2 A.M." on the Gawler's Funeral Home "First Call Sheet" which records events of November 22-23,1963 with the 11 PM - 12 AM hospital arrival time indicated by Joseph E. Hagan. Above the "CASKET DELIVERY DETAILS" on the same document, it says "Arrangements:-When 11 p.m.". How does the Kennedy aide's casket selection "around midnight" fit into this? Although Tomas Evan Robinson and John Van Hoesen made statements to the HSCA, Lifton, ARRB, etc. that they arrived at the autopsy very early when the examination of the body had started, I tend to go with Joe Hagan who indicated that the Gawler's funeral team arrived around 11:00 PM - 12:00 AM. Joe Hagan, Tom Robinson, and John Van Hoesen have all made statements that they had to wait at least around half an hour until autopsy procedures were completed. Compare that to the statements of FBI agent James Sibert who always swore that he and Franis X. O'Neill departed Bethesda when the Gawler's funeral team arrived. Francis X. O'Neill himself told some very tall tales about staying at Bethesda long enough to witness the reconstruction, embalming, and dressing of Kennedy's body. We'll get to that later.

From Harrison Livingstone's 1993 book Killing The Truth: Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case, here are the relevant parts of his interview with Joseph E. Hagan:

(page 728)[...]

Appendix J

[...]

PREPARING THE BODY FOR BURIAL

Joe Hagen: "I had some guy screaming at us the whole time... some air force major... There was a lot of interference with the autopsy, I understand." (Interview of Hagen by Harrison Livingstone and Kathlee Fitzgerald)

The professionals from Gawlers Funeral Home arrived while "they were proceeding with the most mortem... the head, I think the thoracic cavities and all, had been opened... our hearse took the (mahogany) casket out to the Naval Hospital late that evening... we dressed him and rolled the casket right in and put him in it." (Interview of Joe Hagen by Harrison Livingstone and Kathlee Fitzgerald, 8/15/91)

[...]

(page 740-741)[...]

Appendix J

[...]

THE "SHIPPING CASKET" STORY

A document discovered by Patrick Boyles surfaced, which originated at Gawlers Funeral Home in Washington, and was passed around at the 1992 Dallas A.S.K. Conference. The document had a handwritten notation on it which read "Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda."

Joe Hagan, the president of Gawlers, wrote this himself. (Interview with Kathlee Fitzgerald and the author, March 31, 1993.) Hagan explained that the confusion is over semantics. He told me that the use of the term "casket" cannot be confused with what bodies are normally shipped in, such as a Zigler case, an air tray, a combination casket, or a "shipping container" which he said is what the military normally ships a body in. He stated that it would always be called a "container" in that case, and is not considered a casket, nor would it be called a casket.

Hagan went on to say that "The only reason we use that phrase was to identify the casket as a casket and as metal." He said that noone at Gawlers saw the body come out of the casket. nor was anyone from the funeral home there when the body arrived, but came much later, so they had no knowledge of it. He wrote the notation about a shipping casket because this is what he was told the body came in from Dallas. He said that noone would have called it a casket if it had been a shipping container or anything else, and that a casket is only called a casket if it is for viewing. (See Medical Encyclopedia Appendix for witnesses and events regarding the shipping casket.)

And here is the ARRB's report of 5/17/1995 and 6/11/1996 interviews with Joe Hagan: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=713

And Tom Robinson: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=711


And John Van Hoesen: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=712

Before the HSCA, the only interviews the Gawler's men ever did were with William Manchester for his 1967 book The Death of a President and Jim Bishop's 1968 book The Day Kennedy Was Shot.

Relevant section from The Day Kennedy Was Shot here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12083285&postcount=3041



Correct.



Dr. Humes certainly was not talking about a phone call at 2 AM when he told his version of the Perry phone call story (by the way, Perry always described two separate phone calls with Humes, while Humes always reported one).

Dr. Humes gave an approximate 10:30 - 11:00 AM 11/23/1963 time for the Perry phone call, and indicated that he and Boswell indicated that they personally met together at the time of this phone call.

See the relevant section here:

Dr. BADEN. We're talking about also photographs Nos. 13 and 14. Did--in further discussing the exit perforation through the tracheotomy, did you have occasion to explore in the neck area beyond what is in the protocol, beyond what the description was? As to what was injured?

Dr. HUMES. Well, the trachea, I think we described the irregular or jagged wound of the trachea, and then we described a contusion in the apex of the lung and the inferior surface of the dome of the right pleural cavity, and that's one photograph that we were distressed not to find when we first went through and catalogued these photographs, because I distinctly recall going to great lengths to try and get the interior upper portion of the right thorax illuminated-you know the technical difficulties with that, getting the camera positioned and so forth, and what happened to that film, I don't know. There were a couple films that apparently had been exposed to light or whatever and then developed, but we never saw that photograph.

Dr. BADEN. From the time you first examined them, that particular photograph was never seen?

Dr. HUMES. Never available to us, but we thought it coincided very neatly with the path that ultimately we felt that that missile took.

Dr. BADEN. Continuing with the path. There is present in the X-rays Solne Opaque material to the right of the lower cervical spine which has been interpreted as being tiny bullet or bone fragments. Would the track, as you recall, be consistent with the missile striking a transverse process?

Dr. HUMES. Well, I must confess that we didn't make that interpretation at the time. I'm familiar with the writings of Dr. John Lattimer and of some reprints of his articles, and I'd have to go back and restudy it the way he has done. But as you can see from the point of entrance, it wasn't that far lateral. It could conceivably have nicked a--the edge of a transverse process.

...

Dr. HUMES. Laterally to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance is a lacerated wound which I describe for your identification. You may wish to go back and look and add some corrections and whatever to this note. There's another fact of this. Having completed the examination, others might he interested in this--

Dr. BADEN. Yes. We're in session, Joe.

Dr. HUMES. Having completed the examination and remaining to assist the morticians in the preparation of the body, we did not leave the autopsy room until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. It was clearly obvious that a committee could not write the report. I had another commitment for that morning, a little later, a religious commitment with one of my children. And so I went home and took care of that, slept far several hours until about 6 in the evening of the day after, and then sat down and wrote the report that's sitting before you now myself, my own version of it. without any input other than the discussions that we thought that we had had, Dr. Boswell, Dr. Finck and myself. I then returned that morning and looked at what I had written--now wait, I'm a day ahead of myself---Saturday morning we discussed--

Dr. BOSWELL. Saturday morning we got together and we called Dallas.

Dr. HUMES. We called Dallas. See, we were at a loss because we hadn't appreciated the exit wound in the neck, we had been-- I have to go back a little bit. I think for your edification. There were four times as many people in the room most of the time as there are in this room at this moment, including the physician to the President, the Surgeon General of the Navy, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical Center, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical School, the Army, Navy, and Air Force aides to the President of the United States at one time or another, the Secret Service, the FBI and countless nondescript people who were unknown to me. Mistake No. 1. So, there was considerable confusion. So we went home. I took care of this obligation that I had. To refresh my mind, we met together around noon on Saturday, 11 in the morning, perhaps 10:30, something like that and---

Dr. BADEN. Now this is the day after?

