Part 52

Commander HUMES. The wounds which we observed on the President were--excuse me, at this point might I use the charts which I have prepared?

Would that be appropriate?

Mr. SPECTER. Yes; would you like to start with the neck wound?

Commander HUMES. All right, sir.

I might preface my remarks by stating that the President's body was received in our morgue in a closed casket. We opened the casket, Dr. Boswell and I, and the President's body was unclothed in the casket, was wrapped in a sheet labeled by the Parkland Hospital, but he was unclothed once the sheet was removed from his body so we do not have at that time any clothing.

Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, before you identify what that represents let me place Commission Exhibit No. 385 on it so it may be identified.

(The drawing was marked Commission Exhibit No. 385 for identification.)

Commander HUMES. When appraised of the necessity for our appearance before this Commission, we did not know whether or not the photographs which we had made would be available to the Commission. So to assist in making our testimony more understandable to the Commission members, we decided to have made drawings, schematic drawings, of the situation as we saw it, as we recorded it and as we recall it. These drawings were made under my supervision and that of Dr. Boswell by Mr. Rydberg, whose initials are H. A. He is a hospital corpsman, second class, and a medical illustrator in our command at Naval Medical School.

Mr. SPECTER. Did you provide him with the basic information from which these drawings were made?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. Distances, that sort of thing?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. We had made certain physical measurements of the wounds, and of their position on the body of the late President, and we provided these and supervised directly Mr. Rydberg in making these drawings.

Mr. SPECTER. Have you checked the drawings subsequent to their preparation to verify their accuracy?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. And proportion?

Commander HUMES. I must state these drawings are in part schematic. The artist had but a brief period of some 2 days to prepare these. He had no photographs from which to work, and had to work under our description, verbal description, of what we had observed.

Mr. SPECTER. Would it be helpful to the artist, in redefining the drawings if that should become necessary, to have available to him the photographs or X-rays of the President?

Commander HUMES. If it were necessary to have them absolutely true to scale. I think it would be virtually impossible for him to do this without the photographs.

Mr. SPECTER. And what is the reason for the necessity for having the photographs?

Commander HUMES. I think that it is most difficult to transmit into physical measurements the--by word the--exact situation as it was seen to the naked eye. The photographs were--there is no problem of scale there because the wounds, if they are changed in size or changed in size and proportion to the structures of the body and so forth, when we attempt to give a description of these findings, it is the bony prominences, I cannot, which we used as points of references, I cannot, transmit completely to the illustrator where they were situated.

Mr. SPECTER. Is the taking of photographs and X-rays routine or is this something out of the ordinary?

Commander HUMES. No, sir; this is quite routine in cases of this sort of violent death in our training. In the field of forensic pathology we have found that the photographs and X-rays are of most value, the X-rays particularly in finding missiles which have a way of going in different directions sometimes, and particularly as documentary evidence these are considered invaluable in the field of forensic pathology.

Mr. SPECTER. Will you now proceed to show us what Commission Exhibit 385 depicts, please?

Commander HUMES. Actually, I think, sir, at this time the view from the posterior aspect would also be of value to the Commission.

This is----

Mr. SPECTER. Doctor, I hand you the second exhibit which is marked Commission Exhibit No. 386.

(Commission Exhibit No. 386 was marked for identification.)

Commander HUMES. I believe at this point I would like to have, if you have my gross autopsy description because I will give the dimensions of these wounds at this time.

Mr. SPECTER. We will use the Commission Exhibit No. 387 and I will ask you first of all, for the record, to identify what this document is, Dr. Humes.

(The document referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 387 for identification.)

Commander HUMES. This document is a copy of the gross autopsy report which was prepared by myself, Dr. Boswell, and Dr. Finck, and completed within approximately 48 hours after the assassination of the President.

Mr. SPECTER. Does that report bear your signature at its end?

Commander HUMES. It bears my signature on the first or covering page as well as on my last page, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. Will you now proceed to tell us what you observed with respect to the wound which is marked as appearing in the upper back or lower neck?

Mr. McCLOY. Have you identified that?

Mr. SPECTER. The one on the side is 385 and the one of the rear view is 386. And that one is 387. For purposes of our record, if you will, put them in as 385 and 386 for our printed record. You might want to put them in chalk above them so you will see the one on the left is 385 and on the right is 386.

Commander HUMES. These exhibits again are schematic representations of what we observed at the time of examining the body of the late President.

Exhibit 385 shows in the low neck an oval wound which--excuse me, I wish to get the measurements correct. This wound was situated just above the upper border of the scapula, and measured 7 by 4 millimeters, with its long axis roughly parallel to the long axis of vertical column.

We saw--I would rather not discuss the situation of the anterior neck at this time or would you prefer it?

