June 11, 2026 • 55 mins
June 5, 1968, just before midnight, Senator Robert F Kennedy delivered a victory speech in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the democratic primary. RFK was supposed to address another group of supporters in another ballroom, but a last minute press conference was put together, and Kennedy was forced to take an unplanned shortcut through the pantry in the kitchen of the hotel where RFK was shot three times leading to his death the next day at the age of 42. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explore the assassination of the second Kennedy in less than 5 years and review the autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality Bags with Joseph Scott more Day, we're going to
hop back in the wayback machine. And the reason we're
going to do this is that, well, it's a significant anniversary,
(00:21):
and it's significant in the sense that it changed the
course of lives all around the country and even it
changed the course of how forensic medicine is practiced. Today,
we're going to tell the tale of two brothers that
(00:44):
died within a decade, less than a decade upon one another,
and one brother was arguably subjected his body was to
the worst forensic autopsy that had had ever been performed,
particularly in a high profile case. And jumping forward just
(01:06):
a few years later, another brother, His brother dies and
arguably the finest, most highly detailed autopsy that has ever
been conducted on an individual of this stature was performed.
Today we're going to focus on the autopsy of Robert F.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Dave. I've
often wondered, over the course of my career and covering cases,
what the nature what it felt like that night back
(01:54):
in nineteen sixty eight, June the fifth. You know where
we're in a time in our country where it seems
like it's coming apart of the seams, you know. I
mean we've had many of those instances since then. I
think that we kind of live in times that are
not too dissimilar from that. Right now, total chaos, and
(02:16):
you've got one person that kind of burst on the
scene that maybe might offer people some hope, you know,
sense peace maybe, and right before our very eyes, right
before the nation's eyes. And this is not like John F. Kennedy,
where you know, this prut of film was held back.
(02:39):
This is something that was you know, in living color,
you know, where it came out pretty quickly afterwards. We
had a lot of witnesses to this event.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Well, yeah, Joe, you've got to remember a couple of
things in nineteen sixty eight, Okay, June fifth, nineteen sixty eight,
Bobby Kennedy, he was not the front runner for the
Democratic nomination, and he was the hope of the younger generation.
That was really you know, this is a year after
you know, if you're going to San Francisco, Flowers in
your hair with Scott mackenzie, it was four and a
(03:10):
half years after the assassination of JFK And we're only
talking two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior.
So there was a lot going on in our world,
protesting the war, protesting the government, protesting everything. And to
see Bobby Kennedy shot down, you know, murdered while he's
(03:33):
on the campaign. You remember, the one of the most
important things we see is in Bobby Kennedy RFK in
the Ambassador Hotel when he says on to Chicago. You know,
they just won the California primary. He was not favored
to win the primary in California, and he did. And
so it just you know, you've and are talking about
(03:54):
this before we started today, and his campaign just man,
it was like they a rocket to when he won Calimfornia.
It was a big deal and there was a lot
going on at the Ambassador Hotel. Now you have thankfully
been able to look at the autopsy, and you mentioned
(04:16):
in the opening when I encourage you to go back
and listen to the Body Bags episode about John F.
Kennedy's assassination, because the autopsy is just it's despicable to
think that our country did that to a president and
his death. The autopsy of Bobby though considerably different.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, yeah, it really is. I've thought about this, I know,
and I'm going to give a big shout out here
because I owe him a lot. My buddy, Julian Dorry.
I've appeared on his podcast I think twice. Big reveal.
I've got another one coming up this summer where I'm
going to be rejoining Julian.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But the.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Second time I appeared with Julian, we did We did
an entire JFK episode strictly about the medical legal and
of course we did Bodybags, Dave, as you have stated,
probably by far my favorite episode on bodybags. But I
was able to sit down with Julian. I think we
went for how in the world I did this? I
(05:24):
have no idea. I think I talked for like three
hours about JFK. But you know, there's so much to unpack.
There still is, yeah, there really is, and I don't
I don't necessarily look. I entertain everything. I read the
book Chaos not too long ago. I'd seen it on
you know, and several of these other things you know
(05:45):
that talk about mentoring candidates and all of this. But
it was it was me, as we always say on bodybacks,
I'll never flee from this. By the way, we always
have to return back to the science, don't we You know,
there's a lot of speculative stuff that has all always existed.
And if it's like going into a laboratory in science,
(06:07):
if you if you don't follow the steps along the way,
if you're trying to analyze something, if you're trying to
create something, you know you can't you cannot stay within
the rules and expect a reasonable outcome. And reasonableness, I
think is one of the things that you're hoping for,
(06:29):
right It's it's not either a negative finding or positive finding,
it's did you stay within the parameters? What is it
of accepted practice? And reflecting back now you know, we
hate to use the words celebrated, we marked, We mark
JFK's the sixtieth anniversary back in twenty twenty three, and reflectively,
(06:55):
you know, going back to you know, even transporting ourselves
back in time to JFK, there there was an acceptable standard.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I think people think that people in sixty three were
still using whale old lamps, you know, and you know
conjuring up. You know, we need to bleed you in
order to get the negative humors out of your body.
You know, that's not the way it was. I mean,
we had modern medicine back then, we had an understanding
(07:25):
of wound ballistics. We just come off the biggest war
in the history of mankind. Arguably we understood ballistics. Okay,
so you can disabuse yourself with this idea that we
were still in this kind of very primitive stage.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Well, you know, Joe, I'm glad you brought that up
because I want to point one thing out, friends, and
that is we've talked about how how the medical legal profession,
how it's grown, how forensics has grown by leaps and
bounds since you started professionally. Oh yeah, when you look
at the assassination of JFK, then Martin Luther King Junior
(08:01):
and RFK. I want to point something out. It was
comedian Dick Gregory who actually used tape recorders at his
performances to improve himself. And he was at a stage
of his career where he was gaining a lot of
popularity and fame, and he was taking a very active
interest in politics. And Dick Gregory the day of the
(08:25):
assassination November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, he noticed that
he started taping. You know, he had like tape machines
going in the living room, bedroom, every place. He had
a radio or a TV on different networks, and he
was taping what was being said so that he would
have a doctor. He knew how big it was and
he wanted to document what was going on. But something
(08:45):
he picked up as he was listening to this all
day long, the coverage of the assassination of JFK. The
story's changed. The same people being interviewed, their story change.
So you've got people that are being interviewed within an
hour of the assass fascination taking place, indeed Lee Plaza,
and five hours later on another network, a totally different
(09:05):
story from the same people. And that's where Dick Gregory,
you know, I know we talk about JFK because it
actually has bearing on RFK, because you know, certainly does.
Do you know where the assassination of the Zapruder film
the showing which, by the way, we've never seen the
complete Supruder film because the government cut segments out of it.
(09:26):
They edited that can't explain why, but it was edited anyway.
Do you know where it was first shown? It was
on a show that had Dick Gregory as a guest.
It was on heralber Rivera's late night show in the
mid seventies called good Night America. And it was on
that show, which you can find on YouTube, where the
(09:47):
Zapruder film was played for the very first time, and
people who believed in the idea that the Kennedy assassination
was done by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, went, oh,
my gosh, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, I know that, right. I went back. Two things
I went back and did. First off, you've mentioned the
Gregory appearance to me before on on Heralda's show, and
I think I had seen it prior to that. But friends,
if you if you have not seen this, I strongly
(10:24):
urge you to go back, because you get in real
time the reaction from a pristine audience has never been exposed.
I mean, we're kind of jaded now because we've seen,
you know, in that that one frame where the president's
head comes apart, right, they've just passed over that sign
(10:45):
rather not the overpass.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
But the signal that's where the film had been cut to,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And you can see his head, you know, just kind
of well, these people it was seventy seven, right, Dave,
I think seventy seven or a probably you can. I
know that Rivera says. He says something. He alludes to
the fact that you're about to see it for the
first time. Warning yea, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
You're experiencing this with this crowd, this first collective group
of people of regular citizens that bear witness to this.
And trust me, they didn't have even the monitors within
that studio. They didn't have the ability to see it
like we do now where it's super enhanced. Even back then,
where they're looking on an old bulb, you know, bald
(11:36):
monitor there, and the President's head comes apart and you
can hear them all collectively, you know, draw breath. And
I think there's a scene where they cut to the audience.
There's people with their heads buried and they're shaking their head.
And if the scar wasn't deep enough already, it was
further further enhanced that night. And from that point on,
(12:00):
you know, people begin to have begin to have their suspicions,
you know, not that they hadn't already, but this is
kind of a further reinforcement from physical science perspective, I
think where people were actually asking questions, and I'm not
talking about people that sit alone and you know, kind
of ruminate. All. I'm talking about people that were housewives
(12:24):
and people that were plumbers, and people that it never
caught their eye and they didn't realize how deep the
wound was until and I mean that metaphorically, until they
this is burst on the scene. But you know who
else out there saw the problem with all of this,
the film, the autopsy itself, the examination that followed, well,
(12:47):
that person plays a key role in the autopsy of
RFK because he knew what had happened at the autopsy
of Robert's brother, John F.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And we're going to talk a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Him, brother Dave.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
There's a there's an elderly man still with us. I
can't believe he is, but he is. And I'm referring
to Thomas Nogucci still alive, oh over ninety now supposedly,
(13:35):
you know, still Spry once known as the Corner to
the Stars. He wrote two books. I recommend him to everybody.
One is just called Corner. The other one is called
Corner at Large. If you really want to get an
insight into into the world that he inhabited regarding UH
(14:01):
working in l a UH and doing autopsies on people,
like Belushi and Marilyn Monroe shared Tate. He was actually
physically present at to Tate Lapianca murder scenes, and so.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I didn't know that I didn't know, and Neagucci was there.