Dr. HUMES. The day after, within 6 or 8 hours of having completed the examination, assisting Waller's and so forth for the preparation of the President's remains. We got together and discussed our problem. We said we've got to talk to the people in Dallas We should have talked to them the night before, but there was no way we could get out of the room. You'd have to understand that situation, that hysterical situation that existed. How we kept our wits about us as well as we did is amazing to me. I don't know how we managed as poorly or as well as we did under the circumstances. So I called Dr. Perry. Took me a little while to reach him. We had a very nice conversation on the phone in which he described a missile wound, what he interpreted as a missile wound, in the midline of the neck through which he had created a very quick emergency, as you can see from the photographs, tracheotomy incision effect destroying its value to us and obscuring it very gorgeously for us. Well, of course, the minute he said that to me, lights went on, and we said ah, we have some place for our missile to have gone. And then, of course, I asked him, much to my amazement, had he or any other physician in attendance upon the President, examined the back of the patient, his neck, or his shoulder. They said no, the patient had never been moved from his back while they were administering to him. So, the confusion that existed from some of his comments and the comments of other standby people in the emergency room in Dallas had been in the news media and elsewhere, so that added to the confusion. So, following that, and that discussion, and we having a meeting of minds as to generally what was necessary to be accomplished, and being informed by the various people in anthority that our gross report should be delivered to the White House physician no later than Sunday evening, the next day, 24 hours later, or not quite 24 hours later. Not having slept for about 48 hours, I went home and rested from noon until 8 or 10 that evening, Saturday evening, and then I sat down in front of other notes on which I had made minor comments, handwritten notes. I wrote the report which is present here. Now we also have here--and since it's in the record I want to comment about it some comments that I destroyed, some notes related to this, by burning in the fireplace of my home, and that is true. However, nothing that was destroyed is not present in this write-up. Now, why did I do that? It's interesting, and I've not spoken of this in public. Not too long here of this, I had had the experience of serving as an escort officer for some foreign physicians from foreign navies, who were being entertained and given a course of instruction in the United States. We had 20 or 30 of these chaps, and they used to come through every year or two, and I often was escort officer for them. They spent 5 weeks in Washington or 5 weeks in the field, then we went various places. We went to submarine bases and Marine Corps installations and naval training centers to teach them how physicians function in the American Navy. One of the places to which I happened to take them--and we tried to teach them a little Americana--I took them to Greenfield Village, which, as many of you know, Henry Ford set up adjacent to his former home in suburban Detroit, Dearborn. And in that location is a courthouse in which President Lincoln used to hold forth when he was riding the circuit, and these men were very impressed with that, and they knew who President Lincoln was and were impressed with his courthouse and many other things in Greenfield Village. But what I was amazed to find there, because I personally did not know it was there until I made that visit, was the chair in which President Lincoln sat when he was assassinated. Somehow or other they got that chair out of Ford's Theatre, and Henry Ford got it into Greenfield Village, and it's sitting in this courthouse. Now the back of that chair is stained with a dark substance, and there's much discussion to this day as to whether that stain represents the blood of the deceased President or whether it is Macassar. I don't know if you all remember what Macassar is. When people our age were young and you'd visit yoar grandmother, on the back of the sofa there were lovely lace doilies in the homes of many people. And if you recall what I'm speaking of--they were on the sofas and reclining chairs--and those lace doilies bear the name antimacassar. You could go to a store in this country and buy an anti macassar. They don't exist any more. And Macassar was a hair dressing that gentlemen wore in those days to keep their hair in place. And these officers were appalled that the American people would wish to have an object stained with the blood of the President on public display. And I was--it kind of bothered me a little bit-it still does, to this day. And here I was, now in the possession of a number of pieces of paper, some of which unavoidably, and in the confusion which I described to you earlier, were stained in part with the blood of our deceased President. And I knew that I would give the record over to some person or persons in authority, and I felt that these pieces of paper were inappropriate to be turned over to anyone, and it was for that reason and for that reason only, that, having transcribed those notes onto the pieces of paper that are before you, I destroyed those pieces of paper. I think I'd do the same thing tomorrow. I had a similar problem, because I felt they would fail into the hands of some sensation seeker.

And an 8:00 - 9:00 AM estimate for his 2/13/1996 ARRB interview:

Q. During the course of the autopsy--

A. Let me interrupt there. May I?

Q. Sure.

A. My problem is, very simply stated, we had an entrance wound high in the posterior back above the scapula. We didn't know where the exit wound was at that point. I'd be the first one to admit it. We knew in general in the past that we should have been more prescient than we were, I must confess, because when we removed the breast plate and examined the thoracic cavity, we saw a contusion on the upper lobe of the lung. There was no defect in the pleura anyplace. So it's obvious that the missile had gone over that top of the lung.
Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to go out from the neck.
It was the only place it could go, after it was not found anywhere in the X-rays. So early the next morning, I called Parkland Hospital and talked with Malcolm Perry, I guess it was. And he said, Oh, yeah, there was a wound right in the middle of the neck by the tie, and we used that for the tracheotomy. Well, they obliterated, literally obliterated--when we went back to the photographs, we thought we might have seen some indication of the edge of that wound in the gaping skin where the--but it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to go slashing open the neck. What would we learn? Nothing, you know. So I didn't--I don't know if anybody said don't do this or don't do that. I wouldn't have done it no matter what anybody said. That was not important. I mean, that's--

Q. Do you know what the standard autopsy protocol is for gunshot wounds and autopsy of the neck?

A. Well, no. I haven't seen that in--what you say, standard, I mean, many times if you have a track of a missile, it's helpful to take a long probe and put it in the position. It can tell you a lot of things. If you know where the point of entrance and the point of exit are, it's duck soup. But for me to start probing around in this man's neck, all I would make was false passages. There wouldn't be any track that I could put a probe through or anything of that nature. It just doesn't work that way.

Q. Was any probe used at all to track the path--

A. I don't recall that there was. There might have been some abortive efforts superficially in the back of the neck, but no.
And if there's a standard protocol, I don't know where you'd find it, to tell you the truth.

...

Q. Dr. Humes, I'd like to go through the events as they occurred, as best you can recollect them, on November 26th, starting from--

A. 26th?

Q. Excuse me. November 22nd, starting in the afternoon. The first question I'd have for you would be whether you heard from anyone prior to the time the autopsy began about the nature of the wounds that President Kennedy had suffered.

A. Not at all.

Q. Are you familiar with the name of Robert Livingston, Dr. Robert Livingston?

A. Is this him? No, that's Harry Livingstone. No, I'm not.

Q. I'd like to show you a transcript of some testimony that he offered in the case of Crenshaw v. Sutherland?

A. May I ask who is Dr. Livingston?

Q. Yes.

A. Not the guy in the jungle.

Q. According to "Who's Who in America," Robert Livingston is a neuroscientist who received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University, and he was a resident at Stanford Hospital in San Francisco. In 1963, he was the chief of the Neurobiology Lab at the National Institute of Mental Health.

A. Okay.

Q. Does that help refresh your recollection of who Dr. Livingston is?

A. I don't know him from Adam, personally. I never heard of him before this minute, but I don't doubt his qualifications or whatever.

Q. I'd like you to take a moment, if you would, and read the deposition from page 23, line 1, to page 26, line 16.

You should also feel free to read any other part of the deposition that you'd like.

