Murder Tales: The JFK Conspiracies

by H. N. Lloyd

  There were even more ballistic bamboozlers, the Commission stated that the magic bullet had entered President Kennedy’s back and exited via his throat. Yet Commander Dr. James Humes at Bethesda Naval Base examined the bullet wound in President Kennedy’s shoulder, he examined it to the lengths of sticking his own finger into the wound and following its trajectory, this was because the doctors could not seem to see an exit wound. Dr. Humes stated that he could quite clearly feel the end of the bullet track with his finger, and therefore the bullet that entered the President’s back did not exit via his throat, and therefore could not have gone on to enter Governor Connally. Commander Humes level headedly explained the absence of any bullet in the wound; by stating that it was quite common for chest decompressions carried out during resuscitation to push bullets out that were lodged in the torso. Of course the Warren Commission weren’t happy with this; it made a mockery of their Magic Bullet theory if there was no exit wound for the bullet to have left President Kennedy’s body from. So Commander Humes had to alter his original findings. The Commission stated that it was only after his original examination of the body; that Commander Humes discovered that the tracheotomy scar in the President’s throat had originally been a bullet wound, not before his examination as suggested by Dr. Livingstone, and Commander Humes certainly had not been told that the throat wound had been an entrance hole. Now the Commission had the perfect excuse and explanation for Commander Humes having subsequently altered his original medical statement. It was all to tidy up the inconsistencies made by his original medical examination, which were explained by the medical procedures carried out on the President at Parkland’s Memorial Hospital. Now Commander Humes could suggest that the bullet that had entered the President’s back had actually exited through his throat. None of this could explain why Commander Humes had originally been adamant that he could feel the bullet wounds termination point with the tip of his finger of course, but that could be silently glossed over in the final Warren report. It also didn’t explain how a bullet travelling on a downward trajectory from the 6th floor window of the depository; could suddenly change course and start travelling upwards to exit through the President’s throat. If we take the conceit that it was a single bullet that made these wounds; then wouldn’t it have made much more sense if the bullet had entered through the front via the throat, travelling downwards in an uninterrupted trajectory; and exited via the wound in the President’s back or shoulders? Of course saying such a thing would have meant that Oswald wasn’t acting alone, destroying the theory of the lone gunman the Commission was so desperately trying to prove despite the mounting evidence against it.

  The Warren Commission ran into further difficulties explaining away the tricky medical evidence; when they came across the statements of Professor of neurosurgery Dr. Kemp Clark and Dr. Robert Nelson McClelland, trauma doctors who both treated the President at Parkland’s Memorial Hospital; upon the President’s admittance. Both of these seasoned medical professionals stated that the official autopsy photographs taken at Bethesda Naval Base must have been doctored, as the massive head wound at the back of the President’s skull; which they both not only viewed but had medical diagrams drawn of, had vanished by the time the President’s body had reached Bethesda and was photographed. The contentious autopsy photographs were withheld from the public and even from the investigating attorneys on the Commission. Two reasons were put forward for this, firstly; that the Kennedy family did not want the American public’s last memory of their President being his dead and mutilated corpse, secondly; Earl Warren had viewed the photographs; and felt them too gruesome to be viewed by anyone else. Now both of these points are perfectly reasonable and valid explanations for the photographs to have been withheld from the public, but to have held them back from the Commission’s own investigators was beggars’ belief. So what was the real reason for the photographs being withheld from the Commission investigators? Well, congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi believes that the discrepancies between what the Parkland Memorial staff reported; and what the Bethesda medical staff reported; threw the Commission into complete confusion. This in turn meant that the discrepancies made it impossible for the Commission to say with any definitiveness that there hadn’t been more than one shooter. So to remove any doubt the photographs that caused the problem were simply omitted from the Warren Commission’s purview, as a result the Parkland Memorial doctors concerns over alterations to the wounds could be ignored, and the revised Bethesda autopsy, with the once missing bullet now entering through President Kennedy’s back and then exiting further up his body through his throat could be accepted no questions asked. Paying testimony to this outrage; is the salient fact that not one of the doctors or nurses who treated President Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital had their testimony included in the Warren Report.

