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.