Multiple Stretcher Bullets and the Paul Landis Revalation
The recent Paul Landis revelation that he found a bullet in the Presidential limousine and put it on Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One lends itself to a separate web page (rather than being buried in the "News" of my Home page), so here it is. I've previously written about "Multiple Stretcher Bullets" in one of my Micro-Studies books. The Landis admission doesn't really change my scenario much, except that instead of falling out of Kennedy's head from a partial exit due to cardiac massage or whatever, the bullet was placed on the stretcher by Landis.
My friend and doctoral student Tim Cochran (whose thesis is on the JFK assassination and supports the Hickey-as-accidental-shooter scenario) alerted me to this interesting article concerning SS Agent Paul Landis and a confession he makes in an upcoming book: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-secret-service-agent-reacts-to-colleague--s-changing-testimony-on-jfk-assassination/ar-AA1gzTZa Apparently, Landis saw a nearly intact (except for rifle striations) spent bullet in the limousine, put it in his pocket, then put it on Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One.
My friend thought that Landis is now telling this story in order to sell his upcoming book. However, it seems that Landis did say something in 1983, about a bullet fragment that he found in the limousine. According to the 1983 account, "There was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat that he picked up and gave to somebody." (See https://bleedingcool.com/pop-culture/jfk-secret-service-agent-told-a-different-story-about-bullet-in-1983/ which contains a link to one 1983 article.) This was not an exact quote, and it's possible that something was lost in the telling--i.e., that the "bullet" became a "fragment" based on confusion or misinterpretation on the interviewer's part, especially since nose and tail fragments WERE found in the front of the limo,
The Landis bullet is probably the same one as Nurse Hall's Trauma Room One bullet, which she described as being picked up from Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One while Kennedy was being treated, and taken out of the room in a specimen container. (The revelation of the "specimen container" was made in a personal phone interview with me, rather than news accounts, where she just describes it as being "removed." I published as close to a transcript of the interview as I could manage, since Nurse Hall declined to let me record the interview, in one of my Micro-Studies books.) The main differences between the Landis bullet and the Nurse Hall bullet are:
It's got to be the same bullet. Perhaps Landis or Hall mis-remembered exactly where on the stretcher the bullet was placed/seen, but I doubt that there were two bullets on Kennedy's stretcher. Apparently I'm not the only one to think that the Hall/Landis bullet are one and the same. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12509921/JFK-assassination-nurse-Phyllis-Hall-Paul-Landis.html which re-vamps an old article based on a Sixth Floor Museum interview with Nurse Hall (wherein she describes her stretcher bullet), based on the Landis claims.
So what's with the "Multiple" Stretcher Bullets? In the JFK assassination lore, there are various accounts of bullets and stretchers, to which the Landis account has now been added:
Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas and co-plaintiff in the Mary Farrell foundation lawsuit against the Biden administration and NARA, wryly reports a hearsay comment by Parkland Head Nurse Doris Nelson: "I wish they would stop putting bullets on these stretchers." (See "Duquesne University 2003 JFK Assassination Conference: Josiah Thompson" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolUozA1Crw). We now have three stretchers, and what appears to be three bullets, with two of them being placed on stretchers by Secret Service agents. Which gives us a good explanation for this otherwise absurd-seeming comment.
Problematically for the Single Bullet theory, Darrell Tomlinson refused to identify the hallway stretcher on as the Connally/elevator stretcher, but insisted it was the other stretcher (i.e., not Connally's) where he found the bullet. Also unfortunately for the Single Bullet Theory, multiple Parkland nurses testified to the Warren Commission that Kennedy's stretcher had been moved to Trauma Room Two (not the hallway) and remained there for some time after the body was transferred to a casket. Author and private investigator Josiah Thompson gives convincing argument for the hallway stretcher on which the bullet was found as having been used by neither Kennedy nor Connally, but by a young boy named Ronnie Fuller, who was admitted for "profuse bleeding due to a fall." Moreover, Tomlinson and Wright described the bullet they saw on the hallway stretcher as "pointed," which certainly doesn't describe the supposed hallway stretcher bullet, round-tipped Mannlicher-Carcanno 6.5mm bullet known as Commission Exhibit CE-399. Nurse Hall likewise described the Trauma Room One bullet as "pointed."
