Incredible Wounds of Governor Connally

Superficial Wound of the Thigh

Dr. Shires in his operative report of November 22, 1963 described a 1-cm punctate wound and debriding the wound track into the muscle. He interpreted an X-ray as showing a small fragment imbedded in the femur. Shires repeated these descriptions during his testimony in Dallas and added his speculations on whether a tangential entry by a whole bullet or a fragment caused the observed peculiarities of this wound.

The description of the wound as punctate means that the abrasion surrounding the bullet hole was spotted. This punctate appearance implied entry by a spent missile with insufficient kinetic energy to produce the solid area of discoloration surrounding a typical bullet hole.

Shaw explicitly attributed the wound in the thigh being considerably longer than the size of the missile to a tangential entry by the bullet.

Before surgery, Dr. Gregory carefully observed the bullet hole in the thigh. He noted that the hole was almost round and could see penetration from the skin to the underlying fascia. During his testimony in Washington, D.C., Gregory described a puncture wound on the inner aspect of the thigh and a little toward the front. The wound appeared rounded with a diameter of about 6 mm. This size excluded the surrounding abrasion reported by Shires.

The preoperative X-rays produced by Gregory revealed a shallow fragment inline with the femur and just beneath the skin. These observations contradicted Shires who asserted that the fragment deeply penetrated the thigh and was imbedded in the bone.

The Forensic Pathology Panel dismissed the presumed fragments on the X-rays as artifacts.

Cynics have suggested that the Parkland doctors concocted the story of a fragment in the thigh to reduce the embarrassment of Doctor Shaw who during the Friday afternoon press conference told the World that the bullet is in the leg and will be removed during surgery. This statement is made just beyond five minutes from the excessively delayed start of the linked recording.

Composite Wounding

The Parkland doctors in the operating room collectively developed the idea that one missile inflicted all the wounds suffered by Connally. Dr. Shires discussed this idea with his assistants, Drs. Baxter, McClelland and Patman. Shires had direct knowledge of similar discussions among Drs. Shaw, Boland and Duke. He surmised that Dr. Gregory, Osbourne and Parker also discussed the wounding. These groups concluded that one bullet inflicted the five wounds suffered by Connally.

Gregory cited progressively less damage from the chest, through the wrist and into the thigh as evidence of wounding by a single bullet. The bullet inflicted considerable damage upon the torso in shattering ten centimeters of the fifth rib and punching a 5-centimeter roughly circular hole in the chest. These injuries consumed a considerable portion of the kinetic energy of the transiting bullet. This less energetic bullet inflicted lesser injury upon the wrist. The wounds of entry and exit were elongated slits and cleaved a few pieces of bone from the radius. These lesser injuries consumed more kinetic energy. The bullet upon striking the thigh had insufficient kinetic energy to produce a solid abrasion and perforate the leg. Instead this spent missile produced a punctate abrasion surrounding the wound track, which extended to but not through the muscle.

The report of an initially small tunneling wound by Shaw is evidence of entry and initial transit of the torso by a bullet with negligible angles of yaw and pitch. Coupling these observations of the back wound with the report by Frazier of a round 3/8-inch hole in the front of the coat shows exit by a bullet with negligible angles of yaw and pitch. These observations argue for overall transit of the torso by a properly aligned bullet and explain the absence of metallic fragments in the chest.

Figure 3 - 60° Incidence Angle

Problems arose when the doctors provided further details of the injuries.

The elliptical wound twice described by Shaw and corroborated by Gregory required that the bullet entered the back with an approximate 60° incidence angle as shown on Figure 3. The locations of the back and the chest wounds required that this tangentially entering bullet deflected by an incredible angle of between forty and sixty degrees during transit of the torso. So both the original and the revised descriptions of the back wound are entangled in insoluble problems.

Following the testimony of Shaw on March 23, 1964, Specter and Shaw had a conversation off the record then went back on the record and discussed whether a tumbling bullet struck Governor Connally in the back. Shaw mistakenly associated an elliptical wound with a bullet, which had struck something else. This testimony strongly suggests that Doctor Shaw and the authorities reached a compromise. In particular the authorities would forgive doctoring his medical reports in exchange for capitulation to tolerate the SBT.

The locations and dimensions of both wrist wounds and especially the linear shape of the volar wound imply transit by a bullet with a considerable though decreasing angle of yaw. For the dorsal wound the given dimensions imply striking by a bullet with a yaw angle between arcsin ( 2 / 3 ) or forty-two degrees and arcsin ( 2.5 / 3 ) or fifty-six degrees. The dimensions of the wound on the volar side of the wrist imply exit by a bullet with a lesser yaw angle of arcsin ( 1.5 / 3 ) or thirty degrees. Modifications of these calculations to account for the elongation of the wounds by a few tenths of a centimeter due to tangential entry and exit by the yawed bullet would be inconsequential.

However, the ante posterior X-rays of the wrist, CE 691 and CE 692 show no evidence of a yawed bullet having punched a slot with dimensions ranging from 1/4 inch by 1 inch nearer the dorsal side of the wrist to 1/4 inch by 4/5 inch nearer the volar side. Given the locations of these wounds, a slot punched by a yawed bullet would have been seen on the ante posterior X-rays as a through and through gap in the radius. So the failure to see this large void of bone stands in contradiction with the description of the surface wounds.

By contrast, a properly aligned bullet with negligible yaw angle could have tangentially perforated the wrist and tunneled a track with a 1/4 inch diameter through the bone. This bullet track would appear as a narrow strip of lesser opacity on the X-rays.

Apparently Gregory learned by experience that a yawed bullet could produce linear surface wounds and another bullet could tunnel a small cylindrical track through a bone. However, his role as a medical doctor did not require him to analyze whether one wound could embody the special characteristics of two other unrelated wounds. Probably these gaps in his knowledge account for the contradictions in the presented descriptions of wrist wounds.

The X-rays presented by Gregory showing the tiny fragment inline with the femur on some views and just beneath the skin on orthogonal views effectively disproves Shires' claim of a fragment imbedded in the bone. Further the report by Gregory of a 6-millimeter "almost round" thigh wound discredits the speculation by Shires of a tangential entry by the bullet. The implications of these two reports by Gregory consistently point to an unexpected posture for the leg when wounded.

If Connally's left leg were crossed with its calf resting near his right knee then a bullet on an earlier course from below the right nipple and straight through the wrist would strike the inner surface of the left thigh at a small angle of incidence. This trajectory would carry the bullet and any shed fragment closer to the knee while not penetrating toward the bone by a comparable distance.

Perhaps the authorities interpreted this implied posture of Connally as feminine and moved the left leg to a normal masculine position when shot. The problems with Shires' testimony in Dallas and his latter absence from testifying in Washington, D.C. are consistent with this possibility.