Dr. OLIVER Volume V
TESTIMONY OF DR. ALFRED G. OLIVIER
The President's Commission reconvened at 3 p.m.
The CHAIRMAN. The Commission will come to order. Mr. Specter, has the doctor been sworn yet?
Mr. SPECTER. No, sir; he has not.
The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, would you raise your right hand and be sworn, please? Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give in the matter before this Commission will be the truth., the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Dr. OLIVER. Yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. You may be seated.
Mr. SPECTER. State your full name for the record.
Dr. OLIVER. Dr. Alfred G. Olivier.
Mr. SPECTER. What is your occupation or profession?
Dr. OLIVER. A supervisory research veterinarian and I work for the Department of the Army at Edgewood Arsenal, Md.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you describe the nature of your duties at that arsenal, please?
Dr. OLIVER. Investigating the wound ballistics of various bullets and other military missiles.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you describe the general nature of the tests which are carried on at Edgewood Arsenal?
Dr. OLIVER. For example, with a bullet we run tissue studies getting the retardation of the bullet through the tissues, the penetration, various characteristics of it. We use as good tissue simulant 20 percent gelatin. This has a drag coefficient of muscle tissue and makes an excellent homogenous medium to study the action of the bullet. We also use animal parts and parts of cadavers where necessary to determine the characteristics of these things.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you set forth your educational background briefly, please?
Dr. OLIVER. Yes; I did 2 years of preveterinary work at the University of New Hampshire and 4 years of veterinary school at the University of Pennsylvania, and I hold a degree doctor of veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Mr. SPECTER. In what year did you complete your educational work?
Dr. OLIVER. 1953.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you outline your experience in the field subsequent to 1953?
Dr. OLIVER. In this field?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, sir.
Dr. OLIVER. I came to Edgewood Arsenal, then the Army Chemical Center, in 1957, and originally to work, take charge of the animal colonies but immediately I got interested in the research and started working in the field of wound ballistics and have been in it ever since, and am presently Chief of the Wound Ballistics Branch.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you been in charge of a series of tests performed to determine certain wound ballistics on circumstances analogous to the underlying facts on wounds inflicted upon President Kennedy and Governor Connally on November 22, 1963?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I have.
Mr. SPECTER. And in the course of those tests what weapon was used?
Dr. OLIVIER. It was identified as Commission Exhibit 139. It was a 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
Mr. SPECTER. Did the designation, Commission Exhibit No. 139, appear on the body of that rifle?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; it did.
Mr. SPECTER. What type of bullets were used in the tests which you performed?
Dr. OLIVIER. We used the Western ammunition, Western being a division of Olin Industries, Winchester Western, it was lot 6,000 to 6.5 mm. round. Has a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,160 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. And were those bullets obtained by you upon information provided to you by the Commission's staff as to the identity of the bullets which were believed to have been used during the assassination?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I first got the identity from the people at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and then I further checked with the Commission to see if that was right before ordering this type of ammunition.
Mr. SPECTER. And where were those bullets obtained from?
Dr. OLIVIER. I obtained 100 rounds from Remington at Bridgeport, Conn., and Dr. Dziemian obtained another 160 rounds, I believe, from Winchester in New Haven.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you perform certain tests to determine the wound ballistics and include in that the penetration power of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, which you referred to, firing the Western Cartridge Co. bullet by comparison with other types of bullets?
Dr. OLIVIER. We didn't fire any of the others at the same time. These had been fired previously. We have all these records for comparison.
Mr. SPECTER. Was the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle then fired for comparison purposes with the other bullets where you already had your experience?
Dr. OLIVIER. No; it was fired for the purposes for which--to try to shed some light on say the factors leading to the assassination and all, not for comparison with the other bullets.
Mr. SPECTER. I now show you a photograph which is marked as Commission Exhibit No. 844, may it please the Commission, and ask you if this photograph was prepared by you in conjunction with the study on the Mannlicher-Carcano and the Western Cartridge Co. bullet?
Dr. OLIVER. Yes; it was.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you explain to the Commission what that photograph depicts?
Dr. OLIVIER. Actually, the bullet passed through two gelatin blocks. This was done as part of an energy study to see the amount of energy imparted to the block of gelatin taking a high-speed motion picture. These blocks show a record of the permanent cavity left in the gelatin. This is not necessarily the total penetration. This bullet when it comes out of the second block still has quite a bit of penetrating power. Quite a few of these bullets would go into a dirt bank and imbed themselves so deeply that they couldn't be recovered.
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Mr. SPECTER. I now show you Commission Exhibit No. 845 which is a photograph, and ask you to state for the record what that photograph represents?
Dr. OLIVIER. This has been adopted as standard military ammunition of the U.S. Army. It is known as the NATO round. It is M-80 ball fired in the M-14 rifle. It has a different--it is a full jacketed military bullet but has a different point, what they call a no jag point, a sharp point. It has tumbling characteristics. When it goes in a certain block it tumbles. and does the same in the body. It is more efficient in producing wounds than the bullet under study.
Mr. SPECTER. How do the impact, penetration, and other characteristics of the bullet depicted in 845 compare with the Western Cartridge Co. bullet fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano in 844?
Dr. OLIVIER It has better wounding potential due to the quicker tumbling but it would not have as good penetrating ability, when it starts tumbling and releasing all that energy doing all that damage it comes to a stop in a shorter distance.
Mr. SPECTER. Would the Western bullet be characterized as having the qualities of a more stable bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; it would. You mean in the target?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, sir.
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. The stability in the air would be the same for any missile, would it not?
Dr. OLIVIER. To be a good bullet they should be stable in air in order to hit what you are aiming at, yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Then would the characteristics of stability in the air be the same for either of the two bullets you have heretofore referred to?
Dr. OLIVIER. Essentially so.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you photograph marked as Commission Exhibit No. 846 and ask you to state what that depicts?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is a 257 Winchester Roberts soft nose hunting bullet. This one pictured fired from right to left instead of left to right and the bullet didn't even go out of the block. It deforms almost immediately on entering the block and releases its energy rather rapidly. This type of ammunition is illegal for military use. We are just studying the wounding characteristics of various bullets, but this is not a military bullet.
Mr. SPECTER. How does it compare with the Western bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. It would be better for wounding, better for hunting purposes. But as I said, it isn't acceptable as a military bullet.
Mr. SPECTER. How does it compare with respect to penetration power?
Dr. OLIVIER. Much less than the Mannlicher-Carcano.
Mr. SPECTER. In the normal course of the work that you perform for the U.S. Army at Edgewood Arsenal, do you have occasion to simulate substances for testing purposes on determining the path of a bullet through the human body?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; we do use animal tissues or gelatin as simulants for tissues of the human body.
Mr. SPECTER. Has the autopsy report on President John F. Kennedy been made available to you for your review?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; it has.
Mr. SPECTER. And subsequent to your review of that report, did you make an effort to simulate the body tissue through which the bullet is reported to have passed through the President in accordance with the report of the autopsy surgeon; entering on the rear of his neck, 14 cm. below the mastoid process and 14 cm. to the left of the right acromion process, passing through a fascia channel, striking the trachea and exiting through the lower anterior of the neck?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. What substance did you prepare to simulate that portion of the President's body?
Dr. OLIVIER. We determined the distance on various people by locating this anatomical region and using people of various sizes we found that regardless of general body build, the distance penetrated was around 13 1/2 to 14 1/2 cm.
As a consequence, I used gelatin blocks 20 percent gelatin cut at 13 1/2 cm.
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lengths and also used horsemeat and goatmeat placed in a box so that--this was a little harder to get the exact length but that varied between 13 1/2 and 14 1/2 cm. of muscle tissue.
Mr. SPECTER. Did that simulate, then, the portion of the President's body through which the bullet is reported to have passed, as closely as you could for your testing purposes?
Dr. OLIVIER. As closely as we could for these test purposes; yes.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked as Commission Exhibit No. 847 and ask you to testify as to what that depicts?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is a box containing--I couldn't say looking at it whether it is the horsemeat or the goatmeat but one of the two. The distance traveled through that meat would be 13 1/2 to 14 1/2 centimeters. It is also covered with clothing and clipped goatskin on the entrance and exit sides, and behind that are the screens for measuring the exit velocity. We had already determined the striking velocity by firing I believe it was--I have it right here if you want----
Mr. SPECTER. Before you proceed to that, describe the type of screens which are shown in the picture which were used to measure exit velocity, if you please?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes. These screens are known as the break-type screen. They are silver imprinted on paper and when the bullet passes through it breaks the current. When it passes through the first screen it breaks the current activating a chronograph, counting chronograph. When it passes through the second screen it stops. This is over a known distance, and so the time that it took to pass between the first and the second will give you the average velocity halfway between the two screens.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked Commission Exhibit 848 and ask you to describe what that shows?
Dr. OLIVIER. This was a similar setup used for firing through gelatin. It had clothing and skin over the entrance side only. If it had been placed on the other side it would have just flown off.
Mr. SPECTER And that is similar to that depicted in 846?
Dr. OLIVIER. Essentially; yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Except that it is----
Dr. OLIVIER. Gelatin instead of the tissues.
Mr. SPECTER. Now at what range was the firing performed on the gelatin, goatmeat and horsemeat?
Dr. OLIVIER. This firing was done at a 60-yard range.
Mr. SPECTER. And what gun was used?
Dr. OLIVIER. The 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano that was marked Commission Exhibit 139.
Mr. SPECTER. And what bullets were used?
Dr. OLIVIER. The Western ammunition lot 6,000, 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano.
Mr. SPECTER. And was there any substance placed over the gelatin, horsemeat and goatmeat?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; over the gelatin we had clothing; had a suit, shirt and undershirt, and underneath that a clipped goatskin. The same thing was over the meat, and on the other side of the meat was also clipped goatskin.
Mr. SPECTER. Would there be any significant difference to the test by leaving out the undershirt if the President had not worn an undershirt?
Dr. OLIVIER. No.
Mr. SPECTER. So that the circumstance was simulated with the actual type clothing and a protective skin over the substance just as realistically as you could make it?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. What measurement was obtained as to the entrance velocity of the bullet at the distance of 60 yards which you described?
Dr. OLIVIER. The striking velocity at an average of three shots was 1,904 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. And what was the average exit velocity on each of the substances used?
Dr. OLIVIER. For the gelatin the average exit velocity was 1,779 feet per
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second. The horsemeat, the average exit velocity was 1,798 feet per second. And the goatmeat the average exit velocity was 1,772 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked Commission Exhibit 849 and ask you what that picture represents?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is one of the gelatin blocks used in that test. It shows the type of track left by the bullet passing through it. That bullet is very stable. Passing through the body and muscle, it would make a similar type wound. Of course, you couldn't observe it that nicely.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you describe that as being a straight line?
Dr. OLIVIER Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a picture marked Commission Exhibit No. 850 and ask you what that represents?
Dr. OLIVIER. These are pieces of clipped goatskin, clipped very shortly. There is still some hair on it. These were placed, these particular ones were placed over the tissues. This would be placed over the entrance side of the animal.
Mr. SPECTER. When you say "this," you are referring to a piece of goatskin which is marked "enter"?
Dr. OLIVIER. Marked "enter." The one marked "exit" was placed on the far side of the tissues and the bullet passed through that after it came out of the tissues.
Mr. SPECTER. For the record, will you describe the characteristics, which are shown on the goatskin at the point of entry, please?
Dr. OLIVIER. At the point of entry the wound holes through the skin are for all purposes round. On the exit side they are more elongated, two of them in particular are a little more elongated. The bullet had started to become slightly unstable coming out.
Mr. SPECTER. And how about the third or lower bullet on the skin designated exit?
Dr. OLIVIER. That hole appears as more stable than the other two. In all three cases the bullet is still pretty stable. The gelatin blocks, there were gelatin blocks placed behind these things too, and for all practical purposes, the tracks through them still indicated a stable bullet.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other conclusions which you would care to add to those which you have already indicated, resulting from the tests you have heretofore described?
Dr. OLIVIER. Well, it means that the bullet that passed through the President's neck had lost very little of its wounding potential and was capable of doing a great deal of damage in penetrating. I might mention one thing showing how great its penetrating ability was. That say on one of the gelatin shots, it went through a total, counting the gelatin block, it went through plus the backing up blocks of gelatin, it went through a total of 72 1/2 centimeters of gelatin, was still traveling and buried itself in a mound of earth so it has terrific penetrating ability. This means that had the bullet that passed through the President's neck hit in the car or anywhere you would have seen evidence, a good deal of evidence.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Olivier, in the regular course of your work for the U.S. Army, do you have occasion to perform tests on animal materials where the characteristics of those animals materials are sufficiently similar to human bodies to make a determination of the effect of the bullet wounds in human bodies?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I do.
Mr. SPECTER. And did you have occasion to make a test on goat material in connection with the experiments which you ran?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Are you familiar with the wounds inflicted on Governor Connally on November 22, 1963?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; from reading the surgeon's report and also from talking to Dr. Gregory and Dr. Shaw.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have access to the medical reports of Parkland Hospital concerning the wounds of Governor Connally in all respects?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. And did you have occasion to discuss those wounds in great
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detail with Dr. Shaw and Dr. Gregory when they were present in Washington, D.C. on April 21, 1964, preparatory to their testifying before this Commission?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. What was the nature of the wound on Governor Connally's back?
Dr. OLIVIER. The surgeon's report described it as about 3 centimeters long, its longest dimension, and it is hard for me to remember reading it or discussing it with him but I did both. Apparently it was a jagged wound. He said a would like this consists of two things, usually a defect in the epidermis and a central hole which is small, and he could put his finger in it so it was a fairly large wound.
Mr. SPECTER. What was the path of the bullet in a general way, based on the information provided to you concerning Governor Connally's wound in the back?
Dr. OLIVIER. Apparently it passed along the rib. I don't recall which rib it was but passed the fifth rib, passed along this rib causing a fracture that I believe removed about 10 centimeters of the rib through fragments through the pleura, lacerating the lung. I asked Dr. Shaw directly whether he thought the bullet had gone through the pleural cavity and he said he didn't believe that it had, that the damage was done by the rib fragments. Then the bullet exited as described somewhat below the right nipple.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you perform a test on goat substance to endeavor to measure the reduction in velocity of a missile similar to the one which passed through Governor Connally?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. Why was goat substance selected for that purpose in the testing procedure?
Dr. OLIVIER. We usually use this in our work so we are familiar with it. I am not saying it is the only substance that could be used, but we were not using any unknown procedures or any procedures that we hadn't used already.
Mr. SPECTER. Does it closely simulate the nature of a wound in the human body?
Dr. OLIVIER. In this particular instance it did.
Mr. SPECTER. Was the wound inflicted on the goat, then, subjected to X-ray analysis for the purpose of determining the precise nature of the wound and for comparison purposes with that wound----
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; it was.
Mr. SPECTER. Inflicted on Connally?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; it was.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you an X-ray marked Commission Exhibit 851 and ask you to state what that shows?
Dr. OLIVIER. It shows a fractured rib. From this you wouldn't be able to--well, if you were a better radiologist than I was, you might be able to tell which one, but it was the eighth left rib. It shows a comminuted fracture extending some distance along the rib.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you Commission Exhibit No. 852, which is a photograph, and ask you to testify as to what that depicts, please?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is a photograph taken from the same X-ray again showing the comminuted fracture of the eighth left rib.
Mr. SPECTER. And is that a photograph then of the X-ray designated Commission Exhibit 851?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; it is.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have an opportunity to observe personally the X-rays showing the wound on Governor Connally's rib?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. And how do those X-rays compare with the wound inflicted as depicted in Exhibits 851 and 852?
Dr. OLIVIER. They are very similar.
Mr. SPECTER. When the wounds were inflicted, as depicted in 851 and 852, what weapon was used?
Dr. OLIVIER. This was again the 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
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Mr. SPECTER. And what bullets were used?
Dr. OLIVIER The 6.5 millimeter Western ammunition lot 6,000.
Mr. SPECTER. And what distance was utilized?
Dr. OLIVIER. On the goat the distance was 70 yards.
Mr. SPECTER. And was there any covering over the goat?
Dr. OLIVIER Yes. There was a suit, shirt, and undershirt.
Mr. SPECTER. What was the entrance velocity of the bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. Striking velocity for an average of 11 shots was 1,929 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. And what was the exit velocity?
Dr. OLIVIER. The exit velocity was 1,664 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a box containing a bullet, which has been marked as Commission Exhibit No. 853, and ask you if you have ever seen that bullet before?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I have.
Mr. SPECTER. And under what circumstances have you previously seen that bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. This was the bullet that was fired through the goat. It went through the velocity screens into some cotton waste, dropped out of the bottom of that and was lying on the floor. It was picked up immediately afterwards still warm, so we knew it was the bullet that had fired that particular shot.
Mr. SPECTER. Was that fired through the goat depicted in the photographs and X-ray, 851 and 852?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; that was the goat.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you describe for the record, verbally please, the characteristics of that bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. The bullet has been quite flattened. The lead core is extruding somewhat from the rear. We weighed the bullet. It weighs 158.8 grains.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you Commission Exhibit 399, which has been heretofore in Commission proceedings identified as the bullet found on the stretcher of Governor Connally, and ask if you have had an opportunity to compare 399 with 853?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I have.
Mr. SPECTER. And what did you find on that comparison?
Dr. OLIVIER. The bullet recovered on the stretcher has not been flattened as much, but there is a suggestion of flattening there from a somewhat similar occurrence. Also, the lead core has extruded from the rear in the same fashion, and it appears that some of it has even broken from the rear.
Mr. SPECTER. Is there some flattening on both of those bullets in approximately the same areas toward the rear of the missiles?
Dr. OLIVIER. In the bullet, our particular bullet is flattened the whole length, but you say towards the rear?
Mr. SPECTER. You say our bullet; you mean 853?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, 853 is flattened. No. 399 is flattened more towards the rear.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other conclusions which you have to add to the tests performed on the goat?
Dr. OLIVIER. Well, again in this test it demonstrates that the bullet that was stable when it struck in this fashion again lost very little velocity in going through that much goat tissue.
Incidentally, the amount of goat tissue it traversed was probably somewhat less than the Governor, but in any case it indicates the bullet would have had a lot of remaining velocity and could have done a lot of damage.
Another thing that hasn't been brought up is the velocity screen immediately behind the goat, the imprint of the bullet left on it was almost the length of the bullet.
Mr. SPECTER What does that indicate?
Dr. OLIVIER. This indicates that the bullet was now no longer traveling straight but either traveling sideways or tumbling end over end at the time it hit the screen.
Mr. SPECTER. And that was after the point of exit from the goat?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
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Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other conclusions which you found from the studies on the goat?
Dr. OLIVIER. No, I believe that is all I can think of right at this moment.
Mr. SPECTER. In the regular course of your work for the U.S. Army, do you have occasion to perform tests on parts of human cadavers to determine the effects of bullets on human beings?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, I do.
Mr. SPECTER. And was a series of tests performed under your supervision on the portions of human cadavers simulated to the wound inflicted on the wrist of Governor Connally?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Were you familiar with the nature of the wound on Governor Connally's wrist prior to performing those tests?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, 1 was.
Mr. SPECTER. What was the source of your information on those wounds?
Dr. OLIVIER. I had read the surgeon's report, also talked with Dr. Gregory, the surgeon who had done the surgery, and had looked at the X-rays.