I knew about the Belushi because I remember I asked
you about it on the Belushi autopsy. When they held
he held his arm up and squeezed because he wanted
to see if he could find where the needle the.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Needle puncture wounds.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, and that's the milking of the arm is something
that we use. And there's something that I teach my
students that I learned from doctor Nogucci in reading one
of these books, and he I think it was at
the Tate scene. His idea was, and this this seems
so counterintuitive, but this gives you an idea of the
way his mind works. Okay, as a death investigator, you
(14:55):
think that you're going to walk into a scene and
immediately you go right to the box. I don't know
if it's if it is doctor Nogucci's kind of Zen
like Eastern mentality that's so different from the Western mind.
But he understood something that I wish every investigator that
(15:15):
works death cases understands he purposefully never looked at the
body at a scene until the last moment. He always
cast his eyes up, he said, because it's human nature
to focus on the body, and you lose context for
the entire for the rest of the environment that you're in.
A doctor Noguchi, he put forth the idea that if
(15:39):
you look up and kind of work your way down
side to side three hundred and sixty degrees, if the
body is concentrically in the center of the room and
you just kind of look around, then you never lose
context for the biggest bit of evidence that you have.
Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, And so I actually makes sense with my students
when I'm teaching them, like, don't because it's so easy
to get distracted by the body. Why you know, you're
kind of chomping at the bit you're outside the tape.
Maybe you finally make an in and you rush to
the body to begin to do all these things. But
you can do it already. We get measurements.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yeah, this drives me crazy because you know, you and
I talked about the destruction of evidence at a crime
scene in particular, you know in Idaho where they tore
the house down before there was any kind of trial,
and even I was shocked. And now talking about Nogucci
not looking at the body until the very last thing,
after getting all of those points of reference so that
(16:38):
you can actually do your job to the best of
your ability, it makes perfectly good sense, which now tells me,
why would you ever destroy the crime scene? Wow?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, I don't know. And some some you know, we
have a sense of omission and sense of comission, right,
and so you know, you begin to think about, you
know why, and of course, you know you and I
hate the why question because it's generally why is unanswerable
most of the time. What I think is like, what
(17:10):
the hell were you thinking? Right, it's kind of, you know,
it's kind of a better question.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Well, all right, beginning down to Bobby to RFK in
the situations, we can get this set up because Robert F.
Kennedy had just won the Democratic primary. He's speaking in
the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel ye Is, He's speaking
to eighteen hundred to two thousand people. He is supposed
to go to another small gathering of supporters, people who
(17:38):
have knocked on doors and hung flyers to you know, hey,
thank you and cheering on the troops. That was the
plan when he took the stage at the end. Before
he gets on the stage in the ballroom, there was
a private meeting in a suite I think it was
five nineteen in the Ambassador Hotel. These are thirty to
forty people that were celebrities, media personnel, and some of
(18:02):
his most valuable contributors financially. Met with them first after
the victory, then goes down to thank everyone in the
main ballroom. Now he was scheduled to go to another
ballroom where another group of people was waiting, where Bobby
would once again stand there say thank you. We got
more to do, you know, just a brief appearance. That
was the plan, But plans changed. After he's on stage
(18:26):
in the main ballroom and comes off, he is told, no,
we're not going to the other ballroom right now. We're
going to take you to an impromptu press conference. Now,
the media was all around. The media had been upstairs
in the suite. The media was with him. You know,
they loved RFK and now there was no need to
have an impromptu press conference. Go say thank you to
(18:49):
the people who got you the primary win. But there's
any Fred Dutton, who was working the campaign out in California.
And it was Fred Dutton who said, no, we're going
to the press conference. And that's the guy that scheduled
the path, Joe. The path threw from the ballroom through
(19:09):
the kitchen to the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. This
was not something that had been scoped out ahead of time.
It wasn't part of the plan. But that was what
the impromptu press conference caused to happen. That Bobby Kennedy
was going to be walked through this kitchen area where
there's thirty or forty workers, kitchen workers who had no
(19:30):
idea that RFK was coming through because it was never
a plan.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well, dig this, man, dig this. I found this interesting.
He is actually Bobby is actually shaking hand, referring to
him like a knowing yeah, senter. Kennedy is actually shaking
hands with a busboy.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
The moment he shot all right, can I say one
name to you real quick please, And you're going to
know the name as soon as I say it. Ros
And the reason I'm saying you know, rest in.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Peace, Rosie.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But the reason I'm saying this is that just a
few years earlier, in Dallas. Right, we saw what happened
with Bob Kennedy's brother. Okay, and he had a whole
team of people with him, all right, secret service personnel,
(20:29):
all the seven. I know, I know, I know, he's
the president. But when you've got a person that is
what they refer to in security is the body. Person
is Rosie Greer, former NFL player, played for the Rams,
one of your favorite teams of all time. Big man,
(20:49):
huge man. I'd be intimidated by him. You want that
wall in front of you. But God bless him. He
plays football. He's not he's not a person to be
there to vet the crowd, and you get you get
these other people that are surrounding and kind of swirling
(21:10):
around his environment. Davis, pure chaos. And not only is
a chaos, This is a turkey shoot. Yes, because if I,
if I or to have to plan some type of
event like this, a fatal event like this, this is
a choke point. This is a you know, an environment
(21:32):
that I would want, I would want the target to
come into. First Off, you've got proximity, you've got access.
You don't have to do you don't have to prove anything,
you don't have to prove who you are in this environment.
Can you imagine today if you went into an area
like this, first off, it would be completely sanitized. I
(21:52):
think you'd be surrounded by a wall of folks and
the fact that they drugg him through there. He's got
this family history. It just it always and I know
it does to you. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but
it just it feels there's something about it that just
feels completely off. And again, I don't want to hear
(22:15):
anybody say, well it was a simpler time back then. No,
you just had MLK executed, you know, just you know,
weeks earlier, literally two months, you know, whatever it was.
And then you know, beyond that, you know, you had
you had John F. Kennedy and not to mention all
the other violence that was going on in the country
(22:36):
at that point, Tom, How can you be so out
of touch, you know, with the security situation like this.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
You know, Joe, one of the things that and I'm
glad you pointed out that, do not think of this
as a simpler time because there was security, there was
a plan. The thing is that plan got pushed aside.
But here's something else I want to get back to,
something we said a few minutes ago about the Zuppruder
film on Heraldo's Good Night America. It was the airing
(23:07):
of the Supruder film that brought about the congressional hearings
on assassinations. I don't know how many of you remember this,
but there was a funded, well funded congressional committee put
together to look into the conspiracy, the possible conspiracy end
of the deaths of JFK, MLK, and RFK. All Right,
those three assassinations were after the Zuppruiter film was aired
(23:32):
for the first time, twelve years after the assassination of JFK,
and after years of people going how was it possible that?
How is it possible that Martin Luther King Junior could
be killed at the Lorraine Hotel? How is that possible?
How is it possible that RFK got re routed into
the kitchen when that was never a plan? How is that?
(23:52):
And people actually were standing up in the mid seventies saying,
enough's enough, look into this, and they did. And if
if you remember, those hearings did take place, and one
of the big hearings that came out was an auditory
specialist that came in on the JFK detail. It was
a motorcycle microphone with police. Yeah, it was locked in
(24:14):
place and you could get the sound of gunfire. There
was a huge debate about this. But here's the thing.
This happened ten years after rfk's assassination, you know, and
fourteen years after JFK, and they're having these meetings with
people who were still alive from both of those times.
That's a you know, important note. But do you know
(24:37):
what the hearing came up with. What their end result
was that we needed a well funded committee to that.
The probability is that a conspiracy existed in each of
those assassinations, and each one needed to be examined further
that there was It wasn't Lee Arvashold acting alone, it
(24:57):
wasn't James Earl Ray acting alone, and it wasn't Sir
Hans or Han acting alone in the Ambassador Hotel June fifth,
nineteen sixty eight. That's what the Congressional I hear in
meeting they came up with that that was improbable. But
even now, all the years later, that's what we're left with.
So we're not going to open up the conspiracy window
that's already been open and it's part of the public
(25:18):
record that y'all can go and look up for yourselves
what we are going to do. And I'm so thankful
that Joseph Scott Morgan can do this because do you
know how many times Bobby Kennedy was shot? Do you
know how many other people were wounded? And by the way,
Rosie Greer, head of security for Bobby Kennedy, along with
(25:42):
Rayford Johnson, author George Plimpton, author Breslin, they jumped on
Sir Hans Rahn, but it was Rosie Greer that tackled him.
Imagine that. And yet we've got shots, We've got injuries,
Joseph's got Morgan. That seemed highly improbable that they came
(26:06):
from where Sir Hans Rohn was in the kitchen pantry
of the ambassa Hodel. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah? And you know in per and listen, just to
frame this out from the forensic pathology standpoint, doctor Naguchi
doesn't say, and he even alludes to this at one
point in Tom that he never says that you know,
Sir Hans or Han is holding the weapon and firing
(26:36):
the weapon. As a matter of fact, he alluded to
you at one point Tom, he said, I never said,
and you can look this up for yourself. Don't believe me.
I never said that Sir Hans or Han fired the
fatal blow, you know, the fire, the fatal shot. And
I'll get into that in just a second. So I
never said that. All I'm merely stating as a forensic
(26:58):
pathologist is that there was a fatal sho shot that
was fired. And here's the nature of it, all right,
And he talks about this one of the one of
the conclusions that that doctor Nogucci drew and I have
to say, they did extensive testing, Dave, which is kind
(27:18):
of fascinating now that these were almost within a couple
of these are like within contact range, and you know,
doctor Gucci even talks about the residue that's left behind,
and you're only going to get this deposition, you know,
(27:40):
on a surface if the weapon is fired within inches.
