THE PUBLIC MIND: CONSPIRACY NOT BACKED BY RIFLE EVIDENCE

To the Editor:

The movie, "JFK", has exhumed the memory of that tragic day in Dallas when a popular president was murdered with a shot to the head. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot the next day.

From such terrible events arise a tide of public doubt. Waves of conspiracy theories and alleged coverups culminate in an endless train of books and articles.

From the sixth story of the Book Depository Building, Oswald is alleged to have fired three shots toward the rear of the Kennedy limousine. Three spent cartridges were found near the abandoned Manlicher-Carcano rifle.

Assassination buffs argue that there were "multiple shooters." Their theory is based, in part, upon a few frames in the Abraham Zapruder home movie of the motorcade. Since the film speed was known to be 18 frames per second, the camera functioned as a very precise clock. The physical evidence observed in these frames does not indicate the presence of other "shooters".

According to analysis of the film by physicist Dr. Luis Alvarez of the University of California, there were three shots. Following the first shot (frame 177), there was the wounding shot (frame 251), and the killing shot (frame 313). The latter bullet penetrated the back of the skull, making a small hole. While passing through the cranium, the bullet caused high fluid pressure in the brain. Then, it exited the skull, blasting a large hole. This high pressure in the skull forced brain matter to squirt out the large hole at high speed.

The next, crucial event convinced many that a second gunman had fired a bullet into the president's head from the opposite direction. When the brain matter exited, the head was driven violently backward. Later, assassination buffs were convinced that another bullet had struck from the front!

Alvarez analyzed this motion using well-known principles of physics. He determined that the recoil motion of the head resulted from the forward-ejected jet of brain matter exerting a backward force on the head. This is analogous to hot gasses ejected from a rocket, creating an opposite thrust on the vehicle. Could this explain why the "brain was missing"?

To test his theory, Alvarez had watermelons wrapped tightly with Scotch glass 1-inch filament tape, "to mock up the tensile strength of the cranium." The melons were suspended like pendulums. When struck by high-velocity bullets, "most of the reinforced melons were driven toward the gun", not away from it!

This analysis does not prove that another gunman was involved in the assassination, as the buffs suggest. It does eliminate the "retrograde head-snap" as evidence of a conspiracy.

Also, Alverez's film analysis includes evidence that Oswald did not have an accomplice; i.e., another "shooter". ~

Harley Rutledge

Cape Girardeau