A. Now, where?

Q. Page 23, line 1. This is in microscript.

A. Page 22--okay. I see it now. Okay.
[Pause.]
BY MR. GUNN:
Q. For the record, the exhibit number is No. 24.

A. Well, this is ridiculous. I was at home at this time. He never talked to me, period. Absolutely never did talk to me. I don't need to read any further, to tell you the truth. I mean, I don't know what he's talking about. I was at home helping my wife prepare for a social event that night, and our first knowledge of the death of the President was when our children came home from school on the school bus, came in running, yelling, all screaming, of course, "The President was shot." And I couldn't even remember where the President was, to tell you the truth, at that time. But I never talked to this person.

Q. Could you complete through page 26, line 16, please?
A. I get confused. It stops and goes over to another...

Q. 24, 25, 26.

A. It doesn't follow, sir. It doesn't follow.

Q. 23.

A. I see.

Q. 24.

A. Well, this doesn't follow this. It makes no sense. It's a nonsense. I don't mean it frivolously.

Q. At this point it says--there is an objection, calls for speculation, then there's some colloquy, and it's back to--

A. What? All I see is the word "speculation"--oh, somebody objects--

Q. "Objection, calls for speculation."

A. Oh, okay.

Q. The passage between the two pages.

A. Okay. I didn't understand that. This is fantasy. Pure fantasy. I don't know where this guy was or where he's coming from. He was concerned about the autopsy, he called me and talked to me about it? He never talked to me. I mean, I'll read it, but I don't know what good it's going to do you.
Never happened. That's all I can tell you. If I did, I mean, I developed amnesia of some kind or other. But a long conversation like this at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, absolutely, categorically did not occur.

Q. Just so the record is clear here, you are saying that--would it be fair to say that you're saying that Dr. Livingston never called you on the 22nd--

A. To my recollection, he never called me. The only person, outside of the people right there on the scene, I spoke to was Bruce Smith. Bruce Smith, a very dear friend, close friend of mine, was the Deputy Director-Navy at the AFIP at that time. He called and offered the services of the AFIP, anybody I needed, which was very logical. I had been stationed at the AFIP. You know, it was home to me. It was a very cordial conversation. "Bruce," I said, "Thanks a lot. Let me see what the problem is, and if I need any help, I'll call you back." When I saw what the problem was, I needed a ballistics person. And I called Bruce back. I said, "Who do you have that's in ballistics?" He said, well, Colonel Finck just got back from Panama, where he'd been unscrambling some who-shot-whom between the Americans and the Panamanians, one of the typical--which was familiar to me because I served for a couple years in Panama during a revolution. So I was very familiar with that. I said, "Well, that sounds great."
I welcomed the assistance of Dr. Finck. That is absolutely the only person that I spoke to outside of that building that day. Now, whether he talked to somebody else, I can't--it could be. He could have talked to J or he could have talked to any number of people in our department. We had a big department, you know, but I did not speak with him.

...

[color]Q. When is the first time you had a conversation with anyone outside of people in the autopsy room regarding the nature of the President's wounds?

A. The next morning when I called Malcolm Perry.

Q. Approximately--

A. I'm pretty sure that's who I spoke to. I know it is.

Q. Approximately what time did you speak to Dr. Perry?

A. I think 8 or 9 o'clock on Saturday morning.

Q. Were you aware of any telephone calls being made from the autopsy room during the time of the autopsy?

A. Well, you see, that's possible. Certainly not by me, but we had a large defect in the side of--in the right side of the President's skull, and there was dialogue back and forth between somebody- -I don't know whether the FBI or Secret Service-- that fragments of bone had been picked up on the street. And there was conversation back and forth between--I guess they were Secret Service people. I had no idea, to tell you the truth. And they were going to be sent to us, which was fine because we needed to close the defect if we could. It didn't turn out to be enough to totally close the defect. We did other things to accomplish that. But your specific question, if these phone conversations were going on, I was not directing them, I was not involved in them, and really it wasn't my problem.

Q. Was there a telephone in the autopsy room?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you recall whether anyone was stationed at the telephone during the course--

A. No, no. If there was, I didn't have anything to do with it.

Q. Did you make any attempts to call anyone in Dallas prior to the completion of the autopsy?

A. No.

Q. Were you aware of any other kinds of communications, in addition to telephone calls, between Bethesda Hospital and Dallas regarding wounds of the body?

A. No.

Q. In addition to the call that you had with Dr. Perry, did you speak with any other person who had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination regarding the nature of the President's wounds?

A. Contemporaneously at that time?

Q. Thank you. Let me try the question again. Prior to the time that you had completed the autopsy protocol, did you speak with any other doctor--

A. No.

Q. --or law enforcement official about the nature of the wounds on President Kennedy's body?

A. I did not.

Q. Dr. Perry is the only one, then, prior to the completion--

A. Right.

Q. --of the autopsy protocol?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see any written materials prior to the time that you completed the autopsy protocol that discussed or described events in Dallas?

A. No.

Q. In the autopsy protocol, there is reference to information that happened in Dallas. Do you recall how you came to have that information?

A. I'd have to know--

Q. I'll show you the autopsy protocol.

A. Yes. I can't recall.

Q. Just start with the first two paragraphs of the autopsy protocol.

MR. GUNN: Dr. Humes is now examining Exhibit 3.

[Pause.]

THE WITNESS: Yes, this makes reference to the local newspapers, which is the source, plus I may have had the television on sometime on Saturday. I'm not sure. I was busy doing a lot of things. I can't tell you for sure. I had no personal knowledge. I had to get it secondhand, whatever it was. It was not my job. It was not my responsibility in the first place.[/color]

...

Q. Did you consider the autopsy to be a medical-legal autopsy?

A. Yes. Oh, sure.

Q. And there was a gunshot wound to the neck, wasn't there?

A. Well, you'd better clarify that. There was a big gaping tracheotomy wound in the anterior neck. I learned later that there had been a gunshot wound in that location, but I didn't know it. That was 99 percent of my problem. There was a bullet wound in the back above the scapula, like I mentioned earlier, and there was a wound of entrance in the back of the skull and a wound of exit in the skull. Those were the wounds.

...

A. Well, we looked at this wound in the upper part of his neck, and we made a customary Y-shaped incision to do the rest of the autopsy and removed the breast plate, which was standard operating procedure, and examined the inside of the thorax. And that's when we saw the contusion of the dome of the upper lobe of the right lung, and we wondered, Where's the bullet? You know. Should have called Dallas right then and there. It would have saved me a lot of worry and grief for several hours, because X-rays hadn't found it for us. Like it could have been in his thigh or it could have been in his buttock. It could have been any damn place. We don't know where it went. It was obvious after we talked to the doctors the next morning where it went. It went out. That's why we couldn't find it. And we weren't going to spend the rest of the night there, you know.
Meantime, George Burkley is telling me, you know, the family wants to get out of here sometime tonight. Then we proceeded with the dissection of the lungs, heart, and abdominal contents and so forth.

...

Q. During the time that you were performing the autopsy, did you ever identify what you took to be the margin of a wound in the area of the trach incision?

A. No.

...

Q. During the course of the deposition, we have talked three photographs that you had had some understanding existed and that you did not see here today. I'd like to ask you a question about another possible photograph or X-ray to see if you have any recollection of it. Do you recall any photograph or X-ray that was taken with a probe inserted into the posterior thorax?

