The "King-Size" Bullet Fragment
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Introduction
There were reports that a bullet or "slug" or "king-size fragment" of a bullet (descriptions vary, according to the accounts) had been recovered during the autopsy. I contend that this vital piece of evidence was quietly disappeared from public scrutiny because it would have killed the Single Bullet Theory. But obscure accounts of it remain. Jerrol Custer, who was present when it was discovered, testified to its existence to the ARRB. And in 1963 and early 1964, leaked accounts of an FBI autopsy report appeared in a few select news sources.
I address exactly what happened with the first bullet, including what the Dealey Plaza witnesses saw, in https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/what-happened---shot-1.html. This brief article deals with one small aspect of that bullet--the king-size fragment that was recovered from Kennedy's back during the autopsy.
To be clear, I contend that the first bullet that struck President Kennedy entered at the forehead/temple location and fragmented on impact. The largest fragments exited at the back of the head. These include the nose and tail portions of the bullet, which I believe ricocheted off the seat back to end up at the front of the limousine. But the weights of the nose and tail fragments together do not make up the weight of even half of a Carcanno bullet. What happened to the main portion of that bullet? It also ricocheted off the seat back, but returned to Kennedy to create the shallow back wound. We have accounts that the missile was recovered during the autopsy. Where it went after that is anyone's guess.
There were reports that a bullet or "slug" or "king-size fragment" of a bullet (descriptions vary, according to the accounts) had been recovered during the autopsy. I contend that this vital piece of evidence was quietly disappeared from public scrutiny because it would have killed the Single Bullet Theory. But obscure accounts of it remain. Jerrol Custer, who was present when it was discovered, testified to its existence to the ARRB. And in 1963 and early 1964, leaked accounts of an FBI autopsy report appeared in a few select news sources.
I address exactly what happened with the first bullet, including what the Dealey Plaza witnesses saw, in https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/what-happened---shot-1.html. This brief article deals with one small aspect of that bullet--the king-size fragment that was recovered from Kennedy's back during the autopsy.
To be clear, I contend that the first bullet that struck President Kennedy entered at the forehead/temple location and fragmented on impact. The largest fragments exited at the back of the head. These include the nose and tail portions of the bullet, which I believe ricocheted off the seat back to end up at the front of the limousine. But the weights of the nose and tail fragments together do not make up the weight of even half of a Carcanno bullet. What happened to the main portion of that bullet? It also ricocheted off the seat back, but returned to Kennedy to create the shallow back wound. We have accounts that the missile was recovered during the autopsy. Where it went after that is anyone's guess.
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Jerrol Custer's ARRB Deposition
With his secrecy/gag order finally lifted by the JFK Records Act, autopsy X-ray technician Jerrol Custer was finally able to be candidly honest with his ARRB questioners and to the public at large, Hence, he and photographer Floyd Reibe gave their 1994 Press Conference where they were able to say that the publicly available autopsy X-rays and pictures were "fake" and "phony, and not the pictures we took."
And to the ARRB in 1997, he revealed a number of interesting pieces of information. For one thing, he described tiny metallic fragments that had been visible in an X-ray that was missing from the ones in the ARRB's collection. He didn't discuss them in his deposition, other than to note that they were missing and what they showed (tiny fragments in the C3/C4 region of the neck), but they are indicative that the throat wound was caused by a small exiting fragment rather than an intact bullet.
More to the point for this study, Custer described lifting the body up to take some X-rays, and when he did so, a "king-size" bullet fragment fell out of the back, as this excerpt shows (starting at line 9):
With his secrecy/gag order finally lifted by the JFK Records Act, autopsy X-ray technician Jerrol Custer was finally able to be candidly honest with his ARRB questioners and to the public at large, Hence, he and photographer Floyd Reibe gave their 1994 Press Conference where they were able to say that the publicly available autopsy X-rays and pictures were "fake" and "phony, and not the pictures we took."
And to the ARRB in 1997, he revealed a number of interesting pieces of information. For one thing, he described tiny metallic fragments that had been visible in an X-ray that was missing from the ones in the ARRB's collection. He didn't discuss them in his deposition, other than to note that they were missing and what they showed (tiny fragments in the C3/C4 region of the neck), but they are indicative that the throat wound was caused by a small exiting fragment rather than an intact bullet.
More to the point for this study, Custer described lifting the body up to take some X-rays, and when he did so, a "king-size" bullet fragment fell out of the back, as this excerpt shows (starting at line 9):
From the transcript of Jerrol Custer's ARRB deposition, describing the "king-size" bullet fragment that fell out of the body, found at https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/medical_testimony/pdf/Custer_10-28-97.pdf
I think it might have been Humes who actually picked up "king-size" fragment with the forceps, as Finck reportedly did not arrive at the autopsy until after the brain, heart, and lungs had been removed and the "Y" incision had been made. The who picked up this missile seems like a more easily forgettable detail than the fact that the fragment existed and was picked up--which would definitely be memorable.
