THE NECK WOUND:

CAN AN EXIT WOUND LOOK LIKE AN ENTRANCE WOULD?



The following is from John Lattimer's KENNEDY AND LINCOLN,  pp.
231-239.
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     The bullet left the front of the President's neck,
turning slightly nose down, as I saw it, creating
half-inch-long vertical slits in this shirt immediately
below and touching the collar band just to the left of the
button. The collar made a strong supporting band around the
front of the neck just at the bullet hole. The President's
challis necktie was also in place, giving further support
for the skin of the area. There was a bloodstain on the knot
where blood was carried from the neck out onto the necktie.
As we have seen, the bullet then continued downward and
forward at about a twenty-degree angle, tumbling or yawing
end over end as it traversed the thorax and wrist of
Governor Connally, before ending up, now traveling
completely backward, embedded in his leg.  From this
location it was knocked out onto the hospital stretcher. 

     Nonetheless, skeptics remained unconvinced that the
bullet hole in Kennedy's neck could be so small if it indeed
was an exit wound from such a powerful bullet. My wartime
experiences with bullet wounds led me to believe that the
collar band of the President's shirt had probably supported
the skin of his neck sufficiently to permit a very small
exit wound in the skin. This seemed so logical that I
proposed in 1972, in an article in RESIDENT & STAFF
PHYSICIAN, that this was the answer to the problem of the
smallness of the bullet hole. Although this was a logical
assumption, I felt that I could not be absolutely sure that
it was the explanation unless I reproduced a series of such
wounds under controlled experimental conditions to be sure
that was actually what happened. I therefore decided to set
up a duplication and see what did happen when you fired such
a bullet through necks that had just such a collar and
necktie on each of them, under varying conditions.

     It was apparent that no one else was doing, or even
anticipating doing, any experiments of this type. Aware that
surprises sometimes occur and of that you can never be sure
what is going to happen until you try it in yourself,
several times, very carefully, I started gathering the huge
carful of gear it would take to set up the experiments under
safe and unhurried conditions.

     I had already examined President Kennedy's shirt in
detail at the National Archives and knew that the fabric and
the thread holding the collar button were in new condition,
or of high quality and excellent strength.  

Experiments with Mock-ups of Neck and Shirt

     I made appointments with Michael Macfarlane, my
laboratory assistant, now a medical student, and the firing
range custodians, to be sure that there would be no
conflicts. I checked everything on my long list of equipment
once again, to be sure that everything worked and nothing
was missing. Then I consulted my friend the butcher at the
Fort Lee A & P, to be sure he would have on the chosen day a
large number of legs of fresh pork with the skin still on.
The skin of pork legs is similar to human neck skin. I
dissected out the bone, leaving the cylindrical
configuration of the outer skin undisturbed, and then
compressed each into a neck-like cylinder that would
accommodate a size-sixteen collar and tie, like the one
Kennedy had been wearing on November 22, 1963. I tried one
experimental neck fashioned from a large turkey breast, with
the skin still attached and the bones removed, but I found
the pork legs more like human necks. A sample neck, mounted
on the firing stand in front of the bullet trap is seen in
figure 94. I then aligned a bullet trap on the far side of
each of these necks, with its face at the same distance that
Governor Connally was sitting in front of Kennedy, in order
to determine the imprint of each bullet on the simulation of
Connally's skin.  

     We set up movie and still cameras and shrugged on
protective armor, since we might be exposed to a ricocheting
bullet or lethal flying fragment of bone. Then the laborious
process of arranging the precise angles at which the gun
would be fired, to produce wounds exactly like those at
Dallas, were calculated. I fired fully jacketed military
bullets from sub-lots 6000 and 6001, made by the Western
Cartridge Company and belonging to the same lots of
ammunition used by Oswald, into the back of each of these
shirted necks at an aiming point determined to be
approximately at the same level as the hole in the back of
Kennedy's neck. I used a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano carbine
of the same model as that used by Oswald (model 91-38), with
the identical type of Ordnance Optics Company telescope,
sling, and steadying arrangements that he had used. Only the
distance was different; ours was shorter than at Dallas, to
insure that each bullet struck the exact spot we wanted to
hit.  

     After each shot, the shedding of the armor, the rushing
to see what had happened, the distant and close-up
photographing, the measuring, the labeling of the specimens,
the packaging of fragments for later laboratory and X-ray
analysis, the recording of the data, all required a great
deal of time. A new shirt and a new necktie then had to be
fitted to the next "victim," and new measurements and new
angles had to be established before the next shot. Sometimes
we were interrupted by thundershowers and sometimes for the
spraying of all hands with mosquito repellant. We soon
learned that we had to start very early in the morning to
get even a few experiments done during a single day.

Collar Support of Skin


     The first neck, with shirt and tie on, was tilted so
that the bullet exit hole in the front of the neck was
one-fourth inch below the lower border of the band of the
shirt collar. At the distance set, the collar provided only
partial support to the skin. Although the exit hole in the
skin was small (approximately one-fourth inch in diameter),
the skin cracked open moderately for a half-inch on each
side of the quarter-inch bullet hole.  The bullet then
passed through the center of the knot of the necktie, only
slightly to the left of the midline, creating a large ragged
hole, somewhat larger than the nick in the left side of
President Kennedy's necktie. It should be noted that this
tie was silk, whereas Kennedy's necktie was a challis by
Christian Dior. The bullet then tumbled vertically as it
struck the back of our Connally target, which was placed
twenty-eight inches away. The bullet was traveling almost
exactly sideways, nose down, by the time it reached the
target, as can be seen by the imprint of the bullet left on
the skin of our Connally simulation.