A. No, absolutely not. I do not have a recollection of such.

Sibert and O'Neill had to have left by then. It takes at least 45 minutes to drive to the FBI lab, and FBI lab firearm expert Robert Fraier wrote in this report that the two large fragments recovered from the autopsy had been personally delivered by Sibert and O'Neill at 1:45 AM: https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FrazierSpeaks/Figure1.jpg

And at 2:00 AM a teletype was sent describing the autopsy findings as summarized by Sibert and O'Neill: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=680

According to Google Maps, it takes at least 45 minutes at night to drive from the former Bethesda Naval Hospital to the FBI crime lab. Now there's the unknown element of how much time would be spent walking, waiting, etc.

Hagan’s direct statement
Hagan, of Gawler’s funeral home, stated that “the embalming began shortly after midnight, and concluded about 3 A. M.” This puts the end of the autopsy at shortly after midnight at the latest.

(Hagan had a hard time remembering what went on. He recalled arriving with the casket, but also recalled arriving “no later than 12:30AM.” But the casket arrived at 2AM. His testimony cannot all be correct, as he himself later realized. Nevertheless, he directly testified to the embalming starting shortly after midnight.)


Agent Sibert leaves
FBI Agent James Sibert said he left before midnight. He also said he left at the end of the autopsy. This is how he described the scene as he was leaving the autopsy:



If we take Sibert at his word, the doctors were not even attending to the body at the time he left. He testified that the doctors were gathering records, completing the final cataloguing, and filling out paperwork after the autopsy. You have tried very hard to dismiss his testimony as irrelevant by saying he just assumed the autopsy was over, but it is much stronger than that. He witnessed them stop working on the body and start working on the concluding paperwork.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.

Yes, Sibert did witness the autopsy pathologists leave the room (by the way, what was up with Humes saying "I never left the room" to the HSCA?), perhaps to make a phone call?

I want to bring your attention to what Francis X. O'Neill told the HSCA and ARRB. We know from the 1:45 AM Robert Frazier document and the 2:00 AM teletype that they couldn't have left the autopsy much later than midnight, because the trip is like an hour away.

So O'Neill could not be telling the truth when he told the HSCA "I did not discuss any autopsy procedures with the embalmers. I last saw the body just prior to the dressing, after the morticians were through.":https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=628#relPageId=8&tab=page

Or when he told the ARRB that he saw the Gawler's funeral team reconstruct the body until it was in "good shape", embalming, dressing and casketing, speaking as if he had a clear recollection of this event: https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/medical_testimony/pdf/Oneill_9-12-97.pdf

Since it took at least 3:30 AM to get everything ready, with personnel reminding them to hurry up, it must have taken longer than 1:00 AM to get to this stage of the restoration work by Gawler's funeral team.




I want to point out the unexplained "2:00 - 2:45 AM" information.

1. 11/30/1963 statement of Secret Service agent Clinton J. Hill
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0371a.htm

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=758&tab=page

The President's body was taken to the morgue at the hospital, accompanied by ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, and Admiral Burkley, for an autopsy. SA Landis and I secured the 17th Floor of the hospital and remained there with Mrs. Kennedy. We established a communications system with the White House and handled all telephone calls both incoming and outgoing, screening each and every call. Any person attempting to reach the 17th Floor was also screened.

At approximately 2:45 a.m., November 23, I was requested by ASAIC Kellerman to come to the morgue to once again view the body. When I arrived the autopsy had been completed and ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, General McHugh and I viewed the wounds. I observed a wound about six inches down from the neckline on the back just to the right of the spinal column. I observed another wound on the right rear portion of the skull. Attendants of the Joseph Gawler Mortuary were at this time preparing the body for placement in the casket. A new casket had been obtained from Gawler Mortuary in which the body was to be placed.

I went back to the 17th Floor of the hospital at approximately 3:10 a.m. The President's body was taken from the U.S. Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, at 3:56 a.m., accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy, in the rear of a U.S. Navy ambulance driven by SA Greer. ASAIC Kellerman rode in the right front seat. I rode in the right front seat of a White House limousine immediately behind the ambulance. The motorcade was accompanied by motorcycle police and arrived at the White House at 4:24 a.m. The casket was taken immediately to the East Room and placed in the center of the room on a catephalt.

2. 11/29/1963 Statement of Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0371a.htm

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/sa-kelle.htm

Mrs. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and General McHugh sat in the rear of the ambulance- SAs Greer, Landis and myself with Dr. Burkley rode in the front to Bethesda, with a police escort. The body was immediately taken to the morgue and the family was assigned rooms in the Towers of the Center. Hill and Landis remained with Mrs. Kennedy in her quarters and William Greer and I remained in the morgue and viewed the autopsy examinations which were performed by Vice Admiral Gallway, Commanding Officer, NNMC, Chief Pathologist Cdr. James Humes, Lt. Col. Pierre A. Finck who is Chief, Military Environmental Pathology Division and Chief of Wound Ballistics, Pathology Branch, and J. Thornton Boswell, Cdr. Medical Corps, USN, together with the Naval Medical Staff. SA O'Leary was also in the morgue briefly. Agents O'Neill and Siebert were present.

During the night Joseph Cawlers Sons, Inc., funeral directors, were notified by Robert Kennedy and Sargent Shriver and a new coffin was obtained. After the completion of the autopsy and before the embalming I summoned SA Hill down to the morgue to view the body and to witness the damage of the gunshot wounds. The embalming was performed after the autopsy by the staff of Joseph Gawlers.

Prior to our departure from the Naval Hospital I received all film, x-rays, that were used during this autopsy, and upon arrival at the White House I turned them over to SAIC Bouck.

3. The Day Kennedy Was Shot by Jim Bishop 1968 (posted above)

4. The 2 AM casket delivery notation on the Gawler's "First Call Sheet"

5. Roy Kellerman's Warren Commission testimony (you posted that)




Did you forget the line "Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors who had been in Trauma Room No. 1."?

BTW you should also probably read these:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11931229&postcount=956

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11931291&postcount=962

And therefore..........? (Please complete this sentence)

 

[smartcooky]

I am not so sure if the Mahogany casket arrived at the hospital at 2 AM.

Remember, Kennedy aide David F. Powers wrote a contemporaneous journal (within November 22 and 23) which said "Around midnight Ken, Larry, and I picked out a coffin for our President". This was cited in William Manchester's book The Death of a President (relevant section here)

Comparing the record, I have found no satisfying way to reconcile the notation "2 A.M." on the Gawler's Funeral Home "First Call Sheet" which records events of November 22-23,1963 with the 11 PM - 12 AM hospital arrival time indicated by Joseph E. Hagan. Above the "CASKET DELIVERY DETAILS" on the same document, it says "Arrangements:-When 11 p.m.". How does the Kennedy aide's casket selection "around midnight" fit into this? Although Tomas Evan Robinson and John Van Hoesen made statements to the HSCA, Lifton, ARRB, etc. that they arrived at the autopsy very early when the examination of the body had started, I tend to go with Joe Hagan who indicated that the Gawler's funeral team arrived around 11:00 PM - 12:00 AM. Joe Hagan, Tom Robinson, and John Van Hoesen have all made statements that they had to wait at least around half an hour until autopsy procedures were completed. Compare that to the statements of FBI agent James Sibert who always swore that he and Franis X. O'Neill departed Bethesda when the Gawler's funeral team arrived. Francis X. O'Neill himself told some very tall tales about staying at Bethesda long enough to witness the reconstruction, embalming, and dressing of Kennedy's body. We'll get to that later.

From Harrison Livingstone's 1993 book Killing The Truth: Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case, here are the relevant parts of his interview with Joseph E. Hagan:

(page 728)[...]