One researcher brought up a good question on the JFK Education Forum site: if Finck (or Humes) had already acquired this bullet, or a large part of it,, what was all the fuss about "looking for bullets" that reportedly occurred during the autopsy? Well, for one thing, I think they were specifically looking for the AR-15 bullet, which had been left on the stretcher back at Parkland and they didn't learn about until later. For another thing, Custer's bullet fragment from the back, "king-size" as he described it, was still a fragment. They didn't find the rest of the bullet until the FBI and Navy corpsmen searched the limousine, when they came up with the nose and tail fragments at the front of the limousine, as well as two tiny pieces in the rug (as well as the Dr. James Young "extra" bullet). Otherwise all the autopsists had were the minuscule fragments left in the head.
As for the "looking for a bullet"? That's what they were doing. They had been told that three shots had been fired, and two of them hit Kennedy, which was true enough. So the autopsists were on a mission to find two bullets: one Carcano and one AR-15. They didn't yet know about the "stretcher" bullet, the Connally bullet or fragments hadn't yet been turned over to the DPD by State Trooper Bobby Nolan, and this piece of evidence was not yet an entire bullet. The Tague wounding was not yet known, so being told "three shots," one of them hitting Connally, leaving two bullets to account for hitting Kennedy (the Tague wounding and SBT were not yet a "thing"), the autopsists were on a mission to find the two that hit Kennedy. So, finding only this one incomplete bullet and a number of tiny fragments, the FBI as well as Humes sent men to search the limousine. (Which is when they found Dr. Young "extra" bullet--and they were beginning to have the converse problem of having too many bullets--which worsened when the Tague shooting became publicly known. Hence, this "king-size" fragment was quietly disappeared, and the SBT became a "thing.")
Another interesting part of Custer's ARRB deposition was when he talked about tiny metallic fragments in the C3/C4 region of the neck in an X-ray that was missing from the collection he was shown. (We also get a tantalizing hint that what was on one X-ray before Dr. Ebersole "accidentally" burned it was a bullet fragment.)
One researcher brought up a good question on the JFK Education Forum site: if Finck (or Humes) had already acquired this bullet, or a large part of it,, what was all the fuss about "looking for bullets" that reportedly occurred during the autopsy? Well, for one thing, I think they were specifically looking for the AR-15 bullet, which had been left on the stretcher back at Parkland and they didn't learn about until later. For another thing, Custer's bullet fragment from the back, "king-size" as he described it, was still a fragment. They didn't find the rest of the bullet until the FBI and Navy corpsmen searched the limousine, when they came up with the nose and tail fragments at the front of the limousine, as well as two tiny pieces in the rug (as well as the Dr. James Young "extra" bullet). Otherwise all the autopsists had were the minuscule fragments left in the head.
As for the "looking for a bullet"? That's what they were doing. They had been told that three shots had been fired, and two of them hit Kennedy, which was true enough. So the autopsists were on a mission to find two bullets: one Carcano and one AR-15. They didn't yet know about the "stretcher" bullet, the Connally bullet or fragments hadn't yet been turned over to the DPD by State Trooper Bobby Nolan, and this piece of evidence was not yet an entire bullet. The Tague wounding was not yet known, so being told "three shots," one of them hitting Connally, leaving two bullets to account for hitting Kennedy (the Tague wounding and SBT were not yet a "thing"), the autopsists were on a mission to find the two that hit Kennedy. So, finding only this one incomplete bullet and a number of tiny fragments, the FBI as well as Humes sent men to search the limousine. (Which is when they found Dr. Young "extra" bullet--and they were beginning to have the converse problem of having too many bullets--which worsened when the Tague shooting became publicly known. Hence, this "king-size" fragment was quietly disappeared, and the SBT became a "thing.")
Another interesting part of Custer's ARRB deposition was when he talked about tiny metallic fragments in the C3/C4 region of the neck in an X-ray that was missing from the collection he was shown. (We also get a tantalizing hint that what was on one X-ray before Dr. Ebersole "accidentally" burned it was a bullet fragment.)
Another section of Custer's ARRB deposition discusses seeing metallic fragments in the C3/C4 region of the neck in an X-ray that was missing from the collection he was shown.
Those fragments in the C3/C4 region ere an indication that what had passed through that area was an exiting deflected fragment, and indeed the newspaper accounts of early leaked FBI report on the autopsy were pretty much universal in reporting that the throat wound had been caused by a fragment that had been deflected from the "one" headshot.
At any rate, in these reports, Custer's "king-size" fragment got morphed into a more dramatic "bullet" (with no mention of the small nose and tail fragments) when an account of the FBI report on the autopsy was leaked and reported in a number of news sources.