Tomlinson, and Wright described their hallway stretcher bullet as being "pointed," and Nurse Hall also described her Trauma Room One bullet as "pointed." And we have accounts by Secret Service agents of having moved this bullet around. The "pointed" description more closely matches the type of ammunition used by the AR-15 rifle than the round-tipped Mannlicher-Carcanno ammunition.
So can any of this be resolved? Without resorting to multiple assassins firing at the limousine from different directions? Here's where a bit of logical conjecture comes in. Let's considers that the Paul Landis, Nurse Hall, Sam Kinney, and Tomlinson/Wright bullets are in fact, one and the same bullet. Let's also consider that this "pointed" bullet was the AR-15 bullet that struck Kennedy in the head for the second time as a result of an unintended slam-fire discharge.
How did the same bullet end up on two stretchers?
It's clear that Landis and Kinney were ignoring basic criminal procedures by picking up evidence and moving it around. Were the Secret Service agents even trained in the handling of evidence? If they were, they ignored their training. So how much of a stretch is it to imagine this scenario? Landis sees the (pointed AR-15) bullet in the limousine and pockets it, then puts it on the stretcher in Trauma Room One. He might have put it at the foot of the stretcher, with someone else moving it to where Nurse Hall saw it, or either Nurse Hall or Paul Landis misremembered exactly where on the stretcher the bullet was put/seen. The bullet is put in a specimen container and taken out of the room, and given to a Secret Service agent in charge (Kellerman? Roberts?). Whoever it is given to recognizes that there is a chain-of-evidence problem, and tries to "preserve" the evidence by taking it out of the container and putting it back in the limousine. (In actuality, this action further complicates the chain of custody). Next Sam Kinney starts to clean the limousine (photographed there with buckets), and finds the bullet. He picks it up and takes it back to (Kellerman/Roberts), who exasperatedly tells him to "Put it back!" Someone else tells Kinney that it came from the President's stretcher. So Kinney goes to put it back on the President's stretcher. Only by this time, Kennedy has been moved into the casket and his stretcher (in Trauma Room Two) is nowhere to be seen, so Kinney puts it on the only stretcher he sees--Ronnie Fuller's hallway stretcher--assuming that it was the President's stretcher. The chain of custody for this bullet is now throughly f***ed up, and in the cover-up of the AR-15 accident (which began immediately after Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby), a round-tipped Mannlicher-Carcanno bullet (CE-399) is substituted for the pointed AR-15 bullet and passed off as the "stretcher" bullet.
Two stretchers, same bullet, carelessly moved around by Secret Service agents, because they were poorly trained in the handling of evidence or otherwise willing to mush the facts of evidence to make it appear as if chain-of-custody was "preserved," but in the process making a greater muddle of it.
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Clint Hill said that the (new) Landis version "couldn't have happened that way" but I've shown in my documentary how misleading Clint Hill can be when he chooses to be (e.g., "Where was the blow-out, Clint?"). I also don't think there was a "Grassy Knoll shooter" on the other side of the picket fence, because Lee Bowers would have seen him from the railroad tower, as I pointed out in my documentary. And even though both Landis and Kinney claimed to have seen evidence of the "Grassy Knoll shooter," I think it's more likely they would make that claim--which was not under oath--in order to protect their fellow agent George Hickey, who was handling a defective weapon.