Appendix J

[...]

PREPARING THE BODY FOR BURIAL

Joe Hagen: "I had some guy screaming at us the whole time... some air force major... There was a lot of interference with the autopsy, I understand." (Interview of Hagen by Harrison Livingstone and Kathlee Fitzgerald)

The professionals from Gawlers Funeral Home arrived while "they were proceeding with the most mortem... the head, I think the thoracic cavities and all, had been opened... our hearse took the (mahogany) casket out to the Naval Hospital late that evening... we dressed him and rolled the casket right in and put him in it." (Interview of Joe Hagen by Harrison Livingstone and Kathlee Fitzgerald, 8/15/91)

[...]

(page 740-741)[...]

Appendix J

[...]

THE "SHIPPING CASKET" STORY

A document discovered by Patrick Boyles surfaced, which originated at Gawlers Funeral Home in Washington, and was passed around at the 1992 Dallas A.S.K. Conference. The document had a handwritten notation on it which read "Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda."

Joe Hagan, the president of Gawlers, wrote this himself. (Interview with Kathlee Fitzgerald and the author, March 31, 1993.) Hagan explained that the confusion is over semantics. He told me that the use of the term "casket" cannot be confused with what bodies are normally shipped in, such as a Zigler case, an air tray, a combination casket, or a "shipping container" which he said is what the military normally ships a body in. He stated that it would always be called a "container" in that case, and is not considered a casket, nor would it be called a casket.

Hagan went on to say that "The only reason we use that phrase was to identify the casket as a casket and as metal." He said that noone at Gawlers saw the body come out of the casket. nor was anyone from the funeral home there when the body arrived, but came much later, so they had no knowledge of it. He wrote the notation about a shipping casket because this is what he was told the body came in from Dallas. He said that noone would have called it a casket if it had been a shipping container or anything else, and that a casket is only called a casket if it is for viewing. (See Medical Encyclopedia Appendix for witnesses and events regarding the shipping casket.)

And here is the ARRB's report of 5/17/1995 and 6/11/1996 interviews with Joe Hagan: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=713

And Tom Robinson: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=711


And John Van Hoesen: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=712

Before the HSCA, the only interviews the Gawler's men ever did were with William Manchester for his 1967 book The Death of a President and Jim Bishop's 1968 book The Day Kennedy Was Shot.

Relevant section from The Day Kennedy Was Shot here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12083285&postcount=3041



Correct.



Dr. Humes certainly was not talking about a phone call at 2 AM when he told his version of the Perry phone call story (by the way, Perry always described two separate phone calls with Humes, while Humes always reported one).

Dr. Humes gave an approximate 10:30 - 11:00 AM 11/23/1963 time for the Perry phone call, and indicated that he and Boswell indicated that they personally met together at the time of this phone call.

See the relevant section here:

Dr. BADEN. We're talking about also photographs Nos. 13 and 14. Did--in further discussing the exit perforation through the tracheotomy, did you have occasion to explore in the neck area beyond what is in the protocol, beyond what the description was? As to what was injured?

Dr. HUMES. Well, the trachea, I think we described the irregular or jagged wound of the trachea, and then we described a contusion in the apex of the lung and the inferior surface of the dome of the right pleural cavity, and that's one photograph that we were distressed not to find when we first went through and catalogued these photographs, because I distinctly recall going to great lengths to try and get the interior upper portion of the right thorax illuminated-you know the technical difficulties with that, getting the camera positioned and so forth, and what happened to that film, I don't know. There were a couple films that apparently had been exposed to light or whatever and then developed, but we never saw that photograph.

Dr. BADEN. From the time you first examined them, that particular photograph was never seen?

Dr. HUMES. Never available to us, but we thought it coincided very neatly with the path that ultimately we felt that that missile took.

Dr. BADEN. Continuing with the path. There is present in the X-rays Solne Opaque material to the right of the lower cervical spine which has been interpreted as being tiny bullet or bone fragments. Would the track, as you recall, be consistent with the missile striking a transverse process?

Dr. HUMES. Well, I must confess that we didn't make that interpretation at the time. I'm familiar with the writings of Dr. John Lattimer and of some reprints of his articles, and I'd have to go back and restudy it the way he has done. But as you can see from the point of entrance, it wasn't that far lateral. It could conceivably have nicked a--the edge of a transverse process.

...

Dr. HUMES. Laterally to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance is a lacerated wound which I describe for your identification. You may wish to go back and look and add some corrections and whatever to this note. There's another fact of this. Having completed the examination, others might he interested in this--

Dr. BADEN. Yes. We're in session, Joe.

Dr. HUMES. Having completed the examination and remaining to assist the morticians in the preparation of the body, we did not leave the autopsy room until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. It was clearly obvious that a committee could not write the report. I had another commitment for that morning, a little later, a religious commitment with one of my children. And so I went home and took care of that, slept far several hours until about 6 in the evening of the day after, and then sat down and wrote the report that's sitting before you now myself, my own version of it. without any input other than the discussions that we thought that we had had, Dr. Boswell, Dr. Finck and myself. I then returned that morning and looked at what I had written--now wait, I'm a day ahead of myself---Saturday morning we discussed--

Dr. BOSWELL. Saturday morning we got together and we called Dallas.

Dr. HUMES. We called Dallas. See, we were at a loss because we hadn't appreciated the exit wound in the neck, we had been-- I have to go back a little bit. I think for your edification. There were four times as many people in the room most of the time as there are in this room at this moment, including the physician to the President, the Surgeon General of the Navy, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical Center, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical School, the Army, Navy, and Air Force aides to the President of the United States at one time or another, the Secret Service, the FBI and countless nondescript people who were unknown to me. Mistake No. 1. So, there was considerable confusion. So we went home. I took care of this obligation that I had. To refresh my mind, we met together around noon on Saturday, 11 in the morning, perhaps 10:30, something like that and---

Dr. BADEN. Now this is the day after?

