Mr. DULLES. Could I ask one question that relates, I think, to your
question. Assuming that the wrist wound and the thigh wound were caused
by the same bullet, would you agree that the approximate trajectory is
as indicated in this chart where Dr. Shaw has drawn a trajectory that
he assumed taking into account three bullets instead of two? I am only
asking you about the two wounds, namely the wrist and the thigh.
Dr. GREGORY. It would strike me, sir, that the trajectory to the wrist
and the subsequent wound of the thigh could be lined up easily in a
sitting position.
Now, those two could probably be lined up with a trajectory of the
wound in the chest as well, but this would require a more precise
positioning of the individual.
Mr. DULLES. But do you agree in general, taking the two wounds with
which you are particularly familiar, that that would have been the
trajectory as between the wrist and the thigh as drawn on that chart?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes, essentially so; yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. For the record, how was that chart identified. Doctor?
Dr. GREGORY. This is identified as Commission Exhibit 689.
Mr. SPECTER. Would you outline briefly the operative procedures which
you performed on the Governor, please?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes. The wound on the dorsum of the Governor's wrist
was treated by debridement, which means to remove by sharp surgical
excision all contaminated tissues and those which are presumed to
have been rendered nonviable by force. This meant removing a certain
amount of skin, subcutaneous tissue, fat, and all of the particles of
clothing, threads of cloth, which we could identify; and, incidentally,
a bit of metal or two.
That wound was subsequently left open; in other words, we did not
suture it or sew it together. This is done in deference to potential
infection which we know often to be associated with retained organic
material such as cloth.
The wound on the volar surface or the palmar side of his wrist was
enlarged. The purpose in enlarging it was an uncertainty as to the
condition of the major nerves in the volar side of the wrist, and so
these nerves were identified and explored and found to be intact, as
were adjacent tendons. So that that wound was then sutured, closed.
After this, the fracture was manipulated into a hopefully respectable
position of the fragments, and a cast was applied, and some traction,
using rubber bands, was applied to the finger and the thumb in order
to better hold the fracture fragments in their reduced or repositioned
state.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Gregory, could all of the rounds which were inflicted
on the Governor, that is, those described by Dr. Shaw, and those which
you have described during your testimony, have been inflicted from
one missile if that missile were a 6.5 millimeter bullet fired from
a weapon having a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per
second at a distance of approximately 160 to 250 feet, if you assumed a
trajectory with an angle of decline approximately 45 degrees?
Dr. GREGORY. I believe that the three wounds could have occurred from a
single missile under these specifications.
Mr. SPECTER. Assume, if you will, another set of hypothetical
circumstances: That the 6.5 millimeter bullet traveling at the same
muzzle velocity, to wit, 2,000 feet per second, at approximately 165
feet between the weapon and the victim, struck the President in the
back of the neck passing through the large strap muscles, going through
a fascia channel, missing the pleural cavity, striking no bones and
emerging from the lower anterior third of the neck, after striking the
trachea. Could such a projectile have then passed into the Governor's
back and inflicted all three or all of the wounds which have been
described here today?
Dr. GREGORY. I believe one would have to concede the possibility, but I
believe firmly that the probability is much diminished.
Mr. SPECTER. Why do you say that, sir?
Dr. GREGORY. I think that to pass through the soft tissues of the
President would certainly have decelerated the missile to some extent.
Having then struck the Governor and shattered a rib, it is further
decelerated, yet it has presumably retained sufficient energy to smash
a radius.
Moreover, it escaped the forearm to penetrate at least the skin and
fascia of the thigh, and I am not persuaded that this is very probable.
I would have to yield to possibility. I am sure that those who deal
with ballistics can do better for you than I can in this regard.
Mr. SPECTER. What would your assessment of the likelihood be for a
bullet under those hypothetical circumstances to have passed through
the neck of the President and to have passed through only the chest of
the Governor without having gone through either the wrist or into the
thigh?
Dr. GREGORY. I think that is a much more plausible possibility or
probability.
Mr. SPECTER. How about the likelihood of passing through the President
and through the Governor's chest, but missing his wrist and passing
into his thigh?
Dr. GREGORY. That, too, is plausible, I believe.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other circumstances of this event which have
been related to you, including the striking of the President's head by
a third bullet, which would account in any way, under any possibility,
in your view, for the fracture of the right wrist which was apparently
caused by a missile?
Dr. GREGORY. May I refer to this morning's discussions?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, please do.
Dr. GREGORY. This morning I was shown two additional missiles or
portions of missiles which are rather grossly distorted.
Mr. SPECTER. Let me make those a part of the record here, and ask
if those are the missiles which have heretofore been identified as
Commission Exhibit 568 and Commission Exhibit 570.
Dr. GREGORY. These items represent distorted bits of a missile, a
jacket in one case, and part of a jacket and a lead core in the other.
These are missiles having the characteristics which I mentioned
earlier, which tend to carry organic debris into wounds and tend to
create irregular wounds of entry. One of these, it seems to me, could
conceivably have produced the injury which the Governor incurred in his
wrist.