It was a "Comedy of Errors" scenario of the Secret Service responses on that day. Trauma Room One nurses testified to the Warren Commission that Kennedy's stretcher was moved to Trauma Room Two after the President's body was placed in the casket, and it remained there for some time. The hallway stretcher could not have been Kennedy's. The hallway stretcher on which the bullet was found (Josiah Thompson gives convincing reasons why) was young patient Ronnie Fuller's stretcher, The hallway stretcher bullet was "planted" only in the sense that it was mistakenly put there by confused Secret Service agents who were either clueless about chain of evidence procedures or willfully ignored them. They may, or may not, have realized that it was an AR-15 bullet, and that it struck Kennedy in the head.
Stupidity, not malice.
In summary, here's what happened: Kennedy is taken out of the limo and put on a stretcher and wheeled to Trauma Room One. Meanwhile, Landis sees the spent (pointed, AR-15) bullet, pockets it, and takes it with him as he follows Kennedy and the stretcher to Trauma Room One, where he places the bullet on the stretcher. Meanwhile, Nurse Hall is recruited to assist in Trauma Room One, and sees the bullet picked up by hospital staff and placed in a specimen container and taken out of the room. The bullet is given to someone of authority in the Secret Service out in the hallway (Kellerman or Roberts), who takes it out of the container to examine it, and asks where it came from. He is told two things: 1) that it came from Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One, and 2) (by Landis) that it came from the Limousine. In the interest of either "preserving" evidence, he (or another agent by his orders) takes it out of the container and puts it back in the limousine. Then Sam Kinney, who was photographed (along with Hickey) with a bucket and sponge cleaning the limousine and putting the bubble top back on the limo, finds the bullet AGAIN and takes it to Kellerman or Roberts AGAIN, who tells him to "put it back where it came from." Someone ELSE tells him that it came from Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One. Except, by this time, Kennedy's stretcher no longer is in Trauma Room One--It's in Trauma Room Two after Kennedy was transferred to a casket (Connally having been taken up to surgery), and Secret Service agents are busy fighting Parkland pathologist Dr. Earl Rose over the President's body. So Kinney puts it on the only stretcher he can see in the hallway, which of course was Kennedy's stretcher at all, but on the stretcher used by child patient Ronnie Fuller. A short time later, Connally's stretcher is placed on the elevator and sent back down to the Emergency Department. There, Darrell Tomlinson takes it out of the elevator and puts it into the hallway. About that same time, someone goes into the men's bathroom, and moves the stretcher to get to the door. Tomlinson goes to push that stretcher out of the way of hallway traffic, and he sees the "pointed" bullet on the stretcher. He alerts hospital head of security O.P. Wright, who gives the spent, intact, "pointed" bullet to Secret Service agent Richard Johnson (not part of the Kennedy detail) who was still lingering at Parkland Hospital. Eventually, the "pointed" (AR-15) bullet is "disappeared," replaced by the substitute round-tipped Carcanno round. The original pointed bullet is the "mysterious 7:30 bullet" described by John Hunt in his essay (no longer available at the JFK Lancer website) that was given to Secret Service Chief James Rowley and put in the envelope marked as received from Rowley at 7:30 pm, as Hunt described. (Meanwhile, the AR-15 rifle is the "gun that apparently killed the President" described in the Shanklin memo from Hunt's original article as being in the possession of the Secret Service, whereas the Oswald Carcanno weapon was never in the hands of the Secret Service. Additionally, there is autopsy X-ray technician Jerrol Custer's testimony that a "king-size" bullet fragment fell out of Kennedy's back during the autopsy, accompanied by contemporaneous news accounts of a "bullet" being recovered from Kennedy's shoulder during the autopsy.) Custer's king-size fragment and the limousine nose and tail fragments were from Oswald's first shot, the fragmented bullet that struck Connally was recovered at Parkland Hospital (described by Connally in his autobiographical book and described in Robert Harris' essay "The Connally Bullet") was subsequently made to disappear, the "Single Bullet Theory" BS was invented, and the imperfect nature of the cover-up began leading to any number of conspiracy theories.
