Features: The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter: Part 2

NONE OF THESE factors were explained in the final conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. The assertion that the fatal shot came from the sixth-floor window of the Depository was based, like the conclusions about the other shots, solely on the description of the wound in the official autopsy report.
"It is perfectly plain without any doubt as 10 where the bullet entered
and where it exited," says Specter.

It is "perfectly plain" according to the autopsy report. Specter never saw the x-rays and photographs that would have without question removed any doubt.
And that is important because, as with other findings of the autopsy report, there is evidence that does raise questions about it.

The autopsy report said there was a small hole in the rear of the President’s skull, "the point of entry." Nowhere in the FBI report of the autopsy is there mention of that small hole. All of the 10 doctors who worked on the President at Parkland Hospital, not one reported seeing a small hole in the back of his head.

Specter says the doctors at Parkland never saw the entry hole in the back of Kennedy’s head because they were too busy working on the front of him and never turned him over.

"Everybody thought that was incredible that they didn’t know he had a hole in the back of his head," he says. "Well, we sit here and say, ‘Why in the devil didn’t they turn him over?’ Talk to Dr. Perry about that, or Clark, the head doctor, and it was just incomprehensible that anybody should think. . . . They had so much to do in the front of him … and after he was dead . . . well, John Kennedy had died in front of them and they just walked out of the place."

It is not inconceivable that the doctors at Parkland did not turn Kennedy over, but there is evidence that the back of his head was examined, and the only wound testified to in that area was a large gaping one in the right rear part.

Dr. Malcolm Perry said: "I saw no injuries other than the one which I noted to you, which was a large avulsive injury to the right occipitalparietal area,"

Dr. Gene Akin said: "The back of the right occipital parietal portion of his head was shattered, with brain substance protruding."

Dr. William Clark said: ”I then examined the wound in the back of the President’s head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed."

Every Parkland doctor who testified described a large wound in the right rear part of Kennedy’s head, and Specter specifically questioned each one about the small hole which the autopsy report said was also there. Not one of them saw it. In fact, one nurse, Patricia Hutton, testified: "Mr. Kennedy was bleeding profusely from a wound on the back of his head and was lying there unresponsive. . . . A doctor asked me to place a pressure dressing on the head wound. This was of no use, however, because of the massive opening on the back of the head."

The fact that the autopsy report says there is, a small wound in the back of the President’s head is less significant than its contention that it is a wound of entry. An exploding bullet impacting on the top of the skull could very well have produced, besides a gaping wound at its impact point, any number of holes. And there is, as a matter of fact, some evidence that Kennedy might have suffered a wound on the left side of his head.