Speaker 1: It's the evening of Friday, November twenty second, nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: Earlier that day in Dallas, President Kennedy had been shot.
Speaker 1: After the doctors at Parkland Hospital feverishly tried to save
Speaker 1: his life. At approximately one pm, he was officially pronounced dead.
Speaker 1: The president's body was then loaded onto Air Force one,
Speaker 1: flown to Washington, and taken to Bethesda Naval Medical Center,
Speaker 1: where a team of pathologists began not just the most
Speaker 1: important autopsy of their careers, but the most important autopsy
Speaker 1: in American history. Thirty six hours later, pathologists doctor j
Speaker 1: Thornton Boswell and doctor James Humes concluded their work. Humes
Speaker 1: finished the autopsy report at home. Now he fully understands
Speaker 1: the importance of this report. It'll be a central piece
Speaker 1: of the official record that describes how the president was killed.
Speaker 1: It will be part of history, and it has to
Speaker 1: be precise. But here's what he tells the Warrant Commission
Speaker 1: the following year. Now, Sola, Dad, could you read this.
Speaker 1: It's doctor Humes describing what he did that evening.
Speaker 2: Doctor Hume says, quote, in the privacy of my own
Speaker 2: home early in the morning of Sunday, November twenty fourth.
Speaker 2: I made a draft of this report which I later revised,
Speaker 2: and of which this represents the revision that draft I
Speaker 2: personally burned in the fireplace of my recreation room.
Speaker 1: Okay, could you repeat that last.
Speaker 2: Sentence, that draft I personally burned in the fireplace of
Speaker 2: my recreation room. So he's admitting to the Warrant Commission
Speaker 2: that he burned the original draft of the report, then
Speaker 2: made a revised draft, and.
Speaker 1: Once the revelation that Humes had burned the original copy
Speaker 1: of the autopsy, he had to continue to defend himself.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety two, doctor Humes told The New York
Speaker 2: Times that the original copy was stained with blood and
Speaker 2: he didn't want it to become a quote ghoulish collector's item.
Speaker 2: He insisted that the second report was copied verbatim, word
Speaker 2: for word from the draft he burned.
Speaker 1: If it was only about accepting the lame excuse of
Speaker 1: preserving the president's dignity, we might buy it. But burning
Speaker 1: the autopsy report wasn't the only thing about the forensic
Speaker 1: investigation that was suspicious, starting with the two so called
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists that were in charge.
Speaker 3: Humes and Boswell were not forensic pathologists.
Speaker 4: That's Doug Horn.
Speaker 2: From nineteen ninety five to eight, he was a senior
Speaker 2: staff member of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records
Speaker 2: Review Board, and he's an expert on the case.
Speaker 3: Now, it should be troubling to everybody who studies this
Speaker 3: case that the two people selected to be the number
Speaker 3: one and number two pathologist, these guys were pathologists who
Speaker 3: did deaths due to natural causes. So Hume's and Boswell
Speaker 3: really weren't qualified to be doing this autopsy, and yet
Speaker 3: they were picked.
Speaker 2: So you have two doctors who are not certified nor
Speaker 2: qualified in forensic pathology, and the lead doctor throws his
Speaker 2: notes into the fireplace before handing in a revised draft.
Speaker 1: And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 4: This is who killed JFK.