That account of the stretcher bullet may all seem rather convoluted, with the bullet being picked up and moved multiple times, but it's not implausible. And it matches witness accounts (including the one given by Paul Landis), without the problem of adding a multitude of extra shots. My speculation is certainly more feasible than the Single Bullet Theory invented by Arlen Specter. The only real change needed to the scenario I proposed in one of my Micro-Studies book is that the AR-15 bullet was originally found in the car and placed on the Trauma Room One stretcher by Landis instead of being a partial exit and falling out of Kennedy's head during cardiac massage. A Secret Service miscommunication or two among hungover agents during a time of great stress, a desire to cover up the actual origin of the bullet as well as the level of Secret Service errors, the substitution of a rounded Carcano bullet for the original "pointed" bullet that was actually found, the disappearance of the actual Connally fragments, and voila! The "magic bullet" nonsense is born. The alternative is that the conspiracy theorists were right, that multiple shots were being fired from more shooters than just Oswald (and Hickey) with weapons involving silencers, because there would have been too many stretcher bullets to account for otherwise. Honestly, though, that would still leave the question of why all the cover-up took place, whereas the explanations of the AR-15 slam-fire accident (as well as my explanation of the front-to-back windshield hole) are a better fit and give a reasonable motive for the cover-up.
There's a bit of other information of interest. O.P. Wright's widow Elizabeth Wright-Good apparently recalled that "bullets were found on several stretchers" around the time of the assassination (recalling head nurse Doris Nelson reportedly saying, "I wish they'd stop putting bullets on these stretchers." Apparently the nurse who picked up the Connally bullet (or fragment) showed it to D.A. Henry Wade before giving it to Highway Patrolman Bobby Nolan and subsequently disappeared. It was a different chain of custody than the hallway stretcher bullet. Elizabeth Wright-Good, meanwhile, was given a bullet by her husband as a souvenir of sorts (Wright apparently kept some bullets in his desk, or at least had one to give to Josiah Thompson as being "like" the stretcher bullet he had turned over to the Secret Service). Mrs. Wright-Good told researcher Mark Oakes that the bullet her husband had given her was "not part of the evidence" and could not remember exactly when her husband had given her (sometime around the weekend of the assassination), "It was there" (at the hospital) but she didn't know anything more about it than that, adding "and obviously, it has not been shot." (She shows the bullet on camera, but it is impossible to get a good look at it due to focus and distance). But she did say herself that she didn't think it was part of the JFK/Connally evidence. See Mark Oakes' interview of Elizabeth Wright-Good in "Feature Presentation: 'The Death of the Magic Bullet (JFK Assassination)'" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66W6N2_xlU (about 16:00).
The recent Paul Landis revelation that he found a bullet in the Presidential limousine and put it on Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One lends itself to a separate web page (rather than being buried in the "News" of my Home page), so here it is. I've previously written about "Multiple Stretcher Bullets" in one of my Micro-Studies books. The Landis admission doesn't really change my scenario much, except that instead of falling out of Kennedy's head from a partial exit due to cardiac massage or whatever, the bullet was placed on the stretcher by Landis.
My friend and doctoral student Tim Cochran (whose thesis is on the JFK assassination and supports the Hickey-as-accidental-shooter scenario) alerted me to this interesting article concerning SS Agent Paul Landis and a confession he makes in an upcoming book: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-secret-service-agent-reacts-to-colleague--s-changing-testimony-on-jfk-assassination/ar-AA1gzTZa Apparently, Landis saw a nearly intact (except for rifle striations) spent bullet in the limousine, put it in his pocket, then put it on Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One.
