Charles Crenshaw was born
in Texas. He received his BS from Southern Methodist University and
his MS from East Texas State University. He worked on his Ph.D. at
Baylor University Graduate Research Institute in 1957 and, in 1960
received a M.D. from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
School. He then became the resident physician in Parkland Hospital
in Dallas.
When John
F. Kennedy was shot on 22nd November,
1963, he was taken to the hospital and was treated by Dr. Malcolm
Perry. Perry performed a tracheotomy
over the small wound in Kennedy's throat, therefore inadvertently
destroying crucial evidence concerning the direction of the bullet
that hit the president. At the press conference that followed the
death of Kennedy, Perry stated that he thought the throat hole looked
like an entrance wound.
Crenshaw
also treated Kennedy at Parkland Hospital. He later stated: "Two
wounds were visible. There was a small, round opening in the front
of the midline of the throat. This became the site of Dr. Malcolm
Perry's tracheotomy incision. In the occipito-parietal region at the
right rear of the
head, there was an avulsive wound nearly as large as a fist.... I
considered the throat wound to be an entrance wound and the large
head wound to be an exit wound. Along with many of my Parkland colleagues,
I believed at the time that President Kennedy had been hit twice from
the front."
The author of JFK:
Conspiracy of Silence (1992), Crenshaw, along with Robert
Livingston, David Mantik, Ronald
F. White and
Jack White, contributed to Assassination
Science (edited by James
H. Fetzer).
Crenshaw is also co-author with Gary Shaw
of Trauma Room One (2001).
Crenshaw eventually became
Professor of Clinical Surgery at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.
He later worked at the Department of Surgery at John Peter Smith Hospital
at Fort Worth.
Charles Crenshaw, died
at his home in Fort Worth, Texas on 15th November, 2001.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Charles
Crenshaw, JFK:
Conspiracy of Silence (1992)
All I could see there
was mangled, bloody tissue. From the damage I saw, there was no doubt
in my mind that the bullet had entered his head through the front,
and as it surgically passed through his cranium, the missile obliterated
part of the temporal and all the parietal and occipital lobes before
it lacerated the cerebellum.
(2)
Charles
Crenshaw, JFK:
Conspiracy of Silence (1992)
Every doctor who was in
Trauma Room I had his own reasons for not publicly refuting the 'official
line'.... I believe there was a common denominator in our silence
- a fearful perception that to come forward with what we believed
to be the medical truth would be asking for trouble... Whatever was
happening was larger than any of us. I reasoned that anyone who would
go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would
surely not hesitate to kill a doctor.
(3)
Charles
Crenshaw, Let's Set the Record
Straight, included in Assassination Science (1998)
Just after
12:40 p.m. on Friday, 22 November, I entered Trauma Room at Parkland
Hospital with Dr. Bob McClelland. Several other Parkland doctors were
already there. President Kennedy lay, mortally wounded, on a stretcher.
For the next several minutes, I helped administrate emergency treatment
to the President and I observed both his throat wound and the wound
at the right rear of his head.
I helped to remove President
Kennedy's trousers and Dr. Ken Salyer and I performed a cutdown and
inserted an IV catheter which fed Ringer's solution into Kennedy's
right leg. At the same time, other Parkland doctors were performing
a tracheotomy, inserting chest tubes, and doing a similar cutdown
on the left leg.
Two wounds were visible.
There was a small, round opening in the front of the midline of the
throat. This became the site of Dr. Malcolm Perry's tracheotomy incision.
In the occipito-parietal region at the right rear of the head, there
was an avulsive wound nearly as large as a fist. Bone, scalp, and
hair were missing in the region, and brain tissue, including much
of the cerebellum, was hanging from the opening. I considered the
throat wound to be an entrance wound and the large head wound to be
an exit wound. Along with many of my Parkland colleagues, I believed
at the time that President Kennedy had been hit twice from the front.
(4)
Charles
Crenshaw, Trauma
Room One (2001)
The book I originally wrote
with Jen Hansen and J. Gary Shaw, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence,
was published in April, 1992 and was well-received across the nation
by the American public. I had broken the “edict of silence”
thrust upon us, those who tried to save President John F. Kennedy,
and, two days later, his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. My observations
contradicted the “official” version of the assassination,
as reported in the Warren Report. I stated that President Kennedy
was shot at least once, and I believe twice, from the front, and Oswald
could not have been a “lone gunman.” I had anticipated criticism
from some, but I never expected the vicious attack from my medical
colleagues.
In May 1992, the editor
and a writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
called a press conference in New York to promote a JAMA article which
attacked me both personally and professionally. They quoted some of
my fellow physicians who had been in the Parkland Emergency room on
that tragic day, with statements that varied significantly from the
testimony that they had sworn to before the Warren Commission.
I repeatedly asked JAMA
for a retraction and correction and received correspondence denying
our request. My coauthor Gary Shaw and I were advised to sue JAMA,
and on November 22, 1992, exactly 29 years since that fateful day
in Dallas, we filed suit for “slander with malice.” In October,
1994, we agreed to court-ordered mediation and accepted a monetary
settlement offered by JAMA. The litigation details and exposure of
JAMA ‘s unethical publication are included in this book in the
section written by our attorney, D. Bradley Kizzia.
The House Select Committee
on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded in 1979 that President Kennedy’s
death was the result of a probable conspiracy, but their records were
sealed until the year 2029. The 1992 President John F. Kennedy Assassination
Records Collection Act (JFK Act) was a unique solution to nearly thirty
years of government secrecy, and the government was required to release
whatever information it had concerning the assassination. The JFK
Act created an independent board that would oversee the government’s
implementation of the Act, the Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB).
Many of the revelations
from the ARRB have substantiated my allegations in the original book.
According to Saundra Spencer, the autopsy photographs of President
Kennedy that she developed at the Naval Photography Center in 1963
were different from those in the National Archives since 1966. The
ARRB Report also suggests that Dr. Humes, one of three autopsy physicians,
appears to have changed his Warren Commission testimony when his deposition
was taken under oath by the ARRB. Additional testimony questioned
the autopsy and brain photography that are now in the National Archive
and Records Administration.
I have no idea who shot
President Kennedy or why. What I do know is that somehow and for some
reason, there was a medical cover-up. The “official” autopsy
photos do not depict the same wounds I saw in Trauma Room One at Parkland.
The wounds I saw were wounds of entrance, and thus they could have
not come from the rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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