Speaker 2: Sixty years later, What can we uncover about the greatest
Speaker 2: murder mystery in American history? And why does it still
Speaker 2: matter today? I'm your host, Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we learned that it was the
Speaker 1: intent of the Warren Commission to prove that Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy. Alan Dulles,
Speaker 1: the godfather of the CIA was placed on the Commission
Speaker 1: to make sure that any damning information about the CIA
Speaker 1: was kept hidden. J Edgar Hoover ignored evidence that might
Speaker 1: implicate anyone other than Oswald. Then, in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: after learning that the Warren Commission had been compromised, the
Speaker 1: House Select Committee on Assassinations launched a new investigation, and
Speaker 1: though they were able to expose more than the Warren
Speaker 1: Commission had, they too learned afterwards that their efforts had
Speaker 1: been compromised because the liaison to the CIA that they
Speaker 1: were given there was a man named George Joannedes. He
Speaker 1: was a retired CIA agent who oversaw the special ops
Speaker 1: program that had recruited Lejarvey. Oswald and joan Edes made
Speaker 1: sure that the new committee never knew about that. And
Speaker 1: although the House investigation concluded that Kennedy was killed as
Speaker 1: a result of a conspiracy, they came to no conclusion
Speaker 1: as to who took part in it. The result two
Speaker 1: flawed government investigations with two completely different conclusions.
Speaker 4: So where does it leave us.
Speaker 1: Well, first, let's look at the forensics how the victim died.
Speaker 1: After that we'll take a look at the man who
Speaker 1: they claimed did it. We'll dive into Oswald's world. We'll
Speaker 1: find out who he really was, who he may have
Speaker 1: been working for, how he was set up, and who
Speaker 1: could have pulled this off. Then we'll have it all
Speaker 1: unfold again, from the days leading up to the assassination
Speaker 1: to the moment that Jack Ruby silenced Oswald, except this time,
Speaker 1: when we ultimately relive it, we'll know the forces hiding
Speaker 1: in the shadows behind it all. Okay, so let's get
Speaker 1: into this. In any murder case, the forensic evidence is critical.
Speaker 1: It paints the picture of how the victim died, and
Speaker 1: in this case, to prove a single gunman, the forensic
Speaker 1: evidence should be straightforward. But trust me, it's far from that.
Speaker 1: The bullets, the gun, the photographs, the doctor's first hand
Speaker 1: reports are all heavily disputed, and in this episode we're
Speaker 1: going to go through all of that. As I said,
Speaker 1: like any other murder, you need to understand the forensic evidence.
Speaker 5: Forensic evidence it mattered because it was essential in determining
Speaker 5: the site from which the shot was fired.
Speaker 6: That's the key to the case.
Speaker 4: That's doctor Cyril wet renowned forensic pathologists.
Speaker 5: The Warren commissioned report saying that Lee Harvey Oswald was
Speaker 5: the sole assassin, the sole shooter, and that he fired
Speaker 5: from behind from the sixth fur window of the Texas
Speaker 5: school Book Depository building, and that there were no other shooters.
Speaker 5: That's the essence of the case, because once you showed
Speaker 5: two shooters, then you've got, of course, a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: So let's take a look. According to the Warren report,
Speaker 1: Oswald fired three shots.
Speaker 4: How did they arrive at that number?
Speaker 1: It was based on two initial pieces of evidence. One
Speaker 1: was the Dallas police report and the second was the
Speaker 1: Subruder film.
Speaker 2: Remember the Dallas dressmaker Abraham's a Bruder, the whole thing
Speaker 2: on camera.
Speaker 1: The Saprudi film has no sound, so you can't hear
Speaker 1: the shots, but you can see the President being hit twice,
Speaker 1: and you can also see Governor Connolly sitting in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat in front of Kennedy also getting hit. The
Speaker 1: Zapruda film clearly shows three hits. So the Warren Commission
Speaker 1: established three shots.
Speaker 7: Unfortunately for them, there was a bystander named James tag.
Speaker 2: That's doctor David Mantick. Doctor Mantick has made nine visits
Speaker 2: to the National Archives where the President's x rays, autopsy photos,
Speaker 2: and other critical evidence sits available for select members of
Speaker 2: the public to review. You could try to get an
Speaker 2: appointment to see them, or you could read any of
Speaker 2: the three books doctor Mantick has written about them. According
Speaker 2: to doctor Mantick, this bystander was about to create a
Speaker 2: huge problem for the Warren Commission.