Because if you think about I like to compare it,
I like to compare it to like talcum powder when
you fire weapons.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Stand by one second, what are we looking at, Joe,
What are you showing me right now? Are you threatening me?
Speaker 1 (27:57):
No, not threatening any brother. So this is a weapon
that we use to train with you know on you know,
with fake scenes. It's not real. It's just a toy.
And this is not representative of the weapon that Sir
and Sirrohn used, but it is a handgun representative of
a handgun. He used a revolver, okay, and ivor Johnson
(28:20):
twenty two caliber revolver.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Before we move forward. For those who don't know the
difference between a revolver and one that holds a clip.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, yeah, So this has got a spot for a
magazine right here, and a revolver has a cylinder on it,
So Sir Hans, Sir Huan's weapon has a cylinder, okay,
And it held it held twenty two caliber long rifle
rounds as opposed to standard or shorts. And it was
(28:50):
not a magnum. Magnum is the higher end of twenty
two caliber weapons. But I just want to do this
kind of give you an idea of This is the
end of the barrel the muzzle, right, so when a
weapon is fired, you have this cloud that comes out
of the end of the muzzle. So you've got smoke,
(29:13):
you've got debris that's caught up in the barrel, particularly
if you have a dirty weapon and you also have
unburned powder. Okay, that comes out scorching high. Okay, there's
a bit of flame that comes out of the end
of the muzzle. So the closer you are to your
target area right here, the higher the probability is you're
(29:34):
going to have deposition of this. So the further you
move away from your target spot. Okay, the powder that
comes out, it's not very Uh what's the term. It's
not very It doesn't have a lot of aerodynamicism. Okay,
it's not like a projectile that's coming out of the
end of the barrel that's spinning. Okay, you're talking about powder.
(29:56):
So that's why I said, like topic powder, what happens
is as it's is charged, it blows and it drops
away pretty quickly. So you have to be really close
to the target in order to get this deposition that deposits.
And they call it a term that I love that
they've used for years and years, is called tattooing. And
(30:17):
what this means is that those little grains, those unburned
flecks of powder, they actually get beneath the skin and
so you'll see these little dots all over that area. Well,
in order for that to happen. In order for that
to happen, you have to be at very close range.
And what doctor Nagucci put forward is the fact that
(30:37):
when this weapon is discharged, it's within inches of Bobby
when it's fired, and it's all and they're all fired
from the rear. And give you an example. The fatal wound.
You know, Bob Kennedy actually had around that he took
in a cervical spine. Okay, that's not fatal wound. The
(31:01):
fatal wound is actually, if if everyone will reach behind
your right ear right here, Okay, you'll feel and you
go directly backwards, there's a lump that you'll feel on
the surface of your skull right there. That's your masteroid bone. Okay,
it's it's real prominent bone. Males, it's generally bigger in us,
you know, you know, we're kind of robust bones. Women
(31:24):
is a bit more dainty back there. It's called grassisle.
We'll talk about that at some point in tom when
we talk about a case on the forensic anthropology. But
to suffice it to say that the round actually entered
right here, and so it's behind the right ear and
it hit with such force. Dave that the round actually
(31:45):
essentially fragmented upon impact. But here's something that people don't
know that happens when you take shots to the skull.
Did you know that the bits of skull the bone
actually become projectiles. And so when Bobby was shot that
brown created a defect right here, and it knocked a
hole in the masteroid process and it blew not just
(32:08):
fragmented lead projectile remnant in there, it also blew bone
fragments in there as well. So it creates this kind
of cavitating it almost see how can I say, this
kind of fans out a bit, creates kind of like
a little cone, and as it as it goes out,
(32:29):
it's disrupting more and more tissue along the way. You know,
his surgery lasted hours. He was not pronounced dead, you know,
until the next day. You know, he he lingered, he
lingered for a protract. They thought there might be a
chance to save his life. Of course, this is obviously
every area of our brain is critical. But you know,
(32:52):
the deeper you go into the brain, the survivability you know, lessons. Okay,
and so that's what they were, that's what they were
looking at here. But all of these rounds that that
Senator Kennedy was hit with this total of three three
(33:13):
wounds that he's got and he's got one that goes
into the armpit that doesn't do a lot of a
lot of damage, circle spine injury, and then of course
fatal injury is up here. The scene's unsurvivable. But it's
important to understand that.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Not only.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Did they were they able to draw some conclusions about
the range of fire, they were also able to draw
some conclusions regarding survivability or lack thereof. They were able
to conclude that what they needed to do was do
(34:01):
further testing and verify, verify all of these issues surrounding
ballistics that otherwise, particularly in the case of JFK, were
never confirmed. Dave, I'm gonna throw a name out to you.
(34:26):
I don't know if you'll remember this person's name or not.
It's okay if you don't, but I'll remind you the
name is actually doctor Earle Rose. Do you remember that name?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Oh? I do. I know who we're talking about, but
it's only because of the JFK show than we did.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. Doctor Earle Rose was actually I think the first
board certified forensic pathologists that they had ever had in Dallas. Okay,
doctor Earle Rose is the one that got pressed against
the wall by Secret Service and said, no presence bodies
coming with us. We're taking body back east, right, even
(35:03):
though Earl Rose was a board certified forensic pathologist, and
he's interestingly enough, you know, he was actually officed Dave
in the same area at Parkland as the emergency room
was in. I mean, he's like right down the hall.
So when the president was brought in, doctor Earl Rose,
(35:25):
who's a forensic pathologist, actually stuck his head in. You know,
he was actually there in real time.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Can you imagine that the best, most qualified person in
the country. Yeah, take a look at these injuries and well.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, and certainly in the state of Texas and in
Dallas that day, you've got a boards in and they're saying, no, I.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Really kidnapped the body and illegally fly it back to Washington,
d C. And see if you can find the most
incompetent people in the country to actually do the autopsy
on the President of the United States.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, we're going back to Bethesda with it. Not only
are we going to put this, you know, this man's
autopsy into the hands of three of the biggest incompetence
on the face of planet. We're going to make a
circus out of it, and we're going to have unknown,
untold numbers of people in the room in the autopsy suite,
(36:16):
and we're going to do an ineffective job of doing
the assessment. We're not even going to look at that,
at the clothing that the president that had been removed
from the president's body, We're not even going to take
a look at it until months after the autopsy has
been performed. So you know, that's that's the group of
clowns that you're talking about. And these people had never
(36:37):
done a forensic autopsy. Down the road, though, there's an
interesting fellow that was working at the time. It's called
the Armed Forces Institute Pathology. And this gentleman who was
actually in d c UH and came up to Bethesda,
(36:57):
and but they did not wait on him, is a
guy named doctor Feint and he this is the height
of stupidity. This guy was in charge of ballistic studies
and he was a forensic pathologist, and they didn't call
on him until the last minute, until these other two
people had their hands on the president's body and we're
(37:20):
trying to make sense of all of these injuries. But
here's who else was watching. It's doctor Tom Negucci. The
world of forensic pathologists is very small world. Okay, Forensics
in general is a very small world, particularly back then,
even though you've got people that are calling themselves a
forensic this and a forensic that, and all of that.
(37:44):
Back then, rares Hen's teeth. So doctor Nogucci said, this
is not going to happen with Bobby Kennedy. Let me
just kind of give you an idea to day as
to who was present. And there's one key part to
this I want you to be aware of. So doctor
Negucius is actually the pro sector. He is actually the
(38:04):
autopsy physician he's got in charge. He had an interrelation,
an inter an aide who worked as the agency point
of contact that was a representative of the corner physically there.
He had two other forensic pathologists that were deputy corners
(38:27):
that were there, Holloway and lou He had a board
certified radiologist standing by, doctor Scanlon stand by, I'm getting there.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Ye.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
The neurosurgical team that worked on Senator Kennedy, four of
them were present. Okay. He actually had another pathologist that
was a clinical pathologist that worked in the hospital's Good
Samaritan Hospital uh Kernin by the way, just so everybody understands,
(39:03):
when Bobby was removed from the Ambassador, he was taking
a Good Samaritan hospital. They get this. His body never
left Good Samaritan. They did everything in house. So there
was no like we're gonna put him on a plane,
We're gonna cast get the body, We're gonna fly the
body something no, no, no, it was done there. Nogucci
(39:25):
had seen what had happened, so he invited and they
flew Dave. They flew from d C. He invited doctor Fink,
remember the guy, yep, that was the belistous guy, had
him show up. Also had doctor Stall show up, AFIP,
had doctor Kenneth Earl, who was a neuropathologist from a
They all flew from d C or from Bethesda that
(39:48):
area to LA to be present for this autopsy. You
had a myriad of other people that were specifically there.
And but here's the person I re wants you to
focus in on. They actually had a guy and in
doctor Nogucci's autopsy report for Bobby Kennedy, unlike unlike JFK.
(40:11):
You know how they the pathology assistance and everybody. There
were people coming and going out there. We didn't know
who was there dig this. Nagucci was so bright about this.
He had a guy in charge of security of the
autopsy room, that's his title, Charles Maxwell. He's the chief
of Investigation Division, and so he's physically there taking names,
(40:34):
observing everything. So they locked this down. When they took
the samples from Bobby Kennedy's autopsy, including the bits of
bone fragment that they had recovered, they took his brain
that they had already sectioned. And when we section a
brain at autopsy, we do we bred loaf. It's called
(40:56):
serializing the brain like this. They take the whole thing
after they've done that, physically, walk it to the radiology
suite and they all stand by and watch watch these
images being taken. Dave, Wow, that's how that's how on target.