Mr. SPECTER Had you had an opportunity to discuss the wounds with Dr. Gregory and view the X-rays taken at Parkland Hospital, here in the Commission headquarters?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. On April 21, 1964?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you an X-ray marked as Commission Exhibit 854, and ask you what that depicts?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is a comminuted fracture of the distal end of the radius of a human arm.
Mr. SPECTER. And in what manner was that wound caused?
Dr. OLIVIER. It was caused by a bullet from the Commission Exhibit 139. This was again the 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher- Carcano Western ammunition lot 6,000.
Mr. SPECTER. Fired at what distance?
Dr. OLIVIER. Fired at a distance of 70 yards.
Mr. SPECTER. And was there anything protecting the wrist at the time of impact?
Dr. OLIVIER. Not protection but there was again clothing, this time suit material or suit lining, at least suit material and shirt. I am not sure about the lining. I can tell you. I have it right here. Suit material, suit lining material, and shirt material.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked as Commission Exhibit 855 and ask you what that represents?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is a photograph taken from the X-ray, Commission Exhibit 854.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you describe for the record the details of the injuries shown on 854 and 855, please?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is a comminuted fracture of the distal end of the radius. It was struck directly by the bullet. It passed through, not directly through but through at an oblique angle so that it entered more proximal on the dorsal side of the wrist and distal on the volar aspect.
Mr. SPECTER. How does the entry and exit compare with the wound on Governor Connally which you observed on the X- rays?
Dr. OLIVIER. In this particular instance to the best of my memory from looking at the X-rays, it is very close. It is about one of the best ones that we obtained.
Mr. SPECTER. Is there any definable difference at all?
Dr. OLIVIER. I couldn't determine any.
Mr. SPECTER. It is close, you say?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes. If I had both X-rays in front of me if there was a difference I could determine it, but from memory I would say it was for all purposes identical.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a bullet in a case marked Commission Exhibit 856 and ask if you have ever seen that before?
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Dr. OLIVIER. Yes. This is the bullet that caused the damage shown in Commission Exhibits Nos. 854 and 855.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you describe that bullet for the record, please?
Dr. OLIVIER. The nose of the bullet is quite flattened from striking the radius.
Mr. SPECTER. How does it compare, for example, with Commission Exhibit 399?
Dr. OLIVIER. It is not like it at all. I mean, Commission Exhibit 399 is not flattened on the end. This one is very severely flattened on the end.
Mr. SPECTER. What was the velocity of the missile at the time it struck the wrist depicted in 854 and 855?
Dr. OLIVIER. The average striking velocity was 1,858 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have the precise striking velocity of that one?
Dr. OLIVIER. No; I don't. We could not put velocity screen in front of the individual shots because it would have interfered with the gunner's view. So we took five shots and got an average striking velocity.
Mr. SPECTER. When you say five shots with an average striking velocity, those were at the delineated distance without striking anything on those particular shots?
Dr. OLIVIER. Right, and after establishing that velocity, then we went on to shoot the various arms.
Mr. SPECTER. And what was the exit velocity?
Dr. OLIVIER. On this particular one?
Mr. SPECTER. If you have it?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes. Well, I don't know if I have that or not. We didn't get them in all because some of these things deflect. No, I have no exit velocity on this particular one.
Mr. SPECTER. What exit velocity did you get on the average?
Dr. OLIVIER. Average exit velocity was 1,776 feet per second. This was for an average of seven. We did 10. We obtained velocity on seven.
Mr. SPECTER. Would the average reduction be approximately the same, in your professional opinion, as to the bullet exiting from the wrist depicted in 854 and 855?
Dr. OLIVIER. Somewhat. Let me give you the extremes of our velocities. The highest one was 1,866 and the lowest was 1,664, so there was a 202-feet-per-second difference in the thing. Some of the cases bone was missed, in other cases glancing blows. But I would say it is a close approximation to what the exit velocity was on that particular one.
Mr. SPECTER. And what would the close approximation be, the average?
Dr. OLIVIER. The average.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you compare the damage, which was done to Governor Connally's wrist, as contrasted with the damage to the wrist depicted in 854 and 855?
Dr. OLIVIER. The damage in the wrist that you see in the X-ray on 854 and 855, the damage is greater than was done to the Governor's wrist. There is more severe comminution here.
Mr. SPECTER. How much more severe is the comminution?
Dr. OLIVIER. Considerably more. If I remember correctly in the X-rays of the Governor's wrist, I think there were only two or three fragments, if that many. Here we have many, many small fragments.
Mr. SPECTER. In your opinion, based on the tests which you have performed, was the damage inflicted on Governor Connally's wrist caused by a pristine bullet, a bullet fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle 6.5 missile which did not hit anything before it struck the Governor's wrist?
Dr. OLIVIER. I don't believe so. I don't believe his wrist was struck by a pristine bullet.
Mr. SPECTER. What is the reason for your conclusion on that?
Dr. OLIVIER. In this case I go by the size of the entrance wound and exit wound on the Governor's wrist. The entrance wound was on the dorsal surface, it was described by the surgeon as being much larger than the exit wound. He said he almost overlooked that on the volar aspect of the wrist.
In every instance we had a larger exit wound than an entrance wound firing
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with a pristine bullet apparently at the same angle at which it entered and exited the Governor's wrist.
Also, and I don't believe they were mixed up on which was entrance and exit. For one thing the clothing, you know, the surgeon found pieces of clothing and the other thing the human anatomy is such that I don't believe it would enter through the volar aspect and out the top.
So I am pretty sure that the Governor's wrist was not hit by a pristine or a stable bullet.
Mr. SPECTER. What is there, in and of the nature of the smaller wound of exit and larger wound of entrance in the Governor's wrist as contrasted with a smaller wound of entrance and larger wound of exit in 854 and 855, which leads you to conclude that the Governor's wrist was not struck by a pristine bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. Do you want to repeat that question again?
Mr. SPECTER. What is there about the wound of entry or exit which led you to think that the Governor's wrist wasn't struck by a pristine bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. Well, he would have had a larger exit wound than entrance wound, which he did not.
Mr. SPECTER. And if the velocity of the missile is decreased, how does that effect the nature of the wounds of entry and exit?
Dr. OLIVIER. If the velocity is decreased, if the bullet is still stable, he still should have a larger exit wound than an entrance.
Now, on the other hand, to get a larger entrance wound and a smaller exit wound, this indicates the bullet probably hit with very much of a yaw. I mean, as this hole appeared in the velocity screen the bullet either tumbling or striking sideways, this would have made a larger entrance wound, lose considerable of its velocity in fracturing the bone, and coming out at a very low velocity, made a smaller hole.
Mr SPECTER. So the crucial factor would be the analysis that the bullet was characterized with yaw at the time it struck?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Causing a larger wound of entry and a smaller wound of exit?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Now is there anything in the----
Dr. OLIVIER. Also at a reduced velocity because if it struck at considerable yaw at a high velocity as it could do if it hit something and deflected, it would have, it could make a larger wound of exit but it would have been even a more severe wound than we had here. It would have been very severe, could even amputate the wrist hitting at high velocity sideways. We have to say this bullet was characterized by an extreme amount of yaw and reduced velocity. How much reduced, I don't know, but considerably reduced.
Mr. SPECTER. Does the greater damage, inflicted on the wrist in 854 and 855 than that which was inflicted on Governor Connally's wrist, have any value as indicating whether Governor Connally's wrist was struck by a pristine bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. No; because holding the velocity the same or similar the damage would be greater with a tumbling bullet than a pristine.
I think it reflects both instability and reduced velocity. You have to show the two. I mean, the size of the entrance and exit are very important. This shows that the thing was used when it struck. The fact that there was no more damage than was done by a tumbling bullet indicates the bullet at a reduced velocity. You have to put these two things together.
Mr. SPECTER. Had Governor Connally's wrist been struck with a pristine bullet without yaw, would more damage have been inflicted----
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Than was inflicted on the Governor's wrist?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. So then the lesser damage on the Governor's wrist in and of itself indicates in your opinion----
Dr. OLIVIER. That it wasn't struck by a pristine bullet; yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other conclusions which flow from the experiments which you conducted on the wrist?
Dr. OLIVIER. We concluded that it wasn't struck by a pristine bullet. Also drew the conclusion that it was struck by an unstable bullet, a bullet at a much
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reduced velocity. The question that it brings up in. my mind is if the same bullet that struck the wrist had passed through the Governor's chest, if the bullet that struck the Governor's chest had not hit anything else would it have been reduced low enough to do this, and I wonder, based on our work--it brings to mind the possibility the same bullet that struck the President striking the Governor would account for this more readily. I don't know, I don't think you can ever say this, but it is a very good possibility, I think more possible, more probable than not.
The CHAIRMAN. What is more probable than not, Doctor?
Dr. OLIVIER. In my mind at least, and I don't know the angles at which the things went or anything, it seems to me more probable that the bullet that hit the Governor's chest had already been slowed down somewhat, in order to lose enough velocity to strike his wrist and do no more damage than it did. I don't know how you would ever determine it exactly. I think the best approach is to find out the angles of flight, whether it is possible. But I have a feeling that it might have been.
The CHAIRMAN. It might have been?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. The one that went through his chest went through his hand also.
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; and also through the President.
The CHAIRMAN. The first shot?
Dr. OLIVIER. Well, I don't know whether the first or second. The first one could have missed. It could have been the second that hit both.
The CHAIRMAN. The one that went through his back and came out his trachea?
Dr. OLIVIER. It could have hit the Governor in the chest and went through because it had so little velocity after coming out of the wrist that it barely penetrated the thigh.
The CHAIRMAN. May I ask one more question? Would you think that the same bullet could have done all three of those things?
Dr. OLIVIER. That same bullet was capable.
The CHAIRMAN. Gone through the President's back as it did, gone through Governor Connally's chest as it did, and then through his hand as it did?
Dr. OLIVIER. It was certainly capable of doing all that.
The CHAIRMAN. It was capable?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
The CHAIRMAN. The one shot?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Olivier, based on the descriptions of the wound on the Governor's back, what in your opinion was the characteristic of the bullet at the time it struck the Governor's back with respect to the course of its flight?
Dr. OLIVIER. Let's say from the size of the wound as described by the surgeon, it could have been tipped somewhat when it struck because that is a fairly large wound. Another thing that could have done it is the angle at which it hit. On the goat some of the wounds were larger than others. On the goat material some of the wounds were larger than others because of the angle at which it hit this material. The same thing could happen on the Governor's back.
Mr. SPECTER. And how was that wound described with respect to its size?
Dr. OLIVIER. The Governor's wound?
Mr. SPECTER. On the Governor's back?
Dr. OLIVIER. About 3 centimeters at its largest dimension.
Mr. SPECTER. And would you have any view as to which factor was more probable, as to whether it was a tangential strike on the Governor's back, or whether there was yaw in the bullet at the time it struck the Governor's back?
Dr. OLIVIER. I couldn't as far as being tangential. I couldn't answer that, not knowing the position of the Governor. But it could have been caused by a bullet yawing. I mean it would have made a larger wound, as that was.
Mr. SPECTER. Is there any other cause which could account for that type of a large wound on the Governor's back other than with the bullet yawing?
Dr. OLIVIER. With this particular bullet those would be the two probable causes of this wound of this size.
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Mr. SPECTER. And those two probable causes are what?
Dr. OLIVIER. One, the bullet hitting not perpendicular to the surface of the Governor, in other words, hitting tangential at a slight angle on his back so that it came in cutting the skin. Another, the bullet hitting that wasn't perpendicular to the surface as it hit. The bullet did go along, the surgeon described the path as tangential but he is speaking of along the rib. It isn't clear it was, as it struck, whether it was a tangential shot or actually perpendicular to the Governor's back.
Mr. SPECTER. Permit me to add one additional factor which Dr. Shaw testified to during the course of the proceeding after he measured the angle of decline through the Governor; and Dr. Shaw testified that there was a 25° to 27° angle of declination measuring from front to back on the Governor, taking into account the position of the wound on the Governor's back and the position of the wound on the Governor's chest below the right nipple.
Now with that factor, added to those which you already know, would that enable you to form a conclusion as to whether the nature of the wound on the Governor's back was caused by yaw of the bullet or by a tangential strike?
Dr. OLIVIER. I don't think I would want to say. If I could have seen the Governor's wound, this would have been a help.
Mr. SPECTER. Would the damage done to the Governor's wrist indicate that a bullet which was fired approximately 160 to 250 feet away with the muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second, would it indicate that the bullet was slowed up only by the passage through the Governor's body, in the way which you know, or would it indicate that there was some other factor which slowed up the bullet in addition?
Dr. OLIVIER. It would indicate there was some other factor that had slowed up the bullet in addition.
Mr. SPECTER. What is your reason for that conclusion, sir?
Dr. OLIVIER. The amount of damage alone; striking that end it would have caused more severe comminution as we found. You know--if it hadn't been slowed up in some other fashion. At that range it still had a striking velocity of 1,858 or in the vicinity of 1,800 feet per second, which is capable of doing more damage than was done to the Governor's wrist.
Mr. SPECTER. Had the same bullet which passed through the President, in the way heretofore described for the record, then struck the Governor as well, what effect would there have been in reducing its velocity as a result of that course?
Dr. OLIVIER. You say the bullet first struck the President. In coming out of the President's body it would have had a tendency to be slightly unstable. In striking the Governor it would have lost more velocity in his chest than if it had been a pristine bullet striking the Governor's chest, so it would have exited from the Governor's chest I would say at a considerably reduced velocity, probably with a good amount of yaw or tumbling, and this would account for the type of wound that the Governor did have in his wrist.
Mr. SPECTER. The approximate reduction in velocity on passage through the goat was what, Doctor?
Dr. OLIVIER. The average velocity loss in the seven cases we did was 82 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. If the bullet had passed through the President prior to the time it passed through the Governor, would you expect a larger loss than 82 feet per second resulting from the passage through the body of the Governor?
Dr. OLIVIER. I am not sure if I heard you correctly. This is if it hit the Governor without hitting the President or hitting the President first?
Mr. SPECTER. Let me rephrase it for you, Dr. Olivier.
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; please.
Mr. SPECTER. You testified that the bullet lost 82 feet per second when it passed through the goat.
Dr. OLIVIER Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Now what would your expectations be as to the reduction in velocity on a bullet which passed through the Governor, assuming that it struck nothing first?
Dr. OLIVIER. It would be greater; the distance through the Governor's chest would have been greater.
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Mr. SPECTER. Would that be an appreciable or approximately the same?
Dr. OLIVIER. Can I bring in any other figures? Dr. Dziemian has computed approximately what he thought it would have lost.
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, of course, if you have any other figure which would be helpful.
Dr. DZIEMIAN. I believe you misunderstood Mr. Specter. I think you gave the figure for the loss of velocity through the Governor's wrist instead of through his chest.
Dr. OLIVIER. I am sorry. We were on the wrist; okay.
Mr. SPECTER. Let me start again then. In an effort to draw some conclusion about the reduction in velocity through the Governor's chest, I am now going back and asking you what was the reduction in velocity of the bullet which passed through the goat?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did misunderstand you. I am sorry. The loss in velocity passing through the goat was 265 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, would that be the approximate loss in velocity of a pristine bullet passing through the Governor?
Dr. OLIVIER. The loss would be somewhat greater.
Mr. SPECTER. How much greater in your opinion?
Dr. OLIVIER. Do you have that figure, Dr. Dziemian?
Dr. DZIEMIAN. I would say a pristine bullet of the Governor was about half again thicker. It would be about half again as great velocity, somewhere around 400.
Mr. SPECTER. Had the bullet passed through only the Governor, losing velocity of 400 feet per second, would you have expected that the damage inflicted on the Governor's wrist would have been about the same as that inflicted on Governor Connally or greater?
Dr. OLIVIER. My feeling is it would have been greater.
Mr. SPECTER Had the bullet passed through the President and then struck Governor Connally, would it have lost velocity of 400 feet per second in passing through Governor Connally or more?
Dr. OLIVIER. It would have lost more.
Mr. SPECTER. What is the reason for that?
Dr. OLIVIER. The bullet after passing through, say a dense medium, then through air and then through another dense medium tends to be more unstable, based on our past work. It appears to be that it would have tumbled more readily and lost energy more rapidly. How much velocity it would have lost, I couldn't say, but it would have lost more.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any indications from the internal wounds on Governor Connally as to whether or not the bullet which entered his body was an unstable bullet?
Dr. OLIVIER. The only thing that might give you an indication would be the skin wound of entrance, the type of rib fracture and all that I think could be accounted for by either type, because in our experiment we simulated, although not to as great a degree, the damage wasn't as severe, but I think it would be hard to say that.
One thing comes to my mind right now that might indicate it. There was a greater flattening of the bullet in our experiments than there was going through the Governor, which might indicate that it struck the rib which did the flattening at a lower velocity. This is only a thought.
Mr. SPECTER. It struck the rib of the Governor?
Dr. OLIVIER. It struck the rib of the Governor at a lower velocity because that bullet was less flattened than the bullet through the goat material.
Mr. SPECTER. Based on the nature of the wound inflicted on the Governor's wrist, and on the tests which you have conducted then, do you have an opinion as to which is more probable on whether the bullet passed through only the Governor's chest before striking his wrist, or passed through the President first and then the Governor's chest before striking the Governor's wrist?
Dr. OLIVIER Will you say that again to make sure I have it?
Mr. SPECTER. [To the reporter.] Could you repeat that question, please?
(The question was read by the reporter.)
Dr. OLIVIER. You couldn't say exactly at all. My feeling is that it would be
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more probable that it passed through the President first. At least I think it is important to establish line of flight to try to determine it.
Mr. SPECTER. Aside from the lines of flight, based on the factors which were known to you from the medical point of view and from the tests which you conducted, what would be the reason for the feeling which you just expressed?
Dr. OLIVIER. Because I believe you would need that, I mean to account for the damage to the wrist, I don't think you would have gotten a low enough velocity upon reaching the wrist unless you had gone through the President's body first.
Mr. SPECTER. The President's body as well as the Governor's body?
Dr. OLIVIER. As well as the Governor's.
Mr. SPECTER. Does the nature of the wound which was inflicted on Governor Connally's thigh shed any light on this subject?
Dr. OLIVIER. This, to my mind, at least, merely indicates the bullet at this time was about spent. In talking with doctor, I believe it was Gregory, I don't think he did the operation on the thigh but at least he saw the wound, and he said it was about the size of an eraser on a lead pencil. This could be accounted for--and there was also this small fragment of bullet in this thigh wound--this, to me, indicates that this was a spent bullet that had gone through the wrist as the Governor was sitting there, went through the wrist into his thigh, just partly imbedded and then fell out and I believe this was the bullet that was found on the stretcher.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you have any opinion as to the velocity of that bullet at the time it struck the Governor's thigh?
Dr. OLIVIER. No. We didn't do any work to simulate this, but it would have been at a very low velocity just to have gone in that far and drop out again.
Mr. SPECTER, Dr. Olivier, in the regular course of your work for the U.S. Army, do you have occasion to perform tests on reconstructed human skulls to determine the effects of bullets on skulls?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I do.
Mr. SPECTER. And did you have occasion to conduct such a test in connection with the series which you are now describing?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. And would you outline briefly the procedures for simulating the human skull?
Dr. OLIVIER. Human skulls, we take these human skulls and they are imbedded and filled with 20 percent gelatin. As I mentioned before, 20 percent gelatin is a pretty good simulant for body tissues.
