I happened to watch a special this evening and they showed the Zapruder film. I’ve seen this film a thousand times, but one thing finally stood out to me that I never thought of before…
When Kennedy gets hit in the throat, his hands go directly to the front of his neck. If this shot came from behind, wouldn’t he reach for the back of his neck first? At least with one hand at least?
Seemed kind of strange to me, and gives me another reason to believe the throat shot came from the front somewhere.
Is there any anecdotal evidence from people in the military or your general gun shot victim on a through and through shot? (i.e. if a shot passes completely through the body, what part does the victim grab first, the entry or exit wound?)
1.) The time it takes for a bullet to go from the back of your neck to the front of your neck is so insignificant that the entry and exit wounds might as well have been created simultaneously.
2.) He wasn’t shot in the back of the neck at all. He was shot in the upper back with the bullet exiting from his throat. If two wounds were created virtually simultaneously (see above) and one was in your upper back and the other in your throat, which do you think you’d reach for?
3.) There was only one gunman.
I agree, but if he was indeed paralized (see runner pat’s post), he wouldn’t have felt the front wound.
Thank you for the correction. The upper back is the location of the entrance (or exit) wound, depending on your POV. As for which wound I would reach for, hell, I don’t know. That’s why I asked. That’s also why I asked about folks that have actually had a through-and-through wound.
You don’t know that. You simply can’t know that. But you can think it. Many people do. Many more believe in 2 or more based on public polls.
Is the contention that Kennedy was paralized by the back/throat shot?
You might try reading some books. Gerald Posner’s Case Closed cites a neurologist who speculates that the weird reaction Kennedy has, with his elbows shooting straight out at an almost horizontal angle, is a neurological reflex to spinal cord injury they describe as “Thorburn’s position.”
Why would this be a natural reaction? Even leaving aside the speed it happened (the bullet from a long rifle is moving so fast that it’s going to be micro seconds between entry and exit wounds), if you suddenly felt a pain in your chest and saw blood spouting from your chest, would you reach back behind you to feel for the entry wound, or try and cover the blood pouring out from the front? Reflexively it would be pretty unnatural to reach to the back of your neck when blood is spouting from the front.
Considering the fact that he was clearly leaning forward in the car, and the actual entry and exit wound, the gunman would have had to be in the front seat firing upward to inflict that wound from the front. And a bullet to the throat would have torn a huge hole in his throat and been pretty obvious in the autopsy, since there is good forensics on entry verse exit wounds.
Well…anecdotally I saw a deer shot in the neck once with a bow from behind. The deer obviously didn’t have hands, but the reflex was to try and bite the point sticking out it’s chest, not throw it’s head back to explore the entry area. Obviously this is not a perfect analogy, but it’s the only one I’ve ever seen personally. I think that with humans, the natural reaction, especially the reflexive reaction, is always going to be to put hands to the front of the body when encountering such an injury, since our hands and visual sense organs are all to the front.
You should try reading some books too. I’ll wager that I’ve read more books that point to Oswald as the lone killer, including Posner’s. I will also wager that you haven’t read many books suggesting a conspiracy. I challenge you to just read one. Garrison’s “On the Trail of the Assassins”. Don’t tell me you saw JFK and that’s good enough. Read the book. Tell me how it’s not as convincing as anything else you’ve read.
Only if there was one shooter.
The throat shot? Could be, but I’ve never heard that. It really doesn’t matter, though does it?
True enough. I added the paralysis, since I would think that nicking the spinal chord with the bullet would certainly do some damage. But I guess there’s no guarantee that paralysis would be an outcome.
If I knew what the facts are, I’d write a book and disappear for a while. If you knew what the facts are, you may do something similar.
The fact is, you don’t know the facts. Neither do I. You may know what you’ve read cold, but that doesn’t make you any more of an expert than I am. Because neither one of us know the truth.
For all you folks gearing up for a debate on this subject, I’m not interested in a debate. I’ve seen too many on this board and I know how they go. No one ever changes their minds on the subject, and the Oswald did it alone crowd always shout down any other competing theories. It’s boring. I also know that I’m open-minded enough to change my POV if someone showed me something that proved it one way or the other. But I never get that same impression from the Oswald alone crowd. Being locked into a position makes it impossible to debate, especially on a subject like this, where the truth is simply not available no matter what you think.
My questions was just that. A question. I’m not trying to prove Posner wrong. It just made me curious. The fact that some neurologist is cited in Posner’s book as that he “speculates” as to the cause of Kennedy’s weird reaction proves my point. That neurologist doesn’t know because he didn’t examine the body and he wasn’t at the autopsy. I’ll bet there are a dozen other reasons that neurologists can give as to the reason for Kennedy’s reaction. How about he was simply reacting to being shot in the neck? No “Thorburn’s position”. Just a wounded guy reacting to the pain.
If there isn’t anyone that can answer my questions, that’s fine. But this isn’t about who shot Kennedy from where.
Guys, he’s just asking questions. Like I’d like to ask about the angle of the shadows of the moon rocks supposedly taken by the Apollo “astronauts.” And the mysterious puffs of smoke right before the WTC came down. I’m not saying they are explosive charges; and if you can lay out a convincing case that it wasn’t government-planted explosive charges that brought down the WTC, then I’ll be willing to consider your “evidence”. C’mon, asking questions just shows that I’m an open-minded guy, right?!?
I’m pretty sure it was his brains being blown out that killed him. I mean, a bullet in the throat won’t have done him any good, but the brain thing was more decisive.
And they came out the back of his head, for those keeping score.
Cite? The autopsy photos are online, you know, and that’s a pretty gaping hole at the top & front of his head. And the Zapruder film shows a jet of brain matter flying up and toward the front of the car, not the back.
I agree with that. I’ve never heard that first shot killed him.
It would have done damage, sure. But that doesn’t mean paralysis, especially instant paralysis that would have prevented him from feeling the shot. For that matter even if he’d been paralyzed he would have had sensation above the affected area.
Every fact I know is public and is known by lots of other people, so there wouldn’t be much point. Nevermind the pointlessness of trying to convince people on issues like this.
I recognize that that’s what you think, but that doesn’t make it true. The question you’re asking is interesting and I can’t answer it, but I’m not sure it would mean anything either.
To me it looks like he’s bending forward from the throat shot and then gets pushed back from the head shot, indicating the head shot came from the front and not from the back.
While this sounds like common sense, the problem is that physics doesn’t allow it (and I don’t know that anatomy does either). You can’t draw conclusions about where the shots came from based on the movement of his head.
I only watched the zapruder film and base my opinion on this film and the laws of newton.
The fact that the neck joint can move in just about any direction would result in the shell transferring its general direction to the motion of the head upon impact.