They were no pun intended with everything with this case,
because they were not. They were not going to fail
(41:19):
in their assessment of these injuries because it had failed
so miserably relative to Dallas in what happened to the
present's body. Now that brings us back to the ambassador.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Okay, it's.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It is not as easy load these many years later
after jfka's assassination, to manipulate and control what's going on
as it you know, as it was with him. Okay,
now they have command and control over the body and
(41:58):
collection of that evidence. As matter of fact, they even
went out with same weapon, Dave and the ballistic section
from Los Angeles County Crime Lab. Guess what they did.
They took that weapon and they fired it into deceased
pig ears to get an idea about deposition of the
(42:20):
gunshot residue. Wow, just to formulate this thing just over
and over and over again, because unlike Lee Harvey Oswal Okay,
there's going to be a trial in this case, all right,
there's going to be a trial, and you know it's
they've hooked her hand up. So from the forensic side
(42:41):
of the house, they really locked this thing down and
were able to integrate themselves into control of all of
the evidence, documentation of the evidence. And this is all
because of doctor Thomas Magucci.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
It's just amazing to me that one person and you
and I preach this, you know, be in the moment,
know what you're doing. Because one person can make a difference.
And the reason we're able to talk about the assassination
of RFK and the autoposy with such certainty is because
of one man, Thomas Nogucci, who set the standard for
(43:15):
how this is going to be done and how we're
going to do it. And now we're looking at it
all these years later and we're able to go. You
now know so much about what happened with RFK that
it's documented and you can explain it. You can explain
the injuries that I still want to know how Sir
Hans Sirhan was able to get that close to Bobby
(43:37):
Kennedy with a gun and shoot him from behind when
he was standing in front of him. I can't figure
that out.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Joe, Yeah, and this is interesting day. We've talked about
this before. You know that, Uh people, according to the eyewitnesses,
they had stated that they never saw sir Han sir
Han within two feet. Certain people did, and they focused
on this in the investigation, within two feet of Bobby
(44:06):
Candy when he shot. So if you can't explain it
that way, if you can't put the gun in his hand,
even though you can see there's actually this famous image
of them having his hand pinned down. They're removing the weapon.
You know, these guys are crawling all over him. So
is it possible someone else could have been in, you know,
(44:30):
in that space firing a weapon. I can't answer that question.
I know that they were able to wrestle him down,
and Dave, there's there are a couple of things that
have floated around over the years, you know, relative to this, right.
I mean a lot of people have put forth this
idea that there was a second shooter down there.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Okay, well, Joe, the reason that comes out it's twofold,
but one, we have proof through the autopsy that that
RFK was shot three times, but five other people were
also wounded. They were shot, so you've got at least
eight shots being fired. You have RFK being shot behind
(45:12):
the right ear as you pointed out to us earlier,
that was the kill shot behind his right of your
end within two feet. Now you've got Bobby Kennedy on
camera going through there. Tell me where it happened, Show
me the shot, you know, because we should be able
to figure this out. But we also have, Joe, we've
got markings in that pantry area of bullets that didn't
(45:34):
hit anybody, So we're not playing conspiracy or we're just
laying out the facts of the case and why the
Congressional hearing of the Committee on Assassinations said we need
to investigate these as probable conspiracies involving more than one person.
But still you mentioned there was a trial, Sir Hans
(45:55):
round was convicted. He says he doesn't remember anything about
the event, by the way, even to this day. And
there are plenty of shows that deal with conspiracies, and
if that's your thing, go ahead. I'm fascinated by the
facts because the facts of this case leave me to
believe there's more to it than Jessir Hans or Han.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Well, here's the thing. Is that the round okay, so
that the rounds that are fired right, This is coming
from what's called a twenty two caliber revolver. It's manufactured
by a company called Iver Johnson. I don't think Iver
Johnson's in business anymore anyway. The model of this weapon
(46:39):
is called a cadet. If you've ever watched old police
dramas and you see people, you see detectives, they used
to be called detective specials, and that's generally a thirty
eight special weapon, something that you know in old television shows,
you'd see them holstered on their side or maybe even
in a sling, you know, shoulder holster, rother beneath their arms.
(47:03):
Thirty eight caliber. It's a snub nose, it's very tiny,
and it's meant for shooting within proximity. Some people refer
to these types of weapons as pocket pistols, vest guns,
belly guns. Is something that's easily concealable and easily acquired.
It's got a fixed iron sight on the front of it.
You're not going to shoot it. You're not going to
(47:24):
use this to defend yourself at one hundred yards. Okay,
this is something that you're going to utilize if you're
within just several feet of subject, you know, like street crimes,
those sorts of things. And it would be easy to
get this thing in there.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
But the.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Weapon itself only holds eight rounds. Bobby is hit with three.
There is an additional one that passes through his jacket,
so that's a total of four, right that have some
kind of contact with with Bobby, You've got the round
(48:03):
that actually strikes him, this fatal round. Remember we talked
about the mastoid you've got another round that enters in
the armpit and passes kind of ford beneath the chin
like this, so it hits right armpit. His arm would
be kind of if you raise position, fires through here,
(48:24):
not ax yet. No, it's not a fatal wound. It
exits out. Now you can account for that. Maybe did
it strike somebody else. We're talking about five other victims.
There are some people that have estimated or have thrown
out a number. And then get this of up to
thirteen rounds being fired, and you've got multiple, multiple witnesses
(48:51):
that say that there could have been they heard twelve shots.
And isn't that interesting because you're in this I think
when you and I were speaking earlier, we were you know,
I talked about this kind of funnel funneled area and
the way the noise, you know, kind of plays off
(49:13):
the walls. You've got people that are going to scream, okay,
So that's going to be factored into what your at
least auditory perception is. You might not actually see it.
I mean, how many times? How many times have you
ever been in a crowd of people and you might
hear somebody say something, You might hear screaming the crowd,
and you won't necessarily see it, but you'll hear it.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
I can't tell you how many Marty Gorough praides I've
been to over the course of my life, you know,
where there's all kinds of screaming and hooting and hollering
going on. I've been adjacent to fights that I never
saw happen. I heard fights. I've heard people being hit
and punched and all that, but it doesn't mean that
I witnessed it right with my own eyes. But I've
heard things. And so you've got this kind of cacophony
(49:57):
that's going on in there. What can they prove and
what could they disprove? Because you know, in forensics the
positive findings are just as important as negative findings. For us,
we want to know what's present, what's absent those sorts
of things. What kind of conclusions can can we reach?
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Dave, You know, the amazing thing is that after all
these years where we did have a remarkably well done
job with the autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy, we have
the Congressional Committee saying we need to have a full investigation,
fully funded by the United States government, and by the way,
(50:37):
needed to be done by nineteen eighty. It's ever been done. Yeah,
there has been no full on investigation of the assassination
of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior, or Robert F. Kennedy.
It's right here, is what we have. So not playing
a conspiracy game, just looking at the basic facts of
(51:00):
what took place that night, seems odd that you could
have an assassin in place at a moment's notice for
a route that was never planned planned or a place
they were never planning to go through at the last minute,
(51:20):
just before midnight on June fifth, nineteen sixty eight. But
that's where we are. Robert F. Kennedy was alive for
fourteen hours after he was shot. He subjumbed to his injuries.
The one thing I remember, I was a very very
very young child at the time. I do remember my
mother listening to a radio report and saying, I hope
(51:44):
he lives because they were reporting.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
That he was.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
It wasn't fatal yet, you know, it wasn't. There was
that because of what had happened with JFK. And I
just remember my mom saying that my mother, by the way,
was a conservative, so it was just some thing from
her heart. She didn't want Kennedy's to go through anything else,
you know, is just and that's what a lot of
Americans were feeling at the time. Yeah, it's it's a burden.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
It's a burden that I don't you know at this
point in time that none of us can, at least
in my your generation, we can't fully appreciate what those
adults back then were bearing witness to. But we carry,
you know, we carry the scars of this with us
everywhere we go because these events, these threes, of these
three events, these three assassinations, will have to do a
(52:31):
separate one at some point in time where we talked
about h mlk's assassination. But these these these things have
marked us, right and so the one upside to this
that I can say, if if there's any way we
could ever memorialize the actions of doctor Noguchi, uh that
(52:54):
just like in all pursuits and science, you learn from
your mistakes. In this context, it marked us in practice,
I think as to how we would handle cases moving
forward in the future, that we were not going to
be dominated in our assessments relative to relative to what
(53:18):
the finding should be or what people want them to be.
And that's the whole goal when it comes to medical
legal practice, in any kind of practice within forensics, is
that the science will always lead you to the truth. Now,
you take that science and you do with it as
you wish. But the assessments that were made by arguably
(53:43):
the most renowned forensic minds at that time. As a
matter of fact, on a closing note, one of the
people that actually consulted on this case that doctor Novucci
actually list in his autopsy report is doctor Russell Fisher,
(54:04):
who wrote this book, Spitz and Fisher. We've talked about
the passing of doctor Fisher.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Not too long ago.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
We did a memorial episode about some of these guys
that have passed. Guess who else is mentioned in this
autopsy report. One of my great friends and people that
had a big influence on me, and that's Sarah Weck
Cirriah Weck is in this report day and the guy
that directly mentored me that I was. I was thinking
(54:35):
about the time, the times that I spent in autopsy
suite with this man over the years, and to think
that he's named in this autopsy report and I sat
at his feet and learned from him doctor William Eckert,
who was consulted directly by Nogucci in this moment history,
in these huge minds in forensic science, it marked, it
(54:57):
marked our practice in forensics. It marked a way forward
for us. I hope that these are lessons that we
have learned from of how to do things and how
not to do things. Because, guys, let me tell you something.