They are in the moisture content. When I say 20 percent, it is 20 percent weight of the dry gelatin, 80 percent moisture.
The skull, the cranial cavity, is filled with this and the surface is coated with a gelatin and then it is trimmed down to approximate the thickness of the tissues overlying the skull, the soft tissues of the head.
Mr. SPECTER. And at what distance were these tests performed?
Dr. OLIVER. These tests were performed at a distance of 90 yards.
Mr. SPECTER. And what gun was used?
Dr. OLIVER. It was a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano that was marked Commission Exhibit 139.
Mr. SPECTER. What bullets were used?
Dr. OLIVER. It was the 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano Western ammunition lot 6,000.
Mr. SPECTER. What did that examination or test, rather, disclose?
Dr. OLIVER. It disclosed that the type of head wounds that the President received could be done by this type of bullet. This surprised me very much, because this type of a stable bullet I didn't think would cause a massive head wound, I thought it would go through making a small entrance and exit, but the bones of the skull are enough to deform the end of this bullet causing it to expend a lot of energy and blowing out the side of the skull or blowing out fragments of the skull.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a case containing bullet fragments marked Commission Exhibit 857 and ask if you have ever seen those fragments before.
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, I have.
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Mr. SPECTER. And under what circumstances have you viewed those before, please?
Dr. OLIVIER. There were, the two larger fragments were recovered outside of the skull in the cotton waste we were using to catch the fragments without deforming them. There are some smaller fragments in here that were obtained from the gelatin within the cranial cavity after the experiment. We melted the gelatin out and recovered the smallest fragments from within the cranial cavity.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, I show you two fragments designated as Commission Exhibits 567 and 579 heretofore identified as having been found on the front seat of the President's car on November 22, 1963, and ask you if you have had an opportunity to examine those before.
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, I have.
Mr. SPECTER. And have you had an opportunity to compare those to the two fragments identified as Commission Exhibit 857?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, I have.
Mr. SPECTER. And what did that comparison show?
Dr. OLIVIER. They are quite similar. These two fragments on, what is the number?
Mr. SPECTER. 857.
Dr. OLIVIER. On 857 there isn't as much of the front part in this one, but in other respects they are very similar.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked Commission Exhibit 858 and ask you what that depicts.
Mr. DULLES. Could I see that other exhibit?
Dr. OLIVIER These are the same fragments as marked 857.
Mr. SPECTER. That is a photograph of the fragments marked 857?
Dr. OLIVIER 857.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked Commission Exhibit 859 and ask you what that depicts?
Dr. OLIVIER. These are the smaller fragments that have been labeled, also, Exhibit 857. This picture or some of the fragments labeled 857, these are the smaller fragments contained in the same box.
Mr. SPECTER. Are all of the fragments on 859 contained within 857?
Dr. OLIVIER. They are supposed to be, photographed and placed in the box. If they dropped out they are supposed to be all there.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. DULLES. Back on the record.
Mr. SPECTER. At what point on the skull did the bullet, which fragmented into Commission Exhibit 857, strike?
Dr. OLIVIER. I would have to see the picture. I mean I can't remember exactly what point. I can tell you the point we were aiming at and approximately where it hit.
Mr. SPECTER. Permit me to make available a photograph to you, then, for purposes of refreshing your recollection, and in testifying as to the point which was struck, for that purpose.
Dr. OLIVIER. We did 10 skulls so I can't remember offhand where everyone struck.
Mr. SPECTER. For that purpose I hand you Commission Exhibit 860 and ask you if that is designated in any way to identify it.
Mr. DULLES. This is the test we are talking about now, is it?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, sir; where the bullet fragmented into pieces in 857.
Mr. DULLES. Are you introducing that into evidence?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. Have you already introduced it in the record?
Mr. SPECTER. May I at this point move for the admission into evidence of Commission Exhibits 844 through 860, and they have been identified in sequence as being the photographs, X-rays, and other tangible exhibits used in connection with these tests.
Mr. DULLES. They shall be admitted.
(The documents heretofore marked for identification as Commission Exhibits Nos. 844 through 860 were received in evidence.)
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Dr. OLIVIER. This photograph is the skull that was shot with the bullet, the fragments which are marked 857.
Mr. SPECTER. At what point on the skull did the bullet strike?
Dr. OLIVIER. From this I couldn't tell you exactly the point. We were aiming, as described in the autopsy report if I remember correctly the point 2 centimeters to the right of the external occipital protuberance and slightly above it. We placed a mark on the skull at that point, according to the autopsy the bullet emerged through the superorbital process, so we drew a line to give us the line of flight, put unclipped goat hair over the back to simulate the scalp and put a mark on the area which we wished to shoot.
Now, every shot didn't strike exactly where we wanted, but they all struck in the back of the skull in the vicinity of our aiming point, some maybe slightly above the external occipital protuberance. In some cases very close to our aiming spot.
This particular skull blew out the right side in a manner very similar to the wounds of the President, and if I remember correctly, it was very close to the point at which we aimed.
In other words, a couple centimeters to the right.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have any record which would be more specific on the point of entrance?
Dr. OLIVIER. Our notebook has all.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you refer to your notes, then?
Dr. OLIVIER. The notebook is in the safe in there in the briefcase.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you get the notebook and refer to it so we can be as specific as possible on this point.
Dr. OLIVIER. I have the location of that wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you give us then the precise location of the wound caused by bullet identified as 857?
Dr. OLIVIER. The entrance wound is 2.9 centimeters to the right and almost horizontal to the occipital protuberance, This is almost exactly where we were aiming. We were aiming 2 centimeters to the right.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked as Commission Exhibit 861, move its admission into evidence, and ask you to state what that depicts.
Dr. OLIVIER. This is the skull in question, the same one from which the fragments marked Exhibit 857 were recovered.
Mr. SPECTER. And what does that show as to damage done to the skull?
Dr. OLIVIER. It blew the whole side of the cranial cavity away.
Mr. SPECTER. How does that compare, then, with the damage inflicted on President Kennedy?
Dr. OLIVIER. Very similar. I think they stated the length of the defect, the missing skull was 13 centimeters if I remember correctly. This in this case it is greater, but you don't have the limiting scalp holding the pieces in so you would expect it to fly a little more but it is essentially a similar type wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Does the human scalp work to hold in the human skull in such circumstances to a greater extent than the simulated matters used?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; we take this into account.
Mr. SPECTER. I hand you Commission Exhibit 862, move its admission into evidence, and ask you what that depicts?
Dr. OLIVIER. This is the same skull. This is just looking at it from the front. You are looking at the exit. You can't see it here because the bone has been blown away, but the bullet exited somewhere around---we reconstructed the skull. In other words, it exited very close to the superorbital ridge, possibly below it.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you formulate any other conclusions or opinions based on the tests on firing at the skull?
Dr. OLIVIER. Well, let's see. We found that this bullet could do exactly--could make the type of wound that the President received.
Also, that the recovered fragments were very similar to the ones recovered on the front seat and on the floor of the car.
This, to me, indicates that those fragments did come from the bullet that wounded the President in the head.
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Mr. SPECTER. And how do the two major fragments in 857 compare, then, with the fragments heretofore identified as 567 and 569?
Dr. OLIVIER. They are quite similar.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have an opinion as to whether the wound on the Governor's wrist could have been caused by a fragment of a bullet coming off of the President's head?
Dr. OLIVIER. I don't believe so. Frankly, I don't know, but I don't believe so, because it expended so much energy in blowing the head apart and took a lot of energy that I doubt if they could have fractured the radius. The radius is a very strong, hard bone and I don't believe they could have done that much damage. I believe they could have caused a superficial laceration on someone or a mark on the windshield, but I don't believe they could have done that damage to the wrist.
Mr. DULLES. And it couldn't have then gone through the wrist into the thigh?
Dr. OLIVIER. I don't believe so.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you had an opportunity to examine a fragment identified as Commission Exhibit 842 which is the fragment taken from Governor Connally's wrist?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, I have.
Mr. SPECTER. Could that fragment have come from the bullet designated as Commission Exhibit 399?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, I believe it would have, I will add further I believe it could have because the core of the bullet extrudes through the back and would allow part of it to break off very readily.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have an opinion as to whether, in fact, bullet 399 did cause the wound on the Governor's wrist, assuming if you will that it was the missile found on the Governor's stretcher at Parkland Hospital?
Dr. OLIVIER. I believe that it was. That is my feeling.
Mr. SPECTER. To be certain that the record is complete on the skull tests, would you again state the distance at which those tests were performed?
Dr. OLIVIER. Yes, the skulls--it was fired at the skulls at a range of 90 yards.
Mr. SPECTER. With what gun?
Dr. OLIVIER. The 6.5 mm. Carcano which was marked Commission Exhibit 139 and using Western ammunition lot 6,000, again the 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano.
Mr. SPECTER. Going to the results of the test on the cadavers, what was the average exit velocity?
Dr. OLIVIER. The average exit velocity on the wrist was 1,776 feet per second.
Mr. SPECTER. Had Governor Connally's wrist been struck with a pristine bullet and the bullet exited at that speed, what damage would have been inflicted had it then struck the area of the thigh which was struck on the Governor according to the Parkland Hospital records which you have said you have examined?
Dr. OLIVIER. It would have made a very severe wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Would it have been more severe than the one which was inflicted?
Dr. OLIVIER. Much more so.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have anything to add, Dr. Olivier, which you think would be helpful to the Commission in any way?
Dr. OLIVIER. No; I don't believe so.
Mr. DULLES. I have no further questions.
Mr. SPECTER. That completes my questions, Mr. Dulles.
Mr. DULLES. Thank you very much. We appreciate very much your coming.
(Discussion off the record.)
Dr. Arthur J. Dziemian
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TESTIMONY OF DR. ARTHUR J. DZIEMIAN
DR. HUMES VOLUME II
TESTIMONY OF COMDR. JAMES J. HUMES
The CHAIRMAN. The Commission will be in order.
Commander Humes, will you please step up. You know, Commander, what we have met for today to take your testimony concerning the autopsy and anything else you might know concerning the assassination of the President.
Would you raise your right hand, please?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you give before this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Commander HUMES. I do.
The CHAIRMAN. Will you be seated? You may proceed.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, will you state your full name for the record, please?
Commander HUMES. James Joseph Humes.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is your profession or occupation, please?
Commander HUMES. I am a physician and employed by the Medical Department of the United States Navy.
Mr. SPECTER. What is your rank in the Navy?
Commander HUMES. Commander, Medical Corps. United States Navy.
Mr. SPECTER. Where did you receive your education, Commander Humes, please.
Commander HUMES. I had my undergraduate training at St. Joseph's College at Villanova University in Philadelphia. I received my medical degree in 1948 from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia.
I received my internship and my postgraduate training in my special field of interest in Pathology in various Naval hospitals, and at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C.
Mr. SPECTER. What do your current duties involve?
Commander HUMES. My current title is Director of Laboratories of the Naval Medical School at Naval Medical Center at Bethesda. I am charged with the responsibility of the overall supervision of all of the laboratory operations in the Naval medical center, two broad areas, one in the field of anatomic pathology which comprises examining surgical specimens and postmortem examinations and then the rather large field of clinical pathology which takes in examination of the blood and various body fluids.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you been certified by the American Board of Pathology?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; both in anatomic pathology and in clinical pathology in 1955.
Mr. SPECTER. What specific experience have you had, if any, with respect to gunshot wounds?
Commander HUMES. My type of practice, which fortunately has been in peacetime endeavor to a great extent, has been more extensive in the field of natural disease than violence. However, on several occasions in various places where I have been employed, I have had to deal with violent death, accidents, suicides, and so forth. Also I have had training at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, I have completed a course in forensic pathology there as part of my training in the overall field of pathology.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have occasion to participate in the autopsy of the late John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. What was your specific function in connection with that autopsy?
Commander HUMES. As the senior pathologist assigned to the Naval Medical Center, I was called to the Center by my superiors and informed that the President's body would be brought to our laboratories for an examination, and I was charged with the responsibility of conducting and supervising this examination; told to also call upon anyone whom I wished as assistant in this matter, that I deemed necessary to be present.
Mr. SPECTER. Who did assist you, if anyone, in the course of the autopsy?
Commander HUMES. My first assistant was Commander J. Thornton Boswell, whose position is Chief of Pathology at the Naval Medical School, and my other assistant was Lt. Col. Pierre Finck, who is in the wound ballistics section of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
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When I ascertained the nature of the President's wounds, having had the facilities of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology offered to me by General Blumberg, the commanding officer of that institution, I felt it advisable and would be of help to me to have the services of an expert in the field of wound ballistics and for that reason I requested Colonel Finck to appear.
Mr. SPECTER. Tell us who else in a general way was present at the time the autopsy was conducted in addition to you three doctors, please?
Commander HUMES. This, I must preface by saying it will be somewhat incomplete. My particular interest was on the examination of the President and not of the security measures of the other people who were present.
However, the Surgeon General of the Navy was present at one time or another. Admiral Galloway, the Commanding Officer of the National Naval Medical Center; my own commanding officer, Captain John H. Stover of the Naval Medical School, Dr. John Ebersole, one of the radiologists assigned to the Naval Hospital, Bethesda, who assisted with X-ray examinations which were made. These are the chief names, sir; that I can recall.
Mr. SPECTER. What time did the autopsy start approximately?
Commander HUMES. The president's body was received at 25 minutes before 8, and the autopsy began at approximately 8 p.m. on that evening. You must include the fact that certain X-rays and other examinations were made before the actual beginning of the routine type autopsy examination.
Mr. SPECTER. Precisely what X-rays or photographs were taken before the dissection started?
Commander HUMES. Some of these X-rays were taken before and some during the examination which, also maintains for the photographs, which were made as the need became apparent to make such.
However, before the postmortem examination was begun, anterior, posterior and lateral X-rays of the head, and of the torso were made, and identification type photographs, I recall having been made of the full face of the late President. A photograph showing the massive head wound with the large defect that was associated with it. To my recollection all of these were made before the proceedings began.
Several others, approximately 15 to 20 in number, were made in total before we finished the proceedings.
Mr. SPECTER. Now were those X-rays or photographs or both when you referred to the total number?
Commander HUMES. By the number I would say they are in number 15 to 20. There probably was ten or 12 X- ray films exposed in addition.
Mr. SPECTER. What time did this autopsy end?
Commander HUMES. At approximately 11 p.m.
Mr. SPECTER. What wounds did you observe on the late President, if any?
Commander HUMES. The wounds which we observed on the President were excuse me, at this point might I use the charts which I have prepared? Would that be appropriate?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes; would you like to start with the neck wound?
Commander HUMES. All right, sir.
I might preface my remarks by stating that the President's body was received in our morgue in a closed casket. We opened the casket, Dr. Boswell and I, and the President's body was unclothed in the casket, was wrapped in a sheet labeled by the Parkland Hospital, but he was unclothed once the sheet was removed from his body so we do not have at that time any clothing.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, before you identify what that represents let me place Commission Exhibit No. 385 on it so it may be identified.
(The drawing was marked Commission Exhibit No. 385 for identification.)
Commander HUMES. When appraised of the necessity for our appearance before this Commission, we did not know whether or not the photographs which we had made would be available to the Commission. So to assist in making our testimony more understandable to the Commission members, we decided to have made drawings, schematic drawings, of the situation as we saw it, as we recorded it and as we recall it. These drawings were made under my supervision and that of Dr. Boswell by Mr. Rydberg, whose initials are H. A.
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He is a hospital corpsman, second class, and a medical illustrator in our command at Naval Medical School.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you provide him with the basic information from which these drawings were made?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Distances, that sort of thing?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. We had made certain physical measurements of the wounds, and of their position on the body of the late President, and we provided these and supervised directly Mr. Rydberg in making these drawings.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you checked the drawings subsequent to their preparation to verify their accuracy?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. And proportion?
Commander HUMES. I must state these drawings are in part schematic. The artist had but a brief period of some 2 days to prepare these. He had no photographs from which to work, and had to work under our description, verbal description, of what we had observed.
Mr. SPECTER. Would it be helpful to the artist, in redefining the drawings if that should become necessary, to have available to him the photographs or X-rays of the President?
Commander HUMES. If it were necessary to have them absolutely true to scale. I think it would be virtually impossible for him to do this without the photographs.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is the reason for the necessity for having the photographs?
Commander HUMES. I think that it is most difficult to transmit into physical measurements the--by word the exact situation as it was seen to the naked eye. The photographs were there is no problem of scale there because the wounds, if they are changed in size or changed in size and proportion to the structures of the body and so forth, when we attempt to give a description of these findings, it is the bony prominences, I cannot, which we used as points of references, I cannot, transmit completely to the illustrator where they were situated.
Mr. SPECTER. Is the taking of photographs and X-rays routine or is this something out of the ordinary?
Commander HUMES. No, sir; this is quite routine in cases of this sort of violent death in our training. In the field of forensic pathology we have found that the photographs and X-rays are of most value, the X-rays particularly in finding missiles which have a way of going in different directions sometimes, and particularly as documentary evidence these are considered invaluable in the field of forensic pathology.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you now proceed to show us what Commission Exhibit 385 depicts, please?
Commander HUMES. Actually, I think, sir, at this time the view from the
posterior aspect would also be of value to the Commission. This is--
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor, I hand you the second exhibit which is marked Commission Exhibit No. 386.
(Commission Exhibit No. 386 was marked for identification.)
Commander HUMES. I believe at this point I would like to have, if you have my gross autopsy description because I will give the dimensions of these wounds at this time.
Mr. SPECTER. We will use the Commission Exhibit No. 387 and I will ask you first of all, for the record, to identify what this document is, Dr. Humes.
(The document referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 387 for identification.)
Commander HUMES. This document is a copy of the gross autopsy report which was prepared by myself, Dr. Boswell, and Dr. Finck, and completed within approximately 48 hours after the assassination of the President.
Mr. SPECTER. Does that report bear your signature at its end?
Commander HUMES. It bears my signature on the first or covering page as well as on my last page, sir.
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Mr. SPECTER. Will you now proceed to tell us what you observed with respect to the wound which is marked as appearing in the upper back or lower neck?
Mr. McCLOY. Have you identified that?
Mr. SPECTER. The one on the side is 385 and the one of the rear view is 386. And that one is 387. For purposes of our record. if you will, put them in as 385 and 386 for our printed record. You might want to put them in chalk above them so you will see the one on the left is 385 and on the right is 386.
Commander HUMES. These exhibits again are schematic representations of what we observed at the time of examining the body of the late President.
Exhibit 385 shows in the low neck an oval wound which excuse me, I wish to get the measurements correct. This wound was situated just above the upper border of the scapula, and measured 7 by 4 milimeters, with its long axis roughly parallel to the long axis of vertical column.
We saw--I would rather not discuss the situation of the anterior neck at this time or would you prefer it?
Mr. SPECTER. How would you prefer to do it, Dr. Humes?
Commander HUMES. I would prefer to discuss the wounds, two wounds, we saw posteriorly and the wound, other wound, of the skull before going to that.
Mr. SPECTER. That is fine, Dr. Humes, do it any way you find convenient. I will give you the other drawing and you can do them both together. Let the third drawing be marked as Commission Exhibit No. 388.
(The drawing referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 388 for identification.)