Speaker 7: James Tag was standing under the overpass to the left
Speaker 7: front of the limousine who was hit by some debris
Speaker 7: that may have been a piece of concrete.
Speaker 1: He's watching the motorcade when the first shot rings out
Speaker 1: and he feels something sharp hit him in the cheek.
Speaker 1: It was a piece of cement from the curb, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden his cheek starts bleeding. So clearly
Speaker 1: the first shot completely missed the motorcade.
Speaker 7: So this left the Warrant Commission only two shots to
Speaker 7: work with to explain all the woods. So they knew
Speaker 7: that one bullet had to kill Kennedy via a headshot,
Speaker 7: So there goes one. You're only left with one more shot.
Speaker 7: With that one shot, you have to explain everything else.
Speaker 7: So that's where Arlen Spector rode to the rescue on
Speaker 7: his shining white Horse and invented the magic bullet theory.
Speaker 1: Otherwise known as the single bullet.
Speaker 5: Theory, and so now begins the saga of the single
Speaker 5: bullet theory.
Speaker 2: That's doctor Weckt again, and he deserves a full introduction.
Speaker 2: He's a highly decorated forensic expert who's done more than
Speaker 2: seventeen thousand autopsies and who's been probing the jfk assassination
Speaker 2: since the nineteen sixties. He's one of the most vocal
Speaker 2: critics of the Warren Report and the single bullet theory.
Speaker 5: Enter Arlen Spector, at that time junior legal consul for
Speaker 5: the Warren Commission. Spector, to his credit, came up with
Speaker 5: which seems to be a solution for them, and that
Speaker 5: is known as the single bullet theory.
Speaker 2: You'll remember Arlen Spector from our last episode. The journalist
Speaker 2: Gayton Fonsie pressed him on his single bullet theory, and
Speaker 2: when he gave Fonsie an evasive answer, Fonsie published a
Speaker 2: scathing article.
Speaker 5: The single bullet theory holds that one bullet entered the
Speaker 5: president's back to begin with, moved upward, moving then inside
Speaker 5: the president's chest eleven and a half degrees upward. How
Speaker 5: in the hell is that possible? When the bullet comes out.
Speaker 5: It's moving again downward, leftward, and forward, turns in midair,
Speaker 5: comes back eighteen twenty inches and hits calmly behind the
Speaker 5: right armpit, exiting below nipple level. The bullet in midair
Speaker 5: turns upward sweeping motion, goes into the wrist presses a
Speaker 5: common manufacture of one of the two line bones from
Speaker 5: the elbow to the wrist. Exits from the wrist, re
Speaker 5: enters the Governor's left thigh, and that is the pathway
Speaker 5: of the single bullet.
Speaker 2: The bullet presumably leaves the gun from the sixth floor
Speaker 2: of the building that's now above and behind Kennedy, and
Speaker 2: the bullet enters President Kennedy's back. Looking at a picture
Speaker 2: of the president's jacket which you can easily find online,
Speaker 2: the bullet hole is in the upper middle part of
Speaker 2: his suit coat.
Speaker 1: Right then it supposedly turns upward and comes out of
Speaker 1: his throat.
Speaker 5: Well, my colleagues are others who try to defend that
Speaker 5: Singapore theory. They say, well, what if the president were
Speaker 5: bent over tying his shoe. No, he wasn't doing that.
Speaker 5: He was looking at the crowd and cheering and waving.
Speaker 2: It's pretty clear when you watch the Subbruder film, he
Speaker 2: is not hunched over. The president is poised upward toward
Speaker 2: the crowd.
Speaker 8: When Governor Connolly testified to the Warren Commission.
Speaker 4: That's Dick Russell.
Speaker 8: He repeated multiple times that he was not hit but
Speaker 8: the same bullet that had hit JFK.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, if you look at the
Speaker 1: Zapruta film, you'll see that when Kennedy reacts to getting
Speaker 1: hit in the throat, Connelly then turns around to see
Speaker 1: what happened. Then moments later he gets hit. There's no
Speaker 1: way that it can be the same bullet that hit Kennedy.
