AFTERMATH OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION PARKLAND HOSPITAL TO THE BETHESDA MORGUE

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2 AFTERMATH OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION PARKLAND HOSPITAL TO THE BETHESDA MORGUE by James V. Rinnovatore & Allan Eaglesham ARJE Books Ithaca, New York March 2012

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4 To Mary Anne iii

5 Foreword Like most people over the age of five at the time, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I learned that President Kennedy had been shot. On that unusually warm Friday in Philadelphia, I was outside my home with my children when I received the news from my next-door neighbor. I quickly gathered the children, went indoors and became transfixed in front of my TV for three days. Within a few hours we learned that an alleged assassin had been apprehended in a Dallas movie theater: Lee Harvey Oswald. He was brought into the Dallas County jail for questioning, not only about the president s assassination, but also the killing of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit. In the evening, we saw Oswald being transferred from one room to another for interrogation in the Dallas County jail. The corridor was chaotically crowded with TV crews and newspaper reporters: Off-camera voice: Did you shoot the president? Lee Oswald: No, they ve taken me in because of the fact that I ve lived in the Soviet Union. I M JUST A PATSY! His use of the word patsy as well as a ring of truth in how he responded made me think something was amiss. I got the impression that Oswald had been deceived into playing a role in some scheme, which unbeknownst to him, would point to him as the president s assassin. I m just a patsy! James V. Rinnovatore Flanders, NJ March 2012 iv

6 Contents 1. Introduction Report of the Warren Commission Renewed Interest Evidence Related to the Wounds Back Wound Throat Wound Head Wound Dr. Boswell s Autopsy Face Sheet Intentional Omission Single-Bullet Theory Removal of the Body from the Bronze Casket Eyewitnesses to Delivery of a Casket at 6:35 6:45 PM Roger Boyajian Dennis David Edward Reed Floyd Riebe Paul O Connor James Jenkins Gawler s First Call Sheet Eyewitnesses to Delivery of a Casket at 7:17 PM Francis O Neill James Sibert Eyewitnesses to Delivery of a Casket at 8:00 PM Samuel Bird James Metzler Summary of Multiple Casket Entries Duplicity of Dr. Humes Proof of Alterations Edward Reed Saundra Spencer Joe O Donnell Dennis David In summary v

7 13. Movie Mystery Wound Alterations: Where and When? Head Wound Throat Wound Floyd Riebe Jerrol Custer Edward Reed Who Took the Pre-Autopsy Photographs? John Stringer Robert Knudsen Summary Activities of FBI Agents James Sibert and Francis O Neill Arrival and Delay Synthesis Conclusion Fragmentary Evidence Afterword Sources and Notes Section Index vi

8 1. Introduction We, the authors, believe that this work provides answers to important questions that have surfaced over the years within the JFK-assassination research community. In addition, contrasting interpretations of key evidence discussed by other investigators will be presented. We trust that it represents a concise account of what transpired from the time the body of President Kennedy left Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, at about 3:00 PM (EST) to 8:00 PM, the starting time of the official autopsy at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda. 2. Report of the Warren Commission A third of the 800-plus page Warren Report is devoted to the life of Lee Oswald. A scant two pages are devoted to the president s wounds and not even one page is devoted to an appraisal of the autopsy report. In their conclusion, [1, p. 195] that Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy, not one shred of medical evidence was incorporated. Such evidence would have at least indicated the type of bullets used plus the directionality of the shots. The Commission chose to ignore the extemporaneous reports and the testimony given by the Parkland Hospital doctors to the Warren Commission, as well as the autopsy protocol, which was at odds with the evidence regarding the wounds found at Parkland Hospital the original, unadulterated wounds. The Warren Commission s objective appeared to present only information that incriminated Oswald and to ignore potentially important exculpatory evidence, including the findings at Parkland Hospital that the throat wound was one of entry and the head wound was one of exit. If Oswald brought the rifle into the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) disguised as curtain rods as alleged, [1, p. 182] it seems odd that he did not have a plan in place either to remove the rifle from the TSBD undetected or to hide it effectively. Did the Warren Commission consider these questions? Not likely; they had their man and he was dead. QED. Setting aside how the wounds were described at Parkland Hospital, indicating that shots were fired from the front, the premise that Oswald killed JFK should have raised serious questions, especially in view of his alleged actions. For example, his calm demeanor, under the circumstances, when confronted by Dallas Police Officer Marrion Baker in the TSBD lunchroom, was very 1

9 unusual. [1, p. 151] If Oswald had just shot the president, why was he still in the building 90 seconds later? [1, p. 152] Why did he leave the alleged murder weapon, a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, where it could easily be discovered? [1, p. 79] Likewise for the three cartridge cases found at the sniper s nest on the sixth floor: how long would it have taken to pocket that critical evidence? 2

10 3. Renewed Interest From the year of the assassination until 1992, two years after I (JVR) retired, my interest in the subject was maintained by reading a few books and viewing documentaries. In 1992 I came upon David Lifton s Best Evidence, [2] a scholarly, compelling research document, that provides evidence that a break in the custody of the president s body occurred as it transited from Parkland Memorial Hospital to the Bethesda morgue. [2, pp ] Lifton made the astute observation that focus should be on how the president s body was transported and not on how the bronze casket into which the body had been placed at Parkland was transported. He proposed that, during the break in custody, the wounds were altered. Lifton based his alteration thesis on the fact that there were significant differences in the president s wounds as described in the extemporaneous reports written by the Parkland doctors [1, pp ] versus how they were described in the autopsy report. [1, pp ] Such differences could have resulted only from alterations to the body after leaving the hospital (at approximately 3:00 PM EST) in a bronze, ceremonial casket and arrival of the same casket in the autopsy room at the Naval Hospital (part of the NNMC), Bethesda (at 8:00 PM) accompanied by an all-service honor guard. Where and when the wounds had been altered, and by whom, were questions that needed to be answered. Lifton was the first researcher to show the significance of an FBI report, written by Agents James Sibert and Francis O Neill, dated 26 November [3] This report described their duties, listed autopsy attendees, and noted the description and location of the wounds as stated by the pathologist who headed the three-man autopsy team, Navy Commander Dr. James Humes. Page three of the FBI report [3] contains the following sentence:...it was also apparent that a tracheotomy had been performed, as well as surgery of the head area, namely in the top of the skull. In 1997, Sibert and O Neill testified to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) that these words had been uttered by Dr. Humes. [4, p. 95; 5, p. 70] This utterance was confirmation of Lifton s hypothesis that surgery had been performed on the president s head prior to the official autopsy. However, as will be shown, Dr. Humes was duplicitous in making that statement at that time; we believe that it was intended for consumption by Sibert and O Neill. 3