Commander HUMES. The wound in the low neck of which I had previously begun to speak is now posteriorly--is now depicted in 385, in 386 and in 388.
The second wound was found in the right posterior portion of the scalp. This wound was situated approximately 2.5 centimeters to the right, and slightly above the external occiptal protuberance which is a bony prominence situated in the posterior portion of everyone's skull. This wound was then 2 1/2 centimeters to the right and slightly above that point.
The third obvious wound at the time of the examination was a huge defect over the right side of the skull. This defect involved both the scalp and the underlying skull, and from the brain substance was protruding.
This wound measured approximately 13 centimeters in greatest diameter. It was difficult to measure accurately because radiating at various points from the large defect were multiple crisscrossing fractures of the skull which extended in several directions.
I have noted in my report that a detailed description of the lines of these fractures and of the types of fragments that were thus made were very difficult of verbal description, and it was precisely for this reason that the photographs were made so one might appreciate more clearly how much damage had been done to the skull.
Mr. SPECTER. Were the photographs made available then, Dr. Humes, when Exhibit 388 was prepared?
Commander HUMES. No, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. All right.
Commander HUMES. The photographs, to go back a moment the photographs and the X-rays were exposed in the morgue, of the Naval Medical Center on this night, and they were not developed, neither the X-rays or the photographs. They were submitted to the, and here, if I make a mistake I am not certain, to either the Federal Bureau of Investigation or to the Secret Service, I am not sure of those.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you submit those yourself immediately after they were taken, Dr. Humes?
Commander Humes. Again, one of the senior people present, I believe my own Commanding Officer, Captain Stover, took care of tuning this material over to these authorities, and receiving a receipt for this information, for this material. It was--I supervised the positioning of the body for various of these examinations but as far as beyond that, I did not consider that my responsibility.
These, then, were the three wounds which were quite obvious at the time of the examination.
I could expand further on the general appearances of these wounds or I could
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turn to the anterior. portion of the body and describe various other wounds which were present.
Mr. SPECTER. You were focussing on 388 before I last asked a question, Dr. Humes. Why don't you describe in general terms the nature of the wound which was present at the top of the head of the late President?
Commander HUMES. With your permission, sir, and Mr. Chief Justice, I think I might describe those two wounds together, and describe the defects in the scalp and in the skull in each instance.
Mr. SPECTER. That would be fine.
Commander HUMES. Would that be appropriate?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes.
Commander HUMES. Turning now to Commission Exhibit 388, where we have depicted in the posterior right portion of the skull a wound which we have labeled "in" or a wound of entrance and a large roughly 13 cm. diameter defect in the right lateral vertex of the skull. I would go into some further detail in describing these wounds.
The scalp, I mentioned previously, there was a defect in the scalp and some scalp tissue was not available. However, the scalp was intact completely past this defect. In other words, this wound in the right posterior region was in a portion of scalp which had remained intact.
So, we could see that it was the measurement which I gave before, I believe 15 by 6 millimeters.
When one reflected the scalp away from the skull in this region, there was a corresponding defect through both tables of the skull in this area.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you describe what you mean by beth tables, Dr. Humes?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
The skull is composed of two layers of bone. We will put the scalp in in dotted lines.
The two solid lines will represent the two layers of the skull bone, and in between these two layers is loose somewhat irregular bone.
When we reflected the scalp, there was a through and through defect corresponding with the wound in the scalp.
This wound had to us the characteristics of a wound of entrance for the following reason: The defect in the outer table was oval in outline, quite similar to the defect in the skin.
Mr. SPECTER. You are referring there, Doctor, to the wound on the lower part of the neck?
Commander HUMES. No, sir; I am speaking here of the wound in the occiput. The wound on the inner table, however, was larger and had what in the field of wound ballistics is described as a shelving or a coning effect. To make an analogy to which the members of the Commission are probably most familiar, when a missile strikes a pane of glass, a typical example, a B-B fired by a child's air rifle, when this strikes a pane of glass there will be a small, usually round to oval defect on the side of the glass from whence the missile came and a boiled-out or coned-out surface on the opposite side of the glass from whence the missile came.
(At this point, Mr. Dulles entered the hearing room.)
Commander HUMES. Experience has shown and my associates and Colonel Finck, in particular, whose special field of interest is wound ballistics can give additional testimony about this scientifically observed fact.
This wound then had the characteristics of wound of entrance from this direction through the two tables of the skull.
Mr. SPECTER. When you say "this direction," will you specify that direction in relationship to the skull?
Commander HUMES. At that point I mean only from without the skull to within.
Mr. SPECTER. Fine, proceed.
Commander HUMES. Having ascertained to our satisfaction and incidentally photographs illustrating this phenomenon from both the external surface of the skull and from the internal surface were prepared, we concluded that the large defect to the upper right side of the skull, in fact, would represent a wound of exit.
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A careful examination of the margins of the large bone defect at that point, however, failed to disclose a portion of the skull bearing again a wound of--a point of impact on the skull of this fragment of the missile, remembering, of course, that this area was devoid of any scalp or skull at this present time. We did not have the bone.
In further evaluating this head wound, I will refer back to the X-rays which we had previously prepared. These had disclosed to us multiple minute fragments of radio opaque material traversing a line from the wound in the occiput to just above the right eye, with a rather sizable fragment visible by X-ray just above the right eye. These tiny fragments that were seen dispersed through the substance of the brain in between Were, in fact, just that extremely minute, less than 1 mm. in size for the most part.
(At this point, Senator Cooper entered the hearing room.)
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, this would be a good juncture to produce two photographs.
May it please the Commission, Mr. Chief Justice Warren, I have identified as Commission Exhibits 389 and 390 which will at a later time be identified as being two frames from the motion picture camera operated by one Abraham Zapruder, being the amateur photographer who was on the scene, which I think would assist in evaluating the angle of the President's head corresponding to that exhibit designated as 388.
I will hand those to you, Dr. Humes, and ask you if you would state for the record the relative position of the President's head in 389 which is a frame about one-sixteenth of a second before the point of impact shown in Exhibit 390.
(The frames referred to were marked Commission Exhibits Nos. 389 and 3.90 for identification.)
Commander HUMES. It will be noted in Exhibit 389 that the President's head is bent considerably forward and perhaps somewhat to the left in this frame of the photograph 389.
Mr. SPECTER. Is that in approximately the same position as the angle of the head depicted in Commission Exhibit No. 388?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; it is.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, at this time I would like to move for admission in evidence of Exhibits 385 through 390.
The CHAIRMAN. They may be admitted under those numbers.
(Commission Exhibits Nos. 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, and 390, previously marked for identification, were received in evidence.)
Mr. SPECTER. Will you proceed now, Dr. Humes, to continue in your description of the head wound?
Commander HUMES. Head wound--a careful inspection of this large defect in the scalp and skull was made seeking for fragments of missile before any actual detection was begun. The brain was greatly lacerated and torn, and in this area of the large defect we did not encounter any of these minute particles.
I might say at this time that the X-ray pictures which were made would have a tendency to magnify these minute fragments somewhat in size and we were not too surprised in not being able to find the tiny fragments depicted in the X-ray.
Mr. SPECTER. Approximately how many fragments were observed, Dr. Humes, on the X-ray?
Commander HUMES. I would have to refer to them again, but I would say between 30 or 40 tiny dustlike particle fragments of radio opaque material, with the exception of this one I previously mentioned which was seen to be above and very slightly behind the right orbit.
Mr. DULLES. Were these all fragments that were injected into the skull by the bullet?
Commander HUMES. Our interpretation is, sir, that the missile struck the right occipital region, penetrated through the two tables of the skull, making the characteristic coning on the inner table which I have previously referred to. That one portion of the missile and judging by the size of the defect thus produced, the major portion of the missile, made its exit through this large defect.
A second portion of the missile or multiple second portions were deflected, and
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traversed a distance as enumerated by this interrupted line, with the major portion of that fragment coming to lodge in the position indicated.
Perhaps some of these minor fragments were dislodged from the major one it traversed this course.
To better examine the situation with regard to the skull, at this time, Boswell and I extended the lacerations of the scalp which were at the margins of this wound, down in the direction of both of the President's ears. At that point, we had even a better appreciation of the extensive damage which had been done to the skill by this injury.
We had to do virtually no work with a saw to remove these Portions of the skull, they came apart in our hands very easily, and we attempted to further examine the brain, and seek specifically this fragment which was the one we felt to be of a size which would permit us to recover it.
Mr. SPECTER. When you refer to this fragment, and you are pointing there, are you referring to the fragment depicted right above the President's right eye?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; above and somewhat behind the President's eye.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you proceed, then, to tell us what you did then?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. We directed carefully in this region and in fact located this small fragment, which was in a defect in the brain tissue in just precisely this location.
Mr. SPECTER. How large was that fragment, Dr. Humes?
Commander HUMES. I refer to my notes for the measurements of that fragment.
I find in going back to my report, sir, that we found, in fact, two small fragments in this approximate location. The larger of these measured 7 by 2 mm., the smaller 3 by 1 mm.
To make my presentation of this wound of the skull more logical to the Commission, I would like to go forward in time that evening to at a later hour. I apologize--time and what happened exactly at what moment escapes me at this time.
I mentioned previously that there was a large bony defect. Some time later on that evening or very early the next morning while we were all still engaged in continuing our examination, I was presented with three portions of bone which had been brought to Washington from Dallas by the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
These were--
Mr. SPECTER. Might that have been by a Secret Service agent?
Commander HUMES. It could be, sir; these things.
Mr. SPECTER. At any rate, someone presented thee three pieces of bone to you?
Commander HUMES. Someone presented these three pieces of bone to me, I do not recall specifically their statement as to where they had been recover. It seems to me they felt it had been recovered either in the street or in the automobile, I don't recall specifically.
We were most interested in these fragments of bone, and found that the three pieces could be roughly put together to account for a portion of this defect.
Mr. SPECTER. How much remained unaccounted for, Dr. Humes?
Commander HUMES. I would estimate that approximately one-quarter of that defect was unaccounted for by adding these three fragments together and seeing what was left.
This is somewhat difficult, because as back to when we were actually looking for the fragments of metal, as we moved the scalp about, fragments of various sizes would fall to the table, and so forth, so it was difficult to put that exact figure into words.
However, the thing which we considered of importance about these three fragments of bone was that at the margins of one of them which was roughly pyramidal in shape, there was a portion of the circumference of what we interpreted as a missile wound. We thus interpreted it this because there was, the size was, sufficiently large for us, for it to have the curve of the skull still evident. At the point of this defect, and I will draw both tables of the bone in this defect, at the area which we interpreted as the margin of a missile wound, there was a shelving of the margin.
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This would, to us, mean that a missile had made this wound from within the skull to the exterior. To confirm that this was a missile wound, X-rays were made of that fragment of bone, which showed radio-opaque material consistent and similar in character to the particles seen within the skull to be deposited in the margins of this defect, in this portion of the bone.
Mr. SPECTER. Then what conclusion did you reach as to what caused that hole reconstructed from the three portions of the late President's scalp?
Commander HUMES. We reached the conclusion a missile entered the left--the right posterior inferior portion-----
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor, perhaps it would be helpful if you would refer to that as letter "A" and the exit as letter "B", so that the record is clear on those two points and perhaps it will be helpful to your description as well. And would you mark them as well, with a pencil?
Commander HUMES. That is not entry for the second.
Mr. SPECTER. Exit for the second?
Commander HUMES. I will label 388 with the letter "A" to indicate our opinion as to the wound of entrance into the skull.
I will label as Point "B" the area of exit of a portion of the missile that entered posteriorly, I say a portion because a small fragment was seen in the position previously noted which was recovered.
However, we concluded that a very significant portion, perhaps the largest portion, made its exit and accounted for this very large defect for the multiple fractures of the skull and for the loss of brain and scalp tissue at this point.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you describe at this juncture the damage which was inflicted upon the brain, please?
Commander HUMES. May I refer at this point to the gross description of the brain prepared separately?
Mr. SPECTER. Certainly, Dr. Humes, if you prefer to do it in that order.
Commander HUMES. I believe you have that. It is the second portion of the report.
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, sir. I can make that available to you here.
Commander HUMES. While that is being provided, when we reflected the scalp away from the badly damaged skull, and removed some of these loosened portions of skull bone, we were able to see this large defect in the right cerebral hemisphere. It corresponded roughly in size with the greatest diameter of the defect in the scalp measuring some 13 cm.
Mr. SPECTER. May the record now show I am handing to you, Dr. Humes, an exhibit marked Commission Exhibit 391, and will you identify what that is, please, Doctor?
Commander HUMES. Exhibit 391 is listed as a supplementary report on the autopsy of the late President Kennedy, and was prepared some days after the examination.
This delay necessitated by, primarily, our desire to have the brain better fixed with formaldehyde before we proceeded further with the examination of the brain which is a standard means of approach to study of the brain.
The brain in its fresh state does not lend itself well to examination.
From my notes of the examination, at the time of the post-mortem examination, we noted that clearly visible in the large skull defect and exuding from it was lacerated brain tissue which, on close inspection proved to represent the major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere.
We also noted at this point that the flocculus cerebri was extensively lacerated and that the superior sagittal sinus which is a venous blood containing channel in the top of the meninges was also lacerated.
To continue to answer your question with regard to the damage of the brain, following the formal infixation, Dr. Boswell, Dr. Finck and I convened to examine the brain in this state.
We also prepared photographs of the brain from several aspects to depict the extent of these injuries.
We found that the right cerebral hemisphere was markedly disrupted. There was a longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which was parasagittal in position. By the saggital plane, as you may know, is a plane in the midline which would divide the brain into right and left halves.
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This laceration was parasagittal. It was situated approximately 2.5 cm. to the right of the midline, and extended from the tip of occipital lobe, which is the posterior portion of the brain, to the tip of the frontal lobe which is the most anterior portion of the brain, and it extended from the top down to the substance of the brain a distance of approximately 5 or 6 cm.
The base of the laceration was situated approximately 4.5 cm. below the vertex in the white matter. By the vertex we mean--the highest point on the skull is referred to as the vertex.
The area in which the greatest loss of brain substance was particularly in the parietal lobe, which is the major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere.
The margins of this laceration at all points were jagged and irregular, with additional lacerations extending in varying directions and for varying distances from the main laceration.
In addition, there was a laceration of the corpus callosum which is a body of fibers which connects the two hemispheres of the brain to each other, which extended from the posterior to the anterior portion of this structure, that is the corpus callosum. Exposed in this laceration were portions of the ventricular system in which the spinal fluid normally is disposed within the brain.
When viewed from above the left cerebral hemisphere was intact. There was engorgement of blood vessels in the meninges covering the brain. We note that the gyri and sulci, which are the convolutions of the brain over the left hemisphere were of normal size and distribution.
Those on the right were too fragmented and distorted for satisfactory description.
When the brain was turned over and viewed from its basular or inferior aspect, there was found a longitudinal laceration of the mid-brain through the floor of the third ventricle, just behind the optic chiasma and the mammillary bodies.
This laceration partially communicates with an oblique 1.5 cm. tear through the left cerebral peduncle. This is a portion of the brain which connects the higher centers of the brain with the spinal cord which is more concerned with reflex actions.
There were irregular superficial lacerations over the basular or inferior aspects of the left temporal and frontal lobes. We interpret that these later contusions were brought about when the disruptive force of the injury pushed that portion of the brain against the relative intact skull.
This has been described as contre-coup injury in that location.
This, then, I believe, Mr. Specter, are the major points with regard to the President's head wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have an opinion, Dr. Humes, as to whether there were dumdum bullets used specifically on this would which struck point "A" of the head, on 388?
Commander HUMES. I believe these were not dumdum bullets, Mr. Specter. A dumdum bullet is a term that has been used to describe various missiles which have a common characteristic of fragmenting extensively upon striking.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you characterize the resultant effect on this bullet as not extensive fragmenting?
Commander HUMES. Yes. Had. this wound on point "A" on Exhibit 388 been inflicted by dumdum bullet. I would anticipate that it would not have anything near the regular contour and outline which it had. I also would anticipate that the skull would have been much more extensively disrupted, and not have, as was evident in this case, a defect which quite closely corresponded to the overlying skin defect because that type of a missile would fragment on contact and be much more disruptive at this point.
Mr. SPECTER. At this point would you state for the record the size and approximate dimension of the major wound on the top of the head which you have marked wound "B"?
Commander HUMES. This was so large, that localization of it in a descriptive way is somewhat difficult.
However, we have mentioned that its major--its greatest dimension was approximately 13 cm. The reason it was difficult to measure is that various
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fracture lines extend out from it in a quite irregular fashion, but it was approximately 13 cm.
Mr. McCLOY. This red that is marked on 388 on the base of the skull, is that seepage or what?
Commander HUMES. No, sir; that is to depict the musculature at the base of the neck.
Mr. McCLOY. I see.
Commander HUMES. That is not taken to depict the blood, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. On the reconstruction of the three portions of the scalp which you described-----
Commander HUMES. Skull, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Skull, which enabled you to reconstruct a point of exit of the bullet, will you state at this point of the record that size of opening or exit path of the bullet?
Commander HUMES. As I mentioned previously, at one angle of this largest pyramidal shaped fragments of bone which came as a separate specimen, we had the portion of the perimeter of a roughly what we would judge to have been a roughly circular wound of exit. Judging from that portion of the perimeter which was available to us, we would have judged the diameter of that wound to be between 2.5 and 3 cm.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, have you now described the major characteristics and features of the wounds to the late President's head?
Commander HUMES. I believe that I have, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. All right. Will you now turn your attention, please to the wound which is noted on 385 and 386 being at the--
Mr. McCLOY. Before we leave that, could I ask a question?
When you talk about dumdum bullets, do you include the ordinary type of soft nose sporting bullets, maybe this is something that Colonel Finck would be more expert on, but was that, was the bullet, could it possibly have been a sporting type of hunting bullet that has a soft nose but is still somewhat firm?
Commander HUMES. From the characteristics of this wound, Mr. McCloy, would believe that it must have had a very firm head rather than a soft head.
Mr. McCLOY. Steel jacketed, would you say, copper jacketed bullet?
Commander HUMES. I believe more likely a jacketed bullet because of the regular outline which was present.
Mr. McCLOY. All right.
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask a question?
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Dulles.
Mr. DULLES. Believing that we know the type of bullet that was usable in this gun, would this be the type of wound that might result from that kind of a bullet?
Commander HUMES. I believe so, sir.
Mr. DULLES. If my question is clear--
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; it is.
Mr. DULLES. We think we know what the bullet is. we may be wrong but we think we know what it was, is this wound consistent with that type of bullet?
Commander HUMES. Quite consistent, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. There is no evidence of any keyholing of the bullet before it hit, before the point of impact?
Commander HUMES. I don't exactly follow your question.
Mr. McCLOY. Was the bullet moving in a direct line or had it begun to tumble?
Commander HUMES. To tumble?
That is a difficult question to answer. I have the opinion, however, that it was more likely moving in a direct line. You will note that the wound in the posterior portion of the occiput on Exhibit 388 is somewhat longer than the other missile wound which we have not yet discussed in the low neck. We believe that rather than due to a tumbling effect, this is explainable on the fact that this missile struck the skin and skull at a more tangential angle than did the other missile, and, therefore, produced a more elongated defect, sir.