In this life, you come around mountains every now and then, right,
and the good Lord above will either allow you to
(55:20):
keep going around the same mountain or he'll show you
a way over the top of it. Hopefully we've learned
how to go over the top of it and moved
on so that we can be better in our practice.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags.
Quality Bags with Joseph Scott more Day, we're going to
hop back in the wayback machine. And the reason we're
going to do this is that, well, it's a significant anniversary,
(00:21):
and it's significant in the sense that it changed the
course of lives all around the country and even it
changed the course of how forensic medicine is practiced. Today,
we're going to tell the tale of two brothers that
(00:44):
died within a decade, less than a decade upon one another,
and one brother was arguably subjected his body was to
the worst forensic autopsy that had had ever been performed,
particularly in a high profile case. And jumping forward just
(01:06):
a few years later, another brother, His brother dies and
arguably the finest, most highly detailed autopsy that has ever
been conducted on an individual of this stature was performed.
Today we're going to focus on the autopsy of Robert F.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Dave. I've
often wondered, over the course of my career and covering cases,
what the nature what it felt like that night back
(01:54):
in nineteen sixty eight, June the fifth. You know where
we're in a time in our country where it seems
like it's coming apart of the seams, you know. I
mean we've had many of those instances since then. I
think that we kind of live in times that are
not too dissimilar from that. Right now, total chaos, and
(02:16):
you've got one person that kind of burst on the
scene that maybe might offer people some hope, you know,
sense peace maybe, and right before our very eyes, right
before the nation's eyes. And this is not like John F. Kennedy,
where you know, this prut of film was held back.
(02:39):
This is something that was you know, in living color,
you know, where it came out pretty quickly afterwards. We
had a lot of witnesses to this event.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Well, yeah, Joe, you've got to remember a couple of
things in nineteen sixty eight, Okay, June fifth, nineteen sixty eight,
Bobby Kennedy, he was not the front runner for the
Democratic nomination, and he was the hope of the younger generation.
That was really you know, this is a year after
you know, if you're going to San Francisco, Flowers in
your hair with Scott mackenzie, it was four and a
(03:10):
half years after the assassination of JFK And we're only
talking two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior.
So there was a lot going on in our world,
protesting the war, protesting the government, protesting everything. And to
see Bobby Kennedy shot down, you know, murdered while he's
(03:33):
on the campaign. You remember, the one of the most
important things we see is in Bobby Kennedy RFK in
the Ambassador Hotel when he says on to Chicago. You know,
they just won the California primary. He was not favored
to win the primary in California, and he did. And
so it just you know, you've and are talking about
(03:54):
this before we started today, and his campaign just man,
it was like they a rocket to when he won Calimfornia.
It was a big deal and there was a lot
going on at the Ambassador Hotel. Now you have thankfully
been able to look at the autopsy, and you mentioned
(04:16):
in the opening when I encourage you to go back
and listen to the Body Bags episode about John F.
Kennedy's assassination, because the autopsy is just it's despicable to
think that our country did that to a president and
his death. The autopsy of Bobby though considerably different.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, yeah, it really is. I've thought about this, I know,
and I'm going to give a big shout out here
because I owe him a lot. My buddy, Julian Dorry.
I've appeared on his podcast I think twice. Big reveal.
I've got another one coming up this summer where I'm
going to be rejoining Julian.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But the.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Second time I appeared with Julian, we did We did
an entire JFK episode strictly about the medical legal and
of course we did Bodybags, Dave, as you have stated,
probably by far my favorite episode on bodybags. But I
was able to sit down with Julian. I think we
went for how in the world I did this? I
(05:24):
have no idea. I think I talked for like three
hours about JFK. But you know, there's so much to unpack.
There still is, yeah, there really is, and I don't
I don't necessarily look. I entertain everything. I read the
book Chaos not too long ago. I'd seen it on
you know, and several of these other things you know
(05:45):
that talk about mentoring candidates and all of this. But
it was it was me, as we always say on bodybacks,
I'll never flee from this. By the way, we always
have to return back to the science, don't we You know,
there's a lot of speculative stuff that has all always existed.
And if it's like going into a laboratory in science,
(06:07):
if you if you don't follow the steps along the way,
if you're trying to analyze something, if you're trying to
create something, you know you can't you cannot stay within
the rules and expect a reasonable outcome. And reasonableness, I
think is one of the things that you're hoping for,
(06:29):
right It's it's not either a negative finding or positive finding,
it's did you stay within the parameters? What is it
of accepted practice? And reflecting back now you know, we
hate to use the words celebrated, we marked, We mark
JFK's the sixtieth anniversary back in twenty twenty three, and reflectively,
(06:55):
you know, going back to you know, even transporting ourselves
back in time to JFK, there there was an acceptable standard.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I think people think that people in sixty three were
still using whale old lamps, you know, and you know
conjuring up. You know, we need to bleed you in
order to get the negative humors out of your body.
You know, that's not the way it was. I mean,
we had modern medicine back then, we had an understanding
(07:25):
of wound ballistics. We just come off the biggest war
in the history of mankind. Arguably we understood ballistics. Okay,
so you can disabuse yourself with this idea that we
were still in this kind of very primitive stage.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Well, you know, Joe, I'm glad you brought that up
because I want to point one thing out, friends, and
that is we've talked about how how the medical legal profession,
how it's grown, how forensics has grown by leaps and
bounds since you started professionally. Oh yeah, when you look
at the assassination of JFK, then Martin Luther King Junior
(08:01):
and RFK. I want to point something out. It was
comedian Dick Gregory who actually used tape recorders at his
performances to improve himself. And he was at a stage
of his career where he was gaining a lot of
popularity and fame, and he was taking a very active
interest in politics. And Dick Gregory the day of the
(08:25):
assassination November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, he noticed that
he started taping. You know, he had like tape machines
going in the living room, bedroom, every place. He had
a radio or a TV on different networks, and he
was taping what was being said so that he would
have a doctor. He knew how big it was and
he wanted to document what was going on. But something
(08:45):
he picked up as he was listening to this all
day long, the coverage of the assassination of JFK. The
story's changed. The same people being interviewed, their story change.
So you've got people that are being interviewed within an
hour of the assass fascination taking place, indeed Lee Plaza,
and five hours later on another network, a totally different
(09:05):
story from the same people. And that's where Dick Gregory,
you know, I know we talk about JFK because it
actually has bearing on RFK, because you know, certainly does.
Do you know where the assassination of the Zapruder film
the showing which, by the way, we've never seen the
complete Supruder film because the government cut segments out of it.
(09:26):
They edited that can't explain why, but it was edited anyway.
Do you know where it was first shown? It was
on a show that had Dick Gregory as a guest.
It was on heralber Rivera's late night show in the
mid seventies called good Night America. And it was on
that show, which you can find on YouTube, where the
(09:47):
Zapruder film was played for the very first time, and
people who believed in the idea that the Kennedy assassination
was done by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, went, oh,
my gosh, it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, I know that, right. I went back. Two things
I went back and did. First off, you've mentioned the
Gregory appearance to me before on on Heralda's show, and
I think I had seen it prior to that. But friends,
if you if you have not seen this, I strongly
(10:24):
urge you to go back, because you get in real
time the reaction from a pristine audience has never been exposed.
I mean, we're kind of jaded now because we've seen,
you know, in that that one frame where the president's
head comes apart, right, they've just passed over that sign
(10:45):
rather not the overpass.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
But the signal that's where the film had been cut to,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And you can see his head, you know, just kind
of well, these people it was seventy seven, right, Dave,
I think seventy seven or a probably you can. I
know that Rivera says. He says something. He alludes to
the fact that you're about to see it for the
first time. Warning yea, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
You're experiencing this with this crowd, this first collective group
of people of regular citizens that bear witness to this.
And trust me, they didn't have even the monitors within
that studio. They didn't have the ability to see it
like we do now where it's super enhanced. Even back then,
where they're looking on an old bulb, you know, bald
(11:36):
monitor there, and the President's head comes apart and you
can hear them all collectively, you know, draw breath. And
I think there's a scene where they cut to the audience.
There's people with their heads buried and they're shaking their head.
And if the scar wasn't deep enough already, it was
further further enhanced that night. And from that point on,
(12:00):
you know, people begin to have begin to have their suspicions,
you know, not that they hadn't already, but this is
kind of a further reinforcement from physical science perspective, I
think where people were actually asking questions, and I'm not
talking about people that sit alone and you know, kind
of ruminate. All. I'm talking about people that were housewives
(12:24):
and people that were plumbers, and people that it never
caught their eye and they didn't realize how deep the
wound was until and I mean that metaphorically, until they
this is burst on the scene. But you know who
else out there saw the problem with all of this,
the film, the autopsy itself, the examination that followed, well,
(12:47):
that person plays a key role in the autopsy of
RFK because he knew what had happened at the autopsy
of Robert's brother, John F.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And we're going to talk a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Him, brother Dave.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
There's a there's an elderly man still with us. I
can't believe he is, but he is. And I'm referring
to Thomas Nogucci still alive, oh over ninety now supposedly,
(13:35):
you know, still Spry once known as the Corner to
the Stars. He wrote two books. I recommend him to everybody.
One is just called Corner. The other one is called
Corner at Large. If you really want to get an
insight into into the world that he inhabited regarding UH
(14:01):
working in l a UH and doing autopsies on people,
like Belushi and Marilyn Monroe shared Tate. He was actually
physically present at to Tate Lapianca murder scenes, and so.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I didn't know that I didn't know, and Neagucci was there.