  Unfortunately this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the Warren Commission ignoring the tricky medical issues left dangling by the assassination. The Commission did not in the slightest way deal with any of the criticism levelled at President Kennedy’s autopsy. This simply was not an issue, not once did they question why a pair of doctors with no formal practice or experience in forensic pathology, who were not trained or ready to conduct an autopsy, let alone the so-called ‘autopsy of the century’, were let near the President’s body and allowed to pontificate on the reasons for his death, no matter how obvious those reasons might have been. It was stated by staff at Bethesda; that Commander Dr. James Humes and his assistant Commander Dr. J. Thornton Boswell had never carried out an autopsy, and that their roles at Bethesda had for several years been strictly administrative, leaving them out of touch with modern medical procedures. It was never questioned why what was left of the brain was not sectioned off; and the path of the assassin’s bullet traced through its sponge-like substance. If the Commission had asked this important question, then the Commission would have been forced to discuss the startling fact that the President’s brain had gone missing. That’s right; somewhere between Dallas and Bethesda what was left of President Kennedy’s grey matter had simply disappeared into thin air, yet the Commission did not question any of the Bethesda medical staff about its disappearance, or mention it in their findings. The fact that the brain had seemingly been stolen had stunned the men whose job it was to prepare the body for autopsy. Further evidence of this grave-robbing was hinted at in the manner in which the President’s body had arrived at Bethesda. All witnesses who saw the body arrive at the naval base; claimed it was no longer in the ornate casket it had been taken off the plane at Andrew Air-force Base in. It was now in a simple gun metal grey coffin, and inside the body had been sealed in a body-bag. Where and when and why this swap occurred has never been officially acknowledged or explained. Some have claimed that the swap happened on Air Force One; and that the body was taken off the plane on the opposite side to the empty casket, away from the glare of the news cameras. It was then flown by helicopter to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research; where the brain was removed to prevent the doctors who were due to carry out the autopsy from tracking the trajectory of the bullet. Witnesses, such as Paul O’Connor, remembered not only seeing the gunmetal grey coffin, but also remembered hearing helicopters flying overhead; and landing nearby, shortly before President Kennedy’s body had been brought in to Bethesda for autopsying. Of course there was no case to answer when allegations were raised that the autopsy had been incompetently carried out, because in October 1966 it was discovered that all samples taken from the President’s body during the autopsy had disappeared from the National Archive, this gave those involved in the autopsy plausible deniability, no one could definitively prove that the autopsy had been ineptly handled; because there was no evidence left over from the procedure to definitively prove such a case. Everyone was a winner, except those looking for the truth.

  In order for the Warren Commission to assert that Oswald killed Tippit, there had to be enough time for Oswald to walk from his lodgings to
the spot where Officer Tippit was gunned down on 10th and Patton. The journey between the two spots was a little under a mile. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald was last seen at the corner of Beckley and Zang at 1.03 p.m. and that the mile long journey took Oswald thirteen minutes. With the Commission stating that the shooting took place at 1.16 p.m. Yet this contradicted the testimony of Helen Markham; who reported that a short man with a ruddy complexion and grey trousers had shot Tippit; and that the time was only ‘a little after one’, when pressed for an exact time Miss Markham said that Officer Tippit had been murdered no later than 1.06 or 1.07 p.m. she could estimate the time so precisely as she had been rushing to catch the 1.12 p.m. bus. This timing was confirmed by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig; who stated that he was in the Texas School Book Depository when the news came over the police radio that a police officer had been shot. He instinctively looked at his watch and noted the time, it was according to his timepiece 1.06 p.m. Temple Bowley; who joined Domingo Benavides in calling for help on the police radio, also noted the time; he was adamant that he started calling for help over the police radio at 1.10 p.m. The original Dallas Police Log, which for many years was lost, was recently discovered in the National Archives, this confirmed that the Dallas Police had logged the news of Officer Tippit’s shooting at 1.10 p.m.

