Parkland and the autopsy

Doctors at Parkland worked to save Kennedy’s life, not to examine his wounds. Dr. Malcolm Perry made a tracheotomy incision through a small wound in the front of the throat. Dr. Kemp Clark, who looked most closely at the head, described a large, gaping wound in the right rear part of the head. The doctors never turned the president over, so they did not see the wound in his upper back. [1][3]

At a press briefing that afternoon, Perry said the throat wound could have been an entrance. He later explained he had no way to know, not having seen the back wound; under the Warren account it was an exit. [2]

The Parkland descriptions of a wound at the rear of the head are the strongest single basis for the belief that a shot came from the front, since an exit wound is usually large. The autopsy report, photos and X-rays place the large wound on the right side of the head toward the top, with a small entry wound low at the back. Defenders of the Parkland accounts say the photos were altered or misleading; the House committee tested that, below. [1]

The autopsy was done at Bethesda Naval Hospital by Commander James Humes and Commander J. Thornton Boswell, joined by Army Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck. Humes and Boswell were hospital pathologists, not forensic specialists. [1]

The House committee’s forensic panel listed the measures they failed to take. Among them: keeping people with no medical role out of the room; consulting the Parkland doctors before starting; recording the wounds against the fixed anatomical landmarks forensic pathologists use; examining all organs; and sectioning the brain. The committee found it was Humes himself, not a general or anyone else, who decided not to dissect the track from the back wound into the neck, and it blamed the family’s strong wish to finish quickly, a military setting and the doctors’ lack of forensic experience. [1]

Humes burned his original notes and a first draft of the report in his fireplace at home early on Sunday, 24 November. Asked about it by the Review Board in 1996, he said he copied what he needed and burned the originals “to prevent them from ever falling into the hands of what I consider inappropriate people.” [2]

The Review Board, which did not reinvestigate the crime, documented further gaps and contradictions in the medical record, including conflicting accounts of how the brain was examined. [3] The brain, tissue slides and other materials the pathologists kept are unaccounted for. They had been placed under Robert Kennedy’s control. The House committee traced the chain of custody and could not find them. Burke Marshall, a Kennedy family adviser, told it his “speculative opinion” was that Robert Kennedy had disposed of them himself so they would never go on public display; the committee noted he offered no verification and kept searching. [4]

A popular theory says that between Dallas and Bethesda the body, the photos or the X-rays were altered to hide shots from the front. The House committee had photographic and anthropological experts compare the autopsy photographs and X-rays with earlier pictures and X-rays of Kennedy, and examine them for signs of tampering. It concluded the images were of Kennedy and had not been altered. [1]

The committee concluded that Kennedy was struck by two rifle shots fired from behind him. Its forensic pathology panel voted 8 to 1 on many of its conclusions; the dissenter was consistently Dr. Cyril Wecht, the Allegheny County coroner, who rejected the single-bullet theory. [2][3]

The Review Board added to the record without settling it. It took new testimony from autopsy staff and photographers, some of whom recalled photographs or procedures that do not appear in the official set. It explicitly did not reach new conclusions about the shooting. [4]