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12 4. Evidence Related to the Wounds Three wounds are discussed in the autopsy report: the back wound, the throat wound, and the head wound. [1, pp ] 4.1. Back Wound In their report, Sibert and O Neill wrote that Dr. Humes [3, p. 4] located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole located below the shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column. This opening was probed by Humes with the finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had entered at a downward angle of 45 to 60 degrees. Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with a finger. Clearly, during the autopsy, Humes believed that this was a non-transit wound unconnected to an anterior defect. Moreover, no bullet was found inside the back wound. In contrast, the autopsy report describes the back wound as presumably of entry in the upper right posterior thorax The missile path through the fascia and musculature cannot be easily probed. Dr. Humes followed this statement with, The wound presumably of exit was that described by Dr. Malcolm Perry of Dallas in the low anterior cervical region it was extended as a tracheotomy incision and thus its character is distorted at the time of the autopsy. [1, p. 541] Close examination of the above paragraph reveals false inferences. For one, Dr. Humes changed the findings and testimony of the Parkland Hospital doctors regarding the throat wound. It had been described by Drs. Charles Carrico and Malcolm Perry as an entry wound, [1, p. 519; 2, pp ] whereas Humes changed it to a wound presumably of exit. The word presumably was necessary because Humes had no firm evidence that it was an exit wound. He claimed that a contusion at the apex of the upper lobe of the right lung was in alignment with the back wound and the throat wound. [1, p ] On this basis, he concluded that the two wounds were connected, with the back wound one of entry and the throat wound one of exit, in stark contrast with his statement during the autopsy that the back wound had no exit. Certainty of a connection between the two wounds would have required dissection of the wounds, which was not done. 5

13 We believe that trauma to the lung resulted from the bullet that entered the president s throat being deflected downward toward the lung. This bullet was not found during the official autopsy. More on this later Throat Wound Two of the first doctors to arrive at trauma-room one at Parkland Hospital, Drs. Carrico and Perry, described the throat wound as having the characteristics of an entry: small and circular. Carrico said it was a small penetrating wound [1, p. 519] probably a 4- to 7-mm wound rather round no jagged edges... [6, p. 3] Perry described it as about 5 mm (i.e., about a quarter of an inch) and roughly spherical to oval in shape, not a punched out wound [6, p. 9] Dr. Perry made an incision across the throat wound, just large enough to accommodate a breathing tube. During a phone conversation in 1966 with author David Lifton, Perry said the incision was two to three centimeters wide, [2, p. 272] (i.e., approximately an inch). Drs. Paul Peters and Robert McClelland, also present in trauma-room one, described Perry s incision as sharp and smooth, respectively. [2, p. 275] Dr. Charles Crenshaw recalled, When the body left Parkland there was no gaping, bloody defect in the front of the throat, just a small bullet hole in the thin line of Perry s incision. [7, p. 54] Dr. Perry described the throat wound as inviolate, [8, pp ] i.e., the tracheotomy did not obliterate it. Figure 1. 6

14 In stark contrast, when the president s body was observed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital at 8:00 PM the start of the official autopsy the defect in the throat was elongated and widened. The autopsy report [1, p. 540] describes it as a 6.5 cm long transverse wound with widely gaping, irregular edges, consistent with the extant autopsy photographs (e.g., Figure 1). In his testimony to the Warren Commission, Dr. Humes said that it was 7 or 8 cm (about 2¾ inches) in the transverse direction. [9] Such a large wound indicates that it was widened significantly before the autopsy at the Bethesda morgue Head Wound During his testimony to the Warren Commission, Dr. Carrico described a large gaping wound located in the right occipitoparietal area, which he estimated to be about 5 to 7 cm. (i.e., 2 to 3 inches) in diameter, more or less circular, with avulsions (forced detachments) from the calvarium (skullcap) and scalp-tissue. [6, p. 6] He also noted shredded macerated cerebral and cerebellar tissues both in the wounds and on the skull fragment attached to the dura (the membrane covering the brain). [6, p. 6] Kemp Clark, a neurosurgeon, described a large wound in the right occipitoparietal region. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound. [1, p. 518] Malcolm Perry described the head defect as a large wound in the right posterior cranium exposing severely lacerated brain. [1, p. 521] These descriptions by the Parkland doctors located the wound principally in the right occipital region (back of the head), but extending into the parietal region (top and/or side of the head) (Figure 2). The head wound was approximately two inches by three inches in size. Figure 2. Bones of the skull. 7

15 In the autopsy report, Dr. Humes described the head wound as a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into temporal and occipital regions. He added that the defect measures approximately 13 cm in greatest diameter [1, p. 540] (i.e., approximately five inches) (Figure 3). Figure 3. Thus, a defect of 5 by 7 cm principally located in the occipital region (Parkland) had increased to a 13-cm wound principally in the parietal region (Bethesda autopsy). Moreover, Humes concluded that this was an entrance wound, and followed with this startling conclusion: [1, p. 543]..it is our opinion that the deceased died as a result of two perforating gunshot wounds inflicted by high velocity projectiles fired by a person or persons unknown. The projectiles were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased. 8

16 5. Dr. Boswell s Autopsy Face Sheet At the time Dr. Humes was making verbal observations regarding the president s wounds recorded in the Sibert and O Neill FBI report J. Thornton Boswell, assisting Humes, sketched the president s wounds (Figure 4). [10] Figure 4. Dr. Boswell s sketches and notes. 9

17 Dr. Boswell placed the back wound, which he noted to be a 7 4 mm defect, well below the shoulder and, therefore, below the throat wound. If the throat and back wounds resulted from the passage of a single bullet, then, based on Boswell s locations, one would conclude that the bullet had been fired from the trunk of the limousine, which obviously did not happen. Boswell s observations, noted on his autopsy face sheet were in sharp disagreement with Humes conclusion in the autopsy report that the back and throat wounds resulted from a shot fired from above and behind the president. Based on Boswell s location of the back wound, the throat wound and the back wound were unconnected. In describing the damage on the president s skull, (Figure 4) Dr. Boswell wrote: Vomer crushed (i.e., the bone in the nose was fractured) globe rt. eye Fracture through floor (the bone around right eye was fractured) Falx loose from sagital [sic] sinus from the coronal suture back (the fold in the dura was loose posterior to the coronal suture) The notation represented an area in centimeters in which most of the skull bone was missing. The number 19 represented nineteen centimeters of fragmented frontal bone. The 3 cm notation above the left eye represented cracked bone in that location. And 10 on the left represented the size of a bone (in centimeters) broken away from the skull, but still attached to the scalp Intentional Omission It is inconceivable that the damage to the top of the head, which Boswell described, would not have been noticed by the Parkland doctors. And it is unlikely that the falx membrane, which was extruded from the skull cap, would not also have been observed at Parkland. Since they did not write of such damage in their extemporaneous reports, it is reasonable to conclude it was not there. A question should be raised at this point: Why weren t Dr. Boswell s descriptions included in the autopsy report? We believe that their omission was intentional to minimize questions being raised vis-à-vis more damage to the president s skull as described by Dr. Boswell than what was described by the Parkland doctors. It should be clear to the reader that alterations of the throat and head wounds were made at some location prior to the examination of the president s body at the Bethesda morgue at 8:00 PM, the time of initiation of the official autopsy. Lifton described the alterations as occurring at a pre-autopsy autopsy. [2, pp ] 10

18 The autopsy report went through at least two iterations before being finalized. [8, p. 1077] It evolved from the evening of the autopsy until sometime on Sunday, November 24, [8, Chapter 11] Changes had to be made to the descriptions of the president s wounds to reflect an assassin firing from the rear of the limousine. In this way, Dr. Humes arrived at the conclusion that shots were fired from the rear, consistent with the final conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Oswald on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was the lone assassin. 11