My friend thought that Landis is now telling this story in order to sell his upcoming book. However, it seems that Landis did say something in 1983, about a bullet fragment that he found in the limousine. According to the 1983 account, "There was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat that he picked up and gave to somebody." (See https://bleedingcool.com/pop-culture/jfk-secret-service-agent-told-a-different-story-about-bullet-in-1983/ which contains a link to one 1983 article.) This was not an exact quote, and it's possible that something was lost in the telling--i.e., that the "bullet" became a "fragment" based on confusion or misinterpretation on the interviewer's part, especially since nose and tail fragments WERE found in the front of the limo,
The Landis bullet is probably the same one as Nurse Hall's Trauma Room One bullet, which she described as being picked up from Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One while Kennedy was being treated, and taken out of the room in a specimen container. (The revelation of the "specimen container" was made in a personal phone interview with me, rather than news accounts, where she just describes it as being "removed." I published as close to a transcript of the interview as I could manage, since Nurse Hall declined to let me record the interview, in one of my Micro-Studies books.) The main differences between the Landis bullet and the Nurse Hall bullet are:
- Landis says that he put the bullet at the foot of the stretcher, whereas Nurse Hall described it as being near the head. So one of them might be misremembering where the bullet was placed/found, or perhaps someone else moved it from the foot of the stretcher to the head/shoulder area before Nurse Hall saw it.
- Landis apparently identified the round-tipped CE-399 as being his bullet (actually, it was the news people who did that), and Nurse Hall specifically described her stretcher bullet as "pointed."
It's got to be the same bullet. Perhaps Landis or Hall mis-remembered exactly where on the stretcher the bullet was placed/seen, but I doubt that there were two bullets on Kennedy's stretcher. Apparently I'm not the only one to think that the Hall/Landis bullet are one and the same. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12509921/JFK-assassination-nurse-Phyllis-Hall-Paul-Landis.html which re-vamps an old article based on a Sixth Floor Museum interview with Nurse Hall (wherein she describes her stretcher bullet), based on the Landis claims.
So what's with the "Multiple" Stretcher Bullets? In the JFK assassination lore, there are various accounts of bullets and stretchers, to which the Landis account has now been added:
- Secret Service agent Paul Landis admitted to pocketing a relatively undamaged (except for rifle striations) bullet he found at the back of Kennedy's limousine and then putting it on Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One while the President was being treated (per the links given above).
- Secret Service driver agent Sam Kinney, through his friend Gary Loucks, also admitted to putting a bullet on a stretcher (probably the hallway stretcher). (Kinney relayed the story of finding the bullet in the limo and putting it on the hallway stretcher to his neighbor and friend Gary Loucks. Listen to Vince Palamara's interview with Loucks at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27866-for-pat-speer-jfk-secret-service-agent-sam-kinneys-neighbors-gary-loucks-revelations/ for the forum discussion, or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaW6k0N6ZzI&t=110s for the interview alone.)
- Parkland Nurse Phyllis Hall, some decades after the assassination, in a Sixth Floor Museum Living History interview, described seeing a bullet on Kennedy's stretcher while he was being treated in Trauma Room One. She saw this bullet at the head of the stretcher, "between his ear and his shoulder." She described this bullet as"intact" and "pointed," and said it was "removed" (i.e., taken out of the room). To me, she added that it was placed in a "specimen container" before being taken from the room. (See link above and the personal phone call with me transcribed in my Micro-Studies book.)
- Parkland employee Darrell Tomlinson saw a bullet on a hallway stretcher (one of two stretchers, one being in the hallway before Tomlinson removed a stretcher--Governor Connally's--from the elevator and moved it to the hallway) and alerting Parkland head of security O.P. Wright. Wright picked up the bullet and passed it along to authorities (i.e., to Secret Service agent Richard Johnson). This bullet was described as "intact" and "pointed." (See Warren Commission testimonies and Josiah Thompson's book Six Seconds in Dallas.)
- John Connally, the Texas Governor who was shot along with Kennedy, but survived, in his autobiographical book In History's Shadow described a bullet as falling from his stretcher and being picked up and pocketed by a nurse. He didn't actually describe this bullet other than by the sound it made as it hit the floor. (It might have been a fragment.) (See Connally's book In History's Shadow and the Robert Harris article "The Connally Bullet" at https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-connally-bullet .)
Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas and co-plaintiff in the Mary Farrell foundation lawsuit against the Biden administration and NARA, wryly reports a hearsay comment by Parkland Head Nurse Doris Nelson: "I wish they would stop putting bullets on these stretchers." (See "Duquesne University 2003 JFK Assassination Conference: Josiah Thompson" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolUozA1Crw). We now have three stretchers, and what appears to be three bullets, with two of them being placed on stretchers by Secret Service agents. Which gives us a good explanation for this otherwise absurd-seeming comment.
Problematically for the Single Bullet theory, Darrell Tomlinson refused to identify the hallway stretcher on as the Connally/elevator stretcher, but insisted it was the other stretcher (i.e., not Connally's) where he found the bullet. Also unfortunately for the Single Bullet Theory, multiple Parkland nurses testified to the Warren Commission that Kennedy's stretcher had been moved to Trauma Room Two (not the hallway) and remained there for some time after the body was transferred to a casket. Author and private investigator Josiah Thompson gives convincing argument for the hallway stretcher on which the bullet was found as having been used by neither Kennedy nor Connally, but by a young boy named Ronnie Fuller, who was admitted for "profuse bleeding due to a fall." Moreover, Tomlinson and Wright described the bullet they saw on the hallway stretcher as "pointed," which certainly doesn't describe the supposed hallway stretcher bullet, round-tipped Mannlicher-Carcanno 6.5mm bullet known as Commission Exhibit CE-399. Nurse Hall likewise described the Trauma Room One bullet as "pointed."
Tomlinson, and Wright described their hallway stretcher bullet as being "pointed," and Nurse Hall also described her Trauma Room One bullet as "pointed." And we have accounts by Secret Service agents of having moved this bullet around. The "pointed" description more closely matches the type of ammunition used by the AR-15 rifle than the round-tipped Mannlicher-Carcanno ammunition.
So can any of this be resolved? Without resorting to multiple assassins firing at the limousine from different directions? Here's where a bit of logical conjecture comes in. Let's considers that the Paul Landis, Nurse Hall, Sam Kinney, and Tomlinson/Wright bullets are in fact, one and the same bullet. Let's also consider that this "pointed" bullet was the AR-15 bullet that struck Kennedy in the head for the second time as a result of an unintended slam-fire discharge.
How did the same bullet end up on two stretchers?
It's clear that Landis and Kinney were ignoring basic criminal procedures by picking up evidence and moving it around. Were the Secret Service agents even trained in the handling of evidence? If they were, they ignored their training. So how much of a stretch is it to imagine this scenario? Landis sees the (pointed AR-15) bullet in the limousine and pockets it, then puts it on the stretcher in Trauma Room One. He might have put it at the foot of the stretcher, with someone else moving it to where Nurse Hall saw it, or either Nurse Hall or Paul Landis misremembered exactly where on the stretcher the bullet was put/seen. The bullet is put in a specimen container and taken out of the room, and given to a Secret Service agent in charge (Kellerman? Roberts?). Whoever it is given to recognizes that there is a chain-of-evidence problem, and tries to "preserve" the evidence by taking it out of the container and putting it back in the limousine. (In actuality, this action further complicates the chain of custody). Next Sam Kinney starts to clean the limousine (photographed there with buckets), and finds the bullet. He picks it up and takes it back to (Kellerman/Roberts), who exasperatedly tells him to "Put it back!" Someone else tells Kinney that it came from the President's stretcher. So Kinney goes to put it back on the President's stretcher. Only by this time, Kennedy has been moved into the casket and his stretcher (in Trauma Room Two) is nowhere to be seen, so Kinney puts it on the only stretcher he sees--Ronnie Fuller's hallway stretcher--assuming that it was the President's stretcher. The chain of custody for this bullet is now throughly f***ed up, and in the cover-up of the AR-15 accident (which began immediately after Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby), a round-tipped Mannlicher-Carcanno bullet (CE-399) is substituted for the pointed AR-15 bullet and passed off as the "stretcher" bullet.
