Zapruder JFK Film Impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't need to worry about answers". -- Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW (1973).

Madison, WI (OpEdNews) March 27, 2009 -- A debate has been raging just off the radar of the main stream media over the significance of a Polaroid photograph by Mary Moorman, which appears to impeach the famous Zapruder film of the assassination.  Although most attention has focused on an argument initiated by legendary photo-analyst Jack White--that the photo reflects a line-of-sight that places Mary in the street, while the film shows her on the grass--a more serious threat emerges from its photographic content, which shows JFK's head tilted downward and slightly to the left.  Surprisingly, this removes the final resistance to impeaching the film based upon the medical evidence. 

The features of the film that are the center of this latest controversy have been explored by an Australian physicist, John P. Costella, Ph.D., who has a specialty in electromagnetism, including the properties of light and the physics of moving bodies, who is the leading expert on the Zapruder film in the world today.  Some of his studies may be found on my public issue web site at  http://assassinationscience.com  and are archived there as "The JFK Assassination Film Hoax: An Introduction". Indeed, Roderick Ryan, an expert on cinematic special effects, told Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1997), p. 160, that the bulging brains (sometimes called "the blob") had been painted in. Ryan would receive a 2000 Academy Award for lifetime achievement.  But Costella's studies and Ryan's observations have not brought an end to the controversy for those dedicated to Zapruder authenticity. 

The principal protagonists in the debate occurring on several of the leading JFK research forums has pitted Josiah Thompson, author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), an early study largely based upon the Zapruder film, against me, editor of ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and of THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003).  Most of our arguments in the past have been directed to the line of sight argument advanced by Jack White and to the validity of an experiment conducted by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., the leading expert on the medical evidence in the world today, and me, using a transit in Dealey Plaza, which I summarized in an recent article, "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", at http://JFKresearch.com/Moorman  which has as now appeared in a British journal, THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO 13/1 (March 2009), pp. 6-33.

In that article, I observed that, while there are many indications that the film is a fabrication, the most important proof is the inconsistency between the impact damage to the cranium, which is the film's most stunning feature, showing brains and gore bulging out to JFK's right-front, and the medical evidence, which shows a massive defect at the back of his head just to the right of center.  Indeed, Escort Motorcycle Officer Bobby Hargis, who was riding to the left-rear, was hit so hard by the blown-out brains and debris that he though he himself had been shot.  Thus, the question has become how such a massive blow-out of brains and gore at the back of the head could appear to be to the right-front in the film.

In an earlier article, "New Proof of JFK Film Fakery" that appeared in OpEdNews (February 5, 2008), I laid out multiple indications that the Zapruder film is a fabrication.  But none of those proofs even reaches to the mutually reinforcing deceptions of (a) the blow out to the right-front in the Zapruder film, (b) the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and (c) the publication of 313 in LIFE magazine with a caption saying that the bullet had entered the back of his head and blown out the right-front--a caption rewritten twice after breaking the plates. And it implicates Abraham Zapruder in the deception, when (d) he described a blow-out to the right-front during a televised interview that that night (HOAX, page 435)!

None of it was true. Jackie herself reported that, from the front, he looked just fine but that she had a hard time holding his skull and brains together at the back of his head. None of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the mortician! Indeed, the massive defect can even be seen in late frames of the film, including 374.  During a phone interview with Joe West, a private investigator, the man who had prepared the body for burial, Thomas Evan Robinson, described the wounds on May 26, 1992, as follows (MURDER, p. 116; HOAX, p. 9):

* large gaping hole in back of head patched by stretching piece of rubber over it.  Thinks skull full of Plaster of Paris.

* smaller wound in right temple.  Crescent shape, flapped down (3")

* (approx 2) small shrapnel wounds in face.  Packed with wax.

* wound in back (5 to six inches) below shoulder.  To the right of back bone.

* adrenal gland and brain removed.

* other organs removed and then put back.

* no swelling or discoloration to face.  (died instantly)

Those who want to persist in defense of the film, however, observe that Bill and Gayle Newman, Abraham Zapruder and his secretary, Marilyn Sitzman, had reported wounds to the right side of JFK's head.  These observations are consistent with the entry wound to the right temple, which caused the massive defect to the back of his skull, but probably also resulted from observing the brains when the flap that the mortician describes was briefly opened when the frangible (or exploding) bullet entered his right temple, creating the flap (which promptly closed) and apparently damaging his right ear. 

Indeed, according to E. Z. Friedel, M.D., THE JFK CONSPIRACY (2007), his ear was so badly destroyed that those who wanted to conceal the truth causes of his death brought in an expert to perform a reconstruction. Friedel characterizes his book as a work of “fiction”, but what he has to tell us about these wounds appears to coincide with what witnesses have had to say in describing them.  Rich DellaRosa, who founded and moderates JFKresearch.com, has been communicating with him for over a year and believes he has had access to inside information. 

Barb Junkkarinen, arguing the other side of the question, recently observed on the JFK forum, jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, that the Newmans, a couple who were on the knoll side of Elm Street at the time of the shooting, had described damage to the right side of his head.  Bill, for example, reported,

"By this time he was directly in front of us and I was looking directly at him when he was hit in the side of the head" [Affidavit  11-22-63] and

"At that time he heard the bullet strike the President and saw flesh fly from the President's head." .... "He said the president was hit on the right side of the head with the third shot ..."[FBI report 11-23-63]

Similarly, his wife, Gayle, reported,

"Just about the time President Kennedy was right in front of us, I heard another shot ring out, and the President put his hands up to his head. I saw blood all over the side of his head." [Affidavit 11-22-63]

During the trial of Clay Shaw by Jim Garrison in New Orleans, they both reported seeing him hit in the right temple, but she elaborated in the following way:

"Q: Now what was the effect of this shot upon the President's head if you were able to  observe?
A: The President, his head just seemed to explode, just bits of his skull flew in the air and he fell to the side."

Her husband offered additional observations tha were also dramatic:

"I caught a glimpse of his eyes, just looked like a cold stare, he just looked through me, and then when the car was directly in front of me, well, that is when the third shot was fired and it hit him in the side of the head right above the ear and his ear came off. "

None of this, of course, could salvage the authenticity of the film unless it could explain how a blow out of brains and gore from the back of his skull could appear to have been blown out to the right-front in the Zapruder film.  I was so puzzled by the argument that the Newmans, Sitzman and Zapruder had observed such effects that I wrote to leading experts with whom I have collaborated in the past.

Mantik confirmed that, "Of course!", the medical evidence falsifies the film, which I found highly reassuring. Costella, who has demonstrated that the Zapruder is a fabrication at  http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro  had a telling observation about why there may have been so much controversy over the Moorman from scratch. Ironically, Costella had been in agreement with Thompson ("Tink") about the line of sight argument, which placed him on Tink's side on that question against Mantik, White, and me.  So what he had to add on March 19, 2009, was especially striking: 

Jim,

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www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/

McKnight Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Duluth; Founder, Scholars for 9/11 Truth; Editor, Assassination Research.

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