Speaker 8: The surgeons who operated on Governor Connolly's wrist and chest
Speaker 8: wounds at Parkland also noted that they did not think
Speaker 8: all of his wounds had been made by the same bullet.
Speaker 2: It seems to me people are divided into two camps.
Speaker 2: Right There are people who believe the single bullet theory
Speaker 2: and people who think the single bullet theory is crazy.
Speaker 2: If you believe it, then you believe that one bullet
Speaker 2: caused all that damage.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about the path of the bullet.
Speaker 1: To fully consider the single bullet theory, you have to
Speaker 1: ask yourself two questions. The first question, how did the
Speaker 1: bullet look when it was recovered?
Speaker 5: If God came to me and said, what I want
Speaker 5: you to get rid of every single piece of evidence,
Speaker 5: and I'll allow you to keep one thing, one thing only,
Speaker 5: that would be the bullet as it was recovered.
Speaker 1: It is nearly perfect condition. You can see a picture
Speaker 1: of that bullet in the National Archives. It's listed as
Speaker 1: a Warrant Commission Exhibit three ninety nine. A bullet that
Speaker 1: went in and out of both Kennedy and Connolly breaking
Speaker 1: Connolly's bones still look pristine, which brings us to the
Speaker 1: second question, where did they find the magic bullet?
Speaker 5: What happened later on was that a maintenance man, finding
Speaker 5: the er corridor blocked by a stretcher, bent down to
Speaker 5: move the stretcher and level Behold, there was a bullet.
Speaker 6: The bullets Christine.
Speaker 5: Nobody had seen this bullet, missed Y, everybody h Dallas,
Speaker 5: missed by everybody at Parkland before then.
Speaker 1: And so on. That was the official story. This pristine
Speaker 1: bullet just appeared on a stretcher in Parkland, a mystery
Speaker 1: that has confused researches for decades until in September twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, there was a bombshell. A Secret Service agent
Speaker 1: named Paul Landis was on the running board of the
Speaker 1: car behind Kennedy.
Speaker 9: New bombshell claims tonight by one of the Secret Service
Speaker 9: agents was closest to John F. Kennedy when he was
Speaker 9: a sund Fascinated the.
Speaker 7: New version of what might have happened to the magic bullet.
Speaker 2: Former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, who was with the
Speaker 2: president that day, is opening up for the first time
Speaker 2: about what he witnessed that.
Speaker 9: According to The New York Times, could quote change the
Speaker 9: understanding of what happened in Dallas in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: So Rob I saw this story in primetime on CNN,
Speaker 2: on NBC, it was in People Magazine, it was in
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair, it was in the New York Times.
Speaker 4: They all covered it.
Speaker 1: Right, and Paul Landis was kind enough to talk with us. Paul,
Speaker 1: from where the president was sitting, how far behind were you?
Speaker 6: Probably fifteen, no more than twenty eighty feet.
Speaker 1: Can you just describe what you saw at the moment
Speaker 1: that the president was hit.
Speaker 10: Shortly after the second shot I had heard the third shot,
Speaker 10: I saw the tribals had split wide ope on the
Speaker 10: midst of blood and fleshed and green matter flew into
Speaker 10: the air. I ducked to avoid getting splattered, and at
Speaker 10: that point we assumed under the underpass and.
Speaker 6: We were on our way to Party Memorial Hospital.
Speaker 10: I raced to the President's and Missus Kennedy was sitting
Speaker 10: on left center of the rear seat. There was a
Speaker 10: pool of blood next to Missus Kennedy. As soon as
Speaker 10: she stood up, right behind where she had been sitting,
Speaker 10: there was a pristine bullet. I picked this bullet up.