Mr. SPECTER. How would you prefer to do it, Dr. Humes?

Commander HUMES. I would prefer to discuss the wounds, two wounds, we saw posteriorly and the wound, other wound, of the skull before going to that.

Mr. SPECTER. That is fine, Dr. Humes, do it any way you find convenient. I will give you the other drawing and you can do them both together. Let the third drawing be marked as Commission Exhibit No. 388.

(The drawing referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 388 for identification.)

Commander HUMES. The wound in the low neck of which I had previously begun to speak is now posteriorly--is now depicted in 385, in 386 and in 388.

The second wound was found in the right posterior portion of the scalp. This wound was situated approximately 2.5 centimeters to the right, and slightly above the external occipital protuberance which is a bony prominence situated in the posterior portion of everyone's skull. This wound was then 2-1/2 centimeters to the right and slightly above that point.

The third obvious wound at the time of the examination was a huge defect over the right side of the skull. This defect involved both the scalp and the underlying skull, and from the brain substance was protruding.

This wound measured approximately 13 centimeters in greatest diameter. It was difficult to measure accurately because radiating at various points from the large defect were multiple crisscrossing fractures of the skull which extended in several directions.

I have noted in my report that a detailed description of the lines of these fractures and of the types of fragments that were thus made were very difficult of verbal description, and it was precisely for this reason that the photographs were made so one might appreciate more clearly how much damage had been done to the skull.

Mr. SPECTER. Were the photographs made available then, Dr. Humes, when Exhibit 388 was prepared?

Commander HUMES. No, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. All right.

Commander HUMES. The photographs, to go back a moment, the photographs and the X-rays were exposed in the morgue of the Naval Medical Center on this night, and they were not developed, neither the X-rays or the photographs. They were submitted to the, and here, if I make a mistake I am not certain, to either the Federal Bureau of Investigation or to the Secret Service, I am not sure of those.

Mr. SPECTER. Did you submit those yourself immediately after they were taken, Dr. Humes?

Commander HUMES. Again, one of the senior people present, I believe my own Commanding Officer, Captain Stover, took care of turning this material over to these authorities, and receiving a receipt for this information, for this material. It was--I supervised the positioning of the body for various of these examinations but as far as beyond that, I did not consider that my responsibility.

These, then, were the three wounds which were quite obvious at the time of the examination.

I could expand further on the general appearances of these wounds or I could turn to the anterior portion of the body and describe various other wounds which were present.

Mr. SPECTER. You were focusing on 388 before I last asked a question, Dr. Humes. Why don't you describe in general terms the nature of the wound which was present at the top of the head of the late President?

Commander HUMES. With your permission, sir, and Mr. Chief Justice, I think I might describe those two wounds together, and describe the defects in the scalp and in the skull in each instance.

Mr. SPECTER. That would be fine.

Commander HUMES. Would that be appropriate?

Mr. SPECTER. Yes.

Commander HUMES. Turning now to Commission Exhibit 388, where we have depicted in the posterior right portion of the skull a wound which we have labeled "in" or a wound of entrance and a large roughly 13 cm. diameter defect in the right lateral vertex of the skull. I would go into some further detail in describing these wounds.

The scalp, I mentioned previously, there was a defect in the scalp and some scalp tissue was not available. However, the scalp was intact completely past this defect. In other words, this wound in the right posterior region was in a portion of scalp which had remained intact.

So, we could see that it was the measurement which I gave before, I believe 15 by 6 millimeters.

When one reflected the scalp away from the skull in this region, there was a corresponding defect through both tables of the skull in this area.

Mr. SPECTER. Will you describe what you mean by both tables, Dr. Humes?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir.

The skull is composed of two layers of bone. We will put the scalp in in dotted lines.

The two solid lines will represent the two layers of the skull bone, and in between these two layers is loose somewhat irregular bone.

When we reflected the scalp, there was a through and through defect corresponding with the wound in the scalp.

This wound had to us the characteristics of a wound of entrance for the following reason: The defect in the outer table was oval in outline, quite similar to the defect in the skin.

Mr. SPECTER. You are referring there, Doctor, to the wound on the lower part of the neck?

Commander HUMES. No, sir; I am speaking here of the wound in the occiput.

The wound on the inner table, however, was larger and had what in the field of wound ballistics is described as a shelving or a coning effect. To make an analogy to which the members of the Commission are probably most familiar, when a missile strikes a pane of glass, a typical example, a B-B fired by a child's air rifle, when this strikes a pane of glass there will be a small, usually round to oval defect on the side of the glass from whence the missile came and a belled-out or coned-out surface on the opposite side of the glass from whence the missile came.

(At this point, Mr. Dulles entered the hearing room.)