I knew about the Belushi because I remember I asked
you about it on the Belushi autopsy. When they held
he held his arm up and squeezed because he wanted
to see if he could find where the needle the.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Needle puncture wounds.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, and that's the milking of the arm is something
that we use. And there's something that I teach my
students that I learned from doctor Nogucci in reading one
of these books, and he I think it was at
the Tate scene. His idea was, and this this seems
so counterintuitive, but this gives you an idea of the
way his mind works. Okay, as a death investigator, you
(14:55):
think that you're going to walk into a scene and
immediately you go right to the box. I don't know
if it's if it is doctor Nogucci's kind of Zen
like Eastern mentality that's so different from the Western mind.
But he understood something that I wish every investigator that
(15:15):
works death cases understands he purposefully never looked at the
body at a scene until the last moment. He always
cast his eyes up, he said, because it's human nature
to focus on the body, and you lose context for
the entire for the rest of the environment that you're in.
A doctor Noguchi, he put forth the idea that if
(15:39):
you look up and kind of work your way down
side to side three hundred and sixty degrees, if the
body is concentrically in the center of the room and
you just kind of look around, then you never lose
context for the biggest bit of evidence that you have.
Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, And so I actually makes sense with my students
when I'm teaching them, like, don't because it's so easy
to get distracted by the body. Why you know, you're
kind of chomping at the bit you're outside the tape.
Maybe you finally make an in and you rush to
the body to begin to do all these things. But
you can do it already. We get measurements.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yeah, this drives me crazy because you know, you and
I talked about the destruction of evidence at a crime
scene in particular, you know in Idaho where they tore
the house down before there was any kind of trial,
and even I was shocked. And now talking about Nogucci
not looking at the body until the very last thing,
after getting all of those points of reference so that
(16:38):
you can actually do your job to the best of
your ability, it makes perfectly good sense, which now tells me,
why would you ever destroy the crime scene? Wow?
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, I don't know. And some some you know, we
have a sense of omission and sense of comission, right,
and so you know, you begin to think about, you
know why, and of course, you know you and I
hate the why question because it's generally why is unanswerable
most of the time. What I think is like, what
(17:10):
the hell were you thinking? Right, it's kind of, you know,
it's kind of a better question.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Well, all right, beginning down to Bobby to RFK in
the situations, we can get this set up because Robert F.
Kennedy had just won the Democratic primary. He's speaking in
the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel ye Is, He's speaking
to eighteen hundred to two thousand people. He is supposed
to go to another small gathering of supporters, people who
(17:38):
have knocked on doors and hung flyers to you know, hey,
thank you and cheering on the troops. That was the
plan when he took the stage at the end. Before
he gets on the stage in the ballroom, there was
a private meeting in a suite I think it was
five nineteen in the Ambassador Hotel. These are thirty to
forty people that were celebrities, media personnel, and some of
(18:02):
his most valuable contributors financially. Met with them first after
the victory, then goes down to thank everyone in the
main ballroom. Now he was scheduled to go to another
ballroom where another group of people was waiting, where Bobby
would once again stand there say thank you. We got
more to do, you know, just a brief appearance. That
was the plan, But plans changed. After he's on stage
(18:26):
in the main ballroom and comes off, he is told, no,
we're not going to the other ballroom right now. We're
going to take you to an impromptu press conference. Now,
the media was all around. The media had been upstairs
in the suite. The media was with him. You know,
they loved RFK and now there was no need to
have an impromptu press conference. Go say thank you to
(18:49):
the people who got you the primary win. But there's
any Fred Dutton, who was working the campaign out in California.
And it was Fred Dutton who said, no, we're going
to the press conference. And that's the guy that scheduled
the path, Joe. The path threw from the ballroom through
(19:09):
the kitchen to the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. This
was not something that had been scoped out ahead of time.
It wasn't part of the plan. But that was what
the impromptu press conference caused to happen. That Bobby Kennedy
was going to be walked through this kitchen area where
there's thirty or forty workers, kitchen workers who had no
(19:30):
idea that RFK was coming through because it was never
a plan.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well, dig this, man, dig this. I found this interesting.
He is actually Bobby is actually shaking hand, referring to
him like a knowing yeah, senter. Kennedy is actually shaking
hands with a busboy.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
The moment he shot all right, can I say one
name to you real quick please, And you're going to
know the name as soon as I say it. Ros
And the reason I'm saying you know, rest in.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Peace, Rosie.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But the reason I'm saying this is that just a
few years earlier, in Dallas. Right, we saw what happened
with Bob Kennedy's brother. Okay, and he had a whole
team of people with him, all right, secret service personnel,
(20:29):
all the seven. I know, I know, I know, he's
the president. But when you've got a person that is
what they refer to in security is the body. Person
is Rosie Greer, former NFL player, played for the Rams,
one of your favorite teams of all time. Big man,
(20:49):
huge man. I'd be intimidated by him. You want that
wall in front of you. But God bless him. He
plays football. He's not he's not a person to be
there to vet the crowd, and you get you get
these other people that are surrounding and kind of swirling
(21:10):
around his environment. Davis, pure chaos. And not only is
a chaos, This is a turkey shoot. Yes, because if I,
if I or to have to plan some type of
event like this, a fatal event like this, this is
a choke point. This is a you know, an environment
(21:32):
that I would want, I would want the target to
come into. First Off, you've got proximity, you've got access.
You don't have to do you don't have to prove anything,
you don't have to prove who you are in this environment.
Can you imagine today if you went into an area
like this, first off, it would be completely sanitized. I
(21:52):
think you'd be surrounded by a wall of folks and
the fact that they drugg him through there. He's got
this family history. It just it always and I know
it does to you. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but
it just it feels there's something about it that just
feels completely off. And again, I don't want to hear
(22:15):
anybody say, well it was a simpler time back then. No,
you just had MLK executed, you know, just you know,
weeks earlier, literally two months, you know, whatever it was.
And then you know, beyond that, you know, you had
you had John F. Kennedy and not to mention all
the other violence that was going on in the country
(22:36):
at that point, Tom, How can you be so out
of touch, you know, with the security situation like this.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
You know, Joe, one of the things that and I'm
glad you pointed out that, do not think of this
as a simpler time because there was security, there was
a plan. The thing is that plan got pushed aside.
But here's something else I want to get back to,
something we said a few minutes ago about the Zuppruder
film on Heraldo's Good Night America. It was the airing
(23:07):
of the Supruder film that brought about the congressional hearings
on assassinations. I don't know how many of you remember this,
but there was a funded, well funded congressional committee put
together to look into the conspiracy, the possible conspiracy end
of the deaths of JFK, MLK, and RFK. All Right,
those three assassinations were after the Zuppruiter film was aired
(23:32):
for the first time, twelve years after the assassination of JFK,
and after years of people going how was it possible that?
How is it possible that Martin Luther King Junior could
be killed at the Lorraine Hotel? How is that possible?
How is it possible that RFK got re routed into
the kitchen when that was never a plan? How is that?
(23:52):
And people actually were standing up in the mid seventies saying,
enough's enough, look into this, and they did. And if
if you remember, those hearings did take place, and one
of the big hearings that came out was an auditory
specialist that came in on the JFK detail. It was
a motorcycle microphone with police. Yeah, it was locked in
(24:14):
place and you could get the sound of gunfire. There
was a huge debate about this. But here's the thing.
This happened ten years after rfk's assassination, you know, and
fourteen years after JFK, and they're having these meetings with
people who were still alive from both of those times.
That's a you know, important note. But do you know
(24:37):
what the hearing came up with. What their end result
was that we needed a well funded committee to that.
The probability is that a conspiracy existed in each of
those assassinations, and each one needed to be examined further
that there was It wasn't Lee Arvashold acting alone, it
(24:57):
wasn't James Earl Ray acting alone, and it wasn't Sir
Hans or Han acting alone in the Ambassador Hotel June fifth,
nineteen sixty eight. That's what the Congressional I hear in
meeting they came up with that that was improbable. But
even now, all the years later, that's what we're left with.
So we're not going to open up the conspiracy window
that's already been open and it's part of the public
(25:18):
record that y'all can go and look up for yourselves
what we are going to do. And I'm so thankful
that Joseph Scott Morgan can do this because do you
know how many times Bobby Kennedy was shot? Do you
know how many other people were wounded? And by the way,
Rosie Greer, head of security for Bobby Kennedy, along with
(25:42):
Rayford Johnson, author George Plimpton, author Breslin, they jumped on
Sir Hans Rahn, but it was Rosie Greer that tackled him.
Imagine that. And yet we've got shots, We've got injuries,
Joseph's got Morgan. That seemed highly improbable that they came
(26:06):
from where Sir Hans Rohn was in the kitchen pantry
of the ambassa Hodel. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah? And you know in per and listen, just to
frame this out from the forensic pathology standpoint, doctor Naguchi
doesn't say, and he even alludes to this at one
point in Tom that he never says that you know,
Sir Hans or Han is holding the weapon and firing
(26:36):
the weapon. As a matter of fact, he alluded to
you at one point Tom, he said, I never said,
and you can look this up for yourself. Don't believe me.
I never said that Sir Hans or Han fired the
fatal blow, you know, the fire, the fatal shot. And
I'll get into that in just a second. So I
never said that. All I'm merely stating as a forensic
(26:58):
pathologist is that there was a fatal sho shot that
was fired. And here's the nature of it, all right,
And he talks about this one of the one of
the conclusions that that doctor Nogucci drew and I have
to say, they did extensive testing, Dave, which is kind
(27:18):
of fascinating now that these were almost within a couple
of these are like within contact range, and you know,
doctor Gucci even talks about the residue that's left behind,
and you're only going to get this deposition, you know,
(27:40):
on a surface if the weapon is fired within inches.
Because if you think about I like to compare it,
I like to compare it to like talcum powder when
you fire weapons.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Stand by one second, what are we looking at, Joe,
What are you showing me right now? Are you threatening me?