Dr. HUMES. The day after, within 6 or 8 hours of having completed the examination, assisting Waller's and so forth for the preparation of the President's remains. We got together and discussed our problem. We said we've got to talk to the people in Dallas We should have talked to them the night before, but there was no way we could get out of the room. You'd have to understand that situation, that hysterical situation that existed. How we kept our wits about us as well as we did is amazing to me. I don't know how we managed as poorly or as well as we did under the circumstances. So I called Dr. Perry. Took me a little while to reach him. We had a very nice conversation on the phone in which he described a missile wound, what he interpreted as a missile wound, in the midline of the neck through which he had created a very quick emergency, as you can see from the photographs, tracheotomy incision effect destroying its value to us and obscuring it very gorgeously for us. Well, of course, the minute he said that to me, lights went on, and we said ah, we have some place for our missile to have gone. And then, of course, I asked him, much to my amazement, had he or any other physician in attendance upon the President, examined the back of the patient, his neck, or his shoulder. They said no, the patient had never been moved from his back while they were administering to him. So, the confusion that existed from some of his comments and the comments of other standby people in the emergency room in Dallas had been in the news media and elsewhere, so that added to the confusion. So, following that, and that discussion, and we having a meeting of minds as to generally what was necessary to be accomplished, and being informed by the various people in anthority that our gross report should be delivered to the White House physician no later than Sunday evening, the next day, 24 hours later, or not quite 24 hours later. Not having slept for about 48 hours, I went home and rested from noon until 8 or 10 that evening, Saturday evening, and then I sat down in front of other notes on which I had made minor comments, handwritten notes. I wrote the report which is present here. Now we also have here--and since it's in the record I want to comment about it some comments that I destroyed, some notes related to this, by burning in the fireplace of my home, and that is true. However, nothing that was destroyed is not present in this write-up. Now, why did I do that? It's interesting, and I've not spoken of this in public. Not too long here of this, I had had the experience of serving as an escort officer for some foreign physicians from foreign navies, who were being entertained and given a course of instruction in the United States. We had 20 or 30 of these chaps, and they used to come through every year or two, and I often was escort officer for them. They spent 5 weeks in Washington or 5 weeks in the field, then we went various places. We went to submarine bases and Marine Corps installations and naval training centers to teach them how physicians function in the American Navy. One of the places to which I happened to take them--and we tried to teach them a little Americana--I took them to Greenfield Village, which, as many of you know, Henry Ford set up adjacent to his former home in suburban Detroit, Dearborn. And in that location is a courthouse in which President Lincoln used to hold forth when he was riding the circuit, and these men were very impressed with that, and they knew who President Lincoln was and were impressed with his courthouse and many other things in Greenfield Village. But what I was amazed to find there, because I personally did not know it was there until I made that visit, was the chair in which President Lincoln sat when he was assassinated. Somehow or other they got that chair out of Ford's Theatre, and Henry Ford got it into Greenfield Village, and it's sitting in this courthouse. Now the back of that chair is stained with a dark substance, and there's much discussion to this day as to whether that stain represents the blood of the deceased President or whether it is Macassar. I don't know if you all remember what Macassar is. When people our age were young and you'd visit yoar grandmother, on the back of the sofa there were lovely lace doilies in the homes of many people. And if you recall what I'm speaking of--they were on the sofas and reclining chairs--and those lace doilies bear the name antimacassar. You could go to a store in this country and buy an anti macassar. They don't exist any more. And Macassar was a hair dressing that gentlemen wore in those days to keep their hair in place. And these officers were appalled that the American people would wish to have an object stained with the blood of the President on public display. And I was--it kind of bothered me a little bit-it still does, to this day. And here I was, now in the possession of a number of pieces of paper, some of which unavoidably, and in the confusion which I described to you earlier, were stained in part with the blood of our deceased President. And I knew that I would give the record over to some person or persons in authority, and I felt that these pieces of paper were inappropriate to be turned over to anyone, and it was for that reason and for that reason only, that, having transcribed those notes onto the pieces of paper that are before you, I destroyed those pieces of paper. I think I'd do the same thing tomorrow. I had a similar problem, because I felt they would fail into the hands of some sensation seeker.

And an 8:00 - 9:00 AM estimate for his 2/13/1996 ARRB interview:

Q. During the course of the autopsy--

A. Let me interrupt there. May I?

Q. Sure.

A. My problem is, very simply stated, we had an entrance wound high in the posterior back above the scapula. We didn't know where the exit wound was at that point. I'd be the first one to admit it. We knew in general in the past that we should have been more prescient than we were, I must confess, because when we removed the breast plate and examined the thoracic cavity, we saw a contusion on the upper lobe of the lung. There was no defect in the pleura anyplace. So it's obvious that the missile had gone over that top of the lung.
Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to go out from the neck.
It was the only place it could go, after it was not found anywhere in the X-rays. So early the next morning, I called Parkland Hospital and talked with Malcolm Perry, I guess it was. And he said, Oh, yeah, there was a wound right in the middle of the neck by the tie, and we used that for the tracheotomy. Well, they obliterated, literally obliterated--when we went back to the photographs, we thought we might have seen some indication of the edge of that wound in the gaping skin where the--but it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to go slashing open the neck. What would we learn? Nothing, you know. So I didn't--I don't know if anybody said don't do this or don't do that. I wouldn't have done it no matter what anybody said. That was not important. I mean, that's--

Q. Do you know what the standard autopsy protocol is for gunshot wounds and autopsy of the neck?

A. Well, no. I haven't seen that in--what you say, standard, I mean, many times if you have a track of a missile, it's helpful to take a long probe and put it in the position. It can tell you a lot of things. If you know where the point of entrance and the point of exit are, it's duck soup. But for me to start probing around in this man's neck, all I would make was false passages. There wouldn't be any track that I could put a probe through or anything of that nature. It just doesn't work that way.

Q. Was any probe used at all to track the path--

A. I don't recall that there was. There might have been some abortive efforts superficially in the back of the neck, but no.
And if there's a standard protocol, I don't know where you'd find it, to tell you the truth.

...

Q. Dr. Humes, I'd like to go through the events as they occurred, as best you can recollect them, on November 26th, starting from--

A. 26th?

Q. Excuse me. November 22nd, starting in the afternoon. The first question I'd have for you would be whether you heard from anyone prior to the time the autopsy began about the nature of the wounds that President Kennedy had suffered.

A. Not at all.

Q. Are you familiar with the name of Robert Livingston, Dr. Robert Livingston?

A. Is this him? No, that's Harry Livingstone. No, I'm not.

Q. I'd like to show you a transcript of some testimony that he offered in the case of Crenshaw v. Sutherland?

A. May I ask who is Dr. Livingston?

Q. Yes.

A. Not the guy in the jungle.

Q. According to "Who's Who in America," Robert Livingston is a neuroscientist who received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University, and he was a resident at Stanford Hospital in San Francisco. In 1963, he was the chief of the Neurobiology Lab at the National Institute of Mental Health.

A. Okay.

Q. Does that help refresh your recollection of who Dr. Livingston is?

A. I don't know him from Adam, personally. I never heard of him before this minute, but I don't doubt his qualifications or whatever.

Q. I'd like you to take a moment, if you would, and read the deposition from page 23, line 1, to page 26, line 16.

You should also feel free to read any other part of the deposition that you'd like.

A. Now, where?

Q. Page 23, line 1. This is in microscript.

A. Page 22--okay. I see it now. Okay.
[Pause.]
BY MR. GUNN:
Q. For the record, the exhibit number is No. 24.

A. Well, this is ridiculous. I was at home at this time. He never talked to me, period. Absolutely never did talk to me. I don't need to read any further, to tell you the truth. I mean, I don't know what he's talking about. I was at home helping my wife prepare for a social event that night, and our first knowledge of the death of the President was when our children came home from school on the school bus, came in running, yelling, all screaming, of course, "The President was shot." And I couldn't even remember where the President was, to tell you the truth, at that time. But I never talked to this person.

Q. Could you complete through page 26, line 16, please?
A. I get confused. It stops and goes over to another...

Q. 24, 25, 26.

A. It doesn't follow, sir. It doesn't follow.

Q. 23.

A. I see.

Q. 24.

A. Well, this doesn't follow this. It makes no sense. It's a nonsense. I don't mean it frivolously.

Q. At this point it says--there is an objection, calls for speculation, then there's some colloquy, and it's back to--

A. What? All I see is the word "speculation"--oh, somebody objects--

Q. "Objection, calls for speculation."

A. Oh, okay.

Q. The passage between the two pages.

A. Okay. I didn't understand that. This is fantasy. Pure fantasy. I don't know where this guy was or where he's coming from. He was concerned about the autopsy, he called me and talked to me about it? He never talked to me. I mean, I'll read it, but I don't know what good it's going to do you.
Never happened. That's all I can tell you. If I did, I mean, I developed amnesia of some kind or other. But a long conversation like this at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, absolutely, categorically did not occur.

