Writes Dom Armentano:
Doug Horne has recently produced a fascinating documentary about multiple casket entries into the Bethesda morgue on the evening of November 22, 1963. It is well done and I urge everyone to watch it on YouTube.
Horne’s most controversial claim is that JFK’s corpse entered the morgue at 6:35 pm (well before the “official” arrival at 7:15 or so) in a gray shipping casket for so-called pre-autopsy surgery to remove evidence of shots from the front. In the video, Horne asserts at one point that the evidence for both of these claims is overwhelming.
I emphatically disagree. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. For an extended analysis of the Lifton/Horne “early entry” hypothesis, see my 2023 article (based exclusively on ARRB testimony) on this website.
In brief, while there is some evidence that a gray shipping casket may have arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 6:35, there is NO first-hand evidence that anyone saw JFK’s corpse in it; or taken out of it. None. There is nothing in the R.E. Boyajian Report, for example, that confirms that President Kennedy’s body was actually in that casket. And there is nothing in the telephone interview that Doug Horne conducted with Boyajian in 1996 that confirms that JFK’s body was in that casket. Indeed, Boyajian told Horne in 1996 that he now had “no memory” of the casket arrival at all! Yikes!
Doug Horne bases the bulk of his “JFK/early-entry” theory on the testimony of Navy corpsman Dennis David. David claimed, among other things, that Dr Boswell told him that night that JFK’s corpse arrived at 6:35 in a gray shipping casket. The implication, of course, is that Dr. Boswell had seen this personally and, importantly, that Dennis David is not confabulating.
The problem here is that when Dr. Boswell testified before the ARRB he stated that he was nowhere near the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 and, therefore, could not have observed any JFK casket entry. Strike one. David’s assertion about the Bosell conversations is further compromised by the fact that he also made highly dubious claims about handling bullet fragments that night and watching a video of the actual JFK autopsy! (He also underwent hypnosis in 1994 to “recover assassination memories”). Strike two. Finally, when Dennis David was asked specifically whether he himself had seen JFK’s corpse in or out of the shipping casket, he emphatically said that he had NOT. Strike three. In short, Dennis David provides NO credible first-hand evidence that JFK’s body arrived early for any pre-autopsy surgery.
In short, while Horne is to be applauded for producing a thoroughly engaging video (his cinematic skills are substantial) his major proposition–that JFK’s corpse arrived in a shipping casket at 6:35–has NOT (in my judgment) been substantiated by any “best evidence.”