Two stretchers, same bullet, carelessly moved around by Secret Service agents, because they were poorly trained in the handling of evidence or otherwise willing to mush the facts of evidence to make it appear as if chain-of-custody was "preserved," but in the process making a greater muddle of it.
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Clint Hill said that the (new) Landis version "couldn't have happened that way" but I've shown in my documentary how misleading Clint Hill can be when he chooses to be (e.g., "Where was the blow-out, Clint?"). I also don't think there was a "Grassy Knoll shooter" on the other side of the picket fence, because Lee Bowers would have seen him from the railroad tower, as I pointed out in my documentary. And even though both Landis and Kinney claimed to have seen evidence of the "Grassy Knoll shooter," I think it's more likely they would make that claim--which was not under oath--in order to protect their fellow agent George Hickey, who was handling a defective weapon.
It was a "Comedy of Errors" scenario of the Secret Service responses on that day. Trauma Room One nurses testified to the Warren Commission that Kennedy's stretcher was moved to Trauma Room Two after the President's body was placed in the casket, and it remained there for some time. The hallway stretcher could not have been Kennedy's. The hallway stretcher on which the bullet was found (Josiah Thompson gives convincing reasons why) was young patient Ronnie Fuller's stretcher, The hallway stretcher bullet was "planted" only in the sense that it was mistakenly put there by confused Secret Service agents who were either clueless about chain of evidence procedures or willfully ignored them. They may, or may not, have realized that it was an AR-15 bullet, and that it struck Kennedy in the head.
Stupidity, not malice.
In summary, here's what happened: Kennedy is taken out of the limo and put on a stretcher and wheeled to Trauma Room One. Meanwhile, Landis sees the spent (pointed, AR-15) bullet, pockets it, and takes it with him as he follows Kennedy and the stretcher to Trauma Room One, where he places the bullet on the stretcher. Meanwhile, Nurse Hall is recruited to assist in Trauma Room One, and sees the bullet picked up by hospital staff and placed in a specimen container and taken out of the room. The bullet is given to someone of authority in the Secret Service out in the hallway (Kellerman or Roberts), who takes it out of the container to examine it, and asks where it came from. He is told two things: 1) that it came from Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One, and 2) (by Landis) that it came from the Limousine. In the interest of either "preserving" evidence, he (or another agent by his orders) takes it out of the container and puts it back in the limousine. Then Sam Kinney, who was photographed (along with Hickey) with a bucket and sponge cleaning the limousine and putting the bubble top back on the limo, finds the bullet AGAIN and takes it to Kellerman or Roberts AGAIN, who tells him to "put it back where it came from." Someone ELSE tells him that it came from Kennedy's stretcher in Trauma Room One. Except, by this time, Kennedy's stretcher no longer is in Trauma Room One--It's in Trauma Room Two after Kennedy was transferred to a casket (Connally having been taken up to surgery), and Secret Service agents are busy fighting Parkland pathologist Dr. Earl Rose over the President's body. So Kinney puts it on the only stretcher he can see in the hallway, which of course was Kennedy's stretcher at all, but on the stretcher used by child patient Ronnie Fuller. A short time later, Connally's stretcher is placed on the elevator and sent back down to the Emergency Department. There, Darrell Tomlinson takes it out of the elevator and puts it into the hallway. About that same time, someone goes into the men's bathroom, and moves the stretcher to get to the door. Tomlinson goes to push that stretcher out of the way of hallway traffic, and he sees the "pointed" bullet on the stretcher. He alerts hospital head of security O.P. Wright, who gives the spent, intact, "pointed" bullet to Secret Service agent Richard Johnson (not part of the Kennedy detail) who was still lingering at Parkland Hospital. Eventually, the "pointed" (AR-15) bullet is "disappeared," replaced by the substitute round-tipped Carcanno round. The original pointed bullet is the "mysterious 