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20 6. Single-Bullet Theory More evidence was required to secure the Warren Commission s conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. This came about because the Commission was aware that one shot, allegedly fired by Oswald, hit neither President Kennedy nor Governor Connally. [1, p. 111] This was a problem because the wounds inflicted on the president and the governor were inconsistent with the three spent cartridge cases found in the sniper s nest in the TSBD. Since one bullet missed and one hit the president s head, the third had to have caused the wounds to the president s back and throat and all of the wounds to Governor Connally. Through the creative imagination of Warren Commission Staff Member Arlen Specter, the problem was solved via the single-bullet theory (SBT), the sine qua non of the Commission s conclusion that a lone sniper killed the president: a single bullet entered the president s back, exited his throat, struck the governor in the back, exited his chest, entered and exited his right wrist and lodged in his left thigh. Along the way, this bullet shattered the governor s fifth rib and his wrist. [1, pp ] The throat wound is a critical element in the formulation of the SBT. It had to be enlarged to appear as an exit wound. It was enlarged, during the pre-autopsy, also for the purpose of extracting the causal bullet, hence it wasn t found during the official autopsy. 7. Removal of the Body from the Bronze Casket After the president had been declared deceased at Parkland Hospital, Nurses Diana Bowron and Margaret Henchliffe washed and wrapped his body and head with sheets [6, pp. 137, 141] before placement in a bronze ceremonial casket supplied by O Neal Funeral Home, for the drive by hearse to Love Field, accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy. [11, pp ] The president s body was inside the bronze casket when carried onto Air Force One at Love Field. Upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, the bronze casket was placed in a gray navy ambulance and driven non-stop to the entrance of the Bethesda Naval Hospital where it arrived at 6:55 PM. [2, p. 703] But was the president s body inside the bronze casket at this time? After all, if the wounds were altered before initiation of the official autopsy at 8:00 PM, his body had to have been removed from the bronze casket at some point. 13

21 This question was addressed by David Lifton in Best Evidence. He believed that the body was removed from the bronze casket while it was unattended by key individuals in the tail section of Air Force One while on the ground in Dallas, between 2:18 and 2:32 PM, during which LBJ was sworn in as president. The key individuals noted by Lifton were Mrs. Kennedy, the president s personal aide General Godfrey McHugh and advisers Kenneth O Donnell, Larry O Brien and Dave Powers. [2, p. 677] Lifton proposed that the president s body was placed inside a body bag and hidden either in the baggage hold or in a forward galley. In his magnum opus, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board [8] Doug Horne also discussed this subject and proposed that the body was removed from the bronze casket as soon as it was aboard Air Force One, even before being fixed to the deck of the aircraft, well before the President s wife and former staff members gathered around it in flight, after takeoff, to conduct their Irish wake. Horne also suggested that the body was placed inside a body bag and stored in the forward luggage compartment, [8, p. 997] consistent with Lifton s proposal. We made an independent study of the timeline of the activities of the key individuals who left the bronze casket unattended while Air Force One was still at Love Field. Based principally on the Warren Commission testimony of advisors O Donnell [12, pp ] and O Brien, [12, pp ] we believe that the bronze casket in the tail section of the plane was left unattended from about 2:21 PM to 2:35 PM, in close agreement with Lifton s timeline of 2:18 PM to 2:32 PM. What occurred when Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base regarding the president s body, now out of the bronze casket? Doug Horne proposed that the body was transported by helicopter to the grounds of Bethesda Naval Hospital and entered the morgue at 6:35 PM, [8, p. 1003, n2] some twenty minutes before the motorcade s arrival at the front of the hospital. Evidence to support this follows. 14

22 8. Eyewitnesses to Delivery of a Casket at 6:35 6:45 PM 8.1. Roger Boyajian Sergeant Boyajian was in charge of a detail of marines on the evening of 11/22/63. His orders from Admiral Calvin Galloway, CO of the NNMC, were to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering restricted areas around the morgue, [13] as well as to prevent the press from interfering with the delivery of the casket. On November 26, 1963, Boyajian wrote an after-action memo describing the duties of his team including: [13] At approximately 1835 (i.e., 6:35 PM) the casket was received at the morgue entrance and taken inside. Although he provided no details of its appearance, the coffin he saw being unloaded and carried into the morgue could not have been the ornamental bronze casket in which the president s body had been placed at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, because, at 6:35 PM, that casket was en route from Andrews Air Force Base Dennis David Chief-of-the-day for the Medical School (part of the NNMC) on the evening of the autopsy, Dennis David told the ARRB in 1997 that he supervised the removal of a gray shipping casket from a black hearse at about 6:45. [14] A group of sailors under his command carried this casket into the cooler room (sometimes called anteroom ) adjacent to the autopsy room. Later, David witnessed the arrival of the navy ambulance carrying the ornamental casket and Mrs. Kennedy at the front of the NNMC. He saw Mrs. Kennedy exit the ambulance, enter the lobby and take the elevator to the tower. David described the hearse as a black Cadillac, which, he was certain, arrived about 30 minutes before the gray navy ambulance. [14, p. 2]His recollection of the time of arrival of 6:45 PM is consistent with that of Sgt. Boyajian. In February 2009, JVR telephoned Dennis David and asked what, if anything, he had noticed on delivery of the shipping casket to the anteroom. He responded that he saw marines in the morgue hallway. The ten-man security detail under Boyajian s command was composed of marines, whose presence would be conspicuous to a navy man 15

23 8.3. Edward Reed A hospital technician, Ed Reed took a number of X-rays of the president s body during the autopsy. In his 1997 deposition to the ARRB, he stated that he reported to the morgue after being paged. [15, p. 20] In 1978, he told Mark Flanagan of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) [16, p. 1] that he arrived at the morgue at around 6:30 PM, where, according to his ARRB testimony, he found that the casket containing the president s body had already been delivered and was being guarded by five or six marine corpsmen. [15, p. 22] Reed helped carry the casket into the autopsy room, was present when it was opened, and saw that the body was inside a plastic bag. [15, p. 24] Mr. Reed s account corroborates those of Boyajian and David of an early arrival of a casket at the Bethesda morgue and, furthermore, provides proof that this casket contained the president s body Floyd Riebe Hospital corpsman Riebe assisted in taking photographs during the autopsy. In his deposition for the ARRB in 1997, he described the casket containing the president s body as: [17, p. 28, 29, 30] kind of a gun-metal [with] a dull finish It wasn t a ceremonial casket. It was a very plain, inexpensive type casket He was in a rubberized-type body bag. Mr. Riebe added that a man by the name of O Connor (see below) assisted in removing the body from the bag. [17, p. 31] 8.5. Paul O Connor Laboratory Technologist O Connor assisted at the autopsy. In 1997, he told HSCA staff members that a pink shipping casket contained the president s body, which was in a body bag. [18, p. 2] His observations are consistent with those of Reed and Riebe James Jenkins Like Paul O Connor, James Jenkins was a medical technician who was interviewed by HSCA staff members in [19] He was not asked to describe the casket containing the president s body. However, in a telephone conversation with David Lifton in 1979, he said that the casket was not a really ornamental type thing not something you d expect a president to be in. [2, p. 609] Mr. Jenkins had the following exchange with author William Law in the early 2000s: [20, p. 69] 16

