Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (113 page)

Almost four hours after the study began, the results were in. Dr.
Norton, who headed the exhumation study, sta`.ed: "Beyond any doubt,
and I mean any doubt, the individual buried under the name Lee Harvey
Oswald in Rose Hill Cemetery is in fact Lee Harvey Oswald."

Within hours, local newspapers carried the headlines:

-DOCTORS IDENTIFY BODY AS OSWALD,
-AUTOPSY PROVES BODY IS OSWALD'S and
-OSWALD ISSUE FINALLY AT REST

While some discrepancies were found between the corpse's teeth and
Oswald's military dental records, the doctors were satisfied that enough
similarities remained to warrant their conclusion. Also, a hole was discovered behind the left ear, which corresponded to Oswald's known mastoid
operation.

The issue appeared to be settled. But-as so much else in the Kennedy
assassination-this was not to be.

A few weeks after the Oswald exhumation, the two funeral home
directors who prepared Oswald's body for burial in 1963 got together and
talked. Paul Groody and Alan Baumgartner were troubled. They were not
supposed to have been at the postexhumation examination. But at the last minute, Marina Oswald had asked them to be present and identify rings on
the corpse.

Entering the autopsy room in Dallas, both men confirmed that the rings
were on the corpse in the same location they had placed them in 1963.
However, as the forensic examination continued, both Groody and
Baumgartner noticed that the skull of the corpse under examination was in
one piece-completely intact.

Weeks later, after discussing the matter between themselves, the funeral
home directors discussed the situation with Texas assassination researchers
and gave startling information-the body that was exhumed in 1981 was
not the same body they buried in 1963!

What confirmed this idea in their minds was the absence of signs of a
craniotomy, a normal autopsy procedure. A craniotomy involves drawing
the skin off the human skull and cutting off the top of the skull with a bone
saw, usually in a V-shaped cut. This allows forensic pathologists to view
the brain. There can be no question that this procedure was performed on
Oswald's body since the weight of his brain was recorded in the autopsy
report. Furthermore, both funeral home directors recalled the craniotomy
in preparing the body for burial. Groody said: "I put the skull back
together and sewed up his scalp."

Yet both men have said they noticed no sign of the craniotomy on the
skull they viewed during the 1981 exhumation study. If there was no
craniotomy performed on the skull in Oswald's grave, it is proof that the
body is not the same one buried there in 1963.

There are other indications that some manipulation may have taken
place with the body. To begin with, Marina Oswald told newsmen that she
received a telephone call around Easter 1964, from government officials
asking her to sign papers authorizing the installation of an electronic alarm
system at the Oswald grave. She said a "respectful" man in a gray suit
came to her home shortly after the call and had her sign some papers. She
told United Press International: "I signed lots of papers and they were
never translated or explained to me. I didn't even speak English. I just did
what I was told."

Prior to the exhumation, Marina was nearly convinced that Oswald's
body had been removed from the grave, most probably after the signing of
the papers in 1964.

As far as is known, no electronic alarm system was ever installed at the
Oswald grave.

Prior to the exhumation, mortician Groody told newsmen how carefully
Oswald had been embalmed. He also describedohow the body was placed
in an airtight coffin that was placed inside an airtight cement vault. Groody
said that upon exhumation Oswald's body should look exactly as it had
the day he was buried.

However, when workers exhumed the grave on October 4, 1981, they
found the cement vault in pieces and the seal on the coffin broken. Water and air had gotten into the coffin and Oswald's body had deteriorated to
skeletal remains.

While the rupture of seals on both the vault and the coffin is not an
impossible occurrence, several morticians interviewed by this author said
such an event is highly unusual. It could be explained by movement of the
earth, although North Central Texas is regarded as a very stable area. The
broken seals also could be explained by someone having opened the grave
prior to the 1981 exhumation.

Another logical time for a pre-exhumation grave opening would have
been earlier in 1981, when Marguerite Oswald was buried next to Oswald's
grave. The presence of earth-moving equipment and a canopy covering
both graves provided an opportunity for covertly opening Oswald's adjacent grave.

So, the question has been asked-was a substitution made for the body
in Oswald's grave?

The answer may be found in a four-hour videotape made of the 1981
exhumation study. The tape was commissioned by Marina Oswald and
Eddowes and was produced by Hampton Hall, the son of a Texas state
politician.

Once the craniotomy question became known to Marina, a friend and
neighbor was asked to view the tape. The neighbor, along with his
personal physician, viewed the videotape and reported that there was no
sign nor mention of a craniotomy. This added further suspicions about the
exhumation.

Finally, in 1984-four years after the exhumation-a detailed report on
the exhumation findings was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. In the report, it stated:

A previous autopsy saw cut in the usual fashion was present on the
calvarium with an anterior inverted V-notch in the right frontal region.
The calvarium was maintained in continuity with the remainder of the
skull by virtue of decomposed mummified tissue. The previously sawed
calvarium was not separated nor was it easily dislodged.

In other words, decomposed jellylike skin had coated the Oswald skull,
which made it appear to be in one piece.

Researchers were skeptical of this information and turned to Marina for
confirmation of the craniotomy by viewing the videotape of the exhumation. Oddly enough, photographer Hall refused to give up the tape, claiming that so much time had elapsed that ownership of the tape had reverted
to him.

In February 1984, Marina was forced to go to court in an effort to
retrieve the videotape she had commissioned. By the summer of 1986, an
out-of-court settlement resulted in a promise to return the tape, but by
mid-1989 it had still not been returned.

The issue should have been a simple one. View the tapes and photos of
the exhumation and resolve whether or not the craniotomy marks were
visible on the Oswald skull. But with the tapes still not available, this issue
remains in controversy, like so much else in the JFK assassination case.

And researchers remain intrigued. If the body exhumed in 1981 was
indeed that of Oswald-as confirmed by the forensic pathologists and his
Marine dental X-rays-but the exhumed corpse was not that of the man
buried in 1963-as claimed by the two morticians-then it is possible that
an impostor Oswald was killed in Dallas and his body exchanged for
Oswald's sometime prior to the exhumation.

And who might have the power and authority to accomplish such a
momentous task? The idea that the Soviets, Castro agents, or mobsters
could switch bodies is ludicrous.

All this only reinforces the knowledge that in the JFK assassination, not
one piece of evidence or issue of fact can be taken for granted.

There is an abundance of evidence to suggest that one or more persons
were impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald in the weeks and months prior to
the assassination of President Kennedy.

The U.S. government has studiously avoided addressing this evidence
since to admit impersonation would be to admit the possibility that Oswald
was framed for the assassination-exactly as he claimed.

Chief Counsel Robert Blakey of the House Select Committee on Assassinations even told newsmen that the Committee purposely failed to look at
such evidence "to avoid publicizing issues the Committee concluded were
of dubious importance."

Blakey said questions over impersonation distracted the public from the
central question: Who killed President John F. Kennedy?

Researchers, however, point out that discovering who may have been
impersonating Oswald could go far in answering that question.

The idea that someone posed as Oswald to incriminate him in the
assassination is supported by a wide and diverse amount of evidencefrom a 1960 warning of impersonation from none other than FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover to a woman who caught a man who looked like Oswald
firing a 6.5 mm rifle near her home-outside- of Dallas.

There were several instances of Oswald being reported in two separate
places at the same time-an anomaly that the Warren Commission and the
House Committee simply disregarded.

A second impersonation possibility has it that the Oswald killed by Jack
Ruby in Dallas was not even the same man who was born to Marguerite
Oswald in 1939.

British author Michael Eddowes-who first publicized the possibility of a substitute Oswald in 1977-charged that a Soviet agent was substituted
for Oswald while he was out of sight in Russia.

Other researchers claim that evidence supports the idea that someone
was substituted for Oswald while he was in the Marines in preparation for
his mission to Russia.

Even Oswald's mother and brothers noted how changed he appeared
after his return from the Soviet Union. In 1967, his mother publicly raised
questions over the identity of the body in Oswald's grave and asked to
have his body exhumed. But when Eddowes-later joined by Oswald's
widow, Marina-went to court to have an exhumation ordered, they were
blocked for years-first by Texas political figures and later by Oswald's
brother Robert.

When Oswald's grave was finally opened in the fall of 1981, a panel of
four forensic pathologists declared the body that of Oswald-based on
comparing the corpse's teeth to one set of Marine dental records.

But even today the controversy won't die. The two funeral directors
who buried Oswald-both of whom were present at the exhumationclaim the man dug up in 1981 was not the same man they buried in 1963.
They claim there was no sign of a craniotomy-a standard autopsy procedure known to have been performed on Oswald's body-on the corpse in
1981. The medical official in charge of the autopsy disputed this charge
and the one piece of objective evidence-a videotape of the exhumation
examination that should settle the issue-has yet to be returned to Marina
Oswald, who commissioned and paid for the taping.

The impersonation of Oswald would appear to be an issue that could be
resolved easily by a truthful government investigation. Instead, it is another area of the assassination full of omissions, inconsistencies, and
possible deceit.

And in the final analysis, Blakey might be right in saying that the
questions over Oswald's identity are distracting.

The issue of Oswald impersonation may be a moot point, since the
preponderance of evidence suggests that the Oswald in Dallas-whether
lone nut, American agent, Soviet operative, real, or substitute-did not
kill President Kennedy.

... bodies left with no hope of the cause of death being determined by the
most complete autopsy and chemical examinations.

-CIA letter on disposal of victims

In the three-year period which followed the murder of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died-six by
gunfire, three in motor accidents, two by suicide, one from a cut throat,
one from a karate chop to the neck, five from natural causes.

An actuary, engaged by the London Sunday Times, concluded that on
November 22, 1963, the odds against these witnesses being dead by
February 1967, were one hundred thousand trillion to one.

The above comment on the deaths of assassination witnesses was published in a tabloid companion piece to the movie Execution Action, released in 1973. By that time, part of the mythology of the Kennedy
assassination included the mysterious deaths of people who were connected with it.

By the mid-1960s, people in Dallas already were whispering about the
number of persons who died under strange or questionable circumstances.
Well into the 1980s, witnesses and others were hesitant to come forward
with information because of the stories of strange and sudden death that
seemed to visit some people with information about the assassination.

Finally, in the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations felt compelled to look into the matter.

But aside from discrediting the London Sunday Times actuarial study,
the Committee was unable to come to any conclusions regarding the growing
number of deaths. The Committee said it could not make a valid actuarial
study due to the broad number and types of persons that had to be included
in such a study.

In response to a letter from the Committee, London Sunday Times legal
manager Anthony Whitaker stated:

Our piece about the odds against the deaths of the Kennedy witnesses
was, I regret to say, based on a careless journalistic mistake and should
not have been published. This was realized by The Sunday Times
editorial staff after the first edition-the one which goes to the United
States . ..-had gone out, and later editions were amended. There was
no question of our actuary having got his answer wrong: it was simply
that we asked him the wrong question. He was asked what were the odds against 15 named people out of the population of the United States
dying within a short period of time, to which he replied-correctly-that
they were very high. However, if one asks what are the odds against 15
of those included in the Warren Commission Index dying within a given
period, the answer is, of course, that they are much lower. Our mistake
was to treat the reply to the former question as if it dealt with the
latter-hence the fundamental error in our first edition report, for which
we apologize.