7:30 bullet" described by John Hunt in his essay (no longer available at the JFK Lancer website) that was given to Secret Service Chief James Rowley and put in the envelope marked as received from Rowley at 7:30 pm, as Hunt described. (Meanwhile, the AR-15 rifle is the "gun that apparently killed the President" described in the Shanklin memo from Hunt's original article as being in the possession of the Secret Service, whereas the Oswald Carcanno weapon was never in the hands of the Secret Service. Additionally, there is autopsy X-ray technician Jerrol Custer's testimony that a "king-size" bullet fragment fell out of Kennedy's back during the autopsy, accompanied by contemporaneous news accounts of a "bullet" being recovered from Kennedy's shoulder during the autopsy.) Custer's king-size fragment and the limousine nose and tail fragments were from Oswald's first shot, the fragmented bullet that struck Connally was recovered at Parkland Hospital (described by Connally in his autobiographical book and described in Robert Harris' essay "The Connally Bullet") was subsequently made to disappear, the "Single Bullet Theory" BS was invented, and the imperfect nature of the cover-up began leading to any number of conspiracy theories.
That account of the stretcher bullet may all seem rather convoluted, with the bullet being picked up and moved multiple times, but it's not implausible. And it matches witness accounts (including the one given by Paul Landis), without the problem of adding a multitude of extra shots. My speculation is certainly more feasible than the Single Bullet Theory invented by Arlen Specter. The only real change needed to the scenario I proposed in one of my Micro-Studies book is that the AR-15 bullet was originally found in the car and placed on the Trauma Room One stretcher by Landis instead of being a partial exit and falling out of Kennedy's head during cardiac massage. A Secret Service miscommunication or two among hungover agents during a time of great stress, a desire to cover up the actual origin of the bullet as well as the level of Secret Service errors, the substitution of a rounded Carcano bullet for the original "pointed" bullet that was actually found, the disappearance of the actual Connally fragments, and voila! The "magic bullet" nonsense is born. The alternative is that the conspiracy theorists were right, that multiple shots were being fired from more shooters than just Oswald (and Hickey) with weapons involving silencers, because there would have been too many stretcher bullets to account for otherwise. Honestly, though, that would still leave the question of why all the cover-up took place, whereas the explanations of the AR-15 slam-fire accident (as well as my explanation of the front-to-back windshield hole) are a better fit and give a reasonable motive for the cover-up.
There's a bit of other information of interest. O.P. Wright's widow Elizabeth Wright-Good apparently recalled that "bullets were found on several stretchers" around the time of the assassination (recalling head nurse Doris Nelson reportedly saying, "I wish they'd stop putting bullets on these stretchers." Apparently the nurse who picked up the Connally bullet (or fragment) showed it to D.A. Henry Wade before giving it to Highway Patrolman Bobby Nolan and subsequently disappeared. It was a different chain of custody than the hallway stretcher bullet. Elizabeth Wright-Good, meanwhile, was given a bullet by her husband as a souvenir of sorts (Wright apparently kept some bullets in his desk, or at least had one to give to Josiah Thompson as being "like" the stretcher bullet he had turned over to the Secret Service). Mrs. Wright-Good told researcher Mark Oakes that the bullet her husband had given her was "not part of the evidence" and could not remember exactly when her husband had given her (sometime around the weekend of the assassination), "It was there" (at the hospital) but she didn't know anything more about it than that, adding "and obviously, it has not been shot." (She shows the bullet on camera, but it is impossible to get a good look at it due to focus and distance). But she did say herself that she didn't think it was part of the JFK/Connally evidence. See Mark Oakes' interview of Elizabeth Wright-Good in "Feature Presentation: 'The Death of the Magic Bullet (JFK Assassination)'" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66W6N2_xlU (about 16:00).