24 Jenkins: Now, I don t have a very clear memory of him coming through the door. Just a glimpse of the coffin. I wasn t in the atrium. I was in the morgue proper at the table when they came in, so the transfer of the body and so forth is something I don t have a clear memory of. Law: Do you remember what kind of coffin it was? Jenkins: I remember the casket was kind of a if possible, silver bronze. It was a plain coffin. It was kind of like the ones they used to transport bodies in. Law: A so-called shipping casket? Jenkins: Yes, I guess you could call it a shipping casket Gawler s First Call Sheet Gawler s Funeral Directors (Washington, DC) supplied a Marsellus 710 mahogany casket [21] as a replacement for the ornamental bronze casket, because the latter had been damaged in transit from Dallas. (The president s body was interred at Arlington Cemetery inside the Marsellus casket.) Gawler s First Call Sheet, dated November 22, 1963, states: [21] Body removed from metal shipping Casket at USNH at Bethesda. No time is given for this event; however, it is consistent with eyewitness accounts of delivery to the Bethesda morgue of a shipping casket containing the president s body. 17

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26 9. Eyewitnesses to Delivery of a Casket at 7:17 PM When the plain shipping casket containing the president s body was carried into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 6:45 PM, the motorcade bringing Mrs. Kennedy was en route from Andrews Air Force Base. She was in a gray navy ambulance carrying the ornamental bronze casket that had been flown from Dallas; on arrival at Andrews AFB, it had been placed in the ambulance by an all-service honor guard, under the command of Army Lieutenant Samuel Bird. [22, pp. 1, 6] The honor guard made the journey to Bethesda by helicopter. [22, p. 3] FBI Agents James Sibert and Francis O Neill were in the third car of the motorcade from Andrews AFB to Bethesda. Their responsibilities were to maintain constant vigil over the president s body, which they believed was in the bronze ornamental casket; to attend the autopsy and to collect bullets or fragments recovered from the body. Their duties and activities are described in their November 26, 1963 report, [3] in statements to Arlen Specter, [23] to the HSCA, [24; 25] and to the ARRB. [4; 5] 9.1. Francis O Neill Agent O Neill provided a document to the ARRB stating that upon his (and Agent Sibert s) arrival at the front entrance of the hospital, he observed Mrs. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy exit the gray navy ambulance, which contained the ornamental bronze casket, and enter the hospital along with Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman. [26, p. 4] After some time, during which the navy ambulance had not moved, O Neill and Sibert approached Larry O Brien (president s assistant) and asked about the delay. O Brien said that SSA William Greer, who had driven the ambulance from Andrews AFB to Bethesda, was unsure of the location of morgue. Since O Neill and Sibert were familiar with the NNMC, they drove to the morgue entrance at the rear of the main hospital building, with SSA Greer following in the navy ambulance. [26, p. 4] Upon arriving at the loading dock outside the morgue, O Neill noted SSA Kellerman exiting the door to the corridor leading to the autopsy room, at which point he (O Neill) introduced himself and informed Kellerman of their mission. [26, p. 4] The Secret Service agent responded that he was aware of their presence having been informed at Andrews AFB by Secret Service Chief James Rowley. [5, p. 56; 26, p. 4] 19

27 Since Kellerman had found his way from the front entrance of the hospital to the morgue complex, why didn t his partner SSA Greer know the way to the morgue? And why didn t Greer inform Kellerman of this fact before the latter exited the ambulance? The more important question is: for what purpose did Kellerman enter Bethesda Hospital immediately after the arrival of the motorcade? We surmise that he needed to visit the morgue to find out whether the pre-autopsy had been completed or whether President Kennedy s body was still on the autopsy-room table. Knowing that the FBI agents were intent on entering the autopsy room, since the body was still being worked on, Kellerman had to invent a reason for temporarily excluding them (see section 16.2.) and, possibly, others James Sibert FBI Agent Sibert told the ARRB that he and Agent O Neill assisted SSAs Greer and Kellerman in taking the ornamental bronze casket into the anteroom of the morgue at about 7:17 PM. [4, p. 45; p. 50] In their interview with Arlen Specter, both agents said that they were informed that preparations for the autopsy were ongoing upon their arrival. [23, p. 2] 20

28 10. Eyewitnesses to Delivery of a Casket at 8:00 PM Samuel Bird Infantry Lieutenant Bird was in charge of a twelve-man team composed of representatives of the five armed services army, navy, air force, marines and coast guard called the joint-service casket-bearer team, [22, p. 2] (generally referred to as the honor guard ). In a report dated December 10, 1963, he described his duties, from 11/22/63 until 11/25/63 when the president s body was interred at Arlington Cemetery. [22, p. 1] In the early evening of the day of the assassination, the honor guard helped to off-load the ornamental bronze casket from Air Force One into a gray navy ambulance. Mrs. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, along with SSAs Kellerman, Greer and Paul Landis rode in the ambulance with the ornamental casket from Andrews AFB to the Bethesda Hospital entrance. [11, p. 446] Bird s report states that the honor guard carried the ornamental bronze casket into the Bethesda morgue at 8:00 PM. [22, p. 1] James Metzler Medical technician James Metzler was interviewed by David Lifton in 1979: [2, pp ] LIFTON: Were you outside on the loading dock when he arrived? METZLER: I went out to the door, yes.. the honor guard was there. They brought in the casket.. by the time I got to the door I believe they were just about coming in The honor guard brought it in and they had to leave. And then I helped put him on the table there was maybe about five of us that helped put him on the table. LIFTON: How was the body wrapped? METZLER: He was all in a sheet. His head was wrapped in a sheet.. LIFTON: Was it a ceremonial coffin or a shipping casket? METZLER: it was dark brown, I believe it had handles on the side of it. It would be something that you d see at a viewing.. LIFTON: It was not the kind of casket you d use in a disaster situation? To ship a body from New York to L.A. Something like that? METZLER: It s not a rubber bag or a metal box, if that s what you mean. 21

29 LIFTON: That s what I meant. It was a regular viewing casket, or what I call a ceremonial casket? METZLER: Yes. LIFTON: What you see in a funeral home for a viewing? METZLER: Exactly. 22