Speaker 10: It was not just formed, other than it had recognized
Speaker 10: striations on that it had been fired. And looking around,
Speaker 10: everybody was concentrating on the President.
Speaker 11: I didn't know what to do right away, but I
Speaker 11: was afraid this bullet an important piece of evidence and
Speaker 11: I didn't want to get lost.
Speaker 6: So I stepped it in my pocket and the raised in.
Speaker 10: Journey carrying the President's body and were right at trauma
Speaker 10: Room one.
Speaker 6: People were shoving, pushing, shouting.
Speaker 12: I happened to be pushed up right next to his feet,
Speaker 12: so I reached into my pocket, took it out and
Speaker 12: placed it by the president.
Speaker 6: Slashed true.
Speaker 1: So what does this tell us unless the single bullet
Speaker 1: theorists are going to claim that the bullet, after going
Speaker 1: through Kennedy and Connolly, was able to bounce back from
Speaker 1: where it allegedly exited Connolly's body in the front seat
Speaker 1: and somehow wound up in the backseat. It can't be
Speaker 1: the same bullet. What Landis is telling us finally makes sense. First,
Speaker 1: it explains how a bullet got onto a gurney at Parkland.
Speaker 1: He put it there, And second explains why the bullet
Speaker 1: was in near pristine condition. It never broke any bones
Speaker 1: on its path through two people. This completely destroys the
Speaker 1: single bullet theory. There is no magic bullet, which means
Speaker 1: that there had to have been at least a fourth shot,
Speaker 1: which means there had to have been another shooter. And
Speaker 1: we know conclusively that Oswald could not have fired four
Speaker 1: shots in that time span. This points directly at a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: So then what's weird to me as a journalist is
Speaker 2: this new testimony, Like he never mentioned this when he
Speaker 2: was questioned sixty years ago.
Speaker 1: He was never questioned sixty years ago.
Speaker 6: Nobody ever asked Warren.
Speaker 10: Commission never interviewed any of the other agents that were
Speaker 10: in the filow up car.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about the number of shots fired. Remember,
Speaker 1: the Warren report said that three shots were fired.
Speaker 5: The manlier car Kano, a non automatic carbeam, which was
Speaker 5: the alleged murder weapon used by Oswald, was tested by
Speaker 5: top marksmen and it was determined that it took two
Speaker 5: point three seconds from shot to shot, without allowing time
Speaker 5: for reaiming and repositioning at a moving target. They determined
Speaker 5: that the first shot that hit Kennedy was followed by
Speaker 5: a second shot at one point five seconds. Well, how
Speaker 5: was that possible when it was determined that it took
Speaker 5: two point three seconds from shot to shot.
Speaker 1: As they say, do the math the single bullet. The
Speaker 1: timing of the shots were just getting started. Now, let's
Speaker 1: take a look at some of the testimonies from the
Speaker 1: Parkland doctors who tried to save Kennedy's life.
Speaker 2: According to the war report, JFK's car raced from Dealey
Speaker 2: Plaza to Parkland Hospital and it arrived at twelve thirty
Speaker 2: five pm.
Speaker 1: Everyone at Parkland was on high alert getting ready for
Speaker 1: Kennedy's arrival. Among them was doctor Malcolm Perry, a trauma
Speaker 1: room physician. He worked feverishly trying to keep the President alive,
Speaker 1: but once the president was pronounced dead later that day,
Speaker 1: he talked to the press and he described the shot
Speaker 1: to Kennedy's neck as an entrance wound.
Speaker 2: The New York Times published the transcript from that press conference.
Speaker 2: It goes, reporter, where was the entrance wound, Doctor Perry?
Speaker 2: There was an entrance wound in the neck. Reporter, Which
Speaker 2: way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? Madam,
Speaker 2: doctor Perry. It appeared to be coming at him. Reporter,
Speaker 2: You think from the front in the throat. Dr Perry,
Speaker 2: the wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the
Speaker 2: front of the throat. Yes, that is correct. Well, so
Speaker 2: that's pretty clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one would think. But it's not the way doctor
Speaker 1: Perry's story ends.