Senator COOPER. May I ask a question there? Perhaps you have done this,
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but if not, how would you explain the difference of the courses of the fragments which you traced and described as, I think, being discovered behind the right eye?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Senator COOPER. And the course of the fragment which was believed caused the large defect?
Commander HUMES. Caused the large defect?
Senator COOPER. How do you explain.
Commander HUMES. The discrepancy?
Senator COOPER. The difference in the courses.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
As this missile penetrated the scalp, it then came upon a very firm substance, the hard skull, and I believe that this track depicted by the dotted lines on Exhibit 388 was a portion of that missile which was dislodged as it made its defect in the skull. And that--that another portion, and, as I say, presumably, by the size of the defect, a more major portion made its exit through the right lateral side of the skull.
Mr. McCLOY. Is this piece of pyramidal bone that was brought in to you subsequently as I understand it--
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Was that part of the outer table or the inner table?
Commander HUMES. It was both tables, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Both tables?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; had it only been one it might have been difficult to ascertain whether it was.
Mr. McCLOY. Shelving or not?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; in or out, but it encompassed both tables, sir.
Mr. DULLES. Is the angle of declination that you--one sees there from in and out approximately the angle you think at which the bullet was traveling at the time of impact and exit?
Commander HUMES. That is our impression, sir.
Mr. DULLES. So then the shot would have been fired from some point above the head of the person hit?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, would you elaborate a bit on the differences in the paths, specifically why the bullet went in one direction in part and in part in the second direction, terminating with the fragment right over the right eye?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
I will make a drawing of the posterior portion of the skull showing again this beveling which we observed at the inner table of the skull.
Our impression is that as this projectile impinged upon the skull in this fashion, a small portion of it was dislodged due to the energy expended in that collision, if you will, and that it went off at an angle, and left the track which is labeled 388, which is labeled on Exhibit 388 from "A", point "A" to the point where the fragment was found behind the eye.
Why a fragment takes any particular direction like that is something which is difficult of scientific explanation. Those of us who have seen missiles strike bones, be it the skull or a bone in the extremity, have long since learned that portions of these missiles may go off in various directions and the precise physical laws governing them are not clearly understood.
Mr. SPECTER. Would the angle be accentuated in any way if you were to assume the President was in a moving automobile going in a slight downhill direction?
Commander HUMES. There are many variables under these circumstances. The most--the crucial point, I believe to be the relative position of the President's head in relation to the flight of the missile.
Now, this would be influenced by how far his head was bent, by the situation with regard to the level of the seat in the vehicle, off of the horizontal, and so forth.
Mr. SPECTER. How about a decline in the path of the road itself?
Commander HUMES. I think that that would have a tendency to accentuate this angle, yes, sir.
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Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, I would like to move for the admission in evidence now of Exhibit 391, which is the exhibit on the brain report.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The document heretofore marked for identification as Commission Exhibit No. 391 was received in evidence.)
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, would you now move over to the wound which appears on the lower part of the neck and upper part of the back?
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask one more question before we get to that, I am sorry.
Mr. SPECTER. Certainly.
Mr. DULLES. Could one say as to what portion of the bullet was found in all these fragments, I mean arrive at an estimate, was it a tenth of the bullet, was it, how much was it, assuming the type of bullet that we believe was used in this particular rifle.
Commander HUMES. Sir, I have not had the opportunity to personally examine the type of bullet which is believed to have been represented by this injury.
However, I would estimate if I understand you correctly the total amount that was present in the President's skull and brain?
Mr. DULLES. Yes.
Commander HUMES. Including the fragment?
Mr. DULLES. Including all the fragments.
Commander HUMES. Including all these minute particles. I would say there was something less than one-tenth of the total volume of the missile.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, do you make that calculation on the assumption that the bullets used here were 6.5 ram. Mannlicher-Carcano rifle bullet weighing 158.6 grams?
Commander HUMES. Yes, I do; sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Had I brought that particular fact to your attention prior to the time you started testifying here today?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. One point I intended to make clear these fragments which I recovered from this position were turned over to the Secret Service.
I presume that they have made physical measurements including the weight of them, and could give a much more intelligent estimate of the proportion than I. I would say, however, that we did not deliver these minute fragments because they were so small as to be essentially unrecoverable.
So, obviously they were of a very small portion of the major missile.
Mr. DULLES. These minute fragments were part of the bullet, emanations from the bullet?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. They were not from the head?
Commander HUMES. No, sir, they were small, dust, of the size of dust particles. however-
Mr. DULLES. Is the posture of the head of that figure there, the inclination of it, roughly the inclination that you think the President's head had at the time from the other photographs?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. From the photographs and based on the physical examination of this wound, yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. That is all I have.
Mr. McCLOY. Perhaps this was something that Colonel Finck could testify to exactly, but, he would be quite competent. Is there anything to indicate that this was, might have been a larger than a 6.5 or smaller than a 6.5?
Commander HUMES. The size of the defect in the scalp, caused by a projectile could vary from missile to missile because of elastic recoil and so forth of the tissues.
However, the size of the defect in the underlying bone is certainly not likely to get smaller than that of the missile which perforated it, and in this case, the smallest diameter of this was approximately 6 to 7 mm., so I would feel that that would be the absolute upper limit of the size of this missile, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Seven would be the absolute upper limit?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; and, of course, just a little tilt could make it a little larger, you see.
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Mr. DULLES. I have one other question, if I may.
Is the incidence of clean entry as indicated there, and then great fragmentation on exit, is that a normal consequence of this type of would?
Commander HUMES. Sir, we feel that there are two potential explanations for this.
One, having traversed the skull in entrance in the occiput as depicted on 388, the missile begins to tumble, and in that fashion it presents a greater proportion of its surface to the brain substance and to the skull as it makes its egress.
The other and somewhat more difficult to measure and perhaps Colonel Finck will be able to testify in greater detail on this, is that a high velocity missile has tremendous kinetic energy, and this energy is expanded against the structures which it strikes, and so that much of this defect could be of the nature of blast, as this kinetic energy is dissipated by traversing the skull. Is that the sense of the question, sir?
Mr. DULLES. Yes.
Senator COOPER. I will ask a question, and perhaps this isn't in your field. But assuming that the shot which struck President Kennedy at point A was fired by a gun from the window of the Texas School Book Depository, and which has been testified to, and assuming that you could locate the position of the President at the time he was struck by a bullet, you could then, could you not, establish the degree of the missile?
Commander HUMES. The degree of angle?
Senator COOPER. The angle, yes, the degree of angle of the missile from the building.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; there is one difficulty, and that is the defect of exit was so broad that one has to rely more on the inclination of the entrance than they do connecting in this instance entrance and exit because so much of the skull was carried away in this fashion.
Senator COOPER. That was my second question.
My first question was would it be possible physically to establish the degree of angle of the trajectory of the bullet?
Commander HUMES. Within limited accuracy, sir.
Senator COOPER. Within limited accuracy.
That being true then my second question was whether the point of entry of the bullet, point A, and the, what you call the exit--
Commander HUMES. Exit.
Senator COOPER. Did you establish them so exactly that they could be related to the degree of angle of the trajectory of the bullet?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; to our satisfaction we did ascertain that fact.
Mr. DULLES. Just one other question.
Am I correct in assuming from what you have said that this wound is entirely inconsistent with a wound that might have been administered if the shot were fired from in front or the side of the President: it had to be fired from behind the President?
Commander HUMES. Scientifically, sir, it is impossible for it to have been fired from other than behind. Or to have exited from other than behind.
Mr. McCLOY. This is so obvious that I rather hesitate to ask it. There is no question in your mind that it was a lethal bullet?
Commander HUMES. The President, sir, could not possibly have survived the effect of that injury no matter what would have been done for him.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Specter.
Mr. SPECTER. What conclusions did you reach then as to the trajectory or point of origin of the bullet, Dr. Humes, based on 388?
Commander HUMES. We reached the conclusion that this missile was fired toward the President from a point above and behind him, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, on one detail on your report, Dr. Humes, on page 4, on the third line down, you note that there is a lacerated wound measuring 15 by 6 cm. which on the smaller size is, of course, less than 6.5 mm.?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. What would be the explanation for that variation?
Commander HUMES. This is in the scalp, sir, and I believe that this is explainable on the elastic recoil of the tissues of the skin, sir. It is not infrequent
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in missile wounds of this type that the measured wound is slightly smaller than the caliber of the missile that traversed it.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you proceed, now then to the other major wound of entry which you have already noted and described?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Its point of origin, where it hit the President.
Commander HUMES. I--our previously submitted report, which is Commission No. 387, identified a wound in the low posterior neck of the President.
The size of this wound was 4 by 7 mm., with the long axis being in accordance with the long axis of the body, 44 mm. wide, in other words, 7 mm. long.
We attempted to locate such wounds in soft tissue by making reference to bony structures which do not move and are, therefore, good reference points for this type of investigation.
We then ascertained, we chose the two bony points of reference we chose to locate this wound, where the mastoid process, which is just behind the ear, the top of the mastoid process, and the acromion which is the tip of the shoulder joint. We ascertained physical measurement at the time of autopsy that this wound was 14 cm. from the tip of the mastoid process and 14 cm. from the acromion was its central point--
Mr. SPECTER. That is the right acromion?
Commander HUMES. The tip of the right acromion, yes, sir, and that is why we have depicted it in figure 385 in this location.
This wound appeared physically quite similar to the wound which we have described before in 388 "A," with the exception that its long axis was shorter than the long axis of the wound described above. When the tissues beneath this wound were inspected, there was a defect corresponding with the skin defect in the fascia overlying the musculature of the low neck and upper back.
I mentioned previously that X-rays were made of the entire body of the late President. Of course, and here I must say that as I describe something to you, I might have done it before or after in the description but for the sake of understanding, we examined carefully the bony structures in this vicinity well as the X-rays, to see if there was any evidence of fracture or of deposition of metallic fragments in the depths of this wound, and we saw no such evidence, that is no fracture of the bones of the shoulder girdle, or of the vertical column, and no metallic fragments were detectable by X-ray examination.
Attempts to probe in the vicinity of this wound were unsuccessful without fear of making a false passage.
Mr. SPECTER. What do you mean by that, Doctor?
Commander HUMES. Well, the defect in the fascia was quite similar, which is the first firm tissue over the muscle beneath the skin, was quite similar to this. We were unable, however, to take probes and have them satisfactorily fall through any definite path at this point.
Now, to explain the situation in the President's neck, I think it will be necessary for me to refer back to Exhibit 385, I believe the number is correct.
Mr. SPECTER. Yes; please do, that is 385.
Commander HUMES. Now, as the President's body was viewed from anteriorly in the autopsy room, and saying nothing for the moment about the missile, there was a recent surgical defect in the low anterior neck, which measured some 7 or 8 cm. in length or let's say a recent wound was present in this area.
This wound was through the skin, through the subcutaneous tissues and into--
Mr. SPECTER. To digress chronologically--
Commander HUMES. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have occasion to discuss that wound on the front side of the President with Dr. Malcolm Perry of Parkland Hospital in Dallas?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; I did. I had the impression from seeing the wound that it represented a surgical tracheotomy wound, a wound frequently made by surgeons when people are in respiratory distress to give them a free airway.
To ascertain that point, I called on the telephone Dr. Malcolm Perry and discussed with him the situation of the President's neck when he first examined
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the President, and asked him had he in fact done a tracheotomy which was somewhat redundant because I was somewhat certain he had.
He said, yes; he had done a tracheotomy and that as the point to perform his tracheotomy he used a wound which he had interpreted as a missile wound in the low neck, as the point through which to make the tracheotomy incision.
Mr. SPECTER. When did you have that conversation with him, Dr. Humes?
Commander HUMES. I had that conversation early on Saturday morning, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. On Saturday morning, November 23d?
Commander HUMES. That is correct, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. And have you had occasion since to examine the report of Parkland Hospital which I made available to you?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; I have.
Mr. SPECTER. May it please the Commission, I would like to note this as Commission Exhibit No. 392, and subject to later technical proof, to have it admitted into evidence at this time for the purpose of having the doctor comment about it.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be so marked.
(The document referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 392, for identification.)
Mr. SPECTER. What did your examination of the Parkland Hospital records disclose with respect to this wound on the front side of the President's body?
Commander HUMES. The examination of this record from Parkland Hospital revealed that Doctor Perry had observed this wound as had other physicians in attendance upon the President, and actually before a tracheotomy, was performed surgically, an endotracheal tube was placed through the President's mouth and down his larynx and into his trachea which is the first step in giving satisfactory airway to a person injured in such fashion and unconscious.
The President was unconscious and it is most difficult to pass such a tube when the person is unconscious.
The person who performed that procedure, that is instilled the endotrachea tube noted that there was a wound of the trachea below the larynx, which corresponded in essence with the wound of the skin which they had observed from the exterior.
Mr. SPECTER. How is that wound described, while you are mentioning the wound?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. I think you will find that on the first page of the summary sheet, Dr. Humes.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. Thank you. This report was written by doctor--or the activities of Dr. James Carrico, Doctor Carrico in inserting the endotracheal tube noted a ragged wound of trachea immediately below the larynx.
The report, as I recall it, and I have not studied it in minute detail, would indicate to me that Doctor Perry realizing from Doctor Carrico's observation that there was a wound of the trachea would quite logically use the wound which he had observed as a point to enter the trachea since the trachea was almost damaged, that would be a logical place in which to put his incision.
In speaking of that wound in the neck, Doctor Perry told me that before he enlarged it to make the tracheotomy wound it was a "few millimeters in diameter."
Of course by the time we saw it, as my associates and as you have heard, it was considerably larger and no longer at all obvious as a missile wound.
The report states, and Doctor Perry told me in telephone conversation that there was bubbling of air and blood in the vicinity of this wound when he made the tracheotomy. This caused him to believe that perhaps there had been a violation of one of the one or other of the pleural cavities by a missile. He, therefore, asked one of his associates, and the record is to me somewhat confused as to which of his associates, he asked one of his associates to put in a chest tube. This is a maneuver which is, was quite logical under the circumstances, and which would, if a tube that were placed through all layers of the wall of the chest, and the chest cavity had been violated one could remove air that had gotten in there and greatly assist respiration.
So when we examined the President in addition to the large wound which
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we found in conversation with Doctor Perry was the tracheotomy wound, there were two smaller wounds on the upper anterior chest.
Mr. DULLES. These are apparently exit wounds?
Commander HUMES. Sir, these were knife wounds, these were incised wounds on either side of the chest, and I will give them in somewhat greater detail.
These wounds were bilateral, they were situated on the anterior chest wall in the nipple line, and each were 2 cm. long in the transverse axis. The one on the right was situated 11 cm. above the nipple the one on the left was situated 11 cm. on the nipple, and the one on the right was 8 cm. above the nipple. Their intention was to incise through the President's chest to place tubes into his chest.
We examined those wounds very carefully, and found that they, however, did not enter the chest cavity. They only went through the skin. I presume that as they were performing that procedure it was obvious that the President had died, and they didn't pursue this.
To complete the examination of the area of the neck and the chest, I will do that together, we made the customary incision which we use in a routine postmortem examination which is a Y-shaped incision from the shoulders over the lower portion of the breastbone and over to the opposite shoulder and reflected the skin and tissues from the anterior portion of the chest.
We examined in the region of this incised surgical wound which was the tracheotomy wound and we saw that there was some bruising of the muscles of the neck in the depths of this wound as well as laceration or defect in the trachea.
At this point, of course, I am unable to say how much of the defect in the trachea was made by the knife of the surgeon, and how much of the defect was made by the missile wound. That would have to be ascertained from the surgeon who actually did the tracheotomy.
There was, however, some ecchymosis or contusion, of the muscles of the right anterior neck inferiorly, without, however, any disruption of the muscles or any significant tearing of the muscles.
The muscles in this area of the body run roughly, as you see as he depicted them here. We have removed some of them for a point I will make in a moment, but it is our opinion that the missile traversed the neck and slid between these muscles and other vital structures with a course in the neck such as the carotid artery, the jugular vein and other structures because there was no massive hemmorhage or other massive injury in this portion of the neck.
In attempting to relate findings within the President's body to this wound which we had observed low in his neck, we then opened his chest cavity, and we very carefully examined the lining of his chest cavity and both of his lungs. We found that there was, in fact. no defect in the pleural lining of the President's chest.
It was completely intact.
However, over the apex of the right pleural cavity, and the pleura now has two layers. It has a parietal or a layer which lines the chest cavity and it has a visceral layer which is intimately in association with the lung.
As depicted in figure 385, in the apex of the right pleural cavity there was a bruise or contusion or eccmymosis of the parietal pleura as well as a bruise of the upper portion, the most apical portion of the right lung.
It, therefore, was our opinion that the missile while not penetrating physically the pleural cavity, as it passed that point bruised either the missile itself, or the force of its passage through the tissues, bruised both the parietal and the visceral pleura.
The area of discoloration on the apical portion of the right upper lung measured five centimeters in greatest diameter, and was wedge shaped in configuration, with its base toward the top of the chest and its apex down towards the substance of the lung.
Once again Kodachrome photographs were made of this area in the interior of the President's chest.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you mark the point on Exhibit 385, the one on the rear of the President as point "C" and the one on the front of the President as point "D" so we can discuss those, Dr. Humes?
Now, what conclusion did you reach, if any, as to whether point "C" was the point of entry or exit?
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Commander HUMES. We reached the conclusion that point "C" was a Point of entry.
Mr. SPECTER. What characteristics of that wound led you to that conclusion?
Commander HUMES. The characteristics here were basically similar to the characteristics above, lacking one very valuable clue or piece of evidence rather than clue, because it is more truly a piece of evidence in the skull. The skull as I mentioned before had the bone with the characteristic defect made as a missile traverses bone.
This missile, to the best of our ability to ascertain, struck no bone protuberances, no bony prominences, no bones as it traversed the President's body. But it was a sharply delineated wound. It was quite regular in its outline. It measured, as I mentioned, 7 by 4 mm. Its margins were similar in all respects when viewed with the naked eye to the wound in the skull, which we feel incontrovertibly was a wound of entrance.
The defect in the fascia which is that layer of connective tissue over the muscle just beneath the wound corresponded virtually exactly to the defect in the skin.
And for these reasons we felt that this was a wound of entrance.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you search the body to determine if there was any bullet inside the body?
Commander HUMES. Before the arrival of Colonel Finck we had made X-rays of the head, neck and torso of the President, and the upper portions of his major extremities, or both his upper and lower extremities. At Colonel Finck's suggestion, we then completed the X-ray examination by X-raying the President's body in toto, and those X-rays are available.
Mr. SPECTER. What did those X-rays disclose with respect to the possible presence of a missile in the President's body?
Commander HUMES. They showed no evidence of a missile in the President's body at any point. And these were examined by ourselves and by the radiologist, who assisted us in this endeavor.
Mr. SPECTER. What conclusion, if any, did you reach as to whether point "D" on 385 was the point of entrance or exit?
Commander HUMES. We concluded that this missile depicted in 385 "C" which entered the President's body traversed the President's body and made its exit through the wound observed by the physicians at Parkland Hospital and later extended as a tracheotomy wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Does the description "ragged wound" which is found in the Parkland report shed any light in and of itself as to whether point "D" is an exit or entry wound?
Commander HUMES. I believe, sir, that that statement goes on, ragged wound in the trachea. I don't believe that refers to the skin. And you might say that it is a ragged wound is more likely to be a wound of exit.