     The second neck, also with shirt and tie on, was tilted
to the exact angle President Kennedy had been in. My aiming
point on the back of this shirt was at approximately the
same level as the entrance hole on the back of Kennedy's
body, but the tilt of this neck was adjusted one-quarter
inch, so that the wound of exit of this bullet was just at
the lower border of the band of the shirt collar. It created
a vertical slit, one-half inch long, starting at the lower
edge of the shirt collar band, exactly like the slit in the
shirt worn by the President. At this location, the collar
band provided more support for the underlying skin, and the
exit wound was very small, measuring only one-fourth inch in
diameter, without any bursting or cracking of the skin
whatsoever. This bullet continued on, to brush the left side
of the necktie knot, making a small nick in the left side of
the knot exposing the lining. This was similar to what had
happened to Kennedy's necktie, even though this again was a
silk, rather than a challis, necktie. This bullet also then
tumbled, nose down, and by the time it struck the face of
the bullet trap, at the distance Connally was seated in
front of Kennedy, it, too, was tumbling vertically and
traveling almost exactly sideways.

     On a third shirted neck, the collar was buttoned but
the necktie was left off. My aiming point was again placed
on the back of the neck, at the appropriate level where the
bullet first struck Kennedy's skin. This neck was tilted so
that the bullet hole of exit in the shirt was one-half inch
down from the margin of the collar band (an additional
quarter-inch farther away from the collar band than with the
first shirt, and only slightly to the left of the midline).
At this greater distance from the band of the shirt collar,
the collar provided little or no support to the skin, and a
large funnel-shaped wound of exit occurred.  

     This bullet also tumbled vertically as it left the
body, and it too was traveling almost sideways, nose down,
when it struck our simulation of Connally's back.  I was
able to deduce from these experiments that the size of the
exit hole in the skin was indeed directly dependent upon the
degree of support from the collar band, since the hole was
very small if the exit wound was just at the collar band (as
was the case with President Kennedy), but if the wound of
exit was moved another quarter-inch down, away from the
support of the collar band, the small wound of exit was
accompanied by substantial cracks in the skin on both sides
of the bullet hole. 

     If the wound of exit was moved down still further, to a
location a full half-inch below the edge of the collar band,
as in our third shirted-neck experiment, then the wound of
exit became much larger. The lack of the slight support of a
necktie on this preparation may have added slightly to the
large size of the exit wound, but the neckties did not seem
tight enough to give much support.

     Between each of these experiments, we fired a control
bullet from the same gun through a neck with no shirt or tie
to support the skin, using cartridges from the same lot of
ammunition. On the first bare neck, the wound of entry was
small and punctate, with the usual blackened rim burned by
the rapidly spinning bullet. The wound of exit in the
unsupported skin was large and funnel-like, with jagged
stellate tears, approximately one inch in diameter, in toto.
This bullet also then tumbled ninety degrees and entered the
back of our Connally simulation going directly sideways, but
nose down. On the second unsupported neck the bullet made a
punctate wound of entry and also a small wound of exit only
slightly larger than the wound of entrance. This was the
only bullet of the six that did not tumble, and it also made
only a punctate, quarter-inch wound in the skin of our
Connally target, as shown on target disk four as bullet
hole.  

     These experiments demonstrated that the reinforcement
of the skin of the front of a neck by the proximity of the
strong band of a shirt collar and necktie supported the skin
to the extent that only a small puncture hole of exit
resulted. If, however, the wound of exit was moved downward,
away from the supporting collar band, one-fourth of an inch
at a time, the resulting exit wound, from the same type of
bullet, grew progressively larger and became progressively
more funnel-shaped, stellate, and jagged. The size of the
exit wound was dependent primarily on the amount of support
from the collar and tie and was very sensitive to slight
changes in the distance from the collar band. That the
bullet was beginning to tumble or yaw when it left the neck
of the President did not enlarge the size of the wound in
the skin. Even when the exit hole was no larger than the
diameter of the bullet used (one-quarter inch), the exit 
wound in the shirt began to show elongation from top to
bottom as the bullet began to nose down when it left the
neck.  

     If Oswald had used expanding bullets like the
ammunition employed in hunting large animals, then the
wounds of exit would have been very much larger than the
wounds of entrance. Hunters use expanding bullets in an
attempt to kill each animal as abruptly as possible, to end
its suffering and to make it more surely recoverable for
meat. The use of expanding bullets with military rifles is
forbidden by the Geneva Convention. There is no evidence
that Oswald used them, or that he modified his military
bullets so that they might expand on contact with soft
tissues.  The two of his bullets that were recovered intact
had not been modified or mutilated in any way. It seems
unlikely that Oswald would have risked the impairment in
accuracy or penetrating capability that might have resulted
if he had mutilated the noses of his bullets in an effort to
create an expanding (so-called dum-dum) effect. 

     These experiments confirmed beyond all of my doubts
that the smallness of the exit hole in the front of
Kennedy's neck was due to the fact that the skin was
supported by a firm collar band, which restrained it from
bulging and bursting open ahead of the exiting bullet. The
necktie may have given added support, but it fitted so
loosely that it did not appear to contribute very much
support. If the bullet had not exited from the President's
neck just at the collar band, the exit wound might have been
much larger.

     In short, we demonstrated that the smallness of the
wound in the front of the neck of President Kennedy was
perfectly compatible with his being shot through the neck
from the rear, by Oswald, and did not require the
involvement of a second rifleman, shooting from the front.
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