Speaker 7: According to information we have just received from a recently
Speaker 7: discovered notebook kept by Martin Steadman, we've learned a little
Speaker 7: more about this story about doctor Perry.
Speaker 2: That's doctor Mantick again now talking about the journalist Martin Steadman.
Speaker 2: Steadman covered this story for decades.
Speaker 7: A week after the assassination, Steedman and a few colleagues
Speaker 7: went to visit doctor Perry at his home in Dallas,
Speaker 7: and they asked him well, doctor Perry, what do you
Speaker 7: really believe you think this was an entry wound? And
Speaker 7: he said, absolutely, it was an entry wound. And he
Speaker 7: told them what had happened the night of the autopsy
Speaker 7: and the morning after. He said he had gotten several
Speaker 7: calls from the autopsy room from the autopsy doctors who
Speaker 7: told him that if he didn't change his mind about
Speaker 7: the entry wound, he was probably going to lose his
Speaker 7: medical license. And so the journalist finished up by asking him, well,
Speaker 7: doctor Perry, after all of this, what do you really
Speaker 7: think he said it was an entry wound.
Speaker 4: So he says again, it's an entry wound.
Speaker 7: After a long, long paragraph of assumptions, he finally admitted
Speaker 7: to the Warrant Commission that it could have been a
Speaker 7: shot from the rear.
Speaker 2: But this is the guy who repeated three times that
Speaker 2: the bullet entered from the front of the throat.
Speaker 1: Right, why would he change his mind.
Speaker 8: In the nineteen seventies, that's Dick Russell. A Dallas Secret
Speaker 8: Service agent named Elmer Moore confessed that he quote had
Speaker 8: badgered doctor Perry into making a flat statement that there
Speaker 8: was no entrance wound in the net. He said he
Speaker 8: was operating under orders from Washington and the Secret Service.
Speaker 8: He said he regretted it, but that we all did
Speaker 8: everything we were told, or we'd got our heads cut off.
Speaker 1: Perry wasn't the only one that day who said that
Speaker 1: the shots that hit Kennedy were fired from the front.
Speaker 8: Statements from twenty one witnesses at Parkland Hospital that day
Speaker 8: reported seeing a massive head wound in the back of
Speaker 8: Kennedy's skull.
Speaker 6: The doctors at Parkland described a big wound that reached
Speaker 6: into the posterior part of the skull on the right side.
Speaker 8: The journalist Connie Chritzberg interviewed some of those doctors at
Speaker 8: Parkland in the immediate aftermath of that day. She got
Speaker 8: testimony from one of the neurosurgeons, doctor Kemp Clark, who
Speaker 8: also said that there was a huge wound in the
Speaker 8: right rear of the president's head.
Speaker 1: And then there's doctor McClellan, one of the surgeons that
Speaker 1: worked to save the president's life that day.
Speaker 8: Doctor McClellan testified to the Warren Commission that part of
Speaker 8: the cerebellum was blasted away.
Speaker 7: There was a big hole in the back of his head.
Speaker 4: That's doctor Mantick again.
Speaker 7: It was the size of an orange at least, if
Speaker 7: not even a little larger. And dozens, literally dozens of
Speaker 7: witnesses have said the same thing.
Speaker 1: So the shot that killed the president came from the front.
Speaker 7: It's totally consistent with a big hole in the back
Speaker 7: of the head.
Speaker 2: So were the doctor's testimonies just ignored by investigators and
Speaker 2: by the folks on the Warren commission.
Speaker 8: One of the doctors, Ron Jones, said that assassination investigators
Speaker 8: knew of reports of a second shooter but ignored them.