However, the trachea has little cartilaginous rings which have a tendency, which would be disrupted by this, and most wounds of the trachea unless very cleverly incised would perhaps appear slightly ragged.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, what was the angle, if any, that you observed on the path of the bullet, as you outlined it?
Commander HUMES. The angle which we observed in measuring, in comparing the point of entrance, our point of entrance labeled "C" on 385 and "D" point of exit is one that the point of exit is below the point of entrance compared with the vertical.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you had an opportunity to examine the clothing which has been identified for you as being that worn by the President on the day of the assassination?
Commander HUMES. Yes; yesterday, just shortly before the Commission hearing today was begun, Mr. Chief Justice, we had opportunity for the first time to examine the clothing worn by the late President.
In private conversation among ourselves before this opportunity, we predicted we would find defects in the clothing corresponding with the defects which were found, of course, on the body of the late President.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the Commission, I would like to have identified for the record three articles on which I have placed
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Commission Exhibits Nos. 393 being the coat worn by the President, 394 being the shirt, and 395 being the President's tie, and at this time move for their admission into evidence.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The articles of clothing referred to were marked Commission Exhibits Nos. 393, 394 and 395 for identification, and received in evidence.)
Mr. SPECTER. Taking 393 at the start, Doctor Humes, will you describe for the record what hole, if any, is observable in the back of that garment which would be at or about the spot you have described as being the point of entry on the President's back or lower neck.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. This exhibit is a grey suit coat stated to have been worn by the President on the day of his death. Situated to the right of the midline high in the back portion of the coat is a defect, one margin of which is semicircular.
Situated above it just below the collar is an additional defect. It is our opinion that the lower of these defects corresponds essentially with the point of entrance of the missile at Point C on Exhibit 385.
Mr. SPECTER. Would it be accurate to state that the hole which you have identified as being the point of entry is approximately 6 inches below the top of the collar, and 2 inches to the right of the middle seam of the coat?
Commander HUMES. That is approximately correct, sir. This defect, I might say, continues on through the material.
Attached to this garment is the memorandum which states that one half of the area around the hole which was presented had been removed by experts, I believe, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and also that a control area was taken from under the collar, so it is my interpretation that this defect at the top of this garment is the control area taken by the Bureau, and that the reason the lower defect is not more circle or oval in outline is because a portion of that defect has been removed apparently for physical examinations.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, does the one which you have described as the entry of the bullet go all the way through?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; it goes through both layers.
Mr. SPECTER. How about the upper one of the collar you have described, does that go all the way through?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; it goes all the way through. It is not--wait a minute, excuse me it is not so clearly a puncture wound as the one below.
Mr. SPECTER. Does the upper one go all the way through in the same course?
Commander HUMES. No.
Mr. SPECTER. Through the inner side as it went through the outer side?
Commander HUMES. No, in an irregular fashion.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you take Commission Exhibit 394 and describe what that is. first of all, please?
Commander HUMES. This is the shirt, blood-stained shirt, purportedly worn by the President on the day of his assassination. When viewed from behind at a point which corresponds essentially with the point of defect on the jacket, one sees an irregularly oval defect.
When viewed anteriorly, with the top button buttoned, two additional defects are seen. Of course, with the shirt buttoned, the fly front of the shirt causes two layers of cloth to be present in this location, and that there is a defect in the inner layer of cloth and a corresponding defect in the outer layer of the cloth.
Mr. SPECTER. Is there any observable indication from the fibers on the front side of the shirt to indicate in which direction a missile might have passed through those two tears?
Commander HUMES. From an examination of these defects at this point, it would appear that the missile traversed these two layers from within to the exterior.
Mr. SPECTER. Would it be accurate to state that the hole in the back of the shirt is approximately 6 inches below the top of the collar and 2 inches to the right of the middle seam of the shirt?
Commander HUMES. That is approximately correct, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, how, if at all, do the holes in the shirt and coat conform
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to the wound of entrance which you described as point "C" on Commission Exhibit 385?
Commander HUMES. We believe that they conform quite well. When viewing--first of all, the wounds or the defects in 393 and 394 coincide virtually exactly with one another.
They give the appearance when viewed separately and not as part of the clothing of a clothed person as being perhaps, somewhat lower on the Exhibits 393 and 394 than we have depicted them in Exhibit No. 385. We believe there are two reasons for this.
385 is a schematic representation, and the photographs would be more accurate as to the precise location, but more particularly the way in which these defects would conform with such a defect on the torso would depend on the girth of the shoulders and configuration of the base of the neck of the individual, and the relative position of the shirt and coat to the tissues of the body at the time of the impact of the missile.
Mr. SPECTER. As to the muscular status of the President, what was it?
Commander HUMES. The President was extremely well-developed, an extremely well-developed, muscular young man with a very well-developed set of muscles in his thoraco and shoulder girdle.
Mr. SPECTER. What effect would that have on the positioning of the shirt and coat with respect to the position of the neck in and about the seam?
Commander HUMES. I believe this would have a tendency to push the portions of the coat which show the defects here somewhat higher on the back of the President than on a man of less muscular development.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the Commission, I would like to mark for identification Exhibit 396, which later proof will show is a picture of President Kennedy shortly before the first bullet struck him, and ask the doctor to take a look at that.
Will you describe, Doctor Humes, the position of President Kennedy's right hand in that picture?
Commander HUMES. Yes. This exhibit, Commission Exhibit No. 396, allegedly taken just prior to the wounding of the late President, shows him with his hand raised, his elbow bent, apparently in saluting the crowd. I believe that this action--
Mr. SPECTER. Which hand was that?
Commander HUMES. This was his right hand, sir. I believe that this action would further accentuate the elevation of the coat and the shirt with respect to the back of the President.
Mr. SPECTER. Now. Doctor Humes, will you take Commission Exhibit No. 395--
Mr. McCLOY. Before you go, may I ask a question? In your examination of the shirt, I just want to get it in the record, from your examination of the shirt. there is no defect in the collar of the shirt which coincides with the defect in the back of the President's coat, am I correct?
Commander HUMES. You are correct, sir. There is no such defect.
Mr. SPECTER. As to Commission Exhibit 395, Dr. Humes, will you identify what that is, please?
Commander HUMES. We had an opportunity to examine this exhibit before the Commission met today, sir. This is Commission Exhibit No. 395, and is the neck tie purportedly worn, purportedly to have been worn, by the late President on the day of his assassination.
Mr. SPECTER. What defect. if any, is noted on the tie which would correspond with the path of a missile apparently passing through the folds of the shirt which you have already described?
Commander HUMES. This tie is one of those this tie is still in its knotted state, as we examine it at this time. The portion of the tie around the neck has been severed apparently with scissors or other sharp instrument accounting for the loop about the neck.
The tie is tied in four-in-hand fashion but somewhat askew from the way a person would normally tie a four-in-hand and knot.
Situated on the left anterior aspect of this knotted portion of the tie at a point approximately corresponding with the defects noted previously in the
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two layers of the shirt is a superficial tear of the outer layer only of the fabric of this tie which, I believe, could have been caused by a glancing blow to this portion of the tie by a missile.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, I move at this time for the admission into evidence of Exhibits 393 through Exhibit 396, the three articles of clothing and the photograph which we have just used.
The CHAIRMAN. They may be admitted.
(Exhibits Nos. 393 through 3.96 were received in evidence and may be found in the Commission files.)
Mr. McCLOY. Commander, did you say left or right?
Commander HUMES. No, sir. In fact, the way this bow is tied now it would appear to be on the left of this tie, but it is kind of twisted out of shape.
Mr. McCLOY. Yes. It is twisted. It is not too clear.
` Commander HUMES. It is not too clear, it is not clear how that might have been in position with the shirt, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, Doctor Humes, at one point in your examination of the President, did you make an effort to probe the point of entry with your finger?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. And at or about that time when you were trying to ascertain, as you previously testified, whether there was any missile in the body of the President, did someone from the Secret Service call your attention to the fact that a bullet had been found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; they did.
Mr. SPECTER. And in that posture of your examination, having just learned of the presence of a bullet on a stretcher, did that call to your mind any tentative explanatory theory of the point of entry or exit of the bullet which you have described as entering at Point "C" on Exhibit 385?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. We were able to ascertain with absolute certainty that the bullet had passed by the apical portion of the right lung producing the injury which we mentioned.
I did not at that point have the information from Doctor Perry about the wound in the anterior neck, and while that was a possible explanation for the point of exit, we also had to consider the possibility that the missile in some rather inexplicable fashion had been stopped in its path through the President's body and, in fact, then had fallen from the body onto the stretcher.
Mr. SPECTER. And what theory did you think possible, at that juncture, to explain the passing of the bullet back out the point of entry; or had you been provided with the fact that external heart massage had been performed on the President?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; we had, and we considered the possibility that some of the physical maneuvering performed by the doctors might have in some way caused this event to take place.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, have you since discounted that possibility, Doctor Humes?
Commander HUMES. Yes; in essence we have. When examining the wounds in the base of the President's neck anteriorly, the region of the tracheotomy performed at Parkland Hospital, we noted and we noted in our record, some contusion and bruising of the muscles of the neck of the President. We noted that at the time of the postmortem examination.
Now, we also made note of the types of wounds which I mentioned to you before in this testimony on the chest which were going to be used by the doctors there to place chest tubes. They also made other wounds. one on the left arm, and a wound on the ankle of the President with the idea of administering intravenous. blood and other fluids in hope of replacing the blood which the President had lost from his extensive wounds.
Those wounds showed no evidence of bruising or contusion or physical violence, which made us reach the conclusion that they were performed during the agonal moments of the late president, and when the circulation was, in essence, very seriously embarrassed, if not nonfunctional. So that these wounds, the wound of the chest and the wound of the arm and of the ankle were performed about the same time as the tracheotomy wound because only a very few moments of time elapsed when all this was going on.
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So, therefore, we reached the conclusion that the damage to these muscles on the anterior neck just below this wound were received at approximately the same time that the wound here on the top of the pleural cavity was, while the President still lived and while his heart and lungs were operating in such a fashion to permit him to have a bruise in the vicinity, because that he did have in these strap muscles in the neck, but he didn't have in the areas of the other incisions that were made at Parkland Hospital. So we feel that, had this missile not made its path in that fashion, the wound made by Doctor Perry in the neck would not have been able to produce, wouldn't have been able to produce, these contusions of the musculature of the neck.
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask a question about the missile, I am a little bit--the bullet, I am a little bit--confused. It was found on the stretcher. Did the President's body remain on the stretcher while it was in the hospital?
Commander HUMES. Of that point I have no knowledge. The only--
Mr. DULLES. Why would it--would this operating have anything to do with the bullet being on the stretcher unless the President's body remained on the stretcher after he was taken into the hospital; is that possible?
Commander HUMES. It is quite possible, sir.
Mr. DULLES. Otherwise it seems to me the bullet would have to have been ejected from the body before he was taken or put on the bed in the hospital.
Commander HUMES. Right, sir. I, of course, was not there. I don't know how he was handled in the hospital, in what conveyance. I do know he was on his back during the period of his stay in the hospital: Doctor Perry told me that.
Mr. DULLES. Yes; and wasn't turned over.
Commander HUMES. That is right.
Mr. DULLES. So he might have been on the stretcher the whole time. is that your view?
The CHAIRMAN. He said he had no view. He wasn't there, he doesn't know anything about it.
Mr. DULLES. Yes. I wonder if there is other evidence of this.
Mr. SPECTER. There has been other evidence, Mr. Dulles. If I may say at this point, we shall produce later, subject to sequential proof, evidence that the stretcher on which this bullet was found was the stretcher of Governor Connally. We have a sequence of events on the transmission of that stretcher which ties that down reasonably closely, so that on the night of the autopsy itself, as the information I have been developing indicates, the thought preliminarily was that was from President Kennedy's stretcher, and that is what led to the hypothesis which we have been exploring about but which has since been rejected. But at any rate the evidence will show that it was from Governor Connally's stretcher that the bullet was found.
Mr. DULLES. So this bullet is still missing?
Mr. SPECTER. That is the subject of some theories I am about to get into. That is an elusive subject, but Dr. Humes has some views on it and we might just as well go into those now.
Mr. McCLOY. Before he gets into that, may I ask a question?
The CHAIRMAN. Surely, go right ahead.
Mr. McCLOY. Quite apart from the President's clothing, now directing your attention to the flight of the bullet, quite apart from the evidence given by the President's clothing, you, I believe, indicated that the flight of the bullet was from the back, from above and behind. It took roughly the line which is shown on your Exhibit 385.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. I am not clear what induced you to come to that conclusion if you couldn't find the actual exit wound by reason of the tracheotomy.
Commander HUMES. The report which we have submitted, sir, represents our thinking within the 24-48 hours of the death of the President, all facts taken into account of the situation.
The wound in the anterior portion of the lower neck is physically lower than the point of entrance posteriorly, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. That is what I wanted to bring out.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
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Mr. McCLOY. May I ask this: In spite of the incision made by the tracheotomy, was there any evidence left of the exit aperture?
Commander HUMES. Unfortunately not that we could ascertain, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. I see.
Mr. DULLES. There is no evidence in the coat or the shirt of an exit through the coat or shirt
Commander HUMES. There is no exit through the coat. sir. But these two. in the shirt, of course excuse me, sir-- here is. The entrance by our calculations--
Mr. DULLES. The entrance I know.
Commander HUMES. Posteriorly.
Mr. DULLES. What about the exit?
Commander HUMES. The exit wounds are just below.
Mr. DULLES. But there was no coat to exit through.
Commander HUMES. No; anteriorly the coat was quite open.
Senator COOPER. May I ask a question?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir, Senator.
Senator COOPER. Assuming that we draw a straight line from Point "C" which you have described as a possible point of entry of the missile, to Point "D" where you saw an incision of the tracheotomy--
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Senator COOPER. What would be the relation of the bruise at the apex of the pleural sac to such a line?
Commander HUMES. It would be exactly in line with such a line, sir. exactly.
Senator COOPER. What was the character of the bruise that you saw there?
Commander HUMES. The bruise here, photographs are far superior to my humble verbal description, but if I let my hand in cup shaped fashion represent the apical parietal pleura, it was an area approximately 5 cm. in greatest diameter of purplish blue discoloration of the parietal pleura. Corresponding exactly with it, with the lung sitting below it, was a roughly pyramid-shaped bruise with its base toward the surface of the upper portion of the lung, and the apex down into the lung tissue, and the whole thing measured about 5 cm. which is a little 2 inches in extent, sir.
Senator COOPER. What would be the--can you describe the covering around the apex of the pleural sac, the nature of its protection. My point is to get your opinion as to whether some other factor, some factor other than the missile could have caused this bruise which you saw.
Commander HUMES. A couple of ways we might do this, sir. One with regard to temporal, it was quite fresh. When examined under the microscope, the lung in this area had recent hemorrhaging in it. The red blood cells were well-preserved, as they would be if it happened quite recently before death. as was the red blood cells where they had gotten out into the lung tissue near there.
` The discoloration was essentially of the same character as the discoloration in the muscles adjacent thereto, which would roughly again place it temporally in approximately the same time since bruises change color as time goes. by, and these appeared quite fresh.
This is with regard to time--I don't know whether that is the right parameter in which you wished to study it, Senator.
Senator COOPER. My question really went to this point: Considering the location of the bruise at the apex of the pleural sac--
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Senator COOPER. And of the tissue or muscles around it, was there any other factor which you could think of that might have caused that bruise other than the passage of a missile?
Commander HUMES. It was so well localized that I truthfully, sir, can't think of any other way.
Senator COOPER. That is all.
Mr. McCLOY. May I ask you one question which. perhaps, the answer is quite obvious. If, contrary to the evidence that we have here. that anterior wound was the wound of entry, the shot must have come from below the President to have followed that path.
Commander HUMES. That course, that is correct, sir.
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Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, can you compare the angles of declination on 385, point "C" to "D", with 388 "A" to "B"?
Commander HUMES. You will note, and again I must apologize for the schematic nature of these diagrams drawn to a certain extent from memory and to a certain extent from the written record, it would appear that the angle of declination is somewhat sharper in the head wound, 388, than it is in 385.
The reason for this, we feel, by the pattern of the entrance wound at 388 "A" causes us to feel that the President's head was bent forward, and we feel this accounts for the difference in the angle, plus undoubtedly the wounds were not received absolutely simultaneously, so that the vehicle in which the President was traveling moved during this period of time, which would account for a difference in the line of flight, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Aside from the slight differences which are notable by observing those two exhibits, are they roughly comparable to the angle of decline?
Commander HUMES. I believe them to be roughly comparable, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Could you state for the record an approximation of the angle of decline?
Commander HUMES. Mathematics is not my forte. Approximately 45 degrees from the horizontal.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you elaborate somewhat, Doctor Humes, on why the angle would change by virtue of a tilting of the head of the President since the basis of the computation of angle is with respect to the ground?
Commander HUMES. I find the question a little difficult of answering right off, forgive me, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. I will try to rephrase it. Stated more simply, why would the tilting of the President's head affect the angle of the decline? You stated that was--
Commander HUMES. The angle that I am making an observation most about is the angle made that we envisioned having been made by the impingement of the bullet in its flight at the point of entry. This angle we see by the difference of the measurement of the two wounds.
Therefore, this is--we have several angles we are talking about here, unfortunately, this is-the angle of which we speak in this location, "A" to "B", and it is difficult.
I have to retract. Since we feel from their physical configurations, wounds 385 "C" and 388 "A" are entrance wounds, if there wasn't some significant change in the angulation of the President's head with respect to the line of flight from these missiles, the physical measurements of 385 "C" and this 388 "A" should be similar. They aren't, in fact, dissimilar in that there is a greater angulation in 388 "A". Therefore, there has to be either a change in the position of the vehicle in which the President is riding with respect to the horizontal or a change in the situation of the President's head. I believe that the exhibits submitted earlier, the photograph.--
Mr. SPECTER. I believe the ones were given to you so far. excuse me, you are right, 389.
Commander HUMES. 389, in fact at this point shows the President's head in a slightly inclined forward position, and I am not enough aware of the geography of the ground over which the vehicle was traveling to know how much that would affect it.
Mr. SPECTER. If you were to be told that there was a distance traversed of approximately 150 feet from the time of Point "C" on 385 to Point "A" on 388, and you would assume the additional factor that there was a slight angle of decline on the street as well, would those factors, assuming their to be true, help in the explanation of the differences in the angles?
Commander HUMES. I think that they would make the figure as depicted in 388 quite understandably different from 385.
Mr. DULLES. Was it possible, in view of the condition of the brain to point with absolute accuracy to the point of exit there? I can see that the point of exit in 385 can be clearly determined. Is it equally possible to determine the point of exit in 388?
Commander HUMES. No, sir; it was not, other than through this large defect because when--
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Mr. DULLES. Therefore, that angle might be somewhat different.
Commander HUMES. Might be somewhat different, sir. I think we made reference to that somewhat earlier. The fragments were so difficult to replace in their precise anatomic location--
Mr. DULLES. That is what I thought, but I wasn't sure.
Commander HUMES. That is correct.
Mr. McCLOY. I would like to ask a question in regard to 385 similar to that I asked as to 388. In your opinion, was the 385 wound lethal?
Commander HUMES. No, sir.
Mr. DULLES. With the wound in 385, would it have affected the President's power of speech?
Commander HUMES. It could have, sir. The wound caused a defect in his trachea which would most usually have caused at least some defect in the proper phonation, sir.
(Discussion off the record.)
The CHAIRMAN. On the record.
Mr. SPECTER. In response to Mr. Dulles' question a moment ago, Doctor Humes, you commented that they did not turn him over at Parkland. Will you state for the record what the source of your information is on that?
Commander HUMES. Yes. This is a result of a personal telephone conversation between myself and Dr. Malcolm Perry early in the morning of Saturday, November 23.
Mr. SPECTER. At that time did Doctor Perry tell you specifically, Doctor Humes, that the Parkland doctors had not Observed the wound in the President's back?
Commander HUMES. He told me that the President was on his back from the time he was brought into the hospital until the time he left it, and that at no time was he turned from his back by the doctors.
Mr. SPECTER. And at the time of your conversation with Doctor Perry did you tell Doctor Perry anything of your observations or conclusions?
Commander HUMES. No, sir; I did not.
(A short recess was taken.)
The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, the Commission will be in order. We will continue with the examination.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, as to points of entry on the body of the late President, how many were there in total?
Commander HUMES. Two, sir, as depicted in 385-C and 388-A.
Mr. SPECTER. And to points of exit, how many were there?
Commander HUMES. Two, sir, as depicted in 385-D and the vicinity of 388-B. I make the latter remark as was developed earlier, in that the size of the large defect in the skull was so great and the fragmentation was so complex that it was impossible to accurately pinpoint the exit of the missile in the head wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Now as to that last factor, would the X-rays be of material assistance to you in pinpointing the specific locale of the exit?
Commander HUMES. I do not believe so, sir. The only path that the X-rays show in any detail are of the minor fragments which passed from point A to point B.
Mr. SPECTER. Now that you have finished your major descriptions of the wounds, can you be any more specific in telling us in what way the availability of the x-rays would assist in further specifying the nature of the wounds?
Commander HUMES. I do not believe, sir, that the availability of the X-rays would materially assist the Commission.
Mr. SPECTER. How about the same question as to the pictures?
Commander HUMES. The pictures would show more accurately and in more detail the character of the wounds as depicted particularly in 385 and 386 and in 388-A. They would also perhaps give the Commissioners a better---- better is not the best term, but a more graphic picture of the massive defect in 388.
Mr. SPECTER. Going back for a moment, Doctor Humes---
The CHAIRMAN. Before we get off that, may I ask you this, Commander: If we had the pictures here and you could look them over again and restate your opinion, would it cause you to change any of the testimony you have given here?
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Commander HUMES. To the best of my recollection, Mr. Chief Justice, it would not.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. McCloy.
Mr. McCLOY. May I ask this question?
The CHAIRMAN. Go right ahead.
Mr. McCLOY. Do you have any knowledge as to whether or not any Photographs were taken in Dallas?
Commander HUMES. I have none, sir, no knowledge.
Mr. McCLOY. No knowledge that any were taken?
Representative FORD. May I ask what size are the pictures to which you refer?
Commander HUMES. We exposed both black and white and color negatives, Congressman. They were exposed in the morgue during the examination. They were not developed. The kodachrome negatives when developed would be 405. They were in film carriers or cassettes, as were the black and white. Of course they could be magnified.
Representative FORD. Have those been examined by personnel at Bethesda?
Commander HUMES. No, sir. We exposed these negatives; we turned them over. Here I must ask the counsel again for advice to the Secret Service.
Mr. SPECTER. Yes; it was the Secret Service.
Commander HUMES. They were turned over to the Secret Service in their cassettes unexposed, and I have not seen any of them since. This is the photographs. The X-rays were developed in our X-my department on the spot that evening, because we had to see those right then as part of our examination, but the photographs were made for the record and for other purposes.
Representative FORD. But they had never been actually developed for viewing.
Commander HUMES. I do not know, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, back to the angles for just a moment.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Hypothesize or assume, if you will, that other evidence will show that the wound inflicted on Commission Exhibit 385 at point C occurred while the President was riding in the rear seat of his automobile approximately 100 feet from a point of origin in a six-floor building nearby, and assume further that the wound inflicted in 388 at point A occurred when the President was approximately 250 feet away from the same point.
With those assumptions in mind, there would be somewhat different angles
of declination going from C to D on 385 and from A to B on 388.
Commander HUMES. I would expect there would.
Mr. SPECTER. You have already testified earlier today that you were unable to pinpoint with precision angle A to B on 388 because of the reconstruction of the scalp.
Now my question to you, in that elongated fashion, is from what you know and what you have described, are the angles, as you have expressed them to be in your opinion, consistent with a situation where the two wounds were inflicted at the angles and at the distances just described to you?
Commander HUMES. I believe they are consistent. I would state that the path outlined on 388-A to B is to a certain extent conjectural for the reasons given before.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, Doctor Humes, I hand you a group of documents which have been marked as Commission Exhibit No. 397 and ask you if you can identify what they are?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; these are various notes in long-hand, or copies rather, of various notes in long- hand made by myself, in part, during the performance of the examination of the late President, and in part after the examination when I was preparing to have a typewritten report made.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there also included there some notes that you made while you talked to Doctor Perry on the telephone?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; there are.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any notes which you made at any time which are not included in this group of notes?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; there are.
Mr. SPECTER. And what do those consist of?
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Commander HUMES. In privacy of my own home, early in the morning of Sunday, November 24th, I made a draft of this report which I later revised, and of which this represents the revision. That draft I personally burned in the fireplace of my recreation room.
Mr. SPECTER. May the record show that the Exhibit No. 397 is the identical document which has been previously identified as Commission No. 371 for our internal purposes.
Is the first sheet then in that group the notes you made when you talked to Doctor Perry?
Commander HUMES. That is correct. sir.
Mr. SPECTER. And do the next 15 sheets represent the rough draft which was later copied into the autopsy report which has been heretofore identified with an exhibit number?
Commander HUMES. That is correct. sir.
Mr. SPECTER. And what do the next two sheets represent?
Commander HUMES. The next two sheets are the notes actually made in the room in which the examination was taking place. I notice now that the handwriting in some instances is not my own, and it is either that of Commander Boswell or Colonel Finck.
Mr. SPECTER. And was that writing made at the same time that the autopsy report was undertaken; that is, did you review all of the markings on those papers and note them to be present when you completed the autopsy report?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. From the time of the completion of this examination until the submission of the written report following its preparation, all of the papers pertinent to this case were in my personal custody.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you now described all of the documents which were present in that 397, Exhibit No. 397?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; with the exception of the certification to the fact that I, in fact, detailed them in my custody, and a certification that I had destroyed certain preliminary draft notes.
Mr. SPECTER. And those represent all the notes except those you have already described which you destroyed?
Commander HUMES. That is correct, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, just one point on the notes themselves. Page 14 of your rough draft, Doctor Humes, as to the point of origin, the notes show that there was a revision between your first draft and your final report.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you first of all read into the record the final conclusion reflected in your final report.
Commander HUMES. I would rather read it from the final report. The final report reads: "The projectiles were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased."
Mr. SPECTER. And what did the first draft of that sentence as shown on page 14 of your rough draft state?
Commander HUMES. It stated as follows:
"The projectiles were fired from a point behind and somewhat above a horizontal line to the vertical position of the body at the moment of impact."
Mr. SPECTER. Now would you state the reason for making that modification between draft and final report, please?
Commander HUMES. This examination, as I have indicated was performed by myself with my two associates. The notes which we have just admitted as an exhibit are in my own hand and are my opinion, was my opinion at that time, as to the best way to present the facts which we had gleaned during this period.
Before submitting it to the typist, I went over this with great care with my two associates. One or the other of them raised the point that perhaps this sentence would state more than what was absolutely fact based upon our observations, pointing out that we did not know precisely at that time in what position the body of the President was when the missiles struck, and that therefore we should be somewhat less specific and somewhat more circumspect than the way we stated it. When I considered this suggestion, I agreed that it would be better to change it as noted, and accordingly, I did so.
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Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, I move now for the admission into evidence of Exhibit No. 397.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The documents, previously marked Exhibit No. 397 for identification, were received in evidence.)
Mr. McCLOY. May I ask one question about the notes? The notes that you made contemporaneously with your examination, you said you put those down and then you put some in later. How much later were the notes, within the best of your recollection of the final notes made, not the final report, but the final notes that you made in your own handwriting?
Commander HUMES. The examination was concluded approximately at 11 o'clock on the night of November 22. The final changes in the notes prior to the typing of the report were made, and I will have to give you the time because whatever time Mr. Oswald was shot, that is about when I finished. I was working in an office, and someone had a television on and came in and told me that Mr. Oswald had been shot, and that was around noon on Sunday, November 24th.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, I have now marked another photograph as the next exhibit number, Commission Exhibit 398. May I say to the Commission that this is a photograph which, subject to later proof, will show it to be taken immediately after the President was struck by the first bullet.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be marked.
(The photograph was marked Commission Exhibit No. 398 for identification.)
May I move for its admission into evidence at this time for this purpose?
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The photograph, previously marked Commission Exhibit No. 398 for identification, was received in evidence.)
Looking at Commission Exhibit 398, Doctor Humes, with that as a background, have you had an opportunity to review the medical reports on Governor Connally at Parkland Hospital in Commission Exhibit 392?
Commander HUMES. I have.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you noted the wounds which he sustained on his right wrist, that is, Governor Connally's right wrist?
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; I have noted the report of it in these records.
Mr. SPECTER. What does the report show as to those wounds on the right wrist?
Commander HUMES. The report shows a wound of entrance on the dorsal aspect of the right wrist. Let's get the precise point here. The wound of entry is described as on the dorsal aspect of the right wrist above the junction of the distal fourth of the radius and the shaft. It was approximately two centimeters in length and rather oblique, with the loss of tissue, and some considerable contusions at the margins. There was a wound of exit along the volar surface of the wrist about two centimeters above the flexion crease of the wrist in the midline.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, I show you a bullet which we have marked as Commission Exhibit No. 399, and may I say now that, subject to later proof, this is the missile which has been taken from the stretcher which the evidence now indicates was the stretcher occupied by Governor Connally. I move for its admission into evidence at this time.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The article, previously marked Commission Exhibit No. 399 for identification, was received in evidence.)
Mr. SPECTER. We have been asked by the FBI that the missile not be handled by anybody because it is undergoing further ballistic tests, and it now appears, may the record show, in a plastic case in a cotton background.
Now looking at that bullet, Exhibit 399, Doctor Humes, could that bullet have gone through or been any part of the fragment passing through President Kennedy's head in Exhibit No. 388?
Commander HUMES. I do not believe so, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. And could that missile have made the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?
Commander HUMES. I think that that is most unlikely. May I expand on those two answers?
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Mr. SPECTER. Yes, please do.
Commander HUMES. The X-rays made of the wound in the head of the late President showed fragmentations of the missile. Some fragments we recovered and turned over, as has been previously noted. Also we have X-rays of the fragment of skull which was in the region of our opinion exit wound showing metallic fragments.
Also going to Exhibit 392, the report from Parkland Hospital, the following sentence referring to the examination of the wound of the wrist is found:
"Small bits of metal were encountered at various levels throughout the wound, and these were, wherever they were identified and could be picked up, picked up and submitted to the pathology department for identification and examination."
The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket appears to me to be in tact, and I do not understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of these locations.
Mr. SPECTER. What wounds did Governor Connally sustain in his chest area, based upon the records of Parkland Hospital, which you have examined, Doctor Humes?
Commander HUMES. Governor Connally received in his chest a wound of entrance just--this is again from 392--just lateral to the right scapula close to the axilla which had passed through the lattisimus dorsi muscle, shattered approximately ten centimeters of a lateral and anterior portion of the right fifth rib, and emerged below the right nipple anterially."
These were the wounds of the chest of Governor Connally.
Mr. SPECTER. Now assuming that there were only three missiles fired, and bearing in mind the positions of President Kennedy and Governor Connally from the photograph marked Commission Exhibit 398, do you have an opinion as to the source of the missiles which inflicted the wound on President Kennedy marked 385-C to D, and the wound in Governor Connally's chest which you have just referred to?
Commander HUMES. Yes. I would preface this statement by the following: As I testified earlier in the afternoon, as much as we could ascertain from our X-rays and physical examinations, this missile struck no bony structures in traversing the body of the late President. Therefore, I believe it was moving at its exit from the President's body at only very slightly less than that velocity, so it was still traveling at great speed.
I believe in looking at Exhibit 398, which purports to be at approximately the time the President was struck, I see that Governor Connally is sitting directly in front of the late President, and suggest the possibility that this missile, having traversed the low neck of the late President, in fact traversed the chest of Governor Connally.
Mr. SPECTER. How much of the velocity, if any, or would there be an appreciable diminution of the velocity of the projectile on passing through the portions of President Kennedy's body which you have described?
Commander HUMES. I would have to defer to my associate, Colonel Finck, for an opinion about this.
Mr. SPECTER. Fine. As to any damage to the rib which you described Governor Connally sustained, would that impact or trauma be consistent with the markings which are shown on Exhibit 399?
Commander HUMES. I think it quite possible. Here I think if this point were to be explored further, a most valuable piece of evidence would be an X-ray of the chest of Governor Connally, because I believe that this missile could have struck the rib a glancing blow.
The rib is a rather rigid structure, and the missile would not have to strike it directly to cause the fracture that was described, and the fracture is not very clearly described to me, and if an X-ray, for instance, showed no metallic fragments in the chest of the Governor, I would think it quite likely that this was the missile that had traversed his chest, because I doubt if this missile would have left behind it any metallic fragments from its physical appearance at this time.
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Mr. SPECTER. Could that missile have traversed Governor Connally's chest without having him know it immediately or instantaneously?
Commander HUMES. I believe so. I have heard reports, and have been told by my professional associates of any number of instances where people received penetrating wounds in various portions of the body and have only the sensation of a slight discomfort or slight slap or some other minor difficulty from such a missile wound. I am sure he would be aware that something happened to him, but that he was shot, I am not certain.
Representative FORD. Would that have been the potential reaction of the President when first hit, as shown in 385?
Commander HUMES. It could very easily be one of some type of an injury--I mean the awareness that he had been struck by a missile, I don't know, but people have been drilled through with a missile and didn't know it.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, under your opinion which you have just given us, what effect, if any, would that have on whether this bullet, 399, could have been the one to lodge in Governor Connally's thigh?
Commander HUMES. I think that extremely unlikely. The reports, again Exhibit 392 from Parkland, tell of an entrance wound on the lower midthigh of the Governor, and X-rays taken there are described as showing metallic fragments in the bone, which apparently by this report were not removed and are still present in Governor Connally's thigh. I can't conceive of where they came from this missile.
Representative FORD. The missile identified as Exhibit 399.
Commander HUMES. 399, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Humes, would you have an opinion as to whether the wounds on Governor Connally's wrist and thigh were caused by the same bullet?
Commander HUMES. In reading the description of the fragmentation that was found, fragments were found in the wrist, one fragment was found imbedded in his femur, I would feel it was definitely within the realm of possibility that the same missile could have produced both of those injuries.
Mr. SPECTER. Those are all my questions, Mr. Chief Justice.
The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions? If not, thank you very much, Commander. You have been very helpful to us, indeed.
Commander HUMES. Thank you very much, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Mr. SPECTER. Commander Boswell.
Mr. McCLOY. May I ask one more question?
The CHAIRMAN. Of course you may.
Mr. McCLOY. Earlier in the afternoon we had taken out of cellophane bags here the clothing of the President.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. And amongst them was the shirt.
Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. From your examination of the wounds, of the defects, I guess you would call it in the shirt Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Would you from examining the tissues of that shirt have any conclusions as to how that wound, how that missile passed through the shirt? Was it from the rear to the front, or from the front to the rear?
Commander HUMES. As I examined that exhibit today, sir, the threads are fragmented and distorted in such a fashion which would indicate to me that the missile passed through the shirt from the rear to the front.
DR. BOSWELL VOLUME II
TESTIMONY OF COMDR. J. THORNTON BOSWELL, MEDICAL CORPS,
U.S. NAVY
The CHAIRMAN. Commander Boswell, will you raise your right hand and be sworn, please?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you give before this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
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Commander BOSWELL. I do, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Be seated, please.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you state your full name for the record, please?
Commander BOSWELL. J. Thornton Boswell, Commander, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy.
Mr. SPECTER. What is your profession?
Commander BOSWELL. Physician.
Mr. SPECTER. And where did you obtain your medical degree, please?
Commander BOSWELL. At the College of Medicine, Ohio State University.
Mr. SPECTER. And what experience have you had in your professional line subsequent to obtaining that degree?
Commander BOSWELL. I interned in the Navy and took my pathology training at St. Albans Naval Hospital in New York. I was certified by the American Board of Pathology in both clinical and pathological anatomy in 1957 and 1958.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is your duty assignment at the present time?
Commander BOSWELL. I am the Chief of Pathology at the National Naval Medical School.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have occasion to participate in the autopsy of the late President Kennedy?
Commander BOSWELL. I did.
Mr. SPECTER. And did you assist Doctor Humes at that time?
Commander BOSWELL. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you been present here today during the entire course of Doctor Humes testimony?
Commander BOSWELL. I have, sir; yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have anything that you would like to add by way of elaboration or modification to that which Doctor Humes has testified?
Commander BOSWELL. None, I believe. Doctor Humes has stated essentially what is the culmination of our examination and our subsequent conference, and everything is exactly as we had determined our conclusions.
Mr. SPECTER. And are you one of the three coauthors of the autopsy report which has been previously identified as a Commission Exhibit?
Commander BOSWELL. Yes; I am.
Mr. SPECTER. All the facts set forth therein are correct in accordance with your analysis and evaluation of the situation?
Commander BOSWELL. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. And specifically, as to the points of entry and points of exit which have been testified to by Doctor Humes, do his views express yours as well?
Commander BOSWELL. They do, yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Boswell, would you state for the record what your conclusion was as to the cause of death of President Kennedy?
Commander BOSWELL. The brain injury was the cause of death.
Mr. SPECTER. And in the absence of brain injury, what, in your view, would have been the future status of President Kennedy's mortality, if he had only sustained the wound inflicted in 385?
Commander BOSWELL. I believe it would have been essentially an uneventful recovery. It could have been easily repaired, and I think it would have been of little consequence.
Mr. SPECTER. Those are my only questions, Mr. Chief Justice.
The CHAIRMAN. Does anyone have any questions of the Commander? If not, Commander, thank you very much, indeed. You have been very helpful to us.
Mr. SPECTER. Colonel Finck.
DR. FINCK VOLUME II
TESTIMONY OF LT. COL. PIERRE A. FINCK, PHYSICIAN, U. S. ARMY
The CHAIRMAN. Colonel Finck.
Colonel, will you raise your right hand and be sworn? Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give before this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
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Colonel FINCK. I do.
The CHAIRMAN. Will you be seated, please, Colonel?
Mr. SPECTER. Would you state your full name for the record, please?
Colonel FINCK. My first name is Pierre. My middle initial is "A". My last name is Finck.
Mr. SPECTER. What is your profession, sir?
Colonel FINCK. I am a physician.
Mr. SPECTER. And by whom are you employed?
Colonel FINCK. By the United States Army.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is your rank?
Colonel FINCK. I am a lieutenant colonel in the Medical Corps.
Mr. SPECTER. Where did you obtain your medical degree?
Colonel FINCK. At the University of Geneva Medical School in Switzerland.
Mr. SPECTER. And in what year did you obtain that degree?
Colonel FINCK. In 1948.
Mr. SPECTER. What has your experience been in the medical profession subsequent to obtaining that degree?
Colonel FINCK. I had 4 years of training in pathology after my internship, 2 years, including 2 years of pathology
at the University Institute of Pathology in Geneva, Switzerland, and 2 years at the University of Tennessee Institute of Pathology in Memphis, Tenn.
Mr. SPECTER. And how long have you been in the United States Army?
Colonel FINCK. Since 1955.
Mr. SPECTER. And what have your duties consisted of in the Army?
Colonel FINCK. From 1955 to 1958 I performed approximately 200 autopsies, many of them pertaining to trauma including missile wounds, stationed at Frankfort, Germany as pathologist of the. United States Army Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you had any additional, special training or experience in missile wounds?
Colonel FINCK. For the past 3 years I was Chief of the Wound Ballistics Pathology Branch of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and in that capacity I reviewed personally all the cases forwarded to us by the Armed Forces, and some civilian cases from the United States and our forces overseas. The number of these cases amounts to approximately 400 cases. I was called as a consultant in the field of missile wounds for this particular case, and also last year in February 1963, the Surgeon General of the Army sent me to Vietnam for a wound ballistics mission, I had to testify in a murder trial involving a 30/30 rifle in the first week of March this year, and I came back yesterday after one week in Panama where I had to testify. I was sent to Panama by the Secretary of
the Army regarding the fatalities of the events of 9-10 in January of 1964.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you been certified by the American Board of Pathology, Doctor Finck?
Colonel FINCK. I was certified in pathology anatomy by the American Board of Pathology in 1956, and by the same American Board of Pathology in the field of forensic pathology in 1961.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you describe briefly for the Commission what forensic pathology involves?
Colonel FINCK. Forensic pathology is the study with the naked eye and with the microscope of injuries, including missile wounds, trauma in general. In summary, it is the part of pathology in relation to the law, violent death being homicide, be it suicide, accidental or undetermined. It also includes unexplained deaths, sudden deaths, and poisoning.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have occasion to participate in the autopsy of the late President Kennedy?
Colonel FINCK. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. And are you one of the three coauthors of the autopsy report which has been previously marked and introduced into evidence here?
Colonel FINCK. Yes, I am.
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Mr. SPECTER. Have you had occasion to conduct any experiments on the effect of missile penetration of the brain reflected in the chart which you have brought with you here today?
Colonel FINCK. No, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Of the skull--let me phrase the question this way: What does the test which is depicted on the document before you relate to?
Colonel FINCK. It is based on my observations, not on experiments.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you pass that to me, sir, so that I may mark that as a Commission Exhibit, and then I will ask you to identify it, please?
Mr. Chief Justice, may I mark as Commission Exhibit No. 400 a document?
The CHAIRMAN. It may be marked.
(The document was marked Commission Exhibit No. 400 for identification.)
Mr. SPECTER. I will ask Doctor Finck to describe it for us, please.
Colonel FINCK. This is a scheme which I prepared before the 22d of November. It is a teaching scheme, but it applies to the case in discussion. It will be of help in understanding how I could identify the entrance and the exit by examination of bone. "A" represents the bony portion of the skull. "B" represents the cavity of the head, the cranial cavity. "C" represents the entrance and "D" represents the exit. The arrows indicate the missile path. This scheme is based upon observation of through and through wounds of bone, and the same differences apply to a pane of glass. The surface struck first by the missile in relation to the surface struck next by the missile, this one, shows a smaller diameter, which means that if you look at the route of entrance in this case here, C, from the
outside you will not see a crater. If you examine it from the inside, you will see a crater corresponding to the bevelling, coning, shelving, previously described by Commander Humes.
In the case we are discussing today, it was possible to have enough curvature and enough portion of the crater to identify positively the wound of entrance at the site of the bone.
Mr. SPECTER. Relating then your evaluation of the situation with respect to President Kennedy, and turning to Commission Exhibit No. 388, what is your opinion as to whether point A is a wound of entrance or exit?
Colonel FINCK. My opinion as regards Exhibit 388, letter A, is that this wound is the wound of entrance.
Mr. SPECTER. And what are the characteristics of that wound which lead you to that conclusion?
Colonel FINCK. The characteristics were that seen from the inside of the skull, I could see a beveling in the bone, a beveling that could not be seen when the wound was seen from outside the skull.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other individual characteristics that led you to
conclude A was the wound of entrance?
Colonel FINCK. No.
Mr. SPECTER. Were you present when the three pieces of scalp were reconstructed to form the major portion of the absent part of President Kennedy's skull which Doctor Humes described?
Colonel FINCK. I was present when several portions of bone were brought.
Mr. SPECTER. And what did you observe, if anything, as to a reconstructed hole from those three portions of skull?
Colonel FINCK. May I refer to my scheme?
Mr. SPECTER. Please do.
Colonel FINCK. For the sake of demonstration.
Mr. SPECTER. Fine.
Colonel FINCK. At the level of the wound of exit, E, in my scheme, Commission Exhibit No. 400, when viewed from the inside of the skull, there was no crater, whereas when the wound is seen from the outside of the skull, there was beveling, cratering, or coning--this is possible to determine an exit even if only a portion of the bone is submitted, for the reason that if there was enough bone submitted, there is enough curvature to identify the inside and outside of the skull. Therefore the fragment, to give you an example, this portion at the level of the wound of exit can be oriented, and the outer surface of the skull and the inner surface of the skull may be identified due to the curvature.
And then you look at the direction of the beveling and you do see the beveling
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when looking from the outside and you can identify an exit wound. And that is what I did, and now I am referring to the actual case in discussion, Commission Exhibit 388.
Mr. SPECTER. That is B?
Colonel FINCK. Letter B. We will see portions of bone in this general area, the large wound in the bone on the right side of the skull of President Kennedy. I had enough curvature to identify outside of the skull, and inside of the skull, as the first step to orient the specimen, and then I could determine the location of the beveling, and I could therefore say that B, Commission Exhibit 388, is a wound of exit.
Mr. SPECTER. Based on your observations and conclusions, was President Kennedy shot from the front, rear, side or what?
Colonel FINCK. President Kennedy was, in my opinion, shot from the rear. The bullet entered in the back of the head and went out on the right side of his skull, producing a large wound, the greatest dimension of which was approximately 13 centimeters.
Mr. SPECTER. And as to angle, was he shot from below, from level, from above, or what, in your opinion?
Colonel FINCK. In my opinion, the angle can be determined only approximately due to the fact that the wound of entrance is fairly small and could give enough precision in the determination of the path, but the dimension of the wound of exit, letter B of Exhibit 388, is so large that we can only give an approximate angle. In my opinion, the angle was within 45 degrees from the horizontal plane.
Mr. SPECTER. Is that to say that there was a 45-degree angle of declination from the point of origin to the point of impact, from the point of origin of the bullet where the bullet came from a gun until the point where it struck President Kennedy?
The CHAIRMAN. In other words, you mean was he shot from above or below.
Mr. SPECTER. Yes.
Colonel FINCK. I think I can only state, sir, that he was shot from above and behind.
Mr. SPECTER. At this time I move for admission into evidence Exhibit 400, Mr. Chief Justice.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The document was marked Commission Exhibit No. 400 for identification, and was received in evidence.)
Mr. SPECTER. As to Exhibit 385, Dr. Finck, was point C a point of entry or a point of exit, in your opinion?
Colonel FINCK. In my opinion point C of Commission's Exhibit 385 is a wound of entrance.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is the basis for that conclusion?
Colonel FINCK. The basis for that conclusion is that this wound was relatively small with clean edges. It was not a jagged wound, and that is what we see in wound of entrance at a long range.
Mr. SPECTER. Were you present here today and did you hear the entire testimony of Doctor Humes?
Colonel FINCK. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. And do you concur in Dr. Humes' statements and opinions regarding the point of entry C, point of exit D, and general angle on the flight of the missile?
Colonel FINCK. I certainly do.
Mr. SPECTER. Then from what direction was President Kennedy shot on entry point C?
Colonel FINCK. From behind and above.
Mr. SPECTER. Were the bullets used dumdum bullets, in your opinion, Dr. Finck?
Colonel FINCK. In what wound, sir?
Mr. SPECTER. Well, start with the head wound, or the back wound, either one.
Colonel FINCK. In all the wounds considered, on the basis of the aspect of the wound of entrance, dumdum bullets were not used.
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Mr. SPECTER. And what characteristics of dumdum bullets were absent, in your opinion--in your evaluation of these wounds?
Colonel FINCK. I would expect more jagged, more irregular and larger wounds of entrance than described in this case.
Representative FORD. With a dumdum bullet?
Colonel FINCK. With a dumdum bullet.
Mr. SPECTER. With respect to the question of likelihood of Governor Connally having been wounded in the back and chest with the same bullet which passed through President Kennedy in 385, what reduction would there be, if any, in the velocity, considering the relative positions of the two men in the automobile as reflected in photograph, Exhibit 398?
Colonel FINCK. Of course, to reach precise figures we would need experiments and similar circumstances with the same type ammunition at the same distance through two human cadavers, which I did not do.
On the basis that if we assume that this is one bullet going through President Kennedy's body and also through Governor Connally's body, the reduction of velocity would be of some extent after passing through President Kennedy's body, but not having hit bones, the reduction in velocity, after going through President Kennedy's body, would be minimal.
Mr. SPECTER. Would there be sufficient force then to inflict the wound which Dr. Humes described from the Parkland Hospital records as having been inflicted on Governor Connally's back and chest?
Colonel FINCK. There would be enough energy to go through the body of the Governor.
Mr. SPECTER. In expressing your opinion on that subject, Doctor Finck, have you taken into account the assumptions on distance, that we are dealing here with a weapon that has a muzzle velocity in the neighborhood of slightly in excess of 2,000, and that the vehicle carrying these two individuals was approximately 150, about 150 feet away from the site of origin of the missile?
Colonel FINCK. At this range, a bullet of this velocity loses very little velocity, and keeps upon impact a large amount of kinetic energy.
Mr. SPECTER. You heard the whole of Doctor Humes' testimony, did you not?
Colonel FINCK. Yes; I did.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have anything that you would like to add to what he said?
Colonel FINCK. No.
Mr. SPECTER. Or would you like to modify his testimony in any way?
Colonel FINCK. No.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you subscribe to the observations and procedures which he outlined during the course of his testimony?
Colonel FINCK. I do.
Mr. SPECTER. As having been conducted on President Kennedy?
Colonel FINCK. I do.
Mr. SPECTER. And do you share the opinions which he expressed in their entirety in the course of his testimony here today?
Colonel FINCK. I do.
The CHAIRMAN. You might be seated, Colonel.
Mr. McCLOY. Just as truthful seated as standing.
Representative FORD. How many cases did you investigate to develop this theory shown by Commission Exhibit 400?
Colonel FINCK. Among the more than 400 cases I have reviewed, several of them--I cannot give you an exact figure, I do not tabulate them, but many of them had through and through wounds of the skull as well as of flat bones, as, for instance, the sternum. the bone we have in front of our chest and this would apply also to a through and through wound of the sternum. I have cases like that.
There was a specific case in which I was able to identify the entrance at the level of the sternum on the same basis as the criteria I have given for the skull. Whenever a bullet goes through a flat bone, it will produce that beveling, that cratering, shelving, and that I have seen in numerous cases.
Representative FORD. Is this a generally accepted theory in the medical profession?
Colonel FINCK. Yes, sir; it is. Am I allowed to quote a standard textbook?
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The CHAIRMAN. You may; yes sir.
Colonel FINCK. The textbook of legal medicine, pathology and toxicology by Gonzalez, Vance, Halpern and Umberger does not give a scheme like I have shown to you today, but describes similar criteria.
As you know, one of the authors of the book I mentioned is still chief medical examiner of New York City, with 20,000 medical-examiner cases a year.
Mr. SPECTER. Doctor Finck, after the path C-D described in No. 385, would that be a straight line starting with the weapon itself, or was that line deviated in any way or altered when it passed through the body of President Kennedy?
Colonel FINCK. For practical purposes line C-D is a straight line with little or no deviation, the bullet not having hit bony structures.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Finck, have you had an opportunity to examine Commission's Exhibit 399?
Colonel FINCK. For the first time this afternoon, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. And based upon your examination of that bullet, do you have an opinion as to whether in its current condition it could have passed through President Kennedy at point C-D in 385 and then inflicted the wound in the back and chest of Governor Connally?
Colonel FINCK. Yes; I do. This is a bullet showing marks indicating the bullet was fired. The second point is that there was practically no loss of this bullet. It kept its original caliber and dimensions. There was no evidence that any major portion of the jacket was lost, and I consider this as one bullet which possibly could have gone through the wounds you described.
Mr. SPECTER. And could that bullet possibly have gone through President Kennedy in 388?
Colonel FINCK. Through President Kennedy's head? 388?
Mr. SPECTER. And remained intact in the way you see it now?
Colonel FINCK. Definitely not.
Mr. SPECTER. And could it have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?
Colonel FINCK. No; for the reason that there are too many fragments described in that wrist.
Mr. SPECTER. And is the condition of Exhibit 399 consistent with the type of a wound which Doctor Humes described on Governor Connally's rib?
Colonel FINCK. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. I have a question.
The CHAIRMAN. Go right ahead.
Mr. McCLOY. From your examination of Exhibit 399, can you identify the caliber of that bullet?
Colonel FINCK. The caliber of this bullet, if I could measure it, but I cannot touch it.
The CHAIRMAN. We can.
Colonel FINCK. I would say it is consistent with a 6.5 mm.
Mr. McCLOY. Are you familiar with the Mannlicher 6.5 rifle?
Colonel FINCK. I am familiar with the caliber 6.5. I can draw the calibers for you on the blackboard.
Mr. McCLOY. What is the initial velocity of a 6.5 mm. bullet of that character?
Colonel FINCK. Of the order of 2,000 feet per second.
Mr. McCLOY. And you say there would not be a substantial diminution of that velocity either at the point of impact or at the point of exit?
Colonel FINCK. That is correct.
Mr. SPECTER. One more question, Mr. Chief Justice.
On 388, point A to B, what is your view, Dr. Finck, as to whether or not that is represented by a straight line going back to the point of origin of the weapon?
Colonel FINCK. The difficulty in interpreting the path in line A-B of Commission's Exhibit 388 is that, one, there is, as stated before, a large wound of exit, and, two, there is a secondary path as indicated by the fragments recovered. So we can have an assumption and state that the general direction, the general path, the general angle of this missile was from behind and above, and that the bullet, markedly fragmented, went out of the President's head
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on the right side, but that a portion of this bullet which badly fragmented was recovered within the skull.
Mr. SPECTER. In view of the impact on the skull at point A, it is unlikely to be a straight line to B all the way back to the muzzle of the weapon as it is, say, in 385 C-D, all the way back to the muzzle of the gun.
Colonel FINCK. In C-D, Commission's Exhibit 385, due to the fact that there was no fragmentation, I can say that it is a straight line from behind and above, whereas here, due to the fragmentation and to the dual path, I can't give a precise angle, but I can say that the injury is consistent with a wound produced by one bullet producing many fragments.
The CHAIRMAN. Senator, have you any questions you want to ask?
Mr. McCLOY. May I ask one?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes; go right ahead.
Mr. McCLOY. Did you examine any of the fragments which were removed from the President's skull?
Colonel FINCK. I only saw one fragment shown to me when I arrived at Bethesda, and it was an elongated black metallic fragment, and that is the only one I saw to my recollection. I was told that it had been removed from the brain of President Kennedy in the anterior portion of his head.
Mr. McCLOY. From that bullet, that fragment, could you determine, was it sufficiently large to determine from the ballistic evidence the caliber of the bullet?
Colonel FINCK. No, sir; for the reason that to determine the caliber you need the entire bullet, or at least an entire portion. You need a portion of the bullet showing the entire diameter, and I was not shown that. I was shown a fragment which represented a very small portion of the original bullet. Therefore, at that time I could not say anything on the possible original caliber.
Mr. McCLOY. You examined no fragment which did contain those characteristics?
Colonel FINCK. No, sir; I did not see any entire bullet or bullet showing the entire diameter.
The CHAIRMAN. Congressman Ford?
Representative FORD. I believe you testified, Colonel, that you concurred in the previous testimony by Commander Humes and Commander Boswell, and that you were one of the co-authors of the autopsy. At any time during this process where you were conducting the autopsy, was there any disagreement between any one of you three, any difference of opinion as to anything involved in the autopsy?
Colonel FINCK. No, sir.
Representative FORD. There has been complete unanimity on what you saw, what you did, and what you have reported?
Colonel FINCK. Yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Cooper?
Senator COOPER. Colonel, I would like for you to look at Exhibit 388 and at the possible trajectory of the bullet which entered President Kennedy's head at A and then mark it as a possible point of exit by "out". You remember there was testimony about a portion of the bullet from point A to the place on the diagram marked "fragment" where a fragment was found. I would like to ask if it is possible that the trajectory of the bullet, from the point of origin, could have been A to this point marked "fragment" as well as from A to the place marked "Out"?
Colonel FINCK. I don't think so, sir.
Senator COOPER. Why? Would you explain that answer?
Colonel FINCK. I would think that I would consider the midportion of this exit would labeled B, Exhibit 388, as the wound produced by most of the fragments and the major portions of the fragmenting bullet. This is only a small portion of it which makes me say that this is a secondary path.
Senator COOPER. What was the size of the fragment relative to the size of the missile of the 6.5 Mannlicher, fired from the 6.5 Mannlicher rifle?
Colonel FINCK. Approximately one-tenth, or even less.
Representative FORD. From your numerous case studies, is it typical for a
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bullet, for a missile in this circumstance as shown in 388, to fragment to the degree that this one apparently did?
Colonel FINCK. Yes, it is quite common to find a wound of exit much larger than the wound of entrance for weapons commonly used.
Representative FORD. But is it typical for the missile to fragment to the degree that this one did as shown in Exhibit 388?
Colonel FINCK. Yes; it is.
Representative FORD. Is it typical to find only a limited number of fragments as you apparently did in this case?
Colonel FINCK. This depends to a great extent on the type of ammunition used. There are many types of bullets, jacketed, not-jacketed, pointed, hollow-nosed, hollow-points, flatnose, roundnose, all these different shapes will have a different influence on the pattern of the wound and the degree of fragmentation.
Representative FORD. That is all.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Colonel, very much for your help.
Colonel FINCK. You are welcome, sir.
Representative FORD. May I ask just one question?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes; Colonel, we would like to ask just one more question.
Representative FORD. Do these two wounds represent the same or a different kind of bullet?
Colonel FINCK. You are referring to one wound and this other wound here?
Representative FORD. I am referring to the wound shown in Exhibit 388 identified as point of entry A, and wound in Exhibit 385 identified as C.
Colonel FINCK. Due to the difference in the nature of the tissue, difference in the nature of the target, it is perfectly possible that these two wounds came from the same type of bullet, that one hit bony structures and the other one did not, and that explains the differences between the patterns of these two wounds.
Representative FORD. Why one fragmented and one did not.
Colonel FINCK. Yes.
(Discussion off the record.)
The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, again thank you very much. (Whereupon, at 3:45 p.m., the President's Commission recessed.)