Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

 I want to discuss the Single Bullet Theory, but I don’t mean the theory that a single bullet traversed Kennedy and Connally. I mean just that a single bullet traversed Kennedy; that the back wound and the throat wound were caused by the same bullet.

The first medical team that saw JFK were the Parland doctors. They didn’t discover the back wound, but as regards the throat wound, they thought, unequivocally, that it was an entrance wound. Dr. Perry spoke for them, and if you listen to his press conference, he was categorical that it was an entrance wound, and no other Parkland doctor challenged him.

It was the opposite at Bethesda, where they found the back wound but missed the throat wound. Dr. Humes thought it was just a tracheotomy in his neck, and it never dawned on him that there was a bullet wound there.

It’s very odd because JFK’s White House physician, Admiral George Burkley, was there, and he had also been at Parkland. So, why didn’t he tell Humes about the bullet wound in JFK’s throat? I can’t answer that.

But, they did find the back wound, and several of them probed it. They found no bullet inside the wound, and they also x-rayed JFK’s whole body and found no bullet within him. Nobody suggested at the autopsy that the bullet from the back wound came out his throat.

They didn’t dissect Kennedy to reveal the whole track of the back wound. There is an urban legend that they wanted to, but the admirals in the room wouldn’t let them.

But, the next morning, Humes talked to Perry and found out about the bullet wound in JFK’s throat. And that’s when the idea of a single bullet that traversed Kennedy was born.

I’m being facetious because I actually think that it was all planned in advance. The plotters knew that they were making a shallow wound in JFK’s back with the ice dart, and since the ice was going to melt, there was going to be no projectile there. And that’s why they also made a shallow wound in his throat, again with a dissolvable missile, but it wasn’t ice. And that would leave them with two shallow wounds and no missiles, which opened the door to concluding that a single bullet traversed Kennedy.

Again, I’m leaving out the part about Connally because that didn’t surface until April 1964.  

But, let’s go back to Humes talking to Perry and finding out about the throat wound. That is when he should have DEMANDED that he be allowed to go back in and track the back wound to find out, definitively, if it was connected to the throat wound. And, if necessary, he should have threatened them, that he would go on a nationwide tour denouncing the autopsy and accusing them of obstructing justice, if they wouldn’t let him do it. Of course, Humes wasn’t that kind of guy.

So, that is the context of what happened. But now, let’s talk about the medical context of JFK having a burrowing wound, a tunnel, from back to throat, entering adjacent to the midline in back and exiting in the midline in front, and the effect that that would have on him, and his capacities.

First, be aware that Dr. David Mantik told me that he analyzed it and determined that such a bullet path would have impacted the spinal cord. Obviously, if it had done that, it would have been devastating and JFK would have collapsed. Most of his somatic muscles would have been denervated, and very likely, he would have lost consciousness.  Obviously, that didn’t happen, and there is no evidence that ANY of JFK’s muscles lost their nerve supply.

There is no doubt that JFK’s spinal cord was not traumatized. But, a bullet entering the top of his back, adjacent to his spine, and exiting in the midline of his throat, would surely have gotten close to his spinal cord. So, in what condition would JFK be from that?

Even if the bullet didn’t hit his spinal cord, it would have burrowed through the nerve that emerge though the intervertebral foramina.

So, it starts as rootlets that emerge from the spinal cord. They coalesce into roots. Then the roots become a spinal ganglion. And then the spinal nerve, which contains both sensory and motor fibers, emerges from that and goes out to the body.

So, even if the bullet missed the spinal cord, it would still likely blow through the emerging nerve tissue and interrupt the transmission of nerve signals between the spinal cord and the body.

I am not aware that there has ever been another shooting victim with a traumatic wound like the one that, supposedly, happened to Kennedy.  So, we don’t have any comparable cases to compare it to. But, we can still deduce that, if Kennedy had been impacted in the manner claimed, that the consequences would have been dire, that his muscles would have been affected, that some muscles would have lost their innervation, and that his ability to sit upright would have been stalled.

From looking at the Zapruder film, we can see that Kennedy was highly impaired. He exhibited muscle spasms in which he lost control of his arms. He raised them in response to a respiratory obstruction from the throat shot, and he cleared that obstruction by coughing. But after that, he couldn’t put his arms down. That involved the deltoid muscles and the elbow flexion muscles, therefore the biceps and the brachialis. But, as he sat there, the spasticity spread to include the trapezius, the levator, and other muscles, causing him to hunch his shoulders severely. JFK also experienced a complete mental collapse, in which he lost the ability to speak, to communicate in any way, to be aware of his surroundings, to respond, or to take any kind of evasive or defensive action.

But, the question is: did he exhibit any sign of nerve interference, where the transmission of nerve signals from his central nervous system to his muscles was interrupted? And the answer is: no he did not. And I tell you that that disallows the single bullet theory, even as it applies to JFK alone.

So, I am left with the strong belief that JFK had two shallow wounds: one in his back and the other in his throat. The back wound involved no damage to vital tissue. It affected skin, fascia, and muscle, and nothing else. And the throat wound damaged the lower trachea on the left side (and keep in mind that the trachea is very superficial, that you can place your index finger at the bottom of your throat and touch it through the skin) and it also caused a mild contusion (which is a bruise) in the apex of his right lung. But, that it. That was the totality of his physical trauma until the fatal head shot. And that’s why he was able to continue sitting upright, with all his postural muscles working and all his other muscles working too.

So, the Single Bullet Theory, even as it applies to Kennedy alone, is a lie. Until the fatal head shot, JFK was hurt much less bad than Connally, who did have a traversing wound through his chest.

But, JFK did exhibit bizarre physical and mental aberrations, which we see in the Zapruder film. I tell you that they were caused, not by physical trauma, but by the nerve agent, and possibly other toxic agents, that were delivered by way of the back shot.