Mr. DULLES. In his wrist?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. And in his thigh?
Dr. GREGORY. I don't know about that, sir. It is possible. But the
rather remarkably round nature of the wound in the thigh leads me to
believe that it was produced by something like the butt end of an
intact missile.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you an exhibit heretofore identified as
Commission Exhibit 388, which depicts the artist's drawing of the
passage of a bullet through the President's head, and I ask you, first
of all, if you have had an opportunity to observe that prior to this
moment?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes. I saw this illustration this morning.
Mr. SPECTER. Well, if you assume that the trajectory through the
President's head was represented by the path of a 6.5-mm. bullet which
fragmented upon striking the skull, both the rear and again the top, is
it possible that a fragment coming at the rate of 2,000 feet per second
from the distance of approximately 160 to 230 feet, could have produced
a fragment which then proceeded to strike the Governor's wrist and
inflict the damage which you have heretofore described?
Dr. GREGORY. I think it is plausible that the bullet, having struck
the President's head, may have broken into more than one fragment. I
think you apprised me of the fact that it did, in fact, disperse into
a number of fragments, and they took tangential directions from the
original path apparently.
Mr. SPECTER. Assuming the fact that the autopsy surgeon presented
for the record a statement that the fragments moved forward into the
vicinity of the President's right eye, as the diagram shows, that there
were approximately 40 star-like fragments running on a line through the
head on the trajectory, and that there was substantial fragmentation of
the bullet as it passed through the head, what is your view about that?
Dr. GREGORY. I think it is possible that a fragment from that
particular missile may have escaped and struck the Governor's right arm.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have an opportunity to observe the slides and
films commonly referred to as the Zapruder film this morning?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes; I saw those this morning.
Mr. SPECTER. Did they shed any light on the conclusions--as to your
conclusions with respect to the wounds of the Governor and what you
observed in the treatment of the Governor?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes, to this extent. It seemed to me in frames marked 234,
235, and 236, Governor Connally was in a position such that a single
missile entered his back, could have passed through his chest, through
his right forearm, and struck his thigh. That is a possibility.
I looked at the film very carefully to see if I could relate the
position of Governor Connally's right arm to the movement when the
missile struck the President's head, presumably the third missile, and
I think that the record will show that those are obscured to a degree
that the Governor's right arm cannot be seen. In the Governor's own
words, he did not realize his right arm had been injured, and he has no
idea when it was struck. This is historical fact to us at the time of
the initial interview with him.
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask just one question? If a bullet had merely
struck the Governor's arm without previously having struck anything
else, is it conceivable that impediment of the bone that it hit there
would be consistent with merely a flesh wound on the thigh? Do you
follow me?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes; I follow you. I would doubt it on the basis of the
kind of wound that the Governor has. Now the kind of wound in the
Governor's right forearm is the kind that indicates there was not an
excessive amount of energy expended there, which means either that the
missile producing it had dissipated much of its energy, either that or
there was an impediment to it someplace else along the way.
It is simply that there was not enough energy loss there, and one would
expect a soft tissue injury beyond that point to be of considerably
greater magnitude.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Gregory, did I take your deposition back on March 23,
1964, at Parkland Hospital?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes; you did.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you had an opportunity to review that deposition
prior to today?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes; I have looked it over.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have anything to add, Dr. Gregory, that you think
would be helpful to the Commission in any way?
Dr. GREGORY. No, sir; I do not.
Mr. DULLES. Are you in agreement with the deposition as given?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes. I don't think there are any--there is any need
to change any of the essence of the deposition. There are a few
typographical errors and word changes one might make, but the essence
is essentially as I gave it.
Mr. SPECTER. I have no further questions, sir.
Senator COOPER. I would just ask this question. In your long experience
of treating wounds, you said some 500 wounds caused by bullets, have
you acquired, through that, knowledge of ballistics and characteristics
of bullets?
Dr. GREGORY. Within a very limited sphere.
Senator COOPER. I know your testimony indicates that.
Dr. GREGORY. I have been concerned with the behavior of missiles in
contact with tissues, but I am not very knowledgeable about the design
of a missile nor how many grains of powder there are behind it. My
concern was with the dissipation of the energy which it carries and the
havoc that it wreaks when it goes off.
Senator COOPER. You derived that knowledge from your actual study of
wounds and their treatment?
Dr. GREGORY. Study of wounds together with what I have read from the
Army proving grounds, various centers, for exploring this kind of
thing. I don't own a gun myself.
Mr. McCLOY. You are from Texas and you do not own a gun?
Dr. GREGORY. Well, sir, I went from Indiana to Texas. My father gave me
a .410 shotgun, but he took it away from me shortly after he gave it to
me.
The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, thank you very much.
Dr. GREGORY. Thank you very much, sir, Mr. Chief Justice.
(A short recess was taken.)
The CHAIRMAN. Governor, the Commission will come to order, please.