13-00000
arable stress in his statements.
atrolman Gerald L. Hill testified that he
id three spent bullet hulls on the floor
eath the window from which the fatal
ts allegedly were fired. The PSE showed
J stress in his statements.
re rifle was one of the principal points
d by the Warren Commission to link
vald to the assassination. The PSE sub-
tiated the testimony that Oswald owned
ile and that the evidence supplied to
allistics expert indicated this rifle was
murder weapon. However, the PSE did
substantiate the controversial claims of
las police regarding the discovery of
evidence.
he hospital employee was apparently
ng the truth when he recounted finding
bullet on a stretcher at Parkland Hospi-
but many critics have charged that the
et had been deliberately planted there.
s is the famous "single bullet" which the
rren Report says passed through the
lies of both the President and Governor
inally, and then lodged in Connally's
st. Several researchers have tried to
eat this, firing the same type of bullet
the wrist of a cadaver. The bullets never
ained perfectly intact, as the one found
he stretcher; they became twisted lumps
ead and copper.
he second link between Oswald and the
assination is the charge that he killed
cer Tippitt, a Dallas policeman, while
ing from the scene of the first shooting.
umber of eyewitnesses have testified
they saw Oswald shoot Tippitt, and one
hem, Domingo Benavides, was inter-
ved on the CBS tapes. He was asked
ere was any doubt in his mind that
vald was the man he saw shoot Tippitt.
replied, "No, sir, there was no doubt
ill." There was absolutely no stress in
statement. He was telling the truth.
he killing of Officer Tippitt by Oswald
fueled the fires of controversy over the
rren Report. Tippitt was far from his usual
it when he was shot. Some witnesses
e alleged that Tippitt and Oswald were
n together in Jack Ruby's nightclub.
y theorize that the three men were part
in assassination conspiracy, and that
pitt had been sent to silence Oswald,
had been beaten to the draw.
he Dallas police radio dispatcher,
icer Murray Jackson, was asked if he
ught Tippitt knew Oswald. "No," he
lied, "I don't think he knew Oswald." Did
kson know Oswald? "No," answered
kson, "I didn't either." The PSE showed
vy stress in both statements.
erhaps the greatest source of con-
ersy over the Warren Report is it's claim
: all the shots were fired by one gunman.
ne eyewitnesses claim to have heard
ts and seen gunsmoke in the area of
w hillock ahead and to the right of the
sidential motorcade. This hillock has
re to be known as "the grassy knoll."
s of these witnesses was a railroad
ker named S.M. Holland, who observed
The PSE confirmed that he thought he had
seen a puff of smoke on the knoll, but it
could not support his claim that he had
heard a shot from that direction.
Another witness, Charles Brehm, was
quoted by Mark Lane as having said that
he had seen a portion of the President's
skull flying back over the left rear end of
the limousine. Lane offered this as evidence
of a shot from the grassy knoll. On the CBS
tapes, Brehm stated heatedly that he had
been quoted out of context, and emphatic-
ally denied that any shots had come from
the knoll. Despite his emotional state, there
was almost no stress in this statement.
Officer Jacks of the Dallas police, who
was riding in the limousine of Vice-
President Johnson, denied that any of the
shots had come from the direction of the
grassy knoll. The PSE turned up a fair de-
gree of stress.
Three witnesses, Mrs. Caroline Walther,
Arnold Rowland and Howard Brennan,
claimed to have seen gunmen in the win-
dows of the Texas School Book Depository
building. Mrs. Walther said she saw two
men, one armed with a rifle, the second
> Chief Justice Warren:
> "We explored both these
> theories and found
> no evidence that
> either group was involved"
with a shorter gun. Rowland told the Warren
Commission he had seen two men, one an
elderly Negro, in the window Oswald is
alleged to have fired from, but on the CBS
tapes he claimed he had seen an armed
man at a different window. The Commission
relied heavily on the testimony of Brennan,
who claimed to have seen a gunman in the
"Oswald window" actually firing the last of
the shots. The PSE showed hard stress in
the testimony of all three witnesses.
The PSE analysis of the eyewitnesses'
testimony regarding the source of the shots
is ambiguous. It supports Holland's claim
to have seen a puff of smoke on the knoll,
and Brehm's denial that any shots came
from that direction, and it raises serious
doubts about all other claims and counter-
claims. This contradiction seems to result
from the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses, perhaps compounded by a fair
amount of fabrication. Deception, if it is
present here, may have been motivated
merely by a desire for attention. Or there
may have been darker reasons.
There is, however, other evidence and
testimony that could shed some light on the
existence, number and location of assas-
sins other than Oswald. This brings us to
perhaps the most dubious and controversial
element in the Warren Commission's ver-
sion of the event—the autopsy.
nedy had been rushed to the emergency
room at Parkland Hospital, where Dr. Mal-
colm Perry tried to save his life. The physi-
cian saw that the President had suffered
a massive head wound and a smaller wound
in the throat. Perry performed a tracheos-
tomy, cutting through the throat wound in
an attempt to open a breathing passage.
Afterward, when hope for the President had
been abandoned, Perry met with the press
and declared that the wound in the front
of the neck had been an entry wound.
The President's body was flown to
Washington, D.C. There, approximately
eight hours after the shooting, an autopsy
was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Because of the tracheostomy, the nature of
the neck wound could no longer be ob-
served and was, at first, overlooked. Later,
after consulting the Dallas doctors, the
Bethesda pathologists concluded that it
was an exit wound. The autopsy report
stated that there were two entry wounds,
one low in the rear scalp and one at the
right base of the neck; and two exit wounds,
the throat wound and a large irregular
wound on the right side of the head.
The confusion was compounded when
two FBI agents present at the autopsy
reported that a wound had been found in
the President's back, and that no corre-
sponding exit wound had been located.
Diagrams made during the autopsy seemed
to confirm this, showing the lower of the
two entry wounds to be below the shoulders,
not at the base of the neck. What became
of the bullet? The agents reported that
Bethesda doctors thought the bullet had
dropped from the wound when the Dallas
doctors attempted external heart massage.
But this was the shot that the Commission
claimed had passed through Kennedy and
struck Governor Connally.
X-rays and color photographs of the au-
topsy were made. The brain was removed
from the body. Brain and skin tissue slides
were prepared for microscopic examina-
tion. Remarkably, the Warren Commission
never asked to see any of this evidence,
relying instead solely on the testimony of
Captain James J. Humes, one of the
pathologists who conducted the autopsy.
Even more incredible is the disappearance
of the brain, the slides, and some of the
photographs, which were alleged to have
been turned over to the National Archives
by the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Both Dr. Perry and Captain Humes were
interviewed on the CBS tapes. Perry was
asked about the throat wound he'd seen
when the President was brought to Parkland
Hospital. His answer seemed evasive. He
neither confirmed nor denied that he had
thought it was an entry wound, talking in-
stead about the difficulty of making such
a determination and the fact that his atten-
tion had been devoted to saving the Presi-
dent's life. Then the interviewer asked him
directly whether he had thought at the time
that it was an entry wound. "Actually, I didn't
really give it much thought," he replied. He
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