Q. Just so the record is clear here, you are saying that--would it be fair to say that you're saying that Dr. Livingston never called you on the 22nd--

A. To my recollection, he never called me. The only person, outside of the people right there on the scene, I spoke to was Bruce Smith. Bruce Smith, a very dear friend, close friend of mine, was the Deputy Director-Navy at the AFIP at that time. He called and offered the services of the AFIP, anybody I needed, which was very logical. I had been stationed at the AFIP. You know, it was home to me. It was a very cordial conversation. "Bruce," I said, "Thanks a lot. Let me see what the problem is, and if I need any help, I'll call you back." When I saw what the problem was, I needed a ballistics person. And I called Bruce back. I said, "Who do you have that's in ballistics?" He said, well, Colonel Finck just got back from Panama, where he'd been unscrambling some who-shot-whom between the Americans and the Panamanians, one of the typical--which was familiar to me because I served for a couple years in Panama during a revolution. So I was very familiar with that. I said, "Well, that sounds great."
I welcomed the assistance of Dr. Finck. That is absolutely the only person that I spoke to outside of that building that day. Now, whether he talked to somebody else, I can't--it could be. He could have talked to J or he could have talked to any number of people in our department. We had a big department, you know, but I did not speak with him.

...

[color]Q. When is the first time you had a conversation with anyone outside of people in the autopsy room regarding the nature of the President's wounds?

A. The next morning when I called Malcolm Perry.

Q. Approximately--

A. I'm pretty sure that's who I spoke to. I know it is.

Q. Approximately what time did you speak to Dr. Perry?

A. I think 8 or 9 o'clock on Saturday morning.

Q. Were you aware of any telephone calls being made from the autopsy room during the time of the autopsy?

A. Well, you see, that's possible. Certainly not by me, but we had a large defect in the side of--in the right side of the President's skull, and there was dialogue back and forth between somebody- -I don't know whether the FBI or Secret Service-- that fragments of bone had been picked up on the street. And there was conversation back and forth between--I guess they were Secret Service people. I had no idea, to tell you the truth. And they were going to be sent to us, which was fine because we needed to close the defect if we could. It didn't turn out to be enough to totally close the defect. We did other things to accomplish that. But your specific question, if these phone conversations were going on, I was not directing them, I was not involved in them, and really it wasn't my problem.

Q. Was there a telephone in the autopsy room?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you recall whether anyone was stationed at the telephone during the course--

A. No, no. If there was, I didn't have anything to do with it.

Q. Did you make any attempts to call anyone in Dallas prior to the completion of the autopsy?

A. No.

Q. Were you aware of any other kinds of communications, in addition to telephone calls, between Bethesda Hospital and Dallas regarding wounds of the body?

A. No.

Q. In addition to the call that you had with Dr. Perry, did you speak with any other person who had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination regarding the nature of the President's wounds?

A. Contemporaneously at that time?

Q. Thank you. Let me try the question again. Prior to the time that you had completed the autopsy protocol, did you speak with any other doctor--

A. No.

Q. --or law enforcement official about the nature of the wounds on President Kennedy's body?

A. I did not.

Q. Dr. Perry is the only one, then, prior to the completion--

A. Right.

Q. --of the autopsy protocol?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see any written materials prior to the time that you completed the autopsy protocol that discussed or described events in Dallas?

A. No.

Q. In the autopsy protocol, there is reference to information that happened in Dallas. Do you recall how you came to have that information?

A. I'd have to know--

Q. I'll show you the autopsy protocol.

A. Yes. I can't recall.

Q. Just start with the first two paragraphs of the autopsy protocol.

MR. GUNN: Dr. Humes is now examining Exhibit 3.

[Pause.]

THE WITNESS: Yes, this makes reference to the local newspapers, which is the source, plus I may have had the television on sometime on Saturday. I'm not sure. I was busy doing a lot of things. I can't tell you for sure. I had no personal knowledge. I had to get it secondhand, whatever it was. It was not my job. It was not my responsibility in the first place.[/color]

...

Q. Did you consider the autopsy to be a medical-legal autopsy?

A. Yes. Oh, sure.

Q. And there was a gunshot wound to the neck, wasn't there?

A. Well, you'd better clarify that. There was a big gaping tracheotomy wound in the anterior neck. I learned later that there had been a gunshot wound in that location, but I didn't know it. That was 99 percent of my problem. There was a bullet wound in the back above the scapula, like I mentioned earlier, and there was a wound of entrance in the back of the skull and a wound of exit in the skull. Those were the wounds.

...

A. Well, we looked at this wound in the upper part of his neck, and we made a customary Y-shaped incision to do the rest of the autopsy and removed the breast plate, which was standard operating procedure, and examined the inside of the thorax. And that's when we saw the contusion of the dome of the upper lobe of the right lung, and we wondered, Where's the bullet? You know. Should have called Dallas right then and there. It would have saved me a lot of worry and grief for several hours, because X-rays hadn't found it for us. Like it could have been in his thigh or it could have been in his buttock. It could have been any damn place. We don't know where it went. It was obvious after we talked to the doctors the next morning where it went. It went out. That's why we couldn't find it. And we weren't going to spend the rest of the night there, you know.
Meantime, George Burkley is telling me, you know, the family wants to get out of here sometime tonight. Then we proceeded with the dissection of the lungs, heart, and abdominal contents and so forth.

...

Q. During the time that you were performing the autopsy, did you ever identify what you took to be the margin of a wound in the area of the trach incision?

A. No.

...

Q. During the course of the deposition, we have talked three photographs that you had had some understanding existed and that you did not see here today. I'd like to ask you a question about another possible photograph or X-ray to see if you have any recollection of it. Do you recall any photograph or X-ray that was taken with a probe inserted into the posterior thorax?

A. No, absolutely not. I do not have a recollection of such.

Sibert and O'Neill had to have left by then. It takes at least 45 minutes to drive to the FBI lab, and FBI lab firearm expert Robert Fraier wrote in this report that the two large fragments recovered from the autopsy had been personally delivered by Sibert and O'Neill at 1:45 AM: https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FrazierSpeaks/Figure1.jpg

And at 2:00 AM a teletype was sent describing the autopsy findings as summarized by Sibert and O'Neill: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=680

According to Google Maps, it takes at least 45 minutes at night to drive from the former Bethesda Naval Hospital to the FBI crime lab. Now there's the unknown element of how much time would be spent walking, waiting, etc.


Hagan’s direct statement
Hagan, of Gawler’s funeral home, stated that “the embalming began shortly after midnight, and concluded about 3 A. M.” This puts the end of the autopsy at shortly after midnight at the latest.

(Hagan had a hard time remembering what went on. He recalled arriving with the casket, but also recalled arriving “no later than 12:30AM.” But the casket arrived at 2AM. His testimony cannot all be correct, as he himself later realized. Nevertheless, he directly testified to the embalming starting shortly after midnight.)


Agent Sibert leaves
FBI Agent James Sibert said he left before midnight. He also said he left at the end of the autopsy. This is how he described the scene as he was leaving the autopsy:



If we take Sibert at his word, the doctors were not even attending to the body at the time he left. He testified that the doctors were gathering records, completing the final cataloguing, and filling out paperwork after the autopsy. You have tried very hard to dismiss his testimony as irrelevant by saying he just assumed the autopsy was over, but it is much stronger than that. He witnessed them stop working on the body and start working on the concluding paperwork.