Speaker 1 (27:57):
No, not threatening any brother. So this is a weapon
that we use to train with you know on you know,
with fake scenes. It's not real. It's just a toy.
And this is not representative of the weapon that Sir
and Sirrohn used, but it is a handgun representative of
a handgun. He used a revolver, okay, and ivor Johnson
(28:20):
twenty two caliber revolver.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Before we move forward. For those who don't know the
difference between a revolver and one that holds a clip.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, yeah, So this has got a spot for a
magazine right here, and a revolver has a cylinder on it,
So Sir Hans, Sir Huan's weapon has a cylinder, okay,
And it held it held twenty two caliber long rifle
rounds as opposed to standard or shorts. And it was
(28:50):
not a magnum. Magnum is the higher end of twenty
two caliber weapons. But I just want to do this
kind of give you an idea of This is the
end of the barrel the muzzle, right, so when a
weapon is fired, you have this cloud that comes out
of the end of the muzzle. So you've got smoke,
(29:13):
you've got debris that's caught up in the barrel, particularly
if you have a dirty weapon and you also have
unburned powder. Okay, that comes out scorching high. Okay, there's
a bit of flame that comes out of the end
of the muzzle. So the closer you are to your
target area right here, the higher the probability is you're
(29:34):
going to have deposition of this. So the further you
move away from your target spot. Okay, the powder that
comes out, it's not very Uh what's the term. It's
not very It doesn't have a lot of aerodynamicism. Okay,
it's not like a projectile that's coming out of the
end of the barrel that's spinning. Okay, you're talking about powder.
(29:56):
So that's why I said, like topic powder, what happens
is as it's is charged, it blows and it drops
away pretty quickly. So you have to be really close
to the target in order to get this deposition that deposits.
And they call it a term that I love that
they've used for years and years, is called tattooing. And
(30:17):
what this means is that those little grains, those unburned
flecks of powder, they actually get beneath the skin and
so you'll see these little dots all over that area. Well,
in order for that to happen. In order for that
to happen, you have to be at very close range.
And what doctor Nagucci put forward is the fact that
(30:37):
when this weapon is discharged, it's within inches of Bobby
when it's fired, and it's all and they're all fired
from the rear. And give you an example. The fatal wound.
You know, Bob Kennedy actually had around that he took
in a cervical spine. Okay, that's not fatal wound. The
(31:01):
fatal wound is actually, if if everyone will reach behind
your right ear right here, Okay, you'll feel and you
go directly backwards, there's a lump that you'll feel on
the surface of your skull right there. That's your masteroid bone. Okay,
it's it's real prominent bone. Males, it's generally bigger in us,
you know, you know, we're kind of robust bones. Women
(31:24):
is a bit more dainty back there. It's called grassisle.
We'll talk about that at some point in tom when
we talk about a case on the forensic anthropology. But
to suffice it to say that the round actually entered
right here, and so it's behind the right ear and
it hit with such force. Dave that the round actually
(31:45):
essentially fragmented upon impact. But here's something that people don't
know that happens when you take shots to the skull.
Did you know that the bits of skull the bone
actually become projectiles. And so when Bobby was shot that
brown created a defect right here, and it knocked a
hole in the masteroid process and it blew not just
(32:08):
fragmented lead projectile remnant in there, it also blew bone
fragments in there as well. So it creates this kind
of cavitating it almost see how can I say, this
kind of fans out a bit, creates kind of like
a little cone, and as it as it goes out,
(32:29):
it's disrupting more and more tissue along the way. You know,
his surgery lasted hours. He was not pronounced dead, you know,
until the next day. You know, he he lingered, he
lingered for a protract. They thought there might be a
chance to save his life. Of course, this is obviously
every area of our brain is critical. But you know,
(32:52):
the deeper you go into the brain, the survivability you know, lessons. Okay,
and so that's what they were, that's what they were
looking at here. But all of these rounds that that
Senator Kennedy was hit with this total of three three
(33:13):
wounds that he's got and he's got one that goes
into the armpit that doesn't do a lot of a
lot of damage, circle spine injury, and then of course
fatal injury is up here. The scene's unsurvivable. But it's
important to understand that.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Not only.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Did they were they able to draw some conclusions about
the range of fire, they were also able to draw
some conclusions regarding survivability or lack thereof. They were able
to conclude that what they needed to do was do
(34:01):
further testing and verify, verify all of these issues surrounding
ballistics that otherwise, particularly in the case of JFK, were
never confirmed. Dave, I'm gonna throw a name out to you.
(34:26):
I don't know if you'll remember this person's name or not.
It's okay if you don't, but I'll remind you the
name is actually doctor Earle Rose. Do you remember that name?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Oh? I do. I know who we're talking about, but
it's only because of the JFK show than we did.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. Doctor Earle Rose was actually I think the first
board certified forensic pathologists that they had ever had in Dallas. Okay,
doctor Earle Rose is the one that got pressed against
the wall by Secret Service and said, no presence bodies
coming with us. We're taking body back east, right, even
(35:03):
though Earl Rose was a board certified forensic pathologist, and
he's interestingly enough, you know, he was actually officed Dave
in the same area at Parkland as the emergency room
was in. I mean, he's like right down the hall.
So when the president was brought in, doctor Earl Rose,
(35:25):
who's a forensic pathologist, actually stuck his head in. You know,
he was actually there in real time.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Can you imagine that the best, most qualified person in
the country. Yeah, take a look at these injuries and well.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, and certainly in the state of Texas and in
Dallas that day, you've got a boards in and they're saying, no, I.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Really kidnapped the body and illegally fly it back to Washington,
d C. And see if you can find the most
incompetent people in the country to actually do the autopsy
on the President of the United States.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, we're going back to Bethesda with it. Not only
are we going to put this, you know, this man's
autopsy into the hands of three of the biggest incompetence
on the face of planet. We're going to make a
circus out of it, and we're going to have unknown,
untold numbers of people in the room in the autopsy suite,
(36:16):
and we're going to do an ineffective job of doing
the assessment. We're not even going to look at that,
at the clothing that the president that had been removed
from the president's body, We're not even going to take
a look at it until months after the autopsy has
been performed. So you know, that's that's the group of
clowns that you're talking about. And these people had never
(36:37):
done a forensic autopsy. Down the road, though, there's an
interesting fellow that was working at the time. It's called
the Armed Forces Institute Pathology. And this gentleman who was
actually in d c UH and came up to Bethesda,
(36:57):
and but they did not wait on him, is a
guy named doctor Feint and he this is the height
of stupidity. This guy was in charge of ballistic studies
and he was a forensic pathologist, and they didn't call
on him until the last minute, until these other two
people had their hands on the president's body and we're
(37:20):
trying to make sense of all of these injuries. But
here's who else was watching. It's doctor Tom Negucci. The
world of forensic pathologists is very small world. Okay, Forensics
in general is a very small world, particularly back then,
even though you've got people that are calling themselves a
forensic this and a forensic that, and all of that.
(37:44):
Back then, rares Hen's teeth. So doctor Nogucci said, this
is not going to happen with Bobby Kennedy. Let me
just kind of give you an idea to day as
to who was present. And there's one key part to
this I want you to be aware of. So doctor
Negucius is actually the pro sector. He is actually the
(38:04):
autopsy physician he's got in charge. He had an interrelation,
an inter an aide who worked as the agency point
of contact that was a representative of the corner physically there.
He had two other forensic pathologists that were deputy corners
(38:27):
that were there, Holloway and lou He had a board
certified radiologist standing by, doctor Scanlon stand by, I'm getting there.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Ye.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
The neurosurgical team that worked on Senator Kennedy, four of
them were present. Okay. He actually had another pathologist that
was a clinical pathologist that worked in the hospital's Good
Samaritan Hospital uh Kernin by the way, just so everybody understands,
(39:03):
when Bobby was removed from the Ambassador, he was taking
a Good Samaritan hospital. They get this. His body never
left Good Samaritan. They did everything in house. So there
was no like we're gonna put him on a plane,
We're gonna cast get the body, We're gonna fly the
body something no, no, no, it was done there. Nogucci
(39:25):
had seen what had happened, so he invited and they
flew Dave. They flew from d C. He invited doctor Fink,
remember the guy, yep, that was the belistous guy, had
him show up. Also had doctor Stall show up, AFIP,
had doctor Kenneth Earl, who was a neuropathologist from a
They all flew from d C or from Bethesda that
(39:48):
area to LA to be present for this autopsy. You
had a myriad of other people that were specifically there.
And but here's the person I re wants you to
focus in on. They actually had a guy and in
doctor Nogucci's autopsy report for Bobby Kennedy, unlike unlike JFK.
(40:11):
You know how they the pathology assistance and everybody. There
were people coming and going out there. We didn't know
who was there dig this. Nagucci was so bright about this.
He had a guy in charge of security of the
autopsy room, that's his title, Charles Maxwell. He's the chief
of Investigation Division, and so he's physically there taking names,
(40:34):
observing everything. So they locked this down. When they took
the samples from Bobby Kennedy's autopsy, including the bits of
bone fragment that they had recovered, they took his brain
that they had already sectioned. And when we section a
brain at autopsy, we do we bred loaf. It's called
(40:56):
serializing the brain like this. They take the whole thing
after they've done that, physically, walk it to the radiology
suite and they all stand by and watch watch these
images being taken. Dave, Wow, that's how that's how on target.