Speaker 8: A Warren commissioned investigator is said to have told him, quote,
Speaker 8: we have people who had testified that they saw somebody
Speaker 8: shoot the president from the front, but we don't want
Speaker 8: to interview them, and I don't want you saying anything
Speaker 8: about that either.
Speaker 1: And who was that investigator?
Speaker 2: Who arlinspector the creator of the single theory the same.
Speaker 1: Now, let's dig deeper into what happened during the autopsy
Speaker 1: at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The Dallas doctors were unanimous.
Speaker 3: If you study their treatment notes that they wrote the
Speaker 3: day of the President's.
Speaker 4: Death, that's Doug Horn.
Speaker 3: It's that the president had a big blowout in the
Speaker 3: right rear of his head behind his ear the right
Speaker 3: rear portion of the head.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is.
Speaker 3: That the autopsy photographs shows the back of the head
Speaker 3: to be intact.
Speaker 2: So doctor Horn, if the autopsy photographs in the archives
Speaker 2: don't show a gaping wound in the back of his head,
Speaker 2: what do they show.
Speaker 3: The autopsy photographs show the in back of the head
Speaker 3: to be intact, but that's contradicted by the treatment notes
Speaker 3: of the Parkland doctors and by their testimony in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four. So the government had a problem. If those
Speaker 3: photographs had made it into the official record, that would
Speaker 3: have supported the observations of the park Glenn doctors because
Speaker 3: the right cerebellum would have been almost totally destroyed, most
Speaker 3: of it missing, much of the rear of the brain missing.
Speaker 7: When we look at the photographs of the back of
Speaker 7: his head at the archives, everything is totally intact.
Speaker 4: That's doctor Mantick again.
Speaker 7: It looks like the hair has just been freshly washed
Speaker 7: with hardly any blood anywhere, and yet the shirt is
Speaker 7: totally sulked with blood. How's that possible. A woman named
Speaker 7: Sandra K. Spencer processed the photos that were taken to
Speaker 7: the President's head during the autopsy.
Speaker 2: In November nineteen sixty three, she was a petty officer
Speaker 2: in charge of the White House Laboratory at NPC, the
Speaker 2: Naval Photographic Center. Here she is being interviewed by the
Speaker 2: ARRB in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 10: Can you tell me whether those photographs well.
Speaker 2: The questioner says, can you tell me whether those photographs
Speaker 2: correspond with the photographs you developed in November of nineteen
Speaker 2: teen sixty three.
Speaker 5: She says, no, let's start with a conjecture whether the
Speaker 5: photographs that you developed.
Speaker 2: The questioner says, let's start with the conjecture as to
Speaker 2: whether the photographs that you developed and the photographs that
Speaker 2: you observe today could have been taken at different times.
Speaker 2: I would definitely, she says, I would definitely say they
Speaker 2: were taken at different times.
Speaker 7: Of course, the actual authentic autopsy photographs did show a
Speaker 7: big hole in the back of the head, and we
Speaker 7: have solo witnesses at the autopsy who saw those photographs
Speaker 7: and their testimonies in their record today.
Speaker 2: To be clear, what you're saying is that the photos
Speaker 2: that Sondra k Spencer developed are not the ones that
Speaker 2: are in the National Archives.
Speaker 3: I did a chain of custody study on the autopsy
Speaker 3: report while I was at the review board. And so
Speaker 3: the first thing I discovered is that doctor Humes had
Speaker 3: who sets a conclusions.
Speaker 2: That's what makes it all the more remarkable that he
Speaker 2: burned his first copy.
Speaker 3: Sometime after the FBI agents left. Humes made this new
Speaker 3: pronouncement because somebody had called doctor Perry at Parkland Hospital.
Speaker 4: How do we know this?
Speaker 3: Perry told Nurse Bell the following day. She said, you
Speaker 3: look like hell, what's wrong? And he said, well, I
Speaker 3: didn't get much sleep last night. And she said why
Speaker 3: and he said, well, they had me on the phone
Speaker 3: off and on all night long from Bethesden Naval Hospital.