Commander HUMES. Experience has shown and my associates and Colonel Finck, in particular, whose special field of interest is wound ballistics can give additional testimony about this scientifically observed fact.

This wound then had the characteristics of wound of entrance from this direction through the two tables of the skull.

Mr. SPECTER. When you say "this direction," will you specify that direction in relationship to the skull?

Commander HUMES. At that point I mean only from without the skull to within.

Mr. SPECTER. Fine, proceed.

Commander HUMES. Having ascertained to our satisfaction and incidentally photographs illustrating this phenomenon from both the external surface of the skull and from the internal surface were prepared, we concluded that the large defect to the upper right side of the skull, in fact, would represent a wound of exit.

A careful examination of the margins of the large bone defect at that point, however, failed to disclose a portion of the skull bearing again a wound of--a point of impact on the skull of this fragment of the missile, remembering, of course, that this area was devoid of any scalp or skull at this present time. We did not have the bone.

In further evaluating this head wound, I will refer back to the X-rays which we had previously prepared. These had disclosed to us multiple minute fragments of radio opaque material traversing a line from the wound in the occiput to just above the right eye, with a rather sizable fragment visible by X-ray just above the right eye. These tiny fragments that were seen dispersed through the substance of the brain in between were, in fact, just that extremely minute, less than 1 mm. in size for the most part.

(At this point, Senator Cooper entered the hearing room.)

Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Humes, this would be a good juncture to produce two photographs.

May it please the Commission, Mr. Chief Justice Warren, I have identified as Commission Exhibits 389 and 390 which will at a later time be identified as being two frames from the motion picture camera operated by one Abraham Zapruder, being the amateur photographer who was on the scene, which I think would assist in evaluating the angle of the President's head corresponding to that exhibit designated as 388.

I will hand those to you, Dr. Humes, and ask you if you would state for the record the relative position of the President's head in 389 which is a frame about one-sixteenth of a second before the point of impact shown in Exhibit 390.

(The frames referred to were marked Commission Exhibits Nos. 389 and 390 for identification.)

Commander HUMES. It will be noted in Exhibit 389 that the President's head is bent considerably forward and perhaps somewhat to the left in this frame of the photograph 389.

Mr. SPECTER. Is that in approximately the same position as the angle of the head depicted in Commission Exhibit No. 388?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; it is.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. Chief Justice, at this time I would like to move for admission in evidence of Exhibits 385 through 390.

The CHAIRMAN. They may be admitted under those numbers.

(Commission Exhibits Nos. 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, and 390, previously marked for identification, were received in evidence.)

Mr. SPECTER. Will you proceed now, Dr. Humes, to continue in your description of the head wound?

Commander HUMES. Head wound--a careful inspection of this large defect in the scalp and skull was made seeking for fragments of missile before any actual detection was begun. The brain was greatly lacerated and torn, and in this area of the large defect we did not encounter any of these minute particles.

I might say at this time that the X-ray pictures which were made would have a tendency to magnify these minute fragments somewhat in size and we were not too surprised in not being able to find the tiny fragments depicted in the X-ray.

Mr. SPECTER. Approximately how many fragments were observed, Dr. Humes, on the X-ray?

Commander HUMES. I would have to refer to them again, but I would say between 30 or 40 tiny dust-like particle fragments of radio opaque material, with the exception of this one I previously mentioned which was seen to be above and very slightly behind the right orbit.

Mr. DULLES. Were these all fragments that were injected into the skull by the bullet?

Commander HUMES. Our interpretation is, sir, that the missile struck the right occipital region, penetrated through the two tables of the skull, making the characteristic coning on the inner table which I have previously referred to. That one portion of the missile and judging by the size of the defect thus produced, the major portion of the missile, made its exit through this large defect.

A second portion of the missile or multiple second portions were deflected, and traversed a distance as enumerated by this interrupted line, with the major portion of that fragment coming to lodge in the position indicated.

Perhaps some of these minor fragments were dislodged from the major one as it traversed this course.

To better examine the situation with regard to the skull, at this time, Dr. Boswell and I extended the lacerations of the scalp which were at the margins of this wound, down in the direction of both of the President's ears. At that point, we had even a better appreciation of the extensive damage which had been done to the skull by this injury.

We had to do virtually no work with a saw to remove these portions of the skull, they came apart in our hands very easily, and we attempted to further examine the brain, and seek specifically this fragment which was the one we felt to be of a size which would permit us to recover it.

Mr. SPECTER. When you refer to this fragment, and you are pointing there, are you referring to the fragment depicted right above the President's right eye?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir; above and somewhat behind the President's eye.

Mr. SPECTER. Will you proceed, then, to tell us what you did then?