They were no pun intended with everything with this case,
because they were not. They were not going to fail
(41:19):
in their assessment of these injuries because it had failed
so miserably relative to Dallas in what happened to the
present's body. Now that brings us back to the ambassador.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Okay, it's.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It is not as easy load these many years later
after jfka's assassination, to manipulate and control what's going on
as it you know, as it was with him. Okay,
now they have command and control over the body and
(41:58):
collection of that evidence. As matter of fact, they even
went out with same weapon, Dave and the ballistic section
from Los Angeles County Crime Lab. Guess what they did.
They took that weapon and they fired it into deceased
pig ears to get an idea about deposition of the
(42:20):
gunshot residue. Wow, just to formulate this thing just over
and over and over again, because unlike Lee Harvey Oswal Okay,
there's going to be a trial in this case, all right,
there's going to be a trial, and you know it's
they've hooked her hand up. So from the forensic side
(42:41):
of the house, they really locked this thing down and
were able to integrate themselves into control of all of
the evidence, documentation of the evidence. And this is all
because of doctor Thomas Magucci.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
It's just amazing to me that one person and you
and I preach this, you know, be in the moment,
know what you're doing. Because one person can make a difference.
And the reason we're able to talk about the assassination
of RFK and the autoposy with such certainty is because
of one man, Thomas Nogucci, who set the standard for
(43:15):
how this is going to be done and how we're
going to do it. And now we're looking at it
all these years later and we're able to go. You
now know so much about what happened with RFK that
it's documented and you can explain it. You can explain
the injuries that I still want to know how Sir
Hans Sirhan was able to get that close to Bobby
(43:37):
Kennedy with a gun and shoot him from behind when
he was standing in front of him. I can't figure
that out.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Joe, Yeah, and this is interesting day. We've talked about
this before. You know that, Uh people, according to the eyewitnesses,
they had stated that they never saw sir Han sir
Han within two feet. Certain people did, and they focused
on this in the investigation, within two feet of Bobby
(44:06):
Candy when he shot. So if you can't explain it
that way, if you can't put the gun in his hand,
even though you can see there's actually this famous image
of them having his hand pinned down. They're removing the weapon.
You know, these guys are crawling all over him. So
is it possible someone else could have been in, you know,
(44:30):
in that space firing a weapon. I can't answer that question.
I know that they were able to wrestle him down,
and Dave, there's there are a couple of things that
have floated around over the years, you know, relative to this, right.
I mean a lot of people have put forth this
idea that there was a second shooter down there.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Okay, well, Joe, the reason that comes out it's twofold,
but one, we have proof through the autopsy that that
RFK was shot three times, but five other people were
also wounded. They were shot, so you've got at least
eight shots being fired. You have RFK being shot behind
(45:12):
the right ear as you pointed out to us earlier,
that was the kill shot behind his right of your
end within two feet. Now you've got Bobby Kennedy on
camera going through there. Tell me where it happened, Show
me the shot, you know, because we should be able
to figure this out. But we also have, Joe, we've
got markings in that pantry area of bullets that didn't
(45:34):
hit anybody, So we're not playing conspiracy or we're just
laying out the facts of the case and why the
Congressional hearing of the Committee on Assassinations said we need
to investigate these as probable conspiracies involving more than one person.
But still you mentioned there was a trial, Sir Hans
(45:55):
round was convicted. He says he doesn't remember anything about
the event, by the way, even to this day. And
there are plenty of shows that deal with conspiracies, and
if that's your thing, go ahead. I'm fascinated by the
facts because the facts of this case leave me to
believe there's more to it than Jessir Hans or Han.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Well, here's the thing. Is that the round okay, so
that the rounds that are fired right, This is coming
from what's called a twenty two caliber revolver. It's manufactured
by a company called Iver Johnson. I don't think Iver
Johnson's in business anymore anyway. The model of this weapon
(46:39):
is called a cadet. If you've ever watched old police
dramas and you see people, you see detectives, they used
to be called detective specials, and that's generally a thirty
eight special weapon, something that you know in old television shows,
you'd see them holstered on their side or maybe even
in a sling, you know, shoulder holster, rother beneath their arms.
(47:03):
Thirty eight caliber. It's a snub nose, it's very tiny,
and it's meant for shooting within proximity. Some people refer
to these types of weapons as pocket pistols, vest guns,
belly guns. Is something that's easily concealable and easily acquired.
It's got a fixed iron sight on the front of it.
You're not going to shoot it. You're not going to
(47:24):
use this to defend yourself at one hundred yards. Okay,
this is something that you're going to utilize if you're
within just several feet of subject, you know, like street crimes,
those sorts of things. And it would be easy to
get this thing in there.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
But the.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Weapon itself only holds eight rounds. Bobby is hit with three.
There is an additional one that passes through his jacket,
so that's a total of four, right that have some
kind of contact with with Bobby, You've got the round
(48:03):
that actually strikes him, this fatal round. Remember we talked
about the mastoid you've got another round that enters in
the armpit and passes kind of ford beneath the chin
like this, so it hits right armpit. His arm would
be kind of if you raise position, fires through here,
(48:24):
not ax yet. No, it's not a fatal wound. It
exits out. Now you can account for that. Maybe did
it strike somebody else. We're talking about five other victims.
There are some people that have estimated or have thrown
out a number. And then get this of up to
thirteen rounds being fired, and you've got multiple, multiple witnesses
(48:51):
that say that there could have been they heard twelve shots.
And isn't that interesting because you're in this I think
when you and I were speaking earlier, we were you know,
I talked about this kind of funnel funneled area and
the way the noise, you know, kind of plays off
(49:13):
the walls. You've got people that are going to scream, okay,
So that's going to be factored into what your at
least auditory perception is. You might not actually see it.
I mean, how many times? How many times have you
ever been in a crowd of people and you might
hear somebody say something, You might hear screaming the crowd,
and you won't necessarily see it, but you'll hear it.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
I can't tell you how many Marty Gorough praides I've
been to over the course of my life, you know,
where there's all kinds of screaming and hooting and hollering
going on. I've been adjacent to fights that I never
saw happen. I heard fights. I've heard people being hit
and punched and all that, but it doesn't mean that
I witnessed it right with my own eyes. But I've
heard things. And so you've got this kind of cacophony
(49:57):
that's going on in there. What can they prove and
what could they disprove? Because you know, in forensics the
positive findings are just as important as negative findings. For us,
we want to know what's present, what's absent those sorts
of things. What kind of conclusions can can we reach?
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Dave, You know, the amazing thing is that after all
these years where we did have a remarkably well done
job with the autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy, we have
the Congressional Committee saying we need to have a full investigation,
fully funded by the United States government, and by the way,
(50:37):
needed to be done by nineteen eighty. It's ever been done. Yeah,
there has been no full on investigation of the assassination
of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior, or Robert F. Kennedy.
It's right here, is what we have. So not playing
a conspiracy game, just looking at the basic facts of
(51:00):
what took place that night, seems odd that you could
have an assassin in place at a moment's notice for
a route that was never planned planned or a place
they were never planning to go through at the last minute,
(51:20):
just before midnight on June fifth, nineteen sixty eight. But
that's where we are. Robert F. Kennedy was alive for
fourteen hours after he was shot. He subjumbed to his injuries.
The one thing I remember, I was a very very
very young child at the time. I do remember my
mother listening to a radio report and saying, I hope
(51:44):
he lives because they were reporting.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
That he was.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
It wasn't fatal yet, you know, it wasn't. There was
that because of what had happened with JFK. And I
just remember my mom saying that my mother, by the way,
was a conservative, so it was just some thing from
her heart. She didn't want Kennedy's to go through anything else,
you know, is just and that's what a lot of
Americans were feeling at the time. Yeah, it's it's a burden.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
It's a burden that I don't you know at this
point in time that none of us can, at least
in my your generation, we can't fully appreciate what those
adults back then were bearing witness to. But we carry,
you know, we carry the scars of this with us
everywhere we go because these events, these threes, of these
three events, these three assassinations, will have to do a
(52:31):
separate one at some point in time where we talked
about h mlk's assassination. But these these these things have
marked us, right and so the one upside to this
that I can say, if if there's any way we
could ever memorialize the actions of doctor Noguchi, uh that
(52:54):
just like in all pursuits and science, you learn from
your mistakes. In this context, it marked us in practice,
I think as to how we would handle cases moving
forward in the future, that we were not going to
be dominated in our assessments relative to relative to what
(53:18):
the finding should be or what people want them to be.
And that's the whole goal when it comes to medical
legal practice, in any kind of practice within forensics, is
that the science will always lead you to the truth. Now,
you take that science and you do with it as
you wish. But the assessments that were made by arguably
(53:43):
the most renowned forensic minds at that time. As a
matter of fact, on a closing note, one of the
people that actually consulted on this case that doctor Novucci
actually list in his autopsy report is doctor Russell Fisher,
(54:04):
who wrote this book, Spitz and Fisher. We've talked about
the passing of doctor Fisher.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Not too long ago.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
We did a memorial episode about some of these guys
that have passed. Guess who else is mentioned in this
autopsy report. One of my great friends and people that
had a big influence on me, and that's Sarah Weck
Cirriah Weck is in this report day and the guy
that directly mentored me that I was. I was thinking
(54:35):
about the time, the times that I spent in autopsy
suite with this man over the years, and to think
that he's named in this autopsy report and I sat
at his feet and learned from him doctor William Eckert,
who was consulted directly by Nogucci in this moment history,
in these huge minds in forensic science, it marked, it
(54:57):
marked our practice in forensics. It marked a way forward
for us. I hope that these are lessons that we
have learned from of how to do things and how
not to do things. Because, guys, let me tell you something.
In this life, you come around mountains every now and then, right,
and the good Lord above will either allow you to
(55:20):
keep going around the same mountain or he'll show you
a way over the top of it. Hopefully we've learned
how to go over the top of it and moved
on so that we can be better in our practice.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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