  Another problem for the Warren Commission; was the direction in which Oswald was walking when Officer Tippit pulled him over. Five eye witnesses; and the official Dallas Police report into the shooting stated that Oswald was walking in a westerly direction toward Officer Tippit, when Officer Tippit called him over to his patrol car. If the police report and the witnesses were correct then Oswald could not have taken the route that the Warren Commission stated, and could not have been at 10th and Patton in time to shoot Officer Tippit, in order for Oswald to take a route that pointed him in a westerly direction his walk would have taken him at least sixteen minutes. This fact didn’t really concern the Commission; they simply ignored the official police report and witnesses and stated categorically that Oswald must have been walking in an easterly direction towards the Texas Theatre.

  After dealing with Kennedy, Tippit and Oswald the Commission had to turn its weary attention to Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby. The Commission knew that in the weeks leading up to the assassination Ruby had been making telephone calls to high ranking Mafia members, among them Barney ‘Leg Breaker’ Baker, an associate of Jimmy Hoffa and the teamsters, Dave Yarras and Lenny Patrick; two childhood friends of Ruby’s who had grown up to be two notorious mafia hit-men; based in Chicago, and Nofio Pecora; a dope dealing Mafiosi from New Orleans. Ruby had other connections to the Mob; before opening his club in Dallas, he had been a petty criminal in Chicago, but Mob bosses Sam Giancana and Joseph Campisi had run Ruby out of town; as his underhanded deals were drawing attention to wider Mafia plots, they allegedly chose not to kill Ruby because of their close friendship; and instead installed him as a manager in one of their quieter Dallas clubs. Yet the Commission announced to the world that this seedy strip club owner, with a dubious history of criminal endeavours, who had the personal phone numbers of some very scary and very high ranking organised crime bosses; had himself no connection with organised crime. The Warren Commission explained that the phone calls to these drug dealers and hired killers were simply to help him settle a dispute with an ‘entertainers union’. They accepted Ruby’s claim that he had murdered Oswald on impulse; to save Jackie Kennedy the heartbreak of having to endure a long and protracted trial in Dallas. Of course evidence mounted that Ruby far from acting on impulse, had indeed been stalking Oswald since his arrest, waiting for an opportunity to kill him. Ruby was caught on camera by news teams on the night of the assassination; hanging around the corridors of the Dallas Police Head Quarters. He was also photographed masquerading as a reporter at the midnight press conference held in the Dallas Police Head Quarters. On Saturday the 23rd of November 1963, he returned to the Dallas Police Head Quarters; and pressed friends of his in the Dallas Police Department to give him the details of Oswald’s transfer to the local state prison. The Commission also failed to look into how Ruby got into the basement when Oswald was being transferred; Ruby claimed he had simply walked down the car-ramp into the basement. This was blatantly a lie, two guards were on duty guarding the ramp; and they both stated that Jack Ruby did not use this route to gain access to the basement car park. One of these patrolmen, Officer Roy Vaughn, even took part in a lie detector test where his version of events were challenged, Vaughn was adamant that he did not see Ruby that day, he did not leave his post that day, there was no feasible way Ruby could have crept past him that day. Vaughn passed the lie detector test with flying colours. There were also witnesses who backed up Officer Vaughn in his statement, police officers and news reporters who were interviewed on live television; just minutes after the shooting, before any amendments could be made to their stories, these men said live on TV that they had witnessed Ruby walking from the back of the car-park, and that he had jumped over a set of railings that partitioned off the car-parking areas from the elevator and corridor where Oswald had been paraded. If Ruby had come from the back of the car-park, as was immediately stated in the aftermath of the shooting, it meant that he could only have come from one place, inside of Dallas Police Headquarters.

  Now one of the attorneys for the Warren Commission did find this suspicious, Burt W. Griffin felt it mighty peculiar, why would the police just let Jack Ruby wander down into the basement via the ramp, passing two armed police officers, as was being claimed? Griffin also felt it odd that the superior officer of the men on guard, Sergeant Patrick Dean, rather than trying to support his men in their claims that Ruby was lying, had in fact hung the two officers out to dry; and had sided with Ruby’s version of events rather too easily. Griffin felt that Patrick Dean was lying, trying to cover up something bigger, and so he pressed Dean hard on the issue, accusing him point blank of lying about how Ruby had been able to gain access to the basement. Rather than let Griffin continue with his investigation; and possibly get to the truth, he was inexplicably recalled back to Washington and reprimanded for following this line of investigation. He was told in no uncertain terms that the official version of events would state that Ruby simply walked down the ramp into the basement car park, whitewashing out of the official version of events the two armed guards Ruby had to pass; and the witnesses who saw Ruby coming from inside the police station.