30 11. Summary of Multiple Casket Entries The information just provided is, in our opinion, proof beyond a reasonable doubt that there were three casket arrivals, and one body. President Kennedy s body first arrived at the Bethesda morgue at approximately 6:35 6:45 PM in a shipping casket and inside a body bag. The bronze ornamental casket, into which the body had been placed at Parkland Hospital, arrived at the entrance to the Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55 PM, ten to twenty minutes after the president s body had been carried into the morgue. The bronze casket was taken into the morgue entrance twice; the first time was at about 7:17 PM when FBI Agents Sibert and O Neill helped to carry it into the anteroom. [4, p 45; p. 50] At this time the casket was empty, a fact unknown to the FBI agents. Subsequently, the ornamental bronze casket, now containing the president s body, minus the body bag, was carried into the morgue by the honor guard at approximately 8:00 PM. (The logistics of the transfer of the body from the table in the autopsy room to the bronze casket and carriage outside to the navy ambulance remain unclear.) 12. Duplicity of Dr. Humes As stated above, it is fundamentally important that the statement contained in the Sibert and O Neill report that [3, p. 3] it was also apparent that a tracheotomy had been performed, as well as surgery of the head area was made by Dr. Humes early in the official autopsy (which began shortly after 8:00 PM), presumably to suggest to the FBI agents that the gross wound in the throat (Figure 1) as well as the extensive defect in the president s head (Figure 3) resulted from emergency medical treatment in Dallas. This was not true. Humes was making a statement about the wounds that he himself had altered well before 8:00 PM while Sibert and O Neill were sequestered outside the morgue in the corridor (or elsewhere), believing that preparations for the postmortem were in progress in the autopsy room. 23

31 12.1. Proof of Alterations Evidence to support the thesis that alterations to the wounds were made prior to the official autopsy is derived from a number of sources Edward Reed, in his ARRB deposition, indicated that the first incision to the president s body was in the forehead. [15, pp. 57, 58] We believe this was done to excise the small entrance wound in the forehead see the arrows in Figures 1 and 3 that was described by Joe O Donnell [27, p. 1] and Dennis David. [14, p. 4] In a telephone interview with HSCA staff members Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy, autopsy photographer John Stringer said that the doctors had to crack the skull to get the brain out. [28, p. 17] Cracking the skull is not protocol for postmortem brain removal. Moreover, that procedure was not described in the autopsy report. We believe it was done to obscure evidence of frontal shots. Since the original head wound was caused by a bullet shot from the front, crushing the skull and extending damage to the top and side of the president s head obscured the fact that the wound in the right rear of the president s head was one of exit. (See also [29; 30].) Saundra Spencer, in her accounts to the ARRB in December 1996 and June 1997 provide additional proof. Petty Officer Spencer was in charge of the White House laboratory at the Naval Photographic Center in Anacostia. In a telephone interview, [31] she said that on November 23, 1963, she received three or four duplex film holders (six or eight shots) of color negatives from a federal agent named Fox [32] which she understood to be autopsy photographs. She developed the negatives, made prints and gave all of materials back to Fox. The president s body was very clean, unlike its appearance in other autopsy photographs she had seen. There was a circular wound at the base of the front of the president s neck, about the size of a person s thumb in breadth. There was a wound in the back of the president s head, at about the center, 3 or 4 inches above the hairline. It was about 2 to 2½ inches wide, which she described as a blown out chunk. She saw no damage to the side of the president s head. She could not tell whether or not there was damage to the top of the head because the negatives she processed did not show it. In a deposition, [33] Ms. Spencer repeated these observations. She noted that although she was in charge of the White House lab, she worked under Chief Robert Knudsen who acted as her supervisor and liaison with the White House. One photograph showed a brain that was laid beside the body but it didn t 24

32 appear that the skull had been cut, peeled back and the brain removed [33, pp ] As to whose brain it was, she could not say. The throat wound was just like a finger, half-inch. [33, p. 41] On being shown the extant photographs of the autopsy by the ARRB s Jeremy Gunn, Spencer stated that none of the photographs was developed by her. [33, pp. 48, 49, 51, 52] In addition, the print paper used for the photographs she was shown was not the same type of paper she used in November 1963 when she processed the color negatives received from Agent Fox. And none of the photographs she developed in November 1963 was in the inventory of photographs she was shown during her deposition. In the photographs that she developed, the brain was less damaged than that depicted in the photographs shown to her during her deposition. [33, p. 59] The importance of what Saundra Spencer told the ARRB cannot be overstated. Her descriptions of the wounds in the throat and head are consistent with those of the doctors at Parkland Hospital. Therefore, the photographs currently in the official inventory at the National Archives which, for example, show a large gash in the throat (Figure 1) and no defect in the rear of the head (Figure 5) are untruthful representations of the wounds sustained by the president. Figure Joe O Donnell a photographer with the US Information Agency who was interviewed by telephone by the the ARRB in January/February 1997 [27] confirms the observations of Saundra Spencer. O Donnell stated that he was shown two sets of photographs by his friend, White 25

33 House Photographer Robert Knudsen. The first set included a photograph of a hole in the back of the president s head (about the size of a grapefruit), and a hole in the forehead, above the right eye, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter. In the second set, the hole in the rear of the head was gone; the hair, apparently wet, was neatly combed over the region of the hole. [27, p. 2] The wound over the right eye also was gone. [27, p. 5] Dennis David corroborates the observations by Spencer and O Donnell. In his interview with Doug Horne, [14] David said he was shown slides and a B&W 16-mm movie film by Navy Lieutenant Commander William Pitzer [34] that depicted a gaping wound in the back of the president s head (the top of the head was intact) and a small round or oval wound, a quarter to three-eighths of an inch in diameter, located in the right front temporal area. [14, p. 4] A representation of the head wounds was provided by LCDR David at AE s request (Figure 6). In addition, David said it was clear to him that the movie was taken inside the morgue. These depictions are not evidenced in the inventory of photographs currently residing in the National Archives. Figure 6. Representation of head wounds by Dennis David. 26

34 In summary, at some point there existed photographs that documented the wounds that the president incurred in Dealey Plaza, as observed and reported on by the Parkland Hospital doctors. Based on the observations of eyewitnesses at Bethesda, the wounds were enlarged after the president s body left Parkland Hospital. Casket/body chicanery at Bethesda Naval Hospital, between 6:30 and 8:00 PM on the evening of the assassination, was a necessary component of the bodyalteration process. 27

35 28

36 13. Movie Mystery Dennis David s account of a movie film showing President Kennedy s body in the Bethesda autopsy room has raised questions for decades, especially in terms of who took the film, as well as when and how. Various proposals have included the following: It was generated by closed-circuit television (CCTV) at Bethesda. [35] However, videotaping in the Bethesda autopsy room required a bulky TV camera being brought in on a wheeled stand, something that would have been noticed by all present. [35] William Pitzer generated the movie with a 16-mm camera [36]. However, there is no evidence that Lt. Pitzer was present in the morgue during the official autopsy. If Pitzer generated the movie with a film camera or by videotaping it had to have been during the pre-autopsy. [35; 36] In the absence of evidence that Lt. Pitzer was in the morgue on the evening of 11/22/63, another candidate comes to the fore as the potential operator of a movie camera during the preautopsy, a man known to have been present in the autopsy room and who had training in the necessary skills: John Stringer. In his deposition to the ARRB, Mr. Stringer stated that before working at Bethesda, he had received considerable training at the University of Maryland in medical photography, including motion pictures. [37, pp ] While at Bethesda, he became director of medical photography and taught courses to navy personnel. (Stringer was a civilian while working at Bethesda.) When asked if anyone had more experience in autopsy photography than he did, Stringer replied, Not as far as I can know. [37, p. 21] In text to follow, we will provide evidence that Stringer was also the one who took the preautopsy photographs that were subsequently observed by Saundra Spencer, Dennis David and Joe O Donnell. It is ironic that some of the statements Stringer made during his ARRB deposition place him inside the morgue during the pre-autopsy timeframe, even though he attempted to camouflage that fact with other evasive statements. Mr. Stringer was one of the most important eyewitnesses inside the morgue during the pre-autopsy timeframe. He was one of the few who had a close-up view of all that was going on inside the Bethesda autopsy room from beginning to end. 29

37 30

38 14. Wound Alterations: Where and When? Head Wound Based on the accounts by Reed, Stringer, O Donnell, and Dennis David, JVR concluded that the head wound was altered at the Bethesda morgue by Dr. Humes during a pre-autopsy on the president s body. [38] (For full disclosure: this conclusion was reached earlier by Doug Horne, who discussed it in Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. [8, p. 1005]) Throat Wound In contrast to Horne s view that the original throat wound/incision was altered on Air Force One by SSA Roy Kellerman, [8, p. 997] we believe it was altered at the Bethesda morgue by Dr. Humes at the same time the head wound was altered. [38] Three eyewitnesses in the morgue during the preautopsy support this hypothesis, as follows Floyd Riebe assisted in taking photographs during the autopsy. As noted previously, he told the ARRB that he was inside the morgue when the president s body first arrived in a shipping casket/body bag. [17, pp ] After the body had been placed on one of the autopsy-room tables and he started taking photographs, Riebe was asked to leave, presumably by Dr. Humes. [17, p. 32] Upon his return, in the presence of Dr. Pierre Finck [17, p. 46] who arrived at 8:30 PM [39, pp. 70, 76 Riebe resumed taking photographs, at which point he described the throat wound as [k]ind of over exaggerated bigger than I have seen before. [17, p. 46] We presume that the exaggerated wound that Riebe described was the result of alteration during his absence from the morgue Jerrol Custer, who supervised the taking of X-rays, told the ARRB that he was also asked to leave the morgue early. [40, p. 66] He first described the throat wound as a typical bullet hole a little bigger than my little finger (in) diameter. [40, p. 90] When asked if he had observed a long incision or cut on the president s throat, Custer replied, Not at that time I didn t. [40, p. 90] After he had described the throat wound, Mr. Custer referred to schematics of the skull, saying that there was damage in the parietal temporal region with a king-size hole in the occipital region, into which two hands together would fit. [40, p. 94] Also, he indicated that a section of skull between the temporal bone and parietal bone was flapped out as if they had sawed it. [40, p. 96] 31

39 Custer s descriptions of the throat wound indicated that, at some point, it was a small wound, similar to that observed at Parkland, but later appeared to be different. His statement, Not at that time, I didn t, suggests that he observed different wounds at different times. It is plausible that the small wound corresponds to when the president s body arrived in the shipping casket during which Custer was present. and that, during his early absence from the morgue, alterations were made on this wound as well as on the head wound Edward Reed assisted in taking X-rays of the president s body. During a phone interview with Mark Flanagan for the HSCA, Mr. Reed said he was in the morgue at about 6:30 PM. [41, p. 1] He described the throat wound as about two inches in diameter. [41, p. 2] This is a large estimate for the length of the tracheotomy made at Parkland Hospital; on the other hand, in an interview with David Lifton, he said, It wasn t like a normal tracheotomy. It was a lot larger. [2, p. 619] As was the case for Riebe, Reed also was asked to leave the morgue, soon after he had observed Dr. Humes using a saw to cut the president s forehead. [15, pp ] When asked by the ARRB to describe the president s wounds, Reed stated that the head wound was in the temporal parietal region, large enough to accommodate four fingers. [15, p. 27] The throat wound was 7 cm in length (i.e., almost 3 inches) [15, p. 29] Since these descriptions of the president s wounds are quite different from what were observed at Parkland Hospital, we believe that they were altered while Mr. Reed (and Messrs. Custer and Riebe) was absent from the morgue. 32

40 15. Who Took the Pre-Autopsy Photographs? John Stringer Since Saundra Spencer, Dennis David and Joe O Donnell, observed photographs of the president s wounds before alteration, it follows that someone took these photographs shortly after the president s body arrived in the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 6:45 PM. We believe that John Stringer, the official photographer of the autopsy, took these photographs during the pre-autopsy phase. The rationale for this is based on a timeline of events involving Stringer prior to the beginning of the official autopsy at 8:00 PM. In Floyd Riebe s ARRB deposition, he stated that on the afternoon of 11/22/63, after receiving official word from the chief of the day, he called Mr. Stringer at home to advise him that the autopsy was to be done at Bethesda. [17, p. 21] Riebe gathered film, cameras, and other equipment, [17, p. 22] and subsequently went to the main entrance to identify Stringer so that he could enter the hospital complex. [17, pp ] Stringer then asked Riebe to procure a strobe unit (electronic flash). [17, p. 24] Presumably, Riebe took the strobe to the autopsy room where Stringer was waiting. Riebe stated, We were in the room for maybe half an hour before they brought the casket in, [17, p. 27] which indicates a 6:05 6:15 PM arrival time. Since he had been describing their interaction, it follows that his use of we included Stringer, indicating that both men were in the autopsy room when the corpse arrived at 6:35 6:45 PM. Thus, Riebe confirmed Stringer s recollection, expressed to HSCA staff, that he (Stringer) arrived at about 6:15 PM. [28, p. 12] As mentioned previously, he described the casket as plain and inexpensive and said that the corpse was in a body bag. [17, pp ] In Stringer s deposition to the ARRB, he described the casket in vague terms as metal and I think it was sort of brownish ; [37, p. 67] unfortunately, he was not pressed to provide a more precise description. If, as Stringer claimed, he entered the autopsy room sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 PM, it is reasonable to conclude that he witnessed not only two entries of the body first in a body bag within a shipping casket, as described by Riebe [17, pp ] and others, and later in the bronze, ceremonial casket but also the chicanery that was necessary to replace the body in the ceremonial casket, after the pre-autopsy, and temporarily remove it from the morgue. We agree with Doug Horne [8, p. 1003] who interpreted Stringer s metal/brownish vagueness as an attempt to imply that he witnessed only the arrival of the bronze ceremonial casket, finessing the fact that he had also witnessed the arrival of the shipping casket/body bag. 33

41 When asked by the ARRB staff how much time elapsed after the body was taken out of the casket before he began taking photographs, Stringer replied, Oh, it must have been more than an hour by the time they took the X-rays. And they had to develop them and bring them back down. [37, pp. 66, 67] We view this response as an obfuscation intended to answer the question solely as it applied to the official autopsy, which began at about 8:00 PM, while hiding the fact he took the preautopsy photographs much earlier. It is known that X-rays were still being taken after Autopsist Pierre Finck arrived at the morgue at 8:30 PM. [39, pp. 70, 76] Thus, Stringer s response gives the impression that he started taking photographs at about 9:30 PM. If so, what had he been doing since he entered the autopsy room at around 6:15 PM? We believe that he evaded the question as to when he started taking photographs so as to avoid, again, the controversial subject of the arrival of the shipping casket/body bag, which he witnessed. In his ARRB deposition, John Stringer stated that a metal probe was placed in the neck wound, front to back. [37, pp ] There is no discussion in the official autopsy report, or description by others present at the official autopsy of insertion of a metal probe into the throat wound. Technicians Paul O Connor and James Jenkins, who were present throughout the official autopsy, described insertion of probes into the back wound, [20, pp. 40, 74] but both men made it clear that the throat wound was not probed: O Connor: We weren t able to do certain critical things like probe the throat wound that we thought was a bullet wound. We found out it was a bullet wound years later. [20, p. 45] Jenkins: [When asked, Did anybody tell you not to probe the throat wound? ] No, because we went through the whole autopsy on the premise that the throat wound was a trach. [20, p. 78] Not only was Stringer present when a metal probe was inserted into the throat, but he made the surprising declaration to the ARRB that he saw the doctor insert his fingers into the tracheotomy wound in an attempt to find bullet fragments. [37, p. 191] Given that a standard tracheotomy had been performed at Parkland Hospital, producing a wound of about an inch long, [2, p. 238] the incision must have been enlarged to accommodate digital probing, presumably by Humes. Although Floyd Riebe was assisting Stringer, he did not witness probing of the throat simply because he was asked to leave the morgue soon after arrival of the body in the shipping casket. [17, p. 32] The only probing Mr. Riebe recalled was of the back wound by Dr. Finck, [17, p. 38] who arrived in the autopsy room at about 8:30 PM. [39, p. 70] He indicated to the ARRB that, after he 34

42 had started taking general body photographs, X-ray came in and we had to leave. [17, p. 32] The use of we indicates that he and Stringer left the autopsy room at that stage. However, based on the previous discussion regarding Stringer s witnessing cracking of the president s skull as well as witnessing probing of the wounds with fingers and metal rods, if Stringer left the morgue with Riebe, he must have returned shortly thereafter. Mr. Stringer s observations not witnessed by Messrs. Riebe, O Connor or Jenkins, and not described in the autopsy report must have been made during the pre-autopsy timeframe. In his ARRB deposition Dr. Humes maintained that he was unaware of the bullet wound in the throat: [42, p. 76] 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. On the other hand, if the throat wound were simply a tracheotomy, it begs the question of why a metal probe was inserted into this wound, as well as digital manipulation to find bullet fragments. When asked, Did you take any action at Bethesda that increased the size of the tracheotomy?, Humes provided a response that tests all credulity: [42, p. 174] I don t think so. I don t believe so. This was patently false. Dr. Humes enlarged the throat wound in order to extract a bullet or fragments. He knew this wound was one of entry why else would he have probed it? Although Stringer didn t think that he took photographs of the probe in the neck, [37, p. 192] White House Photographer Robert Knudsen, in a deposition to the HSCA, corroborated Stringer s description of the metal neck probe when he described developing a negative depicting probes through the president s body, one through the chest and one through the neck. [43, p. 33] Furthermore, the negative showed that the thorax was held erect, [43, p. 35] indicating that the Y - incision had not been made at the time of the probing, otherwise the body would not have been erected; this points to a pre-autopsy timeframe. In fact, in none of the negatives or prints processed by Knudsen had the chest been opened. [43, p. 40] Robert Knudsen When asked when he first became aware of the existence of photographs of the autopsy of the president, Mr. Knudsen replied, The morning following the autopsy. [43, p. 5] Therefore, 35

43 according to his HSCA testimony, Knudsen did not take photographs during the pre-autopsy or during the official autopsy (although see [44]). The possibility of Robert Knudsen being the photographer during the pre-autopsy has been discussed by Doug Horne. [8, pp. 904, 905, 906, 1003 n3] Mr. Horne indicated that one fact negating this possibility is that Knudsen told his son that he arrived at the Bethesda Hospital from Andrews Air Force Base via the motorcade, at about 6:55 PM. [8, p n3] Horne concluded that this arrival time would not have been early enough for Knudsen to take photographs of the president s original wounds (before alterations). We believe that additional factors negate this possibility. Knudsen was a social photographer who had never even seen autopsy photographs. [43, p. 32] Nor was he stationed at the NNMC. Since Knudsen told his son that he arrived at the hospital in the motorcade from Andrews AFB, Horne offered the possibility that Knudsen rode in a Gawler s Funeral Home hearse from Andrews to Bethesda. [8, p n3] Although this might have allowed Knudsen to arrive early enough to take the initial photographs, there is no evidence that a Gawler s hearse was at Andrews AFB. According to Joe Hagen, a manager at Gawler s, the original order was rescinded; they were directed not to go to Andrews AFB. [8, p. 591] The Gawler s personnel were told that the body/casket would be transported from Andrews by a navy ambulance. [8, p. 591] None of the photographs shown to Knudsen by HSCA Staff Member Purdy depicted probes. Moreover, toward the end of the deposition, Purdy stated [43, p. 51]: Also, there has not been previous evidence that there were either metal probes that were extended totally through the body, or that such probes were photographed through the body. The suggestion that Knudsen was mistaken in his recollection of probes through the chest and neck elicited uncertainty in his responses, of which the following are particularly revealing [43, pp. 52, 53]: Why this [film depicting probes] sticks in my mind that there was one with these two probes through the body that nobody else recalls, it puts a question in my mind, and yet but I could not imagine where I could get the idea from, if I had not seen it. And yet it is starting to bother me now that there is nothing in the autopsy about it. He added [43, p. 53]: At this point, I am confused why it sticks in my mind so strongly that there was this photograph, yet nobody else recalls it, and it is apparently not in any report. 36

44 Mr. Knudsen s uncertainty and confusion indicate that he was not the photographer during the preautopsy when this event occurred. If he had photographed probes through the president s body, he would not have expressed doubt that he had, in fact, processed such a film. When asked whether he was aware that there were autopsy X-rays, he replied, No, I do not know if any were ever taken. [43, p. 29] Accordingly, we conclude that Knudsen was not present during the official autopsy since Messrs. Stringer and Riebe the official photographers at the autopsy knew that X-rays had been taken [37, p. 191; 17 p. 33] and Dr. Finck requested a wholebody X-ray survey after his arrival at 8:30 PM. [39, pp. 70, 76] If Knudsen was in the autopsy room at some point and we believe he was then he was there after the official autopsy was concluded. And if he took photographs of the body, as claimed by members of his family, [45] he did so during the reconstruction phase, possibly thinking that he was participating in the autopsy. A similar scenario has been suggested by Doug Horne. [8, pp. 270, 593 n4, 913] Summary The only photographer known to have been continuously in the Bethesda morgue from about 6:15 PM on 11/22/63 until the completion of the autopsy was John Stringer. The available evidence indicates that not only did he take photographs during the official autopsy on President Kennedy s body, he also took photographs (and possibly exposed a movie film, see section 13) at the preautopsy, during which the president s wounds were altered. 37

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46 16. Activities of FBI Agents James Sibert and Francis O Neill Notwithstanding the importance of the report Sibert and O Neill wrote recording the descriptions by Dr. Humes of the president s wounds during the official autopsy, significant timelines are missing from their account of their activities: the time of the arrival of the ambulance carrying the Dallas casket at the loading dock adjacent to the morgue; the time the Dallas casket was carried into the morgue; the time the president s body was removed from the Dallas casket and placed on the autopsy-room table; the time at which they claim to have been asked to leave the morgue to allow photographs and X-rays to be taken; and the time at which they claim to have re-entered the autopsy room. The only time entered with respect to the autopsy was the first incision was made at 8:15 PM Arrival and Delay The motorcade arrived at the front of the NNMC at 6:55 PM. [2, p. 478] Hence, that is when Sibert and O Neill arrived. Their report states that, after Mrs. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy had alighted and entered the building, the ambulance (carrying the Dallas casket) was thereafter driven to the rear entrance [3, p. 1] The word thereafter is a catch-all, concealing a significant delay before the navy ambulance moved to the rear of the building, the location of the loading dock outside the morgue. After the delay, Sibert and O Neill drove [4, p. 43] to the loading dock and arrived there presumably at 7:17 PM, the time they gave to Arlen Specter for when preparation of the autopsy began. [23, p. 2] This begs the question of what happened between 7:17 and 8:15 PM, when the first incision was made. Nothing in their report directly answers this question, and, we believe, for good reason. They needed to conceal the fact that they failed in their primary duty: they lost vigil of the president s body/casket for a considerable period of time. The claim in their report that Bureau agents (i.e., themselves) assisted in the moving of the casket to the autopsy room [3, p. 1] is less than truthful: they could not have taken the casket any further than the anteroom. Why not? Because the president s body had been in the autopsy room for at least thirty minutes, [13, p. 5; 14, p. 3; 15, p. 21; 16, p. 1] something the agents were not aware of and which had to be kept from them. Our reasoning here is supported by comments made by Mr. Sibert, in retirement, to William Law [20, p. 241]: 39

47 We took [the casket] into the anteroom, like off the autopsy room, where we put it right down on the floor, the casket right down on the floor. I remember that. The next statement in the report is as follows: [3, p. 1] A tight security was immediately placed around the autopsy room by the Naval facility and the U.S. Secret Service. Bureau agents made contact with Mr. ROY KELLERMAN, the Assistant Secret Service Agent in Charge of the White House Detail, and advised him of the Bureau s interest in this matter. These two sentences convey the impression that the events the placement of tight security and the advisement of SA Kellerman occurred sequentially. They did not. During Sibert s deposition before the ARRB, when invited to comment on this passage, he responded: [4, p. 57] Yes, the sequence of events is off there. Contact was made with Kellerman right before the casket even came out of the ambulance. But the tight security, believe me, it was tight. About every 10 feet they had a guard posted in the hallway. Therefore, Sibert and O Neill introduced themselves to Kellerman at the loading dock adjacent to the morgue and subsequently saw the tight security as they entered the anteroom. These independent events provide a new picture of what occurred after 7:17 PM. The use of the word advised coupled with the comment on tight security has elicited erroneous conclusions for decades. The statement about tight security was merely a factual observation; it had nothing to do with their not entering the autopsy room. After all, how would the presence of FBI agents constitute a break in security? The word advised has been interpreted as indicating a battle of wills between the FBI agents and Kellerman, [e.g., 8, p. 1006] whereas a simpler explanation is that Sibert and O Neill were merely introducing themselves to the Secret Service agent, informing him of their remit. They believed that an introduction was necessary, to which Kellerman responded with words to the effect, I know all about you from Secret Service Director James Rowley. [5, p. 56] Synthesis What kept the FBI agents from entering the autopsy room? The answer lies in information that emerges from Sibert s and O Neill s ARRB depositions. On their arrival at the morgue entrance, both men said they became aware of on-going discussions involving the pathologists about what type of autopsy full or partial should be performed. [4, pp ; 24, p. 5] These discussions are probably what were referred to in the following cryptic comment in the report, [3, p. 3] which immediately precedes the description of the body being removed from the casket: 40

48 Arrangements were made for the performance of the autopsy by the U.S. Navy and Secret Service. Being told of these discussions provided Sibert and O Neill with a plausible reason for a delay in the start of the autopsy, which may explain their claim to Arlen Specter that the preparation for the autopsy began at 7:17 PM. In other words, there was no need for them to enter the autopsy room at 7:17 PM, which corresponds to when they brought the Dallas casket into the anteroom, because, as far as they were initially aware, nothing was going on there beyond discussions. However, at some later point, it appears that they became aware of activity in the autopsy room during their absence. Support for this thesis comes from Sibert s statements to William Law; when asked how long it was from when the body was unwrapped to when they returned to the autopsy room (supposedly after photographs and X-rays were taken), Sibert said, Probably close to 45 minutes, something like that. [20, p. 244] Law: So that s how long you were in the cooler room or the anteroom? Sibert: Maybe out in the hall. Law: Out in the hall? Sibert: Yes, we were excluded from where they were working. We had no idea what was going on X-rays or nothin. In their comments to Law, Sibert and O Neill acknowledged for the first time their absence from the autopsy room for a considerable period and that they possibly had been deceived. Two other statements in the Sibert and O Neill report merit discussion here, because neither has received significant attention, which is unfortunate since one is blatantly false. The first is: [3, p. 3] The President s body was removed from the casket in which it had been transported If this is given just a quick glance, one might conclude that Sibert and O Neill witnessed this event. However, the sentence is awkwardly worded in the passive voice leading us to surmise that they did not observe the removal of the president s body from the Dallas casket. On this subject, a bizarre exchange occurred among Sibert, Law and Debra Conway. [20, pp ]: Conway: Were they in the anteroom when they unwrapped him, or when they brought him into the main-- Sibert: I couldn t say for sure. Law: [Y]ou don t remember whether they took the body out at that point 41

49 Sibert: I would think, I don t know, this is just reasoning, but they had corpsmen that were carrying, you know, lifting him out of the casket onto the autopsy table and I can t because I was talking with O Neill. When I saw what we were up against there, I said, We ve got to get the names of everybody in this autopsy room One might conclude from this exchange that Mr. Sibert had better recollection of his concern over who else was present as opposed to when he first saw the bloodied body of his murdered president. We believe otherwise. As discussed below, we will suggest that FBI Agents Sibert and O Neill did not witness the arrival of the Dallas casket brought in by the honor guard. For example, in his ARRB deposition, Sibert claimed no recollection of a military guard unloading any casket. [4, p. 54] In O Neill s ARRB deposition, he said that he and Sibert (and Secret Service Agents Greer and Kellerman) were helped by an honor guard in moving the ornamental casket into the morgue. [5, p. 56]. However when asked if he knew which branch of the military the honor guard came from, O Neill s recollection was vague: [5, p. 58] No. I d be guessing. I think Army, but I m just guessing on that. The easiest thing would be to say Navy, because it was a naval installation. But I don t recall who it was. Figure 7. In fact, the honor guard, whom Sibert and O Neill had seen at Andrews AFB, was composed of all five services. It seems odd that O Neill a World War II veteran of the US Air Force would not have taken mental note of the servicemen in dress uniforms at approximately 7:17 PM or as they arrived in the morgue at 8:00 PM carrying the ornamental casket. Figure 7 shows a press photograph taken through the window of a door in the corridor leading to the morgue; the fact that the honor guard members represented various services is immediately clear. Based on their ARRB accounts, we conclude that Sibert and O Neill were not in the 42