This is consistent with the doctors learning about the throat wound after the autopsy.

Yes, Sibert did witness the autopsy pathologists leave the room (by the way, what was up with Humes saying "I never left the room" to the HSCA?), perhaps to make a phone call?

I want to bring your attention to what Francis X. O'Neill told the HSCA and ARRB. We know from the 1:45 AM Robert Frazier document and the 2:00 AM teletype that they couldn't have left the autopsy much later than midnight, because the trip is like an hour away.

So O'Neill could not be telling the truth when he told the HSCA "I did not discuss any autopsy procedures with the embalmers. I last saw the body just prior to the dressing, after the morticians were through.":https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=628#relPageId=8&tab=page

Or when he told the ARRB that he saw the Gawler's funeral team reconstruct the body until it was in "good shape", embalming, dressing and casketing, speaking as if he had a clear recollection of this event: https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/arrb/medical_testimony/pdf/Oneill_9-12-97.pdf

Since it took at least 3:30 AM to get everything ready, with personnel reminding them to hurry up, it must have taken longer than 1:00 AM to get to this stage of the restoration work by Gawler's funeral team.




I want to point out the unexplained "2:00 - 2:45 AM" information.

1. 11/30/1963 statement of Secret Service agent Clinton J. Hill
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0371a.htm

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=758&tab=page

The President's body was taken to the morgue at the hospital, accompanied by ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, and Admiral Burkley, for an autopsy. SA Landis and I secured the 17th Floor of the hospital and remained there with Mrs. Kennedy. We established a communications system with the White House and handled all telephone calls both incoming and outgoing, screening each and every call. Any person attempting to reach the 17th Floor was also screened.

At approximately 2:45 a.m., November 23, I was requested by ASAIC Kellerman to come to the morgue to once again view the body. When I arrived the autopsy had been completed and ASAIC Kellerman, SA Greer, General McHugh and I viewed the wounds. I observed a wound about six inches down from the neckline on the back just to the right of the spinal column. I observed another wound on the right rear portion of the skull. Attendants of the Joseph Gawler Mortuary were at this time preparing the body for placement in the casket. A new casket had been obtained from Gawler Mortuary in which the body was to be placed.

I went back to the 17th Floor of the hospital at approximately 3:10 a.m. The President's body was taken from the U.S. Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, at 3:56 a.m., accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy, in the rear of a U.S. Navy ambulance driven by SA Greer. ASAIC Kellerman rode in the right front seat. I rode in the right front seat of a White House limousine immediately behind the ambulance. The motorcade was accompanied by motorcycle police and arrived at the White House at 4:24 a.m. The casket was taken immediately to the East Room and placed in the center of the room on a catephalt.

2. 11/29/1963 Statement of Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh18/html/WH_Vol18_0371a.htm

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/sa-kelle.htm

Mrs. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and General McHugh sat in the rear of the ambulance- SAs Greer, Landis and myself with Dr. Burkley rode in the front to Bethesda, with a police escort. The body was immediately taken to the morgue and the family was assigned rooms in the Towers of the Center. Hill and Landis remained with Mrs. Kennedy in her quarters and William Greer and I remained in the morgue and viewed the autopsy examinations which were performed by Vice Admiral Gallway, Commanding Officer, NNMC, Chief Pathologist Cdr. James Humes, Lt. Col. Pierre A. Finck who is Chief, Military Environmental Pathology Division and Chief of Wound Ballistics, Pathology Branch, and J. Thornton Boswell, Cdr. Medical Corps, USN, together with the Naval Medical Staff. SA O'Leary was also in the morgue briefly. Agents O'Neill and Siebert were present.

During the night Joseph Cawlers Sons, Inc., funeral directors, were notified by Robert Kennedy and Sargent Shriver and a new coffin was obtained. After the completion of the autopsy and before the embalming I summoned SA Hill down to the morgue to view the body and to witness the damage of the gunshot wounds. The embalming was performed after the autopsy by the staff of Joseph Gawlers.

Prior to our departure from the Naval Hospital I received all film, x-rays, that were used during this autopsy, and upon arrival at the White House I turned them over to SAIC Bouck.

3. The Day Kennedy Was Shot by Jim Bishop 1968 (posted above)

4. The 2 AM casket delivery notation on the Gawler's "First Call Sheet"

5. Roy Kellerman's Warren Commission testimony (you posted that)




Did you forget the line "Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors
who had been in Trauma Room No. 1."?

BTW you should also probably read these:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11931229&postcount=956

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11931291&postcount=962

And you have the sheer gall to accuse me of posting a wall of text?

The majority of your post is old hat, repeatedly debunked rubbish, gleaned from the echo-chambers of nutcase CT websites (i.e totally unreliable sources). And despite your total lack of expertise in the field of pathology (and other fields) you still insist in drawing your OWN (flawed) conclusions from data sets while spurning the conclusions of trained and experience experts in those fields.

Why is that?

 

[RoboTimbo]

<snipped running away>

Answer the questions, MicahJava.

 

[turingtest]

And you have the sheer gall to accuse me of posting a wall of text?

The majority of your post is old hat, repeatedly debunked rubbish, gleaned from the echo-chambers of nutcase CT websites (i.e totally unreliable sources). And despite your total lack of expertise in the field of pathology (and other fields) you still insist in drawing your OWN (flawed) conclusions from data sets while spurning the conclusions of trained and experience experts in those fields.
Why is that?

MJ's rambling reminds me of the Stephen Hawking quote that "the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." What possible good is such a helter-skelter method, one that apparently equates piling up a mass of disconnected minutiae with a consilient approach, when no useful conclusion can be drawn from it?

 

[Axxman300]

The question he has yet to answer is why any of this is important, or proves conspiracy.

How does ignoring the throat wound prove conspiracy?
How is admitting this fact to anyone who will listen constitute a cover-up?

You have an entry wound in the back (obvious from tissue and fiber evience), and you have a CLEAR exit wound in the throat (again, tissue and fiber evidence).

One bullet to the back and another to the head, both a 6.5x52mm round fired from the same rifle (belonging to Oswald).

 

[MicahJava]

And you have the sheer gall to accuse me of posting a wall of text?

The majority of your post is old hat, repeatedly debunked rubbish, gleaned from the echo-chambers of nutcase CT websites (i.e totally unreliable sources). And despite your total lack of expertise in the field of pathology (and other fields) you still insist in drawing your OWN (flawed) conclusions from data sets while spurning the conclusions of trained and experience experts in those fields.

Why is that?

What do you mean by "CT Websites"? Mary Farrel, History-Matters, and ARRC is a direct source to the original JFK-related documents.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

 

[MicahJava]

The question he has yet to answer is why any of this is important, or proves conspiracy.

How does ignoring the throat wound prove conspiracy?
How is admitting this fact to anyone who will listen constitute a cover-up?

You have an entry wound in the back (obvious from tissue and fiber evience), and you have a CLEAR exit wound in the throat (again, tissue and fiber evidence).

One bullet to the back and another to the head, both a 6.5x52mm round fired from the same rifle (belonging to Oswald).

Axxman, the clothing fiber evidence is not very valuable.

see: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11795880&postcount=2989

This has been pointed out to you several times.