Commander HUMES. Yes, sir. We dissected carefully in this region and in fact located this small fragment, which was in a defect in the brain tissue in just precisely this location.

Mr. SPECTER. How large was that fragment, Dr. Humes?

Commander HUMES. I refer to my notes for the measurements of that fragment.

I find in going back to my report, sir, that we found, in fact, two small fragments in this approximate location. The larger of these measured 7 by 2 mm., the smaller 3 by 1 mm.

To make my presentation of this wound of the skull more logical to the Commission, I would like to go forward in time that evening to at a later hour. I apologize--time and what happened exactly at what moment escapes me at this time.

I mentioned previously that there was a large bony defect. Some time later on that evening or very early the next morning while we were all still engaged in continuing our examination, I was presented with three portions of bone which had been brought to Washington from Dallas by the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

These were----

Mr. SPECTER. Might that have been by a Secret Service agent?

Commander HUMES. It could be, sir; these things----

Mr. SPECTER. At any rate, someone presented these three pieces of bone to you?

Commander HUMES. Someone presented these three pieces of bone to me, I do not recall specifically their statement as to where they had been recovered.

It seems to me they felt it had been recovered either in the street or in the automobile, I don't recall specifically.

We were most interested in these fragments of bone, and found that the three pieces could be roughly put together to account for a portion of this defect.

Mr. SPECTER. How much remained unaccounted for, Dr. Humes?

Commander HUMES. I would estimate that approximately one-quarter of that defect was unaccounted for by adding these three fragments together and seeing what was left.

This is somewhat difficult, because as back to when we were actually looking for the fragments of metal, as we moved the scalp about, fragments of various sizes would fall to the table, and so forth, so it was difficult to put that exact figure into words.

However, the thing which we considered of importance about these three fragments of bone was that at the margins of one of them which was roughly pyramidal in shape, there was a portion of the circumference of what we interpreted as a missile wound. We thus interpreted it this because there was, the size was, sufficiently large for us, for it to have the curve of the skull still evident. At the point of this defect, and I will draw both tables of the bone in this defect, at the area which we interpreted as the margin of a missile wound, there was a shelving of the margin.

This would, to us, mean that a missile had made this wound from within the skull to the exterior. To confirm that this was a missile wound, X-rays were made of that fragment of bone, which showed radio-opaque material consistent and similar in character to the particles seen within the skull to be deposited in the margins of this defect, in this portion of the bone.

Mr. SPECTER. Then what conclusion did you reach as to what caused that hole reconstructed from the three portions of the late President's scalp?

Commander HUMES. We reached the conclusion a missile entered the left--the right posterior inferior portion----

Mr. SPECTER. Doctor, perhaps it would be helpful if you would refer to that as letter "A" and the exit as letter "B", so that the record is clear on those two points and perhaps it will be helpful to your description as well.

And would you mark them as well, with a pencil?

Commander HUMES. That is not entry for the second.

Mr. SPECTER. Exit for the second?

Commander HUMES. I will label 388 with the letter "A" to indicate our opinion as to the wound of entrance into the skull.

I will label as Point "B" the area of exit of a portion of the missile that entered posteriorly. I say a portion because a small fragment was seen in the position previously noted which was recovered.

However, we concluded that a very significant portion, perhaps the largest portion, made its exit and accounted for this very large defect for the multiple fractures of the skull and for the loss of brain and scalp tissue at this point.

Mr. SPECTER. Will you describe at this juncture the damage which was inflicted upon the brain, please?

Commander HUMES. May I refer at this point to the gross description of the brain prepared separately?

Mr. SPECTER. Certainly, Dr. Humes, if you prefer to do it in that order.

Commander HUMES. I believe you have that. It is the second portion of the report.

Mr. SPECTER. Yes, sir. I can make that available to you here.

Commander HUMES. While that is being provided, when we reflected the scalp away from the badly damaged skull, and removed some of these loosened portions of skull bone, we were able to see this large defect in the right cerebral hemisphere. It corresponded roughly in size with the greatest diameter of the defect in the scalp measuring some 13 cm.

Mr. SPECTER. May the record now show I am handing to you, Dr. Humes, an exhibit marked Commission Exhibit 391, and will you identify what that is, please, Doctor?

Commander HUMES. Exhibit 391 is listed as a supplementary report on the autopsy of the late President Kennedy, and was prepared some days after the examination.

This delay necessitated by, primarily, our desire to have the brain better fixed with formaldehyde before we proceeded further with the examination of the brain which is a standard means of approach to study of the brain.

The brain in its fresh state does not lend itself well to examination.

From my notes of the examination, at the time of the post-mortem examination, we noted that clearly visible in the large skull defect and exuding from it was lacerated brain tissue which, on close inspection proved to represent the major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere.