Dr. Cyril Wecht
Expert Cyril Wecht calls Kennedy assassination a coup
Katherine Ramsland, a Facebook friend, criminal psychologist and prolific author invited friend and COPA associate Cyril Wecht to give a lecture on the Kennedy assassination to her college conference and a local reporter was there to cover it.
https://www.facebook.com/katherine.ramsland
http://web1.desales.edu/default.aspx?pageid=1230
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Ramsland
Author: Randy
Kraft, WFMZ.com Reporter, Randy.Kraft@wfmz.com
Published: Sep
18 2013 06:58:04 AM EDT Updated On: Sep 18 2013 01:36:03
PM EDT
CENTER
VALLEY, Pa. -
The
assassination of President John F. Kennedy was “the overthrow of the government,
it was coup d'état in America.”
So
declared Dr. Cyril Wecht, the famous forensic pathologist -- to the applause of
about 300 people attending his presentation on the Kennedy assassination
Tuesday night at DeSales University in Center Valley, Lehigh Co.
“The
assassination of John F. Kennedy was plotted and executed by people in this
country,” said Wecht.
“Jack
Kennedy was going to be around for five more years – no question – followed by
eight years of Bobby Kennedy—almost certainly.”
He said
there was no way in the world that “super, super patriots” were going to sit
back and allow the Kennedys to move the country politically and ideologically
for 13 years.
He said
the Kennedys – and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who like Bobby
Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 -- were undefeatable.
“You
could not beat the Kennedys with their charm, their charisma, their power,
their money, their colleagues, their friends, the constituencies that fell in
line. There was only one way to eliminate that. That was through physical
assassination.”
Wecht,
one of the nation’s leading experts on the assassination of the president,
spoke with so much passion about Kennedy’s death that someone walking into the
middle of his talk might have thought he was talking about someone killed just
last week, rather than nearly 50 years ago.
The 50th
anniversary of his assassination will be observed in November. He was killed on
Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas.
Wecht
told the audience he could not give them the name of the person behind the
assassination of the Kennedy brothers. “I probably would be afraid if I knew
the name. But there are some people that are very suspect, who were high
ranking in the CIA at that time.”
Wecht
said it is naïve to suggest that the true reasons for the assassination should
have leaked out by now. He said “super spies” would never talk about it, but
would do it “for the best of reasons in your mind, to save your country, which
is going to hell in a basket under the Kennedys.”
He noted
at the time some leading U.S. military leaders were advocating dropping nuclear
bombs on Russia and that people opposed Kennedy’s views on civil rights and
voting rights. Some also didn’t like the president just because he was
Catholic.
“This
was the social-political climate in our country.”
Wecht
indicated no other president in his lifetime has had as much public support as
John Kennedy.
Oswald
not alone?
Wecht
said history and political science books in high schools and colleges report
Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin, but every poll taken from the late 60s
until the present shows the American people do not agree.
He said
the latest poll, done late last year, shows 85 percent of Americans do not
believe Oswald was the sole assassin.
‘There’s
not 85 percent of people in America who think that apple pie, baseball,
motherhood and sex is a good idea, but 85 percent of Americans reject the
Warren Commission report.”
He
encouraged his audience to read several different books about the Kennedy
assassination, including those defending the Warren Commission report -- which
concludes Oswald alone did it -- and come to their own conclusion about whether
it is possible for one person “to shoot from that window, with that weapon, to
produce those wounds” in 5.6 seconds.
He said
the bolt-action rifle Oswald supposedly used takes 2.3 seconds from shot to
shot when fired by the best marksmen in the country. But Gov. John Connally of
Texas, who was sitting in front of the president in the open motorcade car, was
shot 1.5 second after Kennedy was hit.
He said
Oswald flunked his first marksmanship test in the U.S. Marines and got the
equivalent of a C-minus the second time he took it.
Wecht
believes two shooters killed the president that day in Dallas, one from the
rear --. “I personally don’t believe it was Oswald” – and one from the picket
fence behind the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. “At least
four shots were fired, quite possibly five,” he said. “The president was hit in
the head twice.”
As Wecht
went frame by frame through the famous Zapruder film of the assassination,
Kennedy is first seen grabbing his throat. Many in the audience gasped in
horror when the front of the president’s head exploded in blood and gore.
Wecht
called that film the single most important piece of evidence in the entire
case.
Wecht
shot big holes in the single bullet theory, that the same bullet killed the
president and wounded the governor. “He called it “scientific nonsense – a
forensic folly of the highest order.”
He had
his wife Sigrid and program organizer Dr. Katherine Ramsland sit in chairs in
the front of the room to simulate the positions of Kennedy and Connally in the
car.
He
demonstrated that one bullet had to change directions at least twice in mid-air
to strike both men. He said Connally had five wounds.
Wecht
said the two military pathologists called in to Bethesda Naval Hospital to do
the autopsy on the president, after his body was flown to Washington, had never
done a single gunshot-wound autopsy in their entire careers. He said 33 people
witnessed that autopsy, including admirals and generals.
Wecht
said in August 1972, he learned President Kennedy’s brain was missing. “To this
day, all these years later, it remains missing.” He said forensic analysis of
the brain would have shown trajectories of two different bullets.
He said
Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald two days after the assassination, had been
let into the basement of the police building in Dallas by a high-ranking police
officer. “The Warren Commission never said anything about that.” He said Jack
Ruby was Mafia, but he does not believe the Mafia orchestrated the death of the
president.
He also
does not believe vice president Lyndon Johnson, who became president when
Kennedy was killed, or FBI director J. Edgar Hoover were involved.
“I do believe
Hoover was very much part of the subsequent cover-up and not digging into it.”
He also
does not believe the Russians, Cubans or Chinese were behind the assassination.
Waiting
for the truth
The
82-year-old Wecht told the audience he used to think the truth about the
assassination would be made known in his lifetime. “I now know it’s not going
to happen in my lifetime. It’s going to take another generation or two. There
remains under seal to this day thousands of documents, which according to an
executive order issued in April 1965, remain sealed for 75 years.
“My
suggestion is get your children and your grandchildren to read and study,
that’s the call to action.”
He
encouraged DeSales to get the 26-volume Warren Commission report on the
president’s assassination for its library, but to be sure to put it with Tom
Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and other works of
fiction.
The
audience applauded when he called that report “the greatest bit of forensic
scientific fiction that has ever been foisted on the American public.”
Robert
Kennedy assassination
Wecht
said Robert Kennedy had just won the Democratic primary in California and was
assured of winning the Democratic nomination for president in 1968. He was
assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 6,
1968.
The
accused assassin is Sirhan Sirhan.
Wecht
stunned the audience when he said the autopsy of Robert Kennedy showed he was
killed by a shot fired from only an inch to an inch-and-a-half behind Kennedy’s
right ear.
On that
point, he said, “There was unanimity of opinion among 10-12 forensic
pathologists, including military people.
“This
evidence was never introduced into the trial of Sirhan Sirhan,” said Wecht.
"Also,
there were 13 shots fired. The gun only held eight bullets. He sure as heck
never reloaded that gun.”
He said
a private guard standing right behind Robert Kennedy had a gun, but it was
never examined by the authorities. Months later, a search for that gun showed
it changed hands several times, then was stolen and never recovered.
King
assassination
Wecht
said he participated in the autopsy of James Earl Ray, accused assassin of
Martin Luther King. He described Ray as a “two-bit, petty, punk thief – a
penniless bum who was in jail for most of his adult life.” He also said Ray was
not involved in politics.
He
expressed skepticism that Ray acted on his own in killing the civil rights
leader on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tenn.
Wecht
said Ray fled to Canada, but forgot to take the rifle with his fingerprints on
it. He said, in Canada, Ray had documents “that would make Sean Connery playing
007 green with envy,” and that he managed to flee to England and Portugal
before being caught.
Forensic
Forum
Wecht
spoke for more than an hour, then answered questions from the audience for
another 25 minutes.
He said
Elvis Presley died not of heart disease, but from 12 central nervous system
depressant drugs, including tranquilizers, sedatives and anti-depressants.
One of
the several books Wecht has written is about JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old
Colorado beauty pageant queen found dead in the basement of her home in 1996.
He does not believe it was a botched kidnapping attempt, indicating it made no
sense for kidnappers to write a ransom note, but then forgot to take the body.
He believes JonBenet accidentally was killed by her father during a sex game.
Wecht
spoke at the latest in a series of Forensic Forums organized by Ramsland, who
teaches forensic psychology at DeSales.
Ramsland
introduced Wecht by saying “he seeks social truth and justice in some of our
greatest forensic mysteries.”
“I’ve
given you the forensic scientific facts,” Wecht told the audience. “I have not
said a thing here today that is not subject to corroboration.”
In
addition to being a forensic pathologist who has done more than 18,000
autopsies, Wecht is a doctor, a lawyer, an author and a legal and medical
consultant who frequently weighs in on high-profile deaths in the national news
media.
He said
he was interviewed a few months ago for a History Channel program about the
Kennedy assassination, which will air in November.
He is
clinical professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Schools of Medicine,
Dental Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health.
He said
he has another book coming out about the Kennedy assassination in about a
month.
He also
said his first e-book, called “Final Exams,” is coming out next week.
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ALSO CHECK OUT:
The 2013 Wecht Conference:
http://www.duq.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/wecht-institute-of-forensic-science-and-law/conferences
ALSO CHECK OUT:
The 2013 Wecht Conference:
http://www.duq.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/wecht-institute-of-forensic-science-and-law/conferences
Passing the TorchAn International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
October 17-19, 2013
October 17-19, 2013
Following up on its world-renowned 40th anniversary conference, the Wecht Institute is pleased to announce its plans to re-convene many of the leading scientific and legal experts on the murder case that has fascinated and perplexed us for decades. As the JFK assassination and many of its witnesses, investigators and researchers begin to recede into history, this symposium is intended in large part to interest and inform young people from the Pittsburgh region, across the country and beyond about one of the seminal events of 20th century American history, and why it still matters today.
1 comment:
Very interesting!
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