  That was the extent to which the Warren Commission, in all its wisdom, dealt with the man who had terminated the life of the only 100% solid lead the Commission had to go on, the man who killed the shooter and destroyed any real hope of anyone ever getting to the truth of the matter. With such a facile investigation; the mystery only deepened as the years went on, in 1988 a former associate of Ruby’s, a dancer from the neighbouring Colony Club named Beverley Oliver, came forward to state that she had seen with her own eyes Jack Ruby meet with Lee Harvey Oswald at Ruby’s Carousel Club. Oliver stated that after she had finished her set at the Colony Club, she regularly crossed the car park to the Carousel Club; where she had talked with her friend, a dancer named Jada. She stated that one night Ruby had introduced her and Jada to a man named ‘Lee’; who she was certain was Lee Harvey Oswald. When asked why she had not come forward in the previous twenty-five years, Miss Oliver replied, ‘I didn’t want to be just another statistic, I didn’t want to be one of these people who shot themselves in the back of the head’. An attempt to track down Jada in order to verify this story proved useless, Jada had become one of the ‘statistics’ Beverley Oliver so feared, dying in a peculiar motorbike accident shortly after Beverly Oliver had come forward with her information; and incriminated Jada. Of course the Warren Commission cannot be blamed for not interviewing people who did not want to talk, but bizarrely enough Janet ‘Jada’ Conforto did want to talk, and had given her own interview, speaking to TV newsman Paul Good on Monday the 25th of November 1963. In this interview; Miss Conforto h
ad stated categorically that Ruby did not love President Kennedy enough to want to kill his assassin out of the compassion of his heart, and in fact Ruby had actively hated Robert Kennedy for his persecution of his friends in organised crime.

  Jack Ruby himself wanted to give evidence to the Warren Commission, but not from a jail cell in Dallas, where he believed his life was in danger, he wanted to be brought to Washington like all the other important witnesses, and give his evidence from the safety of Capitol Hill. The Commission refused to accept Ruby’s demands, and as a consequence they did not hear any evidence from the assassins’ assassin. Perhaps, ultimately, this was because they knew that Ruby would not toe the official line, that he would categorically blow all talk of a lone gunman out of the water. Ruby himself believed this was why he was not allowed to testify, and he told reporters when asked why he had not given evidence to the Warren Commission, ‘The people who had so much to gain, who had a very ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board’ When asked if these people were in a position of high power and authority; Ruby answered simply, ‘Yes’.

  As the Commission progressed with its investigation; a couple of witnesses came forward whose evidence; not only threatened to alter the Commission’s carefully laid out belief that Oswald was a leftist extremist, but also threatened to decimate further the credibility of the FBI’s original report into the President’s assassination. Silvia and Annie Odio were twenty-three and seventeen year old Cuban exiles, their father had been imprisoned in Cuba for attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1962, and as a result the Odio family had become heroes to the Cuban anti-Castro movement. Silvia and Annie had escaped their family’s persecution in Cuba; and in 1963 they found themselves living in Dallas. On the night of Wednesday the 25th of September 1963, three anti-Castro militia men came to the Odio residence, two Cubans and an American; they wanted a letter from Silvia; asking for Junta Revolucionaria Cubana (JURE) an organisation that was attempting to unite the disparate anti-Castro revolutionary groups, to release funds for an operation they had planned. The three men stated that the family’s status as modern Cuban folk heroes would hold some sway with JURE; and would ensure they got the money they needed. The three men gave Silvia their ‘war names’, the two Cubans were called Leopold and Angelo and the American was called Leon Oswald. Silvia was weary of the three men, and so declined to give them a letter supporting their application for funds. The next day Leopold phoned Silvia to try and persuade her to change her mind, and during the course of the conversation Leopold turned the conversation to Leon Oswald. He told Silvia that Leon was an ex-marine and an excellent shot, and that he hated President Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs shambles, in fact Leon Oswald firmly believed that someone should murder President Kennedy for his betrayal of Cuba.