One of those was the Washington Post.
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Early Newspaper Accounts on the "Kennedy Autopsy Report"
The Washington Post published a leaked version of the FBI autopsy report noting a couple of things of importance:
1. The "first bullet...was found deep in his shoulder." This bullet "caused a hematoma, a pooling of blood, inside the neck and shoulder muscles, but no critical harm." The bullet "hit the President in the back shoulder, 5 to 7 inches below the collar line."
2. The throat wound was caused by a bullet fragment that was defected and passed out the front of the throat, "creating an erroneous belief" that one shot hit him in the neck from the front.
The Washington Post published a leaked version of the FBI autopsy report noting a couple of things of importance:
1. The "first bullet...was found deep in his shoulder." This bullet "caused a hematoma, a pooling of blood, inside the neck and shoulder muscles, but no critical harm." The bullet "hit the President in the back shoulder, 5 to 7 inches below the collar line."
2. The throat wound was caused by a bullet fragment that was defected and passed out the front of the throat, "creating an erroneous belief" that one shot hit him in the neck from the front.
from The Washington Post, December 18, 1963 Notice another article on the same page about the bubble-top on the Presidential limousine being made bullet-proof. Sort of closing the barn door after the horse had already escaped. This would also be the car's second trip to Dearborn, the first being when the hole in the windshield was turned into a "crack." Read more at https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/the-limousine-redux-reduced.html
So the "king-size fragment" was now a "bullet"--more dramatic news reporting, after all--and it was found buried "deep in his shoulder" rather than falling out when the body was lifted. But close enough to Custer's account.
Some of the other news accounts say that the bullet was found "in the limousine." Different accounts of the early leaked autopsy report can be found on my site at https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/leaked-early-fbi-autopsy-report.html.
Again, I contend that it was a fragmented bullet, with one "king-size" fragment falling out of the body and being recovered during the autopsy, and other smaller fragments being found in the limousine. How did the "king-size" fragment get to Kennedy's shoulder? Well, just as the early leaked accounts of the autopsy report, this large fragment first "ricocheted off some part of the limousine"--the seat back. What wasn't reported was that it first exited the back of Kennedy's head before making that ricochet. The reduced speed of the fragment, after penetrating two layers of bone plus brain plus the limousine seat-back, accounts for its shallow penetration--only 2-3 inches. I believe that all the discussion of whether Kennedy would have survived this "non-lethal" wound was actually a discussion of whether he would have survived the first head-shot, before the AR-15 accident ensured that there would be no survival.
I further contend that this bullet fragmented on impact, and a tiny fragment made an internal ricochet off the inside of the back of the skull, and was deflected by an internal ricochet to exit at the throat. That a deflected fragment caused the throat wound was also reflected in the newspaper accounts of the FBI autopsy report. A fragment exiting at the throat created the Parkland doctors' erroneous belief of a frontal shot to the throat, but the the shot entered at the forehead/temple region (just at the hairline above the outside corner of the right eye), not "from behind," as the early accounts of the autopsy report claimed. I believe that the doctors were under orders to keep the frontal shot under wraps.
So the next question is...Why? Why cover up a shot that came from Oswald?
I answer that question in another article.
Some of the other news accounts say that the bullet was found "in the limousine." Different accounts of the early leaked autopsy report can be found on my site at https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/leaked-early-fbi-autopsy-report.html.
Again, I contend that it was a fragmented bullet, with one "king-size" fragment falling out of the body and being recovered during the autopsy, and other smaller fragments being found in the limousine. How did the "king-size" fragment get to Kennedy's shoulder? Well, just as the early leaked accounts of the autopsy report, this large fragment first "ricocheted off some part of the limousine"--the seat back. What wasn't reported was that it first exited the back of Kennedy's head before making that ricochet. The reduced speed of the fragment, after penetrating two layers of bone plus brain plus the limousine seat-back, accounts for its shallow penetration--only 2-3 inches. I believe that all the discussion of whether Kennedy would have survived this "non-lethal" wound was actually a discussion of whether he would have survived the first head-shot, before the AR-15 accident ensured that there would be no survival.
I further contend that this bullet fragmented on impact, and a tiny fragment made an internal ricochet off the inside of the back of the skull, and was deflected by an internal ricochet to exit at the throat. That a deflected fragment caused the throat wound was also reflected in the newspaper accounts of the FBI autopsy report. A fragment exiting at the throat created the Parkland doctors' erroneous belief of a frontal shot to the throat, but the the shot entered at the forehead/temple region (just at the hairline above the outside corner of the right eye), not "from behind," as the early accounts of the autopsy report claimed. I believe that the doctors were under orders to keep the frontal shot under wraps.
So the next question is...Why? Why cover up a shot that came from Oswald?
I answer that question in another article.