Speaker 3: People were trying to get me to change my mind
Speaker 3: about the fact that the president was shot in the
Speaker 3: throat from the front. They wanted me to change my
Speaker 3: mind and say that was really an exit win in
Speaker 3: his throat.
Speaker 1: This was all happening the night of the assassination.
Speaker 3: Humes and Boswell met the next morning on Saturday to
Speaker 3: review the first draft of the autopsy report. They met
Speaker 3: at ten o'clock in the morning. Humes worked on it
Speaker 3: all night at home and it was tighted Boswell. This
Speaker 3: under oath. Somebody that day rejected that report because what
Speaker 3: does Humes do on Sunday? He burns the first draft
Speaker 3: of the autopsy report and most of the original notes
Speaker 3: in his fireplace.
Speaker 4: Okay, So where does this leave us? Sum it up
Speaker 4: for me?
Speaker 1: Okay? The Warrant Commission manipulated the evidence to fit their
Speaker 1: single bullet theory in order to prove that Oswald was
Speaker 1: a lone gunman who shot the president from behind. Several witnesses,
Speaker 1: many of them medical professionals, who saw Kennedy's wounds at
Speaker 1: Parkland Hospital that day, contradicted this. They said that the
Speaker 1: president's wounds were a result of shots that came from
Speaker 1: the front. The autopsy report, conducted by doctors who had
Speaker 1: very little experience with gunshot wounds who had burned the
Speaker 1: original report, contained photographs that had no correlation to the
Speaker 1: wounds observed by the Parkland doctors or the photographer who
Speaker 1: initially took the pictures. All of this points to the
Speaker 1: shooters in locations other than just the sixth floor of
Speaker 1: the Texas school Book Depository, and that means whatever Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald was doing that day, he did not do
Speaker 1: it alone.
Speaker 2: You seem convinced that the forensics lead to the conclusion
Speaker 2: that there had to be more than one shooter. So
Speaker 2: then why is the official narrative still one of a
Speaker 2: lone gunman.
Speaker 1: You know, it's perfect that you use that word narrative
Speaker 1: because the evidence is going to show that Oswald was
Speaker 1: part of a narrative, a narrative that he was completely
Speaker 1: unaware of. And when you take a look at his
Speaker 1: journey into this narrative, the picture will become a lot clearer.
Speaker 4: Next time on Who Killed JFK.
Speaker 1: If you don't learn who Lee Harvey Oswell really was,
Speaker 1: there's no way you can understand what happened on that day.
Speaker 2: We'll pull back the curtain on Lee Harvey Oswald Well.
Speaker 5: I was under the impression that Lee has being trained
Speaker 5: for a specific operation.
Speaker 8: He was of interest to the highest counterintelligence officer in
Speaker 8: the CIA for four years before President Kennedy was killed.
Speaker 2: Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Speaker 2: Solidad O'Brien, and our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner,
Speaker 2: Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and Me Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 2: Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell.
Speaker 2: Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pinnero. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Julie Pinnerto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Speaker 2: Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein and Amari Lead. Our editors are
Speaker 2: Tristan Nash, Julie Pinetto and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
Speaker 2: manager is Carol Klein. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,
Speaker 2: mastering and sound design by Ben la Julie and archival
Speaker 2: audio in this episode thanks to The Six Floor Museum
Speaker 2: and Dick Russell. Research and fact checking by Girl Friday
Speaker 2: and emilse Kiros. Business affairs by Henan Nadea and Jonathan Furman.
Speaker 2: Our consulting producer is Razanne Galliini. Recorded in part at
Speaker 2: CDM Studio and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show logo by
Speaker 2: Lucy Quintanilla. Production assistants by Rocco Del Prior and Grace Barron.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Johonig Rose Arse and Dan Storper. If
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Speaker 2: production Solidad O'Brien Productions and iHeart podcasts, s,